This book is dedicated to the Serpents of Wisdom with thanks

Chapter Seventeen

Our Mother, the Holy Spirit

The Hebrew Goddess is in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. She is the woman praised in the Psalms, the Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs and Job. She has been translated as wisdom and knowledge in the Bible, so people have no idea that it is our Mother the Holy Spirit who is being referred to. Our ancestors considered the Cosmic Mother to be the executive power of the Divine who gives body to life. In the Wisdom literature, she is the Mother, Bride and Consort (royal spouse) of the Father God. She is the image of Light, Truth, Law, Insight, Understanding, Compassion and Justice. p 257 Mysteries of the Bridechamber

At first it seemed unnatural to pray to God as Father-Mother. But once I realized the truth and importance of the feminine aspect of God, it just made me sad to think how she has been, and still is, ignored and denied. Our ancestors not only worshipped her, they adored her. We can look all around us today and see what a world is like without its Mother. We can see it in the veiled and abused women in the Middle East. We can see it in the denigrated sexuality and views of women as sex objects in the West. This is a world that doesn’t value its women. If, for the last several thousand years, the feminine side of God had been respected and celebrated, this Earth would be a much better place. Wherever I studied our ancestors, whether it was the Quakers in Pennsylvania, or the Templars, or the Cathars, or the Essenes, women were treated equally with men, in all ways, including spiritually. In the early Christian Church women were apostles, deacons, prophets, missionaries and healers. There was no office that was closed to them.
Our family has always been the preservers of our Mother’s worship. Well, not in recent history with my direct family, but historically. John the Baptist and Jesus were both instrumental in trying to bring a new understanding of our Mother as the Goddess of Wisdom, rather than as a fertility Goddess. Unfortunately that light of Truth was only to surface for a short time. However, it has been perpetuated by a hidden lineage that has never failed since their day and before. The age of Patriarchy was necessary in order for humanity’s intellect to develop. Many believe that the next age will be that of the Goddess. If so, we can expect humanity’s quality of life will improve considerably.
I mentioned that some of the versions of the Sophia story show the Sophia who created Yaldabaoth as a lower version of the Sophia who is the Holy Spirit. Some versions show the lower Sophia or Pistis, as her daughter. In the book Jesus and the Goddess: The Secret Teachings Of the Original Christians by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, the authors say that Sophia represents the soul of each initiate and that the myth is an allegory for the fall of the soul into incarnation in a human body, where it becomes lost in the world until its eventual spiritual liberation through contacting the Christ within, “representing the Consciousness of God at the heart of all beings.”

The authors wrote that the higher Sophia is symbolized by a virgin mother and represents the pristine purity of the soul, while the fallen Sophia is symbolized by a prostitute who is redeemed, representing the soul fallen into incarnation, lost in the world and in need of spiritual enlightenment. They wrote; “The myth of the Christian God man Jesus can only be properly understood alongside the myth of the Christian Goddess Sophia. In the myth of Sophia, the Goddess is the central figure, whilst her brother-lover is an incidental character. In the Jesus myth it is the opposite. The God man is the central character. Yet the myth of the lost Goddess forms an important subtext to the Jesus story, which would have been obvious to Christian initiates familiar with both allegories.”

