eternal life, one in Christ, all-knowing self, begotten, element, natural worlds, harmony, transmute, image reminders, Apocalypse, self-value, higher self

Element of Spirit in a World of Matter

Posted on by Harold Boulette

“Adam was created out of the Element, out of the attracting of the Heart of God, which is the Will of the Father, and therein is the Virgin of the divine Virtue. … The Fierceness of the Devil would fain have dwelt in the Heart of God and have domineered over it, and have opened a Center there, which the Fierceness without the Light cannot do; for every center was generated and opened with the Kindling of the Light. …

“And when the Light of the Sun appeared in the fierce Harshness, then the Harshness became thin and sweet, even Water, and the Fierceness in the fire-flash was extinguished, …Thus the evil Child pants after the Mother, and would get to be in the Mother in the Element, and yet cannot reach her. … The Spirit of the Stars and Elements would continually get again into the Element; for in the element there is Meekness.” ~Jacob Boehme

The Element

The Element of Jacob Boehme is not earth, air, water or fire. It isn’t even the allegorical meaning of those elements on the material plane: solid, liquid, gas, energy. Adam was not a being of matter until the Great Fall. God created him as a spiritual being. Therefore, the Element Boehme speaks of is spiritual in nature. We can call it the creative force of God, the thoughts of God, or the imagination of God. The important thing to understand is that it is spiritual.

Divine Virgin

Here again Boehme is saying something that doesn’t match conventional Christian thought. The virgin here is not Mary, the mother of Jesus. It is another reference to that creative power of God. Since God creates beings without he use of sex, the creative power can be called the Divine Virgin. It can also be a reference to Sophia, the Gnostic Goddess of Wisdom which is not a separate being from God, but a part of Him.

The Fierceness and Harshness

The Fierceness of Boehme might be called the ego of the Devil. The Devil was Jealous of God’s creative power and wanted to be able to use it. He wanted to get into the Heart of God. But he really couldn’t He didn’t have the most important ingredient for creation: the Light. So without light, what he created became the Harshness, the realm of matter.

Matter is harsh because in it things, suffer, grow old, and die. In the realm of matter, beings must kill and eat other beings to survive. That is about as much harshness as possible. That is the realm of Satan. Continue reading “Element of Spirit in a World of Matter” →

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thought world, higher cause

Eternal Will of God And the Torment of the Fall

Posted on by Harold Boulette

“The eternal Will is incorruptible, and unchangeable; for the Heart of God is generated out of it, which is the end of the nature and of the Willing. If the Spirits of the Torment had put their imagination, and their desiring Will, forward into the Light of meekness, into the End of Nature, they should have continues Angels. But seeing out of pride, …they awakened the center of Torment in themselves. They same they now have, and they were thrust out of the Light into the Darkness. …
“If you do not understand this writing, then do not as Lucifer did in taking up the Spirit of Pride, … but seek the humble Heart of God, and that will bring a small grain of Mustard seed into your Soul.” ~Jacob Boehme

Eternal Will

Boehme is correct in saying that the Will of God is incorruptible. Yet that eternal Will created Lucifer and the other fallen angels which did become corrupted. That seems impossible. It implies that God created something corruptible, so how could His Will be incorruptible?

Here is where we get a paradox, a kind of catch-22. In order to create the Angels in His Likeness, they had to have free will. God has free will, so the angels needed it also. But with it, they could choose to be fools and idiots. A few of them did just that.

Center of Torment

I’m not sure exactly what Boehme is calling the Center of Torment. In any case, Lucifer and other angels let their Egos puff up to the point where they thought they could make decisions as well as God could (sound familiar, anyone?).

The result was that in awakening this Center of Torment, they choose to “create” an alternate reality to that of God: the realm of matter. I put create in quotes because they didn’t truly create it from nothing as God does, but by altering, deforming existing spirit into matter. By creating this level of reality called darkness, they were violating God’s will, yet God could not prevent it or they wold not have had free will. Continue reading “Eternal Will of God And the Torment of the Fall” →

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Marcion with St. John

Marcion and Early Gnosticism

Posted on by Harold Boulette

“Marcion was a contemporary of the early Christians (c.85-c.160) and was the founder of the Marcionites. … In many ways, Marcion was not a typical Gnostic. He was relatively kind about Jehova, although he did argue that such a god was unworthy of being the progenitor of Jesus. … Marcion taught in Asia minor and then went to Rome where, in AD 144, he was excommunicated from the church. … He then formed a church of his own, which became extremely widespread and powerful. He taught that there were two gods—one the stern, lawgiving, creator God of the Old Testament, ant the other the good, merciful God of the New Testament.” ~Bernard Simon

Marcion

Whether Marcion was or was not a true Gnostic and Gnostic teacher is debatable, yet it is clear that in some important area he totally agreed with the Gnostic sects. It is also interesting that you don’t hear him mentioned often when people talk about the early Gnostics. An important point found in the quote is that his church was, in the words of Simon, “widespread and powerful”. Even if he didn’t completely agree with some Gnostic teachings, if his church was that successful, he did a good job of at least spreading the basics. Continue reading “Marcion and Early Gnosticism” →

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The Myth of The Fall

Posted on by Harold Boulette

The Myth of Ishtar symbolizes the descent of the human spirit through the seven worlds or spheres of the sacred planets, until finally, deprived of its spiritual adornments, it incarnates in the physical body—Hades–where the mistress of that body heaps every form of sorrow and misery upon the imprisoned consciousness. The waters of life—the secret doctrine—cure the diseases of ignorance; and the spirit, ascending again to its divine source, regains its God-given adornments as it passes upward through the rings of the planets.” ~Manly P. Hall

Primitive manActually, many myths of gods and heroes are allegorical representations of the fall of man from a spiritual being living in a spiritual realm to a physical being living on a material plane. Nearly everything in the quote from Hall is symbolic or allegorical. Let’s take a look at some of it.

Hall talks about the human spirit descending “though the seven worlds or spheres of the sacred planets”. This is definitely not literal, out spirits didn’t pass through seven planets on the way to Earth. What it means is that the spirit descended through seven dimensions of reality. That is true if you assume we started out at the ninth dimension which is the Godhead counting that as one, and we are now in the third dimension. As you descend, each dimension becomes more material and less spiritual or, if you prefer, from higher frequencies to lower ones or from light to relative darkness. As we descended, our spiritual faculties became less and less active, more and more dormant until we arrive in the very material third dimension with them in a state that is like a deep coma. Continue reading “The Myth of The Fall” →

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