“A Sane Mind, A Soft Heart, A Sound Body” November/December 2000—$5.00
MEDITATION: PEACE AND HOLINESS THROUGH CHRISTTHE ADVENT
JOHFRAAND THE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC—SCORPIO & SAGITTARIUSCOSMIC ILLUMINATION
A CHRISTIAN ESOTERIC MAGAZINE
Front cover: Oil on Canvas, Sandro Botticelli, Madonna of the Pomegranate, Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Planet Art. Back Cover: Stained glass, 1855, St. Patrick’s Church, Planet Art.
CHRISTBECOMING MAN
Man Descended,Christ Descending
Man Benighted,Christ enlightening
Man bedeviled,Christ befriending
Man downfallen,Christ Uprising
Man polluted,Christ him cleansing
Man earthbounded,Christ releasing
Man beleaguered,Christ him succoring
Man dead-stricken,Christ upraising
Man bewildered,Christ him guiding
Man lost to purpose,Christ onward
pointingOn to the City of
GodFar, far ahead.
—Evelyn Frances Capel
Illustration for John Milton’s On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity, Nativity Ode 2, 1809, William Blake (1757-1827), Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester
The Shepherds and the Choir of AngelsCapel’s poem from
Pictures from the Apocalypse,
Temple Lodge Press, London
This Issue...Feature
Ancestry...Della Adams Leitner............................................................................2
EditorialAs a Man Thinketh................................................................................................3
Mystic LightMeditation: Peace and Holiness Through Christ...Friedrich Rittelmeyer.............4Sophia and the Event of Pentecost...Valentin Tomberg ......................................11Advent...Carl Swan.............................................................................................17
From Max Heindel’ s WritingsThe Planetary Spirit of the Earth.........................................................................23
Readers’ QuestionsFate of the Executed Murderer; Use of Spiritual Power;...................................25Cooperating with Scientists; Occult Meaning of the Sun “Standing Still”........26
Western W isdom Bible StudyThe Calling of the Twelve...Corinne Heline.......................................................27
AstrologyJohfra and the Signs of the Zodiac—Scorpio and Sagittarius............................29Astrology, a Cosmic Science...Isabel Hickey.....................................................36
Mystic LightThe Virgin Mary and the Evangelion (Part 2)...C.W. .........................................40
Religion and the Public RealmProposing Democracy Anew (Part 1)...John Richard Neuhaus..........................47
Book ReviewsJohn Calvin and the Founding of America...AProbationer................................52John Wesley and Methodism..AProbationer......................................................53
Nutrition and HealthCosmic Illumination...Edna Tradewell.................................................................54
HealingThe Laying on of Hands...Stewart Haring..........................................................58
For ChildrenThe Crooked Fir Tree...Elizabeth Alma McCarton.............................................59
MiscellaneousChrist Becoming Man (poem)...Evelyn Frances Capel..............Inside front coverPrayers of Faith (poem)...John G. Whittier.........................................................22The Disciple (poem)...Rudyard Kipling..............................................................28Saturn, Angel of Discipline (poem)...Isabel M. Hickey......................................38Wise Words by Early Americans (quotes)..........................................................51
“A Sane Mind,A Soft Heart,
A Sound Body”© 2000 The Rosicrucian Fellowship
A Christian Esoteric Magazine
Established byMax Heindel
June 1913
Volume 92, No. 6
November/December—2000USPS 471080—ISSN 0744-432X
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Each is his own ancestor. In many lives to come We will be manifesting What we now gain, or some Of our mistakes will cause us New grief or pain or woe. Now we can change the answer And choose the way to go.
For we are but the outcome Of what we’ve lived before. We can inherit goodness Or we can close the door To challenges that take us Far on the upward road, Where we can gain great wisdom And drop a cumbering load.
For when we come in freshness, A new-born babe again, We bring with us whatever We learned from grief and pain Or joy or helpful striving. We find the home and place That we have truly chosen,That karmic law can trace.
This is a real incentive To live our best each day, Make each thought and purposeAdvancement on the way; To waken in His likeness, Heeding His urgent call, To seek Divine perfection—God’s purpose for us all.
—Della Adams Leitner
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FEATURE
illumination, Ingeburg Psalter, 1210, Musée Condé, Chantilly
The Tree of Jesse
Heredity by nature, physical lineage, has its occult counterpart in meta-physical lineage, spiritual heredity, the sequence of the Ego’s incarnations.
Ancestry
AT THIS TIME OF THE YEAR itis appropriate to remind ourselvesthat Christianity is an incarnationalreligion, as distinguished from, say,Hinduism or Buddhism. That is, the
Son of God became the Son of Man, even ashumans, differentiated sparks of God, or VirginSpirits, have taken on “seven veils” and typicallylive as if their outer veil (their dense physicalbody) constitutes their identity. And that is theproblem: How can we humans claim, know, andlive from our Spirit that is layered and lowered inthese seven “coats of skin”?
Having lived unto death in a human body, Christshares our human consciousness and ennobles all“being-in-the-world.” Such is Christmas, the onsetof Christ-giving: God has come to and become asman. By excarnating or resurrecting, Christ proveswe are not this seventh, outer veil. Nor, for thatmatter, are we any of our finer human vestures. Acentral Christian paradox is that by embracing phys-ical experience humans can lift the physical veil,can give birth to the inner Christ, to the immortalSpirit which grows in wisdom, grace, and power.
If, ontologically, we were first Thoughts in theMind of God, Rosicrucian Christianity teaches thatwe, as separate Egos in physical bodies, are prac-ticing the same incarnational principle; we areproving for ourselves that as a man thinketh (in hisheart, that is, truly), so is he. On many levels, weare the metabolic end product of what we think.
If ignorance involves the human Spirit in themeshes of matter, causing one to think, “I am mybody,” experience in that very body enables us to
learn from, evolve through, and transcend materiallimitations and affirm, “I am Spirit.”
We discover that ideas are creative of physicalform and that the thinker is above and separatefrom his thought and its physical embodiment. Weare responsible for what we think and our thinkingis both incarnational, because it makes things, andliberating, because it can rise above the casementof sensory forms. Through incarnational desire, wethink ourselves into things that can bind us. Throughaspiration, we can think ourselves out of localhabitations into realms of light and truth.
Daily, hourly, we give expression to the dualChristian dynamic: We come down into the mortalmoment and make material commitments whichinvariably bring transformative suffering and releaseof the spirit. Max Heindel remarked that while themartyr dies once for his faith, a more heroic path iswalked by him who, like St. Paul, dies daily.
Christmas and Easter are nodal points in theChristian cycle that characterizes our earthly expe-rience. We will our fullest conscious presence andgood intentions into the manger of the humblest ofcircumstances. We try to stay the course and seeeach intention through to its highest end, even ifthat end is raised on a personal Golgotha. In ourdaily endeavors we endure trials, temptations, andtribulations, from which something of Spirit isconsciously born and strengthened in us. Fromsuffering in the material world the holy child ofresurrected understanding is born. A pattern forliving and dying is given us in the Person of Christ,Who is the door into and the door from earthly life,as well as the path that joins them. r
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EDITORIAL
As a Man Thinketh
¶
THE FIRST THING which we havehad to discuss is the divine funda-mental frame of mind itself, whichChrist brought to earth. For only withChrist is it worth while to live upon
earth. With Christ we willingly return every dayto earth, however little it pleases us to do so. Inthe Act of Christ, the highest will of the divineFather of the worlds, which lies at the root of allearthly happenings, is mirrored before us. It wasa divine necessity that the Father of the worldsshould at some time bring a world into being inwhich He could express His divine will andpower, as He has done in the earth; His most lov-ing aid, even from the lowest depths.
But he who wishes to live upon the earth, musttake upon himself the fate of the earth; and so wecome to the second stage of inward union withChrist. The first object upon which our gaze fellwas man, and the fundamental feeling towardsman was the first to be awakened. For earth isthere for man. But the second thing is to gaze uponthe world, which surrounds men. Here we enter thehistory of the earth. The word which must lead usinto this world is the word peace. As love to menhad led and leads us, so peace enfolds us in theworld.
But Christian peace is just as perverted asChristian love, and just as much in need of cleans-ing. The manner in which the words “love” and“peace” are alive for the most part today inChristianity, has repelled men like Nietzsche.
What, on the contrary, real peace is in the sense ofChrist can best be learned from the picture of theScourging. It is not a medieval peace of the clois-ter, which withdraws from the world, but just astanding in the midst of the vexations of the world.It is not a Protestant peace of the soul, which livesonly in the forgiveness of one’s own sin, but anacceptance of the fate of the world in the strengthwhich comes from above.
Looking still further out into human history, wesee that the heroic indifference of the Stoic, and thespiritually strong absence of desire in theBuddhist, are far behind the picture of heroic
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Meditation: Peace and Holiness
Through Christ
MYSTIC LIGHT
This is the eighth in a series of articles taken from FriedrichRittelmeyer’s Meditation, Guidance of the Inner Life, pub-lished by Floris Books, Edinburgh. Reprinted with permission.
Oil on canvas, 1880. William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1825-1905
The Flagellation of Our Lord Jesus Christ“The life of Christ was a tying to a pillar of martyrdom andalmost everything that came from men was a scourging.”
Christianity shown in the Scourging.Here again we think of the Scourging as a figure
which sums up all that ever happened to Christ. Itis overwhelming to represent to oneself Christ atthe pillar of martyrdom, the holy and divine oneagainst whom rough hands directed the blowswhich lacerated His flesh. Some will doubtwhether their “nerves” are trained to stand a seri-ous meditation upon this picture. And yet we enterfor the first time into the actual fate of what isdivine in the world when this picture becomesalive in us. It is never otherwise with the divine.He who is not willing for this may look after smalljoys, but not the divine in the world.
Conversely, the trulydivine in the world isproved to be so by its mak-ing men strong and coura-geous to share this fate. Itis good to call up this pic-ture of Christ again andagain clearly before one.For, as Goethe has said,one can best help oneself inthe face of the many renun-ciations which lifedemands by “resigningoneself once and for all”; and it will be found that,after such a meditation upon Christ, one returnsback into ordinary life much stronger and morecourageous. One knows what lies before one,one’s resolve has been strengthened and one isthen surprised to meet so much good in the world.A new meaning of “redemption through Christ”dawns upon us. At the present day one thinks, ifone thinks at all of these words, of the act of deathonce performed by Christ at Golgotha. But fromthe individual details also of Christ’s life redemp-tion continually goes forth. He who has really car-ried out the meditation on the scourging of Christis “redeemed from all querulous complaining,from all illusions about life, from all false hopesand wishes.” One notices for the first time that onehas carried those about with one unconsciously.One has a completely different attitude to life;one’s attitude now is that, as helper of the divine inthe world, one can endure life and master it. Christ
has taken our sorrows upon Himself; this old pointof view acquires a new meaning. There actuallyproceeds from the picture of Christ a power bywhich the sorrows which lie before us, as sorrows,are taken away, and His joys are given us in return.Such a concrete experience of “redemption”through Christ, as we here show it in connectionwith one point only, is weightier and leads us fur-ther than if one carried the old church teaching inone’s head and “believed” in it, as one speaks of“believing” to-day, in the full sense which has nolonger much to do with the Biblical meaning.
But from the Scourging one ought to look out atthe whole life of Christ. He who, after a meditation
upon the Scourging, readsthe farewell talk in John’sGospel, will discover thatevery word interpolated bythe disciples into this reve-lation of Christ is like ablow from a whip. Notmerely a pin-prick—a realstroke of a scourge. Thenlet him read back in John’sGospel how “the Jews”—one must not here think ofthe Jews by race—receive
every word, every act of Christ, and it will dawnupon us that the life of Christ was a tying to a pil-lar of martyrdom, and everything, almost every-thing, that came from men was a scourging. Onedoes not notice this only because Christ, for exam-ple in His farewell talk, bears it all so greatly thatHe transforms it into good.
And so, after reading Christ’s farewell talk (John13-16), when one has especially observed theinward attitude of Christ to the interruptions of Hisdisciples, one may add this inward attitude ofChrist, this unassailable greatness of holiness,vividly to our picture of the Scourging. And throughthis it will begin to dawn upon us gradually thatthere may be a “becoming worthy of sharing thesufferings of Christ.” For there is nothing whichcan better help humanity forward and redeem itthan that one should bring against the evil attacksof men this high and noble bearing of Christ, thispurity of one who belongs to God.
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When Godlike patienceoccurs only in the clois -ter, and there refreshesitself with the “divine
life,” it has not reachedChrist’ s heights. It must
stand against the frightfulenmity of the world.
The old mystics spoke of “the patience of God.”But when this Godlike patience occurs only in thecloister, and there refreshes itself with the “divinelife,” it has not reached Christ’s heights. It muststand against the frightful enmity of the world, mustbe an active “uniting” of oneself with the world’sevolving “which can happen through Christ,” mustbe a free taking upon oneself of the fate of the divinein human history. One must feel that this patience,this peace, is the very last quality to be gained by thestruggle of a strong and fiery man. As one has foundthat the Greeks valued “Sophrosyne,” quietness ofmind, because it was hard for them to attain it, so isChristian peace great, when it is the victory of astrong will over itself.
Men have at first spoiled everything which theyhave taken over from Christ. Thus there was a sen-timental sympathy with Christ, an outward imita-tion of His sufferings, well-meant indeed, but oftenvain and self-seeking, and even at the best, lackingin ultimate greatness. There was also a slavishputting-up with anything in the name of Christ,and other similar things. The meditation of theScourging can set us free from all these, if we med-itate not only in our feelings, but with our egoawakened to the choice before it. We do not imitatethe hair-shirts and self-scourging of the monks ofold. But we see Christ, bound of his own free willto the world-tree, smitten by men, opposing to alltortures no outward resistance but only His owndivine greatness. Then we think ourselves into Hisposition, take His fate of our own free will uponus, and vow that in this spirit we shall stand fastagainst whatever may come.
In the lectures on St. John’s Gospel mentionedabove, Rudolf Steiner describes how, in connec-tion with their devoted contemplation of Christ’sscourging, the medieval mystics really had thefeeling that they were receiving blows. We haveheard of similar experiences at the present timemore in the form of dreams which occurred aftercontemplation of the scourging. Here, again, is anoccurrence which need in no way be suggestion. Ifa man fills himself with Christ, if he raises himselfabove his narrow personal life and unfolds himselfin love to the world, then his finer invisible manactually breaks through the sheath in which it has
lived until now. That which has been called theetheric man—not yet the actual spirit-man, butalready the more delicate organ of the spirit-man—begins to take part in a greater life. The first thingwhich then meets man is that he feels the opposi-tion which comes from all sides, the opposingpowers which will not endure the divine. This isthe more severely felt just because the man is thenliving in the feeling that he wishes only to bringgood, and in the unconscious supposition thatother men must as a matter of course recognizethat which to himself is great and divine.
For this reason, men who, filled with a greatconviction, wished to help their fellow-men, hadfirst to fight against a heightened sensitiveness,when humanity answered them so entirely differ-ently from what they believed they had a right toexpect. The experience which we know as “pin-pricks” becomes our experience from the world.These feelings may set in when a man has con-scious experience of enmity, and also when hesimply feels himself to be a disciple of Christ inthe world. They may then be more unconscious orthey may be too conscious. They live in a higherspirituality, which can be distinguished well fromeveryday consciousness.
Thus with a free and loving walking in theworld, a scourging is necessarily united. It is veri-ly a sign that a man is growing out of himselfupward into a higher life. For this reason Christappears in Revelation as clothed in the flowingmantle held in by the golden girdle. This picturereveals itself as the opposite picture to the scourg-ing. Only he who knows the sensitivenessdescribed above, which feels itself so helpless inthe world, can, by binding his fate, his will, his egoto Christ, Who for His divine ministry wasscourged at the world-tree, find security, strengthand rest in the face of experiences which lie beforehim in some form or another. We hold it to beimportant that we should learn the “peace” ofChrist from theChrist Whom we see standing at thestake of torture. Again one may drink in this peaceat the end of the meditation, like a noble life-sapfrom a higher world, when we have allowedtheinner picture to lapse. Thus we are ensured againsta Luciferic egotistical peace.Thus we can find
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beforehand “peace” in the right sense, in the faceof the fate which we take upon ourselves when wewish to stand for what is divine in the world; in theface of little experiences of everyday life as well asin the face of a final shattering of our outward being.
In these studies we are seeking from Christ him-self a purification of Christian qualities, or ratherof fundamental Christian frames of mind. We haveseen that Christian love is something different fromthat which men usually understand it to be; so isChristian peace. Now we turn to Christian holiness.
In the Middle Ages...men experienced thecrowning with thorns in this way, that this will rosewithin them: “I will stand upright against all theworld’s derision and mocking. I will stand for theholy thing which is entrusted to me. Even if Iremain all alone, I will stand undismayed for whatis most sacred to me.” The true Christian holinessis something more individual and more active thanit seems to the Catholics to be when they think of“sinlessness,’’ and something deeper and moreinward than the Protestants think when they talk of“doing their duty.”
Every man has his own higher ego, which mustfirst be brought down to earth. In this higher ego,divine revelations slumber which it already bearswithin itself, and over it hover divine revelationswhich it can still receive. With every human ego anespecial divine thought enters into the world, anespecial divine charge, an especial divine gift. Thisis the true holiness in the sense of Christ: to keepfaith with this higher ego, to let this higher egoenter as a sacrifice into the world’s evolving; not toimagine for oneself any special mission, but to findout the charge which is given to us as a divinethought in our ego; not to thrust oneself upon men,but to give oneself to humanity.
It is clear that it is not here a question of fulfill-ing commandments, nor merely of avoiding sins.More inward and more personal, but also moreheroic and more aggressive, is this new holiness. Itis the holiness which we see in Christ. He has notspoken of it in words, but has given it by deeds.For Him there was only one single commandment:The Son of Man must not do anything of himself,but fulfill the charge which the Father has givenhim.
Here we plunge into depths in which holinessand wisdom are one and the same. For not outwardknowledge, but divine wisdom is in our higherego. The thought of God which we ought to be is,rightly understood, our ultimate wisdom. Thatdeed in our life into which this thought of God willchange itself is our true holiness.
So that we may lose all pride arising from thismission from God, we need only gaze at Christ asHe stands there in the crown of thorns. Our glancesees not only the horrible brutality, but reads alsothe sublime word of God which is there spoken tous. “Thorns and thistles shall it bear unto thee” (theearthly ground) said the history of the beginning ofthe world in a prophetic saying. Thorns are thebadge of the earth with its sorrow and struggle. Butout of the burning thorn-bush, out of this earthlyfield which is full of struggle and sorrow, Jehovah
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Popular devotional art
Jesus Crowned with Thorns
Man must weave for himself a crown out of the thorns of theearth. Earth’s pain must become wisdom and suffering willcrown man’s humanity.
reveals Himself to men. And in the crowning withthorns, Christ takes the thorns from the earth andwinds them into a new royal crown. Earthly wis-dom is born out of earthly sorrow. To know meansto suffer. Thiscrown is the picture of human king-ship.
In ancient times there was seen around the headof wise men the glory of heaven, whose rays wentup to the stars. Out of this in earliest time came theking’s crown. This crown man has lost. He mustweave for himself the new crown out of the thornsof the earth. Earth’s pain must become wisdom.Every single pain has found its redemption, when
it has become wisdom.“I will stand before the world for that holy thing
which is given to me! I will expect nothing inreturn but thorns, but out of the thorns I will makea crown! I will change all my earthly sorrow intohumanly-divine wisdom!” Not the appearance ofholiness is sought by our new holiness, but thecrown of thorns. We stamp into our souls the pic-ture of Christ as He stands there, so that our egomay become like Him. And so the highest fidelityto God unites itself with the greatest clarity ofmind concerning the earth.
One will find the meditation upon the crowningof thorns to be especially beneficial because ourage has in an especial way entered the earth andsought knowledge in it. Here is thehuman wisdomof the earth. We do not cherish a conception of lifewhich sees in the earth only sorrows, and longs forheaven, but an attitude to life which changes thesorrows of earth into a crown. Nor do we cherish aview of the world which wishes to have a wisdomfrom heaven above, and despises the earth, but awill for the world which seeks and gathers divinewisdom in the sorrow of earth. Such a Christianitystands right between East and West, between theEast, which seeks wisdom while it avoids thethorns of earth, and the West, which experiences
the thorns of the earth without gaining wisdomfrom them. Here also man may come to drinkingthis wisdom with his ego like a draught from theGrail. But it is well that, while doing so, he shouldnever lose from his soul the picture of the thorn-crowned Christ.
...[I]t is told that the men of the Middle Ages,when they experienced the crowning with thorns,really felt sharp, pricking pains in the head. This isconnected with the fact that in ancient times mansaw the revelation of the circle of the stars beforehim as if in a ring round his head. The miter stillindicates that. For the word “Mithras” in the
Persian religion, from which the “miter” comes,means a “band” and is connected by learned mentoday with the light of the Zodiac. Now when mantoday feels the pains round his head, especially inthe middle of his forehead, but not in it alone, alsoat the back of the head as if a ring were about toburst, then it may be a sign that he is again on thepoint of breaking through to divine wisdom. Forthis reason Christ appears in Revelation no longerwith the crown of thorns, but with the light of thesun round his head. As in the feet a man’s will canunite itself with the forces of the earth, as in the“middle of man” his life of feeling unites itselfwith the meaning of the cosmos, so in his head hisspirit weds itself to wisdom, which has its spiritu-al home in the kingdom of the heaven of the fixedstars.
