Sex--The Unknown Quantity Part 6

We would say, "Heaven forbid!" only that the appeal is unnecessary.

Heaven does forbid, and that is why we see so many attempts to disrupt these immature relations.h.i.+ps.

"The striving of s.e.xual elements through affinities, or pa.s.sional attractions, after congenial marriage unions, is the cause of all the motions, growths, and activities in the physical and moral world,"

says a writer, and he adds: "The failure to attain the desired end, and the warfare between uncongenial and repulsive elements is the cause of all the broken equilibriums, discords, and collisions in both spheres. If the atomic marriage in nature were perfect, there would be no storms or droughts, or poisons or monstrosities, or disease. If the marriage between the individual will and understanding, between the interior and exterior life, were perfect, we should have regenerated men upon earth, worthy to be called sons of G.o.d. If the marriage between the s.e.xes were perfect, we should have a Social Paradise."

Marriage, then, in the sense of the conjugal union of two persons of opposite s.e.x, is the most important function of our lives; every other activity is subsidiary to it. Commerce is carried on, only because of this union; all the laws of man are the outgrowth of marriage; all morality comes from the ideal marriage--the union of Wisdom and Love.

To imagine that a function, so vitally important to our exterior life, should have no place in the phases of life which we know as "higher,"

is a manifest absurdity, and comes from those attenuated concepts of what const.i.tutes spirituality, which Theology has postulated; concepts which, entrenched behind the walls of "thus saith the Lord," have temporarily defied modern progress.

There is no wide gulf between the spiritual and the material worlds, although the material is but an imperfect reflection of the basic principle of life.

Marriage, then, is eternally going on, "Nature is a system of nuptials," says a writer, and nature is only the language of spirit or Divine Life.

How it came about that Theology made the mistake of degrading s.e.x-union and of limiting it to the ephemeral life of the body only, we shall come to later. For the present, a brief resume of the types of marriage ceremony, which have been universal, will convince us that Nature has always sought to convey to the human mind this great secret of eternal and never-ceasing union of complementaries.

Take, for example, the symbol of the wedding-ring. This custom, varying only in unimportant details, consistent with the prevailing social custom of the times, has come down to us from prehistoric days.

The golden circle, sometimes worn only by the bride, but frequently by both bride and groom, is emblematical of the completion of the circle of wisdom and the final attainment, in "the twain made one," of the finding by each of "the other half." The circle is always used to express the Absolute; Aum; the Supreme Power that is "without beginning and without end."

According to the old Jewish law, the wedding ring must be made of pure gold and must be earned and paid for by the bridegroom; he might not acquire it by credit or gift. There is in this custom something more than mere thrift; or the a.s.surance of the bridegroom's ability to sustain the needs and comforts of his wife and prospective family. It symbolizes the truth that no one may hope to acquire this priceless blessing of perfect conjugal union, other than by his own efforts.

Immortality must be earned, and perfect union, counterpartal union--which means actually "twain made one," comes only by dint of strife and demand and proof of our fitness for the Perfect Life.

Another custom, which has been in almost universal vogue, is that of drinking wine, emblematical of the "wine of life," at the completion of a marriage ceremony. Sometimes this has been the prerogative of the bride and groom only; and sometimes of the officiating priest; but more generally the entire company has shared in this custom. Wine drinking thus symbolizes eternal youth and virility, which can be enjoyed only by those who have attained to the complete life--the divine or spiritual s.e.x-union.

This symbolism is obvious when we take into our consciousness the truth that only complementaries have the power to act and react, without change, or loss. Equilibrium is maintained by a perfect balance of two forces; if one force be ever so small a fraction less than the other, perfect balance is lacking.

Another marriage custom in general use among the ancients was the donning of a crown on the wedding day. This custom formerly included the bridegroom as well as the bride, but later was confined to the bride alone, as was also the custom of wearing a veil. At early Greek marriages crowns made of gold or silver were placed upon the heads of both bride and groom; tapers were lighted; and rings exchanged.

We have a similar custom today in all fas.h.i.+onable church weddings. We have the lighted tapers, signifying the quenchless fires of love; and the circlet which symbolizes eternity.

The crown symbolizes the truth that a truly spiritual union bestows the crown of immortality; the power of G.o.dhood in the Kingdom of Love; which supersedes all earthly kingdoms in splendor. This is a literal truth, although it cannot be understood in its full significance until we are _fit for the kingdom_.

The veil which the bride lifts at the completion of the ceremony symbolizes the truth that when we shall have attained to the spiritual marriage, the veil that separates the interior from the exterior life, shall be lifted; it is so thin that the illusion, of which the wedding veil is made, rightly symbolizes this apparent separation of the physical life from the spiritual. When the veil is lifted, we shall know our completement in the bliss of perfect union; and when we have found that other half of our being, which is the underlying urge of our every thought and act, we shall find the veil lifted. The entire panorama of the universe becomes an open book. There is no "visible"

and "invisible;" it is all One, with our own bi-une s.e.x nature for the pivotal center.

