Brent Paris
22nd January 2015, 20:28
Codex I (b)
Origin of Time
"Our bodies were like inert shadows cast upon a transparent realm of dreams."
Now into the heart of Corpus. Poimandres and the Architect begin to reminisce about their past. We have already seen a glimpse into Poimandres’ personality, the curse that the ancient watcher must carry. And we have noticed that the watcher is also literally carrying his curse with him a shoebox, holding an enigmatic prisoner within. We will discuss the prisoner in the shoebox more as our exegesis progresses. For now, it is enough to understand that the Architect and his demonic workers need the prisoner within the box to complete their church. (And also pay attention to Poimandres’ red bandana; it will become significant later in the story.) But who is this Architect? Who is this mysterious figure that appears in the threshold of this country church under construction, in a place that can never be found? His identity becomes apparent as he begins his tale. Like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Corpus Gnostica is an epic tale, told in a series of short stories, by different narrators. But enough about structure for now, this will become self-evident latter. The Architect begins his tale as if he is in a trance, watching or experiencing a scene that has haunted him for millennia. He begins by reminiscing about a vast and dark swamp, filled with cypress trees and syrupy, murky water. He recalls using a long pole to push his canoe through this dark and swampy place, which is of course the darkness of the subconscious. But it is not the dark subconscious of a mere mortal; instead it is the darkness that enshrouds the highest gods, the ones who gave birth to the Architect. It is the darkness of the void; it is the essence of nothingness.
Make no mistake about it kids; we have jumped straight into the rabbit hole and have landed in the realm of pure mythology. This swamp is the hot core of Never-Never Land. It’s in a place that is no place, in a time that has no minutes. Alice’s rabbit will soon appear, but he is not late for an important date, for there is no watch or calendar. This is in the immeasurable dimension of non-quantum field space that presided before the Big Bang. We are looking into a past that existed before the four fundamental forces, before matter itself. This is a realm of pure mind, a dream world emanating from a mind so powerful that even the parental gods shutter. Anything can happen because the only laws that function here are emotional and mental laws. There is no linear consciousness here, because there is no function of mind or perception, only a murky dream state. It is indeed the origin of time. We have all been in this place, although very few consciously remember it. It is that place between death and birth, the in between realm, the place you lingered before you were here.
The Architect narrating this story is no mere god. He is the Supreme Architect of the physical universe, the builder that the ancient Gnostics called the demiurge. In some Gnostic traditions he is called Ialdabaoth, the son of the fallen Sophia. But in the Corpus Gnostica, the Architect is equated with the Leontocephaline; a lion-faced deity prominent in Mithraism, an ancient Persian religion. Many Gnostics, including myself, find the earliest origins for Gnosticism in the deem recesses of Mithraism. In Mithraism, the Supreme Architect of the universe was depicted with a lion’s head and a man’s body. This lion-like creature, or Leontocephaline in Latin, was believed to be the designer of the physical universe and master of the physical laws and forces within our quantum fields. He is also the god to whom the modern Freemasons pledge their most sacred allegiance. The Gnostics believed that he was a false god, an impostor, a pretender that created the original matrix that we are now trapped within.
There is a great deal of ambiguity about the nature of the Architect. We shall see that the gods and goddesses of the Corpus Gnostica are not cheap stock characters, easily predictable, wearing their emotional dialogs on their sleeves. These are real, existential deities, and they possess the fullest array of emotions possible. The Corpus is not for the faint of heart. If you want happy Jesus stories with smiling children and lambs, go to your local Christian bookstore for that predictable and empty trite. But if you are finally ready to escape from the matrix, from the Architect’s trap, then you’ll have to accept the fact that the deities’ characters are every bit as complex as our own. In Codex I (b) the Architect is also equated to the Egyptian god Osiris. Osiris was the deity responsible for ferrying the sun god Ra; across the abysmal darkness of space each night as the sun passed under the Earth towards the distant western reaches of the Egyptian desert, only to rise again on the eastern side of Egypt the following morning. The most scared rituals of the Egyptian priesthood were performed to insure that Ra rose again each morning after traveling across the dark cosmic abyss. It was Osiris’ responsibility to protect Ra from his evil twin, Apophis, who wanted to consume the sun.
