And when they die, they are winged and light, having won a victory in one of three bouts in the true Olympic games, and neither human sound-mindedness nor divine madness can confer a greater good upon a man than this. Phaedrus

Homage to Thee, Thrice-Great, Thrice Known to Self, Messenger to the Gods, Psychopomp to the Philosophic Soul. Victor of the Quest, Lord of the True Olympian Contests, Herald of the Way, Teacher of the Method, Lamp of the Path.



The colossal state of Zeus presiding over the sacred Games.

Corpus Hermeticum IV.3:

God shared reason among all people, O Tat, but not Nous, though he begrudged it to none. Grudging envy comes not from on high; it forms below in the souls of people who do not possess Nous.”

“For what reason, then, did god not share Nous with all of them, my father?”

“He wanted it put between souls, my child, as a prize for them to contest.”

isciples of the Way often ponder the magnitude of the tasks of Mastery, the immensity of the Herculean labors, the dangers and perils of the Great Work. There is an elitism at the core of all Traditions, those that discover the sacred elixir or herb, the skillful methods, the gnosis, those that grasp the Teaching over the rest, those that make the right decision at the right time, asking the right questions. Why is it that some Remember and that some cling to the Way of the Gods, but most do not. One might ask why do some souls lack the capacity, the piety, the Nature (physis) that allows them to achieve the highest Good? It is the prize and trophy for the Wise, the Pious and those loyal to the ancestral Way of the Gods. Mundane or hylic Souls compete on earth for fame, for riches, for gratification of desires. They see the beauty of forms, the majesty of the sky, the exquisite beauty of this realm, of bodies and passions but the impulse to Philosophy and Immortality is not ignited within. They are devoid of the Memory of the primordial Light and yet they may excel to the highest accolades of this world, skilled, wealthy, and powerful, but all of their energy, their life and triumphs are nothing to the True Olympic Games, the True Baptism of Nous, the sight of the Grail. This Life is a test, a quest and those that do not engage with every aspect of their being, the complete unity of thought, word, and action, of intellect and piety, of conduct and deeds will sink deeper into the fetters of endless lower rebirths.

This realm is a temple, a school, a prison, a punishment, a blessing but also a battlefield, a sacred space for tournaments, spiritual combat, questing. It is also a type of racecourse for the True Olympic Games, a vast structure as hippodromos “chariot road, racecourse for chariots” in which the elite souls compete for Memory, Nous, Gnosis. There is free will so evil can contend, that we have a choice. Just as a single sperm might make it to fertilize an egg, some 300 million will not (see also the so-called universal salvation of Christ’s message Matthew 13 The Parable of the Sower). The world exists from Necessity, it is mediated by Love and Strife, or the bonds of karma, the grasping connection to the material world as an alchemical vessel for the soul. Nous, the Memory, is set as a prize for the wise to contend and compete, the quest, the great work. Earth is an underworld, and we are here from and for a variety of reasons, each soul a different reason. The soul must ascend through the harmonious structure of the seven planetary Gods, past the Abyss, Okeanos, which flows round the earth in a circle, into the consciousness or Nous of the Immortals of the Ogdoad and Ennead. The entire causa essendi of the Mysteries was to initiate as many human beings as possible, to expose them to the catalysts of Memory to ignite the fiery daemonic physis of the Philosopher as True Human Being and Immortal. Thus, many Mystery centers like Delphi, who urged us to ‘know thyself’ was to present this herald to the embodied soul, no matter slave or royal. Initiation was open to males, females, children, the old, slaves, and free people. The only stipulations were that you must not be a barbarian, and this meant one must be able to speak Greek. Delphi was also associated with the freeing of slaves through a process called manumission, which involved selling the slave to the god Apollo. Dionysian Mysteries even further included marginalized, outcasts, outlaws into a beholding of the numinous and sacred, the rapturous divine intoxication of the banquets of the Gods.

Know thyself.

