Even Chances

I could not wait for You, but You made me wait. My death was too far away for me and I could not see.

I hoped against hope that You would appear while I was living, and surely it took the enlightenment of Your presence for me to realise the truth.

In a sense I was not alive before that time, although I had dreamed that it would come. My dreams, in a way, are like memories, because I believe that what is to come is safe.

This is foresight.

Before and after: The beginning and the end. One and the same, yet different.

When you reached that time which came after, did you not see that it could only be

The Beginning?

I think I did.

Then do not fear things coming to an end, because you are here, in my eternal life.

The light of the world.

One of the first things you gave me was light. Everything became light. Truly I believe, that You gave me the moon and the stars, knowing how afraid of the dark I had always been. I believe us to be one and the same, in the most evolutionary way.

There is an honest, loving connection between us that does not fade.

Based upon natural selection?

I would not expand upon this principle, except to remind you of the element of Chance!

Now you perceive the problem with that theory – even chances are divinely designed signs.

I want my memories to last forever and ever.

Were they not your dreams coming true?

In search of Heaven in your Soul, you will find all the lifetime.

What about everybody else?

Do not panic! they are still resting.

Lubet of the Divine Liberty

And this was the death; for the soul’s fire proceeding from the Father’s property turned itself away from the Son’s property, in which alone the divine life consists. Thus the property of the soul remained naked only with its will in the outward Sulphur, and the inward disappeared, and continued steadfast in the eternal unchangeableness, as in an eternal nothing, wherein there was no more any effecting [or working efficacy to bring to pass].

Thus man with his outward body lived barely and merely to the time; the precious gold of the heavenly corporality, which tinctured the outward body, was disappeared, and so the outward body stood barely and alone in the life of nature’s desire, in the soul’s fiery property; understand in the form and property of Mars, in the wrath of God, which is the wrath in Sulphur, the property of God’s anger and the dark world: But seeing the outward body was created out of the time, therefore the time, the constellation with the four elements, presently obtained the dominion in him; and the divine property, the desire of the Deity (which ruled and tinctured time, so that there was a holy life in the creature out of the time), was vanished; its own peculiar love in the divine desire was turned to water, and it became blind and dead in the will and desire of God; and the soul must help itself with the sun’s light.

But seeing that time has beginning and end, and the will with the desire has given up itself to the temporal leader, therefore the dominion of time destroys its own contrived spirit, and so the body also dies and passes away; and this is that which God said to Adam, that “he should not eat of the tree, or plant, of the knowledge of good and evil,” of both properties, lest he died; as it also came to pass, he died in the Sulphur; the Sul in the kingdom of God, the lubet of the divine liberty, out of which the light of God shines, and in which the divine love, the love-fire burns [disappeared and withdrew from him].

Now there was no remedy for him, unless God’s desire entered again into his dead Sulphur, that is, into his Sul, which was dead, into the dead [or mortified] essentiality, and again enkindled it with the love-fire; which came to pass in Christ: And there the heavenly body, wherein God’s light shines, did again arise. But if this must be effected, then the love-desire must again enter into the desire of the enkindled anger, and quench and overcome the anger with the love; the divine water must enter again into the soul’s burning fire, and quench the wrathful death in the astringent fiat, in the desire to nature, that the love-desire, which desires God, might be again enkindled in the soul.

Jacob Boehem, The Signature of All Things

There are Two Wings

There are two: one wing holds him in contact with the divine understanding, and the other with divine memory/inspiration. The two wings are therefore related to the contemplative and creative aspects of God which, in their turn, correspond to the divine image and likeness in man of which Genesis speaks.

The two Angelic wings are the Angel’s links with the eternal sabbath and the eternal creativity of God – or, in other words, with divine gnosis and divine magic. It is by means of the “gnostic” (or “left”) wing that the Angel is in contemplation of divine wisdom, and it is by means of the “magical” (or “right”) wing that he is active in his capacity as messenger or “Angel”.

