Tara - VIII. Portal of Scorpio: Introduction & Rites

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VIII. Portal of Scorpio

Introduction: Leopoldine the Beautiful

Rite 1. The Decision

Deity divides itself into two in order to experience joy, passions, controversy and adventure! Tears and laughter alternate with heavenly visions of perfection won through trials, courage and compassion. Deity manifests as loving Mothers and Fathers through all that is. However the whole Company of Heaven alarms us by being Creators – presumably our own creators! We have to be reminded sometimes that Divine Love is within us all, because we are part of the very mind of the Divine Father: the substance of the Divine Mother. So we too are eternal, travelling through time and place, which exists forever. We share divine love, learning to look after all our varied companions, animal, insect, plant on our earth. For we are learning to be Creators.

How do we distinguish between Divine Love and the creative process? One of the most moving of true life stories was told to me by my friend, the artist Desmond McCarthy. For me it unravelled the enigma of Gnosticism.

Before the Second World War, Desmond had a job in London working in an office. Now there is always someone in an office who is both liked and laughed at – a scapegoat. The victim in this case I shall call ‘Kevin’. He illustrated the unkind joke in a cartoon of a psychiatrist addressing a timid patient in a baggy suit. “You have not an inferiority syndrome. You ARE inferior…” Desmond noticed especially the ridiculous, ill-fitting wig Kevin wore to cover his scanty hair. No girl in the office would look at him.

Then suddenly his status shot up! He acquired a girl friend. His whole attitude changed. He found his fellow workers chatted to him in lunch hour. They wanted to hear him describe Leopoldine. Leopoldine was attractive – even beautiful in an unusual way. She was amusing – but kindly. And she was always having adventures – but survived them with unfailing good humour. Obviously Kevin was overcome by winning Leopoldine’s affections. He kept saying: “I don’t know why a girl like that goes out with me.”

Desmond was worried. A glamorous girl like Leopoldine might break Kevin’s heart by rejecting him for a more successful boy friend with money and position. Surely she would fall for a sophisticated man offering expensive restaurants – a grand holiday.

Ah! At first things were looking good. Kevin and Leopoldine went for a holiday together. This was marvellous. Desmond was touching wood. He was really fond of Kevin and couldn’t bear the thought of his being cruelly hurt.

I think it was this very compassion for Kevin that led to Desmond’s rising suspicion of Leopoldine. Was she an adventuress – the sort that leads men on to amuse herself? No, his suspicion was far, far more grave. Did Leopoldine exist?

I do not mean that he suspected her of being a Spirit of some sort. No. Stranger still. Had Kevin created her?

No one else had any such misgivings. Leopoldine was to them a real person. But Desmond’s doubts were confirmed. One day, casually glancing through the Financial Times, he noticed on a back page, “Shares in Leopoldine Mines.” This was a Belgian Mining company, obviously called after King Leopold.

Naturally Desmond never breathed a word about his suspicions. He had no proof anyway. So it was not his fault that led to poor Leopoldine falling very ill. The whole office was deeply concerned. Finally the awful climax came. Leopoldine was dead.

Kevin was inundated with sympathy. Desmond now was really worried. If Kevin had killed Leopoldine, whom he had created, he must be in despair. Desmond followed his career with concern.

It ended perfectly. Kevin, he told Desmond, had been travelling in a railway carriage one day, and found himself facing a very attractive woman. They fell into conversation. She revealed that she was a hairdresser. Warmly she recommended him to come to her salon in a neighbouring town – and to invest in a really modern wig. He accepted the offer.

So, in a short while, Kevin walked into the office wearing a very smart wig that toned in with his natural colouring. And his friends were so relieved to learn that he had recovered from the sad loss of Leopoldine. He was engaged to be married to the hairdresser! They duly were married, and Desmond with his fellow office workers attended the wedding.

Now this is what fascinates me. Did Kevin, like Pygmalion, create Leopoldine, who became alive as the hairdresser? Or, through his ardent longing, had he found his true love through no less than the Goddess of Love Herself, Venus? I rather think so.”