“Behold the man!” says Pilate as he leads Christout in his crown of thorns before the people. Andour doubt, whether we can really find this sayingsignificant, passes away when we learn that in thePersian mysteries the initiation proceeded in thisway, that the man had to pass through a scourging,then received a royal mantle with a scepter, butalso with an acanthus crown. It is the same wordacanthus [from Greek acantha, thorn] as in theBible account. The crown of thorns had a thorn in
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Threefold is the world in which man stands. He lives among hisfellow men: for this world Christ gives him love. He lives withhis fate: for this world Christ gives him peace. He lives beforeGod: for this world Christ gives him holiness. Behold the man!
the middle of the forehead to indicate that the wis-dom from sorrow must be conquered in the earth-ly ego which lives there. Previous to this point inthe ceremony of initiation, as always in the mys-teries, exercises in self-denial may have takenplace, such as we see in the Washing of the Feet.
There is even a direct connection between thesemysteries and the scene in Jerusalem. For in theRoman armies the service of Mithras was thefavorite religion. When the soldiers heard thatChrist was a king without a country, this scene wasarranged out of mingled memories of the myster-ies and scornful jests. The crown of thorns speaksonly too clearly. Certainly the Persian Sakaean fes-tival was then already well on its way to degener-ation into the Roman Saturnalia.
Also the expression of Pilate, “Behold the man!”may have been a saying from the mysteries, thatwas really spoken on such an occasion when theinitiation had come to an end. Pilate may haveknown this and have used the saying in a cynicalsense. If this is so, then the saying of Pilate wouldbecome more explicable. More explicable alsowould be the wrath of the Jews which broke outjust at this moment when, according to John’sGospel, they for the first time raised the cry: “ cru-cify him!” for they either guessed or knew some-thing about the background of the mysteries. Atthat time hardly any occurrence was to be thoughtof except in relation to such a background and theJews naturally repudiated this entirely. In thissense also are to be understood the mystical expe-riences which, in the medieval cloisters, as anecessity for life, were gone through in connectionwith the individual details of the story of thePassion.
We would, therefore, have this process of evolu-tion before us. In the old mysteries, whose remainsare still preserved for us in the Persian Sakaeanfeast, man was led out of Primal wisdom andinward knowledge of the laws of the cosmos to aconsecration, but without Christ. But they had apremonition of true humanity. In the Middle Agesthey experienced Christ in deep sympathy, butwithout knowledge of the secrets of the cosmos.Yet in their practice they penetrated to thesesecrets. Here in our exercises both are united. If the
exercises are performed, not only in a sympathywith Christ which comes from the feelings, butwith reference to their meaning for the world, thenthey can today take place upon a higher level oflife.
....[W]hat we actually see before us in the threepictures we have described is the evolving of ahigher humanity. One can freely say, in the face ofthat which we have been considering, that the realqualities of men were not in existence beforeChrist, or only as in the mysteries, in a picture.Threefold is the world in which man stands. Helives among his fellow men: for this world Christgives him love. He lives with his fate: for thisworld Christ gives him peace. He lives beforeGod: for this world Christ gives him holiness.Behold the man!
It is not surprising now if in some readers thefeeling arises that, simply because of all thesemeditations, he no longer knows upon what he
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Oil on canvas. Gustave Doré. Private Collection
Behold, the Man (Ecce Homo)The irony of Pilate’s presentation of (Doré’s noble) ChristJesus to the angry, jeering mob is that He is in truth theMan,generic Man, Him in whom Humanity is membered, havingmade the world and mankind—and they knew Him not.
ought to meditate. Let him think that we are hereoffering him aids for his whole life. If a reader atfirst stops short at the exercises for the ego, andreads everything else at first as a help to under-standing the Bible, it is well. Even in this case thefurther amplification can be useful to him justexactly for these ego-meditations. He will see thedirection in which it proceeds and find some detailimportant for his basic meditations, for example,the more exact description of love and peace.
Finally, we shall give suggestions as to how thewhole organism of the twenty-one exercises canbest be brought into corporate life. We shouldadvise first holding fast the two fundamental med-itations; from them proceeding further to attemptthe ego-meditations, and from time to time thethorough reading of the exercises in the training ofthe will, which here begin: not merely readingthem all through at once, as one reads a news-paper, but remaining at the pictures and allowingthem to act upon one. One will thus be able also tocome to a better method of reading the Bible.
Whether one simply reads them now and againmeditatively, or whether one is able, withoutneglecting the earlier meditations, to enter morestrongly into the meditation of these pictures also;it is always advisable that one should actually feel,not so much the sorrows, as the full humanityofthese pictures. It is the real maninto whom wegrow, when we “follow Christ.” This man must beready to take sorrows upon himself. Otherwise hecannot become a man upon the earth. But the sor-rows are not what is essential. Deeply may wereceive this into ourselves—what a gloriousthought of God the man is who bears within him-self royal love to all that is below him, heavenlypeace towards all that is around him, and divineholiness before all that is above him. Then thesethree qualities must be purified, as they can befrom the picture of Christ.
Through love man unites himself to earth. Inpeace he walks upon the earth. With the wisdomwhich is born from holiness, he turns from earthback to heaven. Behold the man! r
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THE ROSICRUCIAN CHRISTIANITY LECTURESBy Max Heindel
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Delivering these twenty lectures in person was one of the earliest activities of thisauthorized Messenger of the Rosicrucian Order. A comprehensive outline, withcontemporary application, of the Christ-centered truths of Rosicrucianism.
Paper. 374 pages. Includes 35-page index. Published by the Rosicrucian Fellowship.
TITLES OF LECTURE-CHAPTERS INCLUDE
WHEREARE THE DEAD?
SPIRITUAL SIGHT AND THE SPIRITUAL WORLDS
SLEEP, DREAMS, TRANCE, HYPNOTISM, MEDIUMSHIP AND INSANITY
THE ASTRONOMICALALLEGORIESOF THE BIBLE
SPIRITUAL SIGHT AND INSIGHT
THE ANGELSAS FACTORSIN EVOLUTION
LUCIFER: TEMPTEROR BENEFACTOR?
THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM, A MYSTICFACT
THE MYSTERY OF GOLGOTHAAND THE CLEANSINGBLOOD
THE MYSTERY OF THE HOLY GRAIL
THE ORGAN OF THE PENTECOSTAL REVELATION
In the study of the Mystery of Golgotha,† wehave tried to express the spiritual fact that,as well as the written records of theEvangelists, there is an “unwritten Gospel”—the life tableau of Christ Jesus—which
has remained, as it were, in the etheric aura of theEarth. This indestructible and ineffaceable Gospelis—and will be ever more and more in the future—the source of such knowledge of the Christ event,which took place nineteen hundred years ago, ascan be acquired on the path of imaginative vision,of inspired knowledge, and of intuitive experience.But this “unwritten Gospel” is not only importantfor the present and the future, it has also hadimmense significance in the past. It became ofimportance, in fact, immediately after the Mysteryof Golgotha took place. For during the forty daysbetween the Mystery of Golgotha and theAscension, the disciples experienced, in effect, thescenes of the life-tableau of Christ Jesus. The“teaching of the Risen One,”the instruction givento the disciples by Christ Jesus during the fortydays after His resurrection, consisted of pictureswhich rose before their souls, each picture evokinganother which represented a scene in the life andwork of Christ Jesus before the Mystery ofGolgotha, thus associating itself, as it were, with
the reconstructed pictures of the past. In this way,pairs of pictures kept rising before the souls of thedisciples: one picture a revelation of the RisenOne, and one taken from His life and work beforethe Mystery of Golgotha. And always the formerwas felt to be the higher meaning and the fulfill-ment, as it were, of the latter. Thus the Risen One
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Sophia and
the Event of Pentecost
MYSTIC LIGHT
† See the three preceding issues of the Raysfor the text ofthis study. This and a second article in the next issue of theRays are excerpted from Valentin Tomberg’s Studies of theNew Testament, published by and reprinted here with thepermission of the Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY 12534.
Watercolor, J. James Tissot (1836-1902), Brooklyn Museum
The Ascension as seen from the Mount of OlivesOnly by leaving the world as an individual physical presence(incarnate in Jesus) could Christ become universally presentto all humanity through the the indwelling Holy Spirit.
led the souls of His disciples through the scenes ofHis life-tableau, yet in such a way that each scenewas, at the same time, experienced as an imagina-tive expression of a higher spiritual truth. It was, infact, a course of instruction wherein they weretaught the content of the “unwritten Gospel”
Then it came to pass that the teaching whichthey were receiving through the medium of theimagination ceased. The pictures vanished fromthe experience of the disciples, and the figure ofthe Risen One vanished also. This happened onAscension Day. From that day began a sorrowfultime for the disciples. They felt themselves forsak-en and bereft. The world of pictures fraught withso much meaning was blotted out; their souls wereplunged into darkness and silence. The grief of thedisciples during this period is hardly to be com-pared with any pain experienced by Man in ordi-nary life. For it was not caused by any affliction orvexation, but by the absence of all which gave thesoul life and meaning. In such circumstances, anypositivesuffering is actually an alleviation. Sharppain is certainly an experience, but life which ismerely an aching emptiness is no experience but acondition in which the soul realizes its own noth-ingness. The disciples’experience of the death ofthe soulpreceded the Pentecost event and was thenecessary preparation for it, because in that eventwas experienced the resurrection of the soul, anexperience which could only follow on the soul’sdeath.
But that painful preparation for the Pentecostevent was alleviated by one fact; namely, that thepain of it was experienced by all the disciples andwas consequently shared. The loneliness of thedisciples was a spiritual experience; humanly,however, it was a bond uniting them into a groupin the very deepest way. For shared grief is thestrongest means of binding men together, and thatparticular grief which the disciples shared provedto be the bond required to unite the circle of disci-ples into the organ of the Pentecostal revelation.For the group of disciples had to be bound intounity in a special way in order that the revelationshould be accomplished. This union must rest notonly on a community of attitude, but also on acommunity experienced in the deepest depths of
sentient life. The sentient bodies of the disciplesmust be bound together like the twelve currents ofthe supersensible heart-organism of Man. The rea-son was to form the group of disciples into oneorgan, as it were, corresponding to the inner struc-ture of the supersensible heart organ. For the expe-rience of the resurrection of the soul must be expe-rienced in the heart, but it must be experienced ina heart which could represent humanity. And sucha heart had to be prepared, a heart of humanityconsisting of a group of men whose sentient bod-ies were united through the suffering of a commongrief, rather as the petals of a flower are united.Thus, at the time of the Pentecost event, theTwelve Apostles represented a twelve-petalledflower in which the individual “petals” arrangedthemselves around one central point. This pointwas represented by a Figure occupying the centralposition as the thirteenth in the midst of the circle.In ecclesiastical tradition this Figure is named anddescribed as Mary, the Mother of Jesus; in theGnostic esoteric tradition she was called the“Virgin Sophia.” “Maria-Sophia” was the “Heartof the Heart”; that is, she represented the centralpoint of the circle of Twelve, which, at the hour ofthe Pentecost event, was, as it were, the “heart ofhumanity.” Knowledge of the central significanceof Maria-Sophia in the circle of the Twelve whenthe event of Pentecost took place has always existedin the early post-Christian centuries, as well asin the later Middle Ages. This knowledge foundexpression even, for instance, in Art. Thus a minia-ture in the Syrian Codex (586 A.D.), preserved inthe Laurentian Library in Florence, represents thePentecost event, with Mary standing in the midstof the Twelve and the Holy Spirit, in the form of adove, hovering over herhead and pouring forth thestream of revelation directly upon her while, as aresult thereof, tongues of fire shoot up over theheads of the Twelve. Maria-Sophia is representedin a bright purple robe (maphorion) over a bluetunic (chiton). The whole group is surrounded by adesign of flowers in bloom, while above is theenclosing dome of an inverted chalice.
This picture, of the circle of the Twelve withMaria-Sophia in the center, leads us to a questionwhich must be answered before the Pentecost
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event can be understood; namely, the question ofthe nature of the Maria-Sophia and of her share inbringing about the Pentecostal revelation.
SOPHIA AND THE EVENT OF PENTECOST
....The first meeting with the reality of theSophia-being in the present age occurs in humanthinking which strives to comprehend the divineTrinity in its cosmic revelation as a unity of threedifferent principles. For the recognition of theUnity of the Trinity revealed in the cosmos is anevent in Man’s thought-life, which extends beyondthe mere life of thought and points to a meeting onthe far side of it—a meeting which, on the onehand, favorably determines the thought-life, but,on the other, is not a creation of that thought-life.This meeting in the depths of the life of thoughtmay be the first experience of the reality of theSophia. For the Sophia is specially manifested inbringing about for Man’s consciousness the harmo-ny of all Spiritual Hierarchies by means of whichthe Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit effectivelyreveal themselves. What is called “synthesis” inthe practice of abstract thought becomes an expe-rience of cognitive knowledge when the ascendingthought-life comes into contact with the Sophia-being. The Sophia-being brings about a cognitiveperception of the harmony in the spiritual—thedivine-world; and this she does in a literal sense,for she is an inspiring Being with whom theascending thought of Man can meet. For such ameeting, however, the consciousness must ascend,if only for a moment, two stages higher than theordinary objective consciousness. This ascent isnecessary because the Sophia-being is actuallydumb both for the objective consciousness and forthe imaginative [Desire World] consciousness. Sheis dumb in these spheres because she does not pos-sess the force of Imagination—the faculty for thecreation of imaginations. And the reason why shedoes not possess this faculty is that she has beenrobbed of it by Lucifer. This occurred at that periodin the spiritual history of the Earth when the Fall ofMan took place. Then Lucifer appropriated to him-self the imaginations of Sophia by making use ofthem himself, instead of placing himself at her ser-vice. He made use of her imaginations for the pur-
pose of creating a world which was to be built upof these imaginations.
But it was to be built of these imaginations insuch a way that it would not be the harmony of theDivine World which was revealed by them, but thegrandeur of Lucifer himself. Thus, the imaginationsof Sophia were changed by Lucifer into their oppo-site, and there arose a world of lies. This World of
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Fresco, Guido Reni (1575-1642), Wing of Paul V, Sala delle Dame, Vatican
The Descent of the Holy SpiritAt the “heart of humanity,” Mary is the center of a revelation ofthe Holy Spirit in this baroque representation of the Pentecost.
Lies became the so-called “Luciferic Sphere”round about the Earth, a sphere of which the cloudsform the outermost physical sense-expression. TheLuciferic Sphere is the false Paradise, a falseSpiritual World, from which originate thosevisions of egoistic bliss which appear so often inthe religious life of the populace. The danger ofthat sphere does not only consist in its encouragingthe egoism so deeply rooted in human nature, butrather that as it is actually built up out of the imag-inations of Sophia—that is, the pictures of thecomprehensive cosmic truth—it can have atremendously corrupting effect on the faculties ofknowledge which is not completely awake in itsconscience. For cosmic falsehood is not merelywild fantasy, it is abused truth. And the truth of theimaginative revelation of Sophia was abused in thesense that it was first broken to pieces and thenreconstructed in a different pattern. The shiningwisdom of God was changed to the glittering gar-ment of Lucifer.
In this way, “Isis-Sophia, the Wisdom of God”was killed for the lower worlds, for Sophia becamea dumb being as regards the two lower spheres ofexistence. The creative force of Imagination wastaken from her, and, as a result, she became a col-orless, ineffective being, condemned to inactionwith respect to earthly happenings. The figure ofthe “mater dolorosa”, the mourning mother, bestexpressed the tragic condition of the Sophia-being.For the Sophia is a generous nature, inwardly filledfull of the gifts of wisdom; but she can only bestowthese gifts on a human consciousness which, itself,rises to her sphere. It is impossible for her to reachthe lower worlds because of the loss of the imagi-native force of which she was robbed by Lucifer.
The gifts which the Sophia bears within her areof quite a different type from those of other hierar-chical beings. For she bears within her a concen-trated inner wisdom which is not only light of theGodhead shining through her being, nor only thevista of the cosmic chronicle, the Akashic Record.No, the wisdom to which this Being owes hername is neither the direct revelation of a divinity ofa higher order nor an epitome of cosmic memory,of the Akashic Record, as present before the gazeof the hierarchic beings; it is a remembrance of the
soul ascending from within. It is a wisdom whichis a pure creativity of the soul, but at the same timesuch that the whole experience of the past Cosmosrises out of the inner being as the primal intentionfor the present Cosmos, as the “plan” of the pre-sent Cosmos. Hence, the Sophia is, for mankind,the spiritual archetype of the soul, and that, notonly in the sense of the tragic destiny of the soulgrowing more and more mute in the world, butalso in the sense of that concentrated wisdomwhich is only possible in and through the soul.
But the tragic path of the Sophia has its counter-part in the human soul in that the human soul alsohas been deprived of the power of forming truth:the power of Imagination has become subjectivefantasy with an inward leaning to the fantastic.Thus, the capacity of the soul to make imagina-tions from within herself has lost its truth-value.The soul has grown dumb—swathed in a sheath ofegoistic interests, overmastering the originalImagination-force.
Thus there exists a similarity of destiny betweenthe true soul-being of Man on Earth and of theSophia-being in the Spiritual World. In earliertimes Man was conscious of this similarity; and forthis reason an astral body (sentient body) whichwas so purified from the sheath of egoistic inter-ests that the true soul-being could come to expres-sion was called the “Virgin Sophia”. In this sense,Mary, the Mother of Jesus was also a “VirginSophia”.
She had, as the outcome of extremely compli-cated influences and experiences coming from theSpiritual World, an astral body so purified that itcould receive the revelations of the Sophia-beingand pour them forth again as Inspirations of thesoul. The possession of this faculty was the veryreason why, at the time of Pentecostal revelation,the Virgin Mary occupied the central positionwithin the circle of the Twelve. Without her, therevelation would have been only spiritual; therewould have been twelve prophets, united with theSpirit in the same way as ancient prophecy wasunited with it. Through the co-operation of Mary,however, something more could happen: thehearts of the disciples beat in harmony with hers,and, simultaneously, the content of the Pentecostal
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revelation was experienced by the disciplesas a personal human conviction. And bythis experience they became, not prophets,but, precisely, apostles. For there is animmense spiritual difference betweenprophecy and apostleship: a prophet was animpersonal proclaimer of spiritual revela-tion, but an apostle bore the revelation ofthe Spirit within his soul. And this was onlypossible because the spiritual revelation ofthe Pentecost event could become soulthrough the Virgin Mary, and could betransmitted by Mary as soulto the disciples.
What took shape in the human sphere onEarth became an organ for the expressionof that which happened within the SpiritualWorld. For a tremendous thing occurred in theSpiritual World at the hour of the Pentecost event:the dumbness of the Sophia-being ceased, and shewas again able to reveal herself by speech.Moreover, she was able so to reveal herself that notonly could certain Initiates rise to her sphere, sothat she could inspire them there, but also she her-self could effectively descend and pour her influ-ence into the waking day-consciousness embodiedin terrestrial men. It was not that the Sophia hadbeen reached by a certain group of men. That hadhappened before. The point was that now, for thefirst time, she, on her side, could reach down to agroup of terrestrial men. The importance of thisfact was that, at the Pentecost event, the oppositionof Lucifer was overcome for the first time since theFall of Man. At the Pentecost event, the barrierwhich Lucifer had erected between the Sophia andthe sphere of human waking consciousness wascleared from the path. Union with the sphere ofearthly destiny, which had been in bondage toLucifer, could be restored. And this was possible,because, on the one hand, there were present oncemore a number of imaginations which remaineduntouched by the influence of Lucifer, and, on theother, because Lucifer conducted the revelation ofthe Sophia, undistorted, through his sphere offalsehood by means of the dedication of his wholebeing.
The following diagram may be of service in pro-moting a clearer understanding of these matters:
Although it is not complete—for the wholeprocess is still more complicated—the abovesketch gives a picture of the co-operation of vari-ous forces at the time of the Pentecost event. Itshows the relationship of the four regions of con-sciousness. In the Region of Waking Consciousness(below) is the circle of the Twelve with the openchalice in the midst of them—the chalice whichrepresents the Virgin Mary.
