Notes of a Hermetic Conversation from March 19, 2019
March 19, 2019
Knight of Coins, as a “Seven” (the 34th Arcanum).
We began with the protective practice.
We then invoked the presence of the Virgin Mary through performing 7 Hail Mary’s in eurythmy, moving from root to crown through the words from the Cross.
After briefly focusing the mantra “I AM” on the brow chakra, we then performed the fourth part of the Inner Radiance Sequence, and the 18th letter of the Divine Alphabet (Tsaddi, in relation to the Moon).
We read from Psalm 119:137-144 in relation to Tsaddi, Revelation 6:12-14, and Matthew 23:16-17
Note that in the week between conversations, our closing realization from March 12 regarding the simultaneity and co-inherence of Aristotelian (imminent) and Platonic (transcendent) archetypes led to an ongoing and ever-expanding dialogue, around the Father and the Mother, the nature of hierarchy in different realms, etc. Here is a bit of a summary:
March 13-17:
Phillip feels that the March 12 conversation was a happy birthday present to Joel from the Hermetic Zone…
The meeting stayed with Phillip a lot; what we arrived at brought incredible context to the Coins and so many different themes, the Fall, Incarnation, the Archetypal realm. Amazing. Looking forward to going into more.
Joel felt that conversation as a real grace, what was coming through. Something that was still in the realm of Spring time, something not really formed yet. He starts to reflect about…there is a process that we can strive to pass onto people that has come out of our work together. But as time goes on, we’re shaping up to have…not quite a cosmology and not quite a theology, something in between those two. But a very unique spiritual paradigm begins to expose itself through these conversations. So writing Letter-meditations in one way will be hard, but we really are approaching concrete realities that haven’t been expressed before, and in that sense writing L-Ms will be easy and exciting.
Phillip agrees this question of Springtime…it’s a big picture and it just illuminates a lot in broad strokes, a lot of our organization around all of our work with the Minors and yet still isn’t outlined in sharp detail at all…
One other thought is this question of the transition from the Three to the Four, and how the Four was the sign under which Phillip’s current life phase was inaugurated. It’s kind of this pre-sentient, pre-conscious activity that reaches a peak degree of intensity that allows some kind of consciousness to come forward from somewhere. Just thinking of his situation in this way, there’s this consciousness, there’s something that…like in MOT when the fire of the supreme consciousness meets the light of our individual consciousness…is our light extinguished? Or enveloped? What’s the process? What is this transcendent archetype and what is the effect on the imminent archetype when they come into contact, maybe after the stages of Unity, Differentiation, Frictional Struggle and then face to face confrontation. At some stage of recognition or encounter between the two…not just oppositional, but it’s each in their rightful place encounters each other….what arises? And this consciousness, where does that come from that is somehow generated by that?
Joel feels Philip is coming to a similar place that he is after the conversation…not sure if we ever really got there in the conversation, but he so strongly as this association between this Transcendent/Platonic realm as the Unfallen Image and this Aristotelian/Immanent realm as the Fallen Likeness. Not even that they were once identical to each other, but they were once on the same plane. And the Aristotelian archetype fell, and that’s where the battle is, is in the falling of the Likeness. Encasing it in terms of the Transcendent Platonic Realm as the bright light, the fiery consciousness of the Godhead, which comes into contact with the relatively dark light of human consciousness, which you could compare with the Aristotelian/Immanent archetype…what does that interaction look like when they come together? Is it an experience of darkness for the soul? Is the soul overwhelmed and put to sleep? This St John of the Cross “Dark night of the Soul” Or Teresa of Avila. And that occurring at a particular moment in the process that we were getting to last night. And that particular moment living somehow in what has unfolded under the sign of the Four.
Also makes Joel wonder could you characterise or recognise a Platonist based around how much they want to avoid conflict and assume everything is fine, or treat everything as fine? Is that the Shadow of that unfallen or transcendent Platonic realm? And is the shadow side of the Aristotelian the tendency to nit-pick and get caught up in minutia, which he thinks Phillip experienced in a recent conversation with a CC study group. What’s the shadow side of these?
Getting caught up in a minutia…it’s sort of that “recognising the essential” yet losing sight of the Essence in favour of “essential minutia”. Not seeing Essence, just seeing the manifest details and not the Immanent, reflective archetypal Essence.
