NOTRE DAME AND EASTER

MY ETERNAL GUIDE

You don’t notice me, yet, if you allow, I will guide you to the veiled window of secrets.

You don’t remember me, yet if you desire, I’ll open your door to eternity.

I bring the Prima Materia to each intimate dialog. Don’t be shy.

I open your secret eye and spark creative fire in your breath.

Now, remember me, we’ve known each other forever.

You might catch a glimpse of my gold clad heel

As I exit the stage on which you dance.          

                                                                               

I do my best work behind the curtain.

I will greet you after the show.

---Marti Fenton White Deer Song

I  welcome the fresh growth springing up from a long winter of the mind. I don't know where to begin, so I will allow new sprouts of insight to spring into words like the weeds and flowers in my garden. 

 

When I first heard the news that the great Notre Dame cathedral was on fire, my initial response was denial that it could be serious. Perhaps something inside was on fire. How could the stone structure be in danger, and how could fire get inside the oak skeleton above? Then the reality of the threat to the revered icon became undeniable.

 The timing of this catastrophe seems synchronistic. For we humans, symbology is more powerful than lifeless facts. These great cathedrals of the middle ages are full of mystery and vanishing knowledge. Who were the people who built them? They accomplished amazing technical feats that would be challenging today, and the builders belonged to a secret society whose knowledge seemed to vanish when they disappeared from public view. Notre Dame is a connection to the medieval world and an architectural book of secret knowledge encoded in Christian symbols. I was relieved to learn that the rose window survived. The last I heard, the method of coloring and forming this kind of glass is a lost knowledge. It was designed to speak to worshipers on many levels of understanding in a language each could recognize sufficiently to stimulate a soul driven search for the mysteries behind the ordinary. 

Cathedrals were built to bring heaven to earth, and inevitably for mundane human purposes such as competition with other cities. It was economically and spiritually advantageous to be the home of a great cathedral, and it was vital for a cathedral to have a few important relics of Jesus or the great saints to attract pilgrims. 

I’m sure there are many meanings attributed to the fire that almost consumed Notre Dame.  Fire destroys and transforms. Many of the images built into the cathedral represented alchemical principles, as did the story of the crucifixion itself.  Transubstantiation is itself an alchemical principle. Alchemy arose in ancient Egypt, and there is a secret teaching that Jesus was educated in Egypt and India before emerging into the visible part of his mission. His baptism symbolized
immersion in the waters of Mother Earth’s womb and rebirth. However, whether this is a fact it is a truth in as much as the process of destruction cleansing and reemergence has ancient roots and is recalled in each time of crisis at the end of an era. Truth is truth, but the way it is clothed changes from age to age. Change at the source level is dramatic, confusing and sometimes terrifying. As such, it creates stress and people react to stress at the level of their inner strength and cohesion. Those without firm moorings often lose all contact with sanity and sense of virtue. They become victims and energy food for dwellers of the lower realms.

Even the earth is changing. We desire the furniture in Mother Earth’s living room to last forever, but the world and its home, the universe is still in creation, perhaps forever in creation. In Genesis, first book of the Christian Bible, it says that on the seventh day God rested. I suppose the inference is that creation resumed after the rest. Is it not a continuous story. It seems obvious that we don’t live in a time of rest. The weather is changing, the poles are moving beyond the usual, and many human developments have exceeded their purpose and become more dangerous than creative. Whether or not global warming is induced by human inventions or a natural cyclic change, or more likely both, the change is felt on all levels. Perhaps, even the solar system itself is affected. It is after all a system to which we belong and contribute. 

There are many activists trying to right the world’s many problems and the problems are becoming so numerous that one would have to be an immortal billionaire to support all good causes coming through email every day. My question is, do we have the wisdom to know what Mother Earth needs most. It seems to me in my humble opinion, that if those of us who feel the rhythm of this change listen to our frightened, sad or angry heart and concentrate on discovering that which will make it sing in harmony, we will have a clue to what Mother Earth needs from each of us as an individual.

 Beauty is more than skin deep; it originates from the center of light and life and it is the creation of love and power. Most of the great  wonders of the world have exited the physical world. Notre Dame will never be as it was before the fire, but perhaps it will be renewed in spirit.

 If you wish to learn more about Notre Dame's mysteries there is a book: Le Mystere des Cathedrales by Hermetic master Fulcanelli. I don't know if it is still in print but it reveals much of the alchemical meaning of the images in Notre Dame and other famous cathedrals.