9 10 105 https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/d7f8f56d169bbd521fd2bed9f440e098.pdf 93fa951408ae333f672b77cbdede02d5 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 typewritten, quadrifold pamphlet 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 Light of the Goddess Description An account of the resource An introduction to Madrianism presented as a fold-out pamphlet. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Personal collection of Dr. Glenys Livingstone. 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 https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/f7f91ecd6ec4a812703a4f815b207658.pdf 572cf8c7e53ce8c633406ea4961a0637 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 (7pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document The Living Tradition Imagine a community of people that has hardly changed its way of life in over twenty thousand years. There are several such communities existing in various parts of England. They are called Madrians, a term deriving from their word "madria", meaning mother – because their whole way of life, both social and religious, is based upon the supremacy of the female. Modern archaeology shows that all over the world this matriarchal form of religious and social order was the norm up until three or four thousand years ago, when the more aggressive masculine systems started to take over. This only serves to confirm the age-old conviction of the Madrians that they are the "original people". The Celts and Druids have come and gone. The Roman and Teutonic religions have come and gone. The Christians have come, and nowadays their cult seems to be on the way out. But the Madrians show no signs of diminishing. In fact, for the first time in many centuries, they are starting to do missionary work among the "urbies" or non-Madrians. To enter a traditional Madrian household is like stepping into another world. There are several different types of household, but let us take a fairly typical one. It will be situated in one large house, or in a number of smaller houses; probably it will be based on a farm. It will be more like an extended clan than a modern fmaily unit; it will contain several married couples and will cover four or five generations. Every wife and mother is the head of her own unit; the absolute mistress of her husband and children, but she in turn is in obedience to her own superiors: her mother, the priestess and the elders, or "wise women", of the clan. This is a wise arrangement, for it means that the absolute authority of a young wife is tempered by the mellow experience of older, deeply spiritual women. There will be no modern gadgets in the household – not even an electric light. Clothes will be traditional; no grown woman will go out without a veil over her head. This veil is a symbol of her authority, and of her status as a "guardian of the Mysteries". Just as the Goddess Herself is never seen fully unveiled, so every maid (the Madrians always call women "maids", they never use the term "woman") is on some level – either as a householder, as practitioner of a sacred craft, as a mother, or simply as a fully initiated maiden – Her representative, and like Her, should not go fully unveiled except among her closest associates. It would be easy to say that every aspect of the Madrian way of life has a religious reason; but that would be a little misleading. The very concept of religion is absent from the Madrian view of the world. The term "religion" was invented by patriarchal societies to designate a particular type of activity conceived as being separate from "everyday life". To a Madrian, neither "religion" nor "everyday life" has any meaning. Every activity of life is a ritual action performed to the glory of the Goddess in the way laid down by Her from the dawn of time. This is what the Madrians call themis [thamë]. The word has been translated as "order" or "custom" or "law"; "authority", "balance", or even "faith". But perhaps the best and simplest translation is "harmony". Themis is the natural harmony and rhythm which the Goddess has established on earth. In nature it is sometimes called ecology; and provided it is not interfered with, it works very wonderfully, producing a perfect "balance of nature", among all the life-forms and forces, both physical and subtle, which make up the "household" (oikos is Greek for household, and gives us the word "ecology") of our planet. But when that ecology, the law of the household, is broken, then we no longer have themis or harmony. We have anathemis [athamë]. Then things start to go wrong; there is chaos and destruction. That is because the order laid down by the Goddess has been broken. The same thing happens in human life. There themis [thamë] is the matriarchal order of the human household. Economy in the true old-fashioned sense of the word (economy also comes from oikos). The mother rules her family, the elders rule the mothers, and so it goes on, right up to the Princess (who is also the chief priestess). And the priestess obeys God. She follows the law set down from the beginning. A whole society run directly by God Herself. That is what the Madrians means by themis. But when themis is broken in human life, the results are just as disastrous as when it is broken in nature. We have violence and wars, we have soaring crime and insanity rates, we have a lack of understanding between the generations. As one matriarch said to me: Once society breaks themis and turns away from the Goddess, it can't last long; it starts to crumble". "But patriarchal societies have lasted for thousands of years," I commented. "A thousand years is not so long," she replied. "The Madrian civilisation lasted for hundreds of thousands. The patriarchal order started crumbling from the day it was created. But it did not turn away from the Goddess completely. That is what has held it together. They used to worship Her as Mary, but then the Protestants stopped all that. The Tibetans used to worship Her as Tara, but then the Communists stopped all that. They have let go of their last lifeline. That is why they are drowning. It is like a maid who inherits an estate from her mother, but does no work. At first she sells off the estate bit by bit, and she thinks she is alright. She eats and drinks and enjoys herself. Then one day the money runs out and everything collapses. It is like that with patriarchy. They have been living off the spiritual inheritance of the Madrian ages. Now it is running out, and everything is collapsing." "What will happen when it does collapse?" "There will be great suffering, but then things will return to normal. There will be a new matriarchal civilisation. Back to themis [thamë]; that is the only way." There is a new vitality in the traditional Madrian communities today, becuase they feel that their time is coming: the time predicted for hundreds of years when the patriarchal order will come to its end and the Old Order will resume its rightful place. All this technology and other nonsense will be swept aside and the old ways will return. It is written that "The serpent will bite his own tail", and the meaning of that saying is becoming clearer every day. Patriarchy will be destroyed by patriarchy. Technology will be destroyed by technology. The signs are all there. The Madrian opposition to technology has nothing to do with a sentimental conservatism or attachment to the past. Rather, it is based upon firm philosophical and spiritual principles. Madrians believe that every craft was taught by the Goddess (or rather, by one of Her Geniae [Janyati], or secondary divinities) to human beings in the Golden Age. Each craft is not simply a means of producing physical goods such as shoes or vegetables. It is also a spiritual path. Every craft has its Ranyas. A Ranya is the equivalent of a guru in the east. But in Madrianism a Ranya may teach weaving or carpentry as well as meditation. But she teaches weaving or carpentry as a means to spiritual realisation. Every tool of the craft, every technique, every traditional form for the finished article, has a deep symbolic meaning. The working of the craft under the close spiritual and technical guidance of the Ranya produces what might be called "occupational meditation". That is the true meaning of the crafts. Just as the whole point and purpose of human incarnation is to transcend the material realm, so every legitimate human activity has its inner transcendental essence. If our work is done for nothing more than to produce food and physical comforts, we are living on the same level as animals; and, according to Madrian teaching, we will then be reborn as animals. It is only when craft has descended to the animal level – when everyone has forgotten the true meaning of craft, and thinks that its sole purpose is to produce material goods – that a modern style technology can arise. Such a technology is very efficient at producing material goods, but only at the expense of destroying the whole structure of the sacred craft which has been laid down by the Goddess. Therefore technology is anathemis [athamë]. It breaks the divine order and harmony. That is why no Madrian will work in technological industries or use the products of such industries. Missionaries who go out of the communities have to make some compromise on this latter point, of course. But in the stricter communities, if a person has touched an industrial product of any sort, she has to be carefully purified with rose-water before anyone is able to touch her! This is not as strange as it sounds; for things made out of themis [thamë] have a deifnite aura of disharmony about them. This cannot be detected by those who habitually handle such objects, as sensitivity to them is naturally dulled, but in the sensitive atmosphere of a themis community, such an influence can have a subtle but very real disruptive effect. Such disruptions are all the more to be avoided because they affect not only the human members of a traditional commnunity, but also the shia [shiani]– the nature spirits or "fairies" which work in tune with the life of a themis [thamë] community. The co-operation of this realm of subtle nature is particularly important in the area of agriculture; for these elementary nature spirits are attached to the fruits and flowers of the field and play a vital role in assisting their growth and development. Like all natural things which have not been tampered with by ignorant interference, the shia are in a condition of themis. They do not see themselves as a cut-off unit living only for the sake of living. They understand that they occupy a place within the cosmic hierarchy which ranges from the highest Geniae [Janyati] to the humblest creature in manifestation. Their life is very different from the human, but in their own way, they are fulfilling their purpose, and mounting steadily through the ritual activity of their appointed work to spiritual union with the Goddess; and they look back to the time when human beings did the same. In their quasi-human forms, their ordering is strictly matriarchal, and they have never deserted their own traditional ways. They can only look with amazement and incomprehension upon modern human civilisation. The anathemis [athamë] methods of modern industrialised "agriculture" are so repellent to the shia [shiani] that they have all but desserted the main farming areas of the "developed" world. It is for this reason that the crops in these areas are becoming more and more sickly and subject to an ever-increasing number of diseases, so that they must be treated with growing multitudes of sprays and chemicals simply to keep them alive. On a Madrian farm, working in harmony with the shia, and with natural rhythms and methods (such as the careful observation of the pases of the moon and their agricultural applications), crops have been frequently obtained which border on the phenomenal. But such a working relationship with the spirits of nature depends upon the maintenance of themis [thamë] within the community, not only in the avoidance of technological appliances, right devotion and relations between maids and men, but also in all the customs and manners of life. Life in a Madrian community is rather like a dance. A great deal of what is said and done is directed by ancient custom. There is a feeling of peace, restraint, purity, respect and gentleness in a Madrian communtiy, which contrasts sharply with the noise, bustle and rough "practicality" of the modern world. A Madrian is easily embarrassed by a wrong gesture or a word out of place. A maid in such circumstances may cover her face with