Seventh Sunday in Alchymical Time: Flowering Sunday

The seventh and penultimate Sunday of Alchymical Time brings us to Flowering Sunday, the mystery of dawning Enlightenment as personified by Ananda receiving the Flower from the Buddha. The central mystery of this week is personifed not under the usual Catholic iconocraphy, but under a story which Catholicism hasn't yet come to understand, that of the moment of transformation under the Bo tree, when enlightenment flowers in the Buddha after he has made his resolve to not leave that spot until he is enlightened. In that moment he calls the earth to witness, touches the ground, and the whole universe, gods, demons, men are enlightened. Later in the in the Deer Park when the Buddha teaches his first sermon, one of his old companions is the first to be Enlightened and it is declared, from this moment the Wheel of Dharma is set in motion. No one, no gods, no devils, no holy men, princes, kinds or scoundrels will stop it. The Flowering of true light has begun.

But what can this mean? Is there any term for it in the West, any more icon for it.Baptism is not it. Salvation has a different connotation though this is salvation most certainly. Even the blessed union with the Beloved is not completely it because this requires re examining the nature of the Beloved. Nor is it apotheosis. To call it the getting of wisdom almost smacks of a self satisfaction. This is the moment of calm, I think, the moment of realization of one ness, the moment of actual seeing and being relieved of delusions and fears.And of course, after this moment comes the next moment, and so the moment of Enlightenment is a grace, but its also the beginning of a work, where you work toward, not simply getting that moment back, but living your life in the light of that moment. Having experienced the universe as the Beloved, having experienced the pain and yearning and the relief from suffering, we don't want to add lives that add to this nonsense.  Not only that, but there are several moments of Enlightenment, several moments of seeing things as they are, seeing the wholeness of it all and rejoicing in it, several moments of returning to living ones life in the light of that vision, several moments of flowering.

But a confluence of things this week holds many holy days. The Sunday of Flowering leads to the Eve of the Ezaltaion of the Holy Cross. At first I wondered about keeping this as part of New Traditions, but after I heard the readings, I realized that the Holy Cross is also the tree of wisdom in Eden and the Axis Mundi. It is the serpent on the pole that brings healing as well as the center of the compass and the Spiral Castle. It is Jacob's Ladder ascending and descending, the traverse point connected heaven and earth and what is below. The Holy Cross is the Fire, first element, that carries all sacrifices up, and the messages of heaven down, and it is the Bo tree which flowers when the Buddha is enlightened. How could we not celebrate it?

In some motifs, such as the crosses on the Red Sword I use at this time of year, we have crosses upon crosses upon crosses. Another form of the cross is the tassel used on the Jewish tallit as well as the tassels seen on Masonic tracing boards. Both of these symbolize the drawing together of the four corners of the earth together at a central place, a place, we witches would say, of alchemy The place of alchemy is also the place of offering.  There had been confusion over this, but perhaps better than confusion we should have confoundment. The Cross is where we offer our work and ourselves to God and God offers the Divine self to us. In Christianity this story is deeply convoluted and the whole theology of the Crucixfision. In the story of Odin and Yggdrasil, Odin, as chief God, offers himself to himself. Thus we learn our offering is to the God without to realize the God within that what we do at our altars in the underworld and the above world may be done in the outer world. The Offering shown in the image of the Cross is the offering of total transformation and actualization. The more I speak about it, the more I am confused and boggled by it, and so I will stop.