The Story of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland and of the new Gospel of Interpretation Part 17

Unto the way of the cross, and to the path in the midst of the wilderness;

Where are the adder and the serpent, the mirage and the burning sand.

For the feet of the saint are set in the way of the desert.

But be thou of good courage, and fail thou not; then shall thy raiment endure, and thy sandals shall not wax old upon thee.

And thy desire shall heal thy diseases; it shall bring streams for thee out of the stony rock; it shall lead thee to Paradise.

Evoi, Father Iacchos, Jehovah-Nissi[78]; Lord of the garden and of the vineyard;

Initiator and lawgiver; G.o.d of the cloud and of the mount.

Evoi, Father Iacchos; out of Egypt has thou called thy Son.

To vindicate the suppressed mysteries of the pre-Christian churches by disclosing them as the true _origines_ of Christianity, and to replace the false doctrine of the exclusive divinity of one man by the true doctrine of the potential divinity of all men,--these are among the foremost objects of the New Gospel of Interpretation. And it is especially in order to reinforce the last named, that it has restored the following hymn in celebration of the supreme results of regeneration, which formed part of the ritual of the greater mysteries of the Greeks. It is addressed to the first of the Holy Seven, the Spirit of Wisdom, as represented by his "angel," the angel of the sun, even "that light which Adonai created on the first day," "whose name is, in the Hebrew, Uriel, and in the Greek, Phoibos, the Bright One of G.o.d."

Breathing both the Spirit and the letter of the Bible, from Genesis to the Apocalypse, the hymns, of which this is one, indicate unmistakeably the ident.i.ty in source and substance of the Hebrew and the Christian with the other sacred mysteries of antiquity, and the derivation of the later through the earlier from their common source in the world celestial when once again they have been restored. And they supply also the motive which led the Christians to destroy the second Alexandrian library, showing that motive to have been the desire to conceal, first, the derivation of the Christian presentment from its predecessors, and next, the perversion of their doctrine in the interests of an unscrupulous sacerdocy.

Taken in connection with its fellow-hymns, similarly recovered, to others of the "Holy Seven," the hymn to Phoibos throws a flood of light on the creative week of Genesis, showing it to be no mere proem to Scripture, or concerned with the world physical merely, but an integral portion of Scripture, being an epitome of eternal verities ever in process, and appertaining both to Creation and to Redemption. The Hymn to Her who is mystically the fourth, but really the third of the G.o.ds, the "Spirit of Counsel" of Isaiah, is especially notable for its solution of the problem of the inversion of the order of the third and fourth days of creation. These hymns, moreover, show indubitably that the order of the solar system was no secret to the hierophants of the sacred mysteries of antiquity.

(7) Hymn to Phoibos, the First of the G.o.ds.

"Strong art thou and adorable, Phoibos Apollo, who bearest life and healing on thy wings, who crownest the year with thy bounty, and givest the spirit of thy divinity to the fruits and precious things of all the worlds.

Where were the bread of the initiation of the Sons of G.o.d, except thou bring the corn to ear; or the wine of their mystical chalice, except thou bless the vintage?

Many are the angels who serve in the courts of the spheres of heaven: but thou, Master of Light and of Life, art followed by the Christs of G.o.d.

And thy sign is the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, and of the Just made perfect;

Whose path is as a s.h.i.+ning light, s.h.i.+ning more and more unto the innermost glory of the day of the Lord G.o.d.

Thy banner is blood-red, and thy symbol is a milk-white lamb, and thy crown is of pure gold.

They who reign with thee are the Hierophants of the celestial mysteries; for their will is the will of G.o.d, and they know as they are known.

These are the sons of the innermost sphere; the Saviours of men, the Anointed of G.o.d.

And their name is Christ Jesus, in the day of their initiation.

And before them every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and of things on earth.

They are come out of great tribulation, and are set down for ever at the right hand of G.o.d.

And the Lamb, which is in the midst of the seven spheres, shall give them to drink of the river of living water.

And they shall eat of the tree of life, which is in the centre of the garden of the kingdom of G.o.d.

These are thine, O Mighty Master of Light; and this is the dominion which the Word of G.o.d appointed thee in the beginning:

In the day when G.o.d created the light of all the worlds, and divided the light from the darkness.

And G.o.d called the light Phoibos, and the darkness G.o.d called Python.

Now the darkness was before the light, as the night forerunneth the dawn.

These are the evening and the morning of the first cycle of the Mysteries.

And the glory of that cycle is as the glory of seven days; and they who dwell therein are seven times refined;

Who have purged the garment of the flesh in the living waters;

And have trans.m.u.ted both body and soul into spirit, and are become pure virgins.

For they were constrained by love to abandon the outer elements, and to seek the innermost which is undivided, even the Wisdom of G.o.d.

And wisdom and love are one.

In view of the restoration of the G.o.ds to recognition by the New Gospel of Interpretation, it must be explained that the doctrines of Monotheism and Polytheism are not necessarily incompatible. This has already been shown in Chapter IV., in the utterance commencing--"In the bosom of the Eternal were all the G.o.ds comprehended, as the seven spirits of the prism contained in the Invisible Light." For as light is one though its rays are seven and each ray is light, so is G.o.d one though His spirits are seven and each spirit is G.o.d.