Within this world, there are anti-human anti-life forces, and it is as above, as so below. In the Golden Age it was easier; there was less bloodshed, less astral demons born from dark rituals. The gnostic shamans are simply telling us that there was an intrusion in the heavens, a war of the gods. It is mirrored in the artificial realities, intelligences, the inorganic ‘post-human’ world of the world’s elite, the ‘saints’ of the false demiurgic and archonic force. The demonic forces have set up their legions to try and stop the souls from incarnating in Royal conditions, by destroying royalty, by lowering humanity, each successive generation further from purpose and the Mysteries. So, each chance of a birth is so far from the Way. The Communist armies destroyed most of the Daoist and Buddhist, the Wahabi and similar mostly Sunni groups, and many of the colonial forces destroyed most of the gnostic and esoteric Islam, the Freemasons did the same for esoteric Christianity and the secret societies are dark, pedophile, ritual based intelligence operations to track and destroy the Way. The goal is to trap the Royal souls in between realms. This agenda extends into plans to full-spectrum dominance, to control birth rates and human reproduction in the future, and destroy the ability and trace of the Way, and it becomes more and more impossible to make that ascension. The old lore even of Norse is that a snake surrounds this realm, keeping us within. It is a prison and a trap. The Hermetic lore teaches us that this was provisional, that we are here as a punishment, but that it’s not evil. It began as a Temple, and it has fallen to dark entities who misused the magic. The Gods need us as we need them, they are our ancestors, to destroy the portals, the rituals, the connections are to exile the soul even deeper. Then in this vacuum, the false cults come in the false inversions like a virus (the masonic, the kabbalistic, the new age, Thelemic), etc., and the rituals create more and more of these entities. Thus, we are proxies for the war of the Gods, the embodied souls that must discern the labyrinth of the Mysteries that are even further cast into darkness, obscurity and the rubble of the modern world. This is the essence of the Occult Wars above and below, that of the Tradition of the Gods and the Anti-Tradition/Counter-Traditions that are traps and fettering snares of the Soul.

Of central importance is the consideration of Necessity in such a cosmology. It is the perfection of all possible worlds, one that tests and educates the soul, one that allows for an alchemical Becoming, an apotheosis such as that one can participate in Creation. This is a godlike aspect, a co-creative purpose and relationship, not a mere predestined or scripted fatalism. There must be pragmatic aspects that adhere to the necessity of souls on earth, and if it was so simple and easy then the world would be abandoned. The Masters are few and far between, incarnating at specific times and places, to reignite the Way as the successive world ages saw fewer and fewer Royal Souls incarnating. These topics are fully discussed in the De Mysteriis Immortalitatis manuscripts.

Especially after the French Revolution, the True Royalty, Monarchies and Aristocracy have been usurped, infiltrated by secret societies, overthrown, assassinated, degraded and destroyed. The forces of modernism and the false Traditions have democratized the world to the lowest common denominator. True nobility was replaced with the merchant class, the nouveau riche, the vulgar minions of the most malignant and parasitic forces. Modernism assaults all that is of balance and harmony, architecture, music, and culture to weaponize what is ugly, demoralizing, estranging from a shared common sense of the sacred, of nature, polluted, desecrated and laced with toxins. It is radically, as above, so below, in this combat of the Gods, this Grail Quest and escape from the maze of false paths, teachings, and traps. This is the exoteric and esoteric infection, the wound of the Grail King, that has fallen over the Western Tradition. Any that claim the title of adept and lead one into the abstractions of the Kabbalah, Freemasonry, and related false “Hermetic Golden Dawn” cults are traitors to the Way. These lead the naïve seeker into sunken incarnations as they acquiesce to such parasitic rituals and worldviews that further seek to obliterate the true path. While the masses are largely of agnosy or a lack of spiritual understanding or insight; a lack of enlightenment, nearly all of those that have some spark fall into the pseudo-mysteries, pop-occultism, and abstractions that the Enemies of Life have created.

