Freemasonry and its shadow

[back to earth]

17 minutes ago, No Solid Ground said:

You seem, er...quite passionately opposed to the idea of a possibility that there could be a secret component within Freemasonry that extends back in time ... or that there might have been at one time, but passion and insisting that it couldn't be because they swear is no substitute for evidence that it couldn't exist. 

I am passionately opposed to you blurbing rubbish that you have in no way whatsoever been able to back up with anything substantial.

I have been backing up what I say in a variety of directions and references which you seem happy to ignore and pass over .

I explained how you tried to turn my swearing comment into your own interpretation , and even after that, you return to this tactic ? 

I guess from now on, thats all this will be ; your tacs and attempted avoiding .

Basically, you have postulated something  'possible'   but in no way have been able to support it with any thing else ... and even admitted you no little of the organisation that is the base of your speculations .

I also note there are certain questions you avoid answering ... that would have cleared up some of this mess , and you never answered them. So I guess, more avoidance of  difficult issues for theory to explain.

You even cited  Vol 2 of a book you were 'working on'  I asked for Vol1 to get up to speed with you ... nothing , no title no ref nothing .

 

[Dhurfjooydig]

14 minutes ago, back to earth said:

Basically, you have postulated something  'possible'   but in no way have been able to support it with any thing else

And you have very passionately insisted that it couldn't be possible but have offered nothing of substance to support your opinion. Emotionality and trivia do not an adequate support make, nor do long rambling posts that veer this way and that way. Nor does an endless stream of personal jabs. Your position, in toto, seems to be that "it ain't so!!!!" and your defense seems to be little more than getting upset that I don't agree with you and tearing sentences and paragraphs of my posts into tiny segments rather than grasp and respond to the meaning being conveyed by the sentence / paragraph as a whole within the context of the entire post ... all contributing in an orderly way to a cumulative and consisten point being made by me in this thread that you seem to repeatedly miss. 

If you can offer any substantial reason besides preference and 'swearing to uphold the rules" why the possibility of a secret oral transmission does not and can never have existed in Freemason, I'd be interested to see and discuss it. In the absence of this, I see no point continuing this.   

Edited May 8, 2017 by No Solid Ground

[XenoFish]

I can't say much about the mason's as I have no indepth knowledge. The only thing I will say is that the few lodges I've been in (my dad was a mason) felt wrong. Just something about them felt so off that I didn't like it. Plus the glimpse I got of one of there "sacred books" had nothing but symbols in it. Beyond my pay grade in occultism at that time.

[back to earth]

59 minutes ago, No Solid Ground said:

And you have very passionately insisted that it couldn't be possible but have offered nothing of substance to support your opinion. Emotionality and trivia do not an adequate support make, nor do long rambling posts that veer this way and that way. Nor does an endless stream of personal jabs. Your position, in toto, seems to be that "it ain't so!!!!" and your defense seems to be little more than getting upset that I don't agree with you and tearing sentences and paragraphs of my posts into tiny segments rather than grasp and respond to the meaning being conveyed by the sentence / paragraph as a whole within the context of the entire post ... all contributing in an orderly way to a cumulative and consisten point being made by me in this thread that you seem to repeatedly miss. 

If you can offer any substantial reason besides preference and 'swearing to uphold the rules" why the possibility of a secret oral transmission does not and can never have existed in Freemason, I'd be interested to see and discuss it. In the absence of this, I see no point continuing this.   

Dude you admitted yourself you dont know how they work !     I tried explaining it to you and all you see is what you describe above .  Instead of addressing any of the points I made .   Like this 'book'  you are 'working on'  .... or  through. 

Now you put words in my mouth saying I am 'passionately' insisting it could not be possible .... when what I am saying is,  it is possible but you have shown no reason for it to be happening .  I say it is unlikely and gave many reasons why .

Lets see what you change this into. 

The context of this entire post was Freemasonry .... all they way through, no matter how often you were asked if you are referring to this or other 'secret socities' you 'conveniently' did not answer .   Like a lot of issues raised with you. 

Edited May 9, 2017 by back to earth

[jaylemurph]

2 hours ago, jaylemurph said:

I see.

