4 10 105 https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/5deb552a2297c9b127e61c44119066e7.pdf 80f78e0e09a2bbf794df8278b4165097 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rosa Madriana Description An account of the resource Materials produced and/or used by Madria Olga and Rosa Madriana. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rosa Madriana Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Rosa Madriana Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1999 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 6pp., loose-leaf, typewritten Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madria Olga Typescript of the Clear Recital from JME Subject The topic of the resource Scripture Description An account of the resource Three sutras of Scripture (The Light, The Way of Simplicity, Thoughts of the Mind) in what is purported to be Madria Olga's own typesetting, as given to her student JME. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Madria Olga Lotar Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Private collection of Madria Olga's student JME, via donation by Sister Sophia Ruth. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/f6bfd209cd2d6c537f48508e525fde29.pdf 73825395e618302c3e63e2bc07792e42 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Romantia Description An account of the resource Materials from the short-lived Romantian community—a mixed-company sister project to Aristasia. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Printed article, 3pp. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Romantic Manifesto Description An account of the resource An article describing the lifestyle and philosophy of the "Romantics" in the late 1980s. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Miss Lucinda Tyrrell Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Spectator Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 24 December 1988 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Magazine article, 3pp. Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant London https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/88577f7a15427e77d4399d4902f31391.pdf 9d9221a870387054d086f4af97012409 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose leaf, handwritten (3pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document Obedience One could perhaps make a case for declaring that obedience is the first of all the virtues. At any rate, it is certainly true that if one renders true obedience to a mistress in themis [thamë] – that is to say, one who is God's indirect representative within the earthly order of things – one will, ipso facto be practising the other virtues also. All, it may be protested, with the exception of one, & that one, the virtue governed by Madria Tethys [Sai Sushuri]. For Love, it will be said, may never be commanded; and this, we will allow, is truly said – yet true obedience is the fruit of Love & wheresoever one is to be found, there most surely you find the other. That obedience which giveth what she must for fear or for advancement – this is what the profane call obedience, yet in truth, she is not more than a counterfeit and a false adulteress. For true obedience binds not the body only but the soul, & tho' we may like the task we are set to no better than the willow-rod that is set upon our shoulders, yet we would not have it any wise other than as our mistress wills it. For if we love our Lady, then we willingly obey Her, & in obeying Her, obey also the Ranya that She has set over us on the earth. Obedience is the chain that bindeth earth to Heaven, & tho' there be them that say they will love but not obey, yet in such case the love endures not long, & this is proven both by the words of holy Scripture & by the examples of maids & of nations. So truly we may say, if obedience be not the first among the vritues, yet Love is, & obedience is not the fruit of love merely, but her daughter – & like to God's own beloved Daughter [sign of pentagram], is not her child only, but her very self. Writ by the maid Alethea in loving obedience to her mistress. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource On Obedience Subject The topic of the resource Obedience Description An account of the resource A calligraphic composition by Sr. Alethea on the significance and importance of obedience to one's spiritual mistress. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sr. Alethea Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Personal collection of David Kay. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1980 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text love obedience ranya virtue https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/f489d9abd54088d266ad99bb3473335c.jpg 65cd40f3b038e4c329d8a2ebc0a983fc Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document Dear Sirs, Ken Penney’s article in the September Ecologist mobilises a coherent and powerful attack upon the economics of greed. However, there is one crucial point which in this, as in many similar statements, is left vague. He points out that communities such as the Amish and the Hutterites have remained content with lifestyles unchanged over centuries, and dismisses the objection that such communities are only successful because of their high religious scale of values with the suggestion that ‘it is only a matter of definition whether some values are religious and some are not. Could it not be possible that profit making itself is the religion of materialism?’ It is scarcely disputable that the race for material goods is a religion-substitute; but that leaves unsolved the problem of what substitute the secular stable economy can find for both religion and money-grubbing. Mere contentedness to live in peace with one’s neighbours is a pleasant idea on paper, but it ignores the actual dynamics of human psychology. The late Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy pointed out in many of his works that all traditional pre-industrial societies had or have a complex metaphysical doctrine of their various crafts (including agriculture). Each is seen not only as a means of producing material necessities, but as a paradigm of the cosmogonic act; and consequently also as a meditative path. An individual’s craft was a vocation in the true sense; an inseparable part of her own being. The loss of this traditional approach to the crafts is the root cause of all ‘industrialism’, since it is only when the inner meaning of craft has been forgotten that its whole essence can be sacrificed to methods which merely increase its external productive efficiency. Having seen for myself the level of real motivation and dedication generated by the ‘path of works’ in traditional Madrian-matriarchal communities in this country, I am convinced that a return to a vocational society in the traditional sense is the only workable long-term solution to the psychological and spiritual problems of a post-industrial economy. Yours faithfully, Sister Angelina, Lux Madriana, Oxford. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data print (1p.) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Vocational Point of View Subject The topic of the resource Craft Description An account of the resource Letter written by Sr. Angelina to the editor of the ecologist, proposing a return to craft-based vocational understandings as the only sustainable path in a post-industrial world. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sr. Angelina Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Sr. Angelina. "A Vocational Point of View." the ecologist 9.8/9, Nov/Dec 1979; http://www.theecologist.org/back_archive/19701999/ Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available the ecologist Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1979 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text craft social criticism https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/1757c2d2a8e5d2f0ad2273bbe852f88b.pdf 7d58bf157f10c07ba6fdb3b05e9a34ec Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose leaf, typewritten (16pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document Madrian Literature Circle: The Beauty and the Beast Debate The three articles reproduced here represent a debate conducted in the pages of the New-Age magazine Aquarian Arrow. It began with a feature in that magazine entitled "Women on Crowley on Women", including a passage by the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley (who liked to refer to himself as "The Great Beast" of the Christian Book of Revelation, "whose number was 666"), expounding his views on maids. This was accompanied by comments from a number of maids working in the occult field. The whole piece was then sent to Lux Madriana by the editors, with an invitation to comment upon it. Sister Angelina responded with the article "Beauty and the Beast" which was published in the following issue. This drew a response from an anonymous contributor writing under the nom de plume of "Robert". His piece, "Lux Madriana and the Solar Logos", sets out in a clear and serious way many of the fundamental errors and confusions of the New-Age movement in general and of the modern pseudo-matriarchal school in particular. The refutation of these errors involves, indirectly, the refutation of the whole modern world-view. Obviously an entire book could be devoted to the subject; but in a witty and concise article, "Marie Antoinetter and the Reine Soleil", Sister Angelina tackles all the fundamental issues. This piece should be read carefully more than once, for it will make many things fall into place which may previously have seemed obscure. <div style="text-align:left;"> --- NOTE: Crowley's argument, briefly, was to reject all sexual morality as a "superstition" and to declare that woman should realise herself as a primarily sexual being, whose "archetype" is the Great Whore. Beauty and the Beast Superstition presupposes ignorance. For a superstition is literally something