Masonic Articles and Essays
The Cosmic Origins of Civilization
Exc. Bro. Aksel Suvari 18°
Date Published: 9/18/2024
The spirit of Humanity has always sought to go beyond the limitations of its condition. In doing so, our gaze is inevitably drawn upwards to the stars, our origins and our destiny. While on earth, we have always sought to reproduce their splendor and glory in what we build. Is this the source of all civilization?
Since the dawn of time, humanity has endeavored to raise edifices in honor of the cosmos and its Architect. We have a deep and abiding understanding that the answer to the mystery of ourselves is to be found in the depths of space. In the myriad patterns of the stars and celestial bodies we draw connections that start within us and reach out to the origins of the universe and which lay the foundation upon which all religion is built. We guide our journeys across the unknown vastness of our oceans by following in the footsteps of the luminaries of the night sky and when we build we endeavor to draw down the mighty grandeur of the heavens to inhabit our structures on Earth.
That which is above mirrors that which is below, and that which is below is like that which is above. In a similar sense, the collective evolution of humanity can be seen to resemble what we know of the formation of the Cosmos. Humanity began its journey out of the animal kingdom surrounded by darkness and violence. In the same manner, the universe was begun (almost inexplicably) as a violent expansion of all that ever was into the gaping void of nothingness becoming somethingness. As the initial burst of self-awareness enlightened our previously blinded state, newly conscious humanity began to observe and to learn from its environment, just as matter began to cool and collect together with similar and compatible particles. Eventually, as more and more matter was accumulated and compressed, the furnaces of the stars ignited and light pervaded throughout the Universe. On the fateful day that man’s knowledge had increased to the point that fire sprang from his hand, suddenly we had the power to know the other half of the world and to recognize our brothers in the darkness. Connections between these previously isolated bands of cave dwellers and nomads were formed and strengthened in the same way that gravitational connections between the protoplanets of countless solar systems began to intersect and form orbits. Steady patterns of repeated interaction became a fixture of the universe. In the story of humanity this is analogous to the establishment of trade, language and myth. We began to orbit each other and to describe and share the stories of the paths that led us there. Eventually, in the evolution of our solar system and others like it, enough matter and gas had gathered together and the motion of these objects had reached such a pace that terrestrial planets formed; their cool and crude surfaces being the construction of their molten cores. In the same way the stone megaliths and early cities of the Bronze age were the construction of humanity’s acquisitive, barbarian spirit.
Civilization is the constant partner of cosmology, leaping forward alongside our understanding of the universe. In the darkness of early human evolution it was the regularity of the movement of the heavenly bodies that produced the concept of law and order; for what our ancestors observed on earth was violent and unpredictable chaos compared to the waltz of the stars. The idea that there exists a consistent order that functions above human affairs and yet seems to govern phenomena on earth provided the first blueprint of social organization. It was the careful observance of this rhythmic dance that provided the second concept necessary to establishing civilization: time. To civilize, as defined by Webster’s, is to “cause to develop out of a primitive state”. It is a process which is demarcated by certain and specific achievements that advance both the total knowledge possessed by humankind and the possible applications and uses of that knowledge in affecting the world. This idea means nothing without a sense of time and without natural cycles by which to measure the age of the universe. Without time there is no progress and without progress there can be no assertion of civilization. Time is a creation of the Universe’s evolution. As things change and transform both in space and on earth, phenomenal markers are created that mark transitions from one form to another, allowing our consciousness to perceive a progression of events. Of course, in a cosmic scale, these observations are essentially arbitrary, biased as they are by the position of our viewing platform in space but are still essential to providing humanity with a sense of movement and purpose. Time, in reality, is fluid in its scope depending upon the position from which you measure change. Although they are not “true” in a universal sense they provide the temporary framework by which to advance a certain idea.
