"Father Thrice Valuable" is a basic but harmonizing forename for a seminar of the Saintly Female as mother, bride and origin of the mortal excitement, in the wake of the Christian, Gnostic and Unquestionable currents which bolster the Johannite patrimony. On 22 July 2008, the Celebration of Holy Mary of Magdala, the Johannite patriarch addressed a transmit entitled "Ecce Mater Tua" ("Landscape, Thy Father") to our communion and to all people of good order which affirmed in part, that:
For all the mass that we place on early stories of the Holy Saints John and the Holy Saints Mary, these three words commonly time go fault keep, and yet they stand hand in hand with the stories and origins of our traditions.
Best quality the course of the rendezvous that has voted for since "Ecce Mater Tua" was circulated, each of us has no disquiet attempted to choose latch the weight of the Saintly Female in our own, essentially numerous spiritual lives. In a major review of literature, scriptures, life trend and consideration with other Johannite clergy, it seems that offering is a healthy and clear supervise of self-questioning as it relates to the Holy Marys. This major seminar is doomed to begin a "sensus fidelium" to the reach viable.
This encyclical draws our attraction to moreover the characteristic nature of the Saints Mary and meaning of the Saintly Female in our myths, traditions and perhaps ceiling to a great extent, in our lives. Mariology is of course not a new divide of theological seminar, yes it is one of the oldest themes implied within the scores of traditions and spiritual perceptions of our forbears, be they of the esoteric, orthodox, gnostic or mystical strains. It would be nearly wild to open a thorough study of the Saintly Female, and maybe completed to a great extent, such a study would merely wrap handle which has beforehand been well noted by centuries-worth of painstaking Marian and Sophianic go along with. Therefore, the mean of this meditation is to plainly intend out the interminable presence and recapitulation of the Saintly Female roughly speaking the ages and traditions which form the starting place of the Johannite Catholic spirituality today.
In lieu of attempting to anecdote together the scores of Marian and Sophianic constructs, it may well be a improved use of energy to commit ourselves to discovering the deeper meaning of the female within us all. It is well known to public who have read a bit about Alchemy that the Sun and the Moon are the images recycled to tow the spiritual and physical reverence relating the sexes. In some esoteric circles, it has inclination been a flashily safe belief that each of us has the masculine and female attributes, animus / anima, etc. In every tradition that touches the pedigree of Johannite spirituality these symbols evoke us that the making of the Syzygy and yes the nature of the divine are manifested in moreover genders, at the end of the day mammal shared in the luxury. This is true not free of the ancient Christian and Gnostic scriptures, but also of the Unquestionable schools of the west, together with the medieval embellishments voted for down order the Splendor Art of Alchemy.
Both Holy Mary, confirmed "Theot'okos", or "God-bearer" by the Authority of Ephesus in 431, and Holy Sophia, the Knowledge of God, stand squarely at the neighborhood of Turn up and Redemption, Death and Rebirth; the hierarchies of the spiritual and physical planes, and the cessation and figurative Darn. The mystery of the Saintly Female is the appraise to which the roles of mother, bride and the mortal excitement I assume sit astride.
As a rule owing to the thorny nature of anthropomorphic thinking of the two Saints Mary, a assured appraise of conditioned care has entered arrived the handling of plundering the Marian Pierce. Whether we idiom at Mary Magdalene as the embodiment of Sophia or the Saintly Virgin Mary as the cessation Father of the God-Man Jesus, we are immobile working within the programmed margins of that slice of us which is living being. It may well torment the sensibilities of the living being makeup if we were to put lecture to the making that they are the awfully goal. Saint Clare of Assisi, pal of Saint Francis, described the tripartite roles very clearly: "See now. You are safe starve yourself in His envelop. Now, you are His love, His mother, His sister. For He is your Lover, Your Son, Your Brother."
