1. Wherefore, O JEHOVAH, stand you afar off? Wherefore hide you yourself in times of distress?
2. Through the pride of the wicked the poor is grievously anguished; they are taken in the devices that they have contrived.
3. For the wicked boasts over his soul's desire, and the covetous blesses himself therein.
4. The wicked, in his pride, despises JEHOVAH, saying, He will not make inquiry. All his thoughts are, There is no GOD.
5. His ways are crooked at all times: your judgements, being high, are not before him: as for all his adversaries, he puffs at them.
6. He says in his heart, I shall not be moved to generation and generation; I who am not in calamity.
7. His mouth is full of cursing, and deceits, and fraud: under his tongue are mischief and iniquity.
8. He sits in the lurking places of the enclosures: in his hiding-places does he slay the innocent: his eyes watch for the helpless.
9. He lies in wait in his hiding-place like a lion in his covert: he lies in wait to make prey of the poor. He makes prey of the poor by drawing him into his net.
10. He crouches, he stoops down, and the helpless fall into his toils.
11. He says in his heart, GOD has forgotten: he hides his face; he will never see it.
12. Arise, JEHOVAH: O GOD, lift up your hand: forget not the poor.
13. Wherefore does the wicked despise GOD? wherefore does he say in his heart. You will not make inquiry?
14. You do see; for you behold mischief and grief, to put it in your hand. To you the helpless commits his cause: you are the helper of the orphan.
15. Break you the arm of the wicked and the evil. You shall search for his wickedness; you shall not find it.
16. JEHOVAH is king for ever and ever: the nations are perished out of his land.
17. You have heard the desire of the poor, O JEHOVAH; you confirm their heart. You will incline your ear to hear.
18. To judge the orphan and oppressed. Never more shall man expel them out of the land.
Friday, October 1, 2010
ANG PINTO NG PARAISO
"This is the Portal of the amphitheatre of the only true and eternal Wisdom--a narrow one, indeed, but
sufficiently august, and consecrated to Jehovah. To this portal ascent is made by a mystic, indisputably
prologetic, flight of steps, set before it as shown in the picture. It consists of seven theosophic, or, rather,
philosophic steps of the Doctrine of the Faithful Sons. After ascending the steps, the path is along the way of God
the Father, either directly by inspiration or by various mediate means. According to the seven oracular laws
shining at the portal, those who are inspired divinely have the power to enter and with the eyes of the body and of
the mind, of seeing, contemplating and investigating in a Christiano-Kabalistic, divino-magical, physicochemical
manner, the nature of the Wisdom: Goodness, and Power of the Creator; to the end that they die not
sophistically but live theosophically, and that the orthodox philosophers so created may with sincere philosophy
expound the works of the Lord, and worthily praise God who has thus blessed these friend, of God." The above
figure and description constitute one of the most remarkable expositions ever made of the appearance of the Wise
Man's House and the way by which it must be entered.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Friday, September 3, 2010
PSALM 9
To him that presides upon Muth-Labben, a Psalm of David.
1. I will praise JEHOVAH with my whole heart; I will recount all your wonderful works.
2. I will rejoice and exult in you; I will hymn your name, O Most High
3. Because mine enemies are turned backwards; they stumbled and perished at your presence.
4. For you have executed my judgement and my cause; you sat on the throne dispensing justice.
5. You have rebuked the nations, you have destroyed the wicked; their name have you blotted out for ever and ever.
6. The enemy are come to an end, a perpetual desolation; and the cities have you overthrown; the very memory of them has perished.
