A few years ago, a man and a woman could not pa.s.s a day together in mutual conversation, and interest, without encroachment upon the one emotion which they were supposed to hold in common--s.e.xual attraction.
That was indeed the whole sum and substance of communication between the two s.e.xes, if we may except the rare instances which history has made much of, because of their rarity--women of the French salons, who have become famous for their wit and beauty, in neither of which attributes did they outstrip the average self-supporting woman of today.
But custom has slowly, but perceptibly, established the possibility of a frank and non-sentimental companionship between the male and the female, and the result is that both are much more clear as to the true character of their sentiments toward each other. Neither is blinded by the force of undifferentiated s.e.x-attraction.
There must be some specific basis of mutual love; hence we have the vogue of the "affinity," and by the term is instantly recognized a special force of attraction, independent of undifferentiated s.e.x alone. It is known that there is at least an a.s.sumption of an interior attraction, and we insist that affinity marriages, however incomplete as yet, are still superior in motive to that of mere marriage, where it is a case of _a_ male and _a_ female, united by propinquity; family considerations; commercial interests; cla.s.s a.s.sociation; or what not.
Affinities at least have the grace to presuppose a special s.e.x-attraction. They argue for the ultimate goal of special and permanent selection, even if they fail to reach it.
That there will be many failures during the journey from the sense-conscious life, to the soul-conscious life, is a foregone conclusion. The pathway of Love has always been a th.o.r.n.y one, but those who are on the high ground may look across into the rose-strewn garden, and know that the little G.o.d is aiming his arrows at the interior nature of those whom he would unite. He is not blind. His sight is illumined and he sees that the soul can unite only with its mate. True it is that "the course of true love never did run smooth,"
but let us hope that the time is coming when it will be less th.o.r.n.y.
_There are no mismates in soul-union._
This truth is the "secret of secrets" of the Hermetics. It is the hidden wisdom of the initiates; the alchemical mysteries of the Ancients. It is told to us in the fairy story of the Sleeping Princess--a story which is found in the folk-lore of every country of the globe. It is the philosopher"s stone, which when found, opens the door to all wisdoms.
_There can be no mismates in soul-union._
Neither can there be any s.e.xual "temptation," or desire outside of this union, when once found.
"But never shall he faint or fall Who lists to hear, o"er every fate, The sweeter and the higher call Of his true mate.
I hear it wheresoe"er I rove; She holds me safe from shame or sin; The holy temple of her love I worship in."
A time when "the twain shall be" virtually, "one flesh" and the "outside as the inside" is not a chimerical dream.
When the physical body is as much reverenced as is the spiritual; when in fact, the soul is revealed (unveiled) to our mortal consciousness; when the mind has been freed from its load of prejudices and fears and doubts and belief in sin; then we shall, indeed, truly see each other.
We do not see each other now, unless perhaps we have developed that spiritual insight which is not blinded by appearances, but which contacts the interior nature. But the revealing, the uncovering process has begun. We have come to the time so long antic.i.p.ated; so earnestly promised, when "naked and unashamed" we should "re-enter the lost Paradise."
Well, the women, G.o.d bless them, are as naked as the tender morality of our police officials will permit and as unashamed as it is possible to be with the handicap of a puritanical ancestry, which was so evil-minded as to suspect G.o.d himself of sin when He formed the "wicked" body.
Prudists may howl; and legislators may legislate; but the course of the Cosmic Law which would free us and bestow upon us Peace and Love and Happiness without stint, has never been stopped, although it has been obstructed.
Let us examine some points of the Hidden Wisdom, in the light of this postulate, and see if the conclusion is not warranted.
CHAPTER VIII
THE HIDDEN WISDOM REVEALED
As we have previously observed, there is what may be termed a religious mysticism and a scientific mysticism. When viewed from the standpoint of the unprejudiced seeker, who finds the truth that is in everything, these two phases of mysticism are but photographs of the same subject taken from different points of view. So, too, mysticism itself is, in the final a.n.a.lysis, nothing more than a long-distance view of science.
