Sangreal, The Cosmic Grail: Sacred Language and Cosmic Alchemy – Part 10

Sangreal, The Cosmic Grail: Sacred Language and Cosmic Alchemy – Part 10

Throughout this series of articles I have been building a case for the idea that celestial events have played a profound and critical role in the history of human as well as planetary affairs. I have invoked the remarkable stories of the Grail Quest as an example whereby cosmic symbolism has been embedded and preserved for posterity. I concluded last month with a exposition of the etymology of the term ‘Grail’ and called attention to the coincidence that the original term traced its origins back to the same term in Latin, and ultimately in ancient Greek, that we now apply to the great basins excavated into the earth by impacting objects from space, that is, ‘crater.’

Of course to the student of the Mysteries this etymological connection is more than mere coincidence, in that it points to the substratum of meaning concealed within the mundane language of normal social and academic discourse. Word origins and derivations provide a glimpse into the methodology of the Sacred Language for encoding unobvious and alternate dimensions of meaning into the language of everyday use. It has been called the Language of the Birds, the Language of Diplomats, the Angelic language, the Green language, or langue verte. It is sometimes referred to by the more generic terms argot, or cant. Argot is defined as “an often more or less secret vocabulary and idiom peculiar to a particular group.” In addition to etymological procedures the secret language involves the use of homonyms, homophones, synonyms, puns, numerical associations and so on that provide sources of alternate meanings that can be substituted into a sentence or phrase, whether spoken or written to reveal an overlooked significance. Variants on this system were employed by Initiates, Alchemists, Occultists, Troubadours, Mystical and Masonic Orders among others, and has even been adapted to the use of thieves, outcasts, smugglers and revolutionaries, or other groups wishing to communicate among themselves without the awareness or understanding of outsiders.

Use of the language has parallels to basic mathematical operations in which it is accepted that something equal or equivalent to any term in an equation can be substituted without altering the value of the equation. However, in the Mystical Language the substitution does indeed alter the meaning of the equation, or at least reveals additional layers of meaning beyond what is superficially apparent. It is these secondary and tertiary meanings that contain and convey the technical language of the Great Work.

One of the most potent practices is to simply take the work apart and analyze its constituent meanings, interpreted in the original sense that has become lost or obscured through evolution and widespread usage over time.
Let’s consider the word disaster, defined by Websters New Collegiate Dictionary as ‘a sudden calamitous event bringing great damage, loss or destruction.’ It is composed of two roots: dis and aster. Dis in the Latin variously means apart, opposite, deprive, exclude or expel. For example, disabled means to be deprived of certain abilities, to disbar means to expel from the bar, disarray means the opposite of array, and so on. The root aster comes from astro, meaning a star, or stars. The meaning for the prefix dis that most pertains to the word disaster is expel, implying an association between an event bringing about great damage and destruction and something expelled from the stars!

Let’s take another related example, the word catastrophe. It is defined by Webster’s as “a momentous tragic event ranging from extreme misfortune to utter overthrow or ruin” and “a violent and sudden change in a feature of the earth.”  Take a closer look at the word. At its heart lies ‘astro’, a star! Let us take it further. Cata comes from the Greek kata, which means ‘down.’ An example of its use is found in the word ‘catacomb’ which refers to a cavern or subterranean passage below, or down, relatively speaking. The Greek word katastrophein, an etymological ancestor of catastrophe, means to overturn, or simply to turn. The word ‘strophe’ formed of the last two syllables, in Greek means ‘a turning, or whirling.’ So here we have an association of meanings in the original sense: the idea of utter overthrow or ruin, of a violent change in the Earth, directly related to the image of a star, turning or whirling down.

The implication of these two words could not be clearer. From whatever ultimate source they derive, it is obvious that somebody perceived a connection between great destructive events and the consequences of Earth’s encounters with comets and asteroids, those expulsions of the stars, whirling around the Sun until, Phaeton-like, they descend down to Earth where they wreak their havoc and ruin.

