Through the alchemical process of dissolving, diluting and emptying, after which we are no longer who we were, His rays and His countenance emerge as the archetype and prototype of the creative primal force.
Its beauty expands into the immeasurable, it knows no borders; it is so overwhelming that we remain silent in its presence.
Our experiences in nature and with natural love happen in an imperfect world. Yet we recognise analogies and similarities with principles and laws of the divine world.
When we turn to a person with love, it is similar to when we love God and Christ. But it is not the same: the love between people is a symbol, an analogy to this ‘other’ love. The Song of Songs in the Bible describes the love of the soul for the divine Spirit and uses images from our world to do so. With the help of parables and symbols Johann Valentin Andreae presents the marriage of soul and Spirit in the Alchemical Wedding of Christian Rosycross.
In the love relationship with the divine, we ‘die’ – at least if it is deep and fulfilled: our self is transformed. We give ourselves away, lose ourselves in the divine-spiritual ‘other’. The ‘facial features’ of the two, who give themselves to each other, merge into each other. We return to the Logos, dissolve into the Origin, which receives us in joy. Our love becomes participation in the divine. He, the other, grows in us, man as the image of God.
Love and beauty are similar. We cannot think them, but we can perceive them with the ‘eyes of the heart’. They exist in two ways. On the one hand, they are ideas in the absolute: to participate in them means to die to the natural soul and to outgrow the ego. On the other hand, they are phenomena in the relative: here they transform again and again into their opposite, only to finally fade away. Our reality is unstable, our lives full of uncertainty and change. Like everything in the world, so too do our relationships oscillate between opposites.
Platonists of the Renaissance felt divinely spiritual love. Above all Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) of the Academy of Florence, but also Antoine Héroët (c. 1492-1568) from Paris. Their words can, if we are receptive to them, still be an inspiration today:
Every lover dies lovingly because, forgetting himself, he turns to the beloved person. When he does not think of himself, he also does not think within himself. […]
The soul of the lover is not in him, because it is not active in him. If it is not in him, then he is also not living in himself. He who does not live is dead. Therefore, he who loves is dead in himself. […] If, on the other hand, the beloved reciprocates the love, the lover lives at least in him. Without doubt, something marvellous happens when two embrace each other in mutual affection: the one lives in the other, the other in him. They exchange each other: each gives himself to the other in order to take him up into himself. […] By loving you, who love me, I find myself in you, who think of me, and, having given myself up, I win myself back in you, who receive me. You do the same in me. That too seems marvellous to me. Having lost myself, I regain myself through you, and so I possess myself through you. […] Oh, wondrous pact, in which one gives up oneself for the other, possesses the other and does not let go of oneself! Oh, what an invaluable gain, when two become so one that each of the two becomes two instead of being one and, as it were, being doubled, who had only one life, through the occurrence of one death now has twofold life! [1]
The soul that longs for the Spirit cannot but be filled with spiritual love. This is also expressed in the courtly love poetry of the Knights of the Grail. It was this love that became the basis of Cathar spirituality. In it, the Cathars experienced the endura, the transformation of their soul and their entry into immortality.
Antoine Héroët writes:
So I thought more of him than of myself, and I was more dead than alive. And I thought of him so much that he thought of me. So our hearts went towards death and yet crossed each other for life. Both my loving heart and his loving heart took on a new form without their power changing. What a beneficial and precious transformation when a kind heart full of goodwill gives itself away and experiences with amazement how it receives itself back from the one to whom it gives itself. What a transformation in which no one is disappointed and in which the gift does not diminish in value after it has been given and received. What happy hearts and what bliss when we attain both of us for the sake of the other one. How wonderful is dying, in which we come alive again through a death that proves to be a doubled life …[2]
In the Alchemical Wedding of Christian Rosycross, we read about the decapitation of, among others, a young queen and a young king. Their souls can now cross the sea to an island where, in the ‘Tower of Olympus’, the great transformation takes place. On the way there, the candidates listen to the song of the nymphs, which says that love has ‘divided’ the royal couple ‘with great power’, but that they will come together again ’through the flames of love and happiness’. [3]
In order to unite with the divine Spirit, the soul breaks its ties with the material body and undergoes a phase of purification and dying to the old. There is no reason to fear this, because the great goal of transformation is in sight.
