One of the rituals that will be part of our local (Pacific NW) 2020 Fall Equinox Isia Festival is the “Lamentations of Isis.”
This rite is an adaptation of the lamentations ritual in Isis Magic.
Our festival version is non-gendered and changes have been made to allow for a larger group of participants.
If you think that you’d like to be a part of this rite, please read on so you’ll know how to prepare. For additional reading, here’s a post about Isis and lamentation.
About the Rite: Lamentation has always been a part of the honoring of Isis. We even have some of the actual scripts of the laments for Osiris that were performed in the temples, though all the surviving records date from the later Ptolemaic period. They are evocative and, in some cases, quite heartbreaking. In Imperial Rome, where Isis became enormously popular, the Isis…
In these days of “self-isolating,” are you perhaps feeling a bit disconnected; not only from others, but from Her?
The Lotus Temple. In March…weird.
It’s pretty weird out there right now, folks. For one thing, I’m in Portland Oregon and it’s snowing. In mid-March. Politics? Don’t get me started. Oh, and then there’s the fact that every grocery store in town is out of just about everything because people are preparing to be “self-isolating” at home for a good long while. Of course, it’s not that we shouldn’t be taking this pandemic seriously. We should. And we are.
But all the crazy out there can make us feel a little, well, crazy. Which is not very conducive to experiencing our connection with Isis. It might even make us panic. Is She still there? Was She ever there? Am I “losing my faith”? What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with Her?
There are three kinds of gifts. The first is the gift of material resources.The second is the gift of knowledge, the gift of the Dharma. The third, the highest kind of gift, is the gift of non-fear. Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva is someone who can help us liberate ourselves from fear. This is the heart of the Prajñaparamita. Svaha!
At this present moment, our home is filled with flowers. Yes, I know. It’s February. That’s why it’s filled with flowers. And since oriental lilies are some of our favorites, right now, I’m smelling the sweet-dark scent of those wonderful lilies throughout the living room.
And all this leads me to think of the perfumes of ancient Egypt and, of course, the perfumes of Isis particularly. For the Goddesses and Gods of Egypt were always associated with scent. Beautiful scents have always been connected with the Divine, but in Egypt particularly, you knew that a Deity had arrived when you smelled Her or His perfume in the temple air.
Egyptian women making perfume
The Egyptians apparently blended scents appropriate for their Deities; for instance, there is a record of an unguent called “Aroma of Horus.” Surely, there was an “Aroma of Isis,” too, but alas, we have no record of…
This Book may justly challenge the first place for antiquity, from all the Books in the World, being written some hundreds of years before Moses his time, as I shall endeavour to make good. The Original (as far as is known to us) is Arabic, and several Translations thereof have been published, as Greek, Latin, French, Dutch, etc., but never English before. It is pity the Learned Translator [Dr. Everard] had not lived, and received himself, the honour, and thanks due to him from the Englishmen for his good will to, and pains for them, in translating a Book of such infinite worth, out of the Original, into their Mother-tongue.
Concerning the Author of the Book itself, Four things are considerable, viz., His Name, Learning, Country, and Time.
1. The name by which he was commonly styled, is Hermes Trismegistus, i.e., Mercurius ter Maximus, or, The thrice greatest Intelligencer. And well might he be called Hermes, for he was the first Intelligencer in the World (as we read of) that communicated Knowledge to the sons of Men, by Writing, or Engraving. He was called Ter Maximus, for some Reasons, which I shall afterwards mention.
