The Holy Spirit is worshipped as the Divine Mother
I’ve discussed the design element of the “longing for liberation,” the divine discontent that keeps us moving around the circle of creation from God to God.
I’d now like to look at another design element of life, created by the Master Builder to keep life moving in its intended direction, according to the Divine Plan and in fulfilment of God’s purpose. That is the natural law.
In the next few articles, let’s listen to Earth’s sages describe how it was created, how it works, and so on.
Zarathustra tells us that God created the natural law. He says: “He who in the beginning thought, and the Light was filled with lights, Himself through wisdom created (the Law of) Righteousness.” (1)
And who is Wisdom? Zoroaster tells us in the following sentence: “God the Lord hears (us) through the Holy Spirit.” (2) Wisdom, as in Hagia Sophia or the Holy or Ancient Wisdom, is another word used by ancients to refer to the Holy Spirit.
Solomon was the best-known mystic who knew the Mother as “Wisdom.” He says:
“Doth not wisdom cry? …
The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old.
I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.
When there were no depths, I was brought forth.” (3)
Elsewhere he says of Wisdom:
“For wisdom … is the breath of the power of God,
And a pure emenation of his almighty glory.”(4)
The Divine Mother created the natural law
The Latin word for “breath” is “spiritus.” Divine Breath means Holy Spirit. The Lord created everything there is by way of the Holy Spirit, the Divine Mother, whose name is Wisdom. “The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth,” Solomon tells us. (5) “Wisdom … operates everything,” he says. (6)
Not only did Wisdom create the Earth, but She also created the human body, as Solomon tells us: “Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn her seven pillars.” (7) Her seven pillars are probably the seven chakras.
She also created the natural law. Sri Aurobindo says as much:
“Something … imposes on [these elements] the law of their being, and what could that be but the Womb, the matrix of original and indestructible matter, the plasm which moulds the universe and out of which it is moulded?” (8)
The Divine Mother is that womb or “matrix of original and indestructible matter,” mater, matrix that “moulds the universe.”
The Holy Spirit is God’s first creation, the primary step-down transformation of the formless into form.
But what is the Divine Mother, the Holy Spirit at essence? She is an organization of Love, just as everything is, but how is She, as a creation just as we are a creation, organized?
The Holy Spirit, unlike the still and silent Father, is organized by being active and sonic, a creative, universal vibration known to us as Aum or Amen, which is the Procreatrix (Prakriti) of all forms in the phenomenal realm.
The Mother is the matrix of matter
Jesus acknowledged the difference between the Mother and Father when he answered his disciples in response to their question, “What is the sign of your Father in you?” He responded: “It is a movement and a rest.” (9) The Mother is that movement and the Father is that rest.
His disciples asked Jesus further: “From where have you originated?” And he replied: “We have come from the Light, where the Light has originated through itself.” The Mother is the “Light, where the Light has originated through itself,” itself being the Father. (10)
Hindus know the Divine Mother as Shakti, which created the Heavens and the Earth. “She” is not a female any more than “He” is a male. The sages used the male/female distinction to tell apart movement from rest. That is all.
It would take a book or more to describe the Divine Mother and I can’t do that here, although I have attempted it elsewhere. (11) I must leave that subject for the moment to focus on the natural law.
When John the Baptist was described as “the voice of one crying in the wilderness,” (12) the Mother is that voice and the Father is the wilderness in the sense that no law applies to the Father, who is the source of law. Law only applies to the Mother and her domain of matter, mater, or materiality.
This is the reason why Sri Ramakrishna could say that Brahman or the Father is unattached and unaffected by the things of the phenomenal world, matter, or the Mother.
“The [phenomenal] world consists of the illusory duality of knowledge and ignorance. It contains knowledge and devotion, and also attachment to [lust and greed]; righteousnsess and unrighteousness; good and evil. But Brahman is unattached to these. Good and evil apply to the jiva, the individual soul, as do righteousness and unrighteousness, but Brahman is not at all affected by them.” (13)
The Mother through the natural law causes all to grow, remain, and transform
The natural law is perfect, which is why Jesus could say: “Wisdom is justified of her children.” (14) What did he mean? In my view, he meant that the work of the law on the Mother’s children, to raise them up from unconscious, ignorant beings to conscious, self-realized beings, shows that the law is perfect and proves or justifies its divine derivation and perfection.
Thus the Father creates the natural law through the Mother and applies it to this dreamworld of materiality which the children of the two reside in on their journey from the Father out into the Mother’s world where She raises them up, schools them and prepares them for their conscious return to the Father.
Footnotes
(1) Zarathustra in Greenlees, Duncan, trans. The Gospel of Zarathushtra. Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1978, 187. [Hereafter GZ.]
(2) Zarathustra, GZ, 227.
(3) Proverbs, 8:1 and 8:22-4.
(4) “Wisdom of Solomon” in Edgar J. Goodspeed, trans., The Apocrypha. An American Translation. New York: Random House, 1959; c1938 191. [Hereafter APO.]
(5) Proverbs 3:19.
(6) “The Wisdom of Solomon” in APO, 192.
(7) Proverbs 9:1.
(8) Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1983, 3.
(9) A. Guillaumont, et al. The Gospel According to Thomas. New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1959, 29.
(10) Loc. cit.
(11) “On the Nature of the Divine Mother or Holy Spirit,” at http://goldenageofgaia.com/spiritual-essays/on-the-nature-of-the-divine-mother-or-holy-spirit-2/
(12) Matthew 3:3.
(13) Paramahansa Ramakrishna in Swami Nikhilananda, trans., The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 152.
(14) Jesus in Matthew 11:19.