So the Architect confides to Poimandres, as the two sit on the front steps of the church, that his twin brother is actually the crocodilian Apophis, who lurked within the murky ancient swamp. Apophis is the dark shadow of the Architect. He is the darkness that lurks in the shadows of our subconscious. Apophis is pure hatred and loathing incarnate. He is what we most fear about death, for we subconscious remember confronting him in the afterlife. The Architect is flawed, but he is not wicked like his reptilian twin. He is deeply conflicted by his emotions and memories. Why are these two powerful forces, one embodying the desire to create and protect, the other embodying hatred and destruction, set on the same stage of creation? Because both of these extremes in the emotional spectrum are required to build a universe. Light has no meaning without darkness, a roses’ smell goes unnoticed without the prick of its thorns.
Who are the paternal gods sitting on the cabin porch in the middle of the swamp? This is one of the greatest mysteries within the Corpus Gnostica. The parental gods, the old man with his bourbon jug, and the old woman with a rose in her hair, appear only twice in the novel. Fittingly they appear at the very beginning of the Corpus in Codex I and at the very end in Codex XIII. We find the clues we need within the text: “He (the father god) was weathered with leathery skin wearing the tattered clothing of a weary man who had always lived on the bayou. His face revealed profound wisdom but was scared by ages of pain and suffering. He had lost his right eye in a struggle many years ago, but he saw everything clearly through his left. In his hands he held his only possessions, an old tin banjo and a jug of Cajun bourbon.” In Egyptian mythology, the god Horus-Ra lost his eye in combat with his evil uncle Set. The Eye of Horus is symbolized as the eye appearing over the pyramid on the back of the American dollar bill. We read that as the Architect looked towards his father; “Powerful rays of light poured from his eye making a golden triangle that framed his face.” And who is the mother goddess: “Like a jewel in the darkest night, my mother glistened from the light of the lantern. Her skin was perfectly smooth, like a statue cut from blackest ebony. She was wearing the finest white linen, and she held a single red rose between her elegant fingers. Her face was as black as the darkest waters of the swamp. Her hair had a bluish hue with silvery streaks, and her eyes… where were her eyes? For in her eye sockets there were only two deep round portals that opened to the universe. A billion stars looked back to my father from her heavenly gaze.” She is a dark skinned African goddess, the mother of humanity... Isis. She is also the Egyptian sky and space goddess Nut, depicted as a nude woman covered with stars in Egyptian art. She is the ultimate Queen of Heaven, and ruler of the celestial cosmos.
The final character on the porch is a little girl: “She was wearing a bright and ruffled bluish dress with white lace and tiny white slippers. She had the palest complexion with ruby lips and icy blue eyes. Her hair was golden, her smile innocent…” She is the final member of this celestial trinity... she is Sophia, goddess of wisdom. But she is young and inexperienced. And wisdom without experience is prone to making mistakes. Knowledge without experience is useless. When the Architect greets his daughter, Sophia, he feels a hot scorching desert like heat emerging from her mouth. He turns away from Sophia for only a moment, and in that one moment of carelessness, our flawed cosmos is born. (Notice that in the myth, Sophia is the daughter to both the Architect and the parental gods. And yet, this would make her the daughter of her own brother? How is such a thing possible? Because we are not in a logical, cause and effect realm. Here, on the higher plane, events are driven by the ebb and flow of emotional energy, not cause and effect. Relationships and personal identities become blurred and even merged. Perhaps you do not like this answer. I’ll let you in on an Illuminati secret. The people that are in your life now, are the ones who have been in many of your previous lives before. Your wife in this life may have been your daughter in another, or you mother in yet another. Boom! Was that brain cells I heard exploding in the back of the classroom?) Sophia strays to the edge of the porch reaching over the edge, trying to grab the reflection of light coming from her father’s eye. At that moment, the wicked crocodile Apophis lunges out of the murky waters and grabs her, dragging her down into the depths of the swamp. Osiris loses no time, jumping into the water to save his beloved daughter.