2. His Learning will appear, as by his Works; so by the right understanding the Reason of his Name.
3. For his Country, he was King of Egypt.
4. For his Time, it is not without much Controversy, betwixt those that write of this Divine, ancient Author, what time he lived in. Some say he lived after Moses his time, giving this slender Reason for it, viz., Because he was named Ter Maximus: for being preferred [Franciscus Flussas] (according to the Egyptian Customs) being chief Philosopher, to be chief of the Priesthood: and from thence, to be chief in Government, or King. But if this be all their ground, you must excuse my dissent from then, and that for this reason, Because according to the most learned of his followers [Geber, Paracelsus: Henricus Nollius in Theoria Philosophia Hermeticae, tractatu priimo.], he was called Ter Maximus; for having perfect, and exact Knowledge of all things contained in the World; which things he divided into Three Kingdoms (as he calls them), viz., Mineral, Vegetable, Animal; which Three, he did excel in the right understanding of; also, because he attained to, and transmitted to Posterity (although in an Ænigmatical, and obscure style) the Knowledge of the Quintessence of the whole Universe (which Universe, as I said before, he divided into Three Parts) otherwise called, The great Elixir of the Philosophers; which is the Receptacle of all Celestial and Terrestrial Virtues; which Secret, many ignorantly deny, many have chargeably sought after, yet few, but some, yea, and the Englishmen have happily found [Ripley, Bacon, Norton, etc.]. The Description of this great Treasure, is said to be found engraved upon a Smaragdine Table, in the Valley of Ebron, after the Flood. So that the Reason before alleged to prove this Author to live after Moses, seem invalid: neither doth it any way appear, that he lived in Moses his time, although it be the opinion of some, as of John Functius, who saith in his Chronology, That he lived Twenty-one years before the Law was given by Moses in the Wilderness; But the Reasons that he, and others give, are far weaker than those that I shall give, for his living before Moses his time. My reasons for that are these:
First, Because it is received amongst the Ancients, that he was the first that invented the Art of communicating Knowledge to the World, by Writing or Engraving. Now if so, then in all probability he was before Moses; for it is said of Moses that he was from his childhood [Acts vii.22] skilled in all the Egyptian Learning, which could not well have been without the help of Literature, which we never read of any before that invented by Hermes [Chapter x.].
Secondly, he is said by himself, to be the son of Saturn and by others to be the Scribe of Saturn. Now Saturn according to Historians, lived in the time of Sarug, Abraham’s great Grand-Father [Sanchoniathon]. I shall but take in Suidas his judgment, and so rest satisfied, that he did not live only before, but long before Moses; His words are these, Credo Mercurium Trismegistum sapientem Egyptium floruisse ante Pharaonem [Suidas].
Hello, Isiacs! I’d like to share with you a beautiful double sistrum that one of our sisters discovered in a market in Baja. It is lovely and I’ll bet it sounds wonderful. Here’s the pic:
Why didn’t I think of that? A double sistrum! Thank you, Agnes. Here’s a repeat post about the sistrum and how this magical musical instrument can shake things up.
A priestess with the naos style of sistrum
In Isis Magic, one of the key elemental implements of the priestess of Isis is the sistrum. It is one of several types of ancient Egyptian rattles that were used in the worship of the Goddesses and Gods. But it isn’t simply a musical instrument; it is also a magical instrument.
As you may already suspect, sistrum is a Latin word. In turn, it derives from a Greek term for the Egyptian rattle: seistron”that which is…
Here is a fascinating story about a man who became an angel, not just an ordinary angel – but the minister in charge of all the other Serafim.
His face appears on one of the King Solomon seals, named “The First Pentacle of the Sun“. On this seal – his radiant horned figure is drawn.
Alongside the figure are the Hebrew words “El Shadai” (אל שד”י) (One of the holy names of God).
Who is this divine figure?
This is the Archangel Metatron, the Minister of the Interior, who is the emissary and representative of God that instructs human beings from the upper worlds. According to various Kabbalistic sources, Metatron is said to be the most senior angel in the world of creation (Olam Yetzirah) — the realm where angels are created.
In the “book of Heichalot”, we can find comprehensive knowledge of the angel Metatron and how he received the highest role in the armies of angels:
Hanoch ben Yered was a human being, flesh and blood, a righteous and God-fearing man, who lived in the generation of the great flood (the seventh in the lineage after the first man). He was taken by the Creator and ascended miraculously (without actually dying) to the upper worlds:
” Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, for God took him” [Genesis 5]
This is what Rabbi Yishmael had said about him:
“Metatron, the angel of the interior, said to me: ‘When the Creator took me from the generation of the flood, it enveloped me in the wings of the Spirit of the Shekhina, to the upper firmament … and nominated me to serve the throne of glory every day.”
