Alice Bailey - From Bethlehem to Calvary - I - Introductory Remarks on Initiation

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From Bethlehem to Calvary - Chapter One - Introductory Remarks on Initiation

But the lesson and message which Christ brought to individual man He brought also to the nations, holding before them the hope of future world unity and world peace. He came at the beginning of that astronomical age which we call "the Piscean age" because, during this period of approximately two thousand years, our sun is passing through that sign in the zodiac which we call Pisces, or the Fishes. Hence the frequent references to fishes, and the appearance of the [19] symbol of the fish in Christian literature, including the New Testament. This Piscean age comes between the previous Jewish dispensation (the two thousand years wherein the sun was passing through the sign Aries, the Ram) and the Aquarian age into which our sun is now in process of transiting. These are astronomical facts, for I am not here speaking of astrological conclusions. In the period when the sun was in Aries, we find the frequent appearance of the ram or the scapegoat in the Old Testament teaching, and the keeping of the Passover feast. In the Christian age we use the fish symbology, even to eating fish on Good Friday. The symbol of the Aquarian age, as it appears in all the ancient zodiacs, is that of a man bearing a jar of water. The message of that age is one of unity, communion and our relationship as brothers, because we are all the children of the one Father. To this age Christ pointed in His instructions to His disciples when He told them to go into the city, and said: "When ye are entered into the city, there shall a man meet you, bearing a pitcher of water; follow him into the house where he entereth in." (St. Luke, XXII, 7, 10.) This they did, and the great and holy feast of communion was later held in that house. The reference is undoubtedly to the future period wherein we enter into that house in the zodiac which is called "the Water-carrier," and wherein also we shall all sit at the same table, and hold communion one with another. The Christian dispensation comes between the two great world cycles, and just as Christ consummated in Himself the message of the past, and gave the teaching for the present, so He also pointed to that future of unity and understanding which is our inevitable goal. We are today at the end of the age, and entering the period of Aquarian unity, as He foretold. The "upper room" is a symbol of that high point of achievement towards which we are, as a race, rapidly moving. Some day the great Communion Service will be held, of which every communion service is the forecast. We are slowly passing into this new sign. For more than two thousand years its potencies and [20] forces will play upon the race and will establish the new types, foster the new expansions of consciousness, and lead man on to a practical realization of brotherhood.

It is interesting to note how it was that the energies playing upon our planet when the sun was in Aries, the Ram, produced in religious symbology the emphasis of the goat or ram, and how in our present age of Pisces, the Fishes, those influences have colored our Christian symbology so that the fish preponderates in our New Testament and in our eschatological symbology. The new incoming rays, energies and influences must surely be destined to produce equal effects, not only in the realm of physical phenomena but also in the world of spiritual values. The atoms of the human brain are being "awakened" as never before, and those millions of cells which, we are told, are to be found inactive and dormant in the human brain may be brought into functioning activity, bringing with them that intuitive insight which will recognize the coming spiritual revelation.

Today the world is reorienting itself to the newer influences, and in the processes of readjustment a period of temporary chaos is inevitable. Christianity will not be superseded. It will be transcended, its work of preparation being triumphantly accomplished, and Christ will again give us the next revelation of divinity. If all that we now know of God is all that can be known, the divinity of God is but a limited matter. What the new formulation of truth will be, who can say? But the light is slowly pouring into men's hearts and minds, and in this lighted radiance they will vision the new truths and arrive at a fresh enunciation of the ancient wisdom. Through the lens of the illumined mind man will shortly see aspects of divinity hitherto unknown. May there not be qualities and characteristics of the divine nature which are as yet totally unrecognized and unknown? Can there not be revelations of God utterly unprecedented, and for which we have no words or adequate means of expression? The ancient mysteries, so shortly to be restored, must be reinterpreted in the light of Christianity, and readapted [21] to meet modern need, for we can now enter into the Holy Place as intelligent men and women, and not as children looking on at dramatic stories and procedures in which we, as individuals, play no conscious part. Christ enacted for us the dramatic story of the five initiations, and urged us to follow in His steps. For this the past era has prepared us, and we can now pass intelligently into the kingdom of God through the process of initiation. The fact that the historical Christ existed and walked on earth is the guarantee to us of our own divinity and our ultimate achievement. The fact of the mythic Christ, appearing again and again down the ages, proves that God has never left Himself without witness and that always there have been those who have achieved. The fact of the cosmic Christ, manifest as the urge towards perfection in all the kingdoms of nature, proves the fact of God and is our eternal hope. Humanity stands at the portals of initiation.

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