readoldthings

(Updated 9/6/21)

 The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 6, Verses 9-13 reads: 


Our Father

We begin with an invocation. Who or what is being invoked? The Father.

Set aside your 21st century understanding of the world for a moment. As far as the First Century knows, the male is more or less entirely responsible for the generation of life. It is he who produces the seed. The female's job is to germinate the seed provided by the male, as the grain is germinated in the soil. 

By opening with an invocation of the Father, we're going straight to the top, to the Maker of the universe himself. Two things are worth noting here:

First, in the Platonic cosmos, the create act doesn't consist of bringing something into being out of nothing. It consists, rather, in the imposition of order onto formless Chaos. This is how the creation is described in Plato's Timaeus. In an orthodox Christian context, this simply means that Creation begins at Genesis 1:2-- "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

In saying the Lord's Prayer, we're connecting to the creative power that brings order to the cosmos. You can see this prayer, then, as a specific theurgical ritual designed to bring about "repentance" or metanoia, the changing of the nous. 

Second, after we bring order to ourselves, we can begin the work of bringing order to the world. This prayer is an especially potent formula for invoking the Creator of the Universe, and we can use it to cause change in the world of our experience. 

Who art in Heaven

As we have seen, "Heaven" refers to the Noetic level of being-- the level of the nous-- in which the eternal powers that shape the changeable, material world reside. The Father is a part of the Noetic realm, but he is also beyond it-- he is the Father there, as well. 


Hallowed be Thy Name

The word "hallowed" or "holy" is agiasthētō, in Greek, from hagia. This word originally means "set apart" or "different." That which is of the gods is different from ordinary things, as the spiritual is distinct from the physical. 

We have already seen that the Name of God has power. Remember יהוה‎, YHVH: He brings into existence everything that exists. 

It's worth comparing the meaning of YHVH to Plato's analysis of the name of Zeus in the Cratylus: 

The name of Zeus... has also an excellent meaning, although hard to be understood, because really like a sentence, which is divided into two parts, for some call him Zena, and use the one half, and others who use the other half call him Dia; the two together signify the nature of the God, and the business of a name, as we were saying, is to express the nature. For there is none who is more the author of life to us and to all, than the lord and king of all. Wherefore we are right in calling him Zena and Dia, which are one name, although divided, meaning the God through whom all creatures always have life (di on zen aei pasi tois zosin uparchei).

Cratylus is worth reading in its entirety; it consists in large part of a half-serious, half-playful analysis of the names of the various deities. The one just given for Zeus is an example." Zena" and "Dia," which mean "Life" and "Because of," are not the actually etymological roots of Zeus's name, and Plato probably knew that. But by being willing to play around with the name, he is able to derive a meaning which sheds light on the nature of the thing named. Meaning itself, as meaning, is a function of the noetic level of being, which is above the rational; it doesn't matter whether any human consciously intended Zeus's name to mean "He causes life." The meaning can be found, and it teaches us something true about Zeus and his nature.

Plato also tells us, in the same dialogue, that the gods love a good joke. 

In a similar way, the English word "holy" is used to translate the Greek "hagia." "Holy" relates to the word "whole" or "wholeness," and from this we can learn that "holiness" relates to "being made whole." Now "wholeness" is a type of "Oneness" and is therefore derived from The One itself, which is God. By invoking the Holy Name of God, we do the work of becoming whole, which is the work of becoming what God has intended us to become.

Thy kingdom come

This is the Kingdom of Heaven, which is to say, continuous existence at the Noetic level of being, of which we've heard so much. Here, we unite ourselves to the Kingdom of Heaven, and ask both that the kingdom come to all who can receive it. 

Thy will be done

Every thing which exists has its natural Act, or, in Greek, energeia. The natural Act of God is the creation of the Cosmos and all that is within it; the Act of every creature is derived from the primordial Act of God. Evil is the embrace of nothingness, non-being, the rejection of the Will of God. We do God's will when we live according to our own proper purpose, uniting our Act to God's. As Plotinus writes,


There is no separation in the Deity; to unite our Will with the Will of God is also to become Whole as God is Whole. 

Now the word "Act" is often used to translate energeia in the works of Plotinus. As a word, it is technically correct but somewhat awkward. A more common English translation of energeia, especially in Christian writings, is Grace. 

On Earth as it is in Heaven

This is, in effect, a prayer for the completion of Creation. "Let God's will be fully realized in everything. Let everything in the astral and material worlds perfectly express its archetype in the spiritual realm. Let Earth and Heaven be united."

If we are praying for a specific intention, we can imagine the Divine Energy of God pouring forth from Heaven, moving into the world, and accomplishing our goal. 

And give us this day our daily bread

We pray that we may receive that which we truly need. Since we have just invoked the Lord of Heaven and prayed for His Will to be done throughout creation, we can confidently say that Jesus isn't just talking about our material needs. Our ultimate need is to be united with God, and we are asking that we receive what we need in order to move closer to that end. 

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. 

Again we are reminded of that most basic of magical principles-- We will receive exactly as we give. Here we are especially enjoined to give forgiveness. Now this is being expressed literally in the form of debt and repayment, and the suggestion is that the weight of our sins keeps us from full union with the Good, which is to say, with God. Often this is because we are trapped in a pattern of sinful behavior which we are unable to break. If we release others who have sinned against us, forgiving them their debt, we will often find that our own patterns of sinful behavior begin to fall away.

Remember that "sin" means "to miss the mark"; the mark is God Himself, and sin is everything that leads us in other directions.

And lead us not into temptation 

That is, let us not be impacted by the rebellions of the passions or the manipulation of our desires by our society or by harmful spirits (the world, the flesh, the devil). 

But deliver us from evil. 

When we fall, as we will, stretch forth thy hand, and raise us up again.

For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory. 

This is a phrase much used in Cabalistic magic. The most common interpretation is this:

"Thine is" is the sphere of Kether, pure being;
"The power" is the sphere of Geburah, Divine Wrath, and the Pillar of Form generally;
"The glory" is the sphere of Chesed, Divine Mercy, and the Pillar of Force generally
"The kingdom" is the sphere of Malkuth, the created world.

In this way, God is shown as having three aspects-- Pure Being, Power, and Activity, which three together bring the universe (the Kingdom) into being. And so we close the prayer as we begin it, with an invocation, which seals the prayer and expresses again God's power to bring about whatever we have asked him for. 

