Founding Fathers, Secret Societies: Freemasons, Illuminati, Rosicrucians, and the Decoding of the Great Seal by Robert Hieronimus

Author:Robert Hieronimus [Hieronimus, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Body; Mind & Spirit, Freemasonry, History, Non-Fiction, Occultism, Secret Societies, Social Science
ISBN: 9781594778650
Google: ZV0oDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B004KSQMDC
Publisher: Destiny Books
Published: 2005-12-28T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 5.3. The ancient Egyptian eye as Ra (sun) rising above the eastern mountain. The Twenty-first Dynasty interpretation of the seal’s reverse. (Illustration from Grimal, Larousse World Mythology.)

Figure 5.4. The Babylonian sun above a mountain, another expression of the archetype found on the seal’s reverse. (Louvre Museum, Paris.)

Some Rosicrucian and Freemasonic groups assert that the Great Pyramid was used to conduct rites of initiation. The Master Mason’s 3rd degree ritual parallels the initiation process the temple neophyte underwent in the Great Pyramid before he became a master of the spiritual plane. The candidate purportedly was placed in the coffer in the King’s Chamber for three days, whence he left his physical body to visit the spiritual world, where will and character were tested. If the candidate succeeded, he gained a view of the microcosm and insight into personal destiny. Returning from the spiritual realms, the candidate was reborn into the physical world and set about realizing his potential by rendering service. According to Freemasonry, the highest privilege of the human being is work in the service of the Divine Architect.31

Jung connects the mountain symbolism to “the goal of the pilgrimage and ascent, hence it often has the psychological meaning of the self.”32 Ascending the mountain is analogous to the process of knowing oneself—which is becoming conscious of the unconscious, or of uniting opposites.

In the alchemical process it is from the union of opposites that the philosophers’ stone emerges. This stone is triune in substance and in part regenerative. The shapes, forms, and symbols used to depict the alchemical process repeat the themes of the mountain, the cave, the coffin, and rebirth. The process of rebirth and transformation is depicted repeatedly and universally by the same symbols, which are thus archetypal in nature.

The Eye and the Archetypal Sun

In many cultures the single eye is linked to the symbol for the sun. Du Simitière, Barton, and Thomson were familiar with Egyptian symbolism through the work of Sir John Greaves, but many archaic societies and ancient civilizations also identified the solar orb as a deity. The solar orb is the archetype from which the eye in the triangle is derived.

The sun and pyramid symbols are closely interrelated in Egyptian mythology. The sun (the father, Osiris) performs the act of creation on the primeval hill (the mother, Isis) in the pyramid (the temple). The eye/pyramid or sun/mountain relationship is a father/mother, husband/wife, brother/sister—that is male/female relationship—from which a son is born. Horus, the result of the act of union, is the self, who avenges his father’s death by overcoming his brother, Seth, who is darkness, unconsciousness, and death. Osiris is reborn in Horus. This same sun/mountain archetypal process is repeated in the symbolism of other ancient mythologies around the world.

The early-seventeenth-century prints shown in figures 5.6 and 5.7 are contemporaneous with the sudden appearance of Rosicrucianism in Europe and the publication of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz (1616). Both contain the motif of the sun over the mountain and thus show the importance of these symbols in the esoteric traditions, as well as their archetypal “staying power.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.