Some readers are greatly puzzled with all this. It must be noted, at this juncture, that the writer of our treatise did not discover new ideas or invent new terms; he used what was in his mind and the mind of his circle. It was, however, the weaving of it into a whole, not as a literary exercise, but as a setting forth in the most understandable terms with which they were acquainted of the "things seen," that was their main interest. Those who had the "second sight'' would understand and appreciate their labors, those who had not would never understand, no matter what terms or what language was used.
[24] And Long has written as much, citing his development of what already existed into a workable system from the fragments of the Tradition inherited.
In this section of the Pymander, our treatise is endeavoring precisely to give an insight into the state of things beyond Fate. The burden of its teaching is that all earthly duality and oppositions are really illusory; man can transcend these limitations and come into the freedom of the Sons of God. Even the most terrible and fundamental oppositions are not really so, but all are Self-limitations of God's Will. And man is Son of God coequal with Him.
[25] The peaceable understanding of force that makes all form quiet.
The First Men
Our treatise goes on to describe the first appearance of man on earth, which it regards as a great mystery never before revealed ("the mystery kept hid until this day"). This I take to mean that it had hitherto never been written about but had been kept as a great secret. This secret was the doctrine that the first men, of which there were seven types, were hermaphrodites, and not only so, but lived in the air; their frames were of fire and spirit, and not of the earth-water elements. The Celestial Man, or type of humanity, was gradually differentiating himself from his proper nature of Light and Life, and taking on bodies of fire and air, was changing into mind (Lightfire) and soul (Life-spirit).
This presumably lasted for long periods of time, the lower animal forms gradually evolving to greater complexity as Nature strove to copy the "Form" of Man, and Man devolving gradually until there was a union of Mind and matter, and the human subtle form could find vehicles among the highest animal shapes. The first incarnate men appear to have been at first also hermaphrodite; and it must have been a time when everything was in a far greater state of flux than things are now.
[26] Logically though not offered often that first humans were hermaphroditic solves a great many problems one being given the helplessness of infants how did the first baby survive long enough to become a human? And wherefore its parents can be answered if there were but one parent. But this is not talking about the physical evolution of man it is talking about the spiritual evolution of man. Castenada and one of THEM speak of the focal point of awareness, and one of them mapped the fpoa onto the Tree of Wyrd's spheres each chakra/focal point/sphere is one of the seven types of hermaphrodite, or was that is, balanced.
To Increase and Multiply
This period of pre-sexual or bisexual development having come to an end, the separation of the sexes took place. The commandment is given by the Word: "Increase in increasing and multiply in multitude." It is true that this is reminiscent of the oft-repeated formula in Genesis, but it is only slightly reminiscent. The main injunction is similar, but the rest of the Logos being quite different from anything found in Genesis. As nothing else in the whole treatise can be referred to direct Hebrew influence, we must conclude that the formula was, so to speak, "in the air," and has so crept into our treatise.
This increasing and multiplying, the perpetual coupling of bodies and the birth of new ones, is effected by Fate, or the Harmony of the Formative Spheres, the Engine of Birth, set under Forethought or Providence. This Pronoia can be none else than Nature herself as the Wisdom or Knowledge of God -- in other words, His Will.
[27] Here, Force, divorces into Forces, and then further into Form, and finally Forms.
Love as the Will of God
The motive power of all this is Love. If this Love manifests itself as Desire for things of matter, the Lover stays in Darkness wandering; if it becomes the Will to know Light, the Lover becomes the Knower of himself, and so eventually at-one with Good. But why should love of body merit Death -- that is to say, make man mortal? The disciple attempts an explanation from what he has seen. Although his answer is approved, the meaning is by no means clear.
The physical body, or body in the sense-world, is composed of the Moist Nature, which in a subsequent phase remains as Water-Earth, and in a still subsequent phase divides itself into the elements of physical earth, water, and air. The dissolution of the previous combination of these elements is effected by Death -- that is, Darkness, the Drainer of the Water, the Typhonean Power. Water must thus here symbolize the Osirian Power of fructification and holding together. The Moist Nature seems to be differentiated from the Darkness by the energizing of Light in its most primitive brooding. But seeing that the Light is also Life, the Darkness, which is posited as the ultimate opposite, must be Death.
[28] This passage relates the physis of Forms dealt with in pMYRIAD: there were prior to increase and multiplication no opposites no tension that can only be bastardized when effected as form as force, there is no mistake, no interpretation. Life, through form, is now Death. Life as force was one with Death. Form brings with it, time, an (artificial) extension (increase) between force and thus space through expansion (multiply) now Life and Death are two.
