Welcome back to this journey through The Kolbrin.
Well, we’ve passed through the last of The Book of Gleanings and start, now, on the next part of The Kolbrin, entitled The Book of Scrolls. Apparently The Book of Scrolls was formerly called The Book of Books. Or The Lesser Book of the Sons of Fire and/or The Third Book of the Bronze Book. It’s all very confusing, but don’t worry, because the compilers of The Kolbrin obviously felt the same way as, before they embarked on the chapters proper, they wrote that The Book of Scrolls was: ‘Compiled from remaining portions of a much damaged part of The Bronzebook and rewritten in our tongue and retold to our understanding according to present usage’. So, there you go.
The first chapter is called The Sacred Registers – Part I and it starts off with the bangingly portentous statement that ‘Herein are recorded sacred things which should never be written’ – and if that doesn’t whet your appetite for things esoteric, I don’t know what will. After that cracking opening salvo, though, it becomes immediately apparent that this first chapter is no more nor less than a kind of funerary oration, an exhortation that a recently deceased member of what sounds like a rather enlightened society be accepted into a shining and glorious afterlife in what is, essentially, a rite of passage. The whole thing has a distinctly Egyptian flavour, but there are one or two little statements that imply the society to which the departed one belongs is no longer located in that ancient land but has upped sticks and moved on elsewhere. So, then, let’s take a look . . .
After giving us flawed human memory and distorted transmission as the reasons why these ‘sacred things which should never be written’ were actually recorded, the eulogy to the recently departed one commences.
The man who died was obviously a great spiritual leader of his society, as he is singled out as almost an intermediary acting between gods and men – so maybe a high priest of some description then – and appears to have behaved himself appropriately while on Earth, in that he respected Divinity and sacred places, never blasphemed, didn’t over-indulge in material desires, treated grave matters seriously, was able to differentiate between truth and lies, and refused to let malice, envy, intimidation, or injustice pass his lips. All in all, it sounds like he was a pretty good egg.
But the passage through the veil can be a dangerous one and he is warned that beings from ‘beyond the Dark Portal’ will seek to claim him so he must be prepared with his defence by telling them that he always helped those who helped others, supported those who did good, stood up for others that could not stand up for themselves, never oppressed the weak, and punished injustice. Furthermore, he redressed the imperfections of spirit with which he was born, practised no evil, and always spoke the truth.
At this point, the Egyptian references start to kick in. He stands before the ‘Twin Shrines’ continues the passage, ‘Even as it was in the Land of the Great River, so let it be here. Let him not be cut off by distance’. Now, the ‘distance’ mentioned here could simply mean the distance between the world of the living and the dead – or between the material and spiritual if you prefer – but it doesn’t sound like that to me. It is more as if this society has relocated to a distant land and is exhorting the spiritual powers of their homeland to treat the departed soul in the same way, even though his physical form did not perish there.
The praise for the departed one continues. He is faithful in heart and has read and taken to heart the sacred texts. He has done what was demanded of him and now he approaches the spiritual realm. He has overcome the trial that is life on Earth, has performed everything written on ‘The Tablets of Truth’, and even ‘sojourned in the Chamber of Profound Silence’ (and I’ll come back to that bit later).
All-in-all, the departed soul has done it all by the book, and the Powers That Be are entreated to let him into the afterlife because of it. Several more passages follow, in which the virtues of the deceased are extolled, and reasons given why he cannot be claimed by the dark powers that haunt the afterlife waiting to waylay those humans who have not been so good on Earth. The righteous man is described as a ‘Shining One’ and a ‘Hero of the Horizon’ (very Egyptian phrase, that) and it is soon after that section that we get a hint that this society, the ones urging their departed fellow into everlasting glory, have travelled to where they currently are from some distant Homeland. ‘We speak for this man,’ they intone, ‘He is one who came with us from afar’.
