The Ultimate Kingdom

"The Last Kingdom", 30"x40", Oil on textured canvas, 2019

I borrowed the title for this painting “The Last Kingdom”, (Das Lezte Konigreich”) from a line in a poem written in 1801 by the famous German writer Novalis (Fredrich von Hardenberg). When I read it there was an immediate resonance with the concepts involved.

The last kingdom struck me as the “ultimate kingdom” rather than the “final kingdom”. This is not the description of the eschaton but of the ideal pinnacle where we strive for the understanding that Jacob Boehme pointed too. A scene of dynamic resolution not a vision of destruction.

Boehme’s writings are a blueprint of the spiritual universe. However, understanding the mechanics of nature is not enough. Later writers who surreptitiously fed off Boehme work (Kant, Hegel, Marx) misunderstood Boehme’s processes and their descendants would interpret their work to see the universe as a grand device. Once all the inputs, programs, knobs, and gears were mapped and subjected to taxonomy then it could be manipulated to enhance the personal power of the technicians.

Von Hardenberg intuitively grasped the “meta” program that was running underneath the words of Boehme and in his poem “To Tieck” he introduced the concept of “the abundance of being”. This acknowledged the true mission as mystical. Understanding the mechanisms of God’s universe was not an exercise in positivism or philosophical materialism rather it was the search for fulfillment not affluence.

D S Reif

The original extended essay (and translation) about the painting refereed to above can be viewed on the website of the International Jacob Boehme Society,   CLICK HERE

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The Divine Embryo (update 8-19-21)

The Archangel Gabriel appears to Mary

 The cosmic event that shakes our world.

Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? Luke 1:34 KJV

[Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" Luke 1:34 NAS]

Two translations, the King James Version and the New American Standard, both conveying the same meaning.

Perhaps this statement spoken by Mary and recorded by the Apostle Luke is the most controversial in the New Testament. It seems to be an enigma. Within this short sentence is a challenge to the rational mind and an assault to our understanding of time and space.

The man who would be known first as Jesus and later Lord Christ born to a woman was the Son of God and the King of the Universe. This man who changed the course of history for the last two millennia was the product of a birth by a virgin, a woman who had not had sexual relations. “How can this be…”?

This human event that has never been duplicated continues to fascinate the believer and perplex the atheist. It has taken us over two thousand years of natural history study to finally glimpse the root of this awesome occurrence.

In the last half century the study of human embryos has unwittingly shed light on this mystery of the Virgin Birth. Modern scientist were perhaps the last people who would have wanted to help the world understand the testimony of Mary. More interested in establishing a “Brave New World” than casting light on an ancient conundrum the idea of cellular embryology verifying a Christian truth was not in the mind of the molecular biologist of the XXth Century.

Yet in this field of study we get a glimpse of a deeper truth that surrounds the Virgin Birth. In the 1970’s Dr. Patrick Steptoe and Dr. Robert Edwards introduced the concept of “in vitro fertilization”¹ as a fertility aid².^. Their research lead to what is now called the In-Vitro Services Industry (IVF) which is a multi-billion dollar business. Its theory and practices are well understood and used throughout the globe.

By studying this process it became obvious to me that the question asked over two thousand years ago could be answered...in part. The embryo that would develop within the womb of Mary was implanted by God. There was no genetic material from her or her (soon to be) husband Joseph involved. The event was complete unique. The blood ties to history were broken. Jesus the Lord Christ was born of a woman as every other human on Earth but had no hereditary linkage to anyone except God.

As this idea developed in me a question was generated. Yes an embryo from outside the body can be successfully implanted into the lining of the womb but where did the embryo come from?

After some further research I found the answer in Luke 1:35, “And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” There the answer was in plain sight. “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee...” The embryo was a material manifestation of a Divine entity delivered through the Holy Ghost of God [the Highest] into the uterus of Mary.

That explained the delivery system but still left the big question open of how was the Divine Embryo created. Of course I do not pretend to know the internal process of God. Jacob Boehme tells us about the continuous process of Creation being generated around us so I knew there would be an indication for us to follow³. What I was looking for was in John 1:1-5.

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2 The same was in the beginning with God.

3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

God creates material objects out of nothing (darkness) through the use of His Divine light (supernatural energy).

I can imagine that even for God the creation of a viable embryo and implanting it in a human womb was perhaps a challenge and that is why it does not seem to happen everyday. Yet in this case the operation went flawlessly.