her veil. Madrians are quicker to tears and to full-blooded innocent laughter than the wary and worldly-wise "urbies". In many ways, they are much closer to the shia, whom they often refer to as their "little sisters". Madrians seem on the whole happier than "urbies"; they have fewer emotional problems, and nervous breakdowns are virtually unknown among them. They have a place in the world, and a sense of meaning which so many modern people are lacking. Madrian children are rarely rebellious, except in small ways. They feel a part of the community. They want to wear the clothes their elders wear, they are happy to be obedient (perhaps because they see that adults are also obedient) most of the time, but even when they aren't obedient, they have no doubt that they ought to be. That is because the chain of authority passes down from Heaven, in accordance with the law of the Goddess. Nobody needs to ask "why is this so?" or "who gives you the right to boss me?" Everybody knows why, and Who. Madrians work hard and enjoy their work, but they are also fond of their traditional stories and songs which are told at night around the fireside, and of the good, strong, home-brewed ale that goes with them. Four times in each lunar month, the Rite of Sacrifice is held in every Madrian home. This consists of a ritual offering of a small honey-cake, and of a libation of wine or ale. It occurs within the context of a very ancient and powerful ritual which, however, does not require a priestess for its performance, but can be offered by the head of any house. Many young wives regularly officiate at their family Cult Domestic (the name given to the regular celebration of the Rite of Sacrifice in a home). But there are still more potent Rites, which may only be celebrated by a priestess, such as initiations and the Rite of Communion. This latter, which is taken in bread and wine, goes back long before Christianity. For example, Cicero, more than half a century before the birth of Christ, explained how the communicants at Eleusis believed the bread of the Communion to be transubstantiated into the body of Demeter. Communion is taken at the Major Festivals, eight times a year, that is, at the solstices, equinoxes, the cross-quarter days between them, and on one other occasion, the Festival of Artemis (or Diana), on the twenty-third of the month of Samhain (not to be confused with the festival of Samhain itself, which falls on the first of the month and is one of the cross-quarter days). All these Festivals take place within the context of the traditional thirteen-month calendar. These great Rites are celebrated by a priestess, and where possible, in a Temple. Temples were usually constructed in special rooms set aside in large manor houses, for in some rural areas, the landed gentry as well as the country folk were Madrian. Priestesses were always few and far between. One priestess to a village was usual. At the present time it is often less than that. Each priestess has a temple hierarchy under her, consisting of an Ancilla (personal ritual handmaid), Lady of the Temple, and a number of Temple maidens of different ranks. There has never been any male priesthood; but men are certainly initiated. All girls are initiated at fourteen (the number of the full moon), and all boys at sixteen (4 x 4; four, the number of matter, being the cardinal masculine number). As has been indicated, the life of the Madrian communities has until recent times been strictly closed to all outsiders. Recently, though, a certain amount of missionary activity has been taking place largely centering on Lux Madriana, and the Pallas Academy has opened to teach Madrian philosophy and metaphysics, mostly by correspondence. These activities were not approved by all Madrians, and in fact a large majority of the traditional communities oppose any form of publicity. Nevertheless, the outward movement of the "catholic" minority, as they are called, is having a very definite effect. In an age of chaos and confusion, a growing number of people in England are ready to turn back to their spiritual roots and to seek in the pre-Christian tradition of their country in order to try to find the meaning and purpose of life, the certainty and the peace of mind, which modern ideologies, whether secular or "religious", cannot provide. 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 Living Tradition 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/7cdfa0d532765c0c93a210abce27beef.pdf 6caed19d93543541ab9b87adfbed27b4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rosa Madriana Description An account of the resource Materials produced and/or used by Madria Olga and Rosa Madriana. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rosa Madriana Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Rosa Madriana Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1999 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose-leaf, typewritten, 3pp. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Madrian Faith and Patriarchal Religion Description An account of the resource A brief treatise on Madrian theology of religions. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Madria Olga Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Rosa Madriana Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1999 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Donated by Joey McEvoy III. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource loose-leaf paper Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/3a71a946f577e5806c81e91f9303a986.pdf 51c85a92284c3b687dcd744bafc10e1e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rosa Madriana Description An account of the resource Materials produced and/or used by Madria Olga and Rosa Madriana. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rosa Madriana Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Rosa Madriana Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1999 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose-leaf, typewritten, 1p. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Madrian Faith vis-a-vis other Faiths Description An account of the resource A short treatment of Madrian theology of religions. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Madria Olga Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Rosa Madriana Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1999 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Donated by Joey McEvoy III. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource loose-leaf paper Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/86874d453db34a4c97a00165994eab4e.pdf 9f5b8ca4386d7f3f9b930cf6b200e84d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rosa Madriana Description An account of the resource Materials produced and/or used by Madria Olga and Rosa Madriana. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rosa Madriana Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Rosa Madriana Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1999 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose-leaf, typewritten, 3pp. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Meaning of a Life Description An account of the resource A short treatise on aging and the meaning of life. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown. Found among Madria Olga's papers, but possible reproduction of Lux Madriana material. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Rosa Madriana Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1999 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Donated by Joey McEvoy III. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource loose-leaf paper Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Text https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/07cbac08c0ba7766ad91405dc39b7344.pdf 8682bbb7d382ad4dac6e41170ce00d45 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 Madrian Literature Circle The Mountain [Story] Once upon a time, there were three sisters who lived with their mother and father in a little cottage at the foot of a high mountain. [hand drawn illustration] Their names were Cora, Dora and Flora. Cora was the eldest, and she was as beautiful as a butterfly in a summer meadow; Dora was the middle in age, and she was as beautiful as a swan on a calm blue lake; and Flora was the youngest, and she was as beautiful as a perfect red rose, jewelled with the dew of the early morn. Now, when Cora was fourteen years of age, and just entering the full beauty of maidenhood, she went one day to her mother and said: "Mother dear, I am fourteen years old and almost ready to be a maiden and mistress of my own house, yet I have never been to the top of the mountain which shelters us from the harsh east wind. Please, mother, wrap some bread and cheese in my apron, and I will climb the mountain and look over the lands to the east." But her mother was sad, and said, "Daughter dear, I am afraid for you to climb the mountain, for folk say that there is an old hag who lives up there all alone, all crazed with evil and loneliness, and that she kills any who go up the mountain, and sucks the marrow from their bones." Cora was frightened when she heard this and went away. But the next day she asked her mother the same thing and had the same reply, and the next day, and the next, until her mother sadly and with a heavy heart did as she asked and wrapped a loaf of bread and a round of cheese in Cora's apron. And she bade farewell to her daughter and placed around her neck a golden chain from which hung a little golden rose. Cora said farewell to her father and her sisters and set off to climb the steep, winding path which led from the door of the cottage to the summit of the mountain. When she had walked for a little time and a long time, and had eaten her loaf of bread, and her round of cheese was no more than a memory, Cora came to a place where the narrow path became wider and more level, and where a little stream dropped from the mountain to run into a dark, rocky pool. But as she put her hand towards the water, she heard a harsh voice behind her saying, "What are you doing by my pool, maid?" Cora turned round and saw the ugliest, crookedest old hag that she had ever seen. Her hair was grey and hung over her face like rope from a sunken ship; her hands and feet were filthy beyond description; and her nose was exactly the right size and shape for taking the cork out of a wine bottle. Cora was terrified and stammered that she meant no harm, but was very thirsty and craved some water from the pool. "Well," said the beldame, "if it's water you want, drink your fill, but you can pay me for it by cleaning my house." Cora thought this a mean way to treat a traveller, but as the last drop of water was some three miles down the path, she drank her fill and, taking more water in the bucket the old woman pointed out to her, she followed her new mistress to a tiny but very dirty hut, which was built squarely across the path which led to the top of the mountain. Now, the hut may have been small, but it was more than a few years since it had seen water and a scrubbing brush, and Cora saw that she would have her work cut out to clean it in a day and a night. Still, she set to her task with no very good grace, and scrubbed and rubbed and polished until her back ached, and her arms and legs were stiff and as heavy as marble. She was still no more than half done, when she heard a little voice above her head: "Little Mistress, Little Mistress," it said, "of your kindness please give me a sip of clean water." Cora looked up: there, hanging from the rafter was a [a] cage, and in the cage was a small, bedraggled lark. [hand drawn illustration] "Please, Little Mistress," she pleaded "a mouthful of clean water." Cora looked about her, but the only water in the hut lay in her bucket, and that was so black that had she had a pen she could have written with it. The only way she could bring clean water to the little bird was by fetching it from the pool, and that would mean that she would not finish her cleaning before night fell again, so she said to the bird, not unkindly, "You must wait, Little Sister, until I have finished my work, and then I will bring you all the water you need." The bird sighed deeply but said nothing more, and when Cora next looked up, it seemed to her that the bird and her cage were smaller than they had been before. At last the work was finished, and the hut was so clean that it sparkled in the sunlight. Cora put away her scrubbing brush and polishing rag and poured the dirty water away outside the door. Then she remembered the