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103: What Lies Beyond the Gateway

"And the Elder Lords opened Their eyes and beheld the abominations of Those that ravaged the Earth. In Their wrath They set their hand against the Old Ones, staying Them in the midst of Their iniquity and casting Them forth from the Earth to the Void beyond the planes where chaos reigns and form abideth not. And the Elder Lords set Their seal upon the Gateway and the power of the Old Ones prevailest not against its might."

From the opening of the Necronomicon (which is, if one believes those who believe that Lovecraft wasn't completely having one over on us, derived from the tables of Dr. John Dee's Liber Logaeth). This passage struck me this morning as having some resemblance to another Old School Mystical Text.

"There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare [children] to them, the same [became] mighty men which [were] of old, men of renown. And GOD saw that the wickedness of man [was] great in the earth, and [that] every imagination of the thoughts of his heart [was] only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them." [Genesis 6:4-7]

And we can also find a parallel in Greek mythology where Zeus rose up against the Titans, bound them, and flung them into darkness. In all of these passages, there is, essentially, the separation of That Which Is Evil from the rest of the world and it is sectioned off behind a permanent Gateway where it spends Eternity trying to break free.

Dr. Paul A. LaViolette subscribes to a notion of subquantum kinetics, a vision of reality that is process-driven. One of his arguments is that ancient mythology wasn't just stories but also a coding of scientific knowledge about how the world works into language (or symbolism in this case) that could be passed down to later generations so that the true knowledge wouldn't be lost. These parallel events across the mythology of the world are key details of the True Science; they are more than just coincidences, they are what every ancient scientist knew to be true: all things are in flux, working in a cyclical system.

So, we've bound off Evil and hidden it behind a Portal where it must remain for all Time. Yet, Evil is part of the system. It is a Definitional Concept: it is Black to White, Ying to Yang, Down to Up. It is, I believe, the distinction between Man in his Fallen State and the Angelic Grace which existed in Heaven before the Fall. Evil, bound off and hidden away, cannot be destroyed because, without it, there is no concept of Good.

Dr. LaViolette highlights the Egyptian cycle of Osiris. Osiris must die, must be disemboweled and strewn to the four winds, in order for Horus to come into his inheritance and defeat Set. When Set is defeated (entropy and disintegration overcome), Horus goes to the underworld and is imbued with the power of his father: he is made the Living Creative Energy. Out of Darkness comes Light.

Which leads to an interesting point of discussion: must we free the Old Ones and defeat them in order to be granted Power over the world? Is that our Inheritance? A bit of an undertaking that is slightly more complicated than going to the store for coffee filters and pound cake.

I love this note of warning from the Necronomicon: "Mark ye well that ye maketh ye Elder Sign at their appearence, lest the tendrils of darkness enter thy soul."

Posted by Teppo at September 24, 2004 09:13 AM

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Individuation.