The 8th Sphere

reply to post by BlueMule


Spiders are much misunderstood and unappreciated creatures

And in the vast majority of cases, very good mothers

KilgoreTrout
reply to post by BlueMule

 

Spiders are much misunderstood and unappreciated creatures

And in the vast majority of cases, very good mothers

Last week my wife and I watched Charlotte's Web and I was thinking the same thing. Plus, Spider-Man has always been one of my favorite super-heroes. >.<

reply to post by BlueMule

Gotta love that Spidey-sense

What has The Moon given us in return (supposing that we were still giving her what she needs, at least willingly)?

I know that we have all heard stories and legends and channelings and the such that tell that we have been 'placed' somehow in our bodies. That we are spiritual creatures that have been trapped, or coerced or who even willingly jumped in these meat-sacks and decided to all star in the big show here on Earth. Some of the stories might even suggest that we struck some sort of agreement with someone. They all have a basis in neoplatonic thought.

The general "Gnostic" theme is that the lady-parts of the Pleroma, called Sophia decided that she wanted to have a child, and she decided to do it without telling anyone. Well, things didn't work out the way that she planned and she had an "accident". She hid the accident so well that it didn't even get to know its own Mother and, in fact, couldn't see anyone else around so it created what we all experience as the phenomenal universe. That was how the Gnostics saw the Demiurgos, in a nutshell, and they believed that he had trapped us all in these bodies; each of us "divine sparks" trapped and encased in matter like a bug trapped in amber.

Now, it's interesting to go back and take a look at what Plato and Plotinus originally said that got these Gnostics in to such an adversarial place with Matter. Plato said that The One was just too abundant and that the monad overflowed itself and created the phenomenal universe, that we all experience, as a "self-reflection" of The One. Both Plato and Plotinus referred to this self-reflection as The Demiurge.

Plotinus picks up this 'mirror' analogy and goes even further suggesting that this overflow from The One is not only the phenomenal universe, but also the mind that orders it. That would be our minds. Plotinus claimed that what he was teaching was the true meaning of what Plato taught, which blows my mind; these guys were already trying to do damage control on keeping the story straight so long ago it should scare the crap out of us. It was finally Iamblichus that ran off without his head and I don't even want to go there.

Where I would like to go is to the Hermetic Kabbalah and one modern concept that has been applied to the sephiroth called Daath. I don't know how far back the idea goes but it is typically shown on the Kircher Tree so I am going to call that modern since we are going so much further back than that. Also, I would prefer not to post it so here is a link that has one link. For those that are familiar you probably already have it focused by method of loci.

So, Daath means a lot of things but the version I would like to stress is that it is mobile. It moves, and sometimes it is shown as having moved in to Malkuth. It has been taken by some to represent God descending in to Matter. Some have gone so far to suggest that it might be us as the direct agents of the divine, carrying the divine spark in to the realm of matter in order to experience what there is to be experienced in the phenomenal universe so as to complete some 'operation' (Magnum Opus). Plus, there's pie and coffee.

Right above malkuth is the sephiroth that is traditionally associated with The Moon, Yesod. The Treasure House of Images which contains the First Forms of all that is here below in Plato's Cave. In Steiner's version of the story of The 8th Sphere, Lucifer and Ahriman want to make off with that treasure house and create their own planet, but I digressinate.

Long story short; after watching those videos what about life as we know it does The Moon not provide? It's keeping the whole show rolling, and if anything is keeping our hides glued together it's the Moon. No Moon: No Pie and Coffee.

And, "No Soup For You!", the Moon is a giant Soup Nazi.

Man, I'm on a roll.

Bybyots
Some have gone so far to suggest that it might be us as the direct agents of the divine, carrying the divine spark in to the realm of matter in order to experience what there is to be experienced in the phenomenal universe so as to complete some 'operation' (Magnum Opus).

That would be my position based on my studies and experiences. I wonder if that's what the word lightbringer really means.

It reminds me one of my trips to the 'Pleroma'... I stood on the edge and looked down at the earth. It was green with a giant river winding through it. I took the silver-haired Goddess in my arms and jumped. She needed a vehicle. She became a light as I landed on a boat in the river. As it sank I leapt to another boat and another and another.

Plus, there's pie and coffee.

Decaf for me please I'm fasting.

reply to post by KilgoreTrout


I think you may be right in linking Blavatsky to the text you referenced. I don't have the time but an interesting link would be the 'Sommaland' Blavatsky mentions throughout many writings and if I remember rightly it is covered in detail in the Secret Doctrine...