thirsty lark, and looked up into the rafters, but neither of the bird nor of the cage was there any sign. Cora went out to where the old woman lay sleeping under a tree, and, not daring to waken her, or to try to find a way around the hut to the upward path, she fled down the mountain and back to her mother's cottage. And before many years she took the son of the woodcutter for her husband, and they did live together until they both died. Now, although she loved her dearly, Dora had always thought that her elder sister had shown too little spirit in her encounter with the old woman of the mountain. And when she in her turn was fourteen years old and just entering the full beauty of maidenhood, she went one day to her mother, and said, "Mother dear, I am fourteen years old and almost ready to be a maiden and mistress of my own house, and yet I have never been to the top of the mountain which shelters us from the harsh east wind. Please, mother, wrap some bread and cheese in my apron and I will climb the mountain and look over the lands to the east." But her mother was sad, and said, "Daughter dear, I am afraid for you to climb the mountain, for folk say that the old hag who lives up there all alone and crazed with evil and loneliness, kills any who go up the mountain, and sucks the marrow from their bones." And Dora went away, but the next day she asked her mother the same thing and had the same reply, and the next day and the next, until sadly and with a heavy heart did as she asked and wrapped a loaf of bread and a round of cheese in Dora's apron. And she bade farewell to her daughter and placed around her neck a silvern chain from which hung a little silvern rose. Dora said farewell to her father and her sisters and set off to climb the winding path which led from the door of the cottage to the summit of the mountain. When she had walked for a little time and a long time, and had eaten her loaf of bread, and her round of cheese was no more than a memory, Dora came to the place where lay the dark, rocky pool, and she stopped to drink. But as she put her hand towards the water, she heard the harsh voice saying, "What are you doing by my pool, maid?" There behind her was the aged beldame with the corkscrew nose, looking even dirtier and uglier than she had before. Dora was made of sterner stuff than her sister, but even she was frightened by the sudden appearance of this horrible hag. But she gathered her wits about her and asked the harridan for a little drink of water to quench her thirst. "Well," said the old woman, "if it's water you want you can drink your fill, but you can pay me for it by cleaning my house." Dora accepted this bargain as gracefully as she could. She drank her fill and, taking more water in the old woman's bucket, she followed her new mistress to her tiny hut which lay across the path to the summit. Now, you would not have thought that that hut had been cleaned within the last twenty years, and Dora saw that it would be more than a day and a night that she would spend cleaning it. But she set to her task with determination, and scrubbed and rubbed and polished until her back ached, and her arms and legs were as heavy as marble. She was still no more than half done when she heard a little voice above her head: "Little Mistress, Little Mistress," it said, "Of your kindness, please give me a sip of clean water." Dora looked up, and there, hanging from the rafter, was the cage with the small, bedraggled lark. "Please, Little Mistress," she pleaded "a mouthful of clean water." Dora looked all about her, but the only water in the hut was that which lay in her bucket, and that was so black that that she could have blacked her shoes with it. The only way she could bring clean water to the little bird was by fetching it from the well, [pool] and that would mean that she would not finish her work before night fell again. But she remembered how thirsty she had been when she reached the pool, and sighing to herself, she took down a cup from the shelf, filled it at the pond, and brought it back to the caged bird. She held the brimming cup against the bars of the cage, and the little lark dipped her beak gratefully into the cool, clear water. To Dora's amazement, as the bird drank, her feathers became more glossy, and she seemed to grow larger and handsomer; even her cage was bigger. Dora listened entranced as the lark began to sing of the eastern lands beyond the mountain, but, too soon, they heard the old woman stirring in her sleep beneath the tree. The lark ceased to sing but whispered in Dora's ear, "You must return to your work, Little Mistress, or the old woman will be angry; but beware, for she will not want you to leave when the work is done." "Oh, Little Sister, what shall I do?" sobbed Dora, "I want to climb to the top of the mountain, and, even if I escape from the old woman, her hut blocks the path to the summit." "Listen carefully and do as I say, Little Sister," said the bird, "On the night of the day which belongs to no year, this hut spins around like a wheel, and it is possible to leap out of the door onto the upward path. But the old woman is sworn to destroy any who try to make that leap, so before you can attempt it, you must wait until she falls asleep, [hand drawn illustration] then take the hatchet and chop her head right off." [hand drawn illustration] Dora was horrified and she cried, "Little Sister, that would be a shameful thing, to murder an old woman in her sleep, however foul she be." But the bird bade her be silent, saying, "Do not say so, Little Mistress, for in truth the old woman was never maid nor mistress, but a serpent in human form. Do you as I advise, and you shall come safe to the top of the mountain; but take care to chop off her head with one blow, for you will never have the chance to strike a second time." So Dora went back to her work, and by the time the old woman came into the hut it was so clean that it sparkled in the sunlight. Dora put away her scrubbing brush and polishing rag, and pour the du[i]rty water outside the door. The old woman was surprised to find Dora still in the hut, but she summoned from her cunning mouth the most ingratiating words that she could find: "You must be tired, maid, for you have worked so hard. Lie down, sweetling, on this bed and rest yourself." Dora did as the woman said, and the ancient crone flung herself down on a pile of rushes and was soon sound asleep. Now this was the night of the day which belongs to no year, and the old woman was no sooner asleep than the hut began to spin like a wheel; slowly at first, then faster and faster. Dora rose cautiously from her bed and crept to the chimney corner where the hatchet lay. Then she walked on tiptoe to the place where the old woman slept. She raised her arm and brought the hatchet down on the hag's skinny neck. But at the last moment her heart misgave her, and the blow landed on the mound of rushes. The hag awoke with a shriek. Dora, in panic, fled to the door of the hut and, without a thought for the spinning, leapt through. But at that moment, the door opened not unto the upward path, nor even onto the downward one. Below Dora's feet, the ground fell away five thousand feet to the crags which loomed over her mother's cottage; and there the corpse of the maid came to rest. There now remained to the aging parents only the youngest daughter, Flora, and on her they poured out all their love, for she was a gentle as the fawn and as wise as the subtle serpent. But when Flora was fourteen years old, and just entering the full beauty of maidenhood, she went one day to her mother, and said, "Mother dear, I am fourteen years of age and almost ready to be a maiden and mistress of my own house, and yet I have never been to the top of the mountain which shelters us from the harsh east wind. Please, mother, wrap some bread and cheese in my apron, and I will climb the mountain and look over the lands to the east." But her mother wept and said, "Daughter dear, I am afraid for you to climb the mountain, for I fear that the old hag who lives up there, all alone and crazed with evil and loneliness, killed your sister and will kill you too, and sucks the marrow from your bones." And Flora went away, but the next day she asked her mother the same thing and had the same reply, and the next day, and the next, until her mother sadly and with a heavy heart, did as she asked and wrapped a loaf of bread and a round of cheese in Flora's apron. And she bade farewell to her daughter and placed around her neck a necklace of crystal beads, each one carved into the shape of a perfect rose. Flora said farewell to her father and set off to climb the steep, winding path which led from the door of the cottage to the summit of the mountain. When she had walked for a little time and a long time, and had eaten her loaf of bread, and her round of cheese was no more than a memory, Flora came to the place where lay the dark, rocky pool, and she stopped to drink. But as she put out her hand towards the water, she heard a harsh voice saying, "What are you doing by my pool, maid?" There behind her was the crone with the corkscrew nose, looking fouler than she had before. But Flora kept her wits about her and replied courteously: "Mistress, I ask your pardon if I am trespassing, but, of your kindness, please let me drink from your pool." "Well," said the crone, "if it's water you want, drink your fill, but you can pay me for it by cleaning my house." Flora agreed wholeheartedly to this bargain and, after drinking her fill, followed her new mistress to her tiny hut which lay across the path to the summit. Well, you may not believe it, but that hut looked as if it had not been cleaned since the day it was built, and Flora saw that it would be more than a day and a night that she would spend cleaning it. But as soon as the old woman had gone to lie under her tree, Flora noticed the cage hanging from the rafter and the little, bedraggled lark which was asleep inside it. "Oh, Little Sister," she said, "Your water bowl is quite empty. Let me bring you clean water from the pool." So saying, she took down a cup from the shelf, washed it in the clean water in the bucket and ran down to the pool to fill it. Then she hurried back to the hut, without spilling a drop, and held it against the bars of the cage so that the thirsty bird could drink. To Flora's amazement, as the lark drank, her feathers became more glossy, and she seemed to grow larger and handsomer; even her cage was bigger. She began to sing of the eastern lands beyond the mountain, until she heard the old woman stirring in her sleep beneath the tree. The lark ceased to sing but whispered in Flora's ear, "You must begin your work, Little Mistress, or the old woman will be angry and beat you, but beware, for when you have finished, she will not want you to leave." "Little Sister, give me your advice," said Flora, "How can I reach the top of the mountain when this hut blocks the way? I would gladly serve the old woman for seven years, if I could only hope the find the path to the summit." "Listen carefully and do as I say, Little Mistress," said the bird. "It is not by serving the old woman that you will find your way to the top, for she is sworn to prevent any from reaching the summit. But on the night of the day which belongs to no year, this hut spins around like a wheel, and it is possible to leap out of the door onto the upward path. But, before you can do that, you must wait until the old woman falls asleep, than take the hatchet and chop her head right off." Flora was horrified and she cried, "Little Sister, for shame. I cannot murder an old woman in her sleep, however foul she be!" But the bird bid her be silent, saying, "Do not say so, Little Mistress, for the crone would destroy you. In truth, she was never maid nor mistress, but a serpent in human form. Do as I advise, and you will come safe to the top of the mountain; but take care to chop off her head with one blow, for you will never have the chance to strike a second time." So Flora began to clean the hut. And she scrubbed and rubbed and polished, and all the time she pondered on the words of the lark; and she prayed for help to make the right choice. In less time than seemed possible, the hut gleamed like a new pin, and Flora put away her scrubbing brush and polishing rag, and poured away the dirty water outside the door. When the old woman came back to the hut, she was surprised to find Flora still there, but she summoned from her cunning mouth the most ingratiating words. "You must be tired, maid, for you have worked so hard. Lie down, sweetling, on this bed and rest