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An unnamed Zen Mistress is rumoured to have inquired of her destined disciple: "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" By which question, if we may properly rely on the only report, and that a regrettably brief and somewhat garbled one, that has so far reached the West of the publication in a now defunct Indian provincial newspaper of one elderly resident's letter referring to his own personal recollection of the account of the matter a solitary passing traveller had one day confided to him over tea, claiming he had seen an identical account of this entire metaphysical transaction in what was, admittedly, a possibly apocryphal and so, perhaps, best forgotten unpublished manuscript he had, however, been permitted to peruse at leisure while journeying somewhere in the hinterland between India and China - the clearly enlightened disciple had been impelled spontaneously to ask: "What's not?"

Written letters, however, are never more than pale shadows of those few parts of human speech which happen to be physically audible. Wisdom is much more coy; even something as facile as irony needs, if it is to be at all effective, to remain metalinguistic, for, as William Blake, writing in a somewhat different context, succinctly expressed it:

• "He who bends to himself a joy
• Does the winged life destroy."

Which is why the Fairy he had cruelly and selfishly captured and taken, he imagined, as his own private prisoner and personal servant to his home, later mocked him, albeit not unkindly:

• "'For stolen joys are sweet and bread eaten in secret pleasant.'
• So sang a Fairy, mocking, as he sat on a streaked Tulip,
• Thinking none saw him: when he ceased, I started from the trees,
• And caught him in my hat, as boys knock down a butterfly.
• 'How did you know this?' said I; 'small sir? where did you learn this song?'
• Seeing himself in my possession, thus he answered me:
• 'My master, I am yours! Command me, for I must obey.'
• - 'Then tell me, what is the material world, and is it dead?'
• He, laughing, answered: 'I will write a book on leaves of flowers,
• If you will feed me on love-thoughts, and give me now and then
• A cup of sparkling poetic fancies.'" (Cf. Saurat, o.c., pp.35-6.)

As I mentioned earlier, before Jesus of Nazareth summoned Lazarus from the tomb, he sighed; this was because his inner eyes had been vouchsafed a fresh reminder, though he needed none, of how far removed the rest of us have always been from enjoying his Father's pristine gift of Life; instead, as Blake was to learn, and as all that is best in Ancient Egyptian symbolism so mightily admonishes us, Adam has - or so it seems - transmitted to each individual member of Eve's long-suffering brood a tainted legacy, not Life at all, but merely life, a woe-filled condition characterised by spiritual lethargy, prolonged slumber, and weakness of memory, the very condition that Jesus's Living friend Lazarus had "died" to get away from.

But G-d's Grace, however, punctuated by Mary of Nazareth's "Genoito moi kata to rêma sou - Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum - Be it done unto me according to thy word" (Lk 1:38; six pregnant words of adamantine fire: 508 + 120 + 322 + 370 + 149 + 670 = 2189 = 11 × 199), an endlessly winding, often tautly stretched, but essentially unbroken silver thread of eloquent silence, flowing like a river in Paradise from some secret source deep within the crystal-rock of constantly changing and everlasting Truth, has superabundantly sufficed to weave into an irridescent, many-coloured, seamless robe of fragrant Beauty that quintessential echo (so perfectly expressive of the eternal mystery of all Life, human and divine) of her future Son's sevenfold primordial declaration of Faith, Hope and all-conquering Love:

• "I am the True Vine."
• "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life."
• "I am the Door."
• "I am the Bread of Life."
• "I am the Good Shepherd."
• "I am the Light of the World."
• "I am the Resurrection and the Life."

Curiosity may fade with time but, even among the Angels, wonder will never cease. "There remain, therefore, Faith, Hope, Love, these three. But the greatest is Love, says St. Paul. The act of apprehending G-d as Truth in the beatific vision discloses him as incomprehensible. This act, grounded in G-d's self-communication, is not one in which the Absolute Mystery, which G-d is, is finally overcome and resolved. It is the act in which the definitive and deadly intensity of that utterly unfathomable mystery can no longer be kept back but must be borne and endured in itself without any possibility of escape into what is transparently comprehensible and so inferior to and within the scope of the subject and his own intrinsic constitution." (K. Rahner, "Towards a Theology of Hope" in Concurrence - a review for the encounter of commitments, no.1, Spring 1969, pp.27, 33.)

Despite Adam, therefore, the light of Truth shines, has always shone, and will always continue to shine clearly, yes, but always in the centre of an immeasurable ocean of Darkness.

So now, also for lesser mortals, fidelity in silence is frequently a treasure of much greater moment than any degree of verbal refinement human eloquence can achieve. At times, however, it seems right to speak.

Orthodox Christians feel that theologians should refrain from peeping round the bedroom door. Western 'experts' on morality have not always been so discrete; indeed, towards the close of Pope Pius XII's pontificate, on 30 June 1952, the Vatican's Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office issued a Monitum or 'solemn warning', published in the Acta Apostolicæ Sedis, which noted that several contemporary writers, in discussing married life, had been devoting their attention openly and in detail to individual points without experiencing any embarrassment, and that some of them had described, praised, and even ventured to recommend something they termed 'a reserved embrace'.

In virtue of an express mandate of Pius XII's, the same Sacred Congregation, therefore, seriously admonished all such writers to refrain from that way of carrying on; it also forbade priests and spiritual directors ever to speak in such a fashion as to suggest that there was, in the light of Christ's law, nothing objectionable about 'a reserved embrace'… Mmm.

