"Clothed with the sun"; being the book of the illuminations of Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

Front matter

bK

O >

"CLOTHED WITH THE SUN"

Part 2. A prophecy of the Kingdom of the Soul mystically called the Day of the Woman

III. Concerning the prophecy of the Immaculate Concep

IV. Concerning Revelation .

V. Concerning the Interpretation of the Mystical Scriptures .... — Part I

Do. Do. — Part 2

VI. Concerning the Mosaic Cosmogony . • •

VII. Concerning the Fall . . . . •

VIII. Concerning the prophecy of the Deluge . •

IX. Concerning the prophecy of the Book of Esther .

X. Concerning the prophecy of the vision of Nebuchadnezzar ......

XI. Concerning the prophecy of the time of the End XII. Concerning the Soul: its origin, nature, and potentialities ......

XIII. Concerning Persephone, or the Soul's descent into matter ......

5-7

8-9

10-13 1315

33-35 35-41

41-52

52-55

Vlll

Contents

[tLUMINATION

No.

XIV. Concerning the Genius or Daimon — Part I

Part The Second. The Book Of The Mysteries Of God

I. The Credo ; being a summary of the spiritual history of the Sons of God, and the mysteries of the kingdoms of the Seven Spheres . . 210

II. The "Lord's Prayer;" being a prayer of the

Elect for interior pcrfectionment . . 211

III. Concerning Holy Writ .... 212-213

IV. Concerning Sin and Death . . . 213-215 V. Concerning the "Great Work," the Redemption,

and the share of Christ Jesus therein . . 215 221

VI. Concerning Original Being, or "Before the

VII. Alpha, or " In the Beginning" • • • 223-224

VIII. Beta, or Adonai the Manifestor . . . , 224-225

IX. Gamma, or the Mystery of Redemption . . 225-227 x Contents,

Illumination

No. PAGES

X. Delta, or the Mystery of Generation . % „ 227-230

XL Epsilon, or the First of the Gods — Proem • • 231

Hymn to Phoibos ..... 232 233

XII. Zeta, or the Second of the Gods— Part I. Proem, . 234235

Hymn to Hermes ..... 236-237

Part 2. An exhortation of Hermes to his Neophytes 23S-240

XIII. Eta, or (mystically) the Third of the Gods— Part I.

Hymn to the Planet God .... 240-249

Part 2. — Hymns to the Elemental Divinities —

(a) To Hephaistos ; 250-252

(/3) To Demeter .....

(7) To Poseidon .....

(5) To Pallas Athena ....

XIV. Theta, or (mystically) the Fourth of the G

Parti. The Hymn of Aphrodite Part 2. A Discourse of the Communion of Souks, and of the Uses of Love between Creature and Creature ; being part of the Goldene Booke of Venus . . . . . .258-269

XV. Lambda, or the Last of the Gods ; being the Secret

XVI. The Seven Spirits of God and their Corresponds 269

XVII. The Mysteries of the Kingdoms of the Seven

Part The Third

Concerning the Divine Image ; or the Vision of Adonai . S75-284

Appendix

Definitions and Explanations . » . . 304-314

Preface

TN the preface to "Dreams and Dream-Stories " Mrs Kings- -*- ford speaks of the " priceless insights and illuminations, acquired by means of dreams, which had elucidated for her many difficulties and enigmas of life, and even of religion, by throwing on them a light which penetrated to their very springs and causes." By far the greater number of the insights and illuminations thus referred to were received during the period of some fourteen years, in which it was my high privilege to collaborate with her in the work principally represented by our joint book, " The Perfect Way ; or, the Finding of Christ," having been expressly vouchsafed, first, to bring about our association in that work, and, next, to aid us in its accomplishment. Many of them were accordingly used, either in whole or in part, in our book, — those that were not so used being reserved either as not coming within its assigned scope, or because their publication at that time would, we were instructed, be premature. The present volume comprises both those which were so used, — such of them as were there given in part being here given in full, — and those also which were withheld, — the motive for their reservation being no longer operative ; together with others, some of which have appeared elsewhere, and some were received subsequently. And the publication is made in fulfilment of the twofold purpose of separating Mrs Kingsford's illuminations alike from her ordinary writings and from mine as her collaborator ; and in accordance with her express injunctions, emphatically renewed on finding xii " Clothed with the Sim"

