Back to the Garden Chapter 8: The New Age of the Divine Lovers

Autumn Afternoon Shadow Play by Jane Sherry

 Divergent life experiences, which are the norm in today's world of two-worker families, contribute greatly to divergent development on every level of being.

Emotional and mental development of partners living in different worlds obviously would be quite different from the development of partners who share work, hobbies, and spiritual practice over time.

The mental body matures later than the physical and emotional bodies. One's overall world view and the mental map of one's "essential world" take time to flesh out.

Once such a personal world is created, the creator has a lot invested in that world and is loathe to tinker with the foundations of that world.

To give up that personal world in middle age can for some be liberating, but for most is perceived by the ego to be the equivalent of death.

This is because the ego has built up this illusory personal world in a series of conscious and unconscious agreements with the personality and with the other members of that world over time.

So both partners can develop an antipathy to, almost an allergy to, one another's workaday worlds over time. This puts the mental bodies further at odds with one another.

In addition, if one of the partners pursues a spiritual path and the other partner cares not for that path or prefers another, such as the path of received tradition, or officially sanctioned religion, or secular materialism, then there can be additional complications, especially at the onset of middle age and as middle age and its crises progress.

This is because the higher bodies are connected with spiritual development, and these higher bodies are activated by the development of the organs of sense perception that can respond to higher frequencies.

When this activation occurs the aspirant begins to perceive higher worlds, and as these perceptions develop and mature the individual participates in much higher frequencies of creation still.

Thus there is a very real possibility that one partner in such a marriage will by a certain time of life called the midlife crisis find herself living with a partner who inhabits a different world, speaks a different language to his everyday companions, and cannot comprehend much of what the poor woman is trying to communicate most of the time.

History Lesson 3, by Jane Sherry

The two love partners are dancing to different tunes.

In this situation, the subtle bodies are said to be "out of alignment", much as your car's tires or transmission can be out of alignment.

 In this situation, in terms of their overall life trajectory, the marriage partners have come full circle in their relationship to a point where once more they must make choices and commitments for the next phase of their lives.

So the situation contains all the seeds of divorce.

A Higher Path

This is perceived as a crisis in our society because our culture has no general understanding of these basic principles of spiritual sexuality.

When people hook up sexually, that is called mating, and mating can be about the exchange of love between two willing and able partners on every level of their being, from the lowest to the highest.

Marriage is a contract between two partners for certain purposes agreed to in advance, both consciously and unconsciously and at the soul level. That contract is only good as long as the conditions of the contract are fulfilled. However, the karmic consequences of engaging in such a contract cannot lightly be dismissed and the marriage partnership creates "samskaras" or the seeds of future karma, which will ripen in the future and result in subconscious tendencies to recreate the unfinished drama initiated by the marriage partners.

Marriage of the Sun and Moon, from the Rosarium Philosophorum 

Spiritually, marriage is a partnership in which both parties take on the immense responsibility to facilitate one another's spiritual growth throughout one or more lifetimes, depending upon their intent and abilities. This is true mating, and when the partners are clear and conscious about their marriage commitment, they will receive grace and guidance from the Divine to help them on their spiritual journey together. 

The path of spiritual love is for the two partners to share in the mutual development of their subtle bodies, from the physical to the very Crown of Creation. Over a period of decades, this shared development keeps all their bodies attuned, and in addition they will both enjoy accelerated development of higher bodies thanks to their mutual faith, respect, perseverance and love.

This however is a path so difficult, so straight and narrow, yet so filled with unexpected switchbacks, hairpin turns, sharp dropoffs and dangerous intersections that it is only for the fully committed.

In addition this path is available only to those couples who can demonstrate an ability to be attuned on every subtle dimension of existence. I say an ability to ACHIEVE this attunement for it is not expected that aspirants to this path be able to maintain such an attunement – that is the culmination of this path, not its entry point.

The partners in the couple experiencing this crisis must learn to share an awareness of the spiritual nature of their crisis, and of the very specific imbalances, grievances, and slights they have suffered and feel they are suffering, with one another.

There is a path for them to achieve great spiritual merit in this difficult juncture.

