By applying faith to hope, and by applying faith and hope to love, a human being may then be transformed into an angel.
So the Scorpion is transformed into an Eagle. The Eagle works with the Bull and the Bull grows wings. The winged Bull works on the Lion so that it grows wings in its turn.
And the end of this fourfold process is that the winged Lion works on the Man so that he is transformed into an Angel. This is a great mystery taught in the Mystery centres of the ancient world, which became the great mystery of esoteric Christianity.
The Four Elements play a crucial role in the formation of the physical universe, and to work on them as they weave in and out of us is to transform not just ourselves but the whole universe, even to its outer limits. If an individual cries tears of compassion, his animal nature is to some extent transformed, but so, too, are the Cherubim that occupy and interweave throughout the whole cosmos. Changes in human physiology become seeds of the transfiguration of the entire material universe.
The Cabalist Isaac Luria wrote that, eventually, there will be no single atom that has not been worked on by man.
IN THE EARLY CHAPTERS OF THIS HISTORY we saw how the world and humanity were created in the following order: first the mineral part, second the vegetable, third the animal, and last, as the crown of creation, the distinctly human element. Constituent parts were nurtured one after the other, each providing the conditions for the succeeding stage to develop. As the latter stages of history progress, these parts will be transformed in reverse order: human, animal, vegetable and, lastly, mineral. At the end of time even the very atoms of our material natures will be transformed like the physical body of Jesus Christ in the Transfiguration.
We have seen that according to the secret history humanity is only briefly dipped into matter, that the hardening of the earth and of our skulls has enabled us to evolve a proper sense of self, and so the potential to think, will and love freely. But before this brief sojourn among physical objects, our experience was of ideas. The objects of our Imagination, which we conceived of as coming from spirits, angels and gods, were real to us. For the greater part of human history, even long after matter had been formed, what we saw in the mind’s eye was still more real to us than material objects. The lesson of modern history is that matter is being transformed, dispersed, so that in the not too distant future we will re-enter the realm of Imagination.
When will this happen? What will happen after the incarnation of Satan? In Chapter 4 we saw that in the mind-before-matter understanding, history is divided into seven ‘days’. Saturday was the rule of Saturn, Sunday was the age when the earth was united with the sun, Monday was the age before the moon departed. Tuesday was the age that started with the locking into place of the fixed, material world in 11,145 BC. The death of Jesus Christ marked the halfway point in Tuesday and the Great Week. What will happen in the rest of the week?
In AD 3574 we will enter the age called Philadelphia in Revelation. If the great evolutionary impulses of previous eras have come from India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome and Northern Europe, the next impulse will come from Eastern Europe and Russia. Freemasonic-influenced governments in America and Britain have been keen to involve themselves in this area of the world for this reason. Already it is possible to see extremes emanating from this area, both extremes of spirituality and extremes of evil, such as the Russian ‘mafia’.
In future personalities we remember from history, the great personalities who helped lead humanity out of the spirit worlds, will be reborn in order to lead us back into the spirit worlds. There will be a new Shakespeare, a new Moses, a new Zarathustra, a new Hercules. Towards the end of the Philadelphian era, Jesus Pandira, the Teacher of the Essenes, will incarnate again as ‘the Fifth Rider who rides a horse called Faithful and True’, referred to in Revelation. In oriental tradition this figure is called the Maitreya Buddha. He will bring great spiritual gifts, opening what St Teresa of Avila called ‘the eyes of the soul’, the chakras.
We will then re-enter the sacred wood described in Chapter 2. We will be aware of the spirits, then angels and gods, alive in everything around us, but we will not be controlled by them any more. We will become aware again of the spiritual beings ranged on either side of us whenever we make a decision.
As good and evil spirits make themselves felt, as everyone communicates more freely with the spirit worlds, organized religion will no longer be needed.
Imagine no religion.
We will regain some of the ability to control animals and plants by the power of our thoughts that Adam enjoyed. We will begin to remember past lives and to foresee the future.
Our waking consciousness will develop so that it bears the same relationship to our present day waking consciousness as today’s waking consciousness bears to our dreaming consciousness. We will realize that, although we have believed ourselves to be awake, we have actually been asleep.
These developments will be hard-won. At the end of the Philadelphian era, there will be a catastrophic world war at the end of which the surface of the earth will become a spiritual wasteland, except for America, where the flame of spirituality will be kept alive. This will be the mirror image of the period of the first Zarathustra.
The period AD 5734-7894 is called Laodicea in Revelation. As matter becomes less dense, so our bodies will respond more and more to spiritual impulses. The goodness in good people will shine out of them, while the faces and bodies of evil people will be moulded by the animal passions that dominate them.
Good people will find it increasingly hard to be happy if they are surrounded by people who are miserable. Eventually no one will be happy until everyone is happy
If the material world is brief, so too is death. In time we will no longer die but sleep very deeply, and then less and less deeply. Death, as St Paul says, will be swallowed up. As we enter another age of metamorphosis, biological generation too will eventually become unnecessary. We will discover the ‘Word that has been lost’ of the Freemasons, which is to say we will be able to create by power of the voice.
In the scheme of the Great Week, we’ll have moved into ‘Thursday’, though, of course, time as we understand it today will no longer exist. Our thoughts will take on a life of their own, working on our behalf but independently of us.
As history approaches its end, the forces of evil will assert themselves once more, as the third being in the trinity of evil, Sorath, the Sun demon opposes God’s intentions. This is the beast with two horns like a lamb’s, described in Revelation. He will lead the forces of evil in the Last Battle.
Eventually, not only will the sun come up differently as St John Chrysostom predicted, but a sun will rise up inside each of us.
ALL OF THIS WILL HAVE BEEN ACCOMPLISHED by the power of thought!
By and large the people who have most changed history have not been the great generals or politicians, but the artists and thinkers. An individual sitting alone in a room and giving birth to an idea can do more to change the course of history than a general who commands thousands on the field of battle or a political leader who commands the loyalty of millions.
This is the romance and excitement of philosophy. In a mind-before-matter universe there is more than romance and excitement in all thinking — there is magic too. It is not just what I do or say but what I think that affects my fellow humans and the whole course of history.