The feast of All Saints points to a hidden unity. Behind the countless faces of sanctity remains a single body, a living organism of light. The saints are its organs and the unknown righteous its invisible breath. On this day the veil between heaven and earth becomes softer and the Corpus Mysticum breathes again through the communion of souls. The light scattered through history gathers itself and for, one instant, the Divine body shines complete.
I. The Body and the Recollection of the Sparks
The mystery of All Saints lies in reunion. The Lurianic Kabbalah affirms that the world was built through fragmentation, that Divine light fell into vessels and shattered. Humanity was born among these shards, each soul carrying a spark of the hidden fire. To be alive is to remember, to polish the fragment until it reflects its source. The saint is the craftsman of reintegration. His struggle against separation itself. The virtue is the art of recollecting what was scattered by desire and fear.
The Corpus Mysticum is a real architecture in the subtle world. Acts of compassion or silent prayers re-align the broken members of this body. The communion of saints is the restoration of the cosmic order in miniature, a living tikkun enacted through human will surrendered to Divine intention. The Church visible is its icon and the Church invisible is its etheric form. When we meditate upon the saints, we are glimpsing into how multiplicity dissolves into unity, with the many voices of creation merging into a single chant of praise.
On this day, the invitiation is to contemplate not only the blessed but the process of sanctification itself. It is the alchemy of the soul that wrestles with its own darkness until the lead of personality turns to gold. The saints carry within them the same confusion and impulse that haunt all mortals; what differs is that their warfare is the labour of recollection. From the fragments of his own fall he rebuilds the image of the Whole. All Saints’ Day is a celebration of Divine memory, the remembrance of what the world forgets.
II. Saint Cyprian and the Dissolution of the Spell
In the legend of Saint Cyprian, the art of dispersion meets its limit. Once a learned magician of Antioch, versed in the languages of spirits and the signs of magical command, he sought to bend the maiden Justina through enchantment. However, the more he invoked, the more the powers he summoned recoiled. The cross she traced was enough to stop them. And that cross became a sigil beyond all conjuration, a point where the wills of heaven converged. Before that intersection, the legion dispersed.
The story is less hagiography than initiation. The fall of Cyrpian before the sign of the cross is the turning from goetia to theurgy. He discovered that the vertical current of Grace annihilates the horizontal circuits of manipulation. The magician, who once believed in the autonomy of his will, perceives that the universe obeys a deeper geometry. The cross is the diagram of reconciliation, the meeting of worlds at right angles. The horizontal axis gathers what is scattered across space; the vertical unites what was sundered between heaven and earth.
The etymology of sortilege reveals the hidden irony of Cyprian’s craft. From the Latin sors, meaning “lot” or “fate”, and lego, “to gather” or “to read”, it implies the act of drawing lots, of reading destiny through fragments. The magician of the old world was indeed a reader of dispersed signs, a gatherer of scattered lots. But his art remained incomplete, since it lacked the axis of the Word. In the Christian mystery, fate is redeemed, not read; the divine lot is cast upon the wood of the cross.
Untouched by the seduction of power, Justina represents pure theurgy. Her invocation is alignment. Instead of summong angels, she becomes transparent to them. The light passes through her prayer without distortion. The demons retreat because the mirror no longer contains shadow. She performs no ceremony, as the gesture of the cross suffices, tracing invisibly the same geometry through which the worlds were formed. In her, the feminine principle restores balance to the masculine will. She represents the soul that has ceased to fascinate itself with force and begun to radiate from purity.
Cyprian’s conversion is beyond moral reform, turning in to metaphysical correction. He renounces the scattered craft of sortilege and enters the single act of Divine recollection. His magic becomes liturgy. The fragment returns to its source and the magician becomes priest of the Word.
III. The Psalms as Theurgical Practice
Theurgy includes the reading of the Tehillim – the Psalms. The Hebrew term Tehillim (תְּהִלִּים) derives from halal (הָלַל), meaning “to praise” or “to make shine”, prefixed by the letter tav (ת), the final seal of the alphabet, sign of completion, the final seal of the alphabet, sign of completion. Etymologically it suggests “the acts that bring forth brightness until the end”. When the digits are added together, the result is 4 + 8 + 5 = 17, which corresponds to tov (טוֹב), “goodness”, whose own letters amount to the same value. In Kabbalistic arithmetic, seventeen represents divine benevolence, the impulse that restores order to chaos.
Further reduced, 1 + 7 = 8, the number of regeneration and resurrection. It marks the octave that begins where the seven days of creation end, the new cycle that arises beyond the Sabbath. Eight is the sigil of creation made whole again.
The very number hidden in Tehillim contains its mystery: 485 as the full structure of praise, 17 as the goodness that flows through it, and 8 as the completion and rebirth that follow restoration. The word itself becomes a geometry of tikkun, the pattern of fall, mercy, and reintegration.
The Psalms are liturgical architecture. The verses construct a vessel and the syllables gather dispersed light. The mystics taught that reciting them aloud re-orders the inner worlds, calming the chaos of thought and emotion so that the Divine Spirit may circulate freely. In the Tikkun ha-Klali, a formula of ten Psalms revealed by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, this process becomes explicit. The ten texts correspond to the ten Sefiroth, the living attributes of Divine emanation. Reading them is an ascent through the Tree of Life, a gradual purification of the channels that connect the soul to its source.
The effect mirrors that which overcame Cyprian when confronted by the sign of the cross. The Psalmic word gathers what is scattered. Each verse is a small exorcism, dispelling confusion through remembrance. To pronounce them with attention is to engage in a cosmic act of tikkun, the mending of the vessels of perception. The lips become instruments of Light and sound become structure again.
The reading of the Tehillim requires no trance or elaborate magical rite. It asks only presence and purity of intention. The words contain their own vibration, shaped by centuries of devotion. When recited, they form bridges across time, connecting the reader to the lineage of all who have uttered them. In that chorus the personal voice dissolves into the collective body of praise. The same mystery of All Saints unfolds: many mouths, one breath.
To engage in this practice on the feast of All Saints is to participate consciously in the restoration of the Corpus Mysticum. The Psalms become threads of sound that weave together the dispersed members of humanity. The saint, the sinner, the living, and the dead meet within the same vibration. The recitation of the Word repairs what the world has torn. Each syllable becomes a small resurrection.
Therefore the day of All Saints, the story of Cyprian, and the chanting of the Tehillim converge in a single revelation. Light is never lost, only misaligned. The cross, the psalm, and the saint are three faces of one act: the recollection of the Divine body through sound, sign, and surrender.
Κύριε ελέησον