This is for the more spiritually advanced partner to do her very best to communicate her highest understanding of all the factors demonstrating the lack of alignment on the various levels of existence, and the well-known psychological fact that at this particular time of life, the issue of choice and commitment arises again for every couple.

This is part of the natural lifecycle of the typical nuclear family and also part of the natural lifecycle of spiritual development of the average human being.

In many cases, any resolution of this crisis that perpetuates the relationship will require the two partners to negotiate a “shared world” they can both develop together that will meet their physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual needs in the next phases of their life for their best and highest good.

If this alternative is for some reason unavailable the partners should seek the counsel of their higher selves and their Spiritual Guides to determine the best course of action.

Exchanges of subtle energy and subtle changes in the physical, emotional, mental and higher spiritual bodies of individuals in a love relationship may very well be the most important factors determining the success or failure of the relationship.

As humanity begins to explore the mysteries of subtle energy more deeply, there will be tremendous advances in psychology, medicine, biology, physics and in the spiritual sciences.

Subtle energy is the creator of the forms that are used as templates of future creations, and thus it is these subtle energy templates that govern the evolution and growth of living beings on Earth.

Biologist Rupert Sheldrake calls these energy templates morphogenetic fields. The embryo's morphogenetic field contains the template for the adult. The seed's morphogenetic field 

The treasures of the Earth, such as gems found deep in caves, are created by beings such as gnomes and other nature spirits, who fashion the energetic forms for these marvelous crystalline beings to grow into their mature splendor. Before any form can be manifested in the material world, the energetic or subtle form must be created first in the spiritual world.

Once we begin to understand that subtle energy is the primary factor in manifestation in this Universe, not physical factors that can be immediately experienced by the five senses, we have reached the point where we can finally understand some of the most important mysteries surrounding the nature of love itself.

Love is not a thing; love is the energetic circumscription of sacred space. Lovers circumscribe sacred space through conscious shared intent, and this space then can be filled with energies of love and light from the Divine Source, activating these energetic forms, which eventually crystallize into the physical, material world. In this way lovers co-create new ways of living, new types of relationships, new myths and archetypes for a New Aeon.

During this traumatic time of transition on planet Earth, it is vitally important that each and every one of us, individually, and in concert with our lovers, family, friends, and other soulmates, maintain our faith in the future. Only in this way can we keep our hearts open in the face of a flood tide of fear, paranoia, accelerating climate change and simmering global warfare that is presently unleashed upon the world.

Know first that such difficulties are quite common in times of transition. Our present time is at the cusp between two long historical cycles, the 2,000 year cycle of the Piscean Age and the 2,000 year cycle of the Aquarian Age. Humanity is evolving spiritually, the archetypes and myths that motivate us are shifting and changing, and the planet itself is undergoing a set of dramatic Earth changes, earthquakes, climate changes, and more.

For more information about the transition between the Age of Pisces and the Age of Aquarius, read our articles entitled The Dark Night of the Planetary Soul  and Traveling Between Two Worlds.

Yet the major lesson of this time is that people can change. This is a lesson that contradicts the biological behavioralists, the rational materialists, and the simplistic fundamentalist moralists who see human behavior as hard-wired by genetics, chemistry, tribe, bloodline, ideology, or religious beliefs.

Most of those who see human behavior as basically fixed share an assumption that human nature is intrinsically flawed, evil, as a result of genetic defects, our animal origins, or original sin of one kind or another. They believe in iron discipline for the masses, exercised by political, religious and economic elites whose privileged position exempts them from the need to behave in a compassionate manner.

This behavior cannot and will not endure. It is rooted in dominator culture, egoistic thinking and patriarchal attitudes characteristic of the dying Piscean Age.

One of the primary spiritual revolutions characteristic of the Aquarian Age is the revolution in relationships between the sexes. Much has been written and discussed concerning this matter, especially among Theosophists, Anthroposophists, feminists, and New Age thinkers of all kinds.

Aquarian Priestess by Jane Sherry

Two basic concepts emerge. First, that the male has dominated the female during the Piscean Age and this will change. Second that the patriarchal, dominator culture of the Piscean Age will give way to a more egalitarian culture.

To obtain a more detailed picture of the most fundamental images that construct and motivate human behavior in the Piscean Age and in the emerging Aquarian Age, it is helpful to connect with the observations of those who are both experts in mythology and proven clairvoyant seers.

