We are going to talk about the second Arcanum of the Tarot, called the Priestess, related with the letter Beth of the Hebrew alphabet, and with the number two. This is the great Arcanum related with the Divine Mother Aima Elohim. The Divine Mother Kundalini, which is also called Prakriti, Mahaprakriti, is the womb from which everything emerges. Here we have to explain about the binary or the duality, which emerges from the unity. When we look at the picture of the second Arcanum, we clearly see that all of it is related with the duality, beginning with the Priestess, which symbolizes the Divine Mother Aima Elohim.
It is good to remember that in the last lecture the speaker explained very well that the magician and the priest is the same thing. The meaning of magician is priest, the meaning of priest is a magician; the one that exercises dominion of nature, internal and external nature. And obviously, when we study the Priestess we are studying the female aspect of that magician, which is the priestess, the woman. As above, so below; as below, so above. You see that there are two columns which represent man and woman, and we are going to explain for you to understand how this card is related to the universe and to the human being.
The letter Beth is the first letter that you find in the book of Genesis. Remember that Genesis comes from "generation, generate," and "Bereshith," which is the first word of the book of Genesis in Hebrew, begins with Beth. And the World of Creation, which is the world of Briah, starts with Beth. And Binah, which is the Holy Spirit or the third sephirah, begins with Beth. This really invites us to reflect, because really, Binah is in relation with creation, Briah, with Bereshith, because it is the beginning or the way in which the universe develops.
When we explain the nature of God, we always arrive at the conclusion that God has no form, but we have to study that which people call God, because remember that in Hebrew, the first word that you find in the Bible for God is Elohim.Many times, we have explained that Elohim or Eloim is a feminine word, Eloah, with a masculine plural ending (-im). So when we say, "Elohim" we are saying "Gods and Goddesses." But El itself is masculine, so when the word Elohim is written in the book of Genesis, many translators interpret that as merely "God." But the real translation should be "Gods and Goddesses," because Elohim is a plural word, which encompasses feminine and masculine together.
The number one is masculine and the number two is feminine. The number two emerges from the unity, which in reality is within the unity. But the number two, the duality, is the way in which divinity multiplies or creates. It is impossible for the unity to create by itself; it does not, it unfolds into two. And That is why in many ways in Kabbalah, you find that there are different names related with different entities, different forces, that always show us the duality, or the two aspects, two polarities; masculine, feminine. And this is because in order for creation to exist we need always the two polarities. Those people that believe in God as masculine and reject the feminine aspect of it, are half-atheists, because God is male-female. So in order for us to be a complete theist we have to understand that we have to worship not only God as masculine, but the Goddess, the Divine Mother, its feminine aspect, in order to be complete. Otherwise, I repeat, we will be half-atheists, because God is male-female.
This is how you find that the fire, which is God, unfolds into another fire which is the Goddess. That is why Kether of the Tree of Life, which is the first sephirah, is symbolized with the letter Iod. The letter Iod is related with the phallus. Iod means phallus, or signifies phallus, thus in everything when you find the letter Iod, you find to be the creative potential of the masculine aspect of divinity.
The first sephirah, Kether, is related with the first card of the Tarot, the Magician. And the second sephirah Chokmah, which means "wisdom," is related with the feminine aspect. But we have to comprehend that in this way, in order to understand that in every sephirah of this triangle that we call Father, Son and Holy Spirit; Kether, Chokmah, Binah; Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva (different names in different religions). They always take possession of the three triangles that we see in the Tree of Life in order to organize that which is the universe.
The first triangle, which is the triangle that you call the triangle of God - Kether, Chokmah and Binah - is controlled by Kether, which is the first one.
The second triangle is controlled by Chokmah, the second sephirah. Chokmah is wisdom, and in that sephirah we find for the first time on the Tree the name of God as Iod He Vav He, which is translated into English as Jah-Hova. But the real translation should be Iod-Havah. Iod indicates the phallus and Havah the womb, because Havah is the way in which you say in Hebrew "Eve." Eva is how you say it in Spanish, but in Hebrew if you want to refer to that name, it is of course "Havah." So when you say Iod-Havah in Kabbalah, you are indicating "masculine-feminine." Therefore, the name Jah-Hova is also masculine and feminine.
The word "Jah," you hear that many times; Christians repeat that word many times: "Hallelu-JAH," which means "worship or praise Jah." And who is Jah? Jah is Kether, the first, the Father, that is Jah, that is his particular mantra. So when you say "Hallelu-JAH," you say, "Praise the first one, the number one, who is Jah," right?
In the word Jah-Hova, Hova is the feminine aspect. Jah masculine, Hova feminine. So that word that always we repeat "Jah-Hova," doesn't point to a masculine entity, it is an androgynous entity. People that think that the masculine name of God is Jah-Hova are wrong, because the name Jah-Hova is not masculine, it is masculine-feminine, together. That is why in Kabbalah we say not Jah-Hova, we say Iod-Havah, and Iod is pointing to Adam, and Havah is pointing to Eve. From Adam comes Eve, as it is written in Genesis, that Eve was taken from the body of Adam. If Eve was taken from the body of Adam, it is because Eve was within Adam before. So Adam was male-female. That is why it is written, "God created man into his own image."
