“To the Berlin friends”

Man beholds
With his world-created eye;
He is bound by what he sees
To joy and pain of the World,
He is bound to all
That becomes, but no less
To all that falls headlong
Into dark realms of the Abyss.

Man beholds
With the spirit-endowed eye;
He is bound by what he beholds
To spirit-hoping and spiritual sustaining force;
He is bound by it to all
That has roots in eternities
And in eternities bears fruit.

But man can behold
Only when he feels the inner eye itself
As a member of the Divine Spirit
Which on the stage of the human soul
In the temple of the human body
Works the deeds of Gods.

Mankind is now forgetful
Of the Divine inner realm,
But it is our will to bring it
Into the clear light of consciousness,
And then bear above rubble and ashes
The divine flames in the heart of man.
Lightning-bolts may therefore shatter
Our houses in the world of sense;
We are building houses of the soul
From the iron-firm.

Light-weaving of knowledge.
And downfall of the outer
Shall become ascent
Of innermost soul-being.

Suffering draws near
From the powers of material force;
Hope rays forth its light,
Even when darkness surrounds us;
And it will one day
Well up in our memory,
When after the darkness
We can again live in the light.
We would not let this inner light be lacking
In sun-illumined future times
Because we now in suffering
Have failed to plant it in our souls.

Rudolf Steiner, “Wahrspruchworte”

The holy name EVE

The Tetragrammaton, the sacred name of God is written in Hebrew as a word composed of four letters – Yod He Vau He (YHVH) – hence the ‘tetra’ prefix. Whilst the name signifies Yahweh, it is pronounced in Hebrew as Adomai and in English became Jehovah.

The root of YHVH is derived from HVH, which means being, life or woman, once interchangeable concepts. In Latin HVH is spelled EVE and the esoteric meaning of the YHVH is, therefore, Eve, the Mother of all living.

A second version of the Tetragrammaton is spelled EHYH and is derived from Hayya, another name of Eve that expresses her connection to women in childbirth
.
A central tenet of philosophical kabbalah is that God the Father has lost the Great Mother, his feminine aspect, also called the Shekinah. For universal peace and harmony the Holy Mother, the Shekinah must be restored to God the Father. There is an evocative prayer formula we can use to support this cosmic mission which is based upon the Seal of Solomon and signified by ‘fiery water’ as the supreme resolution of elemental binaries.

Holy Father, Holy Son, Holy Spirit – Holy Mother, Holy Daughter, Holy Soul

Soul of Nature

I discovered unexpected correlations in things which hitherto I had thought foreign to each other. Objects distant and different from one another appeared near and similar. The facts of the world arranged themselves before my eyes according to a new pattern

And beneath the radiant stars beside the blue river I saw a naked maiden, young and beautiful. She stooped on one knee and poured water from two vessels, one of gold and one of silver. A little bird in a nearby bush lifted its wings and was poised ready to fly away.

For a moment I understood that I beheld the Soul of Nature.

Ouspensky, Tarot Symbolism, The Star

The Russian Mind

Willful and avid mind,-
The Russian mind is dangerous as flame:
So unrestrainable, so clear,
A happy and a gloomy mind.

Like the steady hand of a compass
It sees the pole through swells and fog;
It leads the timid will
From distracted dreams to life.

Like an eagle gazing through the mist
To survey the valley’s dust
It soberly contemplates the earth,
Floating in a mystic night.

We are two trunks ignited by lightning
Two flames in the midnight forest;
We are two meteors flying in the night,
The double-stinging arrow of a single fate!

We are two horses whose reins are held
By the same hand, – bitten by one spur;
We are two eyes of a single gaze,
Two trembling wings of one dream.

We are a pair of shadows grieving
Over the holy marble grave,
Where ancient Beauty slumbers.

The two-voiced mouth of secrets shared,
We two make a single Sphinx.
The two arms of a single cross.

Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov

Fiery Water

But of this secret mercury; if you desire,
the secret for to learn, attend to me:
For this is a water which yet is fire,
which conquers bodies from their degree,
and makes them fly much like a spirit pure,
and this after fixing all flames to endure.

This water it doth flow from a fourfold spring,
which is but three, which two, and which but one,
is the only bath to bathe our king,
This is our maydew, this our flying stone;
our bird of Hermes in the mountains flying,
and without voice or note is always crying.

Marrow of Alchemy, George Starkey

A Silent Witness

We must now undertake a hermetic study of the cathedral and, in order to limit our investigations, I will take, as a type, the Christian temple of the French capital, Notre Dame of Paris…

For the whole cathedral is just a silent witness in images to the ancient science of Hermes, and it has even managed to preserve one of its ancient craftsmen. Notre Dame has indeed kept its alchemist.

Fulcanelli, Mystere de Cathedrales

 

Stirring of the Spirit

James Charles Kaelin, Jr.
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“When Christ the corner-stone, stirreth himself in the extinguished image of man, in his hearty conversion and repentance, then Virgin Sophia appeareth in the stirring of the Spirit of Christ, in the extinguished Image, in her Virgines attire before the soule: at which the soule is so amazed and astonished in its uncleanesse, that all its sinnes immediately awake in it, and tremble and shake before her. For then the judgement passeth upon the sinnes of the soule, so that it even goeth backe in its unworthiness, and is ashamed in the presence of its faire love, and entereth into it selfe, denying it selfe as utterly unworthy to receive such a jewell. This is understood by them who are our Tribe, who have tasted this jewell, and to none else. But the noble Sophia draweth neare in the essence of the soule, and kisseth it friendly, and tinctureth the darke fire of the soule with her Rayes of love, and shineth through the soule with her Kisse of love: then the soule skippeth in its body for great joy, in the strength of this Virgin-love, triumphing, and praying the great God, in the strength of the noble Sophia.”

Jacob Boehme, The Way to Christ

Land of Tears

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye….

“It is such a mysterious place, the land of tears.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Legendary love and magic fears

In winter when the frosty nights are long
And sedge is stiff about the frozen meres,
One night above a volume of old song
Of legendary loves and magic fears
Sweetened by long elapse of slumbering years,
I nodded in the frosty firelight beam
And fell on sleep and straightway dreamed a dream.

I thought it was a luminous summer night,
And in the star-flecked welkin overhead
A fading sickle of soft golden light
Its wonder over all the landscape spread,
While fleecy clouds athwart its paleness sped:
Ten thousand thousand points of light did peep
Out of the boundless heaven’s velvet deep.

C.S Lewis

love one another

It goes without saying that nobody initiates anyone else, if we understand by ‘initiation’ the Mystery of the Second Birth or the Great Sacrament. This Initiation is operative from above and has the value and the duration of eternity. The Initiator is above, and here below one meets only the fellow pupils; and they recognise each other by the fact that they “love one another” (John xiii, 34-45)

There are no longer any more ‘masters’ because there is only one sole Master, who is the Initiator above. To be sure, there are always masters who teach their doctrines and also initiates who communicate some of the secrets which they possess to others who thus become in turn their ‘initiates’, but this has nothing to do with the Mystery of the Great Initiation.

For this reason Christian Hermeticism, in so far as it is a human concern, initiates no one. Amongst Christian Hermeticists nobody assumes for himself the title and the function of ‘initiator’ or ‘master’. For all are fellow pupils and each is master of each in some respect – just as each is a pupil of each other in some other respect.

Meditations on the Tarot, Letter I, The Magician