yourself." But though her words were honeyed, Flora looked into her eyes and saw that they were the lidless eyes of a snake, and she determined to do exactly as the lark had told her. She lay on the bed and the old woman flung herself upon the pile of rushes and was soon sound asleep. Now this was the night of the day which belongs to no year, and the old woman was no sooner asleep than the hut began to spin like a wheel; slowly at first, then faster and faster. Flora rose cautiously from her bed and crept to the chimney corner where the hatchet lay. Then she walked on tip-toe to the place where the old woman slept. She raised her arm and brought the hatchet down on the hag's skinny neck. And her stroke was straight and true, and the old crone's ugly head was riven from her malformed body. As the blow fell, the cage door sprung open and the lark flew free with a glorious song of praise to the Mother of All Things. And as she sand, her form changed to that of a beautiful maiden shining like the sun and dressed in a robe of dazzling white. Flora was filled with wonder. "Who are you, maiden?" she asked. "I am the one who lay in thrall to the snake but whom your courage has freed," replied the maid. "Go now towards the summit, for the path is at your feet. I will come with you." Flora realised that the hut was no longer spinning, but the door opened upon the upward path. The two maids climbed it with light hearts and light feet, until they reached the summit. There, below them, the fair, shining lands of the east were spread. Despite the distance, they could see the folk working in the fields and the fair houses and noble temples of the towns as clearly as if they stood among them, [hand drawn illustration] and Flora heard the singing of the temple maidens rising to greet the dawn. At last, the lark-maiden said: "Go now, sister. Return to your own folk. But remember what you have seen and heard, and some day you will return to walk in that fair land." So Flora took her leave of her sister, and returned to her mother's cottage, to the great joy of her parents. And in later years she became a great teacher and was beloved of all her pupils, who saw through her the beauty of the eastern lands, until at last she returned, as the lark-maiden had promised, to walk in that fair country, to her heart's content. 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 Mountain 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/b932a551c07d169c591471415e5fdfb6.pdf 38c770fb3c6ab676ccd5d495ea41d1bd 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 typewritten, booklet (21pp.) 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 Mythos of the Divine Maid Description An account of the resource Booklet of The Mythos of the Divine Maid. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Personal collection of Dr. Glenys Livingstone. 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 https://filianicstudies.org/cms/files/original/4a935439f4037d049341c799beb959a1.pdf cb18227482bfa7531f5ca48ec68b9219 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose leaf, handwritten (24pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document The Normal Life The Problem Profane society is abnormal. A society with no aim or purpose except material acquisition either individual or communla is an historical oddity. It occurs from time to time; usually at the decay of some great world-order. It happened during the last centuries of the Roman Empire and during the last centuries of the Babylonian Empire. It is happening today. Even during patriarchy, it has been usual for the structure of life (and particularly of peasant life, which has been the life of most people throughout history) to be based primarily on spiritual rather than material considerations. The profane myth that human history is the story of a prolonged struggle for control over the environment and the betterment of material conditions, leading from the caves to the modern technocratic utopia, is not only refuted by spiritual knowledge (which tells us that maid began her earthly history as a spiritual creature having perfect control over her environment, which she only lost by her gradual descent into matter); it is also refuted by a simple study of history, which shows that for the average person in the average century life was neither rich nor poor, and she had better things to think about than the betterment of her material conditions. A normal society is normal not only in the quantitative sense – that it is by far the most usual and frequent type of society – but in the far more important qualitative sense; that it is a society striving to manifest the norm or pattern of fallen humanity laid down by the Divine: that pattern by which human life is rendered as perfect as possible within the limits of its fallen condition and the level of its decline into matter, and by which human activity and society acts as the best possible instrument for the liberation and spiritual advancement of each individual. No patriarchal society can be truly normal in this sense (nor even, considerting that the vast majority of human history has been matriarchal, in the quantitative sense), but a thoroughly profane society such as the one prevailing in both eastern and western Europe (the minor differences of ideology between one materialistic system and another are of negligible importance from an overall spiritual point of view) and extending throughout the world by economic and/or military force is abnormal to a quite extraordinary degree. Every physical act has a spiritual meaning. Every word we speak, every action we make, as well as the environment with which we surround ourselves, has a definite effect upon our spiritual nature and on the whole "spiritual atmosphere" in which we exist. The cumulative effect of all our actions, words and gestures, together with those of the people around us, together with such things as decor, music, entertainment, clothes, modes of transport and the countless other "soul-shaping" influences to which we are constantly exposed, is to build into us an almost unbreakable pattern. This is because our dual physical/spiritual nature is so constructed that it cannot act or be acted upon on one plane without a corresponding action on the other. This fact is used by a normal society in order to build up patterns which lead the soul back to its true spiritual home, not only in a relatively limited number of periods set aside for woship or contemplation, but through every action of her everyday life. This, indeed, is the norm or pattern of human life laid down by the Goddess from the beginning. The pattern is built into the very structure of life on our planet. The divine Mysteries are continually expressed through the cycles of the seasons and of the moon. Every human community, however far it may have strayed from strict spiritual truth, has recognized these facts and enshrined them in its religious rites and in the rituals of everyday life. Every human community, that is, with the solitary exception of the specifically profane society. Superficially, it would seem that the great mistake of profane societies is that they are able to see only the outward and physical results of human activities, that they completely ignore their far more important spiritual aspect. In lloking at human existence, they miss the central and salient feature (its spiritual reality) and focus wholly on what is merely accidental, merely the medium through which it is expressed; like the one who, seeing a great painting, should comment only on the quality of the canvas. But it must not be forgotten that every material phenomenon is in essence an spiritual phenomenon, including materialism itself; and while the human architects of the profane society are for the most part quite ignorant of the inner meaning of their own actions, the spiritual forces which stand behind them know only too well what they are doing. This is evidenced by the fact that the results of profane activity are never "spiritually neutral", but rather the whol momentum of profane society is geared to the undermining and destruction of the relationship of humanity with the Divine. Technological society systematically severs human contact with the seasons, taking the vast majority away from the land, mechanising what little agricultural work remains, creating work which has no seasonal variation of any sort. Natural rhythms are supplanted by mechanical rhythms. The cult of speed is inculcated in every area, creating reflexes of haste and superficiality which are directly contrary to the habit of contemplation and deep thought. To the same end a constant barrage of noise, and a constant stream of mass "entertainment" are maintained. Traditional forms in dress and custom, which usually preserve some trace of the profound spiritual principles upon which all dress and custom were once based, are systematically eradicated, even where they pose no threat to "efficiency". Similar examples are to be listed in every area of life. Every act is a ritual act with a ritual effect; and the effect of this profane ritual (or anti-ritual) is to create a great network of discordant vibrations which are wholly destructive of spiritual harmony, both in the individual and in society as a whole. Although profane society is not by any means a new phenomenon, its successive manifestations have increased in intensity throughout recorded history. The decadence of the Babylonian empire was a relatively local occurrence. Roman materialism, using its undoubted advantages on the physical plane, expanded over the whole of Europe, north Africa [sic] and the Middle East. Nevertheless, not only did it leave untouched vast areas of the globe, such as the Far East and the Americas, but since it had no great effect on the actual methods of agriculture, the areas at any distance fromt he main Imperial centres retained in many respects a way of life unbroken by disruptive influences. As the Empire fell victim to its own innate spiritual dissonance, and came to its inevitable conclusion, there was a break-up of the great metropolitan centres and a massive flight to the land, where the more traditional life-style provided the basis for a return to the relative sanity of a "normal" patriarchal society. During recorded history, there has never been such a thoroughgoing attempt to permeate profane structures throughout the world. Every major area has been taken over, the life of the land has been undermined, and even the smallest pockets of resistance are being systematically eradicated. Tribal traditions are destroyed in Africa by contralised bureaucracies under the guidance of east or west European neo-colonialists, the mountain fastnesses of Tibet are invaded by China under the banner of a western materialism. Indeed, wherever any vestige of a normal spiritually-based life-style survives, it is fighting a losing battle against the economic and political forces pitted against it. The patriarchal religious organisations, even where they do represent a genuine spiritual concern, have too little spiritual knowledge even to understand what is taking place, and for the most part lend their support to the very forces which are destroying them in one form or another. By accepting the division between "religious" and "secular" life, the patriarchal religions have compromised the very principle upon which religion is based and undermined their own foundations. It is no coincidence that this contradiction lies at the very foundation of that religion which has been most bound up with and implicated in the development of modern profanity, in the words "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's". Nothing belongs to Caesar, because all life belongs to God. If Caesar is given anything, there is no logical reasons why he should not have everything. Which is exactly what has happened. But when a civilisation is spiritually disrupted the seeds of its material destruction are already sown. That lesson is clear both from spiritual knowledge and from history. Anyone who has given the smallest study to the ecological crisis facing modern civilisation over the coming century will realise how close that destruction is in physical terms, even assuming that the nightmarish arsenals of nuclear and other "advanced" weaponry are not unleashed upon the world. People who have studied the subject are constantly amazed that governments with the facts of almost unavoidable disaster before them simply treat the problem as if it did not exist. What they cannot know, studying the subject from a purely material standpoint, is that this