The Symbolic, Mystical, Esoteric Meaning of the Resurrection, Part 2/2

(Anna Kingsford, The Perfect Way, Extracts from Lecture 8, 1882)

27. The true design and method of the Gospels, together with the process of their degradation, become clear in proportion as the nature of their real subject – the Man Regenerate – is understood. In dealing with this we are met at the outset by an example of perversion, one of the most conspicuous and disastrous in the whole history of religion. This is the perversion of the doctrine of the “Incarnation.” Of this doctrine the original basis was a prophecy – or declaration of universal import founded in the nature of existence – of the means whereby, both as race and as individual, man is redeemed. Born originally of Matter and subject to the limitations of Matter, Man, according to this prophecy, is redeemed, and made superior to those limitations, by being reborn of Spirit, a process by which he is converted from a phenomenal into a substantial being, one in nature with original Deity, and having, therefore, in himself the power of life eternal. Of this perfected man the foster-father is always that which, spiritually, is called Egypt – the body or Matter, and, by derivation, the Intellect, or reason of the merely earthly mind – the mystic name of which is always “Joseph.” 

On his first appearance in the drama of the soul, as set forth in the Bible, this Joseph is represented as a youth already sufficiently developed, in his affectional nature, to return good for evil and to succor his kindred; in his intellectual nature, to fill with credit posts of responsibility and to secure the confidence of his sovereign; and in his moral nature, to resist the seductions of the world. He is, thus, a type of the philosophical element, both in itself and in its relations with the State; and a representative of the rising Hebrew Mysteries. In the Gospels he reappears – like Egypt itself – aged and past the glories of his prime. And he is represented as the adoptive father only of the Man Regenerate, because this last is really the product, not of the mind, but of the soul; not of “Egypt,” but of “Israel;” not of the “man” Intellect, but of the “woman” Intuition, being “begotten” through her, not by any physical process, but by Divine spiritual operation. Nevertheless he has the benefit of the wisdom and knowledge of his “foster-father,” for he is instructed in the sacred Mysteries of Egypt, which are, indeed, one with those of Israel, only first of Egypt, – a priority denoting the precedence, in point of time, of the development of the intellect over that of the intuition. In representing Joseph as the foster-father only, and not the real father, the parable implies that man, when regenerate, is so exclusively under the influence of his soul, or Mother, as to have but a slender connection with his external part, using it only for shelter and nourishment, and such other purposes as may minister to the soul’s welfare.

28. He who would redeem and save others, must first be himself redeemed and saved. The Man Regenerate, therefore, first saves himself, by becoming regenerate. He receives, accordingly, a name expressive of this function. For, of Jesus one of the significations is Liberator. This name is given, not on the birth of the man physical, nor to the man physical, – of whose birth and name the Gospels take no note, – but to the man spiritual, on his initiation, or new birth from the material to the spiritual plane. And it is the name, not of a person, but of an Order, the Order of all those who – being regenerate and attaining perfection – find, and are called, “Christ Jesus.” (As see Eph. iii. 15.)

29. Of the miracles worked by the Regenerate Man, some are on the physical, some on the spiritual plane; for, being himself regenerate in all, he is master of the spirits of all the elements. But while the terms in which the Miracles are described are uniformly derived from the physical plane, the true value and significance of these Miracles are spiritual. That, for example, known as the Raising of Lazarus, is altogether a parable, being constructed on lines rigidly astronomical, and having an application purely spiritual. To a like category belongs also the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand. For the “loaves” given to the multitude represent the general doctrine of the lesser Mysteries, whose “grain” is of the Earth, the kingdom of Demeter, and of the outer; and the “fishes” – given after the loaves – denote the greater Mysteries, those of Aphrodite, – fishes symbolizing the element of the sea-born Queen of Love, and her dominion, the inner kingdom of the soul. 

It may be noted in this relation that the Gospels represent their typical Man as at first speaking explicitly to the people, but afterwards, warned by experience, addressing them in parables only. Of the Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension, also, notwithstanding that these have a physical correspondence, the signification intended to be enforced, and which alone is valuable, is spiritual. Wherefore the Gospel narrative, though told as of an actual particular person, is a mystical history only of any person, and implies the spiritual possibilities of all persons. And, being thus, it represents, designedly, that which is general rather than that which is particular, and makes no pretence to an accuracy which is merely historical, the object being not to relate facts, but to illustrate doctrines. 

34. He is then qualified to proceed to the greater Mysteries of which the final scene is the “King’s Chamber.” This, as already said, is placed at the extreme summit of the passages, and beyond the centre of the Pyramid; and its purpose is to symbolize that kingdom of heaven which the Initiate attains by what is called the Divine Marriage, an act which separates him altogether from his life of the past. The six superposed beams which compose the ceiling of this chamber denote the “six crowns” of the Man Regenerate, that is, the six acts or stages of initiation, of which three appertain to the lesser and three to the greater Mysteries. These “crowns,” therefore, are Baptism, Temptation, Passion, Burial, Resurrection, and  Ascension. Of all these the ultimate object is that full and complete Redemption which, by its realization of the soul’s supreme felicity, is termed the “Marriage of the Son of God.” And in the second shaft passing upwards through the pyramid, from the topmost point of the last gallery, and pointing in one direction to the coffer in the King’s Chamber, and in the other direction to the Pole-star at it greatest altitude, may be seen symbolized the return to God of the soul, perfected and triumphant, on her final release from Matter. So that by the two pole-star-pointing shafts are typified respectively the forces centrifugal and centripetal, the Will and the Love, from the operation of which proceed Creation and Redemption.

35. Between the “Resurrection” and “Ascension” of the Man Regenerate, is an interval which – in accordance with the mystical system of making all dates which relate to the soul’s history coincide with the corresponding solar periods – is termed “Forty Days.” The actual length of the period, however, is dependent upon individual circumstance. The New Testament contains nothing in compatible with the suggestion that Jesus may have lived on the earth for many years after his “Resurrection,” and was therefore still in the body when seen of Paul. For that which occurs at the expiration of this cycle is not a quittance of the earth in the physical sense ordinarily supposed, but the complete withdrawal of the man into his own interior and celestial region. The Spirit attains the Sabbath of perfection only by attaining Rest or Quiescence; and to this Sabbath – or Nirvana – the Man Regenerate necessarily attains, sooner or later, after his “Crucifixion” and “Resurrection;” and the attainment of it constitutes his “Ascension.” There are then no longer two wills. The man has “ascended to his Father,” and he and God are One. Henceforth he is Lord of his own microcosmic universe, having the “kingdom, the power, and the glory” thereof. And all things in “heaven” and on “earth” are subject to him. “He hath put all things under his feet, that God may be all in all.” 

