E8; Sphere of Death

In this article I will try to prove that the Large Hadron Collider is the culmination of centuries of active research into the secrets of the Egyptian Ogdoad. I will trace the belief in this magical symbol from its roots in Hermopolis to the degrees of Freemasonry, through extensive periods of mathematical inquiry and finally to the LHC itself. Lastly, I will attempt to understand the real reasons behind this scientific venture, by discovering the secrets of the mysterious Eighth Sphere.

The Ogdoad (meaning eight-fold) represents the eight deities of the Ancient Egyptian pantheon. According to the mythology; the Ogdoad consisted of four male-female pairs, inhabiting a vast and dark void maintained prior to the birth of the Universe. An unforeseen imbalance in their respective forces creates the Sun God Ra. Given the pivotal nature of the Ogdoad to the Ancient Egyptian world view, we would expect some reference to it in the primarily symbolic language of the Masonic sects, which draw from this endless source of magic. We find that the Ogdoad finds expression in Freemasonry through the Masonic double square.

Left; the Ogdoad of the Aurum Solis. Right; the Masonic Double Square.

The double square is an abridged version of the Ogdoad specific to the Aurum Solis; a magical order that claims decent from the Ogdoadic tradition of the Western mystic form. The Ogdoad is an important part of Masonic and Aurum Soils initiation rites and represents the unification of cosmic forces.

In 1888, the mathematician William Killing discovered the E8 Lie Group - it is the first of all the largest Lie Algebras. It is so large that if all of the data pertaining to E8 were written out in standard typeface on A4 sheets, laid side by side, they would cover an area the size of Manhattan Island. E8 is the ultimate extension of the Ogdoad; it has 8 real space vector coordinates with 240 additional vertices, making a total of 248 dimensions. It has taken many decades to compile all of the statistical data on this structure, such is its magnitude. In 2007, Antony Garret Lisi incorporated what is known about E8 with his theories on particle physics to form a Grand Unified Field Theory. He suggested that each of the 248 vertices represent a subatomic particle. This implies that the basic underlying structure of the Universe must be 8-dimensional. Rotation of the E8 sphere in 8-dimensional space produces the observable particles and subatomic particles that make up the material Universe. Garret Lisi will be testing his theory alongside physicists at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern in the New Year.

The LHC collides photons at extremely high speeds in the search for the subatomic particle that gives mass to an atom's nucleus. A consequence of these collisions is the creation of mass out of energy. This mass is comprised of equal amounts of matter and anti-matter. When matter and anti-matter come into physical contact, they annihilate one another. This was the condition of the Universe close to its beginning. An imbalance must have occurred early on between these two opposing forms of matter to create the Universe we see around us today. Just such an imbalance is spoken of in the Ogdoad of Hermopolis. The 8 deities of the Ogdoad are the real space vector dimensions of the E8 sphere, upon which all of the matter in the Universe is structured. Therefore, the matter-antimatter imbalance, known as the CP violation, must be  an artifact from the 8-dimensional proto-space of the Ogdoad.

The LHC Silicon Pixel detector arrays ALICE and ATLAS, are both octagonal in shape. The shape could be influenced by the Ancient Egyptian Ogdoad; in much the same way the London Eye was influenced by the early Christian Ogdoad. Further investigation of the dimensions of these detectors and the general layout of the LHC reveals repeated reference to the number 8. The Alice Pixel detector has 8192 (8 x 8 x 8 x 8ˆ2) 8" silicon wafers arranged in 256 rows and 32 columns. The Atlas array has 1744 (8 x 218) modules in the innermost part of the detector. There are some 1232 (8 x 154) dipole magnets in the collider tunnel. The tunnel has eight cryogenic distributor points. The collider tunnel contains two adjacent parallel beam pipes that intersect at four points, making a total of eight intersecting beams. The entire facility appears built to a specification expressing the Ogdoadic and Masonic Double Square. Finally, the design for the ALICE logo is an octagon.

The Octagonal Atlas detector at Cern.

Considering how long it took to compile the E8 data and the vastness of the Collider, it is remarkable that these two complex areas of research were completed just in time for Garret Lisi to test his theory. It is as if the Universe wanted us to find these things and put them together. The discovery of E8 in 1888, could be itself a communication from the Universe; alerting us to the important applications of this number. The comparatively simple eight-point star of the Ogdoad has been replaced by an 8-dimensional one. What does this mean for the future of the Ogdoad?

To understand the motives behind the construction of the Collider; and how it relates to the Ogdoad, we must first know a bit more about the Ogdoad itself. The Ordo Aurum Solis assigned seven of the eight Aeons (dimensional realms) of the Christian Ogdoad to the seven known celestial spheres (planets). The last Aeon of the Ogdoad was known as the Eighth Sphere. But what exactly is the Eighth Sphere?

A section in Madame Blavatski's The Keys to Theosophy entitled On the Septenary Constitution of Our Planet sheds light on Blavakski's belief that there are seven planet Earths nested one inside/beside the other in hyper-dimensional space. (She suggests that the Earth we inhabit extends to the fourth dimension, at most.) Originally Blavatsky taught openly about 8 eight such parallel Earths, but after she suspected left-hand initiates of leading her astray, she revised this to only seven, and left the 8th Sphere, as part of a secret doctrine for higher initiates only.  In this doctrine, the Eighth Sphere was described as a place where irredeemable souls are taken to be ground up into their constituent particles by the Ineffable Father; a place also known as the Planet of Death.

In Gnostic Scripture, the Eighth Sphere is more cheerfully referred to as the Eighth Heaven. It is the perfect realm of the One True God, who supercedes the blind demiurge Yaldabaoth/Yahweh. Considering that these scriptures were only discovered in the last century in the caves at Nag Hammadi, we can assume that Blavatsky was uneducated with regard to the true teachings on this subject. It is conceivable, indeed likely, that had she been privy to such information her views on the Eighth Sphere would have been very different. It is interesting to note that the Ordo Aurum Solis are among the only Secret Societies to have preserved the knowledge of the Eighth Heaven in the shape of the Ogdoad, which we know today as E8.
E8 may not simply be the shape of the physical universe, but that of heaven itself (see image left). Heaven contains our three-dimensional space as a subgroup within the 8th dimensional E8 Sphere. This gives it an Gnostic System of 3 + 5, completing the 7 + 1, 6 + 2, 4 + 4. of earlier Gnostic systems.