‘For this same reason, I have brought to the world the Mysteries of the Light that untie all the ties that you have with the spirit of my adversary.
The Light which frees the soul of the influences that govern it – and transforms it in the Light, refining it and guiding it to my Father’s Kingdom, the First Emanation and the First Mystery.’
Pistis Sophia, Jesus Christ to Mary Magdalene
While you cultivate the soul and embrace unity,
Can you keep them from separating?
Focus your vital breath until it is supremely soft;
Can you be like a baby?
Cleanse the mirror of mysteries,
Can you make it free from blemish?
Love the people and enliven the state;
Can you do so without cunning?
Open and close the gate of heaven;
Can you play the part of the female?
Reach out with clarity in all directions;
Can you refrain from action?
It gives birth to them and nurtures them,
It gives birth to them but does not possess them,
It rears them but does not control them.
This is called ´mysterious integrity´.
Tao te Ching, 54 (10), Lao Tzu
The Master paused for a second, before adding: As soon as possible, please, I sense that the shift is now occurring and the world must see what has been written for The Days of Transformation!
After another hour spent rearranging the whole of the small but superlative library – by now engulfed by a vast, dark shadow-web of captured dreams – the Master ascertained that Pros Theon was definitely not on the bookcase. The situation had become intolerable. A prayerfully desperate sound escaped the Master’s lips. Then, suddenly, a brainwave struck:
Did I put it in a safe place following the comet’s ominous portent?
The specific thought-question yielded an equally direct response from one of the Master’s spirit guides.
No, you’ve lost it, man.
The Master sighed, all at once feeling acutely tested.
Thanks for that Jim… any idea where it could be?
It’s the mother of all mysteries.
The Master let out another behemothic sigh; why couldn’t Soaring Eagle have flown by instead?
OK, but at least let me know if it’s been stolen?
You’re paranoid, man…
Oh for Heaven’s sake! Give me a clue will you?
Maybe it’s in the outer limit.
“Must we go there again,” the Master muttered, looking up all the same. I just need some light to be shed on the actual issue, which as well you know is the precise whereabouts of Pros Theon.
We need lights out here in the perimeter as well.
And why would that be? The Master scowled ferociously. As if we didn’t know already!
Because out here in the perimeter there are no stars; out here we are stoned….
Immaculately[i], eh, you don’t say!
Why don’t you just chill, man, It’s not ME whose lost it?
The Master levelled a thunderous glance at the South-East corner of the ceiling. How do you expect me to ‘just chill’ – as you so eloquently put it – until I’ve found The Magic Book?
Deafening etheric silence was followed by another two hours of frantic searching, during which time all the drawers in the building were pulled inside out (the contents checked thoroughly for the first time in years) and every cupboard and closet, including the drinks cabinet, turned upside down in the feverish quest.
Finally giving up in despair, The Master poured a quadruple Jack Daniels and injected it with a splash of coke, smoked a large pipe full of pure marijuana and headed off to the bathroom with the latest edition of Psychic Circular.
That’s the spirit, man, if you relax, it’ll find you.
Precisely as the confident sun was crossed by a thick, scudding, cloud, the atmosphere in Mysteries was electrified by morbid anxiety verging on panic. To lose the book would be an unmitigated disaster, of this there could be no doubt. There were only seven known-of copies left on the planet, the other two having been lost in the midst of time while three updated versions were yet to be recalled and translated from the Akashic records[i].
A well-preserved copy was with the Dalai Lama, while the elder Rabbi – who had denied its existence no less than 28 times because of his pathological obsession with total secrecy – kept the most pristine version within a hidden compartment in his personal library.
An Indian sage called Mahavatar Babaji had also received a Pros Theon scroll that he subsequently left with his disciples, while a famously un-heard of Sufi Magician inherited the fifth from his grandfather.
This highly revered leader of a largely forgotten tribe of nomads had escaped persecution by retreating to a hidden network of mountain caves above the plains of ancient Babylon. From this increasingly imperilled retreat, he and his devoted disciples kept alive a love-fuelled tradition that transported them all to a revolutionary state of pure ecstasy on a well-timed basis.
The Catholic Church had the remaining extant copies of Pros Theon. The first was mostly in fragments and frequently misinterpreted due to the high number of puzzling gaps in crucial places, while a second had been retrieved by the Knights Templar from a vault below the Church of the Sepulchre in Jerusalem, shortly before mad caliph al-Hakim came to power in the dark ages.
Sealed in a ruby and amethyst-encrusted casket that was locked with a golden key bearing three perfect emeralds and a set of alchemical sigils that were barely understood by anyone alive, this particular copy of Pros Theon had not been opened for almost 1,000 years and nor would it ever be again.
The Master felt a sudden chill. Was it possible that the only freely available text had been lost or – it hardly bore contemplating – stolen? Oh, the horrors if that were true! The very thought brought about cold sweats and a search that was renewed with marked zelatory.
