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| Simplified Scientific Christianity |
With the coming of spring the Gates of Aries swing wide, and earth is revived by the resurrectional powers of the universe. Aries, the head of the Grand Man of the Zodiac, is the sign which, astrologically speaking, marks the Vernal Equinox. Spiritually as well as physically Aries is a center of cosmic creative power, whence issues forth the primal life impulse which belongs first of all to the vernal season but which runs its course to completion with the fulfilled year. This life impulse is primarily spiritual. and the ancients be lieved that the Sun was in Aries when the Creator first forged from primeval elements the ordered cosmos in which we live.
Since man is a microcosm, a universe in miniature, possessing the same secret springs of life and passing through the same cycles of power that characterize the macrocosm, it is true of him as of the cosmos that there is a time when the creative forces are in the ascendant; and at that time he can best initiate measures designed to create a new world order. In the great world around him this time of new power is the spring; and within man himself there is the corresponding fount, or spring, of creative force welling up from the deep places of the soul.
By a wisdom that is at one with Divine Intelligence, the earth unresistingly responds to the Aries impulse to make all things new, and so we have an outburst of fresh, vigorous, exuberant life. The earth takes on a mantle of new green, the birds sing rapturously, and with all animalkind it is mating time. The keynote of the time is Creation.
Man also responds to this cosmic impulse, but less completely and less harmoniously than do the kingdoms of life either below or above his own evolutionary kingdom. Those below respond more perfectly through an unconscious, instinctive guidance; those above through a consciously attained unity with the Wisdom of God.
Alone among the kingdoms of nature man has fallen out of step with cosmic processes. He has injected his limited personal will into the scheme of the Angels, and this personal will is as yet so faulty and so at variance with the universal pattern that the result can only be discord and frustration in the whole sphere of human action. Herein lies the "fall" of man. Having passed the stage of instinctual guidance common to animals and plants, and being as yet too self-willed and unwise to follow the higher guidance of Spirit, he follows an uncharted course of his own devising, and a pain-ladened and grief-stricken course it has proved to be.
Humanity's problem in the large, therefore, consists in restoring the harmony which has been broken. This means a return to nature's ways, to nature's rhythms, to nature's laws. It means an obedience to nature's order, not at the instinctual level of the past, but on the higher intuitionai level now open to man and short of which he can never find a natural. happy and harmonious self-expression; for Spirit and nature, when properly understood, are an harmonious unity, and a spiritual way of life must mean, ultimately, a completely natural way of life, in the best sense of the phrase.
Man may indeed be intellectually and physically aware o,fthe four Seasons as they come and go, but he has lost the sensitivity which would enable him to register the corresponding changes which take place in the spiritual envelope of the planet; yet as we have shown, these inner changes are no less vital than the outer, and as a result of his failure to cooperate with the creative spiritual forces of nature man is at dissonance with his world and with himself. This dissonance between the inner and the outer has brought disease, suffering and death to the human race, and only when concord has been restored between man and his planet can life be the joyous, abundant, transforming thing it was meant to be.
The spiritual impulses released into the earth at the four crucial points of the year differ as radically as do the physical characteristics of the earth's surface. Each is designed to promote some specific evolutionary need. Under Aries it is a fiery force which burns out the dross of the old nature (symbolized in winter) to release a new and ardently aspiring life. As the seed which is placed in the ground disintegrates, releasing the plant life into newness of experience as the roots push downward for nourishment from the earth and the stem pushes upward for sunlight and air, so there is a latent soul force which at this season pushes outward for expression in the human being; but this soul force cannot be satisfied with endless repetition, it must pour itself out into a dynamic, creative design according to the laws of epigenesis which govern human evolution. The new wine must not be put into an old vessel. This is the law of Aries.
In the pattern life of Jesus the Christ, the corresponding event is that of the burial in the tomb as a prelude to the Resurrection on Easter morn. This is an Aries operation. It is an event belonging to the Spring Equinox, for Christ's Resurrection was not merely the re-animation of a corpse, it was the raising up of a celestial body which changes continuously but cannot die, since it cannot be dis solved by the forces of corruption. To create this imperishable "diamond body", even the Christ required the cooperation of cosmic forces which animate the world at the Spring Equinox.
Nature's processes are orderly and harmonious, like the stars in their courses. Each day of the week comes under a different planetary ruler. Sunday differs from the week days, and each week day has its own peculiar spiritual and stellar quality. This is true even of the hours of the day. Each hour has a presiding "star'' or "deity" of its own. The spiritual radiation of early dawn is quite different from that of the evening twilight; and the varying influences of the changing Moon are facts of common knowledge and experi ence. The months radiate the qualities of the zodiacal Hierarchies and the Four Seasons are attuned to, the four cardinal signs, Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn. Quite apart from the physical changes on the earth's surface as the Sun traverses the signs of the Zodiac is the subtle aura of the stars through which the Sun passes in the course of the month, and this aura is both visible and tangible to the spiritual sense; while over and above these are the distinctive qualities of the four Sacred Seasons themselves.