Immediately above this group, in the Region ofImagination—at the boundary of WakingConsciousness—the Life-tableau which Christ leftbehind is shown. This tableau takes the place of thestolen imaginations of Sophia now appearing inthe Sphere of Lucifer, above. It consists ofImaginations which, since they were also realphysical events, are not susceptible to the Lucifericinfluence. At the same time, they are the “missinglink” between the Region of Waking Consciousnessand the Region of the Sophia’s Inspiration. Andthen, between the Region of the Sophia’sInspiration and the imaginations of the Life-tableau of Christ, lies the Luciferic Sphere itself.At the time of the Pentecost event, however, thissphere became pervious to the Sophia-revelationdescending from above. And this happened as theresult of the inner conversion experienced byLucifer at the Mystery of Golgotha. The penitentLucifer became the humble bridge over the Sphereof Falsehood which he had himself created in thepast. Thus the path of the Sophia-revelation led
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Christ Sophia
Sophia
Life Tableau of Christ
Lucifer
Sphere of falsehood
Circle
Intuition
Inspiration
Imagination
Mary
Waking Consciousness
Disciples
of
-
through the Sphere of Lucifer, and indeed throughthe being of Lucifer himself. At the hour of thePentecost event, Lucifer surrendered himselfentirely to the Sophia-impulse; he became onewith it, he led it through his own being down to theLife-tableau of Christ where it reached the souls ofmen. In reality, there took place a union of theinfluence of Sophia with that of Lucifer. It is theunited influence of these two beings which iscalled, in St. John’s Gospel, the “Paraclete”, theComforter. The Paraclete is not merely the HolySpirit as the third Hypostasis of the divine Trinity,but a revelation of this third Hypostasis, such asthe combined influence of Sophia and Lucifereffected when Lucifer humbled himself in serviceto the impulse of Sophia. And Lucifer’s attitude ofservice towards the impulse of Sophia resulted notonly in Sophianic revelation reaching the souls ofmen in undisturbed form, but also in the fact thatLucifer radiated from himself the inspiring flameof its enthusiasm and joy. The Paraclete, theComforter, could be manifested as an effectivereality only because the Spirit who had broughtabout the isolation of souls now brought the enthu-siasm for the reunion of souls. There is a hint ofthis fact in the “Acts of Apostles” when we are toldthat several of the bystanders received the impres-sion that the Apostles were “full of new wine”. TheDionysian enthusiasm which was actually presentsuggested to the bystanders that exaltation whichwas produced in the Bacchus-cult by the aid ofwine.
It was, of course, a misunderstanding, but a mis-understanding which pointed to the significant factthat, among the Apostles, enthusiasm was evokedby the cooperation of Lucifer.
Above the Sphere of Lucifer, to resume theexplanation of the diagram, in the Region ofInspiration, is shown the Sophia-being, represent-ed as an inverted chalice. In the Region of Intuitionshe is united with the Christ, and by this unionbrings about in the Spiritual World that which shemust also effect in the realm of terrestrial Man;namely, the realization of the words of Christ, “I inyou, and you in Me.” For the first purpose of theMystery of Golgotha is this: that the Christ, Whoat first stood withoutas the Master of the disciples,
should now pass within, into their innermost souls.The path which the Christ had to tread was to leadfrom a position without to an in-dwelling within.This took place at the Pentecost-event; it was thenthat Christ entered into the souls of the disciples.And this He did in such a way that He was, as itwere, born a second time: through the HeavenlyMother, Sophia, He was born in the souls of thedisciples. Thus the Ego of the disciples was filledwith the Christ, Who became the Kyrios, the com-mon Ego, so to speak, of their group. This Ego wassheathed in the communal astral body of theSophia; in their ether-body, however, they bore thecombined experiences of the life-tableau of Christ;and, physically, they represented a circle formed tobe the organ of the Pentecost revelation, having asits central point, Mary, whose esoteric name wasthe “Virgin Sophia.” r
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Limbourg Brothers, Très Riches Heures de Jean Duc de Berry, 1413, Musée Condé, Chantilly
PentecostMary’s significance in the Whitsun gathering is shown by herhalo, toward-center position, and her relatively larger stature.
Planet A
rt
IN THE CHRISTIAN LITURGICALyear, Advent designates the four weeksbefore Christmas. It is a time of anticipa-tion, of heightened expectation of the his-torical birth of Christ. In occult astronomy,
Advent refers to the projection of the vivifyingsolar ray from the southernmost (and thus mostspiritual) point of its geocentric path. This fertiliz-ing impulse “surfaces” at the spring equinox as arebirth of nature.
A reading for the first Sunday in Advent is “Nowis the time to wake out of sleep: for now our sal-vation is nearer than we first believed.” A secondSunday text trumpets into our wilderness: “TheKingdom of God is close at hand: Repent andbelieve the Gospel.” On the third Sunday inAdvent the reading is : “When the Lord comes, hewill bring things now hidden in darkness and willdisclose the purposes of the heart.” Must we waituntil then? Spiritual Science says no. It now bringsto light things hitherto hidden in darkness, includ-ing supersensible facts pertaining to Christ’s com-ing to the Earth, His apparent going from it, andHis coming again. Christ’s physical appearance onEarth, around 30 A.D., was not accomplished in ashort span of time. His active involvement inEarth’s evolution began many millennia before heappeared in human form. Occult science revealsthat His incarnation was preceded by three pre-physical advents, three supra-mundane sacrifices,before He entered into the physical body of Jesus.
Ever since Atlantis, and probably before, but theoutward effects were not evident, there has been anannual advent, commencing at the summer sol-stice. It is a function of the Earth’s rotational plane
being inclined 23-1/2° from its orbital plane, caus-ing the perpendicular solar ray to mark out a ser-pentine or figure-eight path above and below theequator. On the physical and etheric levels, the sunthus brings restored life alternately to the northernand southern hemispheres. But man is more than aplant. He has a soul and a spirit, and both weregrounded in a kind of permanent winter, gravity-held to a burden of dark and earth-bound deeds.The collective selfishness of humanity madeChrist’s advent increasingly imperative. He hadalready made prior sacrifices, which resulted inordering and harmonizing man’s five senses, his
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Advent
MYSTIC LIGHT
Watercolor, Harry Menne
The Three MagiFor millennia the pupils of Zarathustra knew that the Lordof the Sun would one day come to Earth in human form.
internal organs, and the relation between his think-ing, feeling, and willing—thus offsetting the disrup-tive influences of Lucifer and other spirit beings.
Esoterically, the first coming of Christ refers tothe gradual entry of the Sun’s Regent into theenvelopes of Earth, through the thought and desirespheres, undergoing a kind of spiritual decompres-sion to acclimate Himself to the finite conditionsof mortal existence so that we could see Him. Ofcourse, we saw Him not, but rather the bodies Hechose to appear in. God could not become a direct-ly experienced reality because humans had lostcontact with the supersensible worlds. Therefore,the supersensible had to become sensible.
Max Heindel writes in the Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conceptionthat Christ “prepared both the Earthand humanity for His direct ingress” (p. 404).“[T]he seer who can read the Memory of Naturesees that ages before the actual advent of ChristHis benefic influence was exercised from without”(2Q&A, p. 325). Early in this 5th Post AtlanteanEpoch, sages and seers knew that the Spirit of theSun would at a future time be coming to Earth. Inthe 2nd sub-epoch, Zarathustra taught the comingof Ahura Mazda. The Magi who came toBethlehem at the time celebrated as Epiphany(January 6) were the descendants of these first starvisionaries. It required a long preparation ofhuman consciousness and form to prepare a mangod who could temple the God come down to man.A milestone in this preparation was reached whenJehovah, the reflector of Christ, as the Moonreflects the light of the Sun, identified God as the“I” principle, the ground of I-Being, and appointedMoses as a bearer and revealer of this I. Mastery ofthe physical world is predicated on the develop-ment of Ego consciousness, which separates manfrom his environment, including other Egos. Christcould only descend to the physical plane whenhumanity had attained to a degree of self-mastery.
Christ has been in continuous transformation forthe benefit of humanity. For our better understand-ing of this movement, we can identify sevenstages. The first stage pertains to His metamor-phoses of pre-existence. Pre-Christian religionsgive glimmers and glimpses of the successivestages reached by Christ as He moved from sphere
to sphere toward Earth. In the second stage Christbecame man. The divine Ego incarnated in theJesus body at the Baptism in the Jordan. The thirdstage includes Death and Resurrection. Throughthe events of Good Friday, the descent into Limbo,and Easter Sunday, Christ begins to unite Himselfwith the whole Earth. The fourth stage ofAscension is not a moving away but a deepeningof Christ’s union with the Earth. The fifth stage isthe manifestation of Christ’s abiding presencethrough the agency of the Holy Spirit at Whitsun(Pentecost). The Damascus event marks the sixthstage, where Paul (the human Ego) meets theobjectiveChrist, the Earth’s indwelling Spirit, anexperience that shall become increasingly com-mon. The seventh stage is the final metamorphosis,popularly called the Second Coming of Christ, whenhumanity will be joined in one spiritual body.
Advent is an ongoing, ever-deepening andexpanding process of Christ’s joining with human-ity and its Earth. The diffusion of the Christ lifeand power into the planetary sphere was effectedby His blood shed on Golgotha. Max Heindelrelates that were the desire envelope of the Earthviewed from interplanetary space at the time of theCrucifixion, an immediate brightening would havebeen evident as the cosmic Christ Ego began toirradiate it with His vehicles (Cosmop. 407). Thispermeation included a Hiram-like journey throughthe Earth’s nine arch-like strata to its core, aprogress detailing not only the descent into Hell,Limbo, or Hades—terms which designate thelower desire world and the spirits who have powerthere—but the deeper strata which correlate withthe higher spiritual planes, where the shadowcounterparts of the Lords of Mind and the Lords ofForm exert their influence. In a true sense, asEastern Orthodox iconography intuits and depicts,Christ overcomes for humanity not only the Devil,but the dominion of Death and those Spirits asso-ciated with the form side of materiality, whoimprison in the Earth sphere Egos released fromtheir bodies, thus preventing them from extractingas soul growth the full spiritual essence of theirearthly experience. The Son of God transformedthe grave of the earth into an engendering wombwhere consciousness of the life of the spirit can be
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rekindled and postmortem transition to thehigher worlds is facilitated.
From the time of His earthly ministry,Christ moves from a finite, particular pres-ence toward a global presence, an omni-presence, the fruit of a spiritual seeding,begun by the shedding of the blood ofJesus, that will be harvested as Christ-bornsouls, ripe to enter the Jupiter earth—theetheric kingdom which will be prefiguredin the New Galilee of the sixth epoch ofthe Earth Period. What was a uniqueEaster event, local and dated, will becomean ever present Easter Sphere, whereChrist is permanently and everywhere withhumanity in the etheric. This prospect willbe preceded by what was once a uniqueChristmas event, the Nativity, local anddated, becoming an experience for most ofindividual humanity.
That the Ascension of Christ to theFather actually brings Him closer tohumanity, making Him, as it were, perma-nently come, is indicated in John’s Gospel whenthe Easter Sunday Christ tells Mary Magdalene,“Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to myFather.” How, one asks, could Mary touch HimwhenHe was so ascended, if he were on the farside of manifestation. His command to Thomasone week later is the very opposite: “put your fin-ger in my side.” The mysterious growth of Christ’sspirit-body, enabling an intensified manifestation,was a temporary condition, but it showed a devel-opment of the Christ presence on the Earthside ofthe spiritual cosmos, which would generalize froman historical therenessto a universal hereness—inother words, from Bethlehem in Israel two thou-sand years ago to the Bethlehem of each soul thatconceives in waking consciousness the Christ lifeas individual identity.
The expansion of the Christ toward “coming tothe entire world” is reported in the Gospels. Theirresurrected Master will go before the disciples intoGalilee. On Easter Monday He walks fromJerusalem with Luke (probably) and Cleopas onthe road to Emmaus.
While the Ascension itself takes place on the
Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, it is a “jumping offpoint”, and a slope of this mountain’s summit iscalled “Little Galilee” because of the expansive-ness of soul experienced there by the disciples.Galilee means “the country of nations.” Theinjunction of Christ to His disciples and apostleson the mountain in Galilee was, “Go out into thewhole world and teach all nations.”
The road from Judea to Galilee thus symbolizesthe transition from confinement within one’s ownrace and nation to going out among and sharingwith the people of the world. This impulse ofexpansion from the local to the global, this quietspiritual explosion, manifests on the physical planeas an ecumenical impulse; but it has its guidingand informing source in the solar fissioning of theChrist Spirit, a subterranean sunburst, radiatingoutward from the Earth’s center to embrace thewhole world. An Annunciation to Mary ofNazareth evolves into an annunciation to the theMother soul of planet Earth: Christ will come toyou and be born in you.
The disciples’ outgoing action, and theChristian’s outshowing lifestyle can be seen as a
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Giotto di Bondone, c.1310
NativityThe Bethlehem of each human soul will conceive the Christ life in wak-ing consciousness and bear it as individual identity.
response to the injunction “As my Father has sentme, so do I send you”—to both call humanity tothe Kingdom and to build toward the reality of theKingdom come. The Word is come into the World,is here. The Christian calling is to respond to thisWord, this “come unto me,” this “follow me.” TheEucharistic act affirms and incorporates the pres-ence of the Risen Christ; it realizes the advent inthis moment of time and makes immediate theovershadowing of the Holy Spirit.
A maturing of their initial dreamlike experienceof Christ’s physical presence made possiblethe heightening and focusing of thedisciples’ consciousness. Theflower-phase of the Resur-rection and Ascensiongave way to the form-ing of spiritual fruit intheir souls. The conse-quence of Christ’simpulses begin toappear as conscious under-standing. Now Christ hastruly Christians who can carryand embody the Word He gave and is.From the One come the many.
As astrophysicists derive the universe from asingle point of unimaginable potency, soChristianity’s “big bang” originates in the Being ofthe Christ, and the prospect is that “Christ in you”will become a universal reality. From a spiritualsupernova are born a galaxy of stars. He came untoHis own (by race and blood) and His own receivedHim not. That was from without. He comes untoHis own (by spiritual generation) from within(even those who rejected Him externally) and theydo and will receive Him as their highest possibili-ty, their true Self, as the Way to their Father Star.
Resurrection is the flowering of Christian hope.By the time of Ascension, forty days later, hope’spetals are falling, the ecstasy of belief has faded,and the results of this fertilization begin to show.By Whitsun, ten days later, the seeds of Christ’sdeeds planted in his disciples’souls break theirhusk of latency and incomprehension, germinatinginto a conscious spiritual fire of intention and real-ization. Christ as Immanuel was bodily with them.
Now He is spiritually in them. This is Christianenthusiasm, God in us. More intimately than mostnow know are His words true: “Lo, I am with youalways, even unto the end of the world.”
While Christ’s Ascension was an apparent goingaway, Pentecost shows that He is more immediateas an interior impulse mediated by the Holy Spirit,Who teaches of Him and impels with His life.
Damascus signifies a yet more objective condi-tion of Christ’s Earthly involvement and omni-presence. He is more present than the Sun itself.For with Him there is no day and night. But it is day
when Paul is blindsided on his way toDamascus. In fact, it is high
noon. The sun is at its zenith,but nothing compares to
the dazzling splendor ofthe apparition. Paul isblinded by the light ofthe Lord of light, the
solar Archangel Christ.From the Resurrection
and Ascension of this lightinto and throughout the aura of
the Earth sphere, Christ is now foundwherever one is ready for His revelation, not onlyas a mystical or personal intuition, but as a phe-nomenon of occult nature. The One Who inGethsemane identified Himself to the templeguards as Christ, causing them to fall backward, thesame Spirit from above caused those with Saul toalso be struck, as by a force of nature. Paul is thefirst interpreter of Christ’s Revelation as the Earth’sindwelling Spirit. And all of Earth’s members, itsfour life waves, are groaning as a woman in travailuntil Christ can be formed in them. Earth is puttingHim on, individually and collectively. His advent toone human, Jesus, became the portal to His univer-sal advent. The light form of Christ is the presenceof the Sun Spirit in the planetary light ether. But Heis also present as the Word through the reflectingether, through tone, through the permeation of ourthinking by the light of spiritual understanding. Wehear His voice, we see His etheric form. Whenhumans are able to see the etheric body, they willlearn to see the etheric body of Christ Jesus, as didPaul.
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WhileChrist’ s Ascension
was an apparent goingaway, Pentecost shows that He
is more immediate as an interiorimpulse mediated by the Holy
Spirit, Who teaches of Himand impels with His
life.
When the Revelation of Christ, theexperience of Damascus, becomes gen-eral, the Second Coming will take place.As the foregoing outline indicates, thisterm is somewhat of a misnomer, sinceChrist has not gone from us. When Hispresence has so permeated the souls ofindividual humanity and its Earth, Hewill be revealed as a cosmic Reality in auniversal experience. He shall come inthe clouds, come down into the ethericwith enhanced power. That will be but aculmination of what this meteorologicalmetaphor suggests. As moisture inclouds condenses and is released uponearth, so the objective presence ofChrist will saturate Earth’s spiritualatmosphere and will condense to thepoint of becoming etherically dis-cernible. Clouds are an etheric phenom-ena. Heavier than the surrounding air,they are borne up by the vital forces ofthe etheric sphere. Clouds are not simply water ingas form, they are vitalized water, they are imbuedwith a life force absence from terrestrial, “fallen”water.
There is something self-centered aboutAdvent,for Christ comes to us, because we have beenremiss in, some would say incapable of, going tothe Father. We have been wayward, wasteful,blind. We have required a Wayshower, Christ’sprodigal love, the light of His Spirit, to mark outthe lost path and to ignite our torpid souls. God isour Source and ontological Center, yet we, likechildren, require Him to come to us. And He didand does in His Son, Who enables us to go to theFather. Yet one does not see deeply renewed theo-centrism in today’s western world, rather, a surgingegocentrism characterizes our aggressively acquis-itive society, where “get” trumps “give” and merelypersonal rights claim priority over moral duties.
Advent is a reciprocal activity. Because Christcomes to us, we can act on His summons and rise tomeet Him. “Come unto me and I will give you rest.”
In his June, 1913, letter to students on “Christand the Second Coming,” Max Heindel also callsthis reappearance of Christ His “second advent.”
The First Advent was an incarnation. In the secondadvent Christ will be excarnate. In the first, Hecame to us. Because He became human and put onmortal flesh, we will be able to put off mortalityand rise to meet him “in the air”, as Paul describesit in Thessalonians (1:4:17). Then the vital bodywill be our permanent earthly habitation, our dens-est vehicle, whose natural action is to levitate.
The term “second coming” is a translation of theGreek word parousia, whose original meaning ispresence. A later meaning is adventor coming;also indwelling and, finally, aid or help can beimplied. When the future Presence of Christ inhuman evolution is prophesied in the original textof the New Testament, nothing less than the four-fold meaning of parousiawill adequately translatethe comprehensive sense intended.
The Christ within of Whitsun and the Christwithout of Damascus will be joined in the Christ ofthe parousia. He will be present simultaneously asan internal force and guiding light and as an objec-tive Revelation. The Christ invoked in John’sBook of Revelation will be the Christ of theSecond Coming, in Whom those who have soughtHim will glory, and those who have denied Him
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Die Bibel in Bildern, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1789-1853)
John’s Vision of the New Jerusalem“The Lord Christ is building in the etheric realms the New Jerusalem, whichis to be the home of humanity in the Christ Dispensation.”—C. Heline
will be spiritually mortified. For “the glory of theLord shall be revealed, and all mankind shall see it.”
In summary, Christ came once in a physicalbody; He comes yearly to rejuvenate all nature; Hecomes individually in fulfillment of the petitionand affirmation, “Thy Kingdom come”; and Hecomes eschatalogically, climactically, in the lastcoming, to permanently secure the world of resur-rected humanity. The actual time of this coming noone knows but the Father, but it is obviously con-tingent on humanity’s readiness to receive Him.Max Heindel speculates that the Second Adventwill take place when the Sun by precession entersthe zodiacal sign of Capricorn (2 Q&A, p. 355). Inthe CosmoHeindel writes that the true religion ofChrist is projected for the Sixth Epoch, the NewGalilee, when there shall be “one universalBrotherhood under the Leadership of the ReturnedChrist” (p. 360). He also writes that the more menand women consciously build the temple of thesoul, the golden wedding garment, “the sooner weshall see the second advent of Christ” (F&C, p.98). Then those Spirits, those Wise Virgins, willspeak the final rapturous words of Revelation:“And the Spirit [the human Ego] and the bride [thepurified soul] say, come. And let him that is athirst,come. And whosoever will, let him take the water
of life freely....Our Lord says, surely I come quick-ly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” The graceof our Lord Jesus Christ is with us. r
—C.W.
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ECHOES FROM MOUNT ECCLESIA 1913-1919EDITED BY MAX HEINDEL
The Echoes from Mount Ecclesia 1913-1915record the first events of MountEcclesia as they were printed and published by Max Heindel. In later 1915Heindel decided topublish a magazine, entitled Rays from the Rose Cross.Thereafter the Raysincluded the Echoes, which relates the history and eventsof Mount Ecclesia. The Echoesof 1913-1915 are out of print, as are some ofthe oldest Rays. Echoes from Mount Ecclesia 1913-1919enables everyone to know thehis-tory of the The Rosicrucian Fellowship from the time of its inception until Max Heindel passed awayin January, 1919. Echoes from Mount Ecclesia 1913-1919is the “companion” book to Memoirs about Max Heindeland the Rosicrucian Fellowshipby Augusta Foss Heindel. Echoeshas 608 pages and fifty-one blackand white vintage pictures, most of which are different from those in Memoirs.Price: $32.50, postage included. California residents please add 7.75% tax. Foreign orders add $2.00.
