Índice Geral das Seções Índice da Seção Atual Índice da Obra Anterior: XII - Sobre a Alma: sua Origem, Natureza, e Potencialidades Seguinte: XIV - Sobre o Gênio ou “Daimon”
Nº. XIII
CONCERNING PERSEPHONE, OR
THE
SOUL’S DESCENT INTO MATTER (2)
I SEE God under two modes, one static or passive, the
other dynamic or active. As the former, God is original Life, Will, Power. As
the latter, God is the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit and the Substance of God are
one. At first there is perfect rest. Then comes a movement of rotation round
itself, and Substance becomes first ether, and at length matter. Every
ultimate particle of matter moves in ether, as do the planets, and has two
poles, that is in the intercellular ether. Their
rotation is intensely rapid; it makes me giddy to look; and by this movement
comes creation. This is accomplished in six periods, and then there is Rest, and
the whole is re-absorbed. Wherefore there is an incessant Putting-Forth for six
“days,” and a recurring Sabbath of Rest.
The more rapid the movement of the
particles of his body, the more material is the man. Hence the object of the
saint is to attain perfect quiescence, and thereby union with the Divine
One. The “Philosopher’s Stone” signifies in one
aspect perfect quiescence, or the re-absorption of matter into spirit through
the absence of motion.
Thus the rigidity we know as matter
is caused by the incessant intense movement of spirit. This truth, for the
Greeks, is represented by Demeter, who is all that is in motion and solid. And
whereas motion is begotten of the Holy Spirit in time, her parents are Rhea and
Saturn. Rhea is “the mother” of the Gods, and is the same as Nox, the original Darkness or Invisible Light of Divinity
prior to manifestation in creation. And Persephone, or Proserpine, is the
daughter of Demeter or Motion – or that which makes visible – by Ether.
Persephone is the liquid or psychic part of man, which consists both of his true
soul and his “fiery” or magnetic perisoul. And the
story of the stealing of Persephone, or rape of Proserpine, relates to the
“fixing of the volatile,” whereby the astral part becomes coagulated into the
material. Belonging thus, half to the body, or lower world, and half to the
heavens and upper world, and thus linking the two together, she is said to spend
six months of the year in Hades and six on Olympus. And she would be
updrawn altogether to the latter, but that as the consequence of her
eating a pomegranate, which – like the apple of Eve – is the symbol of illusion
or matter, she is fixed in the lower world or body, whence her mother, Demeter,
seeks to withdraw her.
You are to understand, further, that
this descent of Persephone into Hades comes about not only through the continued
motion of the particles of the soul, but also through their depolarisation from
the central and Divine Will. The body ought to be in such a state that the
man can indraw
and re-absorb it. But Persephone, through following her own will, reversed the
poles of her constituent substance, and caused this to become fixed. Whenever,
as was the case with Jesus, the man is in union with the central will of his
system, he has power to indraw and
re-absorb
his body. And one of the purposes of the Gospel story of the water being changed
into wine, was to typify this transmutation. Animals
never have this power, as they have no divine spirit, and, therefore, no central
will, to polarise. Man has it only by the Spirit’s descent into him. The eating
of the pomegranate implies the reversal of the poles, and the illusion whereby
the outer becomes the inner, and the individual polarises outwardly instead of
centrally, and, so, becomes fixed and material.
Footnotes
(34:2)
Índice Geral das Seções Índice da Seção Atual Índice da Obra Anterior: XII - Sobre a Alma: sua Origem, Natureza, e Potencialidades Seguinte: XIV - Sobre o Gênio ou “Daimon”