Addendum 1: The Cabalistic Cross

It is common in the Golden Dawn tradition to begin magical operations with a Hebrew invocation that goes "Atah malkuth ve'geburah ve'gedulah le oh lam, Amen." These are the words said during the Cabalistic Cross, and the whole ritual goes like this:


This invocation comes from Eliphas Levi, and is said, both by Levi and the Golden Dawn adepts that followed him, to mean "Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, amen." 

There's just one problem: It actually does not mean that. "Atah malkuth ve'geburah ve'gedulah le oh lam" means "Thou art kingdom and power and glory forever." So what's going on here?

I believe that the mistranslation is deliberate. "Thou art the kingdom" is technically a heresy, identifying creator with creation. But the Name of God associated with Kether, the First Sphere of the Tree of Life, is אֶהְיֶה, "AHIAH," which means "I am." "Thou art" is a very proper response to "I am;" by saying "Thou art," the initiate invokes the highest Name of God while still identifying God as other than himself.

So, taken literally as a sentence, the Cabalistic Cross is heretical. It's also grammatically somewhat nonsensical-- "Thou art kingdom"? If, on the other hand, it is a series of names-- or, rather, Names-- it makes much more sense. And notice, again, that in the word "Atah," the initiate is simultaneously identifying himself with God, while acknowledging the radical Otherness of God. 

Addendum 2: Two Speculations Regarding the Mother

As we have seen, this prayer invokes the Father. But men do not create without women-- not today, and not 2,000 years ago. By invoking the Father, Jesus implies the existence of a Mother. Who is She? 

Speculation 1: A Father still requires a mother; a seed does not sprout without soil. In the Timaeus, Plato suggests that there are three basic principles governing the creation of the universe: The Form, the Formless, and the Formed. Now the first principle is the Father, the creative impulse; the second principle is the Mother, the formless something which receives that creative impulse; and the third principle is the Child, that which is created: 

This, for Plato, is the primordial Triad which brings everything into existence. Who is this Divine Mother? Some have identified her with the Holy Spirit; others with the figure of Sophia, Divine Wisdom; others with the Virgin Mary. Or it may be that all three are correct. 

Speculation 2: If human culture is shaped and determined by higher, spiritual principles, then it was the will of the gods that the First Century saw the universe in the way it did-- and it is their will that we see it in the way that we do. We have made the "discovery" that, in sexual reproduction, the female contributes as much as the male-- rather than the male providing her with a seed, in fact they each have a seed. We can say that both create, though in different ways-- the male creates by going outside of himself; the female creates by drawing into herself. 

If we know this today, it is the Divine Will that we should know it, and that we should think somewhat differently about the role of male and female did than our ancestors did in earlier times. Not entirely differently, as the extract from Plato shows-- but differently enough that we can justifiably believe that it is both proper and divinely ordained that the roles of men and women ought to be different in our place and time than in earlier places and times. 

Such changes happen from time to time. Women in the time of the Sumerian priestess Enheduanna, who lived about 4,300 years ago, had higher status than they did in the Greece of Plato's day, 2,000 years later; and in Enheduanna's time, the planet Venus signified War as well as Love. 

 In The Gospel of Matthew Chapter 5, Verses 38 to 48, Jesus says:
Here we come to some of Jesus's best known and most easily ignored words. 

They are not easy words, and following this path is not easy. But I believe that what Jesus is teaching here is the very highest sort of spiritual development-- and spiritual warfare. Let's illustrate that point by example.

The Magical Battle of Britain

Beginning in 1939, the English Occultist Dion Fortune led a series of magical workings designed to ensure a British victory in World War II. Her method was fairly straightforward-- she and her circle would send out a letter and a theme for meditation once a week to all the members of their organization. On Sunday, the recipient was to open the letter and study its contents, and then, at 12:15-- that is, at high noon on the Day of the Sun-- to face London and enter into meditation on the theme indicated.

At one point, Fortune received a letter urging that she and her group carry out magical attacks on German leaders. Her response is worth careful study:


Fortune was not a pacifist and did not demand that the British lay down arms. She did insist, however, that the spiritual work to be done in aid of the war effort consist entirely in works of healing and blessing. And why?

Note her opening line: "Nothing and nobody is altogether evil." This is because-- to state the very obvious-- everything which exists is. That is, it has being. Being is derived from the One, which is the same as the Good and which we also call God. Therefore, to exist at all is to possess a kind of goodness. The work of the true initiate, then, is not to destroy things, because to destroy is, necessarily, to rebel against God. 

Healing is a very different thing. To heal literally means to make whole. Wholeness is another way of saying oneness; every whole consists of a unity of parts, and that unity is an expression of oneness and is therefore derived from the One. If Germany exists, it is because God wills that it exists, and God does not will evil. If Germany is acting evilly, then the solution is to heal Germany, not destroy it. A regenerated Germany rising up in strength and greatness is a Germany expressing Oneness, Goodness, and Godliness through a particular filter-- the filter of the German nation. 

The Magical Battle of America

I very often think of these lines with regard to the present political impasse in the United States. What would happen if partisans on either side of our divide were to say to one another, "We do not wish to destroy you, but to perfect you?" This country consists of many different subdivisions-- regional, ethnic, religious. What if we had a politics which said "Blacks, Jews, WASPs, Irish and Scots-Irish, Italians, Apaches, Germans, Mexicans and Scandinavians; New Englanders, Appalachians, New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians, High Southerners, Deep Southerners, Westerners, Mid-Westerners, Californians, Cascadians, and the Cubans of Miami; Protestants, Catholics, Jews again, Mormons, Pagans, Wizards and Radicals; Rednecks, Hippies, Yuppies, Cowboys-- each of these is a particular expression of Americanness, and America is a particular expression of Godliness. We are all in this together, like words in a sentence spoken by God. Without exception, all have sinned and fallen short and owe repentance to God and one another; all have triumphed and achieved greatness and are worthy of celebration. All have their own particular struggles, wounds of the past and besetting sins, but we can lean on one another, and all of us can lean on God. We will not force the values of Berkeley onto West Virginia or Charleston onto Minnesota, but we will instead support each in leading the life proper to it in its own proper place, so that each may achieve its own greatness."

How would that change our political discourse?

A Story

Some years ago I was living in a house with 4 or 5 roommates. We were all friends and got along well with one another. Then we had a very bad falling out, and we came to hate one another. It was so bad that I couldn't be in the house alone with them. I got off of work at 5:00, but my girlfriend, who lived with me at the time, got off at 7:00; I would wait downtown for her, so that we could go home together. 