Like the proverbial pot and kettle, which we are told made much noise over calling each other black, we find the scientist frequently disdains the mystic, and the mystic may retaliate with equal disapproval of the scientist"s position. Both are right, each from his point of view. Each is looking at life from an opposite end of the same pole. The scientist looks at the effect and the mystic at the cause. In their final calculations they arrive at the same conclusion, although they call it by different names.
The scientist says that everything proceeds from the one eternal energy. The mystic perceives the spiritual co-existent with the external. Religious mysticism calls it "G.o.d"s word made manifest." In reference to this definition of religious mysticism, perhaps the phraseology used by William Ralph Inge, in his "Christian Mysticism,"
is the best possible exposition of the position of the religious mystic, if we may separate the two phases. Inge says: "Religious mysticism may be defined as the attempt to realize the presence of the living G.o.d in the soul and in nature, or more generally as the attempt to realize in thought and in feeling the imminence of the temporal in the eternal, and the eternal in the temporal."
Which is to say exactly what the scientific mystic says, using other terminology; and likewise what the physicist says or will ultimately say, as his researches lead him into the finer and finer realms of discovery.
The scientific mystic, like Archimedes, believes that in order to measure the purpose of external creation, he must "base his fulcrum somewhere beyond."
The scientific mystic, therefore, starts from the center of the Circle; from the crux of creation; and he finds the X, which is the hypothetical base of algebraical science--the unknown quant.i.ty of which s.e.x is the symbol. Reasoning from effect back to cause and from cause forward to effect the mystic finds the equation complete, perfect, and likewise simple; but it is simple only after we have deciphered it. Like the prize puzzles which are designed to exercise the inductive faculties, mysticism, when we have not the key, is a most tantalizing enigma. Most "practical" persons dismiss it with the same superficial idea that they entertain in regard to puzzles, saying "it is only a puzzle"--utterly ignoring the value of exercising the inductive reasoning faculties.
Fairy stories are popularly supposed to be for the entertainment and amus.e.m.e.nt of children. In reality they are the universal language of symbolism. There is not a single fairy story which has not been handed down from generation to generation, and, what is more suggestive, each story is told with astonishing lack of variation, in every tongue and throughout every nation on this earth.
The stories involving the turning of men into animals and their final restoration to human form, as a reward for some service, some sacrifice, typifies the two-fold nature of Man. He may live in his animal, or exterior nature; or he may develop his spiritual, or interior nature; through service; through unselfish love. Our limited mortal consciousness is responsible for the tendency to personify everything, instead of to realize the principles underlying all expression. G.o.d and the Devil have been the personification of the two phases of the principles of Evolution, from animal man to spiritual man.
Romulus and Remus have been presented as an actual and specific instance of twins; likewise Castor and Pollux. Almost every child instinctively alludes to himself or herself, as either "the good little me" or the "bad little me." "O, I didn"t do that; it was the bad little Dorothy," or "Harold," as the case may be, is the child-like way of expressing the innate consciousness that there is an interior and an exterior nature to all of us.
The union of G.o.ds with mortals, which forms the gist of Mythological tales, symbolizes the G.o.d-like and the mortal qualities inherent in human nature. Mortals raised to the abode of the G.o.ds; and the G.o.ds descended into mortal life; symbolize the interchangeability of what we term matter and spirit--the power of trans.m.u.tation of the lower into the higher life.
Volumes could be written upon the subject, and we will therefore try to confine our reviews to the symbolical traditions which deal most directly with the relations of the s.e.xes.
In religious symbology, the story of the ark stands as the supreme type of creation, through the conjunction of the s.e.xes.
The cherubim are, when all is said and done, nothing more, nor yet less, than spiritual children--the result of spiritual s.e.x-union.
