Over the course of the past month or so, I have reflected more on the topic of these three streams of Michael, Christ and Sophia. I’ve had time for conversation with others who have read what I wrote last month, and taken in their reflections as well. One of the main things we wondered was, “what exactly is it that characterizes and sets apart the Gardeners from the Masons?” We might say that the Gardeners are those who are tending the “eternal springtime” of humanity; they are those who maintain the Tradition, i.e. the Living Tradition of Hermeticism. On the other hand, the Masons are those who have an eye on the “eternal autumn” of humanity, who receive inspirations from the future of humanity and do their best to steer humankind steadily to the great city, the New Jerusalem, when all the earth will have been transformed by human activity. “May that which is fired in the East in the West take form.”

And so we have Aristotelians and Platonists as scientists and historians; we have Shepherds and Kings as mystics working in the realm of Beauty (i.e. artists); and we have Gardeners and Masons working in the religious and social realms. We begin to approach, in a quite roundabout way, a picture presented by Rudolf Steiner of the four compass points in the realm of the Archangels (see for example this excellent piece: http://www.waldorfresearchinstitute.org/pdf/Creating-Social-Sacraments.pdf):

Archangel Michael works in the East as the leader of Cosmic Wisdom. Here, clearly, the School of Michael (Aristotelians and Platonists) finds its home. This is equivalent to the Medieval class of laborers/artisans/farmers.

Archangel Gabriel works in the South as the leader of Cosmic Beauty. Here we might place the School of Sophia (Kings and Shepherds) in relationship to Gabriel. As Robert Powell writes in the introductory invocations in his Christian Hermetic Astrology:  “Holy Gabriel, thou glowing one clothed in silvery moonlight, breathing graciousness, fill us with the ineffable beauty of thy gentle loving piety and reverence.” The Virgin Mary was the bearer of Archangel Gabriel in her life mission at the time of Christ, with whom she had a revelatory experience at the time of the Annunciation. Indeed, we might say that other than the newborn Jesus, it is Mother Mary who is the focal point of the nativities. The School of Sophia is equivalent to the priestly class.

Then we have Archangel Uriel working in the North as the leader of Cosmic Righteousness. He is the Archangel who oversees the religious and social realms. The School of Christ finds its home here, with the “Gardeners” more related to the religious realm, and the “Masons” more related to the social realm. The School of Christ is equivalent to the class of Knights/Royalty.

(Here the perceptive reader might wonder, what of the fourth point on the compass? What of Raphael in the West? More on that later).

It is perhaps here that we come to the heart of the problem with the School of Christ. The Knights Templar were perhaps the last time that these two streams of Tradition and Progress were totally united. For the stream of Tradition is upheld most of all by Orthodoxy, by the Catholic Church. And the stream of Progress is upheld most of all by the western occult brotherhoods, for example Freemasonry. And yet, since the time of the destruction of the Templars, these two impulses have been sundered, and are even at odds with one another. Especially since the time of Napoleon and Kaspar Hauser, these two streams have even begun working in a destructive, anti-Christian way towards humanity: they have become their opposite, the School of Antichrist.

Rudolf Steiner made the unfortunate characterization of the egregore of the Catholic Church as “Jesuits.” I say that this is unfortunate, as there are plenty of Jesuits who are not working for dark brotherhoods, and there are plenty of individuals who are working for dark forces who are not part of the Jesuit brotherhood. The important point is not the name, but the activity. The goal of the egregore of the Traditional stream of Gardeners is to arrest progress. The wish is for Tradition to no longer be living, for it to be removed from the realm of “Spring Time.” These dark forces wish for a permanent caricature of celestial hierarchy to be established on earth, for oligarchical centers of power and control to be established. We see this manifesting in many realms as religious fundamentalism that will go to violent extremes in order to achieve its goals.

On the other hand, the egregore of the Western lodges (which has more or less entirely absorbed Freemasonry, but again this would be a misleading title to give to this egregore, as “Jesuit” is for the egregore of Tradition) has as its goal to bring the future too quickly into the present, crashing down upon our heads in a revolutionary and chaotic manner. Ironically, the egregore of progress, of the Masons, has the same goal as the above mentioned traditional egregore in mind:  establishing centers of control and power. The progressive egregore wishes to achieve this by misusing occult knowledge of the future and of scientific technology in order to completely abolish all traditional hierarchy, particularly in the form of cultural marxism. The wish is to eradicate traditional morality and replace it with moral relativism. The end result they have in mind is for a large majority of human beings to be sick, immoral, medicated, and addicted to things which nullify the human spirit (entertainment devices, opiates, etc).

