ET IN ARCADIA EGO

[Lightfoot]

From THE SECRET TEACHINGS OF THE ARGENTUM ASTRUM

*The Order of the Argentum Astrum (Silver Star) claims, like many other secret societies, that it has existed since Atlantis. Be that as it may, the Order has certainly played a major role in the evolution of Freemasonry, and has inculcated a mystical obsession with the star Sirius throughout other esoteric movements. For instance, there is a silver star in every Masonic lodge, and Gen. Albert Pike, the highest-ranking Freemason in 19th century America informs us in his Morals and Dogma of Freemasonry that this silver star is Sirius.

A special meaning is also given to Sirius in Theosophy and the Gurdjieff schools. Kenneth Grant, who once claimed to be the Grand Master of the Argentum Astrum, also said that the silver star was Sirius, and called it allegorically the sun behind the sun. The most famous occult order of the late nineteenth century, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, originally admitted only 32* Freemasons. Among its members were poet William Butler Yeats, actress Florence Farr (once Bernard Shaws mistress), novelist Arthur Machen. Golden Dawn literature describes a second, more esoteric order to which only the most worthy would be admitted; this was, again, the Argentum Astrum or Silver Star.

It is necessary to remind the candidate that each page of this manuscript should be burned as soon as it is read. In no case should a copy be kept in ones possession, even for a few hours. For any of this information to fall into the hands of our enemies, the Black Sorcerers, would be more disastrous than for all of us to be arrested en masse and executed.

Since our original concern was to protect the Widow and the Widows Son, and our long-range objective is as already explained (in pages which, we repeat again, should have been burned by the candidate before reaching this page), it is desirable that all the accepted ideas of humanity be undermined and subverted by any and all means possible. Faith (viz., belief without experience of personal contact with the Living One) is the great enemy, the iron out of which are forged the chains of tyranny and superstition which retard humanitys progress toward the Great Work. Doubt, in the form of dogmatic atheism, may also become just another faith, another prison for the mind.

What we wish to encourage is uncertainty. People must be convinced not just that the King may be a humbug, and the Policeman a thief, but that all systems of philosophy are equally dubious, that all Royal decrees are as absurd as picaresque novels, and that all facts not directly experienced should be viewed as works of fiction.

The candidate knows that as unrelenting doubt is our sword, paradox and satire are our catapults and cannons. We must learn to hide in ambush, as it were. Who is near me is near the fire. To know the Living One, humanity must come out of the cells and closets of ideas and dogmas; life must become an experience like unto reading a novel in which it is never clear from one page to the next whether the matter is comic or tragic, who is the hero and who the villain, what is meaningful and what is happenstance or coincidence.

He is nearest to enlightenment who walks into a dark cave alone, for such a one has no fixed ideas but is alert in every cell and watchful every second. We are all in such dark caves every day, as Plato tried to teach, but we do not realize it and our fixed ideas keep us sleepwalking when it is most necessary that we awaken.

Again we warn: before reading the next page, burn this page.

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<span style="font-family:Trebuchet Ms">Brotherhood of Light ~ Grenoble ~ Belfast



LVX|Cagliostro ~ LVX|Eye.of.Privas</span>