Love in the Air

She opened her door and her window, and the heart and the soul came through, To her right hand came the red one, To her left hand came the blue*

As soon as dusk fell the witness peered into an antiquated telescope positioned by Mysteries’ upper-back window and focused it on the perfect half-moon above the star-crossed landscape.

Ahhhhh!

The portents were all there; love really was in the air.

For starters, Mars had just moved into a visually stunning conjunction with Aphrodite’s blue-white ball of ferocious energy, as the shyly radiant moon made up the third part of a most compelling, cosmic love-triangle.

Mercury hovered expectantly, waiting for the precise moment to convey his timeless message to the lovers and their watchers.

The Day of Transformation was truly dawning and the witness could only wonder if the consciousness of the human race was strong enough to survive the impact. Would the collective mind be blown – short-circuited by the influx of cosmic energy – or would humanity rise to the occasion by using it to accelerate a collective metamorphosis into a higher dimension?

*William Butler Yeats, The Cap and Bells

Imperatrix

When his love he doth espy, let her shine as gloriously as the Venus of the sky

It wasn’t the flickering light in the upper storey window that drew the Watcher’s attention, for many lights vied for his attention that evening. It was a melody drifting upwards through the gradually darkening sky. A rose-gold sun set the western horizon alight as the lone figure made slow, wide circles in the radiant atmosphere.

Drawn by her irresistible presence below, he descended to the place where she now dwelt. The flame of a candle within licked gently at the surrounding air and a heady scent was carried up to him with the rising music. Deeply he inspired, considering the soul within. She was stretched like a cat upon the bed, with an open book face-down beside her on the pillow. His eye was now fixed.

One golden glance of what should be.

A powerful gust of wind blew the window open and she jumped out of her skin, shaken from her hazy reverie by the sudden noise and rush of cool air. Moving like quicksilver he silently slipped inside, permeating the chamber with a magnificent aura, the robe of divine beauty. He watched as her eyes slowly scanned the space, seeking what or whomsoever had electrified the ether, almost fully aware of the almost unexpected arrival of the thrice-descended master.

With curious concentration she listened to the voice entering her room via the radio that now seemed remarkably significant. A drama was set to unfold, of that she could be sure. Doubtless there was a kind of magic taking place right there and then, with her at the centre of its endlessly opening and closing circle. Luscious chords swelled like the rising ocean, sweeping over her body in sensuous waves. The lost history of time unfolded in his fathomless mind.

She was wearing gold-coloured sandals – shoes that were a gift from her father – and a midnight blue dress. Around her wrist was a bracelet full of charms and with his bright, ancient eyes, he saw that the necklace at her throat was made from the stuff of magic, a gift from her mystery-loving mother.

Once again he had challenged the doors of time to reach her and the wait had seemed an eternity. 2,628 years had passed since she had last been this close to him. On that occasion the moon had been perfectly halved by the shadow of the Earth. Jupiter, then, was at the same point in its orbit as it would be in precisely three and a half minutes that self-same night.

He looked over his shoulder at the gigantic sphere, which slowly turned through the expanding cosmos with an intricately complex, haunting melody. A ray of its light fell upon her in that moment and the ageless diamond of her soul began to dissolve in his mercurial presence.

One shaft of light that showed the way

A sense of fervent devotion rose up inside her like the flames of a secret fire as he stretched out his hands to touch her outspread hair.

This flame that burns inside of me is here in secret harmonies

She had dreams; he could see every colour of every scene.

One dream, one soul, one prize, one goal

With a silent whisper he reminded her of the truth:

No mortal man can win this day.

He drew a flickering moment of eternity into the infinite space between them and exhaled into her parted lips.

There can be only one….

The radio crackled and grew fainter, framing the esoteric silence like a braid of wheat, magnetising all background interference until the air grew taut as a lens, magnifying live reactions as if they were in a scene from a lyric master’s play.

Still you will always be with me, your name constantly on my lips, never forgotten

With quotes from William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Freddie Mercury, A Kind of Magic and a Hymn of Orpheus

The Conjunction of Venus

The setting midsummer sun found the witness in a distinctly prayerful posture, shrouded by heady masala incense and calling Earth to witness. Venus had emerged, triumphant as a diamond on her band of gold, heralding the rising moon and guided to the altar by a vast and dominant Jupiter.

Pondering this crystal-clear sky, the witness could see how the dazzling quintessential force of the even-star was polarised by the glowing pharos of Mars, beckoning his paramour as he bequeathed to her the dark and endless night. The imperator of war was in a state of surrender at the temple of beauty.

The witness wondered about the effects of Mars’ conjunction with Venus, Jupiter and Mercury beyond the perfect moon, at that very instant deflecting onto captivated Earth the magnified potential for an alchemical wedding. This compelling planetary event was irresistibly conspiring with the precession of the equinoxes to create the most potent cosmic conditions that had ever been witnessed from Earth – at least since the Star of the Magi heralded the turning point of history.