Now this is something very important to understand, because God has no form, but God needs form in order to abide in matter. That form, that matter within which God needs to abide is called Human Being or Man. But here we have to explain that the word Man is androgynous. We are not taking the word Man as the dictionary, that is always pointing to the male. When we say the word Man, we are naming the female and the male together. This is something that we have to understand because this is how it is written, that the Man was made male-female.
Obviously, after that comes the division, when Eve was taken from Adam, and then we find that Adam is called Man, and the woman Wo-Man, which, between parentheses, "Wo" in Sanskrit means "no" - "no man" - or the negative or the passive aspect of the man, the feminine aspect, the Wo-Man.
So here God is fire, I repeat. And that is why in the Bible and many other books, when they refer to God they always refer to fire. But God is not the common and current fire, because the fire itself has two aspects: the visible and the invisible. The visible aspect of the fire is this that we call "matter," as forms. In other words, matter is only the crystallization of fire, or as we say scientifically, matter is just the complication of the energy. Remember Einstein, he says: Matter transforms into energy and energy into matter. So in the last synthesis, matter is energy. As an example we say that the physical matter that we know is a compound of cells, the cells are a compound of molecules, the molecules are a compound of atoms. If we make an explosion of an atomic bomb we liberate energy, so in the last synthesis all of that matter is energy. So whether it is water, whether it is air, whether it is earth, it is the same fire. In the last synthesis, everything is fire, energy. The crystallization of the fire or the energy into many forms is the visible aspect of the fire. Obviously, with the physical sight or with the physical senses we only capture the physical aspect of the fire. But there are other dimensions where you find other crystallizations of that fire that we call "God."
It is important to understand that, as we said in other lectures, in order for the invisible fire to crystallize into matter, it needs the second aspect; that second aspect is what we call the Akasa. What is the Akasa? It is that feminine aspect of the fire, an unfoldment of the fire, but it has no form. The Akasa is diluted in the space. That Akasa or fire, we will say, is what the Hindus call the Prakriti, the Mulaprakriti, which is in the universe. From there, from that substance, emerge the worlds, planets, moons. That is precisely what in Kabbalah we call Daath, and that we were talking about in the previous lecture: the upper Eden. Paradise. It is called paradise because it is the place where God is abiding, as male-female. That is why the sephirah Daath, which is a Hebrew word for "knowledge," Gnosis, is the place where God abides. Everything is possible within Daath, because there is where we find the activity of Chokmah, Iod-Havah, wisdom, in Briah. And you know, Briah is creation, the World of Creation, where Binah is acting, where the Divine Mother creates.
The great Rabbi from Galilee, Jesus of Nazareth, was a Rabbi who knew Kabbalah, and he founded Christianity. Kabbalah is the root of Christianity. And obviously, he knew about creation, and about Aima Elohim, the Divine Mother, which was represented in his physical mother that we know of as Mary, or Miriam. The physical mother of Master Jesus is a great Master, a great female Master, a Goddess related with the elements of nature. And 2000 years ago, when Christianity began, she took the responsibility of representing the Divine Mother in Christianity. Being a priestess of the temple of Israel, she received that honor. That is why we call her Mary, the mother of God. We understand very well that Mary, the mother of God, has no form. But Mary, the mother of Jesus that came 2000 years ago, yes, she is a Master, as Master Jesus is a Master who represents the Christ. But Christ is universal, the Divine Mother is universal and has no form, but is represented in Mary, the mother of Jesus.
Jah-Hova, the great Master of the past Mahamanvantara or cosmic day, is a great Master too. He is an individual, but he represents in us our own particular individual Jah-Havah, which is inside. So then we have to understand that in Gnosticism, we do not deny these Masters, they exist, but they represent something inside of us. That is the way to understand how to develop, because Christianity is unfortunately stagnant and worshipping the personality of Jah-Hova, the personality of Jesus, the personality of Mary. They are Masters, they deserve our respect, but we have to love our God above all things, and the neighbour as thyself. That is the commandment. The neighbour, Masters like Jesus, Jah-Hova, like Mary, Krishna, many other Gods, Masters that exist: we respect them. But first we go inside, because each one of them represents something within; this is how we understand.
Mary is the representation, the symbol, of the Divine Mother, of that fire which is called Akasa. When it crystallizes (thanks to the activity of the masculine fire that we were studying in the first Arcanum, the Magician, which is Kether, Chokmah and Binah together), the Akasa enters into activity in Briah. Briah is the world of creation. That is why the Divine Mother, which is the duality, is depicted in the Arcanum between two columns, because she needs to work. She in herself is one column. But if we see two columns there, it is because her house is within Briah, within Daath. Daath is her house. Only in her house is creation.
