The Macrocosm and the Microcosm, frontispiece of Robert Fludd’s Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris metaphysica atque technical historia, Oppenheim: 1617-1619.

The Macrocosm and the Microcosm, frontispiece of Robert Fludd’s Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris metaphysica atque technical historia, Oppenheim: 1617-1619.

Our task in the New Age is to restore a balance between male and female, return to the Garden of Eden within us and restore the planet around us to a state of ecological balance. As above, so below. The microcosm and the macrocosm are reflections of one another. The work we do to create inner balance, and increase our experiences born of love and generating light will help to fill the world with love and light.

The Fall in the Garden of Eden that precipitated the creation of the illusory Self, dominated by body, ego and emotional and mental attachments, is responsible for the tragic state of today's world, engulfed in pain and suffering.

The tragic fall in the Garden was also part of God's plan. This mystery is known among Christians as th “felix culpa, which means fortunate fall. Fortunate according to theologians because only this fall could trigger the decision on the part of God to send Jesus Christ into the world, to redeem human beings and put them on the path back to the Garden. Christ's sacrifice would enable human beings to rise to a new level of consciousness, Christ consciousness, and earn them entry into heaven.

 The esoteric meaning of the felix culpa is this. God's original intent for human beings was that we learn, as individuals exercising free will, to choose co-operation with the Divine plan. Through the fall and humanity's subsequent countless reincarnations men and women were to learn to consciously attune their individual wills to the Divine will. 

Then human beings were to re-enter the Garden of Eden. This return can only be accomplished by surrendering the ego's control of our being, connecting to the Higher Self, attaining Cosmic Consciousness, and thus demonstrating unconditional love and expressing Divine wisdom.

 Pink Rose Offering, Photo by Jane Sherry

Pink Rose Offering by Jane Sherry

According to spiritual science, to re-enter the Garden of Eden, human beings must raise their common level of consciousness from the third chakra, in the stomach, which governs fear and power relations to the fourth chakra, which is the heart center governing love, and unite that heart center with the fifth chakra center in the throat governing peace and bliss and the sixth chakra center where the third eye is located, between the eyebrows, which governs wisdom and is the seat of Christ Consciousness.

Finally, we are challenged to reconnect with the crown chakra at the top of the head, where the Divine Lovers, Shiva and Shakti unite in blissful liberation.

In this way, humans connect the lower physical, etheric, astral and mental bodies, and the ego, to Higher Self, Higher Mind and Higher Purpose, and through the Higher Self, to the Divine Father-Mother Source. This is the ascension practice for the New Age.

For most human beings now alive on planet Earth, the primary task this lifetime is to elevate their life force energy, chi, or prana, from the third to the fourth chakra, from the belly to the heart, and to open the heart. The heart chakra is the seat of transpersonal consciousness, the doorway to inner knowledge of the web of life and the seat of compassion for others and for all life.

This state of mystical unity does not necessarily represent a total loss of individual identity, as that paragon of yogic wisdom, Paramahansa Yogananda, points out in his commentaries on The Baghavad Gita: Royal Science of God-Realization.

The Diver, by Jane Sherry

Diver, by Jane Sherry

". . .An accomplished yogi is not only one with the Absolute, merging his identity in God; he can also separate himself, recapturing his individuality with no loss of God-perception, and in this state, with his heart full of supreme devotion, enjoy the bliss of Brahman," explains Yogananda, in his discourse on Chapter XVIII, verse 54 of the Gita.

"To paraphrase a well-known allegory, he is then comparable to an idol made of sugar that sought to measure the depth of the Ocean of Divine Nectar. On entering the Sea, it found itself melting. The idol retreated hurriedly to the shore, thinking: 'Why lose my identity in order to determine the depth of divine sweetness? I already know that the Ocean is indeed very deep, and Its nectar exceedingly sweet.' Thus the sugar idol chose to perceive the Ocean of Sweetness through the isolated consciousness of individuality. Similarly, a devotee may love to be one with the Infinite, yet love even more the enjoyment of God experienced by retaining his individual existence. The latter is the state of supreme devotion." 

According to the Divine Plan, once they have re-entered the Garden within them, once they have achieved this state of supreme devotion, human beings would restore the Garden of Eden physically on Earth by restoring an ecological balance and bringing peace to the world.

