The ancient Hebrews used the same word for 'knowing' and 'erotic union': ie. "Now Adam knew his wife Eve, and she conceived..." (Genesis 4:1). They understood that human emotion and human biology were not entirely separate from human intellect. Indeed, they 'knew' that the heart has it's reasons of which the mind 'knows' little. Adam knew Eve and she concieved (Gen 4:1) The reason ot does this is in order to show how close a husband and wife should be. True love is a religious act. If I love you as God wills that I love you, it is the highest expression of love. Since the very beginning, love was spoken of as making man and woman "two in one flesh". One soul passes into another soul, and the body follows the soul to such unity as it can achieve.

It is here that we approach the mystery of love, where the constant action of spontaneous experiencing is found to be the basis from which love and its expressions arise. At it's essence, this spontaneity is the will of the Creator which governs the uprising of all life. To honor this within one's life is a gift one gives to oneself as well as to the beloved. In this open and ungrasping state of awareness, the beloved, the other, is not possessed but rather is received into oneself with all the abundance and splendor of joyful surprise. In this then, the mysterious and unsought uprising of love, the experience of complete joyous relationship with another, is the transforming vision; not only of the beloved, but of the entire world and life.. This may seem irreverent, or just claiming to much, to those unwilling to feel it completely, refusing to see anything mystical or divine in the moment of life's origin. Yet it is just in treating this moment as only a instinct, that we reveal our vast separation from, and indifference to, the gift of life. Now God is the creator of beauty; and if we are indifferent to beauty, we will not posses beauty.

In the fiercest extravagant love is the tangible source of all wisdom! In the sprint of your exquisite flesh is evinced the awesome recklessness of God's mercy!

ike walking in an enchanted fog. The fog breaks for a moment; you see the moon or a girls face, you feel an unnamed gravity. The fog comes down again and leaves you groping for something, you don't quite know what.

A sad thing in life is when you meet someone who means a lot to you only to find out in the end that it was never meant to be and you just have to let go

It hurts to love someone and not be loved in return but what is more painful is to love someone and never find the courage to let that person know how you feel.

To be devoid of love is the essence of hell. Scripture tells us: "Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" (2 Cor 3:17). Shall the devoted religious heart be without a someone to love? Sweet surrender is all I have to give.

Sometimes we live with people that are not beneficial to us and sometime people we should be with, we cannot be with. "for time and chance happen to all".

Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. ....... Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. . ..( Ephesians 5: 17, 32).

The height of harmonious, lyrical, erotic love, coming upon us of itself, is one of the most total experiences of communion with another of which we are capable. Only indoctrination, prejudice, and insensitivity have prevented us from seeing that in any other circumstance such rapture would be called mystical ecstasy. For what lovers feel for each other in this moment is no other than adoration in its full religious sense, and its climax the literally felt pouring of their lives into each other. Such adoration, which is due only to God, would indeed be misplaced were it not that in that moment love takes away the illusion and shows the beloved for what he or she is in truth; the naturally divine soul of love.

She is the way every woman wants to command respect and love because of the beauty of her goodness. And this Ideal and Essence is truly our Goddess whom God loved before the world was made. She is the one whom every man loves when he loves a woman; wether he knows it or not.

That ideal love we see beyond all other loves, is the same love that God has in his heart for the Lady who is own his desire and completion; our Goddess, Wisdom and Holiness, and their daughter New Jerusalem. She is the woman whom every man marries in ideal when he takes a spouse. This Dream Woman before women were, is the one of whom every heart can say in its depth of depths; 'She is the woman I love!"

Then I was by him as one brought up with him; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men.PROV 8:30-31

It is an understanding that if you have God, you have everything. And so it is written, "let 'us' make man in 'our' image" (Genesis 1:26).

And within this bond you are touching the core of reality; for the Divine love is felt to be everywhere. It imparts an intuitive understanding of the Creators love for the creation.

And this is a true celibate, not physically, but theologically; the celibacy of one who is in reality two, two who are in reality one, given entirely to God, and who is now totally open to the presence of God and in love with the whole world. And this is because the person has participated in an experience similar to the Beatific Vision; or God in all things, and all things in God. For God 'is' love. Authentic Christian celibacy, then, is not a rejection of sexuality or a devaluation of marriage. It's the expression on earth of its ultimate purpose and meaning!

This person does not love the beloved only as a means to God. The process is more intuitive, and this cannot be explained. It is an experience of God at the heart of all creation. He/She loves this being and God at the same time. There is no moving of the mind from this to that, but in their vision they see at one and the same time the created being and the infinite love of God who created this being and gives it to them as a gift. They find the gift and the Giver in the same look.

The more a woman is holy; the more she is a woman; just as the more a man is holy, the more he is a man. Woman was made for the sacred. She is heaven's instrument on earth. Mary the Mother and Mary the Lover are the Archetypes, the every-woman who fulfills in herself the deepest aspirations of every daughter of She who is God's Wisdom.

hen viewed against this background, the sexual imagery of the union between God and the Sabbath, or between God the King and his consort, the Shekhina-Matrom't-or, for that matter, between the Matrortit and man; appear neither offensive nor fantastic. The two-thousand-year-old jewish tradition of viewing the relationship between God and man as one between husband and wife was, in the course of time, repeatedly transmuted, transformed, expanded, reapplied, and refined. What remained unchanged was the basic approach underlying it all: to view both the physical cosmos and the metaphysical world of the divine in human terms, which inevitably centered on the sexual reference,

There was nothing unusual about resorting to the symbolism of coitus in speaking of certain cosmic and divine events. Thus, for instance, in the cosmic realm the conjunction of the sun and the moon-that is, the appearance of these two luminaries close to each other in the sky-was described verbally and visualiy as a man and a woman in sexual embrace.

Our Creator who made the sun, also made the moon. The moon does not take away the life giving light of the sun, rather, The moon reveals the sun still with us, even at midnight. Light represents the Active Principle, and Darkness or Shadow is analogous to the Passive Principle. Therefore it was that they made of the Sun and Moon emblems of the two Divine Sexes and the two creative forces; therefore, that thev ascribed to Woman the Temptation and the first sin, and then the first labor, the maternal labor of the redemption, because it is from the bosom of the darkness itself that we see the Light born again.

July 22nd is the feast day of Mary Magdalene. The July full moon is known as The Full Black Moon. Mary Magdalene is revered in France as The Black Madonna. A dark moon is a time to seek the deepest mysteries, unbind oneself from unwanted limits, and release whatever delays you.

May we reflect the light of God's love out to the world, just as the moon reflects the light of the sun, with a brilliant pearlescenct glow.

Joining back to the oneness of God will include acknowledging the Female side of God, the dark side of the moon. Appearances has it, that it looks as if there is only a half moon because the darkness renders that side invisible but the moon is always a full circle. Likewise, God is a Family God, a Father and a Mother figure, and that means, all women too are made in the image and likeness of God. The Balance scales will be equal one day, when man acknowledges the importance and value of women though a greater understanding and experience of God.