There can be no creation without the mother. If a man has a sperm and wants to have a son, he needs the womb of the woman, and it is the woman that is going to take nine months in order to develop that seed, not the man. Of course, the sperm is necessary, which is the seed, but the woman is the one that takes all of her creation. That is why in Latin mother is called "mater." When you said mother, mater, and mater you know in English is "matter," which is mother, because she is the origin of the form. The woman, the feminine aspect, is the origin of the form, because that sperm takes form in the womb and becomes what we are. So the woman takes all of that within her womb in order to create what we call the human being, physically speaking. The same thing occurs above, in Daath, in the space. The Divine Mother Maha-Kundalini takes the fire of the creator and molds it in her womb, which is the space, and creates a planet. That is why in other lectures we talked about the Divine Mother having different aspects.
The first aspect of the Divine Mother is the unknowable. Even the Unknowable Divine needs the Unknowable Feminine aspect in order to exist. The Unknowable Divine is masculine and feminine. That is why the Ain Soph receives from this point of view the name of "Sephirah." The word Sephirah is a feminine name that alludes to the Divine Mother, the Ain Soph from which all the Sephiroth emerge, which is the universe. So then you find that the Unknowable Divine in its feminine aspect is Sephirah, the Divine Mother, who creates the universe, the sephiroth.
The Divine Mother as a visible aspect is called Divine Mother Nature, because from the space Mother Nature creates different planets; She is in nature. The Divine Mother is everywhere. So the Divine Mother Nature as Eden is the fourth dimension. It is in the fourth dimension that we find the Divine Mother Nature, which is the feminine aspect of God in every single planet that creates life, different forms of life that crystallize in the physical three-dimensional world. That is why we said that paradise, Eden, is in the fourth dimension. And when we talked about that, we pointed to the sephirah Yesod, which is the sexual force. Shaddai El Chai, the almighty power of God, is in Yesod, but the Divine Mother needs to be there in order to create that. That is why in the beginning God said: "Let there be light!" And the Divine Mother said: "And there was light!" Because if she didn't say, "And there was light," there is no light, right? It is like the man says: "Let there be a son!" And the mother says: "And here is your son!" Same thing. The light is the son of both. That is why it is written that Mother and Father are Darkness, and Light is their son, and this light is Christ. You see the beauty of all of this.
We always emphasize that whether the Father or the Mother are fire, they have no form. That is why it is said that the devotee, when he is worshipping the Divine Mother, the Divine Mother can appear before him or before her by taking the shape of any religious feminine aspect of God. If she or he is a Christian, she will take the feminine aspect of Mary. But if he's a Hindu, she will take Saravasti or any other, because in Hinduism we find many feminine aspects of the Goddess, God. If he or she is a worshipper of the ancient, in this case the Tarot, then she will appear as Isis. But after she appears as Isis and talks with her devotee, and the devotee receives the blessing of her Divine Mother, or his Divine Mother, she dissolves the form because she doesn't need it. But she is the origin of forms. That is why it is written that when God, the masculine aspect Binah, talked to the devotee he says: "I am the one that formed you in the womb of your mother." The Holy Spirit really creates within the womb of our mother. If it wasn't for our mother, whether any religion that we follow, we wouldn't be here. So don't forget the Divine Mother, because her mystery is occultism.
Everything related with the number two is occultism, hidden. That is why the Divine Mother is covered with a veil, which is called the "veil of Isis." You need to lift the veil, to have the courage. In order to lift the veil of Isis, you need Thelema; that means "willpower," because She hides the secret of creation. Only by being a creator can you lift that veil. And here is the secret.
In the previous Arcanum, the speaker talked about God as air; Aleph is air, so God is air, the origin of air, that fire and air. But so is Shin, which is fire in Kabbalah, and so is Mem, mother, matter, within which the fire abides, because the Mem, the matter, Aima Elohim, is the house above, the house above in space of God. So God has a house, and that house is the Goddess, Aima Elohim. There he abides in order to create. Fire within fire. That is why when God wants to create his habitat, or wants to appear before anybody or in the universe, he makes the human being.
The human being is precisely the last, the utmost goal of God, because in him or in her - we said in him, but really the real human being is both, masculine and feminine. Because if God wants to abide in the human being, he first enters as feminine and then as masculine, and this is how you discover the mystery of creation. So behold here, the whole secret in order to become the house of God; Beth means the house of God, Beth itself. Even in Arabic, Beth is house.
It is written, "A man without a house is not a man." If you do not understand the meaning, you think you need to buy a house, and then you will be a man; no. You will be a man in many ways. A man without a woman is not a man, because Beth is the woman, that is the meaning of it. Also, a man without a house is not a man, meaning, a man without the creation of the vehicles in order for God to abide within, is not a man. So it has many meanings, you see? But of course, people that do not understand Kabbalah take just the literal meaning. A man without a house is not a man, so he has to fight all the time, making money in order to buy a house. He says, "Now I am a man, I have a house, I have a wife." Everybody does that. But the real meaning is different.
And behold, the womb is the symbol of that Beth, that house within which creation is made. In other words, the womb of the woman is paradise. We came out of paradise into this physical world to suffer, but that womb is related with the fourth dimension as well, symbolically. But look, observe how the fetus is developed in the womb of the woman. It is floating in the water, receiving through it all the elements needed in order to be developed. We are talking about the physical body that has the shape of the human being. But the physical body really is a great creation, a great organism, that needs different forces, elements that the woman attracts to her womb. And this is how it is being created. Elements from the Megalocosmos, elements from the Macrocosmos, elements from nature, in order to create the Microcosmos, the human body.