The exoteric policies, psychic driving, the influence and indoctrination has been focused on eradication of the hero archetype, the erasure of the merit-based society. There is the push for secular humanism, an atheism and nihilism that inverts empathy and true justice for warped ‘social justice’ that praises the most degenerate criminals, the violent, vulgar, and seeks to imprison those that defend themselves or others, or who dare speak against the Agenda. It is a conspiracy against beauty, against harmony, against the Good. Ancestral narratives, like the footrace discussed in Phaedo or the charioteer’s adept control of the conflicting forces within understood as a winged ascension and race following Zeus, the God of philosophers.

Thus, the Human “Race” is literally a sustained contest to stay true to certain holy dreams and the Philosophical Path of the Muses, the daughters of Mnemosyne (Memory) as the born of the union with Zeus:

But I wanted to see whether I could engage with the holiness of certain dreams. In the course of my life I have often had the same recurrent dream, which appeared in different forms in different versions of my envisaging the dream, but which always said the same thing: “Socrates,” it said, “go and practice the craft of the Muses [mousikē] and keep on working at it.” Previously, I had imagined that this was only intended to urge [61a] and encourage me to keep on doing what has always been the pursuit of my life, in the same way that competitors in a footrace are called on by the spectators to run when they are already running. So, I thought that the dream was calling on me to keep on doing what I was already doing, which is, to practice philosophy as the craft of the Muses [mousikē], since philosophy is the greatest form of this craft and since I practiced philosophy. But now that the trial [dikē] has taken place and the festival of the god [Apollo] has been causing the postponement of my execution, I got the idea that I should do something different, just in case the dream was ordering me to practice the craft of the Muses [mousikē] in the popular [dēmōdēs] sense of the word—so I got the idea that I should not disobey it [= the dream] and that I should go ahead and practice this craft. I was thinking that it would be a safer thing not to depart [this world] before performing a sacred rite by making poetry [poiēmata] and thus [61b] obeying the dream. So, the first thing I did was to make a poem [poieîn] in honor of the god who is the recipient of the current festival, and then, after [meta] having finished with the god, here is what I [= Socrates] did: keeping in mind that a poet must, if he is really going to be a poet, make [poieîn] myths [mūthoi] and not just words [logoi] in general, and that I was no expert in the discourse of myth [mūtho-logikos… Phaedo

Thus, the true Olympic games are those that control these aspects within themselves. This is succinctly and directly addressed in Plato’s Phaedrus, (emphasis added) “Now in all these cases, whoever has behaved justly obtains a better destiny, while whoever behaves unjustly obtains a worse. For the soul does not ever arrive back at the same place it came from for ten thousand years, because it does not … These souls become winged in the third cycle of a thousand years if they have chosen this life thrice in succession, and in the three thousandth year they depart. As for the others, once they have completed their first life they encounter judgement, and having been judged, some go to places of correction beneath the earth where they pay the full penalty while others are borne aloft by justice to some place in the heaven and spend their time as they deserve based on how they lived their life when in a human 249B form. But in the thousandth year both arrive for allocation and choice of the second life, and they choose the one they want. At this stage a human soul takes on the life of a beast, and from a beast someone who was once a human enters a human being again. Indeed, a soul that has never beheld the truth will not attain the human condition. … And this is recollection of those things our soul knew when it accompanied the god, and with a downward glance on things that are now said to be, lifted its gaze to what actually is. … only the mind of the philosopher be winged, for by the power of memory it is always as close as it can be to those things by whose proximity a god is divine. And indeed, someone with proper recourse to such reminders, being continually initiated into perfect mysteries, is the only one who actually becomes perfect. And standing apart from the preoccupations of humanity 249D and getting close to the divine, the person is criticised by the multitude for being disturbed, but the multitude overlook the fact that he is divinely inspired.”