J. D. Solomon never failed to remind his readers that individual tastes differ. Hence, no single presentation may fairly be expected to please everybody. Dr. John Mumford's Ecstasy through Tantra (a Sanskrit word which means 'weaving') was originally published by Llewellyn Publications (St.Paul, Minnesota) in 1975 under the title: Sexual Occultism; a second, revised edition was published in Australia in 1977. My own quotations, however, are all taken from the more recent 1988 Llewellyn Publications edition:

•  "It was recognized that any sexual activity, whether normal or so-called deviate, released copious quantities of psychic energhy into the body and surrounding environment. All that was required was the tapping and controlling of this force for magical purposes, rather than the permitting of its dissipation in the usual manner.
• This type of thaumaturgy might involve the consecration of a special temple..., or it might simply involve an act of concentration by the practitioner at the moment of climax, with the object of influencing another person telepathically.
• A very special example of this is known as 'The Mass of the Holy Ghost.' This is a Mass in which the elements of Transubstantiation are the fluids secreted from the bodies of the couple participating. Western sexual alchemy, like Tantra, is literal 'feeding on love.' This ceremony is not a parody of the Catholic Mass and is similar only in aim; i.e., Transubstantiation." (pp.10-11.)

A valuable appendix contains Shri Mahendranath the Avadhuta's account of the Rite of the Naked Fire as used by the Adi-Nath sect of Nathas in the Gujarat, where most Sannyasin sects have a strict tradition that they must be naked when meditating, or when performing the Fire Rite, in which Om prefaces all Mantras. "It is put there to imply that whatever is expressed in the Mantra, it is still only OM." (p.153.) In other words, the pantheist or panentheist implications are, here too, quite explicit.

Shri Mahendranath also emphasises that "attention should be paid to the wording of the rite, if it is not to become only a worthless ritual. Each verse expresses basic Upanishad teachings, and they can expand one's awareness." (pp.153-6.) He recommends use of the following English Oration, which, we are assured, aptly conveys the flavour of the Sanskrit original:

• "One fire, One God, One World, One people;
• Ignorance transforms the One into many:
• Homage and Salutations to the Naked Fire!
•  
• As fire burns we destroy delusion and bondage,
• Leaving only the white ash of Liberation.
• Homage and Salutations to the Naked Fire!
•  
• Let the fire destroy the drag of the senses,
• Pulling us hither and thither in bondage;
• Homage and Salutations to the Naked Fire!
•  
• In the Naked Fire the mind regenerated,
• Fit to attain the vision of Reality.
• Homage and Salutations to the Naked Fire!
•  
• As burning releases the fire from the fuel,
• May mankind be released from bondage.
• Homage and Salutations to the Naked Fire!
•  
• Let the fire burn all Karmas and their power,
• Releasing us to attain equipoise and Liberation.
• Homage and Salutations to the Naked Fire!
•  
• The flame in the fire is the symbol of Wisdom;
• As Naked Fire let the inner Consciousness glow.
• Homage and Salutations to the Naked Fire!
•  
• Realisation of the Self is Immortality
• And the Supreme Attainment is spontaneous.
• Homage and Salutations to the Naked Fire!
•  
• Thoughtless, the fire burns without intention;
• In Samadhi we attain that state of Bliss.
• Homage and Salutations to the Naked Fire!
•  
• Like as the Dhunee is the symbol of Shakti,
• The flame is the Lingam of Lord Shiva.
• Homage and Salutations to the Naked Fire!
•  
• As above, so below. Fuel transforms to ash;
• All the worlds in the Universe turn to dust.
• Homage and Salutations to the Naked Fire!
•  
• As fire is inherent in the fuel,
• So the Soul is inherent in the body.
• Homage and Salutations to the Naked Fire!
•  
• In the fires of Samsara, painfully burning;
• May the Grace of the Absolute descend on us.
• Homage and Salutations to the Naked Fire!
•  
• As fire takes the form of the fuel it consumes,
• The Immortal Soul takes the form of the body.
• Homage and Salutations to the Naked Fire!
•  
• As flame passes on to other pieces of wood,
• So the Soul passes on from body to body.
• Homage and Salutations to the Naked Fire!
•  
• Drink though the Nectar of Immortality;
• Thou art the Naked Fire of Eternity.
• Homage and Salutations to the Naked Fire!
•  
• In the fire of frustration, Wisdom is born,
• From the womb of a jackal, a tiger is born,
• From the fire of Wisdom, dispassion is born,
• From all cast aside, Liberation is born.
• The one has done all that which needs be done,
• As Naked Fire then shine as mortals all.
• Homage and Salutations to the Naked Fire!
• OM NAMA SHIVAYA!
• OM NAMA SHIVAYA!
• OM NAMA SHIVAYA!
• OM SHANTI SHANTI SHANTI!"

Two coloured plates in the series following page 76 in the same book beautifully portray a nude couple in the Yab Yum or Father-Mother Asana: "The male sits locked in lotus posture with the female sitting atop him, her legs clinging rond his hips. The penis is deeply and securely inserted in the vagina, while the 'Father Face' and 'Mother Face' are locked together with tongues touching firmly and arms strongly hugging each other close to the other. This is an ideal posture for 'pre-birth rocking' until the moment of orgasm. The man may find additional support from a pillow placed under his buttocks."

Unfortunately, although seemingly straightforward and quite matter-of-fact, the foregoing explanation can, as experience confirms, all too easily be completely misunderstood. That is one of my reasons for especially recommending Margo Anand's Tantric titles in preference to Dr. Mumford's for your own personal reading:

• "In its essence High Sex is not technique but love, not a method but a deep relaxation into the heart. It is a state of being. All methods lead to this understanding: that a point is reached when the ecstasy for which you have been seeking and searching suddenly overwhelms you, floods through your body, consumes you. That is the moment when you abandon the method, abandon all attempts to manipulate, rationalize, or categorize the experience. In that moment you allow yourself to move beyond the control of the mind and let yourself be possessed by something bigger than you, carrying you into a timeless experience of ecstatic loving. Then you have truly experienced High Sex. Then there are no longer two people involved, but one. In fact, there is not even one. There is only the experience of ecstasy. There is only bliss." (Mitsou Naslednikov - Margo Anand, The Art of Sexual Ecstasy, Aquarian Press, 1990, p.423.)

