| Brigid of the Spheres |
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| Color drawing by Olivia Robertson |
Fellowship of Isis Liturgy
by
Olivia Robertson
Brigid of the Rainbow Planets,
Adventures of the Alchemical Twins
The Octagonal Temple of Alchemy
"Earth is a Reflection of Heaven."
Introduction
1. A New Humanity is Born
It has always struck me as curious that philosophers and clerics see creation as an act of a dominant God,
creating life forms and other chemical beings as a potter makes – and breaks – his figurines, vessels, whatever
he fancies according to his needs. We have here an on-going cycle of a God Who either likes or disapproves of His creations,
whether great or small. In this mind-set we are totally subservient to our creator, as is a child’s Barbie doll or a
clay teapot. The rift between creator and created is total. We grovel or fight, we deny or believe – it is all the same.
We are powerless as much as an ant that we can crush with a boot.
Matriarchy brings us realization of facts. All organic
beings are born from the Mother, whether from egg or womb. Love nourishes and cares for us. We are all children of the Great
Mother. We are, along with crystals and stars, a part of Divinity, for we were born of Divinity.
Last autumn I became
aware of Indigo Children, a hopeful phenomenon of children who can alter their own DNA. We have a baby curing itself of AIDS!
So my mind went coursing back through the years, recognising Starchildren. Here possibly is one of them.
Starchild
Years ago – in 1975, before FOI was founded, my brother Lawrence, his wife Pamela and myself were awaiting the arrival
of a young mother and her little boy – about three years old. They were on their way by sea to London. It was a lovely
spring evening, and I picked primroses and plum blossom for their bedroom – the haunted Red Room – which, like
most of our rooms in the Castle, had ghostly visitants! This room has a gentleman in a powdered wig, who inspects new visitors
to see, presumably, if he dislikes them. I think he is my great-great-great grandfather…
The young mother and
child – I will call them Kate and Don – sat at our dining room table, watched by moving eyes of family portraits.
Kate told us hilarious stories about her London life, while Don solemnly drank from a huge mug of milk. We had had difficulty
getting him up the stairs because he said he saw a man in a cap at the head of the stairs, holding a walking stick. We had
seen no-one. His mother, embarrassed, commanded him to go up. So Don did, carefully walking round some invisible gentleman
– possibly my departed father. *** Pamela commented: “What he doesn’t see, his mother does”. *** Psychic
Irish!
During our tea, my young nieces, Melian and Anna, burst in talking about plans to pick yarrow, their bare feet
on dewy grass at dawn. Not at that time conversant with Celtic festivals, I took no notice.
Some time after Don had
been put into the red-room four poster bed, Kate came down in a state of great amazement. “I went upstairs to tuck Don
in”, she said, “but he told me that the Lady had already tucked him up. Then I looked towards the fireplace. It
had been empty. But now a woman dressed as a nurse was lighting a fire. The flames shot up. I noticed she was wearing a swan
brooch. Then she crossed the room and opened the window. Then she disappeared.” I asked what she had felt about the
lady, and she said that both Don and herself liked her, and accepted her presence.
Next evening, after pleasant walks
round the grounds, Kate put Don very early to rest in preparation for the night sea crossing. She brought him up a mug of
milk and a banana at five o’clock – still broad daylight. Later she came rushing down the stairs with a strange
tale to recount.
“When I came into the room with the tray,” she said, I went over to the mirror. When
I looked round towards the bed where Don was asleep, I saw the Lady. This time it was daylight so I saw her distinctly. She
stood by Don. And she lifted her finger to her lips. This time I was really taken aback. I gathered that I should not wake
Don up.” Then she vanished.
It was only a fortnight later that I began to see meaning in these happenings. The
gathering of yarrow by the girls was because it was Beltaine Eve. I looked up the mythology and this is what I found.
The
secret Mysteries of Isis were known to concern the story of Isis and the child. Isis, seeking for her lost husband Osiris,
was discovered seated by a well by the daughters of the local King and Queen. They ran to their mother, Queen Astarté, who
told them to bring the woman to her. This they did. The Queen told the strange woman whom she took for a homeless wanderer,
that she had given birth to an heir to their kingdom, a little boy. She sought for a wet-nurse to suckle the baby. Isis, who
had given birth to the God Horus, said that she could suckle the boy. So she was entrusted with the task.
Here we
begin to scent a Mystery, for Isis was Mother to the Rising Sun, Horus, the transformed Ra, whom Isis had taken into her starry
body of the night, and given birth to him at dawn. So she duly suckled the baby – but not with food. She gave him the
essence of the hidden sun within her. And the child grew in strength, goodness and beauty.
But the Queen Astarté grew
more and more suspicious of this transformation. So one night she hid herself to watch. To her horror, she saw the nurse light
a supernatural fire with leaping flames. And she watched with terror as the nurse held the child within the flames. The Queen
sprang forth with a cry and seized her child, tore him from the flames and held him to her. She accused the nurse of being
an evil witch.
