'Have a Blessed and Wonderful Winter Solstice'.

This shortest day of the year marks a blessed heavenly shift when the dark begins to recede and the light to expand again.The winter solstice is forever a time of rebirth, peace and renewal.

The word solstice means “the sun stands still.” And at the Winter Solstice we reach the depth of that darkness with the longest night of the year. Darkness has at last reached its peak. Just like ourselves, we all have moments of darkness, when we don't know how much deeper we will go before the light starts to return (or even if it will). But with much prayer and forgiveness, not just for ourselves, but to everyone we have caused directly or indirectly harm, hurt and pain, We know that the Omnipotent and forgiving God will bless us and lift us out of our darkness within and bring us to welcoming Light, Peace, Unity and Harmony.

In alchemy, Rebis (Latin "res bina" meaning dual or double matter), was the prototype for the alchemical Magnum Opus; the Alchemist Great Work. As a symbol of ambrosia and immortality, Rebis represents the perfect spirit before matter became flesh, giving it gender.

Alchemically speaking, after one finishes the putrefaction and purification stages of separating opposing qualities, those qualities are united once more to become a divine hermaphrodite, the union of spirit and matter, male and female, within a single body. On a deeper level, this unity of opposing forces can be seen as representing a pure awakened state of non-duality.

In Greek Mythology (borrowed from Orphic traditions) Time, also called Aion, created the silver egg of the Universe, with which Phanes burst through as the first born, also know as "Protogonos"; literally, the first-born.

Phanes was a male-female deity of light, whose name means to bring light or to shine. Thus, a bringer of light; a primeval deity of procreation and regeneration. Similar parallels can be seen with Dionysus, who’s epithets were primeval, two-natured, Bacchic lord, ineffable, secretive, two-horned, two-shaped, and thrice-born.

Esoterically speaking, we should all aspire to be like Rebus within and without, below and above. This is how we perfect our spirit and transcend our flesh and skin.

© Written & Art by Carrie Love Ξ

TELETAI

Learn to tame your serpent
By working with your furnace
Rewire your brains synapses
Detoxify your hypothalamus

Activate your DNA
Uncoil your inner naga snake
Awaken all your vertebrae
33 paths to help you guide your way

Knock on the door of the underworld
Third times a charm in the dream world
And if Hermes or Thoth hear you
Viracocha will let you in
To illuminate and liberate
Your dove spirit from within

Open Sesame is the key
To give your dreams lucidity
Vibration is the answer
To our immortality
Darkness hides all of the colors
So do two star-crossed lovers

As you start to transcend
Your Vision Quest will begin
As your dream time unfolds
You'll begin to be shown
Your own eternal Quetzalcoatl Soul

A place where galaxies exist
And time never ends
By raising your breath
You could cheat your own death
Like the Thrice-Greatest Hermes
Once died, but still lives

It's a paradox
A metaphor
Gold Elixir
Alchemy
The Chalice
Or a Labyrinth
The art of chastity

The initiate will progress
In the realm of degrees
If one learns to transmute
Their serpentine seed

© Written by Carrie Love Ξ

The only initiation which I advocate and which I look for with all the ardor of my Soul, is that by which we are able to enter into the Heart of God within us, and there make an Indissoluble Marriage, which makes us the Friend and Spouse of the Repairer … there is no other way to arrive at this Holy Initiation than for us to delve more and more into the depth of our Soul and to not let go of the prize until we have succeeded in liberating its lively and vivifying origin.

- Louis Claude de Saint-Martin

Art by Carrie Love Ξ

Christianity and Catholicism or Churchism
by Louis Claude de Saint Martin  

The principal reproach I have to bring against them is, that, at every step, they confound Christianity with the Church (Catholicisme). 

Now, true Christianity is anterior, not only to Catholicism, but even to the name Christianity itself; the name of Christian is not once found in the Gospels; but the spirit of that name is very clearly expressed, and it consists, according to John (i. 12), in the power of becoming the sons of God; and the spirit of the Children of God, or of the Apostles of Christ, who believed on Him, is shown, according to Mark (xvi. 20), by the Lord working in them, and confirming the word with signs following.

In this point of view, to be truly in Christianity, would be to be united with the Spirit of the Lord, and to have perfected or consummated our alliance with Him.

Now, in this respect, the true genius of Christianity would be less in being a religion, than as being the term and place of rest of all religions, and of all those laborious ways through which men's faith, and their need of being purged from their stains, oblige them to walk daily.

And it is very remarkable that, in the whole of the four Gospels, which are founded on the Spirit of true Christianity, the word religion is not to be met with once; and in the writings of the Apostles, which complete the New Testament, only four times.

Once in Acts (xxvi. 5 – [in Eng. version ; also, Gal. i. 13, 14]) – where the writer speaks of the Jewish religion.

The second, in Colossians (ii. 18) where the Apostle incidentally condemns the religion [Eng. vers. Worship] of angels.