One day I left work and I was feeling extremely angry. It was the kind of anger that doesn't go away, no matter what you do. And I tried everything-- think about something else, take deep breaths, you name it.

I wandered into a coffeeshop, thinking that a cup of chamomile tea might at least calm my nerves. I sat down with my tea, and I remembered that chamomile is a Solar herb and used in rituals of blessing and spiritual protection. That gave me an idea. 

The coffeeshop had a single-use bathroom with a door that locked, and it was relatively clean inside. So I took my tea into the bathroom, locked the door, and did the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. Afterward, I stood in the light, surrounded by flaming pentagrams and the four archangels, and I felt compelled, I do not know by what, to say the Lord's Prayer. At the line "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us," I stopped, and found myself repeating the line over, and over, and over. Then I finished the prayer and took up the chamomile tea. I dipped my fingers in it, and drew crosses on my forehead and on the backs of my hands. 

Then I went back to my seat and entered into meditation, resolving to meditate until the tea on my head and hands dried completely.

In meditation, I visualized each of the roommates that I was angry with, one at a time. I pictured the entire conflict as clearly as I could from their perspective. Once I had a clear sense of their perspective, I called their image to mind again and said "I understand that you can only be who you are. I am sorry for my part in our conflict, and I forgive you for yours." I then thanked them for the friendship that we had at one time, released the image, and moved onto the next person.

When I entered the coffeeshop I was so angry I was shaking. By the time I left I felt like I was floating in an ocean of golden light.

Strangely enough, when I finally got home, my roommates greeted me politely, for the first time in weeks, as though nothing was wrong.

I won't tell you we became friends again after that-- We didn't and we couldn't. But the fight was over. 

Likeness

Jesus tells us to be perfect, as our father in Heaven is perfect; this is how we become children of God. Remember that he has used this term before, in the Beatitudes. And remember that, from our perspective, things are not like one another by coincidence. If something is like another thing, it is because it is participating in the very being of the thing that it is like. By becoming like God, we ourselves become Divine. "Therefore," says Plotinus, "Let each become godlike and beautiful who wishes to see God and Beauty."

The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 5, Verses 20 through 28 reads as follows:

Pharisees and Sadducees

Unless we are more righteous than the Pharisees and Sadducees, we shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. But who are the Pharisees and Sadducees?

Historically, these were two sects within Second Temple Judaism, the Judaism of Jesus's time. The Sadducees tended to come from the upper classes; the Chief Priest and the High Priests were Sadducees, and they had a majority in the Sanhedrin, the ruling court or parliament of Israel. The Pharisees also had power in the Sanhedrin, but came from a more modest social background; the First Century Jewish historian Josephus tells us that they were widely supported by the common people.

For our purposes, we are more concerned with the role of the Saducees and Pharisees in the myth that is the Gospel than in their historical reality. From that perspective, the important points are these: The Sadducees did not believe in an afterlife or in the existence of spirits of any kind. (Notice that they were members of the Upper Class, and had power within both the priesthood and government-- parallels to the modern world very obviously suggest themselves). The Pharisees, on the other hand, believed in the realty of the spiritual world. But they emphasized strict adherence to the rules of the Old Testament, especially the purity laws-- Later we'll find them condemning Jesus for performing miracles on the Sabbath, for example.

We can think of the Sadducees, upper-class materialists who controlled the priesthood and much of the government, as akin to today's atheist or non-religious upper class Social Justice liberals, and the Pharisees as akin to our middle-to-lower class right-wing religious fundamentalists. The parallel is not exact, but it is useful for our purposes, as we will see presently.

The Pythagorean and the Orphic

The late Platonic philosopher Proclus tells us that there are two methods of approaching theology in a symbolic manner, the Pythagorean and the Orphic:

In other words, the Orphics symbolize the divine through Myth, the Pythagoreans, through Math.

In the modern world, we probably aren't used to the idea that mathematics has any relationship to theology. Indeed, the two are often opposed to one another, with "Math" set alongside "Science" and the two together opposed to "Religion." From a Platonic perspective, this makes very little sense. After all, what do mathematical formulae describe, but immaterial realities which constantly shape and uphold the material world? In the physical world, no perfect right triangle exists; the perfect right triangle, whose dimensions are described exactly by the Pythagorean Theorem, exists in ideal form alone. And yet it constantly shapes the world of our experience, and knowledge of it gives us the ability to shape that world.

Myths are the same. As Sallust wrote, they are stories which "Never happened, but always are." Saturn was never a real guy who sat down with a fork and a knife and ate his children; if he had, his story would simply be a horror, and there would be nothing we could learn from it. If we understand that Saturn is Time, and his children are the seconds, minutes, hours and days of our lives, then we can understand something about our world and the way it functions.

The same is true of Christian myth. The Garden of Eden, the Fall, and Noah's Flood; the entire saga of the Old Testament; and now the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, are all, whatever else they are, myths. As works of journalism or history, they may also be more or less accurate-- or they may not be. It doesn't matter: As myths, they describe the immaterial processes which shape our lives and our souls now, regardless of what happened 2,000 years ago. 

This is very important when it comes to passages like these, in which Jesus gives particular moral imperatives. From our perspective, the important thing about the Gospels is that they are myths. When Jesus gives teachings like these, he is playing the part of The Lawgiver, a particular form of a figure common to many mythologies.

The Pharisaic, The Sudducean

Both the Pythagorean and the Orphic methods of understanding the Divine can be debased, and when they are debased, they do an enormous amount of harm. In both cases, the cause of the debasement is the same, and we can call that cause Literalization. Pythagorean formulae or Orphic stories are taken by the Literalizer as descriptions of, or prescriptions for, life in the physical world, rather than descriptions of processes in the Eternal World.

We can call the degradation of the Pythagorean Method the Sadducean Method, and degradatation of the Orphic Method the Pharisaic Method. In the Sudducean Method, beings in the material world are mistaken for numbers in the ideal world; in the Pharisaic Method, myths from the ideal world are taken as descriptions of the physical world. In both cases, the Literalizer often attempts to force the physical world to conform to the Ideal World, often with dreadful consequences.

Knowing the Pythagorean Theorem will give you the measurement of a right triangle, but you will be incorrect if you expect any particular right triangle in the physical world to be perfect; all of them are off, even if by only the tiniest bit. That mistake won't cause much harm, but there are ways that Sadducean Method, applied to human beings, can be very harmful indeed. We see this especially in the reduction of individual human beings to statistical aggregates in modern political rhetoric. Indeed, this is the essence of modern identity politics, whether of the Left Wing (Communist, "Social Justice") or right-wing (Ethnonationalist, Nazi) varieties. 

