8 10 105 https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/608a472425d33b0226a525a72926ec87.pdf 8e72c692f533c919152566223899eca7 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 Coming Age Description An account of the resource The official magazine of Lux Madriana from 1975 to 1982. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975–1982 Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Oxford, England 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 magazine, 23pp. 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 Coming Age, Issue 20 Description An account of the resource Contents: Wenver's Hunt [poem], Many Religions, The Art of Telling Tales, Scenes from a Madrian Childhood Part 3: Mayamijai, The Power of Choice, The Coming Season, The Wonderful Beanstalk [story], The Downward Path: The Decline of Religion, Strength through Serenity: The Nature of Femininity, Symbolism: The Bridge of Dread, Light in the Darkness: Our Lady in the Patriarchal Religions 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 Lux Madriana 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 Todmorden, England Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Autumn 1981 https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/f83e915fab939ac8694024dd678476f8.pdf 779c053708c4f5d72ab52b33dce4737e 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 Coming Age Description An account of the resource The official magazine of Lux Madriana from 1975 to 1982. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975–1982 Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Oxford, England 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 magazine, 24pp. 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 Coming Age, Issue 7 Description An account of the resource A New Poem by Sappho?; Spirits of Nature; Work in Progress; The Three Lives; Who is Moira?; A Question of Balance; The Coming Season (Summer); The Breach in the World-Wall [story]; Sappho Speaks; Being Human; Discovering the Goddess; Symbolism: The Rose and the Way Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Lux Madriana Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Georgia State University Archives in Valdosta 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 1978 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource magazine, 24pp. Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/c1eed83c8a076b59128edc32c8dcbd76.pdf eac28b5cd3f658591b2a0ece3099225b 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 Coming Age Description An account of the resource The official magazine of Lux Madriana from 1975 to 1982. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975–1982 Language A language of the resource English Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Oxford, England 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 magazine, 24pp. 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 Coming Age, Issue 9 Description An account of the resource A Nativity Carol; The Temple of Hestia; Work in Progress; Walking with Our Lady; Discovering the Goddess; Work and the Myth of Progress; Hestiad Blessing; She Who Is Coming; The Coming Season (Winter); The Legend of Carminta; Nativity; The Three Princesses; Symbolism: The Cave; Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Lux Madriana Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Georgia State University Archives in Valdosta 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 1978 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource magazine, 24pp. Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/44b6bc10fbf55c5bfd42c72a4db0d40f.pdf 3bcb89c43f8f98da84f2ec1bd1fa8cd6 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 booklet, 18pp. 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 Creation and the Crystal Tablet Description An account of the resource Original booklet publication of the Creation and the Crystal Tablet by Lux Madriana, with introduction. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Lux Madriana Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Georgia State University Archives in Valdosta 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 1976 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource typewritten, booklet (18pp.) Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/c9b1bb2517061a2771329568f17159c7.pdf 8bf3a99364caee7a6021a8615468f1db 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 (11pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document The Daughter in the East When the Goddess was worshipped throughout the world, the division of cultures into "eastern" and "western" had not taken place. Only with the fragmentation of human society and religion caused by the decay of the matriarchies did such divisions occur. In the west it is well known how the image of the Goddess persisted through the semi-patriarchal and patriarchal periods right up to the present, first as a goddess with an inferior male consort (Isis, Cybele, Ishtar, etc.), then in the same form with the "god" slowly taking over, and finally in various supposedly non-Divine forms, chiefly the virgin Mary. It is also well known that however low Her "official" status may have sunk, She always returned to the central and predominant position in the hearts, minds and devotions of the vast majority of the people. This was universally true, whether in the late cult of the Roman Empire, where Osiris was more or less forgotten for most of the time, or in the Mary cult in mediaeval Europe, where dozens of popular legends, as well as the vast predominance of Her devotion testified to the supremacy of Mary over Christ and the male trinity everywhere except in the Church's official dogma. Above all, souls have always placed their hope in the Divine compassion of our Lady, as opposed to the vengeful and masculine aggression of the all-too-human gods "made in man's image". This is powerfully represented in the prevalent mediaeval picture of "the two ladders to heaven"; the red ladder of Jesus from which many fall off into the fires of Hell, and the white ladder of Mary upon which every soul reached its glorious destination in safety. At this time it was also commonly believed that once a soul had entered Hell, even Jesus was powerless to save her, yet she might still be rescued by the infinite compassion of Mary. All this is well known, but what is less well known in the west is that very much the same process has also taken place in the east. In China, for example, the worship of the Daughter under the ancient name of Kuan Yin was so prevalent that She was finally incorporated into Buddhist practice as a celestial bodhisattva, very much as Mary was incorporated into Christian practice as a saint, and quickly assuming the same predominant position. Her life-story as a bodhisattva comes far closer to the Truth of the Mythos than does that of Mary. It exists in various versions, but the essentials are always the same: incarnate on earth as a devoutly religious maiden, she defies her cruel father's wishes in order to enter a convent, whereupon he sets out to kill her. In many versions he has the convent surrounded by archers and then sets the building afire. Any nun seeking to escape is driven back into the inferno by a hail of arrows. Yet Kuan Yin (or Miao Shan, as she is sometimes called in this version) rises from death as a beautiful white bird, and the souls of the slaughtered nuns follow her into the sky, even as the souls in Hell follow the resurrected Daughter in the Mythos. In other versions, it is even clearer, and she actually descends into Hell to release the poor souls suffering there before entering into her ministry of compassion over all earth's children. Perhaps one of the most striking points about the Kuan Yin cultus is that She rules a Pure Land or paradise, situated in the west, to which those who have called upon Her in life are taken to rest in happiness for a period before continuing upon their journey through cycles of incarnation. The parallel with the western Madrian teaching about Avala could hardly be more complete. Just as the Daughter in the west is said to be "pure love" (Catechism 15), so Kuan Yin is the very embodiment of Divine compassion. She is constantly attentive to the prayers of humanity, so that one of Her most frequently-used titles is "regarder of the cries of the world", which again recalls the western epithet "Our Lady of Succour". Though perhaps Her most familiar and most expressive title is simply "Saviour". As with the Daughter in the west, Her sacred tree is the willow, and She uses a willow-branch to sprinkle water on the heads of Her votaries in a striking echo of the Rite of Initiation. Another mark of the worship of the Daughter in all cultures is the faith of the people in Her power to deliver them from danger and suffering. This faith in the mediaeval west was enshrined in the opening words of the Memorare: "Remember, O most loving Virgin Mary, that it is a thing unheard of, that anyone ever had recourse to Your protection, implored Your help... and was left forsaken." In the Far East, this same belief finds its expression in a lengthy passage from the Lotus Sutra, the principal text of Mahayana Buddhism, which has been called "the Gospel of half Asia": "...The echoes of Her sacred deeds Resound through all the world... Who hears Her Name, who looks to Her, Unceasingly remembers Her, Is freed from worldly sorrow. Were you by vicious felons cast Into a roaring furnace, Turn but your thoughts upon Kuan Yin, The flames will turn to water. Or driven by the raging sea With foul fiends close about you, Turn but your thoughts upon Kuan Yin, The waves shall turn their fury. Else from Mount Sumeru's towering peak Some enemy should hurl you, Turn but your thoughts upon Kuan Yin, Like the sun in the sky will She hold you. Or running fast from evil men The Iron Mountain bars your path, Turn but your thoughts upon Kuan Yin, No hair shall come to harm Encircled by a murderous band With sharp knives poised to strike, Turn but your thoughts upon Kuan Yin, Pity shall turn their hearts. Or victim of a tyrant power, The axe upraised to slay you, Turn but your thoughts upon Kuan Yin, It shall be dashed in fragments. Locked in a dank and filthy cell And bound with iron fetters, Turn but your thoughts upon Kuan Yin, And freedom shall be granted. Or, having drunk a venomed cup, The darkness closes round you, Turn but your thoughts upon Kuan Yin, And you shall wake refreshed. Or else beset by devil-fiends, Dragons and demons, things Hell-spawned, Turn but your thoughts upon Kuan Yin, They dare not touch Her servant. With fearsome beasts on every side Cruel tusks and keen-edged claws, Turn but your thoughts upon Kuan Yin, They flee in all directions. Fierce dragon-serpents bar your way, With fiery breath and poison fume, Turn but your thoughts upon Kuan Yin And instantly they vanish. Horrendous lightnings rend the sky, Prodigious torrents flood the earth, Turn but your thoughts upon Kuan Yin, The storm shall turn its wrath. Bound upon Moira's [Werdë's] iron wheel, All creatures suffer countless woes, Yet Kuan Yin's eyes see everything, Her help is always ready. Infinite Her Godly power And skilful in the care of souls She manifests in countless forms Throughout the wide-spread world. Though endless evils plague the earth, Demons and beasts and godless men, Birth and old age, disease and death, Kuan Yin will end them, one by one. True Kuan Yin! Pure Kuan Yin! Incalculably wise Kuan Yin! Compassionate to every creature, Eternally honoured and adored. O, Heavenly Light, pure and unceasing! O, Sun of Wisdom, dispelling the dark! O, Conqueror of fire and storm! Your glory fills the world! Your pity shields us from the lightning, Your compasion is like to a radiant cloud Dropping sweet rain of spiritual love, Quenching the flames of distress. Name of Kuan Yin, most holy Name, Voice of the sea-tide, voice of God, Surpassing every worldly sound, Let it always be on your lips. Call upon Her, never doubting, Saviour of all things, pure and serene, In pain or anguish, fear or death, She is our faithful and certain support. Resplendent in every supreme perfection, All-seeing eyes of eternal compassion, Boundless ocean-store of blessings, In deep adoration we kneel at Her feet. The belief in Kuan Yin's supernatural aid may seem far-fetched. After all, it is a simple fact of experience that "tyrant power" which now dominates China, manifesting the ultimate extreme of masculist materialism, has murdered and imprisoned many thousands of Her devotees in its cruel drive against all spirituality. We must take into account that on one level the physical dangers depicted in the Sutra are allegories of the spiritual dangers which confront the soul at every stage in her ascent toward perfection. On another level, the Sutra expresses the truth that all worldly sufferings are the result of inward attachment to the world of illusion, and that if our contemplation is wholly directed toward the Divine (all our thoughts turned upon Kuan Yin) earthly sufferings can no longer touch us. So long as we remain separate from the Mother, we are bound to Moira's [Werdë's] iron wheel, we are subject to birth, old age, disease and death and all the ills that flesh is heir to not once but endlessly, until we realise the Truth and act upon it. Only when we unite in contemplation with the Divine, "unceasingly remembering Her", do we transcend the endless evils that plague the earth. Even so, like all inspired words, these sacred verses contain Truth on many levels; and alongside the deeper spiritual strata of meaning, the simplest exoteric significance of the words contains profounder truths than the profane mine (whether openly anti-religious or trying to "rationalise" religion into a form acceptable to the prejudices of late-patriarchal materialism) would be happy to admit. Innumerable accounts exist – some well-attested by persons still living – of instances in which Kuan Yin has miraculously intervened to save some devotee from danger who has called upon Her. Many of the more modern instances involve hair's-breadth escapes from Communist persecutors. Sometimes help comes through "natural" means, extraordinary coincidnces or strokes of luck. At other times it is purely "miraculous": the attacker who suddenly found himself unable to move a muscle when his victim called upon Kuan Yin's name; the lost traveler led to shelter by a vision of Kuan Yin; the devotee who was simply ignored by the Red Guards who were searching for her as though she had become invisible. It is not only in China that Kuan Yin is honoured. She is known throughout most of South-East Asia. In Japan She is called Kwannon; in Tibet She goes by the name of Tara. In the introduction to Dr. Beyer's monumental study The Cult of Tara,* we read: "Tara was the principal 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 and religion." The instruction to "unceasingly remember Her", to "Let Her name be always on your lips", is taken with the utmost seriousness wherever She is worshipped, and Her most ardent devotees spend many hours in recitation; sometimes simply repeating Her name thousands of times, sometimes reciting the Lotus Sutra verses, or the Dharani of Great Compassion, another important text in the worship of Kuan Yin, often using a Rosary. Sometimes the Name is recited unceasingly over a period of many days, until the revolving of the sound becomes a continual inward reality even in sleep or when engaged in other activities. This practice may eventually lead to a mystical experience or a vision, and certainly to a degree of detachment from wordly suffering corresponding to