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XII. Portal of Pisces:
Introduction: The Above and the Below need Ground Level
Rite 1. The Dark Goddess of a Myriad Stars
Rite 2. The Concourse of Prophets
Fellowship of Isis Liturgy
By
Olivia Robertson
Tara of the Oracles
The Alchemical Twins Face the Fates
The Octagonal Temple of Alchemy
XII. Portal of Pisces: Introduction to Rituals One and Two
The Above and the Below need Ground Level
I have never been able to understand why many people refuse to believe in Universal Salvation. Not only do we have racial and social segregation, but we limit Heaven in a belief system which condemns dissidents to eternal torture in Hell. Very good people fall for this. There was the Lady Warden of my high-church Anglican school who told us that unbaptized children could not go to heaven. This was particularly unfortunate, as we Protestants did not believe in purgatory. It was heaven or hell. You could do nothing to improve matters once you were dead. It was unbelievably cruel. But I did realise that people were not cruel. They reminded me of the home-life of the Meercats of the Calahari Desert, so lovingly and scientifically monitored and filmed by the Cambridge Team. A mother Meerkat naturally killed all her sisters’ cubs for some biological benefit. This was Nature.
I remember a very kind young American woman, mother of two, really upset by my strange ideas. “Olivia,” she said, “It’s all very well you saying everybody will be saved. But think of Saint Francis, he was a lovely man – giving away all that money to the Poor. You say Hitler could get into heaven somehow. Well even if they let him into heaven after thousands of years, don’t you think Saint Francis would be a little hurt? After all, where would be his reward?”
Life is restricted by segregation, usually petty and snobbish. My father was deemed unworthy to marry my mother because he was only an architect. As my mother’s relations would say sneeringly, “When we have anything wrong with the drains, we will send for dear Manning.”
The social rules that limit us are illustrated by the behaviour of my Great Grandmother, early in the 19th Century. As wife of a mere physician, Doctor Robert Graves, she was not received at the Viceregal Court in Dublin Castle, to which she felt she was entitled. Her Grandfather, Cornelius Grogan, had given the family Johnstown Castle to be the first Irish Senate of a new Republic during the 1798 Rising. The Senate lasted one day. He was duly hanged by the British and lost his castle. So his descendant scraped up the money to buy the haunted Rathfarnham Castle which gave her the social status to get into the Viceregal Court. It was a curious Irish come-back which she felt was her right. She was the only Doctor’s wife to get to be received in Dublin Castle at that time.
My own attitude – of one born in 1917 – was very much the same as my generation. We accused our elders of being Victorian. We admired Mahatma Ghandi. During the war, though many of us were pacifists, we hero-worshipped the women in the French Resistance. Our socialist, humane, practical world was scripted by Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and George Orwell. It had one disadvantage. We had to die. We had no God, no angels, no heaven, no immortal souls. The Paranormal was taboo. We were bereft of Divinity.
The first wave of a new spiritual renaissance occurred just after the war. Again I thought I was alone. When I awakened into multi-dimensional consciousness I was alone. Except of course for strange Beings with bodies of Light and heavenly minds. I was made to feel totally deluded. I was just having hallucinations.
Then I was joined by my brother, then an orthodox Rector of the Church of England. Then by his wife, of Quaker stock. I remember the three of us meditating in the Castle library in 1963. I said: “We will never be alone again.”
We met followers of Spiritualism, Occult Orders, Historic groupings, claiming teachings from Ancient Egypt, Hinduism, and The Tao. We started the Huntington Castle Centre for Meditation and Study.
Then in the sixties came the second wave – the Flower People. These did not all take drugs, though this was given as a medical reason for the spiritual experiences.
There followed an outburst of religious extremism, leading to some groups that committed group suicide. These were later joined by enthusiasts who not only were willing to kill themselves, but felt it would be of benefit for their faith if they brought the opposition with them to the next world, themselves to Heaven, their enemies to hell.
Our own idealistic New Agers began also to develop paranoid obsessions. Many kept their equilibrium, but others became a prey to monstrous conspiracy theories that reminded me of the persecution of the Jews in the last century.
Why do we need enemies? The answer is obvious. We have them. But as every person alive has a different enemy, there does not seem much of a future for the human race. So the idea would be for us to not have any enemies. Through spiritual alchemy we may learn to transmute our enemies – heretics, evil-doers, war-mongers, into their own true selves. And we can only do this miracle if we know what their true selves are. And we don’t know.