Jewish mystics and poets, modern and medieval, often perceive the Divine feminine outside the conventions and fears of the Jewish community. They may see the Goddess-and/or God-not only in text but in the trees and the sun and the moon, just as pagans do. They may see her as "dark womb of all," 1 as if She gave birth to the universe (a pagan image Genesis emphatically edited out). Many of us 2 find divinity not only in Jewish texts and prayers about the divine feminine, but in myths of goddesses as well. I too see God in these ways. I want to be a monotheist, but I also want to recognize the godliness in many images of feminine and masculine divinity, and not only those in Jewish text. I want not to edit my moments of contact with the Divine to get rid of any "pagan" influence. I want not to demonize goddess-imagery while thunder-god imagery rolls through the Hebrew Bible without comment or controversy. In short, I want not to be afraid of goddesses. That's why I love this text in the Zohar. 2. "It says in Deuteronomy, '"You shall not plant for yourselves an asherah or any kind of tree beside the altar of the Lord thy God which (asher) you shall make for yourselves." Are we to suppose that anywhere else it is permitted [to plant an Asherah]? [Of course not!] The truth is that the He' [the letter of God's name that represents the feminine Divine] is called Asherah, after the name of its spouse, Asher, and the meaning of the verse is therefore: "You shall not plant another Asherah by the side of the altar which is established upon this [Asherah]." Observe that throughout the Scriptures the worshippers of the sun are called servants of Baal and the worshippers of the moon servants of Asherah; hence the combination "to Baal and Asherah." If this is so (that Asherah is the name of the feminine aspect of God), why is it not used as a sacred name? The reason is that this name brings to mind the words of Leah, "happy am I, for the daughters will call me happy (ishruni)," but this one is not "called happy" by other nations, and another nation is set up in its place. It is written, "all that honored her despise her" (Lam. 1:8). But the real altar is one that is made of earth as it is written, "An altar of earth you shall make for me." That is why it says in Genesis, "dust from the earth." Zohar I, 49a The Jewish mysticism of the Zohar (a twelfth-century mystical document from Spain that influenced the course of all Jewish mysticism after it) is saturated with panentheism, the belief that God is both separate from and embodied in the natural world, i.e., that God "surrounds and fills" the universe. Even so, the passage that appears at the beginning of this article is so shocking that it is hard to decode. The Zohar quotes a classic text from Deuteronomy prohibiting pagan worship: "You shall not set up an asherah or any kind of tree, near the altar…" 3 An asherah, as most scholars agree, based upon excavations as well as other ancient references, is a pillar or tree representing the goddess Asherah. Stone inscriptions show that Israelites may once have worshipped Asherah, a goddess of love and fertility known as "She Who Walks on the Sea," as the female counterpart to the Israelite god we call Adonai. 4 References in Jeremiah 7:18 and 44:17 indicates that Israelite women worshipped the "queen of heaven" by baking cakes-this queen may have been Asherah. In general, the stamping out of Asherah-worship was one of the main concerns of the pure monotheists who established themselves as normative in the days of King Josiah and who are responsible for the composition, according to scholars, of much of the Torah. From those radical monotheists, Judaism evolved. We would expect, then, that all later Jewish references to Asherah would be negative, as indeed most of them are. Yet the Zohar, steeped in multiple personalized, sexualized, gendered images of the deity, chooses to read this passage in a radically different way. The Zohar writers do not equate Asherah with Lilith or another demonic figure, which would be an easy theological move. Instead, they reread the verse. It is not, they say, that the Torah wants to tell us not to plant an asherah by the altar because it is an idolatrous object. If the Torah had wanted to tell us that, it simply would have said: "Do not plant an asherah anywhere." Rather, the Torah wants to tell us that Asherah is a name for the Shekhinah, the feminine Divine presence, already at the altar. An extra Asherah image would be redundant. The Zohar proves this assertion by connecting the name Asherah to the word asher. Ordinarily, this word simply means the word "which." However, in Zohar-speak, many common Hebrew prepositions like asher and et are regarded as names for God. In this case, the Zohar reads Asher as a name for masculine divinity. The Zohar redefines the word Asherah as the feminine form of Asher: the Spouse of Asher, the Spouse of God. The verse now means, in the Zohar's reading, that we must not plant an asherah by the altar because Asherah already resides in the altar in the form of the Shekhinah. We do not need a pillar to remind us of Her. The Zohar does not choose to say that the goddess Asherah is evil or false and that worshipping her is a theological mistake. Rather, it says that the theological mistake would be to assume that Asherah (the tree) is separate from Shekhinah (the altar), when in fact they are one. The Zohar seems to be saying is that the object used to worship (i.e. the altar) God must be single rather than multiple, just as all the faces of the feminine and masculine Divine are ultimately unified. The Zohar then quotes a passage related to the biblical queen Jezebel's worship of other gods, and informs us that the priests of Baal and Asherah (male and female deities) are worshippers of the sun and moon. The sun and moon, the Zohar goes on, are really Tiferet and Malkhut, the Holy One (male divinity) and the Shekhinah (female divinity). Baal and Asherah worshippers, the very people whom the Torah rejects as the worst of pagans, are actually worshippers of the (legitimate) masculine and feminine Divine. The Zohar appears to be saying that pagans and Jews are worshipping the same aspects of divinity by different names. The next question, of course, is: If Asherah is simply the Shekhinah by another name, why is it forbidden to worship her? A standard answer one hears is that idolatry is really about separation-idolatrous practices separate the particular manifestations of God (e.g. the moon/Asherah or the sun/Baal) from the singular godhead, and sees them as different entities. Yet the Zohar does not take this easy approach. Instead, it comes up with a statement even more shocking than the first: The only reason we may not worship the Shekhinah as Asherah is that the name Asherah, as translated by the Zohar, means "happy." (The Zohar proves this by connecting the matriarch Leah, who herself is an image of feminine divinity in the mystical tradition to the root alef-shin-reish, which translates as "happy" or "fortunate.") The Shekhinah is in exile among the enemies of the Jewish people, and therefore we cannot call Her happy. That-not separation and not idolatry-is the error. The Zohar implies that we abstain from using the name Asherah, not out of theological exactness, but out of courtesy: we abstain in order to empathize with the pain of the Shekhinah. The unspoken implication of this is that in the world to come, when the Messiah has arrived, we will be able to call the Shekhinah Asherah. It is only in this imperfect world, where the Shekhinah is exiled, that we are banned from doing so.

Knowing Nature you know Sophia for She is your Nature. Hence we each are Sophia incarnate for it is She that takes residence as our inner Soul, which is the reason the genitals of women fold inward.they direct us to the Truth.

The fish symbol has been used for millennia worldwide as a religious symbol associated with the Great Mother Goddess. It is the outline of her vulva. The fish symbol was often drawn by overlapping two very thin crescent moons. One represented the crescent shortly before the new moon; the other shortly after, when the moon is just visible. The Moon is the heavenly body that has long been associated with the Goddess, just as the sun is a symbol of the God. The link between the Goddess and fish was found in various areas of the ancient world:

ASHERAH Ta'Anith Esther (Israel) Themes: Kindness; Love; Divination; Foresight Symbols: Lion; Lilies; a Tree or Pole About Asherah: Asherah, a Canaanite Goddess of moral strength, offers to lend support and insight when we are faced with inequality or overwhelming odds. In art, she is often depicted simply as an upright post supporting the temple. This is a fitting representation, since her name means "straight."
Among the Hebrews' Phoenician neighbors, tall standing stone pillars signified the numinous presence of a deity, and the asherahs may have been a rustic reflection of these.

At Kuntillet Arjud (in Hebrew Horvat Teman) in the Sinai Desert in the 1975 excavation, a pottery ostraca was inscribed "Berakhti et’khem l’YHVH Shomron ul’Asherato." (=I have blessed you by YHVH of Samaria and His Asherah.)

This would appear to show northern Israelite influence but others have suggested that "Shomron" should be read “shomrenu”, our Guardian.

Scholars have argued that this was a sacred site but others suggest it was a resting place, of a religious nature, for travellers following trade routes through the Sinai of the 8th century BC There may also be another reference YHVH and His Asherah in an inscription on the building wall.

An additional references to YHVH and His Asherah, has been found at Khirbet el-Qom, near Hebron, where an inscription reads "Blessed be Uriyahu by Yahweh and by his asherah; from his enemies he saved him!" (Berlinerblau).


Asherah is listed in connection with Baal, but not as his consort. Her consort, very clearly, is El - the senior deity of the Canaanite pantheon, creator of heaven and earth, Eternal father, the ageless one, father of years. As for Asherah, she is revered as the Creatrix of all deities with the title 'she who gives birth to the gods' occurring 5 times.

