And who is qualified to impartially judge that?
Solon, in the egoic world which you and I inhabit, NOBODY is impartial. EVERYBODY is coming at EVERYTHING from their own point of view. Only exceptions I know of are 7th Stage spiritual masters who have the vantage point of All and Everything.
"IF the original even existed!"
I don't know on what basis you would doubt the magic in the bible given your belief in the magical realm. You did not doubt the story of your friend, did you? Why then doubt the stories of others?
I had known my friend for a number of years and considered him to be very trustworthy and reliable.
In the case of the bible, I do not know the writer(s) and editors over 2 to 3 THOUSAND years of history. Is there something perverse about trusting the former more than the latter?
"powers" of this kind (which are a phenomenon of the 5th stage of life) are what they are, and are not necessarily
less in the hands of a black magic practitioner. They may last a shorter time, however."
Well, this is where you can lend me a hand. There is a common conception that magical powers are gained by peforming the will of an ultimate source of evil or good--a "spiritual" progression of some sort.
Here is a quote from THINKING & DESTINY. I gave you the URL
for the online book earlier:
There are brotherhoods composed of those who have command
over many of the forces of nature, and who have knowledge of much that is hidden from the senses of the run of human beings and is equally unknown to the learned men of the world. In these brotherhoods are members who have disciples, taken out of the world from time to time. There is no way in which the public or those not fitted can enter these schools. When the inner development of a human shows him to be fitted to become a disciple of one of these lodges, he is called to it. He has to comply with certain rules in his daily life, follow a course of study, go through trials, temptations, dangers, initiations and ceremonies. These lodges exist for the purpose of developing the human in worship of a deity.
There are other groups of initiates which are not so numerous today as they were in the past when they flourished with the ancient Mysteries. The object of all such Mysteries--Eleusinian, Bacchic, Mithraic, Orphic, Egyptian and Druidic,--was nature worship; their gods were nature gods. In the rites of these religious institutions was often something that gave, if one cared to receive it, information about the nature and the powers of the doer-in-the-human. So the teaching of the Hall of the Two Truths was a fair representation of the Judgment that awaits the human after death, when he stands naked--not clothed with the breath-form--in the Light of his Intelligence. In the Druidic Mysteries the first ray at sunrise entering the stone circle at the vernal equinox, remained from an unknown past as a symbol of the influx of the Light of the Intelligence to meet the solar germ at its entrance into the head, indicated by the stone circles which were symbols of the skull and the brain. The Druids interpreted this symbol, of course, as relating to the awakening of nature or to the procreative act, and accordingly the outer stone circle was the pelvis and the inner the uterus.
Generally, in the Mysteries, sacrificing animals was a degenerate representation of a disciple sacrificing his own passions, which the bull or goat symbolized; human sacrifices were a degenerate misrepresentation of the giving up of one's human sexual life for a regenerate life. But these inner meanings of what became brutal, noisy and sensuous displays, were lost.
The mysteries, that is, those that were secret, were adapted to the seasons of the year. The meaning had to do
with the life of the doer in nature. Gods and Goddesses personified nature. The coming of the portion of the doer into physical life, its descent into the body, the dangers and allurements encountered during life, and death and the state of the doer after death, were dramatically presented.
There were also initiations which the neophyte had to pass. Privations and sufferings, dangers, encounters and obstacles had to be overcome before he could be initiated and join the purified. After he had gained the highest initiation, he discovered that the years it had taken him to qualify were filled with symbolic teachings of what the after-death states would be, so that when death actually did come and he had to pass through death, he had been so trained in these mysteries that he knew what to do. That was the inner object of the mysteries and of course was not told to the world, nor was it discovered by all who took part in them. None but superior persons could go through them. A true disciple, in any age, could through these forms get an insight into the real path beyond them. The training he received was a preparation to fit him in some life for The Great Way.
Among fraternities of a later date Alchemists and Rosicrucians have acquired notoriety. The disfavor in which they are sometimes held is due to impostors and charlatans who pretended to belong to the true orders.
The Alchemists, while they studied or appeared to study laws of external nature, concerned themselves with transmuting and refining the baser metals of the physical body, which was to become a refined astral body and by them called a "spiritual" body. Their fanciful terms can be interpreted as referring to alchemical processes in the flesh body by which the fourfold matter of it was refined and transmuted. The Philosopher's Stone, the Red Lion and the White Eagle, the White Tincture and the Red, the White Powder and the Red Powder, the Sun and the Moon, the Seven Planets, Salt, Sulphur and Mercury, the Elixir and many strange terms placed together in an unintelligible jargon, conceal definite meanings. When they had arrived at a certain stage, where they could through their own bodies command some of the forces of nature, they could transform lead and other base metals into gold. But as they then had no desire or use for possessions, the making of gold
was no object. The alchemical steps which lead to the making of gold were processes in their own bodies and built up and vitalized organs so that these would hold the elixir of life. The elixir was the conserved essence of the procreative stream in the generative system. When the organs were able to hold the elixir, the lunar germ could extract Light from the contents of the organs. When enough had been gathered by the lunar germ, the solar germ was discovered to be the Philosopher's Stone.
The Rosicrucians were much like the Alchemists. They were a body of men who tried to grow into an inner life while they lived in the mask of their worldly stations. In the Middle Ages they let the existence of their order be known by the name of Brothers of the Rosy Cross or Rosicrucians, for the benefit of any who found themselves not in accord with the Church, and who wanted to lead an inner life. Their publications appeared with symbols and strange language. Those known to the world are not likely to have been real Brothers though some of them may have been disciples. Anyone who, having heard of their teachings, tried to live an inner life, was discovered to them by his earnest effort. He was called, and if he could go through their course, he became a Brother of the Rosy Cross. The Red Rose is the new heart which is opened by the Light of the Intelligence in thinking, and the Golden Cross is the new astral body which has been developed within the solid physical body. The ordinary heart is like a rose with petals closed. When it opens to the Light and feels the needs of the world, it is symbolized by the rose with petals opened. It was to them a "spiritual" thing and so was the new body, though in reality the opened rose was a stage, namely, a mental stage of the psychic degree, and the new body was the astral body which when developed had a golden lustre. This body of gold was to be transmuted out of the ordinary body, which is like lead. It passed from lead to mercury, to silver and then to gold. The heart was called a living rose on a golden cross. They had to do alchemical work to transmute the body of lead into the body of gold. The furnaces, crucibles, retorts and alembics were organs in the body. The powders were the ferments in the body, which at critical stages caused, like catalysts,
a change from one alchemical element or stage into another. By the stone and the elixir they changed in these organs the metals of the body from lead to gold.
The designation of "good" is simply a matter of reference and opinion. Now if these powers directly relate to sources of "good" and "evil" then one wonders why they should be unequal in duration but not in strength?
Good and evil are human notions. They do not occur at the
existence level. Ultimately all power/energy is Divine.
I imagine the Divine has it preferences however, about how it is used!
I am not a good source for information on Magical Powers, Solon. My gig is the Realization of Real God and I have a very good source in that direction!
Namaste!
Jim |
