PKT:Secret Trad#1 - Study Group

INIVEA

deleted all the quotes I posted.

I was following along what others were saying about the sentences, but I was asking questions more than answering what Waite was meaning in each sentences. I was trying to add my thoughts or 2 cents in, I apologize that my questions and responses took us off topic, I was just wanting to learn.
This is where it started.

Teheuti said:
Added: I just saw your response, Abrac. It's an excellent one. What do you feel was Waite's understanding of the Shekinah?
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Abrac said:
Waite divides the Shekinah into two very broad categories, Sekinah above and Shekinah below, or Shekinah in manifestation. In Waite's Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, it's Shekinah in manifestation who helps, or leads, the initiate through the first four grades, at which point her guidance is no longer necessary. The Shekinah is one of Waite's more complicated doctrines imo; I still don't have it all sorted out. :)

In my best estimation, the High Priestess is Sekinah above (in transcendence) and the Empress is Shekinah in manifestation.
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In looking up words that Waite would use, (Sekinah) I stumbled across interesting info, and shared. sorry that It went off topic.

ETA: I was following Line 17. sentence.

I can see that I didn't follow any other sentences. I will try to pay better attention in the group.
 

Abrac

Wiktionary is an excellent online dictionary. I've been pretty impressed by it.

From a footnote in Waite's Secret Doctrine in Israel, 1913.

We must remember that the object of the soul’s legends is not the delineation of putative histories, but the symbolical adumbration of possibilities inherent in the soul.
 

Abrac

Mary, I think I found the part you were talking about in Manual of Cartomancy; this should be it:

"It is because the whole experiment constitutes an experiment in intuition and not a counsel of adeptship that, although the cards may be arranged after several manners, I have adopted the most simple mode. They could be grouped, for example, about the central figure, which is that of the Querent, but this would involve a particular distribution of the symbolism belonging to a higher grade of the whole experiment. I say therefore that the Cipher Card being placed on one side, to stand throughout for the Querent, the 21 Trumps must be dealt after shuffling in a single line, and from the place of the various symbols contained therein, they are constructed by the gift of the operator into an intelligible revelation according to the testimony of the arrangement thus fortuitously secured and according to the plane of the question."

Looking back to what Waite said in the PKT about the "soul's legend," I see it in a different light. He doesn't say it, but if you read between the lines he seems to be talking about a "reading" with all the cards, where a "story" is developed from the position of the cards. The ones he mentions specifically represent the soul's legend and the other are the "details" or "accidents." By accidents, I take him to mean "wildcards" as it were.

That whole paragraph at the very end, right before the Bibliography is excellent and deals with Secret Doctrine.
 

Teheuti

Abrac said:
Mary, I think I found the part you were talking about in Manual of Cartomancy; this should be it:

"It is because the whole experiment constitutes an experiment in intuition and not a counsel of adeptship that, although the cards may be arranged after several manners, I have adopted the most simple mode. They could be grouped, for example, about the central figure, which is that of the Querent, but this would involve a particular distribution of the symbolism belonging to a higher grade of the whole experiment. I say therefore that the Cipher Card being placed on one side, to stand throughout for the Querent, the 21 Trumps must be dealt after shuffling in a single line, and from the place of the various symbols contained therein, they are constructed by the gift of the operator into an intelligible revelation according to the testimony of the arrangement thus fortuitously secured and according to the plane of the question."

Looking back to what Waite said in the PKT about the "soul's legend," I see it in a different light. He doesn't say it, but if you read between the lines he seems to be talking about a "reading" with all the cards, where a "story" is developed from the position of the cards. The ones he mentions specifically represent the soul's legend and the other are the "details" or "accidents." By accidents, I take him to mean "wildcards" as it were.

That whole paragraph at the very end, right before the Bibliography is excellent and deals with Secret Doctrine.
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That's it Abrac. Thank you so much for presenting it. I find it interesting that he did not include this material in PKT - perhaps because he found it more the work of an adept? - yet he talks about it in the Manual of Cartomancy.
 

Teheuti

Abrac said:
Wiktionary is an excellent online dictionary. I've been pretty impressed by it.

From a footnote in Waite's Secret Doctrine in Israel, 1913.

We must remember that the object of the soul’s legends is not the delineation of putative histories, but the symbolical adumbration of possibilities inherent in the soul.
Click to expand...
This is great. I rarely use wiktionary but will have to now. We should use it from now on for words that might need defining.
 

Teheuti

INIVEA said:
deleted all the quotes I posted.

I was following along what others were saying about the sentences, but I was asking questions more than answering what Waite was meaning in each sentences. I was trying to add my thoughts or 2 cents in, I apologize that my questions and responses took us off topic, I was just wanting to learn.
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It wasn't necessary to remove stuff - just a request to remain more on topic so we can truly explore this material and not get too sidetracked. Thank you for understanding.
 

Teheuti

Going back to sentence 12:
12. “The tract contains the mystery of what is called the mystical or arch-natural elixir, being the marriage of the soul and the spirit in the body of the adept philosopher and the transmutation of the body as the physical result of this marriage.”
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The word arch-natural doesn't appear in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) or in Wiktionary. Waite uses it many times in The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal and other works. Before that it appears mostly in the work of Thomas Lake Harris. Waite equates it here with 'mystical' but it is more specifically the presence of the eternal and divine in the world (or in a person or entity or thing) while still in this worldly life. It may come from Swedenborgian materials regarding the emergence of a new and higher nature of man.

Here's the clearest explanation I could find in Waite's other works.
"The difference between the natural man complete in his own degree, and the arch-natural man whom we understand by the term adept, is, in fact, the difference between the star of the microcosm with its five points, and the star of the macrocosm to which a sixth point is added in the symbolism, signifying the super-addition, over and above our humanity, of that consciousness in the spirit to which I have already referred."
Waite, Studies in Mysticism and Certain Aspects of the Secret Tradition, Page 259.
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Some inexact synonyms might be: Transcendent, spiritual, mystical, metaphysical, ethereal, adept. 'Physical but free from all disabilities.'
 

Abrac

Wiktionary has Arch- as a prefix: Chief or Highest. Two example that come to mind are archrival or archbishop. Arch-natural seems to indicate nature which has been elevated to it's highest degree while still remaining nature.

Waite is a little confusing when he uses "super-addition." I don't think he means something outside of nature as in supernatural, but something above our natural humanity but still part of our humanity. See Superadd.

It's a fine line of distinction but an important one to be drawn I think.

As an aside, it's interesting to get Waite's take on the pentagram and hexagram. :)
 

Teheuti

Abrac said:
Arch-natural seems to indicate nature which has been elevated to it's highest degree while still remaining nature.
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Yes, this is what Waite was aspiring to with his Fellowship of the Rosy Cross.
 

Yelell

Teheuti said:
Going back to sentence 12:

The word arch-natural doesn't appear in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) or in Wiktionary. Waite uses it many times in The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal and other works. Before that it appears mostly in the work of Thomas Lake Harris. Waite equates it here with 'mystical' but it is more specifically the presence of the eternal and divine in the world (or in a person or entity or thing) while still in this worldly life. It may come from Swedenborgian materials regarding the emergence of a new and higher nature of man.

Here's the clearest explanation I could find in Waite's other works.


Some inexact synonyms might be: Transcendent, spiritual, mystical, metaphysical, ethereal, adept. 'Physical but free from all disabilities.'
Click to expand...



The only place I have heard of the word archnatural was refering to Christ. Archnatural was to be a man wholy untouched by sin and unfallen, ie that sort of perfection, and Jesus was the only example.
 
Did I stumble across a gem? Any ideas for a study group?