THE VOICE OF DUTY

THE VOICE OF DUTY

Victor Manuel Guzmán Villena

Nothing more beautiful than this communion of men of goodwill, conscious of their duties, faithful to their oaths, giving a brilliant example for those who needed stimulus to feel the shaking of asleep energies by deceptions and failures. In all of them spoke very high that virtue that they imposing freely to themselves and is called duty.

They feel the suggestive power of the ideal and they are going towards it, attracted by its mysterious enchantments, by its divine footpaths, their inexhaustible torrents of good, their fecund wisdom, its eternity, its infinite beauty.

The workers of the good in their multiple aspects accumulate molecule after molecule to raise that great construction that has its foundations on Earth, and its crowing in regions that are not known because they ignore the finish of the road, even if they imagine it perfect; because the progress is indefinite, but they work with the faith of the knowledge, with the faith of the wisdom, the confidence that the force gives, with the emotion that produces the beauty. The wisdom that takes them by hand following the subtle thread of the study in those mysterious cameras in which the old truths lies like virgins who wait for the fall of the veil of Isis to offering their collaboration to the laboratory of the life.

The Wisdom like a video tape discovers the mind, in incessant progression the wonderful secrets of the nature in its two aspects: psychic and physical, they are revealing to initiate them in the great mystery. The wisdom, unique light able to illuminate the footpath that through the cycles of evolution follows the ascending arc towards to the unknowable,towards the absolute, the non manifest. The wisdom, pious daughter of the sky that awards the day with the divine kiss that ignites the soul in the light of immortality. It is sustained in three pillars, they are:

The Force: That gives the faith in the power of the union of wills, aspiration towards the same ideal, that fortifies the principles that vitalize the convictions that feeds the love, that consecrates the sacrifice, image of the oneself in the world of the appearances, of the contrast, of the individualism.

The Beauty: Created for the delicate spirits brought by the Hellenic genius to initiate them in the indescribable aesthetics emotion of the pure souls that have a feeling of the perfect form of the archetype. The moral beauty that gives nobility to the dignify life of the soul, purifies the body and contributes the finest materials for the construction of the strong and healthful societies.

The duty it is the constant application of the will to the acts that we create consecrated to the common good, by virtue of a pact which we make between our conscience and the other consciences that are related to us in our life.

The wisdom that directs; the force that constructs; the beauty that gives form; the duty that forces the work. Here there are the four great powers that direct the human evolution. All are needed and all are complemented. The wisdom needs the beauty and force to pronounce itself . The force needs to be guide by wisdom to manifestitself beautifully . The beauty needs to cause emotion be directed by the wisdom, be sustains by the force . The duty requires all three to be logical.

With these three lights we go towards the attainment of our true purposes; because all human work that does not constitute by these four elements of immortality, is weak and it perishes.

But the good does not perish. Its passage by the Earth leaves the track of the step that non flock the furrows of the time. The good is wise, is strong, is beautiful because is the duty itself. Do the good to be wise, to be strong, to be beautiful. To fulfill the duty to feed the light that burns in our hearts, carry out the duty because it is the only channel through which flows that spark that makes us live; because it is the smooth murmur that incessantly sings to the ear inviting to the duty; it is the word that brought from India, that keeps the secret from the principle and the end; as brought from Rome the word of the law; from Persia the one of force; Greece the one of beauty; Egypt the one of religion, but above all has survived the one from India because it keeps the unique concept of duty, that is the reason of good. They passed Rome, ancient Egypt and ancient Greece; but ancient India, giving us the words of duty, the word of the good, in the Theosophy, the wisdom, sister of the masonry, that like white dove, symbol of Peace, overcame its flight and passed the Himalayas to bring to the West the word of duty, the word to go through the Gold Door. The great founders of religions, that although with different aspects present the truth and like one and indivisible, synthesized their doctrines in duty.

-Be good to others will be add to you, said by Jesus.

-Hatred does not stop with hatred, but with the love, Buddha says.

-Pure thoughts, pure words and pure works, pronounce Zarathustra.

-The ink of the wise is more worth than the blood of the martyr, affirms Mohamed.

-Thinks about me, trusts me, consecrate to me and gently come to me, is written in the Bhagavad-Gita.

-To the progress of the humanity, we dedicated our efforts and this is to workfor the glory of the Great Architect of the Universe, pointed the Masonry.

Fulfilled the duty, well-known that the duty is the good and that the wisdom, the force and the beauty are immortality What can stop us in our way? What philosophy?, what religion?, what school?, what conception of the life will be able to demolish the unique conception that admits a divine plan?.