The Architect tries to find his daughter at the bottom of the swamp but fails. And then he hears his father’s voice, telling him to pray: “Where was Sophia? I prayed to the ancient one; … the one that you now have in that box, and he answered by allowing me to find her. I heard her calling out, ‘Father Osiris… I’m here… help me!’ I could feel the parched breath from my daughter’s cries, and when I opened my eyes… I saw her standing on the dunes of time. I had found her. On the horizon I could see the mirage like shapes of rocky hills and mountains baked under a blazing sun.” The Architect and his daughter Sophia are reunited in another dimension, that place where the fabric of the space-time continuum is first woven, the dunes of time. They begin to wander towards some distant hills where they discover the beast: “It was a massive black creature, sitting between the rock outcroppings. As we drew nearer we could see that it was a huge desert hare. It was jet black, its ears were raised, and its hind legs stood poised to spring into flight or to cut one’s jugular with razor sharp claws. We stopped as close to the giant hare as we dared, perhaps one hundred yards… no more. We could hear it breathing; its breath was as hot as the parched desert air. Its body expanded and contracted with every breath like the great bellows of a tremendous blast furnace. Its eyes were closed; it appeared to be in sublime meditation.”
This beast is Ancient of Days. The ancient one is a trickster god, who often appears in the guise of a rabbit or hare. The rabbit as a trickster is prevalent in Native American and African traditions. The Native American, Algonquian trickster god, Nanabozho was referred to as the Great Hare. Over time, as Native Americans and enslaved Africans met and exchanged elements of culture, their separate hare god traditions merged, producing a new trickster, Brer Rabbit. This trickster is also the dreaming god. It is the emotional energy of the universe. It is everything that is felt, both good and evil. It is diabolical, but it also has a purpose, a goal. Unfortunately, even the highest gods, the old man and his wife in the shack, are unable to control the spirit of Ancient of Days.
Osiris and Sophia approach the giant sleeping hare with great caution. (A word of warning to my readers, if you ever come across a giant hare blocking your path, turn around and go the other way.) Osiris begins to pray to the sleeping giant, and slowly it awakens. Osiris is so distracted by the dreaming god, that he does not notice that he is no longer holding Sophia’s hand. (A word of warning to my readers, if you ever rescue Sophia and find yourself in a mysterious trans-dimensional desert, tie a cord around her wrist or something. That child gets lost faster than rent money in Vegas.) When the hare opens its eyes from his unending dreams, the Architect sees within its dark eyes “... boundless potential…” This phrase, “boundless potential,” will repeat itself throughout the Corpus. It is the heart of the message behind the text, that the hare is the fullness of emotional and spiritual potential.
The great hare now speaks to Osiris: “I am without cause, without beginning or end, never born… and never ending. I am the first cause for all that ever has been or will be. I am that I am.” The hare is none other than the god who spoke to Moses from the burning bush. Although it is not the creator, it is a key element of creation. For without unconscious, emotional energy, mind cannot exist. And without mind, matter can never become animated.
The Architect continues to listen as Ancient of Days recalls his latest dream: “In my vision, I was a simple hare in a great savannah, hiding behind some tall elephant grass, quietly watching a scene which filled me with great anxiety. I looked out from my hiding place onto the blistering grasslands, the sun pouring down on some weary animals that sought the life preserving waters of a nearby watering hole. Fighting in the center of the watering hole, I watched two beasts struggling for life. One beast was caked in black mud, a hippopotamus; … the other was a lion. As I watched, the hippo appeared to have bested the lion in their death struggle… having swallowed the lion from his hindquarters half way up his body. It appeared as if the hippo was about to completely devour the lion when the lion struck back with all of his remaining strength. His powerful claws cut fiercely into the face of the hippo while his body twisted and struggled to become free from the mouth of the watery beast. With heroic effort, the lion freed himself from the dark hippo and mounted its back, forcing the vile creature’s face under the water to be drowned.’ Silence again reigned in the desert. I don’t know why brother, but a question rose in my mind and I asked the great hare, ‘What then?’ Ancient of Days coolly laughed, ‘Son… no one can drown a hippo. It’s in his nature to love the dark and murky waters of the lake.” Anyone familiar with the third degree Illuminati initiation will immediately recognize this ancient Egyptian tale. It is reenacted every seven years during the performance of the Illuminati third degree ritual, but beyond this I can divulge no more. Symbolically, this dream is telling the Architect that he is trapped in a struggle that he can never win, because his foe cannot die.
