We in our modern society tend to think of time as a straight line, always progressing forward. This leads us to believe that we are the most advanced society the world has ever known. But is this so? Ancient civilizations such as Egypt seem to have been at their most advanced from the beginning and experienced a slow degradation over time while megalithic constructions the world over display amazing feats of construction and alignment that architects and engineers would think impossible to recreate today. To add to this, it seems the older they are the more advanced their construction techniques were. Sites such as Gobleki Tepe and Baalbek show many stages of construction over vast amounts of time with the most advanced being the oldest and a clear degradation of building techniques over time. Myths such as Atlantis and Lemuria speak of a Golden Age when god-like beings roamed the Earth before meeting a catastrophic end.
We look at our technological wonders such as cars, aircraft and computers and think we are the most advanced society to have ever lived. Yet at the same time we are polluting our land, water and air and our forests are disappearing at alarming rates. Cancer, autism and sociopathy are at epidemic proportions when they were virtually unheard of in so-called "simpler" times. The materialist reductionism people think is science today has led to an unsustainable consumerist culture that is completely based on constant expansion while the world has never seemed smaller.
Yet, just when it seems things can't get any worse, the most recent discoveries in science seem to indicate that the matter we thought was king is but an illusion created by that great mystery called consciousness that we seem to have forgotten the true nature of. Once again people seem to be slowly but surely taking a fresh look at the ancient wisdom we once regarded as the superstitious reasoning of ignorant savages. When looked at in the light of our most cutting edge discoveries it seems that we are just now beginning to start even contemplating the ideas that ruled the minds of our most ancient ancestors.
What do these ancestors have to say about this thing that we call time? From the Celts to the Egyptians to the Mayans to the Vedas of ancient India, ancient cultures believed that time is not the never ending straight arrow that our society thinks it is but a series of cycles within cycles, wheels within wheels. The 24 hour cycle of the day and the night gives way to the monthly cycle of the moon. Each planet has it's cycle through the heavens and even the fixed stars, the heavens themselves, have their own cycle through the sky. This cycle takes over 26000 years to complete and yet the ancients had charted and measured this apparently through the whole cycle at least once. Still, our modern scholars tell us that civilization began just a few thousand years ago.
These cycles have effects and not just in the material plane. Policemen and emergency workers are well aware that there is a much larger number of arrests and emergency calls during the full moon each month and during the darkest parts of the year. These cycles have a profound effect on consciousness. Even our known and accepted history shows that civilizations rise and fall in regular cycles. The Hermetic principle of rhythm states that everything happens in cycles of rising and falling and this is some of the most ancient wisdom known to man. When looked at from the Kabbalistic view that we are all pure consciousness descending into matter before returning to the source that is pure consciousness this all starts making sense.
A close look will show that not only did we come as deep into materialism as is possible before recently beginning the long journey back out but this was predicted by everything from the Mayan calendar to the Persian/Babylonian/Greek astrological system to the Egyptians to the Vedic Indian's yuga cycle. It is darkest just before the dawn and all of these traditions predicted that we would be dawning on a new era of thinking right about now.
It is important to note that at this time there will still be more people stumbling around in the dark of materialism than those that have started to see the light that is just peaking over the horizon. However, this does not mean that we need limit ourselves. The darkest of nights only make the stars shine brighter and at this point the light is plain to see so long as you are looking in the right direction. Til next time, Happy steeming!