On May 15, 2009, at 2:31 AM, guyfawkes91 wrote:
it would not detract from the significance of the work.
The significance of the work needs to be seen in its proper context.
It is a well known fact amongst the educated that it's trivially
easy to find spurious connections between things. For example a
straight six cylinder engine is naturally balanced (see http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_six) so if I wanted to be
mischievous I could say the six systems of Indian Philosophy match
the six cylinders of a straight six and the fact that it's
naturally balanced is the result of it therefore being in harmony
with all the laws of nature. If I wanted to hunt about in the
engine bay I bet I could find something with 10 components, maybe
the fan, and then I could say "Wonder of wonders! the 10 avatars of
Vishnu are embodied in this fan, this vehicle represents the
totality of knowledge". It's an interesting exercise to look at
common inanimate objects, or maybe living things that aren't human
and do the same trick that Tony Nader has done in his books. Ants
have six legs and three main body segments, six systems and Rishi-
Devata-Chandas perhaps? A bike has two wheels, maybe the two
fullnesses of the absolute and the relative? If I have a bike with
10 gears I could argue that it's the embodiment of the 10 avatars
of Vishnu linking together the two fullnesses of absolute and
relative through the principle of action or karama. You can get
carried away with this kind of thing. It should be an exercise for
MUM students to find an object at random and then write an essay
that links it to the structure of the Veda and then write a similar
essay that links it to Moby Dick or the New York telephone
directory or their favorite film.
Systems of correspondence are common in mysticism, in the west the
Tree of Life or Etz Chaim has been used endlessly as a system of
correspondences, although often, as is more commonly the case, via
the intellect rather than as an actual spiritual revelation. IMO the
former, correspondences of intellectual theorizing, have only minimal
value: roadmaps for the thinking mind and perhaps the occasional
springboard. It's the much rarer "jnana" or "gnosis" which comes from
beyond the human mind, which floods consciousness often in one fell
swoop with volumes of real, practical wisdom, illuminating the yogin
(i) who "receives" it and those who s/he has a connection to. We're
talking something light-years beyond trance channelling here or
specious systems of correspondences, something truly rare.
Being familiar with both, I just do not see any such authentic gnosis
coming out of Nader or MMY. So it's always interesting when the
underpinning of their "faux-gnosis" becomes clear. I love your parody
My. Fawkes. Hilarious! Nail hits head and thumb, all break out into
laughter.
One of the most hilarious parodies of this type of intellectual
brouhaha, Victorian Buddhist tantric, poet, proto-hippie, mountaineer
and notorious bisexual, Aleister Crowley, while sharing the mystical
use of correspondences, includes an "interlude", a parody on
correspondences and the mystical sublimity of nursery rhymes in his
large work on western gnosis ["Magick"]:
From Liber ABA by Aleister Crowley (c. OTO)
An Interlude
Every nursery rime contains profound magical secrets which are open
to every one who has made a study of the correspondences of the Holy
Qabalah. To puzzle out an imaginary meaning for this "nonsense" sets
one thinking of the Mysteries; one enters into deep contemplation of
holy things and God Himself leads the soul to a real illumination.
Hence also the necessity of Incarnation; the soul must descend into
all falsity in order to attain All-Truth.
For instance:
Old Mother Hubbard
Went to her cupboard
To get her poor dog a bone;
When she got there,
The cupboard was bare,
And so the poor dog had none.
Who is this ancient and venerable mother of whom it is spoken? Verily
she is none other than Binah, as is evident in the use of the holy
letter H with which her name begins.
Nor is she the sterile Mother Ama-but the fertile Aima; for within
her she bears Vau, the son, for the second letter of her name, and R,
the penultimate, is the Sun, Tiphareth, the Son.
The other three letters of her name, B, A, and D, are the three paths
which join the three supernals.
To what cupboard did she go? Even to the most secret caverns of the
Universe. And who is this dog? Is it not the name of God spelt
Qabalistically backwards? And what is this bone? The bone is the
Wand, the holy Lingam!
The complete interpretation of the rune is now open. This rime is the
legend of the murder of Osiris by Typhon.
The limbs of Osiris were scattered in the Nile.
Isis sought them in every corner of the Universe, and she found all
except his sacred lingam, which was not found until quite recently
(vide Fuller, The Star in the West).