ECHOESFROM
MOUNT ECCLESIA1913-1919
Edited by MAX HEINDEL
THE ROSICRUCIAN FELLOWSHIP
Prayers of Faith
O strong, upwelling prayers of faith,From inmost founts of life ye start—
The Spirit’s pulse, the vital breathOf soul and heart.
From pastoral toil, from traffic’s din,Alone, in crowds, at home, abroad,
Unheard of man, ye enter inThe ear of God.
Ye brook no forced and measured tasks,Nor weary rote, nor formal chains;
The simple heart that freely asksIn love, obtains.
For man the living temple is: The mercy-seat and cherubim,
And all the holy mysteries,He bears with him.
—John G. Whittier
THE LAW OF ANALOGYholds good everywhere. Itis the master key to all mys-teries, and what applies to themicrocosmic man also applies to
the Macrocosmic God or the Divine Power. Theanimals are guided now by Spirits from without.At a later period they will become indwellingSpirits, and learn to guide their vehicles withoutassistance from other sources. Similarly it waswith the Earth, as stated in the Cosmo-Conceptionand various other parts of our literature.
Up to 2,000 years ago, Jehovah had charge andguided the Earth from without, as the animals areguided by the Group Spirits. Thus, the Earth washeld in its orbit by His power, and He was up tothat time the Supreme God, but at the change madeon Golgotha the Christ Spirit drew into our Earthin order that He might aid us to evolve facultieswhich Jehovah could not give us.
Jehovah gave us laws which hold us in check,but the Christ gives us Love. One is the restrainingforce, applied from without; the other is animpelling energy applied from within. Thus theChrist is now guiding the Earth in its orbit fromwithin and will continue until we have learned tovibrate to that great attribute, Love, whereby weshall be able to supply the power to our own plan-et and thus guide it in its orbit from within.
Christ is the highest Initiate of the Sun Periodand, as such, has His dwelling place in the Sun. Heis the Sustainer and Preserver of the whole solarsystem. In one sense it is right to speak of Thatwhich dwells within our Earth as a Ray, yet this
does not convey the exact idea of whatis the case. Perhaps we can get at the
matter by an illustration. Let us liken thegreat Spirit in the Sun to a refiner of metal.
He has upon His furnace a number of cruciblesand is watching them all. Heat is melting thesemetals and throwing the dross to the top. The refin-er gradually is skimming the crucibles, until at lastthe metal is absolutely beautiful and clear and Hecan see His face in each.
Similarly we may see that Christ turns His atten-tion from one planet to another, and as He turnsHimself to our Earth, for instance, His image isreflected in the Earth, but it is not a dead image. Itis a living, feeling, sentient being, so full of lifeand feeling that we ourselves in our present deadstate, dwelling in these bodies of Earth, can haveno idea of that faculty of feeling possessed by theindwelling Spirit of the Earth.
Thus, for a time, His energy is imparted to thepicture as a focus, and while really being in theSun, the Cosmic Christ feels everything that isgoing on in the Earth as if He actually were herepresent. That picture within, which, it must beunderstood, is not a picture in the ordinary sense ofthe word, is a counterpart, a part, of the Solar Christ.Through it He knows and feels and senses every-thing upon Earth as if He were actually present.
This is something that should be very thorough-ly understood. That is really what is meant byomnipresence, so that while the Christ is theindwelling Spirit of the Sun, He also is theindwelling Spirit of the Earth, and must continueto hold this office of helpfulness for us, feeling
RAYS 00 23
The PlanetarySpirit
FROM MAX HEINDEL’S WRITINGS
of the Earth
everything, enduring everything that goesor would go with an actual presence, for oursakes.
Let us now consider for a moment whatthat which we call the Earth really is—thatis to say, its origin. The solidification com-menced in the Sun Period, when we wereunable to vibrate at the high rate demandedto remain there. Thus we gradually workedourselves out of the Sun and were projectedinto space.
The rate of vibration gradually was low-ered until the middle of the AtlanteanEpoch, and thus the Earth crystallized intoa mass of stone, we might say. Thus, weourselves made the Earth what it was, and ifno help had been given we should havebeen unable to extricate ourselves from themeshes of matter.
Jehovah from without endeavored to helpus by laws. To know the law and to followit would, in time, aid us, provided we hadthe requisite strength, but no man is justi-fied by the law, and by the law all Spiritsmust become further enmeshed. Therefore a newimpulse had to be given, which should inscribe thelaw into men’s hearts, for there is a great differencebetween what we do because we must for fear ofan outside master who metes out a just retributionfor every offense, and the inner urge which impelsus to do right because it is right so to do. We rec-ognize what is right when the law is inscribed inour hearts, and then we obey its dictates unques-tioningly, even though it may cause our wholebeing to vibrate in pain.
Thus we, collectively, are the Spirits of theEarth. We must some day guide the vehicle wehave created. Jehovah guided it for us from with-out by means of laws, but as this was not suffi -cient to bring us to the point of individualizationwhere we shall be able to take care of ourselves,Christ came in as a Savior and is helping us untilthe time comes that we shall have evolved a Lovenature within ourselves which is sufficient to floatthe Earth. So there have been no other Spirits inthe Earth. The Christ is here only temporarily tohelp us, and in time it will be our privilege to take
up the task for ourselves and guide our planet aswe want and as we should. The increased vibrato-ry force already has made the Earth much lessdense —much lighter—and in time it will becomeethereal again as it once was. It will cease to bedead in sin. It will become alive in Love.
The spiritual fires in the Earth are brightest atthis time of the year; now is the best opportunityfor soul growth, for investigation and study of thedeeper mysteries of life. Therefore it behooves usto use this present time to the very best advantage,patiently and prayerfully, knowing that among allother things in the world which change, this greatwave of spiritual light will be with us in the winterseason for ages to come. It will grow more andmore brilliant as the Earth and ourselves evolve tohigher degrees of spirituality.
This season of the year is the most propitioustime to give and receive, so let us be sure to let ourlight shine on the great cosmic Christmas Tree,that it may be seen of men and attract them to thetruths we know to be of such vital importance inthe development of our fellow men. r
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Hand-illustrated, hand-colored, from Pennsylvania German Fraktur Collection, c. 1830, based on original
engraving by Jacob Böhme, Theosophische Wercke, Amsterdam, 1682, Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg
The Mysterium MagnumWhile Moses was the representative of the authoritarian aspect of God(Jehovah) for Israel, Christ Jesus was the incarnation of divine love forhumanity as a whole, becoming Earth’s indwelling Spirit. The trumpet-blowing angel of the end of time unveils the transfigured face of Moses.
FATE OF EXECUTED MURDERER
QUESTION: If a murderer is executedfor his crime, does he suffer the same asa suicide, or is the archetype destroyed?(It is stated in the Rosicrucian literaturethat he may see the comatose victim,
also that he is able to incite others to crime.) Answer: As a general rule people die, or are
killed, when the pre-designated time has come.However, because man has free will, he may notonly end his own life prematurely, but also that ofanother.
If a murderer is executed before his time to die,he, too, is murdered, even though it may be in thename of “justice.” His archetype would not be de-stroyed, and would no doubt keep on (until his life-span ends) gathering material which it would beimpossible for him to assimilate, as in the case ofanyone murdered. The intervention of other agen-cies would probably prevent the suffering which asuicide undergoes, but he would be punished byhaving the comatose desire body of his victim “fol-lowing him wherever he goes, without a moment’srespite. The picture of the murder is always beforehim, causing him to feel the suffering and anguishwhich must, inevitably accompany this incessantreenactment of his crime in all its horrible details.This goes on for a time corresponding to the peri-od of life of which he deprived his victim.”
Max Heindel states that “when we free the Spiritof a murderer from his body we liberate him in thespiritual world where he can and often does workon others to influence them to similar crimes.”
Were his archetype destroyed it would hardly bepossible for him to influence another in this way.
USE OF SPIRITUAL POWER
Question: Would a person be justified in usingspiritual power to sabotage war materials of anaggressor nation, or for example, the weapons of aperson about to assault or rob others, as Parsifalused the Holy Spear to destroy the castle ofKlingsor?
Answer: No, we do not think so. It is always aquestionable procedure to use spiritual power toaccomplish a material end. Whether or not a per-son would be justified; or to what extent he mightbe justified, would depend upon the nature of thecase. There is always the matter of destiny to beconsidered on such occasions, and unless a personknows to what extent he may be interfering withthe destiny of other people, he is apt to bring downupon his own head an undesirable karmic debt.
We are taught that the Elder Brothers alwaysencourage the good, and that they transmute evilinto good. People who are working constructively,i.e., doing good, attract help from both the invisi-ble and visible planes, and in this way evil is even-tually overcome by good. This is the method weshould therefore use, rather than “fight” the evil.
One thing we can always safely do where help isneeded: hold the persons and situations in theLight of God’s Love, asking that His will may bedone. This is white magic, and “the white magicianis prompted altogether by love and benevolence.”The use of the Holy Spear by Parsifal to destroythe castle of Klingsor (by making the sign of the
RAYS 00 25
Fate of Executed Murderer ★ Use of Spiritual Power
Cooperating with Scientists ★ Interpreting Joshua
READERS’ QUESTIONS
cross with it) simply indicates, in our opinion, thepower of good to absolve evil. This power is inher-ent in the cross—or the spiritual life.
COOPERATING WITH THE SCIENTISTS
Question: It is stated in the Rosicrucian litera-ture that we should cooperate with the scientistsand use the information which they obtain. Whywould it not be much more satisfactory in obtain-ing information concerning disputed points—forinstance, the nature of the atom or the right kindof diet—to go directly to the invisi-ble planes and obtain the cor-rect answer by clairvoyance?Would this not be muchmore accurate, and settlethe question without argu-ment and long years oftedious experimentation?
Answer: Considerable scientif-ic information was incorporated in theCosmo-Conception because Rosicrucians believein cooperating with the scientists and using empir-ical knowledge insofar as it is true and practicable.The reason is that one can obtain true informationin regard to the nature and conditions of any planeonly with the senses which are correlated to thatplane. That is, we must obtain knowledge in regardto the physical properties of matter with our phys-ical senses; we must investigate the Desire Worldwith the senses of the desire body, namely, clair-voyance and clairaudience; and we must informourselves in regard to the Mental World with thecognitive faculties of the mind or mental body.
It is a mistake to think that all sorts of informa-tion on physical matters can be obtained from spir-itual sources. However, if we wish to obtainknowledge pertaining to the spiritual counterpartsof any physical object or condition, then we mayuse the spiritual senses. For instance, if we wantinformation about the mental archetype of anocean steamship, we go to the Region of ConcreteThought, which is the region of archetypes. If wewish information about the emotional properties ofa revival meeting, we go to the Desire World,which is the realm of emotion, and there observethe colors that are produced by the activities car-
ried on in that meeting. But if we want to knowabout the physical properties of a metal such asiron, we must experiment with that metal on thephysical plane.
Some people have the mistaken notion that theminute one gets into the invisible worlds he imme-diately becomes omniscient, but this is no moretrue in the higher worlds than it is in the PhysicalWorld. Knowledge is obtained by study and effortthere the same as it is acquired here. To be sure, the
archetypes there speak to us and flood us with aknowledge of themselves, but we
can make this knowledge oursonly by studying it and work-
ing with it in the same man-ner we observe and logi-cally process material data. In accepting scientific
knowledge we must keep inmind that it is not infallible, due
to the fact that scientists are ever discov-ering new data which modify their earlier theories.At the onset of the third millennium, the rapidincrease of atomic, electronic, and genetic infor-mation has led to many scientific accomplishmentswhich would not have been believed possible bymost scientists themselves only a few decadesago. Judgment and discrimination must be used inconsidering this matter as in all others.
THE SUN STANDING STILL
Question: Will you please give the occult inter-pretation of the passage in Joshua commanding theSun to stand still?
Answer: The entire book of Joshua is a story ofinitiation. Joshua in Hebrew means Jesus. The fivekings that are destroyed and the seven cities thatare saved may be said to refer to the process ofpurification that must take place within the body ofthe Neophyte in preparation for initiation.
The Sun and the Moon that stand still refer to theequilibrium that must be established in theNeophyte between the masculine and femininepoles, and it the power deriving from this balancethat is used by the initiate. The Book of Joshuacontains some of the deepest esoteric truths pos-sessed by the early Hebrews. r
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Kind hearts are the gardens,Kind thoughts are the roots,Kind words are the blossoms,
Kind deeds are the fruits.
BEFORE EVERY important step Hetook Christ Jesus went for a time intothe silence of the desert. He knew thatHis work was to be accomplishedwithin the short space of three years.
He therefore chose the twelve most advanced ofHis followers to carry on the work of disseminat-ing the new religion when He had gone.Immediately after choosing the Twelve, He deliv-ered the Sermon on the Mount, His most sublimepublic utterance.
After conflict, trial, and temptation such as noother has ever known before or since, He returnedfrom the wilderness to share with men the divinerealization which was His. The physical body ofJesus was as a tool in His hand. Every feeling andemotion was subservient to His dual powers ofspiritualized will and dynamic love. He returnedto the world to bring to it the new message ofredemptive Christianity. Through perfect self-control and an absolute dominion over Himself,Christ Jesus performed works the world calls mir-acles. The fundamental tenet of His teaching iscontained in His words: “The kingdom of God iswithin you.” When we discover this kingdomwithin ourselves, we shall find it also in others, andin all things about us. The Path of seeking must bethe way of love.
From the multitudes who surrounded Him, Hechose the Twelve Disciples who made up His innercircle, among whom were several who hadreceived esoteric instruction from John the Baptistin preparation for the call from the Messiah. Thesechosen Disciples were not ignorant fishermen asmany have supposed. They were men whose eso-teric training and attainments proved them to be
ready for receiving and teaching the deeper truthsof the Christian religion.
It was customary in the time of Christ for everyrabbi to earn his livelihood at some gainfulemployment, even manual labor, in order that hemight teach spiritual things free of charge. ThusJesus was taught carpentry and building. He was apractical as well as a spiritual Mason. Paul was atent maker. In Hebrew eyes there was no indignityconnected with common labor. It was the over-intellectual Greeks who despised all manualemployment. While revering the beautiful work ofthe sculptors, painters, and builders, they despisedthe workers who produced them! Incredible as itseems, the divine Phidias was looked down uponby the Athenian aristocracy. Unfortunately, thisblemish upon the otherwise lofty Grecian tempera-ment has been reflected in Greek translations ofthe Gospels, giving us the impression that Jesusand the Twelve were ignorant laborers. While itwell may be that not all were brilliant philosophersin the formal Greek sense, it does not follow thatthey were not highly cultured in the Hebrew wis-dom with its marvelous Kabala and astronomicaltheosophy inherited from ancient Chaldea whencecame Abraham.
Andrew was the first chosen of the Twelve. Henever became one of the innermost circle, but wonspecial recognition through bringing his brotherPeter to Christ. It is a wonderful privilege to carrythe message of the Spirit to others. Both James andJohn were quiet and reserved, but possessed an inten-sity which caused the Teacher Himself to call themsons of thunder. This intensity accounted in part forthe martyrdom of James who was the first Disciple tofollow the Master to the Cross. A similar intensity,
RAYS 00 27
The Calling of the Twelve
WESTERN WISDOM TEACHINGS
but softened by divine love, placed John at thehead of the Disciples in spiritual attainment.
Philip, being materially minded and spirituallyundiscerning, was slow to accept the divinity ofour Lord. His inseparable companion, Nathanael,was a mystic and a dreamer. Christ Jesus, at Hisfirst meeting with Nathanael, promised that heshould see the wonders of heaven. He made itclear, in fact, that Nathanael was to attain throughInitiation, an experience that was gloriously ful-filled in his later life. Matthew was the fifth andthe last of the Disciples to be chosen separately.The remaining seven were called out just prior tothe Sermon on the Mount.
The. name Peter in the Egyptian language meant“the opened eye.” In Greek, Peter (petra) meansrock. One of the utterances of the Master was,“Upon this rock I will build my church.” A stone isuniversally used as a symbol of the Initiate.Initiation is the foundation of religion and is in thatsense the rock upon which the Church is estab-lished—a fact to be generally recognized in thecoming age.
Jerome states that the Jude of Luke, Lebbeus ofMatthew, and Thaddeus of Mark, all refer to thesame Disciple. This Disciple did not becomeprominent until after the Ascension.
Simon Zelotes belonged to the nationalist, patri-otic sect of the Zealots, whose aim was to throwoff the Roman yoke, restore the freedom of theJewish State and then conquer the world under thebanner of the Messiah, with fire and sword. Simon“the Zealot” was to learn, however, that the mosteffective weapon of all is the power of the Christlove and that it is the only weapon with which toachieve world conquest.
Information relative to Thomas is found chieflyin the Gospel of John and in certain apocryphaldocuments. Thomas was slow to believe. He waspessimistic and despondent. Yet so intense was hisdevotion to the Master that he was willing to diefor Him. He was a skeptic, yet he was filled withearnestness and aspiration, and later became one ofthe most glorious of the Disciples. He was particu-larly revered by the philosophically trainedGnostics.
Judas Iscariot was the man of mystery, the
betrayer of the Christ. He came from Kerioth,which belonged to the tribe of Judah. This tribe isgoverned by Leo, the heart sign, and symbolizesone in whom the love nature is linked with thesense life. Judas portrays the state of the averageman who daily betrays the Christ, the Higher Self,within.
Each of the twelve Disciples represents a specif-ic faculty or attribute of man himself: Judas, there-fore, will play his role in human evolution untilsuch time as the lower nature of the race shall beredeemed. He destroyed himself, as all evil ulti-mately destroys itself, and was replaced byMatthias, the symbol of the redeemed man of theNew Age and the new race. r
—Corinne Heline
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THE DISCIPLE
He that hath a Gospel to loose upon Mankind, Though he serve it utterly—body, soul and mind—
Though he go to Calvary daily for its gain—
It is His Disciple shall make his labor vain. He that hath a Gospel for all earth to own—
Though he etch it on the steel or carve it on the stone—
Not to be misdoubted through the after-days—It is His Disciple shall read it many ways. It is His Disciple (ere Those Bones are dust) Who shall change the Charter, who shall split
the Trust—Amplify distinctions, rationalize the Claim;Preaching that the Master would have done the
same. It is His Disciple who shall tell us how Much the Master would have scrapped had he
lived till now—
What he would have modified of what he saidbefore.
It is His Disciple shall do this and more.... He that hath a Gospel whereby Heaven is won(Carpenter, or cameleer, or Maya’ s dreaming son), Many swords shall pierce Him, mingling blood
with gall; But His Own Disciple shall wound Him worst of all!
—Rudyard Kipling
THE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC havebeen drawn in much the same way forhundreds of years. Only if paintingswere made of them would there besome scope for a new interpretation.†
I decided to get right down to the essence ofeach sign and then briefly meditate on as many ofits aspects as possible. My idea was to combineseveral symbols—all of which would have a bear-ing on the particular sign—and so give more back-ground to each painting, allowing the spectatormore scope for free association. In this way, thetwelve signs became a cycle of twelve meditationsthat followed the course of the zodiac.
The numerous similarities between various reli-gious systems and their symbols, such as theCabala, magic, alchemy and Tarot, made it possi-ble for me to illuminate the numerous aspects ofeach sign by using the corresponding symbols,thus throwing the sign itself into greater relief....
The deepest truths can only be approachedthrough myths and symbols. They cannot even beconveyed through exegesis or philosophical trea-tise. The Truth can only be hinted at and, eventhen, can only be recognized by those who alreadyknow it. Yet this recognition lies dormant within usall. The Mysteries raise this unconscious knowl-edge of truth to consciousness. This is not donewith intellectual explanations but with symbolsand games of mystery in which the truths aredepicted in dramatized form.
In fact, all religions, all schools of mysticism,and all esoteric societies used and still use symbolsin their instruction, simply because what they areconcerned with cannot be put over or expressed inany other way. A symbolic approach works totallydifferently from an intellectual. The latter appealsonly to the intellect, leaving the rest of the individ-ual untouched; it remains a thought construction.
A truly universal archetypal symbol works deepdown; it touches the unconscious essence of theindividual who thereby recognizes it from inside.It moves him totally. It strengthens him, changeshim. A symbol is never absolute and objective. It isopen to various interpretations. It takes on differ-ent shades of meaning according to the individual.It is subjective and adapts itself to a particularsituation. It is like a mirror that, while remainingitself, constantly displays different images,depending on the person who looks in it....
In the light of the above, it will be clear to youthat you should not expect exact explanations herein the sense of “this means that and that other sym-bol this.” I shall however try to share with you asclearly as possible the thoughts that I had when Iconceived these paintings, the paths that beckonedme and the meanings I intended. They are entirelymy own responsibility and are very personal.Another might see something completely differentin the symbols used, and would have every rightto do so. As I have already shown, it is what peo-ple themselves experience in the beholding of asymbol that determines its relevance. This is muchmore important than what another, in this case thepainter, sees in it. Just the same, before I start dis-cussing the twelve signs of the zodiac, I shouldfirst like to discuss the philosophical systems from
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Johfra and the Signs of the Zodiac—Scorpio and Sagittarius
ASTROLOGY
† This is the first in a series of articles on the twelve signs ofthe zodiac as conceived and painted by the Dutch artistJohfra and coupled with his personal commentary. Johfra,recently deceased, studied the Rosicrucian teachings. Thanksto this association, his wife, Ellen Lorien, has graciouslygranted the Rayspermission to reprint his artwork and text.
which my symbolism is mainly derived, the richtreasuries of the past into which I have delvedquite freely.