36. But although the true signification of the Gospel narrative of the Ascension is spiritual only, the process of Redemption is not without its physical results; for every faculty is enhanced thereby to the degree ordinarily deemed “miraculous,” rendering the Subject clairvoyant and clairaudient, enabling him to impart health and recall life by the touch or by the will, to project himself in visible form through material obstructions, and to withdraw himself from sight at will. And not only is disease eliminated from and rendered impossible to his system, but his organism becomes so highly refined and vitalized that wounds, however severe, heal by first intention and even instantaneously. So that, if only for this reason, it is quite impossible that the Gospels should have intended to represent their typical regenerate man as dying, in a physical sense, of the injuries described by them as received on the cross. 

37. By the Crucifixion of the Man Regenerate is denoted no physical or brief exterior act, but the culmination of a prolonged Passion, and its termination in the complete surrender of the soul. And this arrival of the “last hour” of the earthly man, or old Adam, is symbolized by the action of tasting the very dregs and lees of the cup of suffering, – the soul’s experience, that is, of the limitations of existence. Accordingly it is written: – “Jesus, knowing that all things were accomplished, said, I thirst. And they put a sponge full of vinegar upon a reed, and gave him to drink. Jesus, then, when he had tasted the vinegar, said, It is consummated. And bowing his head, he gave up the ghost.” By this exclamation is announced the emptying of that cup of spiritual bitterness which may not pass from the Christ until the dregs even be consumed. This selfsame cup it is, of which the symbol, fixed on the summit of a reed, was borne in the hand of an attendant priestess at the ceremony of final initiation as practiced in the Mysteries. 

38. By this cup is represented the chalice of Existence or Incarnation, wherein is contained that Substantial Water, or Soul, which by the “marriage” of the will of the man with the Will of God, becomes  the Wine of the holy Sacrament, or Communion with God. The Reed which supports this Cup is the universal rod or Staff which so constantly recurs in Hermetic Scriptures, and is at once the rod of Moses, the wand of the Magician, the sceptre of the King, the reed of the Angel, the rod of Joseph that flowers, and the caduceus of Hermes himself. For it is the symbol of Force, the Line, or Jod, by which is typified alike the creative act of projection into Matter and individualization thereby and the energy of the will – inflexible and undivided – through which the return to Spirit is accomplished and salvation achieved. Of these cup-surmounted reeds the bearers, in the Greek Mysteries, were called Canephorae, or reed bearers. And the corresponding celebration in the Gospels is appropriately described as occurring at Cana of Galilee, where, as may be gathered from Josephus, was a cave of initiation. The nature of the occasion depicted in Fig. 9 is further denoted by the symbol carried in the right hand, both of the priestess and of the candidate. 

This is the Crux ansata, or handled cross, called the Cross of Osiris, and already referred to as an indispensable emblem in all religious ceremonials, in that, combining the cross with the circle, it denotes Renunciation as the means whereby Eternal Life, the object of initiation, is attained. This symbol it was which, transferred to Christian hands, became the model of the Papal Keys of the kingdom of heaven; while, mounted on four steps, or traversed by four bars, it indicated also the fourfold nature of the existence to be comprehended by those who would attain to perfection. The character of this perfection is, moreover, symbolized in the cross, in that, being formed of two transverse beams, it portrays the at-one-ment between the divine and human wills. The “new-born” is represented as overshadowed by a dove – emblem of the Holy Spirit – as is the Man Regenerate of the Gospels at his baptism of initiation. The two figures on either side of the candidate are, respectively, the male representative of Thoth or Hermes, wearing the ram’s horns – emblematic of Intelligence; and the female representative of Isis, the initiating priestess, bearing the Rosary of the Five wounds or Decades already mentioned. By the presence of these two, as representatives of the Intellect and the Intuition, is denoted the absolute necessity to the individual of perfecting himself alike in both regions – the masculine and feminine – of his nature, so that by tile coequal unfoldment of head and heart he may attain to the stature of the whole humanity. It is the man thus complete and become, spiritually, man and woman in one, that, primarily is typified by the Greeks under the dual form of Hermaphroditus, the joint child, as his name denotes, of Intelligence and Love. 

39. As the last substance tasted by the Regenerate Man of the Gospels before his death on the cross, is the “vinegar” of the exhausted Chalice of the Passion, so the first food partaken by him after his resurrection is “fish,” to which some add “an honeycomb”. By these is symbolized the commencement of the new life inaugurated by the greater Mysteries. For the fish, as already stated, is the symbol of Water, and therein of the Soul, its Greek name being the monogram of the Christ and the tessera of redemption. And the honey, uniting sweetness of taste with the color of gold, and contained in the six-sided cell on “cup” of the comb, typifying the six acts of the Mysteries, – is the familiar emblem of the Land of Promise “beyond Jordan,” to which only the Man Risen can attain. For, as the River of Egypt denotes the Body, and the Euphrates the Spirit, – the redeemed man being promised the dominion of the whole region contained within these (Genesis xv, 18.) – so the Hiddekel, the Ganges, and the Jordan, in the mystical systems of their respective countries, denote the Soul, and constitute the boundary between “the wilderness” of the Material, and the “Garden” of the Spirit. 

 Part 1

The Symbolic, Mystical, Esoteric Meaning of the Resurrection, Part 1/2

(Anna Kingsford, The Perfect Way, Extracts from Lecture 8, 1882)

 7. Although Redemption, as a whole, is one, the process is manifold, and consists in a series of acts, spiritual and mental. Of this series, the part wherein the individual finally surrenders his own exterior will, with all its exclusively material desires and affections, is designated the Passion. And the particular act whereby this surrender is consummated and demonstrated is called the Crucifixion. This crucifixion means a complete, unreserving surrender, – to the death, if need be, – without opposition, even in desire, on the part of the natural man. Without these steps is no atonement. The man cannot become one with the Spirit within him, until by his “Passion” and “Crucifixion,” he has utterly vanquished the “Old Adam” of his former self. Through the atonement made by means of this self-sacrifice he becomes as one without sin, being no more liable to sin; and is qualified to enter, as his own high-priest, into the holy of holies of his own innermost. For thus he has become of those who, being pure in heart alone can face God. 