Of course, that paragraph can do no more than hint at the advantages to be derived from reading Margo's account of, among other things, the 'reserved embrace' (those interested in the probable historical cause of Pope Pius XII's related intervention may wish to read Doctor Alice B. Stockham's Karezza - Ethics of Marriage, New York: R. F. Fenno & Company, new and revised edition 1903; 1st edition 1896), the wave, the interior flute, the chakras even…

Kevin & Venika Kingsland used to teach groups of individuals in the U.K. how better to appreciate the vital function of the seven principal chakras, wheels or blossoms which grow and can be helped to flourish in each person's usually, to most of us, invisible ætheric body or bioelectromagnetic envelope. Peter Rendel of Hourne Farm,, near Crowborough, who hosted and participated in at least one such workshop, has published what is probably the best available short introduction to this important subject: Understanding the Chakras (Aquarian Press, re-issued 1990).

Also helpful is David V. Tansley's Subtle Body (Thames & Hudson, 1977); page 46 includes a labelled diagram showing not only the main 'chakras' but also the principal 'nadis' as well - these latter are, according to Tansley, conduits of, or rather - as I would prefer to say, quasi-localised condensations of vital force or 'prana' which human discourse sometimes finds it helpful to describe as being part of a much vaster intricate web, viz., the labyrinth of Mother Nature's all-encompassing Cosmic Egg, the Tree of Life, the Spider's unbroken thread of silken, sunlit beads.

So much to learn!

THE NUPTIALS OF G-D

THE KING'S SECRET

St. John the Evangelist concludes his Gospel (21:25) by assuring his readers that "there are many other things Jesus did which, if they were set down one by one, would… require so many books to be written that the whole world would be unable to contain them."

Moreover, according to St. Mark's Gosepl (4:10-12), "When Jesus's companions, the twelve disciples among them, found themselves alone with him, they set out to question him about the parables. And this is the reply he made them: 'As for yourselves, you have had the very secret of the Kingdom of G-d committed into your hands, while everything comes by way of parables to those others who stand outside. And the point of it all is that, while looking indeed, they should see nothing, and while hearing indeed, they should understand nothing, to make it certain that they should not turn towards G-d and have their deeds forgiven them'." (cf Isaiah 6:9.)

While I was living in London in the early 1970s, I became acquainted socially with a strict vegan lady, a civil-servant in her early 60s whom, some 40 years previously a medical specialist had pronounced to be in proximate danger of dying of a seriously malignant cancer. She, however, had then visited Dr. Alexander Cannon, KCA, MD, PhD, DPM, MA, ChB, FRSA, FRGS, Hon. FPPS, etc., Master-the-fifth of the Great White Lodge of the Himalayas, and Kushog-Yogi of Northern Tibet, in his then consulting-rooms in Welbeck Street, and 40 years later I found her still entirely convinced that she owed to this eminent practitioner's advice and friendly ministrations her continuing good health as well as her ability to hold down a responsible full-time job without ceasing to enjoy a full and varied social life.

I still have a copy of Dr. Cannon's Sleeping Through Space (Woodthorpe, Nottingham: Walcot Publishing Co., 1938) in which he declares (p.8): "My work is a sincere attempt to give to the world the knowledge which it so much needs, in these days seething with unrest, when men are searching in vain for Peace, Truth, and real Knowledge," only to add later (pp. 14-15 & 24): "I know many secrets of mind control, which I cannot relate... Back to Nature is the only Way to revitalize ourselves, and to understand the mysteries of mind and its magic, known more than three thousand years ago to the Aryan Hindus, who are a remnant of ancient Atlantis - the great continent which was sunk by the evil forceful powers of man about the year 254,666 B.C.... You must bring yourself to realize that the world is the result of Maya - the Great Illusion."

Denis Saurat's Introduction to Gods of the People includes the personal confession that he and his wife once listened in delight to a talk being delivered at Hyde Park corner by a man in rags, standing below a huge canvas inscribed:

I suspect that Dr. Alexander Cannon would have been much readier than I am to share Denis Saurat's unqualified delight in that honest display of native wit and general benevolence. He would also, I think, have been very happy to endorse Saurat's observation towards the end of Chapter Three of Part One of his book:

• "Bergson will explain scientifically that our cogitation in the brain is but the insertion into matter of the fine point of a spiritual cone, which goes broadening into Eternity; but what he studies is the fine point of the cone and its relationship to matter. Freud and his descendants similarly chart vast seas under the conscious, but see clearly only what happens in the conscious and explain it by hypothetical movements of the seas. All these semi-scientific folk are the representatives of this world and look into other worlds for explanation.
• Not so the poet: he is the representative of the other worlds in this world. There is for him no unconscious: there is only ignorance in the common man or common scientist, ignorance of the action of supernatural beings who are perfectly conscious of themselves, of their will and methods. The poet sees the Angel that sees your thoughts. The scientists, Bergson or Freud, see only the disturbance caused in your thoughts by an angel invisible to them: as those round the pool at Shiloah saw only the turmoil in the waters when the angel came to stir them." (op.cit., pp.36-7.)