a higher level of consciousness. The effect is due not only to the psychological value of the exercise (in the fullest sense: psyche = soul, therefore true psychology is the science of the soul's laws), but also the particular spiritual quality of the sound of the Name itself (it is possible that the same effect would not be produced by a western pronunciation of the Chinese syllables, though there are western equivalents of the Name, most notably, of course, Inanna, which should be pronound short a's and a particular caressing quality about the n's). The Name is often incorporated within a short mantram. Certain rather more complicated mantric visualisation practices have also been used to great effect and might well be adopted by Madrians who feel drawn to this form of development. For this reason, an adaptation of one such method is included here. The main mantram employed is the famous OM MANI PADME HUM. This mantram has a long history, going back long before Buddhism and the practices with which it has been associated in more recent times. In being addressed to Kuan Yin, it is returning to its origins, for it is a primordial sound-form corresponding to the devout invocation of the Daughter. It is suitable for western usage, since it is from the Sanscrit [sic] which is close to the root-language of all western dialects. The fact that it is also effective in the Far East is a possible indication that it goes back beyond this to the universal root-language which preceded the division of east and west, and therefore remains unchanged in sound since the central matriarchal period. A rough translation would be "Hail (or behold) the jewel in the lotus". This refers directly to the Daughter, the lotus being the eastern equivalent of the rose, which symbolises the Mother, and the "jewel" within it the Daughter to Whom She gives birth. This symbolism occurs on the ring sometimes worn by priestesses with a pure crystal couched in the petals of a golden rose. Gold is the metal of the sun, symbolising the Mother, and crystal the jewel of the moon, symbolising the Daughter. The following practice has been used in both China and Tibet: Preparation Take a ritual bath, preferably scented with eucalyptus or some other lunar essence. Let the purification of your body symbolise the purification of your mind, and if any sin lie on you, do penance for it beforehand. Dress yourself with quietness and reverence, preferably in a white robe. Go to your shrine, whereon shall be an image or a statue of the Daughter and a censer for incense-sticks. Take in your left hand an incense stick, and with the finger and thumb of your right hand, form a circle. At the place where the tips meet, envision a white glow, representing the syllable OM (this is pronounced midway between OM and AUM). After a moment, this is transformed into a budding lotus wherewith you trace the letters OM AH HUM above the glowing incense. Thus will the smoke spread out to form a great cloud of purity. Reverencing, recite these words: "May this precious cloud form an offering to the Mother and to the Daughter and to Absolute Deity, an offering to the Geniae [Janyati] of the seven spheres, and to all the Geniae of Heaven, an offering to the saints and the heras [helati] that have walked this earth in the love of the Goddess through countless centuries, and having attained to perfect liberation are one with me in Her Ekklesia." Make the Pentacle in the four directions, and invoke the protection of the guardian daughters of the fourfold earth (as in the Rite of Sacrifice, but do not use the Name of Power). Place the stick reverently in the censer. First Stage Settle before the shrine, either in the Artemid posture or the Padmasana (Lotus Posture) or in any position that is comfortable and not disturbing. Breathe slowly and deeply. At the crown of your head, envision a white glow representing OM, at your throat a red AH, at your heart a blue HUM. These glowing centres throw out rays of their respective colors in all directions. by them all the evil of wrong choices and wrong deeds made since the dawn of time by your self and by all selves are expelled in the form of a black liquid which drains away into the earth until no drop remains. Thus, purged of evil, you are one with the Good, and your body, speech and mind are as the body, speech and mind of Kuan Yin. Unutterably beautiful and overflowing with compassion. Place your hands in the lotus position (thumbs and fingertips together with hands arching away from the centre, to form the "bowl" of the lotus). Recite the mantram OM MANI PADME HUM, centring your consciousness of each syllable in turn upon a specific part of your upper body, revolving the mind from one to the next, thus: OM, heart; MA, left shoulder; NI, throat; PAD, right shoulder; Me, navel; HUM, crown of hear (first rotation). [An illustration maps the syllables to the body for both the first and second rotation, and depicts correct formation of the lotus position for the hands.] After a time, rearrange the positions of the syllables into the following pattern: OM, crown of head; MA, throat; NI, right shoulder; PAD, navel; ME, left shoulder; HUM, heart. The more these rotations are repeated, the more wonderful will be the results. For a time it will be sufficient to practise only the first stage, attaining proficiency in this practice before passing on to the complete exercise. Second Stage Within your breast envision the moon's disk, bright and pure in brilliant white. Standing in space before you is a pink moon-disk manifesting the syllable TAM (the invocation-word of Tara). Suddenly this disk becomes a vision of Kuan Yin with a bright nimbus about Her head and a Rosary around Her neck made from pearls strung together. Upon the crown of her head appears a white glow within the numbus, manifesting the syllable OM; at Her throat a red AH, close to Her heart a blue HUM. The rays of these blend with those proceeding from the OM AH HUM upon your own body. She is seated in a posture of meditation. An opening develops in the crown of your head, and the rays are drawn into it. The image of Kuan Yin diminishes in size until it follows the rays into your head and you are one with Her. Now join the tip of your right thumb with the tip of the ring-finger. Trace the words OM AH HUM on your left hand. Envision a pearl before you, and with your left hand trace those syllables upon it, at the same time speaking them with intense concentration. Now visualise yourself holding the pearl before your breast with the thumbs and forefingers of both hands, and begin to recite the mantram OM MANI PADME HUM for a period. Third Stage Visualise a white glow manifesting OM upon the crown of your head, streaming out rays of splendid light, which illuminate all states of existence, hells and higher worlds, spirit-worlds, and every place in which souls still strive for liberation. By this light their sins and wrong-choices are purified away. Near your heart shines a blue HUM, filling all the earth with its rays, and comforting all the creatures that move upon it. Within the circle of the light shed by its rays are seen as many Pure Lands or heaven-worlds as one wishes to envision. Then the white and blue rays enter the crown of your head and penetrate to the lowest parts of your body. Adopt again the position of holding the pearl and recite again the OM MANI PADME HUM for a period. When this has been achieved, say the prayer of eternity and reverence the nymphs of the four quarters. (Note: the reverence consists of placing the hands together, fingertips pointing upward, before the breast and bowing the head). *Published by the University of California Press. 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 Daughter in the East 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 https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/7e564a2c102880b1e16b1f5b1405bead.pdf f2d7e709b7aa2ee4ae5a974fb3200254 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 (3pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document The Femaleness of God: the image and essence of the Divine Perhaps the first thing we can say is that the Goddess is not passive. When images and symbols of Her persist through the ages, it is not by accident, but because She is flooding our unconscious with memories of Her and Her acts, stimulating our appreciation of symbols and guiding the hands of our artists. She is present and active within us, and increasingly so as we open ourselves to Her. It would be too much to expect that we could directly apprehend the nature of the Divine in this life. Our knowledge of the Goddess is shaped by the limitations of our understanding, and it is precisely because of these limitations that we must trust to Her revelations, rather than to any any 'rational' theorising. Each soul must seek to develop her own relationship with and understanding of the Goddess by every means in her power, and in this world the Goddess has revealed Herself to us most fully in myth. It is sometimes asked, "Can't we get at the truth behind the mythology directly? Must we have it in 'story' form?" I think of this question, or rather of the whole complex of attitudes leading up to it, as an appetite suppressant. It has been asserted that all our nourishment could be taken in the form of a few small pills. One of the pills would, of course, have to be an appetite suppressant. It is quite easy to image a person so bored by these pills, or finding them so hard to swallow that she only bothered to take the one which stopped her feeling uncomfortable – the suppressant. She would, of course, starve to death. It is quite possible to extract a dry theology from the myths.* Like the pills, it is hard to swallow and not particularly interesting. So most people take only the appetite suppressant, which is readily to hand, and become, for all practical purposes, atheists. We are not so 'advanced' as we like to suppose: like our ancestors, we must eat. The myths refer to Ultimate Reality, or the Absolute as "The Mistress of All Things." The further back in time we go, the more frequently we find the Goddess at the centre of the myths and as the subject of all religious art.** And this was in the highly sophisticated civilisations of the remote past as well as the less civilised societies introduced by early patriarchy. It is evident that the male god first made an appearance as the political tool of patriarchy, and he has been used as a political tool ever since. Yet the original image of the divine still reigned in the popular imagination. The frequent emergence of the Goddess as the central religious image in the face of prevailinig political ideologies is a striking testimony to the strength of the Divinely inspired archetype in the human soul. Our image of the Absolute as Goddess has two main aspects: the Personhood of Divinity and the perception of that Personhood as female. We can describe these aspects as symbols or metaphorical, just as in addressing the Goddess as "Rose of the World" or "Great Dove of the Waters" we are using symbols or metaphors. But we must also say that the symbol of the Absolute as Goddess is absolutely central to our understanding of Her. It is the best way that we are capable of perceiving Her, and thus it is the way in which She presents Herself to us. We see Her in human terms because the highest thing we encounter in this world is the human personality. We can only speak of things outside our experience in terms of our experience. Try to think of a six-dimensional universe, or existence outside time. Some people describe the Absolute as a 'power' or a 'force', thinking that they are getting 'behind' the myths; but of course, they too are using a physical metpahor – comparing Deity to a wind or magnetism or electricity. But these things are great only in a quantitative sense – they are bigger or stronger than human beings, but nor morally or spiritually superior. Any abstract thing, having no personality, is less than a person. The Goddess is more than a person. She does not lack any of the attributes of personality, but rather has them to an absolute degree which we can hardly appreciate. Her Personhood is infinitely more sublime, more intense and more complete than ours. We have seen that the femaleness of the Divine Person is not a human invention but a Divinely inspired image. The meaning of that image can be difficult for those brought up in a masculist environment to understand. Some may be unable to see any essential difference between the Goddess and the male god they have been driven to reject; others may want a 'balance' of femininity and masculinity in the Divine as a result of sensing a severe imbalance in the male god. I can sympathise with such difficulties; the issues worried me for a long time until I realised that my problem was simply a misunderstanding. I first began to see light when I realised that principles, not people, were involved: the feminine and the masculine principles, not maids and men. Maids and men are not very different from each other, but the ideas of masculinity and femininity have always been seen as very different. That is because they are the archetypal symbols of two principles which operate at every level of fallen creation. Both principles operate in both maids and men (thought the balance differs in each individual, and will tend to fall more heavily on the feminine side in maids). The whole subject as been obscured by the frequent use of the phrase "God is a woman." God is not a woman; She is God. In this context, God can be described as the embodiment of the feminine principle. The feminine and masculine principles have been explained more fully elsewhere,*** and I shall just cover the main points. The ancient symbols are strikingly appropriate. The female symbol [astronomical symbol of Venus within parentheses] shows the dominance of spirit (the circle) over matter (the cross); the male symbol [astronomical symbol of Mars within parentheses] shows matter (the cross or arrow) partially dominant over spirit. (This is the standard interpretation of the components of planetary symbols – see, for example, Teach Yourself Astrology, pages 29 and 31.) The feminine principle represents the dominance of spirit over matter, quality over quantity, while the masculine principle represents the reverse. Furthermore, the masculine or material principle is dependent on the beyond-matter, the feminine or spiritual principle, for its very existence is temporal and insecure – the cross/arrow cannot dominate the circle. On the other hand the feminine principle is absolute and self-sufficient. Now the Divine is defined as Asolute, spiritual, qualitative, and Self-existent – and therefore quintessentially feminine. The "male god" is a contradiction in terms. It is this forcing together of opposite and opposing ideas – masculinity and the Divine – which gives the image of the male god its fatal imbalance. The answer is not to add a feminine "aspect" to the masculine, but to eliminate the intrusive masculine and leave the naturally feminine God. As to whether the Goddess is in essence different from the male god, if anyone is still in doubt – well, one has only to experience Her to know that She is. Various lukewarm Christians and others have tried to persuade themselves that there is no significant difference, but, in the words of one of the most intelligent and clear-sighted Christian apologists:– "Without drawing on religion, we know from our poetical experience that image and apprehension cleave much closer here than common sense is prepared to admit; that a child who has been taught to pray to a Mother in Heaven will have a religious life radically difference from that of a Christian child."