The Corpus Hermeticum describes this, and this is a quote from Volume 2 of the coming manuscript De Mysteriis Immortalitatis: Below is the description soul’s ascent and the seven-fold planetary spheres of the Gods and the aspects encountered, although the total number of things through which the soul must make its way are twenty-five: Do you see, my son, how many bodies we have to make our way (seven below), and through how many troops of demons (in the hostile sense, not daemons), through which continuous succession of (cosmic elements), and through how many courses of stars, in order to press on the One-and Only?(CH IV, 8)

These ‘troops of demons’ are the spawn of unholy intercourses, of sexuality devoid of love and of procreation or manifestation. These entities spawn from profane sex, the wanton seeding of potential souls into the astral world. These are not mere abstractions; these are encountered in the visionary rites, as are the hells and paradises of the mythos and lore. The elixirs give a seeing to the world beyond the limited spectrum of vision of the human senses, the veil is pulled back and the vast and myriad entities are encountered in the sublunar realms, and in the overlaid ‘worlds’ spawned by the false-demiurge and goetic demons that the true Gnostics warned against. The lower realm is like the distillation vessels that souls ascend and condense and return to earth, while the most subtle are able to ascend past the sub-lunar realm, to the higher Gods of the harmonious structure above. Many of the dark entities are hungry ghosts, malicious and parasitic entities, lost and broken souls that seek to lure and trap others into their shared misery. They are meant to scare and deter the uninitiated lest the world be deprived of souls in the lower realm from ease of ascent. There was an understanding of this aspect even in the chariot races of the most ancient Olympian chariot races with the Taraxippus, a presence, variously identified as a ghost or dangerous site, blamed for frightening horses at hippodromes.

The Corpus Hermeticum continues with a description of the traps and confrontations that are encountered upon the Ascent:
[25] Thence the human being rushes up through the cosmic framework (the true tree of life), at the first zone surrendering the energy of increase and decrease; at the second evil machination, a device now inactive; at the third the illusion of longing, now inactive; at the fourth the ruler’s arrogance, now freed of excess; at the fifth unholy presumption and daring recklessness; at the sixth the evil impulses that come from wealth, now inactive; and at the seventh zone the deceit that lies in ambush.

Corpus Hermeticum I:
[19] “After Theos said this, providence, through fate and through the cosmic framework, caused acts of intercourse and set in train acts of birth; and all things were multiplied according to kind. The one who recognized himself attained the chosen good, but the one who loved the body that came from the error of desire goes on in darkness, errant, suffering sensibly the effects of death.” [20] “Those who lack knowledge, what great wrong have they done,”
I asked, “that they should be deprived of immortality?” “You behave like a person who has not given thought to what he has heard. Did I not tell you to think?” “I am thinking; I remember; and I am grateful as well.”
“If you have understood, tell me: why do they deserve death who are in death?”
“Because what first gives rise to each person’s body is the hateful darkness, from which comes the watery nature, from which the body was constituted in the sensible cosmos, from which death drinks.”
[21] “Truly you have understood. But why is it that ‘he who has understood himself advances toward god,’ as god’s discourse has it?”
“Because,” I said, “the father of all things was constituted of light and life, and from him the man came to be.”
“You say your speech well. Life and light are god and father, from whom the man came to be. So if you learn that you are from light and life and that you happen to come from them, you shall advance to life once again.” This is what Poimandres said. “But tell me again,” I asked, “how shall I advance to life, O my mind?
For god says, ‘Let the person who is mindful recognize himself.’ [22]
All people have mind (Nous), do they not?” “Hold your tongue, fellow. Enough talk. I myself, the Nous, am present to the blessed and good and pure and merciful – to the reverent – and my presence becomes a help; they quickly recognize everything, and they propitiate the father lovingly and give thanks, praising and singing hymns affectionately and in the order appropriate to him. Before giving up the body to its proper death, they loathe the senses for they see their effects. Or rather I, the mind, will not permit the effects of the body to strike and work their results on them. As gatekeeper, I will refuse entry to the evil and shameful effects, cutting off the anxieties that come from them. [23] But from these I remain distant – the thoughtless and evil and wicked and envious and greedy and violent and irreverent – giving way to the avenging demon who {wounds the evil person}, assailing him sensibly with the piercing fire and thus arming him the better for lawless deeds so that greater vengeance may befall him. Such a person does not cease longing after insatiable appetites, struggling in the darkness without satisfaction. {This} tortures him and makes the fire grow upon him all the more.”
“Not all have gained true understanding, Asclepius. They are deceived, pursuing, on rash impulse and without due consideration of reason, an image that begets malice in their minds and transforms the best of living things into a beastly nature with brutal habits. When I speak about spirit, I will give you a full account of consciousness and related topics.”