In the supreme process of coronation, Enoch (Hanoch) was granted many blessings from the Creator, his dimensions were magnified and intensified, and he received 72 wings (36 pairs of wings), 5360 eyes, “Each eye as the greatest light”. A chair was built for him, reminiscent of the Creator’s Throne of Glory, with all the lights of the world shining in it. The chair was placed at the entrance to the Seventh Divine hall and Hanoch was seated on it.
It was also told by Rabbi Yishmael:
“Metatron, the angel of the interior, told me,” Since then, all the secrets of the Torah have been revealed to me, and all the mysteries and deepness of wisdom, and all the thoughts of the hearts of creatures and all the mysteries of the world and all the ways of creation unfold before me, the way they are known by the Creator, and there is nothing in Heaven and the depth of the world that disappeared from me. ” [The book of Heichalot].
The Creator loved Hanoch most of all – he made him a garment that shone with all kinds of lights, dressed him in a coat of honor, and gave him a crown of kingship, in which there were 49 stones shining like the sunlight. On the crown the Creator wrote in fire the Hebrew letters through which the world was created. When this crown was tied to Metatron’s head, all the ministering angels in front of the throne of glory moved away from him with dignity and fear.
“And they all fall upon their faces when they see me and cannot look at me from the glory and splendor of beauty”.
Metatron was given seventy names to the seventy languages of the world. Some of these names may be familiar to you from various kabbalistic writings and talismans: זב”יה, צפצפ”יה, טפטפ”יה , etc. Every name conveys supreme lights.
The Zohar tells about Metatron that he controls all the angels responsible for this world, and has direct linkage with the Creator.
Metatron is also considered the redeeming angel to the world that protects mankind, and he is the one who summons blessings to the whole world, for he has received all the blessings of the Creator.
Why was Hanoch ben Yered chosen to play such an exalted role in the kingdom of heaven and earth?
In the Zohar it is explained that since Hanoch followed the path of truth when he lived in the physical world, he found the lights (sparks) that were lost by the first man because of the first sin (of the Tree of Knowledge). These lights were hidden in the lower heaven, among the trees of the Garden of Eden, where they remained concealed until the birth of Hanoch. Hanoch lived next to paradise, and the hidden light began to shine in him and so – he transcended spiritually.
Due to the spiritual radiance that emanated from him, he was allowed into the Garden of Eden, where he found the tree of life, smelled its fruits, absorbed its essence, and the spirit of the preliminary light of life entered into him.
Angels came from the upper worlds and taught him the supreme wisdom. He was given a book that was hidden in the Tree of Life, from which he learned and knew the ways of the Creator and the secrets of the universe. This is the reason why it was said about him “And Enoch walked with God”.Hanoch lived in the material world for 365 years. He fulfilled the spiritual ascension that every man is supposed to aspire to, and then he was elevated to the upper worlds to his rightful place, and became the great and powerful Metatron the Minister of the Interior. In practical Kabbalah, Metatron’s name and its seventy different names are used for testaments and whispers, and many Kabbalists have warned against pronouncing these names aloud.
As for the First Pentacle of the Sun:
The original seal, on which the image of Metatron is engraved, there is a Latin sentence translated into English in this language:
“Behold His face and form by Whom all things were made, and Whom all creatures obey.”
From this verse, we can innerstand that the purpose of the seal is to illuminate the face of the person who wishes to follow the path of the Creator (like Hanoch), a person who is in equilibrium with the Creator, who strives to give and influence the world. The glow of his face radiates far away, deters the dark forces, and thus he is protected against tormentors and dangers..
When one invests effort, transcends and acts with high awareness, he is able to equalize with the Creator (whose essence is infinite giving), and therefore all his wishes and desires are fulfilled.
This is the secret of the seal: Protection and fulfillment of the wishes of the person holding it.
