I read a book at the beginning of the year, The Babylon Rite by Tom Knox. In a nutshell, I couldn’t put it down and read it in one sitting. If you’re squeamish, you might want to give it a miss.
What drew me to the book initially is that it started off set in Edinburgh and we all know I love all things Scottish! It starts off with a scene in Rosslyn Chapel and having recently been there, I could relate to the imagery described. My knowledge on the Templars is patchy at best but the topic fascinates me.
I’ll try not to give away any spoilers but I will say the theory presented, while fictional, is interesting nonetheless. The theory that there’s a link between all the ancient religions is set out in a way that is almost plausible. I read somewhere *wish I could remember where* that all the religions are depicted in the carvings at Rosslyn. There’s so much symbolism and imagery in the walls you could spend a significant chunk of time there and never decipher it all.
An interesting idea comes out of the book. The ancient civilizations used pictures, carvings and paintings to document their history. Since the discovery of these glyphs, carvings and pictures, people have been looking for the meaning behind them. It’s assumed that the depictions are metaphorical, maybe even a simplistic view of rituals and customs from a time we are desperate to understand. But what if….. What if what you see is what you get? What if the depictions aren’t symbolic at all but more along the lines of what a photograph would be? An actual representation of ritual and custom? While we’re trying to decipher the hidden meaning, what if the meaning was never meant to be hidden?
Maybe the best place to hide the truth is in plain sight because who’d look for it there?
To be clear, I’m not a scholar in archaeology or theology. I’ve never spent any time attempting to decipher hidden meaning in anything, it’s just never occurred to me to do so.
My interest in this idea is trying to find other places and ways where old wisdom was passed down in plain sight. The clichés we are sick of hearing, what if there’s a fundamental truth at the basis of it? Ancient civilizations had an immense knowledge of nature and the cosmos which seems almost impossible to explain when you look at what they had to work with. So how did they know and have they left clues to that knowledge hidden in plain sight?
There’s an order to the universe, that much cannot be denied. I can’t speak for anyone else but I want to find it for myself. I need order and logic in my life but most days life feels a lot like farting against thunder; pretty damn pointless.
Something as simple as please and thank-you being called the magic words. If you think about it, maybe they are because when you use them, they bring more into your life. Well, they do for me anyway. If someone doesn’t say please or thank-you, they get nothing further out of me. They come across as entitled and rude and I don’t do favours for those kinds of people. When people say please and thank-you, I go the extra mile for them because I know they appreciate it. Maybe that’s the magic in those words. Using them draws more people to want to help you and do things for you. Lack of them pushes supply away. A cliché with a ring of the truth to it.
How many others are out there? They came into being for a reason but overuse has dulled the meaning. It makes me wonder if there’s a cache of old wisdom waiting to be uncovered that’s veiled by the grime of overuse.
This isn’t going to be a quick discovery but I need to find order and meaning for myself. The world as it stands now is draining my will to live; people barking on about everything they’re entitled to for nothing; people being offended because it’s profitable and someone will always be made to pay. Common sense isn’t common anymore and the world is going to hell in a hand basket as a result.
Life was simpler then and that’s what I crave. Simplicity. Order. Harmony. Bliss.
