The
Esoteric Significance of the Summer and Winter Solstices
The summer solstice
occurs during summer. This is the June solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and
the December solstice in the Southern Hemisphere. Depending on the shift of the
calendar, the summer solstice occurs sometime between June 20 and June 22 in
the Northern Hemisphere and between December 20 and December 23 in the Southern
Hemisphere. The same dates in the opposite hemisphere are referred to as the
winter solstice.
Solstice is derived
from the Latin words sol (Sun) and sistere (to stand still).
Summer Solstice is the
celebration of the birth of the body on earth. It is the time of our spiritual
initiation and change, for a renewed life experiences to attain perfection in
oneness with God.
Ancient
Philosophers
Beginning with
Pythagoras, then Plato, then the neo-platonists, Numenius, Macrobius, Proclus,
and Porphyry, the concept of the immortality of the soul teaching was passed on
to the Greeks from the Egyptians-who observed the unending cycles of nature: in
the heavens, the sun seemed to be reborn each morning and die each night;
spring was a time of birth, growth, and youth; autumn was a time of decline and
old age; in winter plants died and even the sun seemed to fight for its
existence; and the following spring the cycle began anew.
Passed
on to the Greeks
Plato, the Athenian
Philosopher (428-348 B.C.), like his teacher, Socrates was initiated into the
Greater Mysteries at the age of 49. The initiation took place in one of the
subterranean halls of the Great Pyramid in Egypt. Plato was the founder of the Academy, an
institute for philosophical and scientific research just outside of Athens.
“The soul whose inseparable attitude
is life will never admit of life’s opposite, death. Thus the soul is shown to
be immortal and since immortal, indestructible… Do we believe there is such a
thing as’ death? To be sure. And is this anything but the separation of the
soul and body? And being dead is the attainment of this separation when the
soul exists in herself and separate from the body, and the body is parted from
the soul. That is death… Death is merely the separation of the soul and body.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher
and scientist born in the city of Stagira, Chalkidiki, in the north of
Classical Greece. Along with Plato, Aristotle is considered the “Father of
Western Philosophy”, and is known for the Chaldean order of the astrological
principles of the journey of the soul by alighting at each of the planets
spheres descending from Saturn, Jupiter,
Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury and the Moon. With the pure essence of each
planet collected in its downward movement, the soul arrived at the moon where
it waited for the correct moment of the native’s birth where physical
manifestation took place and soul joined with the body.
Masonic
Tracing Board of Entered Apprentice Masons Degree, Summer Solstice
Soul descends from
Heaven by way of Jacobs Ladder allegory through the tropical point cardinal
water Cancer, the Gate of Men. The
canopy of heaven with the hottest time of the year in the Fire Leo Sun combines
the two other luminaries, the Moon ruled by Cancer with cluster stars of the
Pleiades in Taurus and the Blazing Star Sirius properly illustrated by Masonic
Philosophers, a belief emanated from Ancient Egypt passed on to the Greeks and
Romans Philosophers.
Roman Writer Macrobius
Ambrosius Theodosius (390-430 CE) is famous for his classical Seven Books on
Saturnalia. The galaxy crosses the Zodiac in two opposite points, Cancer and
Capricorn, the tropical points in the sun’s course, ordinarily called the Gates
of the Sun. Through these gates, souls
descend to earth and re-ascend to Heaven.
In Cicero’s Dream of Scipio, a discourse on the nature of the cosmos,
the Gate of Men; and the other, the Gate of the Gods. Cancer was the former
because souls descended by it to the earth, and Capricorn the latter, because
by it they re-ascended to their seats of immortality and became Gods.
According to Macrobius,
the soul descended through the spheres of the seven planets as it descends from
the highest heavens to manifest as a physical matter on earth.
When the soul
encounters Saturn’s heaven, the
seventh sphere, it gains the power of reasoning and theorizing.
In the next sphere, the sixth level closer to
earth, the soul alights on Jupiter where
it showed the Saturn’s gift of reason and critical analysis that can be put
into practice so that the soul can direct the earthly body towards success or
spiritual enlightenment.
In the 5th heaven Mars, the soul obtains the
passion, courage and zealous qualities to the soul.
Below Mars, the soul
encounters the Sun in the 4th level,
where it meets glorious light in the purest form and envisages the potential
for its own illumination or enlightenment. It absorbs the Sun’s spirit and
brings with it the soul potential during the lifetime.
In the third heaven Venus, the soul inherits the motion of desires,
beauty, and balance.
At the second level
from earth, Mercury bestows the
power of language and communication in order for it to be capable of
interpreting human feelings and giving expression to its emotions.
When the soul enters
the Moon’ realm the sphere nearest
to Earth, the soul absorbs the Moon’s essence which includes the awareness that
it will soon experience the changes of physical movement, growth, and eventual
decay. The region of the Tropic of Cancer is the gate of man as it absorbs the characteristic
of emotions, caring for the family.
When the soul is drawn
towards the body, it begins to experience a material agitation, matter flowing
into it and likens to the human experience of drinking excessive amounts of
alcohol as Plato’s remarked in the Phaedo.