7. But JEHOVAH shall sit for ever; he has established his throne for judgement:
8. He will judge the world in justice; he will pass sentence on the peoples in equity.
9. JEHOVAH, also, will be a tower of refuge for the weak, a tower of refuge for times of distress.
10. And they that know your name will trust in you; for you have not forsaken them that seek you, O JEHOVAH.
11. Sing to JEHOVAH, that dwells in Zion; declare amongst the peoples the things which he brings to pass.
12. For he searches out deeds of blood: he remembers them: he forgets not the cry of the miserable.
13. Have mercy on me, O JEHOVAH; look at my misery from them that hate me, O you that liftest me up from the gates of death:
14. That I may recount all your praises in the gates of the daughter of Zion, - may exult in your salvation.
15. The nations are sunk in the pit which they made; in the net which they hid is their own foot caught.
16. JEHOVAH is made known: he has executed judgement: in the work of his own hands is the wicked ensnared, Higgaion. Selah.
17. The wicked are turned back into hell; all the nations that forget GOD.
18. For not always shall the needy be forgotten; the expectation of the poor shall not perish for ever more.
19. Arise, JEHOVAH; let not man prevail; let the nations be judged at your presence.
20. Inspire them, O JEHOVAH, with fear: let the nations know themselves to be but men. Selah.
1. I will praise JEHOVAH with my whole heart; I will recount all your wonderful works.
2. I will rejoice and exult in you; I will hymn your name, O Most High
3. Because mine enemies are turned backwards; they stumbled and perished at your presence.
4. For you have executed my judgement and my cause; you sat on the throne dispensing justice.
5. You have rebuked the nations, you have destroyed the wicked; their name have you blotted out for ever and ever.
6. The enemy are come to an end, a perpetual desolation; and the cities have you overthrown; the very memory of them has perished.
7. But JEHOVAH shall sit for ever; he has established his throne for judgement:
8. He will judge the world in justice; he will pass sentence on the peoples in equity.
9. JEHOVAH, also, will be a tower of refuge for the weak, a tower of refuge for times of distress.
10. And they that know your name will trust in you; for you have not forsaken them that seek you, O JEHOVAH.
11. Sing to JEHOVAH, that dwells in Zion; declare amongst the peoples the things which he brings to pass.
12. For he searches out deeds of blood: he remembers them: he forgets not the cry of the miserable.
13. Have mercy on me, O JEHOVAH; look at my misery from them that hate me, O you that liftest me up from the gates of death:
14. That I may recount all your praises in the gates of the daughter of Zion, - may exult in your salvation.
15. The nations are sunk in the pit which they made; in the net which they hid is their own foot caught.
16. JEHOVAH is made known: he has executed judgement: in the work of his own hands is the wicked ensnared, Higgaion. Selah.
17. The wicked are turned back into hell; all the nations that forget GOD.
18. For not always shall the needy be forgotten; the expectation of the poor shall not perish for ever more.
19. Arise, JEHOVAH; let not man prevail; let the nations be judged at your presence.
20. Inspire them, O JEHOVAH, with fear: let the nations know themselves to be but men. Selah.
PHILOSOPHY
PHILOSOPHY is the science of estimating values. The superiority of any state or substance over
another is determined by philosophy. By assigning a position of primary importance to what remains
when all that is secondary has been removed, philosophy thus becomes the true index of priority or
emphasis in the realm of speculative thought. The mission of philosophy a priori is to establish the
relation of manifested things to their invisible ultimate cause or nature.
"Philosophy," writes Sir William Hamilton, "has been defined [as]: The science of things divine and
human, and of the causes in which they are contained [Cicero]; The science of effects by their causes
[Hobbes]; The science of sufficient reasons [Leibnitz]; The science of things possible, inasmuch as they
are possible [Wolf]; The science of things evidently deduced from first principles [Descartes]; The
science of truths, sensible and abstract [de Condillac]; The application of reason to its legitimate objects
[Tennemann]; The science of the relations of all knowledge to the necessary ends of human reason
[Kant];The science of the original form of the ego or mental self [Krug]; The science of sciences
[Fichte]; The science of the absolute [von Schelling]; The science of the absolute indifference of the
ideal and real [von Schelling]--or, The identity of identity and non-identity [Hegel]." (See Lectures on
Metaphysics and Logic.)