On a spiritual level, human beings would become conscious instruments of the Divine plan for evolution of all the beings on the planet, and further the evolution of Mother Earth as well. By uniting love and wisdom within themselves and bringing the energy of spiritual realms into the physical plane, human beings would engage in compassionate activities to spiritualize this physical, material world, infusing every sentient and non-sentient being and all the elements of planet Earth with the energy of Cosmic Consciousness.

Doing this would further Mother Earth's spiritual evolution. Earth would then truly be the planet of Loving Wisdom, radiating the energy of Cosmic Consciousness throughout the Universe. Earth would, in a sense, become a new Sun, a vibrant spiritual Star shining in the firmament, and contributing a new energy of individualized Divine consciousness to the great mosaic of creation.

Blue Marble Photo of Earth, Courtesy NASA 

Blue Marble Earth, courtesy NASA

Most other planetary civilizations that have evolved into the light have done so on the path of collective consciousness, not individualized consciousness, and that is what will make Earth unique.

In this way, human beings would prove that even individualized life forms, cut off mentally from Divine Source, willingly choose to evolve according to God's plan, and to further the evolution of other greater and lesser life forms as part of their own evolution.

This would be an unprecedented occurrence in Creation, and indeed would arguably render human beings greater than the angelic beings inhabiting spiritual worlds.

Thus would the Divine plan of love and light and wisdom work out. Then the Fall in the Garden would be a fortunate Fall indeed.

Divine Lovers in the New Age

Conscious intent is very important in all spiritual undertakings for very specific energetic reasons. In terms of partnerships, it is necessary for both partners to have a conscious alignment at the levels of the astral and mental bodies. Shared dreams, aspirations and spiritual beliefs provide the container for love shared between you. Without this energetic container, you have no fuel with which to create a shared future, and you cannot create a shared store of vitality in the form of loving energies that will help your relationship to grow and flower over time.

For more information on the seven energy bodies and how to know if you are compatible with your lover on all seven levels of being, see the chart below which shows how you can tell when your seven energy bodies are in alignment with your loved one. The seven bodies are connected to the chakra system as you can see below. 

Compatibility Chart for The Seven Bodies and Seven Chakras

 

 Subtle Bodies

Compatible 

 Incompatible

Physical Body

Muladhara Chakra
Red, Earth, Four Petals
Perineum


Sexual compatibility, ease of being together

 


Incompatible sex

 

Vibrational Body
(also called Etheric Body)


Svadishthana Chakra
Orange, Water, Six Petals
Two Inches Below Navel

 



Good general sensations, non-verbal & non (gross) physical, easy to be with in silence



Always needing to talk, touch or do something together to feel close, uneasy silence

 

Astral Body

Manipura Chakra
Yellow, Fire, Ten Petals
Navel, Solar Plexus



Similar & pleasing dreams, fantasies, hopes & aspirations

 



Fantasizing & dreaming about others, lack of mutual hopes

 

 

Mental Body

Anahata Chakra
Green, Air, Twelve Petals
Heart



Similar beliefs & values



Dissimilar or opposing beliefs & values

 

Causal Body
(Higher Mental Body)



Vishuddha Chakra
Blue, Space, Sixteen petals
Throat



Similar religious & spiritual beliefs, thoughts in harmony, telepathy, intuition & awareness of the other (pictures or words), distance communication

 



Opposing religious beliefs; feelings of isolation from the other when apart & inability to know what the other is thinking

 

Spiritual Heart
(or Buddhic Body)


Ajna Chakra
Magenta, Spirit, Two Petals
Third Eye



Feelings of self-less love or unconditional love & tenderness, compassion for one another, being in sympathy (this is where synchronicities come from), similar responses to world environment (art, war, nature)

 




Conditional love, lack of compassion, unsympathetic to one another

 

Soul Body
(The Self that remembers Past Lives, The Self that recognizes the connection with God)

Sahasrara Chakra
Violet, Kundalini Shakti, One Thousand Petals, Crown


Déjà vu, sense of agreement of past life memories, sense of eternal life with mate, sense of eternal union (most people don’t have their soul bodies activated)

 




Having no sense of a soul life with the other

 

 

The degree of compatibility you share with your loved one will determine the future course of your relationship. Living beings and events manifest first as subtle energy and later as physical events, so it is possible for you to predict in what ways you will be compatible with another, and in what ways you may be incompatible by considering the subtle energy signatures of your seven bodies and the seven bodies of your loved one.

