Beyond the limits of present historical memory there have always been
stories and fables hinting at the existence of such a situation for mankind;
fables and allegories are one of the many means adopted by Schools for
passing on a concealed knowledge which may yet become available to those in
a position to interpret them correctly.
An acquaintance with one of these tales is not unusual today; it is the Myth
of the Black Sheep. This story is a genuine myth; it is, not, as many
naively suppose, merely a little fairy-tale for the entertainment of
children. It contains many authentic elements of A-type knowledge and those
elements, moreover, are concealed only to the extent that we are not
directly told to whom the story really refers.
Ostensibly the tale related to a shepherd and his flock of sheep. To the
latter the shepherd takes on the aspect of a beneficent being, indeed of a
beneficent god. He continually addresses himself to their welfare and he
employs what can seem to them to be only supernatural and unimaginable means
to assure their safety and to rescue any of their number who may have the
misfortune to wander away and become lost or to fall into some other
jeopardy. He leads them to shelter against the cold and he provides them
with the food and other requirement necessary for their existence. He takes
very good care of them, much better care indeed than they could assure for
themselves. It is therefore no source of wonder that they should look upon
him as genuinely concerned with their welfare and entertain toward him
feeling of grateful awe.
The shepherd himself, however has purposes in relation to these sheep of
which they are unaware. These purposes would much astonish the sheep if the
latter were to know of them; they are concerned first with a supply of wool,
and later with a supply of mutton. In fact the sheep have somewhat seriously
mistaken the shepherd's motives, for his care of them is occasioned
primarily by considerations that the wool should be thick and useful for
human (not animal) protection and that the meat should be well-nourished and
tender when it is finally brought to market. These values, held by the
shepherd and the real causes of his behavior, relate to matters entirely
beyond either the knowledge or the comprehension of the ordinary sheep.
The ordinary sheep, as can be seen at a glance, is white. He and his
fellows, as alike as so many peas in a pod, make up the vast majority of the
sheep population. But very occasionally at long intervals there appears an
unusual sort of sheep whose presence can also be noted at a glance; for this
is a black sheep. The black sheep is both more skeptical and far cleverer
than the ordinary member of the flock and while taking care to present an
appearance of conformity in his daily sheeplike behavior, he is all the time
directing his attention toward little anomalies which seem to contradict the
general views held by his companions. The annual shearing, for instance, is
certainly done at a time of year when the sheep will be least discommoded by
it; yet it really seems a strange proceeding and, upon serious reflection,
one that can scarcely be thought of as motivated primarily by a concern for
the sheep's' comfort. The black sheep also speculates upon the problem
raised by the unaccounted-for disappearances of his compatriots just when
they have reached their manifest prime; and he explores various hypotheses
in an endeavor to explain to himself these peculiar happenings. Many a black
sheep never arrives at any satisfactory conclusions upon these questions
before his own turn at the butcher's comes around but very, very
occasionally some unusually clever specimen contrives to see what he should
not see or to overhear a conversation at which he is not presumed to be
present. And thus he learns the secret.
We may imagine his consternation as the truth becomes known to him. The
situation is not only a shocking surprise, it is also so contrary to
established opinions and convictions as to overturn them completely. Every
seriously held life-view concerning sheephood is destroyed at a stroke. And
supposing the sheep to experience some feeling of solidarity with his paler
brothers, we may next imagine his concern to share with them the information
he has discovered regarding their desperate circumstances. A large
proportion of the black sheep who have by some chance reached this position,
do not proceed beyond it, for hastily to blurt out the dreadful news not
only arouses the disapproving incredulity of the other sheep but is
calculated likewise to bring matters to the attention of the shepherd. There
is a ready means at hand to quash such subversive activity; it consists in a
premature trip to the slaughterhouse, inevitable later in any case for this
remarkable fellow who is both too clever and yet not quite clever enough.
