Let us take the simplest possible representation of something, a point, a line, that we can take to represent One, or Everything, and bring this around to the simplest close, making a Circle, or a Cipher, or Everything, or One.
That we can build symbols of the Heavens from these simplest shapes is symbolic philosophy, but we perceive these with the mind of man, and so with man as witness, as we must understand. For we look at a line and see the Earth, or Time, and at the Circle and see Earth, or Time, or the Heavens. Even these symbols are the work of man’s hands, meaning ARTIFICE. Christ is God’s Artificer, the First and True Witness, symbolically a carpenter, in truth a carpenter.
God commands us against making graven images, first via Moses, who saw Christ. For the work of men’s hands is abomination to God, all the more as it reflects the machinations of his heart. If he makes an image of something above, he necessarily places something of God’s worshipful virtue in what is now below, in his heart; or if he fashions an image of something below, he takes worshipful glory from the Creator above, ascribing it to himself in his own heart, to the degree of the estimation of his work by himself and others.
Nevertheless we illuminate our manuscripts with images; wherever we can, we fashion new 🅱️ictograms for ourselves. Everywhere, in speech, in the world, in our minds, we carve temples of memory from images: to ourselves, and ourselves in the heavens, and the fantastic visions of others, but scarcely of the Heavenly Vision.
The lives of the saints, and many holy things, become commoditized and sold as merchandise in the Image; as St. Mark the Ascetic declares, “all sin begins with the Image”, so it was with Man made in God’s Image, and why the Last Man, the Heavenly, must take all sin away from the Image.
As man making his own Image glories in himself, taking glory from God, so will the Man of Sin seek all glories in the Image.
“And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.”
(Revelation 13:15)
Christ tells us that the great commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, and soul: so we know that we can dedicate these three consciously in worship. The son of perdition, possessed by Satan, will seek to ape God in every way: to search the heart, pierce through the individual personhood of the soul, and join the world in a spiritual marriage of the mind. So too will he “speak” in the minds of the captive, in his Image, and join the masses from across the seas in One Body of the Antichrist.
And he will counterfeit the Heavenly Vision.
Know then that the war in Heaven is also a war for the eye of the mind.
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The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! ”(Matthew 6:22-23)
The difference between Art and Nature is a classic problem of philosophy, and touches on the question of the Image. Let us turn to the opening words of An excellent discourse of the admirable force and efficacy of Art and Nature, written by the famous Friar Roger Bacon (1597):
“Some there are the ask whether of the twain be of greatest force, and efficacy, Nature, or Art, whereto I make answer, and say, that although Nature be mighty and marvelous, yet Art using Nature for an instrument, is more powerful than natural virtue, as it is to be seen in many things.”
Classically, as from Aristotle, Art completes the work of Nature or imitates her in its productions. In Roger Bacon’s words, we see a more contemporary mindset revealing itself, Art transcending Nature to the power it can control it. Let us now turn to the thoroughly contemporary Francis Bacon, a father of organized sciences, and architect of the modern mindset: in ancient thought there was “despair both as regards the acquisition of knowledge and the possibility of action… (philosophers) made a cult of the incomprehensibility of nature and condemned mankind to eternal darkness.” So man has an active role to play in the acquisition of knowledge, and an important one in the history of the world and his kind.
The objective of Art and Science, to the latter Bacon, is to form an Image that imitates Nature. Ever the polymath, he puts this poetically in his reflections on the myth of Echo: “that is in fact the true philosophy which echoes most faithfully the voice of the world itself, and is written as it were from the world's own dictation; being indeed nothing else than the image and reflection of it, which it only repeats and echoes, but adds nothing of its own.”
Where one hears “true philosophy”, another hears “perennial philosophy”; where one hears “echo”, another hears the harlot. We might leave the matter at this, but we know that Francis Bacon had seen the Heavenly Vision.
It is the Baconian organization of scholars into a united body that formed the committee of the King James Bible, and the institution of the Royal Society. His organization of artists and workers into a same structure produces Organized Freemasonry, which King James advanced, as does the Royal Society. As the institution develops, it marries “operative” masonry, of material matters, with “speculative” masonry, on the spiritual plane. With this comes a deep understanding of Symbol, and the construction of minds, and psychic empire. Quite literally an idolatry, in the spiritual sense, this marriage reflects Bacon’s philosophy of Echo.
To adherents of the Baconian worldview, Rome’s restriction of the proliferation of the Word into common minds had been a gatekeeping of the Heavenly Vision, as confirmed by their own spiritual experience; and the natural sciences, which were also fought by Rome, were confirming things seen first in captive visions. These two were then combined into one conception of “light”, a consciousness not to be extinguished by the darkness of the world.
In that we communicate in English, we are in a Baconian psychic empire, given his influence on the language, doubly so given his importance in the founding of the United States, thrice so as the Scientific Mindset has captivated all of mankind. Even computers are programmed in English, or then binary, as an Echo or a checkerboard, or then in cryptographic ciphers, the sons of those codes he pioneered while working in Royal Intelligence.