Asherah was indeed a goddess, and the consort of Yahweh'
according to the Bible, a statue of Asherah stood in the Solomonic temple in Jerusalem for about two-thirds of its existence Asherah "must, then, have been a legitimate part of the cult of Yahweh"
"the asherahs" were usually wooden; they stood upright, often beside altars, along with stone pillars.

Asherah is the Shekhina..

In Judaism, the worldly presence of God, sometimes conceived of as a divine light. It is said that the Shekhina descended on the Tabernacle and on Solomon's Temple, though it was one of the five things lacking in the Second Temple of Jerusalem


In addition to the testimony of the Hebrew Bible, there is also considerable archaeological evidence that may throw light on the role of Asherah in the religion of the early Israelites. First, a considerable number of small, clay, female statuettes, which archaeologists usually call "pillar figurines," have been unearthed all over Israel. Dating to the eighth and early seventh centuries, that is, to the height of the Israelite monarchy, they occur in almost every excavation of the period. So many pillar figurines have been excavated in the heartland of Judah that they are often regarded as "a characteristic expression of Judahite piety"
The clay figurines could have been "popular, domestic copies of some larger Asherah image" from an important shrine.

Hundreds of small female figurines (854 to date) have been found in Judah and Jerusalem, known as Judaean pillar figurines. They are between 8 and 14 cm tall, with prominent breasts and prominent eyes. Figurines found in Jerusalem and north Judaea sometimes wear a turban, and some hold a disc which has been identified as a shield, a drum or a loaf. The face is often painted red, the ‘dress’ seems to have been white, and there are traces of red and yellow decoration on the neck and shoulders, perhaps representing jewellery. These figurines were often found with horse and rider figurines. Many had been smashed. Archaeologists have concluded that these figurines went out of use at the end of the second temple period, the time of Josiah.

· Graffiti have been found on two large storage jars at Kuntillet Ajrud in the southern desert, which seems to have been a resting place for pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. ‘I bless you by Yhwh of Samaria and by Asheratah’ says one, and the other ‘I bless you by Yhwh of Teman and by Asheratah.’ There has been endless debate about these inscriptions, and how the name Asheratah relates to the Old Testament name Asherah. Given that Asheratah is a constant form, and Yhwh is defined by his cult centre - Teman, Samaria - it looks as though Asheratah was ‘senior’ figure, perhaps the mother of the Lord?

Wisdom describes herself in the holy of holies in Proverbs 8. In the temple, this had been constructed as a perfect cube and lined with gold to represent the light and fire of the divine presence (2 Chron.3.8); here in Proverbs 8 it is the state beyond the visible and temporal creation. Wisdom was herself begotten and brought forth in this state (Proverbs 8.24-25), and she was beside the Creator as he established the heavens and marked out the foundations of the earth. She witnessed the creation. She was also the Amon, a rare Hebrew word which probably means craftsman; in the Greek it became harmozousa, the woman who joins together, or the woman who maintains the harmony (Prov.8.30). This Wisdom poem does not describe the visible creation - trees, birds, animals - but only the structures which were established in the invisible state., the ‘engraved things’. She was there when the Creator engraved the circle on the face of the deep, set the engraved mark for the sea which it could not pass, engraved the foundations of the earth (Prov.8.27-29). She was the Creator’s delight, and she danced and played before him. The male and female Creator is familiar from Genesis 1.26-27: ‘Then God (a plural word in Hebrew) said ‘Let us make the human in our image, after our likeness… So God created the human in his image, male and female he created them.’ The female figure also appears in Genesis 1.2: ‘…the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters’ ‘Moving’ here is a feminine form: she was hovering, fluttering over the face of the waters. When Genesis was translated into Aramaic, a version used in Palestine[8], and so one the first Christians would have known, gave the first verse of Genesis as ‘In the beginning with Wisdom the Lord created… People remembered that Wisdom had been present at the creation, and that she was also known as the Spirit.

The woman in the holy of holies, clothed with the sun and giving birth to the Messiah, must have prompted the early Church to tell the story of Mary as the story of Wisdom. The Infancy Gospel of James is not easy to date, but Justin in the mid-second century knew that the birth had taken place in a cave, Clement of Alexandria, at the end of the second century, knew that Mary was a virgin after giving birth, and Origen knew that Joseph had been a widower with other children; all details unique to account. A papyrus of the Infancy Gospel of James, dated to the end of the third century, is the oldest known complete gospel text. The Infancy Gospel of James tells how Mary was given to the temple when she was three years old, like the infant Samuel (1 Sam.1.24). The priest received her and sat her on the third step of the altar, and she danced at his feet in the temple. She was fed by an angel, and grew up in the temple until, at the age of twelve and the onset of puberty, she had to leave. A husband was found for her, Joseph, who was a widower with sons. When a new veil was needed for the temple, seven young women were chosen to spin the wool and to weave. Mary was one of them, and while she was spinning, the angel told her that she would give birth to the Son of God Most High. Mary spinning the red wool as the angel speaks to her became the ikon of the Annunciation. The little girl in the temple, dancing before the high priest, is exactly how Wisdom was described in Proverbs 8: playing and dancing before the Creator. Like Wisdom, Mary is depicted in ikons as seated in the holy of holies, being fed by an angel. She left the holy place to give birth to her child, like the woman clothed with the sun appearing through the opened veil of the holy of holies. Whilst she was weaving the new veil, the symbol of incarnation, she was pregnant with her child, and in ikons, she is shown holding her spindle, the ancient symbol of the Great Lady. The Queen of Heaven and her Son were Mary and her Son, and just as Jesus was proclaimed the Lord, the God of Israel, so Mary was depicted as the Great Lady, his Mother.

the shadows cast by Venus rising in the east as the Morning Star, Eastern Star or Shekinah. In temples oriented to the rising of Venus in the 40-year Venus cycle, these shadows would be cast by either the doorways or pillars erected outside the doorways. Often the light of Venus penetrating the interior of the Holy of Holies on it’s 40-year Venus cycle was taken as an omen of the feminine form of the Deity joining the male form in the marriage bed of the Holy of Holies. This penetration of the Holy of Holies was often taken as indicative of the presence of God with the nation and could be a portent of an important event such as the birth of a Messiah who might be named "God is with us" or victory over an enemy. The Bible is thick with cycles of 40, be it days or years.

The Holy of Holies in Solomon’s Temple represented the womb. In the Holy of Holies was kept the Ark of the Covenant. Upon the Ark were the Mercy Seat and the two Covering and Annonting Cherbums. The image found in the gospel of Matthew of both Marys standing on either side of the tomb represents the Holy of Holies and the Ark of the Covenant, where Christ lay being the mercy seat, and both Marys being angels of the first degree. Likewise, the twin pillars of strength and beauty that stand at the door of the Holy Place are properly female.
The temple of Jerusalem was simultaneously dedicated to Yahweh and to the Queen of Heaven.

The Ivory Cherubim: as far back as 873 B.C.E. the palace of King Ahab of Israel contained "a number of small ivory plaques"; these plaques gave the royal palace the name "Ivory House."  These early figures depict two women in profile, "crouching female figures" that face each other.  Their arms are outstretched toward each other; underneath these outstretched arms is a wing that seems to be attached to the "lower contours" of the outstretched arms of the respective female crouching figures.  Each of these outstretched hands holds a "large flower, probably a lotus."  The upper bodies of these figures that face each other are erect, the legs of each figure are bent, with knees touching each other, and the buttocks of each figure "rest on their upturned heels."  These figures are naked but have about their shoulders "wide, fringed collars...breast-plates hang down from their necks."  The heads of these figures are "covered by Egyptian-type head-cloths" that flow down "behind the ears and over the shoulders"; the heads are "crowned by a hollow, ring-like ornament" that rises "vertically upward."   a "vertical ritual object" with a ring on top of it is similar in type to the ornament on the heads of the two figures; this ring-like ornament rests between the two figures.  This round figure has "under it a four-tiered structure [that is] supported by slender, out-turned legs."  This ritual figure that is positioned between the two Cherubim "engages the attention of the two figures who seem to shield or fan it with their wings."

 this "ivory plaque" is the "closest illustration" to the Cherubim that shielded the Ark in the Holy of Holies in Solomon's Temple; it is "closest not only in general arrangement and detail, but also in time of provenance and place of discovery as well as origin." 

