220 continued

"The Greek historian Plutarch (c. A.D.50-120 ) refers to the people of the Canaries as Atlanteans. Homer may have identi-fied the islands, as later writers did, with Elysium, the mythical winterless home of the happy dead. This may not have been due merely to their position in the far west, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, but the discovery by ancient navigators of the natives' cult of the dead and their belief in immortality. They used to embalm dead bodies, reducing them by some means  to a weight of only 7 or 8 pounds, and, like many American peoples, they believed that the dead gave their advice to their descendants. When Peruvian Indians had to appear in a court of law they brought with them all their mummified ancestors: while among the Guanches a dead ruler was never buried until his successor died, so that the living king was, so to speak , assisted at all times by his predecessor.      
Some believe that the Guanches learnt the technique of mummification from the Egyptians, but in fact the methods were completely different. The Egyptians may have taught the Guanches their writing system and the custom of brother-sister marriage, but in other respects the Guanche civilization remains a mystery. It is only known to us only from ruins that call to mind those of Sardinia, Jerico and Zimbabwe and from the underground structures on the island of Grand Canary,which have much in common with the relics of other ancient Mediterranean cultures."

Page 224

Beyond the Styx
" Some years ago a young engineer and amateur archeologist named Kama el Malakh discovered not far from the Great Pyramid, the funeral barques of the first Pharaohs. These were some 180 feet long and 10 feet wide, and contained everything the dead monarch might need on a long voyage. They were not destined to put to sea, however, but to convey the sovereign until such time as he should be reincarnated , following the journey round the earth of the Sun, his father."
"…This custom may or may not derive from ancient memories of space-travel. Until recent times it was thought to be of purely Egyptian origin, the Greeks having borrowed the myth in a modified form - that of Charon's barque transporting the souls of the dead across the Styx. However, it appears that

/ Page 225 /

many peoples of the remote past buried their dead in boat-shaped coffins, and some South American tribes do so to this day.As Homet writes,… "
…We find examples still current in Oceania, in central Africa and in the region of the Amazon. These barques served as transitional vessels from one point to another, and most cultures combine the migration of the soul with the crowning of its rebirth. And always - as we have found in numerous documents in Africa-the soul travelled towards the Sun God. But it always travelled in "something" which could also accommodate the body before it was resurrected, hence a "death barque"
'The facts suggest,' Homet continues, that their may have been a place of common origin, an earlier culture that was the primordial home of the death barque and the fountain-head uniting all the ancient cultures: Celtic, ancient Egyptian, north-west European and South American. This we call Atlantis, the mother civilization of all
"children of the sun"
In Greek mythology the entrance to Hades was guarded by the three-headed dog  Cerberus. Among the Aztecs the abode  of the dead was surrounded by a sevenfold river, and the god who presided over  the departed spirits was the dog-headed Xolotl (like Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead ). A thin leaf of copper has been found in the mouth of certain mummies, apparently to pay for their passage to the shades below, in the same way as the obol which was Charon's fee.
In the roof of the funeral crypt at Tiahuanaco there is a round hole exactly like the one found in Egyptian tombs, where its purpose is to allow the 'bird of death' to escape."
The belief in reincarnation was common to many parts of

/ Page 226 /

ancient America, and this is why mummies and skeletons are often found in the foetal position: the bodies were bound in this fashion with ropes, even while there owners were still alive, so that they might be ready for rebirth. A similar custom prevailed in ancient Gaul, Mecklemburg, Britain, Sweden and southern Russia,and also the Tonga islands. It is still in force in the Amazon region, and so is the practice of 'double burial'which was also once known in Ireland, Crete and various parts of Europe. The bodies were first buried in damp ground to accelerate decomposition (the Indians of Brazil have a different method-they suspend them in nets in running water, where the piranhas soon pick them dry ); then the skeleton is removed, cleaned and painted red-the colour of blood or placenta,  as Homet remarks-after which it is re-interred. We have already mentioned symbols of life after death, such as yokes (among the Olmecs and Egyptians), knots and butterflies,which are common to ancient America and the Mediterranean peoples. The lotus which in India is the symbol of birth , is common in pre-Columbian temples and burial-places, especially in the Mayan capital of Chichen Itza. Here it is represented complete with flowers, leaves and root-stock, in motifs similar to those of India, Cambodia and Indonesia, and with the same accompanment of dragons, sea-monsters and fierce animals of the cat tribe.    
We do not know the age of the lotus as a symbol, but in Europe it is found amongst the Celts who brought it from Asia as long ago as 2000B.C.,and whose rulers later trans-formed it into the fleur de lys. It is usually thought to have spread from India to south east Asia, but Homet believes it to be of much earlier, Atlantean origin. His view finds some support in the enigmatic 'Phaistos disc'- a round terracotta tablet, six inches in diameter and about an inch thick, discovered in 1908 in a Cretan palace in a stratum belonging to the sixteenth century B.C. "
"…The disc is inscribed on both sides with ideograms, quite different from Cretan writing in a left hand spiral.
In the centre  