The Tabula Smaragdina, the original alchemical text, also speaks of the fact that in the earthly realm, a separation must first take place before union with the divine can occur:
Separate lovingly and with great insight and wisdom the earth from the fire, the finely woven from that which is hard, dense and rigid. From the earth, it rises to heaven and from there sinks back down to earth, taking with it the power of what is above and what is below. Thus you will possess the glory of the whole world, and therefore all darkness will flee from you. [4]
The soul dares to undergo the process of becoming one because she is attracted by the love and grace that emanate from the Logos – a point in her innermost being, the point of her origin. In the course of the transformation, the boundaries of separation that our previous self has created in its feeling of existence disappear. The more the union progresses, the more the subject-object relationships and the reality corresponding to them dissolve.
In becoming one, the absolute reveals itself. The archetype of our humanity communicates itself as we immerse ourselves in the non-self that is within us and also in all other beings. We dive into the ‘inner Lord’, the ‘Christ in us’. The rays of the Sun of the Spirit can penetrate us again because we have given them space to do so. We have left the beauties of the world, the stories of the analogies of the divine that are told in the ‘book of nature’.
Through the alchemical process of dissolving, diluting and emptying, after which we are no longer who we were, His rays and His countenance emerge as the archetype and prototype of the creative primal force. Its beauty expands into the immeasurable, it knows no borders; it is so overwhelming that we remain silent in its presence.
And then we look around – and behold the glorious face of Christ, the Son of God, in every person! Everyone carries it within, as potential, as their inner dignity.
What has happened?
The spiritual power of Christ has transformed us. It has broken through the boundaries and matrix of duality. In its place, the triad has come to form the basis of a new perception. The eye of the Spirit sees everything in the unity of the Logos: everything is beautiful, worthy, equal and loved. The central sun – Father-Mother-Son – emits powerful rays, rays of sacrifice. It sacrifices its power and its beauty into the darkness of the creatures in order to reveal their beauty and inner perfection. The divine powers are waiting to be understood, they want to be applied in processes of transformation. All people on earth should discover and realise their splendour and beauty
A ray of light cannot remain in one place. It flies like a shot arrow, hovering in the spheres until it hits the ground somewhere. It is a vibration that dissolves, an aspect of the eternal that fades and passes away in the temporal. So too does the idea of the beauty of the eternal in the human heart shine forth, as a brief sensation that quickly passes. It is only when it finds a breeding ground that it unfolds and transforms the heart. Such a person awakens and recognises his task. He recognises that he has been given a torch that he is to carry further.
Who will take up this torch of light?
Whoever does so will be guided by it, will be transformed by it, until he is no longer who he was. Within him, the beautiful, the sublime, the glorious, the spiritual man, the first-born Adam is formed. This is the mysterium magnum. In the Second Book of the Corpus Hermeticum, Pymander, the spiritual soul awakened in Hermes explains that good, beauty, bliss and wisdom form the essence of God. [5]
[1] Marsilio Ficino, in: On Love or Plato’s Banquet, 2nd speech, 8th chapter
[2] Antoine Héroët, Dokonalá přítelkyně, v. 123-131, 37-47 a passim In Culianu, Ioan Petru, Erós a magie v období renesance. Prag: Malvern, 2023, S. 348-349.
[3] In: Jan van Rijckenborgh, The Alchemical Wedding of Christian Rosycross, Volume 2, The Fifth Day, Haarlem 1976.
[4] In: Jan van Rijckenborgh, The Egyptian Arch-Gnosis, Volume 1, Haarlem
[5] In: Jan van Rijckenborgh, The Egyptian Arch-Gnosis, Volume 1, Haarlem