¹“in vitro fertilization”

noun, a specialized technique by which an ovum, especially a human one, is fertilized by sperm outside the body, with the resulting embryo later implanted in the uterus for gestation.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/in-vitro-fertilizatio

²In this essay by Tian Zhu is a brief history of “in vitro fertilization” and embryo implantation. https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/vitro-fertilization

³ Jacob Boehme, Aurora: the Day Spring, 1612, transcribed Wayne Kraus, Online Edition, 2:77

*Researchers: You may use this essay as a resource.  Please credit the source.*
D S Reif

Update: 8/18/21

 Summary of the Pistis Sophia, (Of His Own Incarnation) G.R.S. Mead, p 461

"Into Mary, His mother, also He had implanted a power higher than them all, "the body which I bore Of His own Incarnation.in the height," and also another power instead of the soul, and so Jesus was born. It was He Himself who had watched over the birth of His disciples, so that no soul of the world-rulers should be found in them, but one of a higher nature."

This is a description of Christ implanting his own (human) embryo into Mary Theotokos. 

Full text click HERE

For the complete Update click AUTOGENE

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Mystery of the Palm II

"Tree of the Soul"

Jacob Boehme's (1575-1624) concept of Creation as illustrated by Dionysius Freher (1649-1728)

The seven layers within the circle of illumination are the seven spirits that organize the awesome power of God.  This is the continuous force of Creation coming from God. Our world, seen at the base of the Majestic Palm, can only look in prayerful wonder at the incredible forces that surround us.

The symbolism of the palm tree recurs here as it did in John 12:12-19 which is the story of Lord Christ entering Jerusalem.  Freher roots the palm in the deep wisdom of antiquity and the cosmic truth of Creation.

Click here for the first part:  The Mystery of the Palm I    

Much more can be learned about Jacob Boehme at the website of the International Jacob Boehme Society.  The physical facility is located in Goerlitz, Germany (ancient Silesia) where Boehme spent much of his life.  There is an extensive English language site that is frequently updated.  

                                         Jacob Boehme Society 

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Martyr to What?

Understanding Richard Rohr’s complex theological and social teaching is a challenging enterprise particularly when we factor in the implied blast at Globalism and the world atheist order. Occasionally he adds references to his posts to broaden our knowledge and provide context for complicated issues. In two reading just prior to Easter he included Marcus Borg and John Crossan.

Rohr writes:
Two theologians I deeply respect, Marcus Borg (1942-2015) and John Dominic Crossan (b. 1934), offer important historical and symbolic context for the crucifixion. The theory of “penal substitutionary atonement” only became dominant in recent centuries.

“This common Christian understanding (Atonement) goes far beyond what the New Testament says. Of course, sacrificial imagery is used there, but the language of sacrifice is only one of several different ways that the authors of the New Testament articulate the meaning of Jesus’s execution. They also see it as the domination system’s “no” to Jesus (and God)...Though Mark provides the earliest story of Good Friday . . . Mark’s narrative combines retrospective interpretation with history remembered. . . .”

“Mark tells us that Jesus was crucified between two “bandits. [the Chinese Communists call opposition “bandits” or “roaders” not much different from the EU terms like “criminals” or “gangsters”, names for the French Yellow Jackets or Gilet Jaune] The Greek word translated “bandits” is commonly used for guerilla fighters against Rome, who were either “terrorists” or “freedom fighters,” depending upon one’s point of view….Ordinary criminals were not crucified. Jesus is executed as a rebel against Rome between two other rebels against Rome [to drive home the point]. . . .(When Jesus died), ‘the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom’ (Mark 15:38)...To say that the curtain was torn in two has a twofold meaning. On the one hand, it is a judgment upon the (Hebrew) temple and the temple authorities . . . who colluded with imperial Rome to condemn Jesus to death. On the other hand, . . . [it] is to affirm that the execution of Jesus means that access to God is now open.”

“This affirmation underlines Mark’s presentation of Jesus earlier in the gospel: Jesus mediated access to God apart from the temple and the domination system that it had come to represent in the first century. Then Mark narrates a second event contemporaneous with Jesus’s death. The imperial centurion in command of the soldiers who had crucified Jesus exclaims, ‘Truly this man was God’s Son’ (15:30). . . .That this exclamation comes from a centurion is very significant….The emperor was Lord, Savior, and the one who had brought peace on earth. But now a representative of Rome affirms that this man, Jesus, executed by the empire, is the Son of God. Thus the emperor is not.”

“Jesus...spoke to peasants as a voice of peasant religious protest against the central economic and political institutions of his day. He attracted a following and took his movement to Jerusalem at the season of Passover. There he challenged the authorities with public acts and public debates.

According to Mark, Jesus did not die for the sins of the world. The language of substitutionary sacrifice for sin is absent from his story. But in an important sense, he was killed because of the sin of the world. It was the injustice of domination systems that killed him...And thus Jesus was crucified because of the sin of the world. . . .”