which "stands over"; a disembodied remnant of a philosophical structure which, rent from its context and idolised for its own sake, is devoid of content. A hundred years from now, when the primordial forests are slowly reclaiming these islands, there will no doubt be many who will set up steering wheels or spools of computer tape on piles of stones and bow down before them. That will be superstition. Our descendents will have a vague memory of the "power" attaching to these objects, but the context in which alone that power could be actualised will have been lost in the mists of ignorance. In precisely the same way, the sexual "morality" prevalent in Crowley's time (and, to an extent, today) was and is superstition. Certain taboos and mores inherited from the past were regarded with a superstitious awe; a quasi-noumenous "power" was recognized as attaching to them. Just like the steering wheel, these mores had once been part of an integrated system, and it was in their relation to the system alone that their "power" had any validity. The relations between the sexes are the reflection on the material plane of certain transcendent Realities. Realities which existed long before the manifestation of physical creatures endowed with biological gender and which will exist long after they have passed away. Marriage is a ritual "actualisation" of the reflection. That is what it was created for, and that is how it has been understood in every civilisation that has not lost sight of the Absolute. The more conventional of Crowley's contemporaries were superstitious because they worshipped marriage while they did not have the vaguest idea of what marriage is. Crowley (along with the whole contemporary avant garde, whom he merely echoes in rather more fustian prose) is not superstitious; but he is equally ignorant. He does not worship marriage, but he has no more idea of what marriage is. He disposes from the beginning of the idea that he might have any metaphysical understanding: "This Nibbana-idea is the coward – "mother's boy" idea; one ought to take a dip in the Tao, no more." To make a statement like this is simply to say "I am not a metaphysician", just as to declare that 2+2=5 is to say "I am not a mathematician"". The wisdom of the saints and sages is replaced by the crass "dynamism" of Herbert Spencer projected onto the Absolute. "Why do men insist on the innocence of women?" he asks, and comes up with a series of answers on teh same level of profundity as the nineteenth-century dictum that "myths are primitive attempts to explain natural phenomena". He sees woman as nothing more than a sex-object, and proceeds to project this sex-object onto his own sentimental equivalent of the metaphysical plane in the form of an Archetypal Whore. Always the same fundamental error – an error that can only arise in a materialist environment, but which in that environment will always vitiate any spirituality which lacks metaphysical principles. The projection of the relative onto the Absolute. The belief that "as below, so above". What, then, is marriage? For herein lies the answer to the whole problem. Marriage is the ritual actualisation of the fire-kiss. The transformation of the dragon by the sun-maiden. Beauty and the Beast, the Frog Prince and hundred similar folk-motifs are allegories of the archetypal marriage. The maid is (nay, not represents, for, by the power of the Rite, she is) the Spirit, the supernal Sun. The man is the soul ensnared in matter, who is consumed, destroyed and reborn in Her kiss. No mortal maid is God; yet in the power of the Rite, while she does not become the Reality, the Reality becomes Her. The all-consuming fire-kiss is re-enacted in every "consummation" of the marriage; and the ritual extends not only to this, but to every action of marital life. That is why a man must obey his wife. In many of the matriarchal civilisations which have dominated the world for the vast majority of human history, a maid was allowed up to four husbands: the four men representing the four material elements and the maid the quinta essentia. This is not the practice among contemporary Madrians, but it expresses a vital truth about the real nature of marriage. Patriarchal marriage partly inverted and partly misinterpreted the truth. It was perversion, it was heresy, but it was not yet ignorance. Yet the seeds of ignorance lie at the very heart of patriarchy. For every act is a ritual and every ritual has a magical effect. In ritually turning from the feminine principle to the masculine principle – from the sun-maiden to the unregenerate dragon – civilisation turned from the qualitative to the quantitative; from pure metaphysical Intellect to earthbound reason; from transcendent Truth to transient "facts". When the first warrior king usurped the throne of the first priestess-queen, the advent of Freud, Marx and Darwin became an inevitability. So did that of Crowley. In rejecting the fire-kiss of the sun-maiden, patriarchal civilisation also rejected Intelligence in its pure form. For the Kiss operates on many levels, from the simple marriage to the consummation of the perfected hera (saint) in God Herself. Without the Kiss of pure transcendent Intellect (which is not other than the supernal Sun Herself), the dragon of earthbound reason cannot be raised up out of the mire of matter. Instead is will become ever more "materialist", until it grows into the hydra-headed monster of modern techno-bureaucratic scientism. Crowley sought to react against this monster; but having no access to metaphysical principles, his thinking could not be radically different (in the strict sense of that much-abused term) from that which it opposed. he could not have been other than he was. 666, and never been Kissed. Sister Angelina This article is the first of three published by Aquarian Arrow. Lux Madriana and the Solar Logos I am a Thelemite, and hold no brief for Crowley's attitude to women nor his writings on sex. But when Sister Angelina accuses Crowley of metaphysical ignorance, this is really the pot calling the kettle black. For in none of his writings has Crowley ever displayed such a crass misunderstanding of the "underlying realities" behind traditional metaphysical attributions of some elements to women, and others to men, as Sister Angelina did in her article. There may well have cultures in the past in which women personified the Sun and men the Earth, just as the Moon is masculine and the Sun feminine in the German language. But these have been a minority, among matriarchal just as much as among patriarchal cultures. Women have been associated with Earth and Matter long before the days of patriarchal monotheism. This was not the result of men seeking to debase women, because the Earth and Matter were not until recently regarded as "base". In pantheist cultures, Matter and Spirit are but two different aspects of the same divine Reality underlying all Life. Women have been associated with the Earth, because they bear and bring forth children in the same manner in which the Earth brings forth crops. That is why the word "matter" (in Latin materia) has the same linguistic roots as the word "mother" (in Latin mater). Matter is seen as the mother-stuff from which all physical sentient life is made. Women have also been associated with the Moon, because of the close parallel between their twenty-eight day menstrual cycles and lunar months. That is why in matriarchal fertility cultures, the calendar was divided into thirteen lunar months, and each month into four seven-day weeks representing one of the quarters, and why the number thirteen was sacred. It is also at night, especially when the Moon shines and is near Full Moon, that men and women are most under the influence of their feelings and emotions, especially the feeling of Love. This is also associated more closely with women than with men, because of their primary role in rearing children and in protecting them in infancy. The Moon influences also the sea's tides: hence a link between the Moon and the sea, and by extension between women and the element of Water, which also plays an important role through rain in preserving the fertility of the soil. These are the "underlying Realities" behind traditional metaphysical attributions of Earth and Water as feminine elements. The Sun, on the other hand, is associated with the element of Fire: not unnaturally, since the Sun is itself a huge ball of fiery thermo-nuclear explosions and chemical reactions. Fire is itself an aggressive and destructive element, capable of reducing fertile jungles to ashes. The Sun too is essentially destructive when it is not balanced by Water in a landscape: it turns vast pasts of the tropics to deserts, and its solar flares were the main agent of evolution on Earth before the arrival of Man, usually by causing climatic changes that wiped out whole species unable to adapt, for example, the dinosaurs. The male sex has traditionally been the more aggressive of the two, not just in human cultures, but in most mammal species as well. Hence it is natural to attribute the aggressive elements of Fire and the Sun to men. Humanity alone of all animal species has been able to domesticate Fire, and to turn its destructive prooperties to creative use, in the smelting of metals and the fashioning of tools. But these in turn have been used as means of aggression against the environment, of destroying an existing landscape as the first step to fashioning it in a new form. This creative use of the destructive power of Fire, and of the tools made with it, requires the ability for mental conceptualisation of patters different from the existing ones. This conceptual ability, usually attributed to the element of Air, tends to be more highly developed in that statistical myth the "average man" than in the "average woman", although differences between individuals are of course much greater than between the sexes. Hence the attribution of the elements of Air and Fire, Conceptualisation (Logos) and the Destructive