her departure imminent. The present volume, however, does not exhaust the store of similar treasures left by her, but only such portion as comports with the form of publication here 'adopted. There still remain sundry lectures and occasional papers, and the majority of her conversations with her Genius ; — for, as is shown in this book, she was privileged in this respect far in excess of any instance known to history ; — conversations which, while also constituting illuminations, were of too personal a character for inclusion in these pages, comprising as they did not only instructions for guidance in circumstances of difficulty, but also intimations — fully borne out by evidence — respecting her own previous existences. For in this respect also Anna Kingsford was a demonstration of the great doctrine, the rehabilitation of which was an important part of her mission, — the doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul or Ego ; of its persistence through all changes of form and conditions, and of its power while still in the body, to recover and communicate to its exterior selfhood, its recollections of its past existences. Belonging, however, to the category of the biographical rather than of the exegetical, all precise references in this relation are withheld from these \ ■ such allusions only being retained as are necessitated by the context.

Although the questions of the derivation and significance of the matter herein contained, have been treated with considerable fulness in " The Perfect Way," — particularly in the preface to the revised and enlarged edition, — some account is not the less called for here , and this, not only for the sake of those readers who may not have prior acquaintance .with that book; but also because the removal of the per- T sonality concerned has made it possible to speak with greater explicitness than was fitting in her lifetime.

Preface. xiii

A comparatively brief statement, however, will suffice, since the questions to be satisfied are but two in number, and the answers to them will be addressed to such persons only as are already sufficiently developed in respect of the consciousness of things spiritual, as at the least to be capable of entertaining propositions involving the reality of the region and experiences concerned. For this is a restriction which obviates the necessity of arguments and explanations, which could not be other than protracted, conceived in deference to those who, being totally devoid of the spiritual consciousness, are wont to make their own defect of sensibility an argument against such reality, and to regard denials based upon non-experience as effectually disposing of affirmations based upon experience.

The two questions to be elucidated are — (i) The source and method of these illuminations; and (2) the nature and import of the revelation contained in them, supposing it to be, as confidently regarded by ourselves, a new and divine revelation. And this, whether judged by the method of its communication, or by its intrinsic nature. For the test, no less than the testimony, is twofold.

As respects the first head. These illuminations are in no way due to artificial stimulation of faculty, whether by means of drugs, or by " animal magnetism," " mesmerism," or " hypnotism," or to the induction of any abnormal state through the act of the recipient herself or of some other person ; all that was or could be done on this behalf being the promotion of the interior conditions favourable to the reception of them. And these conditions consisted, not in the search for phenomenal experiences — though these would sometimes occur — but in the intense direction of the will and desire towards the highest, and an unchanging resolve to be satisfied with nothing less than the highest, xl xiv " Clothed with the Sun?

ne namely, the inmost and central idea of the fact or doctrine

^ c to be interpreted ; the motive also being the highest,

° u namely, the emancipation, satisfaction, and benediction

ca of souls, our own and those of others. As will be seen

an from this book, the majority of her illuminations were

W1 received during natural sleep, some in satisfaction of their

P T recipient's own difficulties, and some in immediate response

t0 to needs and mental requests of mine, of which she had

J" 1 no cognisance and surpassing her ability to have satisfied.

in And not (infrequently the responses surpassed the ability

f Q1 of either of us to comprehend them at the time, — tl.

t10 invariably coming through the consciousness, — and only

P n on our subsequent advance in perceptivity did they fully

,01 disclose their significance, thereby proving their independence

u1 ^ of our own limitations. They nc cr, sooner

tm or later, to demonstrate thei to us as I \ and

P e self-evident truths, founded indefeasibly in the very nature

°f of existence ; and never did we finally accept and

mi until thus demonstrated to and K >oth.

cx And such, precisely, is the authority to which .

b K made on their behalf, and in no waj to book, person or

re * institution — howei I or venerable— or even to the

SU( manner of their communication, veritably miraculous tl.

tn< this was, as the term miracle is wont to be understood.

