divine word

Divine Word and Breath of God

Posted on by Harold Boulette

Divine Word of God

“Johannes Tritheim, an abbot and alchemist, whose writings are plainer and more comprehensive than any other alchemical book, says:

‘All things have been made by the power of the divine word, which is the divine spirit or breath that emanated from the divine fountain in the beginning. This breath is the spirit or soul of the world, and is called the “spiritus mundi.” It was at first like air, and contracted into a fog or nebular substance, and afterward became “water” (Akasa). This “water” was at first all spirit and life, because it was permeated by and made alive by the spirit. It was dark in the depths; but through the outspoken word the light became generated therin, and then the darkness was illumined by the light, and the “soul of the world” (the astral light) had its beginning. This spiritual light, which we call “Nature,” or the soul of the world, is a spiritual body, which, by means of Alchemy, can be made tangible and visible; but as it exists in an invisible state, therefore it is called “spirit.”’”. ~Franz Hartmann

Divine Word

The idea of the Divine Word that comes from God is a very misunderstood concept. Too many people, thinking in human terms, and seeing God in the typical image of an old man with a long beard, think of God’s Word as speech coming out of that old man’s mouth. But God is not human, not material, and doesn’t look at all like a physical human. He is a spirit and has no mouth to speak with. His word is thought, not speech. So it is accurate to say that this word created the world and “all things” in it.

Which World?

But the inner quote from Tritheim seems to be mixing two worlds together: the physical and the spiritual. He does do a good job of explaining how one became the other, using terms that are not quite scientific, and therefore easily misunderstood. He makes it sound as if the physical world was generated from the spiritual, and that it was God who caused this to happen. In actual fact, since spirit is perfect, and matter is flawed, it makes no sense at all for God to decide to turn spirit into matter. It was the Demiurge who created the realm of matter by altering some of the spirit of the spiritual realm. Continue reading “Divine Word and Breath of God” →

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divine cause

Divine Cause and Derived Existence

Posted on by Harold Boulette

“Everything that derives its existence from participation in some other reality presupposes the ontological priority of that other reality. Thus it is clear that the divine Cause of created beings – which derive their existence from participation in that Cause – is incomparably superior to all such beings in every way since by nature its existence is prior to theirs and they presuppose its ontological priority. It does not exist as a being with accidents, because I that were the case the divine would be composite, its own existence receiving completion from the existence of created beings. On the contrary, it exists as the beyond-beingness of being. For if artists in their art conceive the shapes of those things which they prelude, and if universal nature conceives the forms of the things within it, how much more does God Himself bring into existence out of nothing the very being of all created things, since He is beyond being and even infinitely transcends the attribution of beyond-beingness. For it is He who has yoked the sciences to the arts so that shapes might be devised; it is He who has given to nature the energy which produces its forms, and who has established the very is-ness of beings by virtue of which they exist.” ~The Philokalia

Derived Existence

Any being or thing that was created by some other being is a derived being and has a derived existence. This quote from the Philokalia is saying that such a derived being, having been created by some other being, cannot be greater than that which created it. This is really very logical if you think about it without letting ego or passions cloud your thinking. After all, an artist may create a great work of art that lives on long after the artist has been forgotten, but that doesn’t make the work of art greater than the being that created it.

Divine Cause

There are many causes of things and creators of things, but there is only one Divine Cause and that is God. Naturally, God is greater than anything He has created, that is essentially the definition of God. If you accept that the universe is logical and intelligent rather than random, then it is reasonable to believe that an intelligent organization has a hierarchy with a being or force at the very top of the structure. That is what most of us call “God”. And as such, He must be greater than any and all of the created beings and things on the lower levels of creation. Continue reading “Divine Cause and Derived Existence” →

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archons

Archons and the Demiurge

Posted on by Harold Boulette

“In his arrogance, Yaldeboath decides that he is the most powerful being in the universe and he declares himself to be the only God. The Demiurge then goes on to create the physical world, together with various archons, heavens and powers. Some of these are thought to belong to the 365 days of the year and others to the seven days of the week. Yet others seem to be more personal, for they deal with emotional and mystic forces.

“The Apocryphon is incredibly detailed as to the creation of man. The Archons, as we have seen elsewhere, attempt to creat a man, They fail to give him life, however, since they cannot make him move until Sophia tricks Yaldeboath into breathing his essence of the Light into man, allowing him to become a living being. Finally comes the creation story of Genesis with its episode in the garden: Adam and Eve eat of the “Tree of Knowledge” and are cast out.

“It is an interesting exercise to deconstruct the myth simply to understand the culture and thinking which gave birth to it. …

“First we have Unity in the Light; then duality in the pairing; recognition of the Three in the Trinity; four within the creative soup and so on. If we allow it to, this can take us into the hidden significance of numbers.” ~Bernard Simon

The Demiurge Declares Himself God

This is the start of everything going wrong. Whether you think of the Demiurge as a single being, or as a group name for the fallen angels led by Lucifer makes little difference. When he/they decided in their arrogance that they were equal to the true God, they crossed a line that should never have been crossed. The decision that they were equal to God meant that they had no reason to operate within the Laws of God, but could make up their own rules. They then decide that they could create a universe of their own, with their laws, and where they ruled. That is the start of the physical universe of death, disease, and destruction. Yaldabaoth, the Demiurge, is the jealous god, the angry,destructive god. He is not the real God, not the God that Jesus called Father.