The reduction of the human being to a statistical aggregate is one of the hallmarks of modern political ideology and, indeed, of modern politics in general. Its fruit is genocide. Nor are its worst features limited to the political Left. 

The Pharisaic Method is equally destructive. The Christian tradition, as we have said, has its own body of myth, beginning with the Garden of Eden and proceeding through the life of Jesus and his apostles, and his eventual return. But its stories about the fate of the soul after death are also myths. The traditional understanding of Hell as a prison in which unrepentant sinners are tormented by fire and demons is a very useful way of understanding what happens to our psyches when we wallow in our own bad behavior and evil thoughts. As a literal description of an actual place in which a supposedly good deity tortures people in a way that would gladden the heart of Ted Bundy, it is a moral abomination, and its promulgation is a form of psychological torture. 

Keep all this in mind when Jesus discusses punishments and hellfire.

A Story About A Bible

Before we continue I want to tell a story.

This happened about 4 years ago. One night I was lying awake reading Eliphas Levi's Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic, and I came across his discussion of thoughts, and the way that our thoughts and feelings can affect others at a distance. Levi writes:


As I read this, I thought about the passage in the Gospel that we're discussing today. In particular, I was thinking about Jesus's insistence that even to think lustfully about a woman is to commit adultery with her. That always seemed a little over the top to me, and, of course, in my youth it was more or less a form of torture-- if there is a 14 year old heterosexual boy that doesn't look lustfully at women, I've never heard of him, but of course the priests insisted that God was going to send us to hell for it. (There's that Pharisaic Method again, in all its glory-- and it's not like the priests didn't do any lusting themselves; you can read the Grand Jury report here.)

So if Jesus wasn't just being a jerk or control freak, what could this passage mean? Could it be that he was saying just what Levi was saying-- that our thoughts and feelings can affect others at a distance? If so, the passages about having already committed adultery with a woman you're lusting after are completely literal.

Well, anyway, I thought these things, and then I fell asleep.

The next morning I left the house to walk to work, my work being only a few blocks from my apartment in those days. As I stepped onto the street I kissed my hand and held it toward the Sun, saying a small prayer of gratitude to him for the light of the day. I continued on. After another block or so I came across a book, lying open, face down in the street. 

The book was a Bible.

I picked it up, and in rapid succession, my eyes fell upon the following two passages:

I can't imagine that even the most thoroughgoing Pharisaic fundamentalist could believe that the second passage refers to actual birds flying through the air and telling the king that you're mad at him. No-- King Solomon is teaching the same principle which Jesus is teaching here, and which will later be discussed in detail by people like Eliphas Levi. Our thoughts can affect people at a distance, and we must be very careful with them, lest we become murderers or adulterers, with all the consequences that entails. 

Occult Anatomy

We have bodies which are not made of matter. Contemporary occult theory, which is ultimately an elaboration of ancient Platonism (which is itself an elaboration of still older traditions), recognizes between 2 and 6 levels of existence above the physical, depending on how you divide them. We exist on all these levels, and have fully formed bodies on three of them. 

The physical body you know. Occult theory recognizes the subtle body or etheric body, which consists of the vital energies; you can find details on this in any text on Ayurveda or Traditional Chinese Medicine. Above the etheric body is the the astral body, which consists of the thoughts, emotions, and mental representations. The astral body is also what is known as the soul. 

Above the astral body is what is sometimes called the "mental sheath." This is what is called the nous in Platonic thought, and it is what Jesus and John are telling us to change, that we may dwell in the Kingdom of Heaven. Somewhat confusingly, the mental body isn't a body of thought; thought is astral. It exists at a higher level than than thought. Why is it called a "sheath," rather than a body? Because at our current stage of spiritual evolution, we don't have a fully-functioning body on this level. Saints do, though, and that's why they are able to affect change in our material world. The idea that they "pray to God for us" is mythic language; it means that, at the level of nous, which is also called Intellect or Divine Mind in the texts we've been looking at, they are always united to God, the First Cause, and it is ultimately through the First Cause that any change happens. 

Space, distance, and time exist at the material level. At the highest level, the level of the One or God, there is no space, and there is no time; this is what is meant by Eternity. Between the physical and Eternity, time and distance become less and less relevant. Our thoughts and feelings, existing at the astral level, are only affected by distance to a limited degree. Thus a strongly formulated thought, charged with passion, can affect another person. When Jesus says that you have already committed adultery with a woman by lusting after her, he isn't being metaphorical; when he tells you that anyone who is angry with his brother is already guilty of murder, he's just telling it like it is. To direct evil thoughts at others is to curse them, and curses always carry their own consequences. We can understand those consequences as imprisonment and hellfire: the soul addicted to sin becomes hardened against the outside, and trapped in the burning heat of its own negativity.

These are fundamental principles of magic and of magical ethics in particular, and this is what Jesus is teaching us here.

The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 5, Verses 13-16 reads

The Beatitudes, as detailed in Matthew 5:3-12, read as follows:

3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

4 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

Initiation

Now, it's my view, as I've stated repeatedly here, that all of these taken together work as a unified program of spiritual development and initiation. Let's remember what came before this. Jesus, following John, tells us: Change your nous, for by doing so you will attain awareness of the spiritual reality which is already within you. ("Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.")

He then teaches the Beatitudes: this is the process through which the Nous is changed.

Three Phases

The Beatitudes can be broken down into 3 groups of 3, which we can call the Three Phases.

The First Phase teaches us to alter the disposition of our souls, in order to open ourselves to the Divine. In the First Beatitude, we learn the disposition of Spiritual Poverty: This is the immediate opening of the Soul to God, including the recognition that the Soul itself has nothing and is nothing without the Eternal One by whose power it is brought into being.

The Second Beatitude is a recognition of the nature of life in the material world. As Plotinus writes:

The divine Plato who uttered many noble sayings about the soul everywhere expresses contempt for all that is of the senses, blames the commerce of soul with body as an enchantment, an entombment, and upholds the saying of the Mysteries that the soul is here as a prisoner.

Finally, the Third Beatitude teaches us the proper ordering of our inner world. Our passions and appetites, the parts of our souls that are bestial and tie us to the earthly world, are to be tamed and brought under the rule of our Nous-- which is possible, now that the Nous, the highest level of the Soul, is opened to God.