There are two sources of Divine Information as to this mystery. The Divine Beings Who have Love, Beauty and Truth may help us through inspiration. But this only works if we accept this influx. Our free will is essential. Otherwise we are robots. Divine Inspiration may be represented by a great V, an inverted triangle. “As Above so Below.”
Another way is that of hard moral work on the material plane. This is our evolutionary path. “As Below so Above.” The emblem is an up-pointed triangle. When these two triangles join at their tips, they produce a diamond to the degree of 1.618, the Golden Mean. Here we have the Diamond of Perfection: Divine Union of idealism and the mundane; the Above and the Below; Love and Truth; mind and heart. So I sketched in this Diamond of Harmony to make it actual for me. This is the land, I thought, of our life’s destination – and our home. We are living where we need to be. We are at Journey’s End – at the beginning and the end. Names came to me: Heaven, Valhalla, Paradise, Tir na nOg, Korean Margoland, Shangri-La, Brocéliande, The Isle of Cytherea: for each of us our own Land of Heart’s Desire…
Poussin entitled his famous painting of Rennes-le-Chateau as “I also have lived in Arcadia.” Why not? Optimists have given Romantic place names to their homes. Alas, now these are called a string of numbers put on a mail-box. I was in Arizona when the idea came to me that we should live in our own idyllic land. I was sitting at the time in “Utopia”. My hostess Stephanie assured me that really was the name. Our friend John Michael said his place had been called “Avalon in Paradise Valley”.
The idea took life. Added to mailing numbers, I found we had friends living in “Grenadine Peak,” “Two Ravens” and “Forever Land”. After all, a bus goes to “Eureka”, and I have travelled in a street-car called “Desire.” Join us as Arcadians!
No subscription, no forms, no rules, no certificates, no numbers. Just be yourself.
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
XII. Portal of Pisces
The Dark Goddess of a Myriad Stars
Ritual No. 1
To Take All is to Lose All. To Give All is to Gain All.
The Octagonal Temple of Alchemy
Priest of Alchemy: (to the twin apprentices, Aiden and Elaine) You now face the culmination of the zodiac revelation of Alchemy, The Portal of Pisces. This sphere resolves duality into the music of the spheres. To face the nature of the Universe in its perfection, you need to receive the Oracle of the Goddess Nuit.
Priestess Alchemist: (raises her wand) I invoke the Goddess of our Milky Way Galaxy, the Goddess Nuit. Thou Whose Divine Body is composed of the blackness of space, yet is resplendent with constellations, receive our prayer to awaken into our true being.
ORACLE OF THE GODDESS NUIT
To know your Self is to find that you are an eternal offspring of My Body. Within each creature, whether Deity or mouse, I express a unique part of My Self. When you honour yourself – you honour others and you bring love and joy to My Heart. You tremble when you think of death as a final end to yourself. But this is impossible, because as part of Myself you also are eternal!
But I have compassion for your sorrows and fears, which result in violence, cruelty and stupidity. So come to Me not only on ceremonial occasions, but every day, and especially every night. You will find Me in the love of your friends and family, and when you care for those you hate or fear. For in Me are no enemies.
Within the Divine Aura that surrounds Me, evil does not exist. Your sufferings are part of your learning. Find the Divine wherever you recognise it, in the Arts, in love, in a widening consciousness. So will you walk both in the darkness and in the light: in truth and love:in vision and adventure: You will have grown up at last!
End of Oracle
Priest Alchemist: We give thanks to the Goddess for Her Oracle.
Priestess Alchemist: Elaine, you have bravely fought evil all your life, though the enemy changes as you grow in wisdom. The final enemy is the duality within yourself. Are you willing to face the Ordeal of Pisces?”
Elaine: I have always recognised the Sign of Pisces as the Yin-Yang of the East, and the Caduceus of the West. Eagerly I accept the challenge. Yet I cannot believe evil can be resolved into good through Alchemy. I hope, but cannot see how!
Priestess Alchemist: (shows her a tarot card from the Marseille deck) Describe this card!
Elaine: Ah, the culminating card of the pack! This depicts The Goddess Fortuna, Daughter of Themis, Goddess of Wisdom. She stands in the Initiate posture, on her right leg, her left leg held behind her. She holds in balance 2 batons. Around her is an oval wreath, its leaves are red, yellow and blue, the primary colours. At each corner are the four Babylonian Kerubim, the Bull, the Lion, the Eagle and the Angel. Strangely, it is called “Le Monde.” But I realise this is not the earth, but the world which is the product of inner creation. We help to form the World. The earth exists anyway.