**** Having known only the parody, when faced with the original, we may say: "This is just like the other thing! Look at this bit, and this!" Our Lady is waiting for us to stop counting Her fingers and start looking into Her eyes. First published in The Coming Age No. 3 *Though in practise this would not be an 'adequate diet'. The myths are the perfect expression of religious Truth for creatures at our stage of spiritual development. Abstract theological stuctures are only an aid to understanding the myth. To have the theology without the myth is like have the binoculars without the scene. **The male god rarely figures prominently in religious art. Extreme masculist religions (e.g. Islam and extreme Protestantism) tend towards iconoclasm, one suspects for this very reason. Almost all the religious art of the Middle Ages and Renaissance centred on the Virgin Mary, the Christian 'goddess' figure. ***In "The Feminine Principle" by Camilla in The Coming Age, 2. ****C.S. Lewis, Undeceptions, London 1971, page 194. 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 Femaleness of God: The Image and Essence of the Divine Subject The topic of the resource femininity, thealogy, theology of religions Description An account of the resource An essay exploring the metaphysical evidences for, and devotional significance of, a feminine conception of God. 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 andromorphism femininity metaphysics thealogy theology of religions https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/318d8ae9afec22c9d6fef2e27458b5fa.pdf 88f20265c290bd2268d35bb99854a529 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 (8pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document The Hollow Tree Introduction Recent years have seen the development in this country of a "women's spirituality movement", which can be seen as a subsection of the women's liberation movement. In some respects it is a positive development that maids are looking to their spiritual roots, but, as must be expected, this movement, having grown out of the late-patriarchal world and having no access to authentic tradition, perpetuates many of the errors and prejudices of the modern world. So much so, in fact, that many maids within the movement are beginning to question some of its more extreme antitraditional aspects. The present article was written not by a Madrian, but by a maid who has spent many years in the women's spirituality movement. It is addressed primarily to other maids within the movement, but has experienced difficulty in being published within it, wxcept in a drastically abridged version. We are therefore circulating it in the Literature Circle. We would stress, however, that this paper is not an official Madrian document. The Hollow Tree Feminist Spirituality or Sanctified Materialism? A feminist friend recently averred (with some intensity) that there is "no dogma" in the feminist spirituality movement. I would like to use these words to pick up as a thread, to explain why I believe that all is not well with the movement. Feminist religion as a whole does indeed claim to be non-dogmatic, in other words to be free from creeds, belief-systems or assertions of religious truth in general. A closer examination of the facts shows that this simply isn't so. The word 'dogma' means a principle of tenet, and on this ground alone the movement is dogmatic in fiercely holding to certain key tenets (e.g. the right of every woman to define her own spirituality and/or sexuality). Apart from this, the movement's dogma is often simply called something else ("spiritual affirmation" or "collective insight" etc.) as a way of making it sound acceptable. There is a very powerful dogma that the Goddess is the earth-goddess (or that the earth "is" the Goddess). You may say that this isn't a dogma, but just try questioning it, and see how far you get. If you as a woman in this movement don't believe in the earth-goddess, you will meet with strong negative reactions – disapproval, hostility, even abuse – no matter how gently or respectfully you express yourself. A recent pamphlet published by a sect called "The Church of the Goddess" contains this statement: "...the Goddess lives or dies as the earh lives or dies..." as dogmatic (and debatable!) a sentence as one ever did hear! It is simply not logical to insist that dogma is bad, useless or invalid, because this is, in itself, a dogmatic statement – and therefore contradicts itself. Another self-contradictory statement often heard in 'womanspirit' circles is that there is not such thing as absolute truth – in other words, it is absolutely true that no such thing as absolute truth exists! This absurdity is usually taken for granted – and anyone who is daft enough to claim religious certainties is told that one cannot have them – that is, one can know for certain that one cannot know for certain! All these things are interconnected – a mesh to shut out truth or light. Any movement describing itself as spiritual should, one would think, be deeply concerned with Truth – YES, with a capital T! But no – crucial questions, questions of the most fundamental kind, are dealt with byb refusing them as 'patriarchal'. The fact is that dogma – like everything else in the manifest world – amounts to a necessary evil, for we must speak and must communicate. Dogma has its right place as signpost, as key to a lock, as a window, or a road to a destination – but it also has its risks; the violent use of dogma to inflict sufferings on others, while the lazy mouth a form of words to aboid the work of understanding anything. We have gluttons – but do we then ban food? It is not honest, and not the standard to be expected of Amazon women, to refuse to make the effort of discernment and to pretend that we have no dogma. Neither is it honest to refuse to examine basic assumptions. These almost all have their roots in the late-patriarchal-Protestant-tending-to-atheist world-view; the first principles of the 'womanspirit' movement come from relativism, scientism, materialism and atheism – worse still, some of them from very recent patriarchal ideas that were designed in hatred and rejection of all things Female and all things Spiritual! (Not so much woman-spirit as malematter, it seems). It is absurd to reject indiscriminately every aspect of the last three millenia of world religion (including such basic and perennial concepts as worship, prayer, the soul, and so forth) while accepting without question such things as left-wind politics, progress and evolution (to name but a few of the key dogmas of patriarchal atheism) and actually attempting to construct a spirituality upon such ideas. Of course, those who have been fooled by patriarchal false alternatives will only be able to see Fascism, right-wing social injustice and tub-thumping creationism as the alternatives to left-wing politics, progress and evolution respectively. I would have hoped that the essential creative vision of woman-kind could see past these crude masculine stupidities! When we come to the Goddess Herself, who I hope is the centre of all our meaning and endeavour, we often find Her described (blasphemously, in my opinion) as a "concept", and one which is justified only insofar as it serves a sexual or political end. Now, either the Goddess is real, Reality itself, the Essence of all, the Self of selves, or She is nothing at all; a vaporization from the collective feminist brain, a projection of our psychology or of some political ideal; less in fact than the least of us, because a mere subjective fancy. Any refusal or reluctance to affirm the Goddess as the Absolute must reduce Her to a nonentity. If one does affirm the Goddess as the Absolute, one's 'sisters' in feminist religion are ready with dismissive quips about "Jehovah-in-drag", "God-in-skirts", or even "The Great Feminist in the Sky". And what, precisely, is meant by "spirituality"? As expressed in most of the movement's literature, it appears to be compounded of psychological theorising (mostly in the style of Jung and so forth) and the flotsam-and-jetsam of patriarchal occultism (a dab of yoga here, a soupcon [sic] of Qabalah there, and rather a strong flavoring of Gardner's "witchcraft", or what he imagined to be the "old religion"). Underpinning the whole and in a sense knitting together a superficial 'diversity', we find the supposition that religion, the basic instinctual drives, the workings of the subconscious and sensations of pleasure are all somehow the same thing. This idea, confused though it may be, is passively accepted as received wisdom, and thereafter adhered to as a dogma. And hand-in-hand with it, we find the related idea that life, matter, this world PRECISELY AS THEY ARE constitute the only reality worth having. The consequences of this are devastating; a religion which leads one to strive towards nothing, and a moral complacency which is a refusal to recognise any difference between spiritual laziness and spiritual effort – it is all the same. We are all 'spiritual' already, without actually doing anything! And since everything already "is" the Goddess, one owes Her nothing; certainly not worship! This hedonistic gospel has nothing to recommend it except that it combines the most comfortable and easy advantages of both religion and atheism. Many of the women in the movement have been demonstrating – with the best of intentions in the world – at Greenham Common Air Base, protesting against the nuclear weapons which threaten the sacred and Goddess-given earth. Many of the same women see no conflict between their expressed Greenham desires to protect life, and the fact that they themselves poison their children in their own living-rooms by cigarette-smoking, as well as the fact that they believe in the destruction of life at its most vulnerable, in the womb. This moral contradiction is nothing more than may be expected from a philosophy of "this world only" and "freedom for all, but no responsibility", and so on and so forth. The so-called Goddess-religion of feminists offers absolutely nothing that may be distinguished from such amoral ways: there is in fact no "Goddess" to answer to; this is atheism and materialism, pure and simple – or, rather, corrupt and complicated! Thus most of the womanspirit movement's literature is intensely sex-centred, pleasure-centred, even cynical of any moderation or restraint – it deals almost exclusively with material considerations as ends in themselves, as "already spiritual"; it offers virtually nothing of any wider perspective. Moral questions are ignored altogether, or dismissed as 'patriarchal' (a very useful dustbin, and saves one a lot of hard work and thought!). As as [sic] for MEANING and PURPOSE, these are never mentioned, except in connection with "cosmic cycles" and other hazy terms, thrown about with much ease and little knowledge. It is little wonder that so much weight is given to those images from the past, from art and mythology, which portray a grotesque, demonic or tastelessly sexual female personage, taken to be a "dark side" of the Goddess, and interpreted as meaning that evil is "contained in" the Goddess Herself, or that promiscuity is a laudable and spiritual activity, or that evil and good are both the same thing. It is not that the women who treasure such diabolical images have no power of discernment, but that these images naturally express the demonic element in feminist spirituality; misguided women reach for them as surely as one reaches for a wooden spoon to stir soup. The constant efforts to prove that what is wrong is really right, make it necessary to refer to such evidence over and over again. The Goddess becomes the mother of lust, the mother of drugs, the mother of self-indulgence, the mother of fearful minds; the worshippers of this 'Goddess' ardently desire divine sanction for what is wrong; not receiving such an assurance from previous deities, they create a 'Goddess' who is part-evil, and then call that evil 'good'. It is true that the growth of female spiritual activity is in itself a happy and hopeful thing, and that some women do (as individuals) have high ideals and real commitment, and are not afraid to think and to be scrupulous. But as for the movement as a movement, it is like a diseased tree – full of promise and springtime on the outside, but hollow within. It leans far too heavily on the modern, masculist world-view; it constantly fights shy of hard graft, and the profound spiritual questions, in particular the questions of Truth and Reality in their deepest and widest sense. It rejects all criticism, both internal and external, which indicates that women in the movement see it as an all-perfect and blameless thing, looking after itself without any attention or scrupulousness on their part. Worst of all, there is a sad lack of real reverence or humility in the face of the Sacred; in consequence the movement is impoverished in any truly spiritual sense. ADDENDUM A shorter version of this article was published in the American magazine Womanspirit. This version contained a few points not contained in the longer version which we reproduce here: Another thing that disturbs me is an apparent unwillingness to see that much of the movement's philosophy comes from patriarchal roots. Many women, though rejecting most of the last three millenia of world religion (including the concepts of worship, the spirit, and so forth) accept without question left-wing political concepts, 'progress' and evolution. How can we safely construct our spirituality from such key concepts of patriarchal atheism? I also question the possibility of common ground between matriarchy and anarchy. Women who look to deconstructed society ('matrianarchy') are adopting the Marxist notion of egalitarian primitives, without seeing that such societies, whether prehistoric or modern, matriarchal or patriarchal, are intensely disciplined and hierarchical. "Living in harmony with nature" and "natural cycles" does not mean "without structure" (which, by definition, would actually be "chaos"). After writing this article more than a year ago, I lost many friends, but during the same year some women who had disagreed violently came back and said, "You know, I have been thinking about this, and I agree with some of what you say." I wrote the article because I care passionately about the Goddess and women's spiritual concerns. I hope that even if you read it with anger, you will by-and-by find something in it that might be of value to you. This last point is particularly interesting in view of the fact that the author herself originally held many of the opinions criticised in her article and even wrote a booklet in which they were set out. This book was sent to Lux Madriana for comment, and her reaction to our criticisms (many of which were substantially the same as those set out in the present article) was one of complete rejection. We were therefore both surprised and pleased to receive the article a year or so later. We believe that wherever someone is prepared to give time and thought to the matter, traditional truth will inevitably prevail over modern fashion, simply because the one is true and the other false, and the soul, in her profoundest depths, cannot fail to recognise that. Why not try it yourself? 