An Anthology of Occult Wisdom Vol.3

Just published by Datura Press www.daturapress.com or daturapress@gmail.com is the third volume of Anthologies of Occult Wisdom, which on this occasion features the work of Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki, Ernest Butler and Gareth Knight. As I am a major contributor to this volume I will forebear to review my own work but pass on an independent review by the Inner Light Journal.

"As we head into Autumn I offer you another absolute cracker! Many of our readers will know or have known one or more of these greats of the magical world (two of whom are still alive at the time of going to press!). Friends, teachers, inspirations all.

"This is the first of the SOL archives that I have seen, and very impressive it is too, what a wonderful idea it has been, to transcribe from fading Gestetnered copies and barely-audible tape recordings the amassed wisdom of forty years or more. What a huge job it must have been! We may have read all the books by these well-loved authors, but many of us have not been able to attend as many lectures and conferences as we would like, so it has been a pleasure both to revisit the familiar and to discover the unfamiliar, new facets of, dare I say, insight into the personalities of these Elder Statesmen? ('not so much of the Elder,' I hear them grumble). It is because much of this material was originally spoken rather than written, that the 'voices' of the authors shine through, it is as though we hear them speak. Marvellous!'

"I love the outdated and un-pc comments from long ago, which are apologised for in the introductions! Please don't ever edit them out! They show how much things have changed over the years and also make me chuckle. There is hitherto unpublished material here too, including a particularly interesting piece by Gareth Knight, his 'Reflections on the Mirror of Venus'. So many thanks to all who are involved in undertaking this sterling work of archiving for future generations. Power to your printing arm!"

Contents List:
Social Work and the Unseen; The Automatisms of Mediumship;Trance; by W E Butler.
The Seven Jewels of the Heart; The Solo Practitioner in Magic; The Practice of Group Magic; by Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki.
Dion Fortune in Bristol & Somerset; The Magical Life; Avalon of the Heart; Interview with 'Magickal Light'; The Faery Tradition in Arthurian Legend; Dion Fortune & the Masonic Tradition; Reflections on the Mirror of Venus; DF lives! - OK? ; by Gareth Knight.

Through the Skylight

Great news! Well known esoteric author Alan Richardson has joined the list of Skylight Press writers with a brilliant novella "On Winsley Hill". You can keep up with breaking news of Skylight Press by going to http://skylightpress.wordpress.com/
You can also enter your e-mail address if you would like to receive notification of new posts.

To the Heart of the Rainbow

In the esoteric world things are not always what they seem. And sometimes for very good reason. One of which is the tradition of providing practical instruction in some other guise – sometimes in the form of fiction. Here the secret is to stimulate the imagination to go into areas that it otherwise might not think existed. It is a technique that has been followed by many esoteric teachers and not least my old mentor Dion Fortune.

Here is my own contribution to the genre. How to experience the power of the Paths of the Tree of Life without having to mug up on all the theory! It is simply a matter of lowering the barriers of disbelief and intellectualisation and being borne along on the flow of story. It follows that what may seem to be a children’s story is a highly appropriate vehicle – for you need to have the willing acceptance of the eyes and ears of a child to register certain things – “of such is the kingdom of heaven”. So identify with one of the children, (or even the dog!), and you never know what might happen!

This is now published as To the Heart of the Rainbow (along with evocative illustration by Libby Travassos Valdez) by Skylight Press. It will shortly be available through all the usual trade channels but in the meantime you can get your copy now, hot off the press, straight from the printers. Simply go to http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/to-the-heart-of-the-rainbow/12312714
Price is £12.79 or $18.43 or you can get it cheaper still by file download.

You can find further details from Skylight Press, who will shortly be publishing various out of print titles by me, including The Magical World of the Inklings, A History of White Magic, and Experience of the Inner Worlds. Whilst on the site, take a look at This Wretched Splendour by Rebecca Wilby. Reading play scripts is not everybody’s cup of tea, but this may be somewhat different. Remember what I said about things not always being what they seem? This also is packed with esoteric clout.