problem is not in itself the disease which is destroying profane civilisation, but merely the physical symptoms of a far greater spiritual disease; and that even if catastrophe could in some way be circumvented, without a complete spiritual re-orientation of society, it would only be a postponement of the inevitable. From a long term spiritual/historical perspective, what is far more disturbing than the fact that profane society is in its final days is the fact that it has spent those days in destroying all the things which might provide human life with continuity after its demise. Unless a very sudden change of direction takes place – of which there are no signs – there will not be any remnant of a normal life-style left in any part of the globe to which the refugees of the collapsing civilisation may flee for shelter and which may become the basis for renewal. It is this which makes the modern phase of profanity more dangerous than any of its predecessors. Yet even this is not a mere "accident" of the material level. Even in this a definite pattern can be traced. Ever since the ending of the matriarchal period (which can almost be termed a "second Fall"), there has been a steady and continual decline or downward spiral. Each profane phase has been more intense and more widespread than its predecessor. Each "recovery" after the inevitable downfall of the profane civilisation has been less complete, incorporating religions even further removed from the archetypal faith, and forms of society ever farther removed from the authentic Norm. We have now reached the extreme point of descent, at which we are confronted with a sort of mirror-image or inverted parody of normal world-order. During the matriarchal period (except in the last decadence) a single faith was held in every part of the world. Throughout the various phases of matriarchal civilisation over countless thousands of years, the one religion was that revealed by the Goddess from the beginning of earthly existence. Although social forms in different times and places varied over this vast period, each one was essentially normal, in that it was based on absolute spiritual principles and always judged every action not by its outward result or "efficiency" but by its spiritual or ritual effect.* After the "second Fall", spiritual Truth was fragmented. Different civilisations took up different aspects of the Truth and allowed others to drop. Everywhere the essential Centre and guiding image of the one Goddess was cast aside. Thus the one complete Religion was replaced by a variety of partial religions. Every patriarchal society abandoned the Norm, but each fell further from it or came closer to it, passed through profane phases and quasi-normal phases according to the vicissitudes of each particular culture. Now, for the first time since the matriarchal period, the world adheres to a single faith, a dogmatic scientistic materialism completely closed to any form of spiritual reality (it matters little whether the adherents of this faith pay lip-service to the masculist religions, or rather to the burnt-out shells of them); and the whole world stands in the same relationship to the social Norm: that of complete rejection and alienation. The long process of decline is rapidly approaching its ultimate point: the total inversino of the normal state of human existence. After this there can be no new "recovery", for the ever-dwindling spiritual residue left over from the matriarchal period will finally have been exhausted. The human race is rapidly approaching spiritual extinction; and extinction on the spiritual plane would, of course, be mirrored immediately on the physical. The instruments of this physical extinction are already in place, awaiting only the touch of a button. Is there any escape from this extinction? In the strict logic of cause and effect, there can be no escape. But we must not forget that the sacrifice of the Daughter permeates the whole of fallen creation, and that through this, the mystery of mercy may always overrule the logic of causality. Through Her death and resurrection, every death contains the potentiality of a resurrection. Even now, She is actively making available the means of a new rebirth. The religion of the matriarchies has once more become a reality on earth. The seeds are being sown from which a new world may arise out of the ashes of the old. But the Goddess cannot save us without our active participation, for that would be to destroy our free will. She is making the way ready for us, but we must take it. This means firstly that we must return to Her spiritually; but it must be a return which involves not only an intellectual decision, but a radical re-orientation of our whole lives. Secondly, we must begin to lay the foundations for a rebirth of the normal lifestyle. This means beginning to construct a way of life based upon ritual and spiritual principles; one in which outward activity is directed not only to outward aims, but is continually "referred back" by its traditional form to the centre of all being. The transfer from abnormal life to normal life is in essence a transfer from living "on the surface" to living "from the centre". The Solution: first principles The ways in which we may begin to recover the normal life will vary with the situation of each person or group of persons. No full attempt to realise the active life can be made outside the context of a community, or at least a relatively large and self-contained household; and between the ideal community and the most unfavourable individual circumstances, every intermediate stage will present its own peculair problems and advantages. Here we will attempt only to give certain fundamental principles. There are two forms of the normal life: the active life and the contemplative life. Of these, the higher, and in the fullest sense the more active, is the contemplative life. In this life the soul is fully active and moves among the highest spheres. The activity is not "intellectual" in the profane sense (i.e. exclusively concerned with the lower faculty of reason), nor is it emotional; it is a raising up of the self to the plane of pure Intellect, or pure apprehension of Absolute Reality, "changeless, beyond the impermanent flux of time" [1 Teachings 12:6], that is to say, "behind" the purely relative events or "shadows" of the material world. This activity of pure Intellect is expressed in the Teachings in the words "then shall mind rise up into soul and soul breathe the breath of Spirit" [1 Teachings 12:23]. It is, however, an extraordinarily strenuous activity as well as requiring a special aptitude (that is to say, a special state of moiraic** [werdic] development), and is, therefore, only the vocation of a relatively small number of people. Our main concern here will be with the active life. Whereas the contemplative life penetrates behind the veil of matter to the Absolute Reality that lies beyond, the active life remains within the flux of material events. However, it is fully aware of the relative nature of these events, and realises that they exist only by virtue of the external Cause and Ground of all being. Therefore no material objective is regarded as an end in itself, but rather, all outward activity is seen as the expression of inner Truth. Contingent existence is continually referred back and re-connected with the first Cause from which it flows and upon which it depends. The contemplative life and the active life are in no way opposed. Rather they are complementary, although not equal. It is said that the contemplative life is the elder sister of the active life, guiding and protecting her, and also teaching her to grow up in her own likeness. For the ultimate aim of the active life (although it is not necessarily to be achieved in the present incarnation) is to transcend outward activity and penetrate the veil of matter; for all truly normal activity leads eventually to the same point. The active life is sometimes called the "slow way", or the "gentle way". Nor should too rigid a distinction be drawn between the two lives, for all outward activity, in so far as it is authentically normal must contain at least a minimal contemplative element. Its very ritual pattern is a constant "reminder" of the eternal Truth which underlies it. Furthermore, certain outward activities, particularly in the sphere of artistic expression, are wholly or partly contemplative disciplines, whose creations in a normal society are judged not by their "originality" or individualistic self-expression, but by the contemplative realisation of the Whole that shines through them, as expressed in the saying: "not I, but She that creates through me". This true art is practised both by contemplatives and by those in active life (usually under the direction of contemplatives). Which raises the converse point, that even the strictest contemplative is, by the very fact of inhabiting a material body, necessarily involved in some degree of outward activity, and that by her very presence, as well as by her spiritual ministry, she makes an important, not to say essential, contribution to the normal active community. There is a third life, which may be called the passive, or passionate life. This life is lived according to no Principle, but is merely bent upon maximizing pleasure and avoiding pain. This life is, strictly speaking, sub-human, since it relinquishes the free will which is the essential characteristic of humanity, making the soul the passive plaything of external influences, biological drives, and physiological reactions. The passive life may be exceedingly "active" in the outward sense at times, but this is not the authentic activity of the soul, but merely a reaction to stimuli. The soul is active only in the sense that a log is active when borne by a rushing torrent. It is this perversion of the active life which constitutes the whole life of abnormal societies. This life is doomed to a continual frustration, since in its constant round of outward activity it is desperately seeking a depth of peace and satisfaction which, by its very nature, is not be found in the flux of outward things, but only in the Reality which underlies it. In the first instance, a considerable part of the development of the normal lifestyle will be negative, since we must begin to cut off the channels by which the passive life is inculcated into us by profane society. The difficulty here is that our natural inclination to take the line of least resistance is always working against us, since the passive life is by definitino the line of least resistance. The false self is naturally inclined towards the passive life. That is why the introduction of western attitudes and lifestyles into relatively normal eastern societies has often broken up the traditional way of life even when it was not enforced upon the people compulsorily, merely by the power of "temptation". We will put ourselves in a very vulnerable position if we underestimate this power, and we will do wel, as far as possible, to remove ourselves from it. One particular example of this lies in the profane mass-media, particularly television. The very nature of the media, quite apart from anything they may actually say, is so constituted as to inculcate a profane world-view. They are designed to concentrate upon change, novelty, "news", in other words, to fix the consciousness exclusively upon "the impermanent flux of time" [1 Teachings 12:6]. The visual nature of television is designed to fix the mind on outward "things", rather than on fundamental principles, ideas or contemplative truths. These faults are quite apart from the specifically profane and materialistic scale of values which underlies every word written or spoken, the more or less dogmatic assumption that only the outward events of the physical world are "real", and that they exist by and for themselves, with neither cause nor purpose beyond them. This is no less true of those who profess a religion, for except when they are speaking on specifically "religious" subjects, they invariably express views indistinguishable from those of the materialist, though perhaps with a few "religious" catch-phrases by way of decoration. They have no specifically spiritual analysis of the world. These may seem merely negative evils, but all evil is essentially the negation of good, just as all cold is the negation of warmth. Evil is not an entity in its own right. The profane media inculcate a whole view of the world designed to entrap the soul within the outward flux and blind her with the veil of matter. There is a temptation to feel that since we realise these