“Mankind is the only living thing that is twofold: one part of him is simple, what the Greeks call ousiodes, what we call a form of divine likeness. What the Greeks call hulikos and we call earthly is fourfold.

From it is made the body that covers over what we have already termed divine in mankind; it covers the divinity of pure mind, which rests alone with its kindred, the thoughts of pure mind, at peace with itself as if sheltered by a wall of body.”

“Why then, Trismegistus, should humans have been put in the world?

Why do they not live in the highest happiness in the region where god is?”

“You are right to ask, Asclepius. Indeed, we beseech god to grant us the strength to find a reason for it. Although everything depends on god’s will, those things especially depend on it that concern the summit of the all, the all whose reason we seek in our present inquiry.”

[8] “Listen, then, Asclepius. When the master and shaper of all things, whom rightly we call Theos, made a god next after himself who can be seen and sensed (I call this second god sensible not because he senses but because he impinges on the senses of those who see him; at another time we shall discuss whether he senses or not), then, having made this god as his first production and second after himself, it seemed beautiful to him since it was entirely full of the goodness of everything, and he loved it as the progeny of his own divinity. Then, so great and good was he that he wanted there to be another to admire the one he had made from himself, and straightaway he made mankind, imitator of his reason and attentiveness. God’s will is itself perfect achievement since willing and achievement are complete for him at one and the same moment of time. After he (had made) mankind ousiodes and noticed that he could not take care of everything unless he was covered over with a material wrapping, god covered him with a bodily dwelling and commanded that all humans be like this, mingling and combining the two natures into one in their just proportions. Thus god shapes mankind from the nature of soul and of body, from the eternal and the mortal, in other words, so that the living being so shaped can prove adequate to both its beginnings, wondering at heavenly beings and worshipping them, tending earthly beings and governing them.”

“Just now, in speaking about mortal things, I mean to speak not about water and earth, those two of the four elements that nature has made subject to humans, but about what humans make of those elements or in them – agriculture, pasturage, building, harbors, navigation, social intercourse, reciprocal exchange – the strongest bond among humans or between humanity and the parts of the world that are water and earth. Learning the arts and sciences and using them preserves this earthly part of the world; god willed it that the world would be incomplete without them. Necessity follows god’s pleasure; result attends upon his will. That anything agreed by god should become disagreeable to him is incredible since he would have known long before that he would agree and that it was to be.”

[9] “But I notice, Asclepius, that mind’s quick desire hastens you to learn how mankind can cherish heaven (or the things in it) and tend to its honor. Listen, then, Asclepius. Cherishing the god of heaven and all that heaven contains means but one thing: constant assiduous service. Except for mankind alone, no living thing, neither divine nor (mortal), has done this service. Heaven and heavenly beings take delight in wonderment, worship, praise and service from humans. Rightly the supreme divinity sent the chorus of Muses down to meet mankind lest the earthly world lack sweet melody and seem thereby less civilized; instead, with songs set to music, humans praised and glorified him who alone is all and is father of all, and thus, owing to their praise of heaven, earth has not been devoid of the charms of harmony. Some very small number of these humans, endowed with pure mind, have been allotted the honored duty of looking up to heaven. But those who lagged behind (at) a lower reach of understanding, under the body’s bulk and because theirs is a mingled twofold nature, have been appointed to care for the elements and these lower objects. Mankind is a living thing, then, but none the lesser for being partly mortal; indeed, for one purpose his composition seems perhaps fitter and abler, enriched by mortality. Had he not been made of both materials, he would not have been able to keep them both, so he was formed of both, to tend to earth and to cherish divinity as well.”

