You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up. Ironically, this is not far from the truth. This is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. Take the blue pill and I dig into my brain and pull out a speech about possible toastmasters topics. Take the red pill and I dig into my mind and show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
The Listener Always Opts for the Red Pill – so you continue…
This is an insert to the album All-n-All from Earth Wind and Fire in 1977. The man shown here is Maurice White the founder and main force behind the group. Maurice was about 10 years older than the other members of the band and often spoke on topics that they didn’t fully understand. Maurice was a student of many things including “Astrology, and Mysticism, and World Religion and so forth you dig.” At the peak of their powers EWF produced this – the album title is All-n-All. Most buyers were fascinated by the artwork on the cover that seemed to depict ancient Egypt as some sort of advanced society – an 1970’s version of Wakanda Forever.
I was more interested in the inside of the cover. My teenage mind spent hours studying the strange symbols and characters with no real understanding of what I was seeing. Many years later I stumbled across this text that Maurice White referenced frequently. The Secret Teachings of All Ages. The book was written in 1928. I found it shortly after the author died in 1990. The book contained concise chapters on a litany of esoteric topics including Rosicrucianism, Hermeticism, Chaistian Gnosticism, Alchemy, Tarot cards and so on.
The book was also a favorite text of the Theosophical Society of America, founded largely by by a Russian Mystic named Helena Blavatsky in 1875. The Theosophists believed that all major religions started from some common core –probably from Atlantis, that was handed down and taught in the Mystery Schools of Egypt before being corrupted and lost to the world. They further believed that only a hand full of people initiated into the ancient mysteries understood the true nature of the world.
Their most common example involved the Sun and its symbolic meaning. You see the layman is taught that the sunrise is symbolic of the birth of the child. And as the sun grows and strengthens until mid-day, followed by a gradual descent back to the underworld, so is the child born, grows, matures, ages and eventually dies. The Theosophists taught that this bastardization of the secret teaching has the story bass-ackwards. The sunrise does not represent the birth of the child. Instead, it refers to the sprit exiting the material world. They also taught that there was only 1 sun because there was only 1 soul. This soul had been exploded and split into billions of little pieces – and every living thing contained a small piece. The purpose of life, as they saw it, was for the soul to escape the material world and be reunited and re-integrated into a singular reality.
Of course, this is not easy, as it is a battle with the force that binds the soul to the material world. MPH represents this force in a collection of images. Here we see the serpent wrapping itself around the egg, symbolic of all that is born. Here we see the serpent wrapped around a god, preventing him from returning to his home. Oftentimes, we see it as a serpent wrapped around an orb, representing the physical world, biting its own tail to hold the soul within it. Of course, the serpent is only symbolic. You never actually see it. Its more like a mysterious force. Some kind of electricity or fire.
The ranks of Theosophists was dominated by Rosicrucians and Freemasons who saw ways to project their understanding and rituals onto the limited images that they saw. They envisioned a series of initiations into some mystery school of Egypt, or Chaldea, and later Greece and Rome. After initiation into the highest levels of the mysteries, one would be a new man and the leaders would proclaim – Oh ye, Oh ya, Oh ye – a new man is born.
Play Song Snipet if Possible and explain
With this new knowledge, I circle back to 1977 and understand what EWF really meant when they sang . . .
I’m gonna tell the story of morning glory (the sunrise)
All about the serpentine fire (the force binding the sprit to the material
world.
As surely as life begun, you will as one (because there is really only 1
soul)
Battle with the Serpentine Fire (to escape the material world.
Oh-yeah, Oh-Yeah, Oh-Yeah. (Now that you know the teaching you are
a new man)
And now you know – the rest of the story!