Many love relationships ignite when two people with unresolved karmic ties have two or three levels of compatibility activated.

Sexual compatibility, which activates the connection between the lovers at the root chakra, which is the energy center of the physical body.

Lovers with similar family backgrounds, class, race, and/or religious affiliations activate the connection at the heart chakra, which is the energy center of the mental body.

Young people especially may find these two degrees of compatibility to be sufficient to initiate a love relationship. Such a relationship is unlikely to reach a level of compatibility that would sustain a long term relationship, however.

When the lovers find that they have a general sense of ease and grace in one another's presence, a feeling that they understand one another easily without lengthy verbal exchanges, this indicates an affinity at the level of the second chakra, which energizes the etheric body.

Relationships which are based on affinity at the root, heart and sacral chakras are generally quite strong, at least in the beginning. Over time it is to be determined whether or not this degree of compatibility is sufficient for a successful long term relationship.

The High Point of Summer . . .The Huntress Becomes Alchemist, Magic Lantern Drawing by Jane Sherry 

The High Point of Summer. . .Huntress Become Alchemist, by Jane Sherry

An additional level of compatibility is achieved when the lovers share hopes and dreams. This can mean life goals and desires as specific and limited as having children, raising a family, achieving success and abundance through their careers. Or it can mean aspiring to create art or literature that inspires others.

It can mean having the hope that through working diligently the lovers can help one another achieve accelerated spiritual progress in a partnership. It can mean a shared desire to make the world a better place to live through political activism of one kind or another.

These are just a few examples of shared hopes and dreams. As long as the lovers can maintain their shared intent to manifest these hopes and dreams, and have the faith that together they can manifest these material and/or spiritual goals, they will activate the third chakra at the navel, which energizes the astral bodies of the lovers.

Lovers with affinity at the root, heart, sacral, and navel chakras have a substantial degree of compatibility and they are quite likely to be able to sustain a relationship over the medium to long term. 

Most of us have had an experience where we thought of another person and then they called on the telephone or showed up at our door. Lovers who have repeated experiences of telepathic exchange via words or images are exhibiting affinity at the level of the throat chakra, which activates the causal, or higher mental body, the abode of the Higher Mind.

This level of compatibility can also be activated when the lovers share strongly felt religious and spiritual beliefs, and a shared spiritual practice, especially a consistent practice over time. These practices will actually energize the exchange of subtle energy through their throat chakras, and can trigger telepathic experiences. 

Compatibility at the level of the third eye chakra, which energizes the Spiritual Heart, or Buddhic Body, is activated by shared feelings of compassion for one another, and, especially for all of humanity, love of nature and identification with the web of life surrounding us, and sympathetic shared responses to suffering humanity, to war, to tragedies, and to humanity's spoilation of the Earth's ecoysystem.

It is out of these trans-personal experiences where the two lovers find themselves sympathetically connected to the larger collective consciousness and the web of life that a strong bond is created in the higher realms of subtle energy that can generate significant synchronicities and meaningful coincidences and lead the lovers to their spiritual teacher, their soul group, and to the work and the play that will enable them to be of maximum service in the world.

At this level, their love begins to spread, as if by osmosis, through the collective consciousness and can positively impact their environment in a myriad of ways. As the spiritual partners translate these loving feelings into spiritual practices done for the benefit of humanity, all sentient beings, and the web of life across the planet experiencing they will certainly experience more love, receive more enlightenment, and receive intuitively the wise counsel needed to improve their own lives and the lives of all those around them.

Horned Lovers, Rainbow, Dolphin Magic Lantern Drawing by Jane Sherry

Horned Lovers, Rainbow, Dolphin Magic Lantern Drawing by Jane Sherry

Compatibility at the level of the crown chakra, which activates the Soul Bodies of the lovers is quite rare, because most individuals on Earth do not currently have their Soul Bodies activated. Lovers who share spontaneous memories of past lives they both remember in similar ways are fortunate indeed because their Soul Bodies are activated and they can, through their love, achieve a shared sense of the immortality of their love, and of their reincarnating Higher Selves.

These shared experiences that transcend the rational mind and the limits of a single lifetime  prepare the lovers for an experience of satchitananda. These individuals are within sight of the final goal. With persistent loving practice they will achieve knowledge and direct experience of the Truth of Unity Consciousness and the Bliss that transcends Understanding. 