and Creative Will to men. Life on Earth is the result of a delicate balance between all these elements. Pure Conceptualisation and Destructive-Creative Will unbalanced by the conservative forces of Form and Love produce the fiery furnace of the Sun, in whose chemical processes millions of new shapes and colours are forever being created, but endure for less than a microsecond, because the conservative force of Matter is absent to hold them and give them form. But pure Matter and Form, unfertilised by thte energy of the Sun mediated by an atmosphere of Air and Water, produces the unchanging surface of the Moon. The Earth is intermediate between these two extremes, though closer to the Moon, and thus we have the marvellous balance of Life, ever-changing but also renewing itself, and in which individual life-forms last long enough both as species and as individuals, to establish an identity and to experience that identity. The ancient pantheistic cultures recognised that Life on Earth is the product of a sacred marriage between the Sun and the Earth mediated by the Moon, of the elements of Fire and Matter, mediated by Air and Water. The sacred marriage of men and women was indeed a paradigm of this. But it was not unregenerate Man being spiritualised by the Sun-maiden. It was Man's fiery aggression and airy speculative intellect being "earthed" and made productive by Woman, by disciplining it into the world of Form. This is still true in practice today, though in the absence of an understood ritual to sanctify it, participants in the process are mostly unaware of it on the conscious level. Men on their own either form armies, that are embodiments of the Destructive-Creative Will, the element of Fire; or congregate into monasteries, universities, or research laboratories, to pursue speculative and conceptual thought for its own sake, the element of Air. It is the women who domesticate the warriors, and bring the speculators down to reality, by asking practical questions such as: "How are your children and I going to survive this war?" or "What good will this wonderful utopia do to ordinary people?" Men are the idealists, women the materialists. But when a great statesman, writer or architect actually achieves something enduring, it is frequently because he had one or more women behind him, encouraging him to give form to some of his many abstract concepts. Solar monotheism originated with the Aryan tribes of the Caucasus, as an attempt to become more efficient at war and conquest by worshipping the spirit of fiery aggression to the exclusion of the gentler loving elements of Earth and Water. That is why they forbade the priestess-dominated fertility cults: they made the tribes "soft" and tolerant, and less effective in war. Solar monotheism also made these warrior tribes less efficient at the Goddess-ruled arts of agriculture, but this did not matter since they could conquer agricultural Goddess-worshipping peoples and force them to feed them. This was the logic behind the solar monotheism of the Aryans and Persians, and later of the Jews under Moses and the Prophets. This could work as long as solar monotheism was the religion only of an upper caste of rulers and warriors, and the lower classes were allowed to retain their religious beliefs with the Earth. But when the Christian Church in its zeal hunted down the witches of the villages, and made the ordinary country people be as solar monotheist as the aristocracy and town inhabitants, the path was set for the society we have today. This is not so much "materialist" in the true metaphysical sense – would that it were! – as obsessionally creative of useless artefacts from which derive no real enjoyment other than the pride of having made them. In doing so, we destroy the much more beautiful and essential environment in which we live, and display the mutual fear and distrust (or at least our rulers do) that is the sign of people alienated from their roots. Sister Angelina claims to deplore this society as much as I do. But she and her fellow Madrians appear to think that all that is needed to redress the balance is to put women at the top of a religious-political edifice that still worships the Solar Logos to the exclusion of Matter, by making the Sun a "Her" instead of a "Him". Instead of turning to the great Earth Mother Goddess of antiquity – to Isis, Ishtar, Astarte, Cybele or Kwan-Yin – the Madrians worship Jehovah-in-drag. Jehovah is a real God – i.e. aspect of the Ultimate Reality – who generally answers the prayers of those that worship Him/Her exclusively, by refashioning their souls in His/Her image of ruthless Destructive-Creative Will. He gave the Jews the will to conquer Palestine on at least three occasions in as many millenia, and the Protestant Puritans the will to conquer and settle North America, South Africa and Australasia, as well as to found countless business empires. Judging by the tone of her interventions at the recent conference on "The Re-emergence of the Goddess" in April 1979, Jehovah has already given Sister Angelina that steely conviction of alone possessing the Truth that I normally associate with Jewish and Christian Fundamentalists. In time Jehovah will help the Madrians to get themselves accepted as equals by men in the rat-race to the top of executive boardrooms, or to become tomorrow's Mrs Gandhis, Golda Meirs and Margaret Thatchers (which is all that some feminists are interested in). But I doubt whether Jehovah can teach the Madrians how to make their kisses initiatory to a higher level of consciousness either to their partners or to themselves, for that is not in that God's gift. To achieve self-transcendence in a Sacred Marriage, the two partners must approach it in a spirit of recognising the divine in their partners that can complement the divine in themselves, and then surrender to them, rahter than look down on them as rather base creatures "ensnared in matter" whom one is trying to lift up. What good would it do humanity to have more Golda Meirs and Mrs Gandhis? Israel was no less intransigently aggressive under Mrs Meir than under earlier and later male Prime Ministers, and India a great deal more oppressed under Mrs Gandhi than before or since. Western civilisation has now worshipped the Solar Destructive-Creative Will exclusively for so long that it is in grave danger of blowing itself and the whole of life on Earth up with its overstocked arsenal of artificial suns, the H-bombs. If we are to prevent this, then it is desperately urgent for us to restore the ancient Earth Mother Goddess to Her temples, put more faith into the preserving power of Love and Fertility than into the sterile Capitalist and Socialist abstract utopias. It is because we all know deep down within ourselves that women are so much closer in intuitive empathy to the Earth spirit that alone can save us that male resistance to the women's struggle is crumbling in the West, and many men would indeed gladly put up with a period of matriarchy. But it would have to be a matriarchy of the intuitive as well as of intellectual women, the sensual and loving ones more than the politicians and administrators. Fortunately, important elements in the Feminist Movement recognise this better than Lux Madriana. For perceptive and sensitive contributions to the resurgence of Mother Goddess worship, and a historically more accurate description of the matriarchal past, read Merlin Stone's Paradise Papers, Carol Ochs's Behind the Sex of God and Anne Kent Rush's Moon, Moon. Robert This article is the second of three published by Aquarian Arrow. Marie Antoinette and the Reine Soleil To begin at the end of Robert's article: yes, there is a form of matriarchalism very different from that of Madrianism. It is preached (with variations) by Merlin Stone, Robert Graves and others. It consists, broadly, in accepting the old patriarchal sky-father/earth-mother doctrine, but inverting their hierarchical order, so that the earth-mother and her cthonic values are exalted above the "rationality" of the sky-father. Madrians have always maintained that such a minor cosmetic operation could never alter the real patriarchal essence of the doctrine; and if proof were needed, Robert's delightfully chauvinist article (behind every Great Statesman is a Good Woman, etc.) surely supplies it. Actually, the whole situation is the result of a metaphysical confusion so excruciatingly entangled that one is reminded more than anything else of a kitten that has managed to get itself trussed like a chicken in its own ball of wool. And this confusion, in turn, derives from the sheer blackness [word unclear] of metaphysical ignorance which characterises (and indeed practically constitutes) the post-Renaissance mentality. In view of this, it is scarcely surprising that Robert is able to accuse me of metaphysical ignorance. I have heard a topologist facetiously but not inaccurately described as "someone who can't tell the difference between a teacup and a doughnut". Robert's reaction to true metaphysics in akin to that of the bumpkin who bursts out: "Topology's supposed to be the science of shapes ain't it? Well any idiot can tell the difference between a teacup and doughnut. Them blamed professors must be daft!" This is not so much a personal criticism of Robert as a general crticism of modern ignorance as a whole. But a little real metaphysics can quickly dispel the ignorance and get the kitten out of the cats'-cradle. But what is real metaphyics? It is the primordial Philosophy not devised by any human mind, but passed down (traditio) from mother to daughter since the primordial time, the Golden Age "when earth touched Heaven". In its original form, this Philosophy was matriarchal, as was the social order. The social order was matriarchal because the primordial Philosophy was matriarchal. Earth followed the law of Heaven. Yet even as humanity descended away from the Golden Age, through the Silver and Bronze Ages, into the Iron Age itself (which began some 5,000 years ago), and in this