things, the media can have no power to persuade us, and therefore can do us no harm, although they may harm others. Ironically, this is based upon a fallacy which has its roots in profane rationalism: the fallacy that "intellectual" persuasion (in the profane sense) is the only danger. The answer to this lies in the Teachings: "Thoughts of the mind pass not away, nor vanish into air. For every thought is a builder in the subtle world that lies about you." [1 Teachings 11:1–2] Each time we expose ourselves to particular thoughts or currents of thought, structures are being created or strengthened within the psychic and astral material of our subtle bodies. This last principle is one of the keys to both positive and negative action in the construction of the active life. To put it another way, the material world is really a realm of symbols rather than realities. If those symbols reflect the Reality which underlies material existence, they participate in its quality of realness. If, on the other hand, they become severed from it, they become like the arbitrary scrawls of an infant on a piece of paper, devoid of significance. It is necessary, therefore, to exclude negative influences and to construct positive ones. Grace, rhythm and a certain formality are the keynotes of the active life. The modern use of language and gesture, for example, fosters a casual and "outward" approach to life. Here one must be careful in the use of terms. What is certainly not wanted is a "formality" of the kind cultivated by the governing classes of late patriarchal societies, but rather the easy and natural formality of the central matriarchal period: gestures of respect, such as the reverence, formulae of speech. One recalls the simple and natural use of "Mari be praised" on referring to the homeliest blessings, and the everyday use of invocational forms. The remembrance that all words are a species of magic ("I am ... between the lightest word of greeting and the thought from which it flows": Teachings [1 Teachings 11:35]) is a guarantee of a formality of the correct type, since the instinct for correct speech is latent in every human being. Nevertheless, language as a whole is a very involved subject, since the whole modern dialect, and indeed the late patriarchal languages as a whole are very far degenerated from archetypal language, which, very far from having its origins in animal squeaks and grunts, as profane mythology suggests, was a direct manifestation of Divine Intelligence on the particular fallen plane which we inhabit. There can be no question of the sudden creation of an artificial language. We must work with the languages we have, allowing the Madrian communities to develop first their own dialect, and gradually, over several generations, their own distinctive language. Insofar as this language develops out of an authentically normal way of life, it will be a sacred language, having retained and purified that which is true in contemporary languages, replaced that which has been lost and discarded all that is false. The fostering of developments of this sort is another reason for the isolation of the community, so far as possible, from profane influences. The slowness of this process should not be a source of discouragement; firstly, because it is one of the marks of abnormal society that its thinking never extends beyond the next generation, owing to its immersion in the cults of speed and immediacy, secondly because there is no implication that the very earliest forms of purified speech will not be an immeasurable improvement on current profane language. Very much the reverse; once the real nature of language is understood, and that understanding is put into practice, we have already stepped over the boundary which divides normal speech from profane speech. We are encamped, so to speak, in sacred territory; the task that follows is the building of a permanent citadel. Clothes, decoration, forms of recreation, etc. should never be devoid of higher meaning, for that would be to imply the self-existence of material things. This is not to say that, for example, our stories and poems should all be "religious" in the restricted sense which that term has acquired in profane society. On the contrary, all authentic art whether "folk-art" or "high-art" has a metaphysical dimension; the genuine fairy-tale is always an allegory of the soul's quest (it is the characteristic failure to understand this – or at a deeper level, the unconscious realisation of it – which has induced modern society to banish the fairy-tale to the nursery. It was never written for children alone). So-called "realistic" art, on the other hand, has for its "moral" the self-existence of material events. The distinction between art and craft is also false, based on the one hand on the profane cult of "originality" in art, and on the other, upon the degeneration of craft into mere "production". In a normal community, both art and craft are the expression of primordial principles, with traditions of form and style governing every aspect; which far from limiting the expression of the craftsmaid, provides her with that field of expression within which alone she can convey genuine meaning. Spiritual leadership and direction is particularly important in the process of distinguishing harmonic forms of expression from dissonant ones, and in creating cohesion within the community as a whole. Profane society, while imposing an increasing uniformity of lifestyle and activity upon all its members, together with a continuing "standardisation" of the artefacts and influences which affect their everyday life, encourages a lack of discipline in all matters of abnormal behaviour and a disregard for all forms of courtesy, respect and obedience on the personal level. This is calculated to strengthen the passive life, by making the individual increasingly subject to impersonal stimuli, while simultaneously undermining the willed control of outward actions which is the essential characteristic of the active life. On the esoteric level, it also helps to prevent any workable alternative to profane society from emerging by ensuring that personal discipline is absent and genuine authority (which is always based upon spiritual principles) is confused with the tyrannical (because unfounded) pseudo-authority of profane society. Thus the vast majority of "alternatives" founded on purely secular, or inauthentically "spiritual" bases, have collapsed in a welter of conflicting personalities. While it is unlikely that a Madrian community would make this elementary mistake, it is essential that a sound authority whould run throughout the community, and that no concessions be made to the falsely "libertarian" conditionoing of profane society (the express purpose of which is to destroy the liberty of the soul by making her "passion's slave"); while at the same time, that authoirty should be constantly referred back to its spiritual bases and not exercised outside them, otherwise it will degenerate into mere tyrannt of the profane order. Crafts and work which is in tune with the rhythms of nature are best suited to a normal community; and it is essential that an entirely new rhythm should begin to pervade the community as a whole. A slower rhythm; a rhythm suited to the human being and her natural environment rather than to the machine; a rhythm which will welcome the re-telling of old stories without craving for novelty or novels, which in all things is released from the necessity for ever new stimuli. A new simplicity and a sense of wonder in simple things, which is in a sense a refining of the perception until it begins to see the unity underlying all things. The profane rhythm of the working week must give way to the sacred rhythms of the moon and sun. These rhythms are an expression of the childlikeness enjoined upon us in the Mythos. They are nurtured by the ritualisation of life, and by the setting up of patterns in dance and song and ritual drama. Above all, they will be fostered by the habit of contemplation, and the presence within the community of at least one person pursuing the fully contemplative life will be of inestimable value. Touching only on principles, we have said but little about the actual practices which a community might establish. Some of these will be suggestes in the companion paper to this, to which this paper really forms a preface. Yet the principles enunciated here will prove fruitful if applied contemplatively and prayerfully to a living situation. They may be summarised in three words: live from the Centre, harmonise, control. They are perfectly expressed in the following passage, and in the whole of the Teaching from which it is taken: "It is not possible that a flute should play at once two tunes. Nor may any maid pursue at once true wisdom and the false. Therefore, be you attuned to the music of Eternity, and dance within the rhythm of the Mysteries and the seasons. Let your soul be simple, that she may be a mirror of perfect love." [1 Teachings 3:43–5] *Which, incidentally, was as successful in achieving happiness, peace and – within the limits prescribed by a non-materialist society – prosperity as civilisations wholly devoted to these temporal aims have been unsuccessful. **Moira [werdë] is the stream of moral/spiritual causality which continues from one incarnation to another. 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 Normal Life 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/05c74f5d548be3b99f9a9d9f9db1cbf4.pdf f99a6be661d9cb282e78cc08eb9b4181 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 (2pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX An enigma of modern psychology understood in light of the Madrian faith. Modern psychology has been a mixed blessing. Insofar as it has increased awareness of levels of mind beyond normal waking consciousness, it has done humanity a great service, but insofar as it has tried to explain these in purely material terms, it has attempted to deprive humanity of even such glimpses beyond the 'natural' as nineteenth-century scientism allowed. One truly significant aspect of the psychoanalytic method, however, has been its recognition of the importance of myth. Even Freud, the most materialistic of psychoanalysts, realised that in order to express the emotive and psychic quality of a psychological situation as well as merely describing it intellectually, one must harness the archetypal depth of myth to one's purposes. He did not realise, though, that the psychological level of myth is inextricably connected with far deeper levels of spiritual meaning, and that one cannot use one without unconsciously bringing in the others. It is because of this archetypal depth that the idea of the Oedipus complex has had such a profound effect on modern thought – despite the fact that most of its details are incorrect. Baldly stated, the idea of the Oedipus complex is that nearly every man has within him the repressed and therefore unconscious desire to kill his father and marry his mother. The evidence upon which Freud came to this conclusion was correct; but Freudian theory is founded upon a thoroughly materialistic world view – the belief that human beings have no souls, but are merely 'naked apes.' This gave rise to two prejudices which distorted the interpretation of the evidence: 1. The prejudice that we cannot have had any existence previous to this life – and therefore all feelings held from an early age must originate in childhood experience (or even 'womb-experiences.') 