It is in reality an autobiographical snapshot of the last days of one of Dion Fortune’s early contacts, a master by the name of David Carstairs. It is said that old soldiers never die, they only fade away, but this one has positively refused to fade away over the past ninety odd years. He features as a respondent in The Abbey Papers that came to me when I was working on some DF letters in 1993 and later came strongly through to a student as recorded in An Introduction to Ritual Magic that I co-authored with the late Dion Fortune.

Not content with that, he followed up by inspiring the writing of this play, and even more astonishingly seemed to pull the strings to get produced within weeks, at the Playhouse Theatre, Cheltenham and at the Grace Theatre, London. If to read it can be a moving experience, to see it performed can be mind blowing and inspiring, witness the critical acclaim it received at the time. For more details of which go to the Skylight Press web site http://www.skylightpress.co.uk

2010 Dion Fortune Conference

The annual Dion Fortune Conference which has become a regular fixture in the esoteric calendar moves this year from Glastonbury to Bristol - subtitled Magic and Mysticism.

Venue is the Southville Centre, Beauley Road, Bristol, Avon BS3 1QG and it takes place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday 2nd October.

Speakers this year are:
Bob Gilbert - Dion Fortune in the Light of the West
Geraldine Beskin - The Psychologist and the Psychopath (Dion Fortune & Aleister Crowley)
Marian Green - In the Footsteps of Dion Fortune
Ina Custers-van-Bergen - The Transformation of the Archetype

Ticket price is £30 which includes buffet lunch and refreshments.

For further details and information on how to pay e-mail naomi.ozaniec@gmail.com

More Anthologies of Occult Wisdom!

At the beginning of May I posted a review of Volume 2 of An Anthology of Occult Wisdom that had just come my way - forty years of writings of Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki and Walter Ernest Butler from the archives of the Servants of the Light School of Occult Science. I have since come upon Volume 1 in the series and am equally impressed with it as a fascinating and most useful compendium for any serious esoteric student of the western mystery tradition. Just two of the articles included - The Elemental Kingdom by D.A-N and The Training and Work of an Occultist by W.E.B. - are well worth the cover price from a 180 page book that contains a score of other talks and articles on subjects as diverse as Increasing Personal Power to Aphrodite the Awakener, or from The Table Round to Assumption of the Godform.

However, that is not all in this exciting series. Volume 3 is about to be published in which I have been invited to contribute some works of my own over the years. These include talks I have given to various audiences - Dion Fortune in Bristol and Somerset; The Magical Life; The Faery Tradition in Arthurian Legend, Dion Fortune and the Masonic Tradition plus some early efforts an inner plane communication Reflections on the Mirror of Venus and DF Lives! OK?
This in addition to contributions from the usual SOL stalwarts on Social Work and the Unseen, The Seven Jewels of the Heart, The Automatisms of Mediumship, and Trance.

Now available for pre-order, like the others it costs $20 + shipping ($3 US $10 UK/Europe). Any questions to daturapress@gmail.com Any paypal payments to gonnefarr@mac.com

Midsummer message

As readers of The Faery Gates of Avalon may already be aware Midsummer is an important faery time, Midsummer Day being also St John's Eve, and in Chretien de Troyes' story of Yvain or the Knight of the Lion (also known to Mabinogion fans as The Lady of the Fountain) it is the day that King Arthur sets off to test the powers of the magic fountain in the forest of Broceliande where one of his knights has already married a faery bride.

Thus after a fairly fallow period it was perhaps no coincidence that I should receive a message from R J Stewart announcing imminent proofs of my next book Melusine of Lusignan and the Cult of the Faery Woman, which should therefore be available by the end of the year - despite the recent credit crunch having had the effect of the esoteric publishing world "going to hell on a hand cart" as a fellow author so graphically put it.