final Age, patriarchy slowly took over from matriarchy, the primordial Philosophy continued to be taught. It was taught by Plato and Plotinus, by Shankara and Shakyamuni the Buddha; indeed, every Iron Age civliisation has possessed its own more or less scaled-down version of the primordial Philosophy. Or rather, that was true up until the last 300 years. And although each version speaks a slightly different spiritual "language", each is saying the same things. Metaphysics is not a matter of personal opinion; it is as precise as a mathematical equation. The essence of Robert's confusion is as follows: he equates the sky-father/earth-mother duality with two other dualities, namely Spirit/matter and rationalism/emotionalism. Now in the first place thesee two dualities are not only not equivalent, they have no common measure whatever; and in the second place, he has completely misconceived both of them. He state calmly that the majority of matriarchal as well as patriarchal cultures have regarded women as earth/matter as opposed to sun/spirit. Yet even Merlin Stone has pointed out that the sun was female in Japan, India, Canaan, Anatolia, Aravia, Australia and among the Eskimos (The Paradise Papers, p. 18) and one could easily add others to the list. In fact the male sun is purely a patriarchal Indo-Aryan invention. The same author points out that far from being exclusively an earth-goddess, Her most frequent title from the earliest times has been Queen of Heaven (perhaps Robert should scratch the book off his list). The reason he gives for this supposed matriarchal equation of maid with matter is that matter was then given its due worship for its own innate virtues. This is an interesting argument, but it has one fatal flaw. However amazing it may seem to the modern mind, the concept of matter as a physical stuff possessing certain innate qualities was wholly unknown up until 400 years ago. All form, all qualities, according to the primordial Philosophy, are Archetypes, or Divine Ideas, belonging to Spirit. Matter is simply the wax upon which the seal of forms and qualities is impressed. This means that pure matter, untouched by Spirit, would have no qualities whatever: no size, no weight, no shape, neither hardness nor softness, hear nor coldness nor colour. Obviously, it is in no sense physical. The equation of nature with matter implied in Robert's article rests upon the post-Cartesian concept of matter. Applied to ancient civilisations, whether matriarchal or patriarchal, it is pure anachronism. When we speak of modern "materialism", we are using the term loosely, for what is in question is not true matter, but the modern fantasy of "physical matter", which very phrase is a contradiction in terms. This is not to say that all ordinary people in the ancient world possessed a clear philosophical concept of matter, but they certainly did not possess the unnatural notion of "physical matter" which has been inculcated into the modern mind via the compulsory "education" system and the mass-media. Matter, then, is a "crystal mirror", a tabula rasa ready to accept whatever image Spirit shall impress upon it. The combination of matter and Spirit is nature (whether physical or non-physical). The patriarchs knew precisely what they were doing in equating maid with matter, thus making her the purely passive support of man's activity (behind every Great Statesman is a Good Woman). The matriarchal perspective is not simply the reverse of this, for the man in the marriage rite is not "man" being saved by "maid", he is soul being saved by Spirit; the maid is just as much soul as the man; but she is enacting a ritual role. The ritual is certainly real, and not just an "act". But not on the most obvious level. If that were so it would mean that every wife was God! This is subtle stuff, I know, and it cannot be mae any clearer by tossing it about in a polemical arena. All I can say is, contemplate [word unclear] it if you want to and don't if you don't. Any true understanding well be supra-verbal. Which brings us to rationalism. It has become a New-Age truism that the Christian west is overbalanced on the side of solar intellect; and like most New-Age truisms, it is not true. Of the two paths, bhakti marga and jnana marga; the path of Love, will, or emotion and the path of Light or solar Intellect, Christianity has always erred on the side of the former. If one were to look for a culture which has erred on the other side, Buddhism would be an obvious example. What the New-Age critics have in mind is actually the rationalism of the Christian west. But rationalism and solar Intellect are two entirely different things. Intellect not only perceives, but is one with, the Spiritual Archetypes. It is not an individual faculty at all, but rather the point at which the individual soul touches the trans-personal Centre. Viewed subjectively, it is Enlightenment; viewed objectively, it is the Absolute; nor is it other than pure Love (which, from our earthly point of view, is lunar), since the distinction between the two is an illusion which appears only when seen from "below". Rationalism, on the other hand, is the ignorant reaction of the individual mental faculty, through its agent the brain, upon the contingent things of the physical world as transmitted via the senses. Ignorant because it is, by definition, unaware of the Spiritual Archetypes which are the real essence of all physical phenomena. Sentimentalism or emotionalism is a similarly ignorant reaction to the same phenomena by the passional faculty. Far from being in any way opposed, rationalism and sentimentalism are two sides of the same coin. The west is rationalist because it is sentimentalist. The two are inseparable. But just as Love and Intellect, seen in their true persepctive, are seen to be one, so their inferior parodies, sentimentalism and rationalism, being cut of from unitive Reality, present the illusion of being eternally separate. Every modernist reaction against rationalism inevitably takes the form of a mere appeal to emotional reactions as opposed to mental ones: thus its sole effect is to give the wheel of Samsara another turn. Robert's underlying thesis is simply another essay in the long history of such barren sentimentalist reactions. One must sympathise with the desire to react against rationalism. But nothing is achieved by running continually from the right hand of Moira into her left. Since deserting the revealed symbolic structure of the matriarchal Philosophy, patriarchal metaphysics has always been balancing on a tightrope. With Christianity, it finally fell victim to its own meddling with the primordial Doctrine. Due to its dogma of the male sun, it mistook the Christ (who is actually a masculinised version of the lunder Daughter, as opposed to the solar Mother) for the Solar Logos; thus depriving itself of any authentic representative of the solar Principle. The two greatest exponents of solar Intellect in Christianity were Origen and Meister Eckhardt. Both were declared heretics. Lacking the "backbone" of Intellect, the love-path of Christianity declined into a samsaric sentimentality, which eventually gave rise, at the time of Aquinas, to an equally samsaric rationalism, which was the inverse parody of the missing Intellectuality. This rationalism developed slowly, still dressed in metaphysical garments, until the Renaissance, when it broke loose and initiated the wild downward spiral which has led us to the modern world; creating on the way such topsy-turvy notions as "physical matter", and all the confusions which they have generated. These confusions have proved particularly effective in neutralising all intellectual resistance to the downward movement. What is the answer to this impulse? How shall we cleave a path between the Scylla of rationalism and the Charybdis of sentimentalism? The Madrian answer is very straightforward: we must return to the primordial matriachal Philosophy, devotion and way of life. This does not mean reconstructing [word unclear] a "matriarchalism" from a handful of archaeological bones tied together by modern speculations (which will inevitably by rationalist, sentimentalist, or – more likely – both). That will leave us right back where we started. We must go to the living matriarchal tradition, as it has been preserved down the ages in this country and elsewhere. The tradition we call Madrian. And this means not only accepting a Philosophy – although the path of Light is indispensable; nor simply opening our hearts to the adoration of God in the form in which She has revealed Herself to humanity from the dawn of time – although the path of Love is also indispensable. It also means treading the third path, which called the path of Works, or of themis [thamë]. This entails governing our entire way of lief in accordance with divine Harmony. It means rejecting all secular political systems which are not directed by the one lawful Princess of Earth. It means rejecting all industrial systems which are geared to merely "making goods", instead of practising the ancient sacred crafts which are not merely utilitarian, but also a path of meditation. It means rejecting commercialism and the cash nexus, whether in its capitalist or socialist forms. In short, it means rejecting the whole edifice of modern human-centred culture, and returning to a God-centred matriarchy. This is the most extraordinary part of Robert's article. He might have accused us of being wild anarchists bent on tearing down all the "achievements" of "progress". He might have called us Amazon reactionaries intractably opposed to the liberal-democratic ideals of late patriarchy. Either accusation would have some semblance of plausibililty. The more impish among us might have been sorely tempted to reply: "Yop, that's about the size of it." But instead, he chooses to accuse us of wanting to join "the ratrace to the top of executive boardrooms, or to become tomorrow's Indira Gandhis, Golda Meirs and Margaret Thatchers" – we, who do not even accept