This is the principle of polarity underlying the duality of the wings. The principle remains valid also for Angels – and for entities from other spiritual hierarchies – who have more than two wings (sixteen, for example). It will be the task of a future science of “Angelology” to grasp the reason or reasons for the plurality of wings of certain Angelic entities.

With respect to us, we have to restrict ourselves to a general explanation of the two wings of Angels, in reminding ourselves that it is a matter here of meditation on the fourteenth Arcanum of the Tarot, whose card represents an entity with two wings.

From tradition we know that there are also human beings endowed with wings….The astral and etheric wings of a human being signify a more-or-less advanced degree of recovery of the divine likeness in him. For certainly it was the lot of men before the original sin to have wings. He lost them subsequently. How are they recovered?

Unknown Author, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XIV Temperance

Don Juan

Don Juan is not purely and simply a blasphemous dissolute, he is rather a hierophant of this small god of great power known in antiquity under the name of Eros or Amor (Love). It is the magic of Eros that he represents, and it is the mysteries of Eros over which he presides in the capacity of a priest.

Don Juan was neither a blasphemous dissolute nor a false-hearted seducer, nor even a brutal adventurer, but rather an obedient and courageous servant of this childlike divinity who loves and commands elan, enthusiasm and ardour, and who detests and forbids the weighing, measuring and calculating of reason with its laws of utility and advantage, circumspection and respect for convention and, lastly, its priority of a cold head over a warm heart.

However, love has not only its right to exist, but also its transcendental metaphysics, philosophy and mysticism. Don Juan was more than a victim or dupe of love – this apparently capricious goddess. He embraced her philosophy and mysticism and was therefore her conscious collaborator, her hierophant initiated into her mysteries. And it is thus that he has become an archetype – the archetype of love for its own sake, the lover par excellence.

Don Juan lives through the energy of amorous influence for the energy of amorous influence – by nourishing it and maintaining it like a fire which should never be extinguished. This is because he is conscious of the value of this fire and of the mission that htis fire has in the world. In the eternal conflict that there is between law – of right, of reason, and of the divine – and love, he takes the side of love, for which courage is necessary.

And it is thus that Don Juan represents an idea, an archetype, an arcanum. He represents the young man on teh Card of the sixth Arcanum of the Tarot “The Lover”, who has chosen the fire of love as such and multiplicity instead of the unicity of the love of his eternal sister soul – since Babylon, the woman appointed to the mysteries of erotic magic, has convinced him.

Unknown Author, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XXI, The Fool

A Soul’s Journey Through the Time-Worlds

Thrown down from my origin, I have been nursed in this miserable world by a presence embodied in the motions of the sky.

She the same who cared for Adam, and led his children up through the scale of consciousness according to their capacities.

She is the whole within which all things grow, and the natural propagative power.

She calls to the cypress, and it rises up straight. To man, and her living fluid moves to make him erect.

So I was formed and wandered in the desert, and through the mountains haunted by wild animals around me and inside me.

Then a clarity woke in me, and I saw my soul’s face, and felt drawn upward, but I pulled down still too, by the other, contended for, bewildered, and without guidance, as I ran, as from a burning house, onto a narrow, upward-spiraling, path.

Dangerous cliffs, the summit far off. My only hope was to die.

Then, through that dim murkiness, I saw an old man with a radiant face.

“You are the moon!” I called out. “Where did you come from?”

“I am beyond substance and space. I am creation’s cause, here to lead you back to your home. Hold close, and let my fire consume you. Don’t be afraid of losing your strength here. This fire is one which has a spring of eternal water inside it. As your animal-soul dies, your new soul will be born. Live humbly with me, and I will raise you into majesty.”

He talked more to me in silence, without using syllables. He gave me love and light and eyes to see, and together we set out.