Let us take another example from this rich storehouse of magick lore.
Little Bo Peep
She lost her sheep,
And couldn't tell where to find them.
Leave them alone!
And they'll come home,
Dragging their tails behind them.
"Bo" is the root meaning Light, from which spring such words as Bo-
Tree, Bodhisattva, and Buddha.
And "Peep" is Apep, the serpent Apophis. This poem therefore contains
the same symbol as that in the Egyptian and Hebrew Bibles.
The snake is the serpent of initiation, as the Lamb is the Saviour.
This ancient one, the Wisdom of Eternity, sits in its old anguish
awaiting the Redeemer. And this holy verse triumphantly assures us
that there is no need for anxiety. The Saviours will come one after
the other, at their own good pleasure, and as they may be needed, and
drag their tails, that is to say those who follow out their holy
commandment, to the ultimate goal.
Again we read:
Little Miss Muffett
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating of curds and whey,
Up came a big spider,
And sat down beside her,
And frightened Miss Muffett away.
Little Miss Muffett unquestionably represents Malkah; for she is
unmarried. She is seated upon a "tuffet"; id est, she is the
unregenerate soul upon Tophet, the pit of hell. And she eats curds
and whey, that is, not the pure milk of the mother, but milk which
has undergone decomposition.
But who is the spider? Verily herein is a venerable arcanum connoted!
Like all insects, the spider represents a demon. But why a spider?
Who is this spider "who taketh hold with her hands, and is in King's
Palaces"? The name of this spider is Death. It is the fear of death
which first makes the soul aware of its forlorn condition.
It would be interesting if tradition had preserved for us Miss
Muffett's subsequent adventures.
But we must proceed to consider the interpretation of the following
rime:
Little Jack Horner
Sat in a corner,
Eating a Christmas pie.
He stuck in his thumb,
And pulled out a plum,
And said, "What a good boy am I!"
In the interpretation of this remarkable poem there is a difference
between two great schools of Adepts.
One holds that Jack is merely a corruption of John, Ion, he who goes-
Hermes, the Messenger. The other prefers to take Jack simply and
reverently as Iacchus, the spiritual form of Bacchus. But it does not
matter very much whether we insist upon the swiftness or the rapture
of the Holy Spirit of God; and that it is he of whom it is here
spoken is evident, for the name Horner could be applied to none other
by even the most casual reader of the Holy Gospels and the works of
Congreve. And the context makes this even clearer, for he sits in a
corner, that is in the place of Christ, the Corner Stone, eating,
that is, enjoying, that which the birth of Christ assures to us. He
is the Comforter who replaces the absent Saviour. If there was still
any doubt of His identity it would be cleared up by the fact that it
is the thumb, which is attributed to the element of Spirit, and not
one of the four fingers of the four lesser elements, which he sticks
into the pie of the new dispensation. He plucks forth one who is
ripe, no doubt to send him forth as a teacher into the world, and
rejoices that he is so well carrying out the will of the Father.
Let us pass from this most blessed subject to yet another.
Tom, Tom, the piper's son,
Stole a pig and away he run.
The pig was eat,
And Tom was beat,
And Tom went roaring down the street.
This is one of the more exoteric of these rimes. In fact, it is not
much better than a sun-myth. Tom is Toum, the God of the Sunset
(called the Son of Apollo, the Piper, the maker of music). The only
difficulty in the poem concerns the pig; for anyone who has watched
an angry sunset in the Tropics upon the sea, will recognize how
incomparable a description of that sunset is given in that wonderful
last line. Some have thought that the pig refers to the evening
sacrifice, others that she is Hathor, the Lady of the West, in her
more sensual aspect.
But it is probable that this poem is only the frst stanza of an epic.
It has all the characteristic marks. Someone said of the Iliad that
it did not finish, but merely stopped. This is the same. We may be
sure that there is more of this poem. It tells us too much and too
little. How came this tragedy of the eating of a merely stolen pig?
Unveil this mystery of who "eat" it!
It must be abandoned, then, as at least partially insoluble. Let us
consider this poem:
Hickory, dickory, dock!
The mouse ran up the clock;
The clock struck one,
And the mouse ran down,
Hickory, dickory, dock!