• to cite the preface to " The Perfect \V .Id it to be

°} "contrary to the nature of truth I ofautho-

^sid r ity, or of aught other than the understanding; since truth,

P r€ how transcendent soever it be, has r. s in the mind,

1S ! and no other testimony can avail it. . . . What is indis-

sa k pensable is, that appeal be made tot' mind, and not

r^ ut to one department of it only." Now, that mind or.

I s01 had learnt to account a whole mind which comprises the

S ie two modes of the mind, the intellect and the intuition and

these duly trained and developed.

Preface. xv

Having such derivation and character, these illuminations are the product, simply and purely, of the process which has ever, by those versed in Divine things, been recognised as that whereby Divine communication occurs, — namely, the spontaneous operation of the Spirit in a soul duly luminous and responsive. Through such operation the perceptive point of the mind is indrawn and uplifted to a sphere transcending both the physical and the astral or magnetic, and one altogether superior — because interior — to those accessible to the mere lucid, sensitive, or clairvoyant ; in that it is the inmost and highest sphere of man's manifold nature, the celestial, or "kingdom within." Attaining to this degree of inwardness, the soul is "clothed with the sun" 1 of full intelligence, recovering all memories and discerning all principles and significations, in measure according to its capacity as developed by the experiences gained in its many earth-lives and in the intervals between, and is enabled also to communicate of them to its superficial personality. The condition is, moreover, one to enter which is to hold direct communion with the "spirits of the Just made perfect," and to be qualified to become the mouthpiece of the Church invisible and triumphant. So many and of such kind were the experiences received by Mrs Kingsford that when, after conjecture had been exhausted in the endeavour to frame a satisfactory hypothesis concerning them, assurance at length came from her own angel-genius, declaring the method of this revelation to be entirely interior, in that his "client" was a "soul of vast experience, knowing all things of herself and needing not to

1 The " woman " of the Apocalypse and all other mystical Scriptures is never a person, but always the soul. Hence the significanc of the present title. Any such exaltation of a person would be act of idolatry.

b xvi " Clothed with the S?m."

be told ; who was being divinely enabled to recover hi this incarnation the memory of all that was in the past, expressly in order to give the world the benefit of the holy and inner truth of which she was the depositary ; " — so far from the statement — extraordinary and remote from anticipation as it was — being found difficult of credence, it was at once re _ nised as affording the only solution which reconciled all the difficulties and accounted for all the facts.

And so far, it may be well to add, from these experiences occurring in the first instance to persons predisposed to accept them, we were— both of us— at their commencement utterly sceptical as to their possibility, or as to there being any basis of reality for any spiritual phenomena whatsoever. Not that we were materialists. In neither of us had perception ever been at that low ebb. Rather were we idealists, but idealists who had yet to learn that the ideal is the real, and that the ideal world is a spiritual and personal world. They came, too — as already said — in course of a quest, not for phenomena, but for truth ; and were possible only because the veil of matter interposed between the worlds of sense and of reality had already, by dint of persistent earnest seeking inwards, and by the adoption of the mode of life which has always, by proficients in spiritual science, been insisted on as essential to the higher percept become for us so rare and tenuous as to be readily penetrable. The period, moreover, was anterior to that of the recent impulse given to such studies by the importation o\ kindred knowledges from the East And from first t< our work was carried on in complete independence oi extraneous sources and influences, such recour-v had to books or to persons being on behalf of parallels, correspondences, and confirmations in regard to our own experiences and results.