The other great symbol of wisdom was the Tree of Life. ‘She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her, those who hold fast to her are called happy.’ (Prov.3.18). ‘Happy’ here is the Hebrew word asher, which may be word play on her name Asheratah. Ben Sira, writing in Jerusalem about 200BCE has Wisdom compare herself to all manner of trees: ‘I grew tall like a cedar in Lebanon, like a cypress in the height s of Hermon, I grew tall like a palm tree in Engedi, like rose plants in Jericho, like a beautiful plane tree I grew tall’ (Ben Sira 24.13-14). Enoch reveals more about the Great Tree. On his visionary journey in heaven, he saw a great tree by the throne, ‘whose fragrance was beyond all fragrance, and whose leaves and blossoms and wood never wither or rot (1 Enoch 24.4). No mortal could touch the tree until after the great judgement, when its fruit would be given to the chosen ones, and the tree itself transplanted again into the temple. The fruit of the tree was sometimes compared to the clusters on a palm (thus here) or to grapes. The tree is fully described in a text which was part of a small Christian library, hidden in a cave in Egypt in the fourth century and rediscovered in 1945. The text is usually identified as Gnostic, but texts such as these are full of temple imagery and traditions, and labels such as Gnostic (and therefore heretical) should not be applied with too much confidence. ‘The colour of the tree of life is like the sun, and its branches are beautiful. Its leaves are like those of the cypress, its fruit is like a bunch of white grapes.’ Enoch reveals something more about this tree; it is the place where the Lord rests when he is in Paradise. ‘I saw Paradise, and in the midst, the tree of life, at that place where the Lord takes his rest when he goes (up) to Paradise… That tree is indescribable for pleasantness and fragrance, and more beautiful than any created thing. its appearance is gold and crimson and with the form of fire’ (2 Enoch 8.4).

The Tree of Life icon projects the conception of Yah as the life and
light of the world and the simple but powerful representation on
Har Karkom is hard to discount as a commemoration of the bush
that burned but was not consumed before the eyes of Moses
(Exodus 3:1-2).

Old Negev;=Hebrew: Yah & the Burning Bush [also the Tree of Life & Light - a very unconventional minorah.

Ezekiel, who was a priest in the first temple and was deported to Babylon, described how the Lady left the temple. In his two visions of the chariot throne, the one as it left the temple and the other as it appeared to him on the banks of the River Chebar in Babylon, he described a male and female figure. Most English versions of these chapters (Ezek.1 and 10) attempt to cope with the confusing Hebrew by smoothing over the evidence for what Ezekiel was actually describing. There are four (feminine) Living Ones in human form (Ezek.1.5), and they had four faces/presences, wings and hands. In the midst of the Living Ones was fire, and she/they were in the midst of a wheel within a wheel, and the rings were full of points of light/eyes. Wherever the Spirit went, the wheels went, because the Spirit of the Living One, (feminine singular) was in the wheels (Ezek.1.20). Over the heads (plural) of the Living One (fem. singular) there was the likeness of the firmament, like the gleam of terrible ice/crystal, and above this there was a throne on which was a human form, the likeness of the glory of the Lord (Ezek.1.28). Immediately after this vision, Ezekiel was given a scroll and told to eat it (Ezek.3.1-2). Since Ezekiel was describing the heavenly throne, this must have been how he imagined the Holy of holies; the throne, and beneath it the gleaming firmament, and beneath that, a fourfold fiery, female figure with wings and hands. Ezekiel heard a sound ‘like the voice of Shaddai’, which must have been the name of the Living One (Ezek.1.24; 10.5). There is a similar description in chapter 10, where he described the Glory leaving the temple: ‘As for their appearances, they four had one likeness, as if a wheel had been in the midst of a wheel’ (Ezek.10.10 AV); ‘All their body (singular body, plural suffix) was full of points of light’ (Ezek.10.12); ‘She is the Living One that I saw by the River Chebar (Ezek.10.15); ‘She is the Living One I saw beneath the God of Israel by the River Chebar’ (Ezek.10.20). One very obscure verse (Ezek.10.12) seems to say that all flesh, that is, all created things, were the points of light within the wheels. This was the Lady as Ezekiel knew her, leaving the temple. We are accustomed to translating the plural form elohim as God, singular; it is likely that the Living One was also described in singular and plural forms.

What Ezekiel saw was a wheel within a wheel, (or a ring within a ring), and those rings were full of points of light. In the midst of the rings was a fourfold fiery female figure, the Living One, with hands and wings. Overhead was the firmament, gleaming like ice, and above this, the heavenly throne. Ezekiel was then given a scroll. The Living One whom Ezekiel saw leaving the temple must have been the Queen of Heaven, Wisdom. It is remarkable how many details of Ezekiel’s vision appear in the ikon of the Holy Wisdom.

Elsewhere (Ezek.28. 12-19), Ezekiel described an anointed guardian cherub, full of Wisdom and perfect in beauty, who was driven out of the Garden of Eden. The cherub was the seal, and must have been the high priest, because the Greek version of the list of twelve gemstones worn by the cherub is an exact description of the high priest’s breastplate (Ezek.28. 13; Exod.28. 17-20). Fire came forth from the midst of the cherub - who must have been a fiery being - and consumed the holy place. What is remarkable is that the anointed guardian cherub high priest was female. In its present form the oracle concerns the king of Tyre, but Tyre and Zion are very similar words in Hebrew, and the Hebrew text has already been distorted to conceal the gems of the high priest’s breastplate. Only the Greek has the full list. Ben Sira, writing some four centuries after Ezekiel’s vision, described Wisdom as the one who served in the temple of Zion. She was the high priest (Ben Sira 24.10).

The other great symbol of wisdom was the Tree of Life. ‘She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her, those who hold fast to her are called happy.’ (Prov.3.18). ‘Happy’ here is the Hebrew word asher, which may be word play on her name Asheratah. Ben Sira, writing in Jerusalem about 200BCE has Wisdom compare herself to all manner of trees: ‘I grew tall like a cedar in Lebanon, like a cypress in the height s of Hermon, I grew tall like a palm tree in Engedi, like rose plants in Jericho, like a beautiful plane tree I grew tall’ (Ben Sira 24.13-14). Enoch reveals more about the Great Tree. On his visionary journey in heaven, he saw a great tree by the throne, ‘whose fragrance was beyond all fragrance, and whose leaves and blossoms and wood never wither or rot (1 Enoch 24.4). No mortal could touch the tree until after the great judgement, when its fruit would be given to the chosen ones, and the tree itself transplanted again into the temple. The fruit of the tree was sometimes compared to the clusters on a palm (thus here) or to grapes. The tree is fully described in a text which was part of a small Christian library, hidden in a cave in Egypt in the fourth century and rediscovered in 1945. The text is usually identified as Gnostic, but texts such as these are full of temple imagery and traditions, and labels such as Gnostic (and therefore heretical) should not be applied with too much confidence. ‘The colour of the tree of life is like the sun, and its branches are beautiful. Its leaves are like those of the cypress, its fruit is like a bunch of white grapes.’ Enoch reveals something more about this tree; it is the place where the Lord rests when he is in Paradise. ‘I saw Paradise, and in the midst, the tree of life, at that place where the Lord takes his rest when he goes (up) to Paradise… That tree is indescribable for pleasantness and fragrance, and more beautiful than any created thing. its appearance is gold and crimson and with the form of fire’ (2 Enoch 8.4).

