Posted on by Kyle Roques

Atlas of the Heart

This is a deeply profound book. It’s almost biblical. In the introduction alone, there is a handful of lines you can spend ages breaking down and interpreting. Just about everything is quotable.

This book is sort of the hard, data driven science, behind the Christian maxim of redemption of the soul is to be found in truthful speech. This work also helps to explain the LOGOS (the creative power behind words/truthful speech).

Language is our portal to meaning making, connection, healing, learning, and self awareness. Having access to the right words can open up entire universes. When we don’t have the language to talk about what we are experiencing, our ability to make sense of what’s happening and share it with others is severely limited. Without accurate language, we struggle to get the help we need, we don’t always regulate or manage our emotions and experiences in a way that allows us to move through them productively, and our self awareness is diminished. Language shows us that naming and experience doesn’t give the experience more power, it gives us the power of understanding and meaning….

Language speeds and strengthens connections in the brain when we are processing sensory information. But newer research shows that when our access to emotional language Is blocked, our ability to interpret incoming emotional information is significantly diminished. Likewise, having the correct words to describe specific emotions makes us better able to identify those emotions in others, as well as to recognize and manage the emotional experiences when we feel them ourselves.

Brene Brown
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Laboratory of Ideas

When gathered together, we feel safe to be ourselves, to be vulnerable. Meeting on the level, we work on ourselves, opening our minds, learning to view mankind as a family composed of brothers and sisters. Freemasonry may be seen as a laboratory, as lodges are ideal places to test new ideas. But they also act as an incubator, allowing new concepts to flourish. Out in the world we can observe our ideas to see what happens when they reach maturity.

Moreover, perhaps more than most religions, Freemasonry offers a bridge between the past and future (just like the US constitution). Through willing to embrace new ideas, Freemasonry’s intentionally deliberate nature prevents it from being swept up by mob rule

Russ Charvonia
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Civility Mosaic

The Civility Mosaic is a practical guide that zeros in on what is arguably the greatest ailment affecting Western civilization today: the almost complete breakdown of civility and the balkanization of the population into warring tribes engaged in a scorch Earth battle to silence one another’s opinions.

There is a razor thin line between democracy and rule by the mob…

John Adams wrote “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” They recognize that our nation’s ongoing survival depended on its citizens being equipped with the civic virtues of honesty, courtesy, responsibility, industriousness, marriage, and religious devotion of some kind.

Freemasonry was deliberately encouraged to expand westward across America specifically to teach this rough desperate and illiterate public how to get along with one another…. The Masonic lodge became a classroom wherein its members learned how to operate a Republic. In an age before widespread, organized schools, the lodge ritual introduced members to concepts of Enlightenment, of the liberal arts and sciences, of the importance of honor and duty of the Cardinal virtues and more… We still teach our members the same ancient code of behavior and elements of character that sustained Western civilization for centuries.

The Civility Mosaic is a Handbook, a primer about how to apply the philosophy, lessons, and structure of Freemasonry to repair our relationships with others and, in doing so, repair the society around us….

If you are not a Mason yourself, it will provide valuable insight into this ancient and honorable society. If you are a Mason, it’s an exciting book, a guide to spreading the evangel of equality, brotherhood, and the power of the individual to act as a powerful force in the world around him.

Chris Hodapp
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Opulence

The Freemasonic ritual is intended to be a spiritually transformative experience. The initiatic aspect of Freemasonry is “intended to actually change the candidate; a rebirth with a new cognitive frame that allows him to see that he could not before – to behold the ‘mysteries’ of Freemasonry and not just the secrets.”

W.L. Wilmhurst writes:
“The purpose of initiation may be defined as follows: – it is to stimulate and awaken the candidate to direct cognition and irrefutable demonstration of facts and truths of his own being about which previously he has been either wholly ignorant or only notionally informed; It is to bring him into direct conscious contact with the Realities underlying the surface images of things, so that, instead of holding merely beliefs or opinions about himself, the universe and God, he is directly and convincingly confronted with truth itself; And finally it is to move him to become the Good and the Truth revealed to him by identifying himself with it.”

Part of how we make good men better is by this process of initiation. Which, when done right, fundamentally changes the way our brothers see, think, and act in the world. Mircea Eliade has this to say about the initiation process: “…the novice emerges from the ordeal endowed with a totally different being from that which he possessed before his initiation; he has become another.”

This is what happened to me when I was Initiated, Passed, and Raised through the fraternity. This is the main reason I stay active in the lodge, because this was so transformative and important to me. So now I am paying it forward to give new canindates the same experience. Because without me, new, and veteran Masons conferring these rituals, Freemasonry dies.

I get to take part in these initiations on a regular basis. I regularly have new canindates personally thank me and tell me that I helped in spiritually transforming them (since I typically perform very critical and involved roles) – as my brothers did for me when I was a new canindate. I’ve seen the transformations, sometimes even the very moment of epiphany.

This brings me a level of joy that I never knew existed. My life has never been more meaningful. I have never had so much direction, drive, and determination. I have never felt so powerful and strong. I have never been so happy. Words cannot convey my feelings. At the very least, all I can say is that all these feelings are felt with an intensity I never knew existed.

I now know the reason the Mystery School tradition has been passed down for 1000s of years. And I couldn’t be more honored to keep it alive and well.

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Operative Freemasonry

…Freemasonry is exceptional. That is, I believe that Freemasonry is something special. It isn’t the same as the Rotary, Lions, or any other civic group. Nor is it equivalent to your bowling team. It is a very specific system designed to effect the moral and spiritual transformation of its members. When done conciously and properly, it should actually change the men who join. It should set them in a lifelong journey of spiritual, moral, and mental growth that the average person can’t get anywhere else.