These rites may be used as alternatives to those in “Psyche”

For initiates on the Spiral of the Adepti

Tara of the Oracles

The Alchemical Twins Face the Fates

Fellowship of Isis Liturgy by Olivia Robertson

VIII. Portal of Scorpio

The Decision

Ritual No. 1

The Choice is Ours, the Fates Weave the Outcome

The Octagonal Temple of Alchemy

Priest of Alchemy: (to the twin apprentices, Aiden & Elaine) Without the exercise of free will, the honour of choosing, we are as marionettes, our strings pulled by every passerby. To learn discrimination in choosing, we need to invoke the wise Goddess Beltis of Carthage. She administers justice with her right hand uplifted: Her left hand protects victims, pointed downwards.

PRIESTESS ALCHEMIST: (raises her wand) Divine Goddess Beltis, millions of your devotees in ancient Africa and Troy invoked your aid. In hymns to You they chanted that you fed the hungry with good things, and denied those who had excess. They sang that you saved the poor who were treated cruelly, and brought to justice the rich who were tyrants. Teach us to use both our hands – that we may balance justice with compassion.

ORACLE OF THE GODDESS BELTIS

I am amused when I see into your minds! You realise that while millions of men, women and children starve – too many of you have an obesity problem! You have clergy as ministers to your armed forces – yet you torture helpless prisoners. You send thieves to prison – but your financial institutions gamble away billions. Through selfishness, stupidity and greed you are destroying your planet. You are poisoning the air, the earth and the oceans. You are misusing fire. You spend millions causing an explosion on the moon, and try to make an imitation of what you term “The Big Bang”, which you think started creation.

Some of you wisely turn to the Goddess, by whatever name you use, because you need an entirely different way of viewing reality. You may wish to save the earth by rising above this material plane, or your vocation may be through active service. I have two arms, one upraised Heavenwards – the other drawing life from the depths.

Whatever you choose, you will fulfil your destiny – to awaken into Eternal Life…

End of Oracle

Priest Alchemist: We give thanks to the Goddess Beltis.

Priestess Alchemist: (to Elaine) Elaine, you know you are apt to rush into adventures, and are upset when the consequences take a turn opposite to what you desired! Are you willing to face the Choice offered by Beltis?

Elaine: I need to look before I leap…I accept the challenge.

Priestess Alchemist: So be it! (she hands Elaine a tarot card from the Marseille deck) What does this card mean to you?

Elaine: (examines the card) Here is Beltis! She is winged and wears a strange robe, half deep blue, half scarlet. Her inner gown is yellow. With her left hand she is pouring water from a blue jar, into a red jar held by her right hand. She is in a desert. Here is the balance, “Temperance” of repose and activity.

Priestess Alchemist: You are prepared to enter trance. We will be with you but may not help you.

Trance Journey

Elaine: The Scorpio realm should be exciting! I mount the Hill of the Temple ****** I do like the entrance to Scorpio! Above is its earlier representation in Babylon – an eagle with outspread wings – one of the 4 Kerubs. I part the heavy indigo curtains and pass through the Portico ********

This is delightful – I am in Arcadia. The God Apollo is approaching me from a small, asphodel covered hill. He is not as usually depicted. He has fairly long untidy fair hair blown by the wind. His face is Slav – with magnetic grey eyes that are not human – slanting – and his mouth is wide and laughing, deeply indented at the corners. He laughs.

“You think I’m ugly – yet they say I’m the most beautiful of the Gods! Anyway, here I am. I am going to introduce you to one of our greatest dramas, which involved Gods and men – and Goddesses and women. This shall be a re-enactment – alternative reality. You are to take the role of my protégé, the Prophetess Cassandra. It really involves a tremendous choice she had to make.”

“What was that?” I asked. “Was it about her prophecies that no one would believe?”

“Not exactly. When the God Zeus – backed by His Consort Hera – commanded that the Gods should not interfere in the Trojan war – Cassandra, like a good woman, obeyed Him.”

“Surely that was correct,” I said, “One should not intervene in evolving cultures.”

“Ah, but hers was a terrible choice. For Cassandra had the gift of prophecy. Remember, she was a Trojan Princess. She loved her family, and her fellow Trojans. Because the Greeks conquered Troy, her whole family were either slaughtered or taken into slavery – including herself. The entire city of Troy, outpost of the great African Carthaginian empire was destroyed. Yet she could have prevented this catastrophe through using the Gift of Beltis. She could read minds.