Saurat is, of course, well aware that many persons are less than comfortable in the presence of either poets or mystics, but is himself quite familiar with the Jewish Cabalistic Zohar or Book of Splendours and, more particularly, with a 3000-page French translation of it by de Pauly, which was published from 1906- to 1911 by Lafuma with Lerous in Paris. In Chapter One of his own Part Six Saurat quotes approvingly from this literary masterpiece:

• "Rabbi Yehouda says: 'I would have preferred, in the interests of this child, that he should know less of the mysteries, for I fear that he may die young.'
• Rabbi Isaac said: 'Why?'
• Rabbi Yehouda answered: 'Because the child is capable of contemplating spiritual spheres which it is not lawful for man to contemplate.'
• Having heard him, the child cried out: 'I fear no punishment, for when he was on the point of leaving this world, my father blessed me and prayed for me; and I know that my father's merits will protect me.'
• So they asked him: 'Who was thy father?'
• And he answered them: 'The son of Rabbi Hammenouna, the Old One.'
• Then they took the child; lifted him upon their shoulders, and carried him for a distance of three leagues." (op.cit., pp.155-6.)

Having reviewed the evidence, I have already concluded that Joan D'Arcy Cooper had no cause to envy that remarkable child's good fortune. In the Preface to her most detailed work she wrote:

• "For nearly six thousand years the original teachings of Yoga remained an oral teaching. This oral teaching was never recorded over the long period of its history, for reasons given in the Introduction, although some of the basic knowledge found its way into certain writings - often in a different context or misrepresented. It is being recorded fully (emphasis added) for the first time in this book, because of the critical conditions of life today on this planet." (Yoga…, p.8.)

However, although, as she notes further on (p.148): "On the highest level a man's mind will reflect all that exists in the etheric universe," it is equally true that "for a man to reach this level, he must will to know and experience all things as they are" - and that is rare.

It being manifestly impossible genuinely to will the end without also willing all the means needed effectively to arrive at it, in his only posthumously published Meditations on the Tarot - a Journey into Christian Hermeticism (cf tarotdex.htm) the anonymous but undoubtedly erudite author quotes Mephistopheles in the act of pulling the leg of a certain journalist who happened also to be a bit of a snob:

• "You who hold for very little the scientific endeavour, the world of thought from Plato to Kant, the treasures of authentic witness of the great mystics, the riches of the Hermetic tradition and, lastly, the Holy Scriptures, the sacraments, the blood and sweat of Gethsemane, the Cross of Calvary, the Resurrection... take, therefore, what you desire - these volumes of banalities presented in a pompous manner and communicated to you, as you would wish, in an extraordinary manner." (Loc.cit., pp.424-5.)

St. John Bosco (1815-1888) used to say that he was always ready to accept good advice, even if it came from the Devil himself. Nevertheless, I suggest you would do well to read the passage I have just quoted again, but this time in the profoundly enriching context of the book from which I have just quoted it.

Meanwhile, Saurat offers a valuable and pertinent comment:

• "Ideas do not run from great men to great men, nor from small men to great men, nor, again, from great men to small men. Milton or Blake or Hugo have had practically no influence on subsequent thought. But the ideas which they expressed, to which they bore witness in their time, continue to evolve apart from them, in ways that might be strange to them.
• Ideas really evolve in the masses, in unknown people. Some great man at one point of the evolution of the ideas expresses and also distorts a part of what he has adopted or, as he sometimes thinks, originated. Then, centuries later perhaps, another great man gives a new shape again to the descendants of those thoughts to which Milton or Blake gave a very partial expression: not to the ideas of Milton or of Blake, but to the descendants of those ideas among which Blake or Milton chose a few to express and distort." (Gods of the People, p.10.)

Our anonymous hermetist nowhere denies this thesis; indeed, he takes it further:

• "Hermetic philosophy is not composed of the Cabbala, astrology, magic and alchemy. These four branches sprouting from the trunk do not make the trunk, rather they live from the trunk. The trunk is the manifested unity of mysticism, gnosis and sacred magic. There are no theories; there is only experience, including here the intellectual experience of arcana and symbols. Mystical experience is the root, the gnostic experience of revelation is its sap, and the experience or practice of sacred magic is its wood. For this reason its teaching - or the 'body' of its tradition - consists of spiritual exercises and all its arcana (including the Arcana of the Tarot) are practical spiritual exercises, whose aim is to awaken from sleep ever-deeper layers of consciousness." (op.cit., p.9.)
• "Hermeticism [or rather, more properly, Hermetism], the living Hermetic tradition, guards the communal soul of all true culture. I must add: Hermeticists [Hermits] listen to - and now and then hear - the beating of the heart of the spiritual life of humanity. They cannot do otherwise than live as guardians of the life and communal soul of religion, science and art. They do not have any privilege in any of these domains; saints, true scientists, and artists of genius are their superiors. But they live for the mystery of the communal heart which beats within all religions, all philosophies, all arts and all sciences - past, present and future. And inspired by the example of John, the beloved disciple, they do not pretend, and never will pretend, to play a directing rôle in religion, science, art, in social or political life; but they are constantly attentive so as not to miss any occasion to serve religion, philosophy, science, art, the social and political life of humanity, and to this to infuse the breath of life of their communal soul - analogous to the administration of the sacrament of Holy Communion. Hermeticism [hermetism] is - and is only - a stimulant, a 'ferment' or an 'enzyme' [or, I venture to suggest, a 'catalytic converter'] in the organism of the spiritual life of humanity. In this sense it is itself an arcanum [viz., The Hermit]." (Ibid., pp.6-7, text in boxed parentheses added.)

St. Thomas Aquinas's secretary, Brother Reginald, testified that his master was frequently caught up in spiritual rapture and that on one occasion, probably towards the end of 1273, this state of ecstatic contemplation had depived the saint of the everyday use of his senses for an hour or so. It seems to have been immediately after this experience that St. Thomas said with a sigh: "Reginald, my son, I reveal to you something in secret, forbidding you to reveal it to anyone as long as I live. I have come to the end of all my writing, because such things have been shown to me, such that all that I have written and taught now seems to me very insignificant…" (Cf. op.cit., p.656.)