Here we have the actual words translated from the Mysteries. The supposed witch shot up to about eight
feet high and revealed Herself as the Goddess Isis. And she uttered these words:
“Wretched woman, you have done
harm beyond repair. If you had let me, I would have made your son as the Immortal Gods. But now he shall be as other men,
and suffer and grow ill and die. But those who would aspire to win my Grace, I shall teach the Mysteries.”
And
so were the Mysteries of Isis taught for thousands of years. And these gave place to the Eleusinian Mysteries of Greece, where
the same Myth was told, with Demeter as Isis, and the boy was named Demophoon, the Initiate.
I felt full of hope with
this modern enactment of the Mysteries. The Egyptian and Greek mothers not only refused the initiation for their child, but
actually accused the Goddess of being evil. But our modern Irish girl and her son, nurtured as Irish exiled in London, thoroughly
enjoyed the supernatural! They naturally accepted what is our divine heritage: the acceptance of God The Mother of all that
is.
2. The Rainbow Spiral
How could I allow the questing twins to rest on their laurels – having achieved the twelve alchemical
degrees of the zodiac, and not pursue the other twenty degrees of the FOI Spiral of Alchemy? I kept wondering what happened
to them. Learning the Mysteries through identification with attractive individuals helps us to respond not only with the mind
but with the heart. That is why television dramas have such an appeal, whether domestic upheavals or science fiction perils.
We go on semi-trance journeys, unmonitored.
We humans, save for those termed “computer heads” or “Borgs”,
cannot live without love. We long for loving kindness and happiness which may become ecstasy.
Long have I pondered
on the miracle of love. It is blind, exceptionally so, and a wife can happily live with a mass murderer – dwelling only
on a good hidden side certainly not apparent to his victims. Concentration-camps guards, having fled to South America, have
led bourgeois lives with merry Christmases with loving families. It is surrendering to a power greater than oneself that is
the hallmark of passion. “I could not love thee dear so much, loved I not honour more.” This was so of the poet
but is not usual. When love strikes – aptly called an arrow, honour flies out of the window.
A Renaissance view
of the matter was well described by the 15th Century Florentine philosopher, Marsilio Ficino. He would teach his pupils of
the Ladder of Love. This ladder began in a lowly way with Eros. This could be overcome by a higher form, Platonic Friendship.
This gave place to the highest form of love, Agape, Divine Love. Marsilio was a Catholic priest and Mystic. Doubtless, in
his case, gazing upon his refined countenance in his portrait, it worked with him.
But it certainly does not work
out with most people. Has one ever come across a case where erotic passion was genteelly transformed into friendship? It was
the charismatic Pico della Mirandola who pointed this out. He had brought Cabala to the Platonists – and was imprisoned
on this account for heresy. He presented Cabala as a board with hooks on it on which one could successfully hang the keys
of all faith in one Tree of Life. Fortunately he was rescued by the empirical Lorenzo de Medici, who may have had to pay a
lot, not on dogma but with cash.
So I myself used to draw coloured diagrams of the Chakra system of the human body
– those many-coloured psychic centres that glow brilliantly or dimly within us all. I related these with the octave
in music, as described by the teacher Gurdjieff. And I discovered an interesting phenomenon.
We can in our life’s
spiritual journey indeed travel by a ladder to heaven, from down to up step by step, hitting each note of the octave, taming
each psychic centre at a time. Monks and nuns, those with an innate respect for philosophy whether Buddhist or Western, have
succeeded in attaining Enlightenment by this suppression of “the lower nature.” I noticed that this method could
be described in the West as belonging to the Piscean Age. I drew in the symbol of the tied fish. The passions were tied –
two fish caught in a matrimonial stasis. Then I changed the drawing to Vesica Piscis. This represented two intersecting circles.
Here was freedom! Each circle was unconstrained in its true self, yet was in harmony with the other. A curious shape appeared
between the two circles, rather like a fish or insect. This beetle form symbolised the union of opposites, free from domination
or ties.
I turned to the octave in music. Here the creation of chord was easy. I used to play the piano. To strike two notes adjoining
each other produced discord. Every alternative note brought harmony. The eighth note was totally in resonance with the first.
The octave achieved perfection – same but different, on a higher or lower key. Here was the spiral of transcendence
through all spheres.
Now for colours. Light emerged from a black tunnel of space. The sudden emergence of Light has
been compared to “a big bang.” But this also occurs, not “horizontally” in the material cosmos, but
with our tree of Life, ascending and descending through the spheres of being. The colours of the rainbow emerged from White
Light, each with their own sound. Every colour has an octave “up” and “down” – infrared –
ultra violet. So sound and colour ascend and descend the spheres of consciousness, from a crystal to a Buddha. These powers
play through our chakra system in our bodies, as a violinist plays on the strings of a violin. Colours affect our very being.
There is no inherent duality in the cosmos. Life and consciousness play through the spiral of creation.