In an account of the life of Adam and Eve written at the end of the second temple period, when God returns to Paradise, the chariot throne rests at the tree of life and all the flowers come into bloom. The synagogue at Dura Europas depicts a king enthroned in a tree. The tree was inseparable from the throne itself. Reigning from the tree became a Christian theme, and the subject of controversy with Jews. Justin claimed that the they had removed words from Psalm 96.10, which were important for Christians The verse had originally been: ‘Say among the nations “The Lord reigns from the tree”’, but, he claimed, ‘from the tree’ had been removed. The Letter of Barnabas hints at this longer reading by saying that the royal kingdom of Jesus was founded on a tree, and the longer version of Psalm 96 was known to several early Christian writers. ‘From the tree’ does not appear in any version presently known, but the tree of life and what it represented was a point of contention between Jews and Christians. In the Book of Revelation, faithful Christians were promised that they would eat the fruit of the tree of life (Rev.2.7; 22.14), which stood by the throne of God-and-the-Lamb, watered by the river of life.

Will anybody who believes in Jesus as divine and also the story of the virgin birth deny that Jesus was born by Mary through faith? When the female Holy Spirit indwelt in Mary it was the substance of Mary's faith. It is the very image of the Divine Feminine. And from this the word is made flesh.
If Jesus was born by Mary's faith what does that make Mary? It makes her the God bearer as well Christ bearer.. and Mediatrix,, and co-redemptrix

Jesus hints at the Holy Ghost's gender when he refers to his 'mother' in heaven, and compares her in the Nag Hammadi gospels to his earthly mother, saying his earthly mother gave him death but his heavenly mother gave him life. He also mentions that his followers are to be born again of the Ruach or Anima, and he speaks of baptism as a ritual of rebirthing, where we are born again of the water. Everyone knows there is no birth without a womb, without a mother. Jesus explains this so that the gender of the Ruach is not only incidental, but central and crucial to the mystery of baptism, and the one being baptised is reborn as a child of the Holy Ghost, he or she is born again of the Holy Ghost, a son of the Goddess. I have presented all these facts to conclude that Jesus, and his rabbi John the Baptist, both of whom were Essenes, were beyond a shadow of a doubt teaching a form of Goddess spirituality and a Goddess mystery tradition within Judaism, and that the Ruach's status as a Divine woman was central to the true mystery and meaning of baptism.

Like all initiations, in the baptism performed by John the Baptist and the Essenes, the old self must die and one is reborn again. The Gospel of Phillip sheds light on this mystery when it teaches us that 'a horse can only beget a horse, a man can only beget a human, and a god can only beget a god'. This further illuminates what it means to be 'born of the Ruach'. If the Ruach is spirit, then one reborn from Her becomes spirit and shares her divine, immortal nature, and receives the Holy Ghost as his mother. This new relationship between humans and the Ruach is one of the things that identifies the new Christian community and Christian mysticism.

The mystery of baptism is clearly a Goddess mystery, where the sacred waters grant us new life just as they did in Genesis. In fact, the creation myth that we find in Genesis is based on an earlier, Sumerian myth where the Sumerian Father God (El) and Mother Goddess (Asherah) copulate at the beginning of creation. We know of the identity between the God of Abraham and the Heavenly King in Sumerian myth from the name: El. Most prophets and angels in Jewish traditions have names that end in -el, such as Daniel, Gabriel, Mikael, etc. This is a reference to El, the Sumerian God, with whom Abraham believed to have made a pact or covenant that extended to all his descendants. Abraham came from Ur, where El was the main God, even if one among many.

We also know of the identity between the Holy Ghost and the Asherah because both are the waters of life. Lady Wisdom, in the Bible, says that She existed before creation and witnessed it, which means that She is non-created, and therefore her nature is divine. In the Sumerian myth, the spirit of El is hovering over the Asherah, and they are copulating. In the Genesis myth, the waters of life are no longer personified, and we see a plain sea where the Sumerians saw a watery primal Goddess. But the myth, otherwise, is almost identical. Asherah is the consort of the God of Abraham, the co-Creator, and this must have been the reason why Jewish women used to commit transgresions against the prophets' warnings and pray to Her during early Judaism, because they saw their pagan cousins and neighbors praying to her alongside their more familiar God, and they knew that they had a spiritual Mother who had been stolen from them by patriarchal Jewish religious authorities.

Prior to our modern era, the Church had enjoyed peaceful possession of the same truth. It seems to have generated little or no controversy. The Eastern and Western Fathers and Doctors of the Church had amassed a veritable Mariological treasure in regard to these sublime Marian roles, and in doing so already prepared the groundwork for the later invocation of Mary under the more technical term "Coredemptrix."

And along with his wife..

Mary the Magdalene.. who is one with Jesus through marriage and being the chief prophetess and apostle to the apostles.. who is also a "Coredemptrix." and a bodhisattva (like Kaun Yin)..

These two Mary's are the twin pillars on the right and on the left..

1Ki 7:21 - And he set up the pillars in the (l) porch of the temple: and he set up the right pillar, and called the name thereof (m) Jachin: and he set up the left pillar, and called the name thereof (n) Boaz.

(l) Which was in the inner court between the temple and the oracle.

(m) That is, he will stablish, that is, his promise toward this house.

(n) That is, in strength: meaning the power of it will continue.

These pillars are named.. like an Asherah is named. “Direction” and “Strength.”

t appears to have been the custom among the ancient mid-eastern
people to give names to their sacred and religious objects. It is stated (in
Exodus 17:15), "And Moses built an alter, and called the name of it
Jehovahnissi". This name which Moses endowed upon the alter, when translated
from the ancient Hebrew effectively states "God's Sacred and Holy Vestments".
Thus we can establish the fact that the two pillars were not merely articles
of architectural design and function, but also must have been objects of
blessed sacraments, in relation to the names which were used to adore them.
 

These two pillars also served as memorials of Gods repeated commitment of
support to His people of Israel and of a vision, which came to David, the
father of King Solomon, where the voice of God proclaimed, (I Kings 9:5)
"Then I will establish the Throne of thy Kingdom upon Israel forever, as I
have promised to David thy father".

But why two pillars, if but one Deity is represented?

This is symbolic of God's presence in his Asherah

Ancient Goddess' could symbolize both love and war.

So these pillars being eminently strong and stable, were types of that strength which was in God, and would be put forth by God for the defending and establishing of his temple and people.

or of the church of God, the pillar and ground of truth; as of Christ himself, and the two natures in him, and of his royal dignity, signified by the crowns or chapiters on them, decorated as they were, whose legs are as pillars of marble, and in whom are righteousness and strength; which is no small encouragement to those who are entering into the church of God the temple was a type of; who, should they fear, being feeble and weak, that they should totter and fall, here stands Jachin, to let them know the Lord will establish and settle them; or that they should never hold out to the end, here is Boaz to direct them to Christ, in whom their strength lies, see Son_4:15.

Jachin and Boaz represent two giant plants or tree whose top is a lotus flower and stem or trunk are that of a palm tree. "The lotus flower was recognized as a love flower anciently and here it signifies God's love.

Thus the two pillars typify Unity and the redeeming power of Love, with the significant suggestion that the redemption results from the Unity. They correspond with the two "bonds," or uniting principles spoken of by St. Paul, "the Unity of the Spirit which is the Bond of Peace," and "Love, which is the Bond of Perfectness."

These two pillars, therefore, stand for the two great spiritual principles that are the basis of all Life: Jachin typifying the Unity resulting from Being, and Boaz typifying the Unity resulting from Love.