A Soul’s Journey Through the Time-Worlds, Sanai

Three Golden Apples

Three Golden Apples from the Hesperian grove.
A present Worthy of the Queen of Love.
Gave wise Hippomenes Eternal Fame.
And Atalanta’s cruel Speed O’ercame.
In Vain he follows ’till with Radiant Light,
One Rolling Apple captivates her Sight.
And by its glittering charms retards her flight.
She Soon Outruns him but fresh rays of Gold,
Her Longing Eyes & Slackened Footsteps Hold,
‘Till with disdain She all his Art defies,
And Swifter then an Eastern Tempest flies.
Then his despair throws his last Hope away,
For she must Yield whom Love & Gold betray.
What is Hippomenes, true Wisdom knows.
And whence the Speed of Atalanta Flows.
She with Mercurial Swiftness is Endued,
Which Yields by Sulphur’s prudent Strength pursued.
But when in Cybel’s temple they would prove
The utmost joys of their Excessive Love,
The Matron Goddess thought herself disdained,
Her rites Unhallowed & her shrine profaned.
Then her Revenge makes Roughness o’er them rise,
And Hideous feireenesse Sparkle from their Eyes.
Still more Amazed to see themselves look red,
Whilst both to Lions changed Each Other dread.
He that can Cybell’s Mystic change Explain,
And those two Lions with true Redness stain,
Commands that treasure plenteous Nature gives
And free from Pain in Wisdom’s Splendor lives.

Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens

The Four Winds

The spiritual revelation recorded in the seventh chapter of the Book of Daniel affords us what we need for our task. In that chapter, the karma of evil is boldly outlined. The delineation begins with the picture of “the four winds of heaven [that] strove upon the great sea” (Daniel 7:2).

This figure shows us the cosmic scene of the conflict between good and evil. Space – with its four cardinal points of north, south, east, west – is neither one of the three abstract categories of Kantian philosophy, nor is it merely the distance that must be covered to reach some particular point; it is an ocean of forces at rest, set in motion by four active forces. These four active forces are the spiritual influences within the elemental world – the “winds” that cover the elemental world.

The currents caused by the four “winds” in the elemental world give rise to the four elements, which are impregnated by the four realms of elemental beings (salamanders, sylphs, undines and gnomes). These four groups of elemental beings are simply the lowest expression of the “four winds”. Their origin is rooted in the eternal Trinity, from which issue the cosmic impulses called ‘north’, ‘south’, ‘east’ and ‘west’. The Father being works through the cosmic impulses of north and south’ the Son and the Holy Spirit are active in the impulses of east and west.

When these impulses work together, cosmic good results; when the “four winds” work against one another, the result is cosmic evil. This is why the description of Daniel’s night vision begins with this image: “The four winds of the heaven strove.” These winds striving against one another are the four currents of cosmic evil. They are not controlled from Heaven, but from the depths of the ‘sea’; their origin must be sought in the “four….beasts” that appear out of the depth of the sea:”And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse from one another” (Daniel 7:3).

Christ and Sophia, Valentin Tomberg

Time Present and Time Past

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.

T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets, Burnt Norton

Heavenly Music

Deep within the endless ocean
Swam the dolphin, swift in motion,
With a haunting cry, the seeking
Spirit felt its wisdom speaking.

Hosts of angels sang a promise
‘Here’s eternal bliss in heaven’.
More than all they dared to dream of
Heard the sages deep within them.

Music of the highest order,
Tones of never-ending beauty,
Filled the dolphin’s soul completely
So it rose back into ether.

Now the circling bird, so patient,
Dived again to catch the spirit
As it reached for air, transpiring
At the dolphin’s exhalation.

All at once the ones in heaven
Heard an instrument of glory,
Sounding far beyond their memories
Rolling out the timeless story.

Not a thing would they remember
Of the secrets of the music
‘Cept that it was more than wisdom,
More than knowledge; all that truth is.

Dissolution is the secret of the Great Work

The dissolution of form is a fundamental tendency of the Cosmic process. All things change. All conditions pass away. No form ever remains fixed. Existence is a stream, a series of waves, an eternal movement.

Hence, he who would know the Rosicrucian philosophy must rid himself of the irrational desire for fixity, must eliminate the wish for crystallisation. We are in the midst of a flowing universe, and in order to bring to completion the Great Work to which we are called, we must grasp the truth expressed in the alchemical maxim:

“Dissolution is the secret of the Great Work.”

Paul Foster Case, The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order