Thus in the cycle of a day, or a month, or a year, humanity is exposed to a continual rotation of influences from the outer uni verse, influences which are designed to bring out and perfect the potentialities of man's complex inner being. In the lower kingdoms of nature, and in the greater portion of the human kingdom as well, this work proceeds below the threshold of consciousness. Only a minority, even among human beings, have become intellectually and psychically aware of the wise and tender care with which their Father-Mother God is rearing them to become worthy of their divine heritage.
But when once man has matured sufficiently to realize his re lationship with nature and his dependence upon her in terms of a living, loving, protecting Mother, life takes on new dimensions. Consciousness bursts the bonds which have hitherto confined it to an imaginary separative selfhood, and he receives the first intima tions of that cosmic consciousness in which the individualized ego knows itself as one with the Whole, the divine Reality.
Not until then, when he has become an intimate of nature, learn ing her ways and cooperating with her voluntarily and intelligently, can he leave the long, slow path winding around the mountain of attainment and take the straight path which leads directly to the summit. Only then does he even begin to take his own destiny in hand and advance swiftly toward illumination and liberation.
To help man find this straight and narrow path is the purpose for which all religions were founded; and to realize their objective they must of necessity coordinate their activities with the universal pattern. Therefore the times and manner of spiritual exercises pre scribed by ancient teachers are not, as sometimes supposed, the merely arbitrary machinations of an officious priesthood, but are truly scientific devices discovered and created by illuminated minds, and they are deliberately and consciously aimed at the restoration of man's ancient concord with the hidden side of nature.
When this simple truth is grasped intellectually, then inwardly digested and outwardly acted upon, human life automatically falls into place in the cosmic pattern. Order replaces disorder, harmony replaces discord, cooperation and fulfillment replace conflict and frustration. The disjointed state in which mankind suffers a continual sense of separateness, insecurity; fear and impotency gives way to a sense of strength, security and accomplishment, such as can come only through the clear realization of union with the Whole.
But until he touches the esoteric doctrine, man has little comprehension of his intimate relationship with the cosmos and the correspondence that exists between himself and nature; and even when this is granted hypothetically, the tendency is still to be guided more by the appearance than by the substance of the Mystery, and to regard the correspondences as similar but separate. The thought is that the correspondences proceed along parallel lines but that they stand quite free of each other.
This is not true. We are threads in nature's own fabric. We are inextricably woven into the whole cosmic pattern. We find our fulfillment neither independently of each other nor of the planet. Hence the spiritual importance of observing nature's times and sea sons and of bringing our small personal activities into harmony with her great processes and procedures.
In verification of this we have but to look to the lives of the world's great Way-Showers such as Christ Jesus, the Buddha, Krishna, Zoroaster, and others of like stature, to £ind, as we have said earlier, that the high points in their earthly careers coincide with the major astronomical turning points of the year. The study of comparative religion has made these parallels common knowledge, and to the materially minded and skeptical they seem to prove that all of the great World Saviors are alike mythic figures; but to the spiritually enlightened the same facts are simply evidence of the at-one-ment between nature and man and between nature and God.
Esoteric Christianity traces these cosmic correspondences in re lation to the Christ, the last and greatest of the World Saviors, whose work, begun in ancient Palestine in the person of the Initiate Jesus, has continued until now and will continue until. literally, the "end of the world", as we have also shown many times in these pages.
We have seen how, at the Autumn Equinox, He draws near the earth, touching its auric envelope with living fire, and as the positive ray of Spirit unites with the negative substance of matter the planetary "conception" and "quickening" take place. By the time of the Winter Solstice, that which was conceived at the Autumn Equinox has gestated in the deepening darkness to the point where the planetary "birth" occurs. From that point onward, the Christ Life radiates outward through the entire globe, from its center, and to spiritual vision it appears that the Glory Cloud which is the Life Spirit vehicle of the Christ begins to loosen from earth's center; and at the Spring Equinox it floats free of the globe, preparatory to Ascension at the Summer Solstice.
The Christ is a cosmic character, and His activities are those of the living cosmos itself. The motions of the one follow the motions of the other. And so it is with the lives of all World Teachers. For us they point the way, and that way is nature's way. As we swing into her rhythms we enter into her secrets and share more fully and joyously in the life universal.
Under Aries, said the ancient Wise Men, God fashioned the world. Under Aries the Israelites left Egypt, their land of bondage, for the Promised Land. Under Aries Christ rose triumphantly from the tomb of death. Under Aries humanity is impelled to move for ward into new adventures of the Spirit.