In the New Testament gospels, this is characterized in the virgin mother Mary and the repentant prostitute, Mary Magdalene. These two Mary’s represent the higher and lower Sophia. They are both called by the same name to emphasize the fact that they are mythologically aspects of the same figure. The authors claim that these “characters” can be traced back to Jewish texts such as Genesis, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Proverbs and “various pagan myths.” They cite the myths of Aphrodite, Helen, Eros, Psyche, Demeter, Isis and Persephone as all being allegories for the descent of the soul into incarnation and its eventual redemption.
The author’s write; “For the Christian Gnostics, their mythical hero Joshua/Jesus is likewise Sophia's envoy who comes to reveal her Wisdom which leads to Gnosis. Hence 'the secret' that Paul proclaims in his Letter to the Colossians is Christ in whom is hid the treasures of Sophia and Gnosis.” Unfortunately, most Bibles have these important words translated as wisdom and understanding or knowledge, which is not entirely incorrect, but the proper meaning of the words has been lost. The authors say that the evidence, “clearly suggests that Christianity was originally a synthesis of pre-existing Jewish and Pagan spiritual philosophy and allegorical mythology, and that central to that tradition was the myth of the Goddess Sophia.”
The authors attribute the loss of the Goddess to the patriarchal Roman church. They wrote “The eradication of the Christian Goddess by the patriarchal Roman Church has left us all motherless children. Women have been denied a sympathetic rapport with the Divine Feminine. Men have been denied a love-affair with a female face of Deity. Spirituality has become part of the battleground which separates the sexes, when it should be the sanctuary of eternal fellowship. The original Christians, however, practiced 'partnership spirituality'. They were known for valuing men and women equally, as expressions of God and Goddess. They saw the division of the sexes as a correlate of that primal polarity which is the basis of life. A duality which when made one, as in the act of love, brings the bliss of mystical union that they called Gnosis.”

The author of Gnostic Secrets of the Naassenes p 106 tells us that the text of the Naassenes Sermon confirms that the awareness of the Divine Mother was absorbed into Gnostic Christianity. He says that the Sermon quotes a hymn honoring the Mother as the companion to the Father; “From thee (comes) Father and through thee (comes) Mother, two names immortal, progenitors of Aeons.” He refers to a scripture called The Gospel according to the Hebrews that only survived fragmentarily. He says that according to many scholars, it closely follows the Gospel of Matthew. In it is a statement made by Jesus that is preserved in two separate places in the writings of Origen and Saint Jerome; “Even now did my Mother the Holy Spirit take me by one of my hairs, and carry me away to the great Mountain of Tabor.”

Our Mother’s devotees believed she was the Serpent on the Tree in the Garden of Eden who brought knowledge to Adam and Eve. If this is confusing to you because as we understand it, Satan brought that knowledge, and it was a bad thing, here is the key to understanding it; The Holy Spirit is sometimes represented as two sons with opposite characteristics. Originally there was only one son with both characteristics. The Mother and her two sons are the same. Knowledge is a good thing. Access to the Tree of Life is a good thing. The Power of our Mother is a Great Thing.
Our Mother wields three powers; creation, preservation and destruction. She is the life-force that creates the universe and sustains it and at the end of a period of time, she destroys it and turns it back into pure energy. The author of Guardians of the Holy Grail p 74 says; “It is the destructive power of the Goddess that gives a Holy Grail the power to transform a human into a god or goddess, a process it accomplishes by destroying the physical and emotional impurities, as well as the false notions, that keep him or her from knowing their true self.” The black Madonna’s of the European cathedrals are likely representative of this aspect of our Mother. To the Templars she was Baphomet which looks hideous if you don’t understand her purpose. The destructive Life Force is what accomplishes the Christening of our selves that leads to the Sacred Marriage of our soul and spirit, so this gives you an idea of why the destructive side of her was so important to our ancestors.
We learned earlier that we are a star race and that God was said to send His/Her power through a central sun that traveled through other suns. This power is the Life Force. It’s the true Holy Grail, the subtle, etheric energy that surrounds and interpenetrates an object and has the power to transform those who come into contact with it. This Life Force is the Goddess. The ancients believed that God and Goddess were locked in an eternal embrace and it was that embrace that sustained life. This was said to be represented by the two angels locked in an embrace that adorned the top of the Ark of the Covenant.
The Pyramids of Egypt were built over natural energy vortexes, which is why initiations took place in them. The Templars situated the beautiful cathedrals of Europe over natural vortexes of energy, and constructed them so that they were conducive to accumulating the Life Force for their initiations.
In her book The Woman with the Alabaster Jar Margaret Starbird informs us that the dove, which is a sign of the Holy Spirit, wasn’t considered masculine until it was translated into the Latin ‘spiritus sanctus’. She says that the original Hebrew word for Spirit is feminine. Don’t think for a minute that this was done inadvertently by the Catholics. They eventually succumbed to their parishioner’s wishes and brought the Divine Feminine back in the guise of the Virgin Mary. Ironically, or sadly, Southern Baptists, and myself until recently, cannot fathom the reason the Catholics deify the Virgin Mary as they do. The author of Gnostic Secrets of the Naassenes has this to say about the loss of the Divine Mother in Christianity;
P 110 The Wisdom dialogue inspired by the Book of Job reached its culmination in the teachings of Jesus - yet those same teachings never found their way into orthodox Christianity. The church aggressively resisted the Divine Mother and succeeded in erasing every trace of her from its official doctrines. In Christianity’s earliest days, of course, things were very different. The first Christian churches were loosely organized communities in which a spirit of gender equality often prevailed. We know that women participated in discussions, taught alongside men, and sometimes even led services. ....During the second century a male hierarchy of deacons, priests, and bishops emerged. By 200 CE women had been relegated to subservience.

