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The foundation of the ascent/descent tradition is enatiodromia � the process of reversal. Plato suggests elevation of the Scapegoat to leadership status, a U-turn of cosmic and comic proportions, an inversion of the genetic ultimata in primate dominance/submission structures. It�s a hierarchical Jubilee, an overturning of the material and spiritual tables, a flip-flop of the magnetic poles, the Old Switcheroo.

The cornerstone, or keystone, of the New Temple is the rejected stone, the prodigal son, fool, hanged man. Disdain for power immunizes him.

But for now we have a conundrum, a spirituo-political Catch 22. The rightful leaders of the State, the Philosopher Kings, not only have been exiled from office, but still fulfill the role of Scapegoat for the mob.

We have foxes in the henhouse, sheep holding the shears, and the masters in the cage.

Rising in Love with Matter

The most famous chapter of �The Philosopher King� is the �Allegory of the Cave,� a white-water narrative down mid-stream of the Western spiritual tradition.

The Allegory conserves both the elder �earth-magic� of descent and the later masculine �sky-magic� of ascent, shipped to Platonic Greece primarily via Egypt, Sumer, Babylon and Assyria. Four centuries before the birth of Christ -- that solar shaman-par-excellance -- Plato picked up the scent, couching a psycho-spiritual tradition reliant upon phenomenology in reflexive dialogues printed on replicable papyrus.

Plato stepped down the esoteric, elite and experiential phenomenology of prehistoric ecstatic experience into a more diverse Logos -- the Greek common tongue, which wagged throughout Hellenism�s cultural diaspora.

Both individuals and collectivities -- such as nations -- undergo descent and ascent phenomena during evolution. The Philosopher Kings are Plato�s version of shamanic politicians. They are thus oxymorons, anti-leaders.

But the Kings differ from Christ in that they are local boyz, not sonship descended from heaven, but sons born in and of earth � the filius macrocosmi, the low-born son.

This distinction is crucial, because kingship born of Earth will always love Earth. After undergoing descent and ascent, the Philosopher King is in empathy with the planet, and therefore is positioned to penetrate and raise matter. Such beings have fallen in love with Creation, and after rising above matter, they seek its sacralization and release.

This planet is incalculably wise, six billion years of wisdom in her womb. She knows exactly how you feel about her -- whether you love, hate, or are indifferent. She is the cell, we are the subatomic specks. Coniunctio is a marriage. It occurs under charged emotional states and banners of mutual empathy.

The low-born filius, having risen to the Upper Worlds, is authorized to return to Earth to effect coniunctio by inclusion of the Scapegoat � the excluded elements of humanity and matter, the Fourth. Christ was a high-born filius, descended from pure solarity, through virgin birth in the ancient tradition. But the raising of matter requires homeys who have suffered and enjoyed the basest forms of materia.

Plato envisions the need for a new order of manhood, a radical, reborn kingship, in which the practical acumen of the strictly political leader is transfigured by spiritual practice and conversance. By �spiritual� Plato does not mean orthodox priest-or-priestess-hood, either ancient or modern. He means a being filled by holy spirit, live wires crackling with juju � not a carnival barker for expired values and institutions, driving an SUV.

�The Philosopher King� opens with a description of the cave, and its prisoners caught on Earth between the light of the sun, representing the Upper World, and the illusory shadows cast upon matter, the Lower World. The narrative quickly shifts into a recitation of the spiritual ascent experience -- from the nigredo, unconscious, subterranean state of lowest matter, where the Philosopher King is born, to the brilliant heights of the Upper Worlds, to which he strives to ascend. He journeys to sun, to the Meeting with the Father -- the astronomic rise to the Upper Worlds of nirvana, heaven, space, the endless halls.

And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the prisoners are released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows.

And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have a pain in his eyes which will make him turn away � and suppose once more, that he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged ascent, and held fast until he's forced into the presence of the sun himself, is he not likely to be pained and irritated? When he approaches the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see anything at all of what are now called realities.

Here the Dialogues describe the first steps of the ascent process, the painful turning away from darkness toward consciousness and light. The path to the Upper Worlds is �steep and rugged.� This is the movement out of descent, the alchemical nigredo, the prima materia of chaos. Nigredo, the blackening, first stage in the individuation process, is the fall to bottom, and the hitting of bottom -- paying dues in hell.