The Love of Wisdom

The Love of Wisdom

I am the Forethought of pure light,

I am the thought of the Virgin Spirit, who raises you to a place of honor.

Arise, remember that you have heard

And trace your root,

Which is I, the compassionate.

The Secret Book of John

The Goddess of Wisdom assumes a tutelary role as the Angel of Revelation, Salvation and Annunciation, the Revealer of the Sacred Mysteries and Mistress of Initiation. Like the chameleon she assumes the native symbolism of her local surroundings, secreting the Light of Eden through the climate of the soul to procure the Elixir of Life, fermenting the wine of love, gnosis and ecstasy within the vessel of the Incarnate Entity. Her arrival delivers the dispensation of grace that is our summons unto a higher calling, as the Breath of the Merciful who fans the coals of the divine desire to kindle the Holy Fire of the Sakina, a presence that burns all that separates the soul from the unity of the Borderless World.

Shining through the aperture of the heart as the redemptive ray of the Spiritual Sun, the Holy Spirit is our shepherd, witness and companion upon the path of the return, the guiding principle who as our own Perfect Nature illuminates the dark shroud of corporeality with the luminance of eternity.

The Eternal Sophia awakens the wayfarer to the knowledge of the Covenant. As the Agent of Intelligence she is the herald of the Word and inseminating power of the Divine Mind who conceives the resurrection of the Solar Child within the receptacle of mortality, a purification through which the soul reflects the Light of Heaven to grow unto the likeness of her own Personal Angel. Those possessed by the Holy Spirit become cupbearers of the Good, sharing the Living Water that is the boundless stream of inspiration with which they are filled.

As this river of revelation pours from the Fountain of Eternity we find faith in the mark of Wisdom, letting her Lamp of Knowledge brighten our path to reveal the traces, signs and seals of the divine mystery. The fragrance of the Beautiful entices us to embark upon the Way of Love, leading our pilgrimage back into the Garden of Paradise where the fruits do not whither, the birds sing is everlastingly, and all souls find their peace.

Out of the sweetness of the spring,

The branches leaf, the small birds sing,

Each one chanting in its own speech,

Forming the verse of its new song,

Then is it good a man should reach

For that for which he most does long.

Guillaume de Poitiers

We experience the sea of nature as a living mandala through which every current, tide and scent carries the impulse of divine concordance/expression, as the sacred rhythm of the Seraphic Choir is sung through the elemental lyric of the cosmic instrument. By penetrating the diaphanous body of the Magna Mater we uncover the resplendent beauty that is the Virgin of Light.

The spirit speaks through the transliteration of riddles, omens and messages perspiring through the skin of sensual phenomena, whose symbolic meaning intersects with the budding consciousness and spiritual maturity of the wayfarer, dynamically weaving the existential journey of each individual traveler in consonance with the symphonic progression of the universe. By consciously attuning to the metrical flow of the Cosmic Soul we become a measured chord in the hymn of symbiotic becoming, a high note dancing to the creational music of the Angelical Harmony. By acclimating to the natural order we uncover our own inner sanctuary, entering the mystic grove of tranquility within the sanctum of the heart, whose lucid clearing opens the shining path to our Beloved.

Sophia is the patroness of sages, mystics and lovers, the blessed illuminatrix who nurtures her children with the tender care of a mother. She fulfills her divine role as the instiller of sapience, the brightener of intuition and harbinger of revelation who develops a most intimate rapport with the Friend of God, thereby quickening the soul as the alchemical catalyst who blends the grains of love and wisdom to leaven the bread of deliverance.

The Sakina stirs our burning ardor for the sacred, thrilling the soul like a lover whose heart is melted by/at the very sight of his beloved. Enchanted by the spell of her sublimity the wayfarer is selflessly drawn outside the limits of disjointed consciousness [and] into direct sympathy with the ever-presence of his [divine] adoration. It is the dove who leads the soul/lion through the very love of wisdom, as the Holy Spirit of the angelic guardian emerges as the realization of one’s Perfect Nature preexisting within the Divine Mind of the Word, who, as the rising sun of noetic consciousness, vaporizes the hazy fog of forgetfulness.

Those seeking Wisdom spark the flame of their aspiration upon the tinder of mercy, receiving the bestowments of truth, meaning and understanding through the affinity of their devotion and purity of their own soul consciousness. Our innate relation to the Deity is the prime benefactor of gnosis, whose empathic presence is felt throughout the entirety of existence and within the innermost recesses of the self.

The divine mercy nourishes the soul as the charitable nurturance of the Love Supreme, the sweetening caress of grace that epitomizes the principle of true beauty. By fostering unconditional love for this heavenly perfume we reciprocate the implicit trust of that eternal promise that is the royal seal of the Covenant.

They who serve Love with truth

Shall in love walk with Love

All round that Kingdom whose Love is Lady

And united with her receive all that splendor

And taste to the full her noble fidelity.

Hadewijch

It is the burning desire for the beautiful that compels the seeker upon the road of the Spiritual Quest, as the secret fire within achingly yearns for the grace of divine solicitude, seeking reunion with the Edenic Light of its own eternal nature.

The soul's preparedness measures the extent of her ability to know God, as the scale of purity determining her vertical distance from divinity while commensurately enthusing the intensity of love she feels for the Good. For the more intimately we know God the more we love Her. Love and wisdom are the inseparable ingredients comprising the Elixir of Life, whose tasting inspirits the mystical ecstasy of the God intoxicated.

