The Ark of the Covenant

Their prophet also said to them, the sign of his kingship is that the Ark of the Covenant shall come to you. Therein shall be Sakina from your Lord, and the relics which the House of Moses and the House of Aaron left behind. It will be borne by the angels. There is a sign in this for you, if you believe.

Quran 2:248

The Covenant is the Sakina within the Ark, the indwelling spirit whose sacred icon/relic signifies our inborn sympathy with the Good, thereby securing our unmediated relation to God as the immanence of divine presence. The Covenant represents both the immediate nearness of God as well as the solemn oath in undertaking our faithful recognition and devotional service to that intimate closeness. Recollection is the honoring of this pact for which the servant receives the promissory grace of tranquility, felicity and solicitude.

The Sakina is the sheer being of God, the celestial rainbow who descends as the Holy Fire of divine will to engender, nourish and consummate the sacred art of creation. She is the Lamp of Knowledge who illuminates the darkness of mortality, guiding her children upon the path of the Holy Spirit into direct confluence with the Deity, revealing herself as the eternal wisdom and ubiquitous mercy pervading the very heart of reality.

All wisdom comes from the LORD and with him it remains forever…

Before all things else wisdom was created; and prudent understanding, from eternity…

He has poured her forth upon all his works, upon every living thing according to his bounty;

He has lavished her upon his friends.

Sirach 1:1-10

The Sakina pours out of the One as the Breath of the All-Merciful, preconfiguring the Pleroma in the metahistorical moment of eternity before emerging as the Cosmic Soul to perpetually conceive the diaphanous symbol of the living world. She is the river of essentiality which gathers, unifies and encompasses the three hypostases of the spirit, soul and matter, extending as the Triple Powered One of the Gnostics whose emanation lowers the vertical axis of causation to manifest the ontological hierarchy of the Holy Mountain, spanning the polarity of Heaven and Earth through the planetary spheres to comprise the mythical body of the Anima Mundi. She is the divine Mediatrix as both Creatrix and Initiatrix, respiring as the oscillatory flux between the created and the uncreated, consolidating the entirety of existence within the singular unity of the love divine.

She is the living flow of reality driven by the sublime passion of God, the fiery expulsion and contraction of that spiritual desire to both reveal and return unto itself. As the Breath of Mercy she is the continuous outpouring of divine verbosity which articulates and circulates the whole of the theophanic continuum as the ecstatic force of La Dame Amour. The Sakina is the energy of the Deity who animates the whole of existence as the power of life itself, the indwelling spirit who underlies, permeates and envelopes the revelatory disclosure of God.

Her body unfolds as the World Tree in weaving the tapestry of creation, unifying the disparity of its parts in distributing the ambrosial sap of the Living Water to the leaf every Incarnate Entity as the abiding presence of God within the spiritual heart. The Goddess extends her prolific branches for the nurturance of the faithful by which she maintains the Covenant of the Good. Her sacred milk bears the gnosis of revelation to nourish the fecundation of the Solar Child, conceiving the Golden Falcon who rises as the dawn of the Spiritual Sun, setting flight through the nether womb of the starry heavens upon the way of the return.

The twin pillars of the cherubim enclose the Temple of Solomon in representing the Lunar and Solar currents of creation and salvation, whose opposing tension of grace and rigor are unified as the constitutive presence of the beautiful Sakina, who, as an ontological process, continually regenerates the presentation of existence through the Breath of the All-Merciful. She is the Silver Light of Venus, the Evening Star who sets into the myopic night of the natural world only to reemerge as the Morning Star of salvation, shining the Edenic Light to prophetically steer the illumination of noetic consciousness that is the resurgence and intensification of the Logos within the individuated state of the embodied soul. This bilateral process comprises the lowering and raising of the cosmic curtain, a continuous flux which both dims and rekindles the lantern of transcendental awareness. She is thus the Creatrix, Mediatrix and Initiatrix through whom all living things emerge and return to the unbegotten essence.