Here we are on higher ground at once. The clock symbolizes the spinal
column, or, if you prefer it, Time, chosen as one of the conditions
of normal consciousness. The mouse is the Ego; "Mus," a mouse, being
only Sum, "I am," spelt Qabalistically backwards.
This Ego or Prana or Kundalini force being driven up the spine, the
clock strikes one, that is, the duality of consciousness is
abolished. And the force again subsides to its original level.
"Hickory, dickory, dock!" is perhaps the mantra which was used by the
adept who constructed this rime, thereby hoping to fix it in the
minds of men; so that they might attain to Samadhi by the same
method. Others attribute to it a more profound signifance-which it is
impossible to go into at this moment, for we must turn to:-
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall;
Humpty Dumpty got a great fall;
All the king's horses
And all the king's men
Couldn't set up Humpty Dumpty again.
This is so simple as hardly to require explanation. Humpty Dumpty is
of course the Egg of Spirit, and the wall is the Abyss--his "fall" is
therefore the descent of spirit into matter; and it is only too
painfully familiar to us that all the king's horses and all his men
cannot restore us to the height.
Only The King Himself can do that!
But one can hardly comment upon a theme which has been so fruitfully
treated by Ludovicus Carolus, that most holy illuminated man of God.
His masterly treatment of the identity of the three reciprocating
paths of Daleth, Teth, and Pe, is one of the most wonderful passages
in the Holy Qabalah. His resolution of what we take to be the bond of
slavery into very love, the embroidered neckband of honour bestowed
upon us by the King himself, is one of the most sublime passages in
this class of literature.
Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater,
Had a wife and couldn't keep her.
He put her in a peanut shell;
Then he kept her very well.
This early authentic text of the Hinayana School of Buddhism is much
esteemed even to-day by the more cultured and devoted followers of
that school.
The pumpkin is of course the symbol of resurrection, as is familiar
to all students of the story of Jonah and the gourd.
Peter is therefore the Arahat who has put an end to his series of
resurrections. That he is called Peter is a reference to the
symbolizing of Arahats as stones in the great wall of the guardians
of mankind. His wife is of course (by the usual symbolism) his body,
which he could not keep until he put her in a peanut shell, the
yellow robe of a Bhikkhu.
Buddha said that if any man became an Arahat he must either take the
vows of a Bhikkhu that very day, or die, and it is this saying of
Buddha's that the unknown poet wished to commemorate.
Taffy was a Welshman
Taffy was a thief;
Taffy came to my house
And stole a leg of beef.
I went to Taffy's house;
Taffy was in bed.
I took a carving knife,
And cut off Taffy's head.
Taffy is merely short for Taphthatharath, the Spirit of Mercury and
the God of Welshmen or thieves. "My house" is of course equivalent to
"my magick circle." Note that Beth, the letter of Mercury and "The
Magus," means "a house."
The beef is a symbol of the Bull, Apis the Redeemer. This is
therefore that which is written, "Oh my God, disguise thy glory! Come
as a thief, and let us steal away the sacraments!"
In the following verse we find that Taffy is "in bed," owing to the
operation of the sacrament. The great task of the Alchemist has been
accomplished; the mercury is fixed.
One can then take the Holy Dagger, and separate the Caput Mortuum
from the Elixir. Some Alchemists believe that the beef represents
that dense physical substance which is imbibed by Mercury for his
fixation; but here as always we should prefer the more spiritual
interpretation.
Bye, Baby Bunting!
Daddy's gone a-hunting.
He's gone to get a rabbit-skin
To wrap my Baby Bunting in.
This is mystical charge to the new-born soul to keep still, to remain
steadfast in meditation; for, in Bye, Beth is the letter of thought,
Yod that of the Hermit. It tells the soul that the Father of All will
clothe him about with His own majestical silence. For is not the
rabbit he "who lay low and said nuffin'"?
Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man!
Bake me a cake as fast as you can!
Pat it and prick it and mark it with P!
Bake it in the oven for baby and me!
This rime is usually accompanied (even to-day in the nursery) with a
ceremonial clapping of hands-the symbol of Samadhi. Compare what is
said on this subject in our comment on the famous "Advent" passage in
Thessalonians.
The cake is of course the bread of the sacrament, and it would ill
become Frater P. to comment upon the third line-though it may be
remarked that even among the Catholics the wafer has always been
marked with a phallus or cross.