So simple and so obvious are all these symbols of the natural man that we are astounded, when we have found the key, that we did not sooner penetrate their meaning. "She will have a crown in Heaven," we say of some self-sacrificing and loving soul, and the phrase suggests to most of us the power of earthly kings and queens with all their splendor of jewels and retainers; but there is an inner meaning which the splendor and the crowns of earth's kings and queens symbolizes.

Spiritual union with the perfect complement of our interior nature is in itself the crown of regal power, of which earthly rulers are symbolical. The spiritual body through this union becomes radiant; luminous; and s.h.i.+nes with such splendor that it dazzles the eyes of the beholder. What const.i.tutes the beauty and the value of gems--diamonds; rubies; sapphires; emeralds; topaz; pearls?

It is the radiations of light which they throw off; it is their luminosity--their transparency. It is, indeed, true, that the power which we see exemplified in the rulers of the earth has a corresponding meaning in a spiritual sense; as, in fact, have all things which we cognize with our physical eyes. The Hindus tell us that all things are either the "nita" or the "ita" message. Either they tell us "this is the way to the heights;" or "this is not the way."

The crown of orange blossoms which has supplanted the ancient crown of gold and silver and tinsel, worn with such unconsciousness of its esoteric message, symbolizes one of the most beautiful truths relating to the spiritual marriage--counterpartal union.

Even as this union confers a beautiful radiance upon the spiritual body, the body also becomes sweet-scented like a flower. Weeds, we remember, have no scent or they may be obnoxious in their odor. Weeds are unregenerate flowers.

Certain chemical combinations produce nauseous gases. The human body is a laboratory in which chemical changes are constantly going on. The changes produced by s.e.x-functioning are greater than anything which the experimental chemist has ever discovered in nature.

It is a fact well known to the pathologist that an unwilling wife, however faithful she may be, if forced into the s.e.xual act, may present her husband with a well-defined case of genital disease; nor is this at all strange when we consider the now well-recognized fact that anger, fear, revenge, avarice, and all the destructive thought-forces produce poisons in the secretions of the body.

In Rosicrucian literature, we have the story of "the Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosy Cross," which is, when read with the key to its esoteric meaning, a story of the chemistry of marriage between the s.e.xes. Indeed, the whole story of the secret doctrines of the Rosicrucians, is the story of the s.e.xes, and the "secret of secrets,"

which was so zealously guarded by the Hermetics and the Rosicrucians and other secret societies, is the secret of the spiritual union of the male and the female principles throughout nature and culminating in man and woman, conferring upon them immortal life through the perfect balance of s.e.x.

It has been said that women were not admitted to the Brotherhood of the Rosicrucians, but this is not true, as there is plenty of evidence to prove.

Owing to the enmity of the established Church toward any exaltation of the s.e.x-relation, and particularly toward the veneration of woman, it became necessary for those who sought to keep alive the fires of Esoteric Wisdom to surround themselves with the most rigid secrecy; in consequence of this, the story of the s.e.xes, const.i.tuting the very heart and center of Hermetic philosophy, has been told in allegory, unintelligible unless one has the inner sight or has been initiated into the secret code.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Church had so far succeeded in undermining the work of the Hermetics, that women were excluded from the Brotherhood, and the apparent sole purpose of the secret order was the search for metallic trans.m.u.tation. Side by side with this convincing evidence that the esoteric meaning of the symbols has been perverted, we find their allegorical phraseology intermixed with frequent allusions to pa.s.sages from the Scripture and to the Virgin Mary, proving conclusively that the Church, then in the zenith of its power, had confiscated the archives of the secret order, and, either through fear of the influence of their work, or possibly through lack of any adequate comprehension of their wisdom, had employed their symbolism to the further glory of the temporal power of the Church.

This subject will again be dealt with in a chapter devoted to "The Hidden Wisdom," and so we will leave it for the present.

One other great spiritual truth relating to marriage is found in the intimate and constantly recurring a.s.sociation of the turtle-dove with the ceremony of marriage.

The dove is, par excellence, an example of conjugal love. The turtle-dove, more than any other of the dove family, is noted for the fervor of its s.e.xual desires; fidelity to its mate; and for the devotion and diffusion of its love nature. It is well known that if either of a pair of turtle-doves dies, the mate will grieve itself to death. "Like a pair of turtle-doves" is said of a couple who are happily married, and the domestic life of the dove has made the dove a symbol of peace.

Doves have been held sacred in many parts of the world, and figure prominently in religious symbolic architecture and utensils, from ancient times down to the present day. The symbol of the doves flying over the ark of the covenant typifies the spiritual origin of birth, the ark being the primordial egg, from which issued all the forms of life. Let us also remember that they issued _in pairs_.

CHAPTER VI

CONTINENCE; CHASt.i.tY AND ASCETICISM; THEIR SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE

From the earliest forms of s.e.x-wors.h.i.+p, in which the creative function was doubtless given its rightful place, down through successive stages of s.e.x-degeneracy, we come to the s.e.x-perversions and the almost general licentiousness of Ancient Greece and Rome, with whom the s.e.x function became nothing more exalted than a method of procreation, in common with the animals; and a means of sense-gratification, on a par with gluttony.

