THE two terms of the history of creation or evolution are formulated by the Catholic Church in two precious and all-important dogmas. These are--first, the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary; and, secondly, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. 2 By the doctrine of the first we are secretly enlightened concerning the generation of the soul, who is begotten in the womb of matter, and yet from the first instant of her being is pure and incorrupt. Sin comes through the material and intellectual element, because these belong to matter. But the soul, which is of the celestial, and belongs to heavenly conditions, is free of original sin. "Salem, which is from above, is free, which is the mother of us all. But Agar"--the intellectual and astral part--"is a bond slave, both she and her son." The soul, born of time (Anna), is yet conceived without taint of corruption or decay, because her essence is divine. 3 Contained in matter, and brought into the world by means of it, she is yet not of it, else she could not be mother of God. In her bosom is conceived that bright and holy light--the Nucleolus--which dwells in her from the beginning, and which, without intercourse with matter, germinates in her and manifests itself as the express image of the eternal and ineffable personality. She gives this image individuality. Through and in her it is
focused and polarised into a perpetual and self-subsistent person, at once God and man. But were she not immaculate,--did any admixture of matter enter into her integral substance,--no such polarisation of the Divine could occur. The womb in which God is conceived must be immaculate; the mother of Deity must be "ever-virgin." She grows up from infancy to childhood at the knee of Anna; from a child she becomes a maiden,--true type of the soul, unfolding, learning, increasing, and elaborating itself by experience. But in all this she remains in her essence divine and uncontaminated, at once daughter, spouse, and mother of God.
As the Immaculate Conception is the foundation of the mysteries, so is the Assumption their crown. For the entire object and end of cosmic evolution is precisely this triumph and apotheosis of the soul. In the mystery presented by this dogma, we behold the consummation of the whole scheme of creation--the perpetuation and glorification of the individual human ego. The grave--the material and astral consciousness--cannot retain the immaculate Mother of God. She rises into thee heavens; she assumes divinity. In her own proper person she is taken up into the King's chamber. From end to end the mystery of the soul's evolution--the history, that is, of humanity and of the kosmic drama--is contained and enacted in the cultus of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The acts and the glories of Mary are the one supreme subject of the holy mysteries.
It is necessary, in relation to the Mysteries, to distinguish between the unmanifest and the manifest, and between the
macrocosm and the microcosm. These last, however, are identical, in that the process of the universal and the process of the individual are one.
Mary is the soul, and as such the matrix of the divine principle--God--made man by individualisation, through descent into the "Virgin's womb." But the seven principles of universal spirit are concerned in this conception; since it is through their operation in the soul that she becomes capable of polarising divinity.
[This is the secret aspect of the Mosaic week of Creation, each day of which week denotes the operation of one of the Seven creative Elohim or Divine Potencies concerned in the elaboration of the spiritual microcosm.]
It is said that the Blessed Virgin Mary is the daughter, spouse, and mother of God. But inasmuch as spiritual energy has two conditions, one of passivity and one of activity,--which latter is styled the Holy Spirit,--it is said that Mary's spouse is not the Father, but the Holy Ghost, these terms implying respectively the static and the dynamic modes of Deity. For the Father denotes the motionless, the force, passive and potential, in whom all things are--subjectively. But the Holy Ghost represents will in action,--creative energy, motion and generative function. Of this union of the Divine will in action--the Holy Ghost-with the human soul, the product is Christ, the God-Man and our Lord. And through Christ, the Divine Spirit, by whom he is begotten, flows and operates.
In the trinity of the unmanifest, the great deep, or ocean of infinitude--Sophia (Wisdom)--corresponds to Mary, and has for spouse the creative energy of whom is begotten the Manifestor, Adonai, the Lord. This "Mother" is co-equal with the Father, being primary and eternal. In manifestation the "Mother" is derived, being born of Time (Anna), and has for Father the Planet-God--for our planet, Iacchos Joachim, or Jacob; 1 so that the paternity of the first person of the Trinity is vicarious only. The Church, therefore, being a Church of the manifest, deals with
[paragraph continues] Mary (substance), under this aspect alone, and hence does not specify her as co-equal with the first principle. In the unmanifest being underived, she has no relation to time.
120:1 Paris, December 12, 1882. Referred to in Life of Anna Kingsford, Vol. ii, pp. 98, 99.
120:2 The latter is not yet promulgated. See The Perfect Way, V. 43, n. 13. E. M.
120:3 See Part I, No. III, "Concerning the Immaculate Conception," and No. XLII, "Concerning God."
121:1 Home, August 19, 1883. Mrs Kingsford thus prefaces this; exposition in her diary:--
"How wonderfully the Church helps one in matters of Theosophy! When I am doubtful about Divine Order, or about function in the human kingdom, I appeal instinctively to Catholic doctrine, and am at once set in the right path. I think I should never have clearly understood the Order and Function of the Soul but for the Catholic teaching concerning the Mother of God; nor should I have comprehended the Method of Salvation by the Merits of our Divine Principle, save for the doctrine of the Incarnation and the Atonement."
Between Catholic doctrine in its inner and true meaning, however, and that doctrine as set before the world, she recognised an absolute distinction, holding firmly to the dictum that "The Church has all the truth, but the priests have materialised it, making themselves and their followers idolaters." E. M.
Referred to in Life of Anna Kingsford, vol. ii, pp. 133-135.
122:1 Ps. xxiv, 6; cxxxii, 2, 5, etc. See Appendix, "Definitions." Every kosmic entity, whether a system, a planet, or a person, is constituted of a certain portion of Divinity, segregated and assigned to be its life and substance. These names designate that particular individuation of the universal deity of which we and our planet consist. Wherefore Mary, as the perfected human soul, is "daughter" of the planet-god, precisely as her "son" Christ, the perfected human spirit, is "son" of the planet-god. The soul is at once "daughter, mother, and spouse of God," as woman is at once daughter, mother, and spouse of man. E. M.