And the Egyptian references keep on coming. ‘His Kohar awaits him,’ they chant, ‘and needs hide no awful aspect in shame.’ Now, this has just got to be a reference to the Egyptian belief that the soul is split in two at birth, one part of which must endure life on Earth with all its trials and temptations, and the other, which awaits its twin’s return from beyond the veil. The allusion in this part of The Kolbrin is to that part of the twin-soul belief in which any bad or evil behaviour that the Earthbound twin gets up to is somehow reflected onto, and disfigures, the other twin. The word Kohar is too evocative of the Egyptian Ka for this not to be the case.
And now the ritualistic incantation shifts to addressing the Kohar directly and there can no longer be any doubt that this whole passage is geared toward the reunification of the soul-halves that was an intrinsic part of Egyptian religion. The Kohar is exhorted to joyfully embrace its twin sundered at birth. ‘Arise alive in the Land Beyond the Horizon and journey to the Land of Dawning,’ is the entreaty to the unified whole, which must now pass to the next stage for judgement.
On and on goes the ritual. The earthbound part of the being had some imperfections, it says, some minor character flaws, but they weren’t that bad, just the normal foibles of human impatience; certainly not enough to hinder his march into the afterlife. Life on Earth, it seems, with all its trials and tribulations and temptations, is seen as a kind of blast furnace which will either burn away your imperfections or, if they are too many, scar you to eternal damnation. And again, we get a reference to ‘our forefathers from far away’, thereby supporting the theory that what we are dealing with here is a breakaway Egyptian society, far from its original homeland.
So, the departed man is now reunited into a single being with his Kohar (which is henceforth known as Nevakohar) and has arrived at what the ritual calls the ‘First Threshold’ whence he must continue his journey into the afterlife.
The Nevakohar’s next test is a ship voyage ‘over the waters to the Place of Reeds’. If the combined soul’s weaknesses are too great, they will weigh him down to be grabbed by the dark ones that lurk below. He is not borne down, even after being tempted by an evil being clothed in the appearance of a beautiful seductress, and so passes the test.
Back on firm ground, the candidate is greeted by a ‘Bright Being’ who escorts him up the ‘Steps of Splendour’ to be greeted by a host of Shining Spirits and others he knew in life who passed through before him, and there he is dressed in radiant clothes. He has passed through the Hall of Judgement, crossed the waters, ascended the steps, and now stands on the threshold of immortality. He speaks in an unworldly tongue that all understand and he can see Good and Evil for what they truly are, yet now Evil holds no power over him. He takes on the title ‘The Newcomer’.
In terminology that gets a little less otherworldly, we are told that the Newcomer has succeeded because he has overcome the trials of Earthly life where, very interestingly, and just like in a myriad religions and philosophies before and since, ‘bodily passions’ are singled out as the ‘Raging Ones’, the single most dangerous adversaries to personal spiritual evolution. This being, now a Nevakohar, has fought many battles with itself. In a quite striking analogy, the ritualistic language likens each personal conflict, each struggle with itself and its earthly passions, to a one-on-one battle. With each victory, says this scribe in The Kolbrin, it has left a lifeless form behind it. And that, in my opinion, is a very great and profound Truth. Because, when we have won a battle with ourselves and conquered one or the other of the many passions that besiege us, it changes us, and we move forward as a different and better person. We are stronger now, the old ‘us’ is dead. Good riddance to it. Let it lie.
The last two passages in this chapter are deeply esoteric and deserve to be mentioned. In the penultimate section, we get the following:
‘The Newcomer has sought out and discovered the One Hidden Behind the Two, and the Three which stand before them. He knows the secrets of the Nine which veil the others from the eyes of men. He has unravelled the skein of life’s mysteries, even as those enlightened ones yet living on Earth must do’.