As my anonymous predecessor who departed this life very shortly after concluding his own Meditations on Trinity Sunday, 21 Mary 1967, would without the slightest hesitation undoubtedly agree, all such prohibition of any such acts of revelation is very largely superfluous, since only persons gifted with appropriately attuned ears can 'hear', as Aristotle well knew. Thus, when Alexander the Great, who had earlier been privately instructed by the Philosopher in a numer of acroamatic or esoteric disciplines, one day complained to his former master about the latter's decision to publish certain writings which previously had circulated only privately among a chosen few within the Lyceum, Aristotle explained that Alexander's fears were entirely groundless - the writings had been published, admittedly, but in such a way that they had also not been published!

Bonum est abscondere sacramentum regis, but, whether his Servants bother to hide them or not, the Great King's secrets are, quite naturally, always perfectly safe!

On 1 March 1555 Michæl of Nostradamus addressed the Preface of his Centuries to his son, Cæsar, and wrote: "Bear in mind that the events here described have not yet come to pass, and that all is ruled and governed by the power of Almighty G-d, inspiring us not by bacchic frenzy nor by enchantments but by astronomical assurances: predictions have been made through the inspiration of divine will alone and the spirit of prophecy in particular. On numerous occasions and over a long period of time I have predicted specific events far in advance, attributing all to the workings of divine power and inspiration, together with other fortunate or unfortunate happenings, foreseen in their full unexpectedness, which have already come to pass in various regions of the Earth. Yet I have wished to remain silent and abandon my work because of the injustice not only of the present time but also for most of the future. I will not commit it to writing, since governments, sects and countries will undergo such sweeping changes, diametrically opposed to what now obtains, that were I to relate events to come, those in power now - monarchs, leaders of sects and religions - would find these so different from their own imaginings that they would be led to condemn what later centuries will learn how to see and understand. Bear in mind also Our Saviour's words: Nolite sanctum dare canibus, nec mittatis margaritas ante porcos ne conculent pedibus et conversi dirumpant vos - 'Do not give anything holy to dogs, nor throw pearls in front of pigs lest they trample them with their feet, and turn on you, and tear you apart.'… Abscondisti hæc a sapientibus et prudentibus, id est potentibus et regibus et eunuculeasti ea exigiuis et tenuibus - 'You have hidden these things from the wise and the circumspect, that is from the mighty and the rulers, and you have purified those things for the small and the poor,' and through Almighty G-d's will, revealed unto those prophets with the power to perceive what is distant and thereby to foretell things to come. For nothing can be accomplished without this faculty, whose power and goodness work so strongly in those to whom it is given that, while they contemplate within themselves, these powers are subject to other influences arising from the forces of good. This warmth and strength of prophecy invests us with all its influence as the Sun's rays affect both animate and inanimate entities…" (Quoted from Jean-Charles de Fontbrune, Nostradamus - Countdown to Apocalypse & Into the Twenty-First Century, 1-vulume edition complete and unabridged (London: Cresset, 1993). For some recent and important comments on the Centuries, cf Maurice Zammit's The Secret of Nostradamus revealed by Maurice Zammit, Mellieħa, Malta, 1996.)