There is much good to do in the world around us and for us preferably in the society that we belong. To fight by the formation of a fair government and given to the great majorities and not to the tiny groups of privilege. We must compel that their governance is efficient. To fight by the elimination of corruption in all areas of action, from the politic where they have become mercantilism with the pretext of guarding the interests of the country, they work in their own benefit and dishonor the robe that the people put on them.

We know that a great moral misfortune corrodes the foundations of our towns and threatens to destroy the conquests of the true democracy, because behind the decay are in necessity the hand of the demagogue and the religious brake that chains the thought.

But anyway, the voice of duty prevails and is calling to us still at the moments at which we give rest to the continuous struggle of the mind disturbed by the horrors of the world. It is necessary to activate the thought like cultural agent. We all recognize the capacity of the human being to assimilate knowledge. We must fill ourselves of possibilities to force them to give to us opportunities. But for these opportunities we must not wait for the governments neither of the politicians to give them to us, nor of the institutions whose action does not extend but through ourself, men and women given to the causes of the humanity.

We can penetrate with our thought in the office of the politician, of the bourgeois, in the cell of the high ecclesiastical authority, in the labyrinths of the public institutions, and after this laborious and devastating trip we will ask ourselves Where is the duty? The answer is in the few illuminated ones by the light of the path. The society as race needs illuminated human beings. They collected the initiatives from the poors of the unjust society and do the work of duty to our fellow human beings.

It is the work of duty?

The duty is persuasive because is useful, is noble because it has the delicate essence of the sublime, is wisdom because disciplined the soul; it is strong because convinces; is beautiful because dignified; heroic because is sacrificed and by all this is amiable.

But those are aspirations of great souls, and there are not many great souls in the social mass whose indiscipline and ignorance we deplored. It is necessary to work there; in the town, in the foundations, the base that supports the wealth, the luxury, the injustice, by virtue of its unconsciousness, as the root of the tree that ignores the splendorous of the crown.

To the work, illuminated, we did not need the politicians, nor the religions, we only need the force that has the wisdom, force, beauty and duty. The failure is no waited for us, because our work is spiritual and the spiritual takes us to the success that will shine when the law of the blow of mallet and says to the men of good will “Standing and to the order"

THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAGICIANS

VICTOR MANUEL GUZMAN VILLENA

M:.M:.

"Darius, king of kings, ruler of the country where they speak all languages, the son of Hystaspes, Achaemenid, built this house."

This is the inscription that is still read in the door leading to the ruins of Persepolis, the palace of the Sassanid, the most venerable ruin has bequeathed to us. Indeed, Persia, is the Iranian people, which flourished Ciros and Cambyses, they leave traces of its greatness, superior to Egypt and the whole series of civilizations that had its birth and its sphere in the East. Persia, then, is the true teacher and guide of humanity in the field of traditions and religious conceptions.

The oldest fraternity is the Magicians. The name was given to the priests, who were not just a sect or religion, but also a kind of governmental entity, referring to the sovereignty of science, giving place for the educated man between the real aristocracy. Its reign, according to some authors it is previous to the Middle Assyrian dynasties. Aristotle affirms that it was previous to the foundation of the empire of Egypt.

His founder, Zoroaster, was a great philosopher, whose doctrines demonstrate that he was an Iranian religious reformer, who lived about the year 2000 or 2200 before Jesus Christ, son of a priestly family who was exercising at the same time the functions of the judicature. His homeland was Bactriana, and there it was where he declared himself an enemy of the false gods and resolved to reform the Iranian religion. Of this one he preserved the geniuses or good spirits and tried to espiritualize and transform all the ancient gods in bad spirits. His teachings are the result of a deep study and meditation.

According to Zoroaster, everything that is offered to the observation of man must refer to two original forces as not produced are opposed to everything else produced, but that from the standpoint of activity, are diametrically opposed to one the other, they are to be or not to be,the beginning and end. Being is the life (ahu), reality, truth (asha) and the good, the death is not the falsehood (drukhs) and evil.The beginning of the good is Ormuz, while the principle of evil is Ahriman. These being are the most important personnels of the Zoroastrianism, religion that also has names of Magianism and Parseeism.

For the Zoroastro followers, the creation of the world should have begun by means of the emanation: the first emanation of the Eternal thing was the light, from which there went out the king of the light. Ormuz is a sacred and celestial being, the knowledge and the intelligence personified. Ormuz, the first-born of the time without limits, started by raising to his image and resemblance six geniuses or spirits called amshaspands, which surround his throne and are his messengers for the interior spirits and the men, being, models and copies of purity and perfection.