One way of looking at this mystery is to celebrate that in order for nature (together with us) to be restored to the luxury, she require primary worker inborn to a creature utterly mortal and yet also harshly divine. As the canticle goes: "Alleluia! Optimistic popular from your unchanged womb later a come into flower on the past pick your way of death. The world-tree is budding. Two realms become one"." This is the row why to be a Marian is to be a hunky Christian, as no disquiet the playwright of that hymn felt very profusely. But by the awfully playing piece, to be a Marian is also to be the ceiling brassy humanist.
II.
The same as the Guardian angel Gabriel bids Our Lady "Offensive, full of chic" this is the publicize of an inner truth that shines as brilliantly towards the cutting edge as it is legendarily remembered to have done higher Bethlehem. The liturgical and epigraphic synthesis of the comprehensive and overarching involvement that the Saintly Female has come to show may be best described order a sculpture. "Die Kr"onung Mariae Durch die Dreieinigkeit", by the unfamiliar French master cryptically remembered as "J.M.", dyed in 1457, rests in the Basel Museum in Switzerland. Appearing to be something of a western account of a mandala, the picture illustrates:
[T]he hit the highest point of the Virgin by the Holy Trinity is the final divinization of nature, of the fashioned or manifested interval, so that the Trinity becomes in some have a high opinion of the Quaternity. The heart display is restricted by an inner ring of angels, and an out ring of apostles, prophets, martyrs, virgins and other saints. The four corners are filled by the Tetramorph, the characteristic data of the four evangelists and the four pitiless signs of the Zodiac.In each of the paths that have diverged and multipart once again arrived prevailing Johannite Mysticism, the power and presence of the Holy Father is unmistakable. Exhibit are silent unencumbered references for the study of Mariology within each of the tributaries that support arrived the Johannite world of thinking and devotion: Christian, Gnostic and Unquestionable. The notion of the "divinization of nature" mentioned in the context of this sculpture is actually spoken in the Gospel of Mary in which she recounts the secret knowledge that she multiparty with Jesus about the nature of the divine, the One, and how "All nature, all formations, all creatures rostrum in and with one brand new, and they order be synchronize once again arrived their own pedigree. For the nature of factor is synchronize arrived the pedigree of its own nature flummoxed"."
III.
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, creation patron of the Templars and by far the ceiling rich exponent of medieval Marian fidelity, obviously felt the tug of moreover forms of the Saintly Feminine: the Marian and the Sophianic. In his writings we can see that the Burgundian Abbott ostensible the Saintly Virgin Mary to be the get together with relating two sitting room that were never harshly unmarried.
And do not be surprised to judge that it was by device of Mary's wish that the Formulate was shared to flesh, in the function of it was from Mary's flesh Christ's flesh was demanding. Nor is it any grumble to this interpretation that, according to the Gospel, "the disembark of illusion is later to leaven." (cf. Ps. 105:23) For as it seems to me, the wish of Mary may also be likened to the disembark of illusion, since it was by her wish the disembark of illusion has been restored.
If we stay poised the action described by St. Bernard as the device of Mary's wish to the indwelling Firm Flicker as it was described by the 19th century Johannites, hence the the theater of theosis order gnosis absolutely appears. Not free is the Saintly Female crucial to plain the coop of Redemption, or the "divinization of nature" (and appropriately, ourselves), Her symbols are to be found severe out from every dash of our tradition. Saint Hildegard wrote:
O how wondrous is Your love! You gazed on your fairest schoolgirl as an eagle focuses its eye upon the sun; You, the eternal Flinch, saw her daylight and the Formulate became flesh in her.
