Human Origins 14

Human Origins 14

In our last discussion we spoke of the art of living in the spaces.  It is time we should re-visit that idea and expand upon it.

We have provided several installments of the Kybalion in order to provide some of the ground work for this idea.

For those who have spent any amount of time just observing humanity, it is very clear that we are much like other living things in some ways.  I think of fish, swimming in schools. Or of birds flying in flocks.  Or of cattle moving in herds.

We do the same thing and in some ways we are even more tuned to cluster and move in waves.  In our social interactions this is abundantly clear.  What is the meaning of “going viral.”  That says it all.  People do things, look certain ways, think certain thoughts, and believe in certain ideas often for no other reason than it is what everyone else is doing.

In fact, it is very predictable.  It is so predictable that if someone had the desire to sidestep the masses, so to speak, it is not that difficult.

But this applies to many aspects of life beyond just social interaction and social media.  If you would sit up on a bridge, an overpass over a major multilane highway in North America during the off-peak hours and just observe the flow.  Something amazing would show itself.  The vast majority of cars and trucks that you see will be travelling in groups.  Within those groups there will even sometimes be competition for position.

Seriously.  There will be vast spaces of highway with hardly anyone.  Those spaces normally will only fill up during the heaviest of traffic periods through the day, usually morning and afternoon.  Other than that it is waves, or clusters if you prefer.

The interesting thing is that most high-speed wrecks happen when travelling in those clusters.  One vehicle has a problem and everyone is too close to avoid them.  So it would seem reasonable to avoid those clusters.  But most people don’t.

The principle that we are observing here is the underlying basis for what we heard in the introduction to the Kybalion.

The critics don’t like the supposed “exclusivity” of the Hermetics, but I would argue that most of that is self-selection.  It takes focus, awareness and effort to live in those empty spaces as you find them.

You first have to see them, and then you have to pace yourself in whatever part of life you are applying the principle, in order to stay in those spaces.  The fact is, you are usually alone in the endeavor because most people do not want to do that.  They default to the crowd.

That’s fine with us.  We offer no criticism nor do we preach, we only have our own course and we simply claim the right to follow it.  And we expect the right to enjoy the benefit we find in that course.

But there is a bigger picture here as well.  The true origins of humanity are not widely known or accepted.  As we pointed out in the earlier sections of this discussion, there is an entire body of literature that is a conflation of parts of the truth, a partisanship to one part of that truth and then spiritualizing into a monotheism that carries forward to this day.  And it is given the stamp of sacred.

Jordan Peterson gave us a great psychological insight into how that monotheism arises out of the imperatives of evolution.  Mark Stavish pointed out the effect of that 2000 year old meme and the power that it has.

The origin of our species is rather prosaic by contrast, yet what the god Enlil feared came to pass.  We became self-aware and that changes everything.  He knew that was the transition from animal to the next level, and it was not their right to make that happen, despite being much superior creatures to us.

So here we are.  They have left us here essentially to our own devices, yet I am one of those who believe that there was an attempt to pass on some of the knowledge they possessed.  Not just knowledge of things and methods of manipulating the world around, but rather the higher knowledge.  Knowledge of the origins of the universe, the power that creates and sustains that universe and the purpose of those who have risen to the point that we have come to.  We are self-aware and searching for our destiny.

To my mind, that knowledge, that search for more knowledge, is contained in Hermeticism in its distilled form.  As the Kybalion points out, so much that is central to the various religions of the world relate back and are undergirded by the Hermetic philosophy.  In fact, for the most part, I don’t believe there are very many deal breakers, if you will, in the religions of the world, at least in their essence.

The practitioners occasionally take these religions off on tangents, it is true.  And, saddest of all, almost all religions at some point have been used as a cover for the activities of evil people who cared not for the religion they appropriated for their own purposes.

This is where people like Sam Harris get hung up, I think.

For the Hermetics, there is little point in debating with either the Sam Harris’s of the world or the committed religionist true believer.  Better to stand back and watch the debates and occasionally there are those who walk away in sadness and disgust and are seeking the truth of the human race in the universe, and if they are receptive it is occasionally possible to show them a path to Hermetic understanding.

That is quite rare I think.  I myself came to the understanding by reading and studying a cross section of teachers and students who have already begun the path, often in widely divergent fields of study and practice.  Eclectic, one might say.