Or so it seemed.

How can such a sign be ignored? thought the witness.

The answer was that it could not!

That the divine plan might remain unfulfilled was inconceivable, but how, precisely, it was to manifest would remain the Mother of all Mysteries.

The Days of Transformation

An indeterminate length of time later the witness re-emerged, relieved of magazine and whiskey glass but clutching to heart an exceedingly large, old and important-looking volume. The disappearance of Pros Theon had ended a few short minutes after its guardian entered the large, cluttered bathroom, whereupon it was joyfully rediscovered amidst a towering stack of books.

Unspeakably relieved with seven years of life added back on, the witness placed the priceless treasure on the polished wooden desk with a great sense of ceremony, lit an ancient lamp and turned to the penultimate section:

Μεταμόρφωσις ἀλκυονίδες (Transformatio Dies)*

Translating and interpreting the metamorphosing text was a mission that took every effort of will and imagination, the fruits of the prophetic tome being rare and arcane indeed. At a certain point – in need of divine assistance – the witness looked over the text and out of the window for inspiration, focusing on the swaying tree tops as a breath-taking vision manifested with perfect clarity in the darkening ether.

A great supernatural bird – a huge white-headed eagle – awoke prophetic memory with his clairvoyant eyes then spread his enormous wings and took to flight towards the window. His sights were locked with terrible precision on the fixated witness, who felt a heavenly upsurge of pure joy and ran in the eagle’s direction as if physically lifted from the chair, having reverted back to childhood in a twinkling of the eye.

They reached the window as one and were simultaneously faced with the realisation that a window between worlds was separating them. The knowledge brought both grief and gratitude in equal measure, as the love-struck witness was just able to grasp one of the bird’s magnificent tail feathers and later attach it to the sun-tinted dream catcher. More evocations of Halcyon Days would be captured by this than all the other feathers combined.

“What you seek is seeking you”

* Days of Transformation

If you relax, it’ll find you….

After another hour spent rearranging the whole of the small but superlative library – by now engulfed in a vast, dark shadow-web of captured dreams – the witness ascertained that it was definitely not on the bookcase.

This cannot be!

The situation was intolerable.

Then, suddenly, a brainwave struck:

Did I put it in a safe place following the comet’s ominous portent?

The specific thought yielded an equally direct response from one of the witness’ spirit guides.

No, you’ve lost it, man.

The witness sighed.

Thanks for that Jim… At least let me know if it’s been stolen?

You’re paranoid, man…Maybe it’s in the outer limit.

“Must we go there again,” the witness muttered, looking up all the same. I just need some light to be shed on the whereabouts of Pros Theon.

We need lights out here in the perimeter as well.

And why would that be? inquired the witness, unable to refrain from scowling.

Because out here in the perimeter there are no stars; out here we are stoned….

Immaculately, eh, you don’t say!

Why don’t you just chill, man, It’s not ME whose lost it?

Why couldn’t Soaring Eagle have flown by?

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 witness 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.

By the Gods

Didn’t I see it just after Halle Bop showed up in ’96 and the moon was side by side with Jupiter?

Or perhaps it had been Venus….

Again there was no answer, but the witness now felt sure this was when the rare and ancient copy of ‘Pros Theon’, which translated into English as ‘By the Gods’, had last been consulted.

But where is it now, for heaven’s sake?

Who could say?

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 that there could be no doubt. There were only seven known-of copies on the planet, the other two having been lost in the midst of time – one after being buried many moons ago by the earthly entrance to Shambhala – while three updated versions were yet to be recalled and translated from the Akashic records.

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 a pristine version within a hidden compartment in his personal library. Mahavatar Babajihad also received a Pros Theon scroll that he subsequently left with his disciples, while an un-heard of Sufi Magician inherited the fifth from his grandfather.

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 or dead, this particular copy of Pros Theon had not been opened for almost 1,000 years and nor would it ever be again.

The witness 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 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 sense that the shift is now occurring and the world must be told what is written for The Days of Transformation!

Drama at Mysteries

If one goes deep enough in atomic physics one ends with a situation of pure chance *

The witness sighed, deep in thought, and approached an overloaded bookcase standing against the Eastern wall of Mysteries’ upper room, near to the point where horoscopes were cast.

Dazzling sunlight rendered a large cross-section of the case invisible with its blinding rays, while the lower parts were swathed in darkness, forming a vivid chiaroscuro on the rich mahogany canvas.

The lovingly burnished bookcase was home to a myriad esoteric masterworks and timeless classics. Ancient volumes interspersed with lavishly illustrated fairy tales and poetry written in the green language were stacked two-deep in places and upside-down in others.

It would not be a simple matter to extract from all of this the book that the witness had in Mind. Indeed, at that moment in time it would prove impossible.

