Be aware of the fact that nothing is impossible for you. Consider yourself immortal and able to understand everything, all art, all science, the nature of all that lives. Become higher than all heights and deeper than all depths.
Hermes Tresmegistos book 2: 80-81
Prologue
It is our task to keep alive the richness of meaningful images from the past and their profundity for the present. The mythical animals as described in this book [1] unlock the special images of the truth that is connected with every human heart, with every human soul.
The representations of mythical animals carry within them a force for the development of the spirit- soul and from there they lay the seeds for spiritual life that is hidden in every person. They enable the leap to the supernatural for the consciousness, just as symbols do. Once recognized and lived through, they open the door to connection, as Hermes Tresmegistos says in the Tabula Smaragdina:
That which is below is equal to that which is above, and that which is above is equal to that which is below, that the wonders of the One shall be accomplished.
Mythical animals are like star forces of inspiration within the microcosm.
They impel us on the path to what is holy, what is whole:
as a human being to be united with Christ,
the light of lights, in which transfiguration takes place,
where all opposites fade,
to where “the One” pours itself out in the holy grail,
in light and power,
both cosmic and in our own center,
the dynamic source in our lives.
Let us go the way of the stars, the way that is connection.
The cosmos is equipped to bring the universal plan to its goal.
In the microcosm,
as part of the whole,
as a shining jewel,
we are equipped to take our place in the world,
for humanity,
in order to give ourselves to the universe as a starry power.
Friendship and soul power
I am today; I am yesterday; I am tomorrow!
I am the divine, mysterious soul.
My radiance-fullness illuminates every risen one,
Who, while he goes through successive transformations
in the realm of the dead,
is struggling to find his way
through the region of darkness.
The Egyptian Book of the Dead
Our wonderful planet earth is based on an alchemical formula that is constantly active.
The intercosmic space is filled with primordial substance, the materia magica, an eternal sea of fullness of life, in which the great breath of the spirit moves the sea and brings it to revelation: an immense grand field, in sacred language called the kingdom of God.
See the cosmic revelation field in which stars and planets move, see the revelation field of the earth, in which all life unfolds, the revelation field of man, of you and me in which we live.
Every revelation is part of the whole, harmonious or still developing, each has a twofold movement: centripetal one, to receive life force, and a centrifugal one, to give away power, imbued with the one idea, which drives the whole revelation, an inhalation and exhalation vibrated by one breath.
Man has three shrines in which he can receive this holy breath; the sanctuary of the heart, the sanctuary of the head and the sanctuary of life.
The desire to move along with that one grand breath, from that one idea: we know it, and we are opening up to receive the materia magica, the primordial substance, the pure ethers. Love is always the first one present in this encounter. The love power of the Christ, the cosmic power of light which has given itself to the interior of the earth, to the heart of the world, as world soul, touches us in our heart, awakens with gentle kisses the divine spark that rests within us there: a new feeling with regard to the self, life and the world is freed; we see ourselves standing in relation to all creation, to everything that lives, our neighbor, and we behold a path there, a way that is enlightened, lights and insights that we can follow. And if we do enter on that path, it cannot be otherwise than that the love we receive in Christ radiates through us and emanates from us again.
This love stream issuing from the heart finds its way upwards and unites with the great breath of the spirit, with the field of wisdom, and this spirit descends into the crown of the head. A new thinking awakens, a new conscious being in the light of this sanctifying spirit so that we may be healed, one harmonic movement with the one breath.
See the movement: from the heart a stream of loves reaches to the left and right, and far up into the one spirit, and see how the one spirit descends and connects itself with the opened head sanctuary. This movement of power of love and wisdom, it forms the wings of an immortal soul body that is growing within us, that wants to show and spread the beauty of life, of original life.
The wings of the soul body, beautifully colored, two sides, complementing each other, to power and movement, opposites, symmetrically tuned.
The butterfly was driven forth across the field, and when I walked on, dreaming, a luster from paradise stayed with me. All is blown by the wind, but butterflies are a fleeting resemblance of ephemeral things.
A butterfly is seen as a symbol of the soul, of the victory over transience, over death.
We light up/brighten in the beauty of a butterfly, but often do not consider the changes that the butterfly, with its wings of paper, is going through to achieve this beauty.
There is nothing in this entire world that remains. Everything changes, everything slips away, all things take shape and pass by again.
The renewer of all things, mother nature, shapes every form from other forms and no thing, not one atom, is lost in this universe, they are the form changes of nature.
In it man/the human being is a wonderful formation: going through all kinds of changes, he becomes ripe to dedicate his nature to the spirit, indicated as the way back to his universal origin in the Egyptian mysteries and the Cathar Brotherhood, from the Green Osiris to the Black Osiris, an initiation from Kepler to Mès-Naut – unto Ka, symbolically from caterpillar to pupa to butterfly, from formation, reformation to transformation[2].
The caterpillar, the human being, the Green Osiris who desires to go the path, spins into a pupa, in mystery language in the cave Kepler, by entering the silence of his inner sanctuary, realizing that in silence the formative hand of the spirit, the highest revelation awaits. This person becomes silent as to the ego, becomes empty of himself, enters his own grave, where the reformation takes place.
The caterpillar in the pupa, the man who rearranges, reforms and dies to the Black Osiris, the black that makes him receptive, makes him absorb the light and thereby changes.
In his dark enclosure, the cave of Mès-Naut, he progressively undergoes a permutation, a transformation, from material man to soul man.
Higher and higher, yes, ever higher, the soul body develops, becomes perfected in a light-conscious and light-following human being, to break out as celestial butterfly, as a light soul to Ka, and to be his spirit-soul, the risen light man, the perfect insect that was already hidden within the caterpillar.
This metamorphosis is an inner-formation, a merging into eternal nature and partaking of it, cooperating without interruption by being light, giving true friendship, saving what is lost, comforting what is defeated, resurrecting the fallen, healing the wounds of everything affected, bringing forth a stream of light into the world, and connecting with others to be a large, wide flood that flows into society.
And see, this stream of light, it will turn the tide of the world.
Joy, beautiful divine spark,
we enter with fiery passion,
heavenly being, your sanctuary,
your magic powers again connect
what lives separated and divided,
all people become brothers,
where your gentle soul wings,[3]
where we are servants
of the sanctifying spirit,
the Paraclete.
[1] This article is an extract from the prologue and a chapter of the book:
The bird of paradise and other mythical animals. Primary images of soul life.
(De Paradijsvogel en andere mythische dieren. Oerbeelden van zieleleven.)
Ankie Hettema-Pieterse, Rosycross Press 2019
[2] A. Gadal, On the Path of the Holy Grail, Rosycross Press, Haarlem 2018
[3] Friedrich Schiller: Ode to Joy (German: An die Freude ), 1785