8. The “Passion” and “Crucifixion” have their immediate sequel in the Death and Burial of the Self thus renounced. And these are followed by the Resurrection and Ascension of the true immortal Man and new spiritual Adam, who by his Resurrection proves himself to be – like the Christ – “virgin-born,” – in that he is the offspring, not of the soul and her traffic with Matter and Sense, but of the soul become “immaculate,” and of her spouse, the Spirit. The Ascension with which the Drama terminates, is that of the whole Man, now regenerate, to his own celestial kingdom within himself, where – made one with the Spirit – he takes his seat for ever “at the right hand of the Father.” 

9. Although the Resurrection of the man regenerate has a twofold relation, in that it sometimes affects the body, the resurrection is not of the body in any sense ordinarily supposed, nor is the body in any way the object of the process. The Man, it is true, has risen from the dead. But it is from the condition of deadness in regard to things spiritual, and from among those who, being in that condition, are said to be “dead in trespasses and sins.” In these two respects, namely, as regards his own past self and the world generally, he has “risen from the dead”; and “death,” of this kind, “has no more dominion over him.” And even if he has redeemed also his body and made of it a risen body, this by no means implies the resuscitation of an actual corpse. In this sense there has been for him no death, and in this sense there is for him no resurrection. It was through misapprehension of the true doctrine, and the consequent expectation of the resurrection of the dead body, that the practice – originally symbolical and special – of embalming the corpse as a mummy, became common, and that interment was substituted for the classic and far more wholesome practice of cremation. In both cases, the object was the delusive one of facilitating a resuscitation at once impossible and undesirable, seeing that if reincarnation be needful, a soul can always obtain for itself a new body. 

10. That which constitutes the Great Work, is, not the resuscitation of the dead body, but the redemption of Spirit from Matter. Until man commits what, mystically, is called idolatry, he has no need of such redemption. So long as he prefers the inner to the outer, and consequently polarizes towards God, the will of his soul is as the Divine Will, and she has, in virtue thereof, power over his body, as God has over the universe. Committing idolatry, by reason of perverse will to the outer, – looking back, and down, that is, and preferring the form to the substance, the appearance to the reality, the phenomenon to the idea, the “city of the Plain” to the “mount of the Lord,” – she loses this power, and becomes, as already said, a “pillar of Salt,” fixed and material. Thus does Man become “naked,” for he has brought his soul to degradation and shame and profaned the temple of the Spirit. He has eaten of the “Forbidden Fruit” of  Sense; “Paradise” is his no longer; and only by “Redemption” can he regain it.  (Lecture 8 Part 1, 7-10)

Part 2 - 11. IN order to obtain an adequate conception of the vastness of the interval between the condition of man “fallen” and man “redeemed,” it will be necessary to speak yet more particularly of the Man perfected and having power. Thus contrasted the heights and depths of humanity will appear in their true extent. It is but a sketch, comparatively slight, which can here be given of what they must endure, who, for love of God, desire God, and who, by love of God, finally attain to and become God; and who, becoming God without ceasing to be man, become God-Man, – God manifest in the flesh, – at once God and Man. The course to this end is one and the same for all, whenever, wherever, and by whomsoever followed. For perfection is one, and all seekers after it must follow the same road. The reward and the means towards it, are also one. For “the Gift of God is eternal Life.” And it is by means of God, – the Divine Spirit working within him, to build him up in the Divine Image, – he, meanwhile co-operating with the Spirit, – that man achieves Divinity. In the familiar, but rarely understood terms, “Philosopher’s Stone,” “Elixir of Life,” “universal Medicine,” “Holy Grail,” and the like, is implied this supreme object of all quest. For these are but terms to denote pure Spirit, and its essential correlative, a Will absolutely firm and inaccessible alike to weakness from within and assault from without. Without measure of this Spirit is no understanding – and therefore no interpretation – of the Sacred Mysteries of existence. Spiritual themselves, they can be comprehended only by those who have, nay, rather, who are Spirit; for God is Spirit, and they who worship God must worship in the Spirit. 

12. The attainment in himself of a pure and Divine Spirit, is, therefore the first object and last achievement of him who seeks to realize the loftiest ideal of which humanity is capable. He who does this, is not an “Adept” merely. The “Adept” covets power in order to save himself only; and knowledge is him thing apart from love. Love saves others as well as oneself. And it is love that distinguishes the Christ; – a truth implied, among other ways, in the name and character assigned in mystic legends, to the favourite disciple of the Christs. To Krishna, his Arjun; to Buddha, his Ananda; to Jesus, his John; – all terms identical in meaning, and denoting the feminine and tender moiety of the Divine Nature. He therefore, and he alone who possesses this spirit in quality and quantity without measure, has, and is, “Christ.” He is God’s anointed, suffused and brimming with the Spirit, and having in virtue thereof the power of the “Dissolvent” and of “Transmutation,” in respect of the whole man. Herein lay the grand secret of that philosophy which made “Hermes” to be accounted the “trainer of the Christs.” Known as the Kabalistic philosophy, it was a philosophy – or rather a science – based upon the recognition in Nature of an universal Substance, which man can find and “effect,” and in virtue of which he contains within himself the seed of his own regeneration, a seed of which – duly cultured – the fruit is God, because the seed itself also is God. Wherefore the “Hermetic science” is the science of God. 

13. “Christ,” then, is, primarily, not a person, but a process, a doctrine, a system of life and thought, by the observance of which man becomes purified from Matter, and transmuted into Spirit. And he is a Christ who, in virtue of his observance of this process to its utmost extent while yet in the body, constitutes a full manifestation of the qualities of Spirit. Thus manifested, he is said to “destroy the works of the devil,” for he destroys that which gives pre-eminence to Matter, and so re-establishes the kingdom of Spirit, that is, of God.  

