Love: The Temple Builder

“Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born and not within thyself, thy soul will be forlon; the cross on Golgotha thou lookest to in vain unless within thyself it be set up again” - sung Angelus Silesius. St. Paul also reminded us of Christ being formed in us. Interestingly enough the picture of the temple in the wilderness is in the form of a human figure (NABI VoL.I). Also, according to esoteric masonry, the name Solomon, the wise King means; the Sun energy (Love) which creates the Holy temple. Again, the theme in all Max Heindel’s essays that comprise the book – Mystical Interpretation of Christmas is Love. Love, peace and giving of gifts also characterise the Christmas Spirit.

But what is this Love – this universal Love? Since those days of old when the man and the woman willfully defiled the guardianship of the Angels and scorned the Sanctuaries where they were wisely mated, have they asked each other this question in the moonlight and vainly sought the answer while passion held their eyes fixed downward under a square from Mars to the Moon or a parallel of Mars and Venus. What is this Love? Only the pure vision undimmed by selfishness and sexual desire and lifted up to the starlit heights can read the answer which is written in the Heavens when Venus blazes in white sextile to Neptune. Neptune forms a glorious transmuting trine to Mars, and the body- building Moon is in conjunction with the soul-building Jupiter. The lovers of the New Age find a reflection of the Heavens in one another’s eyes, and through the great, great stillness of this new Love, whose peace is as sweet as that of the Heavenly homeland, there rings the answer, solemn as an eternal vow, jubilant as the bells of Christmas: “God is Love.”

And this is what the new man and the new woman say to one another in the moonlight, I love thee, my dear one, because thou art a part of God (all Good), as I am. From God we came, as searching pilgrims; to God we shall return, triumphant conquerors; in God’s love we abide; in God’s love we are united – thou and I. And because I love the Godhead in thee and thou findest God in me, there is no allurement for us in the selfish seclusion where passion and pleasure dwell; joyously we bid all living creatures to come and share our love. Because I love thee, I do not keep thee to myself, but I give thee to the world that thou mayest love the world and serve the world as thou lovest and servest me. The smile of happiness which thou hast kindled in my eyes radiates forth to all my brothers and sisters of the great universal family. The sweet words of kindness which thou hast awakened on my lips are passed on to all my fellow beings. “Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace and good-will toward all mankind.”

The benign star of universal good-will, the planet of Love expansion is Jupiter. He, the magnanimous, makes the heart big and wide so that it may hold a full measure of world embracing compassion. Thus, he prepares the race for the New Age of soul union and universal brotherhood over which Uranus presides. Under the fruitful rays of Jupiter, the small home bud of human love grows into the world flower of love divine, and under the fiery trine from Sagittarius to Leo, the spirit fire in the heart of man and the woman is kindled at the flame in the heart of the universe. Jupiter’s hammer is shaped like a cross, but lo, attached to it on upward flight there is the wing-like symbol of the soul. Jupiter wields his hammer in a twofold direction. Swung downward it destroys, swung upward it constructs. Jupiter, the destroyer of self, is the constructor of the soul. The Mason’s T square is in the form of a cross. Jupiter, the builder of souls, is the star of the Mystic Mason. Initiation, over which Jupiter, the teacher, presides in Sagittarius, includes instruction in building. An initiate is a skilled builder, a builder of qualities in the soul and of vehicles for the soul.

The rays of Uranus set the atoms of the light ether spinning, the rays of Neptune those of the reflecting ether. Of those two higher ethers the soul body is being formed, the Golden Wedding garment, the robe of our glory in which we shall greet the Master. And the building song, whose rhythms guide the carpenter so that he may group the priceless etheric materials into an abiding structure of perfect harmony, is intoned by Jupiter. Do we hear it burst forth from the pure lips of the devoted heart of the Mystic Mason? Do we see him standing high upon the temple dome, illumined, transfigured a halo around him, woven by the rays of the setting Sun? His face is turned westward. Behind the setting splendour of the physical Sun, he sees arising the Sun of the Spirit, the Mystic Star of Bethlehem, and exultantly he greets it – greets it with his life song which is Love.

Christ Jesus is the perfect healer because He is perfect in Love. The Holy name of Jesus means, “God heals.” God is Love, and through the expectant silence of our Saviour’s symbolic birth-night there sounds the message of promise; Love heals! All the voices of nature take it up; it is repeated by all suffering creation, rejoice, oh world, Love heals! At the Holy Midnight, the sign of Virgo arises, and the Christmas Sun stands in Capricorn. Virgo and Capricorn, the spheres of purity and of sacrifice, are the signs through which the healing love rays of Christmas are focused. Both Jesus, the human, and Christ, the divine, have that love which is so pure that it knows no greater glory than sacrificial giving, giving to the other; “Behold, when I give, I give myself,” and “Greater Love hath no man than that he gives his life for his brother.” This Love is all encompassing, universal; it includes not only the human race but the whole of creation; it smiles upon the least little brother. Pisces and Virgo, Sagittarius, and Gemini, rule our relations to our younger brothers, the animals. The compassionate Good-Will learned under Jupiter through the sorrows of Pisces embraces all that lives. Peace on earth cannot be established until man recognises the unity of life and venerates God in all His children.

And our mute animal brothers, the abused, the sorrowful, the tortured, the agonised, they know the Christmas message of the healing Love. There is a beautiful legend which tells that at the Holy Midnight all the animals in fields and woods, in pastures and mangers, bend their knees before their Saviour, the ban of their dumbness is lifted, they speak, they give praise, and he who loves them can understand the utterances of their rejoicing souls. Ah, he who loves! The keynote of Christmas is Love, and if we vibrate to it, the mystic, moonlit wonders of the Holy Night are revealed to us. On Christmas we celebrate the descent of the loving Christ Spirit in whom God’s Love is perfected, and the symbolic birthday of the Loving Jesus in whom human love found its sublimest expression. Jesus was the first perfect man. His body, immaculately conceived, was so purified by selfless, sacrificial love that it vibrated to the very pitch of the Sun Spirit, and as the first master builder of our evolution, He had through Love fashioned within Himself the glorious, golden, immortal soul body. His birth occurred nearly two thousand years ago, but the fragrance of His holiness still lingers with us; for the aura of a saint is imperishable, and He was the greatest of all saints. At the Christmas Season when the Christ draws into the jubilant planet, and with him the very essence of Love Divine, the aura of Jesus, the man mingles with the aura of Christ, the God, and the protective influence of this combined love aura is so great that it is projected into the nights before Christmas and extends over the nights after Christmas, from the time the Sun enters Capricorn until the twelve nights following. These twelve nights are set apart from all other nights of the year. The unassailable peace of the Holy Night, in which all evil comes to naught before the power of Love, is prophetic of the New Age when under the iridescent glory of the Uranian Sky, luminous with the soft glow of a never fading light, a regenerated, united humanity will unfold wings of immortality; and ever youthful beings, radiant in their Golden Wedding Garments, will live in peace beyond understanding and in plenty beyond measure.

If we but love enough, we are invincible. No harm can penetrate an aura made by love. If we but love enough, we draw to ourselves all good gifts bestowed by Jupiter, the opulent planet. He gives us a lasting opulence of soul qualities (not material things), and with the opulence of our own souls we shall endow the soul of our Temple. If we but love enough, we shall receive the panacea. If we but love enough, we shall heal the race. And our Tempe shall stand forever – a bulwark of the Christ, a stronghold of the New Age – if we but love enough!

We will end this article with these two beautiful greetings. “Let there be peace on earth and let it always begin with me.” “May the Christ (Universal Love) be formed in us.”

- Abraham Obeng

REFS.