Ancient mystery knowledge is perfectly immutable and unchanging when you need it to be, but is "alive, not static,shifting with the culture over time" when you need that. That's... startlingly convenient for you.

--Jaylemurph

Your entire premise in discussing esoteric knowledge allegedly being passed down accurately across up to 18,000 years. 

If you need helping remembering that, you either assume your entire audience is stupid enough not to be able to piece that together or you're attempting a staggering level of disingenuousness.

--Jaylemurph

[back to earth]

 

[Kenemet]

1 hour ago, No Solid Ground said:

ADDENDUM:  I see that the quote you used only exists in two places on the internet ... in both cases, in a preview blurb for a (fantastic) book by Anne C. Klein, Professor of Religious Studies at Rice University. So, it appears that you googled the name of the text, grabbed this quote, used it out of context, distorted it, and tried to claim that it was used as confirmation, as if you were knowledgeable about the text and the culture ... only you know why you would do this.  

Yes, I'm a wicked leopard... hunting up reviews of the book.

In addition, I commit the further egregious mischief by looking up the religion on Wikipedia and other sources.

Here's what Wikipedia says:

Bon is a Tibetan religion, which self-identifies as being distinct from Tibetan Buddhism, although it shares the same overall teachings and terminology. It arose in the eleventh century and established its scriptures mainly from termas and visions by tertöns such as Loden Nyingpo.

The culture itself comes from the Zhangzhung region - an area where there were literate people who wrote many things, including histories of the area.  They do not match with the information in the book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhangzhung

You may not appreciate my researching Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche, but I felt that in order to find out about the book and the philosophy that the only reasonable thing was to find as much as I could in a quick search from reliable sources (sources that would summarize but would link to older material that could be confirmed.) 

Quote

[Shenrab Miwo] occupies a position very similar to that of Śākyamuni in Buddhism, but... we have no available [or pre-10th century] sources with which to establish his historicity, his dates, his racial origin, his activities, and the authenticity of the enormous number of books either attributed directly to him or believed to be his word."[

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonpa_Shenrab_Miwoche

If these make you uncomfortable, please realize that this kind of checking is done by many members here when someone comes up with something we've not heard before.  Many of us read languages other than English and have easy access to things that English speakers can't use.

I think that if you took a step that most believers won't (which is going back to find out what the earliest mention is of this material and this person) you would be uncomfortable with the answers.

By the way, "Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche" is not a name in the ancient Tibetan language -- the language spoken in the area before the Bon people arrived.  Of course, 16,000 years ago they would not have been speaking Tibetan or Zhangzhung but something else entirely that was distantly related to Old Tibetan.  However, the name is more modern - it's "bodisavita" in Zhangzhung; the language of the Bon people.

Names tend to be culture specific and are often a very good clue about how old something is and how valid a claim is.

 

[Dhurfjooydig]

41 minutes ago, Kenemet said:

Yes, I'm a wicked leopard... hunting up reviews of the book.

In addition, I commit the further egregious mischief by looking up the religion on Wikipedia and other sources.

Here's what Wikipedia says:

Bon is a Tibetan religion, which self-identifies as being distinct from Tibetan Buddhism, although it shares the same overall teachings and terminology. It arose in the eleventh century and established its scriptures mainly from termas and visions by tertöns such as Loden Nyingpo.

The culture itself comes from the Zhangzhung region - an area where there were literate people who wrote many things, including histories of the area.  They do not match with the information in the book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhangzhung

You may not appreciate my researching Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche, but I felt that in order to find out about the book and the philosophy that the only reasonable thing was to find as much as I could in a quick search from reliable sources (sources that would summarize but would link to older material that could be confirmed.) 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonpa_Shenrab_Miwoche

If these make you uncomfortable, please realize that this kind of checking is done by many members here when someone comes up with something we've not heard before.  Many of us read languages other than English and have easy access to things that English speakers can't use.

I think that if you took a step that most believers won't (which is going back to find out what the earliest mention is of this material and this person) you would be uncomfortable with the answers.