“Was Jesus guilty or innocent? As Mark tells the story, Jesus was not only executed by the method used to execute violent insurrectionists; he was physically executed between two insurrectionists. Was Jesus guilty of advocating violent revolution against the empire and its local [Jewish] collaborators? No.
As Mark tells the story, was Jesus guilty of claiming to be the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed? Perhaps. Why perhaps and not a simple yes? Mark does not report that Jesus taught this, and his account of Jesus’s response to the high priest’s question about this is at least a bit ambiguous. Pilate asked Jesus, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus replies, ‘You say so’ (Mark 15:2). [or “Thou sayest it.” KJV]
As Mark tells the story, was Jesus guilty of nonviolent resistance to imperial Roman oppression and local Jewish collaboration? Oh, yes.”

Read All

By using these two learned scholars Rohr supports a point he has made before, that Jesus was opposing not only the spiritual but the social order of the time. The Roman Empire was the political overlords but it was the Jewish bureaucracy that kept the civil reigns through the use of “The Law” an artifact of Old Testament Hebrew thinking.

These powers were the Globalists of the time. Rome was the supreme Global power and its vassals in the Hebrew bureaucracy were tasked with keeping the population under control. Today State powers like NATO are the equivalent to Rome and non government organizations (NGO) and quasi-governments like the European Union (EU) assume the role of controlling the people through the secular religion of Big Science and the atheist world order.

We will continue to unbolt the layered view of perennialism that Richard Rohr has brought into the world.

Many of you have been enjoying Perennis blog for years since the print version cease to exist.  After over a decade we continue to post on this blog as time permits.  I still go to work everyday as an artist squeaking out a living with my wife creating things to sell.  It is no easier today than ever .

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The Perennial Rohr

Recurring Springtime

When Richard Rohr gets it right he certainly shines. In this 2015 essay entitled The Perennial Tradition he give his definition for the Perennial Wisdom that we have been studying since the 1980’s. He mentions some of our favorite authors, particularly the often overlooked Huston Smith whose insights into perennialism and his critique of modernism are some of the best in print.

Richard Rohr writes...

“The things I teach come from a combination of inner and outer authority, drawn from personal experience and a long lineage of the “perennial tradition” as Aldous Huxley, Huston Smith, Ken Wilber, and many others have called it. I don’t believe God expects us to start from zero and reinvent the wheel of faith in our one small lifetime. Thankfully, we can each participate in the “communion of saints,” and draw upon the force field of the Holy Spirit. The Great Tradition, the perennial philosophy, has developed through the ages, and is an inherited gift.”

“The Perennial Tradition points to recurring themes and truths within all of the world’s religions. At their most mature level, religions cultivate in their followers a deeper union with God, with each other, and with reality—or what is. The work of religion is to re-ligio—re-ligament or reunite what our egos and survival instincts have put asunder, namely a fundamental wholeness at the heart of everything. My calling (and the CAC’s work in the last twenty-nine years) has been to retrieve and reteach the wisdom that has been lost, ignored, or misunderstood within the Judeo Christian Tradition. Any truth that keeps recurring and gathers humanity’s positive energy is called wisdom and most assuredly has to be from the One Holy Spirit.”*

Of course this squares very nicely with what we have written in Perennis as well as what others have taught for years.

* https://cac.org/the-perennial-tradition-2015-12-20/

Many of you have been enjoying Perennis blog for years since the print version cease to exist. After over a decade we continue to post on this blog as time permits. I still go to work everyday as an artist squeaking out a living with my wife creating things to sell. It is no easier today than ever.

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Mystery of the Palm I

In the only passage that mentions “palm” in the namesake observance Palm Sunday appears in, The Gospel of John.  The palm frond is viewed as a symbol for victory yet in ancient Egypt (goddess Seshat) it was a nuanced sign of victory  tempered wisdom. It is one of the four esoteric elements of the Sukkot which would have been well known in Jerusalem as a symbol of fecundity yet having both male and female attributes; the erect spine enclosed by the branched (ovaries) leaflets. The symbol might be summed up as a blessing of the ancients.  

As Jesus entered Jerusalem people displayed palm branches in the streets and greeted him.  John is the only disciple who specifies that it was palm branches. This recollection had a purpose.  In the classic world concepts were communicated with “gestures”.

“Hosanna”, (save us) they cried, thinking that this was the King of Israel come “in the name of the Lord”.  He was not the Lord to the crowd more likely thinking him a great magician who could raise the dead come to destroy the Hebrew  Pharisees and their authoritarian bureaucracy much as the Zealots had predicted.

