Day 708 (Tidbits)

Blake gets into some arcane literature and biographical details on Manly P. Hall - and since Blake does a nice job of the biographical details, I will refrain from adding to these.

I would, however, like to comment that the videos Blake selected for the Day 708 on his THE 800 DAYS blog are some of the most interesting to date within the content of The 800 Days Countdown Project. These are some of the clearest messages and powerful concepts yet expressed via video, and I hope that readers do listen to all the videos from the Day 708 post. I know sometimes people skim through the content to get the ghist of topics, intending to return to other media forms (audios/vids), but for this Day 708 post, I have to openly suggest that these videos not be skipped.

In the first video, there is a discussion on love, happiness, virtue, love as an experience of consciousness, placing something bigger than yourself into the foreground, and more. Also discussed, "what love is NOT."

"Democracy is a Fallacy" is a statement made in the 2nd video from the top...with such clear wording and explanation that anyone who chooses to believe otherwise is just nursing a need to "stay the same" and resist a better common sense.

Perhaps Manly P Hall and topics/works by Manly P Hall don't seem too closely related to Mayan Calendar countdown details but part of the point here is to engage people in CRITICAL THINKING about topics related to knowledge, philosophy, beliefs. Manly P Hall, during his lifetime, engaged consistently in difficult debates, topics, and studies - all related to learning, knowledge, society, "the self," philosophy, beliefs, science, mind, body, etc.

The third vid deals with "the mind" to a great degree and the speaker (Manly P. Hall) talks in very clear language to explain how we think what we think, mostly based on who offers to let us have information... ie: governments may be limiting our critical thinking (my conclusion based on Hall's given information) and selecting the information we receive in society so we can't use our minds to their full extent and purposes. If this isn't a wake up call TO THINK FOR OURSELVES, I don't know what is...

Blake's first words on the Day 708 post are "If you haven't heard of Manly P. Hall...then you really should have." I agree - how true, how true! Now to assist Blake in projecting info and the works of Manly P. Hall, I went and found the item (Secret Teachings) mentioned in the Day 708 post - to make it available to readers via my Scribd account.

Read for free: The Secret Teachings Of All Ages by Manly P. Hall

Inside are topics such as:

• Pythagorean Mathematics
• The Human Body in Symbolism
• The Initiation of the Pyramid
• Mystic Christianity
• Bacon, Shakespeare, and the Rosicrucians
• Freemasonic Symbolism
• American Indian Symbolism
• Flowers, Plants, Fruits, and Trees
• The Tabernacle in the Wilderness
• many, many more topics - these are less than half those in the book

If you've already read this book by Manly P. Hall, feel absolutely free to leave some comments about it here.

The Day 708 post is associated with WAKING UP YOUR CRITICAL THINKING, as well as the date Wednesday January 12 2011.

Day 752 (Tidbits)

Ah, now Blake is really delving into some arcane details here. People who have already been looking outside of standard and traditional Christian religions will likely have heard of the topic Blake is talking about in the Day 752 post on THE 800 DAYS blog.

The Topic: The Emerald Tablet

Also known as the philosophy/principled works and beliefs of Hermes Trismegistus (Hermes the Thrice Greatest).

The works and associated teachings of Trismegistus have also been called "Secret of Secrets" and by a number of other titles. It seems this material was considered dangerous (probably still is) at an earlier time in ancient history. The works have been wrongly dated up until quite recently, so a while back many people believed these volumes of text to belong further into the past than they actually were. Most scholars today agree that The Emerald Tablet was mistakenly dated as having been written long, long before Christianity arose in the Western Civilizations and Western regions. Now, most authorities believe that these works are rightly dated as coming into existence just prior to Christianity and as a possible, probably precursor for the principles of the earliest Christianity.

Naturally, there are ongoing debates about the age of these texts that are probably a healthy way to question ANYTHING from our distant past, but generally, there are a LOT of tidbits that scholars from the fields of history, religion, sociology and more actually agree quite soundly on.

• These texts are at the core of Hermetic Tradition
• The Emerald Tablets complement or go together with a larger core set of documents called The Corpus Hermeticum (18 tracts or chapters/sections)
• There are different sorts of denominations/groups with slightly differing viewpoints who followed and still do follow today, the Hermetic Tradition, each having variations of principles. In other words, Hermeticism is not dead... people still live by and practice these religious, ethical, practical and living principles.
• Followers of Hermeticism study in the fields (whether we think this is outdated or not) of Alchemy, Astrology and Theurgy.
• Alchemy: study of things related to or powered by the Sun
• Astrology: study of things related to or powered by the Moon
• Theurgy: study of things related to or powered by the Stars
• In some respects and for some purposes, the details of astrology and theurgy are not separate from alchemy and in these situations, the study is simply known as alchemy or alchemical. ie: knowledge of the operation of the moon and stars might be used in certain alchemical routines or practices to gain a particular result or effect. In such cases, we wouldn't say, "that was an alchemy and astrology and theugy reaction," we'd just say "that process was one of alchemy" or something similar.

To me the Emerald Tablet of Trismegistus is pretty much like a condensed short guiding piece to sum up general principles of Hermetic Tradition, the combination of The Corpus Hermeticum and related works.

Go read the Emerald Tablet on Blake's Blog: Day 752 - The Emerald Tablet

If you're interested in learning more about the principles involved in the Hermetic Traditions, you can find The Corpus Hermeticum online:

About The Corpus Hermetica

Now if you get to busy to look at the longer works, don't worry... I'm just POSITIVE that The Corpus Hermeticum, along with The Emerald Tablet are topics and works that are going to show up repeatedly over the remainder of the 800 Days countdown. The Hermetic works really are some of the most interesting (AND USEFUL) collections of esoterica that are available to us. For now, The Emerald Tablet is a nice, concise piece of reading to pick up and apply accordingly.

The Emerald Tablet information post from Day 752 is associated with Monday November 29 2010.