Anyway, apologies for a short response but it might prove to be another interesting link.

reply to post by Bybyots

In Steiner's version of the story of The 8th Sphere, Lucifer and Ahriman want to make off with that treasure house and create their own planet, but I digressinate.

We avoided getting into Steiner in the OP, ostensibly because we wanted to keep it as lean as possible, but I think we also felt the imperative to reign in the narrative some ourselves. For my part, the Steiner version knocked the wind out of me for three straight months, but we’re going to have to look into it now, because it will help us with another thing we avoided fully addressing in the OP:

How does “clairvoyance” feed the Moon; and why did Blavatsky encourage practices such as mediumship, communication with the dead, and divination?

As Bybyots mentioned, Steiner taught that there are two entities named Lucifer and Ahriman who are using us as a means to harvest the very substance of our Earthly sphere and transfer it to the Moon, which acts as a physical nucleus to collect the stolen energy directed toward it by Lucifer and Ahriman. They want their own planet, but because they are sterile, incapable of creation, their sole hope for success lies in subverting and distorting that which already exists (mirror mirror). Their actions interrupt a larger cosmic process, the artificial 8th sphere cuts us off from the megalocosmos, diverting the energies that should be used to mature our species to feed their protoplanet.



Like Blavatsky, Steiner also claimed to work with Vedic sources, and regularly uses terms from that cosmology, for example:

“Asuras [other demons, as it were] are spirits of the very greatest egoism who remained behind during Saturn evolution. They want to condense matter and compress it ever more so that it can't be spiritualized and brought back to its original condition. They're the dregs of the planetary evolution that goes form Saturn to Vulcan. The asuras inhabit the moon and from there they work on the men whom they want to drag down into the eighth sphere and thereby tear away from progressive evolution and its goal — the Christ. All those who strive towards the eighth sphere will eventually live on a moon.”

sites.google.com...

Ahriman, taken from Manichaeism, is synonymous with “Science” in Steiner’s story:

To the modern mind it might seem a contradiction to say Ahriman opposes increased consciousness but promotes intelligence and science. This is because the modern mind is so immured in what is generally considered to be "scientific thinking" that it has almost no conception of the true nature of conscious thinking.

The fact is that the "scientific" thinking normal in this epoch, no matter how clever, is hardly conscious at all (possibly with some relatively rare exceptions at moments of "insight" or mathematical discovery)..

And since it is unconscious, it is not our free action; it is automatic.

… Gurdjieff’s sleepwalkers.

And this is what Ahriman wants: he wants to stamp out all traces and all possibility of free, individualized human consciousness; he wants the Man not to be an individual, but only a member of a general species of pseudo-mankind -- to be a clever, earth-bound animal, an "homunculus".

www.bibliotecapleyades.net...

Steiner also says that clairvoyance feeds the Moon, not because it is bad for us in and of itself, but because it can be used as a means for us to surrender our Will to the Moon:

[M]an is perpetually exposed to the danger of having his free will wrested from him and dragged by Lucifer and Ahriman into the Eighth Sphere. This happens if the element of free will is transformed, for example, into visionary clairvoyance. When this is the case, a man is already in the Eighth Sphere. This is a matter of which occultists are so reluctant to speak, because it is an awful, terrible truth. The moment the free will is transformed into visionary clairvoyance, what unfolds in the human being becomes the booty of Lucifer and Ahriman. It is immediately captured by them and thereby spirited away from the Earth. You can see from this how, through the shackling of free will, the spectres of the Eighth Sphere are created. Lucifer and Ahriman are engaged perpetually in shackling man's free will and in conjuring all sorts of things before him in order to tear away what he makes out of these things and let it disappear in the Eighth Sphere ... This devilish plan — for here we have indeed to do with the devil — was put into effect by Lucifer and Ahriman when it had occurred to occultists to endeavour to accomplish something through mediumship. Lucifer and Ahriman inspired the mediums through whom they arranged the whole business, in order that people might be guided to the realm whence the dead were alleged to be speaking. Lucifer and Ahriman could then lay hold of their souls.

Now, Blavatsky was an open fangirl of Lucifer, and though she may have defined the entity very differently from Steiner, perhaps they were on the same page when it came to the nature of the 8th Sphere, and how to feed it.