To summarize this topic of the two twin pillars, we must learn to open
our minds and hearts to the Spirit.  And as
the pillars of Boaz and Jachin do inhabit, the inspirations which are represented by the "Pillar of
fire" and the "Pillar of cloud", should teach us how
the Children of Israel were led through the Red Sea by a miraculous east
wind, so should we ever remember that God promises to watch over us with
grace and love and how He will redeem us into His own house at the end of our
earthly existence.

Son 3:6 Who is this who comes up from the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all spices of the merchant?

 
Hebrew anan. As visible heavenly objects, clouds are often associated with supernatural phenomena. God rides upon the clouds (Ps. 104:3). When God becomes manifest on earth, clouds obscure what is happening (Ex. 19-21; Job 22:13; Ex. 19; Lev. 16:2). Angels too manifest themselves as cloud, most famously the pillar of cloud that guided the Children of Israel during the day on the Exodus (Ex. 13:21, 14:19-24).
According to Rabbinic tradition, a cloud is a sign of the Shekhina, the feminine Divine Presence (Gen. R. 1:6; 1:10). Such clouds hovered over the tents of the matriarchs (Gen. R. 60:16). Clouds (called by the Sages "clouds of glory") not only led the Israelites, but actually transported them, surrounding them on all sides and protecting them from the harsh desert environment (Mekhilta Bo 14; Pesik. R. 20; Targum Shir haShirim). These clouds had supernal letters written on them, serving as banners for each tribe. A pillar of cloud became manifest over the altar on Yom Kippur, and its appearance was an augury of the future (Yoma 21b). The presence of these clouds diminished and eventually disappeared due to the accreted sins of Israel. Bar Nifli, "son of a cloud," is a title for the Messiah, who will appear riding one, following the Book of Daniel.


In relation to these two pillars as representing parallels of the Spirit,
we should study the illustration of their ornamental adornments.
The lily, and the retired situation in which it flourishes, teaches us
that we must learn to open our minds and hearts to all of mankind, to retain
the fact, in our compassion, that as one pillar only serves to support the
other,
all of mankind must learn to live in peace and harmony with his brothers and
sisters and with nature; to appreciate the beauties which God has given us to
enjoy, .

 we ever strive to attain them
as symbols of charity, relief and brotherly love. These symbolic structures
should become a pathway for all men to tread throughout there earthly
existence.

And he set up the pillars at the hall of the Holy Place, and set up the right pillar, and called its name Jachin, and ... the left...Boaz.” Instead of ההיכל לאוּלם we have in 2Ch_3:15 הבּית לפני, and in 2Ch_3:17 ההיכל על־פּני, “before the house,” “before the Holy Place.” This unquestionably implies that the two brazen pillars stood unconnected in front of the hall, on the right and left sides of it, and not within the hall as supporters of the roof.

Son 3:10 He made its pillars of silver, its bottom of gold, its seat of purple, its midst being paved with love, from the daughters of Jerusalem.
Son 3:11 Go forth, you daughters of Zion, and see king Solomon, with the crown with which his mother has crowned him, in the day of his weddings, in the day of the gladness of his heart.

In the Tree of Life, the left side is often called "feminine" and the right side "masculine". This is based on the giving-receiving aspects of the Sefiroth in either column. Every Sefirah has equal giving and receiving qualities, and therefore are male and female. So God is feminine and masculine but still ONE.

Adam Kadamon is the name given to the first man, who was actually male and female. As in the Bible, God created Adam in their image, as male and female. The creation of Adam is the creation of the Universe. Adam is the reflection of God. This unity became divided into opposites, male and female, good and bad, as shown in the Tree of Life.

The root of the Tree is "Kether" or the "Crown". In the diagram, it is seen as coming from the top of the tree. I wouldn't think of the roots as being in the sky. This is taking it a little too literally. Rather the roots are coming from the inner, and expanding to the outer.

The Crown is "unknowable". Yes Wisdom and Understanding can be seen as a husband and wife. In Christian Qabbalah, the Crown is pictured as Yahweh, the Father. Wisdom is pictured as The Holy Spirit, and Understanding as Sophia. The reason that Understanding is seen as Female is because she receives from Wisdom. The union between this divine couple is the "invisible sefirah" called "Daat" which means "gnosis" as well as "union".
 

First, you should know that the Creator, called Ein Sof in Kabbalah, is the cause of causes, (The I AM THAT I AM,)One without a second, One that cannot be counted. Change and multiplicty do not apply to It. The word "one" is used metaphorically, since the number one stands on its own and is the beginning of all numbers. Every number is contained within it potentially, while it inheres in every number in actuality.

The Creator is called "One" from this aspect. Ein Sof is present in all things in actuality, while all things are present it potentially. It is the beginning and cause of everything. In this way, oneness has been ascribed to the Creator; nothing can be added to this oneness or taken away from it. Ein Sof is necessary being, just as the number one is nesessary for all numbers, since without it, no number can exist. If the number one were nullified, all numbers would be nullified, whereas if the numbers were nullified, the number one would not. Such is the power of One. All of creation is IN God--but if creation ceased to exist in a moment of time, God (who is the cause and effect of everything) would still BE. So it is with Ein Sof, the Creator of all, the One who acts and sustains existance. If an action were nullified, the actor would not be nullified, since Ein Sof does not need anything. If existance were nullified, the number one would not cease since it does not need space and exists on its own.

So in Cabballistic terms, Ein Sof is the Creator God--the One God spoken of in the scriptures. The I AM THAT I AM.

Furthermore, you should know that Ein Sof emmanated its sefirot, through which its actions are performed. They serve as vessels for the actions deriving from Ein Sof in the world of separation and below. In fact, the world's existence and essence spread through them. The first aspect to come into being is Keter (head or crown) named Eheyeh (in the Christian system this is the Christ who was "with God in the beginning and who was God" Jn. 1:1); Hohkmah (Wisdom) is named Yah; Binah (Understanding) is named YHVH with the vowels of Elohim; Hesed (Love) is named El; Gevurah (Power) is named Elohim; Tif`eret (Beauty) is named YHVH; Netsah (Eternity) is named Tseva`ot; Yesod (Foundation) is named Shaddai or El Hai; Malkhut (Kingdom) is named Adonai.
 

the High Priestess

The High Priestess (II) in the Rider-Waite-Smith deckThe High Priestess (II) is a Major Arcana Tarot card. In the first tarots with inscriptions, the 18th-century woodcut Marseille Tarot, this figure is crowned with the Papal tiara and labelled "La Papesse", the Popess. For historians or heresiologists, such a figure suggests the female equality practiced among the Cathar perfect, who had been extirpated from Northern Italy and Southern France, where the Tarot first appeared.

 

The High Priestess (II) in

Description and symbolism
Some frequent keywords are:

Intuition ----- Nonaction ----- Mystery ----- Calmness ----- Silence
Inner voice ----- Deep understanding ----- Discretion ----- Sensitivity
Distance ----- Stability ----- Wisdom ----- Unconscious knowledge
Patience ----- Looking inward ----- Contemplation ----- Subjective mind

In the modern Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck many occultist symbols have been applied to La Papesse (illustration). She now has the lunar crescent at her feet, a horned diadem centering a globe on her head, and a large cross on her breast. The scroll in her hands is inscribed with the word Tora, signifying the Greater Law, the Secret Law and the second sense of the Word. It is partly covered by her mantle, to show that some things are implied and some spoken. She is seated between the white and black pillars—'J' and 'B' for Jachin and Boaz—of the mystic Temple of Solomon, and the veil of the Temple is behind her: it is embroidered with palms and pomegranates. The style is influenced by Art Nouveau.


Interpretation
This section does not cite its references or sources.
You can help Wikipedia by introducing appropriate citations.