That author fills us in on the role of the Holy Spirit. He says that she controls all human activity via the power of the planets and stars. I know many Christians will object to this, but the truth is that destiny and fate are part of the plan put in place by God for this part of His/Her Creation. The Essenes, and in fact all of our ancestors, were involved with astrology and the keeping of time through the movements of the heavens. The planets and stars were intended to guide us in more ways than just navigation! The cosmic powers are neither good nor evil. They serve both purposes, depending on what is called for by the choices and actions of the people concerned. Our ancestors believed that every star and planet was the body of a soul. In fact, humans are made from the same materials as the stars, which is a scientific fact. Since I was young, I have believed that the twelve signs of the Zodiac were the system put in place by God to insure that there are twelve types of personalities or sets of characteristics needed to fulfill all the functions of earthly life. There is a science behind it. It is one of the laws of the universe put in place by God to insure proper functioning of this creation.

The Goddess lives within us as our inner wisdom and guidance. She is that “still small voice” that I have audibly heard. She gives us the gifts of understanding and discernment, which is something I fervently pray for day after day. The Goddess, our beloved Holy Spirit, is my best friend, and my constant companion. The Bible and Wisdom texts have this to say about her;
I am Wisdom, I bestow shrewdness and show the way to knowledge and discretion. Proverbs 8:12
From me come advice and ability; understanding and power are mine. Proverbs 8:14
Through me kings hold sway and governors enact laws. Proverbs 8:15

Whoever listens to me will live without a care, undisturbed by fear of misfortune. Proverbs 1:33

I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the Earth was. Proverbs 8:23

She knows and understands all things; she will guide me prudently in whatever I do, and guard me with her glory. Wisdom 8: 9.11

I called for help and there came to me the Spirit of Wisdom. I valued her more than health and beauty. I preferred her to the light of day, for her radiance is unsleeping. Wisdom 7:7-8

She is an inexhaustible treasure for mortals and those who profit by it become God’s friends. Wisdom 7:14

I was taught by Wisdom, by her whose skill made all things. Wisdom 7:22

She is quick to make herself known to all who desire knowledge of her, he who rises early in search of her will not grow weary in the quest, for he will find her seated at his door. Wisdom 6: 13-14

She herself searches far and wide for those who are worthy of her, and on their daily path she appears to them with kindly intent, meeting them half way in all their purposes. Wisdom 6:16

Wisdom working through a holy prophet, gave them success in all they did. Wisdom 11:5

I mentioned earlier that the word Elohim was a plural word, if it was singular, it would be El. According to Richard Smoley, “This word is a feminine noun and a masculine plural, implying Goddess and God and yet more, the One become many - hence singularity and multiplicity as a simultaneous truth. In effect, it eludes to all creatures and specifically, to human beings, as quantum manifestations of the One, the Holy Father-Mother.” To simplify the term quantum manifestations, just think of us as individual sparks of God living on planet Earth in this incarnation, who are unaware that we are in actuality temples of God Him/Herself. He is absolutely correct. Elohim stands for everything that is God. That includes Gods, gods, goddesses, lords, elves, fairies, humans, extra-terrestrials, animals, plants, you name it, it is all Elohim! Without the Spirit of God in it, nothing would have life. Proverbs 3:13-26 says about Wisdom;