14. This, the interior part of the process of the Christ is the essential part. Whether first or last, the spiritual being must be perfected. Without this interior perfection, nothing that is done in the body, or exterior man only is of any avail, save, in so far as it may minister to the essential end. The body is but an instrument, existing for the use and sake of the soul and not for itself. And it is for the soul, and not for itself, that it must be perfected. Being but an instrument, the body cannot be an end. That which makes the body an end, ends with the body and the end of the body is corruption. Whatever is given to the body is taken from the Spirit. From this it will be seen what is the true value of Asceticism. Divested of its rational and spiritual motive, self-denial is worthless. Rather is it worse than worthless; it is materialistic and idolatrous; and, being in this aspect a churlish refusal of God’s good gifts it impugns the bounteousness of the Divine nature. The aim of all endeavor should be to bring the body into subjection to, and harmony with, the spirit, by refining and subliming it, and so heightening its powers as to make it sensitive and responsive to all the motions of the Spirit. This it can be only when, deriving its sustenance from substances the purest and most highly solarized, such as the vegetable kingdom alone affords, it suffers all its molecules to become polarized in one and the same direction, and this the direction of the central Will of the system, the “Lord God of Hosts” of the Microcosmic Man – Whose mystic name is Adonai.  

15. The reason of this becomes obvious when it is understood that the Christs are, above all things, Media. But this not as ordinarily supposed, even by many who are devoted students of spiritual science. For, so far from suffering his own vivifying spirit to step aside in order that another may enter, the Christ is one who so develops, purifies, and in every way perfects his spirit, as to assimilate and make it one with the universal Spirit, the God of the Macrocosm, so that the God without and the God within may freely combine and mingle, making the universal the individual, the individual the universal. Thus inspired and filled with God, the soul kindles into flame; and God, identified with the man, speaks through him, making the man utter himself in the name of God. 

16. It is in his office and character as Christ, and not in his own human individuality, that the Man Regenerate proclaims himself “the way, the truth, and the life,” “the door,” and the like. For, in being, as has been said, the connecting link between the creature and God, the Christ truly represents the door or gate through which all ascending souls must pass to union with the Divine; and save through which “no man cometh unto the Father.” It is not, therefore, in virtue of an extraneous, obsessing spirit that the Christ can be termed a “Medium,” but in virtue of the spirit itself of the man, become Divine by means of that inward purification by the life or “blood” of God, which is the secret of the Christs, and “doubled” by union with the parent Spirit of all, – the “Father” of all spirits. This Spirit it is Whom the typical Regenerate Man of the Gospels is represented as calling the “Father.” It is the Unmanifest God, of Whom the Christ is the full manifestation. 

17. Hence he disavows for himself the authorship of his utterances, and says, “The words which I speak unto you I speak not of myself. The Father which dwelleth in me, He doeth the works.” The Christ is, thus, a clear glass through which the divine glory shines. As it is written of Jesus, “And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” Now, this “Only Begotten” is not mortal man at all, but He Who from all eternity has been in the bosom of the Father, namely, the Word or Logos, the Speaker, the Maker, the Manifestor, He Whose mystic name, as already said, is Adonai, and of whom Christ is the counterpart. 

18. To attain to the perfection of the Christ, – to polarize, that is, the Divine Spirit without measure, and to  become a “Man of Power” and a Medium for the Highest, – though open potentially to all, – is, actually and in the present, open, if to any, but to few. And these are, necessarily, they only who, having passed through many transmigrations and advanced far on their way towards maturity, have sedulously turned their lives to the best account by means of the steadfast development of all the higher faculties and qualities of man; and who, while not declining the experiences of the body, have made the spirit, and not the body, their object and aim. Aspiring to the redemption in himself of each plane of man’s fourfold nature, the candidate for Christhood submits himself to discipline and training the most severe, at one physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual, and rejects as valueless or pernicious whatever would fail to minister to his one end, deeming no task too onerous, no sacrifice too painful, so that he be spiritually advanced thereby. And how varied soever the means, there is one rule to which he remains constant throughout, the rule, namely, of love. The Christ he seeks is the pathway to God; and to fail, in the least degree in respect of love, would be to put himself back in his journey. The sacrifices, therefore, in the incense of which his soul ascends, are those of his own lower nature to his own higher, and of himself for others. And life itself, it seems to him, would be too dearly bought, if purchased at the expense of another, however little or mean, – unless, indeed, of a kind irremediably noxious, whose extinction would benefit the world. For, – be it remembered, – though always Saviour, the Christ is sometimes also Purifier, as were all his types, the Heroes, – or Men Regenerate, – of classic story. Enacting, thus, when necessary the executioner’s part, he slays for no self-gratification, but “in the name of the Lord.” 

19. They who have trod this path of old have been many, and their deeds have formed the theme of mystical legends innumerable. Epitomizing these, we find that the chief qualifications are as follows: – In order to gain “Power and the Resurrection,” a man must, first of all, be a Hierarch. This is to say, he must have attained the magical age of thirty-three years, having been, in the mystic sense of the terms, immaculately conceived, and born of a king’s daughter; baptized with water and with fire; tempted in the wilderness, crucified and buried, having borne five wounds on the cross. He must, moreover, have answered the riddle of the Sphinx. To attain the requisite age, he must have accomplished the Twelve Labors symbolized in those of Heracles, and in the signs of the Zodiac; passed within the Twelve Gates of Holy City of his own regenerate nature; overcome the five Senses; and obtained dominion over the Four Elements. Achieving all that is implied in these terms, “his warfare is accomplished,” he is free of Matter, and will never again have a phenomenal body. 

20. He who shall attain to this perfection must be one who is without fear and without desire, save towards God; who has courage to be absolutely poor and absolutely chaste; to whom it is all one whether he have money or whether he have none, whether he have house and lands or whether he be homeless, whether he have worldly reputation or whether he be an outcast. Thus is he voluntarily poor, and of the spirit of those of whom it is said that they inherit the kingdom of heaven. It is not necessary that he has nothing; it is necessary only that he care for nothing. Against attacks and influences of whatever kind, and coming from whatever quarter without his own soul’s kingdom, he must impregnably steel himself. If misfortune be his, he must make it his fortune; if poverty, he must make it his riches; if loss, his gain; if sickness, his health; if pain, his pleasure. Evil report must be to him good report; and he must be able to rejoice when all men speak ill of him. Even death itself he must account as life. Only when he has attained this equilibrium is he “Free.” Meanwhile he makes Abstinence, Prayer, Meditation, Watchfulness and Self-restraint to be the decades of his Rosary. And knowing that nothing is gained without toil, or won without suffering, he acts ever on the principle that to labor is to pray, to ask is to receive, to knock is to have the door open, and so strives accordingly.  

