Prophetic Philosophy
and the Cycles of Time
Outline for Presentation at the Global Shift conference, Louisville, KY, April 26-28.
I. Prophetic Utterances From Finland to Egypt.
1. Prophecy. What is prophecy? Prophecy is not prediction. Prediction vs. Prophecy; different types:
· A prediction: “it will rain next week”.
· “The sun will rise tomorrow” = just knowing about time cycles.
· “I will die soon or your marriage will fail” = a hex (projection of bad wish or fear).
· “I will one day be president” = highest intention for manifestation.
Prophecy is much more than just saying something that actually happens; and prophecy is not prediction. When we look at doctrines in the prophecy category, especially as it relates to eschatology or the end of time, we will see some common threads that will help us understand what prophecy is.
2. Väinämöinen’s Prophecy or Väinämöinen’s Return.
Väinämöinen
walked away,
Walked
away down to the seashore
There
he sang his last enchantment:
Closed-in
vessel decked with copper
There he sat, steering seaward
Out
upon the clear sea surface.
As
he sailed he went on speaking,
And
he said as he was leaving:
“Annapas
ajan kulua, “Let the rope of time run out —
Päivän mennä toisen tulla, One
day go, another come —
Taas minua tarvitahan, And
again I will be needed.
Katsotahan, kaivatahan They'll
be waiting, yearning for me
Uuen sammon saattajaksi, To
bring back another Sampo,
Uuen soiton suorijaksi, To
invent another harp,
Uuen kuun kulettajaksi, Set
a new moon in the sky,
Uuen päivän päästäjäksi, Free
a new sun in the heavens
Kun ei kuuta, aurinkoa, When
there is no moon, no sun
Eikä ilmaista iloa.” And no gladness on the earth.”
So old Väinämöinen sailed,
Sailed
out in his copper vessel
In
his wingéd copper boat
To
the upper worldly regions
To
the lowest of the heavens.
There he halted with his vessel,
Rested
weary in his boat
But
he left his harp behind
Graceful
instrument to Finland
Joy
eternal to the nation
And
the great songs to its children
Features:
At end of cycle the Deity leaves, but promises to return; leaves behind wisdom
for guidance.
3.
Volsunga Saga. (From The Masks of
Odin).
The
Kalevala is graceful at the transition (though it occurs after the
eschatological drama of Runo 42), but the Norse Eddas are dramatic and
destructive. However, even this hides a deeper truth. The Voluspa, the Sybil’s
prophecy, is probably the most famous Viking myth dealing with the end of time
and prophecy. It gives a vivid description of Ragnarok – the end of cycle
events. As Elsa Brita Tichenell writes in The Masks of Odin:
“Ragnarok
has been translated as “the age of fire and smoke”, but there is a better
interpretation of the word. Ragna, plural of Icelandic regin (god
or ruler) and rok (ground, cause, origin) is the time when the ruling
gods return to their root, their home, at the end of the world. The horrors
depicted as accompanying the departure of the gods are indeed chilling,
punctuated by the howling of the hound of Hel, but this is not the end. After
the toppling of the world Tree, the Voluspa continues to describe the birth of
a new world and the dawn of anew Golden Age. Irreversible finality is not found
in the myths.”
The gods depart and the gods return in endless cycles. Let us read from the Prophecy of the Seeress, the Voluspa:
Here me, all ye Holy Kindred
Greater and lesser sons of Heimdal!
You wish me to tell the ancient tales
O Father of seers, the oldest I know
(Note:
She is telling of ancient wisdom, like the Kalevala’s “stores”). It goes on
with a recounting of the Creation of the world; then…
An ash tree stands, I know, by name Yggdrasil
That tall tree is watered by
white icicles daily
Thence come the dew that
drops in the dells
It stands ever green above
Urd’s well
Motif
of World Tree, like the Sampo in the Kalevala; astronomy and cosmology is
present here.
Thence come maidens who know
much
Three from the hall beneath
the tree:
One was named Origin, the
second Becoming
These two fashioned the
third, named Debt
(Three
norms or Goddesses at base of World Tree – past present, future)…
They established law
They selected lives
For the children of ages
And the fates of men
She remembers the first
slaying in the world
When Gullveig was hoist on a
spear
Thrice was she burned and
thrice reborn
Again and Again – and yet
she lives.
She
could mean here that the three norns are really one – the triple goddess that
lives or is) the Tree Yggdrasil. On the other hand, this might refer to the seeress
referring to herself with a dissociated witness consciousness in the third
person. The first slaying refers to the original sin, the fall process begins.