any secular or patriarchal government as legal! It is rather like accusing Mary Whitehouse of being a pornographer, or Archbishop Lefèbvre of being a Protestant. The good primate no doubt has his detractors. Some of them, perhaps, say some very nasty things about him. It is even conceivable that some of those things may be true. But if anyone is going about accusing him of being a Protestant, we may be forgiven for thinking that person does not have the remotest idea of what he is talking about. Actually, Madrianism, while it is unashamedly matriarchal both in its doctrine and in its social institutions, has nothing to do with denigrating men, or with regarding them as in any sense "base". It is a simple, traditional way of life, based on authority, love and devotion. It puts God (both in Her solar and Her lunar aspects) at the centre not only of its Sundays, but of its stories, its songs, its work and its life. It is lived by men and maids, in that mutual love and respect which one finds only in a God-centred hierarchy. I do not deny that there are many self-styled matriarchalists (most of whom have never seen the inside of a matriarchal household) who, filled with the urban ideologies of the Iron Age, despise our way of life and all that it stands for. But I cannot help but thinking that theirs is the fastidious contempt of a Marie Antoinette, dressed up with crook and smock, upon meeting a real-life shepherdess. Sister Angelina This article is the third of three published by Aquarian Arrow</div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Beauty and the Beast Debate Subject The topic of the resource Aleister Crowley, sex, femininity, New Age, marriage, role of men, matriarchy, decline of the ages, Solar Intellect, rationalism, sentimentalism, feminism, Christianity, metaphysics Description An account of the resource A reproduction of letters exchanged between Sr. Angelina and "Robert" in the pages of Aquarian Arrow, offering competing analyses of Aleister Crowley's views on the nature and archetype of woman. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sr. Angelina Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Personal collection of David Kay. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1980 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Christianity decline of the ages femininity marriage men metaphysics New Age sex social criticism Solar Intellect https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/d5913a294c5c6e570aff732bee9bad68.pdf 7ec1549d173bbce3106e7ce787747c0e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose leaf, handwritten (26pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document [In Mr David Kay's handwriting]. The Road to the Future (The closing address, given by Sister Angelina, at the conference entitled "The Re-Emergence of the Goddess at Kensington, [London, Britain] Maia [April 18th - May 15th] 5080 [1979]) This conference has been very much like a kaleidoscope. In a kaleidoscope, many bright fragments of different sizes, shapes and colours come together to form a beautiful and harmonious whole. And this conference, too, has been a phantasmagoria of many different experiences, both artistic and intellectual, covering several different traditions, viewpoints, arts and crafts. But the things in the kaleidoscope would be nothing more than a meaningless jumble if it were not for the mirror (or more exactly, the arrangement of three mirrors) which impress symmetry, order and harmony upon what would otherwise be a mere meaningless chaos. At this conference, the unifying Principle has been the Goddess Herself; She Who is Three in One and One in Threes, and Who wrought order out of chaos at the dawn of time. And from the dawn of time, seven divine Principles have flowed from the heart of the Goddess, like seven streams, from the one fountain; on earth they are reflected in the seven colours of the rainbow, the seven sacred planets, the seven ancient metals, the seven notes of the musical scale and a hundred other sacred sevens. And one of those Principles is Order. In Madrian tradition we call her by the name of Themis. The seasons come and pass in their appointed rhythm; and for those who can see beyond the outward show, a sacred dance is being performed, a ritual drama enacted before our eyes. Each flower, each tree, each snowflake and each crystal develops in perfect accordance with a divine pattern so intricate and is perfect that it is at once more beautiful than any work of art and more complex than the American space programme. And it is this same law, this same pattern, this same themis, to which in any normal society, all the activities of maid are attuned (and maid, of course, embraces man). All of her arts, all her crafts, the way she builds her house, the way she tills the soil, the way she weaves her clothes: none of these things is done haphazardly or at random, any more than a crystal is formed at random. Neither is it done simply in the quickest, cheapest or most efficient way, as it is in an abnormal society like our own. It is done according to a ritual pattern laid down from time immemorial. Why is this so? I think those present who have some understanding of the principles of magic (I think they are a majority) will readily understand why. For they will know that a properly conducted ritual is not simply a game, but something that has a very defina[i]te effect. Imagine, then, the force of a ritual performed not just by a handful of people in a room or a forest for an hour or so, perhaps once in a month; but performed by an entire society for most of the waking life of all its members, over a period of thousands upon thousands of years. And remember that when we speak of a society here, we are not referring to a town or a village, or even to a country, but to the whole world, for the religion of the Goddess was the faith of every part of the globe up until a few thousand years ago. And what was the purpose of this ritual? It was not, for the most part, to attain any material goal, but to bind every soul to She Who has created her; to God Herself. Beyond that its purpose was the same as the rhythm of the seasons, and every natural pattern: to show forth the divine drama; to unite every creature in the dance of the love of the Goddess. For love and harmony and order are one. I would like to read you some words from the book of the Crystal Tablet:* [33] " It is Love that holds the drop of dew penda[e]nt upon a blade of grass, neither flowing forth in watery profusion, but swelling within the unseen urn of its brief harmony. [34] " It is Love that holds the stars within their courses, and all the worlds of the immeasurable cosmos within the harmony of the celestial music. [35] " Truly, all the cycles of the times and the seasons; all the rhythms of the soul and of the mind and of the body: truly, all these flow from the love of our Lady, the Maid, that creation may not decompose, each several member flying away into black eternal chaos." It has been said that the function of a conference is not so much to answer questions as to ask them. And one question before all others has implicitly been asked by the whole of this conference. Not only by the things that have been said and done, but by the very fact that it has taken place at all. That question, put in its simplest form, is: where are we going? Where lies the road to the future? For this conference is more than just an isolated event; it is a symptom. It is a symptom of a very real change that is taking place in the thinking and feeling of many of the most sensitive people in our time; a symptom of a subtle but very defina[i]te shift in the spiritual aethyr which surrounds and interpenetrates our physical world. A conference of adult maids and men meeting together in the fourth quarter of the twentieth century to discuss the Goddess. Of course, it happened last year in California, but then California is California. Anything can happen in California. But in Kensington? [London, Britain] Ten years ago it would have been impossible. Five years ago it would have been wildly improbable. Today it has happened. In its way it is a landmark, and it is defina[i]tely part of a pattern. I would like to relate a few incidents which make clear the nature of that pattern. A little over three years ago, I was part of a group of traditional Madrians living partly near Oxford and partly around the Kentish Coast. The members of this group were thinking and talking about taking the unprecedented step of bringing their religion out into the open, and giving those who had not been brought up in traditional Madrian homes the opportunity of becoming a part of the religion of the Goddess. It is difficult to appreciate what a tremendous step this was if you have never experienced the life of the traditional Madrian community. The beliefs and customs of the faith have been passed down from mother to children for centuries in the strictest secrecy. The whole life of the community is governed by traditional ritual and custom. To do anything which breaks with tradition is something almost unheard of. Now please don't misunderstand me; I am not criticising this attitude in the smallest degree. I know only too well that the value and power of tradition is something infinitely deeper and more mysterious then the profane world can possibly understand. But we believed not only that this was not so much a break with tradition as a return to a deeper and more ancient tradition. After all, the religion of the Goddess has not always been secret by any means. For most of the history of the human race it has been not only open, but the universal religion of the whole world. Also, we believed that what we were doing was in accordance with a new pattern which was about to emerge in the course of human history. That is why we called our magazine The Coming Age. In fact, subsequent events only too neatly served to confirm the pattern. Traditional Madrians have very little contact with the mass-media, so