As the alluring perfume of sublime beauty, she is the Light of Glory that shines through the very heart of reality, irradiating her scent from the Throne of the Most High to engender and beautify the body of nature. Her sweet nectar is the Water of Life gushing forth as the Rainbow Bridge of the Covenant, fluttering out from the Spiritual Sun as the blessed dove of peace bestowing the divine gift of existence. 

She is the descent of the Holy Spirit flowing out from the Pleroma, the disclosure of wisdom whose theophanic presence manifests the Ideal Forms of the Most Beautiful Names. She is the Wind of the Elohim who, pregnant with the seed of the celestial archetypes, disseminates the divine plan of the metacosm through the gradated planes of existence, thereby germinating the flowers of the Celestial Anthropos within the gardens of the Incarnate Entities. Mercy is the generosity of existence itself, the essential substance of the Real.

In Islam, mercy is known as the feminine verb rahma, which can be esoterically conceived as the innermost essence of God. Being is applied mercy, for it is through the charity of the Good that all things partake of existence and through that unconditional love are apportioned their subsistence in reality. She is the immanent term of existence, the instantiator of being and spiritual force of life, the pervasive perpetuity that is the singular presence of God supplying the unitive basis through which the movement of the soul participates in the uncreated orchestra of the divine energies.

Mercy is the ontological encapsulation by which all things derive from the integrity of essential being. It gushes from the fountain of unity to engender the whole of multiplicity, whose impartible sympathy is the undying embrace of the Beloved at the sublime root of compassion. This most basic condition of life is the desire of necessity from that most simple essence beyond and thus fulfilling all dependency, the sole determinant of reality whose basic substance forms the ground of creation while remaining utterly undefinable in itself. It is the measure of existence whose intensification is the illumination of consciousness, a beacon whose brightening draws the soul closer unto the likeness of God through the Holy Fire of the Sakina, whose wisdom as the guiding light of the North Star leads the pilgrim through the Substantial Motion of the Spiritual Quest.

Her presential knowledge reveals the direct awareness of the divine immanence that is the similarity and affinity of the Deity pervading the whole of creation. The profoundly felt intimacy of the Sakina bestows the mystical tasting of God whose revealed nature is none other than divine Beauty. The sweet fragrance of the Love Supreme irresistibly draws the wayfarer onto the rapture of the Beautific Vision, through which her soul is existentially extinguished before the intoxication of that unbound felicity, utterly annihilated within the blissful amour of the Unio Mystica. The transfiguring reception of this presential knowledge is her initiation into the House of God, the infusion of grace by which she engages in the very life, heart and spirit of this sacramental reality, courting the messenger of that everlasting love into which she at-ones with the principal unity of the Good.

I was formed long ages ago, at the very beginning, when the world came to be.

When there were no watery depths, I was given birth,

When there were no springs overflowing with water;

Before the mountains were settled in place, before the hills…

I was there when he set the heavens in place,

When he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep…

Then I was constantly at his side.

I was filled with delight day after day,

Rejoicing always in his presence,

Rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind.

Proverbs 8:23-31

Love is the raw essence of desire and attraction, the warming energy of the Living Light that circulates the orbit of being as the quickening current of the quicksilver both separating and reabsorbing the contemplative extension of the One. This ecstatic motion is the raw passion of life that relieves the primal tension of the divine restlessness, whose insistent pressure secretes the procreative journey of creation through the metamorphic expression of its aesthetic articulations undergoing a parallel transformation that fulfills its primal urge through the cultivation of the soul.

The seed of this innermost desire yearns to return onto its origin as the tide of existence spreading out and furling back into the One. This movement of love carries the savory aroma of the Beautiful as the driving force of creation, diffusing the fragrance of eternity in a festive activity to entice the wedding of mortal and divinity in a heartrending ecstasy encompassing the totality of the All in a sea of sublime empathy lavishing the tender caress of the Sakina.