There have been three great philosophicalschools of major influence in the field of esotericthought in Europe since the Middle Ages.Together, they have determined the secret sci-ences. They are: Neoplatonism, Hermeticism, andthe Jewish Cabala....
The essence of Neoplatonism is that all beingsare part of the One, although at lower levels theiremanations are multiple. The One first created theLogos, the Word, the Intellect, or Spirit. The worldof divine ideas was created in this Intellect. Thesewere the perfect primordial ideas in whose imagematerial nature was formed. Material beings aretherefore incomplete and imperfect. Yet withinthem all lies the dormant memory of the archetypeafter which they were formed. Beauty is thereforethe extent to which a being reflects its perfectprimordial idea in its shape. The essential efforts ofhuman nature consist in going back to its originalbeing, beyond time and space, in order to unitewith the One from which it emanates.....
The second philosophical system is closelylinked with the former. Both developed in the sameenvironment, in third-century Alexandria. Easternand Western ways of thought came together toform a great synthesis: Hermeticism. This wasrooted in the books which are said to have beenwritten by Thoth, the Egyptian god of knowledge,or, as he was later known, the legendary HermesTrismegistos (thrice-great Hermes)....
I particularly want to draw your attention to thisimportant couplet: “That which is below is like tothat which is above, and that which is above is liketo that which is below, so that the wonders of theOne may be realized.”
This is the basis of all magic and astrology.What it means is that the macrocosmos (the largeworld of the stars) finds perfect expression in themicrocosmos (the small world of the creation).The latter is a faithful reflection of the former. Butthere is more than that. “So that the wonders of theOne may be realized” implies a reciprocal effectbetween the two worlds within the One.Thisrefers to thefundamental law of resonance which
rules in all worlds. Everything that vibrates (andvibration is the foundation of being) acts uponeverything else —whether positively or negatively,depending on the vibration key. So every beingthat sends out a certain tone will receive a responsefrom every other being that is attuned to that samevibration. This is an irrevocable process, regard-less of whether the being is a mineral, plant, ani-mal, human being, angel or planet....
This process [of responding to ever higher tonal-ities] is like a journey. Astrologically speaking, it isthe evolution of the being through the course of thetwelve signs of the zodiac. This happens not justonce, but over and over again on ever higher lev-els. This concept of evolution is also the essence ofalchemy. Here, the scope of the alchemist is trans-formed from the materia prima, the unformedprimitive matter, by means of the “philosopher’sstone,” the “elixir of life,” or “the powder” withwhich base metals could be transmuted into goldand on to a higher level. Transmutation of lowerinto higher faculties through a series of fixedprocesses forms the “Great Work.”
Finally, I should like to say something of thedoctrine which has had the greatest influence onesoteric thought in the west: the Cabala, the secretphilosophy of the Jews. This ingenious doctrinefinds perfect expression in one symbol: the Tree ofLife....
In my symbolism, I have related the planets tothe sephiroth [pathways for he operation of the cre-ative impulse] and their spheres of operation.Magic makes wide use of the hierarchy ofarchangels, angelic choirs, powers, and spirits ofthe planetary spheres. Magic is the practicalexpression of the Cabala. Just as cabalism andastrology are chiefly reflective, so is magic practi-cal. The magician tries through ritual to bind theplanetary system to him and to make it serve him.To do this, he uses corresponding colors, sounds,metals, incense, precious stones and signatures ofthe relevant planetary hierarchy. This technique isbased on the previously mentioned laws of harmo-ny and resonance. When a rapport exists betweentwo or more things in a similar tonality and one ofthem is struck, all similar ones will resound simul-taneously. This is the power of the magic formula.
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By applying his own limited power in the rightway (in his microcosmos), the magician summonsall the corresponding powers of the macrocosmosto him like a tidal wave. It is self-evident that if, bybeing wrongly attuned, he is not prepared toanswer these powers, he will be overwhelmed anddestroyed. Hence the lengthy preparations andpurifications through fasting and abstinence whichall old magic manuals insist upon.
Besides this conjuring type of magic, there isanother kind called talismanic magic. Here,objects (talismans) are made from the relevant cor-responding planetary metals, and the signaturesand symbols of the planetary hierarchy whosepower is needed are engraved on these objects inan exact ritual. This has to happen at the momentthat the relevant planet is exercising its greatestinfluence. The objects, loaded or ‘consecrated’inthis way, will then assure their owner of the powerof the relevant corresponding planetary hierarchy,which he can use forall sorts of purposes. I men-tion all this because I have also furnished the paint-ings of the signs of the zodiac with the signaturesof the angels and spirits that represent the rulingplanets of these signs.This is to link these paintingswith the powers of the relevant planets.
I shall now turn to the description of the twelvesigns of the zodiac and their ruling planets. In sodoing, I shall consciously omit the psychologicalaspects of these signs. Character analyses of thoseborn under a particular sign (called the ‘native’ofthat sign) can be found in every astrology book, ofwhich there are many excellent ones on sale. As faras the symbolism used in this book is concerned, Itook the spiritual development running through thecycle of the twelve signs as my starting point. Theyare the twelve phases in the growth of conscious-ness along a path on which all latent powers hid-den in the being can successively be made real andactive.
SCORPIOScorpio, the scorpion, is a negative sign, “fixed”
water. The sun stands in Scorpio at the end ofOctober, the wine month, the fruit month par excel-lence, the time when leaves fall and the plant king-dom turns in on itself, slowly preparing for winter.
Mars used to be the ruler, but this was changed
to Pluto in 1930 after the discovery of the planet. Ihave kept to the old sign of Mars.
Scorpio is a battlefield of intense psychic colli-sions and deep experiences. This is immediatelyevident from the symbolism linked to the sign inancient cultures. In ancient Indian writings, thescorpion is referred to as the “dark serpent.” It isalso the seven-headed dragon that Hercules killed;Apep, the snake of darkness, killed by Horus, sonof Osiris, in Egyptian mythology; the dragon killedby St George; and the snake of paradise whichbrought death and yet, with it, the knowledge ofgood and evil. It is also the eagle, as this sign issometimes illustrated in the modern English zodi-ac. It even represents Satan.
If one wanted to sum up the nature of this signin a few words, one might say: awareness of themost fundamental facets of life and transformationof the primary forces.
Scorpio is about the libido, the power of creation,as well as love, birth, death, and resurrection. AScorpio native delves deeply into the problemsconnected with all these and is constantly occupiedwith them; he struggles continuously against thoseprinciples in himself. In affliction, he is perverseand destructive. If he conquers his poisonous sting,he turns into a mystic or a doctor, doing good for hisfellow people. Yet he throws himself into everythingwith an intensity given by Mars, who rules over him.
I have particularly tried to express in this paint-ing the essence of the creative power that isreleased through the death of the baser nature totransmute the human into a risen being. I haveplaced the astrological symbol of Mars in a dodec-ahedron (1). This regular twelve-sided surface isone of the Pythagorean structures. As we havejustseen, the pentagon, the five-sided surface, is associ-ated with the planet Mars because Mars is allotted
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32 RAYS 00
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to Geburah, the fifth Sephira, onthe left pillar of the cabalistictree of life, the pillar of severity.The pentagon also, however,symbolizes the human beingwith his five senses, who fills apentagram, with his arms andlegs outstretched. The dodecahe-dron is made up of twelve penta-grams and that is why I haveused it to symbolize man’s voy-age along the path of conscious-ness through thetwelve phasesof the zodiac.
In this case, man is in thephase of the scorpion. He strivesto find out what state he hasreached but can only see thereflection of this in the surface ofthe sea of his consciousness; thissurface is constantly changing ashis own emotions change, so giv-ing a very misleading image (2).His emotions block his insightand therefore prevent him risingto a higher level. His instincts are
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his poisonous sting, the dragon of hislower nature that he has to fight, likeSt George (3), who represents hishigher nature. He must become ayogi, a mystic, to transform the basicpowers inside him in a long drawn-out process of self-discipline (4). Hewill then rise from this sublimationlike an eagle, the royal soul bird thatflies to the sun (5). The old self dies(6) and a new person is born as achild (7).
The cup of the old life is drainedand knocked over (8). It is no furtheruse. It is replaced by a new cup(because nobody puts new wine intoold bottles) in which the light of theSpirit will go on burning (9). This ishow the ‘dark serpent’who broughtdeath to naivete and innocence inparadise yet makes a new person pos-sible by disclosing to him the knowl-edge of good and evil (10).
I have tried to express the characterof the lower Scorpio in the intricatepointed and hooked shapes of the frame.The colors are, of course, shades of a poisonous red because of Mars.
The magic signs are: (top left) the planetary seal of Phaleg, belong-ing to Mars (11), and (right) the signature of the intelligence Graphiel(12).
SAGITTARIUSSagittarius, the archer, is a positive sign, the last of the three fire
signs—so, fire in resolution. The sun stands in this sign at the end ofNovember, the month of slaughter, the time when the animal worldgoes into hibernation, rest, and death, yet also the time when innerspiritual life reaches a peak. Jupiter is the ruling planet.
The experiences gained have been analyzed under Virgo, balancedunder Libra and sorted out (the ephemeral from the lasting) underScorpio. Under Sagittarius, the self is projected onto this material and,together, they are formed into something completely new: the idealnew image of man. The Sagittarius native is, before all else, an ideal-ist who aims his arrows at an elevated target. The Sagittarian plungeshimself into the ideas he has acquired, this being represented in theChinese zodiac by the setting sun (1), the ancient Chinese symbolforthis sign. (The modern Chinese zodiac has a tiger, which refers to thefirmness of the sign.)
The self and non-self are joined together under Sagittarius to make
the all-self, hereby resolving thedualism of the sign of Gemini.The first fruits of consciousnessnow come into being. Sagittar-ius’s motto is synthesis, the pic-ture of the centaur being a good
example: the man-horse. TheScorpio native must continue tostruggle with the animal in hisnature (Mars, the ruler ofScorpio [now Pluto-Ed.]), butthis conflict is harmoniouslyresolvedin the Sagittarian (thegenerosity of the ruling Jupiter).Here the instinctive is logicallylinked with the spiritual; itbecomes the vehicle, the mount.That is why the churchChristianized the Sagittarianfeast of the winter solstice, byproposing saints to replace other
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pagan horsemen: St Nicholas, forexample, and St Martin. They arealso typicalsaints of good deeds(Jupiter again).
The urge for unity of experiencein the Sagittarianexpresses itselfespecially in his great love fornature, particularly for animalsand horses, since he is himsel fhalf horse. The Sagittarian stays intouch with his origins and,although he aims high in his ideal-ism, his feet stay firmly on MotherEarth, who will never disown him.He is inspired, above all, by thegenerosity of Jupiter. That is whyJupiter, the supreme godenthroned in the clouds, lights thearrows of idealism with his heavenly fire, which the archer cannothelp shooting (2). It is the same Jupiter’s generosity (the planet Jupiteris associated with Hesed, the fourth sephira on the right pillar, that ofgenerosity) that rules over the luxuriant growth of the plant kingdom(3). I have depicted this Jupiter power in the form of the plant-inspir-ing dryads and elfs (4), while the air spirits, the sylphs, carry theJupiter powers through the air in the form of rain clouds (5).
The Sagittarian develops by forgetting his stallion body in his pas-sion (because, as da Vinci said, “passion of the spirit excludes passionof the senses”) and this body becomes white and serene; it turns intoa unicorn, ancient symbol of chastity (6). He is the mythological cen-taur Chiron, teacher of Asclepius, the god of healing, and manyheroes such as Hercules, Jason, and Achilles. He also becomes theHermit of the ninth Tarot card who, as the wandering wise man,lights the wayof others with his lamp of instruction (7). TheSagittarian becomes the square door of the cave of consecration andthe Mysteries, the square of construction which has four steps leadingto it (four being Jupiter’s number) (8).
Over his arm he bears as trophy the skin of the Ram, the goldenfleece. The first fire sign has finally found resolution in the last firesign, Sagittarius, the fire power now being aimed at the non-selfinstead of the self (9).
The magical seals are as follows: The symbolic sign of Sagittariuson the door (10); above that, in the middle of the semi-circular arch,the astrological sign of Jupiter (11); to the left of the arch the sign ofthe planetary spirit Hismael (12). To the right, that of the planetaryintelligence Lophiel (13). Bottom left, in red in a cartouche in theframe, the seal of the Olympic planetary spirit Bethor (14). Underthat, the sign of Sachiel (15). Bottom right-hand corner, in a car-touche, Jupiter’s own seal (16). (Continued) r
SO YOU HAVE DECIDED to studyastrology.† Welcome. You are starting ajourney toward self-understanding aswell as gaining the ability to understandhow the other fellow operates. Truly it
is a spiritual science. It involves the relationshipbetween the larger universe outside you and thepersonal universe within. The same energies thatfunction in your personal universe function in thelarger one ‘out there.’The blueprint we call thehoroscope, or the birthchart, plots the energies thatflow in your magnetic field. At the moment ofbirth you took into your body, with the first breath,the vibrations manifested on that day and time atthat particular spot on earth. This basic patterngoes with you throughout life.
The birthchart shows our potentials and tenden-cies. One of our astrological teachers once said:“Man is not what he is because he was born whenhe was. He was born when he was because he waspotentially what he is.” It is not because you wereborn at a certain place or time that you react toinfluences, but the influences of that moment andthat place in space show your potentials that can beactualized in the future. Fate is earmarked in ten-dencies, not in facts. All anyone can see in abirthchart are tendencies that will become facts ifone does not do something to alter them. None ofus comes unbound into this livingness. We do notstart here, and we do not finish our livingness here.Life is eternal. If we have it in front of us, is it notlogical to believe we may have it behind us too? Itis as though we have a built-in bookkeeping sys-
tem. We have debits, and we have credits. Some ofus come into this life with a great deal of capital inour spiritual bank books. This is earned income froma past life. Others come in with a depleted bankaccount. This is the difference between an easy lifepattern and a difficult one. However, there is nothingto stop us from using up our capital and becomingbankrupt, or going to work to make up the deficitso we will have a surplus with which to function.
The horoscope is a blueprint of our character.Character IS destiny. There is nothing static in thisuniverse in which we dwell. We can change bychanging our attitudes and patterns of behavior. Inso doing, we change our destiny. Yes, the blueprintor birthchart shows your character and your per-sonality pattern—your human nature, but you arespirit too. The stars impel but do not compel. Anunderstanding of planetary influences allows youto take your life into your own hands and intelli-gently utilize the planetary influences that willhelp you in your evolution, if you but will.
Astrology deals with symbols. The signs of thezodiac are symbols of great and potent forces. Thephysical planets are but the outer forms throughwhich soul energies manifest. It is these energiesthat affect us, not the physical planets. When youmeet a person, you are not affected by his physicalbody. Yet you respond to his character and person-ality to your benefit or detriment. So it is withplanetary energies.
Let us consider your horoscope to be a roadmap.It shows the conditions you are going to meet inlife. Some of the roads on which you will travelwill be smooth and easy if you have built themwell in a past that your personality does notremember. Some of the roads will be in poor
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Astrology—ACosmic Science
ASTROLOGY
† The text of this article is reprinted with permission fromIsabel Hickey’s Astrology, A Cosmic Science, published byCRCS Publications, P.O. 1460, Sebastopol, CA95472
condition and need repair. If you repairthem and put them into good condition,your vehicle will not break down and causeyou difficulties and delays.
Always the idea of rebirth raises thequestion: “If I have lived before why do Inot remember and know?” Your personali-ty is new but not the soul. The soul is theunit of evolution. The personality is the unitof incarnation. When you become con-scious of who you truly are—a soul using apersonality through which to function—you will remember.
Another thought worth pondering is thisone. “How much do I consciously remem-ber of what I have lived in this lifetime?”As you will learn later in your study ofastrology, the knowledge is in your subcon-scious self. Your subconscious self has hid-den in it the sum total of all your experi-ences to date. You will find as you studythat you will be developing your intuition-al facilities for you are dealing with power-ful energies that will aid in your spiritualon-going. How much you get out of thisstudy depends on how much you put into it.It is security invested in your spiritualbankbook upon which you can draw in anycrisis or experience where understanding isneeded. If you have not studied for a longtime the study of astrology will be a means ofremoving the rust from your brain, not only in onearea but others as well. New pathways or groovesin the brain are made with every new study youtake up. There is an actual expansion of dormantbrain cells when you make new pathways of com-prehension in your gray matter.
The first part of astrological study involves theuse of your memory. The signs and the planets thatrule them must be memorized, though I would liketo add the word visualized. Dwelling on the sym-bols, pondering, their meanings, meditating onthese energies, will bring you in contact with thepower behind the symbols. Remember: any knowl-edge gained through outer study takes you as far asyour conscious mind. There is a SuperconsciousMind beyond that area where you can gain direct
knowledge from the source of your Being. Thatpart of you already IS Understanding—IS Wisdom—IS Knowledge NOW. Astrology is one of themeans of knowing that SELF. So let’s be on ourway. Godspeed.
The Art of InterpretationThe art of interpretation—and it is an art—
depends on the ability of the student to get a men-tal grasp of the nature of the energies involved aswell as an intuitive feeling of their meaning. Thosewho meditate on the symbols can pierce throughthe symbol to the energy or actuality that the sym-bol represents. The astrologer must be able to havesome idea of where the client stands on the path ofevolution in delineating the birthchart and counselhim at that level. If the individual is involving
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himself in matter and building a personality, hewill be very different from the one who is evolvingout of the personality and building a soul.
When most of the planets are in the first six signsand the higher octave planets are not angular or con-figurated with Sun, Moon or Mercury, the person isinvolving himself with the world of appearance andthe personality. When the last six signs have manyplanets in them and the higher octave planets areprominent, the soul is more advanced and the per-son will be evolving out of personality orientation.His life, though more difficult, will be more effec-tive. This planet is a school and the different gradesare different stages in growth and development. Thelife of the kindergartner and those in the earlygrades of school are comparatively uncomplicated.In the higher grades studies are harder and morework must be done and more tests taken.
The stronger the soul the more squares andoppositions in the chart. It takes great strength tomeet the bigger challenges of life. There is noaffliction in the chart that cannot be changed andunredeemed. It starts with a change of attitude orconsciousness. The world outside is the world ofmanifestation; not the world of creation. Everythingis created inwardly and then projected into theworld of manifestation. If this cosmic law wasfully realized, the key to the secret of this universecould be used in the outer world. Change your atti-tude, release the tension and allow the true natureof the planets (energies) to work, seeking to be buta channel through whom the energies can flow.You then can flow with the rhythm of life andknow the true meaning of joy.
The astrological pattern is meant to be a guide toshow how the tides are flowing at any particulartime. The wise person uses these tides and makesallowances for them. He cannot escape their influ-ences but he can use them and does not allow themto influence him negatively. Each birthchart marksa step in the evolution of the soul and representsthe character of the Self in the body and shows theenvironmental conditions necessary for the nextstep forward in consciousness. He can dillydally ifhe chooses. He can pass by or pass up his opportu-nities; then he fails to pass his grades and is heldback to do that grade over again until he is able to
go on to the next grade. The choice is his. God ispatient. God is also pressure and pressure is theinexorable force that cannot be evaded except for acertain length of time.
The planets are symbols that convey eternaltruths to those ready to receive them. They havepreserved the Cosmic law since the beginning oftime. As far back as there is any planetary historythe symbols have been found.
For centuries astrology fell into disreputebecause, like so many things on earth, it fell intothe wrong hands and was used as fortunetellingand was exploited by those seeking to gain throughit instead of seeking to give through it. The Lightwas withdrawn and the inner truths behind it werenot given to the profane. With the dawning of theAquarian Age there are those who have come toearth to restore astrology as a sacred science.Many there are who are doing this work, and manythere will be who will do it. Many there are whomay use it for their own ends and deride those whowork to raise the level of consciousness of thosewho seek understanding. Ever it has been and everit will be for this is a world of duality and “chooseye this day whom ye will serve” is as true today asit was 2,000 years ago.
It is particularly important in astrological
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SATURN, ANGEL OF DISCIPLINE
In the deep darkness of grief and pain,
I found the angel of Light again.
She wore no lovely garment of white
But was garbed in robes as deep as night.
I saw in her arms no flower fair,
Instead, a crucifix nestled there.
She didn’t walk with joyous tread
Or offer me relief from dread.
But I felt her peace and her quiet power
And knew in that night of awe-filled hour
She was the angel of Eternal Dawn.
Lifting her hood I saw her face
And knew the glory that hid her grace.
From earth blinded eyes too dim to see
That only through her, could we ever go free!