Hope flees from the Architect as he realizes that his daughter is no longer standing beside him. He cries out, and then the ancient one speaks: ‘Osiris my son … Sophia is not dead … her soul has been exiled beyond the veil. You alone of the gods will I allow to pass into the middle realm to find her, for you are that same golden lion of whom I dreamt.’ A wind then strikes up dust as Osiris runs pass Ancient of Days. The Architect finds himself in another level of creation, the level below the highest gods but still well above the physical plane. If one is so disposed, they should study the classical, Neo-Platonic writers, or the Kabala to learn more about the several levels of creation. I will not bore you here with that right now. But what are we to make of this strange scene when the Architect runs away from the dreaming hare? I submit to you that we are not to focus so much upon the events themselves, but the emotions that they invoke. There is a sense of desperation, hopelessness, and predestination in these passages that enshroud the reader. We become the Architect when we hear his story. The utter hopelessness of his situation, his complete lack of control when he is facing the ancient one. Remember in the first chapter of the Corpus, the Architect tells Poimandres that he has never had the choice to follow his own will. How many of us now are actually doing exactly what we would be doing if given the choice? Our lives are not our own. For me, the Architect is no longer the vile demiurge of the Gnostics; he becomes one of us, wit larger than life. As Above... So Below. This is a siren call to all Gnostics; the Architect is a victim as well. He is trapped in the middle realm, just as we are trapped here. Perhaps he is trying just as desperately as we are to escape from the matrix.
Origin of Time
"Our bodies were like inert shadows cast upon a transparent realm of dreams."
Now into the heart of Corpus. Poimandres and the Architect begin to reminisce about their past. We have already seen a glimpse into Poimandres’ personality, the curse that the ancient watcher must carry. And we have noticed that the watcher is also literally carrying his curse with him a shoebox, holding an enigmatic prisoner within. We will discuss the prisoner in the shoebox more as our exegesis progresses. For now, it is enough to understand that the Architect and his demonic workers need the prisoner within the box to complete their church. (And also pay attention to Poimandres’ red bandana; it will become significant later in the story.) But who is this Architect? Who is this mysterious figure that appears in the threshold of this country church under construction, in a place that can never be found? His identity becomes apparent as he begins his tale. Like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Corpus Gnostica is an epic tale, told in a series of short stories, by different narrators. But enough about structure for now, this will become self-evident latter. The Architect begins his tale as if he is in a trance, watching or experiencing a scene that has haunted him for millennia. He begins by reminiscing about a vast and dark swamp, filled with cypress trees and syrupy, murky water. He recalls using a long pole to push his canoe through this dark and swampy place, which is of course the darkness of the subconscious. But it is not the dark subconscious of a mere mortal; instead it is the darkness that enshrouds the highest gods, the ones who gave birth to the Architect. It is the darkness of the void; it is the essence of nothingness.
Make no mistake about it kids; we have jumped straight into the rabbit hole and have landed in the realm of pure mythology. This swamp is the hot core of Never-Never Land. It’s in a place that is no place, in a time that has no minutes. Alice’s rabbit will soon appear, but he is not late for an important date, for there is no watch or calendar. This is in the immeasurable dimension of non-quantum field space that presided before the Big Bang. We are looking into a past that existed before the four fundamental forces, before matter itself. This is a realm of pure mind, a dream world emanating from a mind so powerful that even the parental gods shutter. Anything can happen because the only laws that function here are emotional and mental laws. There is no linear consciousness here, because there is no function of mind or perception, only a murky dream state. It is indeed the origin of time. We have all been in this place, although very few consciously remember it. It is that place between death and birth, the in between realm, the place you lingered before you were here.
