Other than the number 8 and the "third wall of fire", I don't see the similarity. Excalibur is more like New OT 5 thru 7 than the Lucifer OT 8.
I do believe there are anti-freedom-loving forces "pushing back" against everything Scientology claimed to hope to do. And it seems to me they've been quite successful!
If you believe the Lucifer OT 8 HCOB, then everything LRH's worked for for years has finally been achieved. All the intro processes, all the Grades, Dianetics, the pre-OT levels; all that has been preliminary to Truth Revealed, where people get ready to fight the REAL battle. So what does Church management do? They decide that OT 8 is an embarassment, a PR flap, and they throw it away, defeating the purpose of the entire bridge.
Oh sure. The C of S is still a money-making engine, but no one will be singing "Onward, Anti-Christian Soldiers" soon.
I'm still interested is seeing the entire OT 8 series; if anyone has it, would they let me know?
Helena
The materials I have seen by RO in Virginia, USA aren't shoving as much cosmology down their newbies. They just mostly do an interview to find troublesome areas on the individual. Then they clean their way down the lines of connection.. There are certain perspectives you probably have to get with, considerations....but not so bad as originally discussed in Berlin.
thresh·old
ˈTHreSHˌ(h)ōld/Submit
noun
1.
a strip of wood, metal, or stone forming the bottom of a doorway and crossed in entering a house or room.
synonyms: doorstep, doorway, entrance, entry, door, gate, gateway, portal, doorsill
"the threshold of the church"
a point of entry or beginning.
"she was on the threshold of a dazzling career"
synonyms: start, beginning, commencement, brink, verge, cusp, dawn, inception, day one, opening, debut;
"the threshold of a new era"
the beginning of an airport runway on which an aircraft is attempting to land.
2.
the magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded for a certain reaction, phenomenon, result, or condition to occur or be manifested.
"nothing happens until the signal passes the threshold"
In the illustrative artwork of most religions you will see depicted some kind of trial by fire or torment or persecution or rules to escape from demons. The theme seems always to be that the soul essence of the individual has the potentiality to meet with
oblivion or get eaten up....Alas poor Yorick I knew him well.
This area where the ascending soul is striving for his lofty entitlements has always been laden with traps and demonic interferrences and trickery....so it goes. More than a few religions provide their manuals for safe passage as well as prayers from the priests. The general accepted notion among astral travelers, clairvoyants and occultants is that there is this Abyss where one's very soul or identity as a 'self' is in peril. A safe crossing takes preparedness and cleansing and good Graces....deserved. The Gnostics called those
Peratae , of whom it was said
they knew how to pass safely through 'the ring -passed-not'. So they had a a series of spiritual cleansings to do.
Very interesting wiki definition.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perates
According to the Peratics, the cosmos is one, but also consists of a threefold division; this rendering of the cosmos they symbolized by a circle circumscribing a triangle. The circle denoted the unity and oneness of the cosmos, while the triangle represented the "Three Worlds" of Patēr, Huios, Hulē [Greek: πατηρ, ὕιος, ὕλη]. These "three Minds" or "three Gods," as they were called, each possessed certain characteristics:[1]
Patēr (Father)—the unbegotten perfect-goodness; megethos patrikon [Paternal Greatness]
Huios (Son)—agathon autogenes [self-begotten goodness/perfection]
Hulē —basic matter or unformed substance, gennēton [begotten/created]
Physiology
All the ignorant are Egyptians. Egypt is the body, coming out of Egypt is coming out of the body, and passing the Red Sea, that is the water of destruction; or, in other words, generation. Those, however, who suppose themselves to have passed the Red Sea, are still liable to be assailed by the gods of destruction, whom Moses called the serpents of the desert, who bite and destroy those who had hoped to escape the power of the gods of generation
So many religions have their own idea of their wall of fire. The thing I noticed especially though was that it had to do with the individual striving to remain an individual, risen and sovereign. There was an understanding about the perils of attempting to escape the world and achieve a status as a causative actor, where death did not mean annihilation. And many believed they had seen the boneyards of those that didn't make the grade.
We are very much in our materialistic zenith. In the days of old there was so much loss of life early on that they got fed up. Maybe they decided that death and dying had been way oversold as a way of life.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/zor/sbe04/index.htm
This takes a person into the idea of First Cause or Prime Mover Unmoved BEFORE entry and entanglements with what has been Created.
In the Vendidad chapter there's this occultism which crept into the Chaldeans magic. The land by the Black and Caspian Seas as well as Northern Iraq is still rife with gypsies and bedouin who know their spells I'll bet. I don't know that it is co-incidence that the bowels of Hell keep yawning over there.