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 Hollow Tree 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 https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/d1df834f56107d77bee91814c787d4d0.pdf c54a0349d0e9d67b5ab71c3deb8ba417 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 (29pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document <div style="text-align:left;">The Inner Meaning of Chess. Chess is one of the most ancient and universal games in the world. Variants of it are found throughout Europe, India and the far and middle east. The earliest surviving representations of the game have been found among the archaeological remains of matriarchal Crete. As with all facets of matriarchal civilisation, chess, for those who hold the key to its symbolism, is penetrated through at every level with profound spiritual and metaphysical truth. To one versed in its mysteries, playing the game exercised not only the rational ingenuity, but also far deeper levels of contemplation, and, approached with the correct themis [thamë] and customs, constituted a "minor ritual". The earliest form of the game involved the use of powers and the understanding of states of existence no longer accessible to modern humanity in its present state of decline. All surviving forms date from a period when the "consolidation" or "materialisation" of the human environment had taken place to the extent that organised physical conflict had become a factor in human affairs; and the symbolic structure of all variants of chess as we know it have their roots in the traditional form of the Amazon armies, and the pre-Amazon forces of the Cretan Empire which kept patriarchy at bay in Greece and the Aegean for many centuries. Nonetheless, beneath the immediate physical symbolism, the far deeper cosmic and spiritual truths are still manifested and continue to constitute the most important levels of meaning. Indeed, with such complexity, and on so many strata of interpretation, both microcosmic and macrocosmic, do these meanings operate, that in a short paper it is only possible to suggest some of the most fundamental principles involved; and what follows by no means pretents to be a comprehesive study of the subject. The Field of Action. The chessboard consists of a square made up of 8 x 8 smaller squares coloured alternately black and white. This pattern is a glyph or mandala of the manifest universe, and is known as the Square of Moira [Werdë], Moira being the "weaver" of fallen creation. Eight is the basic number of the chessboard, and eight is also the number of Themis [Thamë], the mother of Moira, and therefore closely associated with Moira herself. Eight is also the number of a spider's legs, and the spider is symbolic of Moira as spinner and waver (Arachne, the spider-sign of the thirteen month zodiac is an aspect of Moira). Again, eight is the number of the "rose of the winds" ✴ which symbolises both the eight principle directions of space and the eight cardinal junctures of the year (the solstices, equinoxes and cross quarter days). The four sides of the board correspond to the four corporeal elements; in some variants of the game, four players rather than two are involved, each having four pieces and four pawns arranged against one of the sides of the board, each "army" corresponding to one of the elements – it is from this that we derive the duplication of most of the pieces in the modern game* – however, we will restrict our consideration here to the two-sided game. The twenty-eight squares around the perimeter of the board correspond to the twenty-eight phases of the moon. This lunar month, comprising four weeks of severn days each, corresponds to all the basic permutations of the primary constituents of the manifest universe. Each day of the week is governed by one of the planetary principles, and each week of the month is governed by one of the four elements (for this latter see "Rhythm of Life", The Coming Age 5). Therefore the lunar month contains each of the planetary principles in combination with each of the corporeal elements. The number sixty four, the sum of all the squares on the board, is also a sub-multiple of the fundamental cycle number 25,920, which is the total number of years in a complete precession of the equinoxes. The fact that the chessboard "contains the whole universe" is symbolised by the various "grains of wheat" legends. In one of the matriarchal versions the mythical inventor of the game, upon presenting it to the Cretan Empress, was asked what she would take as her reward. She replied that she wanted nothing more than that one grain of weat should be placed upon the first square of her chessboard, two on the second, four on the third, eight on the fourth and so on. The total amounted to more wheat than could be found in the whole empire, for by the sixty fourth square it had reached 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 grains.** The cosmic symbolism of the chessboard is closely related to that of the I Ching. In this system, also matriarchal in origin, the whole of manifest existence is conceived under the aspect of sixty four hexagrams, which are often arranged graphically in the form of an 8 x 8 square. The hexagrams themselves are produced by the intercombinations of eight fundamental trigrams. The commonest pictoral representation of the system consists of a glyph showing the eight trigrams arranged in the form of the "Rose of the Winds" around a central yin-yang figure: [illustration in original] The flux of yin-yang can be seen as the impermanent and dualistic "play" of existence, through which the timeless and unchanging essence represented by the trigrams and hexagrams are made manifest on the material plane. On the chessboard this twofold flux is represented by the division of the squares into black and white. The white and the black respectively correspond to all the fundamental oppositions or complementarities which are the necessary condition of manifest existence: life and death, summer and winter, pleasure and pain, activity and rest, day and night, waking and sleep etc. All these have their fundamental prototype in the alternation between the manifestation of the universe itself and its reabsorption into the non-manifest. It should be noted here that there is no square at the centre of the chessboard. Its true centre is an infintesimal point which stands outside all the oppositions of being, and ultimately "beyond being and unbeing". This point corresponds to "The temple of the Heart" described in the Teachings: "The ignorant eye shall not see this Temple from without, for it is smaller than the seventh part of a seventh part of the seed of an apple, and the seventh part of a seventh part divided again until what part remains can be seen nor touched nor tasted. "The ignorant eye shall not see the Temple from within, for it is as vast as the manifest universe. "Beyond life, beyond death is the Temple, for it is the Temple of the spirit." In view of this symbolism and of the strategic importance of the centre of the board, the central point may be taken to represent on the macrocosmic level (as opposed on the one hand to the microcosmic or human level and on the other to the supra-cosmic or genia [janya] level, both of which are symbolised by the pieces) what the Ranya represents among the pieces.</div> <div style="text-align:left;"> Indeed, many examples of the transposition of symbols may be found within the game, and this in itself illustrates the truth that symbols are not static, but change according to the perspective from which they are examined, each part of a symbolic structure being a microcosm of the whole. Thus, on one level, the sixty four squares represent the archetypes or essences of pre-manifest creation, while the "play" of black and white upon them symbolises the flux of material existence through which they are made manifest. In this paradigm, we see the essence as "changeless, beyond the impermanent flux of time", and therefore, in a certain sense "static" rather than "dynamic"; while materia, or substance, is "active". From another perspective, however, the board as a whole represents materia or substance (literally, that which "stands under") and the pieces symbolise Essence or the archetypes. Here Essence is seen as the active, creative principle, while materia is simply the passive support of manifestation. From a third perspective, the board may be seen as a "web of tapestry", in which black and white bands are woven over and under one another, creating the effect of alternate squares; the white bands, representing Essence, are the warp, and the black bands, representing materia, the weft. In this paradigm, Essence and materia are equal on the passive/dynamic scale, but the qualitative superiority of Essence (if one may be permitted such a term) is expressed in the fact that its threads run vertically, while those of materia are horizontal. In other words, Essence descends from pure Spirit and is always radically connected to Her, whereas materia exists on various levels more or less distinct from Her, and is only connected with Her by virtue of its union with Essence. This is cognate with the symbolism of the spider's web, in which the concentric threads exist at different degrees of separation from the centre, representing the various levels of the descent of into matter while the radial threads, representing Essence, connect every level with the centre, just as Essence at every level of manifest existence participates directly in the Divine. The concept of the ranks of the chessboard as levels of proximity to the Divine is reflected in the symbolism of the eighth rank as spiritual Goal in the journey of a pawn. These three perspectives from which the interplay of Essence and materia may be seen reflected in chess correspond respectively to the microcosmic, the supracosmic and the macrocosmic levels. In the first the "flux" presents itself most immediately, just as the flux of material life is the most immediate experience of human existence. Essence, signified by the squares, is both veiled and revealed by the "play" of blackness and whiteness, just as spiritual reality is both veiled and revealed by the "shadows" of material existence (revealed because it is through their blackness and whiteness that they are made visible to us; veiled because it becomes impossible to perceive them in their pure essence, apart from their "accidental" blackness and whiteness). From this perspective the centre takes on a particular importance which is absent from the others. This is because of the volitional nature of the microcosmic or human perspective, centring upon the striving of the will for union with the Divine, Who is not only the unmanifest Centre of the manifest universe, but is also at the centre of the human microcosm: "within the innermost temple of your heart". The second perspective concentrates upon essence and upon the essential Archetypes in their highest aspects as Geniae [Janyati]. Each archetype is a Divine idea, and a Genia [Janya] is the direct expression of such an idea – the living emanation of a function of God Herself. Here the pieces represent the Geniae, while materia, represented by the board, is nothing more than the passive support of their activity. While the first perspective concentrates most immediately on the flux of matter, and the second on the activity of Essence, the third concentrates upon the interplay of the two in their creation of the macrocosm. In one respect the chessboard represents the universe in its grandeur, intricacy and relative perfection – The skilful craftmaidship of Madria Moira [Sai Werdë]; yet equally it is represented as a place of duality, conflict and confusion, reflecting the dark and terrifying aspect of Moira. This very ambiguity, inherent in fallen creation as a whole, is expressed through the alternation and equal presence of the two colours: "some call the chessboard black, some call it white". It is this ambiguity which creates the "field of action" for the conflict of good and evil, whether on the cosmic scale or within the human soul, which is represented by the game itself. The Pieces The chess pieces are derived in their present form from the classical structure of the Cretan and later Amazonian armies. In each case, the army had four main sections, corresponding to the four corporeal elements. In most cases, and in the modern version these were infantry, chariots, cavalry anda rchers; however, during the Cretan period, the chariots were sometimes replaced by ships, for Crete was a great naval power. During this period, chariots were either not used (being difficult to transport by sea) or were placed under the cavalry command. It would have been seen as madness to disrupt the symbolic function of the forces for any merely utilitarian reason. There was also a fifth section corresponding to the fifth element. This was an elite corps under the direct command of the Princess, called by various names at different times: The Silver Guard, the Blackribbons, the Iron Ring, etc. This corps was drawn from those members of the other four sections who were most advanced in the military and spiritual disciplines – for the martial arts of the matriarchal period, like all the arts and crafts, were never separate from metaphysical symbolism and constituted both an initiatory path and a system of spiritual and contemplative training. The five sections also correspond to the five estates or castes of late Cretan civilisation. Modern chess is essentially Amazon chess. The earlier Cretan forms were mostly four-handed variants, in which the four players grouped into two pairs of allies. This reflected the more complicated position of the late Cretan Empire, where diplomacy was as important as military strength, and Madrian-matriarchal civilisation was maintained by a complex policy of shifting alliances with surrounding semi-matriarchal and semi-patriarchal powers. It also had its roots in a far more ancient form of the game which belonged to a time when physical conflict had not yet entered into the possibilities of the world. The direction in which this game was played was one of "rotation" rather than "collision". Its symbolic model was not physical war, but a mode of action which, as the human decline proceeded, became too subtle for the minds of later ages to grasp. Its more complex form corresponded to a metaphysical understanding impossible to later generations except in the profoundest contemplative states. Cretan four-handed rotational chess was a degeneration from this. The later Amazon version simplified, but also purified the game, removing the residue of profundities which were no longer understood, and allowing it to become perfect on its own level. By a seeming paradox entailed in the laws governing the transposition of symbols, this purification actually allowed the deepest levels actually to re-enter the game for those few who could contemplate them since, being perfect on its own level, the simplified game, like all pure symbolic systems, contained all symbolic possibilities in microcosm; whereas the older system in its degenerated form had become a hybrid attempting to incorporate two symbolic systems at once, and therefore did not fully succeed in either. The four handed game did continue in some places, and inevitably continued in its degeneration, so that in many later versions a dice [sic] was added to the game which is an obvious travesty of its very nature. In the four-handed version each player had four pieces and four pawns. The pawns represented infantry and the other pieces were Chariot (or ship), Cavalier or Knight, Archer and Queen. The Amazons united each pair of allies into a single army placing them at opposite ends of the board so that each player had eight pawns, two chariots, two knights, two archers and also two queens. This latter was not so surprising as it may seem since every Amazon nation did, in fact, have two queens, known respectively as the Princess and the Ranya. The term Ranya is used by modern Madrians to mean a teacher or mistress in any capacity, though always on a spiritual basis. In earlier times the term also meant queen since the idea of a secular ruler was quite alien to matriarchal civilisation. The queen was the highest priestess in the country and she ruled in the name of God and as Her surrogate by virtue of her priesthood, for "human authority" is a contradiction in terms. As it says in the Teachings: "I am every princess and every mother, each priestess and each lady of the earth, and none has themis [thamë] (authority) save in Me." "Who rules in her own right is a tyrant, or yet in the right of other maids. There is but one themis [thamë] and the Truth alone is true."