—Isabel M. Hickey
counseling to study the chart well before talkingabout it. If the chart has mutable signs on theangles the individual will remember every nega-tive comment and forget every positive statement.He is a worrier and full of fear. In every diagnosisof the afflictions give an antidote that will clear upthe conflict. No physician diagnoses a diseasewithout giving the remedy that can cure it. If theperson is emotionally oriented it is through hisfeelings he can be helped. If he is intellectually ori-ented he can be reached through reason. If he isstrongly materialistic he will be the one who willsay “I’m not interested in anything exceptfinances” and “what I’m going to get out of this orthat situation.” Then it’s up to the astrologer totalk, first about finances, and then (lovingly) showthe individual how what happens to him outward-ly cannot be detached from the person he is on theinside. The body cannot be detached from the per-son living in it and have any life power or energy.
The truly inspired astrologer is the one who isoriented spiritually and really cares about every
individual that comes, whether they come out ofcuriosity or a real need. Unless the astrologer hasbecome soul-oriented, how can he help anothersoul? Unless the astrologer has known pain, suf-fering and loneliness, how can he help someonewho is suffering? Pain is the breaking of the shellof selfishness and only through pain (not around it)can one feel the pain of others and be able to say ingreat love “I know.”
The true astrologer will be a healing agent andwill know he is only the channel through which thePower flows. Then, added to his knowledge gainedthrough study, will come that plus factor that is notof this dimension but comes through from theLove that eternally sustains the universe. Come toyour study of astrology in reverence for the won-der of life and a desire to understand yourself andchange what is manifesting negatively in yourself.Then you can help others and your service to themwill be appraised and based on loving understand-ing. When you know Love and Joy it can be trans-mitted through you to others. ❐
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WHILE THERE IS ONE GOD,there may be many by participa-tion in the One. Because ChristJesus cites the passage inPsalms (82:6), “I have said, ye
are gods,” St. John wrote in his gospel that “hecalled them gods, unto whom the word of God[Christ] came” (10:35), and this was preeminentlytrue of Mary, who, with holy others, actualized, inthe words of Peter, “exceeding great and preciouspromises”, whereby they became “partakers of thedivine nature, having escaped the corruption of theworld” (2 Pet. 1:4).
Russian Orthodox art did not hesitate in portray-ing Mary as “divine,” as the word Theotokosrequired. In the Eastern Church, salvation meansdeification or divinization, summarized in thepatristic formula already in use in the second cen-tury, “God became human so that man mightbecome divine.” From a Rosicrucian perspectivethis statement might be amended as, “God becamehuman so that humanity can recover its inherentdivinity in willed waking consciousness.”
As iconizing Christ Jesus provided the justifica-tion for iconizing His Mother, so her icon suppliedthe basis for the icons of all other saints. Again,while there may be a tendency for some studentson the intellectual path of spiritual development todisdain the practice of reverencing the holy per-sons of Mary and the saints, many of these sameiconoclasts prize and give prominence to photos oftheir occult leaders, or make mental genuflections
to their teaching authority. Is there a substantivedifference here? Surely the mother of the individ-uality regarded by Max Heindel as “the highestfruitage of the Earth Period” (2 Q&A, p. 315) war-rants the reverence millions of Christians give her,particularly since she was in intimate communionwith Christ during and after his earthly ministry.We may also assume that Mary was initiated byHim into the highest Mysteries pertaining tohuman evolution. We must remember that Mary, ahigh initiate before her incarnation, was also des-ignated by Christ as the spiritual mother of John,who later became Christian Rose Cross. This mayhelp us to evaluate her stature. Nor should we con-fuse the gender she chose for her assignment as
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The Virgin Mary and the Evangelion
MYSTIC LIGHT
The reader may refer to the September/October 2000 Raysfor the first section of this two part study of the Virgin Mary.
The Mother of God of the PassionA later variation of the 16th century Greek prototype, theabove image shows the Theotokos (Mother of God) and herSon contemplating the destiny of the Agony and Crucifixion.This depiction is also known as Our Lady of Perpetual Help.
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onastery Icons, ww
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onasteryicons.com
defining or limiting her individuality, which iswhole-human and had taken many male and femalebodies over the course of her prior evolution.
What Protestant reformers and many contempo-rary Christians object to as Mariolatry and adetraction from the due honoring Christ, the soleMediator, is countered by the terse fact that He,Christ, chose her to be His mother, to bear Hisbody, to love Him, to suffer not merely a mother’slove for Him, but to share her initiate understand-ing of His spiritual states and His mission as theworld’s Savior. While the Rosicrucian student dis-tinguishes between the human Jesus, born of theVirgin Mary, and the Christ, the highest initiate ofthe Sun Period, he might well pause to consider thehigh esteem he justly confers not only on the ElderBrothers, but also on Max Heindel, an initiate of atleast three of the nine Lesser Mysteries. For ifJesus surpasses Christian Rosenkreuz in EarthPeriod achievement (2 Q&A pp. 315, 319), thensurely Mary participated in this achievement.Moreover, Christ conferred on her the singular roleof being mother to an archangel, of sharing in themind and embodied life of the world’s Redeemerand in the Father’s vision for a regenerate humanitythrough the power of a superhuman sacrifice.
The emancipated intellectual may reply thatMary had little to do with Jesus when, during the“dark years” between age twelve and thirty, heabsorbed the Mystery teachings of Egypt, AsiaMinor, and India. But clearly this advanced soulwas with her son in spirit during his journeys, as anElder Brother is with his pupils or fraternal associ-ates in an instant, and closer than hands and feet.
Christ said that for a man to follow Him, he mustleave father and mother. Mary did that. No doubtChrist’s injunction should be expanded to includethose possessive parents who do not release theirchildren. In this instance, her son was also herSavior, her Elder Brother. So she followed him inbody and in spirit. As Anne Catherine Emmerichdiscloses from her visionary experiences, Mary,with a group of women, was often in advance ofher adopted son from heaven, preparing for Hismaterial needs as he journeyed throughoutPalestine, introducing people to the Kingdom ofHeaven.
Jesus was born of Mary’s heart, a heart brim-ming with God’s grace and love, a heart underwhich he was carried and by whose blood he wasbaptized as the foremost representative of the mys-tic or heart path of initiation.
How could Mary, in her dual motherhood role,not have been blessed and wounded by the Wordof God? There is a term for this experience—trans-verberation, represented, for instance, in Bernini’ssculpture of an angel directing an arrow at theheart of an ecstatic St. Theresa of Avila. Thoughtechnically not applied in this context, many artistshave intuited transverberation at the Annunciationas the process of conception by depicting a ray oflight from the Father mediated by the Holy Spiritin the form a dove penetrating the mind or breastof the Virgin. Such was Anne CatherineEmmerich’s vision. St John of the Cross wrote ofhis experience: “It will happen that while the soulis inflamed with the love of God it will feel that a
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The transverberation of stigmatist and visionary St. VeronicaGiuliani (d. 1727) resulted in the imprint of symbols of Christ’sPassion within her heart as revealed by postmortem autopsy.Transverberation is the spiritual wounding of the heart.
Tan Publishers
seraphim is assailing it by means of an arrow ordart which is all afire with love....the soul is tran-spierced by that dart.”
At the presentation of the infant Jesus in theTemple, Simeon prophesied of Mary, “Yea, asword shall pierce through thine soul, also, that thehearts of many may be revealed.” Here is a directstatement that shows the connection between thesuffering of the soft heart (compassion—sufferingwith) and the supersensible knowledge that comesthrough the heart center or the soul. Mary wascalled “Blessed.” She was in two senses. The word“bless” comes from the Anglo Saxon blod, blood,in reference to the sprinkling of blood on the hornsof the altar in the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, asa sacrificial ritual that sanctified and blessed. TheFrench word blessémeans wounded. The adoptionof the image of Eros piercing the heart of thebeloved with the arrow of desire is sacramental-ized to represent a spiritual wounding of the heartby the mystic’s incendiary love for God. Mary istruly the Bride of Christ because Christ is theembodiment of God’s love. And Love was cruci-fied on Golgotha. This love of the Father first con-ceives in Mary as the Word made flesh. It imbuesher with superabundant mercy and self-giving. Itenkindles in her a fire of devotion which inciner-ates all mere motherly possessiveness and exaltsthe objective Mother love of God for all humani-ty’s children, for whom Mary becomes theMother.
For millions who suffer, Mary as mater dolorosais consoler and sympathizer. For expectant andnew mothers she is the Madonna who confers dig-nity and holiness and teaches that each child is achild of God, a son or daughter of the heavenlyFather as well as of a biological father.
For many, Mary is more approachable thanwholly transcendent God. She is closer to home,this temporary home away from our eternal home.She is sought first by those whose fear envisions animplacable Christ of the Last Judgment, or thosewhose sense of guilt evokes a retributive Jehovah,or those who cannot comprehend the ineffablemystery of God’s love and mercy. She is NotreDame, Our Lady, by whom, as Dante writes in theDivine Comedy, the “stern judgment up above isshattered” because she is also Notre Regina, Our
Queen, the archetype of all who are saved, and aspiritual magnet by her very mildness and mercy,for many who would besaved, but know they needto come clean and fear such dire honesty beforeGod might damn or demolish their souls.
Mary’s devotion is so total that many intellectu-als are offended by her apparent docility. Her faithdirects a totally trusting surrender of her mind andperson to God. What the intellectual, for whomskepticism is second nature, can’t know, is thatheart-based faith can read the mind of God and isfortified with a certitude that no logical proof canprovide. It also is steeled by a resolve which thetortures of martyrdom cannot break.
Martin Luther’s protesting of the “abominableidolatry” of medieval Mariology led to ruthlessiconoclasm, especially in the Swiss ReformedChurch, where the church interiors were strippedof all images, including crucifixes, fulfillingZwingli’s words “Christ is the only Mediatorbetween God and us,” which excludes the inter-cessory role of all the Church saints and Mary andall “created mediation” (John Henry Newman’sterm). Yet even Zwingli called Mary “the highestcreature next to her Son” and the “Mother of God,”and Luther taught that Mary was “Ever-Virgin,”Semper Virgo.
But the most Mary-affirming of the Reformationslogans was sola fide, “by faith alone.” In the the-ology of the Reformers, Mary was the model offaith, as given by Paul’s statement “Faith comethby hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Rom.10:17), and the Annunciation is the archetypalinstance of these words. Mary hears and sheaffirms. As Calvin defines the idea, faith is “aknowledge of God’s will toward us, perceivedfrom his Word.” And as far as the conflict over thedistinction between justification by faith or justifi-cation by works, a fully dynamic faith is an ongo-ing, life-affecting, literally earth-moving force whichserves God in tangible and world-saving ways.
In his post-Romantic years Wordsworth describedMary as “our tainted nature’s solitary boast.” Bypopular acclamation she has become Queen ofheaven, crowned by the divine Trinity. Is this spir-itual fact or religious fiction? Many saints andclairvoyants swear to the former. In Faust, Goethe
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introduces Mary as the Grace-full mother of sor-rows sought by penitents to heal their impurities.At the drama’s end Mary is presented in her stateof exaltation as the Mother of God as she isinvoked by Doctor Marianus: “Virgin, Mother,Queen, Goddess, continue to grant grace.” Isthis simply uncommon hyperbole froma usually level-headed scientist?
Those who value Max Heindel’sdiscernment might want toreevaluate the merits and statusof the Virgin Mary by consid-ering how she is portrayed inFaust, which Goethe beganin early adulthood but didnot complete until late inhis life. Heindel quotesGoethe on numerous occa-sions, favoring passagesfrom Faust, and describeshim as both “a great initi-ate” and under Rosicrucianinspiration. The action ofFaustopens in the setting ofHoly Week and ends inParadise with the vision ofMary and the Eternal Feminine.As Hans Ur von Balthasarwrites inPrometheus, A Study inGerman Idealism, Faust (theseeker on the intellectualpath) travels “from Gretchenand Helen through Sophia,which brings with it the bestof our inner life, higher toMary, who alone, as the supreme center of human-ity, lifts the upward look into the miracle of themystery.” And what is this mystery? Consider thefinal words of Faust, characterized by MaxHeindel as “that most mystic of all stanzas foundin all literature”: “All that is perishable/ Is but alikeness./ The unattainable/ Here is accomplished./The indescribable,/ Here it is done./ The EternalFeminine/ Draws us on.” Heindel further explainsthat the Eternal Feminine is “the great CreativeForce in Nature, the Mother God” (Mysteries ofthe Great Operas, pp. 45-46). By popular, patris-
tic, and poetic (Dante, Goethe) consensus, Mary isthe earth’s highest and most perfect manifestationof this Eternal Feminine.
John the Beloved was entrusted with Mary’scare after the Crucifixion. His Gospel also records
details about her relationship with ChristJesus not present in the synoptic
gospels, including her appeal that thewedding guests at Cana have no
more wine. Christ seemingly dis-misses her implied request withthe words “my hour is not yetcome.” His words are like-wise seemingly ignored byMary with the confidentassurance of a mother whoknows her son and at leastintuits his newly acquiredChristic powers. She sim-ply instructs the servants tofollow Jesus’ directions,knowing that he will meetthe occasion’s needs.
Drawing on the memory ofnature, Anne Catherine Emmerich
observed that John and the otherdisciples were in virtual awe of
the Virgin because of her profoundsanctity, her intuitive under-standing of spiritual myster-ies, including the state oftheir own souls, and herunity with the ascendedChrist Jesus and the Father.
In view of the foregoing,we understand that in Mary we must identify ahuman individuality of surpassing spiritual attain-ment, and only pride, prejudice, or obtusenesscould fail to concede her a richly deserved honorand veneration. Many seekers of the good and thetrue have read Thomas à Kempis’Imitation ofChrist. They would also be well served by imitat-ing Mary. As one does not imitate Christ, per se,but Christ in Jesus, so one may imitate Christ inMary, for the Word became flesh in her.
Of the thousands of reported apparitions of theVirgin Mary, the first is the Woman Clothed with
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Our Lady of GraceIn a reprise of Revelation’s Woman Clothed with theSun, the Virgin, standing on a crescent moon (con-trolling the lunar forces) and haloed with a coronaof twelve stars, represents the divine feminine.
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Sun who appeared to the writer and seer of theApocalypse. This is a vision of the macrocosmicVirgo, but it is also of the ascended Virgin, clothedin the light of the solar Christ, having subdued thelunar generative force infiltrated by the Luciferspirits, fulfilling the prophecy in Genesis thatEve’s seed (Mary) “shall bruise” the head of theserpent. According to René Laurentin, a leadingauthority on the history of Marian apparitions,“The [Catholic] Church is very prudent withregard to apparitions, and accordsthem alow status because they are signswhich reach us through our sensesand are subject to the illusions ofsubjectivity.” In consequence, upto 1962 only ten Marian appari-tions had been ecclesiasticallyacknowledged to be worthy ofpious belief, beginning with herappearance to Juan Diego in1531 at Guadalupe and includingLourdes and Fatima.
While the angel Gabriel appearedto Mary to announce the birth of theJesus, Mary subsequently appearedon numerous occasions, with theglory of an angel, she who is called the Queen ofAngels, and her apparitions also had conceptualconsequences—engendering ideas, events, heal-ings, children, and religious conversions. InGuadalupe, Mexico she appeared as a slightly preg-nant mater dolorosa, from whose mantle cascadeda profusion of roses, to a native Indian, thus vindi-cating the indigenous peoples over the Spanishcolonial domination and promoting the female self-image to counter the patriarchal dominance repre-sented by the Spanish conquistadors. Mexican poetOctavio Paz has called Mary “the Mother ofMexico,” and others call her a “Mexican nationalsymbol,” citing her as a decisive factor in “the for-mation of Mexican national consciousness.” Thesensitive Hispanic-American commentator RichardRodriguez says that Mary’s Guadalupe apparition“symbolizes the entire coherence of Mexico, bodyand soul,” and that this apparition “has become theunofficial, the private flag for Mexicans.”
Likewise at Lourdes (1858), appearing in simple
clothes, she could be identified with the poor andhumble and her appearance and impact seen as afulfillment of her proclamation and prophecyrecorded by Luke in what has come to be known asthe Magnificat, beginning with “My soul dothmagnify the Lord” and continuing “he [God] hathscattered the proud in the imagination of theirhearts. He hath put down the mighty from theirseats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath
filled the hungry with good things and the richhe hath sent empty away” (1:51-53).
Mary has been invoked by ThirdWorld liberation theology to serve
as a social as well as a spiritualleaven. At Lourdes she became aunifying symbol to help theFrench people overcome theirclass, regional, and local differ-ences. There she identified her-self to the peasant girl Bernadette
Soubrette not as Mary but as “TheImmaculate Conception,” thus
influencing the Church’s doctrinaldevelopment. This apparition was so
influential in combating Frenchrationalists and atheists that it gave
rise to the saying “Rome is the head of the Churchbut Lourdes is its heart.”
The miraculous powers of the Virgin of Lourdesand the Virgin of Fátima, where Mary appeared atthe nadir of World War I (1917) to hearten andinspire peace, have received certification at thehighest level of authority. When John Paul II wasgravely wounded by gunshot in 1981 in St. Peter’sSquare, he credited his recovery to the BlessedVirgin, who sixty years earlier to the day appearedin Fatima. The Pope confided, “That day...I feltthat extraordinary motherly protection, whichturned out to be stronger than the deadly bullet.”
As a variation on the motto “a picture is worth athousand words,” “it does seem safe to say,” writesJaroslav Pelikan, “that for many millions of peopleno form of Marian devotion or doctrine has carriedmore momentous significance than her miraculousapparitions.”
The most recent Marian dogma, made obligatoryto Roman Catholic belief in 1950, is the doctrine
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The Madonna of the Magnificat
Detail, B
otticelli (1483-1485), Uffizi G
allery, Florence, P
lanet Art
of the Assumption, by which one understands thatMary’s soul and body were raised in glory to thethrone of threefold God as “the first fruits of[human] incorruptibility.” Many religious sectsbelieve in bodily resurrection, including most fun-damentalist denominations and the Mormons.While the Bible implies that both Elijah and Enochwere bodily assumed into heaven, and that manybodies of the saints came out of their graves afterChrist’s Crucifixion (Matt. 27:52), St. Paul assertsthat flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom ofGod. Esoteric science describes a third view.Rather than material of the dense physical bodybeing raised, the archetype for Virgin’s chemicalether body was not only taken into the higherworlds with her Ego, but facsimiles of this chemi-cal ether body of unparalleled purity and integrityhave been generated in the eighth or atomic stra-tum of the earth and are available to incarnatingEgos whose own evolution merits use of thissuperlative form. Regarding other bodily assump-tions, we understand that the vital bodies of theprophets and saints were seen and that the ele-ments of their physical bodies were returned totheir original unstructured state.
In his typically dense, verbally tense and crypticstyle the Jesuit priest and poet Gerard Manly Hopkinssuggests in the poem entitled “The Blessed VirginCompared to the Air We Breathe” why Mary hasfigured so prominently in post-Golgotha cultureand consciousness:
New Nazareths in us,Where she shall yet conceiveHim, morning, noon, and eve,New Bethlems, and he born There, evening, noon, and morn—Bethlem or Nazareth,Men here may draw like breathMore Christ and baffle death;Who, born so, comes to beNew self and nobler meIn each one and each oneMore makes, when all is done,Both God’s and Mary’s Son.
An esoteric truth about each of us is given byone of the Virgin Mary’s designations, Theotokos,
or Mother of God. There shall be, we intuit theremustbe, new Nazareths wherein the divine con-ception shall take place, quietly, amazingly. AndBethlehems shall surely follow, and Christ shall bedrawn in like breath, like life, as life, life that isbeyond breath, beyond death. Born will be the newSelf of us each, our nobler me. We visit Mary andrevere her because she shows us how Christ maybe born in us. She inspires us to so live that thewomb of our soul may be made fruitful for thesowing of the solar Word, that in our hearts maydawn the true Light of this world—and the next.
Origen, regarded as “the Father of EasternTheology,” wrote in the third century, “Everyincorrupt and virgin soul, having conceived theHoly Spirit in order to give birth to the will of the
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Associated with this image of the Virgin proffering a rosary,scapular (bearing the initials J-esus and M-ary), and sacredheart are the words: “My Immaculate Heart will be yourRefuge and the way that will lead you to God.”
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Father, is a Mother of Jesus.”Mary’s perfect humility was a key to her divine
preferment. The low shall be exalted. It is so today.But that humility is undergird and sustained by anessence of self-less power which is confirmed inMary’s apotheosis, her coronation in heaven.While the mighty are put down from their highworldly seats, those of low degree are elevatedbecause the will of God has been fledged in themthrough firm obedience, informative suffering, andrefining piety. As St. Augustine noted, “Allstrength is in humility, because all pride is fragile.The humble are like a rock: the rock seems to liedownward, but nevertheless it is firm.”