“She” was destroyed and was thrice reborn – meaning three world ages passed,
but also we hear an echo of Thrice Great Hermes.
The mighty drew to their
judgment seats
All holy gods to hold
council
Should the Aesir alone atone
the wrong
Or all the gods make
reparation?
The
Aesir are the ruling gods; thereafter time progresses, increasing strife occurs, and the forces of good and evil come to
battle at the end of time…
Garm howls at the Gnipa-hollow of Hel
What is fixed loosens, and Freke runs free
She grasps much, but I see more:
To Ragnarok and the Victory-god’s hard death
struggle.
Brothers shall battle and slay one another
Blood ties of sister’s sons shall be sundered
Harsh is the world. Fornication is rife,
Luring to faithlessness the spouses of others
The dying world tree flares
At the sound of the shrill trump of doom
Garm howls at the Gnipa-hollow of Hel
What was fixed loosens, and Freke runs free
The tree is overturned, In titanic rage
Yormungandir (THE MILKY WAY) writhes
Whipping the waves to froth
With a roaring in the ancient tree
The giant is loosened
The ash, Yggdrasil
Quakes where it stands.
This last passage (bolded) describes the uprooted and quaking of the World Tree, very similar to the amazing eschatology passage in the Kalevala:
Plow too, from the meadows edge
With it plowed the Sampo’s roots up
Fastenings of the ciphered cover
As the ciphered cover loosened.
The
Sampo is the Finnish metaphor for the World Axis and the starry sky centered on
the polestar. These are descriptions of precessional movement as the
determining factor of World Age transitions!
Well,
after the dust settles:
She sees rising another earth from the sea,
Once more turning green.
Torrents tumble, eagle soars
From the mountains seeking fish
The Aesir then meet on the Ida field
To judge the mighty Soil-Mulcher
There to recall their former feats
And the runes of Fimbultyr (The God of Secret
Wisdom)
There are found in the grass
The wondrous golden tablets
That in days of yore
The ancient races had owned.
She sees a hall more fair than the sun
Gilded, glowing on Gimle
There shall the virtuous hosts abide
And joy in serenity for along ages.
Motifs:
Again, the ancient wisdom runes or stone; The Aesir retreat the Ida field –
like Väinämöinen, beyond the reach of earth. Rebirth of the world – insight
into cyclic processes in nature. Is destruction necessary – yes, of that which
has become no longer aligned with life. Earth cleanse. This is a “hard truth”,
but death is a truth. The hope is in the teaching that is also consistent in
these prophecies that a sacred knowledge survives, indeed never dies, because
it is of eternal and universal character. It returns, or is recalled and
rediscovered, during the next cycle.
4.
Destruction of the Temple in Ezekiel; dwelling place of the divine shekina.
Its rebuilding – this is what the restoration of Israel is about. The return of
the divine presence to the earthly plane. Judaic cosmology: six millenniums
followed by the seventh shemittot of reabsorption into the divine mind –
due in AD 2340
because it is Year 6000. The Visions of Enoch:
The Holy Great One will come forth from His dwelling,
And the eternal God will tread upon the earth, (even) on Mount Sinai,
And appear in the strength of His might from the heaven of heavens.
And all shall be smitten with fear
And the Watchers shall quake,
And great fear and trembling shall seize them unto the ends of the earth.
And the high mountains shall be shaken,
And the high hills shall be made low,
And shall melt like wax before the flame
And the earth shall be wholly rent asunder,
And all that is upon the earth shall perish,
And there shall be a judgment upon all (men).
But with the righteous He will make peace.
Note: Enoch ascended to heaven and became Metatron, angel of the countenance and scribe of god, an archetypal parallel to Hermes and Manu.
5.
There are many other prophetic traditions in the Judeo-Christian context;
apocalypses were common in the apocrypha literature. Revelation of John
of Patmos from the Bible. Some motifs: Astronomy in Revelations, timing
of precession, angles in the four quarters, 7 lamps or seven seals = seven
charkas; 4 beasts = four cardinal directions = alignment eras:
Second
coming, linear, Judgment Day, a literal and unsophisticated model adapted into
a Christianity that had other goals of world domination. However, these
Neoplatonic ideas developed into a Prophetic Philosophy in Islam:
6. Islam is a Prophetic Philosophy. The works of Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Henry Corbin, illuminate the mysteries. Muhammed, referred to as The Prophet, is really recognized as the last in a line of six or seven prophets within the current cycle. He is, however, the last one, and is called the “Seal” of the Prophets. His miraj or vision in the seventh century AD was the last dispensation given by God to mankind. The Prophet said: “Die Before You Die.” Summarized: Six prophets in the current cycle of manifestation: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad. Sometimes Hermes is recognized as a seventh. Each prophet is followed by 12 Imams during his era of reign. The prophets and their Imams each mediate divine shari’ah or knowledge; The Quran is the revealed knowledge for the current cycle. Within Twelver Shiism, the twelfth Imam departed or was occulted. His influence is felt invisibly until at the end of the cycle the Mahdi or twelfth Imam returns. All the elements of prophecy are here, but in Islam they were made into a philosophy and a religion.