21. To gain power over Death, there must be self-denial and governance. Such is the “Excellent Way,” though it be the Via Dolorosa. He only can follow it who accounts the Resurrection worth the Passion, the Kingdom worth the Obedience, the Power worth the Suffering. And he, and he only, does not hesitate, whose time has come. 

22. The last of the “Twelve Labors of Heracles “ is the conquest of the three-headed dog, Cerberus. For by this is denoted the final victory over the body with its three (true) senses. When this is accomplished, the process of ordeal is no longer necessary. The Initiate is under a vow. The Hierarch is free. He has undergone all his ordeals, and has freed his will. For the object of the Trial and the Vow is Polarization. When the Fixed is Volatilized, the Magian is Free. Before this, he is “subject.” 

23. The man who seeks to be a Hierarch must not dwell in cities. He may begin his initiation in a city, but he cannot complete it there. For he must not breathe dead and burnt air, – air, that is, the vitality of which is quenched. He must be a wanderer, a dweller in the plain and the garden and the mountains. He must commune with the starry heavens, and maintain direct contact with the great electric currents of living air and with the unpaved grass and earth of the planet, going barefoot and oft bathing his feet. It is in unfrequented places, in lands such as are mystically called the “East,” where the abominations of “Babylon” are unknown, and where the magnetic chain between earth and heaven is strong, that the man who seeks Power, and who would achieve the “Great Work,” must accomplish his initiation. (8, 2, 11-23)

Part 2

Henry Olcott - Asceticism

No delusion is more common among aspirants to the higher knowledge than that the end can be attained with reasonable certainty by physiological restraint. The prevalent idea is that maceration of the body, regulation of the diet, a protracted course of devotions, and the filling of the mind from books, will bring the postulant to the threshold of gñanam, if not across it. This was the ruling motive of the desert recluses of early Christianity, of the pillar, forest and cave hermits of all nations; while to this day it rules equally the Roman Catholic monk and nun, the Mohammedan fakir, and the Hindu ascetic. The tortures self-inflicted by the last named surpass Western belief. This is the lower, or Hatha, Yoga and its gymnastic practices are sometimes horrible and revolting. They have been kept up for centuries, and the tortures are the same now as they were in ancient days—and equally fruitless. The faculties of such ascetics—as it is said in the Lalita-Vistara—are “wriggling in the grasp of the crocodile of their carnal wants.” Some of their penances are thus enumerated:

“ Stupid men, who seek to purify their persons by divers modes of austerity and inculcate the same. Some abstain from fish and flesh meat. Some abstain from spirits and the water of chaff. Some indulge in tubers, fruits, mosses, Kusà grass, leaves, cow’s dejecta [One of an early group of our Indian chelas (!) did this before he joined the T.S.], frumenty, curds, clarified butter and unbaked cakes. Seated at one place in silence, with their legs bent under them, some attempt greatness. Some eat once in a day and night, some once on alternate days, and some at intervals of four, five, or six days. Some wear many clothes, some go naked. Some have long hair, nails, beard, and matted hair, and wear bark. Some carry on them [various talismans enumerated], and by these means they hope to attain to immortality, and pride themselves upon their holiness. By inhaling smoke or fire, by gazing at the sun, by performing the five fires [i. e. lying uncovered under a burning sun, and having fires built all about them], resting on one foot, or with an arm perpetually uplifted, or moving about on the knees, some attempt to accomplish their penance………They all follow the wrong road; they fancy that to be the true support which is untrue; they hold evil to be good, and the impure to be pure.” [vide for full details, Rajendralala Mitra’s “Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali”, and his “Buddha Gaya” pp. 24 et seq.] 

Readers of my own writings may recollect my once meeting at Marble Rocks, on the Nerbudda River, a Hatha Yogi who had spent fifty-seven years in austerities, including a pradakshana, or circumambulation, once in each three years, of that historic stream, and yet who asked me—me, an American, not worthy to wipe the feet of a true Raja Yogi—how to control the mind! I told him—the poor fool—how to do it, as I shall tell my present readers, and if they wish the corroboration, they have only to read the teachings of every great spiritual leader the tree of humanity has ever germinated.

Nobody even dreams how hard is the task of self-conquest, the subjugation of passion and appetite, the liberation of the flesh-prisioned [sic] Higher Self, until he has tried. Every such struggle is a tragedy, full of the most painful interest, and provocative of sympathy in the hearts of good men and “angels”. That is what Jesus meant when he said there was more joy in heaven over one sinner that repented than over ninety and nine just men that needed no repentance. And yet how bitterly uncharitable is the world—the world of concealed sinners and respectable, undetected hypocrites, usually—over the failure of a poor soul to scale the spiritual mountains in consequence of lack of reserved power of will at a critical moment. How these undetected ones patronisingly condemn the vanquished, who at least have done what many of them have not, made a brave fight for the divine prize. How they strut about in fancied impregnability, like the street-praying Pharisee of Jerusalem, thanking fortune that their private sins are still hidden, and redoubling their prayers, postures, canting moralities, and asceticism in diet, to deceive their neighbour and themselves!

“ And the devil did grin, for his darling sin.
  Is pride that apes humility.”

Shakespeare made a man like that say :

“ And thus I clothe my villainy with old odd ends, stol’n out of holy writ,  and seem a saint when most I play the devil.”

The whole burden of Jesus’ preaching was to show that so long as the heart and mind were unpurged, all external forms and ceremonies were but whitewash to a sepulchre. This was also the teaching of his glorious predecessor, the Buddha, who specifically sketched in infinite detail and condemned the forms of hypocrisy, spiritual pride, and self-delusion. He had begun his training for the future struggle with Mara under the Bodhi tree, by learning and himself practising all the systems of Hatha Yoga, and discovering their futility as helps to salvation. The pure heart and clean mind alone permit one to attain salvation. This was his doctrine. So, likewise, is it taught in the Aryan Mahabharata [Sec. CXCIX, Vana Parva] which says :

“ Those high souled persons that do not commit sins in word, deed, heart and soul, are said to undergo ascetic austerities, and not they that suffer their bodies to be wasted by fasts and penances. He that hath no feeling of kindness for relatives cannot be free from sin, even if his body be pure. That hard-heartedness of his is the enemy of his asceticism. Asceticism, again, is not mere abstinence from the pleasures of the world. He that is always pure and decked with virtues, he that practices kindness all his life, is a Muni, even though he lead a domestic life.”