I don't think any of us at that time were aware that a book by Elizabeth Gould Davis entitled The First Sex was sweeping through the women's liberation movement in America and creating radical changes in the thinking of many maids and men who had not previously thought of themselves as feminists. Or that the paperback edition was already beginning to make an impact in this country. [Penguin Books, London UK (1973)]. This book marshal[l]s a vast array of evidence, arch[a]eological, anthropological and historical, to establish three facts beyond reasonable doubt: firstly that human civilisation, in the form of civilised and cultured communities had been in existence for tens of thousands of years before the rise of the patriarchal cultures of the last four or five millen[n]ia; secondly, that these older civilisations were matriarchal - that maids were the heads of households and priestess - queens, rather than warrior kings, the heads of state; thirdly, that almost without exception, all these matriarchal civilisations, in China, in Europe, in the Middle East, in India, in the Americas, worshipped a supreme God, and that She was invariably depicted as female. Of course, this was very far from being new. Apart from Madrian traditions, people had been saying this for over a century, from J. J. Bachofen to Robert Graves (in fact Elizabeth was a close friend of Robert Graves). And the information has always been there in the ancient writers, such as Herodotus, for those who cared to read it. She certainly added some more up-to-date evidence to clinch the case - such as the findings of the Catal Huyuk excavation of the early sixties. But the real importance of the [book] was its impact. For years the facts about matriarchy had been told, but nobody had listened. Now it seemed that they were emerging from the category of forgotten facts, known by the few and ignored by the many. Matriarchy was an idea whose time was coming. In the next few years, of course, we witnessed a tremendous upsurge of interest in matriarchy and the religion of the Goddess. A number of books were published and organisations founded within a short time of each other, all of which were the result of long thought and preparation. To a large extent, this conference is a result of those years of activity. The fascinating thing is that for several years a number of different people, with no contact between them, were all working and thinking along the same lines at the same time. It is beyond the bounds of coincidence. Something important was happening. After centuries of suppression, the world's first religion was preparing to break in again upon the consciousness of the world. I am not saying that everyone involved in this large and rather amorphous movement was aware of what was going on. Probably not. But the movement was far greater than the sum total of individuals who made it up. We are living in one of those rare moments in history when Eternity touches time, and where the seeds of deep and mysterious changes take route [root] in the soil of human destiny. The essence of these changes was neatly summed up by the writer and journalist Stewart Farrar: *2 "...the readmission of the Goddess to Her proper place in the minds of men and women is probably the most significant relig[i]ous development of modern times. I will risk a prophecy, because I profoundly believe that it will prove to be true: that over the coming centuries (or even decades), it will be at Her shrines, increasingly and predominantly, that the mass of humanity will worship." If this [this] is true, why is it true? I think the answer takes us back to the question of themis, order or harmony. I don't think anyone can be unaware today that man (and I use the word advisedly) is flouting the laws of nature to a degree which puts the entire future of the human race in doubt. Natural resources are wantonly wasted; the environment is polluted; nightmarish weapons are created. On a more subtle but no less important leva[e]l, the spiritual environment is being equally polluted. Polluted by making the majority of people do work which has no spiritual meaning, unlike the traditional crafts. By undermining the faith in spiritual and supernatural realities by a shallow and vulgar materialistic pseudo-philosophy incalculated compulsorily by the education system and semi-compulsorily by the mass-media. A friend of mine is an avid reader of children's comics. One of the current stories, set a few decades in the future, depicts a time when there are no more trees or grass, when the parks are stocked with plastic replicas of plants. Where the entire landscape is nothing more than an endless concrete ant-heap broken by a few pseudo-parks. The vision is a horrifying one; but one has only to pause for a moment to see it is no more horrifying, and probably rather less so, than our own cities - and, indeed our industrialised agriculture - would seem to a visitor from a natural society. In that world the people revolt; and in this world too the first signs of revolt are manifesting themselves. On the physical level through ecological, self-sufficiency and similar movements. On the spiritual level by a widespread movement toward exploring spiritual realities. I do not think the return to the Goddess is a part of this movement, I think it is the very heart of it. Everything that is wrong with this world springs from a rupture in the divine order, in the natural themis of human life. And that rupture is not new; it started a very long time ago. It started when the first warrior king usurped the throne of the first priestess-queen, and when the worship of the female God of love and harmony was overthrown by the idolatry of the male god of wrath and war. The real disease of the modern world is not physical but spiritual, as Theodore Koszak has put it: "What, after all, is the ecological crisis which now captures so much belated attention but the inevitable extro[a]version of a blighted p[s]yche? Like inside, like outside. In the eleventh hour, the very physical environment suddenly looms up before us as the outward mirror of our inner condition, for many the first discerna[i]ble symptom of advanced disease within." *3 If we want to cure the disease, we cannot simply concentrate upon the external symptoms, we must get down to the spiritual roots. The fundamental problem is disorder. Matriarchy used to be called chrysothemis: "the golden order", because the Goddess, as we have seen, is the very principle of order, and the order of society which She has ordained is necessarily the perfect order. When we look at the world without the Goddess we see chaos. Because to look at the world without the Goddess is like looking through a kaleidoscope without the mirrors. We see a jumble of physical facts which have neither beauty nor transcenda[e]nt meaning. This is the materialist view of the world, and it cannot do anything except produce a world which lacks beauty and meaning. It has to produce ugly cities and despoil nature because it cannot understand beauty. It has to create spiritually useless work, because it does not know the spiritual meaning of the world. All it can see is a chaotic jumble of physical "things", and all it can ask is "how can we get as much out of them as possible". Even the animals are treated as "things". We all know about the way hens and calves are treated on factory farms. I won't go into the sort of torture they practice in vivisection laboratories, because we have just eaten. This sort of thing is inevitable, and it will get worse, so long as society continues to turn its back on the Goddess. Everything that is good, everything that is humane, everything that is beautiful in the modern world is what we call a legacy; a fund of spiritual capital left over from the time when the whole world worshipped the Goddess. And that capital is running out rapidly. There is only one possible solution, and that is to turn back to the Source, the single Fountainhead of grace, Who is the Goddess. If we do not do that, then all the ecological, political and other measures taken to ease the situation will be like so much straw stuffed into the cracks in a bursting dam. Every action and every thought is a ritual. And when we see matter without Spirit, the world without the Goddess, the fragments without their unifying Principle; and when we act out this vision as if it were true, which is what the whole of modern society is all about; then things really start becoming disconnected fragments; the world starts to fall apart, both the outer world of the environment, and the inner world of our own souls. The ancient arts and crafts and all the ancient wisdom was a sort of white magic devoted to unifying the world with God and with itself. Modern industry and all the false teachings of modern materialism are a sort of black magic, which has the effect of breaking up and fragmenting the world. I have said that the spiritual capital which we have borrowed from our matriarchal past is rapidly running out. One very good example of this concerns Tibet. Tibet was perhaps the last country of any size upon this earth whose whole way of life was based around spiritual principles. This was largely due to the fact that although on the surface she had been patriarchalised, she retained to a very large extent her matriarchal heritage. The Goddess, under the name of Tara, was the most powerful religious influence in the country. To quote from Dr. Beyar's The Cult of Tara: *4 "Tara is the principle superhuman being in Tibet who might be called divine without further qualification. She is prayed to by millions. Her help in adversity is divine. "...It does not help much to search for "causes" to explain this trust in Tara and her eternity... She was real, she was divine. Tara was, had always been, and still is the almighty support of her devotees who address her. In fact she is mightier than Buddhas and Bodhisattvas... To understand something of her cult is to understand something of the mainstay of Tibetan culture." In the country regions of Tibet, a more or less matriarchal structure existed right up until the turn of the century. Savage Landor, who travelled there reported that: "The Tibetan woman is far superior to the man, never shy; while the men ran away or hid from foreigners, the women always received them with dignity, speaking fluently."