7.
Islam and Christianity have roots in ancient Egypt, which is evident when
we read The Prophecy of Hermes. Grateful acknowledgment to Timothy
Freke and Peter Gandy for granting permission to use here their translation
that appeared in the book The Hermetica: The Lost Wisdom of the Pharaohs
(Tarcher/Putnam, 1997). Their work can be explored more deeply
at Timothy
Freke's website and on the Jesus
Mysteries website.
The student of pure philosophy
Studies the sciences,
Not as fanciful theories, but as devotion to Atum —
Because they reveal a universe
Perfectly ordered by the power of number;
Because measuring the depths of the sea
And forces of fire
And magnitudes of physical things
leads to a reverent awe
at the Creator’s skill and wisdom;
Bear witness to the unsurpassed talent
of the Supreme Artist
who has beautifully harmonized
all things into a single Whole,
suffused with sweet melodies
To simply love Atum in thought
With singleness of heart,
And to follow the goodness of his will —
This is philosophy,
Unsullied by intrusive cravings
for pointless opinions.
But I forsee that, in times to come,
Will mislead the minds of men,
Turning them away from pure philosophy. (Sophia perennis et universalis)
It will be taught that our sacred devotion was ineffectual
And the heart-felt piety
And assiduous service
With which we Egyptians honor Atum
Was a waste without reward.
Note: lower intellect and higher intellect. The "pure
philosophy" referred to is the Sophia Perennis.
Egypt is an image of the heavens,
And the whole Cosmos dwells here,
in this its sanctuary —
But the gods will desert the earth
And return to heaven,
Abandoning this land
That was once the home of spirituality.
Egypt will be forsaken and desolate,
Bereft of the presence of the gods.
It will be overrun by foreigners,
Who will neglect our sacred ways.
This holy land of temples and shrines
The sacred Nile will be swollen with blood
And her waters will rise
Utterly fouled with gore.
And there is worse to follow…
O Egypt!
Nothing will remain of your religion
But an empty tale
Which even your own children
Will not believe.
Nothing will be left
To tell of your wisdom
But old carved stones
Men will be weary of life,
And will cease seeing the universe
As worthy of reverent wonder.
Spirituality, the greatest of all blessings,
Will be threatened with extinction,
And believed a burden to be scorned.
The world will no longer be loved
As an incomparable work of Atum;
A glorious monument
To his Primal Goodness;
An instrument of the Divine Will
To evoke veneration
And praise in the beholder.
Egypt will be widowed.
Every sacred voice will be silenced.
Darkness will be preferred to light.
No eyes will raise to heaven.
The pure will be thought insane
And the impure will be honored as wise
The madman will be believed brave,
And the wicked esteemed as good.
Knowledge of the immortal soul
Will be laughed at and denied.
No reverent words worthy of heaven
Will be heard or believed.
So I, Thrice-Great Hermes,
The first of men to attain All-Knowledge,
Have inscribed the secrets of the gods,
In sacred symbols and holy hieroglyphs,
On these stone tablets,
Which I have concealed
For a future world
That may seek our sacred wisdom.
Through All-Seeing Mind,
I myself have been witness
Of the invisible things of Heaven,
And through contemplation
Come to knowledge of the Truth.
This knowing I have set down in these writings…
Other
prophecies could be detailed, e.g.,
the Hopi blue star (Hopi Tribal Prophecy; Oh Shinnar says the "Great Purification" will be over by 2011
(ref: Profiles
in Wisdom on Dire Gnosis 2012 Books page)
and says "it will be marked by the appearance of a new
star"). Aztec prophecy of the Return of Quetzalcoatl (Frank Waters’ Mexico
Mystique – loss and redemption generally, astronomical via New Fire, etc.)