The six headings under which the disciplines of philosophy are commonly classified are: metaphysics,
which deals with such abstract subjects as cosmology, theology, and the nature of being; logic, which
deals with the laws governing rational thinking, or, as it has been called, "the doctrine of fallacies";
ethics, which is the science of morality, individual responsibility, and character--concerned chiefly with
an effort to determine the nature of good; psychology, which is devoted to investigation and
classification of those forms of phenomena referable to a mental origin; epistemology, which is the
science concerned primarily with the nature of knowledge itself and the question of whether it may exist
in an absolute form; and æsthetics, which is the science of the nature of and the reactions awakened by
the beautiful, the harmonious, the elegant, and the noble.
Plato regarded philosophy as the greatest good ever imparted by Divinity to man. In the twentieth
century, however, it has become a ponderous and complicated structure of arbitrary and irreconcilable
notions--yet each substantiated by almost incontestible logic. The lofty theorems of the old Academy
which Iamblichus likened to the nectar and ambrosia of the gods have been so adulterated by opinion--
which Heraclitus declared to be a falling sickness of the mind--that the heavenly mead would now be
quite unrecognizable to this great Neo-Platonist. Convincing evidence of the increasing superficiality of
modern scientific and philosophic thought is its persistent drift towards materialism. When the great
astronomer Laplace was asked by Napoleon why he had not mentioned God in his Traité de la
Mécanique Céleste, the mathematician naively replied: "Sire, I had no need for that hypothesis!"
In his treatise on Atheism, Sir Francis Bacon tersely summarizes the situation thus: "A little philosophy
inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." The
Metaphysics of Aristotle opens with these words: "All men naturally desire to know." To satisfy this
common urge the unfolding human intellect has explored the extremities of imaginable space without
and the extremities of imaginable self within, seeking to estimate the relationship between the one and
the all; the effect and the cause; Nature and the groundwork of Nature; the mind and the source of the
mind; the spirit and the substance of the spirit; the illusion and the reality.
An ancient philosopher once said: "He who has not even a knowledge of common things is a brute
among men. He who has an accurate knowledge of human concerns alone is a man among brutes. But he
who knows all that can be known by intellectual energy, is a God among men." Man's status in the
natural world is determined, therefore, by the quality of his thinking. He whose mind is enslaved to his
bestial instincts is philosophically not superior to the brute-, he whose rational faculties ponder human
affairs is a man; and he whose intellect is elevated to the consideration of divine realities is already a
demigod, for his being partakes of the luminosity with which his reason has brought him into proximity.
In his encomium of "the science of sciences" Cicero is led to exclaim: "O philosophy, life's guide! O
searcher--out of virtue and expeller of vices! What could we and every age of men have been without
thee? Thou hast produced cities; thou hast called men scattered about into the social enjoyment of life."
In this age the word philosophy has little meaning unless accompanied by some other qualifying term.
The body of philosophy has been broken up into numerous isms more or less antagonistic, which have
become so concerned with the effort to disprove each other's fallacies that the sublimer issues of divine
order and human destiny have suffered deplorable neglect. The ideal function of philosophy is to serve
as the stabilizing influence in human thought. By virtue of its intrinsic nature it should prevent man from
ever establishing unreasonable codes of life. Philosophers themselves, however, have frustrated the ends
of philosophy by exceeding in their woolgathering those untrained minds whom they are supposed to
lead in the straight and narrow path of rational thinking. To list and classify any but the more important
of the now recognized schools of philosophy is beyond the space limitations of this volume. The vast
area of speculation covered by philosophy will be appreciated best after a brief consideration of a few of
the outstanding systems of philosophic discipline which have swayed the world of thought during the
last twenty-six centuries. The Greek school of philosophy had its inception with the seven immortalized
thinkers upon whom was first conferred the appellation of Sophos, "the wise." According to Diogenes
Laertius, these were Thales, Solon, Chilon, Pittacus, Bias, Cleobulus, and Periander. Water was
conceived by Thales to be the primal principle or element, upon which the earth floated like a ship, and
earthquakes were the result of disturbances in this universal sea. Since Thales was an Ionian, the school
perpetuating his tenets became known as the Ionic. He died in 546 B.C., and was succeeded by
Anaximander, who in turn was followed by Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, and Archelaus, with whom the
Ionic school ended. Anaximander, differing from his master Thales, declared measureless and
indefinable infinity to be the principle from which all things were generated. Anaximenes asserted air to
be the first element of the universe; that souls and even the Deity itself were composed of it.