Holy Krishna, Moses and Mary, Christ the everlasting Lord, please don’t let Pros Theon fall into the wrong hands. Forgive me for so carelessly misplacing it, I beg of you to let me find The Book…
[i] Derived from the Sanskrit word akasha, which means ‘sky’ or ‘ether’, ‘akashic record’ is a phrase used in theosophy and anthroposophy to define a body of mystical knowledge – a hall of records – accessible only via non-physical planes of existence or dimensions. This is where the ‘books of life’ are thought to be written and stored, along with the secret history of the world. The records are seen as equivalent to the mind of God, although the concept originated with the dualistic and atheistic Hindu Samkhya philosophy that recognizes only that there are two distinct realms of being, the one material, the other of consciousness.
Dear Unknown Friend
The preceding Arcanum – ‘The Moon’ – confronted us with the task of human intelligence to liberate itself from the magical enchantment which separates it from spontaneous wisdom, and to unite itself with the latter, ie, to arrive at intuition. The nineteenth Arcanum – “The Sun” – is that of the accomplished union of intelligence and spontaneous wisdom: the Arcanum of intuition.
*
“The children who are fraternising under the sun correspond all the better to Gemini because this zodiacal constellation berings in the longest days to us” says Oswald Wirth (Le Tarot des imagiers du moyen age), thus locating the nineteenth Arcanum in the zodiacal circle of twelve cosmic mysteries or, speaking in the language of C J Jung, in the circle of twelve archetypal force-images of the collective unconscious which work in the depths of every human soul.
For the zodiac is that which the human soul knows unconsciously; it is the book which the soul “ate” and which is present and active only in his “bowels” – in the depths of his being – from whence it renders him strong or weak, fertile or arid, fervent or tepid, according to whether he is in harmony or not with its teaching-impulse.
Now, the teaching impulse called “Gemini” can be expressed by paraphrasing a little the first statement of the Emerald Table of Hermes:
May that which is below be as that which is above, and may that which is above be as that which is below to accomplish the miracles of one thing.
This is the principle of analogy put into practice, taking its point of departure from the principle of cooperation.
*
One of the highest aspects of the principle of Gemini, the principle of cooperation, is that which is present in intuition: that of the cooperation between spontaneous wisdom and intelligence. Here it is a matter of a state of consciousnes where intelligence advances from formal knowledge to material knowledge, ie, from knowledge of the relationships of the things to knowledge of the things themselves.
Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XIX, The Sun
Once I was asked when he – Dionysus – first came here.
Who can say! I should laugh at such a question, for what is time? There are only hours of sun, seasons and days marked by the passage of the moon. Most severely have I been warned by the priests to never fall under the sway of time, because that would bring death to all prophecy.
Daily I am reminded that time is of no consequence, as fate unfolds precisely as the gods command it to and ‘when’ this occurs is immaterial, the potential for all action being present in every moment.
We are concerned here with what is infinite. “For this reason”, Timocrates informed me – quite pompously, in fact – when I questioned him on the matter, “the League has taken it upon itself to regulate all of the calendars throughout the civilised world in order to subjugate for perpetuity the menace of time at the centre of the Earth.”
For the sake of the initial inquiry, however, it was sufficient to say to say that Dionysus comes at first sighting of the Pleiades, accompanied always by Euterpe, whose hypnotic sounds will soar over Parnassus from flutes poised like spears of moonlight on the muse’s lips. What happens then, who can say? It is one of the mysteries we cannot share easily, for like dark and endless dreaming, memories of those days are like mist in the fire of morning.
I lifted up skyward the crown of the faeries,
Tarnished by oceans of sea-crossing time.
Forged in the fire of golden-days dawning,
Lit with a halo of stars in the night.
Who now shall wear it? I wondered in silence
Una is resting with Duessa at play.
Gwenevere wanders in halls of forgetting,
Deep in the summer of dreaming this day.…
On her feet sandals of gold, steps the princess,
Floating on air through the green garden grass,
Walking alone by the castle of ether,
Seen but unseen by the world through a glass.
The seal of the nether-world opened up freely;
Through the dark tunnel with reason behind,
Following meekly the one with a mission;
Perfect in will and a reader of signs.
Once past the stream of the guardian lizards,
On through the gate to the bright other place,
Land of reflection and fathomless knowledge,
Home elemental of alchemic race.
Where do we go? I looked left and then eastward,
Somehow forboding the place that I saw.
Life’s university, building of sandstone
Burnished and gleaming, a prison by law.
Silent, but knowing, did reason stand sweetly
Holder of mysteries, the teacher and guide.
Younger and wiser and older all-seeing,
Dressed up in white and demure by my side.
Then came a voice – and as if out of nowhere –
Do you need help, you seem lost in this realm?
There stood a faerie, bewitchingly golden
Silken and spun was her hair from the sun
Stepped forth the reason – seduced by her magic –
Stretched out a hand to her beautiful hair.
Won’t you come with me? The faerie enticed us,
Stop by the hearth of the potter this day...
Brooding I pondered, could faeries be trusted?
Should I be swayed from the pathway assigned?
Yet I had watched how my reason surrendered
So before airs of a beautiful kind….
Loathe to offend such a glorious being,
One who had offered with kindness and grace,
Help just when needed. I bowed to the faerie;
Take now your highness my reason away.