In summary, lovers who have three, four or five bodies in alignment have a substantial basis on which to build a love relationship that will last, a spiritual partnership that can accelerate their spiritual progress, if they choose that path of development and personal co-evolution. By forging a spiritual partnership, performing meditation practices such as though suggested in this book, working together to remove karmic debris from their auric fields and chakras by techniques such as are suggested here, and by opening their hearts to suffering humanity, to all sentient beings, and to the entire web of life on Earth, it is always possible to increase the number of bodies in alignment at any given time.

Of course, the alignment of the subtle bodies changes over time, and it is extremely likely that any given couple will become either more or less compatible over time given their lifestyle, intent, spiritual practice, and physical circumstances. 

How Couples Grow Apart

In society today, we see many marriages that start strong and where the love is palpable between the partners. Marriages that more than endure and seemingly thrive for years.

Children are "successfully" raised and career and economic goals achieved. The man rises to an influential position in his profession while the wife excels at home and in community service, or perhaps in her own career.

Sometimes the rare and extremely energetic woman will find success in her own career as well as these other spheres.

They each develop their own "worlds", spheres of influence and networks of communities which they know and in which they are well known.

As they grow into those separate worlds, they may tend to grow apart in a number of different ways, corresponding to their karma, and the development of the various subtle bodies, which mature at various times of life, often from the teens to age 50 and beyond.

No More Than 6 Minutes of Personal Attention, by Jane Sherry 

No More Than Six Minutes of Personal Attention, by Jane Sherry

The ways a couple can grow apart are many when they inhabit different worlds much of the time, day after day: Sexual attraction to another; emotional dependency on or living vicariously through, or being best beer buddies with another; opening one's heart to another as an exclusive arrangement; mental attunement to a like-minded community with standards and customs alien to one's partner; spiritual development in one partner that outstrips the development of the other partner.

Commonly, such a couple reaches a crossroads when their children are entering puberty and teenage years. Each has invested a great deal in their separate worlds.

Often, the male has ascended the commanding heights of his profession, emerging as an Emperor of his domain. The female often has attained substantial recognition herself, for her talents, her creativity and her "people magic". She is often a leader in her community, in her own way, a center of attention, a magnet and a template for others around her who share her aspirations, her zeal for life, and her steadfast determination.

 As the most intense child-bearing years are now over, both partners have a natural inclination to assess their current condition, as to whether or not their needs are being met, whether or not they are fulfilled in their life so far, and so forth. To all appearances, they are the Emperor and the Empress of their world. They have attained success.

So why can't they get along? Where did their love go? Where did their love go wrong?

This is sometimes called the midlife crisis. As part of this reassessment, partners often find that when they compare their current relationship to the relationship they had when they married, they find their current situation lacking.

Lacking in passion, lacking in shared mental maps of the world, lacking therefore in shared values.

The Seeds of Divorce

They remember when they were young and so in love. At that time their physical bodies were attuned and in fairly constant touch with one another, stimulated by the powerful flush of new love. So their physical bodies were in attunement. The world was full of beauty, reflecting that love in every way every day.

 Red Reef Sailboat, Photo by Jane Sherry

Red Reef Sailboat, Boca Raton, Florida by Curtis Lang

Their emotional bodies were more than likely highly stimulated, and there is a good possibility that early sexual experiences actually open the heart chakra -- for a time. So emotional bodies were quite likely stimulated, if not in attunement.

Mentally, they may have been in attunement if they have come out of the same type educational institutions, family or socio-economic background.

If they shared the same religious tradition, spiritual aspirations, and/or karma, they may also have shared pastlife experiences that aligned their higher bodies.

So many young people in love have the tantalizing experience of sharing love between two partners who are compatible on several levels, or who have several chakras in alignment, or who have several subtle bodies in alignment, depending on how you look at it.

No matter how you look at it, this exhilarating experience is the basis for much of the world's mythology, romance, and even mystical literature.

Inasmuch as the physical, emotional and mental bodies mature at different rates, it is easy for a couple that have one or more bodies in alignment at the time of marriage to find that as those higher bodies mature at ages 30, 40, and 50 they will have less and less in common with their partner. Suddenly, at some point the young lovers realize they are entering the autumn of their lives.