The first part of that is easy enough. It is an allusion to the well-known Law of Threes where the merging/interaction between two elements (normally of a different esoteric ‘polarity’) is effected through a ‘unifying’ third force or energy. In this case the earthbound half of a being is allowed unification with the so-called Kohar through the medium of the energy expended ‘being good’ while on Earth. The overcoming of passion and generally behaving in a decent manner has created a medium (or pool of energy – a kind of force, call it whatever you like) that is the circumstance under which the unification may successfully take place. As far as the rest of the section is concerned – well that’s a bit harder. There is a Law of Nines (just as important as the Laws of Three and Seven) and nine is a very magical number (being, amongst other things, 3 x 3) but the scribe, here, doesn’t give us much else to go on, unless he is hinting that if you truly understand the workings of the Law of Nines then you have an understanding of what it takes to peer beyond the veil (inter-dimensionally, perhaps?). The last bit of the section is simply a reference to the dead initiate’s fellows who are left alive, struggling to become enlightened.
The very last section of the chapter is really interesting, because, in it, there are hints of some very strange powers and forces at play. The wording is – perhaps deliberately – obscure, but it seems to suggest that, if a being which has passed all the afterlife tests and become a Bright One like The Newcomer of the passage, had known, in life, a being who, upon their own death, was found wanting and had consequently been relegated to live amongst the ‘Dark Ones’, then the Bright One would initially forget all about his erstwhile earthly acquaintance. However – and this is the weird bit – at some stage, that Bright One would ‘remember’ his old mate and that act of remembrance would somehow have the power to return the Dark One ‘to the crucible’. The matter is, in my opinion, pretty much glossed over by the scribe, here, almost as if they were not quite sure what they were supposed to be conveying; but, for me, it rang some bells from other sources. We’re running out of space and time in this post, so I can’t really get into too much depth here, especially as the whole afterlife thing is explored in greater detail in the upcoming chapters, but here are a couple of considerations:
Firstly, the phrase returning something ‘to the crucible’ implies that it will be melted down and a fresh start made on something new. So, the meaning could simply be that, rather than facing eternal damnation as a ‘Dark One’, the being in question gets another crack at life on Earth – reincarnation in other words.
But I think there is more to it than just another explanation for the mechanism of having repeated goes at something until you get it right and receive the promised reward. What really intrigues me is the way that this ‘Dark One’ cannot even be returned to the crucible without the active and deliberate act of remembrance on the part of a ‘Bright One’. There is an element of intent here, of positive energy – the text says ‘because of his efforts’ – and it’s made all the more curious because the positive energy, the intent, has to come from a ‘Bright One’ who had forgotten all about the ‘Dark One’ for a while!
Now, I may well be grasping at straws here because the text of The Kolbrin gives us so little to go on, but it may be possible that what we are looking at in this passage is another veiled metaphor for the Law of Threes in action. The Dark One is, of course, the negative energy, and the Bright One, the positive energy; but what about the third, the unifying force needed to create a new outcome? Well, that may well be the act of remembrance itself. The Bad + The Good + The New Energy (active memory with intent) is enough for ‘the crucible’ to be activated and a new being with a karmically clean slate is the outcome. Maybe? Perhaps? Well, let’s see if The Kolbrin can throw any further light on this puzzle in the upcoming chapters.
But let’s go back now to that bit in the passage where we are told that the departed initiate had ‘sojourned in the Chamber of Profound Silence’ (and note the capital letters). The speaker is obviously talking about a physical place. We’ve noted in previous chapters that ‘caves’ are considered special areas in The Kolbrin (and also in just about every other religion that was or is). That ‘specialness’ is due not only to their peculiar position between the earth – the world below – and the world above (they are part of neither one nor the other, but exist, in a way, between the two and yet are still part of both), but also to their enclosed nature, in that they are shut off from the outside world. Many religions have ‘recreated’ caves; for instance, in the form of monks’ cells, Holy of Holies, those shut-off areas of temples and churches where only the priest (= ‘enlightened one’) may go. They are secret places, sacred places, places for communion with higher powers. They are also silent places, places where communion with the All and Everything is best attempted from within (prayer, meditation, call it what you want). They are places where man attempts to be alone with God (however he understands that term) and to pierce the veil between worlds (or states of being).