And yet further. The deities recognised under various names or by various peoples are not necessarily different G.o.ds, but may be either the same G.o.d or different modes or aspects of the same G.o.d. Notably is this the case with the G.o.ds of the Hebrews, the Greeks, and the Christians. For while by the term Elohim is denoted the two principles, masculine and feminine, of Force and Substance, which const.i.tute Original Being, by Jehovah or Yahveh, Adonai and Shaddai, is denoted the resultant of the interaction of these two principles as Father and Mother, who is called therefore their word, expression, and Son. By the Holy Ghost is denoted the same two principles in activity, having procession from the "Father-Mother" through the "Son," to be the const.i.tuent principles of creation, being Deity dynamic as distinguished from Deity static. By the Seven Spirits of G.o.d--as by the seven great G.o.ds of the Greeks,--are denoted the seven potencies into which Deity differentiates on emerging as Holy Ghost from the prism const.i.tuted of Father, Mother, and Son, which are to each other as the force, substance, and phenomenon of which every manifest ent.i.ty consists. For "Every ent.i.ty that is manifest, is manifest by the evolution of its trinity." And by Christ is denoted the ultimate issue of such procession of Deity into manifestation, namely, divinity individuated by means of its pa.s.sage through matter, and elaborated by co-operation of the Seven Spirits of G.o.d, into a perfected _spiritual_ Ego, who is at once G.o.d and man, and subsists under two modes--the microcosmic or individual, and the macrocosmic or universal, and who is always in process of increase, because, in manifestation, "the Father is greater than the Son;" and "the manifest never exhausts the unmanifest."

Now the process of the Christ is by regeneration, and of this, as has been said, reincarnation is the condition. The New Gospel of Interpretation contains an utterance of Jesus on this subject which will fitly conclude this series of examples. It was recovered by "Mary" under illumination early in 1880, and consequently when we had not fully come to realise the actuality of the doctrine and the possibility of the recovery of the memories of past lives. Hence she sought from her illuminators confirmation of the genuineness of the experience, when she was distinctly and positively a.s.sured that the incident had actually occurred, and that she had borne part in it, though no record of it survives. Such is the extrinsic testimony on which it rests. We found the intrinsic no less satisfactory, whether as regards the substance or the form.

(8) Concerning the previous lines of Jesus, and Reincarnation.

This morning between sleeping and waking I saw myself, together with many other persons, walking with Jesus in the fields round about Jerusalem, and while He was speaking to us, a man approached, who looked very earnestly upon Him. And Jesus turned to us and said, "This man whom you see approaching is a seer. He can behold the past lives of a man by looking into his face." Then, the man being come up to us, Jesus took him by the hand and said, "What readest thou?" And the man answered, "I see Thy past, Lord Jesus, and the ways by which Thou hast come." And Jesus said to him, "Say on." So the man told Jesus that he could see Him in the past for many long ages back. But of all that he named, I remember but one incarnation, or, perhaps, one only struck me, and that was _Isaac_.

And as the man went on speaking, and enumerating the incarnations he saw, Jesus waved His right hand twice or thrice before his eyes, and said, "It is enough," as though He wished him not to reveal further. Then I stepped forward from the rest and said, "Lord, if, as thou hast taught us, the woman is the highest form of humanity, and the last to be a.s.sumed, how comes it that Thou, the Christ, art still in the lower form of man? Why comest Thou not to lead the perfect life, and to save the world as woman? For surely Thou has attained to womanhood." And Jesus answered, "I have attained to womanhood, as thou sayest; and already have I taken the form of woman. But there are three conditions under which the soul returns to the man's form; and they are these:--

"1st. When the work which the Spirit proposes to accomplish is of a nature unsuitable to the female form.

"2nd. When the Spirit has failed to acquire, in the degree necessary to perfection, certain special attributes of the male character.

"3rd. When the Spirit has transgressed, and gone back in the path of perfection, by degrading the womanhood it had attained.

"In the first of these cases the return to the male form is outward and superficial only. This is my case. I am a woman in all save the body. But had My body been a woman's, I could not have led the life necessary to the work I have to perform. I could not have trod the rough ways of the earth, nor have gone about from city to city preaching, nor have fasted on the mountains, nor have fulfilled My mission of poverty and labour. Therefore am I--a woman--clothed in a man's body that I may be enabled to do the work set before Me.

"The second case is that of a soul who, having been a woman perhaps many times, has acquired more aptly and readily the higher qualities of womanhood than the lower qualities of manhood. Such a soul is lacking in energy, in resoluteness, in that particular attribute of the Spirit which the prophet ascribes to the Lord when he says, 'The Lord is a Man of war.' Therefore the soul is put back into a man's form to acquire the qualities yet lacking.

"The third case is that of the backslider, who, having nearly attained perfection,--perhaps even touched it,--degrades and soils his white robe, and is put back into the lower form again. These are the common cases; for there are few women who are worthy to be women"[79].

(9) Concerning the "Work of Power."

You have asked me if the Work of Power is a difficult one, and if it is open to all.

It is open to all potentially and eventually, but not actually and in the present. In order to regain power and the resurrection, a man must be a Hierarch; that is to say, he must have attained the _magical_ age of thirty-three. This age is attained by having accomplished the Twelve Labours, pa.s.sed the Twelve Gates, overcome the Five Senses, and obtained dominion over the Four Spirits of the elements. He must have been born Immaculate, baptised with Water and Fire, tempted in the Wilderness, crucified and buried. He must have borne Five Wounds on the Cross, and he must have answered the riddle of the Sphinx. When this is accomplished he is free of matter, and will never again have a phenomenal body.