This thought occurs to Phillip that the Values that Tomberg speaks of represented by the Coins that must be paid to cross the threshold are these Values…that are these structures that are the immanent Likeness of the reflected Image. That maybe there are these Ten aspects of Likeness which in themselves are like small little differentiated holograms, each reflecting the Whole yet each in an individual distinctive way, separate from each other. Confusing the matter but maybe in the same way that the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge are actually one and the same tree. That when you eat from the Tree of Life it becomes a Tree of Knowledge. And your only actually able to eat a Fallen version. The Values are these Immanent archetypes perhaps, and you pay them or cash them in by letting them house and reflect a portion of the Image.
It’s amazing how much more magical the conversation is vs the recounting of the conversation. Phillip wonders how it is for someone reading it who wasn’t there. The skeleton of the thing vs the living body of the thing. But they’re good, interesting to go back over. Gosh, the conversations are like a tenfold degree of quantity and richness. Curious what people will make of it? It all flows naturally. They seem like big ideas to Phillip, but reading them is so different than discovering them through conversation.
Joel knows what he means in terms the notes. It’s interesting…two hours of time to transcribe and all that comes out is the bare-bones framework. All the ideas that came out of the conversation, but all the magic, all the flesh and life is lost. But maybe if he set himself the task, maybe he could create something that still had that flesh and blood to it. If he wasn’t just writing notes, but writing something fuller than that. It does give hope in terms of writing LM’s…that’s gonna be kind of a…the Conversation is an Ex Deo Nascimur…the notes are an In Christo Morimur…and the writing of the LM’s ought to be a Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus. It will be interesting to get to that third phase of the work.
We discussed potentially having a podcast style conversation with the two of us, Lucian and Molly around the Magician—in terms of “How does one approach studying the Tarot?” The Magician is the perfect Arcanum around which to have a conversation of this theme. He is the one who has seen it all, accomplished all, experienced it all. And now it’s like he is making a presentation. Showing you what he has seen and done, showing you how to engage with the Tarot.
At the same time though, we can think of Magician and High Priestess and Mysticism and Gnosis. And that in a sense those two are united in a single act, and can only be extracted from each other at the stage of Gnosis, when the Mysticism is brought to consciousness. And so even though the Magician is the one who has seen and done it all, he is also like the stage that comes before the beginning. The High Priestess is the true beginning. The Magician is more that phase where one asks “Hm…now, how do I begin?” And the High Priestess is the answer (Gnosis) to his question (Mysticism). So he is the end of everything, but also that which precedes the beginning of the whole process.
Phillip feels there’s so much here…it completely…this idea of unpacking Tomberg’s implied cosmology, unpacking a comprehensive background picture that encompasses for example transcendent and imminent archetypes and their relationship…this bigger picture…and this idea of “what comes before the beginning?” The beginning isn’t the start! It isn’t the beginning! What is there that is prior to the beginning? That is a cosmological state that needs to be elaborated.
There’s a lot to reference from Steiner or Tomberg. The tsim-tsum or the principle of Love as the fundamentally pre-existing principle. The thought that feels the most expressive of this is…the idea of there being nothing before a beginning is implicit for Phillip in “the beginning.” How do you restructure that so that the beginning is a qualitative moment arising out of something…a different qualitative state that is just pre-existent. Ever pre-existent. There isn’t ever just a nothingness out of which things arise. That’s one of these huge reservoirs of question that is fueling this whole endeavour.
Joel woke up with images in his head…of this realm preceding time…where the transcendent and the immanent are together on the same plane. And they’re not the same as each other but they’re on the same plane. And that’s what constitutes the eternal realm. I guess you could call that the Father and the Mother. The shape that makes in his mind is a horizontal lemniscate. It’s not a hierarchical thing because they’re on the same plane. And that’s exactly what’s there at the top of the Magician is the horizontal lemniscate. Not fully formed…just an image upon waking…
It’s also in the horizontal layout of the Deuce of Coins. The thought that comes to Phillip is the constellation of Virgo at one point being vertically oriented and now horizontally oriented.
Interesting because from what Joel is bringing up it begins horizontal, and then the move to a vertical state brings in the risk of a Fall, the risk of a ball being dropped. Whereas with Virgo moving from the upright to the fallen, it’s the opposite movement but the same gesture. The story is really the movement from things being oriented correctly (whether vertical or horizontal) to being oriented incorrectly. Makes Joel think of the slightly tilted Coin in the Knight which is reminiscent of the tilted axis of the Earth, which came about due to the Fall and the separation of the Moon from the Earth, and brings about the different Zodiacal and cultural epochs.
