Tag: Gnosis
The first pages of Genesis contain a rift that will echo through the whole of Scripture and the secret traditions born around it. Expelled from the garden, Adam begets three figures who carry in themselves three different paths of humanity. Cain, the cultivator of the soil, violent and restless. Abel, the fragile shepherd, whose life…
The word empire carries an ancient resonance. It once signified order descending from above, a structure that replicated the harmony of creation and drew earthly power into alignment with the Divine. For Dante, the empire in its true sense was the Empyrean, the region of pure Light where blessed souls abided in union with God.…
The spectacle of a solar eclipse is never a simple matter of astronomy. It carries the quality of a rite performed in the sky. When the Sun is hidden by the Moon, even if partially, the order of visibility is reversed. The lord of clarity and centre is cast into silence and the lesser light…
The image of the serpent runs through every current of mystical tradition. It coils around the Tree of Knowledge in Genesis; it burns in the deserts of Israel as the bronze figure that heals those who gaze upon it; it curls at the base of the spine in the secret lore of yoga; it climbs…
The drama of the soul is the drama of exile. In the human heart the memory of unity lingers, but mundane life is lived in division. The psyche carries within it a double figure: the self presented to the light and the hidden shadow. To integrate that shadow is to acknowledge the dyad within and…
The human being stands beneath the wheeling heavens, woven into their intricate fabric of lights and shadows, obedient to rhythms older than memory. Time is measured by their motion, seasons carved by their courses, fate written in their alignments. The body is pulled by them, the soul impressed with their signs, the mind conditioned by…
The Cross stands as more than a tool of suffering; it is a symbol of the world made visible. The vertical and the horizontal meet and in their union a mystery is revealed. The ancients did not require it to be explained in scholastic detail, as they sensed that life itself unfolded upon these axes.…
“É a Tua face que eu procuro, Senhor.”“It is Your face that I seek, Lord.” The phrase inscribed upon the Portuguese writer António Telmo’s gravestone carries the purest confession of the soul. It is a sentence where philosophy becomes prayer. To seek the face of the Divine is to stand in the position of Sophia,…
Language hides the map of the soul. Words that in daily speech are used lightly once carried within them the full weight of heaven. To consider meant to look at the stars, to stand under the sky, to read in their light the measure of human time. Design comes from the act of marking with…
The mystery of manifestation is bound to the seal and sigil. In the act of sealing, the invisible breath becomes visible form; the hidden Will finds expression in matter. To seal is a gesture of fulfilment. It is the descent of the Divine current into flesh. When the Gospel declares that the Word became flesh…