Still, at very long intervals indeed, there does occur a black sheep of such
outstanding acumen that he avoids this pitfall, too, and is thrown back upon
the most sober consideration of what to do for the best. Such a sheep has
lost his peace of mind once and for all; and he soon comes to realize that
in his extremity nothing will suffice except to add an equal degree of
courage to the intelligence which has brought him to his present pass. To
remain where he is, is certain death, even (in his own conditions) a sort of
deliberate suicide. But what then is he to do? It would be difficult enough
to escape the watchful eye of the shepherd and, even if such a miracle were
accomplished, where could he find fodder to keep himself alive or shelter
from the winter which he likewise knows will surely come? All these
necessities have always been provided for him; he lacks any knowledge
himself as to how to go about obtaining them. Would it perhaps be better to
forget the whole thing, to enjoy a life in many respects obviously suited to
sheephood and to resign himself to the fate which will overtake him only a
little sooner than properly, in any case? And so, finally, we may imagine in
what straits our sheep struggles with these alternatives.
At the end of the fable we are told of the black sheep which came to a final
decision. Having waited interminably for a possible opportunity, that black
sheep disappeared one dark night from the fold and could not thereafter be
found. It had escaped. We are not told what happened to it after that.
This Myth, incidentally, is said to have been put into public circulation
originally by that School which flourished for a time in medieval Europe and
two other of whose productions were the earlier Gothic cathedrals and the
Orders of Chivalry. The true name of the School, which itself stood behind
these different activities and directed them, is not disclosed.
Certain points about the allegory are evident enough. The sheep, of course,
correspond to the human race of which we are members. And the black sheep is
that extraordinary person whose pronouncements are too difficult or too
unpleasant to our tastes to be acceptable to investigation, even if we
experience the profound unliklihood of ever meeting with him. But what is
the hidden horror he is endeavoring to communicate to us? What, in our case,
is the wool and mutton of the fable? Who is the ambiguous shepherd?
These are the questions, specifically, which the Myth is designed to arouse
in those whom it reaches and who also by chance possess a Magnetic Centre.
And it does indeed stimulate those queries; but it does not answer them.
Here we are concerned with the answers, no longer veiled or speculative. And
first we shall give the answers, which are both literal and part of the
Local Map; then for their explanation we shall have to take a further glance
at the Greater Map, for it is there that their reason lies.
The black sheep's secret is this: that our lives have nothing to do with our
personal aspirations or desires; that we are born and live because death
must follow life; and that in death we provide a kind of food required in
the economy of the Universe, which nothing else can provide. The wool and
mutton of the Myth are our literal physical bodies, in which during life
certain purely physical substances are accumulated, quite unconsciously upon
our part, substances that, when automatically released at our deaths, will
furnish ingredients required by the cosmic machine. These substances are
altogether physical in character but they belong to the realm of physics
rather than to that of chemistry; their nature is electromagnetic.
But what of the shepherd? Who is he? In the Myth he did not stand for
mankind in general in relation to the sheep; instead, he was a specific man.
In the same way, the tale dealt not with all sheep but with a specific flock
of sheep. Mankind on this planet is not the entire human race for, if so, we
could never have known a Buddha or a Christ, by their own original accounts
messengers not from heaven but from elsewhere in this universe. And just as
the sheep could see the shepherd well enough but did not understand at all
what he was, so we can, and do, see our shepherd almost every day without
the slightest recognition of his real role in our lives. He is not an
abstraction nor is he a generality; he is no such thing as Nature in general
or Nature with a capital N, he is a specific and concrete part of Nature.
For men on this planet their shepherd is the Moon. And because the Moon is
specific to this planet, the black sheep's secret is specific to this
planet, too.
It will not do, however, to consider the Moon as a kind of devil. Devils are
no more than the inventions of romanticists and there are no authentic
devils in this universe, although it is true that Nature may properly be
called our Evil Stepmother. In a perfectly proper sense it is Nature which
exiles man from his high destiny and keeps him in his exile. Nature here is
to be considered in her most general aspects, not only in those aspects of
man's own nature which continually prevent his awakening from his usual
semi-conscious state but also in those aspects of the mechanicality and
automatism.
The immediate manifestation of the latter aspects for us upon the Earth is
man's Bad Shepherd, the Moon.