Priestess Alchemist: You are ready for trance, but possibly not for what awaits you. We will watch with interest, but may not help you.
Trance Journey
Elaine: I make my way up the Hill of the Zodiac, and when I reach the inner sanctum I particularly honour the Goddess of the Central Flame, Vesta. I find my way to the Portal of Pisces. As I expected, it shows two powers, one silver, one gold, in the form of mermaids each side of the gateway. Above I see a winged Disc of pure white light in indigo space. I part silvery-green curtains, and cross the threshold.
I was not expecting this! I am in the small room of an old-fashioned night-club – period I guess in the nineteen twenties. The atmosphere is heavy with cigarette smoke. Some people are dancing to a dismal wail of a saxophone. Some are drinking champagne from old-style wide glasses. I wonder, “How long have they been here?” They look like marionettes, half dead. “For nearly a hundred years – or thereabouts,” says a voice behind me. I turn round and nearly run away screaming. I am facing one of those ‘Reptilians” I always laughed at as figments of imagination. He is silver-green in colour and is very polite. He is wearing a well-cut dinner jacket. Suddenly I feel like giggling.
As I laugh, his face changes for a flash into that of a very tired elderly gentleman. He says, “Thank you for laughing.” I realise he has been trapped here – something about finance. He picks up my thought. “Everything in hell is free,” he says. “And it goes on and on. There is no death. No release.”
Curious – I have always particularly disliked greedy financiers, and pitied their victims. But now I am bent on getting this character away from this nightmare club. Perhaps because he reminds me of some people I know. “Try and fix your thought and feelings on some place you really like,” I say.
“No,” he says. “I won’t escape until I bring my girl friend with me…” But even as he says this he vanishes. The obsessive self delusion is broken. He remembered he loved someone. His girl friend is waiting for him in a better world, puzzled as to why he has slept so long.
I begin to feel claustrophobic and wander out of the over-heated room, and make my way upstairs. In a penthouse I find the most extraordinary apartment. It belongs to an earlier period, I gather in Russia, or some Balkan State. The two rooms are also stiflingly hot with a closed stove. The windows are covered with heavy brocade curtains that totally obscure the light. There are two pleated silk shades over oil lamps, and the floor is muffled with a thick patterned carpet. A samovar is dusty – obviously empty.
At first I cannot find the residents. Then, in the inner room I find a couch covered with fringed velvet cushions, and on these crouch two women. They are wearing long sable fur coats, and both have chiffon turbans. One is much older than the other. Curiously, the older woman is more awake than the other, who is chain-smoking to keep awake.
They become aware of my presence. I admire their beautiful, refined features and elegant white hands that clearly have never done any work. “How long have you been here?” I ask. The answer given by the older woman startles me. I feel afraid, for she says, in a remote voice: “A thousand years.” I look at them again and they begin to change. I see them as Assyrian princesses. But somehow they are the same, like dangerous beautiful black panthers.
Suddenly I decide to intervene, despite my dislike of these sorts of women. I find myself persuading the pair of them to come to an all-night café that serves lorry drivers! Dreamily they come with me into a fluorescent-lighted self-service, all-night café. I queue for them to get a fried meal and a huge pot of coffee. They are actually interested in their surroundings, watching the huge red-faced men in T-shirts and denims – in the jolly waitress with red hair – in the laughing students, teasing each other – and are shaken by the blare of canned music that has a curious effect of shattering their closed auras. I feel triumphant. I am awakening the dead *****
But suddenly I feel the music is also battering at me. The whole room rotates at ever increasing speed. Total darkness swallows us all. There stands before me the Older Woman, Who is revealed as the Goddess Nuit Herself. On Her Right Hand stands the reptilian gentleman, now manifest as a human Magus of the Arts. On Her Left Hand is the younger woman, now a laughing girl, creating magical pictures with star-dust. And I am one of Them. So are we all.
End of Trance
Slowly Elaine returns from trance. She says dreamily: “Now I know when you gain cosmic consciousness, all is transmuted into Divine Reality – because all comes from there anyway.”
Elaine has won her degree and is told that any final "test" leads to the beginning of a new adventure! Reports are shared and Rays of Harmony sent forth.