And the third and fourth, in St. James (i. 26, 27) where he merely says: “If any man bridle not his tongue, but deceive his own heart, this man's religion is vain”; and, “Pure religion, and undefiled before God, the Father, is to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world”; examples in which Christianity seems to tend more towards its divine sublimity, or place of rest, than to clothing itself in the dress we are accustomed to call religion.

Here, then, is a table of differences between Christianity and Catholicism Christianity is nothing but the spirit of Jesus Christ in its fulness, after this Divine Physician had ascended all the steps of his mission, which be commenced at man's fall, when he promised that the woman's seed should crush the serpent's head. Christianity is the complement of the priesthood of Melchisedek; it is the soul of the Gospel; and it causes the living waters which nations thirst' for, to circulate in that Gospel.

Catholicism [the Church], to which the title of religion properly belongs, is a way of trial and traveil to arrive at Christianity.

Christianity is the region of emancipation and liberty: Catholicism is only the seminary of Christianity; the region of rules and discipline for the neophyte.

Christianity fills all the earth alike with the Spirit of God. Catholicism fills only a portion of the globe, notwithstanding its title of universal.

Christianity carries our faith up to the luminous region of the Eternal Divine Word; Catholicism limits this faith to the written word, or tradition.

Christianity shows us God openly, in the heart of our being, without the help of forma and formulas. Catholicism leaves us at war with ourselves, to find God hid under ceremonies.

Christianity has no mysteries; the very name is repugnant to it; for, essentially, Christianity is evidence itself, and universal clearness, Catholicism is full of mysteries, and its foundation is veiled. The sphinx may be placed at the outrance of temples built by men's hands; it cannot be seated in the heart, which is the real entrance to Christianity.

Christianity is the fruit of the true: Catholicism can only be the dressing. Christianity makes neither monasteries nor anchorites, because it can no more isolate itself than can the light of the sun; and because, like the sun, it seeks to shine everywhere. Catholicism peopled the deserts with solitaries, and the towns with religious communities; the former, to devote themselves more easily to their own salvation, the latter to present to the corrupt world some images of virtue and piety, to rouse it in its lethargy.

Christianity has no sect, since it embraces unity, and unity being alone, cannot be divided in itself. Catholicism has seen a multitude of schisms and sects spring from its bosom, which have promoted the reign of division, rather than that of concord; and Catholicism, even when it supposes itself in the highest degree of purity, can find hardly two of its members who believe alike.

Christianity would never have made the Crusades the invisible cross it carries in its bosom has no object but the relief and happiness of all creatures. It was a false imitation of Christianity, to say the least, which invented the Crusades; Catholicism adopted them afterwards: but, fanaticism commanded them; Jacobinism composed them; anarchy directed them; and brigandism executed them.

Christianity has declared war only against sin; Catholicism, against men.

Christianity marches only by sure and continuous experience; Catholicism marches only by authority and institutions; Christianity is the law of faith; Catholicism is the faith of the law.

Christianity is the complete installation of man's soul into the rank of minister or workman of the Lord; Catholicism limits man to the care of his own spiritual health.

Christianity continually unites man with God, as being by their nature two inseparable beings; Catholicism, while it uses the same language, yet so feeds man with mere forms, that it makes him lose sight of its real object, and contract many habits which do not always turn to his profit or real advancement.

Christianity rests immediately on the unwritten Word; Catholicism rests on the written Word, or Gospel, in general; and on the mass, in particular.

Christianity is an active and perpetual, spiritual and divine sacrifice, either of the soul of Jesus Christ, or of our own; Catholicism, which rests particularly on the mass, presents only an ostensible sacrifice of the body and blood of the Redeemer.

Christianity can be composed of the holy race of primitive man alone, the true sacerdotal race. Catholicism, resting particularly on the mass, was, as Christ's last Passover, at the merely initiatory degrees of this priesthood; for, when he said to his disciples, Do this in remembrance of me, they had already received power to cast out devils, to cure sicknesses, and raise the dead; but they had not yet received what was most important for the fulness of the priesthood; since the consecration of a priest consists in the transmission of time Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because the Redeemer was not yet glorified (John vii. 39).

Christianity becomes a continual increase of light, from the moment the soul of man is admitted into it Catholicism, which has made the holy supper its highest and most sublime degree of worship, has allowed a veil to be thrown over this ceremony, even inserting, as I have observed before, in the canon of the mass, the words mysterium fidei, which are not in the Gospel, and are contrary to the universal light of Christianity.

Christianity belongs to eternity; Catholicism to time.

Christianity is the term; Catholicism, with all the imposing majesty of its solemnities, and the sacred grandeur of its prayers, is only the means.

Finally, it is possible that there may be many Catholics, who, yet, are unable to judge what Christianity is; but it is impossible for a true Christian not to be able to judge what Catholicism is, and what it ought to be.