So green shoots are beginning to appear and I set great store on the importance of this new little book insofar that it tells the story and background of one of the most remarkable faery traditions
of medieval France that is little known to the English speaking world apart from a brief and not entirely accurate section in Baring Gould's Myths of the Middle Ages.

So much store do I set on the importance of Melusine that I hope to follow it up with a translation of an evocative recreation of the story by a French freemason who seemed to have dug deep into her tradition, Andre Lebey's Le Roman de la Melusine. It seems to be all towards this that over the past twenty years I have been pushed by a seemingly irrational urge to gain a university degree so I could read much of this kind of stuff in the original, from Chretien de Troyes back in the 12th century to Monsieur Lebey in the 20th. I now begin to reap the benefit of having slogged through French irregular verbs when I could have had my feet up in the autumn of my days.

Back of that I have my eye on another possible avenue of interest in the story of Huon of Bordeaux, contemporary with the early Graal romances, who did all kind of marvellous deeds assisted by Auberon, king of faeries, (later spelled as Oberon by Shakespeare).

In the midst of all this high powered swotting I find much leisure and pleasure in wandering in the web-site of Libby Valdez, who illustrated my little Tree of Life pathworking disguised as a children's fantasy Granny's Magic Cards - a juvenile introduction to the Tarot now alas of incredible rarity, although available (though without the illustrations) on PDF from Ritemagic, whose link you will find elsewhere on my website.

I find Libby's drawings, illustrations, stained glass work, and paintings one of the most relaxing and inspiring ways of spending time on the internet. Why not give it a try yourself - on http://www.libbytravassosvaldez.co.uk/ ?

An Anthology of Occult Wisdom

A gem of a little book has just come my way. Although when I say little in fact it runs to over 200 pages. And when I say gem, it is rather a casket of gems. It contains items from the archives of the Servants of the Light including material not only from their Director of Studies Dolores Ashcroft Nowicki, but from her teacher Walter Ernest Butler and his teacher Robert King.

Dolores, who in her globe trotting over the past forty years speaks from a lot of experience in meeting students, provides some salutary guidance on Common Sense and Glamour in Occult Work and wise words on The Unreserved Dedication which every esoteric wannabe ought to take to heart. For those seeking some immediate experience she gives practical instruction on how to make a set of rune stones, and for those really dedicated, an illustrated guide on how to construct a magical temple. This runs all the way from finding a location, choosing the décor and colours, making pillars, banners and lights, dressing the altar, and then how to consecrate and act appropriately within it. And for any who may be called upon to participate in group ritual work she provides detailed advice on what is expected of the Scribe, the Messenger, the Guardian of the Lights, the Thurifer, the Guardian of the Lodge, the Seer, the Ceremonarius and the Officers (or Upholders of Power) of the Quarters. Altogether an invaluable handbook on the subject.

“Of the forming of groups there is no end…” writes W. E. Butler, and as one who had experience of many, from the Theosophical Society to the Society of the Inner Light, he provides excellent instruction Concerning Contacts, Control and Communication and on The Astral Light and The Sphere of Light, and the publishers have done sterling work in rescuing and transcribing old lecture tapes on The Implications of Exorcism and The Etheric Body. Ernest Butler’s great gift as a teacher was to combine deep theoretical knowledge with examples of practical experience, and in this selection of material he provides an excellent guide for any who are confused by the loose use of terms such as “etheric” and “astral” in occult literature.

But even Ernest Butler needed to learn from someone. I know from personal conversation with him how much he felt he owed to his teacher Robert King (1869-1954). King was an occultist and mystic of enormous experience, well known as a lecturer, and from 1909 to 1913 principal medium and psychic for a leading spiritualist group. He also became an auxiliary bishop in the Liberal Catholic Church, from which he resigned in 1921 – probably for much the same reasons that Dion Fortune and Rudolf Steiner distanced themselves from the Theosophical Society at around this time.