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of one side is a lotus flower, and of the signs which follow it 15 are identical to those found in Brazilian inscriptions, while 19 resemble them closely. Also depicted on the disc are heads adorned with feathers, constellations - the Plaides, Serpens and Pisces - a kind of fire bird and the quaz, the Egyptian symbol of physical strength. The disc remains undeciphered "
 
Around and about this time both the scribe and Zed Ali Zed  remembered their visit to the there and back of the  blessed  "…half-mythical  land of  ultima Thule…"
 
Page 235

" Ptolemy's map of the world (second century A.D. ) shows Thule as an island to the north-east of britain, but by the late middle ages it had disappeared from the ken of geographers. Ultima Thule - our last hope, perhaps, of gazing beyond the point where ferocious savages block the extension of our knowledge and prevent us from journeying back through time' following a trail more fascinating and less obscure than we have been able to indicate in these pages.
But the past is not wholly lost. As Ivar Lissner puts it:  'History is imperishable. Unseen and unrecognized, the past lives on in its quiet, imperceptible way. Whether lying dormant in the unfathomable sea of the millennia or buried beneath the ground and swathed in a vast winding sheet of earth and stone, "past civilizations" are still with us even though their tangible remains lie hidden and still un-discovered. All civilizations that have ever been live on in us, and our lives are rooted deep in the remote, mysterious and ancient civilizations of the past. It is our task again and again to rediscover these civilizations, which have a strange way of falling silent as if they no longer lived in us and

/ Page 236 /

we in them. But once a civilization has existed on earth, its effects are permanent. A memory, a new discovery, a visit to an exibition - any one of these may suddenly alert us to their mute presence. And when this happens we feel a strange desire to weep for something that is near us, yet cannot be recalled
 
The ZedAlizZed thanked the venerable brother Kolosimo for his most invaluable past, present, and future gifts, then after entering into a three way goodbye, along with the poor sad blind ass of serendip, they continued on their not too weary way.  
  
 
Alizzed cast around, and although not seeking, nevertheless  finding, other  hidden pieces of the jigsaw that never was, These, the, well, would you believe it scribe, used to make corkwool soup for the evening repast.
 
They said their goodbyes to Brother Kolosimo thanking him with just the right amount of humble pi for all that he had so freely given and promised to return at just the right time.
 

Page 511 / 512

"The learner must be of daunt-less courage and athirst for knowledge, to speak in the style of our theme. The grave, the sepulchre, has always been the emblem of initiation into the society. The neophyte coveting admission to the mysteries must always preserve undaunted courage in the face of their terrors; it is the purpose of the order that he should be tested in them ,led down into and made to linger among them,and later fetched up from them by the hand of an unknown Brother. Hence the winding passages, the dark vaults , through which the novice is made to wander; the black cloth with which the Hall of Strict Observance was hung , the cult of the sarcophagus , which played so important a role in the ceremonial of meetings and initia-tions. The path of mysteries and purification was encompassed by /dangers, it led through the pangs of death , through the kingdom of dissolution; and the learner, the neophyte, is youth itself, thirsting after the miracles of life, clamouring to be quickened to a demonic capacity of experience, and led by shrouded forms which are the shadowing forth of the mystery."

Page726 / 727

"…in the course of his experiences, overcomes his inborn attraction to death and arrives at an
understanding of a humanity that does not, indeed, rationalistically ignore death , nor scorn the dark  mysterious side of life, but takes account of it, without letting it get control over his mind.
What he comes to understand is that one must go through the deep experience of sickness and death
To arrive at a higher sanity and health; in just the same way that one must have knowledge of sin in order to find redemption."
"There are"
"…two ways to life:one is the regular, direct and good way ; the other is bad , it leads through death, and that is the way of genius" It is this notion of disease and  death as a necessary route to knowledge, health, and life that makes The Magic Mountain a novel of initiation."

Page 727 "

"... The Quester legend "
 
"… Faust the eternal seeker  "

"...the eternal seeker, is a group of compositions generally known as the Sangraal or Holy Grail romances. Their hero be it Gawain or Galahad or Perceval, is the seeker, the quester, who ranges heaven and hell , makes terms with them, and strikes a pact with the unknown, with sickness and evil, with death and the other world, with the supernatural, the world that in the Magic Mountain is called 'questionable'.  He is forever searching for the grail - that is to say, the Highest: knowledge, wisdom, consecration, the philosophers' stone, the aurum potabile, the elixir of life."

Page 728

"The Quester of the Grail Legend, at the beginning of his wanderings, is often called a fool, a great fool, a guileless fool."

