The Sacred Pine Cone In Man......

1. After the rational soul had been distributed throughout creation and the nature of man, the Bacchic
   Mysteries were instituted for the purpose of disentangling it from the irrational Titanic nature. This
   disentanglement was the process of lifting the soul out of the state of separateness into that of unity. The
   various parts and members of Bacchus were collected from the different corners of the earth. When all
   the rational parts are gathered Bacchus is resurrected.
   The Rites of Dionysos were very similar to those of Bacchus, and by many these two gods are
   considered as one. Statues of Dionysos were carried in the Eleusinian Mysteries, especially the lesser
   degrees. Bacchus, representing the soul of the mundane sphere, was capable of an infinite multiplicity of
   form and designations. Dionysos apparently was his solar aspect.
   The Dionysiac Architects constituted an ancient secret society, in principles and doctrines much like the
   modern Freemasonic Order. They were an organization of builders bound together by their secret
   knowledge of the relationship between the earthly and the divine sciences of architectonics. They were
   supposedly employed by King Solomon in the building of his Temple, although they were not Jews, nor
   did they worship the God of the Jews, being followers of Bacchus and Dionysos. The Dionysiac
   Architects erected many of the great monuments of antiquity. They possessed a secret language and a
   system of marking their stones. They had annual convocations and sacred feasts. The exact nature of
   their doctrines is unknown. It is believed that CHiram Abiff was an initiate of this society.

   

   
   

   In an old manuscript appears the statement that the Freemasonic Order was formed by alchemists and Hermetic philosophers who had banded themselves together to protect their secrets against the infamous methods used by avaricious persons to wring from them the secret of gold-making. The fact that the Hiramic legend contains an alchemical formula gives credence to this story. Thus the building of Solomon's Temple represents the consummation of the magnum opus, which cannot be realized without the assistance of CHiram, the Universal Agent. The Masonic Mysteries teach the initiate how to prepare within his own soul a miraculous powder of projection by which it is possible for him to transmute the base lump of human ignorance, perversion, and discord into an ingot of spiritual and philosophic gold.

   Sufficient similarity exists between the Masonic CHiram and the Kundalini of Hindu mysticism to warrant the assumption that CHiram may be considered a symbol also of the Spirit Fire moving through the sixth ventricle of the spinal column. The exact science of human regeneration is the Lost Key of Masonry, for when the Spirit Fire is lifted up through the thirty-three degrees, or segments of the spinal column, and enters into the domed chamber of the human skull, it finally passes into the pituitary body (Isis), where it invokes Ra (the pineal gland) and demands the Sacred Name. Operative Masonry, in the fullest meaning of that term, signifies the process by which the Eye of Horus is opened. E. A. Wallis Budge has noted that in some of the papyri illustrating the entrance of the souls of the dead into the judgment hall of Osiris the deceased person has a pine cone attached to the crown of his head. The Greek mystics also carried a symbolic staff, the upper end being in the form of a pine cone, which was called the thyrsus of Bacchus. In the human brain there is a tiny gland called the pineal body, which is the sacred eye of the ancients, and corresponds to the third eye of the Cyclops. Little is known concerning the function of the pineal body, which Descartes suggested (more wisely than he knew) might be the abode of the spirit of man. As its name signifies, the pineal gland is the sacred pine cone in man--the eye single, which cannot be opened until CHiram (the Spirit Fire) is raised through the sacred seals which are called the Seven Churches in Asia.

   

   
   

   As applied to Masonry, the three sunbursts represent the gates of the temple at which CHiram was struck, there being no gate in the north because the sun never shines from the northern angle of the heavens. The north is the symbol of the physical because of its relation to ice (crystallized water) and to the body (crystallized spirit). In man the light shines toward the north but never from it, because the body has no light of its own but shines with the reflected glory of the divine life-particles concealed within physical substance. For this reason the moon is accepted as the symbol of man's physical nature. CHiram is the mysterious fiery, airy water which must be raised through the three grand centers symbolized by the ladder with three rungs and the sunburst flowers mentioned in the description of the Hindu painting. It must also pass upward by means of the ladder of seven rungs-the seven plexuses proximate to the spine. The nine segments of the sacrum and coccyx are pierced by ten foramina, through which pass the roots of the Tree of Life. Nine is the sacred number of man, and in the symbolism of the sacrum and coccyx a great mystery is concealed. That part of the body from the kidneys downward was termed by the early Qabbalists the Land of Egypt into which the children of Israel were taken during the captivity. Out of Egypt, Moses (the illuminated mind, as his name implies) led the tribes of Israel (the twelve faculties) by raising the brazen serpent in the wilderness upon the symbol of the Tau cross. Not only CHiram but the god-men of nearly every pagan Mystery ritual are personifications of the Spirit Fire in the human spinal cord.