The human body is called the negative aspect of the Spirit, because the Spirit has no form, but the physical body has form; when we talk about the Spirit, our own individual particular Spirit, which is Chesed, we find that his negative aspect is Malkuth, the physical body. Malkuth, from this point of view, is feminine, whether you are man or woman. That is why in Malkuth we find the Queen. And the physical body is polarized negatively, that's why we have to work, this is the work of the Spirit.
Chesed, the Innermost, has to command nature, has to command the Holy Spirit, but it is written that the physical body, the house of God, the temple of God, has become a den of thieves; this is what Jesus says. Obviously, the physical body was created by the powers of God, because only God can create. But we have transformed the temple of God, the physical body, into a den of thieves, and that is why Jesus, 2000 years ago, symbolically, when he entered into the temple, he took a whip and drove out all the merchants. Those merchants are the ego that we have within. The temple of God is called a house of prayer, but we have transformed the temple of God, the physical body, into a den of thieves, merchants. The writer of the Gospel is not referring to the temple there in Jerusalem or any church of any other place, or any synagogue, or any mosque that Jesus was talking about, he was talking about the temple of the body. That body was made in the womb for a purpose.
The fetus floats in Mem, in that liquid within the womb. But it also needs the air, and that's why the navel, the umbilical cord has four arteries within, four channels. Two are for the air in order for the fetus to breathe, because the fetus cannot breathe through his nose, if he does he will be dead, because then the liquid will enter into his nostrils. So the air that will nourish his lungs enters through the umbilical cord. And then blood through the other two arteries. So the umbilical cord has four arteries, two for blood and two for air. Aleph is air and the blood is fire, Shin.
So behold here the three aspects of Alchemy: Shin, fire; Mem, water; and Air, Aleph. These three create Adam, physically speaking, the physical body, which is Malkuth, because the Three Primary Forces of these three letters always create. That's why we said that from upper Eden came a river that was nourishing paradise, Eden. That is why we insist always that the physical body is paradise as well for us, coming from paradise.
Unfortunately, we have transformed paradise into a hell, because we don't know how to take advantage of it.
The blood that enters into the organism at the end with all the transformations that we already talked about in other lectures, becomes sperm. [Editor: See the online course The Transformation of Energy]. So that fire that comes from above through the blood becomes sperm in the man and ovum in the woman. But the blood also becomes milk in the breast of the woman; that is why you see that the Priestess that represents the Divine Mother has the Tao Cross pointing to her breast, showing you that you have to be nourished with wisdom, the virtues. As the fetus needs the milk of the mother, we also need milk, that wisdom which is the Divine Mother too, in order to develop. But in order to develop, we need to work with the Divine Mother, we need to worship, and the science of the Divine Mother is called Alchemy.
The great mystery of the Great Arcanum is precisely sexual transmutation, because in the duality abides the Divine Mother. Man is the positive, woman the negative, or masculine and feminine. In order to create, we need the two polarities, sperm and the ovum: that is called Alchemy. We are not going to teach here how to create physically, because everybody knows about that. We teach how to create inside, within, or as Jesus of Nazareth said 2000 years ago, to be born again, by the fire and the water, or by the water and the Spirit. Water is Mem, the feminine aspect; the Spirit is the masculine aspect. It is an alchemical statement; it is not something that we merely believe in, because nobody comes into this physical world by believing.
Christians ignore the mystery of the immaculate conceptions. Tradition says that Mary was conceived by the grace and action of the Holy Spirit; that is Alchemy. It does not mean she did not have sex. It means that she had sex, but in mystery, an immaculate conception without impurity, because immaculate means "purity." The sexual act in itself is necessary for creation to exist, but Mary gives us the mystery there, the example, that in order to become a twice born, a Christian, in order to beget Jesus, she needs to be fecundated in the immaculate way. We are the outcome of the fecundation of our father and mother, but that is not immaculate; unfortunately, we were born through fornication, which means through the animal generation.
Fornication is the sexual act with spasm, or orgasm. That is fornication. No matter if we believe in anything. If the couple reaches the spasm or the orgasm they are fornicators, so all of us are children of fornication. But to be born again as an immaculate conception means that we should take advantage of the duality, Binah, Beth, the house of God. In this case, the man has to penetrate in the house of God, which is the woman, and not damage or pollute the house of God.
Animals pollute the house of God, because they are irrational, they do not know. But the human being knows how to transmute the sexual force, and that's why the Master emphasizes: "Do not forget, you man, that your woman is your priestess, who represents your Divine Mother." Of course, our physical mother also represents the Divine Mother. Of course, our sister also represents the Divine Mother. Of course, our female friends also represent the Divine Mother. The Divine Mother has different aspects, so the feminine aspect of God is the woman, made into the image of the Goddess.
To be born again, to make the house of God, is to create the internal bodies, to enter into the world of Briah, the mystery of creation. That is why the letter Beth is made of three Vavs. One horizontal, which descends into another Vav, which is vertical, held by another Vav which is horizontal at the very bottom. Three. Why three? Because we need three Men inside of us. The three Men are the three Solar Bodies that we need to create, because a man without a house is not a man.