For it is the divine love of mercy which embraces all things as the fluid interconnection between unity and multiplicity, the everlasting affection of the Beautiful who gathers the totality of existence in the softness of her undying compassion. This gracious breath is the sublime love of God who descends as the Holy Spirit to inspire the pulsing heart of reality, a constant determination through which every creature crystallizes as the elucidation of divine adoration. The rhythm of nature is the flowing dance of Shakti, the sensual exchange of giving and receiving through the great cycle of life upon which our spirits embody the musical play of creation.

This is why all parts of the cosmos—being the works of a single craftsman, parts of a single mechanism, and mutually alike in being and living—are bound together by means of a reciprocal love, in such a manner that Love may rightly be called the everlasting knot and bond of the cosmos, the unmoving support of its parts, and the firm foundation of the whole mechanism.

Marsilio Ficino

Beauty is the grace of God while love is the desire for it. The longing of the Sakina is the raw and fervent power of motion leading both into embodiment and back into the felicity of the Godhead, whose majestic enterprise extends into ecstatic union with the very points of its divisive refractions to ultimately converge into an undiminished unity through the opening of every heart. Love is the all-unifying intimacy of this universal sympathy, embracing lover and Beloved as the Covenant of divine festivity. This sacred pact is thus the love between mortal and divine, the empathic desire binding Heaven and Earth as the burning amour consecrating the certainty of faith.

Devotional love is the sacred means by which we discover the Friend through unveiling the subtle layers of the heart. The ecstatic dialogue between mortal and divinity transpires within this innermost chamber of our essential being, fueling our transformative voyage onto the blissful satiation of our mystical resurrection. By disrobing the Sakina we enter a state of pure felicity, enchantingly drawn into the most intimate presence of our Beloved, christened by the Spirit of Love whose fiery passion purifies our soul towards obtaining likeness to God.  For it is through true love that we come to know God, who, through the melting flame of that spiritual intercourse is revealed as the beneficent root of all that is. 

Our separate, isolated experiences of love are included within the all-encompassing love between God and creation. This all-encompassing quality is reflected in the Qur’anic verse, “My Mercy encompasses all things” (7:156). In this vision, God, by virtue of His all-encompassing Mercy, is a lover; we are beloved. It is love, the ultimate faculty of Divine expression, which brings all there is into existence…Thus the most sublime—while also the most fundamental—attraction of opposites is between God and creation.

Sara Sviri

As the ontological source is nothing but the fundamental essence of the Love Divine, the soul is spiritually moved towards her destination of celestial closeness through the intensification of that sublime amour pouring through the fountain of the heart, whose rapturous ecstasy lifts the wayfarer upon the wings of grace unto the tranquility of divine solicitude. Thus it is by increasing the love of wisdom that the wayfarer negates the vertical gap of separation to reach the threshold of divine proximity, thereby falling into the tender arms of her Beloved.

Love is both death and rebirth, the transitory passage between the nuptial worlds of spirit and nature, the ardent ship of desire who carries the cosmic voyager between the poles of separation and reunion, pain and pleasure, poverty and plenty, so she might finally recognize the ever-present and all-pervading grace of God through the compassionate breath of that eternal mercy. It is the message we receive from our dearest Beloved which signs the seal of the Covenant, a blessing raining down from the cloud of the Empyrean to inundate the garden of the soul.

This singular and primordial effusion is recognized by the true lover as fruit of gnosis, the sacral light of salvation and transfiguration. By emptying herself the Friend of God attracts the affections of the Love Divine, relinquishing her mortal will to inherit the noetic imperative of the universal reason, a station of atonement by which the adoring servant becomes the cosmic instrument of grace through the sacrificial offering of fidelity in complete surrender to the Good.

It is by unfettering the compelling force of the divine desire that we are spiritually empowered to embark on the Path of the Return, following the signs of the Archangelic Lights to travel the Way of Love into the very heart of the Holy Spirit. The wayfarer openly submits to the Medicinal Sapience of these divine energies who perform the healing work of her spiritualization, allowing the beauty of her flower to naturally unfold and reveal the qualities, virtues and meaning of her own angelic selfhood.

