Ascension Day
My personal musings on the meaning of this Christian feastival
So, the forty day have passed since the New Dawn at the Resurrection of the Christ on Easter Sunday. His victory over death is as that of a phoenix.
In esoteric Christianity it is understood that this is a world-bound reality and we all have such wings to spread and rise up by. Burnished by the fire of the spirit life within, our soul can fly. Free, free at last. Even the Ancient Egyptians saw the ba as a bird.
Wooden representation of a Ba Hellenistic period, 305 BC →
The trouble is, we tend to clip these wings for the greater sense of freedom a temporal (mortal) earth-bound life seems to provide. We are a bit short-sighted. Our senses are off, troubled like murky waters. We end up caging the bird in the belief this makes it sing more sweetly. We have little to dissuade us of this truth in our metropolises where the pigeons flock, the starlings chatter and the jackdaws caw, while the rest bawls and roars, floods and thunders.
In alchemy we find this rebirth in the Phoenix rising up out of the ashes: this is the Saturnal (warmth) force liberated from the dead skeletal-bone. It is the prana of Yoga, the life-force of Spring proper we celebrated at Easter. The Dayspring of Youth.
- Be sure to click on the below miniatures for more detail. -
- Last Judgement - Christ as the Resurrected One with bleeding wounds on a rainbow, with the lily of mercy in his right hand. Mary reminds her son that she is his mother by showing him her breast in her appeal for redemption. John the Baptist is kneeling on the other side of the rock of faith, always at the risk of crumbling by the undermining work of the devil. The four evangelists pin the corners with medallions of their symbolic animals - John the eagle, Mark the lion, Luke the ox, and Matthew the angel. These correspond to the juxtaposed zodiac signs of Scorpio-Bull and Leo-Aquarius, forming a celestial cross. Furthermore we have respectively, water, fire, earth and air represented by these signs. The Resurrection is a most etheric affair (the elements being the solid manifestation of this life &memory-force).
The four miniatures featured here are from the Book of Hours of Catherina of Cleeves.
↑Morgan Library &Museum Ms.M.917.p.28
Morgan Library &Museum Ms.M.945, f.139r →
- Supper at Emmaus: meant to be studied on a Thursday: the Day of the Sacrament, read at vesper. There are EIGHT hours (matins, lauds, prime, tierce, sext, nones, vespers, and compline) set aside for devotional reading in a nice, 15th century lady's day.
Note that Christ here (after the Resurrection from the Grave on Easter Sunday) is wearing a pilgrim's hat (with the typical
scallop shell of St.James); marvellously anachronistic (the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela dedicated to St. James was begun in 1060 AD) such illustrations can help us to loosen our time constraints now and try to create larger, more universal, and eternal images of the way in which the spirit of love can nourish us in life and in death.
A Book of Hours is a personal book of meditation, predominantly meant to redeem your own soul but also those who had crossed over to the other side. People died young, so you would have powerful images of robust but youthful people suddenly keeling over, that might stimulate the notion of sudden forlornness. Did they already have the powers of judgement (at 35, say) to know what to do next as excarnate soul? Chances seemed slim without the necessary earth-base support. Hence the nuns were forever reading out lists of the dead to commend them to various saints or directly to the Lord Jesus Himself; and why we always hear "Pray for my soul" as the dying-wish.
Catharina of Cleeves spent a lot of time praying for the dead. This was done also by appealing to the saints in the part of the book called, Suffragia, full of prayers to the saints. It seems a bit nutty to me: these saints with the devices by which they were tortured in hand for attributes. Thus we find Saint Laurentius ↑ with grill in hand (upon which he was tortured to death). Morgan Library &Museum Ms.M.917.p.266
He is the patron saint of librarians (and the poor). The fish in the margins may refer to his charitable act of descending to hell every Friday to save souls, since fish is eaten on Friday, by way of "fast" (the leaner meal) in memory of Good Friday when the Lord was crucified (whose symbol is the fish; maybe because the Greek ichtus shares the same letters as Jesus Christus; but the fish is also a very etheric animal, surrounded by the element of water which is tone ether: the medium in whch the cosmic harmony can be reverberated - hence water is the source of life. The legend also has it that, ever in saintly spirits, as he was being fried to death, he joked that he was done on one side and was ready to be turned over, much like one does a fish on the barbie.
Also find here a familiar valliant Saint Sebastian ↑ (with Pope Fabian). Only one guess what torture he endured: look at the decorative margin to be reminded that he was penetrated by as many arrows as a hedgehog has spines (so the legend tells. But he survived that ordeal. Not the stoning that followed when he was discovered to have escaped alive.) Morgan Library &Museum Ms.M.917, p.253
- Ascension: the Virgin Mary watches the Christ lift up to be assumed into the Heavens. It is as if we are left with an inverse tip of the iceberg. Here he stays quiet for ten days - til Pentecost (50 days post death). What happens then is what it's really all been about (the plum-pudding, the hullabaloo of carnaval, the easter eggs and this obscure day). Hold on, folks, for that biggie (20 May).
It is a rare intimate depiction of Mary's solitary witness. I love how this emphasises the personal experience the true meaning of Ascension Day must always have. The story after the crucifixion is one of life-long contemplation, meditation and initiation (pilgrimmage).
It also illustrates the legend (in the Legenda Aurea) that Maria remained behind on mount Sion when the apostles went out into the world to disseminate the Word of Christ. This convenes nicely with the sanctifying role women might take upon them I have been talking about a lot here on Steemit.
The proposition is that we are a mix of heaven and earth: divinity and nature; spirit and flesh.
What the Christ of the Resurrection specifically asks us is: can we mature into spirit men and continue to exist as eternal Atmen? Or Atem (D)? Or Atun (Logos light/Solar Godliness)? Take your pick of imagery and then blow your OWN life into it!
For the less imaginative ones there is always religion: it all ties together for you, in one way or another, giving various slants and versions of the Human Potential. It is all part of the same falconry that bind our bodies to our soul).
The Resurrected Christ might be perceived as the Consciousness made available for such Creative Prowess, such majestic rule of Self.
Leading by example this God-man, spent 40 days (reflecting the 40 days in the Wilderness during his life) consolidating this work of informed spirit which gave him his resurrection or phantom body. Seeing it is believing it, and nowadays few people even want to insult their intelligence by trying.
The story has it that the Christ wandered about for all to see who wanted to that Salvation is a simple switch of Consciousness. Or not so simple: it takes some devotion. Eternal life is just a matter of believing in a larger non-selfish version of yourself, the I Am That I AM: Paul at Damascus, the hosts in Emmaus, Mary Magdalen as the first, of course, and all the disiciples, with Thomas probing the wound made by the lance to make perfectly sure he could trust his eyes. They all discovered that all there is to “belief in God” is seeing for yourself.
Additional photo credits:
- The enlightened headforces (phoenix or eagle) escaping the lower metabolic orouborus of desire. By Jacob Boehme in Theosophical Works, 1682; alongside a caged canary from Pixabay
- Falconeering pair: Codex Manesse, UB Heidelberg, Cod. Pal. germ. 848, fol. 69r, Herr Werner von Teufen; c.1310. All codex manuscript illustrations to be found here