Thoughts on Liber Resh
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Some thoughts on Liber Resh.
AC notes that carrying out Resh daily is 1) a reminder of the Great Work and 2) conquers the fear of the death, but I seriously doubt these comments make any sense until the solar cycle is understood.
For example, in many cultures the dead are buried facing east to west, following the path of the sun, in the belief the soul joins the sun as it enters the Underworld and is reborn with the new dawn. In this schema, day and night correspond to the Upperworld/life and Netherworld/death. We live, then die and enter the Netherworld/night. If this Old Aeon view is correct, AC’s comments about Resh conquering the fear of death suggests that by identifying consciousness with the sun, we pin our hopes on the dawn of a new day . I suggest something far more interesting and literal is going on in Liber Resh.
Caradoc noted on Lashtal.com that the “horizon” (akh) by which the sun enters and exits the sky is key for understanding the significance of the Upperworld and Lowerworld:
www.lashtal.com/nuke/PNphpBB2-viewtopic-t-395-highlight-horizons.phtml
One interpretation of these two horizons is birth and death, corresponding to dawn and sunset, but another may be the two Egyptian glyphs for eternities, djet and neheh - hence the greeting *May you be pure forever (djet) and ever (neheh). *
(RaHorakhty as such may be conceived of as Horus-consciousness suspended between two infinities. This alone provides significant hints: we know that Horus (He Who Is Above) is symbolized by the falcon flying over the Earth, alert, vigilant, but more importantly, the principle of resurrection and avenging of his father Osiris, the King of the Dead and Netherworld).
Note however the Old Aeon interpretation of Ra/dawn = birth and Tum/sunset = death in respect of Resh leads to serious confusion since the Egyptian Book of the Dead (Pert Em Hru) is translated as the Book of Coming Forth By Day. The Amduat is the place of Two Ways and the fate of the soul, whether one enters night or day, depends on whether it knows the spells to shed identity to reunite with Ra. And perhaps that, in turn, depends on one’s orientation, how they understand Day and Night, the Upperworld and Netherworld through which the sun travels for eternity.
We're just scratching the surface, but I'll end with a few choice quotes:
On the Upper and Lower Worlds in the Eleusinian Mysteries:
The Lesser Mysteries were dedicated to Persephone. In his Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, Thomas Taylor sums up their purpose as follows: "The Lesser Mysteries were designed by the ancient theologists, their founders, to signify occultly the condition of the unpurified soul invested with an earthy body, and enveloped in a material and physical nature."
The legend used in the Lesser rites is that of the abduction of the goddess Persephone, the daughter of Ceres, by Pluto, the lord of the underworld, or Hades. While Persephone is picking flowers in a beautiful meadow, the earth suddenly opens and the gloomy lord of death, riding in a magnificent chariot, emerges from its somber depths and, grasping her in his arms, carries the screaming and struggling goddess to his subterranean palace, where he forces her to become his queen.
It is doubtful whether many of the initiates themselves understood the mystic meaning of this allegory, for most of them apparently believed that it referred solely to the succession of the seasons. It is difficult to obtain satisfactory information concerning the Mysteries, for the candidates were bound by inviolable oaths never to reveal their inner secrets to the profane. At the beginning of the ceremony of initiation, the candidate stood upon the skins of animals sacrificed for the purpose, and vowed that death should seal his lips before he would divulge the sacred truths which were about to be communicated to him. Through indirect channels, however, some of their secrets have been preserved. The teachings given to the neophytes were substantially as follows:The soul of man--often called Psyche, and in the Eleusinian Mysteries symbolized by Persephone--is essentially a spiritual thing. Its true home is in the higher worlds, where, free from the bondage of material form and material concepts, it is said to be truly alive and self-expressive. The human, or physical, nature of man, according to this doctrine, is a tomb, a quagmire, a false and impermanent thing, the source of all sorrow and suffering. Plato describes the body as the sepulcher of the soul; and by this he means not only the human form but also the human nature.
The gloom and depression of the Lesser Mysteries represented the agony of the spiritual soul unable to express itself because it has accepted the limitations and illusions of the human environment. The crux of the Eleusinian argument was that man is neither better nor wiser after death than during life. If he does not rise above ignorance during his sojourn here, man goes at death into eternity to wander about forever, making the same mistakes which he made here. If he does not outgrow the desire for material possessions here, he will carry it with him into the invisible world, where, because he can never gratify the desire, he will continue in endless agony. Dante's Inferno is symbolically descriptive of the sufferings of those who never freed their spiritual natures from the cravings, habits, viewpoints, and limitations of their Plutonic personalities. Those who made no endeavor to improve themselves (whose souls have slept) during their physical lives, passed at death into Hades, where, lying in rows, they slept through all eternity as they had slept through life.