Horizontal vs vertical alignment…taking a departure from Virgo…in the transcendent plane there is a difference between the horizontal Deuce and the vertical Deuce, and its transcendent relationship, and similarly in the immanent there is an appropriate horizontal and vertical relationship. The purity of the upright Virgin in the transcendent plane is this unfallen archetype with the hierarchical relationship and maybe this reverses in the immanent plane, that the true manifestation of Virgo is more horizontal in the immanent plane. Maybe that speaks to the way that unfallen Nature works in a non-heirarchical way with fallen nature?
The whole cosmic drama comes from the separation of the primary relationship of Father and Mother. Joel was thinking of Cain, in this role of the eradication of hierarchy. A fascinating idea that on this one plane the horizontal is the natural relationship, and to institute hierarchy is a destruction of the natural order. And on this other plane, vertical is the natural orientation and to make it horizontal, to destroy hierarchy is the actual aberration. How does that play out in different areas of life? The realm of the Trinity as this horizontal realm, then Hierarchies as vertical? How does that play out in human culture, in the social organism, and in a marriage, in a family?
– Looking at the spread Chariot (7)—Tower of Destruction (16)—Three of Coins (25)—Knight of Coins (34). The first thing that stands out is where we ended last time. The Knight represents the transition from the third term (Shin) to the fourth term (Vau).
This is a transition from a process of reflection between Aristotelian and Platonic realms, to a process of mutual interaction and transformation, an alchemical wedding. Well, the Knight of Coins is the 34th Arcanum = 3 + 4 = 7. Again we have an emphasis on 3 and 4. Notice that the Three of Coins also has a quality of combining the 3 and 4. The coins form a triangle (3) and there are four plants blossoming out of the pearl. Finally, the coin that the Knight beholds: it is a 12-petalled flower and a 4-petalled flower. 12 = 1+2 = 3. So here again we have the meeting of 3 and 4.
– Notice that in all three of the preceding Arcana bearing the value of Seven numerologically, it is ambiguous as to whether they have a geometry that emphasizes three or one that emphasizes four. With the Chariot, we see the three-foldness of the charioteer and the two horses. But then there is the four-foldness of the Chariot itself, with the two sides of its canopy and two wheels. With the Tower of Destruction, we see the three-foldness of the windows of the Tower and the two men falling out of it, but overall there is a four-foldness of the top of the tower falling off, the lightning/flame, and the two men. We have already looked at the Three of Coins in this way.
Maybe this is a clue to the right perspective to take with the Knight? It isn’t so geometrically obvious, but it does seem to hold true (a combination of three-fold geometry and four-fold geometry). The horse’s hooves: there are four of them, but one is lifted up. It is 4 yet 3. The triangles of red in the Knight’s garment. Overall, it is four-fold, but it is due to a combination of two three-folds. The image as a whole is a rectangle, yet there is an emphasis on the right triangle in the upper right hand corner: four yet three.
– A blending of Minors and Majors. But they may be like apples and oranges, and we end up seeking for analogies between things that aren’t really suited to being compared. E.g. “maybe there are four particular majors that are echoed here…”—this is a forced, contrived intention.
– Let’s proceed phenomenologically. What majors really resonate with the Knight? This process is akin to what we needed to do with the Three of Coins, where we really had to focus consequently on each particular arcanum in order for the meaning to emerge:
– The Chariot is obvious
– The Fool: splitting of the body, multiple bodies at once
– High Priestess: echoing of the stole on the horse
– Empress: almost the entire gesture
– Emperor: shape of the saddle vs Emperor’s crown. Straight leg/leaning posture. Is there a somewhat different flesh-color in the horse vs the Emperor’s throne/shield?
– Hermit: hood vs bonnet. Coin vs lamp. Staff vs club.
– Death: scythe = club/bridle combo.
Last week we spoke of Kyot, and of Saul/Paul in terms of priestly Knights. The Hermit makes one think of Trevrizent, who was also a Knight, but due to unchastity and the breaking of his vows, retired from Knighthood to lead the (priestly) life of a Hermit. He is almost like a precursor to Kyot. Actually, it may have been a similar time that Trevrizent became a Hermit and Kyot founded St Guillaume?