• Appendix 1: A Supplementary Note supplied by The Preliminary LibrArian emeritus I+N The Neith Network -
• "The Way of Woman I+N Today's World"
• Helen M. Luke was born in England in 1904. She received a Masters degree in French and Italian literature from Somerville College, Oxford. Twenty years later, she became interested in the work of Carl Gustav Jung, and studied his thought in Zürich and London. Arriving in the United States in 1949, she established a practice as a counsellor in Los Angeles. In 1962, she helped found the Apple Farm Community near Three Rivers, Michigan, which has been described as a "centre for people seeking to discover and appropriate the transforming power of symbols in their lives."
• Her earlier writings include Old Age: Journey into Simplicity and Dark Wood to White Rose (a study of Dante's Divine Comedy), both for Parabola Books, 656 Broadway, New York NY 10012, and Woman: Earth and Spirit - The Feminine in Symbol and Myth (Crossroad). In 1992 Parabola also published her most mature work... Kaleidoscope - 'The Way of Woman' and other Essays, which is edited and introduced by Rob Baker (ISBN: 0- 930407-24-5), and arranged as follows -
• PRELUDE: The Bridge of Humility
• THE WAY OF WOMAN: The Perennial Feminine - Demeter and Kore - Eowyn - Orual - Dindrane - Brunhilde - The Cat Archetype
• THE WAY OF DISCRIMININATION: The Secret and the Open - Choice - The Sense of Humour - The Joy of the Fool - Pride - Exchange - Levels - Inner Relationship and Community - The Marriage Vow - The Voice Within - The Mystery Within - The Vows of the Interior Life - Courtesy - The Stranger Within
• THE WAY OF STORY: The Inner Story - An African Tale - The Hunter and the Hunted - Salmon Fish Boy - The Story of Jacob - The Story of the Exodus - The Story of Saul - The Little Prince - The Novels of Charles Williams
• POSTLUDE: Christmas, 1962 - Christmas, 1991
• James Sarfati's dust-jacket nests Painton Cowen's colour-photograph of a stained-glass window from the Church of Santa Chiara in Assisi, Italy, in the middle of four inward-yet-outward-turned identically-yet-differently-inclined images of Emile Saraf's photo of a woman's face from the west wall of the Temple of Jupiter in the Archaeological Museum in Olympia.
• Chapter Eleven, "The Joy of the Fool" begins: 'I remember that, during a discussion of Charles Williams' novel The Greater Trumps some time ago, someone asked for a definition of '"the Fool." It was, of course, not forthcoming, for the Fool of the Tarot eludes all analysis. If he could be rationally defined, he would cease to be the Fool. This is true, in fact, of any numinous symbol' - and, I might add, particularly of "Woman;" Virgil's comment on Dido, Queen of Carthage, has lost none of its thrust: 'Varium et mutabile semper EST foemina,' where the added capitals simply draws attention to an emphasis already naturally present in the rhythms of this eloquent phrase.
• The Glossary of twenty-one terms (anima, animus, archetype, consciousness, unconscious, ego, eros, extraversion, hierosgamos, hubris, introversion, logos, mana, mandala, metanoia, numinous, projection, psyche, self, shadow, symbol) provided by Rob Baker, helpful though it is, unsurprisingly is in no way an adequate guide to the word-dances in which Helen Luke shares herself with her readers on as many levels as they are prepared to venture that encounter... or almost.
• The Supernatural Life of Grace familiar to traditional Catholic theology and Zecharia Sitchin's scholarly insistence that our most ancient myths, those that come from Sumeria and Babylon, are, when read in their original sources and accurately translated, both factually and scientifically as well as psychodynamically true, appear almost equally to be ignored.
• Since a similar criticism can also be made of Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza's otherwise excellent Discipleship of Equals - a Critical Feminist Ekklesia-logy of Liberation (SCM, 1993), discerning readers will treasure Helen Luke's quotation from an anthology of George MacDonald's writings that C.S. Lewis edited (CollierMacmillan, 1986): ' "The Secret in Man. For each, God has a different response. With every man He has a secret - the secret of a new name. In every man there is a loneliness, an inner chamber of peculiar life into which God only can enter. I say not it is the innermost chamber. The Secrets in God. There is a chamber also... a chamber in God Himself, into which none can enter but the one, the individual, the peculiar man - out of which chamber that man has to bring revelation and strength for his creation. This is that for which he was made - to reveal the secret things of the Father."
• But,' she comments, 'if anyone rushes to reveal his glimpses of that first secret place in himself to all and sundry, without the long discipline of discrimination, he or she will assuredly never enter the innermost secret chamber, where the whole, unique life of a conscious being brings to others revelation and strength beyond any words and without any effort of the will.'
• Mary of Nazareth is to my mind (cf. especially Mirror of Justice - Mary IS the Inspiration IN Nuptial Theology, pre-publication draft April 1992, most recently revised 6 January 1998) the supreme demonstration of that. "Stetit iuxtra crucem Iesu mater ejus - close to the cross on which Jesus was hanging were standing his mother, his mother's sister, Mary wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala" (John 19:25). There is an entire theology here.
• Helen Luke's vocation as an Anglo-Catholic Jungian psychologist and writer has enabled her to develop Jung's achievements in a way that meets the needs and aspirations of both women and men in today's rapidly changing world, and on the one hand to liberate the kernel of his message from the residual materialism of his mode of delivering it, while on the other overcoming much of the neo-gnostic ambiguities of his pioneering positions.
• That is her chief merit, and Dom Bede Griffiths clearly sensed it, witness these words of his: "I had read C.S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces before, but had never been able to make much of it. Helen Luke's commentary is a revelation. I understand now why Lewis himself thought so much of it and what a change it must have worked in his own life."
• Colin Duriez's The C.S. Lewis Handbook (Monarch, Eastbourne, 1990) is a much more comprehensive guide to his life, thought and writings but, as a Roman Catholic Benedictine monk and as a Yogi, Father Griffith's spiritual eyes were - to half-borrow one of Helen Luke's own inspired expressions - not primarily those of the suffering victim hanged from one of the lower branches of a strong tree, but the spontaneously innocent ones of the blithe-hearted bird warbling on the immediately next branch above.