The most ancient precursors of civilization, the stone megaliths that are found on every inhabitable continent, are crude yet earnest attempts by early humankind to form a connection with this vast procession of events. These stones raised to the glory of heaven were the first flame produced as the embers of civilization began burning in the mind of man so many thousands of years ago. These structures are designed to form a link between the cycles of this planet and the cycles of the heavenly “spheres” above us, to bring the majesty of universal time into the mundanity of planetary existence. The remnants of Stonehenge, for example, show us that astronomy and the study of celestial events have always been a prime fascination of humanity and have carried with them a sense of the mysterious and magical. The Herculean effort required to construct such a structure (at least according to the conventional understanding of humanity’s technological progress) shows us that the measurement of the movements of the stars was of the utmost importance to the ancients. This devotion was strong enough to become the raison de etre for entire societies, including those of the Druidic tribes, the Egyptian and Mayan pyramid builders and the ancient Ziggurat dwellers of the Sumerian delta. What force precipitates this urge? Who weaves this constant thread woven through all the civilizations of the ancient past? Across the aeons it has been the priests of the stars, the self-selected few who expended the painstaking effort and countless years of observation required to create time and seasons and mythology; those who built the foundational base of knowledge upon which the temple of civilization is still being constructed. These people emerge naturally from the universe in the same way that stars emerge to throw light upon the dark corners of the cosmos. The development of of humanity is inexorably linked with the evolution of the stars, both literally and in the metaphorical sense of our understanding of them. As the cosmos grows, breathes and moves we cannot help but be affected. The slightest perturbation in the orbit of an object many millions of miles away can set in motion a chain of events that could lead to the destruction of large swathes of our home planet; the geological record bearing witnesses to previous collisions of this kind. The recognition of this unified totality, that of a divided yet interactive whole, was the original religion produced by these priests and is the most likely source of the Hermetic axiom quoted above. Astrotheology was the first and most important implement of civilization.
There is a very good reason that the stars are worshiped as gods for they are the civilizers and educators of our species. The observation of the solstices, for example, gave us the rudiments of geometry: the methods of describing a circle within a square. From this we derived the triangular form and have been using it to construct in harmony with nature for millennia ever since. It was from the priestly mythology written by our observation of the stars that we derived our sense of ethics. The battle of opposing forces, first represented by the changing of day to night and then metaphorically explained in the tale of Isis, Osiris, Horus and Set, illuminated our symbolic home in the universe, balanced between two ever-present extremes. The other planets of the solar system became the supporting cast of humanity’s mythos, filling similar and sometimes identical roles across seemingly disparate cultures. Mars, for example, is universally acknowledged as the stellar representation of the ferocious and warlike tendencies of the human race with his fiery red nature and eccentric, elliptical orbit. To the ancients, the heavens were teeming with lively celestial symbolism that illustrated a cosmic morality by which to align and organize their social interactions. Much of this remains intact in the story of civilization today, albeit muted by the atheistic overtones of the modern era.
Some aspects of civilization are themselves comparable to certain celestial bodies, the life cycles of empires in particular are notably similar to the birth, life and death of stars. Just as an empire can only spring forth from the correct psychic substrate so too must a fertile patch of interstellar material form prior to the birth of a star. Stars are created within what are called Giant Molecular Clouds (abbreviated to GMCs), vast areas of space that, while cold and dark, are teeming with particles of dust and gases; a sort of cosmic soil. Eventually the gravity of the GMC causes these particles to contract and heat up and eventually form protostars. These protostars become increasingly denser and hotter as they revolve within nebulae of stellar material. All of this activity raises the temperature until the material begins to glow and emit gases of its own and, if the cloud contains enough mass, from this point there is no return. The material within will inevitably become hotter and hotter until it reaches the almost unimaginable temperature of 10 million degrees Celsius and the nuclear fusion of hydrogen to helium will begin. Empires are built in the same way, instead of cosmic dust and gases they are formed out of the individual psychological, mythological and economic pressures of the inhabitants of a given area and also the forces of the zeitgeist of that particular era. They are always precipitated by consciously acting human beings, leaders both self-appointed and elected who fulfill the role of protostar. These people or groups of people become the glowing hot core of a particular ideology, allowing the cloud of humanity around them to become trapped in their gravity without having to immediately fall into the furnace of fanaticism. It is by the immense gravity of these people that others are drawn to their aspirations and will fling themselves upon swords to achieve their vision, the only difference between themselves and the newborn sun is that their gravity is psychological and temporal. We often think of emperors and tyrants as aberrations of history, people who impose their will upon an unwilling population, but we must not neglect the fact that everything in the universe is in balance and just as the star cannot be born without the disparate elements required so too must the people of a certain age bring forth the empire they invoke. The wildness of the ancient mediterranean yearned for a Romulus to step forth and force chaos into order, the open seas of the Atlantic and Caribbean beckoned to Cortez and the poor and humiliated of post-war Germany demanded a return of their honor.
