Studies:
- General Reading List:
- Mythology
- Psychology
- Philosophy
- History, etc.
- Familiarization with HML materials.
- Self-examination and questionnaires
(Jungian Persona test, for example). - Introductions to Yoga.
Tasks:
- Read Liber OZ
- The Aspirant must meditate.
- Focusing on introspection.
- Mastering the ‘Sign of Silence.’
- Contemplating the Tarot Trumps: Lamed & Aleph (LA)
- Starting Yoga.
- Working with the word AGAPE.
THE HORUS MANDALA Wherein the Mask of Horus is Danced by the Aspirant I) HOOR-PAAR KRAAT
I will be adding a series of texts commenting on the working zonules of the Horus-Maat Lodge, in them expressing my view and experience.
This entry comments on the study of philosophy.
There would be no magic, as a corpus, without metaphysics, and no metaphysics without philosophy.
To understand magic in its integrity it is necessary to grasp metaphysics, and to grasp metaphysics properly or fully it is imperative to first understand philosophy. We will not, however, be disserting extensively on what philosophy is and may be, and will resume it in a very brief and simple definition.
Philosophy is the study of essential existence, knowledge, experience and reality, that results in a guiding principle for behavior. But if we want to be even more truthful, we shall resort to what the word means, love for wisdom.
Now, love is a deep affection that results in a pleasurable and joyful interest. It is a desire that cares.
Wisdom is the quality of reliable judgment over experience and knowledge through sensibility. This wise sensibility, then, is what is nurtured and what does love.
I’d say all philosophy that is devoid of this love, should be ruled out as an impostor.
Often philosophy has been tainted by particular points of view when it should seek the widest possible perspective so that wisdom and truth can be observed in their full spectrum. Because of this, I find it is always important, in philosophy, to hold opposite views simultaneously in our contemplations, and to allow them to inhabit the same space of awareness in harmony, permitting time for intelligence to sink in.
Since the previously mentioned sensibility suggests the full knowledge and experience of cognition and the ability to perceive consciously, philosophy implies we know sensibly its methodologies.
They are, or among them stand
– Analogy: To work with analogy one is to find a subject and dissect its attributes, its adjectives. He or she is, then, to find other objects with the same adjectives, and transfer meaning from one to another through means of meditation. For instance, matter comes from the Latin word mater, and mater means mother. How is matter like a mother?
– Deductive Reasoning: In here, we will try conclusions as “matter is”, and we will find all premises we can that validate the conclusion. These sentences and premises are a map of the problem in terms of cognitive processes.
– Inductive reasoning: In here, the philospher will gather specific observations on the interaction between problems and reach his own probable conclusions.
– Abductive reasoning: We must gather our impressions on the origin of a problem and, through them, find the most simple answer.
Deduction is practiced by focusing on the conclusion, fixing it in one’s mind, and driving the mind, through will, to disclose the different elements that can form such a conclusion.
Induction is practiced the other way around, one focuses on the different elements of cognition concerning a certain theme and forces them through the will to disclose their common element.
Abduction is similar to induction, but one does not apply will, instead one, holding one’s ideas, tries to relax with a magnetic feeling of love until a simple answer arrives.
Questions or problems can be posed of a nature like
– Can existence be known?
– Is language in the mind?
– What can physics tell us of the relation between existence and knowledge?
– What is the relation between the objective, the subjective, and beauty?
Inside fundamental questions a hundred more questions can and should be devised by, for instance, forming two personas and having them debating and dialoguing. Finally, one makes a schematic representation of all the places this dialogue took us to.
Faulty theories are false, theories that are whole and sustaining are in tune with truth.
Now, as is usual, I pick at least one representative of our field of study that I feel has some amount of importance to what the Horus Maat Lodge represents.
In this case, I choose Pierre Teilhard de Chardin whose philosophy predicted cyberspace half a century before there was any cyberspace. That is, he foresaw a planetary, web-based consciousness. It must necessarily imply the sacredness of all that exists on the web (from the pebble to the human being) and an end to the meaningfulness of negativism.
Teilhard’s were evolutionary theories, inspiring the hypothesis that the Earth is a superorganism (global ecosystem) in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. When you read the word Gaia in our works, that is where we are coming from.
John Perry Barlow once wrote, “Teilhard’s work is about creating a consciousness so profound it will make good company for God itself”. When you read the word N’Aton in our texts, this is, again, where we are coming from.
Briefly speaking, Teilhard’s philosophy reveals a complex membrane of information that covers the globe through human consciousness and that will eventually coalesce into a living single tissue of collective feeling and thought, the collective organism of Mind: the point of all evolution.
To Teilhard, evolution is the light of all facts, the curve that all lines follow, and it means guided chance and necessity.
Two pillars move this bark, radial and tangential energy, or rather mechanistic laws and the inner spark. The inner spark in inanimate objects was called by the philosopher “pre-life”, in beings of little self-reflection it was called life, and in human beings, consciousness. As all things gravitate towards consciousness when there is awareness, a greater complexity emerges that comports a greater consciousness and a greater nervous system, causing sudden leaps in intelligence and leading to the emergence of global intelligence.
When you hear us talking about the Homo Veritas, this is where we are coming from. The philosopher described it as “a glow rippled outward from the first spark of conscious reflection. The point of ignition grows larger. The fire spreads in ever-widening circles till finally the whole planet is covered with incandescence.”
Another way that Teilhard characterized this process was as “evolution becoming conscious of itself”, and you will often find Nema discoursing on how intelligence knows itself or uncovers itself, solving the problem of its entity.
Suggested Reading:
The Phenomenon of Man by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Considered Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s Magnum Opus, this book shows the convergence of the cosmos from simple elements to the complex nervous systems of human beings. Teilhard then argues that evolution has not stopped with the creation of human beings, but is now in the process of converging the human mass (like atoms and cells before them) into a higher complex arrangement, this time on a planetary scale. All along the way, this evolutionary process has revealed itself to proceed along an axis of complexity and consciousness. With the growth of globalization, and the development of a complex Internet-based global society, some have argued that The Phenomenon of Man contains many insights that have proven prescient.
The History of Philosophy by A. C. Grayling
With characteristic clarity and elegance, A. C. Grayling takes the reader from the age of the Buddha, Confucius, and Socrates through Christianity’s capture of the European mind, from the Renaissance and Enlightenment on to Mill, Nietzsche, Sartre and, finally, philosophy today. Surveying in tandem the great philosophical traditions of India, China, and the Persian-Arabic world, and astonishing in its range and accessibility, Grayling’s The History of Philosophy is destined to be a landmark work.
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