Very much a “hands on” practical occultist he supervised Ernest Butler’s first unique experience of etheric projection, and he was called in to assist Margaret Lumley Brown when she got into a spot of bother in 1913, as recorded in my study of this great psychic in Pythoness. He is represented here by teaching on Arthurian, Grail and Merlin archetypes, and in Guarding Merlin’s Enclosure describes group work in defence of the inner side of the nation – a theme with which Dion Fortune was also later concerned, as recorded in the currently somewhat scarce Dion Fortune’s Magical Battle of Britain.

As if all this were not enough an Appendix on Dr W J Kilner’s experiments in photographing the human aura completes this Anthology, complete with diagrams, as reported in The New York Times of February 5th 1911.

So, all in all, a book to be highly recommended, along with its publishers, the miniscule Datura Press, http://www.daturapress.com/ and daturapress@gmail.com. who are well worth looking up for details of further gems on the way. This latest book of theirs is described as Volume 2 of what is intended as a series. I eagerly await my ordered copy of Volume 1 to see if it matches up to this one, and look forward optimistically to what future volumes may bring.

"No mere theoretical treatise...."

I seem, rather like Merlin in my declining years, to find myself much concerned with faery tradition, though hopefully not with such unfortunate consequences as some assume to have happened to the great mage. Anyhow, scribbler to the end, I have just completed a manuscript on Melusine of Lusignan and the Cult of the Faery Woman which should be published later this year by RJ Stewart books. In the meantime, by means of the review below, may I draw your attention to the already published The Faery Gates of Avalon which, although I say it myself, throws a new light on Arthurian studies by bringing to the fore the practical faery tradition that is latent within it. That is to say, many of the feminine characters are not so much human damsels in distress as faery beings leading chosen knights into initiatory otherworld adventures. From whence it follows that early Arthurian romances, written some three hundred years before Sir Thomas Malory, can be useful practical manuals even today.


The Faery Gates of Avalon, Gareth Knight’s most recent work, is an invaluable guide to the meaning and power of the faery tradition as it appears in the main works of the medieval trouvére (perhaps best translated at “seeker and finder”) Chrétien de Troyes. Though widely recognised as the first of the Grail romanciers, Chrétien also wrote into his poetic tales a large amount of material dealing with the Realm of Faery. Sometimes, as in Erec and Enide, this material is concealed, whereas in other tales the faery elements are clearly visible.

The Faery Gates of Avalon opens with a brief introduction to Chrétien, his life and associations with the faery tradition, and to how some of his tales are connected to Welsh redactions in the Mabinogion.

Then follows a summary of the main scenes in four of Chrétien’s works: Erec and Enide, Lancelot and Guenevere, (or Knight of the Cart), Yvain (Knight of the Lion) and Le Conte du Graal. The latter given two chapters devoted to Perceval and Gawain, respectively, who are the two major hero figures in the tale. In addition to the clear and concise summaries, each of these chapters contains masterful insights into the main images and magical sequences of Chrétien’s faery world.

Gareth Knight’s book is no mere theoretical treatise, however, but a highly practical work, something perhaps missed by those who’ve come to expect “exercises” in every book. As Gareth says: “Chrétien’s romances can act not merely as works of reference on faery tradition, but as devices for tuning consciousness toward reception of such contacts ourselves.” In order to achieve this tuning, it is useful to read Chrétien’s text in conjunction with Gareth’s book. Gareth Knight is a long-time student of medieval French and thus is capable of reading Chrétien’s work in the original, but for those looking for good English translations, he recommends the highly accessible Arthurian Romances translated by William W. Kibler and published by Penguin Classics in 1991.