– Coming off of this phenomenological survey of the Majors, we see that the Knight is especially related to the Empress, but in a way to the spectrum of High Priestess, Empress, Emperor. The Empress flanked by the other two. He is like an immature version of each of these three. His baton is crude, not ornate like the Empress’s. His saddle performs a similar function to the Emperor’s throne, in that he leans back, yet the Knight remains active. The Empress’s throne is characterized by Tomberg as something living that has been brought to a standstill (frozen wings), and the Knight’s gesture of rearing back is an attempt to bring his living mobile “throne” (the horse) to a standstill. In a way, one could turn the Emperor sideways and it becomes the Knight: the flesh-colored throne/shield becomes the horse.
– The three classes of Commoners, Knights, Priests. Is there a continuum formed by these three? Can we see in the saddle the presence of a King (or Emperor) within the Knight? And with the stole-like straps, the presence of a Priest (High Priestess) within the Knight? And the club represents the Knight himself, in relation to the Empress (the sacred magician)?
– With the Knave, we saw a simultaneity of Magician (Mysticism) and Emperor (Hermeticism). He is performing both of those operations at once, as a unity.
On the other hand, with the Knight, maybe what we are coming to is that he expresses the activity of transformability. Like the Fool, who can wander into and out of any Arcanum. The Knight can “wander” or travel from High Priestess, to Empress, to Emperor at will. He is comfortable, but not strictly at home or stuck in any one of them. Like a Jack of all trades (as I write these notes, I realize that the Knight became the Jack in the normal deck!). There could be something stealthy in a quality like that. Like going undercover. The Knight as spy. This comes into the tale of Lohengrin. The Grail Knights were sent out to different lands in order to serve and to teach the ways of the Grail, but they could never reveal their true identity. They had to unite themselves with the folk they were sent to, not come in their own name. Lohengrin tells the Princess of Brabant he will take her hand, but she must never ask him his true name or where he comes from. But she breaks this promise, and then he is forced to return to the Grail Castle. This is like the missionaries of old, who are commissioned by Christ from the very beginning to take on the customs of the people to whom they bring the Gospel. They must blend in with the people they are sent to. This is the nature of the Knight of Coins.
– The horses’s adornment is very similar to the waistband of the Charioteer (four round flaps on the yellow belt).
– So up above we have Seven Arcana that seem to relate especially to the Knight of Coins. How might we arrange these?
Below, we would have the High Priestess on the far left, corresponding to the stole-like shape on the horse. Then we would have the Emperor, corresponding to the saddle. Then the Chariot, corresponding to the yellow banner: 2—4—7
In the middle, we would have Death, corresponding to the combination of the club and bridle: 13
Then up above we would have the Empress in the middle (Knight’s head) flanked by the Fool on our left (top of the club) and the Hermit on our right (the Coin = Lamp): 0—3—9
Altogether this looks like:
Notice that in the bottom row of cards, all of the important features are right in the middle of the images (stole, throne, banner).
With Death, he is harvesting body parts, and we see a female head corresponding to the High Priestess, and a male head corresponding to the Charioteer.
The Emperor’s crown has a phallus shape embedded in it. This corresponds to the region of the reproductive organs on the Knight (the region of the saddle).
– Why are the High Priestess and the Emperor below? We would associate these two Arcana with the light of consciousness, with the reflective power that makes things conscious. This seems strange for them to be dwelling in this instinctive/animalistic realm of the Knight’s horse. Are they operating on an instinctive level, not fully developed? Still tied to the realm of the will, the animal?
– We can see the three-fold and four-fold natures present themselves again. The overall image is 3-fold: Knight, Coin, Horse. But these three correspond to four major Arcana:
Empress as Knight/Coin; Horse as High Priestess, Emperor, and Chariot. Two become one in the Empress. One becomes three in the High Priestess, Emperor and Chariot.
Another way we can see the 3 and 4 together:
Adding together the top row of Arcana: 0+3+9 = 12 = 1+2 = 3. So we have 3 above.
In the middle we have 13=1+3=4. So we have 4 in the center. This four can be analyzed into three components in the bottom row:
2+4+7=13=1+3=4. So the bottom shows us the 4 of Death in an analyzed form. So this arrangement expresses to us once again the interaction of 3 and 4.
This leaves us with two questions:
1) How does Death contain within it High Priestess, Emperor and Chariot?
2) How is the Knight an expression of The Fool, Empress and Hermit ruling over Death?