In our house are the vehicles within which God has to abide. The Solar Astral Body is the house of the Son. The Solar Mental Body is the house of the Holy Spirit. And the Solar Causal Body is the house of the Father. When somebody has a Causal Body he can do the will of God, because the Body of Willpower, or the Causal Body, is the body through which we learn how to do the will of the Father.
So behold, Causal Body: the Father. Mental body: the Holy Spirit, because in the Solar Mental Body we have all the powers of the Holy Spirit. And the Solar Astral Body is the Son in us. So those three Men or Vavs are the three internal bodies that we have to create in order to become a Man, a Human Being. Then we will become a righteous man.
In Kabbalah, it is said that there are 36 righteous men in the earth, but that is a symbol. Three plus six is nine (Chokmah from bottom to top: Beth, the house; Yesod from top to bottom: the Ninth Sphere, the sexual organs), meaning that in order to become a righteous man, a right human being, we have to create the bodies, the three bodies of the letter Beth, and to make a house of God. Then we are ready to incarnate God.
When the house is ready, Jesus has to come, which is Christ, which is also fire, and incarnates in the Bodhisattva, and with the whip takes the ego, little by little, out of the house of God, in order for that Bodhisattva to become a resurrected man. Only a resurrected man could be really the house of God, because the many aspects of divinity have to incarnate; that's the meaning of creation, God needs a house.
Why does God need a house? Because he needs a form in the universe, he needs to know his qualities, and for that he needs the house, to adorn that house, to make that house according to his own idiosyncrasy. That is why each of us, spiritually speaking, has a different idiosyncrasy. Then we develop that idiosyncrasy, which is spiritual, psychological etc., our own inheritance. And we become Masters. Masters of our own house. And then we become vehicles of divinity.
In Kabbalah such vehicles are called the Sadikim. The Sadikim are those who have Solar Astral, Mental and Causal Bodies; but the real Sadikim is the one who is a Resurrected Master, who is a vehicle of divinity, and who can express divinity and give the blessings of God through himself. Moses is a Sadikin. Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Zoroaster and many other Masters are vehicles of divinity. That is why they are the heads of houses, but in this case, big houses, that people call "religions."
Christianity is a big house, and the head of that house is Jesus, because he is a resurrected Master. Mohammed also made a big house called Islam, because he is a resurrected Master. Buddha also made a big house. Other initiates come and make small houses, because they are not resurrected. So they do not succeed like the great Masters, the resurrected Masters. They have a little hut. There are different kinds of houses, or we will say, organizations. A resurrected Master is the only one that can channel the Holy Trinity and bless anyone who enters into his house.
When you enter into this Gnostic Movement, you enter into the house of Samael Aun Weor, the Red Christ of Aquarius. So then you can enjoy all the blessings of Samael Aun Weor when you enter here. Samael Aun Weor has a temple in the internal worlds; it is a big temple. Anyone who listen to lectures enters into that temple internally. But that temple has many rooms, its altar, and many floors. It depends in which level you are, and then you are guided. In that temple of the Logos Samael, which is guided by his son Samael Aun Weor, there are also other Masters there assisting him, he is not only one there. The White Lodge said: "Samael Aun Weor, we need your house now." - "Why?" - "Because we have to deliver the knowledge of the Aquarian message in this Aquarian era. So are you willing to open the doors of your house and allow all the souls who want to receive the knowledge?" And the Master says: "Welcome, my temple is big." And then they say: "Send your son to the earth and teach, and anybody that comes is welcome." So therefore, you see, the Cosmic Christ is working in that house in this era. So anybody from any religion who wants to enjoy the forces of the Cosmic Christ, enters into the house of Samael in this Aquarian age. His house is big.
Each one of us has to make his own house, too. He as an engineer or architect is teaching you: "Okay, this is my temple, but you have to make your own. I will teach you here, come anytime." And that is why Solomon calls Hiram Abiff to make his temple, because he knew how. And then after he had his own temple, he taught others to make their own temple. To begin to make your own temple, you have to create the solar astral, mental and causal bodies. And for that you need the mystery of the Great Arcanum, which is the secret of the Divine Mother.
The two columns represent the two polarities, because the Divine Mother as fire who creates, rises in the spinal column, and that is why any temple entrance always has two columns. When you arrive at any temple, whether the temple of Samael, or Raphael, or any temple in the galaxy, in the universe, you find always at the very entrance two columns: Jakin-Boaz, the man and the woman, the two polarities. For any temple to exist, it requires two columns, not one; two, for creation. This is Binah, Briah, creation, Beth. The man and the woman. And it is precisely in the sexual act, by taking advantage of Paradise, Eden, which is the sexual force, how the Divine Mother emerges from Eden, because the Divine Mother is in Eden. Eden is a word which means "voluptuousness," sexual voluptuousness. So in order to create something divine you need to enter into Eden, and the entrance of Eden is the sexual act. Man and woman united in the sexual act are in Eden. That is why they are in Paradise.