The Second Phase teaches general principles of magic and the spiritual life, and of the nature of divinity, by way of specific prescriptions. The Fourth Beatitude shows us that our appetite is not to be amputated but rather turned toward its proper object, the Divine. This, too, can be found in Plato and his successors: For Plato (in the Symposium) and for Plotinus, this is the work of the Divine Eros, which leads the soul upward from the realm of sense toward the Universal Soul, the Intellectual Realm, and the Eternal One. More generally, the principle is that the things of this world are not to be destroyed, but saved and redirected. The Fifth Beatitude teaches us to practice mercy, and in this way receive mercy; in this way it also teaches us the Law of Karma, that what ever we do will return to us. The Sixth Beatitude teaches us to constantly redirect our Inner Vision toward God, so that even as we sojourn in the World of Shadows, we do so with the awareness of our true life in the Eternal Realm of the Gods.

In the Third Phase, the changes in the soul of the Follower of Christ begin to manifest. In the Seventh Beatitude, we find that, having brought forth the work of God and and united our wills to the Will of God, we become divine and bring forth the image of the divine. In the Eighth and Ninth Beatitudes, we learn something extraordinary. The True Initiate, the one who has seen God (Beatitude Six), and through whom, in consequence, God has begun to manifest (Beatitude Seven), will not be accepted by the people of the World of Shadows. They will be rejected, persecuted, reviled. And they are to rejoice, because this itself is an outward sign that they have, indeed, achieved the Beatific Vision.

But it's more than just that. The promises made in the Beatitudes, in my view, are not primarily about future achievements. It isn't "Be a real goody goody now, and you'll be rewarded later." No! That might make for a fine system of social control, but it's beneath the Master Jesus. The last two Beatitudes don't teach us that we can rejoice because we'll be happy later, or that we ought to not mind it so much because there's a big old apple pie waiting up there in the sky. What they teach is much stranger and more interesting.

Some months back, in one of his discussions of Dion Fortune's The Cosmic Doctrine, JMG quoted J.R.R. Tolkien's discussion of the elves and other magical beings in the Lord of the Rings who have lived in the "Blessed Realm," the home of the gods:


What Jesus is telling us is not that we oughtn't mind persecution because we'll be happy later. We won't be happy later, but we will be happy now, while we are being persecuted, even though we are being persecuted. By following his initiatic path and beholding the face of God, we will dwell in both worlds at once. As Plato says, we will "keep our eye fixed" on the "universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual." 

This more than anything else shows us how so many of the early saints went willingly, even gladly to their deaths. Dwelling in the Heavens even while their bodies moved about the Earth, they had no need to fear torment or pain, and when death came, it was only the severing of the final bonds which tied them to the material reality. And so they did not die, but rose from this tomb of matter to the True Life of the spirit.

Matthew, Chapter 5, Verse 9 reads as follows:

The seventh Beatitude contains a powerful promise: They shall be called children of God. Let's talk about what this might mean, and then attend to the prescription. 

In His Image

The Book of Genesis tells us this about the creation of humankind:


God is the Creator; His name is "He brings into being all that exists." He is referred to as the Father or First Father in both ancient Jewish and Platonic writings. Moreover, the Biblical tradition is clear that humans are, in some sense, created in the image of God Himself-- an idea which we'll return to shortly.

Given that, it's impossible for any of us not to be children of God. So we don't suddenly become children of God by becoming peacemakers. What's going on here, then?

Dikaios and Diabolos

Remember what we said about Plato's concept of Justice a few entries back. In the Republic, Justice, or Dikaois, is that virtue by which each part of our soul attends to its own proper work and that alone, not interfering with the others. As he writes,


Now Justice in a kingdom is analogous to Justice within the soul-- each individual part does its own work, does not interfere with the others, and there is peace in the kingdom. The opposite of Justice, then, both in the soul and in the kingdom, is injustice-- division, conflict, and war.

Here it's worth noting that the word "Devil" comes from the Greek "Diabolos," which means "To Divide." The Devil is the divider and the source of division, conflict, and war.

God, as we know, is a unity-- THE Unity, the source of all unity.

To bring about Peace, either within oneself or the world, then, is to be God-like. Remember that, in the Platonic universe, which is the Magical  universe, things don't ever resemble one another by happenstance. If one thing is like another, it is because they participate in the same underlying reality. To be God-like is to participate in the very being of God, and to manifest God upon the Earth. When we do the work of God, the part of us which is an Image of God becomes visible, and we are called "children of God."

Create Peace in your heart, and peace in the world, and you will manifest the Will of God upon the Earth, and you will become like God.

Create conflict, sew division, or participate in the group conflicts (tribal, racial, class, gender) which are the primary means of social control in our day, and you do the work of the Devil. 

 Dreamwidth helpfully deleted my original draft for this post, so we'll have to begin again at the beginning. The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 5, Verse 7 reads:

With the Fifth Beatitude, we start to see the explicit applications of Jesus's spiritual path in terms of practical magic. We are given a specific promise here: If we are merciful, we will obtain mercy. We'll discuss that in a moment, but first let's attend to the general principle here.

Magic, Revisited

To do that, it may be helpful to back up for a moment, and remind ourselves what magic is, and how it works. The definition of magic that I like best comes from Dion Fortune. According to Fortune, magic is


Notice three things:

First, magic has to do with consciousness. Now consciousness consists of 100% of the mental phenomena we experience. And it only takes a moment's reflection to realize that that means that consciousness means 100% of everything we experience. Indeed, the word "experience" itself really only means "conscious activity." When you look out the window at the street outside, the image of the street is just that: an image, assembled by your conscious mind; it is, in that sense, no different from an image seen in a dream. The facts that the image has a relative permanence, and that it is more-or-less shared with others, does not make it not an image-- rather, the facts of permanence and "sharedness"* are the two qualities that an image must possess for us to describe it as "matter" or "material."

(*Does your mind ever blank in such a way that you can't come up with a common word? Mine does. What is the word I'm looking for here, anyone?)

