Kybalion

Walking through Athens, through the central district of Plaka, I looked towards Akropole and the first thing that filled my mind, when the gaze became so grand, was... silence. One of the hardest things is... learn to be silent. The men catch something else in the brass. But what is learned in the army is just... shut up and execute, which is not good. Your thought filter is clogged. With women, it's even harder. The lesson of silence is never taught to them.

In the time of Socrates people communicated with each other... vertically and horizontally. Now the smart talk to the smart, the stupid to the stupid, the horizontal has entered our lives and consciousness so deeply that even if you want to hear something more, it's almost impossible. "Silence is golden," said a proverb that some people give back some two thousand years. Would they, the Greeks, have known what they would have known... when they silently found a purpose more important than the action of speaking!

It depends on who you're listening to, but when you learn to shut up, you start to distinguish the bland from the idea more easily, or at least you have the chance to decide what not to say before you know what you want to articulate. Those who are supposed to enlighten us do so with such infatuation, they use words so chosen that you keep wondering how the great philosophers could tell the deep truths in such simple words, how they took out these existential essences with their bare hands and presented them to the world like this, simply, like roots, without gilding them in words.? formal, golden? Their erudition, their deep wisdom, consisted in the substance of the statement, never in form, which they sought to be as intelligible as possible.

"Know thyself!" ... A few simple, clear, common words. I imagine that those who had the possibility of vertical dialogue with Socrates could also find out the sequel. "So you can corroborate." Getting to know yourself was only the first step. Hermes the Trismeghist, in his Emerald Tabula, says that..."it is true, without falsehood, the true truth" and "what is above is the same as what is below, and what is below is the same as what is above, to accomplish the miracle of one thing", using simple words... but hermetic, to reveal Triar to us and introduce us into the macrocosm... through microcosm.

Theogony speaks of eternal Chaos, endless and plunged into darkness, as today we can only imagine... the night of the mind. From Chaos, which is also the source of life, when the light of wisdom penetrates, came born that boundless power, Eros, love, which animates everything. Eternal darkness, Herbos and Night denial, Nyx...they gave birth to the eternal Light, Ether, and the Bright Day, Imera. Cronus ate his children and thus... years passed. Time is the fourth dimension, the serpent biting its tail forever, because it is elastic, infinite, and reduced to one: present.

I approached Akropole, walking and silent, walking up the hill to the place where I was to meet Thanatos, death, Eris, discord, Apates, deceit, Ker, destruction, Hypnos, sleep, with its drove of lures. I didn't see Nemesis, the merciless one, but I knew she was near. Where was Nike, the goddess of victory? But what did I care about all this... when we were with Pallas-Athena, the towering warrior, of divine wisdom, Aphrodite, our soul, always beautiful and eternally young, Ate, the goddess of deception? Heracles killed serpents, the symbol of time, in the bud, which is why he remained immortal. The Lion of Kithairon demonstrated the link of evolution. Erginos, King of Orhomenos, is everyone's adolescence when we overcome our fears. or not. Heracles went from madness to pain, as happens to us when we kill our children. And what are children... what if not our hopes, which we fall in love with and then kill? The first feat... The Lion of Nemeia. Heracles overcame his selfishness. The Hydra of Lerna... There is all the evil within us that keeps coming out, going out, going out, and which we sometimes overcome. Stymphalian Birds... They are our enemies, internal or external. Keryntitic Deer... It is the emptiness, the form without substance, that ravages the seedlings of the mind. The wild boar of Erymanthos... It's envy, jealousy. King Augias' stables... I am the power. The Cretan Bull... it's doubtful. The Horses of Diomedes... They are the momentum and the hope. Hippolyta's Arm... it's feud. Geryones' Cows... they are wealth. Cerberus... it's fear. Apples from the Garden of the Hesperides... i'm lying. Heracles knew himself, his exploits are victory over the microcosm.

Silent and walking... I understood that I no longer had to go to Akropole. The temple is in us, reflected, we find it inside, with the weather-eaten columns, with all the statues and symbols. I sat under the olive tree and smoked a cigarette, watching as the altar of my soul was a little torn down, but still standing. For many more thousands of years!