The Way of Deathlessness
The Way of Deathlessness is then considered. The disciple repeats his lesson, and the Master commends him; the Way Up is the path of self-knowledge. Still the disciple cannot believe that this is for him; he cannot understand that the One Mind is in him, or rather is himself, in so much as Mind as Teacher seems to be outside him. The semantic play is on Mind and mind; the one gives the certitude of Immortality, the other is still bound by the illusion of Death. The disciple has not this certitude; the One Mind, then, is not his.
The Master then further explains the mystery. Gnosis must be preceded by moral purification; there must be a turning-away before the re-turn can be accomplished. The whole nature must be changed. That is the alchemy of the cosmos. Every tortuous effort that the little man seems to make of his own striving is really the energizing of the Great Man.
Those, however, who yield themselves to lower desires, drive the One Mind away, find that their appetites are only the more strengthened by the mind in them. The original text of this paragraph is very corrupt, so that the exact sense of the original is not recoverable; and this makes it all the more difficult to understand what is meant by the Avenging Daimon, the Counterpart of the Mind.
[29] Far too much is said here to comment on briefly yet perhaps this is the most important of all the commentary, and perhaps, because so, should be passed over in silence.
The Ascent of the Soul
Before long, the subject of instruction becomes the Way Above, or ascent of the soul out of the body at death. The physical body is left to the work of change and dissolution. The life of integration and conservation ceases, and the life of disintegration begins. The form thus vanishes, apparently from the man's consciousness; that is to say, presumably, he is no longer clothed in the form of his physical body but is apparently in some other vehicle. The particular fixed form, or "way of life," or "habit," he wore on earth being handed over to the Daimon deprived of all its energy, so that apparently it becomes an empty shell.
The senses that had previously been united by the mind become separate. That is, instead of a whole they become parts; they return to the natural animal state of sensation, and the animal part of man, or his vehicle of sexual passion and desire, begins in its turn to disintegrate, the mind or reason (logos) being gradually separated from it. Or rather, its true nature begins showing forth in the man, as he gradually strips off the irrational tendencies of the energies. Those irrational tendencies have their sources in Fate (the Harmony of the Spheres) It is in these seven subordinate spheres or zones where he leaves his inharmonious propensities, deprived of their energy. For Fate (the Harmony of the Spheres machine) is only evil apparently; it is really the Engine of Justice and Necessity to readjust the foolish choices of the soul. That is, it exists to purify the soul's irrational desires, or those propensities in it that are not under the sway of the right reason of the One Mind.
[24] And Long has written as much, citing his development of what already existed into a workable system from the fragments of the Tradition inherited.
In this section of the Pymander, our treatise is endeavoring precisely to give an insight into the state of things beyond Fate. The burden of its teaching is that all earthly duality and oppositions are really illusory; man can transcend these limitations and come into the freedom of the Sons of God. Even the most terrible and fundamental oppositions are not really so, but all are Self-limitations of God's Will. And man is Son of God coequal with Him.
[25] The peaceable understanding of force that makes all form quiet.
The First Men
Our treatise goes on to describe the first appearance of man on earth, which it regards as a great mystery never before revealed ("the mystery kept hid until this day"). This I take to mean that it had hitherto never been written about but had been kept as a great secret. This secret was the doctrine that the first men, of which there were seven types, were hermaphrodites, and not only so, but lived in the air; their frames were of fire and spirit, and not of the earth-water elements. The Celestial Man, or type of humanity, was gradually differentiating himself from his proper nature of Light and Life, and taking on bodies of fire and air, was changing into mind (Lightfire) and soul (Life-spirit).
This presumably lasted for long periods of time, the lower animal forms gradually evolving to greater complexity as Nature strove to copy the "Form" of Man, and Man devolving gradually until there was a union of Mind and matter, and the human subtle form could find vehicles among the highest animal shapes. The first incarnate men appear to have been at first also hermaphrodite; and it must have been a time when everything was in a far greater state of flux than things are now.
[26] Logically though not offered often that first humans were hermaphroditic solves a great many problems one being given the helplessness of infants how did the first baby survive long enough to become a human? And wherefore its parents can be answered if there were but one parent. But this is not talking about the physical evolution of man it is talking about the spiritual evolution of man. Castenada and one of THEM speak of the focal point of awareness, and one of them mapped the fpoa onto the Tree of Wyrd's spheres each chakra/focal point/sphere is one of the seven types of hermaphrodite, or was that is, balanced.