The Architect narrating this story is no mere god. He is the Supreme Architect of the physical universe, the builder that the ancient Gnostics called the demiurge. In some Gnostic traditions he is called Ialdabaoth, the son of the fallen Sophia. But in the Corpus Gnostica, the Architect is equated with the Leontocephaline; a lion-faced deity prominent in Mithraism, an ancient Persian religion. Many Gnostics, including myself, find the earliest origins for Gnosticism in the deem recesses of Mithraism. In Mithraism, the Supreme Architect of the universe was depicted with a lion’s head and a man’s body. This lion-like creature, or Leontocephaline in Latin, was believed to be the designer of the physical universe and master of the physical laws and forces within our quantum fields. He is also the god to whom the modern Freemasons pledge their most sacred allegiance. The Gnostics believed that he was a false god, an impostor, a pretender that created the original matrix that we are now trapped within.
There is a great deal of ambiguity about the nature of the Architect. We shall see that the gods and goddesses of the Corpus Gnostica are not cheap stock characters, easily predictable, wearing their emotional dialogs on their sleeves. These are real, existential deities, and they possess the fullest array of emotions possible. The Corpus is not for the faint of heart. If you want happy Jesus stories with smiling children and lambs, go to your local Christian bookstore for that predictable and empty trite. But if you are finally ready to escape from the matrix, from the Architect’s trap, then you’ll have to accept the fact that the deities’ characters are every bit as complex as our own. In Codex I (b) the Architect is also equated to the Egyptian god Osiris. Osiris was the deity responsible for ferrying the sun god Ra; across the abysmal darkness of space each night as the sun passed under the Earth towards the distant western reaches of the Egyptian desert, only to rise again on the eastern side of Egypt the following morning. The most scared rituals of the Egyptian priesthood were performed to insure that Ra rose again each morning after traveling across the dark cosmic abyss. It was Osiris’ responsibility to protect Ra from his evil twin, Apophis, who wanted to consume the sun.
So the Architect confides to Poimandres, as the two sit on the front steps of the church, that his twin brother is actually the crocodilian Apophis, who lurked within the murky ancient swamp. Apophis is the dark shadow of the Architect. He is the darkness that lurks in the shadows of our subconscious. Apophis is pure hatred and loathing incarnate. He is what we most fear about death, for we subconscious remember confronting him in the afterlife. The Architect is flawed, but he is not wicked like his reptilian twin. He is deeply conflicted by his emotions and memories. Why are these two powerful forces, one embodying the desire to create and protect, the other embodying hatred and destruction, set on the same stage of creation? Because both of these extremes in the emotional spectrum are required to build a universe. Light has no meaning without darkness, a roses’ smell goes unnoticed without the prick of its thorns.
Who are the paternal gods sitting on the cabin porch in the middle of the swamp? This is one of the greatest mysteries within the Corpus Gnostica. The parental gods, the old man with his bourbon jug, and the old woman with a rose in her hair, appear only twice in the novel. Fittingly they appear at the very beginning of the Corpus in Codex I and at the very end in Codex XIII. We find the clues we need within the text: “He (the father god) was weathered with leathery skin wearing the tattered clothing of a weary man who had always lived on the bayou. His face revealed profound wisdom but was scared by ages of pain and suffering. He had lost his right eye in a struggle many years ago, but he saw everything clearly through his left. In his hands he held his only possessions, an old tin banjo and a jug of Cajun bourbon.” In Egyptian mythology, the god Horus-Ra lost his eye in combat with his evil uncle Set. The Eye of Horus is symbolized as the eye appearing over the pyramid on the back of the American dollar bill. We read that as the Architect looked towards his father; “Powerful rays of light poured from his eye making a golden triangle that framed his face.” And who is the mother goddess: “Like a jewel in the darkest night, my mother glistened from the light of the lantern. Her skin was perfectly smooth, like a statue cut from blackest ebony. She was wearing the finest white linen, and she held a single red rose between her elegant fingers. Her face was as black as the darkest waters of the swamp. Her hair had a bluish hue with silvery streaks, and her eyes… where were her eyes? For in her eye sockets there were only two deep round portals that opened to the universe. A billion stars looked back to my father from her heavenly gaze.” She is a dark skinned African goddess, the mother of humanity... Isis. She is also the Egyptian sky and space goddess Nut, depicted as a nude woman covered with stars in Egyptian art. She is the ultimate Queen of Heaven, and ruler of the celestial cosmos.