Second, magic has to do with consciousness-- and everything has to do with consciousness, as we've just seen. Therefore, according to this definition, magic isn't something especially unusual; to the extent that we're always changing our consciousness, we can say that we're all doing magic, all the time-- 

At least, in a sense. Because-- and this is the third point-- to do magic properly is to change consciousness by means of the will. Suppose that I look out the window at the street outside and see something which causes a reaction in me. Say that it's an American flag on my neighbor's lawn, and that this causes a chain of thoughts and feelings in me, something like "That's good-- I want to live in a neighborhood like this-- I'm glad I don't see BLM flags here-- I trust my neighbors." Or suppose it's one of those leftwing Credos that go on about how "IN THIS HOUSE, WE BELIEVE BLACK LIVES MATTER, NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL, LOVE IS LOVE," etc, etc, etc, and I think something like "Oh no, not them, we moved out of the city to get away from those people, I hope it never comes to a fight..." In either case, my consciousness has been changed-- but not by an act of my will; rather, by an act of someone else's will. (That's one of the best reasons to learn magic, by the way-- magic is being done to you, all the time, without your consent.)

In order to do effective magic, then, we have to first master our own wills; then we can use them to create changes in the world of experience. 

To Master the Will Is to Become Divine

Plotinus, discussing the nature of the First Principle, which is variously called the Supreme, the One, the Good, or God, says this:

Because God is a unity, His will is not separate from his being; therefore, it can be said that God is a will: the Supreme Will. By acting under our own wills, we come to resemble God. And remember that, in the Platonic universe-- which is the universe of Magical Philosophy-- things do not resemble each other by chance. If we come to resemble God, it is only by participating in the very being of God. As Plotinus says, "self possession must belong to it [that is, to God], so that through It others in their turn may be self-belonging."

Now, herein lies a trap, and we must spring it before we move on. When we start talking about the will, about self-mastery, and so on, the temptation is to visualize a kind of Neitzchean super-man, unbound by any constraint, dominating himself and others by his own power. Not only is that not what we are talking about, that is the exact opposite of what we are talking about. We have already seen that to ascend to the level of God by raising ourselves up is precisely the sin of Lucifer, the cause of his fall from grace. We ascend not by pride but by humility; by humbling ourselves, realizing the limitations of what appears to be our human will, and opening ourselves entirely to God.

The truth is that, if God is Will, then no one, acting under their Will, can ever do an act of evil, because Will is derived entirely from God, the Good. 

The program of the Beatitudes leads us to this point. Recall the process: We start by the realization that we are nothing without God, and opening our souls totally to Him; we continue by turning away from the things of the world, which pass away and die, toward Eternal Things, which always live; we tame and gentle the feral desires of our animal nature; and we turn our desiring power entirely toward the Good. It is only at this point that our true wills and our true nature, which is the Will and Nature of God manifested in a particular being, can begin to shine through us, and we can begin to create change in the world. 

...So Shall He Reap.

And so this is why I say that Jesus is beginning to teach us practical magic, here. His first lesson is this: Whatever you put out into the world will return to you. 

If you desire mercy, you must be merciful. If you are merciful, you will receive mercy.

And the corollaries: If you hate, you will be hated. If you love, you will be loved. If you are cruel, 

Another name for this is karma, and there is no escaping it. But if we can understand it, we can use it to our advantage, and the advantage of the whole world-- which is the same thing.

The Gospel of Matthew 5:5 

The Who Shall Do What?

In order to understand this verse, we need to know the word being translated into English as "meek." Let's find out what it is; consider its meaning from a more-or-less orthodox or traditional perspective; and then see what additional light we can shed on it by the way of Occult Philosophy. 

μακάριοι πραεῖς

Let's start with the translation. The Greek word here is πραεῖς "praeis." The word does indeed connote gentleness, but it has a larger meaning-- as usual. The word doesn't necessarily mean mere weakness, but, rather, the sort of gentleness that comes from self-control. Keep in mind that "gentleness" itself is only possible for those who also possess strength. Weaklings cannot be admonished to be gentle; they have no other choice.

Jesus is praeis, when he faces down his accusers in the Sanhedrin, and goes willingly to his execution. Mahatma Gandhi, who greatly admired the Sermon on the Mount, was similarly praeis when he faced violence and arrest at the hands of British soldiers and police.

Notice that Jesus could have fought, and Gandhi could have fought. Fighting, they might have won-- but what kind of victory would it have been? Only the victory that one dog gains over another when they fight for supremacy in a dog pack. The top dog in any dog pack is still a dog. 

Tellingly, "praeis" was used to describe wild animals that had been tamed. 

Psychic Anatomy, Again

As we've discussed more than once in these pages, the soul can be seen as having three parts, which we can call the nous, thymos, and epithymia. 

The Nous is the reasoning part, but it's more than that. At its highest, the nous extends beyond mere discursive reason into the higher, spiritual realm, and interacts directly with spiritual reality. In fact, this is its proper function; when it is operating properly, the nous sees and knows directly, without any sort of intermediary. Proclus has it that nous has three parts: the highest is nous proper; the next down is dianoia, or discursive reasoning; the lowest is doxa, mere opinion. 

The Thymos is the spirited part. We could think of it as the aggression, or the energy, or the will. I think the best translation of it is "heart," exactly as that word is used by (say) high school football coaches. 

Finally, the Epithymia is the appetite. All of the base drives and desires, whether for food or for sex or for another quarter to put in a slot machine can be found here.

In the soul of the animal, only Thymos and Epithymia are present. An animal desires, and it moves towards its desires. In the natural man, the situation is exactly the same-- the difference is that he possesses a nous. He has opinions, he can understand language. In theory, he is capable of reasoning, and of that which is higher than reason-- but only in theory. In the natural man, Thymos and Epithymia-- the animal parts of the soul-- overwhelm the Nous and subjugate it. Insofar as reason is used at all, it is used only in service of desire and appetite; the higher nous is entirely clouded. (Modern Western languages have no proper translation of nous, and in fact deny its existence; this should tell us all we need to know about the degeneracy of our civilization.)

Taming the Beast Within

In the Phaedrus, Plato writes:


The charioteer is the nous; the noble horse is the thymos; the ignoble, the epithymia.

To gain mastery over the epithymia, to tame and gentle it and subject it to the rule of the nous, is the ultimate aim of philosophy and of the spiritual life. This is the definition of the virtue of Justice in Plato's Republic-- every part of the state performs its proper task; the rulers rule, the workers work, and the warriors submit to the rulers. The rulers, here, represent the nous; the warriors, the thymos; the workers, the epithymia. Every one of us has Plato's ideal kingdom within our souls. As it is said, the kingdom of God is within us.

The Divine Council

Jesus doesn't just tell his followers to be meek or praeis, he makes a specific promise. By meekness, they shall inherit the Earth.

What does this mean?

In one of the most important developments in the last decade, many American Christians have finally gotten around to noticing just how weird their Bible actually is. 

