I joined the Antioch cell at the age of 24 and in seven years I entered the nuclear group, the Company of the Eight. Before arriving in Antioch, I taught astronomy at the Mystery campus in Damascus, and wrote numerous scrolls deposited in the library there. (These writings were later destroyed in the Christian campaign to eradicate the Mysteries and all the knowledge emanating in them — all the high culture of Pagan civilization.) Because of the popularity of the scrolls and my teaching role, I came to be known as Lydia of Damascus. I was also a dancer. In the sacred arts of that time and setting, dance and astronomy were intimately related. I danced to the shifting patterns of the stars and the wandering planets. Wicked Deception That evening in autumn 341 AD, the members of the Antioch cell — we called ourselves telestai, those who are aimed— were engrossed in a conversation about Kali Yuga, the last phase of the great cosmic cycle measured by the Zodiac. We spoke in Greek, using the term kairos poneiros for Kali Yuga. Poneiros means wicked or deceitful, with the implication of phoniness. We looked ahead to a time when deception would triumph because human faculties came to be stupefied, and lies overruled any sense of reality. A time when people would be incapable of discerning truth from falsity. Unable, for example, to tell plastic from pearl. Gathered in the soft yellow glow of rape seed lamps, we discussed a future age when every sacred idea would be violated or ridiculed. In the time of poneiros, it would not merely be difficult to tell the authentic from the fake: it would be impossible. We understood that a moment would come, some 16 centuries in the future, when the human race would plunge into desperate confusion, having lost all sense of the sustaining and animating power of the Sacred. In our tradition of Pagan mysticism, we understood the Sacred to be the divine presence that sustains life on earth and makes us conscious of being alive, the planetary goddess whom we called Sophia, divine wisdom. We knew Sophia directly as the ultimate source of beauty, joy, truth, health, and inspired knowledge. But without direct contact with the Sacred, the living goddess who is the earth, how could humanity continue on its proper way? If people in a future time lost this connection, how could any humane society survive? What touchstone might people of the future need to give them immediate contact with the divine source, the Goddess? On that autumn night, we of the Antioch cell were perplexed and troubled. Through the evening and well into dawn, we pondered how to provide a solution for humanity in Kali Yuga, a tool of guidance for the hard times of wicked deception. Lydia of Damascus
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 09:22:34 +0000
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