Referring to Zechariah (Zec 9:9) and the prophecy of the Savior coming to Jerusalem John says to “Fear not daughters of Sion (Zion) ...behold thy King cometh…”  then enters the disclaimer that the significance was not understood by the people including the disciples until after the death and Resurrection.

The other accounts of the event in Matthew, Mark, Luke are very similar although they emphasize different elements of the Zechariah prophecy which seems to be on a dedicated timeline engineered by God but not the Christian institutions (who claim it) or the disciples (that witnessed it) whose analysis is after the fact (along with everyone else apparently). This leaves John’s account and the enigmatic palm frond reference.

Like nearly every other aspect of the New Testament the disciples are searching for the meaning of events that were nearly incomprehensible and certainly unprecedented so meaning is being imputed from whatever knowledge base available.  But the symbolism of John’s palm frond and the subsequent importance of it rings out as a key element.

We are left with a scene of a political rally where a revolutionary figure is hailed as a conqueror. The Pharisee and the Romans certainly thought so.  

So did the Zealots and their allies in the mob. The same mob who would call for the murder of  Jesus in the near future.

It is the appearance of the ancient palm frond that belies this characterization not the cry of “Hossana” which certainly was not a desire for Salvation. Some in the crowd knew the wisdom of the ancient sages (the religio-perennis is discussed by Schoun in the last post) and were signaling that with the palm.  Like waving a flag.

From out of the unconscious mind comes the palm frond, sign of wisdom, plenty, and the dissolution of opposites in the androgyny of the frond. Some in the crowd understood these things and John recognized and noted it.

 Jesus in his cosmic role was going to Jerusalem as a journey back to the womb.   The New Adam would go to Jerusalem and then return to the pre-existing Logos as a result of the Crucifixion.  Through the unmistakable sin of murder at the hands of evil a dramatic gesture was generated that foreshadowed the redemption or his followers forever through the subsequent Resurrection.

John 12:12—-On the next day much people that were come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, 13  Took branches of palm trees, and went forth to meet him, and cried, Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord. 14  And Jesus, when he had found a young ass, sat thereon; as it is written, 15 Fear not, daughter of Sion: behold, thy King cometh, sitting on an ass's colt. 16  These things understood not his disciples at the first: but when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these things were written of him, and that they had done these things unto him. 17  The people therefore that was with him when he called Lazarus out of his grave, and raised him from the dead, bare record. 18 For this cause the people also met him, for that they heard that he had done this miracle. 19  The Pharisees therefore said among themselves, Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing? behold, the world is gone after him.

KJV

Ted Nottingham covers this same material from a different view:    HERE

Many of you have been enjoying Perennis blog for years since the print version cease to exist.  After over a decade we continue to post on this blog as time permits.  I still go to work everyday as an artist squeaking out a living with my wife creating things to sell.  It is no easier today than ever .

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Eternal Horizon

Firthjof Schuon (1907-1998) was one of the great perennialists.  He was interested in intersection of religion and philosophy that he called Religio Perennis. This is the root foundation of esoteric knowledge and our interface with God.

“The essential function of human intelligence is discernment between the Real and the illusory or between the Permanent and the impermanent, and the essential function of the will is attachment to the Permanent or the Real. This discernment and this attachment are the quintessence of all spirituality; carried to their highest level or reduced to their purest substance, they constitute the underlying universality in every great spiritual patrimony of humanity, or what may be called the religio perennis; this is the religion to which the sages adhere, one which is always and necessarily founded upon formal elements of divine institution.”
Frithjof Schuon, “Religio Perennis”, Light on the Ancient Worlds (Full article in PDF).

http://www.religioperennis.org/documents/Schuon/religioperennis.pdf

This is the Cosmic Christ that is spoken about by Richard Rohr without the political overlay and by Ted Nottingham.  The religion of the Sages has always been with us but for much of history it has been hidden beneath layers of bureaucracy.  

The tedious laws  of the Hebrews hid the “great permanent spiritual source” under a cloak of social devices, a practice that was carried on by the Romans when they co-opted Christianity into the state church of the Empire.  Many people have continued down this path to this day through the institutional approach to religion.

Today we are at a crossroads.  The Christian faith is under assault from within and without.  Western Civilization is teetering. Yet the basis for its survival is in plain sight.  

Many of you have been enjoying Perennis blog for years since the print version cease to exist.  After over a decade we continue to post on this blog as time permits.  I still go to work everyday as an artist squeaking out a living with my wife creating things to sell.  It is no easier today than ever .

I have added a Donorbox link to this blog.  Please consider contributing a monthly donation to keep this work going.  Or just a one-time sum will be appreciated. You can contribute anonymously if you like.   

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