The Mayan Creation Myth isn’t a prophecy but is, somewhat like the
Islamic tradition, a prophetic cosmology or mythology; see the Popol Vuh
translation of Dennis Tedlock and material in my book Maya Cosmogenesis
2012.
Note:
all these themes are in the Prophecy of Hermes – which we will now
explore in greater depth.
II.
The Four Features of These Prophecies.
Actually, three features, four aspects:
1. Cyclic time w/ ascent and
descent phase.
2. Sophia perennis et
universalis.
3. The prophet – the
intellectual or visionary faculty that connects us to the divine or
transcendent.
These
can be explored more deeply:
1.
Vedic yuga doctrine. Devayana-pitriyana phases / solstice gateways. This is
really the key that links prophecy and precession / time cycles. It’s the
Tai-Chi symbol!
2.
Primordial Tradition – do reading from book. From Galactic Alignment
(2002):
“What is the Primordial Tradition? Aldous Huxley called it the
perennial philosophy, meaning an ageless wisdom that comes from a transcendent
realm. Coomaraswamy preferred to call it sophia perennis et universalis: the eternal and
universal wisdom. In general, it
has come to be called simply the Primordial Tradition; Huston Smith even wrote
a book by that name. Perennial means “eternally recurring or rebirthing.” Thus,
even though the ancient wisdom may be forgotten, it will inevitably resurface
again and again, because it is a wisdom based upon universal principles which
operate whether or not human beings are directly aware of them. The universal principles within the
Primordial Tradition are those found in ancient sacred sciences; for example
the geometrical cosmology of the ancient Egyptians, based on the square-root
principles of two, three and five.[1] The Pythagorean school adopted a
similar approach, but the advent of
rationalist Aristotelian philosophy signaled the dawn of a profane science
which was out of touch with its metaphysical (transcendent) roots. The
Primordial Tradition is thus not something invented by human beings. Based in
eternal universal principles, it has always been what it is and it is left for
human beings to discover it and integrate it as a guiding principle in the
creation of social, religious, and political institutions. As it is today,
modern civilization is out of touch with the Primordial Tradition and its
institutions are based in man-made ideals, indicating a degenerate process of
increasing alienation from our transcendent origin. And it is a process which removes
us from the intimate vicinity of our source and center, to an extreme wasteland
of alienation called Kali Yuga. The
idea of source and center is very important here, as well as our changing
relationship to it over many eons.….
The Primordial Tradition
is a state of mind rather than a distant Golden Age or ancient location. As
a state of mind, the Primordial Tradition is accessible to any person or
culture, at any time or place, without the aid of direct transmission through
lineage or Atlantean antecedent. The deep truth of our search for lost
“artifacts” is our desire to make visible a knowledge or mindset which is more
comprehensive and fulfilling. As with the legend of Shambhala, which
faded into invisibility as humanity lost the ability to see it, the Primordial
Tradition fades but reemerges in places conducive to rediscovering and
appreciating its profound depth and wisdom. This explains the ancient Maya's
isolation and independent genius which nevertheless had tapped into the same
doctrines also found in ancient Vedic and Egyptian cosmology.”
Regarding Shambhalla: Kalachakra Prophecy: From Dire Gnosis / Vincent Bridges:
Vincent Bridges
writes:
"the Sakya-pa and Nyng-ma-pa schools have different ways of calculating,
and the number of rulers is contradictory in many cases". Hence the 2
versions I had found ( a to e above), with the "final battle" in the
reign of the 25th king in 2425 AD, or in the reign of the 32nd king in 3125 AD.
However, Edwin Bernbaum, in his book, The Way to Shambhalla, has cited
"an early Tibetan source who supposedly made the journey and returned. He
quotes the even older prophecy of Padmasambhava, giving the 5 x 12 x 16
formula". In other words, the AMET paragraph above is flawed, and should
say, "... 960 years after its introduction into Tibet, which
happened in 1027..." instead of 860 and 1127. Jose Arguelles was
inspired by the Bernbaum book, to connect 1987 into the Mayan calendar, by
proposing the Harmonic Convergence of August 1987, and initially proposed the
idea in his 1975 book, Transformative Vision.
Regarding
Atlantis: Only to say that it sank long ago and the legend espouses its return
(variation on the up-down process; there is astronomy in this as we will see in
one of the slides; see “The Galactic Alignment and the Primordial Tradition”
chapter in Galactic Alignment).
3.