From Asclepius,

[18] “The whole substance of all the forms in the world and of each one of them in its normal state is, if I may say so, ‘material.’ Matter nourishes bodies; spirit nourishes souls. But consciousness, the heavenly gift that is happiness for humanity alone (not all humans, but only the few who have the mind to contain so great a bounty – as the sun lights up the world, so the human mind shines with the light of consciousness, but it is greater, for whatever the sun illuminates is sometimes deprived of its light by the interposition of earth and moon and the intervening night), consciousness, once coupled with the human soul, becomes one material in the closely joined coupling, so that minds of this sort are never obstructed by the errors of darkness. They are right who have said that the soul of the gods is consciousness, though I say it is the soul not of all gods but only of the great and original gods.” and the “mystical” logos that leads to immortality; all share the latter gift, but not all make use of it.

Another instruction is given in the “Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius” on a crucial teaching that not all who occupy this realm are True Human Beings. There are many who are so devoid of this divine light, this seeking of the Good, so indifferent or even hostile to the Beautiful that their soul is devoid of this essential spark of Immortal Nous:
“Consequently there are two types of nous: the one is divine and the other belongs to soul. Nevertheless, there are certain men who do not have even that of soul.” The Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius VIII, 4

We are to compete in good deeds like the Heros of old, of ancestors whose glory still echoes even in this degenerate modern age. We are to labor in this fight of reverence as if we will die tomorrow but work as if we will never die. Thus, the immediacy of death is a teacher to Remind us, yet we prepare security for our kindred as if death will never come.

Continuing in the Corpus Hermeticum, Royal souls that continue in this fight are never subjected to a lower birth devoid of Nous: [19] The human soul – not every soul, that is, but only the reverent – is in a sense demonic and divine. Such a soul becomes wholly mind after getting free of the body and fighting the fight of reverence. (Knowing the divine and doing wrong to no person is the fight of reverence.) The irreverent soul, however, stays in its own essence, punishing itself, seeking an earthy body to enter – a human body, to be sure. For no other body contains a human soul; it is not allowed for a human soul to fall down into the body of an unreasoning animal. This is god’s law, to protect the human soul against such an outrage.”

Consider this dialogue between the Messenger of the Gods. Hermes Trismegistus, who is Thrice Great because he came to know himself three times in exile and incarnation into earth to the Son of Apollo, Asclepius:

[2] “Every human soul is immortal, Asclepius, but not all in the same way; some differ in manner and time from others.”

“Is it not true, Trismegistus, that every soul is of the same quality?”

“Asclepius, how quickly you have lapsed from reason’s true restraint!

Did I not say that all are one and one all inasmuch as all were in the creator before he created them all? Not unjustly was he called all, whose members are all. In this whole discussion, then, take care to remember him who alone is all or who is himself the creator of all.” From ASCLEPIUS A Holy Book of Hermes Trismegistus addressed to Asclepius

“Whence, although all kinds are immortal, it happens that not all forms are immortal. In the case of divinity, both kind and form are immortal. The fertility of coming to be preserves the kinds of other things, where eternity belongs to the kind even though the forms perish. Thus, there are mortal forms, (but not kinds,) so that a human is mortal and humanity immortal.”

The major chariot-races of the Olympic and other Panhellenic Games, were four-horse (tethrippon, τέθριππον) and two-horse (synoris, συνωρὶς) events. While the drivers, like the horses, received just a woollen band tied around their heads in return for risking life and limb, a skilled charioteer did become highly sought after and well rewarded. Antikeris of Cyrene is said to have shown his driving skills to Plato by driving round and round the Hippodrome at full speed without ever leaving his own tyre marks. While Karrotos, charioteer for the King of Cyrene, is purported to have raced against 40 others, all of whom crashed, leaving him unscathed to collect his prize. Strabo wrote, “ … the glory of the temple persisted … on account both of the festal assembly and of the Olympian Games, in which the prize was a crown and which were regarded as sacred, the greatest games in the world. The temple was adorned by its numerous offerings, which were dedicated there from all parts of Greece.”