Mary is for all people. Her virtues are catholic(universal), transracial, archetypal. She was a Jewby birth. She was almost certainly named after thesister of Moses and Aaron, Miriam. She is reveredby Muslims and is described in the Qur’an as theVirgin Mother, although the strictly monotheisticIslam objected to the term Theotokos: “It does notbehoove God to have a son. Too immaculate is
he.” She has been called “multicultural Mary.” Thecelebrated icon of Mary at Jasna Góra in the Polishcity of Czestochwa is the most revered sacredimage in Central Europe and the object of count-less pilgrimages. And it is a black Madonna (as isthe Virgin of Guadalupe), which brings to mind thecorrect translation of the passage from Song ofSongs spoken by the Bride, who is a precursor ofMary, “Black am I and beautiful” (1:5). In theserepresentations Mary becomes a special ambas-sador to the majority of humanity which is notwhite. That is one of the many reasons why Maryis given the same title as the Pontiff. For she iscalled Pontifex, the bridge builder to other tradi-tions, cultures, and religions. She is not only theguarantee of the true humanity of the Son of God,she is proof of the inherent divinity of humanity;she, the mother of pure souls who, through purity,obedience, humility, and valor, are fertilized by theHoly Spirit and destined to give birth to the Christwithin. r
—C.W.
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This CD is useful for readers who want all of the original English texts of the RosicrucianFellowship’s esoteric Christian teachings. It is helpful also for those who read the translations of MaxHeindel’s works and desire the original English texts for comparative reference.
Invaluable in preparing lectures and conducting topical research. Contains the Complete Index ofBookswhich alphabetically catalogues hundreds of subjects by book and page number.
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THE PHRASE “Christian America,” isa description under the judgment ofan aspiration.† If we ask what is thequintessentially American aspiration, anumber of candidates come to mind:
freedom, equality, opportunity, justice. But most,if not all, of the possible answers to that questionare summed up in the word “democracy.” Herefollows as two part reflection on ten proposalsabout what makes democracy both possible andnecessary. The proposals are closely connected toJudeo-Christian presuppositions....
A new century and a new millennium is a timeto think anew, and some think the problem withdemocracy is that it is old hat. Lecturing a whileback at a major state university in the midwest, Iwas challenged by a political science student. “Yousay so much about openness to the future, yetaren’t you captive to a democratic theory and prac-tice of the past?”.... [I]n response to the questionposed, I believe the idea of democracy is as auda-ciously new today as when it was first proposed. Ifit does not have to be reinvented, it certainly has tobe rethought, by every generation. Today there is aparticular urgency about rethinking democracy inrelation to its moral and religious grounding....
There are ten propositions about democracy thatcommand our attention (they could, of course, bedivided or combined into more or less than ten).The first proposition is this: The sovereignty of the
democratic state is answerable to a higher sover-eignty. Critics of democratic theory and practice,including Christian critics, frequently claim thatthe chief problem with democracy is that itacknowledges no sovereignty higher than the sov-ereignty of the people. The democratic state,claiming to represent the vox populi, presents itselfas the vox Dei, thus turning the democratic stateinto an “idol.” In response, we must recognize that
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Proposing DemocracyAnewPart 1
RELIGION AND THE PUBLIC REALM
† The text for this two-part study is drawn from John RichardNeuhaus’three-part article of the same title which appearedin the last three 1999 issues of First Things, a monthly jour-nal published by the Institute on Religion and Public Life.
Engraving, 1698, private collection
In its founding documents the United States articulated ahierarchy of values that descended from “Nature’s God”,which ultimate Authority subsumed and conditioned the indi-vidual’s lesser allegiances. In formative days political activ-ity was ordered to religious persuasion. Above, the Quakers,founded in England by George Fox, meet to consider business—religious and civil. William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania,sits at the leader’s right. Fox taught that God is within andtrue worship is in silence, until the spirit leads someone tospeak. The Quakers eventually became the Society of Friends.
E. T. A
rchive
the democratic state, and democracy itself, canindeed become an idol. When that happens, it is aprofound distortion of democracy.
To be sure, in democracy political sovereignty isvested in the people. But a free people is free toacknowledge and hold itself accountable to a sov-ereignty higher than itself. In this respect also,1776 is very different from 1789. In the Jacobin[French] version of democracy, the state isassumed to embody what Rousseau called theGeneral Will, beyond which there is no high-er court of appeal. In the Americanfounding, by way of dramatic con-trast, it is recognized that societyis prior to, and superior to, thestate. The Declaration ofIndependence speaks of“Nature and Nature’s God,”from whom all rights arederived and to whom thepeople constitute themselvesas accountable. Although it isof much later provenance, thePledge of Allegiance in the U.S.speaks of “one nation underGod.” That means, first ofall, “under judgment”—thenation is answerableto ajudgment higher than that ofthe state, higher than posi-tive law, and higher eventhan the will of the people.The paradox, of course, isthat only the will of the people can maintain theeffective awareness of being under the judgment ofa higher will. (God will attend to the reality of ourbeing under judgment.)
In the actual decision-making of the Americanpolity, this higher sovereignty is asserted oblique-ly rather than directly. That is to say, it dependsupon the people continuing to acknowledge such ahigher sovereignty. The point was made emphati-cally and repeatedly by the founders, includingThomas Jefferson, who some contemporary writ-ers erroneously depict as a premature member ofthe American Civil Liberties Union. John Adamsput it this way: “We have no government armed
with power capable of contending with humanpassions unbridled by morality and religion. Ourconstitution was made only for a moral and reli-gious people. It is wholly inadequate for the gov-ernment of any other.”
The constitutional order is not “a machine thatruns of itself.” It must be sustained by a virtuouscitizenry, and by popular religion that publiclyappeals to a sovereignty that transcends the sover-eignty of the state. These conditions cannot be
guaranteed. That is why democracy isalways a risky enterprise. That is why
the founders called our constitu-tional order an “experiment.” It
is in the nature of experimentsthat they can succeed or theycan fail, and they succeedonly when we keep in mindthe possibility of their fail-ing.
The Religion Clause ofthe First Amendment to our
Constitution contains two pro-visions. One forbids the “estab-
lishment” of a religion, andthe other guarantees the“free exercise” of religion.The “no establishment” pro-vision is in the service of the“free exercise” provision.Free exercise is the end, andno establishment is onemeans in the service of that
end. This understanding of the Religion Clause, asevery student of the subject knows, has not alwaysprevailed in our jurisprudence. Indeed, in recentyears, the courts have frequently acted as though“no establishment” is the end, and in the service ofthat end they have sharply curtailed the free exer-cise of religion, at least in the public sphere. Thishas resulted in the unhappy circumstance that Ihave described as the naked public square.
The naked public square is a thoroughly secular-ized public life from which religion and religious-ly grounded moral judgment have been excluded.At present, this constitutes the most severe crisis inchurch-state relations, and, I think it not too much
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The Great Seal of the United States—Reverse SideThe ordering of a new society under God is clearfrom the Masonic and occult symbolism informingboth sides of the Great Seal. The “great work” ofbuilding a new society proceeds under the inspira-tion and guidance of God, Who (translating the mottoannuit coeptis) “has smiled on our undertakings.”
to say, the most severe crisis in the Americandemocratic experiment itself. In the constitutionalorder rightly understood, the state acknowledges asovereignty higher than itself, and acknowledgesthat that sovereignty is defined by the people. In“Christian America” the institution that bears wit-ness to that higher sovereignty is the church. (Ihere speak of the lower-case “church,” includingall the Christian denominations and the synagogue,as well as—and this may become more importantin the course of the coming century—themosque.) The state recognizes theintegrity of the church, not simplyas a voluntary association ofindividuals, but as a communalbearer of the witness to ahigher sovereignty fromwhich, through the consentof the governed, the legiti-macy of the state itself isderived.
A second proposition isthis: In a democratic society,we live under several and some-times conflicting, sovereign-ties. In a democratic societythere is an ongoing debateover the truths about thehuman person and humancommunity on which democ-racy rests. These include the“self-evident truths” alludedto in the Declaration ofIndependence, truths aboutpersons created equal andendowed by God wi th cer ta in inalienablerights. The rich Christologically-based anthropolo-gy contained in, for instance, the 1991 encyclicalCentesimus Annuscan make an invaluable contri-bution in fleshing out and giving a more securefoundation to the constituting truths of the democ-ratic order. That anthropology is not just for the“domestic consumption” of Christians. As with allChristian truth, it is genuinely public in character,and we must work at communicating it in ways notconfined to the sphere marked “religion.” In thecentury ahead, that is an imperative task for those
who have confidently internalized the teaching ofthe Church. Abraham Kuyper, an early-twentieth-century Dutch Calvinist theologian and politician,wrote insightfully about “spheres of sovereignty.”Closely connected to certain understandings ofnatural law, the concept of spheres of sovereigntyderives from an awareness that there is inherent inthe nature of human beings and societies certainfunctions that have their own integrity, and thatintegrity—or sovereignty—must be respected.
Thus, for example, family, economic life,politics, and of course the life of faith
have their own “spheres,” and thecourse of justice is to coordinate
these spheres in the service ofthe common good....
A third proposition: Theproblems of democracy areinherent in democracy. Inthe “new democracies” ofpost-Communist Europe,
many express discourage-ment and disillusionment
that, after a decade and more,they are still wrestling withthe problems of democracy.In America, we arewrestling with those prob-lems after more than twocenturies of our constitu-tional order. The difficultrelationship between moraltruth and democratic politicsis built into democracy. Thedifficulties are not necessar-
ily the result of ill-will on the part of any parties orinstitutions. The modem democratic state, like allmodern states, has an insatiable appetite to encom-pass the whole of social reality, including religion.What we might call the totalitarian impulse did notdie with Nazism or communism. The state, oftendriven by good intentions, is always tempted toturn itself, in effect, into a church, with the resultthat it views the claims of religion as an intolerablelimit upon its effectiveness. This may be particu-larly the case in America.
Many observers have noted that America is a
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The Great Seal of the United States—Obverse SideThe recurrence of the mystical number thirteen onboth sides of the Great Seal—olive leaves and fruits,arrows, levels of the pyramid (excluding the basepanel showing the date)—may refer to the occultinfluence of thirteen initiates (as in the RosicrucianOrder), as particularly suggested by the thirteenstars in the same place as the “God’s Eye” on theSeal’s reverse side. Both mottos consist of 13 letters.
Seals from
Hunt’s
History of the S
eal of the United S
tates, Washington, 1909
profoundly “moralistic” nation. As we have fre-quently had occasion to note, the incidence of reli-gious belief and action in the United States is muchhigher than in other developed democratic soci-eties. There is always the danger that this moralis-tic and religious dynamic can be captured by a“civil religion” that is in service to the state.Against that danger, religious communities mustcultivate their own life in a way that is relentlesslyindependent of both a generalized “civil religion”and the ambitions of the state.
A fourth proposition is this: Democracy is andalways will be unsatisfactory. Winston Churchill isoften quoted as saying that “democracy is theworst system of govern-ment known to man, exceptfor all the others that havebeen tried.” That is noteverything that can be saidfor democracy, but it is anot unimportant thing to besaid. For the Christian, andindeed for every humanbeing who aspires to live in the truth, the only sat-isfactory order is the Kingdom of God promised inthe eschatological consummation of history. Allour politics, including democratic politics, is, atmost, penultimate. The state functions in thesphere of the penultimate. The church points toand anticipates the ultimate, the Kingdom of God.Christians live in both spheres and therefore are, inthe words of the second century Letter toDiognetus, “resident aliens” in any earthly city.
Although all are unsatisfactory, all orderings ofthe earthly city are not equal. Democracy is a rela-tive good, but it is superior to other orders because:1) it is the form of government that, under the con-ditions of modernity, best accommodates theChristian understanding of human dignity; 2) itbest fosters and protects the exercise of basichuman rights; 3) it provides an enlarged sphere forthe exercise of personal responsibility and the pur-suit of the common good; 4) in its economicdimension, it best accords with human creativityand approximate justice; and, most important, 5) itis institutionally open to the future, including theultimate future that is the Kingdom of God. On the
last point, there is a great advantage in a politicalsystem that is transparently conducted by, and heldaccountable to, distinctly ungodlike human beingswho freely avail themselves of their freedom to airtheir discontents with the system. This is a valu-able prophylactic against the temptation to deifydemocracy or mistake it for the Kingdom of God.
The fifth proposition: Democracy is more thandemocratic institutions. Institutions—such as elec-tions, representative legislatures, a disinterestedjudiciary, and a free press—are necessary but notsufficient conditions of democracy. Recall againAristotle’s understanding of politics as free personsdeliberating the question, How ought we to order
our life together? ForAristotle, politics andethics are not separate sub-jects. The word “ought” inthe definition indicates thatpolitics is necessarily amoral enterprise. Moralityis not an intrusion upondemocratic politics, it is the
very heart of democratic politics. The controllingterms of politics—e.g., justice, equal respect, fair-ness, the common good—are all moral terms.
For the people to freely deliberate the orderingof their lives together, there must be different com-munities of deliberation, some determinedly inde-pendent from the political order itself. Chiefamong the latter is the church. This is why Alexisde Tocqueville said that, in American democracy,religion is “the first political institution.” It is inthe communities of religion that people learn thehabits and arts of life together. Even those who donot go to church draw their moral categories andsensibilities, whether they know it or not, fromreligion. It is the church that bears, transmits, andpublicly disseminates what might be called “thecommanding moral truths” by which public delib-eration is conducted. As Centesimus Annusinsists,this does not mean that the Christian message is anideology, nor that the church becomes one politicalplayer among others. The church’s part is to pro-vide the independent space that is the moralambiance within which the commanding truthsare nurtured and transmitted, and from which its
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Politics is in largest partthe function of culture, and
at the heart of culture ismorality, and at the heart of
morality is religion.
members can give those truths effective publicexpression. Sometimes this requires the uncom-promising assertion of moral truths which the stateviolates at the peril of calling into question its ownlegitimacy. (On the last score, questions such asabortion and euthanasia are urgently pertinent.)
The sixth proposition: Democracy is more thanmajority rule. Of course democracy is majorityrule, through representative means and within con-stitutional limits. In the United States it is com-monly said, that the purpose of the Constitution isto prevent the majority from violating the rights ofthe minority, and there is truth in that. The priortruth is that the Constitution is to facilitate the ruleof the majority, which is an indispensable part ofdemocracy. These two truths are not in conflict.The rights protected by, for instance, the first tenamendments to the Constitution, which we call theBill of Rights, belong to both the majority and theminority. If the majority does not support suchrights, they become, in the fine phrase of JamesMadison, no more than “parchment barriers”against tyranny. In American political discourse,we have fallen into the sloppy habit of pitting theConstitution against the will of a majority of thepeople. It is also a dangerous habit, since it under-mines the support of the majority for the constitu-tional order. Majority rule does not mean thateverything is up for a vote. Things that are not upfor a vote include freedom of religion, freedom ofspeech, freedom of association, and other basiccivil rights that make democratic politics possibleand morally worthy. On the other hand, it is possi-ble that a people could democratically vote torepeal the protection of basic rights. At that point ademocracy would cease to be a democracy.
The possibility of democracy’s democratic self-destruction reminds us again that democracyrequires more than the institutions of democracy.One might argue that Weimar Germany possessedelegantly constructed democratic institutions.What it lacked was a public moral culture that heldpolitics accountable to the higher standards, andultimately to the higher sovereignty, without whichfreedom cannot be sustained. I would suggest thisas a maxim: Politics is in largest part the functionof culture, and at the heart of culture is morality,
and at the heart of morality is religion. When thismaxim is forgotten, democracy understood asmajority rule results in the death of democracy.
The seventh proposition: Democracy presuppos-es that the legitimacy of positive law depends uponits compatibility with moral law. This is an argu-ment set forth with great persuasive force in the1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel ofLife). In contemporary democracies, very muchincluding the U.S., it is commonly said that“morality cannot be legislated.” In fact, the oppo-site is the case. Morality is the only thing that canbe legislated. All political questions of importanceare moral questions. We prohibit murder, theft,defamation of character, and false advertising; weregulate employment practices and other mattersin the interest of the common good. Whatevervocabulary is used in explaining such measures,we undertake them because they are deemed to beright and in order to prevent what we deem to bewrong. “Right” and “wrong” are inescapablymoral categories. The question is not whether buthow we legislate morality. In this representativedemocracy, we legislate morality democratically.At least that is the way it is supposed to work. r
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Wise Words by Early Americans
• A good conscience is a continual Christmas.• In humility imitate Jesus and Socrates.• None preaches better than the ant, and she
says nothing. —Benjamin Franklin
• The most liberal professions of good-will arevery far from being the surest marks of it.
—George Washington
• The liberty of conscience which man claims isnot for the service of himself, but of his God.
—Thomas Paine
• We hold these truths to be self-evident: thatall men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certaininalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
—Thomas Jefferson
NO ONE HAS HAD A GREATERinfluence on America than JeanCauvin, or as we know him, JohnCalvin. But for him, there might nothave been an energetic Puritanism,
one of the two basic pillars, along with theEnlightenment, of America’s intellectual develop-ment. When the U.S. Constitution was written, two-thirds to three-fourths of Americans wereCalvinists. Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,”was strongly influenced by one of its spokesmen,Rev. John Witherspoon. Little wonder the author ofthis biography (John Calvin, William Morris,Schocken Books, New York, 1969, 456 pages)states that “the spiritual indebtedness...of NorthAmerica to the educative influence of Calvin’s the-ology is well-nigh measureless” (p. 428).
He was born in Noyon, France, July 10, 1509. Toplease his father, he studied law; on his death, heswitched to the humanities. In 1533, through theinfluence of Gerard Roussel, he became aProtestant. That same year, suspected of havingwritten a speech for the rector of Paris University,he had to flee the city and for several years had noset abode.
It was during this time he penned his master-piece, The Institutes of the Christian Religion,acclaimed by friend and foe alike. In 1536 his trav-els brought him to Geneva, where Guillaume Farelasked him to stay and help make it Protestant. Butafter two years, a hostile faction gained control andthe two had to flee. Farel moved to Bassel, andCalvin to Strassburg, then a German city, where heministered to French Protestants. Here he marriedIdelette de Buren. Their only child died shortly afterbirth, its mother eight years later, when they had
moved to Geneva at the citizens’pleading.Now he had little opposition, and set out to make
Geneva a Christian city, legally at least. Extremelydisciplined himself—he labored prodigiouslydespite dyspepsia, gout, neurasthenia, kidneystones, etc.—he strongly enforced discipline. Therewere services seven days a week and practically allday Sunday: dissenters were punished. No doubtthe most famous case was that of Michael Servetus,who differed from Calvin on doctrine, and onOctober 27, 1553 the dissenter was sent to thestake, though Calvin had requested a more humanepunishment.
Sentencing dissenters to death was nothingunusual in those days. Nor was early senility. WhileCalvin’s mind was as clear and sharp as ever to thevery end, pain more and more wracked his body.His life was a shining testimony of the triumph ofthe will. On May 27, 1564 came the release he hadso earnestly longed for. He had produced about 300sermons and 200 lectures a year, and found time tostart Geneva Academy (later University). It attract-ed students from the entire Protestant world, crowd-ing the city. Since it was unsafe to reside outside itswalls, the students had to be put up in town, so theingenious burghers added extra stories to theirhouses, producing the archetype for something lateridentified as American—the skyscraper.
Surely a major contribution of Calvin was thefounding of the first church organization in theWest separate from state control or support, anecclesiastical imperium in imperio. Thus Calvinismwas “the most potent force...in the development ofcivil liberty” (p. 403). Albeit Calvin did not delib-erately set out to achieve this; it was an unantici-pated and indirect result of his labors. Surely, in
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John Calvin and the Founding of AmericaJohn Wesley and Methodism
BOOK REVIEWS
light of this, the fact that the colonial preacherswere the prime movers behind the AmericanRevolution takes on added significance.
Private capitalism and the Protestant work ethicalso find their roots in Calvinism’s emphasis on dis-cipline, duty, and the sovereignty of a holy andrighteous God.
Unless 18th century America had deeply imbibedthe concepts of Calvin, the most influential of allthe Protestant reformers, the American Revolutionmight not have triumphed. Anyone doubting thisassertion might look at France, whose own 18thcentury revolution on behalf of liberty miscarried,having rejected the spiritual ideals set forth by itsnative son. The Aquarian vision of America’sfounders needed the spiritual soil produced byCalvin’s huge influence.
P.S.: An American president, John CalvinCoolidge, was named after him. Because ofCoolidge’s life style, one biographer has called himthe last Puritan; another, Puritan in Babylon. Itwould be hard to disagree with them. ❐
JOHN WESLEY AND METHODISMDriven by an intense purpose, John Wesley (John
Wesley, Francis J. McConnell, The Abingdon Press,1939, 355 pages), “one of the noblest of mystics,”is best known for what he did not set out to achieve,the founding of a new Christian sect—Methodism.
Born June 17, 1703, in the Anglican rectory ofEpworth, England, Wesley was the 19th child of theRev. Samuel and Susanna Wesley. Nine of theWesley children died in infancy. He too almost per-ished at six. His timely rescue was later taken byhim as proof that God had a destiny for him, whichbegan to unfold when he enrolled at Oxford, wherehe joined the Holy Club, a group devoted to deep-ening the spiritual life. Because of their ordered lifestyle, they were derisively called Methodists.
But some held these earnest men in high regard,including the Rev. Dr. John Burton, a trustee of thefledgling Georgia colony who invited Wesley andtwo others to minister to the spiritual needs of thecolony. In 1735 they set out for Georgia, where,despite best intentions, they just didn’t fit in. Byearly 1738 Wesley was back in England.