Among the Theosophists at the turn of the Twentieth Century, was a gifted Irish writer and clairvoyant named George William Russell. The Theosophists were instrumental in bringing many of the Wisdom Teachings of the East into Western society, and their teachings, however flawed, set the tone for much of what we now call New Age teachings.

Russell wrote a remarkable novel called The Avatars, published in 1933, under the pseudonym A.E. In this novel, a young boy and a young girl from different families in rural Ireland appear among the folk, bringing to them a remarkable spiritual energy. Those around them soon see the two young people as the personification of the Divine Lovers. They transform everyone around them. They bring to their communities a renewed vitality, and revivify the ancient values of nature worship, and an animistic view of nature that sees the whole world as filled with spirit and with spiritual beings. They stand in opposition to the overly technological, materialistic culture of the cities, and they quickly grow so strong in their love for one another, for their communities, and for all of nature, that they come into conflict with the authorities. It's a beautiful story, beautifully written, but too long to go into here. The point is that from this Theosophical clairvoyant's point of view, the New Age would be ushered in by the Divine Lovers. 

Jesus, Mary Magdalen and World Peace

This same grand insight can be found in the work of a remarkable scholar and clairvoyant named William Irwin Thompson. He combines in one person the mythological scholarship of Joseph Campbell and the clairvoyant abilities of an advanced yogi. Thompson's scholarship focuses on cultures of partnership, and his work totally transcends the patriarchal views of Campbell.

In Thompson's remarkable book The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light, he discusses the crucial archetypal images of the most recent ages of Earth development and the emerging Aquarian Age.

Venus Spiral by Jane Sherry

Thompson says, “Myth, as a history of the soul, is still a history, and each stage of the evolution of consciousness generates its appropriate story. As the spiral of history turns, one archetypal story becomes the recapitulation of the old, the performance of the new, and the overture to what is to come.

“As a story, the myth of Isis and Osiris is a recapitulation of the myth of the Neolithic Mother Goddess and the dying adolescent son-lover, but in the case of Isis and Osiris, where the lovers are brother and sister, the relationship between the masculine and feminine is becoming more equal. In the early stages of evolution, nature dominates the human being, the planet dwarfs the tiny human species, but as civilization emerges, the masculine grows to a new level, and so the feminine responds to meet it at that level. The Great Goddess becomes Isis. The story grows from Lascaux to Catal Huyuk to Abydos, but it does not end there."

“The story of Isis and Osiris is an overture to the story of Mary and Jesus. The dead son in the arms of his mother pictured in the famous Pieta of Michelangelo is a recapitulation of the ancient theme of the dying male god and the Paleolithic goddess. But the finishing of a story is also its consummation. In giving his mother away to John while he is dying on the cross, Jesus is preparing to effect his own resurrection. This time it is not the Goddess Isis who raises up the phallus of the dead Osiris to conceive the divine child; the resurrection is not merely the god becoming the Lord of the Dead on the astral plane."

The family of Osiris. Osiris on a lapis lazuli pillar in the middle, flanked by Horus on the left and Isis on the right (22nd dynasty, Louvre, Paris)

Louvre Museum / CC BY-SA 2.0 FR 

“This time an integral being incarnates on the physical plane, takes on the entire mystery of death in the mortal physical body, and rises from the dead on the physical plane. Osiris expresses initiatic mastery of the astral plane, but Jesus expresses initiatic mastery of the physical plane through the mystery of a conscious death."

“Mary Magdalen is the first to see the resurrected body of Jesus, and in that coupled image of the avatar and the whore is the overture to what is to come in the next world epoch. As the whore, Mary Magdalen expresses the presence and consummation of the archaic feminine heritage and its transmutation into the archetypal androgyne of the future. Peter, the orthodox and conventional Jew, would exclude Mary Magdalen from the mysteries, but Jesus sees sexuality in a totally different light."

Christ appears to Mary Magdalene by Martin Schongauer

“Simon Peter said to them, ‘Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of Life.’ Jesus said, “I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’ Jesus did not mean that women should become like men, but that, in the process of initiation, each sex must take on the character of the opposite, before wholeness can be achieved.”