Page728

"The seeker of the Grail, before he arrives at the Sacred Castle, has to undergo various frightful and mysterious ordeals in a wayside chapel called the Atre Perilleux.  Probably these ordeals were originally rites of initiation, conditions of the permission to approach the esoteric mystery; the idea of knowledge, wisdom, is always bound up with the 'other world,' with night and death."  

Page 728

"In The Magic Mountain there is a great deal said of an alche-mistic, hermetic pedagogy, of
transubstantiatiation.   And I, myself a guiless fool,  was guided by a mysterious tradition for it is those very words that are always used in connection with the mysteries of the Grail."

Page728

"...-who voluntarily, all too voluntarily embraces disease and death, because its very first contact with them gives promise of extraordinary enlightenment and adventurous advancement, bound up, of course, with correspondingly great risks."

Page 728/9

"And perhaps you will find out what the Grail is; the knowledge and the wisdom, the consecration the highest reward, for which not only the foolish hero but the book itself is seeking."

Page 729

"It is the idea of the human being, the conception of a future humanity that has passed through and survived the profoundest knowledge of disease and death.  The Grail is a mystery, but humanity is a mystery too.  For man himself is a mystery, and all humanity rest upon reverence before the mystery that is man."

This acknowledgement to the contributions of others within this hymn of praise to creative intelligent consciousness, is freely and humbly given.  It is indicative of where Eht Namuh stands on the ladder of
its progress, that at this quintessential moment of time, each and every one  of us seeks recognition for the this of that, which all of us as creative entities have been entrusted with exteriorizing, for and on behalf of, that creative intelligent consciousness that holds each and every one of us in thrall.  The that of the thou, which is the initiator, and motivating power of the mysterious process of life .Oh Namuh, within the this of the that, of the he as in she, of the thou as in ought, of the ought as in thought, thou shouldst render only praise and credit to the true creator.  The energy of intelligent living creativity, abundant and fecund, manifested everywhere and in everything. For all is living energy, living creative energy, known variously and collectively as the one God.  


Cast off the shackles of thy puny ego Oh Namuh, and accord thanks, only for thine honoured participation in creativity of a kind, and thank your stars for that.
There is a mountain to climb or otherwise a mounting oblivion shall be your future.
  
Take heed the notion, that notion, the notion of an individual unique self. For that notion is no notion at all.Therefore, if any part of this, of the that of our own contribution within this work, can in any way help to free the understanding of thee, Eht Namuh, from the dark age tyranny of thy thinking. Thy thinking thoughts as to the he as in she absurdity, that of the eye of an individual self.Then so be it, publish and be not damned, but be thou blessed, and give only thy praise, in wonder to that living essence of the energy within and without, which is thy true nature. Blessed be the name of thy true god, which is at one with  the thou that is thee, for thou art of it and it is of thee.

                       

In the Beginning Was The Word And The Word Was

_________________

 

Thomas Wolfe  1900-1938

"The life of a book can be as mysterious and wonderful as the life of a man.  Its destiny, like that of man, is often 'touched by that dark miracle of chance which makes new magic in a dusty world."

TheConcise Oxford Dictionary of Current English 1974 Edition.
'Exoteric Of doctrines modes of speech, of disciples not admitted to esoteric teaching; commonplace, ordinary, popular;...'
'Esoteric (Of philosophical doctrines etc.) meant only for the initiated; of disciples (initiated; private confidential within,

" The Making Of "
The Magic Mountain

Page711

"These were the moments when the "Seven Sleeper" not knowing what had happened was slowly stirring himself..."
"He saw himself released, freed from enchantment - not of his own motion he was fain to confess, but by the operation of exterior powers, of whose activities his own liberation was a minor incident indeed!"

Page713

"And we are shrinking shadows by the way side shamed by the security of our shadowdom,"
 

The White Rabbitz had said unto the Zed Aliz Zed, Zed AlizZed, the time of thy calling is at hand. Within the creative wherewithall of the  this and that, of where thou art now at, thou hast been summoned for trial. Thou art a  being  aware as any, to the this a' that  nature of the coming  ordeal, and know, that if you succeed in this for which thou hast been born ,and which it is your bounden duty, and sacred task to fulfill, that you will only be able to return to the Land of the Living minus that with which you first set out.
The preparation of the years is over, you must leave at once and attempt the crossing of The Great Divide.You will be allowed to take nothing with you, other than the compass of thine own minds eye and such  karmic unfortunates as may choose in ignorance to accompany thee. Go now and may thy God be with thee.
And so it was with fearful trepidation that the Zed Aliz Zed, was made to realise at long last that the quitessential moment of the quintessential moment of a long awaited fate was upon them.
        Alizzed understood full well the import of the White Rabbitz words, and felt the spirit within tremble in mortal anguish, at the thoughts of the trials to come. Then and only then did The Zed Aliz Zed, within that total aloneness demanded of the voyager, descend into the perfect fit of the Osiris box and disappear into the void.