BACK to site navigation

BACK to list of introductory material

INTRODUCTION#5

Nature conceals the divine will. In the Gnostic Gospels Christ said ‘‘Study Nature’’ when replying to an enquiry as to how one could find the meaning of life. Nature does indeed conceal this mystery. In different countries all over the world man looked to nature to try and understand the riddle of existence. In desert countries where the Sun ruled harshly and without compromise God was seen as an implacable deity who had clearly defined rules that if not obeyed would result in disaster for the miscreant. This is but a reflection of the implacable nature of the most significant factor of desert man’s experience the implacable nature of the Sun. The Sun will not compromise therefore God would not. If you went out into the desert without obeying the rules you died. From this desert experience was developed the extreme good and evil based religions of Jehovah and the Devil that are the basis of Christianity and Islam.

In more temperate climates where nature was more compromising and the seasons more clearly defined as Spring Summer Autumn and Winter religion took on a gentler and more feminine guise. In these countries nature could be relied upon to aid man to survive, it gave him a varied and bounteous harvest. This man would see the divine in many and varied ways and he personified the bounty and beauty of nature in a multitude of Gods and Goddesses. Indeed this four pole experience of nature he paralleled with the nature of the human female and made her the supreme deity. The great mother whose sons and daughters taught and sustained mankind. To those in temperate climes God was a beneficent and wondrous King bestowing blessings on his people.

To understand the nature of the divine one must synthesise the whole world experience of nature and create a system that encompasses man’s total experience of Her the world over, and having done this one’s results must be systemised in time - as you may guess this systematic synthesis that reveals the nature of the divine will is Astrology, that arcane philosophy that has grown, sometimes creating great temples, at times hidden, but always evolving down the centuries to give us not only a philosophy of existence, but an art and science that reveals the certainty rather than faith that nature conceals. The certainty of the eternal nature of each human spirit in this galaxy of experience that is man’s experience of life on Earth. Life after life through incarnation to incarnation in every climatic condition in the world humanity is taught the essence of his own divine nature. When viewed from man’s experience the process of understanding has little coherence to it, to him coming to understand life can seem a chaotic struggle, but the divine art teaches differently. Astrology teaches that the moment of birth will give the nature and conditioning that each individual soul will experience during the course of its life, culminating, if he behaves correctly, in being introduced to our Royal Art and if he is truly wise, distilling the essential truth from it.

When an astrologer says that a particular planet governs a set of phenomena the magician says that the phenomena is a manifestation of that planet. For example Venus is said to govern human emotion and the beauty and form of nature. The magician turns this idea on its head and says that the emotions and the beauty of nature are Venus in action. Each planet has a physical image, in the case of Venus it is a young beautiful virgin female. The astrologer parts company with the magician where the magician can influence the manifestation of Venus and the astrologer not only cannot but reuses to accept the possibility. The magical holistic view is that emotion and natural beauty have the same source. There is no intrinsic difference between pruning roses and protecting them from pests and diseases to isolate that rose’s beauty, and the development refinement and isolation of a beautiful concept, each utilises these same Venus forces. The root energy is Venus, by contacting that power in the self one is enabled to influence that very same force in the natural world, this is the basis of sympathetic magic. If one can contact the Goddess through her primary manifestation - love, then one can influence her manifestation in the natural world. The beauty of a rose IS Venus in action. That beauty cannot be stolen gathered collected or preserved it can only be emulated by the artist and evoked by the magician.