Cosmic Culture
Cosmic Culture
A Redefinition of a Rosicrucian Ideal
Toward a Universal View
From the first Rosicrucian text (Fama Fraternitatis): (using parts of paragraph 2 and 3 out of order to illustrate an idea clearly)
Laughter, Mockery and malicious talk are on the increase, and even the learned are so full of pride and ambition that they do not wish to come together and out of everything that God in our age has so richly revealed to us, create a book of nature or a perfect development of all the arts [… ] which have become debased and imperfect, so that finally Man might understand his true nobility and splendor, in what sense he is a microcosm, and how far his art extends into nature.
From a Rosicrucian website:
“The Rosicrucians are a community of philosophers who study and practice the Natural Laws governing the Universe.”
The Rosicrucian Order, AMORC is part of an ancient primordial tradition that "... seeks to establish a fundamental origin of religious belief in all authentic religious teachings, adhering to the principle that universal truths are a cross-cultural phenomenon and transcendent of their respective traditions, mythologies, and religious beliefs."
Antoine Faivre and Karen-Claire Voss, Western Esotericism and the Science of Religions, in Numen, Vol. 42 (E. J. Brill, Leiden 1995) 56
The first quote identifies a specific sort of spiritual ideal which comes from our understanding of Nature, and the impetus to have a real sense of our own measure in our works and efforts. Also the Fama identifies cultural cohesion and the ideal of working as a team as a way to create a better world--where petty debate is no longer an acceptable career choice in light of our inherited cultural treasury and its best case scenario of developing a shared future. I take this to mean in a very real way that if we accept the larger mission of developing a more Cosmic Culture there is plenty of harder and more important work to be done than taking sides on current controversial cultural topics.
The second quote is in some ways an indictment of any ideal which would be culturally prejudiced. Cultural relativism would not necessarily mean a love lost for our own cultural heritage. Other cultures and times and peoples contributed greatly to our own traditions of science and art. This is an embrace in the form of words for the perennial wisdom--the wisdom of all our ancestors of all cultures before our own. Even Newton was famous for saying that “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” He speaks of the countless geometers, astronomers, mathematicians and polymaths before him which laid the groundwork for his own explorations in math, science and the divine. In any case, it is important to state that in order for old knowledge to be useful we must be able to clearly assess the limits and strengths of any past approach to a topic, based on its historical setting and its own axioms or assumptions without needing to pretend we are an authority on any particular matter.
Another key point to highlight here is that it is clearly a rosicrucian ideal to serve a cause greater than any single religious, scientific or moral view. This is a cultural ideal of developing a common cultural source or center in as universal of a mind-set as possible. Another way of putting this is to say that it is a very Rosicrucian idea to update our worldview when we update our ideas of the Universe. In many ways this is the simplest statement of the project of these writings.
1
Sol - Sun
The Power to Change your Shared World
If you look into the most frightening or benevolent of Occult Orders, the strangest and most dreadful of Covens, the most bizarre and well funded Think Tanks and corporate research organizations you will see a basic model of how cultural perspectives which are diverse have some common threads. All of these aforementioned groups put energy into remolding our culture and empowering themselves for that grand work. Some do it for a big profit, others do it with a view to serving the public need--some do both. A Witch Coven may seem thoroughly unlike this model of creating a better world for the good of others and ourselves but those we have called witches apply to the haven of wild Nature to embrace their worldview, and do praise and court nature in its diverse and strange forms for their works. This is to say those strange witches have developed cures, tinctures and practices that better the lots of human, animal and plant alike and so our shared heritage is enriched by such works. Groups that seek their own empowerment to the exclusion of others must yet make a world or seek to destroy it--which is somewhat the same thing to a degree. Seek to recreate the world and some of it must come to an end.
What this goes to say is that we have many resources at our disposal and so we must start developing our abilities to see beyond our confined cultural nature into the diversity of the music of the world around us.
2
Mercury
Contiguity - Learning
Transparency of Method and Approach, makes you most ready for Development
In mathematics, axioms are starting principles that you accept as truth. You can't prove the truth of those starting principles, but you can prove the truth of other ideas so long as you make certain basic assumptions. In this way it is most helpful to be able to state clearly your assumptions and ideas, so that these can be modified or updated as needed. Even more so there is a hope that using axioms may help to clarify any discussion or understanding so that at least it is clear that we are on the same page rather than discussing totally exclusive or separate ideas.