And we’re not just talking about Christianity here; there are many, many different examples of cultures that have sought to recreate a cave-like atmosphere for this very same purpose. Which takes me onto the chambers in the pyramids of Giza and elsewhere, chambers that were not always used for internment. Was this just another way to recreate a cave – after all, a chamber in a massive stone block is not so different to a hole in the ground or the side of a mountain surrounded by other rock? And how about the neolithic chambers of North-western Europe and elsewhere – stone-framed spaces piled over with earth to recreate a cave. It has often been speculated that these chambers were used for religious/initiation purposes. They are conjectured to have been built at the nexus of lines of Earth energy (magnetic maybe?) perhaps to help concentrate and magnify the internal effort of the Seeker After Truth, just as the Pyramids were supposedly celestially aligned and built to sacred dimensions designed to concentrate and focus energy within.
The reason I am mentioning this here is that, as we progress through The Kolbrin, it becomes clear that a group of Egyptians have left their homeland and journeyed to what sounds like Neolithic Britain. And it strikes me that, in this passage, we have that society enacting a funerary rite in which they are blending elements of their new home with elements of the land from which they came. This will all become clearer as we progress through the chapters.
One last thing before we get onto the self-help aspects of this chapter. A lot of ink has been spilled over the neolithic stone circles of Britain, North-western Europe and elsewhere and whether they are sited on so-called Ley Lines and form part of a global ‘earth-energy’ matrix. My gut feeling is that there is something in this (my jury is still out on exactly what) but what I can say is that I have had first-hand experience of the power of one of these places. It was at a smallish stone circle that is part of a larger complex called the Rollright Stones near the village of Long Compton in the UK. I was lucky enough to turn up there when the place was relatively deserted, and I treated myself to the short-term hire of a dowsing stick (literally nothing more than a forked piece of wire in the shape of a Y) from a little onsite kiosk. I then proceeded to criss-cross the circle in random directions to see what would happen. The results were truly amazing! As I either crossed, or walked along, the lines that ran across the circle between the major stones, the dowsing rod literally danced in my hands. When I was off those lines (but still within the circle) there was no reaction. Cross or walk along the line between the stones again and wham! the dowsing stick jinked and dipped. I was fascinated and tried it again and again, always with the same result. There was definitely something there to which the dowsing tool was reacting. What it was – underground stream, genuine line of magnetism, something else – I don’t know, but it was there. I even tried it again with my eyes closed (to rule out my mind playing games with me) and, whenever I felt the tool jink in my hands, I opened my eyes and I was always either crossing, or on, a line between the stones. Strange but true.
OK, onto the self-help aspects of this chapter. I guess that what this one’s all about is karma; that is, the law of What We Reap Is What We Sow. If we strip out all the religious mumbo-jumbo, what we’re left with is a very simple life lesson, if not a basic human survival trait: If you behave like a dick head, it will come back and bite you in the bum. There are some buffoons on this planet who seem to think they can get away with outrageous treatment of other humans. Those people will always, but always, get their comeuppance. You may not get to see that comeuppance even though you’ve been one of their victims, but you can take comfort that an immutable law of the Multiverse is that what goes around comes around. Seeking revenge is a waste of emotion and energy – let the Law of Karma do it for you. But, be nice, be kind, be thoughtful, try always to see the other person’s point of view (because you simply don’t know what they, personally, are going through) and it’s all good! The late, great Terry Pratchett wrote that one of the biggest and hardest lessons we have to learn in life is that while we are watching and judging others, they, in turn, are watching and judging us. Remember that – it’s very important. When humans behave like douchebags, others watch and judge – and that judgement is far from complimentary, something that will affect any future dealings with the unpleasant person. Conversely, when we behave reasonably, kindly, and with humanity aforethought, that too is judged by others, but this time we are treated by them in future dealings far more favourably.
OK, I have rambled on for far too long here, so we’ll call it a day for now. The next chapter continues the theme of the afterlife and I hope to see you all there.