Additional practical help is given in the final two chapters of The Faery Gates. Chapter Seven deals with the key characters, locations and situations in Chrétien’s faery realm. Here we read of the significance of questing heroes, faery partners, helpers and guides, guardians and adversaries, and mystery centres and their custodians. Chapter Eight, entitled, “Reopening the Faery Gates”, presents a visionary sequence that can be followed in meditation, but which is open-ended in a way that allows each of us to create our own “continuation” just as Chrétien’s unfinished Conte du Graal sparked a number of literary continuations.

Chrétien falls into the long line of initiate-poets and authors whose ranks include Homer, Apuleius and Dion Fortune. His narrative visions of the land of faery present a series of transformative initiatory scenarios that can be entered in waking dream-vision and drawn upon according to our level of skill and experience.

No matter what level we are at, however, Gareth Knight’s Faery Gates of Avalon stands alone as the definitive guide to our journeys.
CYH Brown

The Faery Gates of Avalon by Gareth Knight (218 pages, paperback) is published by R J Stewart Books. http://www.rjstewart.net/ $17.99 US £15.95 UK

The Litany of the Sun

Having said something about the inner Earth in my last entry it seemed appropriate if I added something about the inner Sun. The following was written by an old mentor of mine, Margaret Lumley Brown, who has been described as possibly the greatest psychic of the 20th century. She also wrote poetry in her earlier days, which was published in a collection called The Litany of the Sun. It upset some conventional reviewers at the time for what they felt to be its paganism. But it seems to me to encompass a universal spirituality that embraces Christian, pagan, and scientific belief systems – not merely as an intellectual appreciation but as a heart felt reality of the wonder of the creation of the world and the source of physical and celestial light. Whatever our appreciation of it as poetry it seems to me her lines are worthy of deep contemplation. I was able only to publish an extract from it in my book about her, Pythoness (Thoth Publications), so here it is in its entirety.



THE LITANY OF THE SUN

Thou who standest at the portal
Of the Heaven’s great highway,
Mortal Light of Light Immortal,
Take the prayers our hearts yet say:
Thou whose worship faileth never
From the Temple of the Day
And who wast and shalt be ever
Lord of Love and Life and Lay:
Strike again thy silent lyre through our dulness of desire,
Walk with us as once in Delos with mysterious song and fire!

Thou who livest through all changes
Since the world began to be,
Ere the mountains rose in ranges
From the bottom of the sea
And the mighty spheric water
Swept the land from shore to lea,
Till the universal slaughter
Laid the forests bare to thee:
Strike again thy silent lyre through our dulness of desire,
Walk with us as once in Delos with mysterious song and fire!

Thou whose kingdom was deep-rooted
In Hellenic hills of yore
Where thy columns piled and fluted
Reared their heads from shore to shore;
Thou whose Face lit those historic
Groves of oak and sycamore,
And whose Limbs divine and Doric
Trampled all the vineyard floor:
Strike again thy silent lyre through our dulness of desire,
Walk with us as once in Delos with mysterious song and fire!

Thou who wast the Generator
Of the world’s primeval spawn;
Thou the Matrix and Creator
Of the Attic soul withdrawn;
Thou whose wine of rising brims on
Every waking lake and lawn
When within its foaming crimson
Hath been crushed the pearl of dawn:
Strike again thy silent lyre through our dulness of desire,
Walk with us as once in Delos with mysterious song and fire!


Thou the fiery Drum that beatest
From the East across the sky,
Till the Southern heights thou meetest
With a crash of victory,
And into the far West wended
Marchest earthward from on high,
As the measured roll descended
Passes the horizon by:
Strike again thy silent lyre through our dulness of desire,
Walk with us as once in Delos with mysterious song and fire!

Thou the Mystic Heav’nly Bowman
Whose swift arrows heal all ills
And who, piercing Night the foeman,
Bath’st the wound in thine own rills!
Thou art Phoebus, Christ, Osiris,
Walking yet upon the hills;
Thine the Myriad-Arching Iris
Which Eternal Heaven fills!
Strike again thy silent lyre through our dulness of desire,
Walk with us as once in Delos with mysterious song and fire!