To the Eleusinian philosophers, birth into the physical world was death in the fullest sense of the word, and the only true birth was that of the spiritual soul of man rising out of the womb of his own fleshly nature. "The soul is dead that slumbers," says Longfellow, and in this he strikes the keynote of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Just as Narcissus, gazing at himself in the water (the ancients used this mobile element to symbolize the transitory, illusionary, material universe) lost his life trying to embrace a reflection, so man, gazing into the mirror of Nature and accepting as his real self the senseless clay that he sees reflected, loses the opportunity afforded by physical life to unfold his immortal, invisible Self.An ancient initiate once said that the living are ruled by the dead. Only those conversant with the Eleusinian concept of life could understand that statement. It means that the majority of people are not ruled by their living spirits but by their senseless (hence dead) animal personalities. Transmigration and reincarnation were taught in these Mysteries, but in a somewhat unusual manner. It was believed that at midnight the invisible worlds were closest to the Terrestrial sphere and that souls coming into material existence slipped in during the midnight hour. For this reason many of the Eleusinian ceremonies were performed at midnight. Some of those sleeping spirits who had failed to awaken their higher natures during the earth life and who now floated around in the invisible worlds, surrounded by a darkness of their own making, occasionally slipped through at this hour and assumed the forms of various creatures.
(Manley P. Hall, Secret Teachings Of The Ages: www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/sta06.htm)
Hence also the necessity of Incarnation: the soul must enter into all falsity in order to attain All-Truth.
(p. 80, ABA)The dead man Ankh-n-f-Khonsu
Hath parted from the darkling crowds,
Hath joined the dwellers of the light,
Opening Duant, the star-abodes
Their keys receiving
The dead man Ankh-n-f-Khonsu
Hath made his passage into night
His pleasure on the earth to do
Among the living(Reverse of the Stele; compare with Mass of the Phoenix)
Commentary: This verse declares that the old formula of Magick – the Osiris-Adonis-Jesus-Marsyas-Dionysus-Attis et cetera formula of the Dying God – is no longer efficacious. It rested on the ignorant belief that the Sun died every day, and every year, and that its resurrection was a miracle.
The formula of the New Aeon recognizes Horus, the Child crowned and conquering, as God. We are all members of this Body of God, the Sun; and about our System is the Ocean of Space. This formula is then to be based upon these facts. Our “Evil,” “Error,” “Darkness,” “Illusion,” whatever one chooses to call it, is simply a phenomenon of accidental and temporary separateness. If you are “walking in darkness,” do not try to make the sun rise by self-sacrifice, but wait in confidence for the dawn, and enjoy the pleasures of the night meanwhile.(p. 47, Authorized Popular Commentary to Liber Legis, Falcon Press)
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Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
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Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
Thank you for your detailed and knowledgeable comments.
I am wondering, what is the significance of the Hebrew letter Resh in relationship to Liber Resh?
Thank you.
Love is the law, lover under will.
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@Tamara_Tornad said
"I am wondering, what is the significance of the Hebrew letter Resh in relationship to Liber Resh?"
The letter Resh is attributed to the Sun astrologically, and to the Tarot card called The Sun.
Liber Resh is an adoration of the Sun.
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@Silenci said
"If one assumes the perspective of the sun there is no rising or setting, only continuity...of consciousness."
That's actually part of what one learns in this practice. The timing isn't about the Sun so much as oneself and one's relationship to it.
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While the 'bark' or body that carries the spiritual self has its 'risings,' 'peaks', 'settings' etcetera - our core remains unchanging. As, in performing the ritual the 'sun,' the 'heavens,' appear to move around our terrestrial selves. At the same time, from the perspective of our spiritual core the all revolves around its unending light.
The source of our perceptions, being that spiritual core, would come to naught without the terrestrial self to perceive it. It is the dance which occurs between the two that creates being and the drama of the ritual. Whose structure remains the same throughout the 'day' with a new name or face to mark the flow of time. Yet each face is just a different way of looking at the sun, also with the same faces coming to be day after day.
The terrestrial self like a fine mist; shifting around and giving the illusion of change, in an unending procession that never really occurs.
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I've read in the Upanishads that man has two ways. 1. To go to his ancestors via ancestor worship. 2. To go to various heavens via gods worship. Nr. 2 can lead to escape from sansara while Nr. 1 not.
Nr. 1 may be attributed to Tem, the Moon and Nr. 2 to Re, the Sun. Some observations by me. -
@Modes said
"I've read in the Upanishads that man has two ways. 1. To go to his ancestors via ancestor worship. 2. To go to various heavens via gods worship. Nr. 2 can lead to escape from sansara while Nr. 1 not.
Nr. 1 may be attributed to Tem, the Moon and Nr. 2 to Re, the Sun. Some observations by me."Interesting attribution of ancestor worship to the moon...Gurdjieff, as shady as that character was, did say that man, when he died, became food for the moon...
616
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@KRVB MMShCh said
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@Modes said
"I've read in the Upanishads that man has two ways. 1. To go to his ancestors via ancestor worship. 2. To go to various heavens via gods worship. Nr. 2 can lead to escape from sansara while Nr. 1 not.
Nr. 1 may be attributed to Tem, the Moon and Nr. 2 to Re, the Sun. Some observations by me."Interesting attribution of ancestor worship to the moon...Gurdjieff, as shady as that character was, did say that man, when he died, became food for the moon...
616"
Both apparently shady and ridiculous.
IAO131
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@Aum418 said
"Both apparently shady and ridiculous."
I am sure(or rather hope) it was a metaphor...probably reflecting the ancient Druidic aphorism "mineral becomes vegetable, vegetable becomes animal, animal becomes man, man becomes moon, moon becomes planet, planet becomes star, etc."...or possibly even a Qabalistic reference - who knows with Gurdjieff...maybe it was a prophecy for 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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