Fifth Sunday in Alchymical Time: The Passion and Glorification of Saint John the Baptizer, Offering Sunday

 

True Summer begins with the feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist and True Summer, which begins its close at Lammas at the beginning of August, receives its true close on the days that end August with the feast of the martyrdom, dormition and glorification of John the Baptist, that is, his second birth and apotheosis as the greatest of the prophets and the second coming of Elijah. 

John is one of the great saints of the Alchymical Rite, inherited from Masonry as their great saint. He is the saintly incarnation of the Green Man and with his passing summer passes as well. He is the beginning of the end of the Alchymical Season. If this Sunday is not his, it belongs to the Mystery of the Ladies of the Water and this is fair because the water and the sand are linked. Mary is our Lady of the Dunes as well as Our Lady of the Waves. The prophetess Miriam, it is said, during her time in the desert, was accompanied by a spring of living water which followed her wherever she would go. The mysteries or rebirth through water and rebirth through wilderness are always linked and it was John, so attest the Mandaens, who gave the sacrament of baptism to the world replacing bloody circumcision with something better, and not only something better, but something which was meant to be repeated again and again for, as Jung would note much later, one must constantly be initiated, that is, as the poet says, one must practice resurrection.

And so, as summer begins its close and we meditate on the execution of the Baptist, we practice and acknowledge his resurrection. The Bible told the story of his burial and beheading and we have become so use to the bizarre story of Jesus, crucified, buried, rising, walking about the earth, eventually ascending, that we have forgotten that these things are all the same. In the Christian world we are so addicted to this idea of resurrection that I have heard preachers say: "If you go to Muhammad's tomb, he's still there. If you go to Buddha's tomb, he's there. But Jesus... he isn't there." Aside from the fact after twenty centuries there isn't much left in anyone's tomb, what these people do not understand is for the Buddhist, the moment of death is the moment of resurrection, and when Buddha died, leaving the world forever, and said strive on, this was his glorification, his triumph, his eternal life. It is the same with all of us who live in the light of love, and it was so with John whom we revere today.

On another note, this was also Offering Sunday, when so many completed projects were at last, at hand and brought to the altar for dedication, when we remembered how blessed we were and offered back what we have to the one who gave it to us, who gives all. This is the first of the Thanksgivings.