The Role of Prophet. Prediction vs. Prophecy. Avatars (Bachelet says every 6400
years). Evocation of highest or projection of deepest fear. Connector to
transcendent – that inner faculty we all have, awakened and operating. We can
all do this; be a prophet. Poetic muse is like this.
The
prophet goes to the ends of the world, his psyche is churning and he sees
reflected in his inner dissolution a vision of the ultimate dissolution of the
world. End of world visions, in this sense, is close to my heart as I endured a
dark night of the soul at a young age, when I wrote hundreds of “doom” poems
and “god” poems not unlike what we find in prophetic literature. Here’s an
example:
Nothingmist
A fanfare of prophets
betrays earthly gaze
Of ignorant beastlings in their last days
A rumor of war keeps persuading my fever
To rise even higher and stifle the unbeliever
Within us all the One Higher writhes
Yet we beckon the tempter and through him, Thee dies
The perpetual churnings of day and night spinnings
Proves the importance of detaching from your winnings
For Nothing is forever, and all else dies
And within us is this Nothingness, can be seen in your eyes
The Nothing is forever, and simply because of this
Springs form and creatura, congealed from the mist
When
the world dissolves and Nothing is left, and the slate is wiped clean so to
speak, the Nothing becomes a fecund womb, a pleroma of infinite
nothingness in which the seeds of future worlds can sprout. Finite manifestation is a possible
expression of the Infinite void. Yet it can be seen or experienced inwardly
only after all conceptual structures crumble to the ground…. In one of my
notebooks from when I was 18 years old, a poem entitled “Doomsay” describes for
page after page a global desolation that would make Hieronymous Bosch shiver,
but at the very end a saving grace occurs:
The rambling prophet sickens
of his soon to be death visions
of omni obliterati
But he knows the last moment as always
will prove us all God and dying lovers
Guénon nailed the whole issue over fifty years ago. At that time, right before his death, he said the end of Kali Yuga was not long off. Another prophet of the Traditionalist school, Frithjof Schuon, said in a 1967 interview that it was about 50 years away. Guénon sums it up, for the ultimate terminal moment of the current historical cycle only appears to be the ‘end of the world’
“to those who see nothing beyond the limits of this
particular cycle. … The end now under
consideration is undeniably of considerably greater importance than any other,
for it is the end of a whole Manvantara, and so of the temporal existence of
what may rightly be called a humanity, but this, it must be said once more, in
no way implies that it is the end of the terrestrial world itself, because,
through the “reinstatement” that takes place at the final instant, this end
will itself immediately become the beginning of another Manvantara. . ….. it
can be said in all truth that the “end of a world” never is and never can be
anything but the end of an illusion……..
error, illusion, and
darkness can enjoy no more than a specious and purely ephemeral triumph, and
nothing can ultimately prevail against the power of truth; for our motto we
should take the one adopted in former times by certain initiatory
organizations: Vincit omnia Veritas.” Truth conquers All
“So, yes, catastrophe
for everything that is built upon a foundation of materialism, lies and
unconscious death wishing. Unfortunately, this means primarily the prevailing
Western paradigm. This also suggests that indigenous cultures that have made it
to the threshold of the end-date are favored exemplars of survivability. They
may be the true midwives of our rebirth into the next World Age, a birth
attended like all births with the ripping asunder of the old womb-world and the
tearing open of the old, spiritually-restricting value system.
This tearing asunder is akin to what happens when more energy breaks into a system; the effect is terrible, destructive, but ultimately opens up larger channels for heightened energy to flow in. The earth, as the location of a specific spectrum of consciousness-in-evolution, has been said to correspond with the fifth level of the Tibetan chakra system, the linguistic or Vishuddha chakra. We need to widen our mental framework to channel in the higher faculties that will allow this to happen. ….We can envision the “catastrophe of cosmogenesis” as an energy increase flowing through earth as it and our sun align with the Galactic Center. Our inner beings, and our inner energy centers, are vibrating in sympathy with the goings on in the larger galaxy….”
These are times of death and renewal, big
questions, hard truths, and universal processes powerfully coming into play
within a human culture that has lost its ability to appreciate its connection
to such universal processes. What is now ending thus seems to be a paradigm
that has already lost all sense of orientation, all sense of true being.
Everything of value that might be lost in a purported global cataclysm has
already been lost in the steep attrition of Kali Yuga. The materialist delusion
has run its course.
The
rambling prophet sickens
of his soon to be death visions
of omni obliterati
But he knows the last moment as always
will prove us all God and dying lovers
Copyright John Major
Jenkins, except for material
cited from other sources. Written April 18 - April 20, 2002