Yet one day it all fits, it all makes perfect sense.  Despite the fact that you have become acutely aware of the fact you know very little, less than you thought when you began.

Now, it is true that the Hermetic teaching, the teaching of the Kybalion, has been proclaimed by some to be the basis of magic.  In order to understand that, we must have an idea of what magic really is.

This is a very convoluted and thorny topic.  There are some who like it that way, on both sides of the discussion.  The magicians like the mystery and the religionists don’t want people to get any ideas.  There are many who identify magic with evil so the connection to Hermeticism leads them to condemn the Hermetics as well.  Generally speaking this is based on ignorance.

So let’s get real for a few moments.  If we leave aside magic and religion for just a moment, let us just think about good and evil.  Let us first acknowledge that they both exist in our world, in this plane of being that we call human life.  There is good and there is evil.  There are people dominated by good and people dominated by evil.  That much is obvious to everyone.

And we could say that the good and the evil seem to be in the people themselves.  We can take any thing in the world and use it for good or evil.  Is this not true.

A garden tool can be used to grow food, or used as a blunt instrument to kill someone.  Good or evil.  Is that not true. 

And it is the person who makes the difference, not the garden tool.  Likewise, with many, if not all of the things, objects, tools that we have around us and at our disposal every day, there is only good and evil in the person who uses those things, not the things themselves. Pretty simple, is it not.

There are two conclusions we can draw from this right from the start. 

First, this principle applies to those things we thoroughly understand and to things we don’t understand nearly as well.

Second, the principle of personal agency of good and evil applies not only on this plane of existence but on higher planes as well.  This we conclude from the Hermetic principle of correspondence.

As above so below.

The less direct point, but important nevertheless, is the point that we do not push this good and evil paradigm downward to the animal kingdom or lower.

Here is why.  We can take the Biblical story quite literally in this regard, wherein the first human beings became like Gods, knowing good and evil.  This parallels the older history from the Annunaki wherein Enlil kicked out the Adamu from the Eedin for that precise reason.

This point is the demarcation line for the upward ascension of humanity, the human spirit, the human soul if you wish to call it that.  It is irreversible.

And it involves the recognition of good and evil.  It is consciousness, as best we can define it.

So now let us return to magic.  If we are to say what magic is, independent of the motivations of its practitioners, we could use the lesson above.  The good or evil is not in the magic, but in the intentions of the magician.

It may be, in the arts of the Hermetists, that the principles that govern the earth and above, are used to accomplish a specific end.  That is neither good nor evil in itself.  If the intent is evil, then the act is likewise evil.  The act of the Hermetist may appear as magic, but in and of itself, that implies neither good nor evil.

There is another type of magic wherein the magician uses, or attempts to use, the power of another entity above the human magician to accomplish the purpose of the act of the magician.

In this case we have the presence of another entity as well as the magician.  That entity, as we have seen, while more powerful than the human magician, could be a good entity or an evil entity.  That is true, as we have seen, through the principle of correspondence.

So in this case as well, we have the possibility of dual evil, the magician and the entity, or of dual good, the magician and the entity.  What is beyond the scope of today’s discussion is the possibility of the mismatch between the magician and the entity, one good, one evil.  We can go into that discussion another time.

Suffice to say, the conclusion here is that magic in and of itself is not evil or good, no more than religious practice is good or evil. Be that rituals, or calling upon the aid of a higher entity.

Of course, what is obvious here is that it is necessary to have some idea of who is who, not only on this plane of existence but on the higher planes as well.  That is, if we wish to call upon them to help us in any way.

There seems to be a certain naiveté among magicians of this latest generation, and a certain carelessness about what entities they involve themselves with.  Let us remember, as above so below, as below so above.  There are evil entities on higher planes just as there are evil people here.

And, for the Hermetist, there is plenty to study, learn and apply among the natural forces of the universe and human beings themselves, without trying to enhance any effect by borrowing power.

So to return to where we started in this discussion, the real essence of Hermeticism is learning the forces of the universe and the principles by which they operate.  The application of that knowledge is the choice of each student, each person.

To some it may appear that there is magic taking place, but most often it is simply someone living in the spaces, understanding the movement of forces and putting themselves in the right place at the right time.

It all takes practice.  When the rhythm of this kind of life is understood, there is a further step that can be taken.  That step is to understand the principles and patterns of human psychology and human consciousness, and apply that understanding to our life in the spaces as well.

However, that subject we shall save for another day.