The sexual act is the most beautiful gift to the human being. But unfortunately, people do not take advantage of Eden; they enter into Eden and they leave Eden all the time. To remain in Eden is to keep the sexual force, to not spill it like the animals. We need to transmute it in order for the Divine Mother, who is the creator that needs to be fecundated by the Holy Spirit, to rise in your spinal column, which is the two columns. That is why we said two columns, because the woman has her spinal column and the man has his spinal column.
Below the Priestess you see two columns, in the waters. Those two columns are in the waters because we need to bring them up. And obviously those columns have four levels. The four levels represent the four Bodies of Sin, which everybody has: the physical body, the vital body, Kama Rupa and inferior Manas; all of those are animal aspects. First, the physical body is the negative aspect, or lunar aspect. The vital body as well. Kama Rupa means "body of desires," which is inside. It's that emotional aspect. And the inferior Manas, the mind, which is animal mind, is also inferior. So you find those four levels there on each column, because man and woman both have four Bodies of Sin, or four animal lunar forces that we have to transform into Solar. We transform them into Solar when we know how to take advantage of the Solar Light in the sexual alchemy, and then we create the internal bodies. And this is how we need the forces of the womb. The woman needs a man in order to take advantage of her forces that are in her womb, and to be born again.
It is coming into my mind Madame Blavatsky, the great Yogi. She wrote "The Secret Doctrine," and she developed a lot of powers, because she was a yogi, and was guided by the Masters. But at a certain age the Masters called her and said, "Madame Blavatsky, you are a great seer, you have developed a lot of spiritual powers, but you need to be born again, you need to develop you house, your internal bodies." And then she was married with the Colonel Olcott in order to perform the duality. And thanks to the Colonel Olcott, Madame Blavatsky became a Master of Major Mysteries, and created her Solar bodies. So there are many groups in this day and age, many organizations that teach you how to develop this or that spiritual force, psychological force, which is good. But if they don't teach you how to build your house, it is worthless. God needs to abide within you. God cannot abide within you if you do not have Solar Astral, Mental and Causal bodies. That is why you see that the two columns with the four levels of the Bodies of Sin are below. Only the columns above can hold the house of God. And that is the mystery of the Second Arcanum.
Question: What about Bethlehem?
Answer: Bethlehem begins with Beth. Beth means house, and lehem is bread. So when you say Bethlehem you say "the house of the bread." But of course this "bread" is not referring to the physical bread that you make with wheat, which is a symbol, because even the wheat is a symbol of that grain which encloses the fire. That is why the Eucharist is related with this occult or hidden wisdom, because within the wheat is hidden the fire of God, which when the priest and the priestess know how to transform, they free the energy in order to feed their souls. That is the mystery of the Eucharist, in which the priest together with the priestess liberate that fire from the bread and the wine; that is the mystery of sexual alchemy. That means that a priest without a priestess is not a priest. For a priest to be really a priest, he needs a priestess. For a man to be a man, he needs a woman, for a God to be a God he needs a Goddess. This is the duality, you cannot escape from it. That is why in any ritual in the Beth or house of God, which will be any church, any Mosque or any place where you celebrate the Eucharist, the priest has to be together with the priestess in order to perform that, because God is not only half, you have to bring the whole entity of God within, and that is the "Bethlehem," the wisdom. The lehem, bread, also represents wisdom. Remember that the Master Samael Aun Weor talks about the supersubstantial bread of heaven, the manna that comes from heaven in order to feed you. That wisdom is the bread, the energy of God that descends from above in order to feed you, and that's precisely the meaning of Bethlehem.
Question: Is there a practice related to this lecture?
Answer: There are many beginners that ask us, "How do we transmute the sexual energy?" The Master Samael Aun Weor delivered for us from the ancient mysteries of Egypt, a beautiful, powerful prayer, an invocation that man and woman can chant, perform, while in the sexual act in order to transmute the sexual energy. I remember the Master Samael, when he was passing his processes of resurrection and he was in bed listening to noise in the street, and he asked: "What is that noise in the street?" They said: "Oh, it's just the people, because today they are celebrating the day of the virgin of Guadalupe." You know Mexicans celebrate the virgin of Guadalupe, which is a dark virgin. The Master, in his bed, said: "Well, really the Divine Mother has to be worshipped, but unfortunately the multitudes ignore that the best way to worship the Divine Mother is in the sexual alchemy."
Of course, any single bachelor or bachelorette that transmutes their sexual energy worships their Divine Mother, but the utmost way to worship the Divine Mother is in the sexual act, because that is where she is. In that moment, she is acting, active. And of course, the practitioners of sexual magic should memorize this prayer and transmute and utter this prayer during the sexual act. Then the Divine Mother will take all her energy out of the sexual organs and raise it in the spinal column, the column of Jakin and Boaz, and begin the creation of the house of God.
A man without a house is not a man, but that man when entering into the house has to obey his woman. A man that says, "Oh, I am the man of the house," well, I always see that the woman is the boss. The man creates it, but the woman commands there. I'm sorry, but that's the truth (laughter).