We might arrange things a little differently. We see the “light” portion of the Knight in the upper right corner. We see the “dark” portion of the Knight in the lower left hand corner. So we might think of it like this:
There is something going on here with the heads. When we focus on this upper right hand corner of the Knight, we see the two heads are here. The “blade” of the “scythe” is dividing the horse’s head from its body. It makes one think of what Tomberg writes about Kalki Avatar in the Letter-Meditation on the Fool: he has the body of a giant, and the head of a horse. And the Fool himself: didn’t we think of him as having had his head removed? And the head perched on the horizontal staff was a bit like John’s head on the platter? Things brings us back around to Hamlet pondering the skull. The Knave is also carrying around a “head.”
– If we turn the image of the Knight somewhat diagonally (like the Coin in the image?), we have the Coin as the pinnacle of a triangle, with the head of the Knight on the left side, and the head of the horse on the right side. This immediately recalls the Three of Coins and the Chariot, with their triangular geometry. Notice in the Chariot and in the Tower, there are triangles within triangles: The Charioteer’s head is the pinnacle of the two horses, but also the smaller triangle created by the faces on his shoulders. It is the same with the small triangle of windows in the Tower and the larger triangle created by the two men below the windows.
The Chariot’s triangle is expressing Self-Mastery: the Human presiding over the conflicting animal natures below.
The Knight presents something else. The Coin presiding over the Human and the Animal = the Common Source or the balancing, transcendent force between the Human and the Animal (thought and will). It expresses latent Gnosis (2), Hermeticism (4), and Self-Mastery (7) coming into contact with that which can actualize them. These latent/profane qualities require a will (animal) and consciousness (human) in order to become sacred/actualized— but it is the Transcendent Divine Itself that performs the deed of actualizing. The human and horse are just the vessel and instrument. We can look to page 514 of the Letter-Meditation on the Moon, where St. John of the Cross attributes none of his transformation to “spiritual technology,” but entirely to the Grace brought on by the fire of love for the Divine. Now the picture becomes totally clear.
Up above we have the Fire of Love (Fool) directed towards Conscience (Hermit), bringing about a deed of Sacred Magic (Empress). This raises the latent Gnosis, Hermeticism and Self-Mastery from the realm of the will (horse) to full consciousness (Knight). And Death is in the middle—he is the Guardian of the Threshold, this whole process is a Crossing of the Threshold between the intellect and the intuitive realm of instinct and conscience. This image is concretely expressing the activity described in the Letter-Meditation on the Moon, where instinct must become disinterested (Gnosis), able to reflect upon itself (Hermeticism), extend itself in unity with objects outside itself (Chariot). Instinct, once purified, becomes intellect in service to Conscience: Daath or Intuition.
– The Three of Coins appears in a new light. We could see The Empress as the upper coin, and the High Priestess and Chariot as the lower two coins. The Emperor’s saddle/crown motif appears around the central pearl, from which the plants are sprouting. In this light, it seems like the High Priestess and the Chariot are reflections of each other. How so? There doesn’t seem to be a uniting factor between the two at first. One that does stand out is the presence of the tapestry/veil or “skin” above each of them. A protection, and a filter of sorts between them and the spiritual world. There is also the reflection of the two horses in the book on the Priestess’s lap. A kind of lemniscate flowing between the “yes and no” of the two horses vs the lemniscate of revelation and memory that is the “book” on the High Priestess’s lap (two sides of the book). The Emperor becomes a kind of still point, like the Ace of Coins.
The Three could be seen as a kind of transitional process from the transcendent to the imminent, with the Ace as the upper coin, and the two lower coins as the Deuce going through a transformation. A movement to a different plane has required that they become horizontal rather than vertical (this refers back to our broader discussion of hierarchy, and how it may be that hierarchy is necessary and appropriate on one plane, and unnecessary and inappropriate in another. The “original being” would be a horizontal lemniscate, therefore in the highest plane there is no hierarchy. But as soon as there is a descent, separation, a Fall, hierarchy becomes a reality. Hence the heavenly hierarchies. The Three of Coins has overall hierarchy with the single coin above and double below, yet each of those planes lacks hierarchy in and of itself; is this some kind of further transition/transformation?).
– The question of instinct developing into intuition—is this a manifestation in a particular domain of the hoped for reunion and mutual transformation of the Platonic and Aristotelian realms (stages 4-5 from the end of last week’s conversation)?
The Knave is only in that third stage of reflection—he perfectly mirrors both the Magician and Emperor, and makes it that they then become identical to each other, perfect reflections of each other—two sides of the same coin, a united activity of Mysticism and Hermeticism.