Scanning the shelves intently, following the words on each well-worn spine with a neatly-nailed forefinger, everything but the item sought was readily apparent.

The shadow of a home-spun dream catcher – hypnotically swaying above the wide open window – crept inexorably along the ceiling like a spider’s web as minutes passed by into an hour of fruitless seeking. Church bells began ringing in the middle distance, heralding both an end of day and onset of night, bridging twilight with their other-worldly call to evensong.

Tension swiftly mounted in the upper room, causing a very mild sweat to break out on the witness’ furrowing brow. Thoughts from what was by any standards a wide-open brow chakra permeated the charged atmosphere with a note of concern.

Where on Earth IS the magic book?

* John Fowles, The Magus

The Day of Light; Ages of the World

As has been already explained, he geographical situation of the former Terrestrial Paradise was variously given. The Babylonians placed it in the Delta of the Euphrates; the Greeks in Crete; the pre-Exilic Hebrews at Hebron in Southern Judaea.

It is of the highest theological importance that Jehovah announced himself to Moses as ‘I am that I am’ or (more literally) ‘I am whoever I choose to be’ from the acacia rather than from any other tree; because this constituted a definition of his godhead.

Had he announced himself from the terebinth, as the earlier Jehovah had done at Hebron, this would have been to reveal himself as Bel, or Marduk, the god of Thursday and of the seventh month, the Aramaean Jupiter, the Paeonian Apollo. But from the acacia, the tree of the first day of the week, he revealed himself as the God of the Menorah, the transcendental Celestial God, the God who presently said:

‘Thou shalt have none other Gods but me….for I the Lord they God am a jealous God.’

The acacia is, indeed, a thorny, jealous, self-sufficient tree, needs very little water and, like Odin’s ash, strangles with its roots all other trees growing near i. Uath, the month dedicated to the acacia, was the one in which the annual Hebron Fair took place, and so holy that all sexual congress and self-beautification was tabooed during it: it was the month of the annual purification of the temples in Greece, Italy and the Near East.

The not yet completed Ages of the World, quoted from Nennius by Gwion, are based on the same planetary cannon:

‘The first Age of the World is from Adam to Noah’. Adam’s was the first human eye to see the light of the sun, or the Glory of God. Sunday is the day of light.’

Robert Graves, The White Goddess

History of the Magic of Love reviving the Dead

The spiritual history of Christianity is the history of successive resurrections of that which is valuable from the past, worthy of eternity. It is the history of the magic of love reviving the dead. It was thus that Platonism became resuscitated and will go on living for ever – thanks to the vivifying breath of he who is the resurrection and the life (“Ego sum resurrectio et vita” – John xi, 25). It is thus that Aristotelianism will participate in eternal life. And it is thus that Hermeticism, also, will live until the end of the world and, perhaps, beyond the end of the world.

Moses and the prophets will live on for ever, for they have acquired their place in the eternal constellation of the Word of resurrection and life. The magical poetry and songs of Orpheus will be resuscitated and will live for all eternity as colour and sound of the Word of resurrection and life. The magic of Zarathustra’s mages will be revived and will live as the eternal human endeavour of aspiration towards light and life. The truths revealed by Krishna will join the retinue of the ‘recalled to eternal life’. The ancient cosmic revelations of the Rishis will live again and will awaken in humanity anew a sense for the marvels of the ‘blue, white and gilded….’

All these souls of mankind’s spiritual history will be resuscitated, ie, will be called to join the work of the Word that became flesh, that died and rose again from the dead – so that the truth of the promise – “I have come so that nothing should be lost but that all should have eternal life” (John, vi, 38 – 40) – will be accomplished.

Meditations on the Tarot, Letter VIII, Justice

The Gift of Tears

The soul who cries is more living, and therefore fresher and younger than when it does not cry.

The ‘gift of tears’ was always considered by the masters of Christian spirituality as a grace from the Holy Spirit, for it is thanks to this gift that the soul surpasses itself and ascends to a degree of intensity of life which is certainly above that to which it is accustomed.

Now, the ‘gift of tears’ is a comparatively recent spiritual phenomenon in the history of human spirituality. In the ancient world one wept only ritually, ie through verbal lamentations and through prescribed gestures of mourning or grief, and it was amongst the chosen people, Israel, that real weeping began.

It was as a manifestation of the share that the chosen people had in the mission of preparing for the coming of Christ – who wept at the time of Lazarus’ resuscitation and who sweated sweat and blood during the night in the Garden of Olives – that real weeping came to have its rudimentary origin from the womb of this people. And to this present day the Jews preserve, cultivate and respect the ‘gift of tears’. In fact, every revelation in the narrative of the Zohar is preceded or accompanied by the weeping of the one who had it and who comes to share it with the others.

Meditations on the Tarot, Letter II, The High Priestess