The final character on the porch is a little girl: “She was wearing a bright and ruffled bluish dress with white lace and tiny white slippers. She had the palest complexion with ruby lips and icy blue eyes. Her hair was golden, her smile innocent…” She is the final member of this celestial trinity... she is Sophia, goddess of wisdom. But she is young and inexperienced. And wisdom without experience is prone to making mistakes. Knowledge without experience is useless. When the Architect greets his daughter, Sophia, he feels a hot scorching desert like heat emerging from her mouth. He turns away from Sophia for only a moment, and in that one moment of carelessness, our flawed cosmos is born. (Notice that in the myth, Sophia is the daughter to both the Architect and the parental gods. And yet, this would make her the daughter of her own brother? How is such a thing possible? Because we are not in a logical, cause and effect realm. Here, on the higher plane, events are driven by the ebb and flow of emotional energy, not cause and effect. Relationships and personal identities become blurred and even merged. Perhaps you do not like this answer. I’ll let you in on an Illuminati secret. The people that are in your life now, are the ones who have been in many of your previous lives before. Your wife in this life may have been your daughter in another, or you mother in yet another. Boom! Was that brain cells I heard exploding in the back of the classroom?) Sophia strays to the edge of the porch reaching over the edge, trying to grab the reflection of light coming from her father’s eye. At that moment, the wicked crocodile Apophis lunges out of the murky waters and grabs her, dragging her down into the depths of the swamp. Osiris loses no time, jumping into the water to save his beloved daughter.
The Architect tries to find his daughter at the bottom of the swamp but fails. And then he hears his father’s voice, telling him to pray: “Where was Sophia? I prayed to the ancient one; … the one that you now have in that box, and he answered by allowing me to find her. I heard her calling out, ‘Father Osiris… I’m here… help me!’ I could feel the parched breath from my daughter’s cries, and when I opened my eyes… I saw her standing on the dunes of time. I had found her. On the horizon I could see the mirage like shapes of rocky hills and mountains baked under a blazing sun.” The Architect and his daughter Sophia are reunited in another dimension, that place where the fabric of the space-time continuum is first woven, the dunes of time. They begin to wander towards some distant hills where they discover the beast: “It was a massive black creature, sitting between the rock outcroppings. As we drew nearer we could see that it was a huge desert hare. It was jet black, its ears were raised, and its hind legs stood poised to spring into flight or to cut one’s jugular with razor sharp claws. We stopped as close to the giant hare as we dared, perhaps one hundred yards… no more. We could hear it breathing; its breath was as hot as the parched desert air. Its body expanded and contracted with every breath like the great bellows of a tremendous blast furnace. Its eyes were closed; it appeared to be in sublime meditation.”
This beast is Ancient of Days. The ancient one is a trickster god, who often appears in the guise of a rabbit or hare. The rabbit as a trickster is prevalent in Native American and African traditions. The Native American, Algonquian trickster god, Nanabozho was referred to as the Great Hare. Over time, as Native Americans and enslaved Africans met and exchanged elements of culture, their separate hare god traditions merged, producing a new trickster, Brer Rabbit. This trickster is also the dreaming god. It is the emotional energy of the universe. It is everything that is felt, both good and evil. It is diabolical, but it also has a purpose, a goal. Unfortunately, even the highest gods, the old man and his wife in the shack, are unable to control the spirit of Ancient of Days.