 

Autumn Shadows, by Jane Sherry

Autumn Afternoon Shadow Play by Jane Sherry

 Divergent life experiences, which are the norm in today's world of two-worker families, contribute greatly to divergent development on every level of being.

Emotional and mental development of partners living in different worlds obviously would be quite different from the development of partners who share work, hobbies, and spiritual practice over time.

The mental body matures later than the physical and emotional bodies. One's overall world view and the mental map of one's "essential world" take time to flesh out.

Once such a personal world is created, the creator has a lot invested in that world and is loathe to tinker with the foundations of that world.

To give up that personal world in middle age can for some be liberating, but for most is perceived by the ego to be the equivalent of death.

This is because the ego has built up this illusory personal world in a series of conscious and unconscious agreements with the personality and with the other members of that world over time.

So both partners can develop an antipathy to, almost an allergy to, one another's workaday worlds over time. This puts the mental bodies further at odds with one another.

In addition, if one of the partners pursues a spiritual path and the other partner cares not for that path or prefers another, such as the path of received tradition, or officially sanctioned religion, or secular materialism, then there can be additional complications, especially at the onset of middle age and as middle age and its crises progress.

This is because the higher bodies are connected with spiritual development, and these higher bodies are activated by the development of the organs of sense perception that can respond to higher frequencies.

When this activation occurs the aspirant begins to perceive higher worlds, and as these perceptions develop and mature the individual participates in much higher frequencies of creation still.

Thus there is a very real possibility that one partner in such a marriage will by a certain time of life called the midlife crisis find herself living with a partner who inhabits a different world, speaks a different language to his everyday companions, and cannot comprehend much of what the poor woman is trying to communicate most of the time.

 History Lesson #3, by Jane Sherry

History Lesson 3, by Jane Sherry

The two love partners are dancing to different tunes.

In this situation, the subtle bodies are said to be "out of alignment", much as your car's tires or transmission can be out of alignment.

 In this situation, in terms of their overall life trajectory, the marriage partners have come full circle in their relationship to a point where once more they must make choices and commitments for the next phase of their lives.

So the situation contains all the seeds of divorce.

A Higher Path

This is perceived as a crisis in our society because our culture has no general understanding of these basic principles of spiritual sexuality.

When people hook up sexually, that is called mating, and mating can be about the exchange of love between two willing and able partners on every level of their being, from the lowest to the highest.

Marriage is a contract between two partners for certain purposes agreed to in advance, both consciously and unconsciously and at the soul level. That contract is only good as long as the conditions of the contract are fulfilled. However, the karmic consequences of engaging in such a contract cannot lightly be dismissed and the marriage partnership creates "samskaras" or the seeds of future karma, which will ripen in the future and result in subconscious tendencies to recreate the unfinished drama initiated by the marriage partners.

 Marriage of the Sun and Moon, from the Rosarium Philosophorum

Marriage of the Sun and Moon, from the Rosarium Philosophorum 

Spiritually, marriage is a partnership in which both parties take on the immense responsibility to facilitate one another's spiritual growth throughout one or more lifetimes, depending upon their intent and abilities. This is true mating, and when the partners are clear and conscious about their marriage commitment, they will receive grace and guidance from the Divine to help them on their spiritual journey together. 

The path of spiritual love is for the two partners to share in the mutual development of their subtle bodies, from the physical to the very Crown of Creation. Over a period of decades, this shared development keeps all their bodies attuned, and in addition they will both enjoy accelerated development of higher bodies thanks to their mutual faith, respect, perseverance and love.

This however is a path so difficult, so straight and narrow, yet so filled with unexpected switchbacks, hairpin turns, sharp dropoffs and dangerous intersections that it is only for the fully committed.

In addition this path is available only to those couples who can demonstrate an ability to be attuned on every subtle dimension of existence. I say an ability to ACHIEVE this attunement for it is not expected that aspirants to this path be able to maintain such an attunement – that is the culmination of this path, not its entry point.

The partners in the couple experiencing this crisis must learn to share an awareness of the spiritual nature of their crisis, and of the very specific imbalances, grievances, and slights they have suffered and feel they are suffering, with one another.

There is a path for them to achieve great spiritual merit in this difficult juncture.

This is for the more spiritually advanced partner to do her very best to communicate her highest understanding of all the factors demonstrating the lack of alignment on the various levels of existence, and the well-known psychological fact that at this particular time of life, the issue of choice and commitment arises again for every couple.