2. The prejudice that we have no higher or spiritual impulses – and therefore all motivation can eventually be reduced to animal instincts – hunger, aggression, sex, etc. The Oedipus story is, in its origins, connected with the early stages of the patriarchal revolution (see footnote). On the surface level, it is a chronicle of an attempt to overthrow Madrian-Matriarchal society and religion, and the tragic consequences which followed. But as the overthrow became complete, the story took the form of a paradigm of the feelings of the deep unconscious of every person – a longing to return to the Goddess, and a bitter resentment against the cruel and arrogant 'father' god of wrath, and the repressive social order set up by his followers. When one realises the tremendous emotional power of past and present Madrian devotion, and the tender and delicate relationship which is built up between the aspiring soul and her Goddess, it is easy to understand the depth and bitterness of the psychological trauma when she feels herself rudely thrust aside by a coarse and violent-tempered 'god' claiming first to own and possess the Goddess, and then denying Her existence altogether. Under the influence of the first of his two prejudices, Freud, who saw every fairy-tale queen and king as types of mother and father, of course interpreted Jocasta and Laius in the same way. Under the influence of his second prejudice, the only motivation he could come up with for the whole things [sic] was his good old standby – sex. And because of his emphasis on sexual (and purely heterosexual) motivation, he could not conclude that women could also have 'Oedipal' feelings. He therefore invented for women the 'Elektra complex,' a pitiful afterthought which has made no real contribution to the understanding of psychology. The Oedipus complex has become a household word because it expressed something which people instinctively felt to contain a great truth – but how many people have even heard of the 'Elektra Complex'? The fact is, however, that the so-called Oedipus complex not only applies to both sexes, but applies more strongly on the whole to women, because they tend to be more spiritually developed. The sexual aspect of Freud's theory, and of the patriarchal version of the Oedipus myth itself are both typical of the spiritual immaturity of masculist culture. The primary act of communion is the union of the female soul with female Deity – not because all Her worshippers are female, but because the soul itself is female. The matriarchal Celts taught that upon death the soul took an 'angel' form, and that all 'angels' were female. The patriarchal Greeks and Romans spoke of their souls as 'she.' Only Christian dogma ended this with its unsophisticated doctrine of bodily resurrection after death. (Incredibly, this doctrine is still officially held by all the major Christian denominations to this day!) The Freudian version of the Oedipus complex has two extremely harmful effects. Morally, its effect is at one with that of puritan patriarchalism – it both crushes and innures; making people feel 'sinful' because of the wicked thoughts which they are unconsciously harbouring, and making them feel that since they have wicked ideas which they can't control, they aren't really morally responsible anyway. The second effect is to help establish repression as a condition of life. One's most basic desire is to kill one parent and marry the other. One cannot possibly do that, therefore one's most basic desire must be repressed. Emotional life is to be founded upon frustration from the beginning. Once we have understood the real nature of the desire, we see also that it can and must be fulfilled. We must overthrow the male 'god' and all the materialisms and puritanisms that follow in his train. We must return to the love of Our [sic] Lady, the one true Deity. * Footnote. See Robert Graves, "The Greek Myths," Penguin, vol. II, pp. 9–15. 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 Oedipus Complex 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/06b88ada3f2855c0f0afa83646035d52.pdf 390dbfdfd14967cb2fc54b9b349f7132 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madrian Literature Circle Description An account of the resource Documents issued by the Madrian Literature Circle between 1973 and 1982. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Madrian Literature Circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973-1982 Language A language of the resource English Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data loose leaf, handwritten (18pp.) Text Any textual data included in the document The Pattern of History and the Quest of the Soul Every religious tradition informs us that the Golden Age or Garden of Eden lies in the past, and that humanity has for long grown ever more distant from absolute spiritual reality. The modern mythology of progress, on the other hand, which has been called 'the religion of the newspaper' preaches a strange inversion of this, holding that we have developed from a superstitious primitiveness, and are rapidly approaching moral and physical perfection on earth through the multiplication of material acquisitions. The earliest civilisations known to archaeology were controlled by women, ruled by priestess-queens, and devoted to the service of the Goddess. Although these civilisations existed for many thousands of years, we possess relics only of their declining centuries when the people were beginning to fall away from their highest religious ideals. Certainly there was a harmony between society and the highest forces of creation of a kind that has rarely been dreamed of since. Nevertheless, certain areas of life were becoming 'secularised': certain elements of materialism were creeping into popular thought and practice, and although these were so far removed from the materialism of our own time that a modern mind might well think of them as forms of the highest spirituality, nonetheless the earliest ideals, which saw the whole of society as one great temple to the Goddess, and all of life as a single and exuberant act of devotion, were declining. And with this decline came a corresponding decline in cultural achievement. Even when the decline had gone so far that nomadic patriarchal tribes from the east had been allowed to make considerable inroads into religious thought, and a second wave of more savage patriarchal invaders had found it possible to overrun large areas, suppressing matriarchy and introducing the cult of the male god of wrath – even at this stage, those states which remained matriarchal maintained a culture whose remains have provoked effusive tribute from even the most soberly academic of historians. Thus, comparing matriarchal Crete with the surrounding male-governed states, the normally unenthusiastic Harold Hauser writes "...what a difference in the whole conception of art! What freedom in artistic life in contrast to the oppressive conventionalism of the rest of the Ancient-Oriental world!" While the art-historian Mrs. Groenwegen Frankfort writes "Here and here alone, the human bid for timelessness was disregarded in the most complete acceptance of the grace of life the world has ever known." Jacquette Hawkes describes the queen-priestess's [sic] palace at Knosses as having "...a residential style, a domestic civility and convenience that seems to anticipate European palaces of the Renaissance and after rather than imitating its contemporaries in Egypt and the Orient." In the language of progressism, it was some three thousand years 'ahead of its time'! Yet perhaps more important than all these things are the qualities which the matriarchate lacked. Miss Hawkes has described how contemporary male rulers surrounded with huge painted scenes of battle and bloodshed. Prisoners bound and writhing, severed hands and severed heads are displayed not only on paintings covering walls and stairs, but also in a great variety of carved objects. This form of decoration – the glorification of violence which has characterised the patriarchate through practically all of its existence – is found not only in contemporary Europe and the Orient, but as far afield as Central America. "And yet in Crete," writes Miss Hawkes, "where hallowed rulers commanded wealth and power and lived in splendid palaces, there was hardly a trace of these manifestations of masculine pride and unthinking cruelty." The difference between these two cultures is best expressed by saying that one was a spiritual culture and the other is a material culture. In one culture, even the architecture expresses the 'grace of life'. In the other culture, even the Supreme Being is represented as an oriental potentate. It is true that at certain times the later religions did recapture certain of the truths of the original religion. Nevertheless, there is a fundamental difference between the two kinds of religion which is expressed in a very profound symbol – the unpronounceable Name of the Goddess. This Name is represented by the three letters I H V (the Trigrammaton). When the earliest priests of the patriarchate set out to masculinise the Godhead, they did a very revealing thing: a thing which, consciously or unconsciously, symbolised the inmost nature of the culture which was to dominate the world for the next five thousand years. They added one letter to the Trigrammaton, thus forming the Tetragrammaton, I H V H. Deity was no longer expressed by the spiritual number three, but by the material number four. The full significance of this can best be understood in the light of the spiritual history of that group of souls which make up humanity. When intelligent creation first turned from the Goddess, the universe was translated from the sphere of ideal forms or Divine thoughts into the realm of matter which includes not only the level of dense material which we call the physical world, but also the etheric and other subtle planes. This separation from the Goddess was not to be permanent, but as by her own choices and actions the child had strayed, so, if she was to retain her essential freedom, by her own choices and actions she must return (it is to make this possible that the holy Maid has come to us). At this time all souls were at a much higher level than now, living on the subtlest planes and still very close to the Goddess. Since then every soul has taken its own direction – some descending to lower planes to incarnate in human form, others coming back into union with the Goddess, and multitudes of others moving through every level of existence from the lowest to the highest. Life on earth, too, has been subject to continual change. At the beginning humanity was still close to the higher realms, sensitive to etheric currents, and to the mental and emotional vibrations of others, able to see 'spiritual' entities and to bring about changes in physical matter by a simple operation of the will. The powers of individuals have never been uniform, and at every time there have been some possessed of the highest faculties; but there is always a general level, and because of the sensitivity of the individual soul to the psychological atmosphere about her, she is rarely able to rise very far above that level. In our own time the level is very low. At the height of the last matriarchal period, however, humanity reached a peak of achievement. Both culture and human faculties were brought to a high point of refinement. It is difficult to describe exactly what took place at that time; but one way of putting it is to say that idea was much closer to actuality than it is now. All our actions begin with an idea and consist of the attempt to bring that idea into actuality. In the Divine Mind, every idea is at once actuality – that is what we mean by Divine creation. We are told that in the beginning 'the daughters of the Goddess' – intelligent creation – possessed a measure of this divine prerogative. As a creature grows further from her Goddess, so her ideas and her actuality grow further apart. We may also say then that humanity had in the period of which we are speaking come very close to the Goddess – for the more a soul is in harmony with Divinity, the more she is in harmony with all things, and the more all things harmonize [sic] with her will. This is the highest meaning of magic. This high level of culture was attained by the dedicated cultivation of the spiritual. The ideal of beauty was applied to every area of life, for only the beautiful was fit for a gift to the Goddess; and all life was to be given to Her. The ideal of perfection governed everything – from the tallest building to the briefest gesture of the hand, each thing must achieve perfection after its own kind. When this is understood, we may see how a decline was possible. Why should those who have a complete magical control over the things about them ever choose to lapse from that state? Why should the choose hardship and effort in place of a life of sublime grace? Because the effort entailed in maintaining themselves at this level was inconceivably great. Because the closer we come to the Goddess, the more She demands complete perfection. We are released from the physical demands of life that we may meet demands of a higher and purer nature whose fulfillment is immeasurably more satisfying than anything we now know, but also immeasurably more difficult. Our Lady demands that we become the perfect and resplendent creatures that we were when She first created us. She leads us patiently, step by step; She does not at any time demand more of us than we are able to perform – but neither does She demand one whit less. Our Lady is pleased beyond measure with our first faltering turning to Her. She is delighted with every loving act