</div> <div style="text-align:left;"> The Ranya was a true priestess-queen in the old sense, whereas the Princess was a more "outward" leader and the overall commander of all the troops. Her existence was made necessary by the complete dependence of the Amazon nation upon its military competence for its very survival. Although both were of the rank of Queen and therefore technically equal the Princess had a personal duty of obedience to the Ranya. Their functions were analogous to the active and contemplative lives respectively – equally valid as alternatives but the latter "encompassing" and taking precedence over the former. The personal relationship was like that of a priestess to her ancilla. The pieces, then, are the pawn, the chariot (corresponding to the rook), the knight or horsemaid, the archer (corresponding to the bishop), the Princess (corresponding to the queen) and the Ranya (corresponding to the king). Incidentally, the name of the "bishop" in modern English usage has no religious significance but is purely accidental. The traditional shape of the piece simply resembled a bishop's mitre; in France the piece is called "le fou" because the same shape was there considered reminiscent of a fools' cap. The symbolism of the pieces may be understood either on the microcosmic or human level, or on the supra-cosmic or Genia [Janya] level. On the first level the Ranya corresponds to the heart or spirit while the other pieces relate to the various faculties of the soul. On the second level the pieces relate to the Geniae [Janyati], most particularly insofar as they represent the archetypal categories of being: primarily the five elements and secondarily the seven "planetary" principles. There is a minor transposition of symbols in the attribution of elements to the pieces since one may either attribute the five elements to the five major pieces or else use the old Cretan system under which the pawns represent earth and the chariot, knight, archer and princess the other four. Here the Ranya will symbolise the absolute standing beyond all manifestation. However, this latter can safely be ignored and we will confine ourself [sic] to the more usual system under which the Ranya corresponds to the fifth element which will then represent Spirit at whatever level the system is considered. A more important transposition takes place in the attribution of the seven "planetary" Genia [sic] [Janyati] to the five major pieces plus the two colours of the board. Here there are two distinct scales of attribution, the first relating to the "exoteric" or human point of view and the second to the "esoteric" perspective which sees the supra-cosmic principles, as it were, "objectively" rather than from the specific point of view of the soul's experience and quest. It is important to note that the "esteric" point of view is not in any sense "superior" to the "exoteric". The latter is, of course, more immediate and more simple; but anyone who succumbs to the prevalent view that she has risen above the level of exoteric religion because she believes herself to understand something of the esoteric dimension merely proves that she is far below the level of either. Esotericism and exotericism are in no sense opposed and neither can one under any circumstances "supersede" the other. They are in all cases wholly complementary. We will begin by giving the scales in their enitrety and examine their meaning as we deal with each piece in detail: --- Piece/Exoteric planetary scale/Esoteric planetary scale/Element Chariot/Themis [Thamë]/Rhea [Rhavë]/earth Knight/Tethys [Sushuri]/Tethys/water Archer/Metis [Mati]/Metis/air Princess/Niké [Vikhë]/Theia [Raya]/fire Ranya/Phoebe [Candrë]/Phoebe/spirit Black/Rhea/Niké White/Theia/Themis --- There are two ascending scales in which the four corporeal elements can be arranged, one terminating in air and the other in fire. The first moves from the most "materialised" state to the most subtle while the second [moves] from the "heaviest" to the most ascending, thus ending in fire which constantly strives to rise upward. It is this second scale which is used in the symbolism of the pieces since the volitional character of the human perspective lays stress upon the striving of the human soul for perfection, while from the supra-cosmic perspective the first scale represents the "static" character of the celestial Powers as a hierarchy ranged in order of proximity to the Centre, while the second represents its "dynamic" character which is that more in view in the symbolism of the pieces – although the two perspectives can never really be separated. The Ranya The Ranya, of course, is the most important piece on the board. She represents the Spirit, the Ctre, the supernal Sun. On both scales, however, she corresponds to the lunar Genia [Janya], Phoebe [Candrë], rather than to the solar Theia [Raya]. This is because Theia, being a principle within manifestation, cannot represent the supra-manifest absolute. Theia is a reflection of the sun-principle on the lower planes of being (including, of course, many planes far higher than our own), but not the supernal Sun Herself. Among the seven planetary Geniae [Janyati], it is Phoebe who is the highest just as the lunar colour, violet, is the highest of the seven spectral colours. As priestess and "mistress of the path beyond the world", it is she who leads most directly to the union of the soul with the Spirit. Just as it is the Daughter (Whose symbolism is essentially lunar) Who bears the light of the Mother into the fallen cosmos so the lunar ray of Phoebe (reflecting the light of the sun) bears the Divine Light upon the cosmic field of the chessboard. Nevertheless, the highest symbolism of the Ranya is essentially solar, for she is the Spirit, the Centre, the one thing needful. One's own Ranya is the Spiritual essence, the indwelling Spirit as opposed to the egoic soul; the Self as opposed to the self. She is the quintessential "divine spark" which must be protected against the assaults and temptations of material existence (represented by the various "powers" of the opposing army) until it be kindled into an all-consuming flame. The opposing Ranya admits once again of a dual interpretation. On the one hand she is the very antithesis of Spirit, antigod. In this aspect she corresponds rather to the Snake of Creation than Irkalla; for Irkalla, as commander of the dark hosts, corresponds rather to the opposing Princess. Furthermore, as we shall see later, it is the primal fall, the initial turning from the Light (after which the supernal Sun was "too bright for us to look upon") which is entailed in the negative or maleficent aspect of the symbolism of the Ranya. On a higher level, she representes the Spirit Herself as the Grail; the goal of the Quest; the single object toward Whose attainment all the powers of the soul (one's own pieces) are directed. It may be said that, viewed supra-cosmically, as a celestial Power, the Ranya is the lunar Phoebe [Candrë], while viewed microcosmically as a "part" of the human being, she is the immanent Spirit; but in this case, the "part" is infinitely greater than the whole, for the Spirit in a maid far transcends both her individuality and the human state as such, for the immanent "human" spirit is not other than the transcendent Spirit Herself. The Princess Historically the supreme power and mobility of the Princess corresponds to the fact that she commanded the elite Silver Guard. Traditionally, also, she was versed in the art of archery and surveyed the battle from a chariot; thus her powers combined those of the Archer and the Chariot. Exoterically she represents Niké [Vikhë], commander of the armed hosts of heaven (or as the opponent, Irkalla, commander of the hosts of Hell). On a more esoteric level she is Theia [Raya], the outpouring of the Divine energy upon the fields of manifest creation. Theia is the expansive principle and the power of the Princess is supremely expansive, her lines of potential movement raying out in all the eight directions of the cosmos in the form of the Rose of the Winds. It will be noted that the Princess "actualises" the "potential" inherent in the Ranya. While the Ranya can take one step in each direction the Princess can extend the movement to the very limits of the cosmos. The Ranya symbolises the Principle underlying all manifestation, while the Princess represents the outward manifestation itself. The respectively "static" and "active" nature of the two pieces correspond to the dictum that "earth moves, but Heaven is still." As we have already noted, Theia [Raya], whilst a solar principle, is not the supernal Sun; and while on one level the Princess reflects the solar-expansive principle of Theia, on a profounder level, and in relation to the solarity of the Ranya, her symbolism is essentially lunar. She is the Daughter-principle who translates the Principle "activity" of the solar Mother-principle onto the level of outward manifestation. Hence the obedience of the princess to the ranya historically. Microcosmically, the Princess corresponds to the soul as opposed to the Spirit. Strictly speaking, she is the soul as Perfect Servant whose will is one with the will of our Lady (this is signified by her "moving at will" which we will discuss in relation to the pawn). She is thus the higher soul or psychopneuma present in each of us as a potency but fully realised only in the hera. But the Ranya and the Princess can be taken to represent the Spirit-soul duality at all levels. In their station together at the centre of the other powers at the beginning of the game they represent the heart in its pscychic-Spiritual duality at the centre of the being (See the "Heart and the Moon Axe", The Coming Age 10). The same symbolism is implicit in the historical custom by which the Ranya would ride with the Princess in her chariot to survey the field before a battle and in the legend that Inanna entered the chariot of an Amazon princess to speak with her on the eve of a great battle, a legend whose form and essential teaching have been patriarchalised and largely preserved in the Bhagavad Gita. The Archer, the Knight and the Chariot Microcosmically these three pieces correspond to the three vehicles of the soul; the mental, emotional and physical bodies and also to the three paths to perfection: the path of Light or Intellect [vyamati], the path of Love or will [vyasucri] and the path of works [vyathamë]. Archery is a supremely contemplative discipline and one which has an obvious connection with the "mental" element of air. ["]The Amazon archer must give herself up wholly to the universal Spirit, must become one with the shaft and with the target."[***] This is precisely equivalent to the realisation of pure Intellect, for while reason proceeds "up" from matter Intellect proceeds "down" from Spirit and its realisation is a unitive knowledge in which the "knower" and the "known" are one. Supra-cosmically the Archer corresponds to Matis [Mati], the Genia [Janya] of Intellect. The art of chivalry (cavalry) had its birth in late matriarchal times. Unlike the art of archert its perfection depends upon the perfect harmony of two wills: that of the horsemaid and that of the horse. This harmony is analogous to the harmony of Spirit and soul, of maid and God. It is therefore analogous to the devotional or love path. The love path is also the path of will: the assertion of the true will of the Self over the wayward desires of the self. Modern profane life drops the reins of this essential self-control thinking that this constitutes freedom but, in fact, when the soul succumbs merely to the animal motivations of avoiding pain and seeking pleasure she is just as surely a slave as any donkey manipulated by stick and carrot. Instead of having a will of her own, she becomes the passive plaything of external influences, biological drives and psycho-physiological reactions. The material body and the lower part of the soul (psychedemas), insofar as she is tied up with it, is an animal which, if free will is to have any meaning, must be tamed and disciplined. This taming of the soul is precisely analogous to the handling of a horse, and the language of horsemaidship is often used in traditional spiritual treatises. There is a profound ritual connection between horsemaidship and the devotional path, and the Amazon knights were often said to be the most gentle and courteous of all the Amazon soldiers. Supra-cosmically, the Knight corresponds to Tethys [Sushuri], the Genia [Janya] of love. The Chariot is the “heaviest” or most consolidated of the pieces, it corresponds to the physical body and its lines of movement lie always at right angles to one another forming the upright cross of matter. It is appropriately represented often as a quadriga or four horse chariot, the Ranya and Princess within the chariot represent the heart within the body. Its path is the path of works; of craft and agriculture, of the life of the household, all performed accordingly to the traditional themis [thamë] and ritual symbolism by which every action within a themis society is bound to the Absolute. From the human point of view which takes into account the other states of being the Chariot corresponds to Rhea [Rhavë] in her lower aspect as the principle of restriction, since physical matter (from the earthly perspective) represents a lower limit and a maximum of consolidation and restriction. This duality also corresponds to the fact that the Active Life of a themis society comprises the correct spiritual path for the majority but would be an intolerable restriction for a contemplative mystic. It is obvious that the three paths are three distinct ways to the Goddess. But it is equally obvious that even in the most extreme cases no one of them can be completely divorced from the others. In practice most people would be following the Active Life, the path of works; but devotional practice plays an important part in the life of every religious person (and the irreligious person is nothing more than a freakish anomaly of the late patriarchal era), and the ritual symbolism of the crafts and arts is essentially an Intellectual symbolism, and it is the desire and duty of every maid to progress as far into the Intellectual comprehension of her craft as she is able. So the three paths correspond equally to the three essential powers of the soul: will, intellect and action; and the Knight, Archer and Chariot respectively symbolise these powers. Negative powers We have briefly mentioned the negative or maleficent aspects of some of the pieces; it is now necessary to go into these more systematically. The opposing pieces generally represent the inversions or perversions of the principles represented by one's own forces. These may be regarded either as demonic forces or as "inward enemies". The Ranya, representing Spirit in her positive aspect, represents negatively the primal sin of turning away from the Light. She is the rejection of the Self by the self, the rabid egoity which desires at all costs