Preface. xvii

The search for such parallels and confirmations in the records of the remote past, proved satisfactory in a measure far surpassing aught that we had ventured to anticipate. For, over and above the full recognition of our methods, facts, and doctrines in quarters worthy the highest respect, we discovered clear and positive announcements, both Biblical and extra-Biblical, of precisely such an illumination to take place at the exact time of its occurrence to us, and possessing exactly the features by which it was characterised for us, — the event itself being variously described as constituting a new illumination, the return of the Gods, the reign of Michael, the breaking of the seals and opening of the Book, the Second Advent, the "number" — or period — of the " Beast " ; and the end of the World, — each alike implying the downfall of the world's materialistic system, both in philosophy and in religion, through the demonstration of the falsity of the materialistic hypothesis. The period assigned was that from 1878 to 1882, and it was precisely the period of our reception of the chief part of our doctrine and of its first promulgation, " The Perfect Way " — which consists of lectures delivered in 1881 — having been published in the winter of 1881-2. So that whether judged by the dates, or by the world's condition, nothing was wanting to the accomplishment of the predictions. And of these we knew only after the event.

To come to our second head — the nature and import of that which was thus received. It was from the very outset made clear to us — and every fresh accession of experience, perception, and knowledge served but to confirm the intimation — that the event constituted nothing less than the re-delivery, from the source and by the method to which it was originally due, of the ancient revelation which, under the name of the Hermetic or Kabalistic Gnosis, constituted xviii " Clothed with the Sun"

the Sacred Mysteries, and underlay and controlled the expression of all the sacred religions and Scriptures, of antiquity, and formed at once a perfect system of thought and rule of life, in that it was founded in the very nature of existence as uniformly discerned under Divine illumination by the advanced souls of all times and places. From which it will be seen that the claim to be a new revelation does not imply a claim to be a new gospel, but a gospel only of interpretation, and therein of restoration and reconciliation. For the position maintained is that Christianity has failed, not because it was false, but because it has been falsified ; its official guardians having, after the wont of their order, "taken away the key of knowledge (Gnosis), and not only not entered in themselves, but hindered those who would have entered in."

The following remarks on the chief points in this indictment of the Church visible on behalf of the Church invisible, will serve to facilitate the comprehension of this book.

Christianity — which is rightly definable as a symbolic synthesis of the fu .damental truths contained in all religions — early fell into bad hands. Like its Founder, it was crucified between two thieves, who were no other than the types of its crucifiers. These were, on the one hand, Superstition, which is the distortion of spiritual perception; and on the other hand, Materialism, which is the privation of spiritual perception. These are the " two beasts " oi mystical Scripture, which come up, respectively, from the "sea" and the "earth,"' to ravage the hopes of humanity. And the two are one under the name of Sacerdotalism, being but varied modes of its manifestation. It Sacerdotalism that crucified both Christ and the doctrine of Christ with its two hands Superstition and Materialism.

For, operating as Superstition, Sacerdotalism perverted

Preface, xix

into mystery, and rendered not merely unintelligible but irrational, a gospel which in itself was absolutely simple, obvious, and reasonable. This is the doctrine that the true life and substance of Humanity are not material and created, but spiritual and divine ; and that it is possible for man, by co-operating with the spirit within him, and subordinating his lower nature to his higher, to rise wholly into and be reconstituted — which is "regenerated" — of his higher, and become thereby divine, having in himself the power of life eternal. And that whereby this is effected — namely, inward purification — is the sole secret of the Christs. Wherefore he in whom this process finds full accomplishment, has and is Christ, and attains the summit of human evolution, the point of junction between Humanity and Divinity. Thus demonstrating to men in his own person their divine potentialities, and the manner of the realisation thereof, and by his loving self-devotion on their behalf softening their hearts and winning them to follow in his steps, he becomes their " Saviour." And that he is said to save them by his blood, is because " the blood is the life," and the true life-blood of the Christ is a spirit absolutely pure, — the inward God in the man, — and by the attainment of this pure spirit man is redeemed. And that the Christ is said to suffer and die for others, is because through his abounding sympathy he suffers even to death in and with them ; — not instead of them — ■ "for" does not here mean " instead of" — for that would be to deprive them of their means of redemption, since only through his own suffering can anyone repent and become perfected.