Anaxagoras (whose doctrine savors of atomism) held God to be an infinite self-moving mind; that this
divine infinite Mind.
another is determined by philosophy. By assigning a position of primary importance to what remains
when all that is secondary has been removed, philosophy thus becomes the true index of priority or
emphasis in the realm of speculative thought. The mission of philosophy a priori is to establish the
relation of manifested things to their invisible ultimate cause or nature.
"Philosophy," writes Sir William Hamilton, "has been defined [as]: The science of things divine and
human, and of the causes in which they are contained [Cicero]; The science of effects by their causes
[Hobbes]; The science of sufficient reasons [Leibnitz]; The science of things possible, inasmuch as they
are possible [Wolf]; The science of things evidently deduced from first principles [Descartes]; The
science of truths, sensible and abstract [de Condillac]; The application of reason to its legitimate objects
[Tennemann]; The science of the relations of all knowledge to the necessary ends of human reason
[Kant];The science of the original form of the ego or mental self [Krug]; The science of sciences
[Fichte]; The science of the absolute [von Schelling]; The science of the absolute indifference of the
ideal and real [von Schelling]--or, The identity of identity and non-identity [Hegel]." (See Lectures on
Metaphysics and Logic.)
The six headings under which the disciplines of philosophy are commonly classified are: metaphysics,
which deals with such abstract subjects as cosmology, theology, and the nature of being; logic, which
deals with the laws governing rational thinking, or, as it has been called, "the doctrine of fallacies";
ethics, which is the science of morality, individual responsibility, and character--concerned chiefly with
an effort to determine the nature of good; psychology, which is devoted to investigation and
classification of those forms of phenomena referable to a mental origin; epistemology, which is the
science concerned primarily with the nature of knowledge itself and the question of whether it may exist
in an absolute form; and æsthetics, which is the science of the nature of and the reactions awakened by
the beautiful, the harmonious, the elegant, and the noble.
Plato regarded philosophy as the greatest good ever imparted by Divinity to man. In the twentieth
century, however, it has become a ponderous and complicated structure of arbitrary and irreconcilable
notions--yet each substantiated by almost incontestible logic. The lofty theorems of the old Academy
which Iamblichus likened to the nectar and ambrosia of the gods have been so adulterated by opinion--
which Heraclitus declared to be a falling sickness of the mind--that the heavenly mead would now be
quite unrecognizable to this great Neo-Platonist. Convincing evidence of the increasing superficiality of
modern scientific and philosophic thought is its persistent drift towards materialism. When the great
astronomer Laplace was asked by Napoleon why he had not mentioned God in his Traité de la
Mécanique Céleste, the mathematician naively replied: "Sire, I had no need for that hypothesis!"
In his treatise on Atheism, Sir Francis Bacon tersely summarizes the situation thus: "A little philosophy
inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." The
Metaphysics of Aristotle opens with these words: "All men naturally desire to know." To satisfy this
common urge the unfolding human intellect has explored the extremities of imaginable space without
and the extremities of imaginable self within, seeking to estimate the relationship between the one and
the all; the effect and the cause; Nature and the groundwork of Nature; the mind and the source of the
mind; the spirit and the substance of the spirit; the illusion and the reality.
