Dearest readers:
I am sending you on this occasion a beautiful engraving that appears in a book from 1593 called Emblematum liber, whose author was Jean Jacques Boissard (1528-1602). This person was a French poet who provided texts and drawings for various French, Flemish and German publishers and engravers.
The present engraving is entitled in Latin…
…INGRATITUDINE LANGUET AMICITIA.
─‘Friendship is extinguished by ingratitude’─.
It is very good that we begin the description of our engraving by appealing to the Latin text that accompanies it, let us see:
“Officium ingratus nullo qui foenore pensant
Orchomeni faciles non habet ille Deas.
Sed cribro similis: per aperta foramine cuius
integra si fundas flumina, tota fluent… “.
Translation:
‘The ungrateful man who pays for a service without any interest does not have the favor of the Goddesses of Orchomenus, rather he is like a sieve: between their open holes, if whole rivers are poured, they will flow out immediately.’
Unquestionably, this is illustrated in the engraving of our study, in which we see three ─virtuous─ women, one of whom pours the water from a pitcher over a sieve and, obviously, through the holes of it this water immediately seeps directly onto the pavement.
This figure reminds us of that Spanish proverb that goes like this: “This is equivalent to wanting to plough in the sea”, or this other: “That is the same as wanting to fill a bottomless barrel with water”…
Undoubtedly, patient reader, ingratitude is a real scourge that adheres to our psyche and manifests itself through our personality.
Many have been the men who have been reciprocated to their noble tasks with the poison of ingratitude on the part of their fellow men. Suffice it to recall the apostles of the Great Kabir Aberamentho. All of them were martyred to death even though the only task they wanted to perform was to save the souls of the multitudes. And how has humanity reciprocated Yeshua ben Pandira himself for his sacrifice on the cross?
Let us remember the very Julius Caesar himself in his time, who, after spending eight years in Gaul wanting to expand Roman civilization, was betrayed by his own fellow citizens, who paid him for his services by attempting on his life in the Roman Senate itself. History still remembers the brutal crime committed precisely by Brutus ─Brute─ and his accomplices, eaten away by envy.
Ingratitude is related precisely to envy, and the latter to self-love. In our present times, the V.M. Samael Aun Weor dedicated his entire life to bringing us the treasure of Gnosis, for which he had to make immense sacrifices of different kinds, and yet, how has this humanity paid him? How have even we, many students of Gnosticism repaid him? Answer: With the most absolute contempt, betrayal of his ideals and total indifference on the part of our present society…
To make matters worse, many of the disciples of Master Samael who came to conquer the Mastery in our studies thanks to the guidance of their preceptor, ended up betraying him in the worst way and, as a final dessert, they ended up denigrating him. Obviously, such “masters” were punished by the solar hierarchies, sent to the Second Death or involution of their souls.
It is good to know that true friendship is a sacred bond, let us not forget that. As connoisseurs of transcendental Gnosticism and the Law of Recurrence, we must not forget that we never know if that friend of a past existence will become in this other current existence a Cyrenean who will help us in a terrible moment of great tribulation. Many times the Great Divine Law uses an “old friend” to help us pay off an old debt we had yet to pay him. For this reason, the popular saying that reminds us “Do good without looking at whom” is very appropriate in these lines.
Nor should we be ungrateful to our most sacred REAL BEING or to our DIVINE MOTHER. He and She, despite the millennia, have never forgotten us and, even if we do not deserve it, they have always assisted us in multiple circumstances in which we were materially or spiritually lost.
Ingratitude likes to exclaim: “One favor is repaid with another favor, and that’s it!” These kinds of lapidary phrases typical of cold hearts and lack of humanism are typical of people who, in their ignorance, forget that the correct thing to do would be to say: “A favor is repaid with the perfume of fidelity to a friendship!”
The V.M. Dante Alighieri, a resurrected Master and currently very active, placed in his DIVINE COMEDY the traitors and the ungrateful ones in the ninth infernal circle. Likewise, the V.M. Samael Aun Weor in his work Yes there is hell, yes there is devil, yes there is karma, tells us that in his visit to the infra-dimensions ─avernus, tartarus or hells─ of our world, he found there in the ninth circle many characters of history ─authors of great crimes and various betrayals toward their fellow men─ involuting within the bowels of the abyss. This is the Second Death of which the Christian and Hindu Holy Scriptures speak. These souls will have to spend thousands of years in those dark spheres until they manage to free themselves from those infernal aggregates that manipulated their psyche, leading them to commit execrable acts because of their ingratitude.
The women in our engraving are similar to the Kharites ─Charites─. They were considered Goddesses of grace. In Greek mythology they represented joy, beauty and abundance, and in Roman mythology the Charites were indicated by the name of Grace ─Gratiae─, and were called: Castitas, ‘chastity’, Pulchritudo, ‘beauty’ and Voluptas, ‘desire’. They had two main centers of worship, one of them being the city of Orkhomenos (Orchomenus) in Greece. In classical sculpture they are depicted as three beautiful naked women dancing in a circle.
Allow me now to add some phrases that I consider important to reflect upon:
“Old friendship is like old wine, the older it is, the stronger it is.”
Antonio Pérez
“The first law of friendship is to ask honest things from the friends and to do honest things for the friends.”
Cicero
“Friendship makes two souls one soul.”
Fray Luis de Granada
“The friendship that can end was never true.”
Saint Jerome
“Friendship is the marriage of the soul.”
Voltaire
VERBA DOCENT, EXEMPLA TRAHUNT.
─’Words instruct, illustrations lead’─.
KWEN KHAN KHU
