Palingenesis

“A rose resuscitated.” Palingenesis is the act (or idea) of raising a plant from its own burned ashes. Athanasius Kircher was a believer and gave his method in Mundus Subterraneu, 1665. The method is also laid out with this illustration in Curiosities of Nature and Art in Husbandry and Gardening, 1707 by Abbé de Vallemont.

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The claims of Gaffarilus — which, by the bye, appeared so preposterous in 1650 — were later corroborated by science.

He maintained that every object existing in nature, provided it was not artificial, when once burned still retained its form in the ashes, in which it remained till raised again. Du Chesne, an eminent chemist, assured himself of the fact. Kircher, Digby, and Vallemont have demonstrated that the forms of plants could be resuscitated from their ashes. At a meeting of naturalists in 1834, at Stuttgart, a receipt for producing such experiments was found in a work of Oetinger.* Ashes of burned plants contained in vials, when heated, exhibited again their various forms. "A small obscure cloud gradually rose in the vial, took a defined form, and presented to the eye the flower or plant the ashes consisted of." "The earthly husk," wrote Oetinger, "remains in the retort, while the volatile essence ascends, like a spirit, perfect in form, but void of substance."†

And, if the astral form of even a plant when its body is dead still lingers in the ashes, will skeptics persist in saying that the soul of man, the inner ego, is after the death of the grosser form at once dissolved, and is no more? "At death," says the philosopher, "the one body exudes from the other, by osmose and through the brain; it is held near its old garment by a double attraction, physical and spiritual, until the latter decomposes; and if the proper conditions are given the soul can reinhabit it and resume the suspended life. It does it in sleep; it does it more thoroughly in trance; most surprisingly at the command and with the assistance of the Hermetic adept. Iamblichus declared that a person endowed with such resuscitating powers is 'full of God.'

-Helena Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled

Four ways to Truth

Here's an example:

1. We can have soul knowledge with certainty.

2. Shadow: Spiritual smog- lost in smog without self determination.

3. We can be egoically active, striving (with failure) to arrive at
valid concepts.

4. Shadow- where you think you've arrived at a true perception/qualification but your ego bound- and that's Luciferic.
Lucifer loves Lucifer - a false love.

Sometimes when arguing we only look at the others' negatives- we view
their double. The Double always gives us something to argue with.

Four Temperaments in Art

The doctrine of the four temperaments goes back beyond memory.
Durer pictured the temperaments as rabbit, elk, ox and cat in his photo of Adam and Eve:




http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/world/images/s27.jpg

Durer and the Fall


untitled.html


Quote:




any one of those mysterious fluids to which we still allude when we use such expressions as "sanguine," "phlegmatic," "choleric," and "melancholic."


Before Adam had bitten the apple, man's constitution was perfectly balanced ("had man remained in Paradise he would not have noxious fluids in his body," to quote St. Hildegarde of Bingen), and he was therefore both immortal and sinless. It was believed that only the destruction of this original equilibrium made the human organism subject to illness and death

and the human soul succeptible to vices--despair and avarice being engendered by black gall, pride and wrath by choler, gluttony and sloth by phlegm, and lechery by the blood. The animals, however, were mortal and vicious from the outset. They were by nature either melancholic or choleric or phlegmatic or sanguine--provided that the sanguine temperament, always considered more desirable than the others, was not identified with perfect equilibrium. For in this case no sanguine animal could be admitted to exist, and it was assumed that man, originally sanguine pure and simple, had become more or less severely contaminated by the three other "humors" when biting the apple.

"An educated observer of the sixteenth century, therefore, would have easily recognized the four species of animal in Dürer's engraving as representatives of the "four humors" and their moral connotations, the elk denoting melancholic gloom, the rabbit sanguine sensuality, the cat choleric cruelty, and the ox phlegmatic sluggishness.













"The Fall is presented in the context of the four humors or temperaments of man: choleric (the cat, soon to pounce on the mouse), melancholic (elk), sanguine (rabbit), and phlegmatic (ox). "







Just as Chinese art had the common theme of Ying and Yang, in European art we find the theme of the four temperaments:


The Bath House, probably 1496 Woodcut; https://scontent.fmel5-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/1779103_10201315784399818_2081838606_n.jpg?oh=717f75a6298e97f7d0bf4f7d10f55f14&oe=59DB90F1

In addition to being a scene from daily life and a realistic study of the male nude, The Bath House has also been interpreted as an allegorical depiction of the four humors or temperaments, each represented by one of the four men in the foreground: one holds a flower (sanguine), another a scraper (choleric), one takes a drink (phlegmatic), and the last leans on a post (melancholic).


Melancholia 1

Albrecht Durer's Melencolia



"The Roman numeral "I" following the engraved title suggests at once that Durer had it in mind to design and execute a series of four copper-engravings illustrating the Four Temperaments: melancholic, phlegmatic, choleric, and sanguine. These were linked in the medieval mind with the Four Elements of the alchemists and certain other mystical groups of four, a magical number inherited from the early civilizations that flourished long before the time of Pythagoras."


The historian Frances Yates did a lot of research on the Melancholia series (Jerome is the last of the series) and how it shows the stages of the melancholic temperament.

The second stage of Melancholia is Durer's Knight & the Devil, according to Prof. Yates. She goes into detail on this. She also tells us about the changing role of Saturn (the planet of Melancholia). In the past it was consider to be the planet of Death, but in the Melancholia 1 you can see various tools representing various trades. Saturn had an another aspect, and that was making that which was spiritual, physically manifest.