Above is the chariot of Saturn. Who can outrun this scythe, eating his own children, the final station of the ascent before the Abyss, where the lies that lie in wait seek to trick and ensnare the spiritual athlete from victory?

Taraxippos Olympios at Olympia. Pausanias describes the site:
The racecourse [of Olympia] has one side longer than the other, and on the longer side, which is a bank, there stands, at the passage through the bank, Taraxippos, the terror of the horses. It is in the shape of a round altar and there the horses are seized by a strong and sudden fear for no apparent reason, and from the fear comes a disturbance. The chariots generally crash, and the charioteers are injured. Therefore, the drivers offer sacrifices and pray to Taraxippos to be propitious to them.

Some say the Olympic Games were established by Heracles (Hercules), who brought a sacred olive tree to Olympia. Pindar wrote that Heracles established an athletic festival to honor his father, Zeus, after he had completed his labors. The celebration of the games were a time the Olympic truce (ekecheiría) was announced so that athletes and religious pilgrims could travel from their cities to the games in safety. The prizes for the victors were olive leaf wreaths or crowns. The Olympic games were held to be one of the two central rituals in ancient Greece, the other being the much older religious festival, the Eleusinian Mysteries.

“in the conversation he had with Socrates concerning philosophy, there related, says, that a philosopher is like a general combatant in the Games. And he himself was in fact a general combatant in philosophy. For he had cultivated physics, and ethics; moreover, mathematics, and all the common learning of those times : and in all the arts he was experienced.” Gorgias he also argues that the ordered body is a good, even necessary thing. The body requires training, but with the greater goal of benefitting the soul. Gymnastic is good for the body, but “not that the good body by any bodily excellence improves the soul, but, on the contrary, that the good soul, by her own excellence, improves the body as far as this may be possible.” Plato was a skilled wrestler who competed in the Isthmian Games, an ancient Greek athletic event similar to the Olympics. Plato’s nickname was likely derived from his broad shoulders, wrestling style, or and he competed in the Isthmian Games and may have also competed in the Pythian games. Plato wrote, “Yes, I am quite aware that the mere athlete becomes too much of a savage, and that the mere musician is melted and softened beyond what is good for him.” “Yet surely, I said, this ferocity only comes from spirit, which, if rightly educated, would give courage, but, if too much intensified, is liable to become hard and brutal.” The Republic

Some aspects of the Hermetic Grail or Krater:

The warring factions sometimes make a provisional truce, in an attempt to reconstitute a Mystery Tradition. The war begins anew in the interpretation and framing of this new phase. Christianity was such an attempt on warring factions in creating a replacement for the destruction of the Classical Age. Thus, pagan magi, Jewish and Hellenistic/Egyptian mysteries are embedded within these narratives in attempt to gain validation or legitimacy or to assert authority of interpretation. Religions are magical constructs, the priests are sorcerers, and the prayers are spells. These are often spread through compulsory means, such as in Islam or later Crusader Christianity but the origin of this malicious anti-Philosophical spirit is in the cult of the Old Testament that swore violence against everything that came before, and everything outside of itself, the true definition of anti-religion and anti-Tradition. But the Grail is such a Mystery Tradition, with the thin veneer of Christianity. The Grail mythos at its core is ‘pagan’ or rather, Hyperborean and Hermetic in its visionary quest for beholding the Krater, above and below.

This is the cup, the chalice, the horn of the wine of light, the mead, the soma, the elixir of immortality that is only for the elite. Christianity was an attempt to give a numinous new path, one that grafted the entheogenic eucharistic Mass and baptism and immortality of the soul, onto the poison tree of Old Testament (lack of) theology and celestial purpose. The Old Testament was merely a covenant of materialism, granting wealth and progeny and dominance in this world, one that has proven true if one has pattern recognition in the study of power in this world. The exoteric Christianity, substituting initiation with a simple ‘belief’ or ‘faith’ and hoping for ‘grace’ is a negation of the entire previous worldview of a ‘paradise earned.’ This notion of gaining a celestial reward through complete effort was the core of the entire Mysteries, of alchemy, of Sages, Masters, Adepts who dedicate themselves to the Way. This is the spirit of the communism or vulgar democratization of the spiritual path, and what Spengler meant when he said Christian theology is the grandmother of Bolshevism, though the true seed of this is Hebraic worldviews in general.