This doctrine, so reasonable and obvious, and satisfying alike to head and heart, Sacerdotalism, operating as Superstition, superseded by shifting the whole edifice of Christianity from its proper— because its only intelligible and xx " Clothed with the Sun"

consistent basis in Pantheism, or the doctrine that God is all and in all — to that of an impossible Manichaeanism — or the doctrine of two eternal, self-subsistent opposing principles of good and evil, — a doctrine which by making evil a positive thing, and thus exalting it to an equal rank with God, at once dethrones God and eternises evil. It deprives God also of His supreme quality of Justice, by representing Him as accepting physical suffering as an equivalent for moral guilt, and the punishment of the innocent in lieu of that of the guilty. While by removing Christ from the category of the highest human to that of the superhuman, it robs all of their potential divinity in favour of the exclusive divinity of one; and thereby effectually neutralises the significance and value of his mission, the express purpose of which was to show his fellow-men, not what could be achieved by some great supernatural personage, with whom they could have nothing in common, but what they themselves have it in them in due time to become, simply by giving fair play to their own best, namely, the ideal of perfection disclosed to them by their own intuition. For the fulfilment of the intuition is the realisation of the ideal; and the realisation of the ideal is the "Finding of Christ."

Operating as Materialism, and prelerring the letter to the spirit, the symbol to the verity, the form to the substance, Sacerdotalism ignored and suppressed the real, because the mystical and spiritual, import of Christianity, by means of the idolatruus exaltation, as the agents of salvation, of its persons, events, forms, and other things physical, in place of its spiritual realities, the principles, processes, and states implied by these and of which they were the symbolic representatives. The obvious truth that religion, as a thing relating not to the senses but to the soul, and appea therefore, only to the soul, must consist in things cognate

Preface. xxi

to the soul, in that they are of like nature with the soul, and not in things material and physical, —was altogether set aside, all logical proprieties being violated, as just shown, by positing physical bloodshed and suffering as the compensation for moral guilt, and these, too, of another than the guilty — instead of the repentance and amendment to which they are ordained to minister. While every expression in Scriptures avowedly mystical and parabolical, was enforced in its literal sense, in defiance of repeated injunctions in Scripture to the contrary. And that which was really "an eternal gospel" by virtue of its being founded in the unchanging nature of things, and everlastingly demonstrable to the mind and verifiable by inward experience, was made dependent on the perishable records of physical events in themselves exceptional, and liable — whatever the testimony — sooner or later to be called into question.

Christianity was further mutilated, dwarfed, and distorted s by the exclusion from recognition and worship due, of those Divine Principles or modes of Deity, variously designated the Gods and the Spirits of God, by whose immediate operation in the soul the man regenerate and made perfect is built up, the spiritual chaos is transformed into a kosmos, and Christ becomes Christ. The very process of Regeneration, moreover, although emphatically declared by Jesus to be the sole condition of Salvation, — a process wholly spiritual and interior to the individual, — came to be either altogether ignored or thrust into the background, in favour of that of atonement by vicarious physical bloodshed, through the loss of the knowledge of the meaning alike of regeneration and of atonement, and the consequent failure to recognise those terms as denoting one and the same process, and this a process, as just said, wholly spiritual and interior to the individual xxii " Clothed with the S?in. r9