Even among the intellectual Greeks, the highest type of a civilization that, although epicurean and esthetic, was yet essentially materialistic, s.e.xual intercourse had no more spiritual place than it occupies today in fine stock-breeding.

Between ancient Roman licentiousness and our own modern att.i.tude toward the s.e.x-relation, there intervenes that terrible time in the history of Human Evolution, known as the Dark Ages, in which was evolved the unnatural view of the function of s.e.x, exemplified rather erotically, in many instances, by asceticism and celibacy. Although it sounds paradoxical, yet there is a celibacy that is distinctly erotic.

In reading of some of the experiences in the lives of the saints, the normal, healthy person feels an aversion similar to that which he experiences in viewing the effects of physical disease; and yet we must note in this abnormal att.i.tude of the Church toward the s.e.x-relation, the effect of nature's attempt at equilibrium; a revulsion from the effect of the centuries preceding.

Some of the contributing causes of this revulsion were: celibacy, except within the Church, forbidden by the Roman Senate; the fact that women had no choice in marriage; the devastating wars which took the best of physical manhood; and the cheapness of women, every man of wealth having as many slave women as he could house and feed; the orgies where women, both bound and free, were openly debauched; all these evidences of the utter degradation to which the pure and beautiful function of s.e.x had sunk, called for a revulsion; and it came in the idea of asceticism--an instance where the remedy was worse than the disease. The mental att.i.tude that resulted in asceticism was not one in which the s.e.x function was lifted from the mire of licentiousness in which it lay; rather it was abandoned altogether as something vile and unclean; and that too, unhappily, by those who should have known better.

The Roman Church, in full accord with the type of Roman mind which fostered it, still harbored the perverted idea that women were inferior. And it is from the Roman Church of today rather more than from any other of the phases of Christian Orthodoxy, that we note a militant opposition to woman suffrage, and all the other avenues of woman's claim to free expression.

While retaining all the old Roman's disrespect for woman, the Church inst.i.tuted and fostered celibacy, as a way out of the old profiligacy, but as though by a sort of spiritual irony, the Church has retained, from its "pagan" ancestors, the s.e.x-wors.h.i.+ppers, the idol of the Holy Virgin. And despite the bombardments of criticism from without and the inculcation of superst.i.tious ignorance from within, the pure-hearted children of the Church have always gone to the "Holy Mother" for their comfort; and thus the eternal fires of Truth have smouldered beneath the ashes of perverted mysticism throughout the Dark Ages that are gone and the scarcely lighter Dawn that is here. Those who have eyes to see, realize that the one worth-while thing which the old, nearly-blind Church has been unwittingly doing all the time, has been to hold to this central truth of all Life--religious, social, national, and domestic--the truth that it is only by exalting the maternal function of human life, that we can hope to reach the saviour of mankind.

And, lest there be still some misconception of what we consider to be the true "saviour" of mankind, we will again state, even as the Church itself states it, "the babe of Bethlehem"--the pure Love between one man and one woman; the "twain made one," which is the only saviour that ever was or ever will be--the pure Christ-child that is born of conterpartal union.

Let those who would cling to the idea of an individual man, born in a city called "Bethlehem" as the saviour of the world, remember that even so, the city derived its name from the word, "bethel," meaning a pure white stone, rounded at the top, in exact imitation of the omphalos of Apollo, in the temple of Delphi. And when the shock of his discovery has somewhat subsided, and his prejudices have been swallowed up in a desire for the whole Truth, let him remember also that this central idea has been the foundation of all religious rites since time began; and instead of feeling that the whole fabric of Christianity has been rent by the light of scientific discovery, he will see that it has merely been _revealed_, and the revelation will prove to him that Truth is the most beautiful, the most spiritual and the most satisfying thing in life, because the Truth is that Perfect Love is the only pa.s.sport to immortal bliss. No one can withhold Heaven from us, if we have this perfect love.

Thus the essentials of Christianity are the essentials of every other religious system; and the essentials are: Love is the One true and only G.o.d; and s.e.x is the form in which this Bi-une G.o.d appears; according to our individual and collective reverence for this bi-une G.o.d, will be our spiritual development.

We do not reverence s.e.x when we cheapen it by dissipation; or when we abandon it as unclean and unworthy and unholy; both att.i.tudes are abnormal, and unbalanced.

Spiritual consciousness aims at equilibrium. The perfectly balanced person is equally developed on all planes; the perfectly balanced individual, in sufficient numbers, will produce a balanced and therefore a healthy social organization; and a balanced and healthy-minded race of beings will result in a balanced sphere; this fact is foreshadowed by the postulate which Science is now considering, to wit: the earth's axis may be straightened, and, if so, a uniform temperature will prevail on this globe.

Returning to a consideration of the subjects which head this chapter, we find it necessary to clear the ground a little, in regard to a definition of words.