So let me now read for you the way you have to intone this invocation while in the sexual act or if you are single, transmuting, you have to do it as well. It works whether single or married. You have to say, concentrating of course in your Divine Mother Kundalini:
Be thou, oh Hadit, my secret, the Gnostic mystery of my Being, the central point of my connection, my heart itself, and bloom on my fertile lips, made Verb!
Up above, in the infinite Heavens, in the profound Height of the unknowable, the incessant glow of Light is the naked beauty of Nut. She reclines, she bends in delectable Ecstasy, to receive the kiss of secret fervor of Hadit. The winged sphere and the blue of the Sky are mine.
O.A.O. KAKOF NA. KHONSA
O.A.O. KAKOF NA. KHONSA
O.A.O. KAKOF NA. KHONSA
These mantras have the power of transmuting our Sexual Energy into Light and fire within the Alchemical Laboratory of the human body. This prayer with its mantras can be utilized in Sexual Magic. This prayer with its mantras is an omnipotent clue in order to meditate upon our Divine Mother.
Iif you do that, you will receive the blessings of Havah, Aima Elohim, the Divine Mother Adonia, because each one of us has their own particular individual Mother. Nobody can be here without a mother, to exist without a mother is impossible. Do you have questions?
Question: You said that in the beginning when Eve was created she was taken from Adam, right? But you also said that that was really when they were androgynous, they were both male and female, so couldn't it be said that Adam was taken from Eve?
Answer: The feminine aspect comes from the masculine aspect. That is why it's written that Eve came from Adam. That's the point, because in order to create we need the feminine aspect, but your question is "Why doesn't it say that the man was coming from the woman?" The reality is that Adam is not a man from the masculine aspect, Adam is here androgynous, so the idea that the woman was taken from the male: no. The male didn't exist until the woman was taken from the androgynous. Adam, in other words, is the name of the androgyne, male-female. So in the beginning when Aima Elohim and God created the Human Being, the Human Being was androgynous, and the name of that androgynous being was Adam. So from that androgynous being, Eve, Havah, was taken out. So then when Havah was taken out, then you find the two polarities, masculine-feminine. So it's not like, people say "Oh, why was the woman taken from the man and why not vice versa?" No, because if you see physically, literally, all of us come from a woman. Whether a man or a woman comes from the womb of a female that is the mother, right? So that's the reality. So we have to understand that, that Adam, that is written in Genesis, was not a masculine person, but an androgyne with two polarities, masculine and feminine at the same time. That's the answer. You have any other question?
Question: What is that piece of paper that she's holding?
Answer: That is not a piece of paper, but a book that represents wisdom, that is Kabbalah. That means, in order to receive Kabbalah you have to enter into the mysteries of Daath, of Binah, Briah. So in this case we have to state, there are two types of kabbalists: intellectual kabbalists who memorize the sephiroth, and they talk about and write books; and intuitive kabbalists, which are the ones that enter into the womb of the Divine Mother in order to receive the true Kabbalah. The word Kabbalah comes from "kabel" which means "to receive." In order to receive the wisdom - that's why she's there with the book - you have to enter into her house, and her house is Eden, the sexual voluptuousness. You have to transmute that energy in order for her to give to you, and then you receive, you take, Kabel, Kabbalah, the real wisdom, the real knowledge, Gnosis. Of course, in the beginning you need to know about it, that's why we're teaching this.
The first type of Kabbalah is first intellectual; you learn it, you study it, but then you have to practice it. That is why this course of Kabbalah is given together with practices. The first practice that we gave in the last lecture was the sign of the infinite in order to enter into the astral plane. Once there, in the astral plane, you pray to your Divine Mother: "Divine Mother of mine, take me to your home, to your house. Teach me." There she is, and then you receive knowledge, because the real knowledge comes from her; she is the Kundalini that develops in the spinal column, she has the powers, she has everything. We need to be devoured by the serpent, the serpent is one of the symbols in Hinduism for the Divine Mother.
But remember that the negative aspect of the Divine Mother, because she is feminine, is the harlot that we have to defeat, that is called lust. The fire of lust which is in each one of us. In other words, we have to defeat the mechanicity of nature which works in the animal, because animals follow lust. In certain periods of time when they are in heat, they multiply. But they are irrational, they just obey their instincts. Now we are intellectual, but we have to overcome that nature and to create another one, to be born again, in other words. Because right now, we are still animals. Intellectual, but animals. And remember that animal comes from Latin, anima, which means "soul." Intellectual souls. We have a body that belongs to nature, but we have to create something more. That is to transform the moon into a sun.
Question: Can transmutation occur without love? You're talking about the sexual alchemy, but it is not a mechanical process, is it?