The Theosophical Society is a sort of battle-field of self-slain spiritual fighters; a long line of supposed chelas can be seen as toppled over like so many bricks in a row. Some of them who did not take their failures quietly and candidly trace them to the real cause, their miscalculation of their moral strength, have turned to rend H.P.B., and those higher than she. I was reading the Path the other day and came across a grand article of hers on “The Theosophical Mahatmas”. It was called out by a silly pronunciamento by a hysterical woman in America and another individual who had failed to become adepts, and turned “with bleeding feet and prostrate spirit” to Jesus! How the goaded lioness scorned them; how clearly she defined what would and what would not bring the aspirant into spiritual proximity with the Hidden Sages! To the discontented in general she puts the question :

“ Have you fulfilled your obligations and pledges? Have you, who would lay all the blame upon the Society and the Masters—the embodiments of charity, tolerance, justice and universal love—have you led the life requisite, and fulfilled the conditions of candidature? Let him who feels in his heart and conscience that he has never failed once seriously, never doubted his Master’s wisdom, never sought other Masters in his impatience to become an occultist with powers, never betrayed his Theosophical duty in thought or deed—let him rise and protest. During the eleven years [this was written in 1886] of the existence of the Theosophical Society, I have known, out of the seventy-two regularly accepted chelas on probation and the hundreds of lay candidates, only three who have not hitherto failed, and one only who had full success. And what about the Society in general, outside India. Who, among the thousands of members does lead the life? Shall any one say because he is a strict vegetarian—elephants and cows are that—or happens to lead a celibate life, after a stormy youth in the other direction, that he is a Theosophist according to the Masters’ hearts? As it is not the cowl that makes the monk, so no long hair, with a poetical vacancy on the brow, are enough to make one a follower of the divine wisdom.” And she depicts the Society’s membership as it is to the in-looking eye : “backbiting, slander, uncharitableness, criticism, incessant war-cry, and din of mutual rebukes.”

I got a stinging rebuke once in Bombay from a Master, when I hesitated to admit to membership an earnest man who had been persecuted, even sent to prison, by Christian bigots, on a pretext. I was bidden to look through my whole body of colleagues and see how, despite their wealth of good intention, nine-tenths of them were secret sinners through weak moral fibre. It was a life lesson to me, and ever since then I have abstained from thinking the worse of my associates, many no weaker or more imperfect than myself, who if they could not climb the mountain were at least, like myself, earnestly struggling and stumbling onward. Years ago—when we first came to Bombay—I was told by H.P.B. that several of the Mahatmas being met together, caused to drift by them in the astral light the psychical reflections of all the then Indian members of the Theosophical Society.[*] 

She asked me to guess which one’s image was brightest. I mentioned a young Parsi of Bombay, then a pre-eminently active and devoted member. She said, laughing, that on the contrary he was not bright at all, the morally brightest being a poor Bengali gentleman who had become a drunkard. The Parsi afterwards deserted us and became an active opponent, the Bengali reformed and is now a pious ascetic. She explained then that many vicious habits and sensual gratifications often affect the physical self, without leaving deep permanent scars on the inner-self. In such cases the spiritual nature is so vigorous as to throw off these external blotches after a brief struggle. But if encouraged and persisted in, evil habits at last overcome the soul’s resisting power, and the whole man becomes corrupted. 

Some Tantrikas, Indian and European, have preached the accursed doctrine that the occult postulant can best kill out desire by gratifying and exhausting it. To deliberately gratify lust, or pride, or avarice, or ambition, or hatred, or anger—all equally perilous to the psychic—is quite another matter from falling now and then, through no pre-arrangement and simply because of moral weakness in a particular crisis, into one of those sins. From the latter, recovery is always possible, and may be comparatively easy where the average moral fibre is strong; but deliberate vicious indulgence leads inevitably to moral degradation and a fall into the depths. Says “The Voice of the Silence” :

“ Do not believe that lust can be killed out if gratified or satiated, for this is an abomination inspired by Mara. It is by feeding vice that it expands and waxes strong, like to the worm that fattens on the blossom’s heart.”

I recall to mind one more instance. Long ago, in the early Society days a certain Theosophist imposed on himself the rule of celibacy and wished to be taken as a chela. He held out for a while, but then failed: the fleshly appetite was too strong. The person dropped out of active Society work for a considerable time, in fact, for years, but at last, gathering himself together, he made a new attempt. He was told that fifty failures did not destroy one’s chance, success was possible at the eleventh hour. We read in “The Voice of the Silence” (p. 63) the following word of encouragement:

“ Prepare, and be forewarned in time. If thou hast tried and failed, O dauntless fighter, yet lose not courage: fight on and to the charge return again, and yet again.”

This young F.T.S. returned again to the conflict, was victorious, and today is one of the most active and respected members of our Society.

Some Western readers have seen the Mahabharata story of the fall of the mighty Rishi Visvamitra through carnal passion. This adept of adepts, this Yogi had a spiritual power so tremendous by centuries of ascetic practices as to make Indra quake upon his celestial throne and cause him to desire his humiliation, so the god took counsel of Menaka, first of the Apsaras (celestial choristers), how it might be effected. The beauteous, “slender-waisted” Menaka, according to the plan, presented herself before Visvamitra in his hermit retreat, in all her seductive loveliness, but bashfully seemed afraid of him and pretended to run away. But the complaisant Maruta, the wind-god, suddenly sent a breeze that stripped her off her raiment and exposed her charms, like another Phryne, to the astonished gaze of the Rishi. In an instant, the sexual desire, long easily suppressed from lack of temptation, flamed up, and he called her to him, took her to wife, and a daughter—the most loveable Sakuntala—was the fruit of the union.

“ Let him that standeth take heed lest he fall”, was the warning of the Nazarene.

Footnote

[*] Everything in physical nature is reflected, as in a mirror, in reversed images, in the Astral Light.