Blavatsky on Soma:

One of the names of the moon in Sanskrit is Soma, which is also the name, as is well known, of the mystic drink of the Brahmans and shows the connection between the two. A "soma-drinker" attains the power of placing himself in direct rapport with the bright side of the moon, thus deriving inspiration from the concentrated intellectual energy of the blessed ancestors. This "concentration," and the moon being a store-house of that Energy, is the secret, the meaning of which must not be revealed, beyond the mere fact of mentioning the continuous pouring out upon the earth from the bright side of the orb of a certain influence.

This which seems one stream (to the ignorant) is of a dual nature--one giving life and wisdom, the other being lethal. He who can separate the former from the latter, as Kalahamsa separated the milk from the water, which was mixed with it, thus showing great wisdom--will have his reward.

www.blavatsky.net...

But she also describes Soma as being the very fluid of which our subtle bodies are made. Our souls, in other words.

Bybyots
And, "No Soup For You!", the Moon is a giant Soup Nazi.

Heh!

reply to post by Eidolon23


I'm slowly collecting one or two things together for you, I haven't got huge amounts of time for book-thumbing right now, and the more information that you both provide the better able I am to ascertain the nitty-gritty, so it is more time efficient for me to hang tight for now rather than just throw stuff willy-nilly.

reply to post by Eidolon23

Eidolon23

... Epilogue

Every human, at some point in their lives, experiences a moment of connection. United in a buoyant fullness, we may be joined in a chorus of shining spheres, singing circles which overlap and merge edges in space. One bright night, we will find one another and lock hands, turning our joyous faces to the world, filled to the brim. All our loved ones stand clear before us, all that we care for quickens to our touch, the eternal presence of life makes itself known within us, and the fact of time endows all things with meaning.

In that moment, we belong to the Moon.

Self-indulging in speaking in pretty riddles and symbolism, devoid of any tangible explanation. LEST anybody understands what’s really going on. Except those already in the know. So eventually, what’s the use of all those pretty allegories and depictions, apart from inflating your "writer" egos.

Enjoying yourselves? (post by Bybyots: “... but the fun part is that ….”). The fun of seeing others suffer without REALLY helping them.

Oh yeah, you’re so much better than the lowly ones. So immensely more evolved. So untouchable.

Did YOU learn your cosmic lessons? It doesn't look like it.

reply to post by giugliot


Hey there, "giugliot". I was wondering if you were going to drop by.

We did our best to condense the story of the 8th Sphere, to make it accessible as possible, but of course, it was bound to be filtered through our partial understanding of it. We presented it to the forum in the hopes that folks here could help us (and all those who have an interest in it) to deepen our understanding. In fact, that is exactly what is occurring, and I am delighted.

I am not sure what is so cryptic about the epilogue, I hope that if we did our job in emphasising the importance of human connection and togetherness throughout the OP, its meaning should be quite clear. If you can present any specific points that seem cloudy to you, we'll try our best to clarify them.

Eidolon23

How does “clairvoyance” feed the Moon; and why did Blavatsky encourage practices such as mediumship, communication with the dead, and divination?

We are all psychic, but thanks to modern scientific thinking our psychic wholeness is basically divided into two warring camps, the "sheep" and the "goats". I'm referring to the sheep-goat effect which was discovered by parapsychologist Gertrude Schmeidler.

Gertrude made one of the most important discoveries ever in parapsychology, one with strong spiritual implications and one which I think none of the spiritual traditions knows about, for while it’s something that can happen in everyday life, it’s pretty much unobservable except under laboratory conditions. She gave many classes of students ESP tests, guessing at concealed cards, but, before giving or scoring the tests, she had students fill out questionnaires that asked, among other things, whether they believed in ESP.

When she analyzed the results separately for the believers – the “sheep” – and the non-believers – the “goats” – she found a small, but significant difference. The sheep got more right than you would expect by chance guessing, they were occasionally using ESP. The goats, on the other hand, got significantly fewer right than you would expect by chance.

Think of it this way. If you were asked to guess red or black with ordinary playing cards, no feedback until you’d done the whole deck, you would average about 50% correct by chance. If you got 100% correct, you don’t need statistics to know that would be astounding. But if you got 0%? Just as astounding!

The sheep thought they could do it, they got “good” scores, they were happy. The goats knew there was no ESP, nothing to get, they got poor scores, they were happy, that “proved” their belief. These were not people who were sophisticated enough about statistics to know that scoring below chance could be significant….

Many other experimenters replicated this effect over the years.