This is part of the natural lifecycle of the typical nuclear family and also part of the natural lifecycle of spiritual development of the average human being.

In many cases, any resolution of this crisis that perpetuates the relationship will require the two partners to negotiate a “shared world” they can both develop together that will meet their physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual needs in the next phases of their life for their best and highest good.

If this alternative is for some reason unavailable the partners should seek the counsel of their higher selves and their Spiritual Guides to determine the best course of action.

Exchanges of subtle energy and subtle changes in the physical, emotional, mental and higher spiritual bodies of individuals in a love relationship may very well be the most important factors determining the success or failure of the relationship.

As humanity begins to explore the mysteries of subtle energy more deeply, there will be tremendous advances in psychology, medicine, biology, physics and in the spiritual sciences.

Subtle energy is the creator of the forms that are used as templates of future creations, and thus it is these subtle energy templates that govern the evolution and growth of living beings on Earth.

Biologist Rupert Sheldrake calls these energy templates morphogenetic fields. The embryo's morphogenetic field contains the template for the adult. The seed's morphogenetic field 

The treasures of the Earth, such as gems found deep in caves, are created by beings such as gnomes and other nature spirits, who fashion the energetic forms for these marvelous crystalline beings to grow into their mature splendor. Before any form can be manifested in the material world, the energetic or subtle form must be created first in the spiritual world.

Once we begin to understand that subtle energy is the primary factor in manifestation in this Universe, not physical factors that can be immediately experienced by the five senses, we have reached the point where we can finally understand some of the most important mysteries surrounding the nature of love itself.

 Diamond with Reflections

Love is not a thing; love is the energetic circumscription of sacred space. Lovers circumscribe sacred space through conscious shared intent, and this space then can be filled with energies of love and light from the Divine Source, activating these energetic forms, which eventually crystallize into the physical, material world. In this way lovers co-create new ways of living, new types of relationships, new myths and archetypes for a New Aeon.

During this traumatic time of transition on planet Earth, it is vitally important that each and every one of us, individually, and in concert with our lovers, family, friends, and other soulmates, maintain our faith in the future. Only in this way can we keep our hearts open in the face of a flood tide of fear, paranoia, accelerating climate change and simmering global warfare that is presently unleashed upon the world.

Know first that such difficulties are quite common in times of transition. Our present time is at the cusp between two long historical cycles, the 2,000 year cycle of the Piscean Age and the 2,000 year cycle of the Aquarian Age. Humanity is evolving spiritually, the archetypes and myths that motivate us are shifting and changing, and the planet itself is undergoing a set of dramatic Earth changes, earthquakes, climate changes, and more.

For more information about the transition between the Age of Pisces and the Age of Aquarius, read our articles entitled The Dark Night of the Planetary Soul  and Traveling Between Two Worlds.

Yet the major lesson of this time is that people can change. This is a lesson that contradicts the biological behavioralists, the rational materialists, and the simplistic fundamentalist moralists who see human behavior as hard-wired by genetics, chemistry, tribe, bloodline, ideology, or religious beliefs.

Most of those who see human behavior as basically fixed share an assumption that human nature is intrinsically flawed, evil, as a result of genetic defects, our animal origins, or original sin of one kind or another. They believe in iron discipline for the masses, exercised by political, religious and economic elites whose privileged position exempts them from the need to behave in a compassionate manner.

This behavior cannot and will not endure. It is rooted in dominator culture, egoistic thinking and patriarchal attitudes characteristic of the dying Piscean Age.

One of the primary spiritual revolutions characteristic of the Aquarian Age is the revolution in relationships between the sexes. Much has been written and discussed concerning this matter, especially among Theosophists, Anthroposophists, feminists, and New Age thinkers of all kinds.

 

Past Priestess, by Jane Sherry

Aquarian Priestess by Jane Sherry

Two basic concepts emerge. First, that the male has dominated the female during the Piscean Age and this will change. Second that the patriarchal, dominator culture of the Piscean Age will give way to a more egalitarian culture.

To obtain a more detailed picture of the most fundamental images that construct and motivate human behavior in the Piscean Age and in the emerging Aquarian Age, it is helpful to connect with the observations of those who are both experts in mythology and proven clairvoyant seers.