“Asceticism,” Theosophist 8, no. 5 (February 1892)

 

Astrology – Spring Equinox – March 20, 2021

Press Reset

After the major social upheavals that the Jupiter, Saturn, Pluto conjunctions of 2020 brought with the Covid-19  epidemic, this intensity spilled over into the first quarter of 2021, marked in the United States on January 6^th with violent pubic demonstrations at the senate buildings in the nation’s capital and in Myanmar where the army overturned the government, resulting in major public protests. One of the year's major aspects, Jupiter square Uranus, went exact not long after, on January 17. According to the Valerie Mesa:

‘’Jupiter in Aquarius is encouraging the collective to cultivate social awareness, and aspire towards change. The concept of humanitarianism and progress are of crucial importance during this time. Its square to disruptive Uranus, however, could trigger everything from an overarching enthusiasm around the thought of revolution to global anarchy. There could also be an excessive impulse and/or sense of idealism surrounding rebellion, but it isn’t necessarily realistic either.’’

A month later, on February 17, the other major aspect of the year, Saturn square Uranus occurred (the first of three exact stations, the others on June 14 and December 24). According to Narayana Montufar:

"While traditional Saturn likes to build and preserve, Uranus likes to change and destroy. This aspect is basically the old versus the new, a clash between rebellion and tradition. When Saturn (which is in Aquarius right now) and Uranus (in Taurus) form a square, we often see cracks appear in the foundations of society. The problems with our political, financial, and social institutions become exposed, and then they crumble… so we can rebuild them based on the concepts of freedom, inclusivity, and individuality,"

The nature of these aspects can be seen to make for a year that will be a consolidation process of the year’s previous upheavals (actually part of deconstruction/revolution process over the last five years), a final year of checks and adjustments to prepare for the new twenty-year Jupiter-Saturn cycle. This is the first Spring equinox of this new cycle, so there is an extra impetus for considerations of renewal and renovation. What needs to be let go, what needs to change, what new projects need to be undertaken, these are some of the key considerations at this time.

This new Jupiter-Saturn cycle marks a definitive shift from earth signs to air signs, which will last until 2159. The previous Jupiter-Saturn cycles were in earth signs since 1802. Once can interpret this as the age of oil and carbon fuels, whereas the next cycle in air signs can mark a new era of alternate energies, along with satellite and computer technologies that have developed over the last 40 years. In the following years, four outer planets will be changing signs over a four-year period, 2023-2026, and so by 2026, we should be witnessing an interesting paradigm shift.

Moreover, the eclipses of 2021 will be in the signs of Gemini and Sagittarius. The first two of four occur on May 26 and June 10. This axis represents knowledge and consciousness, the power of ideas, how they spread, and to whom they belong; both signs are related to education and travel.  This axis should be quite complementary to Jupiter (ruler of Sagittarius) in Aquarius (an air sign, like Gemini).

This is the first chart in a long time without any major highly-charged aspect patterns, just seven fairly tight, interspersed aspects:

Mars sextile Saturn – determined efforts and actions, sense of responsibility and purpose

Mercury sextile Uranus – meetings and group activities, computer, science, metaphysics concerns; original, creative, progressive ideas, strong intuition

Sun sextile Pluto – Rewarding research, discretion, energy and drive; finding things that were lost; shared finances

Venus sextile Pluto – pleasantly impassioned; focused and confident; authenticity in relationships; deeper intimacy

Sun conjuct Venus – beneficial social contacts; charm; tendencies for romantic feelings, material wants, pleasurable activities

Moon trine Jupiter – Positive thinking, happy feelings, moral integrity; good luck; generosity

Mercury square Mars – Quick-witted; snappy and irritable; critical; impulsive communication and decisions; hectic situations

This chart, which sets the tone for the spring quarter, has a productive, positive, progressive, creative, insightful, sociable energy, with some impulsive, irritable influences that add to the tensions, frustrations and obstacles of the difficult Saturn-Uranus square.

References

https://cafeastrology.com/astrologyreference.html

Valerie Mesa  - The Jupiter-Uranus Square Sets Us up for a Year of Rebellion and Even More Surprises https://www.astrology.com/article/jupiter-aquarius-square-uranus-taurus-2021/

Elizabeth Gulino - Why Astrologers Are Calling The Saturn-Uranus Square The Defining Aspect Of 2021 https://www.refinery29.com/en-ca/2021/02/10316162/saturn-square-uranus-february-2021-meaning-effects

Jacob Boehme on the love of Sophia (Wisdom) 2

In The Dual Aspect of Wisdom, H. P. Blavatsky gives some hints about the nature of Sophia :

For, divine Wisdom being diffused throughout the infinite Universe, and our impersonal HIGHER SELF being an integral part of it, the atmic light of the latter can be centred only in that which though eternal is still individualized— i.e., the noëtic Principle, the manifested God within each rational being, or our Higher Manas at one with Buddhi. It is this collective light which is the “Wisdom that is from above,” and which whenever it descends on the personal Ego, is found “pure, peaceable, gentle.” Hence, Job’s assertion that “Wisdom is with the Ancient,” or Buddhi-Manas. For the Divine Spiritual “I” is alone eternal, and the same throughout all births; whereas the “personalities” it informs in succession are evanescent, changing like the shadows of a kaleidoscopic series of forms in a magic lantern. It is the “Ancient,” because, whether it be called Sophia, Krishna, Buddhi-Manas or Christos, it is ever the “first-born” of Alaya-Mahat, the Universal Soul and the Intelligence of the Universe. ([Lucifer, Vol. VII, No. 37, September, 1890, pp. 1-9] Blavatsky, Collected Writings, vol. 12, p. 313)

Jakob Böhme The  Gates  of  the  Paradisical  Garden  of  Roses, from his essay True Repentance, part of six texts grouped under the title The Way to Christ (1624)

The  Gates  of  the  Paradisical  Garden  of  Roses

 2- The Soul saith again to its noble Sophia, its Love, that is born again in it,

O my noble Pearl, and opened Flame of Light in my anxious fiery Life, how thou changest me into thy Joy!  O beautiful Love, I have broken my Faith with thee in my Father Adam, and with my fiery Strength have turned myself to the Pleasure and Vanity of the outward World.  I have fallen in Love with a Stranger, and would have been constrained to walk in the Valley of Darkness in this strange Love, if thou hadst not come into the House of my Misery, in thy great Faithfulness, by thy piercing through and destroying God's Anger, Hell, and dark Death, and restoring thy Meekness and Love to my fiery Life.