An ancient philosopher once said: "He who has not even a knowledge of common things is a brute
among men. He who has an accurate knowledge of human concerns alone is a man among brutes. But he
who knows all that can be known by intellectual energy, is a God among men." Man's status in the
natural world is determined, therefore, by the quality of his thinking. He whose mind is enslaved to his
bestial instincts is philosophically not superior to the brute-, he whose rational faculties ponder human
affairs is a man; and he whose intellect is elevated to the consideration of divine realities is already a
demigod, for his being partakes of the luminosity with which his reason has brought him into proximity.
In his encomium of "the science of sciences" Cicero is led to exclaim: "O philosophy, life's guide! O
searcher--out of virtue and expeller of vices! What could we and every age of men have been without
thee? Thou hast produced cities; thou hast called men scattered about into the social enjoyment of life."
In this age the word philosophy has little meaning unless accompanied by some other qualifying term.
The body of philosophy has been broken up into numerous isms more or less antagonistic, which have
become so concerned with the effort to disprove each other's fallacies that the sublimer issues of divine
order and human destiny have suffered deplorable neglect. The ideal function of philosophy is to serve
as the stabilizing influence in human thought. By virtue of its intrinsic nature it should prevent man from
ever establishing unreasonable codes of life. Philosophers themselves, however, have frustrated the ends
of philosophy by exceeding in their woolgathering those untrained minds whom they are supposed to
lead in the straight and narrow path of rational thinking. To list and classify any but the more important
of the now recognized schools of philosophy is beyond the space limitations of this volume. The vast
area of speculation covered by philosophy will be appreciated best after a brief consideration of a few of
the outstanding systems of philosophic discipline which have swayed the world of thought during the
last twenty-six centuries. The Greek school of philosophy had its inception with the seven immortalized
thinkers upon whom was first conferred the appellation of Sophos, "the wise." According to Diogenes
Laertius, these were Thales, Solon, Chilon, Pittacus, Bias, Cleobulus, and Periander. Water was
conceived by Thales to be the primal principle or element, upon which the earth floated like a ship, and
earthquakes were the result of disturbances in this universal sea. Since Thales was an Ionian, the school
perpetuating his tenets became known as the Ionic. He died in 546 B.C., and was succeeded by
Anaximander, who in turn was followed by Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, and Archelaus, with whom the
Ionic school ended. Anaximander, differing from his master Thales, declared measureless and
indefinable infinity to be the principle from which all things were generated. Anaximenes asserted air to
be the first element of the universe; that souls and even the Deity itself were composed of it.
Anaxagoras (whose doctrine savors of atomism) held God to be an infinite self-moving mind; that this
divine infinite Mind.
Monday, August 2, 2010
PSALM 8
To him that presides upon the Gittith, a Psalm of David,
1. JEHOVAH our LORD, how excellent is your name in all the earth, who have set your glory above the heavens!
2. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings have you founded strength, because of your adversaries; to still the enemy and the self-avenger.
3. When I behold your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have prepared;
4. What is man, that you are mindful of him? and the son of man, that you regard him?
5. Yet have you made him a little less than GOD; and with glory and honour have you crowned him.
6. You have made him to have dominion over the works of your hands: you have put all things under his feet;
7. The flock and oxen, all of them; and also the beasts of the field;
8. The bird of the heavens, and the fishes of the sea; whatever traverses the paths of the sea.
9. JEHOVAH our LORD, how excellent is your name in all the earth!
The Internal Sense
Celebration of the FATHER by the LORD: that he would consider his innocence, and assist him against the hells, verses 1, 2, 3, 9. The LORD'S state of humiliation is described, verses 4, 5; his state of glorification described, verses 6, 7, 8.