The Knight is more like the ending of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. In fact, this Fairy Tale is a perfect picture of what the Knight of Coins is all about. There are two realms, each on a different side of a river. The Lily is on one side, and the Youth is on the other, and they can never come into contact with each other. The Youth attempts to touch her, and he dies. The Temple of Initiation is underground on one side of the river, and the time has come for it to rise up. The Snake sacrifices herself such that the Temple can rise above—on the opposite side of the river—and such that the Youth rises from the dead and is then able to wed the Lily. The Snake transforms into a bridge that brings together the two sides of the river, and anyone is able to walk back and forth at will in order to visit the Temple of Initiation. This is a story that is all about mutual transformation, all about conversation, and the ability to move from one domain to another at will. Goethe wrote it inspired by Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man. Schiller posited that we have two opposing forces within us—the untamed spontaneity of the instinct, of desire; and the crushing weight of duty arising out of reason. Schiller claims that true freedom does not exist in either Desire or Duty, but only when the two can interweave: the light of Reason must penetrate all the way into Desire and purify it; the spontaneity and power of Desire must travel all the way up into the dictates of Reason. Then “Work becomes play,” our duty becomes our natural inclination. And it is only through the “play-drive,” through authentic artistic creation and Beauty, that this interweaving can be cultivated. Through the Lunar Imagination, we can come to this interweaving. Schiller conceived of this philosophy based on watching Goethe at work; Goethe agreed with it entirely, but said that the way it was presented goes against the very philosophy being promoted. Therefore he recast it in its appropriate form: a piece of imaginative art.
The long and the short of it, in terms of the transition from Knave to Knight, would be “we’re equal to each other now—now we can play together.” The Knave is more in the realm of gnosis, now with the Knight, something is happening, Sacred Magic is coming into play.
– We have been doing this a long time. 34th Arcana = 34 months. But it doesn’t feel that long in some way. There are certain conversations that were years ago that still feel fresh and present, and the activity of the conversations is qualitatively the same. In other words, there is still this quality of entering into the unknown at the start of each conversation, the burgeoning feeling of springtime. There is nothing rote or habitual about our method. It is habitual in the sense that it occurs regularly, every week with few exceptions, but otherwise it is not repetitive.
– The Knave is to the 10 Coins as the Knight is to the 22 Majors (and 11 prior Coin cards). The Knave is only vertical movement, the relatively static motion of the 10 coins. But the Knight has horizontal mobility, play, the soulfulness of the Majors.
The Court Cards have the same rich archetypal quality of the Majors, yet summarize, contextualize—one might say rule the Minor numbered cards.
The Four Court Cards as seasons of the year? Seems one dimensional, but it might be something like that. Stages of growth seems more appropriate. Knave as germination—Knight as taking root in the soil of the Majors.
– This is the first time with one of the “7” Arcana that there is not a roof/shelter. It is there as tapestry in the Chariot, then the entirety of the Tower is a building. With the Three of Coins, we noted how the upper coin particularly seemed “nested” or cradled in the plants. There is no longer a shelter. Once again we can look to the quote from John of the Cross: “my house in order, going out drawn by love.” The 22 Majors are the house that has been put in order. Having put them in order, the Knight can now venture our into the great unknown and “play.” Horse’s head on a stick—isn’t this a classic toy?
This conversation went so differently from last week, Joel felt for a second that this was our first conversation on the Knight.
– Pondering the Tarot as the etheric body of Christian Rosenkreuz. The idea that this etheric body didn’t necessarily originate with Lazarus’s resurrection. Augustine: “There were Christians before Christ.” In the same sense, this etheric body existed before Christ. A manifestation of an etheric current that came to a certain level of development in Christian Rosenkreuz’s etheric, but was cultivated long prior in the Egyptian mysteries.
But this etheric body is none other than Christ’s Buddhi, is it not? And where did Christ’s etheric originate from? Doesn’t it say in Christ and Sophia? Was it from the Nathan Jesus? Or from the Archangel Jesus? (edit: it emerged from the immaculate sister-soul of Adam, therefore it belonged in some sense to the being of John the Baptist prior to the fall. This is the “Adam Kadmon,” which is the Sephiroth Tree. This is precisely what was worked with in the Egyptian Mysteries as Osiris/Orion, and became the Cabalistic Sephiroth through Moses—and now, through CR, the Tarot).
We closed with the fourth stanza of the Foundation Stone Meditation in eurythmy.
The Unknown Friends 