The fourth Treatise of the Corpus Hermeticum is the Krater, or chaldron (or ‘cauldron’), basin, cup, and ‘mixing bowl’ which are terms associated with the “Holy Grail.” The mixing bowl recalls that wine was so potent from visionary herbs that it had to be diluted, not because of high alcoholic content. This was because of the entheogenic herbs used to make such wine, which is a visionary sacrament, an inner baptism by fire of the power of the vision. Thus, this tractate is fundamental, and its importance cannot be overstated. One has to be elite to behold the vision of the grail, and to be able to accept and absorb these baptismal waters, which are echoes of the Mystery traditions and such practices foreign to the Old Testament and Jewish religion. Therefore, these aspects are overt appropriation of pagan practices as the core of Christianity. This is beyond the scope of this article, but in ‘pagan’ theology baptism was to plunge, to immerse, or to wash; it also signifies, from the Homeric period onward, any rite of immersion in water. It was used especially to purify newborns and is exampled in the Egyptian Greek and into the Nordic texts. These are Scythian and ancient Aryan concepts as well, with grail cults of military and chivalrous orders pre-dating Christianity. See From Scythia to Camelot by C. Scott Littleton

In Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, this notion of the prize of the Grail is spoken repeatedly, for space we confine to this singular quote, “Then Parzival spoke and said, ‘If knighthood with shield and spear can win the prize of this life and Paradise for the soul as well—for knighthood I have always striven, I fought wherever I found a battle, and in such a way that m armed band had the highest prize within its reach. If God is a good judge of fighting, He should summon my name to the Grail so that they come to know me. My hand shall not fail me there in battle. (471,30)

The Beholding of the Vision is the termination of the hylic and pneumatic ego for the psychic, the Nous/Memory-filled reborn soul who now personifies the Seven Hermetic Virtues (as mentioned in tractate XIII of Corpus Hermeticum, Palingenesis (literally rebirth), in plain language they are Gnosis, Ecstasy, ascetism, justice, fellowship and truth. We use different terminology for these virtues in the image below.

How dismal, profaned, and worthless would such a trophy and prize be if all can attain it with no sport or combat. How mundane and scripted, for most in this Globe Theatre are but actors in the human tragedy/comedy: Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more…” How precious is an incarnation to compete for this prize of Philosophy, this trophy of Nous, this Grail vision that summons one like a magent to the company of the blessed. How sacred is this content, this test and quest that is sealed from the vulgar, the unwashed, the haughty and hylic, the vain and ignorant. Yet, there are no confines to Time, and perhaps All will undertake the Great Work in their due order, having been exhausted with incarnations, tired of the snares and false appeals of sensuality and the shallow, superficial freedoms one thinks is attained by certain paths. These are Mysteries as well, that all who breathe and are of woman born may not be ‘human’, they may not have even a trace of the divine and numinous within and are mere actors on the stage, as “merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts…” For the Quest is to transcend lethe and oblivion, to endure beyond the Abyss and the fateful race course of the starry heavens. Those who do not engage this task are to be reborn only in the stupor and forgetfulness as Being decays to Nothingness.

Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII [All the world’s a stage] William Shakespeare

Here is but a brief sketch of the Holy Tournament of the Strangers to the World, the Aristocrats of the Soul, the Noble of Heart. A priceless goal of the wise, the grand trophy of gnosis and Nous, of Memory and the Vision. It is to feast with the Champions of Wisdom, the Immortal, the Individuated, the Arrived and Eternally Becoming. It is the Triathlon of finding the Way in the rubble of this decaying World, to race the winged chariots through the Seven Climes of Creation, to pass through the watery depths of the Abyss unscathed and intact unto the realms of the Eighth and Ninth.

“May God reunite us, us and you, in the Paradise among the stars of Heaven.“