To Increase and Multiply
This period of pre-sexual or bisexual development having come to an end, the separation of the sexes took place. The commandment is given by the Word: "Increase in increasing and multiply in multitude." It is true that this is reminiscent of the oft-repeated formula in Genesis, but it is only slightly reminiscent. The main injunction is similar, but the rest of the Logos being quite different from anything found in Genesis. As nothing else in the whole treatise can be referred to direct Hebrew influence, we must conclude that the formula was, so to speak, "in the air," and has so crept into our treatise.
This increasing and multiplying, the perpetual coupling of bodies and the birth of new ones, is effected by Fate, or the Harmony of the Formative Spheres, the Engine of Birth, set under Forethought or Providence. This Pronoia can be none else than Nature herself as the Wisdom or Knowledge of God -- in other words, His Will.
[27] Here, Force, divorces into Forces, and then further into Form, and finally Forms.
Love as the Will of God
The motive power of all this is Love. If this Love manifests itself as Desire for things of matter, the Lover stays in Darkness wandering; if it becomes the Will to know Light, the Lover becomes the Knower of himself, and so eventually at-one with Good. But why should love of body merit Death -- that is to say, make man mortal? The disciple attempts an explanation from what he has seen. Although his answer is approved, the meaning is by no means clear.
The physical body, or body in the sense-world, is composed of the Moist Nature, which in a subsequent phase remains as Water-Earth, and in a still subsequent phase divides itself into the elements of physical earth, water, and air. The dissolution of the previous combination of these elements is effected by Death -- that is, Darkness, the Drainer of the Water, the Typhonean Power. Water must thus here symbolize the Osirian Power of fructification and holding together. The Moist Nature seems to be differentiated from the Darkness by the energizing of Light in its most primitive brooding. But seeing that the Light is also Life, the Darkness, which is posited as the ultimate opposite, must be Death.
[28] This passage relates the physis of Forms dealt with in pMYRIAD: there were prior to increase and multiplication no opposites no tension that can only be bastardized when effected as form as force, there is no mistake, no interpretation. Life, through form, is now Death. Life as force was one with Death. Form brings with it, time, an (artificial) extension (increase) between force and thus space through expansion (multiply) now Life and Death are two.
The Way of Deathlessness
The Way of Deathlessness is then considered. The disciple repeats his lesson, and the Master commends him; the Way Up is the path of self-knowledge. Still the disciple cannot believe that this is for him; he cannot understand that the One Mind is in him, or rather is himself, in so much as Mind as Teacher seems to be outside him. The semantic play is on Mind and mind; the one gives the certitude of Immortality, the other is still bound by the illusion of Death. The disciple has not this certitude; the One Mind, then, is not his.
The Master then further explains the mystery. Gnosis must be preceded by moral purification; there must be a turning-away before the re-turn can be accomplished. The whole nature must be changed. That is the alchemy of the cosmos. Every tortuous effort that the little man seems to make of his own striving is really the energizing of the Great Man.
Those, however, who yield themselves to lower desires, drive the One Mind away, find that their appetites are only the more strengthened by the mind in them. The original text of this paragraph is very corrupt, so that the exact sense of the original is not recoverable; and this makes it all the more difficult to understand what is meant by the Avenging Daimon, the Counterpart of the Mind.
[29] Far too much is said here to comment on briefly yet perhaps this is the most important of all the commentary, and perhaps, because so, should be passed over in silence.
The Ascent of the Soul
Before long, the subject of instruction becomes the Way Above, or ascent of the soul out of the body at death. The physical body is left to the work of change and dissolution. The life of integration and conservation ceases, and the life of disintegration begins. The form thus vanishes, apparently from the man's consciousness; that is to say, presumably, he is no longer clothed in the form of his physical body but is apparently in some other vehicle. The particular fixed form, or "way of life," or "habit," he wore on earth being handed over to the Daimon deprived of all its energy, so that apparently it becomes an empty shell.
The senses that had previously been united by the mind become separate. That is, instead of a whole they become parts; they return to the natural animal state of sensation, and the animal part of man, or his vehicle of sexual passion and desire, begins in its turn to disintegrate, the mind or reason (logos) being gradually separated from it. Or rather, its true nature begins showing forth in the man, as he gradually strips off the irrational tendencies of the energies. Those irrational tendencies have their sources in Fate (the Harmony of the Spheres) It is in these seven subordinate spheres or zones where he leaves his inharmonious propensities, deprived of their energy. For Fate (the Harmony of the Spheres machine) is only evil apparently; it is really the Engine of Justice and Necessity to readjust the foolish choices of the soul. That is, it exists to purify the soul's irrational desires, or those propensities in it that are not under the sway of the right reason of the One Mind.
, of their semblance, their type; and ἀρχή - the primal before (προάρχον