The man who has God essentially present to him grasps God divinely, and to him God shines in all things; for everything tastes to him of God, and God forms himself for the man out of all things… Such a man finds far greater merit with God because he grasps everything as divine and as greater than things in themselves are… He must learn to break through things and to grasp his God in them and to form him in himself powerfully in an essential manner… So a man must be penetrated with the divine presence, and be shaped through and through with the shape of the God he loves, so that God’s presence may shine out through him without any effort.

Meister Eckhart

Through direct intimacy with the Sakina we assimilate to the pulse, meter and rhythm of the Angelical Harmony, attuning the lyrical consonance of our own vibratory frequency to the subtle anatomy of the Cosmic Soul, thereby admitting the Light of Heaven whose curative tincture is the universal panacea overflowing from the wellspring of the Pleroma. The inrush of this ambrosial nectar is the Heavenly Dew condensing from the archetypal world of the Pleroma, the flow of existence from the universal to the particular that is the creative manifestation and theophany of God. The apprehension of this energy results in visionary experience, the drinking of which promotes spiritual healing through a greater understanding of reality, tasting the very gnosis that is the unmediated knowledge of the divine. The direct witnessing of this illuminative presence spurs the vertical movement of consciousness towards the angelic realm.

This Medicinal Sapience is the perfecting agent of the First intellect working within the laboratory of mortal consciousness, intensifying the substance of the soul unto harmonic resonance with its own noetic likeness. This spiritual quickening transpires through the indwelling of the Sakina, the immediate presence of the Logos who reunifies the separation of Heaven and Earth through unveiling the divine nature of reality.

The Sakina is the Mistress of Magic who rises from the impenetrable abyss of the Ancient One to instantiate the nested labyrinth of the created worlds, whose circular webs inextricably lead the cosmic passengers back into their source in the Good. She kindles the lantern of knowledge by which the Incarnate Entities are able to recognize, taste and participate in the universal magnanimity of the divine Mercy, suckling her children with the milk of revelation so they might enter the Kingdom of Light, nourished by the heavenly balm of wisdom that is the soothing nectar of love itself.  As the Red Lion of the alchemists, she is the transformative power of the Secret Fire, the sublime amour that envelops the totality of Heaven and Earth within the center of every heart, thereby interweaving the threads of mortal destiny and divine providence through the all-pervading Waters of Life, the sheer being that bestows the flow of existentiality that is none other than the Tao.

The Egyptian Mother Goddess Hathor is the House of Horus who, as the Heart of the World, signifies the reborn King of the Logos, a motif comparable to the Ark bearing the spiritual treasure of the Most High, that is, the Word and heavenly scripture of the Divine Mind.

O noble Virgin, truly you are greater than any other greatness. For who is your equal in greatness, O dwelling place of God the Word? To whom among all creatures shall I compare you, O Virgin? You are greater than them all O Ark of the Covenant, clothed with purity instead of gold! You are the Ark in which is found the golden vessel containing the true manna, that is, the flesh in which Divinity resides.

Athanasius

The Arabs likewise held that the Sakina dwelled within the Ark, sometimes symbolized as a Winged Cat, reminiscent of the lion standard in Ancient Persia who represented the Light of Glory and halo of illumination, the spiritual quality of conformance to the Natural Order which bestowed the king’s right to rule. Just as the countless stars of the firmament all shine with the single light of the Divine Sun our spiritual hearts all burn with the Holy Fire of the Sakina, the Brightening Knowledge that is the love and wisdom of God dwelling in the temple of the soul.   

The Sakina fashions the chariot of the Merkaba, hosting the mutual waystation of that sacred marriage between mortal and divinity, her descent coinciding with the dawn of the Spiritual Sun to form the Body of Light. She is the presence of divine solicitude, the unbound felicity that is our personal identification with God, a relationship solidifying through the companionship of the Angel.