The aretalogies are those first-person statements in which the Goddess details Her many accomplishments and gifts to humankind. Here’s an except from one in case you need a little reminder:
I am She that riseth in the Dog Star. I am She that is called Goddess by women. For me was the city of Bubastis built. I divided the earth from the heaven. I showed the paths of the stars.
I ordered the course of the sun and the moon. I devised business in the sea. I made strong the right. I brought together woman and man.
I appointed to women to bring their infants to birth in the tenth month. I ordained that parents should be loved by children. I laid punishment on…
When Men finally know that nothing counts more than the progression of the Soul, they will be free from all enslavements and will be able to work freely in harmony with the Law.
This is the Sacred Salutation, the Qedushsha, which is used by all the Hierarchy and the Sons and Daughters of Light to greet “The Father” before His Throne. It is also used for the theophany of the Hierarchy, as well as to discern angelic orders through its use as a Salutation, determining those who serve the Eternal Father and those who are His true Messengers. The expression as a three-fold formula sets in motion a trinitized seal and is the highest expression of teamwork in the heavens and upon the earth. It is employed by the Elohim through the Kadumah Kadmon to connect with other sounds for the Divination of new worlds, whereby,
“Each utterance of the Sacred Expression leads to the seed form which represents the complex nature of the basic energies of the Life forces.” — Keys of Enoch Key 305.
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Immerse yourself in the Second Ray energies and the guides that greet you there. Healing, connecting to the mind of God. Peaceful. A Rejuvenating meditation assisting you on your spiritual journey back to yourself.
The 1975 cycle will continue to precipitate momentous choices for individuals and societies. What are the vital elements in this decisive choosing, and what will be the chief consequences? There is in the life of every human being a series of minor choices which add up to a crucial choice, but often it is made with incomplete knowledge of its critical nature. To grow and to age is to recognize with increasing clarity that all events in the past have had their irreversible consequences. Therefore, within any shallow philosophy centered essentially on the physical body and premised upon a single incarnation, a personal sense of futility and fatalism looms large as one comes closer to the moment of death. As with individuals, so with civilizations. Civilizations are apt to conduct the deepest reflection upon their storied past in times of depression, either out of self-indulgent nostalgia or sheer bewilderment at their bygone glory. This has shadowed every great civilization in its hour of decline, and today we are witnessing this in Western Europe and in the nostalgic mood which is intermittent in the United States. Civilizations seek to cling to something of the past, and perceptive chroniclers like Toynbee in England or Jaspers in Switzerland sense that something went wrong as early as before 1914, that the seeds of today’s malaise lay far back in the past. When we look back to that past we surmise that a lot could have been avoided, that there were viable alternatives and missed opportunities. This is the sad state of societies as well as individuals who, because of narrowness of perspective and myopia in relation to the future, impose upon their lives a delusive dependence upon their own edited versions of a truncated past. But whenever human beings are willing to rethink their basic assumptions about themselves, about their shrouded past and about their cloudy future, then they do not need to edit. They do not have to limit unduly the horizon of their gaze.
This is difficult to understand initially. One might think in terms of the extreme example of a person with Promethean foresight who can discern in the cycles of this century long-term factors that go back a thousand years into the past and will go forward a thousand years into the future. In the Victorian Age, T.H. Huxley observed that in the myriad worlds around us there is no reason why there cannot be beings with an intelligence as far beyond our present level as ours is beyond that of the black beetle, and with a control over nature as far beyond our own as ours is beyond that of the snail. He also suggested that even ordinary human beings can look back and forward over a millennium and make broad projections. It is, in principle, possible for there to be beings in the universe who can see all pasts and all futures. The power of choice is partly a function of the scope of perspective. With wider perspectives our choices become more intelligent, but as they become more informed, we readily recognize that there are many factors that are constant. One cannot wish away causes generated over a long cycle. The more clearly a person sees what he cannot alter right now in this incarnation, the more effectively he can use his energies to alter what he can. All this requires a measure of balance, but most human beings are unable to choose wisely by clearly facing the alternatives before them. All too often they vainly hope that by proceeding in one direction, everything else will automatically come to them. Energy cannot move in all directions at once, and though there are many planes of matter, it is always the case that everything adds up in a mathematical universe. One’s capacity to choose is a function of one’s knowledge, not merely of particular causal chains but also of what is at the very core of the phenomenal process of becoming: breathing in and breathing out. Ideally, if one could comprehend the meaning of a single day, one would by analogy be able to understand what is enacted over a lifetime.