I previously showed how Bosch depicted the lower stages of the temperaments:


http://www.comparative-religion.com/...orns-7551.html


I once saw a book on Catholic education which was about using the temperaments.


I note that Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) taught it:


Hildegard of Bingen


Check out these pages on Durer:

He said "Purse means wealth, keys mean power."

Arab scholars associated the temperaments with the planets.

Benjamin Franklin, was among those interested in magic squares.

The Chinese also recognized magic squares.


In Renaissance times it was considered healthy to have the influence of the "Three Graces" (Sun,Venus, Jupiter) around one's person.

http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/art...es-1503-04.jpg

In Melancholia 1, Durer has employed the Jupiter Magic Square to overcome the heavy Saturnine influence. The keys and purse, are are Jupiter influence.

The metal of Saturn is lead.


"mensula Jovis a 'Jovian device used to counteract the unfavorable influence of Saturn.'"

Quote:

Marsilio Ficino said that the magic square of one through sixteen had the power to "turn evil into good" and "dispel all worries and fear." I later discovered that this magic square was used in facades of buildings in medieval Europe as well.

The founder of the Mormons, Joseph Smith, also carried a Jupiter talisman with him. He even had it when he was killed:

Jupiter talisman:

Pages 31-33--Joseph Smith's 1826 Trial and Magic Talisman, A Response to the Anonymous LDS Historian, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, D. Michael Quinn, pendant, masonry, masonic, LDS Scripture, Mormon history, church historians, Mormons, Mormonism, LDS, ch

You'll observe that the numbers here are in Hebrew.


"That is not to say that one should dismiss the qualities that one is endowed with, however at the bottom of one's lower nature there is a serpent, a slug, a dragon, vulture, and so forth, to be contended with."




-The Elder Brothers

Meditation: In Me is God

Try to accustom yourselves to live your way every evening into the consciousness: In me is God. In me is God — or the Spirit of God, or what other expression you prefer to use. (But please do not think I mean just persuading yourself of this truth theoretically — which is what the meditations of the majority of people amount to!) 

Then, in the morning let the knowledge: "I am in God" shine out over the whole day. And now consider! When you bring to life within you these two ideas, which are then no longer mere thoughts, but have become something felt and perceived inwardly, yes, have even become impulses of will within you, what is it you are doing?

First, you have this picture before you: In me is God;

Fig 3

and on the following morning, you have this picture before you: I am in God (see Figure 3). They are one and the same, the upper and the lower figure [side by side]. And now you must understand: Here you have a circle (yellow); here you have a point (blue). It doesn't look like that in the evening, but in the morning the truth of it comes to light. And in the morning you have to think: Here is a circle (blue); here is a point (yellow). Yes, you have to understand that a circle is a point, and a point a circle. You have to acquire a deep, inner understanding of this fact.

Fig 1

But now, this is really the only way to come to a true understanding of the human being! You remember the drawing I made for you, of the metabolism-and-limbs man and the head man (see Figure 1). That drawing was nothing else than a realistic impression or record of what you have before you now in this simple figure for meditation. In the human being it becomes actual reality; the I-point of the head becomes in the limb man the circle — naturally, with modifications. Adopting this line of approach, trying, that is, to understand man inwardly, you will learn to understand the whole of man. You must, first of all, be quite clear in your mind that these two figures, these two conceptions, are one and the same, are not at all different from one another. 

They only look different from outside. There is a yellow circle; here it is too! There is a blue point; here it is too! Why do they look different? Because that drawing is a diagram of the head, and this a diagram of the body. When the point claims a place for itself in the body, it becomes the spinal cord. It makes its way in here and then the part it plays in the head organisation is continued in the spinal cord. There you have the inner dynamic of the morphology of man. Taking it as your starting point, you will be able, by meditation, to build up a true anatomy, a true physiology. And then you will acquire the inner intuition that can perceive in how far the upper and lower jaws are limbs; for you will begin to see in the head a complete organism in itself, sitting up there on the top of the human being, an organism whose limbs are dwarfed and have — in process of deformation — turned into jaws. And you will come to a clear perception of how teeth and toes are in polarity to one another. For you have only to look at the attachments of the jawbones, and you can see it all there before you — the stunted toes, the stunted hands and feet.

Fig 5

But, my dear friends, meditation that employs such pictures as I have been giving can never take its course in the kind of mood that would allow us to feel: Now I am going to settle down to a blissful time of meditation; it will be like sinking into a snug, warm nest! No, the feeling must be continually present in us that we are taking the plunge into reality — that we are grasping hold of reality.

Devotion to little things — yes, to the very smallest of all! We must not omit to cultivate this interest in very little things. The tip of the ear, the paring of a finger-nail, a single human hair — should be every bit as interesting to us as Saturn, Sun and Moon. For really and truly in one human hair everything else is comprised; a person who becomes bald loses a whole cosmos!

What we see externally — we can verily create it inwardly, if only we achieve that overcoming which is essential to a life of meditation. But we shall never achieve it so long as any vestige of vanity is allowed to remain — and vestiges of vanity lurk in every corner and crevice of the soul. Therefore is it so urgent, if you want to become real educators, and especially educators of backward children, that you should cultivate, with the utmost humility, this devotion in the matter of little things. And when you have made a beginning in this way in your own sphere, you can afterwards go on to awaken in other circles of the Youth Movement this same devotion to little things.

-Rudolf Steiner

Cosmic & Human Ego

https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/CosEgo_index.html