• Dom Bede's earliest experience of the monastic life was as a member of the Prinknash Community, and in Buddhist Haloes & Catholic Haloes: are they the same colour? - or, Talking at Talacre (29 July 1986) on Talking to Tibetans at Talacre, PART I: Catholic Teaching in Buddhist Terms, PART II: Buddhist Teaching in Catholic Terms (personal communication from the author), another monk of Prinknash, Dom Sylvester Houédard, in addressing topics of 'Inter-Faith' interest, as they have, in some ways regrettably (since, while 'beliefs' are legitimately many, Faith can only be IN The One), come to be called, steered well clear of the well-intentioned discussions and skirmishes of even the friendliest of rivals in arms in the foothills (where Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza's contributions are invaluable), and, like Helen Luke's happily singing bird, repeatedly invited his audience: "Sursum corda - lift up your hearts".... In other words: open your eyes to the Splendour of Truth (cf. John-Paul II's Splendor Veritatis, CTS, 1993), to the Deifying Light, to the final fruit of what Helen Luke intuits as the hierosgamos, the coincidentia oppositorum, of the practice of what St. Benedict called the crowning summit of the doctrina virtutumque or, to invoke the Buddhist expression, of Highest Yoga Tantra.
• All this is very fine, but a healthy community is never simply a friendly club of upper middle-class intellectuals. As Paramahansa Satyananda Saraswati, head of the Bihar (India) School of Yoga, correctly insists in Tantra-Yoga Panorama (International Yoga Fellowship Movement, Rajanandagaon, India), "Tantra is meant for the common man.... Tantra does not accept any kind of religious, cultural or tribal or national inhibitions.... This difference which I make between myself and yourself because of the way of life that you lead and the way of life I lead is something which is not in Tantra. I do not want you to make a departure from your status of life, nor do I have any disrespect for your status of life."
• St. Francis de Sales, Bishop & Prince of Geneva and Doctor of the Church, did not say exactly the same thing, but he was very much on the same wavelength. Writing from Annecy in June 1616, he remarked: "In nineteen years one learns and unlearns many things; the language of war is not that of peace, and one must needs speak differently to young beginners or to old comrades. Here I am addressing those who are far advanced in the spiritual life." (Treatise Of The Love of God, Preface) And again: "In the Church of God all is of love, in love, to love, and for love.... The present work has followed tracks earlier trod by the Apostle Paul, by the Saints Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Denys the Carthusian, Catherine of Genoa, Catherine of Siena, Angela di Foligni, Matilda, Robert Bellarmine and Teresa of Avila, and by various other theologians including Gerson, Grenada, de Fonseca, Richeome, the Bishop de Belley and Father Laurent de Paris, but it also contains matter not to be found in any of them, as assuredly their works possess many beauties which are not here. My special intention has been different from theirs, save in the general aim of promoting Divine Love. I have merely sought to set the origin, growth, slackening, and working, the peculiarities and blessings, of God's Love simply and plainly before my readers; and if aught else be there it is but as the excrescences, which are not easily avoided by one writing, like myself, amid sundry distractions. Yet even these may have their use, since even Nature herself brings forth so many leaves and tendrils as well as grapes that most vines need pruning."
• "Men," he continues - but it is worthy of note that he emphasises that term by beginning a new paragraph with it (the distinction implied is between 'men' and God's angels), "are wont to deal harshly with authors, and to pass hard sentences on them. There are many foolish authors and over-severe critics. A kindly reader is most like to profit."
• This is the most important message in Helen Luke's discussion of Till We Have Faces, "Orual", Chapter 4 in Part I of Kaleidoscope, as clearly emerges from the following passages: "A modern woman in this world of alienation from eros must take up this work [of removing the veil and searching for her true face] or succumb to possession by the animus; and she must take it up with the same kind of honesty that Orual achieved, and which is of all things the most difficult for a woman caught by the inferior masculine spirit in her unconscious life.... Nothing kills the symbolic life so quickly as words reduced to mere information or mindless chatter. There can be no awareness of the uniting myth without this battle to discriminate and to separate, but if women leave this work to the animus disconnected from their womanhood, then they never glimpse their true story.
• In the Christian myth, the Word, the Logos, must become flesh if man is to stand face to face with God, and this, a fact so consistently forgotten [despite the best efforts of such prominent figures as Madonna and, even more controversially, Annie Sprinkle - cf. Every Woman, no. 99, Dec. 1993/ Jan. 1994], is an impossibility unless he is conceived and brought to birth by woman."
• Etymologically 'man' means mind, most obviously, of course, the conscious mind. Wilhelm Reich seems to have appreciated, as Freud did not, that what psychologists dub 'the unconscious mind' is basically identical with what in ordinary everyday language we call the body. To reject Cartesian dualism effectively, it is also necessary to transcend certain limitations and distortions present in gnostic and Cathar teachings, and to come to appreciate that body-language and mind-language are fundamentally twinned sides of one and the same coin.
• All human bodying is minding; all human minding is bodying. Bestiality and bloodless logic undermine and destroy all authentic human values in whichever men and women fall victim to them, but while the Classical Greeks on the occasion of the Olympics may have rewarded displays of prowess by both genders, only women were praised for their skill in telling lies and other deceitful wiles, only men for their mastery of the logical subtleties of dialectical sword-play.
• "Contempt for women... demonstrates the negative side of man's struggle to free himself from the devouring aspects of the feminine unconscious, of the mother goddess.... The highly rational educated woman of today... will not allow her Psyche to connect her with the gods, with the irrational eternal paradoxes of life, with the Fool beyond reason - she sees only the cruel negative side of the sacrifice - that 'making holy' of her inmost self - and she panics at the threat it brings to her determination to save the world and all the people around her through her own newly acquired masculine reasoning and actvity. The 'oughts' and 'shoulds' of the animus are in fact a passionate femine possessiveness.... The Great Offering [is] the giving of that which is most loved to the god who is as yet unknown. A woman makes this offering when she is willing to risk the loss of a relationship rather than make possessive demands on the person loved. A man makes it when he will sacrifice his achievements in the world rather than betray his deeper values. To both that offering brings the experience of Eros, the god of Love," who cannot, of course, grow to maturity unless and until he has first been born as the Divine Child within. Only when the male consciousness of a human person of either gender not merely impregnates but almost fuses with the female embodied instincts of that same person, either directly (as is meant to be the case eventually with all celibate monks and consecrated nuns) or within the context of a psychologically balanced dyadic relationship (of which marriage is still meant to be the paradigm), can this birth of the inner Child occur in either person, let alone quasi-simultaneously in both.