Dark and threatening clouds hang over the earth today. Dark clouds hung over the earth on the Friday preceding the first Easter morn. Yet we call that day Good Friday. What made it good? The supreme renunciation: "Not my will, but Thine, be done." Then followed the glorious Resurrection.
So shall it be with the world today. This dark day of ours will be turned into light when the little wills of men surrender to the Universal Will of God to all men. Then will come the great world-wide reformation, reconstruction, and resurrection of the long buried powers of the soul. under the auspices of the Aries Hierarchy which makes all things new.
"Easter is an appeal to men to change their lives upwards," writes G. de Purucker, "to bring out the inner Buddha, the Christ glory, from within. When a man has undergone within himself the resurrection, he is great whether he is known or unknown, high placed in social station or a humble peasant. He is then a living example of an embodied divinity."
From time immemorial the Spring Equinox has .been celebrated as a Feast of Fire. In pre-Christian times fires blazed from mountain peaks and from lofty eminences as the people paid homage to the god of fire. This fire god is the Aries Sun that becomes the Son of the Forge in ancient legend. As the Sun crosses the celestial equator northward the Piscean waters are tinged with the rays of a new life, and all nature is suffused with a floodtide of "green fire" in a cosmic baptismal rite which transfers death into life and chaos into beauty supernal.
This transformation in nature is the secret of Vulcan, the celestial blacksmith, who brought fire down from heaven, and in re ward was given Venus, the goddess of beauty, as his bride.
In early Masonic annals we find a legend which has special meaning in this connection, because Masonry is essentially a fire craft originating in the primeval forges of Tubal Cain. It, too, pays homage to the fire god Aries, at the Sacred Season of the Resurrec tion. The legend follows:
It came to pass that Solomon, the son of David, prepared a feast for the chief craftsmen and artificers of the Temple at Jerusalem, and spread the table with the fatness of the land and the wine and the oil thereof. The seat of the King was at the head of the table on a raised dais. The two famous pillars of bronze with their beautiful capitals of lilies, pomegranates and delicate network, stood one on his right hand and the other on his left, and the lintel thereof was a canopy over the head of the King.
And Solomon had also prepared a seat of honor and set it on his right hand, ready for that craftsman who might be pronounced most worthy among all who wrought in building the house of the Lord. And when all was ready, he called unto him his chief arch itects and master overseers, and the head artificers who were cun ning workers in gold and silver, in bronze and ivory, and in wood and stone; yea, all who labored in building the Temple of the Most High; and .he said unto them: "Sit ye down at my table and partake of the feast which I have prepared. Stretch forth your hands, eat, drink and be merry." When Solomon and his guests were seated there came one who knocked loudly upon the door and advanced to the festive board. And the King said: "What manner of man art thou? Why comest thou rude and unseemly, unbidden to our feast, where none were invited save the chief workers of the Temple?"
And the man answered and said: "Please you, I come rudely because the servants at the portal barred my entrance and obliged me to force my way, but I come not unbidden. Was it not pro claimed this day that the chief workmen of the Temple dine with the King? Therefore am I come."
When the man had thus spoken, the guests talked one with another, and he who carved the Cherubim spoke loud and said: "This fellow is no sculptor, I know him not." Then he who inlaid the roof with pure gold said: "Neither is he one of those who work ed in refined metals." And he who wrought in raising the walls said: "He belongs not with those who are cutters of stone." And he who labored in shaping the timbers of the roof said: "We who are cunning in cedar wood, and know the mystery of joining strange timbers together, know him not. He is not one of us."
But the man was in no wise daunted. He took a cup of wine from the table and raised it on high and spoke, saying, "O King, live forever!" and drank until the cup was emptied. Then he turn ed to the guests who had rebuked him, and said unto the chief of the carvers in stone: "Who made the instruments with which you carved?'' And he answered, "The blacksmith." And to the chief of the workers in wood he said: "Who made the tools with which you felled the cedars of Lebanon and shaped them into pillars and roof for the Temple?" And he answered: "The blacksmith." Then he spake to the artificers in gold and silver and precious stones: "Who fashioned the instruments with which you made beautiful ornaments for my Lord the King?" And they also made answer the same: "The blacksmith."
Then said the stranger to Solomon: "Behold, O King, I am he whom men deride when they call me blacksmith, but when they would honor me they call me Son of the Forge. These craftsmen say truly, I am not one of them. I am their superior. Without my labor first, their labor could not be."
"Son of the Forge," said King Solomon, "I. too, honor thee. Take thou this seat at my right hand prepared for the most worthy. It is thy due."
— Corinne Heline
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