Archons, Heavens, and Powers

Simon says that, according to the Gnostic “myth,” the Demiurge created Archons, heavens, and powers. This is being put into the language that people of the distant path could understand. Today we might say that with the creation of the physical universe, Yaldeboath also created various forces, energies, and powers. Some of these forces do good, others are destructive. In Cosolargy, we recognize that there are forces that tend to pull us further down into matter and complete materialism. But there are also forces that try to pull us up to the higher levels of being, the spiritual levels. We can just be like a piece of driftwood being pulled hither and yon by those forces, or we can choose to help those forces that we want to pull on us. Hopefully, that is the spiritual forces trying to save us, and not the destructive forces trying to destroy us. As the old Native American legend of the Two Wolves says, the wolf you feed is the one that wins.

Creation of Man

I think the Apocryphal creation of man as given in the quote is intended to be allegorical, not literal. Either way, I don’t think it is accurate. We know that man existed before the fall into matter, otherwise, there would have been nothing to fall. What the Archons and the Demiurge created was a physical body for man. But we existed long before that as purely spiritual beings. In any case, this tells us that not only was the physical universe a creation of the Demiurge and his Archons, so was man in his physical form. Fortunately, however, we are not just physical beings. We have a spirit and soul. That gives us the power, should we choose to use it, to reverse the process and become beings of pure spirit again.

Tree of Knowledge

There is much misunderstanding with regard to Adam and Eve and the eating of the forbidden “fruit”. I really don’t know how so many jumped to the conclusion that this forbidden fruit was a simple apple, yet today many believe that is what it was. Why should a simple apple have been the forbidden fruit?

First, the full name of the tree was the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is important that the full name is used if we are to understand why it was forbidden. Knowledge is a great thing, but knowledge of evil is not. You don’t teach people how to make bombs with the expectation that doing so will make them peaceful. You don’t teach people how to use a sword with the idea that they will ten grow flowers. You teach such things so they become warriors. And learning knowledge of good and evil meant that some would become evil. That is why it was forbidden. Not because a dictatorial God liked to create arbitrary restrictions.

This Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was the source of physical light, a sun much like the one we have now. That light carried knowledge just as light now carries knowledge. And that light triggered the process that made Adam and Eve become physical beings. This was the gift of the Demiurge and his Archons.

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before creation

Before Creation There Was Light

Posted on by Harold Boulette

“Within the Apocryphon of John, A Gnostic text, there is a myth that can be easily deconstructed so that the structure can be found and the logical model discovered. The main focus of the story is pre-creation, for great care is taken to name many of the beings created by Yaldebaoth and to explain the nature of the universe before the creation of the physical world. Adam and Eve’s difficulties are also discussed and ‘for those who have ears to hear’ it provides a matrix for life within the world.

“Before the material world came in existence, according to this text, there was Light:

“he is immeasurable light, which is pure, holy (and) immaculate. He is ineffable, being perfect in incorruptibility. He is not in perfection, nor in blessedness, nor in divinity, but he is far superior. He is not corporeal nor is he incorporeal. He is neither large, nor is he small. …

“From Light there came a series of Emanations, non-corporeal cosmic beings in male-female pairs. Within the Light itself there were three especially important beings: the Father, the Mother and the Son. Beneath the trinity, there is a kind of creative ‘soup’ consisting of Water, Darkness, the Abyss, and Chaos (four common elements of many pre-creation stories) within which the Trinity exists.” ~Bernard Simon

Truth of Myth

I’ve said this before, but it needs to be repeated since the tale in the quote is called a myth. A myth is not a fairy tale. It is not fantasy or the hallucinations of a deranged mind. It is truth given in the form of an allegorical tale. This is done partly to make it easy to remember and partly to hide the true meaning from those who would misuse the truth for materialistic ends.

Before Creation

To many, it seems a contradiction to speak of a time before creation, even if you limit it to before creation of the physical universe. But it isn’t a contradiction. There was existence before matter and there will be one long after matter is gone. For simplicity, we can simply call this the spiritual universe. In reality, it is more complicated. There are, in fact, nine primary dimensions of reality. Three of them are primarily matter, six are mostly spirit, with the top two or three being all spirit. Those spiritual dimensions exist without the limitations of space and time, therefore, they existed long before the universe of matter limited by time and space. But even these dimensions, except for the highest, were created also. Therefore, to say they existed “before creation,” means before the creation of the physical universe. In truth, these spiritual dimensions are the only real creation. The physical universe is a distortion of spirit. It is a kind of cancer or tumor growing out of the realm of spirit. And as with any other disease, it needs to be cured, and it will be cured.

There Was Light

Mr. Simon says that before the creation of the material universe, there was Light. This Light cannot be something physical if it existed before the creation of the physical. Therefore, it had to be spiritual light. Simon then starts talking about this Light as if it were an entity, an intelligent being. While he doesn’t say it, this being could only be God. So he is equating God with Light.

God is associated with Light in virtually all religions. God is the source of Light. God is the creator of Light. The first creation was light, but the spiritual Light existed before creation. But it is unusual to say outright that God is Light, yet it is true. It is also true to say that God is the highest level of consciousness. But Light is the carrier of knowledge and consciousness. So consciousness is God, Light is God. It is all the same thing.

On the other side, the Devil, Satin, or the Demiurge, the creator of matter is also the head of the realm of Darkness. But nowhere does it say that darkness existed before creation, only Light. It was the creation of matter, illusion, and lies that created darkness. Remember, darkness isn’t really a thing of itself. Darkness is simply the absence of Light. So the world created by the Demiurge is missing some—perhaps most—of its natural, Divine Light. That is what makes it dark.

There are many who say that light cannot exist without darkness. That is simply untrue. Fire can exist without water. White can exist without black. Light can exist without darkness. In fact, until the Great Fall symbolized in the Bible by the story of Adam and Eve, what existed was a world of Light without darkness. And the universe that existed before creation will return as this fallen realm is transformed back into its original form. We can aid in that transformation, if we choose. To choose to help makes one part of the Chosen of God, the Bringers of Light. Make the smart choice.

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