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THE PRIESTESSES OF THE FUTURE

This article appeared in La Flèche No. 12, May 15, 1932. According to a note in a sidebar to the left of the article, the little newspaper had missed its previous publication date of April 15, due to financial difficulties. For the same reason, this issue was only four pages long, instead of the usual eight. This article was signed “Hanoum,” one of Naglowska’s pseudonyms.

One cannot know the Truth, the Law, the Justice, or the Intelligence that preside over the evolution and maintenance of the Universe, if one does not first climb the Mountain where the air is pure and where the divine Breath is not contaminated by the protestations of human egotism.

One will never know in what the transformation of sexual energy into spiritual energy consists, or how it operates, if one does not first remove himself from the vicious circle that imprisons the human species and keeps it on the plains, condemned to procreation.

One cannot learn these things from the mouth of the Freedman who has climbed the dangerous slope and triumphantly operated according to High Wisdom, because the new things that he knows in his new state are too different from the limited reality of those who only inhabit the earth.

An abyss separates the Courageous One from the lower region, and no one will triumphantly climb the dangerous slope without first having swum across the raging river that separates the plains from the Mountain . . .^*11

The law of life on the plains is based on individual egotism. On this earth, one works for himself or one succumbs.

But in the raging waters of the river of separation, it is a matter of losing the very notion of a personal self! It is about totally getting rid of everything that attaches us to ourselves (of everything that allows us to live on the plains) and then one of two things: either one arrives at the other bank, one recognizes oneself in the light of the universal Self, or one is lost to never find himself anywhere: neither on the Mountain nor on the plains, nor in the universal Self, nor in the individual Self.

That, then, is the definitive death, eternal slavery in Hell (in the elementary forces of the visible world), on the gate of which Dante wrote: “Leave all hope, you who enter.”

For the river that one has to cross belongs to the Spirit of Evil, to the Destroyer Spirit that opposes the harmony of the visible creation.

Let us say this thing more frankly still: one does not cross the river of separation, which surrounds the luminous Mountain with a dark and restless wave, without the permission of Satan, the Adversary of the Creator, who protests day and night against multiplicity and division and calls for the re-establishment of Unity within the Supreme Light.

Satan is the force that one must evoke to break the fetter that limits us. . . . And the formula of evocation that is effective for this purpose is a formula of love!

How many mortals are capable of understanding that?

The man who evokes Satan to submit himself to this nocturnal force, or rather to subject it to his human will (to the will of his individual egotism), does not get from the Demon anything more than secondary powers, powers of sorcery, which are of no effectiveness for real transformation of the vital energy, for the victorious crossing of the black river.

To give oneself to sorcery is to aid Satan in his sterile rage within the human realm, for the miraculous forces that one obtains by these means increase the protestation, but do not contribute to a new creation. In passively obeying Satan one spreads over the plains the storm that rages in the river, but one does not climb the slope of the Other Shore.

If, on the other hand, one exerts oneself to subdue Satan, if one tries, as does the White Church, to paralyze his breath by systematically extinguishing the light that He ignites in human consciousnesses, the result is no better, for no one can annihilate what God himself permits: the will toward return to the Luminous Unity! God permits Satan to speak into the ear of Eve, for His wish is for His Son to return to Him.

But this return only works by means of complete love, that is to say by means of the complete fusion of Satan’s force with the divine force that animates the animal flesh of Man. For the vicious circle of the species must be overcome even there where the energy of procreation lives.

Having bitten into the forbidden fruit, Adam spread illness and death through the earth, but, right away Eve gave him two sons. For a single one who shall die, two shall be condemned to live!

And a religion was given to mankind: the religion of the procreation of the species.

Centuries passed, and the earth was peopled with diverse races and innumerable crowds. But in the spirit of some, the hope of the return remained alive.

The Christ came at last upon the earth, bringing a new law to humans: love, which dissolves in the flesh the will to die in order to transform it into a will to live. “I have conquered death,” Jesus of Nazareth said, “come with me to the Other Shore.”

But the people—the numerous people—did not understand what the new love consisted in. They hushed up the rare ones who knew the secret, and proclaimed that the love taught by Jesus was the love that was useful to the species: charity toward one’s neighbor.

The White Churches were organized in this ignorance . . .

But currently Satan is redoubling his vigor. His storm howls everywhere and the modern Eve again hears his voice.

Satan says to the chosen woman: you will absorb me, for you love me; you will help me to pass into the man, for you desire him to realize his union with me . . . you desire him to make of him a god.

Many women see that as through a veil . . . Some are conscious of it . . . Others, still less numerous, understand it totally.

Those are the future priestesses!