Rosicrucianism as a set of axioms
1. Inclusive Cosmic Culture
As regards a spiritual understanding of Cosmic Culture, I like to think of this in terms of the old Faerie Faith. The reason is because ideas of the Fae incorporate a concept of all life, whether born or unborn, in the widest possible sense of the term. We have in our own human DNA, the genes of a wide variety of other species and eras. So it is quite obvious that even to define ourselves we require a very diverse group of other living organisms--whether extinct or currently inhabiting the earth. This also helps to express the idea of a very local and defined region of space and time and how deeply life is ingrained within other species, masses and lifeforms.
2. A sense of Measure derived from the Cosmic Order
Stars and planets are used as the measuring stick for local time and space. This is also to say that our ideas of measure apply to all shapes and sizes--from the stars to our own back door.
This is the cross section of the Age of Reason with the Age of Spiritualism, or to put it another way, this is the drive to integrate in the widest sense everything we have culturally with everything we can conceive of cosmically… It is the last look into the abyss before we die… A kind of challenge to uphold a wider, more inclusive view of life.
It is the challenge to integrate science with the strangest, most diverse forms of experience and especially with the mythopoetic mode of cultural creativity.
The realities of cultural processing mean that en masse we will be continually behind in the prospective cosmic harmony with all that has been experienced and reasoned. Cultural modes of expression demand the misleading nature of marketing and advertising to be a part of public consumption and communication, which is a cultural or local limit rather than a cosmic one. Here we are left with catch phrases which are imbued with meaning and doomed to be incomplete in the true form of food for the living in the form of the re-appropriated dead. To become streamlined and convenient for life as a form of sustenance, what whole truth existed as the source of food and sustenance must now be broken down to basic bits and what a body needs.
So let us not whine about how far a culture is behind our own inquiries, as it is simply a natural fact of cultural processing in a heavily populated area.
3
Venus
A Culture More than Human
If we were to invent a way for all people and all species of life to communicate with one another as though we were caught in a fairy tale that with much work and effort has come true, what would life on earth be like? If we were to develop a way forward into the millenia for all life on earth to have a role in the governance of the lands we all share, I think it is possible all our ideas of intelligence, language, friendship, leadership and many others would be severely challenged and transformed to arrive at such a state of civilization. Yet an ideal which reflects a need to understand the limits and habits of human thinking as opposed to a more universal biological mindset is something I believe would warrant some effort if there is a desire to see the “all-too-human” limits of our cultural efforts.
It is certainly true that we have given many of our own kind charities of food, drink, technology, and many years of education and medical assistance. Yet what charities or learning have we provided to other species in light of their own nature that is anything other than subjugation and an arrogance that places our own species at the pinnacle of creation? How unimaginative, partisan, bigotted, and selfish have we been in our assumptions that mankind is the ruler of earth and the chosen one of God? How ready are we even in our most holy books and proclamations to claim a status as the chosen ones of a God that rules all creation? It is as though the development of our human writing systems and the building of human cities is supposed to make us the chosen ones and more important than other species. To those of this mindset it is perhaps impertinent to ask how we have used our human culture to better the world for other species?
Has the development of metallurgy done more harm than good to our natural world? Mankind has surely developed metallurgy more for military dominance and greed than for some truly universal benefit to our world. For the forests of the world have been systematically burned and cut down to make the fires of the forge for hundreds if not thousands of years, whether for iron, copper, bronze or steel. Even now we praise a cultural model which is willing to lay waste to the world in favor of the American Dream, for free market capitalism is precisely that in so far as it has no conception of the value of resources and goods beyond what a market can sell them for. What is the impact of our farming techniques on the oceans, rivers and habitats of other species? These self same species we neglect are what supports us and makes our lives possible, and yet we accord no importance to the impact our markets, and market shares have on the greater world around us-- for such truly important concerns have no relevance to the value we give to our goods, resources and utilities as they are currently defined.