“Jesus said to them,

‘When you make two into one
And what is within like what is without,
And what is without like what is within.
And what is above like what is below,
And when you unite male and female in one
So that the male is no longer male,
And the female no longer female,
… Then you shall enter the Kingdom.’

“Mary Magdalen, the surviving form of the temple prostitute, became the initiate of Jesus. . .It is Mary Magdalen who first sees the resurrected Jesus. . .John and Mary Magdalen stand at the foot of the cross, for in the next turn of the spiral their story is to become the historical performance of the eternal myth.”

“. . .Isis and Osiris are the avatars of one Platonic Month, Jesus and Mary of another. . .If in the practice of Tantric yoga, one looks into the collective unconscious now, one will see a triptych, something like Grunsward's Isenheim altarpiece, vibrating in the air of the astral plane. In one panel we see a painting of the feminine lamenting the fall of the masculine into time; it is a painting of Isis crying above the coffin of Osiris. In the second panel, we see the dead masculine in the arms of the feminine, Jesus in the arms of Mary. In the third panel we see neither the Fall nor the Crucifixion, but the sacred copulation (hieros gamos) of the reunited young lovers. Once it was physical death and crucifixion which nailed consciousness down into matter; then it was a sacrament of Thanatos [Death]; but in the world-epoch about to begin it is a sacrament of Eros, a physical sexuality in which the lovers of eternity give birth to the world on the physical plane.”

Jane and Curtis in Philadelphia 1980, photo by Aline Mare, digital paintwork by Jane Sherry

The energetic form for the New Age has been set in the astral plane, and the energy of the Divine Lovers is available to us all. This is an energy of unconditional love and balanced sexual affinity, an energy Unified with the Source of Creation.

This new marriage of male and female energies is based upon co-operation, balance and co-creation, rather than hierarchical relations between the sexes. 

Bringing today's war between the sexes to an end and establishing right relations between male and female has never been more important than it is today. A species at war with itself cannot heal the wounds inflicted by mind-body duality, cannot end war, cannot live in harmony with Mother Earth and the sentient and non-sentient beings with whom we share our lovely blue-green home in this universe.

Those who choose to follow the path of the Divine Lovers back to the Garden choose the difficult but important task of creating a new, conscious form of human love, which has not existed before on this planet.

They are assured of help and blessings from all quarters of the spiritual world. And in following this arduous but rewarding path, they obtain their release from the bondage of this ancient struggle between the sexes, which creates suffering in so many hearts and homes today.

At this critical time in history, the ability of lovers to establish a co-operative spiritual practice, a balanced state of sexual affinity, and an unconditional love sends a healing radiance throughout the collective consciousness of humanity.

Lovers who work together to co-create a shared reality of compassionate service based upon loving wisdom are helping to lay the foundations for a new human culture of co-operation and unity with Mother Earth where individuals, communities and nations live in peace and harmony.

Devote by Jane Sherry, as published in ArtForum

Let us all take heart in this time of great turmoil on the planet. Lovers always live with a joyful heart, confident of the future, for lovers are in touch with the stream of loving energy that comes to us from the future, when the Divine Lovers will reign supreme in human consciousness, cultivating a restored Garden of Eden.

As clairvoyant, mystic spiritual teacher, and father of biodynamic agriculture Rudolf Steiner said,“We must eradicate from the soul all fear and terror of what comes toward human beings out of the future. We must acquire serenity in all feelings and sensations about the future. We must look forward with absolute equanimity to everything that may come. And we must think only that whatever comes is given to us by a world-directive full of Wisdom. It is part of what we must learn in this age, namely to live out of pure trust, without any security in existence. Trust in the ever present help of the spiritual world. Truly, nothing else will do if our courage is not to fail us.”

When men and women come to see the image of the Divine Lovers in one another's eyes, and to understand that the Divine Lovers dwell within them, life on Earth will change. Equilibrium will return to human love relations, to relations between husband and wife, relations between families, between communities, between religions and nations.

Equilibrium will return humanity's relationship with nature, with Mother Earth, and all sentient and non-sentient beings, visible and invisible, with whom we share our precious yet momentary Earth existence.

Of that I am sure.