The Golden Ball

Tara of the Oracles
The Alchemical Twins Face the Fates

Fellowship of Isis Liturgy by Olivia Robertson

The Gateway. I: The Golden Ball

Ritual No. 1

A Child Shall Lead

The Octagonal Temple of Alchemy

Priest Alchemist: (To Twin Apprentices Aiden and Elaine) To obtain Admittance through the Gates of the Labyrinth of Destiny, we need to invoke the Goddess Ariadne, Mistress of Past, Present and Future.

Priestess Alchemist: I invoke Thee, Ariadne, to guide pilgrims through the Labyrinth of Fate so that Divine Consciousness is attained through the spirals of Space and Time.

ORACLE OF THE GODDESS ARIADNE

I could not be your Guide if I had not entered and faced the Labyrinth myself. So it is with all those Deities Who incarnate as humans: Brigid, Isis, Quan Yin, and Osiris, Maitreya, Christ, Krishna. The innate divinity within each being is concealed that it may be discovered, and divinity won through hard work, goodness and wisdom.

Those who enter the physical path of spiritual attainment face the hardest ordeal, and therefore are the most honoured. Even failure only means a swift return to the Mothers.

So have good heart! The sphinx wishes its riddle to be solved: the creator of the Labyrinth plans for its paths to be found. Have courage! The labyrinth is within My Mind and so is open to all who understand and love Me.

Priestess Alchemist: We give thanks to the Goddess Ariadne.

Priest Alchemist: (To Aiden) Aiden, you have chosen the Hermetic Path of the Mysteries. You long to solve riddles: to discover the meaning of symbols. So we choose for you the pilgrim path of the Tarot, which some claim to be the Lost Book of Thoth, Egyptian God of Wisdom, friend of Isis. Do you accept the challenge?

Aiden: With good heart I do.

Priest Alchemist: Then you need to put aside all your acquired knowledge, and to make a fresh start. No longer are you an Initiate. Entering this more advanced plane, you are The Fool! Study this card from the Marseilles Tarot pack and describe what you see. (hands Aiden card)

Aiden: This is the first card yet it is marked Zero. I know that zero was once condemned for use as being heretical! It starts the Fibonacci sequence leading to the Golden Mean. It depicts “Le Mat,” a Fool guided by Mercury – there are wings on his hat – and he holds a bag. He is looking back over his right shoulder at a dog - no, I think it is a cat - who has torn a large hole in his breeches, thus exposing his right buttock! This is a ridiculous emblem - so I suppose it is profoundly shamanic …

Priestess Alchemist: You learn little in this way using your knowledge. You need to enter trance and so begin your journey. Describe what happens. We shall be with you but may not help you.

Trance Journey

Aiden: There is smoke - it slowly fades leaving me standing on a desolate plain. It seems to be made of lava and before me is a hill which I recognise as the mountain behind Knossos in Crete. Ah! I must be facing the Ordeal of the Labyrinth! But where it is? I see nothing but extending plains of cracked grey lava, with small plumes of smoke coming from it. How can I face the ordeal if there is no Gateway, no building?

Suddenly I hear a laugh. A small girl stands before me, wearing a T-shirt and short black skirt - a school uniform. She is holding a large computer. She says: “You’re looking in the wrong place. It’s right under your nose!”

I find her rather impertinent. I ask her who she is. She says, “I’m not sure of my own name - we are all Ariadne. I’m called Indigo. The real Me is in stasis with my friends - in a far-off star.”

I find this hard to believe. “Then you hardly need that,” I say, pointing to the computer. I dislike computers. Never use them if I can help it.

She seems to read my thoughts. “This one won’t spoil your dreams,” she says, “because it works through dreams.”

I don’t care for know-all children. So I ask sharply, “All right - if you do know, show me the entrance to the Labyrinth!” “You just follow your guide,” she says.

“You?”

“No no, I’m much too big. There he is!”

I expect Anubis, Guide of the Pathways. I see no-one.

She points.

I see a tiny scarab beetle scurrying on the edge of the lava. Suddenly he disappears down a crack. “There’s your entrance,” the girl says, and runs off. I feel I have been too casual with her. I call her back. But she has taken from her skirt pocket a gleaming golden ball which she is throwing in the air and catching it. It glitters in the sun. So I have to run after her. She runs off and I hear her voice receding into the distance.

“Follow the ball. It will bring you through the Gates.”

I chase after the rolling ball - and at first nothing happens. I trip and fall… The sun has disappeared. I am falling - falling - into total darkness.

I am terrified. I see the beetle, which has become enormous. No! I am tiny. I have somehow fallen through this lava tube, down an endless abyss. Save for the glimmering ball I am in total darkness. But now I am so small, the ball has assumed gigantic proportions! It is like a sun. To my astonishment I see that the beetle has spread out its wings and flown into the orb. I overcome my fear of fire and I too throw myself in this sun ***

I find heavenly light within me and I am filled with joy. Standing before me is the girl, but now she is a Shining Being holding a Golden Thread she is unwinding from the sun!

“I told you I am Ariadne,” She says. “My Golden Thread joins spirit to spirit throughout the starry universe. You have found the key to the Labyrinth. It is within yourself.”

End of Trance

Reports are shared and thanks are given to the Deities. Aiden is told he has won his degree.

End of Rite

Sources: “The Metamorphoses,” Ovid, translated by Joseph Davidson, edited by S. G. Owen, Oxford University Press, 1959. “Parallel Lives,” ‘Theseus,’ (volumes 1 - 12) Plutarch, translated by Bernadotte Perrin, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, United Kingdom, originally published in 1914, contemporary reprints available. “Description of Greece,” (books 1 - 10, in five volumes), Pausanias, translated by W. H. S. Jones and (vol. 1 - 2), W. H. S. Jones and H. A. Omerod (vol. 3 - 4), R. E. Wycherly, translator and editor (vol. 5), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, United Kingdom, 1926 - 1935, contemporary reprints available, Loeb Classical Library series. “A Classical Dictionary,” John Lempriere, George Routledge & Sons, London, 1911. “The Greek Myths,” (vol. 1 - 2), Robert Graves, Penguin Books, London and New York, 1959. Books on Crete.

Website: About.com: Greece Travel, by deTraci Regula, Greece Travel Guide: http://gogreece.about.com/

Specific links to Crete on About.com: Greece Travel:

http://gogreece.about.com/od/crete/Areas_Crete.htm

http://gogreece.about.com/od/cretesights/ig/Hiking-the-Samaria-Gorge/

Tarot of Marseilles (French: Ancien Tarot de Marseille), earliest known variants dating possibly to fifteenth and no later than seventeenth century. A standard Marseille Tarot deck first issued by B. P. Grimaud, 1930, Paris, France, is the version used for these rites.

Note: Plutarch’s “Parallel Lives,” often referred to simply as “Lives” is probably his best known work. The biographies surviving to the present day are those of Alexander, Alcibiades, Aristides, Brutus, Cicero, Demosthenes, Dion, Julius Caesar, Marius, Mark Antony, Nicias, Pericles, Philopoemen, Pompey, Pyrrhus, Romulus, Solon, Sulla, Themistocles, Theseus and Timoleon.

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