I love metaphysics
– but these are not always practical! How did this affect us? Can one announce that one’s passion has been transformed
into friendship? Can one force homosexual people to become like the majority? Can one force oneself to be celibate? Can one
change one’s passions, one’s make-up? From the priest, we have the traditional answer, “yes.” Be converted
or be damned. Hence we have the ongoing “cover-up” – lies, hypocrisy, fear of being exposed before friends
and enemies.
There is a scientific humanist way, which is becoming increasingly popular with philosophers, teachers
and psychiatrists. This compassionate materialism is leading to a revolution in education both for children and adults. But
there is a snag. Materialist humanism, when promoted by those with no knowledge save that of the earth plane, produces first
hope and then despair. There has been an increase in suicides among young people with apparently every advantage.
If
you offer a humanist way of life devoid of the “supernatural”, those with a strong life force become bored and
then angry. What is the point of a long life, health, opportunity for creativity, and Good Relationships – if all ends
in the grave? Desperate men and women try to hang on to life, with “nip and tuck” plastic surgery – with
hormone treatment – with steroids. The more adventurous take chemicals, which, although at first they may give glimpses
of other realities, can burn up the very chakras that they have artificially stimulated.
When I was given a visitation
of the Goddess Brigid, She was showing me a way that would bring us access to other spiritual and better realms without taking
to extreme asceticism and self-punishment. What she demonstrated to me was simple. She was showing the production of sound
from striking certain crystals, and that these affected particles in a vacuum column. All this was performed not in the material
state but in what many call “the etheric” sphere, more refined than our earth, but still the higher part. All
of our apparently solid material world emanates from this more luminous sphere. Hence miracles may take place in soul consciousness.
This realm was a part of a twisting spiral of life involving the Infinite Love and Truth of Deity throughout the Universe.
Since my experience with Brigid, and of attaining the Inner Sun of the Isian and Eleusinian Mysteries, I have tried
to comprehend what I was being taught. I know that what I receive I need to share with others. Of course so many people know
about attaining the spiritual life, but what had I to offer?
What I feel is essential is the acceptance of Deity –
by whatever Divine Name you use – as transcendental, but also immanent throughout all creation. Duality is a delusion.
Obviously we need to be aware of dangers, of evil, of cruelty and injustice, and to conquer these. But we do not conquer what
is real. We are eliminating distorted shadows! So in coping with the most malign person, we can only help by concentrating
on the divine spark within, which is projected from the Heart of the Mother. It is made easy for us to understand Deity by
accepting this as Father and Mother. The Father judges and acts. The Mother gives birth and nourishes. Both principles are
within each creature. For instance it is the lioness who hunts!
Alchemy as a word stems from the Land of Kem, Ancient
Egypt. The Art was developed in the Stone Age, when animism prevailed. To Stone and Bronze Age peoples, all life was honoured
as being some Deity. In Egypt you have crocodiles with earrings. Sacred crocodiles represented those mighty lizards that once
roamed our earth. Cats had necklaces. And this was not the “teddy bear” animated cartoon mentality of the sentimental!
Cats were Deities not because they were furry and purred, and sat on the lap – but because they killed rats and mice
with elegant efficiency, and so saved the Egyptian harvest. Cats kept ships free from plagues, like the mediaeval Black Death
that came through ships from the Far East.
So now, in the Atomic Bomb era, what are we to do? For me, the answer lies
in a diagram of a figure of eight. My lower self is on earth, subject to outer happenings, pleasant or unpleasant. But my
higher self is the upper part of the eight and I draw more and more upon that era, through a flow of energy circulating through
my body, celestial and terrestrial. It is the caduceus of Hermes – DNA, Melusina, the Kundalini.
What makes
the chords of Rainbow Alchemy so pleasant is that life becomes easier! The positive, active part of oneself – call it
Yang – works through the base of spine, solar plexus and throat. It culminates in the Crown Centre on the head. The
other power, Yin, works through the sex and womb centre, the heart and the brow – eye of vision. It is hard to hop from
one chord to another. However, I notice that in this dawning new era, humans are developing both powers according to need,
rather than sexual orientation.
In the past men were trained to use the “Yang” chord, giving them heavily
muscled bodies, with iron solar plexuses, and thick corded necks – the He-Man model. To be She-Women, girls were trained
to have graceful necks, weak hands and feet and tiny waists. But now people are beginning to look different, the men more
elegant, the women stronger. We approach the mysterious Ancient Egyptian zodiac constellation, created with Leo the Lion and
Isis, Virgo – the Androsphinx.
To explore one’s own psychic centres not only may bring us spiritual awareness,
but a relationship with our planets. Each is a Power-House reflecting a harmonic of the Central Sun. The Alchemy of the Goddess
Brigid extends one’s consciousness through the colour spectrum and musical octaves beyond this material world –
yet embraces it. “As Above, so Below.” Earth is a reflection of Heaven.
Back to Brigid of the Rainbow Planets
Back to FOI Liturgy
Color drawing of Brigid by Lady Olivia Robertson dated 1989. All rights reserved. Reproduction is prohibited.
The COI website staff thank the artist for permission to display this work.
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