The
Seven Ages of Man
Moon 0 –
4 years old
Mercury 4 –
14 years old
Venus 14 – 22 years old
Sun 22 – 41 years old
Mars 41 – 56
years old
Jupiter 56 – 68
years old
Saturn 68 –
98 years old
Moon 98 –
102 years old
DIVINE
PURPOSES OF THE TWO SOLSTICES
The Greeks described
the "descent into generation" into re-birth, by the tropical gate of
Cancer and the "ascent to god" of the soul after death, by the
tropical gate of Capricorn, in which the soul ascends into the spiritual ether
of the planetary spheres.
The traditional
symbolism of the gate of god to the north in Capricorn and the gate of men to
the south in Cancer represents the actual physical astronomy of our annual
ascending and descending phases of the tropical zodiac as symbolized by the
winter and summer solstices.
Traditionally, the Gate
of Man was that zodiacal house where the soul, before birth and intended for
incarnation on earth, would descend into the moon sphere waiting for re-birth.
The Gate of the Sun was that zodiacal house wherein the human soul, after
death, would ascend into the planetary spheres beyond the moon sphere, for its
sojourn thru the spiritual worlds, to meet God.
The
Second Degree Masons Tracing Board, the ascending journey of the soul, Winter Solstice
After a lifetime on
earth, the human soul exits thru the gate of the sun in Capricorn and to begin
its journey after death. After its return from the celestial spheres, the human
soul will then reenter the earth sphere for re-birth thru the gate of man in
the sign of Cancer.
The Ancient Wisdom
taught that the soul after death, traveled first, to the successive spheres of
Moon -Mercury-Venus-Sun -Mars –Jupiter
–Saturn on its outward journey.
When
the soul enters the cardinal element water, the sign of Cancer which the ruled
by Moon, it is the descending journey from heaven through the halfway of the ecliptic
from cardinal earth Capricorn ruled by the planet Saturn.
KEYS
OF HEAVEN
Albert
Pike and his book, MORALS AND DOGMA, the
25th degree - KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT summarized the journey of the soul
from heaven to earth
“The ancient Philosophers regarded the
soul of man as having had its origin in Heaven. That was, Macrobius says, a
settled opinion among them all; and they held it to be the only true wisdom,
for the soul, while united with the body, to look ever toward its source, and
strive to return to the place whence it came. Among the fixed stars it dwelt,
until, seduced by the desire of animating a body, it descended to be imprisoned
in matter.
Let us, in order to understand
this old Thought, first follow the soul in its descent. The sphere or Heaven of
the fixed stars was that Holy Region, and those Elysian Fields, that were the
native domicile of souls, and the place to which they re-ascended when they had
recovered their primitive purity and simplicity. From that luminous region the
soul set forth, when it journeyed toward the body; a destination which it did
not reach until it had undergone three degradations, designated by the name of
Deaths; and until it had passed through the several spheres and the elements.
All souls remained in possession
of Heaven and of happiness, so long as they were wise enough to avoid the
contagion of the body and to keep themselves from any contact with matter.
But those who, from that lofty abode,
where they were lapped in eternal light, have looked longingly toward the body,
and toward that which we here below call life, but which is to the soul a real
death; and who have conceived for it a secret desire,–those souls, victims of
their concupiscence, are attracted by degrees toward the inferior regions of
the world, by the mere weight of thought and of that terrestrial desire.
The soul, perfectly incorporeal,
does not at once invest itself with the gross envelope of the body, but little
by little, by successive and insensible alterations, and in proportion as it
removes further and further from the simple and perfect substance in which it
dwelt at first. It first surrounds itself with a body composed of the substance
of the stars; and afterward, as it descends through the several spheres, with
ethereal matter more and grosser, thus by degrees descending to an earthly
body; and its number of degradations or deaths being the same as that of the
spheres which it traverses.
This fiction is also found in
Virgil. “If souls,” says Macrobius, “carried with them into the bodies they occupy all the knowledge which they had
acquired of divine things, during their sojourn in the Heavens, men would not
differ in opinion as to the Deity; but some of them forget more, and some less, of that which they had learned.”
The celestial bodies, Heaven, the
Stars, and the other Divine elements, ever aspire to rise. The soul reaching
the region which mortality inhabits tends toward terrestrial bodies and is
deemed to die. Let no one, says Macrobius, be surprised that we so frequently
speak of the death of this soul, which yet we call immortal. It is neither
annulled nor destroyed by such death: but merely enfeebled for a time; and does
not thereby forfeit its prerogative of immortality; for afterward, freed from
the body, when it has been purified from the vice-stains contracted during that
connection, it is re-established in all its privileges, and returns to the
luminous abode of its immortality.
All this agrees with the doctrine
of Plato, that the soul cannot re-enter into Heaven until the revolutions of
the Universe shall have restored it to its primitive condition, and purified it
from the effects of its contact with the four elements.”
“ Thus, the secret science and mysterious
emblems of initiation were connected with the heavens, the spheres and the
constellations, and this connection must be studied by whomsoever would
understand the ancient mind and be enabled to interpret the allegories and explore
the meaning of the symbols.” …From Morals and Dogma
by Albert Pike.
Presented by:
Frater Gabriel C.
Comia, Jr, VII grade, Pearl of the Orient College, SRICF
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