If the object is larger and/or denser it will survive its fiery passage through the atmosphere to strike the Earth’s surface. In the case of a land impact most of the energy is released into the Earth’s crust. In an oceanic impact a substantial amount of the energy is absorbed by the ocean water, resulting in enormous tsunamis. If the object is large enough it will penetrate the full depth of the water column and gouge a crater on the ocean floor. In either case in the immediate vicinity of the impact temperatures can reach 5000°C, or 9000°F, as hot as the surface of the Sun. The object itself along with a substantial amount of the target material is vaporized in the exceptional heat of hypervelocity impact. Jets of this vaporized material are ejected from the zone of impact into the atmosphere at high speed, sometimes reaching well into the upper stratosphere, 50 or 60 miles in altitude. From here the superhot vapor circulates widely and condenses out as a rainstorm of molten rock, mineral, and metal. This exotic material, part terrestrial, part extraterrestrial, is diffused throughout the biosphere and hydrosphere, catalyzing or influencing a wide range of processes as a result.

The tremendous energy of the explosion excavates a crater, a bowl-shaped basin in the Earth’s crust whose width and depth depend upon the size, velocity and density of the incoming cosmic object. Much of the material just outside the point of immediate impact is melted, forming a strange lava-like brew of boiling hot liquid glass. A substantial amount of this stuff fills the excavated crater as well as being forced over the rim to spread out much like a pyroclastic flow from a volcano.
The extreme pressure induced by impact sends intense shockwaves radiating outward through the crust from the epicenter. Equivalent earthquake energies can range from 9 to greater than 12 on the Richter scale. Remember, the Richter scale is a base-10 logarithmic scale. This means that an earthquake of magnitude 9 on the Richter scale is 10 times more powerful than one of magnitude 8, which, from the human perspective can be devastating. A magnitude 12 earthquake would be 10,000 times more powerful than magnitude 8! An impact event involving production of this much energy is basically inconceivable.

This powerful shockwave emanating through the lithosphere, or crust, will fracture it over large areas to great depth. Fault lines and fissures will form. Volcanic eruptions will occur along the fracture lines so formed, bringing up more exotic material from deep within the Earth’s crust to its surface, where it is incorporated into the biosphere. This process of cosmic impacts has been ongoing since the formation of the Earth, having occurred countless thousands of times. As of this writing the number of confirmed or probable craters and impact sites, known as astroblemes, or ‘star wounds’ numbers several hundred. Extrapolating from the surface of the Moon we know there must be hundreds more awaiting discovery.

While we have been discussing unimaginably destructive processes, there is another side of the equation we must consider. And this is where it gets really interesting. We know that there are certain materials and metals that are rare on the surface of the Earth but abundant in the entities that fall to Earth from the heavens, as we have been discussing in these articles. Among the materials delivered to Earth by comets and asteroids are the platinum group elements, which include iridium, ruthenium, rhodium, palladium and osmium. These metals have a variety of unique properties.

It was the discovery of significant iridium enrichment at the famous Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, ca 65 million years ago, that provided the all important clue to Walter Alvarez and his team that Earth had been struck by a cosmic missile at precisely the geological boundary at which the great dinosaurs rapidly went extinct. As a consequence of that impact the entire planet was blanketed with a layer of iridium dust, a calling card, so to speak, of the celestial visitor. This discovery triggered a major paradigm shift in our scientific understanding of Earth history. It has since become recognized that the history of our planet has been far more dynamic and violent than realized even a generation ago.

But the forces that destroy also create.

Again turning to that great cosmic teaching event in 1908 we find enormous destruction. But in the aftermath we perceive another process at work. Because this explosion happened in the atmosphere it did not leave a crater in the usual sense. Besides the vast area of devastated forest initially found by scientists, in more recent years clues of a more subtle nature began to reveal themselves. Research scientist and astrobiologist Kevin Zahnle wrote in an October, 1996 issue of Nature: “At present, there are two reports of possible debris. One is a modest iridium excess in local peat; the other a relatively high abundance of microscopic dust particles in tree resins exposed between 1902 and 1920 in local conifers that survived the explosion.” p. 674 – 675
In the context of the theme of these articles it would be reasonable to wonder whether there could be any effects ensuing from the introduction of cosmic material into the biosphere. Soviet biologist Dr. Vasilieyev of Tomsk University, leader of several Tunguska expeditions is quoted by Chandra Wickramasinghe in his book Cosmic Life Force:

Until next time, Randall

Read on,  Sangreal, The Cosmic Grail: Alchemical Evolution – part 11