But this gives us ability to communicate with force and authority in the English tongue, it too arranged as a magic language.
Let us come to the conclusion of the matter. In “artifice”, any work of man, is a necessary inclusion of Image. For by him are all the things of the world created, and the heavens. The understanding of spiritual building, and image-symbol magic Art, becomes organized and democratized by Masonry, in the visions of the Baconian project, seeking to create an Image of the World. Because this Baconian project of Art and Science was seen as liberated from the Church at Rome, and then carried out in secret from all organized churches, it has always been occulted.
Occulted meaning “hidden”, philosophy “love of wisdom (sophia)”, this project has been carried out with an occult philosophy. There is such thing as a hidden love of Wisdom, and then too a love of hidden "wisdom", a doctrine of the Nicolatians.
“It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.”
(Proverbs 25:2)
We know there is a call of two women, the Woman of Wisdom, and the harlot, whose end is ultimately as Mystery Babylon, her spiritual city. As this was known to Solomon, so too was it known to Bacon: who called the spiritual house of learning in his New Atlantis vision the “House of Solomon”, as the Freemasons today are the spiritual house of the American psychic empire in the world. In this spirit, as we make an Image of the World, and subdue it, we can do the same with the Heavens, and come to rule them.
“Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.
For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness.
And again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.”(1 Corinthians 3:18-20)
As opposed to the Holy Word, here are words from a 1651 English edition of Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy, the original and ideas of which were known to Bacon and admired by his friends and associates:
“But this is true, this is sublime, but Occult Philosophy: to understand the mysterious influences of the intellectual world upon the Celestial, and of both upon the Terrestrial; and to know how to dispose, and fit our selves so, as to be capable of receiving those superior operations, whereby we may be enabled to operate wonderful things, which indeed seem impossible, or at least unlawful, when as indeed they may be effected by a natural power, and without either offence to God, or violation of Religion. To defend Kingdoms, to discover the secret counsels or men, to overcome enemies, to redeem captives, to increase riches, to procure the favor of men, to expel diseases, to preserve health, to prolong life, to renew youth, to foretell future events, to see and know things done many miles off, and such like as these, by virtue of superior influences, may seem things incredible; Yet read but the ensuing Treatise, and thou shalt see the possibility thereof confirmed both by reason, and example.”
This is artificial intelligence, removal from God, seeking wisdom in secret from an Image of the World; which in spirit is the precursor to the Image of the Beast, to be worshipped by those who “did not like to retain God in their knowledge”.
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And have ye not read this scripture; The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner: And they sought to lay hold on him, but feared the people: for they knew that he had spoken the parable against them: and they left him, and went their way.”
This was the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?(Mark 12:10-12)
Let us return to the friar Roger Bacon’s discourse, whose words would be as wisdom to the modern sons of Francis:
“In like manner, whereas they affirm things without life to move very swiftly in the twilight of the evening or morning, it is altogether false, and untrue. As for consent, it can fain anything that men desire, according as they are disposed together. In all these neither Physical reason, nor Art, nor natural power has any place: and for this cause it is more abominable, is it condemns the laws of Philosophy, and contrary to all reason, invocates wicked Spirits, they by their help they may have their desire.
And herein are they deceived, that they think the Spirits to be subject unto them, and they they are compelled at men’s pleasures, which is impossible: for humane force is far inferior to that of the Spirits. And again, they so err, to dream that the cursed spirits are called up, and figured, by virtue of those natural means which they use. Moreover, they notoriously offend when they go about by invocations, deprecations, and sacrifices to appease them, and use them for the benefit and commodity of man. For this were without all comparison to be attained at the hands of God, or of good spirits. But yet the malignant spirits will not yield to us in those things which are very hurtful and dangerous, save to fare forth as it pleases God (who rules and governs mankind, for the sins of men to permit and suffer them). These ways and means therefore are besides the rules and precepts of Wisdom (nay rather they are contrary unto them) and the Philosophers did never make account of them.”
As in heaven, as on Earth, there is nothing new under the Sun.
These spiritual builders will crucify every believer first in Spirit, as Christ was in Gethsemane, removing the Son from the cosmic conception, and one day seek to behead them, before the Revelation of Jesus Christ comes to them like a thief in the night. Therefore be watchful, and mind your spiritual lamp, knowing that the war over worship of the Image begins first in the eye of the mind, in guardianship over the creative spark.
This was known to Francis Bacon too: between the two Masonic pillars on the frontispiece to his scientific magnum opus the Novus Organum, he quotes the vision of the prophet Daniel against the fall of Babylon, thereby in full knowledge of the telos of the work's completion:
“But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.”
(Daniel 12:4)
“Beware therefore, lest that come upon you, which is spoken of in the prophets;
Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish:
for I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you.””(Acts 13:40-41)