Recommended Reading: “The Cabala,” novel, Thornton Niven Wilder, Longman Green. “Isis and Osiris” Jonathan Cott, Doubleday. “Golden Cauldron,” Nicky Skully, “llustrations” by Angela Werneke, Bear & Co. “Sounding the Inner Landscape,” Kay Gardner, Caduceus. “Secrets in the Fields, Crop Circles,” Freddy Silver, Hampton Roads. “The Secrets of Doctor Taverner,” Dion Fortune. “Varieties of Religious Experience,” William James.
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
XII. Portal of Pisces
The Concourse of Prophets
Ritual No. 2
To Create the Future, the Prophet rises above Space and Time.
The Octagonal Temple of Alchemy
Priest of Alchemy: (to twin apprentices, Aiden and Elaine) Seekers for the Mysteries of Alchemy, Time does not pass from your birth to death. Rather space and time form the area through which you travel: the Alchemical Labyrinth is where you transmute evil to good, that you may grow in true Being. In order to understand this mystery, you need to harken to the Oracle of the Goddess Tara.
Priestess Alchemist: (raises her wand) I invoke the Goddess Tara, known to the Ancient Egyptians as Taur, Keeper of the Tablets of Fate. Origin of the Torah and the Tarot, She Who presides as a Star over the four Sacred Mountains of the Asian continent, and holds the Stone of Destiny on the holy mounds of the Celtic Races.
ORACLE OF THE GODDESS TARA
Occasionally, Those you call Deities – Prophets – Teachers, give seekers a sudden experience of Divine Reality, which includes all time, all space, all dimensions. Too often such divine disclosure has led to fanaticism, when the recipients claim exclusive revelations, and threaten destruction to those who take some other path.
Yet all such mystical revelations, however varied, come from the same Divine Source. The manifestation takes myriad forms, adjusted to the degree of development of the receiver. Branded as heretic, saint, lunatic, genius, such mystics find themselves either adored or reviled.
Now is the time when an influx of new spiritual incarnations gives companionship, guidance and advice to reborn psychics. What gifts do such new angelic visitants bring? Sanity, enjoyment of other companions, tolerance, above all humour. To laugh at others is clever. To laugh at oneself is a first fruit of Divine Awakening…
End of Oracle
Priest Alchemist: We give thanks to the Goddess Tara for Her Oracle.
Priestess Alchemist: (to Aiden) Aiden, your bright mind flies all over the place, receiving ideas, inspiration, vision from every conceivable source. You are just the man we need to explore the Labyrinth of The Fate of Taur. Are you willing to face this Piscean Maze of shifting ideals?
Aiden: I love new vision. So I may as well continue. I am willing.
Priestess Alchemist: (shows him a tarot card from the Marseille deck) Describe this card.
Aiden: It can be no other than Elaine’s card of ‘Fortuna,’ the naked Goddess of Fate. We all have to face Her Honesty at one time or another. I see Her as representing the perfection of balanced movement: progress.
Priestess Alchemist: You have grasped the card’s essential meaning. You may enter trance. We will be with you but not help you.
Aiden: I feel the nostalgia at hearing those words, because this is the final adventure of this course…there will be others, but I love Oracles.
Trance Journey
Aiden: I climb the hill eagerly and enter the Temple of the Zodiac. I honour the Vestal Flame that will always be with me. I make my way to the Gateway of Pisces. It looks full of living beings coming and going in some sort of etheric water *** making my way through the gateway is like passing through silver-green water ***
I enter the most beautiful place I have ever been in. It is formed of a mighty cave with stalactites and stalagmites. Oh! What I have always longed to see! In the centre of the vast cave is a sepulchre. It is very high and made of gleaming crystal. Can this be Hermes Trismegistus, Father of Alchemy, once awakened by Apolonius of Tyana? This is just the sort of venue I adore. I approach the figure hopefully. *** Then I stop *** This is no Hermes Trismegistus – no human being at all. I am faced with a sleeping God. This is the Gnostic Ancient of Days, painted by William Blake. So He really exists!
His hair is snowy white as is His body. His robes flow around Him like flowing water. His arms enfold not the Emerald Tablet of Alchemy but a giant Emerald. Within it are enacted shifting scenes of human lives. With a shock I realise we are all living within the Emerald.
I fall on my knees. I am at last overcome by a Being greater than my mind can imagine.
I find myself saying: “Dagon, Ildebaoth, help me to reconcile myself with all beings.”