But this venture was not entirely for naught. On
the ship he encountered some Moravians, devoutmystics. Wesley admired their calm in stormy seasand their assurance concerning spiritual reality,which deepened his own spiritual quest. This cli-maxed on May 24, 1738, when, during a service atAldersgate Chapel, his heart was “strangely warmed.”Thus began one of the greatest preaching missionsof all time. In his remaining 53 years, he traveledover 200,000 miles and preach 40,000 sermons.
He strongly attracted the lower classes, neglectedby the Church of England. He also drew much hos-tility , yet had no body guards. His courage seemedto be his best defense. But there was one area of hislife where nothing seemed to prevail—his marriageto a Huguenot widow, which occurred in 1750. Shecouldn’t keep up with him; there were numerousseparations. She died in 1782. Wesley called therelationship a 30-year war.
In addition to his preaching, which has been cred-ited with saving England from the fires of theFrench Revolution, he wrote a history of Englandand edited a 50-volume Christian library and wroteon political, practical, theological, poetical and evenhealth topics. He avoided alcohol and was for sometime a vegetarian. He studied Greek and Hebrewand was able to function in Latin, Spanish, andFrench. He considered his followers merely a groupwithin the Church of England, but differences ofopinion inevitably led to a split. There were 75,000“professed Methodists” at the time of his passing.
The student of Astrology cannot help but noticehow strongly “Gemini” Wesley was, with his giftfor languages, his wide interests, his extensive writ-ings. He seemingly had to always have somethingin his hand.
He had no vices; his “weaknesses” were virtuescarried too far. His dynamism was domineering—he had to be in control. He didn’t get along too wellwith others, including his brother Charles, who alsohad a ministry. John was utterly unyielding—exceptin one matter: In his late eighties he realized hisdays on earth were numbered. He survived severalbouts of fever. But on March 17, 1791, just a weekafter his final sermon, and forced to stay in bed, herequested pen and ink, wrote the words “The best ofall is, God is with us,” and breathed his last.r
—A Probationer
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THERE IS WITHIN MAN a power, alight, a fire, a cosmic link betweenhimself and his Creator which, whenallowed, will heal any manner of dis-ease with which he may be afflicted—
even a so-called incurable disease. The light is sopowerful, so divinely radiant, so pure and perfectthat disease melts before its penetrating rays.
This incomparable cosmic fire is within eachman. There are no exceptions. It is the Christ with-in, our part of the Love-Wisdom Principle. It isthat part of us that is so pure it knows nothing lessperfect than itself. It is our protection, our guid-ance, our abundance, our health—our all. It is oursonship with the Creator—God.
I still had this lesson to learn when a doctor toldme I had but a short time to live—that I had cancerof the stomach and bowels. The few remainingmonths, at most, of my life would be painful mis-ery. I knew he would say it was hopeless. Othershad said the same. The symptoms were unmistak-able. I looked at him for a long time—blankly. Inreply he handed me a book, The RosicrucianCosmo-Conception, by Max Heindel.
When I arrived home, I glanced through itspages, but I was too sick of mind and body to readit understandingly. But, grasping it in my hand, Idefied the doctor’s verdict. I decided to get well.How I was going about this seemingly insur-mountable task I did not at the moment know.Defiantly I held the book, as if it were the savingrock to which I was obliged to cling. I tried to readit but my mind as well as my body was weak andinconstant.
Cosmo—I wondered what that meant. I looked
in the dictionary and found cosmos, the same rootword: the universe as a manifestation of law andorder—opposite of chaos. That was exactly what Iwanted. I wanted my body and mind to act in har-mony. I had had enough of chaos.
It seemed as if my different organs were func-tioning as distinct individuals with no considera-tion as to their relationship to the body as a whole.And each atom of each organ was flying at a dif-ferent rate of speed, indifferent to organic harmony.Everything was out of tune.
But I had decided to get well. Instinctively Iknew I would have to do everything I possiblycould to cooperate with the bringing forth of thishealth which I so longingly coveted.
I had been in constant pain for five years. If Idrank water or refrained from drinking water, Iwas in pain. If I ate food or did not eat food, thepain continued unceasingly. I often wondered howit would seem to be relieved of this gnawing, burn-ing agony. I tried to imagine myself free from it.In my strong moments when a passionate willseemed to have taken hold of me, I decided that inorder to get wall, I must, as it were, take myselfveritably in the palm of my hand—rule everythought, word, and act with a will of temperedsteel.
I wanted passionately to be like that cosmos—everything in my body working smoothly, evenly,easily. I always felt cold, chilly, lifeless. As I livedwhere sunshine abounded, I decided to soak myselfin it. I found it helped me relax; even a strong ten-sion always gave way under its influence. At first Ihad only five minutes of exposure to the sun withmy head shaded. This was increased to a half hour.
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Cosmic Illumination
NUTRITION AND HEALTH
I had been on a milk diet but decided to become avegetarian. I ate fruits and vegetables and wholegrain cereals. When I found with what ease rice isdigested, I ate it with pleasure, knowing I was tax-ing my digestion apparatus but lightly.
For breakfast I had whole wheat wafers andraisins, or whole wheat cereal and prunes. Forlunch, a baked potato and a small portion of carrotsand summer squash. Instead of baked potato, Isometimes would have rice boiled in a double boil-er, with perhaps spinach and string beans. It was asimple matter to vary the vegetables from day today. For dinner, I had a plate of fruit. Perhaps apeach and a bunch of luscious purple grapes, or a
red apple and three walnuts.It is not my desire to lay down rules of diet. I am
simply reciting what I did in a successful effort tocure a so-called incurable disease. Each individ-ual, of course, has to work out his own programaccording to his particular temperament and con-dition. I asked repeatedly for divine guidance, notonly in the matter of food, but in all that I did. Godis ever ready to give us wisdom in proportion toour giving up the self.
I read The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conceptionintensively. I would take a statement whichappealed to me and abide with it for a week. Thenanother for the next week, or perhaps just a word:God, or perfection. I used it as a pattern or mould andpoured my thought, my life, and my love into it.
Five minutes out of each hour I was up; I sat ina comfortable position and consciously quieted mymind with Peace...peace...peace...be still, or a sim-ilar formula.
Sometimes I was too ill to get out of bed, and myfood and sun and thought regime was suspendeduntil I was able to get up again. I pledged myselfto God, and, regardless of the appearances, I clungto Him frantically. I knew His was the only path bywhich I could escape death. With fear and trem-
bling I pursued my plan. At times my will wasweak and it seemed futile to try to stand against thefoe—disease. Then, with an onrush of power, myfaith would return and I knew I would fight a goodfight.
For three years I wrestled, thinking health,believing in health, but bound the while by dis-eased flesh. I continued to read the Cosmo-Conception, and attended lectures on the occult. Isaw to it that all my reading material was of aninspirational nature.
As I became stronger, I walked. Only a block atfirst, then two or three, until finally I could walk amile without discomfort. But in the five years, plus
these three years of my self-imposed regime, I wasnever free from pain. It possessed and harassed me.
In the last three years I had gained more than Irealized. I was stronger both in body and mind.Fear did not besiege me with such possessivenessas formerly.
One day I was seized with an indefinable weak-ness. I went to bed, scarcely able to move. My hus-band called a trained nurse, one of my friends, toattend me. He insisted that I have a doctor, but Iassured him I was only exhausted and wanted torest. He did not press the point further. The nursewas an occult student and intuitively she knewwhat was taking place. She did not urge getting adoctor.
I slipped into a strange state where I could notopen my mouth. I could not talk or eat. Neithercould I open my eyes. Occasionally the nursepoured a teaspoonful of warm milk into my mouth.Then things started to happen. The three years’apprenticeship to God had set up a new vibration.The old was dying that the new might be born andthrive.
I moved out of my bed and traveled about, look-ing back amusedly at my physical temple, whichappeared to be in utter darkness. When I returned
RAYS 00 55
When I returned to my body, I felt a glow, a wonderful illu-minating warmth which was beyond human ecstacy. Icould feel only waves of light, for all my being was whirlingin a sea of light as big and great as the whole universe.
to my body, I felt a glow, a wonderful illuminatingwarmth which was beyond human ecstacy. All mysenses functioned as higher senses: the saliva ransweet as honey in my mouth; my eyes saw noforms, no objects, only a brilliant, gorgeous whitelight; my ears were attuned to music more perfectthan earthly symphonies. I could smell adelicate perfume—a perfume sweeterthan any mundane essence, howev-er costly. And I could touch....Icould feel only waves of light,for all my being was whirlingin a sea of light as big andgreat as the whole universe.
I lay in spiritual ecstasy.A voice, an unseen Voice,a voice as of a surgeon,said to me, “Lie very stillthis morning, my child.There is much work to beaccomplished in therepairing of your stomachand bowels. The cancermust be routed out. Youare now being made anew.Have patience.”
Obediently I lay very still,I closed my eyes, It seemedfor hours the etheric knife wasbusy with its work upon me. Agreat shaft of light pierced myabdomen, interpenetrating my stom-ach and bowels. Knives, also of light,were busily at work, backing away, breakingaway, tearing away the diseased tissue, makingway for reparation, regeneration, revivification ofmy whole being.
My back, which had been torn by pain, waspierced by rays of light. I saw them with my innerconsciousness, my eyes being closed the while.This continued for a week while I lay physicallyquiet. No disease could endure the radiance inwhich I was immersed. I knew I was healed. I couldsee my organs. Each individual organ in my bodywas outlined and illuminated like a neon sign. Icould see the circulation of blood in my body.
I lay in bed on Easter morning. In the stillness of
my room, I glimpsed the significance of theResurrection. I realized the role that theResurrection had played in my individual experi-ence. I reminisced the multitudes of times I had inthe past eight years read, reviewed, and meditatedupon the Resurrection. I was grateful that I had
learned to let the light of God flowthrough me. I was thankful, too, that
on this Easter day I had caughtthe true import of Easter:
Resurrection. My husband brought to my
room an Easter lily-perfect,waxen, pure white. A friendsent me a Japanese lily, abrownish orange withdarker spots.
Easter afternoon I gotup and dressed andwalked from room toroom. My home wasbeautiful, more gloriousthan ever. I looked out ofall the windows from thedifferent rooms to view
the flower garden. Thelawn of Coos Bay bent-
grass which had been plantedduring my stay in bed was
coming up to light with sproutsof healthy green. Everywhere I
looked new growth and flowers werebursting forth to show their joy of exis-
tence. Even the garden had caught the con-sciousness of the Resurrection.
I saw the oneness of the universe. I caught thejoy of the cosmic consciousness flowing blithelythrough everything. I saw God shining through.When my friend, the nurse, left she said, “Dear,you will never know what this month has meant tome.” Our hands met. She understood.
Now I could travel through walls, enter sickbodies and make them well. When I looked at aperson, I could see his organs as if my conscious-ness were an X-ray, and if there was a faulty placeit was dark, shadowy, and murky.
When one of my neighbors came in to see me,
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Thor &
Gyger
she said her husband was in bed with a serious caseof pneumonia. His mother was sitting with him.Out from my consciousness darted a streak oflight. It penetrated the chest of the sick man.
The next morning my neighbor came again tosay with surprise,” My husband is up, working inthe garden this morning. Isn’t it amazing?” I wasnot surprised.
A card came stating that my mother had been hitby an automobile. That she was bruised and jarredquite badly was the extent of the account. As I readthis card, out darted with terrific speed light with-out limit from my consciousness. It pierced theconsciousness of my mother and warmed, soothed,and healed her. The next day she came to see me.Her body was black and blue, but she told me thatsuddenly it seemed as if a cloud had lifted from herand the shock, the pain, and soreness had left.
I learned that the light is the healer, the emanci-pator, the liberator. I realized that anything opposedto light is to be eschewed. A universal concept of
things possessed me. My mind had expanded andbounds and boundaries had given away.
I was sitting in the sunroom, a voice clear andbell-like said to me, “You have stood the test. Youhave learned to rely on God. You have graduatedfrom former ignorance and darkness. You realizethe One Power in the Universe—God only.
“You are now initiated into the Order of Lightwhich has no mysteries, no secrets, no seclusionsfrom public view. There is no limitation as tomembership. As many may belong as will standthe test—rely upon God only.
“You are on a firm foundation of knowing God.It is now your work to show others the path oflight, the path of harmony, the pathway of free-dom. Will you do this?”
“I will,” I answered.No more pain; no more sickness. Vibrant health
manifests where disease had dwelt. Former thinghad passed away; all things had been made new. r
—Edna Tradewell
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Some of the most valuable truths about theorigin, functions and proper care of man’s
vehicles to be found on the printed page.
Max Heindel, a trained clairvoyant, dili-gently investigated the real causes of
physical and mental disorders in the super-physical worlds.
Reveals that man is a complex being, pos-sessing a Dense Body, used to fetch and
carry; a Vital Body, specializing energy fromthe Sun; a Desire Body, the emotional nature;and a Mind, the link between the threefoldSpirit and threefold Body.
Postulates that disease is a manifestation ofignorance, and points the way to perma-
nent health by giving fundamental facts nec-essary for intelligent, constructive living.
“A treasure chest of valuableinformation.”
“An indispensable addition to thelibraries of all those who are concernedwith the true art of healing.”
New Eighth Edition. 244 pages. Indexed.Paper. Published by The RosicrucianFellowship.
Occult Principles of Health and Healingby Max Heindel
Please orderon page 64
THE VITAL LIFE FORCE, or nerveenergy, is as yet little understood bymaterial science, for man has not yetreached the stage of developmentwhere he is ready to control and work
with this mysterious essence. We do know, howev-er, that this energy is vitalizing and healing ineffect, and a person is healthy in proportion as hedisplays an abundance of it.
Since it is electrical in nature, people have beenled to attach batteries and magnets to themselves,wear galvanic belts, and take electric shocks in thehope of building up their supply of this force.However, the vital energy is of a much higherfrequency than the electricity of which we com-monly know. Therefore these methods are uselessin generating a reserve of this force.
To generate this healing power to excess in thebody so that it may be used to help others, onemust live the higher life. By that is meant a diet ofthe more etherized foods, such as fresh fruits andvegetables exclusively, deep breathing of fresh air,and clean, spiritualized thinking. Like all electricalenergy, this solar force is dual in nature, and it uti-lizes that physical portion of the body known asthe sympathetic nervous system.
The healing force originates from the visiblepresence of Christ, the Sun, and from there perme-ates the atmosphere about us. From the air the Lifeis breathed into our lungs, where it is taken up bythe blood and the sympathetic nervous system fordistribution to every cell in the body.
There is a right and a left sympathetic nervetrunk running along the spine with numerous
p l e x u s e sbranchingout to allparts of thebody. The right side of this system dispenses thepositive vibrations, while the left represents thenegative aspect. There are nerves (called the radi-al nerves) located in the arms through which thishealing force radiates, and these nerves terminatein the thumb and two first fingers of each hand. Inthe laying on of hands by one who is superchargedwith this healing power from on High, the energyflows directly into the debilitated cells and tissues,often effecting an instantaneous cure. That Jesusand His disciples had an abundance of this force isevidenced by the fact that even their clothes werecharged with it. r
Visible Helpers are just as necessary as InvisibleHelpers, and our friends and patients may share ina high privilege, as well as add much to the powerof liberated healing force, by joining us in prayerfor the sick. Our Healing Service is held everyevening in the Healing Temple at 6:30 (7:30 whenDaylight time is in effect) and in the Pro-Ecclesiaat 4:15 P.M. when the Moon is in a cardinal sign onthe following dates:
November.......................1—8—15—21—28December.............................6—12—19—26
Relax, close your eyes, and make a mental pictureof the pure white rose in the center of the RosicrucianEmblem on the west wall of our Pro-Ecclesia, andconcentrate on Divine Love and Healing.
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The Laying on of Hands
HEALINGC
reated by Ariel A
gemian exclusively for the C
onfraternity of the Precious B
lood
IN THE DEEP FOREST, high up in themountains of California, a group of small firtrees grew closely together in one of theopen spaces where, years before, a lumbercompany had cut away the large trees.
Mother Nature had caused the small fir trees togrow around the disfiguring stumps that remained,in an attempt to heal the scars left by man.
Every year, early in December, the ChristmasTree Folks entered the forest to cut down and shipaway trees for the Christmas trade. They selectedonly the most perfect and beautiful of the treesand, in time, the birds brought from the towns andcities the most wonderful stories about the treesthat were sent away. They told of trees that weredressed in the most beautiful and shining gar-ments, with a gleaming star set in the topmostbranch and of brilliant lights glistening from all oftheir branches as they shed their brilliance from thewindows of homes where little children lived.
The stories told by the birds caused the othertrees to wish that they, too, would some day beselected for Christmas trees, and, after a while, arivalry grew among them. In previous years theyhad clung closely together, with their arms spreadlovingly above the smaller and more delicate treesas a protection against the snow and wind. Nowthey pushed and shoved, complaining that thenearest ones were huddling so close against themthat they did not have room to spread their branch-es evenly.
“How,” they asked, “could one ever get a chanceto be a Christmas Tree when one did not haveroom in which to grow properly?”
“I can’t see why those little runts cling to life sostrongly,” said a tall graceful tree one day, as sherippled her branches in the brisk autumn breeze.“Of what use are, they! They should die and giveus more room. Look at that little fellow there! Heis so short and crooked that be is bent almost to theground. He will never be chosen for a ChristmasTree anyway, and even if he lives to be a hundredhe will be of no use for lumber. Bent over double,he is taking up twice as much room as he should.Of what use is he, I say?”
“Shame on you!” cried another fir. If you andsome of the other trees had not crowded him whenhe was small, he might have had a better chance.Have you forgotten the time a few years ago whenSilver Tip was trying so hard to grow straight andbeautiful so she would be selected for a Christmas
RAYS 00 59
The Crooked Fir Tree
FOR CHILDRENP
lanet Art
Tree? It was that winter the snow bore her branch-es down so heavily because she was taller than therest of us. Well, I heard the little fellow tell her tolet the snow slide down on him because he was sosmall and not very pretty, that it would be a longtime before he was selected, anyway. It was thatyear his back was bent by the weight of the snow.”
“Just the same,” replied the taller tree, shakingher branches with an angry toss, “we can’t all beChristmas Trees and if he is as generous asyou say, he might give us more room.”
The poor little tree bent himselfeven closer to the ground. Hewas so humiliated that bewanted to hide.
“Of what use am I?” hewhispered softly, “I cannever be a beautiful Christ-mas Tree and wear the Starof Bethlehem in my topbranch to light the wearymen on their way at theHoly Christmas season.Some are chosen to stand inthe churches where the peo-ple gather to honor the Birth ofthe Saviour, others gladden thehearts of children in hospitals andorphan homes. I had hoped that someday some humble family would find me andlet me make their children happy, but each year Igrow more crooked. I am afraid that if the snowpiles in on me this winter it will break my back.”
“Don’t grieve,” said a musical bird voice fromunder a thick branch. “I have had my nest here thisyear and I have felt so safe and happy. I wouldn’twant you to go away and be a Christmas Tree. Iwant to raise my little family under your safebranches next year. You do not complain, like thatvain fir near you, because we live in your branch-es. She does not even want me to fly to her topmostbranches to sing my songs.”
“Thank you, little bird,” replied the bent little fir.“I like to have you and your family snuggling closeto my heart. I love your songs, too, but I feel thatif I cannot be a Christmas Tree, I should growstraight and tall so that I may be built into some
home to shelter man.” “Why shelter man?” chirped the bird, “Aren’t
we of some importance to our Maker? I heard thegood preacher over at the little church say that Godtakes care of all of us, and that even a sparrowcould not fall without God knowing about it.”
Just then they heard a disturbance in the forest.The barking of a dog and the excited voices of mencould be heard. Then the snap, snap of breaking
twigs, the sound of pebbles being rolledagainst stones and, with a bound, a big
gray jack rabbit sprang under thebent tree and huddled close. The
tree bent himself even closer tothe ground so as to shelter thetrembling little animal. Themen and the dog, havinglost the scent of the rabbitin the dense brambles,were soon out of sight.
“Thank you, Fir Tree, forhiding me,” said the jackrabbit when he had recov-
ered from his fright. “I wasnearly spent from running.
Had it not been for a thornybramble between the men and
this thicket, I would not have gottenaway from them. It is so much safer
over here that, if you do not mind, I willmove my family under your protecting branches.”
“That will be nice,” answered the bent tree. “Thebirds and I will enjoy your company.”
“See!” chirped the little bird. “Another gooddeed done! It is not necessary that you become aChristmas Tree or that you be cut up into lumber inorder to bring happiness. We forest folk want youto stay right here where you can help shelter usfrom storm and strife. I will be glad , though, if theChristmas Tree Folks take that vain fir away. Shewill find that her glory is short lived.”
“You make me very happy,” said the bent littletree, straightening himself as far as his crookedtrunk would permit. “I won’t let the complaints ofthe other trees bother me any more. I am just gladthat I am being useful.” r
—Elizabeth Alma McCarton
60 RAYS 00
Stephen K
rasemann