Answer: It is not mechanical. The Divine Mother is guided by the fires of the heart, and obviously we have to love. At least in the beginning we have three percent of love; that is why we're always saying the couple should be united physically, meaning that they should like each other physically. Emotionally, they should also be emotionally united. Mentally, to have the same beliefs, the same mind. There are couples where the woman has one religion and the man another religion; they are not united in the mind. But when both follow the same, they are united. And another one is for instance in the will, in the world of Will. Both of them have to have the same will, the same goals. Together they have to work with the same objective. In this case, for instance, the objective is to be born again, because remember very well that willpower expresses in the sexual act as sexual potency. That why we said that our motto is Thelema, willpower. But that works exactly in the sexual act, because in the sexual act is where man and woman with Thelema, with willpower, transmute the sexual energy, and then they are being born again. And for that, this is how love develops, because the Divine Mother is love. In this case we will say, the Father as Father is wisdom, and the Mother as Mother is love. So of course, the Divine Mother enjoys the couples that love each other, and when true love exists in the four worlds; physical, emotional, mental, causal.
Question: You make it sound like it is almost a desperate situation. You know, a man cannot build his house without a woman, a man cannot be a man without his woman. I mean, the good majority of the students are single, right? And to me is sounds like you need that spouse in order to do any of the work. It's always emphasized in every lecture.
Answer: We always emphasize that, because without a spouse we cannot create. But it does not mean that we are helpless without being in a couple, because there are a lot of students who are single, bachelors and bachelorettes, who are working very hard with their Divine Mother. The fact that we do not have a spouse does not mean that the Divine Mother is not there; you have a mother whether you are single or married, right? Physically speaking. As well, internally, the Divine Mother is always there and blesses her children whether they are single or married. But obviously the Divine Mother takes her children to a certain limit when they are single.
When they reach that limit, the Divine Mother will tell her children, "Okay, my son or my daughter, now, if you need to keep ahead, you need to marry down there, in order for me to keep helping you." That is why that invocation that we pronounced is good, whether we are married or single, in order to transmute the sexual energy. But of course, the Self-Realization of the Being is only possibly with the duality, the couples, man and woman. As a single person, you just advance to a certain level. Into my mind comes in this very moment Yogananda. Yogananda is a great disciple of the White Lodge, he worked a lot with his Divine Mother. If you read his writings you will see how he worships his Divine Mother all the time. And he developed a lot and annihilated a lot of ego and awoke. And after death, that he died in a Maha-Samadhi, after death he was in Limbo, awakened. He thought that he was Self-realized because he was fully awakened and with powers. The Master Samael said, "No, you are not Self-realized, you need to be born again. You are awakened, that's good, but you have to build your bodies." As you see, it is possible to develop a lot being single. And he developed so much that he thought that Self-realization can be attained as a single. Now he has to be born again in order to create his internal bodies, which will be easier for him of course, because he's awakened, he has annihilated a lot of ego. So for the single people, good to annihilate a lot of ego and to advance, but of course, it's better to be married.
Question: What if that time never comes?
Answer: It will come, sooner or later, because there is always a couple for everybody. If you are single now it's because you need to be like that, but when you need to be married your spouse will be there with a whip, and then you have accept it. You have to accept it, accept her, or accept him.
Question: It's karma, I mean, I'm sure the majority is karma too, you know.
Answer: Everything is karmic, even the marriages. Karma is karma, the universe exists because of karma, you see? There is not a single thing that doesn't exist because of karma.
Question: It seems like we should wait for a gnostic woman or man for us to have that spouse.
Answer: That's the wrong idea, we need of course a partner, but that doesn't mean that forcedly the partner has to be from gnosis. Obviously, when you meet a woman, you have to talk about gnosis, etc, and if she accepts the doctrine obviously you are done. Right? But she does not forcedly have to come here. If you find her here in Gnosticism, it will be good, right? But there are many women out there that will like this knowledge, and they have not heard about it yet. But they will, and maybe it will be through your lips.
Question: Conflict comes like, take when you say that, in that if they try to oppose you in it. That's where the conflict comes. For example if you're in a relationship with someone and they don't want to help you in any way or they try to stop you from your own beliefs, that's where two different religions really conflict.
Answer: Yeah, That is the problem.
Question: I mean, you can have two different religions and if they respect your beliefs, that's where the bottom line comes in.
Answer: Listen, when I said different religions, I said in the sense that they think that they are different, but there is no difference between religions. Because in this sense we can say, gnostics, we understand all religions. For me it's not a problem, a catholic; a Muslim, a Jew, a Buddhist, for me it's the same, but for them it's different.
Question: It's a big difference in fornication.
Answer: Well, that's the difference, that's the difference. Fornication and chastity, that's the difference. The internal religion transmutes, the external, they have problems because they fornicate. They have their own habitat, they defend their own territory like animals. But a real initiate understands everything, and comprehends that all religions are pearls on the great necklace of divinity. But outside, there are problems. Obviously, I accept all religions, I love all religions, but when I talk with religious people they think there is difference. They said "No, if you want to be saved you have to be Muslim." I said, "Why? Christianity is the same thing." - "No it's not the same." The same with the Jews, the same with Buddhists. A true gnostic understands that all religions are good, because all religions are coming from Aima Elohim, Adonia, the Divine Mother. I would like to know if any of you comes from the air, you know? Everybody came from a womb, and that's why we have to worship Mary, Isis, Isoberta, Rhea, Sibeles, Tonantzin. Do you have any other question? If there is no other question, we thank you for your attention and next lecture will be the third Arcanum of the Tarot. Thank you very much.