Thou who fall’st, thy work completed,
As the darkness stabs thy breast,
And unrobed, discrowned, defeated,
Art uplifted on the West
Where thou hangest, slain and dying
For the world that thou hast blest,
Till the windy landscape, sighing,
Lays thee in the caves of rest:
Strike again thy silent lyre through our dulness of desire,
Walk with us as once in Delos with mysterious song and fire!

Thou who risest sad in glory
From the strife so lately ceased,
Golden-robed but pale and gory,
Double-crowned as King and Priest
Who to awe the midnight’s malice,
At dawn’s sacramental feast,
Liftest up the morning’s chalice
On the altar of the East:
Strike again thy silent lyre through our dulness of desire,
Walk with us as once in Delos with mysterious song and fire!

The Assumption of the Planetary Being

I wrote this article for a recent issue of The Inner Light Journal and the general reception to it suggests that it would bear repetition here. GK

This year of 2009 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Arthur Chichester, the Warden (later known as Spiritual Director) who took over the reigns of the Society of the Inner Light from Dion Fortune in 1946. In the thirty three years of his stewardship he took it through various phases, that perhaps did not suit everyone, but which, in their totality, were of considerable importance.
To his nurturing of the Arthurian tradition, in which he had a close identification with Merlin, I owe a great deal of my early development that enabled me to branch off in other forms of service to the Mysteries. His later insistence on breaking down the elitist assumptions and structure of the Society in the 1960’s was also in keeping with modern developments in the esoteric world. And along with this was a re-emphasis upon Christian fundamentals of the Western Tradition that have tended to be overlooked from time to time by an overemphasis on oriental or pagan spirituality.
Allied to this however was a masterly comprehension of the fundamental tenets of The Cosmic Doctrine, not least of which was an appreciation of the significance of the Planetary Being. Most of the remaining twenty years of his life was devoted to emphasising the importance of this great “generating Elemental” (as he liked to describe it) along with an appreciation of the feminine spiritual principles generally subsumed in veneration for the Virgin Mary in orthodox Christian circles.
This was not so far distant from an appreciation of the principles espoused by Dion Fortune in her earlier Isis work. Indeed a communication from her that inspired an early ritual of mine was to the effect that there was a strong connection between a true appreciation of the mysteries of the Four-fold Isis and the doctrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
With this in mind, it is perhaps worth our while to take the elements of this doctrine and apply it, not just to the Virgin but to the Planetary Being. For if the Incarnation of the Logos (as St John describes the mission of Jesus) was significant for the elevation of the human individual who bore it – it must also have been highly significant for the Planetary Being as a whole, who gave a vehicle of flesh and blood and earthly experience to the Most High.
And if the Blessed Virgin should be later exalted by it (by Assumption and Coronation in Heaven) then why not the Planetary Being – raised in the end from a traditionally dark to a celestially exalted planet?
So let us follow through some of the rubric of the Assumption legend and see how it may apply to the Planetary Being.
When the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ had hung upon the cross he saw standing beneath the cross his mother and John the evangelist, whom he especially loved of all the apostles. And he committed the charge of his mother to John, saying “Behold thy mother” and to her “Behold thy son”. And from that hour the holy mother of God continued in the especial care of John, and abode in the house of his parents beside the Mount of Olivet.
It seems not unreasonable to me to equate St John with the Hermetic tradition generally, which henceforth has the duty of “knowledge and conversation” with those forces and beings that sustain the Planetary Being. (In support of this association I might cite “Meditations on the Tarot” anonymously written by Alexander Tomberg, a mystically intelligent and therefore somewhat controversial follower of Rudolf Steiner).
