Recurring Cycle

[qos]

The Grail has been reappearing in my spiritual life again.

It hasn't been something I post about a lot, but I am ordained as a Grail Priestess in a Christo-Pagan Grail order -- and while the "Christo-" aspect comes and goes, it seems to always come back in my own heretical way.

The Grail is important to me because it reminds me of the what I consider the necessary duality of a healthy spiritual life: the simultaneous focus on personal union with the Divine and and the need to be engaged in the healing of the world, in whatever form best fits one's own gifts and talents. It's about service, about being a channel of blessing -- and I'm not very good at that.

I also very much like the legacy of Rabbi Yeshua, former carpenter, as a spiritual teacher. I don't believe that I have to "believe in him to be saved" but his core message of love is the foundational soil of my spiritual life. It's where I started, and it still informs my ethics. Also, he is grounded in human life in a way no other figure in my spiritual life is. Without making it an article of hard and fast belief, I do favor the idea that he and Mary Magdalene had a connection that was both spiritual and sexual, and that image of Holy Union is powerful for me in my own practice on a variety of levels. The two of them, together with the Grail, model a spirituality that is both down-to-earth and exalted, and I like that very much.

I'm also feeling that this resonates with my Qabalistic studies. Some of that I can put into words, some not. I need to talk with my teacher about that.

And as for Ereshkigal. . . She fits too, at least in my personal overall sense of things. There are few spiritual ordeal stories as compelling as that of the crucifixion. Yeshua made the whole journey through life, love, service, pain and death, including the transition into and through the underworld.

And Magdalene. . . She loved an extrodinary man and lost him all too soon -- and then had to find her own mission to carry through the rest of her life. From the anointing of her lover (perhaps as king, perhaps as sacrifice, perhaps both) through her witness of his death through her encounter with his living spirit afterward, I feel very close to her story.

I've been trying to connect with Inanna as a balance to Ereshkigal, and it hasn't been working. Maybe I haven't been trying hard enough. Maybe I've been doing the wrong things.

Or maybe the balance I need goes beyond the polarity of the sisters, to something that provides an ever deeper polarity. . . Can't quite find the words, but it feels right. . .

It just occurred to me (not for the first time, but for the first time in this cycle): The story of Yeshua can be seen within the larger history of the Ancient Near East dying and rising god stories. The sacred union lore of Magdalene and Yeshua connects them to the hieros gamos. Both of those put them within Inanna's realm. The polarity does work, and goes beyond the upperworld/underworld polarity to the otherworld/human realm as well.


I'm writing this while home sick from work and hoping it all makes sense. . .

Comments

[shadowandstar.livejournal.com]

I believe that while the Divine can act in the world purely through its own agency, it helps a great deal if people make themselves available as channels of love, compassion, mercy, courage, and etc. However good my own intentions, my ability to be a force for good in the world (and overcome my own weakness, selfishness, and etc.) becomes that much more potent when I become a channel or vessel for the Divine.