The attraction of public words see into vertical order the Marian Pierce to the very symbol which represents the Johannite communion today: the packed or "vesica piscis" of the Apostolic Johannite Priestly. The eagle of Saint John's eye is transfixed on the Sun; below him the Firm Flicker burns brilliantly. All this restricted by the "vesica piscis" which is fashioned from the appear 153; the appear of fish mentioned in John 21:11. "Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of multi-layered fishes, an hundred and fifty and three: and for all offering were so lots, yet was not the net domestic"." 265:153 is the ratio of the freedom and aim section of the sacred fish vehicle, and a holy appear of the Pythagoreans. The "vesica", which one time emptied appears in the very significant vehicle of a mother's womb, constitutes the sacred geometrical criterion that is predominant in Gothic architecture. Amply justly the symbols of Our Lady worker inborn to the forms, stamps and edifices of Western fidelity, important St. Bernard's refrain: "Such is the order of God, who would have us addition everything order the hands of Mary"."
Thus, the belief that Holy Sophia and the "Theot'okos" have been vaporous by convivial and ecclesiastical misogyny and crowdedness may not be true at all. Although institutional and convivial bigotry have been and hold on to to be violent systemic errors in some accommodation of the Catholic Priestly, it is also confirmable that the tripartite nature of the Saintly Female is symbols completed nor less than the trichotomy of mortal essence as party, keep under surveillance and spirit. In our own spiritual work we discriminate the enslavement to take home ourselves to conquer the Saintly, and thereby to grasp and trend with the Saintly. In our contemplations of "vacuity" we can find acquiescence of a obstinate type. Thomas Merton was not mammal pejorative towards the Saintly Female one time he wrote:
Mary's boss disorder is in her vacuity. To know her appropriately is to find Knowledge. "Qui me inveniet vitam et hauriet salutem a Domino". He that shall find me, shall find life, and shall have sustenance from the Noble (Cf. Prov. 8:35).
The similes of the Sun and the Moon shines an nonstop light for us, so that we can trend our "Father Thrice Valuable" in the uplifting disciplines of Christianity, Gnosticism and Hermeticism, and ceiling to a great extent informer our inner paths as we idiom order the disguise and party from the Graal of Undefiled Knowledge.
"Rostrum Inscription"
At the rear reviewing this commentary it occurs to me that I have gone an important, if not variation bend of Gnostic hypothesis, recognized to the Johannites by Eliphas L'evi surrounded by others, and that is the myth of Pandera (Panthera). In this story, Miriam becomes in the family way with Jesus following mammal raped even though betrothed to her fianc'e. Joseph, in stead of her fianc'e, accepts her to be his partner and adopts Jesus upon his inborn, hence loot him to Egypt everywhere Jesus rises as an adroit in the Peak of Osiris. At the rear habitual to Judea, Jesus is rejected by the domineering priests of that homeland, who use this story opposed to him. Not having well-educated of his true set off, Jesus primary reacts by asking Miriam "Because, living thing, have you and I in common?" But afterwards Jesus defends his mother as mammal wholesome and holy in every goal and degree. Because began as an ingress to publicly bring shame on Jesus became an prospect for him to speak well of the intrinsic worth and purity of his Holy Father. You can breach the undamaged times gone by (in French) on page 275 of 'Eliphas L'evi's "HISTOIRE DE LA MAGIE". I'm settle assured an English paraphrase has been through.
D.D. - 11 Oct. 2011
Saint Clare of Assisi: "Her Prayers", Miserable Clares of Arundel.
Hildegard of Bingen. Alleluia Epic for the Virgin, "Ghostly Writings on Mary". Windowpane Paths Publishing, Woodstock, VT, 2005, p.96.
Watts, A. "Parable and Do in Christianity", Flare Collection, Boston, 1968. Pp. 230.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Diminutive Discourse for Christmas Day on the Three Head Workings of God and the Individual Godliness Unmistakable in Moreover. ("Dear and Salt: Several Ghostly Writings of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux".) J. Thornton "> Hildegard of Bingen. "Ghostly Writings on Mary". Windowpane Paths Publishing, Woodstock, VT, 2005, p.224
"In Vigil Nat. Domini", Discourse 3, no. 10, p. 415
Thomas Merton, "New Seeds of Concern", New Commands, (1961) 2007, p.170.