The only way I’ve ever been able to understand it is to think that the goats occasionally used ESP, but on an unconscious level, to know what the next card was and then their unconscious, acting in the service of their conscious belief system, influenced them to call anything but the correct one. The goats used a “miracle” to support their belief that there were no such things as miracles….

Talk about living in samsara, in a state of illusion!

"Goats" are unconsciously using their psychic ability to suppress evidence of our psychic nature. The psychic backdrop of our lives is polarized and mostly unconscious thanks to the flawed and dominant scientific paradigm.

What we believe to be true, our psychic ability will MAKE true, because the nature of reality is consciousness. We were created to be creators... to extend the Kingdom of Heaven as sons and daughters of God.

The scientific paradigm, which serves a deadly untruth about our very nature, also leads people to believe the Moon is merely a mindless rock, a belief which does not 'feed' the Moon, the Sun, or the Earth.

BlueMule
We were created to be creators... to extend the Kingdom of Heaven as sons and daughters of God.

I absolutely agree.

The scientific paradigm, which serves a deadly untruth about our very nature, also leads people to believe the Moon is merely a mindless rock, a belief which does not 'feed' the Moon, the Sun, or the Earth.

You know, one thing that gets to me, is that Steiner made a caveat for "clairvoyance" that he failed to make for science. Basically, that while he believed that one type of clairvoyance (the type he engaged in) was fine, he made no such concession for science. Observing natural processes and harnessing them constructively can only occur through application of the scientific method, and yet here we have another example of our greatest gifts being turned against us.

Eidolon23
Observing natural processes and harnessing them constructively can only occur through application of the scientific method, and yet here we have another example of our greatest gifts being turned against us.

We're caught in a catch-22. We can't use the scientific method to validate our psychic gifts and yet we all know - at some level - that we are all psychic. Science is too limited, too clumsy. It can't control the kinds of variables that influence our psychic ability. For example, whether or not the scientists conducting a parapsychological experiment are "goats". "Goats" can't produce evidence of psi in a lab because their own unconscious psi suppresses it in accordance with the "goat" belief system. The "goat" is none the wiser. So we get inconsistent evidence of psi.

The rules of science would need to change in order to get consistent evidence. But they can't change without consistent evidence. Catch-22.

So we, as a species, are unable to stretch out with our hearts and minds to 'feed' the cosmos and the Earth because the dominant paradigm prevents it. At one time, we could and did. We used our collective psychic ability to project the archetypes of the collective unconscious onto the stars, the planets, the Moon, the galaxies where they found a home and where they built homes for us in the afterlife.

The age of Pisces is symbolized by two fish. The first fish was the Christ, and the second fish his twin (anti-Christ). As the second fish gained dominance in the sky, the scientific paradigm gained dominance in our heads and rendered our mythologies dysfunctional.

Eidolon23
You know, one thing that gets to me, is that Steiner made a caveat for "clairvoyance" that he failed to make for science. Basically, that while he believed that one type of clairvoyance (the type he engaged in) was fine, he made no such concession for science. Observing natural processes and harnessing them constructively can only occur through application of the scientific method, and yet here we have another example of our greatest gifts being turned against us.

You're forgetting the first cardinal rule...



Or to paraphrase W C Fields, beware of those who unable to dazzle you with brilliance, will endeavour to baffle you with bull#.

reply to post by KilgoreTrout


That was an especially good bit of RAW.

Steiner taught that Ahriman's intention was to do everything that he could to push Earth and its denizens to a sort of place of ultimate concretization. His job is to completely wring every bit of spirit from matter so that we are trapped forever.

I thought of that when I heard RAW say this in the clip that you posted.

"...or to the extent that new signals do get in they all have to be edited to fit in to the belief system. If they don't fit in to the belief system, they are repressed one way or another; like the doctors don't hear the babies screaming when they are circumcised."

-Robert Anton Wilson

I think that if Steiner had heard that he would have thought that it was the very observation of how he believed Ahriman to work in the world.

For what it's worth; it just struck me deeply enough to post the comparison.

reply to post by giugliot

Oh yeah, you’re so much better than the lowly ones. So immensely more evolved. So untouchable. Did YOU learn your cosmic lessons? It doesn't look like it.

Skipping by and taking a mystic turd upon someone isn't exactly demonstrative of being evolved or of even paying the most fleeting of attentions to the cosmic lessons we all struggle with... is it?

And in that eternal smugness of the assumed uber enlightened, I'll end this with... just sayin'.