Even in our religion, or what is supposed to be our humblest and most spiritual vision of the cosmos, even in our religion, mankind is often more concerned about who the savior is and surrendering to that being than with providing resources and help. It is not very different from a corporation that will provide you with a modicum of short term free assistance so long as you give your entire life and soul to their cause. For even these supposedly highly moral people are really not far from highly brainwashed and indoctrinated soldiers of their Church, which is sure to send them on such missions all over the world. To be sure, a benevolent hand has graced the world via such missions of the Christian churches. Human lives have certainly been saved and cared for where they might not have been without such help.
Yet the missions require something in return for their help--they require your soul and that you fall in line with the program of the church which says there is only one way to the truth, heaven and happiness: through their God. All others shall be burned in eternal damnation.
Sound like a humble and benevolent cause?
The point here is to start to take a few steps forward in our spiritual ideals. What the monotheistic religions have achieved is a unification of the very diverse human world, both economically and culturally to some degrees. Yet what was brought together by holy wars and humble missions is now aching for a less bloody-minded and polarizing worldview.
So what we have here is something like a first step at a spirituality or a vision of the cosmos without cultural, national, planetary or species-centric bias. For it is clear that if we can bring ourselves to truly look at the Cosmos with fresh eyes, we will see how at this point in history we have achieved the truly unimaginable--we know we are not alone in the cosmos. There are planets around every star you see, in every galaxy and in every direction. We are not the chosen ones of the Cosmos--not the Earth, nor humanity itself: there are many others out there such as we are and such as the Earth is--it is simply hard to see even with our best 21st century technology.
All that will be asked here is this: Make not your religion and savior the damnation of all who disagree with you.
Here what will be traced is a perspective which takes the benefit of our world cultural history towards a cosmic culture.
An Exercise of Cultural Imagination
Imagine a building. It's like a little microcosmos. Little insects, plants of all stripes--whether the most beautiful flower or the most mundane seeming weed--are within its bounds. Animals run the round. The dining tables suit the needs of any old type of living thing… the by laws do the same: harbor and protect all life as no species having dominion over others. The land is not owned by anyone. Yet all who would visit such a place would see clearly the worth and power of it, and see that it needs protection.
What type of place is this for a ruler? How even then could it come to be except if all the ones who accept the burden of upholding this haven for all living things represent an honorary role to think and act for the betterment of all within its borders?
How unruly this task! How difficult this job! Who would accept such an onerous seat at this council?
In some ways this should be called the not so secret order, or the necessarily not secret order of fair folk or The fairly colorful order…
The Not-So-Secret Order would be necessarily a place for open consideration, where the truly titanic task at hand would need all the science, art, experience, and patient attention that we can muster. For how else would you come to create a world in which science would inform us of the shape of the unbiased realities of any given idea, and a culture that would foster and make such things possible to exchange and develop, without the rule of economic propaganda or the distortion of information and evidence according to one’s need to make money for a private corporation or cause which exploits the world for its own ends.
Perhaps it is time to accord a higher status to a new type of corporation. What exists in the world of resources and life forms should be accorded corporate status to whatever degree is necessary to accord them greater rights than a private corporate entity which functions only to rule the economic market. A corporation or a corporate system which upholds the bottom line and its own dominion as the only valuable thing (which can be seen mainly in the privatization of wealth into a few hands) is more reasonably regarded as a stain or disease in our world, and hence a thing to be dissolved and ended. It is no hyperbole in truth: those who work to amass all private wealth and have dominion over all should be put in our prisons rather than on stage or tv.
This is an appeal for a new type of culture for all species of life, and the development of a science and art which can surpass our limitations of species to truly come of age in our awareness of our place in the scheme of things and the diversity and nature of lived experience. This is an appeal to develop the truly common tongue, which is the basis for a truly common culture of all species.
If we are truly so wondrous as humans then let us take the harder step towards tending the world, not only for our own ends, but for the ends of other species and habitats and that which sustains them.
Both common sense and Science would tell us: do not ruin the well for all others for your own temporary dominion. Yet we regularly reward private corporations and industries which have a huge impact on the environment, and encourage others to continue doing the same by supporting them with tax breaks, fame, notoriety and respect.
These are the first 3 parts of a projected 12 part essay which is an examination of Rosicrucianism as a staring point for a definition of a Cosmic Culture.