*5 "In that country, the women are the mistress of the house, the men live in dependency upon them, show them great respect, and treat them with such affection and submissiveness that nothing is undertaken without their consent." *6 As well as a general level of spiritual advancement unparalleled by any other nation in this century, Tibet was also renowned for her respect for nature and compassion toward the animal realm. Of course, the ancient priestess - queens had not reigned for many years and a male dominated Buddhism was the official religion. Very slowly, a decadence was [was] setting in deeper and deeper. But still the ritual power of that country and its way of life was a profound force for good in the world; helping to hold at bay the forces of the final disintegration. Now that country has been ravaged and its traditions demolished by the military force of a China enflamed by Western materialist ideology. We should not be surprised at this, for all traditional teaching, in contradiction to the modern creed of "progress", teaches that each succeeding age within the historical cycle will be darker than the one before it. At the beginning of the last and darkest age, Kali Yuga, or the Age of Iron, which began some 5,000 years ago, first matriarchy was slowly undermined, and the religion of the Goddess corrupted by alien cults and practices, then the ancient faith was supplanted by new invented cults. Each of these new religions contained something of the ancient truth, but slowly, as the age progressed, that truth became more and more diluted and corrupted. New cults sprang up as old ones decayed, each containing less of the truth to begin with and succumbing more quickly to corruption. Now we stand at the end of the age, when ignorance, or blindness to spiritual Reality reaches its point of greatest extension, and when Truth is at its lowest ebb. Yet when the dark age ends, it must be followed by a new Golden Age - a renewal of the chrysothemis, the Golden Order; and the seeds of this new order must already be present in the final stages of the dark age. Whenever I am asked what is the difference between a world ordered in harmony and one which has broken away from it - I mean the really practical difference, I always have to go back to the traditional Madrian communities for an illustration. Of course, these communities cannot be anything like the Golden Order, for this is the Iron Age, but they certainly do give a picture of the difference between a people who see the kaleidoscope with the mirror and a people who see it without. And in many ways the difference is even greater than one might have thought. Many people in the modern world find Madrian ideas and doctrines very difficult to understand until they have become used to them. For their part, the members of traditional Madrian communities find the modern world almost impossible to understand. And when they do get to the bottom of a modern way of looking at something, the answer is often more puzzling than the question. Having explained a modern notion, the answer often comes in the form: "I see... really... well, I wonder whatever possesses then to think [think] that." The difference is, of course, that the modern world sees things - anything, from grass to carpentry, from seals to stars, from myths to maths, in terms of physical facts, while the traditional view sees them in terms of the spiritual cause which underlies them. We may use an image to understand this. Imagine a big, old-fashioned cartwheel. The hub represents Spirit, from which all the manifest universe pours fo[u]rth. The spokes shine forth from the hub like rays from the sun. The spokes may be taken to represent either all the different souls, or all the different things in the world. The rim of the cartwheel is the physical plane where your particular spoke touches the rim that is your body, where your particular spoke touches the hub, that is your Spirit or the Spirit. We can say either, because it is the point where "you" stop being an individual sepe[a[rate ego, and become one with the essence of all things , it is the state of oneness achieved by the heras or saints: subjectively, it can be called enlightenment; objectively, it can be called the Absolute. Both are true, because it is both subjective and objective simultaneously. It is at once the top of your individual spoke, and the centre of the wheel. It is described by Yeats: There all the barrel-hoops are knit, There all the serpent-tails are bit, There all the figures converge in one, There all the planets drop in the sun. *7 Most of us, of course, is neither body nor spirit, but soul. And we exist at once, at least potentially, on countless intermediate leva[e]ls of being between matter and spirit. You will notice by the way, that the hub is often compared to the sun. That is because the sun symbolises the Mother, Who is pure Spirit; while the moon symbolises the Daughter, who is perfect Soul, and who has broken away from the hub in order to lead us back to it. As the original doctrine became corrupted, this was misunderstood, and the Goddess was thought of as being either the moon only (as in the Graeco-Roman west), or the Sun only (as in Japan). To return to our wheel. If the spokes are considered as "things" rather than souls, the point at which the spoke touches the hub [is] the point at which a "thing" is emanated fro[m] the Goddess as a divine Idea. The point at which the spoke touches the rim is the point at which the Idea crystallises in physical matter to form a physical object. The real essence or inner nature of the soul lies in the physical body. And like the soul, the "thing" is manifested at countless different leva[e]ls between matter and Spirit. That is why traditional peoples say that the symbolic nature of a thing is more real than its physical nature. The symbolic nature is manifested at every leva[e]l, right the way up to the hub, while the physical object only exists only at the rim. The rose, as a physical flower, exists only in the physical world, but the complex and uniquely beautiful expression of love, and of union with God the Mother, which is the inner essence of rose-ness exists at every leva[e]l of being. It exists at leva[e]ls where the experiences of redness, softness, sharpness and perfume have no meaning, but each of these qualities will have its precise equivalent, and those equivalents will be gathered together to represent at that leva[e]l the unique and universal archetype of the rose. [Full article: Symbolism: The Wheel and the Chariot, page 18, 19, 20, issue 11 The Coming Age]. Now the historical decline, from the beginning of the Golden Age to the end of the Iron Age, may be seen as a centrifugal movement from the hub of the wheel out towards the rim. Of course, we can never quite reach the rim, for if we did, we would not see things and people at all, we would see nothing but sheer undifferentiated matter. In a sense, modern science is pushing toward this final goal when it seeks to explain everything in terms of pure quality, ignoring all their qualitative aspects, and to reduce everything to numbers. So is modern industry when it treats all people as mere numerical units, interchangeable button-pushers. In fact everything that is specifically modern is a sort of black alchemy, seeking to transmute all the remaining gold which we have inherited from our matriarchal past into iron, so that we may reach the iron hoop at the rim of the wheel. But we can never quite reach it. Or rather, we can only touch it for one brief instant of total and absolute chaos, the momentary hiatus in which the wheel stops turning, before it reverses direction, and the Golden Age is restored. Chaos is the precise word to describe this moment, for the hub, being perfect unity, is also perfect harmony, while the rim, being the point where the spokes reach their greatest separation, is absolute discord. Similarly, the axle-point at the centre of the wheel remains still. This is absolute Deity, beyond all manifestation, the Dark Mother. The hub revolves slowly, throwing out her rays into manifestation. The spokes move more and more rapidly as they approach the rim, corresponding to the acceleration of the historical cycle as it reaches its end-point, the ever more rapid rise and fall of empires, ideas and religions, and finally the frenetic "pace of life" of the modern world, its passion for speed and change above all things. And the acceleration itself accelerates, for as the speed increases, the centrifugal pull becomes stronger. [The following is published in one page on page 15, issue 11 The Coming Age]. Now, the whole difference between the traditional and the modern way of thinking is that the traditional order or themis looks toward the centre for the meaning of all things, while the modern mentality has been conditioned to look towards the rim. And this affects everything that each of them says, does and thinks. I say the modern mind has been conditioned, because it is not natural to look toward matter for explanations of things. When a child asks why there is a moon, she is not really satisfied with an explanation of what the moon is, in terms of physical matter. But if she goes on asking why, she will be met with something like "it just is, that's all. There isn't any why." Now to answer the child's question what, or why, is the moon, by saying that it is a piece of rock floating in space, is a bit like answering the question "why do you look so sad", by going into a long rigmarole about the chemicals in your brain and electrical impulses and so forth. In a sense it is true, but it only describes the mechanics of the thing, and doesn't really