to preserve its separateness from the Spirit. It can be called the sin of pride, but it is not pride in the most usual sense but in the promethean pride of the soul in its self-assertion against the Spirit. Having been cast into the flux of matter by this turning from the Spirit the constant round of material existence is kept in motion by the three poisons of the soul which bind her to the iron wheel of moira [werdë]. The first is ignorance, the inversion of the Metis [Mati] principle, symbolised by the Archer. Having turned from it, the soul forgets the Truth. She is blinded by the veil of matter and cannot see the eternal world that lies about her. Because of this she does not know how to free herself from the ceaseless flux of material existence. She does not even know that she can be freed. This ignorance is the precondition of worldly materialism which, by blindly treating this physical existence as the only reality, acts in ways which forge chains of moira; part good and part bad, but all binding the soul to the worlds of matter which must ultimately be worlds of dissatisfaction and suffering, because she is really seeking in the world that fulfillment and completion which can only be found beyond the world. The other two posons are the two great dynamic forces which drive the wheel of Moira [Werdë]: attraction and repulsion, represented by the Knight (Tethys [Sushuri]) and the Princess (Niké [Vikhë]) respectively, the principles of concord and discord, Venus and Mars. These are the stick and carrot of our blind donkey, the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, which keep up the ceaseless round of activity directed to no purpose beyond the world of matter. Finally, the Chariot represents what may be called the force of gravity. The Scriptures tell us that there can be no standing still upon the path. If we are not moving upward we will inevitably slip downward. If we waste the precious opportunity of our present human life pursuing merely transient aims we will not find ourselves "back where we started", we will fall to a lower state of being. An ancient myth tells how some of the earliest of fallen souls, being not yet far, quickly found their way back to Heaven and urged their sisters on the earth (who were still radiant and half-celestial beings) to follow them. But the earthly maids wished neither to move up nor down but only to rest a little time on the earth before following their sisters. But inevitably they sunk deeper and deeper into matter and quickly found that they were unable to free themselves without the most immense effort. This law of gravitation operates on various levels from the individual human soul to the progressive decline into consolidation and increasingly gross material states that take place in both human society and the cosmic environment itself throughout the course of the historical cycle. In the human microcosm this principle may be seen as the sin of sloth or inertia provided that it is understood that there are forms of sloth far deeper and incalculably more harmful than mere physical laziness. For example, modern sicoety can be very energetic in the shouting of slogans or the amassing of facts providing it can avoid the real effort of intellectual activity; very energetic in the ceaseless production of consumer goods, providing it can avoid the spiritual effort entailed in the traditional crafts; very energetic in preaching a shallow and sentimental "social gospel", whether secular or pseudo-religious, provided it can avoid the real emotional discipline of the path of will, in which the true love of God entails the only possible true love of all Her creatures. The Pawn The Pawn is the ordinary Amazon foot soldier, with her solar sword in her right hand and her lunar shield or pelta (sometimes made in the shape of a five day old moon) in her left, representing he microcosmic duality. Yet, despite her intrinsic axial and microcosmic nature, she is the fallen egoic soul or psychedemas. Her potency is far more limited than that of the celestial Powers, and it is limited both quantitively, in that she can only move the shortest possible distance, and qualitively, in that she can only move in one direction. It will be noted that the Ranya shares the same quantitive disability while qualitively she is omnipotent: this indicates that while she is the Principle of all potential manifestation she is herself not manifest. The Ranya contains all qualitative “directions” or possibilities within herself but does not enter into their manifest extensions. The dual restriction of the pawn represents all the various qualitative and quantitative limitations inherent in the various states of being separate from the Spirit. The dual bondage of space and time forms a paradigm of these limitations from the earthly point of view; time symbolising quality and space symbolising quantity. The journey of the pawn is analogous to the quest of the soul. She moves upward through the seven ranks (representing the seven spheres) encountering various obstructions and dangers on the path. When she reaches the final sphere and casts off the limitations of her fallen, egoic nature and becomes a Princess which, as we have seen, represents the perfected soul, the soul in her true nature as the perfect servant or hera. The final rank is the rank of the Geniae [Janyati] or celestial Powers, for the perfected soul returns to her true, unfallen Genia-nature. The fact that from the beginning of the game the rank of the Geniae is not only ahead of her but also behind her signifies that she has fallen from this condition and that her forward movement is also a return to the state from which she has come. As a Princess she is now a mover-at-will; having reached the seventh sphere of Phoebe [Candrë], the "path beyond the world", she may leave the world or enter it as she chooses, even as the hera may return or not return. Her perfect freedom of movement is characteristic of the perfect servant of She "Whose service is perfect freedom". As it says in the Crystal Tablet: "If the soul live in Light, no thing shall be impossible to her, for her will shall become one with the will of our Lady." (C.T. 29). At the commencement of the game, each pawn stands in front of one of the pieces and "belongs" to it. Even when it moves onto another file in the process of capturing a piece or another pawn it continues to be designated "Knight's pawn" or "Princess's pawn", according to the file on which it began. This designation is inalienable to the pawn in question. Each pawn is in the "ray" of one of the celestial powers. Each individual is unique in virtue not of her current earthly existence but of her celestial origins. The multiplicity of pawns on the chessboard is analogous to the multiplicity of souls in the world. Looked at along the "horizontal" rank, which, as we have seen, corresponds to the material and quantitative dimension, all the pawns appear identical and undifferentiated. It is only by considering them in relation to the "vertical files", which correspond to the essential and qualitiative dimension, that we are able to see the inherent and unique character of each soul. That is why it is only in a society which has lost all vision of the qualitative dimension that the demagogic conceptions of "equality" and "democracy" can arise, and human individuals be reduced to mere numerical units; statistics or wholly interchangeable "cogs" in the industrial machine. On another level, this same "horizontalist" tendency gives rise to a scientism which seeks to reduce all phenomena to "explanations" based upon undifferentiated and non-qualitative matter. The Game Finally, we must give some brief consideration to the overall structure of the game. Its primary symbolism, of course, is that of battle: the archetypal struggle between the forces of light and darkness, of black and white. The most exoteric interpretation of this interprets white as the divine solar Light (here represented by Theia) and black as the evil darkness represented by the negative aspect of Rhea [Rhavë], while the Princess as Niké [Vikhë] leads the hosts of Light in the combat. This is a fully valid interpretation although it should be remembered that each player, from her own point of view, fights on the side of Heaven; therefore, from the point of view of "black", the darkness corresponds to the divine humility of Rhea, while the white pieces represent the promethean pride of the negative solar principle which is the first cause of the Fall and therefore the very essence of evil. In either case, the elementary conflict of good and evil fits in perfectly with the historical background of the battle for the preservation of the Faith against the encroaching patriarchal forces of darkness whose distortions of the Divinely revealed mythic forms and way of life carried within them the seeds of the total destruction of all spirituality, the darkness of blind materialism and the promethean pride of atheistic "humanism". On another level, as we have seen, black and white correspond to matter and Essence respectively. Now these two are not in any sense opposed but on all levels of existence below pure Spirit are the complementary constituents of being. Provided these two are in balance a state of harmony or themis [thamë] prevails. But, as we have seen, there is a tendency both in human thought and in the cosmic environment itself towards an excessive "consolidation"; a disproportionate and disharmonious (anathemis [athamë]) predominance of the material and quantitative pole over the Essential and qualitative. This tendency is manifested on the earthly and social plane by the institution of patriarchy which, by its inbuilt symbolic nature, tends inevitably towards materialism, quantitativism or "horizontalism". The central conflict of chess can, therefore, also be seen as that of order or concord, represented by Themis [Thamë], with discord or chaos represented by the negative aspect of Niké [Vikhë] and her planetary influence of Mars. In the symbolic language of the planetary signs the cross represents matter and the circle Spirit. The sign of Niké, therefore, is almost diametrically opposed to that of Tethys [Sushuri]. The latter [read: former] represents the full comination of matter over Spirit. This domination can never, in the nature of things, become complete, but in setting the cross at an angle of forty-five degrees above the circle matter is shown as surmounting Spirit as far as that is possible. It is no coincidence that the symbol of Niké is used to this day for the male principle and that of Tethys for the female. However, it is not the symbol of Tethys which is here set in opposition to that of Niké but the symbol of Themis. Tethys, corresponding to the Knight, symbolises the complete submission to the Divine entailed in the path of will, whereas Themis represents the divine order and harmony, whether in the human soul or in a normal theacentric matriarchal society (it may be noted here that there is a close connection between Tethys and Themis. Tethys is said to be the sister of Themis and her name, cognate with the Greek tithenai, means Disposer or Orderer). This perspective clarifies the truth that the aim of war is peace; for peace is nothing other than the restoration of order or harmony in place of disorder and chaos. War in itself is a disorder but one which exercises a balancing function against the initial disorder, thus restoring harmony. This is only true if the war is fought on a purely spiritual basis without hatred and wishing only to restore harmony both to the enemy and to the order as a whole; and if all the arts of war, like all themis [thamë] crafts, are treated primarily as spiritual disciplines. Even so, it remains true that the very possibility of war represents a considerable degeneration in the earthly order which is why war did not appear until very late in the historical cycle after the passing of the matriarchal ages proper. It should be remembered, however, that the "outward" historical interpretation of the war is very far from being the most important. The true war is the "inner war"; that waged against the forces of darkness and disorder within one's own being. We have already examined the nature of the "negative Powers" against which this war is fought. Here it may be noted that, as with the exterior war, the aim of the interior war is peace in the sense of the restoration of harmony or order. It should also be noted that fallen creation at every level necessarily entails a measure of disorder whether or not it is great enough to manifest itself in exterior warfare in one form or another and that the only way to achieve true harmony is by passing along the flux of multiplicity and fragmentation which is the manifest order and coming to rest in the perfect peace of the Spirit, who is at once the Centre of one's own being and the Centre of all the manifest cosmos. That is why the game of chess centres always upon the quest for the Ranya. Just as the chessboard is based upon the Square of Moira [Werdë], so the game itself manifests in microcosm the moraic [werdic] laws of existence. At each move the player has the freedom to choose among the various possibilities of action. But whichever course she chooses will entail an inexorable chain of consequences which will determine the possibilities open to her as the game progresses. Nothing occurs by chance but all takes place in accordance with rigorous laws. The player will maintain her freedom of choice and attain her objectives only by understanding and acting in accordance with these laws. If she acts without understanding she will find herself bound ever more tightly upon Moira's iron wheel, until her relatively unlimited freedom at the beginning of the game has dwindled to a position bounded in anc enclosed on every side by the results of past mistakes which have been only too well exploited by the cunning of the "evil one". We have attempted to give some indication of the complexity of the spiritual symbolism of the game of chess. It will be seen that many points might have been expanded at much greater length and it may be understood that, in principle, an entire and adequate exposition of metaphysical and religious philosophy could be based upon an exegesis of the game. This is in accordance with the principle that every fully adequate symbolism is a microcosm in which the entire macrocosm can be "read", and that every major activity that is truly in themis [thamë] constitutes just such an adequate symbolism. A child belonging to an ancient matriarchal weaving community is reported to have said, "There are two meanings to everything and three meanings to most things and if you knew all there is to know about weaving you'd know everything in the world – and beyond it."[****] This statement is certainly in accordance with the traditional matriarchal understanding of every art and craft. The tools, the methods of working, the traditional forms, patterns and images created, all contribute toward a symbolism which contains principally "all there is to know", and which can be interpreted on a multiplicity of levels from the simplest to the most profound. These crafts, constituting an entire way of life rather than merely a game, contained, beyond their symbolism an effective ritual structure which made them not only a "teaching" but a plenary means to realisation, an "initiatory path". This aspect we have obviously not touched upon here; but we hope to have shown, within the relatively compact structure of a game, the principles upon which the vital symbolism of the Active Life, or the way of works, are based. </div> <div style="text-align:left;"> *See illustration at end of paper **Sufficient to cover the whole of the British Isles to a uniform depth of thirty eight feet. ***The Moira Handbook, p. 26 ****The Coming Age, No. 8, p. 9. </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 Inner Meaning of Chess Subject The topic of the resource chess, matriarchal history, metaphysics, janyatology Description An account of the resource An article detailing the metaphysical principles behind the game of chess, in light of comparisons between the game's rules and pieces and the functioning and organization of Amazon armies. 