By the way, "Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche" is not a name in the ancient Tibetan language -- the language spoken in the area before the Bon people arrived.  Of course, 16,000 years ago they would not have been speaking Tibetan or Zhangzhung but something else entirely that was distantly related to Old Tibetan.  However, the name is more modern - it's "bodisavita" in Zhangzhung; the language of the Bon people.

Names tend to be culture specific and are often a very good clue about how old something is and how valid a claim is.

 

I've been an (authentic) student of Tibetan Bonpo mind training (from a non religious perspective) for over a decade. [ as an aside, Bon Dzogchen is not considered to be a religion within the traditions ... this classification is a Western imposition. ] There is a great gap between what Western academics have decided about the origins (both time and place) of Bonpo and what Bonpo leaders and traditional texts / oral recitations say about it. There is also a decades long conflict between Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan Bon over who gave birth to who ... a conflict that academia has given very little attention to ... perhaps because it makes it much easier for them to dismiss the possibility of an oral tradition extending back 18k years ... a 11th century date is more convenient and less challenging to conventional thought. 

If you're interested in an understanding that's deeper than Wikipedia and much of what you'll find on the copycat internet, I recommend this comprehensive book as a good starting place:

https://www.amazon.com/Oral-Tradition-Zhang-Zhung-Introduction-Teachings/dp/9994664441/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1494291746&sr=1-4&keywords=zhang+zhung

I'm still interested in why you think the quote you posted in your first post:

"In this case, the confirmation of the authenticity of 18,000 years was made "Through blessings of the Victor Samantabhadra bon-dimension (bon sku, dharmakāya), reflexive open awareness (rang rig pa, svasavedana), a wholeness that is the heart essence of our ancestor is understood by the White Shen Deity, protector of beings"

 ... is considered a confirmation of authenticity of 18,000 years by anyone. It's a book blurb, so you couldn't have arrived at that conclusion from info in any of the two places the quote appears on the internet. Could you explain your thought process that brought you to this conclusion? You seem confident  in your post that the quote does what you say it does, but I'd be interested in hearing how you got there. Thanks.

 

Edited May 9, 2017 by No Solid Ground

[jmccr8]

1 hour ago, jaylemurph said:

Your entire premise in discussing esoteric knowledge allegedly being passed down accurately across up to 18,000 years

During his discussion with me earlier he maintained that there didn't need to be a group but there likely was one so it must be a mystical oral tradition that can maintain and talk to itself.

jmccr8

[Dhurfjooydig]

43 minutes ago, No Solid Ground said:

By the way, "Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche" is not a name in the ancient Tibetan language -- the language spoken in the area before the Bon people arrived.  Of course, 16,000 years ago they would not have been speaking Tibetan or Zhangzhung but something else entirely that was distantly related to Old Tibetan.  However, the name is more modern - it's "bodisavita" in Zhangzhung; the language of the Bon people.

Correct, just as 'Siddhārtha Gautama' and 'Gautama Buddha' aren't names, but rather are variations of similar titles given to village leaders 2,500 years ago ... one that may or may not even refer to a specific person that lived and died. In fact, very likely not. Same with the literary device referred to as 'Jesus'.

Edited May 9, 2017 by No Solid Ground

[Dhurfjooydig]

1 hour ago, jaylemurph said:

esoteric knowledge allegedly being passed down accurately across up to 18,000 years. 

Again, I ask that you point to exactly where I said this, or even suggested it ... the bolded part. Please quote me. 

[Dhurfjooydig]

8 minutes ago, jmccr8 said:

During his discussion with me earlier he maintained that there didn't need to be a group but there likely was one so it must be a mystical oral tradition that can maintain and talk to itself.

jmccr8

Please quote me where I said that. Especially the bolded part. 

Edited May 9, 2017 by No Solid Ground

[jmccr8]

Just now, No Solid Ground said:

Please quote me where I said that. The bolded part. 