By uncovering the spiritual treasure within the Ark of the Covenant we release the divine mercy of that infinite love dwelling within the innermost chamber of the heart, fully surrendering and dedicating ourselves to the “Will between Heaven and Earth”. Unveiling the Sakina as the preeminent force of reality we imbibe her living sapience to partake in the rapturous sublimity of the Beautiful, undergoing a profound transfiguration through which we acquire, cultivate and exemplify the angelic virtues of the Seraphic Choir. The Light of Grace reveals divinity through the immediate presence of the Personal Deity, who substantiates the most intimate means of the Logos becoming conscious within the soul.

Through the Substantial Motion of spiritualization our perception of the natural world becomes increasingly intensified and transubstantiated to unveil the subtle undertones of the First Intellect, as the song of creation empathically discloses itself through the Divine Speech of the Word, catalyzing the alchemical eclipse of Sun and Moon to mend the ontological Wound of Separation and heal the vertical gap distancing mortal from divinity.

The luminous spirits descend into the embodiment of creation while forgetting their primary nature as Immortal Entities, concealing their spiritual identity under the guise of corporeality, their angelic natures necessitating recovery through the devotional practice of remembrance. This theomorphic inquiry leads the wayfarer to the peak of the Holy Mountain to uncover the Fountain of Life gushing out from her own spiritual heart as the charitable blessing of the Sakina, whose quickening nectar draws the soul closer to the Good. The embodiment of virtues and intellective capabilities grow through the voyage in proportion to one’s nearness to God, as the vessel is purified to increasingly admit the rays of the Divine Sun until the sage is able to drink from the Holy Grail itself, thereby kindling the Lamp of Knowledge upon the altar of her soul. 

The Pleroma is thereby unveiled through unpeeling the layers of the heart, a gnostic intoxication through which the everlasting theophany reveals itself to the ecstatic vision of the mystic, blissfully initiating her into the eternal nature of the Love Divine. She awakens to receive her own distinctive message of the Word through the ongoing epiphany of life experience, sensitizing to discern the annunciation of Divine Speech resounding throughout the symphony of creation.

Preparedness signifies our capacity to partake of the Beautiful, the measure through which we empty our vessel to fill with the salvific medicine of the Living Water, assiduously removing the obstacles, barriers and blockages that separate us from the presential knowledge of the Sakina. Our degree of preparedness resolves our ontological station and vertical proximity to the Good.

The lone traveler stands at the periphery of nonexistence upon the altar of her earthly manifestation, her ultimately being stretching back through the causal succession of worlds emerging from the fountain of the Godhead. The recollective passage of her Spiritual Quest leads from the material circumference of creation back into the center of the heart. The sage comes to know her true essence through the mystical unveiling of that luminous knowledge that is gnosis. She undertakes an exegetical mission to intensify the potency of her very being, a pilgrimage towards the full reintegration of her own angelic archetype, reunifying with her Celestial Twin who abides in the Treasury of Light.

This is the Way of Love, the path of resurrection leading into that incomparable Beauty dwelling within the Light of Eden. Through the direct tasting of revelation the wayfarer obtains the veridical faith of divine certitude by which she reposes into the subsistence of the Good. The faithful lover discerns her own distinct message of providence to follow its prophetic guidance back into her home in the celestial stars, spiritually moved by the saving grace and burning desire of the Sakina

For the meaning of life is to awaken to our true nature on this splendorous voyage, to actively celebrate this beautiful experience in synergistic harmony with the sacred music that is the living communion of creation. Our divine purpose is to intimately recognize, empathically feel and unconditionally love the indwelling presence of the Sakina who is none other than the most immanent face of the Almighty/Friend, whose charitable toast of Medicinal Sapience seals the eternal pact of the Covenant.

I wait for that lovely Maiden…

Whose soft eyes sparkle

Like a thousand stars on the clearest night

Whose beautiful gaze

Makes me shiver and tremble with delight

Whose tender smile

Fills my heart with her golden light

The Adorable One

With whom my love feels so wholesome and right.