Kirk C. White
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Art – The Foundation of the Process by Which We Unite Ourselves Psychologically

Making something beautiful is difficult, but it is amazingly worthwhile. If you learn to make something in your life truly beautiful – even one thing – then you have established a relationship with beauty. From there you can begin to expand that relationship out into other elements of your life and the world. That is an invitation to the divine. That is the reconnection with the immortality of childhood, and the true beauty and majesty of the Being you can no longer see. You must be daring to try that.

If you study art (and literature anf the humanities), you do it so that you can familiarize yourself with the collected wisdom of our civilization. This is a very good idea – a veritable necessity – because people have been working out how to live for a very long time. What they have produced is a strange but also rich beyond comparison, so why not use it as a guide? Your vision will be grander and your plans more comprehensive. You will consider other people more intelligently and completely. You will take care of yourself more effectively. You will understand the present more profoundly, rooted as it is in the past, and you will come to conclusions much more carefully. You will come to treat the future, as well, as a more concrete reality (because you will have developed some true sense of time) and be less likely to sacrifice it to impulsive pleasure.  You will develop some depth, gravitas, and true thoughtfulness. You will speak more precisely, and other people will become more likely to listen to and cooperate productively with you, as you will with them. You will become more your own person, and less a dull and hapless tool of peer pressure, vogue, fad, and ideology.

Buy a piece of art. Find one that speaks to you and make the purchase. If it is a genuine artistic production, it will invade your life and change it. A real piece of art is a window into the transcendent, and you need that in your life, because you are finite and limited and bounded by your ignorance. Unless you can make a connection to the transcendent, you will not have the strength to prevail when the challenges of life become daunting. You need to establish a link with what is beyond you, like a man overboard in high seas requires a life preserver, and the invitation of beauty into your life is one means by which that may be accomplished.

It is for such reasons that we need to understand the rule of art, and stop thinking about it as an option, or a luxury, or worse, an affectation. Art is the bedrock of culture itself. It is the foundation of the process by which we unite ourselves psychologically, and come to see established productive peace with others. As it is said, “Man shall not live by bread alone”. That is exactly right. We cannot live without some connection to the divine – and beauty is divine – because in its absence life is too short, too dismal, and too tragic. And we must be sharp and awake and prepared so that we can strive properly, and orient the world properly, and not destroy things, including ourselves – and beauty can help us appreciate the wonder of Being and motivate us to seek gratitude when we might otherwise be prone to destructive resentment.

Jordan Peterson
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Philosophy of Occultism in Pictures & Numbers

No study of Occult Philosophy is possible without an acquaintance with symbolism…. Symbolism cannot be learned as one learns to build bridges or speak a foreign language, and for the interpretation of symbols a special cast of mind is necessary; in addition to knowledge, special faculties, the power of creative thought and developed imagination are required.

In order to become acquainted with the tarot, it is necessary to understand the basic ideas of Kabala and of Alchemy. For it represents, as, indeed, many commentators of the tarot think, a summary of the Hermetic Sciences – the Kabala, Alchemy, Astrology, Magic, with their different divisions. All these sciences really represent one system of a very broad and deep psychological investigation of the nature of man in his relation to the world of noumena (God, the world of spirit) and to the world of phenomena (the visible physical world).

The letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the various allegories of the Kabala, the names of metals, acids and salts in Alchemy; of planets and constellations in Astrology; of good and evil spirits in Magic – all these were only means to veil truth from the uninitiated

P.D. Oupensky
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Mystical Tarot

Once we step outside the box of gathered expectations stemming from superstitious gypsy tales, exploitation movies, and carnie psychic fairs, we realize is that Tarot is more than just another fortune-telling device. There’s something alluring, mysterious about this pack of 78 cards. We need to access their wisdom carefully, allow the cards to speak to us and connect to soul. Every single card in Tarot can act as a gate for us to discover a hidden part of our own self. But this is a process that requires time, patience, and humility.

We live in an ever-increasing complex world. Yeah, our ability to understand the world around us depends on how we understand ourselves. Self-awareness leads to self knowledge. Self knowledge helps us understand others better. We are all in this together.

Serious academic study of Tarot is just beginning and it is revealing to us the influence exerted by a hieroglyphic, emblematic and miniature art; the role played by Cabala, the Art of Memory, and the Picaresque novel, Troubadours and Chansons de Geste, to name just a few. Literature begets literature, art begets art; and human consciousness expands and adapts and adopts accordingly. Nothing is ever forgotten, it is all in the reservoir of the collective unconscious.

Yolonda M. Robinson
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The Quantum Revelation

Pretty much sums up what I enjoy studying – a synthesis of science and spirituality – and in the case of the quantum the two cannot be separated. Quantum physics verifies what mystics and esoteric teachings have thought about our consiousness and reality for centuries, before even a “real” science existed. Ideas that came to these thinkers in altered states of consciousness. Such things like how consciousness isn’t local to the brain, that we are all connected by consiousness – both humans and object – how our perception and beliefs actually take part in creating the objective world around us, and that we are indeed a microcosm of the macrocosm.

Posted on by Kyle Roques · 1 Comment

Medieval Number Symbolism

I got this book to help me better understand number symbolism – the philosophy and relationship of numbers to themselves and to the cosmos – to apply this knowledge to the use of Tarot.

… medieval number philosophy, which often appears as sheer nonsense or at best as the product of extraordinarily confused thinking, is explicable only by reference to its origins. … It is the purpose of this study to reveal how deeply rooted in medieval thought was the conciousness of numbers, not as mathematical tools, nor yet as the counters in a game, but as fundamental realities, alive with memories and eloquent with meaning. … An important result of these studies has been to reveal in the medieval mind a web like structure of abstract ideas and concrete realities so closely interwoven and interdependent that no serious gap was felt to exist between them.

Vincent Hopper