Among the Theosophists at the turn of the Twentieth Century, was a gifted Irish writer and clairvoyant named George William Russell. The Theosophists were instrumental in bringing many of the Wisdom Teachings of the East into Western society, and their teachings, however flawed, set the tone for much of what we now call New Age teachings.

Russell wrote a remarkable novel called The Avatars, published in 1933, under the pseudonym A.E. In this novel, a young boy and a young girl from different families in rural Ireland appear among the folk, bringing to them a remarkable spiritual energy. Those around them soon see the two young people as the personification of the Divine Lovers. They transform everyone around them. They bring to their communities a renewed vitality, and revivify the ancient values of nature worship, and an animistic view of nature that sees the whole world as filled with spirit and with spiritual beings. They stand in opposition to the overly technological, materialistic culture of the cities, and they quickly grow so strong in their love for one another, for their communities, and for all of nature, that they come into conflict with the authorities. It's a beautiful story, beautifully written, but too long to go into here. The point is that from this Theosophical clairvoyant's point of view, the New Age would be ushered in by the Divine Lovers. 

Jesus, Mary Magdalen and World Peace

This same grand insight can be found in the work of a remarkable scholar and clairvoyant named William Irwin Thompson. He combines in one person the mythological scholarship of Joseph Campbell and the clairvoyant abilities of an advanced yogi. Thompson's scholarship focuses on cultures of partnership, and his work totally transcends the patriarchal views of Campbell.

In Thompson's remarkable book The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light, he discusses the crucial archetypal images of the most recent ages of Earth development and the emerging Aquarian Age.

 Venus Spiral by Jane Sherry

Venus Spiral by Jane Sherry

Thompson says, “Myth, as a history of the soul, is still a history, and each stage of the evolution of consciousness generates its appropriate story. As the spiral of history turns, one archetypal story becomes the recapitulation of the old, the performance of the new, and the overture to what is to come.

“As a story, the myth of Isis and Osiris is a recapitulation of the myth of the Neolithic Mother Goddess and the dying adolescent son-lover, but in the case of Isis and Osiris, where the lovers are brother and sister, the relationship between the masculine and feminine is becoming more equal. In the early stages of evolution, nature dominates the human being, the planet dwarfs the tiny human species, but as civilization emerges, the masculine grows to a new level, and so the feminine responds to meet it at that level. The Great Goddess becomes Isis. The story grows from Lascaux to Catal Huyuk to Abydos, but it does not end there."

“The story of Isis and Osiris is an overture to the story of Mary and Jesus. The dead son in the arms of his mother pictured in the famous Pieta of Michelangelo is a recapitulation of the ancient theme of the dying male god and the Paleolithic goddess. But the finishing of a story is also its consummation. In giving his mother away to John while he is dying on the cross, Jesus is preparing to effect his own resurrection. This time it is not the Goddess Isis who raises up the phallus of the dead Osiris to conceive the divine child; the resurrection is not merely the god becoming the Lord of the Dead on the astral plane."

 The family of Osiris. Osiris on a lapis lazuli pillar in the middle, flanked by Horus on the left and Isis on the right (22nd dynasty, Louvre, Paris)  Louvre Museum / CC BY-SA 2.0 FR

The family of Osiris. Osiris on a lapis lazuli pillar in the middle, flanked by Horus on the left and Isis on the right (22nd dynasty, Louvre, Paris)

Louvre Museum / CC BY-SA 2.0 FR 

“This time an integral being incarnates on the physical plane, takes on the entire mystery of death in the mortal physical body, and rises from the dead on the physical plane. Osiris expresses initiatic mastery of the astral plane, but Jesus expresses initiatic mastery of the physical plane through the mystery of a conscious death."

“Mary Magdalen is the first to see the resurrected body of Jesus, and in that coupled image of the avatar and the whore is the overture to what is to come in the next world epoch. As the whore, Mary Magdalen expresses the presence and consummation of the archaic feminine heritage and its transmutation into the archetypal androgyne of the future. Peter, the orthodox and conventional Jew, would exclude Mary Magdalen from the mysteries, but Jesus sees sexuality in a totally different light."

 Christ appears to Mary Magdalene by Martin Schongauer

Christ appears to Mary Magdalene by Martin Schongauer

“Simon Peter said to them, ‘Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of Life.’ Jesus said, “I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’ Jesus did not mean that women should become like men, but that, in the process of initiation, each sex must take on the character of the opposite, before wholeness can be achieved.”