This began-- as far as I can tell-- with the work of an Evangelical Protestant theologian named Michael Heiser. It's not really clear to me why it took until the 21st century for us to get here, but at some point Heiser, who is a very capable Biblical scholar, got down to reading passages like Psalm 82:1


Or Psalm 136:2


Or Deuteronomy 32:8



...and wondering who the "gods" that the Bible continually references are. They aren't the most high-- if so, it would say so, but it doesn't; they are described as "sons of the most high" and they are said to rule over the nations (that's the meaning of Deuteronomy 32. I had to go rather far afield to find an honest translation of that passage, by the way; it was traditional to translate it "children of Israel" and obscure the real meaning).

Once you see it, you can't unsee it. The Bible is full of references like this, which show an understanding of the spiritual world as basically henotheistic-- that is, many lesser deities under the one Most High God.

It is also full of references to a cosmic rebellion. According to this view, some number of the lesser gods-- perhaps a third, perhaps all of them-- have rebelled against YHVH, the true God, as we saw with Lucifer two entries back. These gods are now demons, ruling over the nations but doing it badly and for their own ends, so that, as Psalm 82 continues:

From here, it isn't a very long jump to the traditional Christian understanding of the saints. What are they, after all, but subordinate deities, who rule over particular matters (their "patronage") by the will and through the power of the Most High. As St. Athanasius said, 


And the view of those who hold to "Divine Council" theology is exactly this: The ultimate aim of Christianity is the replacement of the Fallen Angels with Exalted Human Beings.

For the last year or so, a pair of American Orthodox priests have been discussing these issues regularly on a podcast called Lord of Spirits, which I'd recommend to anyone, Christian or otherwise.

Who Shall Inherit the Earth?

Let's bring the discussion back to meekness, or praeis. If we take this view, suddenly it all comes into focus. By taming and subordinating the animal parts of ourselves, we are already, in a sense, taking on the rule of gods. What are gods, but centers of conscious reason and spiritual power that rule over the material world and its lesser inhabitants? And this earthly work becomes a preparation for and an initiation to our ultimate destiny.

In the Phaedrus, Plato continues, concerning the soul and its proper nature:


By meekness, praeis, as Jesus understands it, we step on the path of divinization, through which our soul can regain its wings (in Plato's metaphor), return to its proper home in the Heavenly Realm, and take its own place in the Council of the Gods.

The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 5, Verses 1-3


The Beatitudes

Now Jesus begins his teaching in earnest. The lines that follow are called the "beatitudes," from the Latin word for "blessed." The Greek word being translated here is "makarioi." This word means "happy," but it has a connotation of more-than-worldly happiness. In his recent (and very helpful) translation of the New Testament, David Bentley Hart used the word "blissful," in order to draw out the sense of a kind of divine serenity.

We're going to take the Beatitudes a few at a time. I think that they're critically important and represent the core of Jesus's teaching. Let's start with the first one:


Heaven Is A Place Where Nothing Ever Happens

Here we have the Kingdom of Heaven, again. Jesus and John have already talked about it. But let's take a moment and remind ourselves of what it means, and what it must mean.

First, "Heaven" is the dwelling place of God, and also of his subordinate spirits, whether you call them the Gods or Angels. Therefore, to be in Heaven is to be in the presence of God and of other divine beings.

It is pictured as being located in the physical sky. This could be understood as a metaphor. Alternatively, we can understand that the physical sky is the reflection, in the world of our sensory experience, of the true spiritual reality. This is the view of the Platonists: Everything in the physical world, the world of Becoming, is analogous to things in the spiritual world, the world of Being. Things in the physical world are continually brought into being by the spiritual world. We can contemplate the physical Heaven, then, and understand the nature of things in the true Heaven.

The Kingdom

Second, we're talking about a "Kingdom of Heaven." What is a kingdom? It is, at minimum, a type of society. This means that Heaven isn't empty: We share Heaven with others. A kingdom is a political system, which means that it is governed by a set of laws, which must be obeyed in order to remain a part of that system. And a kingdom is characterized by the rule of a single person, the monarch. In this case that monarch is God.

We have already learned that the Kingdom of Heaven is not a human political system in this world; those have already been shown to be fundamentally Satanic. The kingdom of Heaven is within us, but we also share it with others. The monarch is God, not a human. The laws, then, are God's laws, and these must differ from the laws of human beings-- indeed, they must be "laws" only by analogy. Because God is that power which brings the whole world into being, his laws shouldn't require any extra effort on his part or the part of his subordinate spirits to either enforce them or punish offenders-- God's laws simply work, always. Another way of saying this is that "We are not punished for our sins, but by them." That punishment can only be loss of the Kingdom of Heaven, which is the awareness of the presence of God. I say "awareness," because, since He Brings Into Being All That Is, it is impossible for anything to be both deprived of the presence of God and to exist. The Nous is the eye of the soul; transgression of Divine Law clouds the Nous, so that it can no longer see.

Keys to the Kingdom

The Poor in Spirit

What does poverty of spirit mean?

Clearly not that one's spirit is out of money. So, what then?

The traditional understanding is that "poverty of spirit" is the recognition that the spirit has nothing on its own-- like a beggar holding out his hat to a passing stranger, the spirit needs God. In our case, let us remember that our goal is the accomplishment of the Great Work, the "Creation of a Man by himself, that is to say, the full and entire conquest of his faculties and his future; it is especially the perfect emancipation of his will." Another way of saying this is that, by the aid of God and the power of God, we complete the work of our own creation, and become the beings that we were meant to be.

Christian tradition gives us two very fine examples of Poverty of Spirit in action. Let's consider them in chronological order.

Quix ut Deus?




Lucifer was created as the highest of all the angels. That idea is well known enough that we don't consider exactly what it means. All of the following comes from within orthodox Christian tradition, with no borrowings from the esoterica, Platonism, or anywhere else, by the way.

Throughout the Middle Ages, it was believed that angels had the job of moving the planets in their courses. When the Church more or less changed its mind and decided to agree with modern astronomers that the planets are billiard balls that move on their own, they didn't downgrade the status of angels-- they remain the sort of beings that could move planets in their courses. And it is a long-established teaching of all the sacramental Christian churches that every natural feature in the world has its own particular angel that watches over it-- so every planet, every star, every galaxy in the remotest corner of space is guarded and governed by an angel.