Kabbalistic Approach
She has been called occult Science on the threshold of the Sanctuary of Isis, but she is really the Secret Church, the House which is of God and man. She represents also the Second Marriage of the Prince who is no longer of this world; she is the spiritual Bride and Mother, the daughter of the stars and the Higher Garden of Eden. She is, in fine, the Queen of the borrowed light, but this is the light of all. She is the Moon nourished by the milk of the Supernal Mother.


La Papesse in the Marseille Tarot: the originals were coloured by handIn a manner, she is also the Supernal Mother herself—that is to say, she is the bright reflection. It is in this sense of reflection that her truest and highest name in bolism is Shekinah—the co-habiting glory. According to Kabalism, there is a Shekinah both above and below. In the superior world it is called Binah, the Supernal Understanding which reflects to the emanations that are beneath. In the lower world it is MaIkuth—that world being, for this purpose, understood as a blessed Kingdom that with which it is made blessed being the Indwelling Glory. Mystically speaking, the Shekinah is the Spiritual Bride of the just man, and when he reads the Law she gives the Divine meaning. There are some respects in which this card is the highest and holiest of the Major Arcana.

(Binah and MaIkuth are two of the sephiroth in the gnostic belief.)

On a more mundane level, the High Priestess is a figure who has passed through most of life. She started as a novice when a child. Now She has grown and governs the convent which is Spiritual Reality. She knows God. She knows what we go through because She has been through it Herself. But She is also very strict. Laws are in place to stop the new set of novices from hurting themselves.


Mythopoetic Approach
Other schools of thought associate the High Priestess with intuitive knowledge. The water that flows from her gown is the collective unconscious, and flows through most of the cards of the Pamela Coleman Smith Tarot.

The bow at her feet explicitly evokes with Artemis. Artemis is not merely the Moon, twin sister of Apollo, the Sun; she may be one of the oldest goddesses in Europe. Her name comes from a root word meaning “bear,” and may be linked to the divinity on the oldest cave paintings we have. It is also connected to Arthur, King of the Britains, the once and future king, marking her as another consort of the divine king.

She is often shown wearing the crown of Isis and Hathor; the waxing, full, and waning moon. This demonstrates one of the ways life survives death; through taking on new forms.

She is often shown sitting between two columns, one black, one white. This represents all dualities, light and dark, good and evil day night, summer and winter. She knows that dualities are useful abstractions but can blind us to the underlying wholeness of reality and the need to integrate them.

In some decks, the columns are labeled “B” and “J.” These letters were inscribed on two columns of Solomon’s Temple. The original meaning is controversial, though there are some who say that on the tarot card, they represent Baal and Jehovah; two paths to wisdom. If that is true, Baal may bring back in the Moon, as he was the spouse of Astarte, the Queen of Heaven, and a moon goddess. Jehovah was a god of light; Baal a lord of the night, another duality the High Priestess stands athwart.

As mentioned above, the High Priestess is Shekhinah, the female indwelling presence of the divine.

The High Priestess is associated with Key 11, Justice and Key 20 Judgement through their cross sums (the sum of the digits). There are those who say that the columns represent Justice and Mercy, reminding us that justice is not merely the imposition of the judgment of the powerful onto conflicts, but must be levied with mercy to deserve the title of Justice.

Typically, the High Priestess holds the Torah on her lap. She is not merely the mistress of hidden wisdom, she has read the words and knows their deeper meaning. Generally, unlike The Magician, she does not explore the world in order to master it, but in order to understand it. That understanding often leads to the temptation of mastery.

She is also associated thematically with The Moon. She can lead to deep wisdom, but can also lead to madness.

The pomegranates associate her with Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld and another example of the Dying God whose annual rebirth renews the world. From time to time, Persephone intercedes on the part of visitors to the Underworld, embodying Mercy.

Note that the motif that hangs behind the High Priestess’s throne, veiling what ever mysteries she guards, is suggested in the pattern of The Empress’ gown. The two are sisters, one bringing life into the world, the other inviting the living to the esoteric mysteries.

When she appears in a spread, she typically counsels the Querent to seek new paths and hidden paths to wisdom. She can also be a warning to interrogate the lessons of the unconscious. It does not always lead us to wisdom.

She also warns the Querent to question how he or she has divided up the world; to test the judgments made in the past against the world as we have come to know it.



 The Church preaches her as the Mystical Ark of the Convenant, in whom the Mysteries [Sacramenta] of our reconciliation have achieved their goal [impleta sunt]. When God looks upon her, He will remember His covenant and be mindful of His mercy.
The Church, instructed by the Magisterium of the Holy Spirit, has always professed with filial devotion and affection that Mary is recognized most appropriately as Queen of Heaven and Earth

The Holy Spirit acts only by the Immaculata, his Spouse. This is why she is Mediatrix of all graces given by the Holy Spirit

The anointing is supposed to be symbolic of 'lubrication' - an allusion to the phallic power of kingship. Furthermore, it is interesting that the Jewish law and custom of the time demanded that only a wife was allowed to perform this ceremony.

Hymen: Veil of the Temple; the anatomical definition descended from a concept of the vagina as a sanctuary of Aphrodite, virgin Goddess presiding over defloration. The veil of her temple was 'rent in the midst' (Luke 23:45) by the Passion of her doomed Bridegroom, at the moment when he entered her chthonian womb, and the sun (male principle) was darkened. Hymenaeus was the son of Dionysus and Aphrodite, and was worshiped as the god of weddings. His name is the root of the modern word hymen, because of the ritual connection of the wedding and a woman's loss of virginity. Also known as HYMENAIOS, HYMEN HYMENAEUS: God of Weddings and Getting Married. He's in charge of the wedding procession, the marriage feast,


Sex it's a communion in "one flesh, sexual union is an icon of the inner-life and love of the Trinity. This "Trinitarian concept of the 'image of God' ...constitutes, perhaps, the deepest theological aspect of all that can be said about man." In strictly human terms, then, all the changing forms of the deity, the attribution to him of sexual qualities and functions, the early veneration of goddesses, their transformation into female divine attributes or manifestations, and their resuscitation at a time when they seemed dead and buried for over a millennium; all this served to safeguard human survival. Goddesses" in that understanding are alive and well and living in our own psyches, though we may give them other names. just comprehending this much might have saved the world from the dreadful iconoclasms of history, in which so much beauty was destroyed.

The human body ...is not only a source of fruitfulness and procreation, ...but includes right 'from the beginning' the 'nuptial' attribute, that is, the capacity of expressing love. The body has a "nuptial meaning" because it reveals man and woman's call to become a gift for one another, a gift fully realized in their "one flesh" union. The body also has a "generative meaning" that (God willing) brings a "third" into the world through their communion. In this way, marriage constitutes a "primordial sacrament" understood as a sign that truly communicates the mystery of God's Trinitarian life and love to husband and wife, and through them to their children, and through the family to the whole world. This is what marital spirituality is all about: participating in God's life and love and sharing it with the world. The body, in fact, is capable of making visible what is invisible, the spiritual and divine. It was created to transfer in the visible reality of the world, the invisible mystery hidden in God from time immemorial, and thus to be a sign of it." The body is sacramental, revelatory of the mystery of creation and the mystery of the Creator. The human body - through the reality of sexual difference and our call to sexual union - possesses a "language" inscribed by God that proclaims his own eternal mystery and makes that mystery present, visible, experiential in our world. What is this mystery hidden in God from all eternity? It's the mystery of God's plan to unite all things in Christ (Eph 1:10), it's God's Trinitarian Love and Life, and his amazing plan for us to share in this Love and Life through Christ as members of the Church. This is what the "great mystery" of the "one flesh" union symbolizes and reveals - the "great mystery" of Christ's union with the Church (see Eph 5: 31-32). Our sexuality reveals something of the mystery of God's inner life and his plan to grant us a share in the divine nature

It is awesome to think that we are truly God's beloved, the bride he is preparing to reveal in all her beauty before the courts of heaven. While here on earth the "beatifying experience" of conjugal union is given as a foretaste of the joys of heaven It's almost too grand. How could something as "earthy" as the body be meant to reveal something so heavenly? But it all comes to light in the embodiment of God himself: the Word made flesh.