To my amazement I hear a cheeky voice; it is the red-haired witch. She says: “That is the first intelligent thing you’ve said for ages.” I am bewildered. I am in a large conference-room. This can’t be possible. All round us is brilliant green light. The witch and I and the conference room are inside the vast Emerald. We are in Dagon’s dream. Talk about feeling small. *****
“Well, here you are at last,” says the witch, leading me to a seat. “Welcome to the Sybils’ and Prophets’ galactic get-together. This is where we cook up and send forth oracles, prognostications, prophecies, warnings, to the faithful.”
“What faithful?” I ask. I feel the Olympians are behind this charade. Why, do they think I need taking down a peg?
“It’s not that, Aiden,” says a very tall woman with white hair, obviously a Sybil. “It’s just we cannot afford to have any more pompous dogmatic phoney Prophets. We like you. We like your beautiful blue planet. There is enough violence already without people being deceived, drawn into religious wars.”
“Yes!” says a Prophet with long white hair and beard – but with an odd resemblance to Mercury. “What we need is a naïve Prophet who recommends Love and Joy and Peace.”
“Well, one must be fair”, says the Sybil. “There could still be objections from those who enjoy condemning others. But the violence would then be done to the Prophet. This leaves us in a sound ethical position. After all, you will be preaching toleration, friendliness, and generosity.”
Nervously, I ask: “What do you mean? I am no Prophet.” “Nor is anyone else,” says a gigantic Prophet with long chestnut hair and beard. “The prophecies are from here, to teach humanity some lesson. We just give you what to say. You have to agree of course. But we know you inside out. You’ll agree to go because you love adventures. And you’ll give the message because you like it. Also you’ve always wanted to be a comedian.”
The circle of bearded Prophets and long-haired Sybils are forming a circle around me. The whole room begins to spin. I have learnt not to fight it – just to let myself flow with the spiral rotations through time and space *******
There is still the flow – but it is now of sea waves. I am on an ocean shore, in some South Sea Island. And I am a visiting Celebrity. I am greeted by a respectful delegation, which ceremoniously puts a “ley” wreath of red flowers round my neck, hailing me as their Avatar. I don’t see where the comedian comes in. After all, I am about to deliver a genuine prophecy from Higher Realms. They all burst forth into a hymn, which invokes success and abundance and long life.
I mount the decorated rostrum, shut my eyes and invoke the promised Oracle. I feel the rush of electric-like power through my head, almost throwing me backwards. This is more than I bargained for! And the words come through my mouth but not from me. It is Them.
“You have sold your island for what you think is your safety. The new weapon of war is so dangerous that it will unloose a Volcano, which will erupt beneath you. Refuse to accept this experiment and you will be happy and safe, with love and joy. But you will surrender your present prosperity. Refuse the experiment and you will lose millions.”
I am interrupted by gales of laughter. Some people are throwing coconuts at me! These are shouting “Crackpot! Liar! Comedian!”
There is the sound of a thousand steam engines underground: The platform overturns and there is a giant crack on the ground which becomes a gaping pit. We are swallowed into an abyss of steaming lava ****
*** Then I hear the sound of a ukulele. Around me is a Wedding party, sharing leys and glasses of wine. A girl is shaking me. “Wake up, Avatar,” she says, laughing. “You were shouting in your sleep! It’s the wine.”
The scene fades. I feel utterly exhausted. I have returned to the Cave of the Prophets. I ask the Prophet like Mercury: “Did that volcano really erupt and destroy the island?” He replies, for once seriously: “There are many levels of reality. It depends on which one you choose.”
End of Trance
Aiden returns quickly, excited. “Now I see!” He exclaims. “The Art of Alchemy is not to try and change other people to be as we think they should be. It is to accept people as they are – this includes all forms of life – and find the Golden Mean. Only then may we create with the Deities! We will know we are One with all. Dagon dreams us – but Tara dreams Him!”
Thanks are given to the Deities. Aiden and Elaine are deemed worthy to receive the final degree of their course in alchemy of the oracles. Reports are shared. Rays of Harmony are sent forth to all.
Recommended Reading: “The Demi-Gods,” James Stephens, Macmillan. “The Water-Babies,” Charles Kingsley. “Monkey,” Chinese classic. “The Fruit-Stoners,” Algernon Blackwood, Macmillan. Writings of Gurdjieff, Russian Philosopher. “The Rice Bowl Dream,” Buddhist parable. “Nō Plays,” Japan. “The Sleeper Awakens,” The Arabian Nights. “The Sleepers in the Cave,” The Koran. “Time and The Conways,” Play by J.B. Priestley. “The Tempest,” last play by Shakespeare.
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