answer the question. The essential moon like the essential rose, is something far beyond its physical manifestation on this plane. And it is this essential moon that the child is instinctively after. Hammering this instinct out of her, killing her natural intuition of the spiritual nature of things: this is what is known as education. Now when we move from the modern world, whose whole life is directed toward the rim into a traditional Madrian community, it is like stepping into another world or into another time-period. The whole of life takes on the character of a dance. There is a space and elegance about every activity which, in a way, is the exact opposite of what we call "natural behaviour". For the aim of life is not to express the outward, egoic self but to express the true Self, which is the spiritual Centre of every maid. Every individual is unique, that is why there are different arts, different crafts, different vocations; but the uniqueness of the individual is expressed through the pattern of the dance. It is not a question of everyone being very "spiritual" all the time - it is just a different way of looking at life. In many ways, the expression of emotion is freerer [freer]. The members of the communities are quicker to laughter and to tears; they are able to throw themselves heart and soul into a festival in a way that few modern people can manage. The reason for this is that people are less self-conscious. In the modern world, people are afraid of taking anything too seriously. In Madrian communities, people are aware of being surrouned by eternal Realities. The symbol really is the thing it symbolises, on its own level. We do not say "the cartwheel is a symbol of the cosmos", we speak of "the cosmos in the likeness of a cartwheel"; and the sacred craft of the wheelwright is, in a sense more real than the untraditional mind can comprehend, a re-creation of the world - or, more exactly, a participation in the continuous creation of the world. These are deep and complex doctrines, and there is not time to go into there her; in any case, they cannot really be understood without being experienced. But they do give a key to the life of Madrian communities today, and the seeds of the new order which is emerging from the present chaos. The head of the household is obeyed because she is, on her own level, the surrogate of the Goddess. The household revolves about her as the planets revolve about the sun, or the Geniae revolve about the Goddess. All levels of reality are brought together. In this age, of course, even the best community can be only a shadow of what things were and will be in the Golden Age. Materialism is not merely an attitude of mind; it corresponds to a very real "hardening" or consolidation of the material environment that has been taking place over the last centuries of the iron age. The world has become in many ways a less "magical" place. The ancient writers are often thought of as naive and credulous for believing strange and wonderful tales, and even reporting such events. It is not considered that the very conditions of the terrestrial environment may have undergone changes, and that what is impossible today may not have been so many centuries ago. And since we are speaking only of the degeneration that has taken place within the latter half of the Iron Age, it will be seen that the possibilities open in the Golden Age will be immeasurably greater. There are two possibilities before each of us. Either we lend our weight to the downward spiral, or else we help to sow the seeds of the future. If we choose the latter, the road will not be easy. We must re-think everything that we have been taught by the profane world; we must learn from the primordial tradition a Reality which lies far deeper than the "facts" of the profane world. We must not condition our children to see the pieces without the kaleidoscope. If spiritual truth is true then it affects everything. If one teaches atheist physics, history and geography, there is no point in adding a little "religious" education. Our whole view of the world must be restructured in the light of the Spirit, looking toward the hub and not the rim. It will not be easy, and we cannot do it by ourselves. But if we turn to the Goddess in love, she will show us the way; for "it is love that holds the stars within their courses". All the physical, moral, intellectual and organisational efforts that we make toward the future; not one of them can be separated from the devotional love of the Goddess. Without that love, they will all be as nothing. With it the "impossible" will become a reality. This conference is drawing to a close. Soon we will be going out into the world; and much of what has been said today may begin to seem "unreal". The things we hold dear, the world does not understand, and our minds are in danger of being swamped by the sheer dead weight of its dreary materialist "common sense". Let us remember, then, that the things we have been speaking of are very much hard realities. They have dominated the world for countless thousands of years, compared to which, the reign of the modern materialist mentality is no more than a fleeting moment. And it is fleeting. Already it is passing from us. Already the technological society is beginning to crumble under its own weight, like a weed that has outgrown its strength. All that dull, smug world out there; where will it be in a hundred years from now? Do not forget either that the signs of the times are manifesting themselves not only in a negative sense, but in a positive one as well. This conference has been one symptom of the gradual but deli[be]rate process by which the consciousness of the Goddess is returning to the surface. Things will continue to move slowly for a little time yet. But it has been said, and there can be no question that it has been said truly: there is nothing in the world so powerful as an idea whose time has come. Notes *1 The Crystal Tablet, 33-35 *2 Sut Anubis, Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 6 *3 T Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends, Garden City, New York, 1973, p. XVII *4 S Beyar, The Cult of Tara, University of California Press, introduction *5 Helen Diner, Mothers and Amazons, Anchor Brooks, New York, 1973, p. 133 *6 Ibid p. 134 *7 W. B. Yeats, Supernatural Songs, No. IV (from A Full Moon in March) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Road to the Future Description An account of the resource The closing address of the Kensington "The Re-Emergence of the Goddess" conference (1979), delivered by Sr. Angelina. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sr. Angelina Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Personal collection of David Kay. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1979 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/45f08e2691195214a10ffdee2d8785c9.jpeg b6c7b0f1ae6205e0e14a5a7ce1d77b7e Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Burtonport Maids Description An account of the resource A photograph of three young women taking tea at the Burtonport household. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Unknown Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1982 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Donated by Joey III, who discovered it in the remains of the Madrian household after their occupancy had ceased. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource photograph Type The nature or genre of the resource Still Image Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Burtonport, Ireland https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/e0a47ba5afae7858e27030d6b017d53c.jpeg 16046f94247d5543f26a28774399e919 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data drawing Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Devotional Icon in a Bedroom Description An account of the resource An artwork found in a bedroom of the Burtonport household. Appears to be the original from which the cover of TCA 11 was made. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Lux Madriana Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1978 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Donated by Joey III, who found it in the remains of the Madrian household at Burtonport after their occupancy had ended. Relation A related resource TCA 11 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource paper wall hanging Type The nature or genre of the resource Still Image https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/a5181044d932914104d0f1fce989ce61.jpg 17be13ca6b7c180a9a19fc63d62f75ba Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Two Young Women Reflecting Contemplation Description An account of the resource A photograph of two young women conversing in what looks like an art studio. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Unknown Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1982 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Donated by Joey III, from effects found in the vacated Burtonport house in the early 1990s. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource photograph Type The nature or genre of the resource Still Image Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Burtonport, Ireland https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/ea82f9f0e6d818e09dcd768e9a80119c.pdf b2cbadcf39d205f24bd018fe9b9f56ad Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose-leaf, typewritten, 1p. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Moira Handbook Review Description An account of the resource A book review of the Moira Handbook. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Unknown Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1978/9 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Donated by Joey III, from effects found in the vacated Burtonport house in the early 1990s. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource loose leaf sheet Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text