Moreover, the sorts of angels that have, or might have, the job of moving planets around in space aren't the most powerful sorts of angels either-- nowhere near it. There are nine ranks of angels, as you may know, and guardian angels usually come from one of the lower three grades-- the angels, archangels and principalities. The Virtues are the fifth rank down, and they have sometimes been understood as the angels that watch over natural phenomena. So at the very best, the sort of angels that watch over galaxies might be the fifth from the top.

The highest choir of angels are the Seraphim. One among these was called Lucifer-- one of the highest, maybe, or perhaps the very highest; sources differ. Either way, Lucifer had just one problem. Though more powerful by far than the sort of being that can push a galaxy around without any trouble, he wasn't the highest thing in the universe. That role belongs to God, and only to God.

If you want to understand Lucifer's problem, it pays to take a minute to reflect on the numbers 1 and Infinity. 1, as we've discussed repeatedly, is a number, but it is also present to all numbers. For every given number, there is only one of it-- one 2, one 12, one 786,348. This means that every number has the same relationship to 1, and 1 is equally present to all numbers-- no matter how great, no matter how small.

Infinity is similar. No matter how great any given number is, the distance between it and infinity is always the same-- infinity. If you've counted to three, you will have to go on counting forever to reach infinity. The same if you've counted to 100. The same if you've counted to 786,348. This tells us that infinity minus any other number is still infinity. The gap between any number and infinity is infinity. And the gap between any particular being and Infinite Being is the same-- Infinity.

So you can see the problem. Although Lucifer was more powerful than any other created being, his relationship to God, the Infinite, was the same as that of any other being-- a lesser angel, a housecat, a worm-- even a human being, even a woman.

This was an intolerable situation for Lucifer. And so he resolved to overthrow God, and set himself up in God's place. After all, why not? Wasn't he the most powerful of all creations? Wasn't he...

Like God?

This was the question that Lucifer put to the Assembly of the Angels. He was like God, he would be like God, he would be God. Fully 1/3rd of the heavenly host agreed-- they would overthrow God, and set Lucifer in his place.

Some disagreed.

One angel-- what his name was is unknown, but we know that he was not one of the highest; he came from the lower ranks-- dared to question Lucifer. "Who is like God?" he asked. And the answer is: No one, nothing. Not an angel, not a god, not Lucifer. And so the angel left the Assembly and resolved to follow God, no matter the cost.

For that reason he was given command of all the armies of Heaven, exalted above the Cherubim and Seraphim. He put aside his old name-- God is very fond of renaming people, as we shall see as we proceed-- and he was given, as his new name, his question: In Latin, "Quix ut Deus?"; in Hebrew, מיכאל, "Michael."

Raising himself up by Pride, Lucifer found himself cast down to the uttermost depth.

Lowering himself through Humility, Michael found himself exalted to the highest of heights.

The highest available for an angel, that is. The greatest position for any created being was given to another.

Ecce enim ex hoc beatam me, dicent omnes generationes



If the year was 3 B.C. and you were asked to name someone of particularly low social status, "Jewish woman living in a backwater part of the Roman Empire" would be as good a choice as any. And yet it was to just such a person that the archangel Gabriel came, saying "Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and shalt bring forth a son; and thou shalt call his name Jesus."

She could have refused; she could have made bargained-- "Okay, what do I get in return?"

Instead she said, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to thy word."

Later, visiting her cousin Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, she spoke these words, which might be said more than anything else to embody the concept of Poverty of Spirit:

Magnificat anima mea Dominum;
Et exultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo,
Quia respexit humilitatem ancillae suae;
Ecce enim ex hoc beatam me dicent omnes generationes.

My soul doth magnify the Lord,
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my savior,
For he hath regarded the humility of his handmaid;
Behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.

For his Pride, Satan is cast down to the bottom of the universe, the lowest pit of Hell.

For her Humility, Mary is exalted above all other creatures; in Orthodox hymnody she is called "more honorable than the Cherubim, more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim."

St. Louis de Montfort writes:

God chose her to be the treasurer, the administrator and the dispenser of all his graces, so that all his graces and gifts pass through her hands. Such is the power that she has received from him that, according to St Bernardine, she gives the graces of the eternal Father, the virtues of Jesus Christ, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit to whom she wills, as and when she wills, and as much as she wills.

Recall that the word "grace" is a translation of the Greek "energeia," referring to the actions or the power of God. By submitting to the Will of God, Mary becomes the dispenser of the Power of God. That is the model for all magic in the Christian tradition. Mary is the first Christian, and her path, beginning in the Joy of the Annunciation, proceeding through the unimaginable Sorrow of her son's torture and execution, ending in her Glorification as Queen of Heaven and Earth, is the model for the path that all those who would follow in the Initiatic Tradition of the Master Jesus must walk.

The Gospel of Matthew Chapter 4, Verses 12-17




Whither John the Baptist?

There are three things that I want to extract from this section.

First, note the imprisonment of John the Baptist. This will end in John's execution by beheading. We're a long way off from there, but for now I want to draw attention to it, because it's going to be important.

Order and Chaos

Second: The people in darkness have seen a great light; light is sprung up in the region and shadow of death.

The Timaeus is Plato's account of the creation of the universe. It's a difficult text, but well worth reading in detail. (Also, and as an aside, if you want to get a sense of the sanctimonious idiocy of 19th century scholarship, you could do far worse than to read Benjamin Jowett's introduction at the link provided; it's on full display.) In any case, the important thing for our text is how the creation is accomplished in the Timaeus. Creation does not begin out of nothing. We begin with a formless void, the Chaos. The work of the Most High God-- called the Demiurgos, the Maker or Craftsman God-- is to assemble the world out of formless darkness, rather than create it out of nothing.

The same process of creation occurs in the Cosmographia, a 12th century epic poem written by Bernardus Sylvestris. Cosmographia is basically the Timaeus Christianized, and was considered orthodox enough at one time to have been recited before the Pope. In Sylvestris's work, Creation begins when Nature turns up in Heaven to complain to God that Sylva-- that is, physical reality-- is formless chaos. God-- or, rather, his interlocutor, Noys, "Divine Mind," consents to bring Sylva into ordered regularity.  Here again, creation consists of bringing form to formlessness.

The Book of Genesis details this same process. The only difference is that Genesis 1:1 moves the second hand of the clock back one tick. And so we get:

We've already discussed what these words mean. (If you missed it, head back to the discussion of Matthew 3:1-2.) The important thing for today is that they are the same as the words John the Baptist used. This confirms for us what we've already seen: Jesus is initiated into a magical current by John the Baptist; and, that Initiation is not complete until he faces down Satan during his 40 days in the wilderness.