Now, Elaine, in this re-enactment, you are Cassandra and you face this dilemma: Either you follow the choice made by the original Cassandra, and obey Zeus – In which case, heartbroken, you will be murdered by the jealous wife of your captor – Queen Clytemnestra. Or – you choose other means.”

I exclaim – “Nothing could be worse than what did happen! Anyway, it is not my temperament to put up with evil if I can prevent it. So here goes, I shall intervene, whatever Zeus commands!

The scene changes – I find myself lighting incense in my Temple of Beltis. I pick up a scrying crystal and gaze intensely into it ***** I find myself in the room of Troy’s captive Queen Helen. And I am astonished at what I learn.

Helen is consumed with rage because Hecuba, Queen of Troy, refuses to accept the legitimacy of Helen’s son, born from Prince Paris of Troy. Helen is called a ‘courtesan Queen’ and her son, ‘a Bastard.’ Now I am overwhelmed by her desire for revenge.

She is a Greek and so very clever. I read her mind and know her plan. She has already stirred up resentment against the Royal Family through her Order of Beltis. Their plan is this. Helen will secretly summon to Troy the cleverest of the Greeks, Odysseus, whose father was a princely thief. He is to be disguised as a beggar! He will be helped into the Sanctuary of the Palladium that held the Luck of Troy. This is an archaic clay figure of the many-breasted Earth Mother. He would steal this, thus shattering the morale of the Trojan populace, already tired of this long war. The Greeks would pretend to leave, hiding their ships behind an island. Then the dissident Trojans would open the Gate by the Wooden Horse tavern. They would creep through the Gate at night, with stolen keys, and kill the drunken Trojans, celebrating the Greeks’ departure.

According to Homer’s “The Iliad,” the plan was successful. The city fell, and the Royal Family were killed along with most of their subjects. But Helen was brought back to Sparta with honour.

I remember all the horrors inflicted on the Trojans so graphically described by poets – especially the fate of the Trojan women ***** In a wave of emotion, I decide to disobey Almighty Zeus, and intervene in this siege! So, as Cassandra I inform the Trojan Higher Command of the Greek plot. Drastic action is taken at once. Helen is hanged along with the disguised Odysseus. This I had feared. But I am horrified by the behaviour of my own Trojans. Infuriated by the revealed plot, they make a savage attack on the Greeks.

At night they creep out of the city and proceed to slaughter the sleeping Greeks – and rape and kill their women. I myself sail from Troy to be Queen of Carthage, with its future ruler, my cousin Prince Enaeus, for, heartened by the Trojan success, the Carthaginians manage to conquer all the Greek Islands and mainland.

However, as for me, the Fates have the last word. Instead of becoming Queen of Carthage, when I arrive in the palace, I am stabbed to death by the jealous Queen Dido.

I hear in the distance the voice of Apollo. “The Trojan Poet Anchises wrote a compassionate play, ‘The Greek Women,’ about their sufferings at the hands of the Trojans. He later produced an epic of immense length, ‘The Trojan Victory.’ I fear the birth of Greek civilization was still-born.” ********

I feel utterly ashamed. I am returning from trance. I hear the kindly voice of Apollo: “Never mind, Elaine. You meant well.”

Still utterly ashamed, I burst into tears. Then suddenly there is a flash of white Light. I hear a silvery woman’s voice. “Elaine, by refusing to obey the God Zeus, because you felt compassion, You have become His Daughter, not his servant. You have always been my own daughter. Don’t you remember me? I am Hera.”

End of Trance

Elaine returns from trance will not accept her degree. She has learnt much. Reports are shared, helpful rays are sent forth. Thanks are given to the Deities.

Recommended Reading: “Homeric Hymns,” Heinemann. “The Iliad,” Homer. "Larousse’s Encyclopaedia of Mythology." “The Goddesses of Chaldea, Syria & Egypt,” Lawrence Durdin-Robertson, Cesara Publications, Clonegal Castle, Ireland. “Mythology of Carthage,” Hamlyn. “Sea Priestess,” Dion Fortune, Aquarian Press. “Return to Elysium,” Joan Grant, Methuen. “Treatise on the Connection between Punic and Gaelic languages.” Laurence Parsons, 19th Century. “Hymn to Beltis,” origin of “the Magnificat”. “Hymns to Beltis and other Middle Eastern and Phoenician Deities."

These rites may be used as alternatives to those in “Psyche”

For initiates on the Spiral of the Adepti