"First, God; Secondly, the World; Thirdly, Man."
[Book 1, THE CORPUS HERMETICA.]
Comment: This short saying stresses the priorities. What more
can really be said? Probably only the "how to," that has evolved
over time. And that fills reams and reams of tomes, rules,
instructions, and even threats.
Of course lots of these approaches, both positive and negative,
depend on not only our God concepts but also the god-imagery
that reflects such. The Imago Dei at least sometimes becomes
more sophisticated as we grow more conscious. But always we
do have to ask if our god-imagery accurately depicts the Reality
of God? It's an open-ended question, I'm afraid, that keeps us
standing not too easy. In the end I imagine we will come to
recognize that God depends on our becoming ever more mature.
It's like an equation, in that our maturity will eventually come to
comprehend God in ever more sophisticated ways. God is not
the shapeshifter, we are!
As for the World, well when the first small light of consciousness
entered our brain, no doubt we were scared silly by what we saw
of the world at that point. The world was out to get us! Kill us!
Survival was always of prime concern. Eventually we saw spirits
behind every tree, thus we placated these spirits. Hence Animism,
later Polytheism, eventually Monothesism, ultimately--maybe--to
Panentheism. Regardless our choice, we link God and the
World and ourselves together in a variety of ways.
Man once was the Center of the Universe, especially when we
were entertaining Anthropocentrism. What with recent scientific
discoveries about the universe, more specifically our solar
system, most of us have sadly come to realize that Humanity
is no longer the most important element of the universe, though
we still crave to call ourselves the Rulers of the Earth. Alas,
our Rule has become ruinous!
So here's hoping that eventually we get these old Egyptian
Hermetic priorities right. They would seem to point in the
right direction.