While, as presented by Sacerdotalism, or — to adopt the modern equivalent of this term as more appropriate to: rest of these remarks — Ecclesiasticism, Christianity is thus but a congeries of arbitrary and unintelligible propositions, bearing no discernible relation to the needs, aspirations, or perceptions, whether of the mind or of the soul ; as presented in the recovered Gnosis, it is at once intelligible and irrefragable, constituting a perfect system of thought and rule of life, and satisfying alike the demands of the keenest mind, the longings of the tenderest heart, and the aspirations of the most ardent soul. These are characteristics which not the most hardy champions of Ecclesiasticism venture to claim for the orthodox presentation; but on the con they freely acknowledge it to be a problem insoluble by reason, and one to be accepted on authority of Church or Book, even at the cost of intellectual suicide Said one of them recently — a dignitary of the Anglican Church — speaking, apparently, not alone for his order, but for mankind at large, " We weary ourselves vainly in endeavouring to shape these truths in#o a system. We have no faculties for such speculation. It is enough for us to rest in the language of the Apostles." 1 Such is the frank admission of the official guardians of the faith according to E< * ism, and the

admission is one in respect of which it is hard to determine whether its candour or its courage is the most conspicuous. Its candour, because of its complete indifference to the consequences to their order which can hardly fail to follow the confession that it does not understand its own teaching ; and its courage, because of its palpable disregard of the emphatic injunctions wherein Scripture expressly reprobates such "resting in its language," affirming that the "letter kills," — as indeed it has killed the very faculty of the perception of

1 Canon Westcott on the Atonement-

Preface. xxiii

things spiritual in all who have "rested in" it,— and strenuously repudiating meanwhile the notion of the incomprehensibility of its doctrines, as when it calls on men to " prove all things" and to render a "reasonable service," and insists on the necessity of " hearing ears and seeing eyes," that is, of a " spirit of understanding " in respect of divine things, as the indispensable basis of the faith that saves. But to this it has come, that after having rendered the doctrine of Scripture unintelligible by insisting, against the express injunctions of Scripture, on the literal meaning of the words of Scripture, Ecclesiasticism now complains that owing to the limitations of human faculty, there is no alternative but to rest in the letter of Scripture ! Obviously it is not Ecclesiasticism that is entitled to resent the advent of an interpretation which, by restoring the Spirit to the letter of Scripture, shall restore the doctrine and rehabilitate the credit of Scripture.

But whatever may be the attitude of Ecclesiasticism towards the new — or rather the recovered — interpretation, that of the world at large is scarcely doubtful The world, it is true, has followed the Church in its fall into materiality in respect of things spiritual — a fall which, but for the Church's initiative, the world had not undergone. But there are tokens manifold and indisputable to prove that the heart of the world is, nevertheless, in the main right ; and, consequently, that — like the Prodigal of the parable — having once eaten of the husks of mere materiality — whether religious or scientific — it has learned to loathe them, and is already coming to its proper, because better, self, and turning wistful thoughts homewards. And hence it is that for those who in virtue of their " ploughing with the heifer " of the spiritual consciousness, are able to "expound the riddle" 1 of 1 Judges xiv. 12- 18.

xxiv u Clothed with the Sun"

the age, the epoch is no other than " Othniel " — God's good time; the world is "Caleb" — one whose heart is right; " Kirjath-sepher " — the city of the letter — has already surrendered ; and " Achsah " — the rending of the veil (that hid the Spirit), is about to become the bride of the victor, bringing to him as her dowry the "upper and nether springs" of those blessed results in soul and mind and heart and life which ever flow from the lull understanding of Divine things. 1 From which it may be surely inferred that unless Ecclesiasticism also accept the new interpretation, which also is the old, and like a living garment participate in the growth of its wearer, it will find itself discarded as obsolete; while the new humanity — to which it will thus have served but for matrix — will constitute itself a new, and more than ever a true, Church, and one that can never fail and fall, inasmuch as it will have for foundation, not the incohesive sands of authority and the letter, but the indefeasible Rock of the Spirit and the Understanding.

The chief means proposed in this book in furtherance of its ends, may be summarised as follows : —

i. The re-establishment of the Understanding as the basis of Faith.

2. The restoration to its true place as the object of veneration, of the thing signified — that is, of the spirit, substance, verity, or reality— instead of the symbol or appearance of it ; and therein the abolition of idolatry both in religion and science, whether the object be a person, a book, or an institution, the form, the letter, or the rite, or matter itself, — to the end that God only may be worshipped-

1 Joshua xv. 16-19.