Once the initial fire of of formation has stabilized, a star will burn brightly for millions of years. It’s lifespan, however, is determined by the amount of fuel present at it’s conception. The higher the mass of a star, the more intense the heat and violence of the fusion core, the quicker the star will burn itself out. We can readily apply this analogy to various human civilizations throughout the ages. The Romans, for example, occupied a unique time in history, the population was sparse and the world was mostly open and unexplored. Consequently, the “star” of the Roman Empire was of relatively low mass, there were fewer people, technologies and ideas for its managers to contend with and was thus able to achieve an impressive longevity. This can be seen to be true of most of the ancient past, those civilizations that established themselves at the beginning of the Bronze Age, the Egyptian Dynasties and the Chinese for example, were of the greatest longevity when compared to the more contemporary empires that have existed in an ever more crowded world. From the Spanish, to the British and now to the crumbling American empires we can see that each new empire is forced to bear the burden of an exponentially increasing planetary mass and are thus able to sustain themselves for shorter and shorter periods of time. High mass stars with high intensities of fusion can be compared to those short-lived attempts at empire that accompany violent and unexpected ideologies that burst forth in history, such as the rampaging force of the Great Khan that swept across the Kazakh steppes and into Western Europe before collapsing under its own weight. The Third Reich also consumed its fuel at a terrifying pace, coming to its end at the hands of a supernova generated by the ferocity of its activity. When a star dies it leaves behind the materials for new stars to form in its wake, the remnants of a previous stellar cycle is the substance that is carried in the heart of the new stars. In the same way, civilizations collapse but their inhabitants are very rarely exterminated completely. They migrate outwards from the wreckage of the empire, propagating the mythology and ideology that fuels the beginnings of a new social order. Each new form of civilization transmutes the ideas of the past and is echoed through time by its subsequent adaptation.
Though forms of civilization may appear suddenly or gradually, civilization itself is not the buildings constructed by its populace nor is it the ideas which guide its manifestation. Civilization is a force of nature characterized by an ever increasing complexity. This is the tendency of all things in the universe and is not limited to the realm of intelligent life. From the absolute emptiness that preceded the Big Bang emerged rough and untempered material, raw and brimming with possibility. Over billions of years the interplay of order and chaos has brought forth numerous forms of matter and life but has always been guided by a tendency towards complexity. Each new cause producing an effect that cannot be subtracted from the totality of cosmic history, whether it is observed or passes away unnoticed in the depths of time. This is the natural state of the universe, a flowing river of pattern and designs. Civilization is one the visible aspects of the universal predilection towards evolution, for even if its form is destroyed it does not become removed from the record of all that was. This record is not kept in dusty tomes in some sort of astral library but is lived and felt by all life, from the highest host of angels to the lowest mote of the mineral kingdom. We cannot help but to evolve in the same manner as the stars for we are born of the stars and the entire cosmos is within us. We occupy the privileged position of one of the innumerable points of awareness that pervade the universe, observing ourselves spread across the canopy of heaven. The study of the cosmos and the study of our history are one and the same, for we dance to the rhythm of the macrocosmos just as we arrange and manipulate the microcosmos to our liking. We spin in circles, drawn along by forces greater than ourselves just as galaxies are guided the gravity of their neighbors, all of us entwined in the grand experience of being. If we can abstain from destroying ourselves like so many forms before us, perhaps we can attain to a deeper understanding of our place at the heart of Life.