And in this later synoptic mysticism of the ark of the Covenant, we are informed that "every gift within the tabernacle is willingly offered." If we will but contemplate the volumes of wisdom contained within that sentence, we cannot fail to conclude that every infinitesimal particle of coercion in whatsoever shape and form, individual, economic, ethical, or religious, must be excluded from the regenerated, perfect, ideal s.e.x-relation; otherwise we do not attain it.
If the Ancients seemed to take some of these folk-lore stories too literally, we of this "practical" age, do not take them literally enough.
We have imagined that s.e.x, and the s.e.x function, began and ended in the physical. This view is excusable in the case of the materialist, if there really be such a person but it is obviously a stupid view for the theologian, who regards this life as the door to spiritual life.
Since s.e.x is the cause and the result of what we know of creation; since it is the foundation of all the qualities that we know as spiritual laws; friendship; unselfishness; fidelity; paternal solicitude--it is absolutely certain that the most beautiful things we know here must have a correspondence in the life hereafter. Of these beautiful things in life, babies come first; with birds and flowers and music as fitting accessories.
But to return to the ark of the covenant. The perpetual flame on the altar (the center) is the undying Flame of spiritual love--and by that we mean s.e.x-love, let it be understood. If we seem to repeat this too frequently it is because of the almost general habit of the race to apologize for s.e.x-love. The erroneous idea obtains, that spiritual love is s.e.xless. All too frequently we come across the phrase, "with a love that has in it nothing of human love," the writer evidently anxious to convey the impression of tremendous spirituality and the consequent elimination of the s.e.x function.
And so we emphasize once more, and we may do so again, the a.s.surance that the symbol of the never-dying flame upon the altar is typical of the never-dying spirit of s.e.x-love. Spirit is ever symbolized by flame, as in the "flaming sword" of the archangel.
The Deity upon the seat of the altar symbolizes the bi-une s.e.x-principle of creation.
The reason that the Jewish people have claimed that they were "G.o.d"s chosen people" is because, in their symbolism of the ark of the Covenant, all Israel was grouped under the tabernacle. The formation of the tabernacle proves that it typifies the mother"s womb. The tabernacle was guarded by the priests who _were sworn to purity_; thus they symbolized the esoteric truth that the pure spiritual s.e.x-union bestows immortal G.o.d-hood.
Let us take another story, that of the life-token. This is best told in the story of the Holy Grail, although it is found in all the fairy-books of all nations, in the language and form befitting the race to which it belongs.
In the original, that is in the earliest recitals of this life-token story, we find that the thing left behind, as a _center_ (which is always guarded and protected in various ways), was a tree. Here, we have the phallic symbol as the life-token. But in the story of the Holy Grail, the cup is the life token to be guarded; it is the sacred symbol of the quest and it is of a design resembling the red rose of the Templars. This time it is the yoni--literally the _chalice_ of the _holy communion_; the centre of the radiant circle, which is the answer to all the problems within the radius. It is the search for, and the finding of, the balance in counterpartal union. It is the X of Being, and only the purest and the n.o.blest of the Knights of the "Round Table" essay the difficult quest. The "mound of Venus" is another name for the "Round Table."
Again is emphasized the necessity for purity, and this purity, although including all the spiritual qualities: fidelity; bravery; self-sacrifice; humanity; love of truth; culminates in s.e.xual purity.
"Blessed are the pure in heart (the pulse of the soul) for they shall see G.o.d." We revise this latter part, and we say "for they shall be _G.o.ds_."
Let us consider the story of the "sleeping Princess." She is depicted as a princess, first of all, because she is the daughter of a king; a king is an earthly ruler, or exalted person. Esoterically, she is the daughter of the exalted G.o.d, and she is the soul. Sometimes this story is told in the male gender, but everywhere the essential points are the same.
Wagner, who is known as a Mystic, has ill.u.s.trated the story in Brunhilde and Siegfried. Brunhilde is an immortal--a G.o.ddess, who renounces her immortality to become a woman.