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| Moonflower in garden at Sancta Maria |
The Second Initiation will contain many practical tools and rites; mantra yoga, praying the IsisMariaSophia rosary; and working with the Four Elements in the self and the powerful practise of working with personal polarity.
Here follows an extract from the introduction to the underlying
principle of these powerful rituals and teachings, visible to higher spiritual
awareness.
INITIATION INTO THE SACRED MYSTERIES OF THE TEMPLE OF MARIA/MARY
The Great Work is often defined as the process of becoming more than human. It involves a concentrated and consciously directed effort to overcome imbalances, weaknesses and limitations while unfolding the inner potentials and opening to higher consciousness. It is the turning to one’s personal growth and development, purification and consecration. It involves the acquiring of self-knowledge, self-mastery; a creation of the alchemical container in which the alchemical marriage will be consummated and the Christ within, be born through the work of Shekinah, MahaShakty.
ln the ancient traditions, there are references to the procedures involved in the process. There are various threads of commonality. They all involved a spiritual discipline aimed at altering, transforming and expanding human consciousness. They involved a philosophy of life by which one could live according to that higher state of consciousness while within the physical world.
This great work is divided into three mysteries : the lesser, the greater and the supreme mysteries.
The lesser has to do with ethics, behaviour and our relationships with other people. They involved the unfoldment and development of the personality. The level of the Seeker. The greater mysteries involve the development of our individuality, our own creatively distinct energies. It involves moving from psychic sight to spiritual insight.
The supreme mysteries are the teachings around the spiritual essence of life and its true effects within the physical. They involve understanding how everything is connected and works. They involve learning to set things in motion for the benefit of all and not just for the immediate. It is the aligning of one’s own energies with the more Universal rhythms and energies of life.
One of the Delphic Oracles states : Vocatus atque non vocatus Deus aderit – Calling or no calling God will be present. All of the lessons, the teachings and mysteries of life unfold within the natural course of our own existence. We do not achieve higher consciousness and spirituality through artificially contrived situations, but through the applications of our realizations within the day-to-day life circumstances that we encounter. Learning to look upon life from a universal rather than a personal perspective is what helps unfold the sleeping potential that lies within each of us. As students of the Mysteries, it is our task to recognize these relationships and then to begin the process of creating new ones – ones that are more in line with the divine.
In the Second Initiation into the Mysteries of the Temple of Mary we will focus on Gnosis of the Cosmic Christ.
Christ exists in all things that are – Gregory of Nazianzus
This third nature of Christ (neither human nor divine, but cosmic) – has not noticeably attracted the explicit attention of the faithful or of theologians – Teilhard de Chardin
The Via Maria, the Temple of Mary way of imparting teachings and initiation is the way of Wild Gnosis or Crazy Wisdom which traditionally relies on the sacred relationship between Guru and Sisya, and the commitment as Flamekeeper to the Hearth and the Temple of Mary as spiritual community. Transmission of teachings happen through diksha (spiritual energetic transference), through Shaktypat (the transference of kundalini energy by the Guru) and through the play of the Holy Shekinah in satsang, weekend retreats in energetic powerful spaces, meditation, sacred art, sacred ritual and temple rites.
A Guru who embodies something of the Holy Shekinah, the Divine
Shakty (the Divine Presence and Power) can help to facilitate a movement of Divine Grace, as can exposure to the Shakty of temple rites. However, it is the spiritual life and practise which forms the ground for the alchemical marriage and Self-Realization.
GNOSIS
True gnosis is a special quality of knowing – a knowing that has at its core personal transformation through personal experience. It demands and requires an original experience – a source experience, as defined by Carl Jung. It requires an awakening to the world of shadows and an awakening of the transcendent energies of the heart. It requires the individual to learn to walk the road of shadows where secret knowledge of the soul exists.
The Gnostic teachings set about describing the practises and mysteries of attaining Gnosis. The Gnostic teachings declare that the Divine Feminine is the hidden key to understanding the esoteric teachings of Christianity and Hinduism, as well as the Kaballah; that the Divine Feminine is the key to experiencing the mysticism and power of the Divine on a more personal level.
In the Temple of Mary we work with the Love-Wisdom principle – we refer to the God of Love and the Goddess of Wisdom. In the Kabbalah this principle is the Shekinah. This great Love and Wisdom Principle is also known as the Cosmic Christ. The Cosmic Christ is the great Love-Wisdom principle that manifests in the Sun Gods and the Love Goddesses, most popularly known as Jesus Christ or Yeshua in the Western Christian tradition. The Cosmic Christ is also known as Sophia, Shekinah and Wisdom in the Gnostic traditions. Other manifestations of the Christ that are known to mystery schools are Vishnu, Krishna, Buddha, Osiris, Odin, Mohammed, Zoroaster, Adonis, Prometheus, Eros, Thor, Baal – many of these myths include the Virgin Birth by the Theotokos – the Mother of God, indeed the Mother that births God, that births all.
The Cosmic Christ is the divine Golden child born within us as a result of the Hieros Gamos, the alchemical marriage within.
In the Western tradition of Kabbalah, Gnosis, Theosophy and other derivatives of western thinking and religion, the Christ is seen as the masculine principle, the Logos, the Radiant Sun.
In the Bhakty tradition, it is Krishna Consciousness.
Western Tradition of the Christ Consciousness and the Cosmic Christ
In the esoteric and occult Western traditions, the inner Christ is wisdom itself, the Christ-Sophia is the Cosmic Christ; She Who births the Christ within the individual Soul. The Cosmic Christ is the overlighting principle of divinity which is embodied in the world soul (the anima mundi) and the Solar Logos (the Sun or Father Principle). It is the impersonal cosmic force of ‘goodness’ or ‘compassion’ or ‘prema’. It is beyond individuality and expresses Itself through a prepared, sanctified container of the human Soul.
The inner Christ, the Christed Self, the golden child has up till now been seen as the masculine principle, the male Sun child born from the union of the Sacred Masculine and the Divine Feminine. But now we know that the Christ is both masculine and feminine, Jesus and Mary, Radha and Krishna, Osiris and Isis, both mother to my son and lover to my father – these are metaphysical expressions to illustrate the inner consciousness; to give it a symbol and an image in order to understand the inner processes of the soul and the mind. The Self births falls in love with the Self, joins the Self in divine union and gives birth to the Self.
Among the Chinese, Christ is Fu-ji. Among the Mexicans, Christ is Quetzalcoatl, who was the Messiah and the transformer of the Toltecs. Among the Japanese he is Amida who has the power of opening the doors of Gokurak (Paradise). In the worship of Zoroaster, Christ is Ahura-Mazda. The German Edda cites Christos, the God of their theogony similar to Jesus of Nazareth, born on Christmas Day, December 25th, at midnight, just as the Christian, Nordic Odin, Wotan and Belen.
The gospel of Krishna in millenary India is similar to the Christian gospel. In the ancient Egypt of the pharaohs, Christ is Osiris, and every person who incarnated him was Osirified; Hermes Trismegistus is the Egyptian Christ, the incarnated Osiris.
Introduction to the Second Initiation of the Mysteries of the Temple of Mary