Grace is the participated term of Mercy, the charitable outpouring of the Love Divine which the wayfarer opens to receive by the measure of her preparedness; as the clarity, integrity and purity of her soul consciousness resolves the admittance of the Edenic Light shining through the window of her heart from the angelic center of the Pleroma. The purpose of the alchemical work is thus the preparation of the vessel to receive and assimilate the Water of Life flowing from the Crystal Sea of the Empyrean, thereby refining the Stone from the distillation and agreement of celestial energies.   

This infusion with the immediate presence of mercy perfects the wayfarer onto the likeness of the Beautiful, absorbing its Medicinal Sapience in proportion to the vertical height of personal consciousness, filling her soul chalice with the sublime love of the Universal Panacea through the sanctifying movement to the threshold of divine felicity.

Certainly, love of God is never stripped of ardent desire to gain whatever we lack in knowledge of God. So that as knowledge increases, so does the love of the God we come to know. In fact, as the nature of God infinitely exceeds human knowledge, and as His goodness no less exceeds the love men can bear Him, they continue to nourish a happy desire, as ardent as it is unbridled, to ever grow in the knowledge and love of God.

Leone Ebreo

-          Love is the means to union. Knowledge of the divine is synonymous with love for the divine, for we know what we love and love what we know

Love is the longing for beauty, the desire to repose in the solicitude of the Good. It is our inborn yearning for the restoration of wholeness, the unremitting urge to heal the Wound of Separation and reenter the Abode of Light. The flame of love smolders as the ecstatic sympathy between lover and Beloved, the tender embrace that is the presence of the Sakina illuminating the spiritual treasury of the heart. The Sakina consorts our rapport with God as the most intimate hymn of the Living Light, the dispensation of grace that is the healing balm of salvation.

The Sakina shines as the Edenic ray of the Buddhi from the eternal fire of the Spiritual Sun, thereby connecting the incarnation of every soul with the Atman of transcendent consciousness. Her fiery pillar descends into the Axis Mundi to sustain the whole of creation as the Breath of the Merciful, flowing as the River of Ruach through the center of every heart to nurture, purify and enlighten the becoming of the Incarnate Entity. Her mystical theophany localizes as the iridescent figure of the Personal Angel, the heavenly messenger and beloved companion upon the journey of the return. The Goddess emerges from the Tree of Life as the revelatory arrival of the sacred, thereby blessing the sacrament of mortality as the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

As the generative cause…she then represents the descent or direct revelation, she is called shekinah, the ‘immanence’ or real presence of God…she herself descends, as immanence, into the created being in order to connect him with his transcendental source.

Leo Schaya

The Virgin Mother, and Venus before her, was known as the “Star of the Sea”, the guiding lamp of wisdom by which the traveler navigates the psychic seas of the Seven Heavens upon her voyage into the center of the heart, signifying the Substantial Motion towards divinity by which the soul is alchemically transfigured and spiritually anointed to reflect the integral wholeness of her own Perfect Nature.

The rose was a symbol of Venus and later Mary as the natural emblem of love and wisdom, epitomizing the Virgin of Light who draws the nightingale of the soul by the fragrance of her sublime beauty, opening as the heavenly flower of the Pleroma to exude the enchanting perfume of the Beloved. As the seal of the Covenant the rose is the mediatrix between the creature and the Creator, the blossom of the lovely Daena epitomizing the companionship and guardianship of the Angel upon the search for the Garden of Paradise.

By truly knowing herself the wayfarer comprehends her own existential root within the spiritual knowledge of the Divine Mind, whose coterminous manifestation is engendered by the outpouring of the Sakina into the totality of being. Through the rigors of initiation the mystic becomes increasingly sensitive to this immediate presence of God within all things, opening the Eye of the Heart to participate in the Holy Communion of the Borderless World. She bears witness to the endless flow of theophanies emerging from the womb of the uncreated, recognizing the manifestation of creation as the living embodiment of the Good.

She follows her Lover, allured by the attraction of the Sakina dwelling within the essential oneness of her own identity, thereby adhering to the tutelary spirit whose traces, signs and omens mark her every step, twist and turn through the living Book of Nature; the holy testimony authored by this same everlasting force who pens this existential testament as a declaration of the universal mercy that is God.

The Goddess is the Beautific Vision veiled within the Ark of the Covenant, the abiding presence of the Deity whom the Celtic seers knew as the Spirit of Awen spilling forth from the cauldron of Cerridwen; whose magical vessel symbolized the ancient prototype of the Holy Grail. This mystical chalice of the heart contained the Elixir of Life to magically enlighten the bard Taliesin, who, through his otherworld initiation of death and rebirth, passes through the womb of the Goddess to reemerge into a second life as the inspired madman, prophet, poet and hero.

The Sakina rises as the epiphany of the Virgin Mother who appears to the faithful lover and Friend of God as the revelation of salvation. She delicately unfolds as the mystic rose blooming within the garden of the soul, seductively unveiling the ecstatic presence of Heaven on Earth. The wayfarer who enters the Kingdom of Light participates in the symphony of divinity that is the Song of Light, having remarried the separation of spirit and body to close the vertical gap that is her distance from the Deity.

She walks with the Holy Spirit to engage the sacral luminosity pervading the very heart of reality, observing the “signs on the horizon” through the divine inscriptions of her own soul. By venerating the flower of nature as the signification of royal beauty she partakes of the living sacrament to adore and celebrate the empyreal glory of the Most High.

Like to him who bends the leaves

And picks the loveliest flower of all

I from the highest branch have seized,

Of them, the one most beautiful,

One God has made, without a stain,

Made her out of His own beauty,

And He commanded that humility

Should her great worth grace again.

Guillem de Cabestan