Ascension

Ascension Sunday stands seven days before Pentecost, also known as Whitsunday.  According to conventional Christianity, Whitsunday is the day the Holy Spirit descended to the earth. Mythologically, witchologically, it is the day the Quest of the Holy Grail began. Seven days after the flesh and blood and therefore somewhat limited God—seen in western terms as Jesus—was translated into the High Realms, seven days after the celebration that we will also be translated into the upper realms and are more than we appear, the Grail Maiden appears with Galahad, and initiates the Quest for the Holy Grail.

            In America, in the early part of this century, we all suffer from failing to understand that while we separate church from state and private mystic religion from the common religion of the masses, the Medieval world which is in many ways the source of what witches do, did not see these separations. Before devoting ourselves to the Grail we must understand that the Grail mystics understood that in some way the Grail Maiden coming to Camelot with Galahad and the Grail was at one with the Holy Spirit (Lady Sapientia) descending on the Apostles and the Virgin Mary. In a time before evangelical Christianity as we know it, the Apostles going into the world to propagate the Gospel was, in some ways, linked with the knights who were not going to tell other people the One Truth, but seeking to experience this Truth. The catalyst for both of these stories is Ascension Day. For in the mystic mind,  it is not simply that Jesus of Nazareth the focus of mainstream Christian devotion rises to heaven, but that we are also Jesus, also daughters and sons of the divine, and in true devotion, we have, we will and we are also transcending death, ascending from the ordinary plain to return to the limitless light from which we have come.