Since the time of Kaspar Hauser and Napoleon, these two streams have worked together (to whatever degree dark forces can actually collaborate) in order to create that which they both desire:  99% of humanity in subservience to a small oligarchy. In fact, these two streams over the course of the 20th-21st century more or less merged into one school, the school of antichrist. This school achieved its zenith of power, and the closest that humanity has come to being knocked completely off course of its evolutionary path, between March 13, 2013, and November 8, 2016.

Already, however, in the 1960’s, essentially all of the groundwork had been laid by these two egregores for the machinations of the early 21st century to come to fruition. Readers familiar with the work of Robert Powell are already aware of the fact that the Antichrist, the vessel for Ahriman, was born on February 5, 1962. Around this same time period, the Vatican was engaging in black magical occult rituals dedicating the Holy See to Satanic forces. It was during this time that the unfortunate decisions of Vatican II came about within the Catholic Church (for more on this, see the worlds of Malachi Martin). The traditional egregore was effectively consumed by and united with the progressive egregore.

Looking back even earlier, we can see the cooperation between the Catholic Church and the Nazis. Many of the Nazis at the end of World War II were smuggled into the Americas and became a part of the American power structure (particularly the CIA and NASA). Interestingly, many Nazis found their way into Argentina—the birth country of Pope Francis. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Pius_XII

And here is where Meditations on the Tarot comes into play. Valentin Tomberg attempted to establish the Knighthood of Christ via the Lord’s Prayer Course in Amsterdam in the 1940’s. When this was swept away due to World War II, he continued this Knighthood more or less on his own. Aspects of his daily meditative practice are now being disseminated through the Grail Knight’s Training, facilitated by the Sophia Foundation annually. Valentin Tomberg, we could say, was at the forefront of the battle between good and evil during this time. Part of why he was led to join the Catholic Church was to create an antidote to the black magical union that occurred there between the 1940s and the 1960s. His goal was to plant the seed of the regeneration of an authentic Knights Templar, where Masons are active under the auspices of the Gardeners—Tradition and Progress working together in the name of Christ. In Meditations on the Tarot, the “Martinist—Templar—Rosicrucian” Hermeticism of Mebes, into which Tomberg was initiated in 1920 (see page 590 of Meditations on the Tarot), was married to the orthodoxy and tradition of the Catholic Church.

For hundreds of years we have witnessed the battle between past and future in the name of Antichrist. What needs to be re-established, and to some degree has been through Tomberg, is the marriage of Past and Future in the name of Christ. We might say that the goal of the egregores of the Gardeners and Masons is the annihilation of Time; whereas the goal of the true Gardeners and Masons is the transmutation of Time into Metamorphosis, an alchemical transformation.

Uriel is the inspiring Archangel of both the religious and social life:  i.e. the life of morality. Notice that the Catholic Church has more to do with the traditional administration of the sacraments. However, the Freemasons have always been associated with the “great art” of the transformation of society, of the shaping of culture. Here is the place for the administration of “social sacraments” such as those laid out by Dieter Brull in the text linked to above. The Masonic gesture must become one that is of service to humanity, and not a secret masterminding, coercion, and manipulation from behind the scenes. Remembering that the School of Christ is one of morality, goodness, and righteousness, here is the relevant invocation from Christian Hermetic Astrology:  “Holy Uriel, thou blue radiance of shining glory, instill in us the inexpressible grandeur of thy awesome righteousness.”

Now, we have only been discussing three Great Teachers, and three Schools—but there is a fourth Archangel, is there not? What of Raphael in the West? Is there possibly a relationship between the impulse of Raphael and the fourth teacher—the current incarnation of the Maitreya Bodhisatva? Here we will have to come to a further degree of discernment in regards to what we have already been addressing thus far. We will address this in the next portion: https://treehouse.live/2019/01/11/the-fourth-school/

Previous section: https://treehouse.live/2018/11/15/moving-beyond-aristotle-and-plato/