Well the usual oral traditions are practiced by people that can speak and you have maintained to me earlier that there didn't need to be a secret group within the Freemasons but likely was, so the only conclusion that was left was that it was mystical because it has been self maintaining for 18,000 yrs. Whoa Trigger

jmccr8

[Dhurfjooydig]

1 minute ago, jmccr8 said:

Well the usual oral traditions are practiced by people that can speak and you have maintained to me earlier that there didn't need to be a secret group within the Freemasons but likely was, so the only conclusion that was left was that it was mystical because it has been self maintaining for 18,000 yrs. Whoa Trigger

 

Please quote the conversation that you and I had that included any mention of the 18,000 year date. Really, some precision and specificity would benefit your posts.  You really are all a muddle and you're inserting concepts out of the blue ("mystical") and arriving at wild conclusions (again, "mystical").

[jmccr8]

22 hours ago, No Solid Ground said:

It seems to me that determining if there is an inner circle would come after determining if there is a possibility that there might be an inner circle / why an inner circle might exist. 

Here is one and during the next couple of hours you still maintained that that first you needed to determine that there was a secret oral tradition before having to find out if there was a group.

 

22 hours ago, No Solid Ground said:

Or I can postulate why there might be a secret oral tradition before looking for evidence of it. I'll then have a better idea what I'm looking for as I'm looking. 

I would suggest that you are on no solid ground here

jmccr8

[Dhurfjooydig]

3 minutes ago, jmccr8 said:

Here is one and during the next couple of hours you still maintained that that first you needed to determine that there was a secret oral tradition before having to find out if there was a group.

 

I've been saying those exact things consistently throughout the entire thread. What IS your point? Seriously...  

[jmccr8]

Just now, No Solid Ground said:

I've been saying those exact things consistently throughout the entire thread. What IS your point? Seriously...  

If you don't have a tangible starting point like who there is no point because it is an oral tradition.

jmccr8

[Dhurfjooydig]

7 minutes ago, jmccr8 said:

If you don't have a tangible starting point like who there is no point because it is an oral tradition.

jmccr8

So you're saying that it's not proper to suggest that there might have been a secret oral transmission tradition in Freemasonry because ... no secret oral transmission tradition is known to have existed in Freemasonry?  That's an impressively illogical closed circle. 

Edited May 9, 2017 by No Solid Ground

[kmt_sesh]

31 minutes ago, No Solid Ground said:

Again, I ask that you point to exactly where I said this, or even suggested it ... the bolded part. Please quote me. 

I think it's a misunderstanding other posters are making. You've made mention of oral traditions in many posts, and this is one that caught my eye when I first read it (Post 8):

Quote

If oral traditions can be sustained for thousands of years, there's no reason why ideas / knowledge / historical narratives can't be preserved for thousands of years within secret societies.

I admit when I first read this I had thought you were saying oral traditions are immutable and unerring in content. But you're not saying this, as no logical person would. As important as oral traditions were (and still are) the practice is inherently flawed because the human mind is far from perfect. Obviously the farther from the point of origin a story is, the more it changes. And it's also clear that a story that is shared by a single cultural group can change from region to region within that group's sphere of influence. You more or less said the same thing a little earlier in one of your recent posts.

So I'd chalk it up to misunderstanding on the part of people reading your posts.

 

I don't have much to say on the other material. I'm not interested in Freemasonry. I will say, as an opinion on my own part, I've always been highly doubtful that this or any other "secret" organization actually possesses any esoteric ancient knowledge. Such organizations are big on pageantry but seem to be very limited on a working understanding of ancient cultures and traditions.

[jmccr8]

12 minutes ago, No Solid Ground said:

So you're saying that it's not proper to suggest that there might have been a secret oral transmission tradition in Freemasonry because ... no secret oral transmission tradition is known to have existed?  That's an impressively illogical closed circle. 

Okay you have inferred that there is that there is a secret circle that maintains a secret oral tradition, then you said that they didn't need to be but likely was a secret inner circle but didn't need to prove that they existed and that it would be easier to look for the secret oral tradition before looking for a membership that maintains the tradition. If cops used your investigative technique I would seriously consider a life of crime.

 Before one sets of first one should identify a group(who) then their intent and their means how and why.

jmccr8

Edited May 9, 2017 by jmccr8
spelling

[jaylemurph]

I'm not going to quote you back to yourself.

