Academic

Summum's Seven Aphorisms

By Calvin Massey

    In the reporting on Pleasant Grove v. Summum, the case before the US Supreme Court involving an unusual tangle of free speech and establishment clause principles, there has been almost no reporting of the substance of the Seven Aphorisms.  The Summum sect claims that when Moses came down from Mt Sinai bearing the stone tablets and broke them in anger (Exodus 32:19), the broken tablets contained the Seven Aphorisms, which the people were not ready to receive.  Later, Moses went back up the mountain bearing blank stone tablets, on which God wrote the Ten Commandments.  Exodus 34:1-28.  For those interested, here is my condensation of the Seven Aphorisms:

1. All is mind.

2. As above, so below; as below, so above.

3. Everything moves.

4. Everything is dual.

5. Everything has its season.

6. Every effect has its cause; every cause has its effect.

7. Everything is both male and female.

Here is the Summum account of the origin of the Seven Aphorisms and here is the Summum explanation of the Seven Aphorisms.   Rather interesting, though irrelevant to the constitutional issues in Pleasant Grove v. Summum.

Image from Summum web site.  

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on November 15, 2008 (boomark / email).