* Pages 199 - 202 from "Man: His True Nature & Ministry", L.-C. de Saint-Martin trans. Edward B. Penny

“It did not appear as if he concerned himself in the least, that I did not belong to the Romish Church. He only exhorted me to love the Saviour, to be faithful to Him, and to pray even for him” - “Theosophic Correspondence”.


The Martinist Order - by Papus

The Order, in its whole, is above all a school of moral chivalry, trying hard to develop spirituality in its members by the study of the invisible world and its laws, by the exercise of devotion and of intellectual assistance, and by the creation in each spirit of a faith, all the more solid because it is based on observation and science. Martinism derives directly from Christian Illuminism and has adopted its principles:

Forming the real centre of this living University, that will one day recreate the marriage without division of Science and Faith, without epithet, Martinism tries to be worthy of this name by establishing superior schools of metaphysical and physiological science, disdainfully moved away from classical teachings under the pretext that it is occult.

’Our epoch of scepticism, of adoration of the material world and of atheism, needed so badly a frank Christian reaction, independent of all clergies, that in all the countries where it has penetrated, Martinism has saved many souls from doubt, despair and suicide. It brought back to the comprehension of Christ many spirits that certain clerical actions had moved away from Faith.

Not asking from its members any contribution, nor entrance fees into the Order, neither asking any regular tribute from the Lodges to the Supreme Council, Martinism has remained faithful to its spirit and origins by making material poverty its very first rule.

Martinists want to be Christians, free from any clerical connection, and the accusations of “Satanism” will just make them shrug their shoulders, while asking Heaven for mercy for those who slandered them unfairly.

Martinists do not practise any magic, be it white or black. They study, they pray and they forgive injustices.

Martinism does not ask its members for any oaths of passive obedience, nor does it impose on them any dogma, be it materialistic or clerical, thus leaving them in a perfect freedom of consciousness.

We simply remain fervent Knights of Christ, enemies of violence and vengeance, resolute synarchists, opposed to any anarchy from above or below, in one word, Martinists, as have been our glorious ancestors Martines de Pasqually, Claude de Saint-Martin and Willermoz!

I am living in Richmond Va.  and would like to find Hepted. Any suggestion 

Thank you, 

teresa Uecker 

Interesting facts on Martinism:

 The definition of Martinism

Martinism is a system of mystical Christian Illuminist philosophy and theurgical procedure,  concerned with the Fall of the first man, his state of material privation from his Divine Source, and the process of return of mankind back into its original divine state, called 'Reintegration' or 'Illumination'.

Martinism is a collective term used to describe both this particular doctrine, as well as the teachings of the reorganized 'Martinist Order' founded in 1886 by Dr. Gerard Encausse (Papus). Since the late 18th century, the term Martinism already was used interchangeably between the teachings of Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin and Martinez de Pasqually, and the works of the first being attributed to the latter. Martinism is Christian Chivalry, or, if preferred, a chivalric line of individual and collective improvement. 

Well-known members of the Martinist movement include he Compte de Saint-Germain, Czar Nicholas II of Russia, Gerard Encausse (Papus), John Yarker, Eliphas Levi, Lord Bulwer-Lytton, A.E. Waite, H.P. Blavatsky, J.I. Wedgwood, Victor Blanchard, Honore de Balzac, Pamela Coleman Smith, Margaret Peeke,  and many others in the fields of government, religion, literature, education, business, and the arts. Martinism is intimately intertwined with the teachings of Illuminism, whose influence is felt across Europe and clear into Russia.

A life without deep spiritual awakening is akin to driving on a highway in the Dark without Headlights!

In my life I have always been fascinated by the ideas regarding eternity and spiritual things.  Once a pastor at the chruch I was attending signed my bible and wrote PROV. 3:5,6.  Honestly I could not wait to see what was in those words.  When I got home and read it, the words kind of sank into my soul.  It said "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your path".  I was 11 at the time and I could not imagine that I would try so many ways to make those words real in my life.

I have been in several Christian organizations from Southern Baptist, Seventh Day Adventist, Mormon, Bible Baptist, Lutheran and now Episcopalian.  Despite all of that I have never relented on my own inner search.  I have studied philosophy, Psychology, various other religious beliefs, and have come away still feeling I am missing something somewhere along the way.

I do believe that the one thing that I have learned over time is tolerance for others beliefs.  I cannot help but think that there are many like me who are constantly searching for answers in various forms and from various sources.  My hope is that I will continue in my search and find a closer connection to the Eternal, however that is presented to me.  I also hope I am open enough to the ideas yet have enough doubt so that I can analyze the experience completely without falling into the oft paralyzing affect of emotions so that I may continue my inclination to a higher self.

"The human being is the only book written by the hand of the Creator. All the other books that come to us, God has ordered them or allowed them to be written; all the other books can only represent developments and commentaries that have sprung from the original text. Our fundamental and most important task is to read our own inner being, or the book written by God’s own hand."

                                  Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin

https://www.rosicrucian.org/rosicrucian-books-rosicrucian-principles-for-home-and-business