If your defense is "I never said those exact words," then you're splitting hairs because everyone here knows you've made claims tantamount to that and are attempting to play us all as fools in saying you didn't. This entire thread is predicated on your ridiculous claims of such and watching your failed and failing attempts at being disingenuous is tiresome in the extreme for us all. 

Perhaps you're concerned that using such specific terms so baldly makes your claims (more) implausible and you want some deniability so as to prevent you looking foolish. I would. But your attempt here to deny you suggested these things rests on the concept that everyone here is too stupid to scroll up and check your posts. We are, collectively, not that stupid, and you're unlikely to get anyone to consider your claims or point of view until you stop treating us as if we were simpletons.

I predict this thread will get closed for the pointless cavilling and bickering you engender with your disingenuousness and your stonewalling rather than any real discussion on this topic. For example, who is the group 18,000 years with no presence in any historical record? How can you confirm whatever knowledge exists today has any relationship to what was saud 18 kya? What about it necessitates secret transmission? How and why are you alone in the human race cognizant of this society, its records, its seeming disappearance and its esoteric continuance? 

Until you're ready to answer the questions put to you, you're wasting everyone's time.

 

--Jaylemurph 

Edited May 9, 2017 by jaylemurph

[Dhurfjooydig]

9 minutes ago, jaylemurph said:

I'm not going to quote you back yourself.

I

[back to earth]

1 hour ago, No Solid Ground said:

So you're saying that it's not proper to suggest that there might have been a secret oral transmission tradition in Freemasonry because ... no secret oral transmission tradition is known to have existed in Freemasonry?  That's an impressively illogical closed circle. 

It was your own geometrical construction in the first place .    

I now realise what the issue has been  .  .....  Here  try this 

 

 

I have found the plain iron ones , minus the bling,  to be sufficient .

 

 

[Dhurfjooydig]

25 minutes ago, jmccr8 said:

Okay you have inferred that there is that there is a secret circle that maintains a secret oral tradition, then you said that they didn't need to be but likely was a secret inner circle but didn't need to prove that they existed and that it would be easier to look for the secret oral tradition before looking for a membership that maintains the tradition. If cops used your investigative technique I would seriously consider a life of crime.

 Before one sets of first one should identify a group(who) then their intent and their means how and why.

jmccr8

You're putting the horse before the cart. Before we set out looking for evidence of a secret oral transmission tradition in Freemasonry, we need to look at reasons why there might have been one ... which in turn might make it easier to find evidence if it exists. 

We can do this by looking, as I mentioned earlier, at the events that were taking place in Europe in the 12th-13th century (including Christian recontextualization and / or repression of non-Christian oral traditions) ... happening around the same time period that the first Freemasonry manuscript was published. We can wonder about the timing of this publication and wonder if the manuscript was an attempt to preserve a threatened oral tradition, in seemingly benign, even nonsensical rituals and symbols, by way of code. 

We can simultaneously look at the emergence of the European fascination with alchemy in the 12-13th century, again during a time when non-Christian oral traditions were threatened, and wonder if instead of hocus pocus they are sophisticated containers that encode a threatened oral tradition that is only accessible to those that were trained to recognize them as such.

We can look at even older European / Western Asian non-Christian secret societies that were also threatened by the Christian ascendency ... there were hundreds of them ... one of the most well known and yet not well known, Mithraism ... defined as 'religion' by the modern (Christian-indoctrinated) Western world for a couple hundred years ... but now increasingly being regarded as a 'cultural astronomy' tradition that encoded a threatened much older (non-mystical) oral tradition (keeping in mind that rites are not in themselves evidence of 'religion' or 'mysticism').  

Once we establish that there may have been an incentive for a secret oral transmission tradition in Freemasonry (a school of thought which very likely predates the publishing of the first Freemasonry manuscript) and that there was an older precedence for this phenomenon (oral tradition based secret societies) ... then we're better informed in our search for evidence of this tradition in Freemasonry, if it exists.

[kmt_sesh]

14 minutes ago, back to earth said:

It was your own geometrical construction in the first place .    

I now realise what the issue has been  .  .....  Here  try this 

 

 

I have found the plain iron ones , minus the bling,  to be sufficient .

 

 

Looks like a high-fautin letter opener.