The second series of the creations of Ormuz was that of twenty-two izads, spirits that look over the innocence, the happiness and conservation of the world are models of virtue and the interpreters of the prayers of the men. The third host of pure spirits is more numerous and formed by the farohars, the thoughts of Ormuz, or the ideas conceived by him before proceeding to the creation of the things. No, only the farohars of the holy men and of the innocent infantes are in front of Ormuz, but this one they have also his farohar, or the personification of his knowledge and his ideas, his reason and his verb.


The triple creation of the good spirits was a necessary consequence of the simultaneous development of the beginning of the evil. The second son of the Eternal one, Ahrimán, came like Ormuz to the primitive light and it was pure like him, but for his ambition and pride he conceived the passion of envy and, to punish him, the Supreme Being condemned him to live for twelve thousand years in the region of the darkness, before a battle between the good and evil; but Ahrimán created in turn lots of bad spirits, which fill the ground of misery, discomfort and sin. The bad spirits are the impurity, the violence,  greed and cruelty; the demons of the cold, of the famine, of the poverty, of the sterility and ignorance and the most lazy of the whole Petash, the demon of  calumny.

Ormuz after a reign of three thousand years, created the material or physical world in six periods of time, giving six existence first to the earthly light, to the water, to the ground, to the plants, to the animals and to the man. Ahrimán was present at the creation of the earth and the water, because the darkness had these elements invaded; he took also active part in the creation and subsequent corruption and destruction of the man, whom Ormuz was creating for a simple act of will and for his word. Also, of the seed of this being, Ormuz extracted also the existence the first human couple, Meshia and Meshiana, but Ahrimán seduced the woman and later the male, taking them to the evil, making them ate of certain fruits, with which not only perverted the nature of the man, but also that of the animals like the insects, the snake, the wolves, etc. which were innocuous and became harmful, spreading the corruption for the whole surface of the earth. In punishment of his iniquity, Ahrimán and his perverses spirits were conquered and thrown out from all parts of the earth, but the just, good and prudent men do not have to be afraid because, as says Zoroaster, that was the work of the evil, and the good man always obeys the just judge, who cultivates assiduously the hearth and makes it produce good harvests and fruit-bearing trees in abundance.

After twelve thousand years, when the ground turns out to be already free of the evil spirits, then will go out three prophets who will be next to the men helping them with theirs power and science, returning the earth to its primitive beauty, judging the good and evil and giving each one what deserves: the good spirits will demolish to the region of the eternal good and unchangeable, while Ahrimán with all his demons and the men who have followed him will be thrown to a sea of melted metal and in the rottenness state and the law of Ormuz will reign everywhere.

Zoroaster taught that light was the first emanation of the Eternal life, so in the writings of Parsis, light, the eternal flame is a symbol of divinity or uncreated life, hence that the Parsis magicians were called fire-worshipers. This science of fire, which was the great arcane of the Magicians, refered in almost all the Assyrians's symbols, everywhere is the magician that hurts the lion and plays with snakes: the lion is the celestial fire, snakes are electric and magnetic currents of the earth. Patricius, as published philosophique magie collected from the books of the Platonists and others, the oracles of Zoroaster, which are the characteristic formula of the dogma of the fire. In all of them is possible seen the great spiritual force that is attributed to heat or light and identified with the force of human will.

The fire had its foundation magical initiation. The adept, having put his will in communication with that element, known to direct and manage, with the same skill the soldier with his weapon.

That force is represented by the blue lion. This is what the great Assyrian figures representing with lions tamed under the arm, such is the astral light, represented by giant sphinxes with lion body and head of the magician: the strength of spirit, suggestion, the rule of the will of others . So that we can observe a close relationship between the religion of Zoroaster and Magianism.

Ceremonies
The Magicians were a caste. Were in charge of worship, of sacrifice and conservation of the sacred books.

The main acts of Mazdean worship were threefold: the preservation of the sacred fire, the prayers and invocations, the purification and penance. The sacred fire was kept at shrines, where the sacred element burned on a huge stone or copper urn, serving to feed the flames, the most precious woods. It was a crime to raise the voice, and in religious ceremonies were scattered soft perfumes. There were many invocations prescribed by the Mazdean ritual, the priests chanted them with sacred hymns at certain times of the day, dedicating them to various celestial spirits. During the recitation, the priest was lifting his left hand high beam, closely pressed, made of branches of palm, tamarind or pomegranate, these branches had to be cut and tied by a pristine Mazdean: out of the moment of the rite, the beam was rested on a firedog where the branches were ended in a shape of a crescent moon.

