Post by imakegarb on Nov 25, 2006 19:01:19 GMT
I'd been assigned to read the novel "Brother of the Third Degree" and, so, I had to get a copy. Any excuse to visit Powell's is a good one ;D
On the same shelf as two copies of the novel was a 1918 hardcover edition of Annie Besant's "A Study in Consciousness". Hmmmm. I understand Besant was initiated in the Lodge of Mixte Masonry, the forerunner of LDH, about 15 years prior and her Masonic career was well advanced by 1918. So I bought the book.
I finished the novel yesterday, started Besant's volume today. And a passage in the first chapter caught my eye:
Hmmmm. I think this is a good one
So I went looking this morning and, sure'nuf, it *is* available free online here.
On the same shelf as two copies of the novel was a 1918 hardcover edition of Annie Besant's "A Study in Consciousness". Hmmmm. I understand Besant was initiated in the Lodge of Mixte Masonry, the forerunner of LDH, about 15 years prior and her Masonic career was well advanced by 1918. So I bought the book.
I finished the novel yesterday, started Besant's volume today. And a passage in the first chapter caught my eye:
The LOGOS - not yet a first, since there is yet no second - is seen as a Point irradiating a sphere of Matter, drawn round Him as the field of the future universe, flashing with unimaginable splendour, a true Mountain of Light, as Manu has it, but Light invisible save on the spiritual planes. This great sphere has been spoken of as primary Substance: it is the SELF-conditioned LOGOS, inseparate at every point with the Matter He has appropriated for His universe, ere He draws Himself a little apart from it in the second manifestation; it is the sphere of SELF-conditioning Will, which is to lead to the creative Activity: “I am This,” when the “This,” the Not-Self, is cognised. The Point, speaking symbolically - in order to make the suggestion of Form as seen from the side of appearances vibrates between centre and circumference, thus making the Line which marks the drawing apart of Spirit and Matter, rendering cognition possible, and thus generating the Form for the second Aspect, the Being we call the Second Logos, symbolically the Line, or Diameter of the Circle. It is said of this in mystic phrase: “Thou art My Son; this day have I begotten Thee”; this relation of Father and Son within the unity of the Divine Existence, of the first and Second Logoi, belongs, of course, to the Day of Manifestation, the life-period of a universe. It is this begetting of the Son, this appearance of the Second Logos, the Wisdom, which is marked in the world of Form by the differentiation, the drawing apart, of Spirit and Matter, the two poles between which is spun the web of a universe; the separation, as it were, of the neutral inactive Electricity - which may symbolise the First Logos - into the dual form of positive and negative - symbolising the Second - thus making the unmanifest manifest. This separation within the First Logos is vividly imaged for us in the preparation for cell-multiplication that we may study on the physical plane, wherein we see the processes that lead up to the appearance of a dividing wall, whereby the one cell becomes two. For all that happens down here is but the reflexion in gross matter of the happenings on higher planes, and we may often find a crutch for our halting imagination in our studies of physical development. “As above, so below.” The physical is the reflexion of the spiritual.
Then the Point, with Line revolving with it, vibrates at right angles to the former vibration, and thus is formed the Cross, still within the Circle, the Cross which thus “proceedeth from the Father and the Son,” the symbol of the Third Logos, the Creative Mind, the divine Activity now ready to manifest as Creator. Then He manifests Himself as the Active Cross, or Svastika, the first of the Logoi to manifest outside the two highest planes, though the third stage of the divine Unfolding.
Then the Point, with Line revolving with it, vibrates at right angles to the former vibration, and thus is formed the Cross, still within the Circle, the Cross which thus “proceedeth from the Father and the Son,” the symbol of the Third Logos, the Creative Mind, the divine Activity now ready to manifest as Creator. Then He manifests Himself as the Active Cross, or Svastika, the first of the Logoi to manifest outside the two highest planes, though the third stage of the divine Unfolding.
Hmmmm. I think this is a good one
So I went looking this morning and, sure'nuf, it *is* available free online here.