The Celestial Marriage

Raphael | The Marriage of the Virgin – Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera
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John Williams | Across the stars – Love theme from Star Wars
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Fair encounter of two most rare affections!
Heavens rain grace on that which breeds between ’em!

William Shakespeare – The Tempest, III.1

 

Today we celebrate the heliocentric conjunction in the magnificent sign of Gemini, the magnet of pure Second Ray that determines the changes necessary for the evolution of Christ consciousness and resolves duality into a fluid synthesis, between two of its rulers, Mercury (exoteric) and Venus (esoteric). Mercury is the solar Messenger, the Lord of Centrality, the guarantor of symmetries and correspondences, the Master of Music who harmoniously connects the High and the Low and reflects the Model in all hearts of the System. Venus is the Lady of the golden Ratio and divine Proportion, of the Higher Mind and geometric Space, the executor of the solar project, the Solar Angel our Earth has to follow and imitate, the Master Builder who oversees formal execution, simultaneously active in the worlds of Being and becoming, of Ideas and forms.

Every time Mercury and Venus come in conjunction, it is truly a “fair encounter of two most rare affections”! Their collaboration is a mutual inspiration that – with enthusiasm and co-measurement – embodies and manifests the Laws of Harmony and stimulates us to think of something higher and other (than ourselves) and to realise it. It is what stands out in this world as the expression of a superior dimension and reminds us of the constitution of the universe, its order and its multifaceted beauty; it evokes the creations of the spirit and its freedom, it obeys this order (of the higher Model) and rebuilds it in thousands of ways, according to a golden rule and giving life to a sparkling myriad of right relationships, on every plane of manifestation. A work that is both imitative and constructive, because Beauty must first be contemplated, so that it can be understood and internalised, and then reflected, that is, manifested in life; a fundamental archetype for human beings, since the Soul and personality of Humanity as a whole are governed by the Rays of these two Luminaries, and expressing the Soul, with its principles, values and laws, through the works of the personality is precisely what we come to learn to do, incarnation after incarnation, on Earth, and it is what all evolution tends towards, on each of its infinite levels of consciousness. “As Above, so Below, to perform the miracles of the One Thing.” Each encounter between Mercury and Venus is like a chime in their joint work, a rhythmic reminder of how exciting is the service we are worthy of and that awaits us (isn’t being builders of Harmony and Beauty one of the noblest goals imaginable?) and how much more exciting it will become with each ascending turn of the evolutionary spiral!

Only the commensuration of action with beauty gives the formula of life. Thus, the creation of better evolutionary steps can be asserted through commensuration with beauty. (Infinity II § 368)

Botticelli | Spring (detail, Mercury) – Uffizi Galleries, Florence
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Space and substance are synonymous terms; substance is the aggregate of atomic lives out of which all forms are built… Substance is, however, a soul concept, and is only truly known to the soul.  Therefore, after the fourth initiation, when the work of the soul is accomplished and the soul body fades out of the picture, only the quality which it has imparted in substance is left as its contribution—individual, group or planetary—to the sumtotal of manifestation. All that remains is a point of light. This point is conscious, immutable and aware of the two extremes of the divine expression:  the sense of individual identity and the sense of universality. These are fused and blended in the ONE. Of this ONE the divine Hermaphrodite [Hermes-Aphrodite, Mercury-Venus] is the concrete symbol—the union in one of the pairs of opposites, negative and positive, male and female. In the state of being which we call the monadic, no difference is recognised between these two because (if I can bring such ideas down to the level of the intelligence of the aspirant) it is realised that there is no identity apart from universality and no appreciation of the universal apart from the individual realisation, and this realisation of identification with both the part and the whole finds its point of tension in the will-to-be, which is qualified by the will-to-good and developed (from the consciousness angle) by the will-to-know. (Alice Bailey – Rays and the Initiations, p. 106)

Botticelli | Spring (detail, Venus) – Uffizi Galleries, Florence
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Growing out of the integration of this new group [the New Group of World Servers], there is being formed in the world that “bridge of souls and servers” which will make possible the merging of the inner subjective Hierarchy of souls and the outer world of humanity. This will constitute an actual fusion or blending and will mark the initiation of the human family through the achievement of its foremost pioneering members. This is the true “marriage in the Heavens” of which mystical Christianity speaks and the result of this fusion will be the manifestation of the fifth kingdom in nature, the kingdom of God. (Alice Bailey – Discipleship in the New Age vol. I, p. 32)

Paolo Veronese | The wedding at Cana – Paris, Louvre
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“The Logos is passive Wisdom in Heaven and Conscious, Self-Active Wisdom on Earth”, we are taught. It is the Marriage of “Heavenly man” with the “Virgin of the World” – Nature, as described in Pymander; the result of which is their progeny – immortal man. (Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Anthropogenesis)

Tanabata – The Festival of the Stars in love
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Cécile Chaminade | Sérénade aux Étoiles (Serenade to the Stars)

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Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

William Shakespeare – Sonnet 116

Auguste Rodin | The Cathedral