“Jesus said to them,

‘When you make two into one
And what is within like what is without,
And what is without like what is within.
And what is above like what is below,
And when you unite male and female in one
So that the male is no longer male,
And the female no longer female,
… Then you shall enter the Kingdom.’

“Mary Magdalen, the surviving form of the temple prostitute, became the initiate of Jesus. . .It is Mary Magdalen who first sees the resurrected Jesus. . .John and Mary Magdalen stand at the foot of the cross, for in the next turn of the spiral their story is to become the historical performance of the eternal myth.”

“. . .Isis and Osiris are the avatars of one Platonic Month, Jesus and Mary of another. . .If in the practice of Tantric yoga, one looks into the collective unconscious now, one will see a triptych, something like Grunsward's Isenheim altarpiece, vibrating in the air of the astral plane. In one panel we see a painting of the feminine lamenting the fall of the masculine into time; it is a painting of Isis crying above the coffin of Osiris. In the second panel, we see the dead masculine in the arms of the feminine, Jesus in the arms of Mary. In the third panel we see neither the Fall nor the Crucifixion, but the sacred copulation (hieros gamos) of the reunited young lovers. Once it was physical death and crucifixion which nailed consciousness down into matter; then it was a sacrament of Thanatos [Death]; but in the world-epoch about to begin it is a sacrament of Eros, a physical sexuality in which the lovers of eternity give birth to the world on the physical plane.”

 Jane and Curtis in Philadelphia 1980, photo by Aline Mare

Jane and Curtis in Philadelphia 1980, photo by Aline Mare, digital paintwork by Jane Sherry

The energetic form for the New Age has been set in the astral plane, and the energy of the Divine Lovers is available to us all. This is an energy of unconditional love and balanced sexual affinity, an energy Unified with the Source of Creation.

This new marriage of male and female energies is based upon co-operation, balance and co-creation, rather than hierarchical relations between the sexes. 

Bringing today's war between the sexes to an end and establishing right relations between male and female has never been more important than it is today. A species at war with itself cannot heal the wounds inflicted by mind-body duality, cannot end war, cannot live in harmony with Mother Earth and the sentient and non-sentient beings with whom we share our lovely blue-green home in this universe.

Those who choose to follow the path of the Divine Lovers back to the Garden choose the difficult but important task of creating a new, conscious form of human love, which has not existed before on this planet.

They are assured of help and blessings from all quarters of the spiritual world. And in following this arduous but rewarding path, they obtain their release from the bondage of this ancient struggle between the sexes, which creates suffering in so many hearts and homes today.

At this critical time in history, the ability of lovers to establish a co-operative spiritual practice, a balanced state of sexual affinity, and an unconditional love sends a healing radiance throughout the collective consciousness of humanity.

Lovers who work together to co-create a shared reality of compassionate service based upon loving wisdom are helping to lay the foundations for a new human culture of co-operation and unity with Mother Earth where individuals, communities and nations live in peace and harmony.

 

Devote, by Jane Sherry

Devote by Jane Sherry, as published in ArtForum

Let us all take heart in this time of great turmoil on the planet. Lovers always live with a joyful heart, confident of the future, for lovers are in touch with the stream of loving energy that comes to us from the future, when the Divine Lovers will reign supreme in human consciousness, cultivating a restored Garden of Eden.

As clairvoyant, mystic spiritual teacher, and father of biodynamic agriculture Rudolf Steiner said,“We must eradicate from the soul all fear and terror of what comes toward human beings out of the future. We must acquire serenity in all feelings and sensations about the future. We must look forward with absolute equanimity to everything that may come. And we must think only that whatever comes is given to us by a world-directive full of Wisdom. It is part of what we must learn in this age, namely to live out of pure trust, without any security in existence. Trust in the ever present help of the spiritual world. Truly, nothing else will do if our courage is not to fail us.”

When men and women come to see the image of the Divine Lovers in one another's eyes, and to understand that the Divine Lovers dwell within them, life on Earth will change. Equilibrium will return to human love relations, to relations between husband and wife, relations between families, between communities, between religions and nations.

Equilibrium will return humanity's relationship with nature, with Mother Earth, and all sentient and non-sentient beings, visible and invisible, with whom we share our precious yet momentary Earth existence.

Of that I am sure.