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 archery chess craft decline of the ages Grail horsemaidship janyatology matriarchal history metaphyics patriarchy ranya reign of quantity Rose of the Winds Sai Candrë Sai Mati Sai Raya Sai Rhavë Sai Sushuri Sai Thamë Sai Vikhë Sai Werdë Square of Werdë three paths vyamati vyasucri vyathamë war https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/352aa5bf9706837a9250e0d6b481a2d9.pdf 36bfa04fdce3a5f81c2108239b1185c2 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 (10pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document The Inner Meaning of Music The idea of an art as something merely aesthetic; that is, as something with no purpose beyond that of creating a pleasurable sensation in the observer, is a thoroughly modern invention. It is as foreign to the traditional mode of thought as the related idea of a craft as a mere method of "production", the sole aim of which is to manufacture useful articles as efficiently as possible. In every traditional society from the Incas to the Japanese, from the European Middle Ages to the African tribes, the primary content of both art and craft is intellectual, or doctrinal. The tools, the methods, the traditional styles and patterns of the craft all have a profound symbolic meaning, which "actualised" within the context of the authentic practice of the "mystery", become the constitutents of a contemplative path toward spiritual realisation. The term "mystery" is not used idly. Until recently, every craft was called by its practitioners a mystery, as any student of English literature will be aware; and passing out of the apprentice stage of one's training took place by way of a true Initiation far more solemn and portentous than the rather messy horseplay that still accompanies the occasion in a few of the older crafts today. At one time, this was merely a high-spirited release of nervous tension after the ordeal of the Initiation itself. Having passed this Initiation, one was truly set upon the Path which was the particular craft in question. Such a craft was a worthwhile "living" or life's-work, for its first aim was to fulfil the purpose for which souls are incarnate in human form in the first place – to return to God. Not every soul, of course, is destined to become fully "realised" in one lifetime; nevertheless, the priorities are correct, one is facing in the right direction. At death one should at least be a few steps further forward than one was upon entering the world. It is only when the true meaning of craft has been forgotten that an "industry" in the modern sense of the term can arise. It is craft stripped of everything which relates to the supernatural; a mere mechanical production of goods by the cheapest and quickest means possible, with no regard to the spiritual effect of the work upon the worker. In a society based on an "industry" of this sort, novody, from the chain-belt operator to the managing director, has a worthwhile living. All of them, however many goods and however much money they may be amassing in this life, are from the standpoint not even of eternity, but just of the next couple centuries in the life of their souls, wasting their time. And they know it. There has never been a time in which so many people have been stricken and oppressed by the sheer futility and meaninglessness of life. The advertising and entertainment industries pour out an unending stream of novelties in order to maintain the attention of the jaded masses. No material pleasure can hold its attraction for more than a brief time, so there is a constant demand for more, bigger, better, newer, stranger or even more disgusting novelties to replace the ones that were in vogue the day before. The level of psychiatric disorder is alarminly high, and psychiatrists report that the main underlying problem is "lack of life content" – meaninglessness, apathy, despair. Since the time of William Morris, there have been numerous attempts to return to a more meaningful way of life; to practise traditional arts and crafts, to live the "simple life", to restore satisfaction to everyday activity. All these attempts, however, are doomed to failure for one simple reason. While they reject the symptoms of the modern malaise, they have not rejected the disease itself. Indeed, they have failed to understand what it is. In trying to restore life-satisfaction by bringing back the mere outward form of certain older ways of living, they are like the villagers who tried to keep the spring from passing by fencing the cuckoo to prevent it from flying away. It was not the crafts themselves which made the traditional way of life satisfying. It was the inner meaning which they embodied. It is often supposed by modernists that the Industrial Revolution came about because of new technical knowledge. Actually history makes nonsense of this idea. All the technological innovations of the first stages of the Industrial Revolution could have been made at almost any time in history; but it was only when the real meaning of the crafts had been lost that anybody would have thought of making them. The Industrial Revolution was the product not of new knowledge, but of a new ignorance. It is this ignorance which is the real disease. The loss of the crafts and the traditional way of life are nothing more than a symptom. And it is the disease which must be cured if we are to recover. In practice, this means rediscovering the intellectual or metaphysical content of the crafts and learning to practice them not merely as scaled-down forms of "industry" – mere means to physical ends, albeit somewhat more picturesque and satisfying means – but as authentic contemplative paths. But this is not quite so simple as it may seem, for was are immediately confronted by a double-headed difficulty, which may be summed up in the single word Traditio. We have used the word in its Latin form in order to draw attention to its actual meaning. In modern English usage, "tradition" has come to have a vague meaning, roughly equivalent to "custom" or "convention" or "anything-over-fifty-years-old" (or in some contexts, even over five years old!). In all traditional societies it has a meaning far more precise, and immeasurably more important. It means literally something "passed-down" from the Golden Age – the primordial time when "Heaven touched earth". The techniques of the crafts are not mere human "inventions", but Divinely-instituted rituals. They are passed down through a full-scale initiatory process by ritually qualified teachers in an unbroken chain (tradition) from the beginning. The two aspects of the problem, then, are firstly that no merely human reconstruction of traditional craft-doctrine will be of any value, and secondly that once the chain has been broken, there will no longer be any teachers qualified to carry out the ritual transmission of the Mysteries. However, in the English matriarchal tradition, the craft mysteries are still transmitted. There is an unbroken line of Ranyas or craft-mistresses going back to the earliest period of the manifestation of "human" souls on earth. We may turn, then, to the universal matriarchal tradition in its English form for examples of the practice of craft in the true traditional manner. As a case in point, we may take the craft of music. It may be objected that music is an art rather than a craft; but traditional philosophy draws no distinction between the two. Art, moreover, gives a wider scope for comparison between the traditional and modern perspectives, for modern art cannot help but have some intellectual content, whereas in "industry", all is subjugated to blank utilitarianism. The cardinal difference between traditional and modern art is that the modern world conceives art as having no purpose except to please (or at any rate to arouse some sensation in) the recipient; whereas the traditional doctrine holds that art must be founded upon metaphysical principles and must communicate the primordial Truths of existence in order to be of the smallest value. This is encapsulated in the traditional dictum: "Ars sine scientia nihil", art without science is nothing. But the science in question is, of course, not the merely physical observations which have usurped that name in the modern world, but a knowledge of the underlying metaphysical principles of being. This understood, let us proceed to a brief examination of the art of music. Sound is of two kinds: the heard and the unheard. Heard sound is that manifested upon the physical plane and perceived by our ears. Unheard sound is the primordial expression of creation, the "music of the spheres", the harmonies inherent in the single creative Word spoken by God Herself at the beginning. These harmonies ramify out from the original Note, manifesting the entire range of the Archetypes – the perfect, unfallen order of creation, of which all the lower orders, the physical included, are but reflections. The purpose of the art of music is to organise heard sound into a perfect echo of the unheard. In this, music resembles every other authentic art; for all art has as its aim the depiction not of material "facts" (whether physical, emotional or mental), but of the underlying Realities of which the phenomena of this world are but broken and imperfect shadows. Ar is essentially contemplative. The first task of the artist is to see the Real in contemplative vision. Her second is to depict it in the materials of the shadow-world which we inhabit. Tradition provides her with the means to do this. All the stylised art-forms of traditional societies, from matriarchal Crete to Pharaonic Egypt to Gothic Germany were means for the expression of inner Reality. WHen a traditional artist paints a tree, she is not attempting to mimic the purely physical characteristics of the ash on the village green; she is seeking to capture the essential ash-ness inherent in it; the Divine Idea of ash that has existed in the mind of God before the dawn of time, and will continue to exist in the Real world when this planet and all its trees are ash of another sort. The modern supposition that traditional artists "did not know how to draw true perspective" reflects the same provincial stupidity as the belief that they could not have created an industrial revolution; while modern "realistic" art, which aims merely to reflect material "facts" (physical ones in paint, "psychological" ones in novels, etc.) is an aberration of exactly the same order as modern industry itself. The final loss of traditional art took place in the so-called Renaissance. beginning with the most "concrete" arts of painting and sculpture, a spectacular efflorescence of "realism" replaced the stylistic art-forms of the Middle Ages. These forms cannot but attract our admiration, firstly because material nature is a reflection of the Real, and an art which faithfully reproduces it, although but a "copy of a copy", contains something of its divine quality; secondly because they were the product of a starburst of creative energy released by the sudden relaxation of traditional restraints. It is like a will-disciplined academy suddenly taken over by a principal who believes in a relaxation of all discipline. At first her scheme will work well. nobody will run riot, because the discipline of previous years will have become second nature. For a brief period one will have the best of both worlds – all the advantages of discipline with none of its drawbacks. But as the customs of the past fade and a new generation which has never known the old regime arises, order begins to break down and chaos superenes. In the same way, the age of Raphael and Michaelangelp gave place to the increasingly effete manifestations of the Baroque and Rococo, the sentimentality of Romanticism, and then Surrealism, Dada, Cubism. I hear that some gallery has recently paid for an exhibition of "kinetic art" consisting of a man vomiting into a bucket. Music, due to its more "abstract" character was protected for a certain time from this degenerative process; but this was no more than a temporary reprieve. While it is true that Renaissance music adhered far more closely to authentic traditional patterns than its sister arts, we have today reached a point where all music being composed (with a few insignificant exceptions) can be divided into the slick, meretrecious "popular" variety, and something called "serious music", which is so wholly devoid of either meaning or beauty that short pieces of it have to be sandwiched into programmes of Beethoven and Bruckner in order to induce any concert-goer to listen to it. It may be noted in passing that the two great arguments invariably produced by advocates of the "new music" cancel one another out. The first is "Oh, but all new music is disliked at first; look at Tannhäuser." The second is "We really should be getting used to Berg (or Webern, etc.) by now – after all, it is hardly new, it's been going on for fifty years." Precisely. Beethoven's ninth may have been hissed at the first performance; but it was accepted within a couple of years. Berg et al have not received the wholehearted acceptance of the public in half a century, and there is no reason to suppose that they ever will. But the bankruptcy of modern music, like the bankruptcy of all the arts, has its roots many years earlier, in the loss of its guiding metaphysical principles and the consequent gradual descent into chaos and futility. In other word, it may be accounted for by its failure to echo the unheard Music. In the traditional music of the West, a single note of unchanging pitch is sounded throughout. The melody departs from it and returns to it at the end and at frequent intervals throughout the composition. It is an expression or manifestation of the potentialities inherent in this primordial and continuous note; the "tonic", as it is called. This actual sounding of the tonic throughout the piece is still practised in the music of, say, the bagpipes, and to a lesser degree in the music of such droned stringed instruments as the scheitholt, the langeleik and the Appalachian dulcimer. Where the tonic is not actually sounded, the melody is nonetheless developed in such a way that it is still effectively present and governing the music. The drone, sounding before, during and after the development of the melody corresponds to the Mother, the timeless and unchanging Absolute, while the melody itself represents all the flux and diversity of nature, emerging from Her as its divine Source and returning to Her at the close of its cycle of existence. This process also reflects the emergence of the Daughter from the Mother, the "play" of the events of Her life, and Her final heuresis or reunion. And as it reflects the Daughter, Who is the perfect Soul, so, on a lesser plane, it reflects the separation (or fall) of every soul from union with Godhead, her journey through the vicissitudes of successive incarnations and her final reunion, realisation or salvation. The tonic itself emerges from and returns into silence, even as God the Mother, who is pure Being, emerges from and returns into Absolute Deity, the Dark Mother, who