It has been taught that for the truly wise, each day is like a new incarnation. In small space they see the subtle motions of unbounded space. In a single moment they can grasp quintessentially the infinite possibilities that are spread out in eternal duration. They can retain in consciousness the freedom that belongs to those who are not rushing to manifest, while displaying a shrewd awareness of what it is possible to manifest with a due respect for the feelings of others, for collective strengths and weaknesses, for the limits and possibilities of the current cycle. Theosophical teaching offers the vast perspective of eighteen million years of human history and also of the sixth sub-race which will emerge far in the future but which must clearly have some relationship to the fifth sub-race – now visibly on the decline – that flowered forth in Europe and partly in America. At this point of time there is, by analogy and correspondence, a critical moment of choice bearing upon the alternatives that confront our intelligence. The ratiocinative mind has become adept, because of modern upbringing and so-called education, because of so much dichotomous thinking since Aristotle, at rationalizing its wants, desires and limitations. Now we find at a global level the logical limit of this rationalizing mind, which insists there is not enough room or food on earth for all human beings on our globe. This no-exit barrier in thinking arises because of assumptions that were too limited from the start. It hinges upon a view of the universe which is incompatible with the vast resources of the creative imagination, with the inventiveness displayed in the last three centuries in building up the structures of applied science and sophisticated civilization. Even this is merely a recent example of the immense resourcefulness of the human race over many millennia. The type of thinking which is inductive, inferential and dichotomous, functioning within the perspective of a closed universe or of a one-life system, has become sterile and has no real answers to the awesome problems of our time.
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Immerse yourself in the First Ray energies of Divine Will and Surrender with First Ray Master El Morya and Adama, High Priest of Telos. A Healing, peaceful and rejuvenating meditation assisting you on your spiritual journey back to yourself.
Against this, however, we have the tremendous affirmation through the supreme negation of Sri Shankaracharya.
The individual who knows that at the root is the persisting illusion of separateness, is vaster than the universe, and can dissolve it instantly by breaking down at will the baseless, insubstantial fabric of his imagination. Anyone who can do that has begun to wake up. There are people who will not wake up voluntarily because they repeatedly fell asleep during eighteen million years and are now frightened to settle accounts. They are themselves negated by suffering which comes as healing compassion, and are negated by others in the course of intolerable inhuman encounter. Self-negation is shown by the timeless religion of responsibility and the hidden science of divine wisdom. The invisible sun in every man as the Atman, the spectator, ever radiates endless energy for the sake of all. According to this teaching, darkness is prior to what we call light; glamour or unwisdom is beginningless. It is what the ancients called Chaos, Gaia, or Mahamaya. There is a chaos prior to any cosmos. There are many myriads of systems, galaxies and galactic clusters in the vast spaces of the heavens, but if there were no primordial chaos one would be forever trapped within the same universe. Before Adam was Chaos, the primordial matter, in which is hidden the light that is the soundless sound. In the beginning was the Word. Primordial chaos is necessary for the universe, but whether we think it necessary or not, we have no choice. We are caught. We can get out, because we have in us the light that was hidden in the darkness, which lighteth up every man who comes into the world.
The Crest Jewel of Wisdom speaks only to those who are prepared to negate the world of appearances:
Gaining at length human life, hard to win, and manhood, and an understanding of the revealed teachings, he who strives not for liberation in the Divine Self, deluded in heart, self-destroying, slays himself through grasping at the unreal. who, then, is the very self of folly but he who, deluded, follows selfish purposes, after he had gained a human body and manhood hard to win? Even though they recite the scriptures, and sacrifice to the gods, and fulfill all works, and worship the divinities – without awakening to the unity of the Divine Self, liberation is not attained even in a hundred aeons.