Osiris and Sophia approach the giant sleeping hare with great caution. (A word of warning to my readers, if you ever come across a giant hare blocking your path, turn around and go the other way.) Osiris begins to pray to the sleeping giant, and slowly it awakens. Osiris is so distracted by the dreaming god, that he does not notice that he is no longer holding Sophia’s hand. (A word of warning to my readers, if you ever rescue Sophia and find yourself in a mysterious trans-dimensional desert, tie a cord around her wrist or something. That child gets lost faster than rent money in Vegas.) When the hare opens its eyes from his unending dreams, the Architect sees within its dark eyes “... boundless potential…” This phrase, “boundless potential,” will repeat itself throughout the Corpus. It is the heart of the message behind the text, that the hare is the fullness of emotional and spiritual potential.
The great hare now speaks to Osiris: “I am without cause, without beginning or end, never born… and never ending. I am the first cause for all that ever has been or will be. I am that I am.” The hare is none other than the god who spoke to Moses from the burning bush. Although it is not the creator, it is a key element of creation. For without unconscious, emotional energy, mind cannot exist. And without mind, matter can never become animated.
The Architect continues to listen as Ancient of Days recalls his latest dream: “In my vision, I was a simple hare in a great savannah, hiding behind some tall elephant grass, quietly watching a scene which filled me with great anxiety. I looked out from my hiding place onto the blistering grasslands, the sun pouring down on some weary animals that sought the life preserving waters of a nearby watering hole. Fighting in the center of the watering hole, I watched two beasts struggling for life. One beast was caked in black mud, a hippopotamus; … the other was a lion. As I watched, the hippo appeared to have bested the lion in their death struggle… having swallowed the lion from his hindquarters half way up his body. It appeared as if the hippo was about to completely devour the lion when the lion struck back with all of his remaining strength. His powerful claws cut fiercely into the face of the hippo while his body twisted and struggled to become free from the mouth of the watery beast. With heroic effort, the lion freed himself from the dark hippo and mounted its back, forcing the vile creature’s face under the water to be drowned.’ Silence again reigned in the desert. I don’t know why brother, but a question rose in my mind and I asked the great hare, ‘What then?’ Ancient of Days coolly laughed, ‘Son… no one can drown a hippo. It’s in his nature to love the dark and murky waters of the lake.” Anyone familiar with the third degree Illuminati initiation will immediately recognize this ancient Egyptian tale. It is reenacted every seven years during the performance of the Illuminati third degree ritual, but beyond this I can divulge no more. Symbolically, this dream is telling the Architect that he is trapped in a struggle that he can never win, because his foe cannot die.
Hope flees from the Architect as he realizes that his daughter is no longer standing beside him. He cries out, and then the ancient one speaks: ‘Osiris my son … Sophia is not dead … her soul has been exiled beyond the veil. You alone of the gods will I allow to pass into the middle realm to find her, for you are that same golden lion of whom I dreamt.’ A wind then strikes up dust as Osiris runs pass Ancient of Days. The Architect finds himself in another level of creation, the level below the highest gods but still well above the physical plane. If one is so disposed, they should study the classical, Neo-Platonic writers, or the Kabala to learn more about the several levels of creation. I will not bore you here with that right now. But what are we to make of this strange scene when the Architect runs away from the dreaming hare? I submit to you that we are not to focus so much upon the events themselves, but the emotions that they invoke. There is a sense of desperation, hopelessness, and predestination in these passages that enshroud the reader. We become the Architect when we hear his story. The utter hopelessness of his situation, his complete lack of control when he is facing the ancient one. Remember in the first chapter of the Corpus, the Architect tells Poimandres that he has never had the choice to follow his own will. How many of us now are actually doing exactly what we would be doing if given the choice? Our lives are not our own. For me, the Architect is no longer the vile demiurge of the Gnostics; he becomes one of us, wit larger than life. As Above... So Below. This is a siren call to all Gnostics; the Architect is a victim as well. He is trapped in the middle realm, just as we are trapped here. Perhaps he is trying just as desperately as we are to escape from the matrix.