O sweet Love!  Thou hast brought the Water of Eternal Life out of the Fountain of God, with thee into me, and refreshed me in my great Thirst.  I behold in thee the Mercy of God, which was hidden from me before by the strange Love.  In thee I can rejoice; Thou changest my Anguish of Fire into great Joy in me.  O amiable Love, give me thy Pearl, that I may continue in this Joy forever.

Upon this then noble Sophia answereth the Soul again, and saith,

MY dear Love and faithful Treasure, thou highly rejoicest me in thy Beginning.  I have indeed broken into thee through the deep Gates of God, through God's Anger, through Hell and Death, into the House of thy Misery, and have graciously bestowed my Love upon thee, and delivered thee from the Chains and Bonds wherewith thou wert fast bound.  I have kept my Faith with thee, though thou hast not kept thine with me; but thou desireth now an exceeding great Thing of me, which I cannot willingly trust in thy Hands.  Thou wouldest have my Pearl as thy proper own.  Remember, I pray, O my beloved Bridegroom, that thou didst carelessly lose it before in Adam; and thou thyself standest yet in great Danger, and walkest in two dangerous Kingdoms; for in thy original Fire thou walkest in that Country wherein God calleth himself a strong jealous God, and a consuming Fire.  The other Kingdom which thou walkest in, is the outward World, wherein thou dwellest in the vain corrupt Flesh and Blood, and where the Pleasures of the World and Assaults of the Devil beset thee every Hour.  Thou mayest perhaps in thy great Joy bring Earthliness again into my Beauty, and thereby darken my Pearl; or thou mayest possibly grow proud, as Lucifer did, when he had the Pearl in his Possession, and so turn thyself away from the Harmony of God, as he did, and then I must be deprived of my Love forever afterwards.

No.  I will keep my Pearl in Myself, and dwell in the Heaven in thee, in thy extinguished, but now in me, revived, Humanity, and reserve my Pearl for Paradise, until thou puttest away this Earthliness from thee, and then I will give it to thee to possess.  But I will readily present to thee my pleasant Countenance, and the sweet Rays of the Pearl, during the Time of this Earthly Life.  I will dwell with the Pearl itself in the inner Choir, and be thy faithful loving Bride.  I cannot espouse myself with thy earthly Flesh, for I am a heavenly Queen, and my Kingdom is not of this World. Yet I will not cast thy outward Life away, but refresh it often with my Rays of Love; for thy outward Humanity shall return again.  But I cannot admit to my Embraces the Beast of Vanity, neither did God create it in Adam with a Purpose to have it so gross and earthly.  But in Adam thy Desire, through the Power of its strong Lust, formed this beastial Grossness, from and with all the Essences of the awakened Vanity of the earthly Property, wherein Heat and Cold, Pain and Enmity, Division and Corruption subsist.

Now, my dear Love and Bridegroom, do but yield thyself up into my Will; I will not forsake thee in this earthly Life in thy Danger.  Though the Anger of God should pass upon thee, so that thou shouldst grow affrighted and disheartened, or shouldst think that I had deserted thee, yet I will be with thee and preserve thee, for thou thyself knowest not what thine Office is.  Thou must in this Life's Time work and bear Fruit.  Thou art the Root of this Pearl-Tree; Branches must be produced out of thee, which must all be brought forth in Anguish.   But I come forth together with thy Branches in their Sap, and produce Fruit upon thy Boughs, and thou knowest it not; for the Most High hath so ordered, that I should dwell with and in thee.

Wrap thyself up therefore in Patience, and take Heed of the Pleasure of the Flesh.  Break the Will and Desire thereof; bridle it as an unruly Horse; and then I will often visit thee in the fiery Essence, and give thee my Kiss of Love.  I will bring a Garland for thee out of Paradise with me, as a Token of my Affection, and put it upon thee, and thou shalt rejoice in it.  But I give thee not my Pearl for a Possession during this Life's Time.  Thou must continue in Resignation, and hearken what the Lord playeth on his Instrument in thy Harmony in thee.  Moreover, thou must give Sound and Essence to thy Tune, out of my Strength and Virtue, for thou art now a Messenger of his Word, and must set forth his Praise and Glory.   For this Cause it is that I have contracted myself a-new with thee, and set my triumphal Garland upon thee; which I have gotten in the Battle against the Devil and Death.  But the Crown of Pearl wherewith I crowned thee, I have laid aside for thee.  Thou must wear that no more till thou art become pure in my Sight.

 3- The Soul saith further to the noble Sophia,

O thou fair and sweet Consort, what shall I say before thee?  Let me be wholly committed unto thee; I cannot preserve myself.  If thou wilt not give me thy Pearl, I submit to thy Will; but give me thy Rays of Love, and carry me safely through my Pilgrimage.  Do thou awaken and bring forth what thou wilt in me; I will from henceforth be thy own.  I will or desire nothing for myself, but what thou thyself wilt through me.  I had fooled away thy sweet Love, and broken my Faith with thee, whereby I was fallen into the Anger of God.  But seeing that of Love thou didst come to me into the Anguish of Hell, and hast delivered me from Torment, and received me again for thy Consort, I will now therefore break my Will for thy Love's Sake, and be obedient unto thee, and wait for thy Love.  I am satisfied now that I know thou art with me in all my Troubles, and wilt not forsake me.

O Gracious Love, I turn my fiery Countenance to thee.  O fair Crown, take me quickly into thee, and bring me forth from Unquietness.   I will be thine forever, and never depart from thee more.

The noble Sophia answereth the Soul very comfortably, and saith,

MY noble Bridegroom, be of good Comfort.  I have betrothed thee to me in my highest Love, and contracted myself with thee in my Faithfulness.   I will be with thee and in thee always to the End of the World.  I will come to thee and make my Abode with thee, in thy inner Chamber.  Thou shalt drink of my Fountain; for now I am thine, and thou art Mine; the Enemy shall not separate us. Work thou in thy fiery Property, and I will put my Rays of Love into thy Working.  And so we will plant and manure the Vineyard of Jesus Christ.  Afford thou the Essence of Fire, and I will afford the Essence of Light, and the Increase.  Be thou the Fire, and I will be the Water, and thus we will perform that in this World for which God hath appointed us, and serve him in his Temple, which we ourselves are.  

Part 1