From the standpoint of the sage, the innumerable ways in which human beings are enmeshed in the Mahamaya are not very interesting. The sage can recognize anyone who is fully awake behind a semi-sleepy projection. Those who really want to emerge from behind the false personal mask will receive what they deserve in mathematically exact proportion. This is a truth about consciousness on all planes. One must deserve to go beyond all the external forms and modes and, through the eternal soul-memory now awakened of the soundless sound behind the great vibrations of the universe, to light up in the lower mind a self-conscious reflection of the invisible sun that overbroods the egg.
Albert Einstein said there are no hitching posts in the universe. There are no boundaries except arbitrary and conventional ones assigned by human beings who happen to think that they occupy a fixed point of space and time, when in fact space is curved and time is relative. They do not understand the inner meaning of spatial coordinates and of clocktime. Although there are no hitching posts, there are innumerable hooking points. When people really begin to enjoy the thought that at any point of space-time they could break out of the boundedness of the universe, they can experience through self-knowledge what they have forgotten. The ancients taught that God is a circle with its centre everywhere and circumference nowhere. Human beings can find in the inmost depths of abstract meditation an active centre of intense, motionless, joyous consciousness. Abiding in universal welfare and doing nothing, as beings of light they enjoy pure unmoving spiritual will in, through and independently of, all material vestures. Even if we somewhat understand all of this, it is still very difficult to light the lamp of discernment. The moment we think, “Let me do this,” “May I be that,” we only create karma and imprison ourselves. But the moment we say, “Let me begin,” and also recognize that there is a chaos we cannot explain and that there are no hitching posts, then we begin like true pilgrims to walk along the Path. It leads to invisible summits lost in glorious Nirvanic light which may be glimpsed from foothills and mountains arduously climbed in cheerful enjoyment, although one is aware of the many pitfalls on the way. The only hooking points are found within. They form the seven-knotted bamboo staff of the ascetic. If you were a montagnard you would cherish the serene strength of the individual and know what the communards forget, that communities are doomed to fail from the start when men are afraid to be alone. At the same time, if a human being in distress came for help, the montagnard will take care of him and then return to solitude.
The soul is ensnared through the power of misidentification in the chaos of primordial matter. If we enjoy narcissistically the illusions of the ever-changing reflective soul, then we forget the light of divine discernment, the Sleeping Beauty in the castle. She can only be awakened by Prince Charming, the androgynous manas, the power of noetic thought, ideation and imagination. Real thinking has a self-sustaining quality determined by the grasp, the vision, the scope and the strength of the universal ideas that provide mental nourishment. When one truly begins to walk the inner Path, one does not need any reference point in external space and time, and can see the moment of birth as if it were this morning’s dawn and can see the moment of death as if it were this evening’s twilight. Thousands of previous lives seem like twinkling stars in the sky.
The real Gurus who truly know teach just by being themselves. They are self-existing, self-manifesting embodiments of the wisdom of compassion, crowned with the Crest Jewel of pure insight. Their very existence is testimony. Shankara spoke to disciples who were already free from the delusion of the personal “I” but who were stuck in the illusion of the individual “I.” His teaching is not about the hereafter, not about the now and then, not about the always and everywhere, but about That. The supreme affirmation is TAT TVAM ASI – That Thou Art. That is the oldest teaching which Shankara explained by reference to reason, to experience, to states of consciousness, to vestures of matter in the five-fold classification, and also by references to madmen, yogis and free men. Universal self-awareness is the potential privilege and birthright of every human being, but no one can attain to it except by fulfilling the qualifications, embodying the conditions that approximate the posture and the position of a true learner.
The Crest Jewel could be in your hands. Use it, Shankara says, because by use you make it sufficiently your own to recognize that the greatest lies are “I” and “thou.” All amounts to an “it” and “it” equals That. That equals zero. Your sphere becomes luminous when you wholly adopt the standpoint of the Logos in the cosmos, the God in man, and then enjoy the universe through every pair of eyes. Heal yourself, and others through yourself, by luminous thoughts and adamantine compassion.
Grand Temple of Horus Behdety 