Exposition
Verse 2. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings have you founded strength. Sucklings and they who give suck are occasionally mentioned in the Word, and by them is signified the first state of infants, which state is evidently a state of innocence: for man, as soon as he is born, is introduced into a state of innocence, that that state may be a plane for all his other states, and the inmost in them, which state is signified in the Word by a suckling; next into a state of the affection of celestial good, that is, of love towards parents, which with them is in the place of love to the LORD, which state is signified by an infant; afterwards, into a state of the affection of spiritual good, or of mutual love, that is, of charity towards those who are in a like state, which state is signified by childhood; as he grows older, into a state of the affection of truth, which state is signified by that of young men; but the subsequent states by men, and at length by old men. This last state, which is signified by old men, is a state of wisdom in which is the innocence of infancy; thus the first state and the last are united, and man, when old, as again an infant, but a wise one, is introduced into the LORD'S kingdom. That a suckling, in the Word, signifies innocence, is also evident from David: "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings have you founded strength;" (Psalm 8:2, Matt 21:16) where babes denote celestial love, sucklings denote innocence. So in Jeremiah: "Wherefore commit you this great evil against your souls, to cut off from you man and woman, babe and suckling, out of the midst of Judah, to leave you nonefor remains?" (Jer 44:7) where the babe and suckling in like manner denote celestial love and its innocence, and when these no longer exist, there are no longer any remains, that is, no longer any good and truth remaining stored up in the internal man from the LORD; for all goods and truths perish with innocence, innocence being immediately from the Divine Being or principle Himself, thus being the very essential thing in them. AC 3183.
But it is to be noted, that the innocence of sucklings, of infants, and of children, is merely external, and that internal innocence does not exist with man, until he is born anew, that is, is as it were anew made a suckling, an infant, and a child.
2. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings have you founded strength, because of your adversaries; to still the enemy and the self-avenger.
3. When I behold your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have prepared;
4. What is man, that you are mindful of him? and the son of man, that you regard him?
5. Yet have you made him a little less than GOD; and with glory and honour have you crowned him.
6. You have made him to have dominion over the works of your hands: you have put all things under his feet;
7. The flock and oxen, all of them; and also the beasts of the field;
8. The bird of the heavens, and the fishes of the sea; whatever traverses the paths of the sea.
9. JEHOVAH our LORD, how excellent is your name in all the earth!
The Internal Sense
Celebration of the FATHER by the LORD: that he would consider his innocence, and assist him against the hells, verses 1, 2, 3, 9. The LORD'S state of humiliation is described, verses 4, 5; his state of glorification described, verses 6, 7, 8.
Exposition
Verse 2. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings have you founded strength. Sucklings and they who give suck are occasionally mentioned in the Word, and by them is signified the first state of infants, which state is evidently a state of innocence: for man, as soon as he is born, is introduced into a state of innocence, that that state may be a plane for all his other states, and the inmost in them, which state is signified in the Word by a suckling; next into a state of the affection of celestial good, that is, of love towards parents, which with them is in the place of love to the LORD, which state is signified by an infant; afterwards, into a state of the affection of spiritual good, or of mutual love, that is, of charity towards those who are in a like state, which state is signified by childhood; as he grows older, into a state of the affection of truth, which state is signified by that of young men; but the subsequent states by men, and at length by old men. This last state, which is signified by old men, is a state of wisdom in which is the innocence of infancy; thus the first state and the last are united, and man, when old, as again an infant, but a wise one, is introduced into the LORD'S kingdom. That a suckling, in the Word, signifies innocence, is also evident from David: "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings have you founded strength;" (Psalm 8:2, Matt 21:16) where babes denote celestial love, sucklings denote innocence. So in Jeremiah: "Wherefore commit you this great evil against your souls, to cut off from you man and woman, babe and suckling, out of the midst of Judah, to leave you nonefor remains?" (Jer 44:7) where the babe and suckling in like manner denote celestial love and its innocence, and when these no longer exist, there are no longer any remains, that is, no longer any good and truth remaining stored up in the internal man from the LORD; for all goods and truths perish with innocence, innocence being immediately from the Divine Being or principle Himself, thus being the very essential thing in them. AC 3183.
But it is to be noted, that the innocence of sucklings, of infants, and of children, is merely external, and that internal innocence does not exist with man, until he is born anew, that is, is as it were anew made a suckling, an infant, and a child.
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