• One good reason for the ancient custom of a prolonged solemn Betrothal before the Nuptials were celebrated, was the laudable desire that married couples should not even dream of conceiving a child in the flesh until they had already engendered this secret Child within. Even the severest critics of the papal encyclical Splendor Veritatis have concurred with the widespread general agreement that truth, integrity, and ethical principles urgently and desperately need to be restored to public life. G. K. Chesterton's The Man who was Thursday is unrivalled as a statement of G-d's assessment of the situation.
• The Chinese Education Association for International Exchange organized an International Symposium on Oriental Tradition of Ethics & Morality and Education of the Contemporary Youth in 1993. It was held in Beijing from the 19th to the 24th May, and Dr. Iraj Ayman, the then Director of the Institute of International Education & Development in the Landegg Academy at Wienacht, Switzerland, whose Faith is that of the Baha'i, delivered a paper significantly entitled (emphasis mine): The Imperative Need for a Moral Renaissance and a New Framework for Moral Education.
• He claims, and there is a level at which his claim is both valid and relevant: "The fundamental challenge we are facing is how the following issues [I note in passing that 'issue', too, is a reference to birth] may best be resolved. 1. Which traditional values should be retained as valid? 2. Which new values and guiding principles should be adopted in order to complement and revitalize the traditional values? 3. What are the guiding principles and prerequisites for the realization of a new ethical order? 4. What are the priorities in the value system that should be observed in order to avoid further decadence and chaos? 5. What is the role and function of education of younger generations in this transition?"
• The gist of the answer lies in the Victorian and Edwardian rule: "Ladies before Gentlemen." Until men learn consistently to conduct themselves sensitively in public as well as in private, and until women come to appreciate that unless instincts are first lovingly nourished and nurtured there will be no subsequent growth for them to master, direct and, on occasion, restrain and prune, papal encyclicals and Chinese symposia are unlikely to set the world to rights. As I have said before: "The problem of social de-alienation is that of finding some institution capable of governing, serving, defending, teaching, entertaining, curing, and creating and sustaining symbols of integration great enough to overcome the disintegrative forces of fear and weakness. We do not need fresh ideas merely, but an appropriate application of practical force. This is neither more nor less than art. Art is the communication of society....
• I find the human being standing in a situation of world-openness between the restlessness of disorder and the chthonic expectancy of creative chaos. Outside the individual, if we prescind and abstract from everything that women and men collectively have developed, this ambiguity appears to be all-pervading. Cultural and social order has its immediate origin within women and men in their historicity. Just as a cinema-projector throws an image onto an otherwise blank screen, so women and men in their individual and collective consciousness project stability, dimensions, colours, meanings and values, and so bring a world into being. The human being is, therefore, quite literally, the light of the world.
• The difference, not only between order and disorder, but - and this is of quintessential importance - between the sterility of disorder and the secret vitality of chaos results in this way from a psychological projection which, like all things human, is the hard-won fruit of a very long evolution. The basic need is clearly that of living in an understandable universe. Unless this need is met, not even the most selfish thought is possible....
• Only a new empowering of the human being, a liberation of the riches of the spirit, a more generous opening of the heart to love of natural beauty and true freedom can bring about this urgently needed resurgence." (cf. Creativity House: The Rainbow CYMBAL - Constellate Youthful Minds Beyond Ancient Limits Interpreting Symbolically Earth's Significant PRESENT.)
• Now, as always, the present, both enticing and awesome, is a gift which is, in every moment, utterly new - but this has nothing at all to do with progress; the authentic present is never new because it is novel - its pristine freshness is, like the bloom on a rose, an abiding witness to its underlying primordial character as a symbol of Life and, I trust, of Life Everlasting: to change the emphasis in my opening quotation from Virgil - "Varium et mutabile semper est foemina." That 'always' (semper) reaches back a very long way indeed.
• I have already mentioned Zecharia Sitchin's still insufficiently noticed books, all published by Bear & Company (Santa Fe, New Mexico) and/or in paperback by Avon Books (New York): THE EARTH CHRONICLES, Book I: The 12th Planet; Book II: The Stairway to Heaven; Book III: The Wars of Gods and Men; Book IV: The Lost Realms, Book V: When Time Began; Book VI: The Cosmic Code + Genesis Revisited: Has Modern Science Caught Up with Ancient Knowledge - And Provoked a War of the Worlds?, and most significantly perhaps: Divine Encounters. The crucial point in evaluating the essence of Sitchin's findings is, although the author nowhere explicitly manifests any awareness of this blindingly obvious question: If, as he claims, in Sumerian, the word for 'word' also means something rather like 'Rocket', 'Space-Craft', or 'UFO', was the Sumerian word used properly of flying-machines and only metaphorically of words, or the other way round, or does this way of formulating the question imply a dichotomy that would never have been a relevant consideration for persons then living, whether the humans approximately like us from whom, he suggests, we all of us today descend, or the seemingly immortal giants or gods and goddesses from outer space who created us about 300,000 years ago, and introduced us, as well as to many other wonderful things, to the Secret Mysteries of the all-creating Word?
• Creativity House, Amydon-Exeter Centre 113: for Adele, Alison, Amanda, Angela, Anjelica, Ann, Anna, Anne, Annie, Anuschka, Barbara, Beatrice, Bella, Bernadette, Betty, Brenda, Carol, Caroline, Catherine, Chris, Christine, Colleen, Debbie, Dee, Denyse, Diana, Doriel, Dorothy, Edna, Elisabeth, Eve, Evkathrin, Francesca, Genia, Gillian, Harriet, Harvest, Hazel, Helen, Ianthe, Isis, Isobel, Jane, Janet, Janice, Joan, Josephine, Josette, Josie, Judy, Kay, Karen, Kath, Kathleen, Lala, Laura, Leilani, Lenij, Leslie, Lilian, Lin, Linda, Lisa, Liz, Loraine, Lynn, Maddy, Magenta, Margaret, Maria, Mary, Maureen, May, Melanie, Mildred, Miranda, Mitsou, Moira, Mica, Michaela, Myra, Nalini, Natasha, Neith, Nellie, Nikki, Nora, Olivia, Omm Sety, Pam, Pamela, Pat, Philippa, Rachel, Razia, Rita, Rose, Sally, Sam, Shanti, Sheelagh, Sheila, Su, Sue, Sunita, Tapioca, Terence, Teresa, Tessie, Therese, 'Tricia, Trixie, Tulip, Valerie, Venetia, Veronica, Vicky, Victoria, Wanda, Yasha, Yola & all my other Sisters IN Love + Solemnity of the Tiffany of The Lord Jesus Christ, 6-7 January 2001.

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