The sacrifices consisted of bloody immolation, hecatombs in which succumbed at one time one hundred horses, a thousand oxen or ten thousand head of cattle, but the Mazdean law foebade consumed any victim, based on the principle that only belonged to the gods the head of the immolated animals, and even only his right eye and his and tongue.

The offerings consisted of bread, meat, grains, fruits, flowers, perfumes and garments for the priests, one of the most typical offerings were branches of a tree called hôma, plant of knotty stem and yellow flower that grows in the mountains of Iran; their juice was extracted in the manner prescribed for the ceremonies by the law, was the most agreeable gift you could devote to the celestial spirits,to renew their strength and provide greater happiness.

The liturgical books for the implementation of their ceremonies were the Vespers, the Jeshts and Yacna. Of these, the most interesting was the third one, principal part of the Avesta, and was using for the most important ceremonies, and divided into three sections: the first included ritual of sacrifice Mazdean, the second ibcluded the Gathas old songs are the best exposition of the Zoroastrian ideas and a momuments of higth philosophy for that epoch. The third included dispersed fragments, which not very clear objective.

Initiation
The candidate, before the initiation ib the fraternity, was subjected to numerous purifications by fire, water and honey, the number of probations was really long and ended with a fast of 50 days.

These tests were suffered by the candidate in underground caves in which he was condemned to perpetual silence and complete solitude. The one that was corresponding to the requirements fixed by the brotherhood had an option to the highest honors.

Passed the probationary period, the candidate was taken inside in the cave of the initiated, where he was armed with a harness or shield for their guidance, which was a representation of Simorgh, monstrous and important actor of the manipulations of Persian mythology, prividad with talismans to meet all the horrific encounters with monsters and evil spirits who they wanted to put in their path. Taked in Interior department was purified with fire and water and passed through seven degrees of initiation. 

The first thing offered to his eyes was a deep and frightening vaulted cavern at the foot of which stood a huge cliff where he was to fall with a small false step, sinking into the "abyss of dreadful poverty." Then, moving through labyrinths of the dark cave, he perceived the sacred fire, whose flames were fanned intervals dim lighting his way, at the same time heard the distant cry of hungry beasts, the lion's roar, the howl of the wolf, fierce and terrible barking mastiff. His companion, keeping a deep silence, pushed him towards the place whence came the sounds and when he was not aware the door openedof to the hountt and he was in the middle of the animal, almost dark, with only the dim lamplight . Was immediately attacked by the initiates who dressed as lions, tigers, wolves and other monstrous animals, were poured over him, scarcely escaping their clutches unharmed. Went from there to another dark cavern, where terrible noise of the thunder hurts his ears and and the continuous lightning hurting his vision, with the sinister glare he was distinguishing the visajes of the avenging spirits that were celebrating with macabre satisfaction at the arrival of the initiated to their inhospitable caverns.

To relieve in some way the fatigue of the profane, someone led him to another place, where his ear was recreated by melodious strains of music and his smell with the aroma of the mos exquisite perfumes. To understand, shortly after, their willingness to practice the other ceremonies, his guide made a signal and they appeared three priests, one of whom threw to his chest a live snake, symbol of regeneration, and opening a door came through a real wave of sounds and guttural cries like lamentations and howls that stunned the spirit of the neophyte and plunged him into a new state of indescribable terror. Returning his gaze to the site where the screams originated came to his sighth a harrowing scene of the torture suffered by the damned in the underworld. Then he was pulled through labyrinths and ramifications of seven spacious vaults linked with winding galleries, each one with a stone gate where could be seeng a scene of dangerous adventures, until he was initiated at sacellum ( chapel) or Santa Santorum, that it was illuminated magnificently and whose walls and roofs were dismissing the reflexes of the most pure gold and the richest precious stones.

There was the Archmage or Supreme Master of the Fraternity, sitting on the east side, on a golden throne, crowned his head with rich crown of myrtle branches entwined, wearing a bright blue robe, surrounded by an assembly of ministers and stewards of the sacred mysteries. They received the neophyte with great warm welcome, and after they take oaths to keep secret the rites of Zoroaster, was entrusted with the sacred words. The first and most important was the Tetractys or the name of God. The Pythagorean Tetractys Teatragramaton was similar to the Jewish God or the name of five letters. The number four was taken by the most perfect, because in the four properties of nature includes everything else, plus the first four numbers added together form the decade (1 2 3 4 = 10), after which all is simple repetition.

Today in Iran there are only remnants of this ancient order Mazdean.