and each small sign of progress. But She is only satisfied with perfection. There can be no standing still on this path. Either one is moving forward or one starts to slip back. As soon as one ceases to make moral effort, idea and actuality begin to drift apart and the psychic and magical faculties begin to lose their sharpness. This is not a punishment any more than the faculties themselves were a reward; it is a simple matter of cause and effect. Where idea and actuality separate, the world becomes for all practical purposes more 'solid'; its material is more intractable; and we are increasingly driven to the use of physical intermediaries between ourselves and the matter which we would affect rather than the direct employment of the will. At its most sophisticated the use of such intermediaries becomes an advanced technology. It is ironic that such technologies are claimed to increase human control over the environment, for while in one sense that is certainly the case, in the deepest sense the reverse is true. The exclusive study of the 'objective' physical conditions of the world brings about precisely the psychological conditions which promote the continuing 'solidification' of matter. It also tends to foster an attitude of mind which precludes any serious spirituality and therefore drives people yet further from the Goddess, Who is the fount and source of all creative activity. Must we say, then, that the achievement of the matriarchal age has been completely lost? No, for not only did that period help many souls to refine themselves until they could leave the world and continue their upward journey in the heavenly spheres, but also, every true aspiration to perfection is a precious creation that continues to exist in a realm beyond time and place. This is another and more immediate question which emerges from our brief survey of the pattern of history: for those of us who have remained in the lower planes and in the cycle of reincarnation, is it much harder in this present age for us to come closer to the Goddess? There is a twofold answer to this question. In the first place, it is true that insofar as we have drifted further from out Lady we have a greater distance to return. But it is also true that the farther we stray from the light the fainter it becomes until we can no longer see it at all, and must be lost to flounder in eternal darkness; or even if we should catch a glimpse of it, the tiny increase of brightness which would come from much arduous striving toward it would be of such small comfort to our souls that we could not find the courage to continue. That, in the nature of things is the situation in which we must find ourselves. And yet so great is the love of our Lady for Her children that She could not allow it to remain so. She must come to the assistance of Her children. But how can She, Who is pure unbounded energy and abundance come into a place tinged with restriction and limitation? To put it another way, how can She, Who is pure good, come into a place which contains evil? How, in short, can She come into that place which by its very definition is that-place-where-She-is-not? The nature of that problem is made more difficult for us to understand by the fact that we think mostly in the language of the materialist culture. One the material plane it is easy for a mother to pick up her straying child and carry her back home. She compels the body, but she does not compel the soul. She picks up the body and puts it where it ought to be, but she cannot pick up the mind and put it where it ought to be. She cannot make the child think what she ought to think, feel what she ought to feel, like what she should like and dislike what she should dislike. The mother can teach and encourage the child, but she cannot do these things for her – if she could the child would quite literally cease to have a mind of her own. We could not speak of it being for the child's own good, for the child would simply have ceased to exist as a person. Now on the spiritual plane there is only soul – we have no body that may be carried. Our Lady cannot take us to Her, for is She did so, She would destroy the essential freedom which gives us our existence as intelligent personal beings. We must come to Her of ourselves. It may be asked why She may not come to us, but this too is a question born of material ideas – for coming and going are the only ways of speaking, for there is neither time and space in the spiritual world. The choice that each of us has made from the beginning of our separation was that we should be apart from the glory of Her light and energy. She cannot annul that choice without annulling our personal existence. The distance between ourselves and the Goddess is not real space, but the outward spiritual manifestation of our inward spiritual rejection of Her. It was necessary, then, that She should come to us shorn of the glory of Her light and energy; that She should put Herself on the same spiritual plane as us by making the same choice that we have made – by rejecting Herself. Thus She came to us in the person of Her Daughter. The coming of our Lady is symbolised in the story of Her nativity, and the terrible Act of divine self-rejection in the story of Her passion and death. We cannot ever understand the full meaning of this Act, but some insight may be gained by meditation upon these words from the Easter [sic] Liturgy: She Who is life and life alone, the quintessence of life, Went to death for our sakes; She Who is all and only light Gave Herself to be cast into the profoundest darkness; She, Who is wholly one with the Mother, and is the Mother, Who is the glance of Her eyes and the breath of Her mouth, And the strength and cunning of Her hands; She alone suffered the most terrible severance That we might be reunited. Through this sacrifice has our Lady come to us so that we need not be without Her love even in the lowest depths of fallen creation, and even when we cannot open our eyes to Her light, we have but to stretch out a hand with faith into the darkness and it shall be taken by another hand infinitely strong and infinitely gentle; the hand of One Who has suffered more deeply than we can ever suffer; the hand that shaped the universe. The answer to our question, then, is that we are in any age able to turn to our Lady and to receive Her love, 'so far as we are able to contain it'. Nevertheless, it is certainly true that it is ever harder to turn to Her and to keep Her image before us as we are increasingly surrounded by a leaden atmosphere of dull materialism and receive no encouragement on any side. Materialism has increased throughout the history of the patriarchate. Although it has been a continuing process there were two major religious shifts. The first was when Christianity replaced the Classical religions – the patriarchate could no longer understand a purely spiritual account of divine Actions, and had to imagine that the divine Sacrifice was an actual historical event – also with this went the worship of our Lady under the names of the classical Goddesses. The second was the so-called Reformation – attuning of Christianity to the mechanistic minds of those who initiated the factory system; over-urbanisation and all the other trappings of the last phase of materialism – along with this went the destruction of the worship of our Lady under the name of Mary. It may seem, then, that this flight from the Goddess into materialism might continue forever, and that the souls caught up in its current might be eternally lost. To earthly eyes it may appear so; but in its final stages, the advance of materialism falls subject to a law stated in the Oracle of Changes thousands of years before the dawn of the patriarchal age. This is the law of Climax and Reversion which states that as any temporal movement reaches its point of greatest extension it begins to change into its opposite. We can see how this works in the case of patriarchal religion: the rationalistic spirit of its most extreme form has increased to the point where it has destroyed its own beliefs and ushered in a period of general irreligion – with protestantism [sic], the destructive vibration of Christianity reaches the point at which it shakes itself apart. Yet all the values of civilisation have their source and meaning in religion – divorced from this source, they are but empty husks to be swept aside by the criticism of alienated minds which are brilliant in their destructiveness, but can offer no positive solutions. They speak of 'social conscience', but cannot answer the question of why there should be a society in the first place; they talk of 'human happiness' but cannot say why human beings should exist at all, or what a human being is – how much less can they know in what true happiness might consist. Their 'science' can answer the question 'how' with considerable accuracy (thought even here its limits are severely marked) but it cannot even ask the question 'why'. Life divorced from an understanding of its religious meaning becomes increasingly purposeless and void; that is what is happening to the present society – with irreligion the snake of patriarchal-materialism bites it own tail and begins to devour itself. There is a still deeper reason why we cannot be carried downward forever on the tide of materialism; it is also the profoundest reason why no soul can ever be lost. Because this concerns the highest spiritual truths, it can only be expressed in a symbol. We are told that the highest state of existence consists in beholding the perfect beauty of our Celestial Mother; living in the Divine Image. As we move away from Her, existence becomes less and less like that image until, should we go as far from Her as it is possible to go, at the 'bottom of the universe' we should see a vision so dreadful that to compare it to the most hateful nightmare of high fever were but to make a mockery of it. It is the absolute reverse of our Mother's image. This vision is the most terrible shock that the created soul can sustain; yet although it is an experience of unmitigated horror, its evil is turned to a good purpose, for at the sight of the true face of Evil, every soul is filled with loathing, and must turn to flee back our Lady. This is the final safeguard against 'damnation' for no soul, seeing evil in its absolute form, can fail to hate it. The absurd doctrine that Deity will allow the soul to lose her essential freedom at this point so that she cannot turn, but must suffer eternally is the cruellest of all blasphemies. Though she has the furthest possible distance to travel to her Mother, yet the Daughter, who, through Her sacrifice, has penetrated even to the lowest depths, is waiting to comfort her, and to help her upon her way. This is not to suggest, of course, that human society has collectively plumbed the uttermost depths of Hell, for this can only occur to the individual soul. But a shadow of that awful vision is creeping across the modern mind, and some of the more sensitive souls are already experiencing a revulsion from it. In this revulsion, they are turning again to our celestial Mother. And it is here that we see the true miracle of our Lady's grace. It is part of Her promise that those who love Her shall never lack a way to turn to Her. The most perfect way in which an earthly creature may turn to Her is by participation in Her divine sacraments, but when, due to the laxity of Her servants, these were suppressed by Her enemies, She was called by the names of the pagan Goddesses. When these too were suppressed, She too for us the name of Mary, Maris Stella, Regina Coelis. When this cult was suppressed, still there were the folk-beliefs and popular Marian devotion. And now even that is taken from us, the darkest hour seems upon us – but look again. The light has not vanished, but grows stronger; the sacraments themselves are openly performed once more. The wheel has reached its point of farthest extension and can but return. The waxing has begun. --- Note: The term 'spiritual world' used in this paper should not be confused with the 'spirit world' of the mediums which might more accurately be called the 'psychic world'. It refers to the highest plane of fallen existence which intersects with the lowest plane of perfect existence. The most refined souls have their whole being in this sphere, but all actions of intelligent souls on any plane have spiritual significance and therefore operate also in the spiritual world. 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 Pattern of History and the Quest of the Soul 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