Edit: And to save space but regarding a different post, Trout's post above with the video of R.A.W. about b.s., pretty much gives one all they need to deal with this world, or at least our brains dealings with it... belief systems are great in that they help describe and thus operate in the world... but don't mistake the map for the country.

Robert Anton Wilson was a great thinker.

Bybyots
I think that if Steiner had heard that he would have thought that it was the very observation of how he believed Ahriman to work in the world.

For what it's worth; it just struck me deeply enough to post the comparison.

Well, for what it's worth, on my part, I don't like RAW all that much on the whole...but I like what he had to say on recalibration. And, more importantly, it works for me

On the the other hand, I admire the ethos of the Steiner school system, as I think RAW would've too, even if much of what else he produced doesn't much float my boat.

Anyway, I was kind of hoping that by now you would have worked out your Picatrix pitch...how's that going? Or has the interest, overall, waned? (Pun, most definately, intended)

I'm rushed off my feet at the moment, but should be around for the next few days, off and on, if this thread still has some life left in it, I shall keep my eyes peeled. I have a few things, but I am still seeking a little clarity as to what exactly it is, narrative wise, you twos are fishing for.

Fantastic thread you two!

Been a long time in the making. I enjoyed it greatly and it seems I picked a good night to 'stumble upon' it too. So goes the way of the goldfish.

reply to post by KilgoreTrout


Hey KG,

Nice to see you.

Well, for what it's worth, on my part, I don't like RAW all that much on the whole

Of all the rotten literary "uncles" that I have, I happen to hold RAW responsible, more than any of them, for my weirdness. I suspect that I would have grown up a normal kid if it weren't for him. I'm about half-joking. I have re-read the Cosmic Trigger trilogy numerous times and I read it all through once more just a couple of years ago. Those books are a bear-trap. He's one of my favorite writers, but it's because he has that ability to turn a phrase and make words do something like what Joyce did, and because he's funny. At this age he doesn't really seem all that to me, as much as I love him.

Steiner? I don't know enough about him yet. I want to like him. I really like the way he just sort of 'became' the Theosophical Society in Europe. And that's the thing, really, is that he seemed to be a product of his time. He was kept afloat by the zeitgeist of European desire for some sort of utopia that all of the science, physical and 'spiritual', that people were learning about then seemed to promise.

One thing that I always try to keep in mind when I try to understand the development of occult literature and practices is the strong influence of fashion. Fashion rules, and it is hugely responsible for swelling the ranks of secret societies when cultural homeostasis reaches a place where it can support them. What I mean is during times like the late 19th and early 20th century, and probably during times of Roman opulence when the Roman Mystery Cults were all the rage. I mean, what late 19th century European dude did not want to be a Knight Templar packing sexual secrets?

Alright, so the Picatrix.

So, if Eidolon23 and I were to be the very ones to place the Pic squarely in whatever donkey-cart the Sufis might have hauled it to the Languedoc in, we would be pretty cool. So cool, in fact, that I can't really believe that no one might have thought to try to trace its path in to Europe. I keep thinking that there is some article or essay sitting, imprisoned somewhere on JSTO-#ing-R.

In my mind I can't imagine how else the Moon lore got to where it did and influenced the literary careers that it did. I think I'm repeating myself here, but I know we can agree on what I have already termed to be the profound influence that the Picatrix had on everything having to do with philosophy and science that we think of when we characterize the Age of Enlightenment. I mean, for goodness' sake the damned thing is thought by some to have provided Europe with the basis for scientific inquiry.

A couple things before I go for the moment. Picatrix is not by a single author, it's a compilation of writings, some of which are by Geber himself. And it was Geber's neo-Platonic stuff that made the book ultimately unwelcome in Muslim countries. So there likely an underground influence that the Pic has even had on Islam that will probably go unknown forever to westerners.

Another thing is that I am learning quite a bit here and have been trying to make sense of this whole Moon layer-cake on-the-fly. I had been so focused on the Pic and hoping to find a way forward by trying to understand it's history that I never would have thought to look at Spain and the connection to the Sufis from there and their influence on European religious practices, and for that matter the way it wraps in to the Troubs. Anyhow, all that was not on my radar in a way that fit in to the Op, so thank you for that. I am personally more sure than ever that the Pic was the primary influence on at least Blavatsky, but Gurdjieff is soo weird that I am not so sure with him.

Kinda out of it tonight, I hope any of that made sense.