"And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them? as long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days."

In Mark the bridegroom marries the virgins 25:1 "Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.... While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him. Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps. And the five foolish said unto the five wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out. But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves. And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut."

In Luke we are reminded to wait on the Lord as a returning bridegroom] 2:35: "Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning; And ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately." Jesus however turns the sacred redeemer into a cosmic Bridegroom to end all bridegrooms "Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not. Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh."

In John 3:28: the bridegroom is pronounced by John the Baptist, "Ye yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him. He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom's voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled."

A Christocentric theology of the nuptial union is concerned with protecting the "great mystery" of Creative and Redemptive Love revealed by the "great mystery" of nuptial union. The inner "logic" of the Christian mystery itself is simply unintelligible unless we understand the meaning of sexual difference and our call to nuptial communion.

The thought that God wants our hearts seems to good to be true; our laughter , our tears, our dreams, our fears, our heart of hearts.

How few of us really beieve this. The thought that God wants our heart seems to good to be true.

Lady Julian of Norwich was given a series of revelations into the suffering of Christ and the glory of the gospel. She was taken into the heart of God and upon her return she concluded, quite simply, that we are his lovers.

We are indeed his Betrothed and have already received the first seal of his love in his Spirit that dwells in us.

We remember the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ at Easter but have denied the celebration and honouring of Mary Magdalene, Jesus' beautiful mirror image in the six-pointed Star of David. In the mural at the Russian Church of Saint Mary Magdalene, Jerusalem, she is portrayed holding the egg of fertility. A silent coded image reaching down to us through the ages. Life is created on earth through an equal joining of male and female energies in sexuality but the decisions made about the earth are not being made with the same equality. Within each man and woman there exists this combined energy and we are all disadvantaged if both voices don't have equal representation and an honouring of their wisdom. Two beautiful beings, Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, came to gift the Earth with a model of the Christ Consciousness - Divine Love in expression - not as a religion but as a conscious state of Being that loves and honours all life. In order to birth this consciousness within us, it is necessary to embrace the Christed feminine and masculine within in full chakra union. Now after two thousand years of denial it is time to discover, remember and honour the missing piece of the puzzle, her-story, which has been left out of his-story. Until the inquisition the true teachings of Mary Magdalene and Jesus were honoured and followed by the Gnostics and the Cathars. Mary Magdalene is a representative of the Christed Feminine within us all. As we release the distortions that have surrounded her life and honour her name again, we will remember her not as prostitute but as the beloved bride of Christ. As we love and honour her truth as a sacred priestess of the eternal flame of the Mother, Christed Anointed one, it will set this energy free to flow, and bless and honour the feminine wisdom in us all. In patriarchal times women have felt disempowered; with the denial of the feminine the power of this beautiful egg of the feminine has been split into two circles of light and dark. This has separated spirituality from sexuality and split the sisterhood in two. Without access to the full egg of the feminine creative power our creativity has not flowed; without access to the wisdom of the priestess, the Divine midwife, birth has become a painful experience on this planet. This relates to the birth of babies as well as creative ideas. In patriarchal times the Divine Feminine seemed to disappear as if behind a veil, and seemed less accessible to humankind. The sacred initiations into the feminine wisdom went underground. As the veil is now lifted with the return of the feminine, we move once again into male female balance. It is time to share and celebrate the deep love for the Divine Mother and the wisdom of her Grace. This love, because it has not been celebrated openly, has been felt as a very deep sense of loss in both men and women. As we open our hearts once again to be loved by and to love the Mother Goddess as well as the Father God, deep peace can be experiences in our soul and in the soul of the world. In patriarchal times humanity has forgotten the universal law of the circle, which is: as much as goes out, comes back, in an everflowing circle. Without the honouring of this feminine truth more has been taken from the earth than has been given back. And the denial of this universal law is destroying the delicate ecosystems of the Earth. As we heal the split and reclaim the full circle of the feminine wisdom we restore the role of the priestess of the Divine Feminine. We can then access the Sacred Feminine wisdom and teachings to nurture and heal the earth and ourselves. This allows us to move forward at last, having rather painfully learned the lesson gained from long ages that expressed either the matriarchy or the patriarchy. These energies were never meant to work in isolation but together, drawing on the wisdom of both energies. Let's create a new word for this beautiful new Age of Aquarius: WHOLE-IARCHY and from this union co-create HEAVEN ON EARTH! This Easter let us all join with love in our hearts and ask the Divine Mother to forgive us for so long denying Mary Magdalene, Her beautiful representative of the Christed Feminine. Let us welcome her into our hearts to share the piece of the puzzle she holds about the expression of the Christ love. May we celebrate her life and mission, and reclaim the legacy that she left us. I offer you the poems that I received from Jesus and Mary as I made the flower essences of the Jesus Christ Peace Lily and the Blood Lily. Let these be your Easter lilies. May they help you heal and celebrate this Easter honouring the full expression of the Christ love as expressed in their poems to each other. All is love beloved; every experience in this time dimension can be transformed into knowing through the flame of love. I love the Divine Feminine, the Christ within. Oh Beloved, how I love thee causes the stars to shine, the heavens to smile. The ecstasy of this love enfolds you, protects you, honours and adores you; for you are my home, my hearth, my heart, my compassion, the completion of my wholeness in the one heart of God. I love the Divine Masculine, the Christ within, with every fibre of my being. Deep in my womb I enfold you tenderly. I embrace you with love, passion and compassion, for you are my love, the other half of my wholeness in the one heart of God. As we honour the truth of the legacy that the lives of these two beautiful ones left us we celebrate the Sacred Marriage of the eternal flame of the Divine Masculine and Feminine, forever joined in passionate, heartfelt love, trust, honouring, equality and wholeness.

When this incarnation of the Gospel takes place in us, we see the Church's teaching as the foundation of a liberating ethos, a call to experience the redemption of our bodies, a call to rediscover in what is erotic the original meaning of sexuality which is the very meaning of life. And this is the first step to take in renewing the world. Man and woman's call to form a communion of persons is the deepest substratum of human ethics and culture. Thus, the dignity and balance of human life "depend at every moment of history and at every point of geographical longitude and latitude on 'who' she will be for him and he for her. In short, a culture that does not respect the truth about sexuality is doomed to be a culture that does not respect the truth about life; it's doomed to be a culture of death. At the heart of the new evangelization, at the heart of building a civilization of love and a culture of life, is marriage and the family. And at the heart of marriage and the family is the truth about the body and sexuality.
 

Themes You Will Find At SpiritBride.. Spiritual Mystique, Gardens and Sanctuaries, Weddings and Honeymoons, Wellness and Solutions, The Philo Sophia, angels, Christian, Goddess, Jesus, groom, married, bride, divine, holy spirit, Mary Magdalene, female, women, wedding, Sophia, Mother Mary, woman's, Bible, hagia, study, love, spirit, rosaries, recipes, spice, tea, herbs, wine making supplies, roses, oils, scents, salts, learning, holiday, planner, glassware, kitchenware, software, weddings, faith, soul, happiness, tao, quan, kaun, yin, bodhisattva, fairies, princess, fey, faery, faeries, plant spirits, country, living, herbal, lifestyle, herb gardening, bird houses, crafts, silver, semi precious stones, jewelry, art, music, messages, blog, posts, ministry, hope, zen, "

TOP SEARCH ENGINES

* HOME * Google * Yahoo! * MSN Search * AOL Search * AllTheWeb * AltaVista * AskJeeves * MetaCrawler * Lycos