Latin carried in its verbs the whole mystery of the word Sacred. Sacrificare is formed from sacer/Holy and facere/to make. To sacrifice means to make Holy; to lift the ordinary thing into the Light of heaven. The loaf of bread, the fruit, or the cup of drink, once touched by blessing, ceased to be mere…
Among the forgotten legends of Christendom stands Wilgefortis, the crucified woman with a beard. Her image unsettled the faithful because it broke the logic of gender and form. But behind the strangeness shines a profound sigil. Wilgefortisembodies the paradox where the Christian Cross and the Hermetic caduceus meet. She is woman and man, victim and…
The lives of certain women burn with an intensity that escapes moral judgement. They were called pure, but their purity was not absence of stain, nor the careful avoidance of desire. It was the fire of a total offering. In Rose of Lima, Thérèse of Lisieux, Mary Magdalene de Pazzi, and Catherine of Siena, the…
There is a passage in Megillah 29a that speaks with a simple and inexhaustible voice. It says that, when Israel went into exile, the Shekhinah went with them. The Presence did not remain aloof in heaven, untouched by grief. She descended, clothed herself in the dust of Babylon, and remained beside her children. Few lines…
The question of division has followed humanity from the beginning. Some saw it as punishment, others as fracture, others as exile. Still, within different traditions, runs a deeper recognition: the soul belongs to a greater root, a body or tree from which it cannot be separated. Encounters that seem accidental are in fact echoes of…