is beyond being and unbeing. In counterpoint which retains an essentially modal character, and in harmony where the ground remains unbroken, the pattern, although more complex, is essentially the same. Here there are several manifestations out of the principial Note instead of one; and their intricate interrelations form the character of the music. Each part affects and is affectes by the others; we find ourselves in a world of opposites and dualities, night and day, pleasure and pain, yin and yang. A world of multiplicity and of seeming "accidents"; and yet every even is directed by the inherent logic of the composition – the destiny, or moira [werdë], which determines all earthly events; and beneath is all, either heard or unheard, continues the principial Note which underlies all the "play" of the manifest universe. The Unity which all the movement of multiplicity is, either consciously or unconsciously, seeking. Now once this principle has been lst, we are quickly confronted with forms of music which modulate, changing from one key or tonality to another. The unheard tonic is actually altered during the course of the composition. At first there were only brief forays out of the key, with a final return being regarded as imperative. Later, modulation became a dominant feature of music, and the "well-tempered" scale, in which all keys are interchangeable because they differ only in pitch, was invented in order to facilitate this. At a later stage, we have the logical development (or reductio ad absurdum) of this in atonal music which deliberately rejects all tonality as a matter of principle, or rather of counter-principle, thus producing that music so alien to the divine (and therefore to the human) Norm as to be wholly unattractive to the normal listener. Now it may be noted that once the ground is broken, it ceases to be an unchanging drone and becomes simply another melody. In other words, the immutability of the Absolute is denied, and all is reduced to relativity, flux and transience. This, it will be seen, corresponds perfectly not only to the pseudo-doctrine of "materialism" (which denies all things beyond the flux of the physical), but also to nearly all the tendencies of specifically modern and anti-traditional thought: the "evolutionism" which seeks to reduce all existence to "a process of becoming"; the "dynamism" which regards action as being superior to contemplation; the "anti-dogmatism" which wishes to see all statements about ultimate Reality reduced to the level of "opinion" and "experiment"; the entire ideology of "progress" which permeates every aspect of modern life and thought. It is certainly no coincidence that although the composers of the last few centuries have had no conception of the nature, or even the existence, of the principles which they have been violating, modern music has produced, in musical language, a perfect paraphrase of the errors which dominate and determine modern society. The tonic which generates a given composition may be any one of the seven notes of the natural scale, and because the intervals between the tones of the scale are not identical, a different pattern is formed by the scale depending upon which note begins it; thus there are seven different scales, or "modes" as they are called, each with its own peculiar character. It is well known that all the authentic folk music of this country is modal. Each of the modes has its own particular effect upon the mental state of its hearer; this fact is admitted by the soberest of modern musicologists, although they are able to offer not "rational" explanation for it. Ancient writers, who still had some access to the older matriarchal traditions are able to go into much more detail. Plato encourages certain modes as beneficial to the moral fibre of his ideal republic, while others he would exclude as being corrupting or effeminate. Pythagoras used music in both physical and psychological healing, using mnusic in certain modes to help to counteract conditions of an opposite character. None of these writers, however, has left a systematic exposition of the characters of the modes and their underlying doctrines. Fortunately, this has been preserved in the matriarchal tradition itself. Each mode, in fact, is governed by one of the seven great Geniae [Janyati]; manifestations of God Herself governing the categories of being; they are related to the seven planets of the ancient system. In some traditions they have been called "goddesses", but in modern English this term carries misleading implications. "Angels" might be a better rendering, but it is still inadequate; the more so since an "angel" in Madrian usage is strictly the servant of a Genia [Janya]. The correspondences of the modes are as follows: Classical name; Folk name; Tonic; Genia [Janya]; Planet; Character Ionian; Do; C; Theia [Raya]; Sun; Generosity, Energy, Heroism Dorian; Re; D; Phoebe [Candrë]; Moon; Purity, Peace, Childlikeness Phrygian; Me; E; Nike [Vikhë]; Mars; Discord, Courage, Combat Lydian; Fa; F; Metis [Mati]; Mercury; Wisdom, Trickery, Unworldliness Mixolydian; So; G; Themis [Thamë]; Jupiter; Harmony, Joy, Humour Aeolian; La; A; Tethys [Sushuri]; Venus; Love, Peace, Gentleness Locrian; Te; B; Rhea [Rhavë]; Saturn; Death, Darkness, Mystery The characters given here are obviously rather brief. It will be noted also that the "planetary" Geniae [Janyati] govern the modes in the same order that they govern the days of the week. Some books on music state that the Locrian mode was rarely used, others that it was never used. Especially in the Christian eccleasiastical usage of the Middle Ages, it was usual to speak of the six modes rather than the seven, although it is obvious that seven scales must naturally exist. The fact is that the Locrian mode was never used for everyday music-making, its dark and mysterious power being far too dangerous for ordinary use (particularly in ages when the substance of the world, both psychic and material, was far more sensitive to subtle influences than it is today). But a number of traditional melodies in the Locrian moder were (and are) used in certain highly specific ritual contexts, which cannot be disclosed here. The use of the mode was not preserved in Christianity. Returning to tour previous explanation of music as a paradigm of cosmic manifestation, we may now see that music in each of the modes will represent one particular aspect of that manifestation, which will be further modified by the precise nature of the music itself, just as the archetypal Ash-ness is modified into the individual reee on the village green. In traditional ritual dance-drama, each scene will be set in a particular mode, which established the spiritual "domain" in which the action takes place. The "central" mode is the Ionian. In the table above, the modes themselves are ranked in Ionian order, as is customary. In modern non-modal music, the major key is identical with the Ionian mode. It is the familiar do-re-me scale in which most ordinary tunes are set. The centrality of this mode is natural, since the Sun in its highest aspect represents the Mother Herself, Who governs all the Geniae [Janyati], even as the physical sun forms the central organising principle for all the planets. The name Theia [Raya] can be taken to simply mean "God", and it is possible for Ionian music to be taken as being in no particular mode; that is, as an expression of Divine manifestation pure and simple, under no special Genia [Janya]-aspect. Nevertheless, the Lady Theia is a very distinct personality in her own right who must take her place alongside her six sisters if the full richness and diversity of the Divine Self-expression is to be perceived. On one level, the fall of modal music echoes the puritan rejection of the cult of the saints and angels (which contained the remnants of the old matriarchal worship; particularly in the cult of the Virgin) in favour of a one-dimensional father-god, who quickly dwindled into the insipid "supreme being" of the eighteenth century. The last vestige of this bloodless creature is still worshipped in the modern atheist cult under the name of Progress/Evolution. He created the world. He gives it what little it has of meaning and direction. He even occasionally displays a little of the old autocrat in the oft-repeated incantation "You can't stand in the way of Progress", ritually chanted in defence of every modern atrocity. The true, traditional modal music, like every authentic art, is, on the contrary, a reflection of cosmic manifestation in all its exuberant abundance. It is the Song of God which has become the world. And yet, like every authentic Mystery, it does not stop there, but leads those who have ears to hear beyond the song and beyond the world, into the arms of God, into Her very Heart, "from whence all comes, whereto all must return." 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 Inner Meaning of Music 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 https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/e92b64f2b106da0972e6f7b77c5b282f.pdf f5d83928cbf6707e992255bfac9ebae7 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 (4pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document The Legend of the Sun Of the celestial bodies, the moon (as well as the Morning and Evening Star, Venus) is usually seen as a symbol of our Lady, rather than the sun. Nevertheless, the most ancient mythologists invariably represent the sun as a female figure, from Wurusemu of the ancient Hittites to Grainne of the pre-Christian Irish. Merlin Stone, in her study of ancient Madrian religions, lists sun-goddesses (Geniae [Janyati]) in Canaan, Anatolia, Arabia, Australia, Japan, India and among the Eskimos.* Germans still refer to "Frau Sonne." The following is a sun-legend current among modern Madrians. Like all genuine mythic material, particularly that based on the seasonal cycle, it contains archetypes of Divine Truth, but it is not a work of pure Divine inspiration like the sacred Mythos. -----The Legend of the Sun----- The Mistress of All Things knew that the light of day could no longer be silver, and so She called the seven colours to Her that they might run a foot-race among themselves. For She knew that she who was chosen must be a strong champion, for the Snake would not cease in his attempt to destroy her. And though the colours were but infants, having been born with the dawning of that very day,** each of them ran with marvellous swiftness. But the swiftest by far was Yellow, who ran the whole length of the straight course and back to the beginning before the others had completed the course. And the Goddess laughed and called her Golden, and she was crowned with ivy, and a precious metal was created bearing her name. And when her festivities were over, she was given a golden chariot and seven golden battle-ponies, and was crowned with holly and with thorns, and was given her warrior-name: Sun, the all-conquering. And when that night was ended, she rode slowly forth from the cave of night, bearing aloft her great mace, which streamed out pale gold light. And when the Snake saw this, he laughed, saying: "this is but a child. Has She sent forth a child against the Snake?" But as Sun rode onward, she held the brilliant disc of her shield before her body, and her light grew brighter, and the hooves of her battle-ponies struck fire from the skies. And lo, in war the babe was terrible, and the Snake’s legions fled on every side from the blows of her mace. And her light filled all the world. But still the world was cold, and the creatures upon it tired. And as Sun passed, the shadows closed behind her, and night came quickly. But the creatures of the earth loved her light and did her honour, and grew stronger in her light. And every day Sun grew more powerful, and the legions of the Snake retreated further, and every night was shorter than the one before it, and the earth grew warmer. And there came a time when the night was no longer than the day, and Sun had grown to maidenhood. Tall she stood among the clouds made brilliant by her light. And delight came upon the earth, and life in all things, and the daughters of the earth danced the death of the Snake. And still each day added to her victories, until the whole world was resplendent with her delight. And she had grown to fullness as a warrior, and none could withstand her. But still the Silver Time had passed, and even her forces could not be inexhaustible. And the crafty Snake waited, for it had been long since any had dared to attack her. But the shadows drew closer; and there was a day when it seemed that her grip upon her mace grew looser, and the legions of the Snake attacked. And many were they that dashed themselves upon her shield, and many that were smitten by her mace before the last of them was put to flight. But the Snake smiled, saying: "You are strong, yet I think you grow weaker." For on this day, the day was no longer than the night, and from this day on they grew shorter. And everywhere upon the earth the legions of the Snake ran to and fro, spreading chill and darkness; yet scurrying hence whenever the mighty champion appeared. And day by day they grew bolder, until one day the Snake found the hardihood to stand at the mouth of the cave of night and call to Sun, saying: "Sun, my legions will tonight lay waste the earth unless you dare to fight me hand to hand." "Go your way," replied Sun, "and do not tempt me to your own destruction." "Nay," cried the Snake, "you are not the mighty warrior that once you were, and I fear not the combat." And thereupon, Sun said no further word, but left her chariot and battle-ponies and went with mace and shield to the mouth of the cave of night. And the Snake withdrew himself within, and Sun pursued him. And thus began the longest night the earth had known. And all that night was heard the clangour of that battle which shook the whole earth. And the daughters of the earth fell down in prayer and supplication that their champion should emerge victorious; for they knew that only the victrix might leave that cave alive. But the great priestess of the Mistress of All Things had seen a sign: she had seen Sun, as she rode behind the sea at evening, all red with blood, and her blood spread out upon the sea. And thus, although she also prayed, she held but little hope. And when the clangour ceased, the Snake emerged, dragging behind him the body of Sun. And the daughters of earth wept bitter tears. For three days the funeral lasted; and many were the songs sung of the deeds of the champion, and the races run in honour of she who had won the first race ever run. And for three days the funeral pyre was built of sacred branches of the oak and ash. And on the third day the body of Sun was placed on the summit of the pyre, together with her chariot. And the torches were set to the pyre. And the flames rose from the bottom of the pyre until the whole was ablaze; and the world was suffused in its golden light. And the daughters of the earth said: It is as though Sun were with us once more. And they looked aloft, and lo, in the chariot stood a babe all crowned with ivy. And great was the rejoicing on that day as the daughters of the earth gathered thorns and holly wherewith to crown their champion. *Merlin Stone, The Paradise Papers, Quarter Books, 1976, p. 18. **See The Creation, chapter III, verse 1 & 2. 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 Legend of the Sun Description An account of the resource A Rhennish myth describing the origin of the Sun and its metaphysical narrative through the year. 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 calendar Rhennish legends Sai Raya Snake tree lore