In the second year after Christ, having overcome death, had ascended into heaven, Mary betook herself to her dwelling alone. And lo, an angel, shining, in a garment of great brightness, stood before her. Behold, said he, this branch. I have brought it to thee from a tree in paradise. And it shall be carried before thee when thou art taken up out of the body. For behold, thy son, with the thrones and the angels and all the powers of heaven awaiteth thee. Now the branch from the tree in paradise shone with exceeding brightness. And taking the branch, Mary went up into the Mount of Olivet to pray. And behold, the Lord Jesus came and spoke to her, saying “Come thou most precious pearl, enter into the treasure of eternal life. Come thou without fear, for the heavenly host awaiteth thee, to bring thee into the joy of paradise.
For the branch of the tree in paradise that shines with exceeding brightness we may well see the Tree of Life, the system of revealed wisdom that shows the way between Earth and Heaven. Place the promise to Mary in the context of the destiny of the Planetary Being and we see a glorious consummation of the great ark of creatures that our planetary globe really is.
And as the Lord had spoken, Mary returned to her dwelling, and laid herself down, and giving thanks to God, she gave up the ghost, which the Lord gave into the care of St Michael.
We see the taking up of the elemental into the angelic by the great guardian the archangel Michael, and the consequent result:
When they stripped the body of the Blessed Mary for burial, it shone with such brightness that it could not be looked upon, for the exceeding flashing of the light. A great splendour appeared in it, and a great sweetness and fragrance issued from it like the flowers of the lily.
And that which follows, follows a pattern that had been enacted before by the incarnation of the Logos.
The apostles carried the body of Mary into the Valley of Jehosaphat, and laid her in a new tomb which the Lord showed them, and shut the sepulchre. On the third day the Saviour came with a great multitude to angels, and light flashing with great brightness. He commanded Michael the archangel to roll away the stone. Then Jesus said: “Rise up my love and kinswoman. Thou that did not suffer corruption by original sin shalt not suffer dissolution of the body in the sepulchre”. And immediately Mary rose from the grave and blessed the Lord, saying: “Let thy name be blessed for ever, redeemer of the world, child of my body, and God of Israel.” And the Lord kissed her and delivered her to the angels.
And as it was, is, and will be (time is but an illusion in this context) for the Planetary Being, so by divine promise is it for her human children.
Jesus called to the apostles, saying: “Peace be unto you. As I have always been with you, so will I be, even unto the end of the world.” And when he had spoken, the Lord was lifted up in a cloud, and the angels with him, bearing Blessed Mary into paradise.
All this is perhaps a little beyond what is generally conceived in current concerns for the welfare of the planet, but nonetheless shows an interior reality that as initiates, and followers of the wisdom of St John, we should be fully aware. In fulfilment of which we might also see within the orthodox celebration of the Mysteries of Mary and of the Sacred Heart an extension of the Mysteries of the Planetary Being.
Who, as Holy Mother of God, gave form to the life giving Word, when Jesus the Christ was born into the world.
Who, as handmaid of the Lord, is the balance point of perfect equilibrium, of divine force and holy form.
Who is encountered through the loving heart of any man or woman.
Who is the intercessor, guide, friend and mother of all mankind.
Who is active in the process of the “becoming” of mankind, and through mankind, of the universe.
Who partakes in full measure of the aura of the divine. Into which aura must all mankind grow. For as any human being grows to maturity by grace, so do they begin to share this aura, of Earthly Paradise and of the Holy Trinity.
To share in this aura is to will and act in character with the divine. Freedom within this aura is absolute. For nothing that is initiated from within this aura is out of character with the divine.
The character of the divine aura shows in all who begin, however uncertainly, to enter it. Here the eternal life given to mankind begins to be truly lived. It is an abiding, forever, within the Sacred Heart. And this abiding within the Sacred Heart makes all unreal barriers, separations and limitations fade away.
Those who share in the divine aura, and abide in the Sacred Heart, are at one, and in close fellowship with the communion of saints, the holy angels and all the spirits of God. All the fellowship of heaven and earth is theirs.
This is the joy to which you are called.