Then the wind changed as a wandering mistral,
Warm as the breeze on a meadow of wheat,
Swift, warm and golden the faerie-bird air-borne
Flew o’er myself that fell under her wing.
Passed by all time as I sailed down the sleep-stream,
Far to the land where the doe and stag graze.
Home to the garden that blooms East of Eden,
Land of the ancestors covered in praise.
Opened my eyes as I reached the cool garden
Wonder-filled, wide, as memories unfolded.
Looked up the stag and the doe from their incline,
Wakened my self from the river of time.
Safe in the knowledge of paradise tended,
Turned I my thought to the reason once lost.
So in a blink of my eye I went searching,
Straight to the hearth of the faerie-bird’s host.
One becomes conscious of the pure act of intelligence only by means of its reflection. We require an inner mirror in order to be conscious of the pure act. The breath of the Spirit – or the pure act of intelligence – is certainly an event, but it does not suffice, itself alone, for us to become conscious of it. Con-sciousness is the result of two principles – the active, activating principle and the passive, reflecting principle.
In order to know from where the breath of the Spirit comes and where it goes, Water is required to reflect it: ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of Water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God (John iii, 5).
Reintegrated consciousness must be born of Water and Spirit, after Water has once again become Virginal and Spirit has once again become divine Breath or the Holy Spirit
*
Christian yoga does not aspire directly to unity, but rather to the unity of two. This is very important for understanding the standpoint which one takes towards the infinitely serious problem of unity and duality. For this problem can open the door to truly divine mysteries and can also close them to us….for ever, perhaps, who knows? Everything depends on its comprehension.
We can decide in favour of monism and say to ourselves that there can be one sole essence, one sole being. Or we can decide – in view of considerable historical and personal experience – in favour of dualism and say to ourselves that there are two principles in the world: good and evil, spirit and matter, and that, entirely incomprehensible though this duality is at root, it must be admitted as an incontestable fact.
We can, moreover, decide in favour of a third point of view, namely that of love as the cosmic principle which presupposes duality and postulates its non-substantial but essential unity. These three points of view are found at the basis of the Vedanta and Spinozism (monism), Manichaeism and certain gnostic schools (dualism) and the Judaeo-Christian current (love).
Meditations on the Tarot, Letter II, The High Priestess
Creation reflects the rule of God,
who is praised by the breath of all life.
God’s greatness and goodness fill the universe;
knowledge and wisdom encircle God’s presence.
Exalted is God by creatures celestial;
enhanced and adorned by the mysteries of heaven.
God’s throne is guarded by truth and purity;
God is surrounded by mercy and love.
Good are the lights our God has created,
fashioning them with insight and wisdom.
Endowed by God with power and vigour,
They maintain dominion amidst the world.
Abounding in splendour, emanating brilliance,
their radiant light adorns the universe.
Rejoicing in rising, gladly setting,
they rush to obey their Creator’s will.
God is acclaimed by beauty and glory,
God’s sovereignty sung by celebration and praise.
God summoned the sun, whose light shone forth,
then gave to the moon its cyclical glow.
The stars and planets, all bodies of the heavens
acclaim God with praise;
celestial creatues give glory and greatness . . .
El Adon
They who have received the mystery of the Light, if they come out of the body of the matter of the rulers, then will every one be in his order according to the mystery which he hath received. Those who have received the higher mysteries, will abide in the higher order; those who have received the lower mysteries will be in the lower orders.
In a word, up to what region every one hath received mysteries, there will he abide in his order in the Inheritance of the Light. For which cause I have said unto you aforetime: ‘Where your heart is, there will your treasure be,’–that is up to what region every one hath received mysteries, there shall he be.
And that mystery knoweth why the stars of the heaven and the disks of the light-givers have arisen and why the firmament with all its veils hath arisen.
And it is the mystery which is in them all, and it is the one only mystery of the Ineffable and the gnosis of all these of whom I have spoken unto you, and of whom I will speak unto you, and of whom I have not spoken. Of these will I speak unto you at the expansion of the universe and of their total gnosis one with another, wherefor they have arisen. It is the one and only word of the Ineffable.
And the soul which receiveth the mystery of the Ineffable, will soar into the height, being a great light-stream, and the receivers will not be able to seize it and will not know how the way is fashioned upon which it will go. For it becometh a great light-stream and soareth into the height, and no power is able to hold it down at all, nor will they be able to come nigh it at all.
But it will pass through all the regions of the rulers and all the regions of the emanations of the Light, and it will not give answers in any region, nor giveth it any apologies, nor giveth it any tokens; neither will any power of the rulers nor any power of the emanations of the Light be able to come nigh that soul.
But all the regions of the rulers and all the regions of the emanations of the Light, every one singeth unto it praises in their regions, in fear of the light of the stream which envelopeth that soul, until it passeth through them all, and goeth to the region of the inheritance of the mystery which it hath received, that is to the mystery of the One and Only, the Ineffable, and until it becometh one with its Limbs. Amēn, I say unto you: It will be in all the regions in the time a man shooteth an arrow.
Pistis Sophia