Happy is a man who finds Wisdom and who acquires Understanding, for She is more profitable than silver, and Her revenue is better than gold. She is more precious than jewels; nothing you desire compares with Her. Long life is in Her right hand; in Her left, riches and honor. Her ways are pleasant and all Her paths, peaceful. She is a tree of life to those who embrace Her and those who hold on to Her are happy. The Lord founded the earth by Wisdom and established the heavens by Understanding. By His knowledge the watery depths broke open, and the clouds dripped with dew. Maintain competence and discretion. My son, don’t lose sight of them. They will be life for you and adornment for your neck. Then you will go safely on your way; your foot will not stumble. When you lie down, you will not be afraid; you will lie down and your sleep will be pleasant. Don’t fear sudden danger or the ruin of the wicked when it comes, for the Lord will be your confidence and will keep your foot from a snare.

According to The Dictionary of Common Era Gnosticism “The Holy Spirit is the heavenly partner with whom a union, a marriage, is formed. The Holy Spirit delivers its human partner from death and seals that soul so that it will no longer be capturable by the lower powers (Archons). Holy Baptism, a ritual much older than Christianity, is a purification by fire and by water to assist one to receive the heavenly partner, the Spirit.” The fire referred to is the Holy Spirit. The very same fire that settled on the foreheads or Ajna chakra’s of the people present at the Pentecost in Jerusalem when the Holy Spirit alighted upon the worshipers.

From Victoria LePage, the brilliant author of Mysteries of the Bridechamber;

P 359 The foundational laws, the moral guidelines of society, and the means to their ends, both secular and religious, are worked out only by men, and the only ruling deity is male. Every vital decision concerning foreign and economic policies, every law concerning the family, criminal justice, racial attitudes, moral boundaries, and the sexual or scientific ethos is driven and controlled by men. As a result, our civilization is in the grip of a faster and faster demon of productivity, driven by a phantom called progress, overworked, out of balance, suffering vertigo and despair. The sickening of the Earth, vast populations starving or perishing by genocide; crime, suicide, drug addiction, the rape of childhood, and the death of joy - all these are the inevitable consequences of rampant patriarchy and a repressed mother archetype.

P 360 Where either gender is degraded, the heart of religion dies. The Gnosis withers; the evolution of the human spirit cannot go forward and the civilization dies. Yet it was for this evolution, indeed, that Christianity was brought into existence. And perhaps for this same reason it is already beginning to renew itself in the hidden mystical schools of the Far East, where the oceanic Mother principle has always held sway. p 361…We can be certain that one day, if not tomorrow as projected, the Renaissance prophecies of a coming world order based on a united brotherhood of world religions will be fulfilled. The One Primal Spirit will eventually prevail.

The most important words I can bring you regarding our Mother are these;
For I say unto you, whosoever blasphemeth the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven them; but whoso blasphemeth the Holy Spirit it shall not be forgiven them either in this age, or in the next, for they resist the Light of God, by the false traditions of men. – Spoken by Jesus in the Gospel of the Holy Twelve

I tell you the truth, all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin. Mark 3:28

And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. Luke 12:10

And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come. Matthew 12: 31-32

Chapter Eighteen

Templars, Freemasons and Rosicrucians

The book Bloodline of the Holy Grail p 215 tells the fascinating story of our people at the time of Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. Just before the invasion, the high priest Hilkiah instructed the prophet Jeremiah to have the temple treasures hidden deep beneath the temple built by King Solomon, the son of King David. Underneath the temple lay a vast stable complex which could house two thousand horses. A huge amount of gold, silver and precious objects of art and sacrament were hidden then and remained there until the year 1096 when the first Crusade was undertaken to retake the Holy Land from the Moslems.

The story behind the efforts of the first Crusaders begins with a Catholic priest by the name of St. Bernard, who, evidently unknown to the Catholics, was one of our family members. The story goes that when Bernard first made our family aware of his plans to become a Catholic priest, they were incredulous, that is, until he revealed his ingenious plan to them. That plan was none other than to use the power and organizational ability of the Catholic church to retake the Holy Land from the Muslims and retrieve the ancient treasure that was hidden by Jeremiah and the Temple guard. The Knights Templar were well aware of the treasure hidden there, and most likely knew every item of its contents. The later discovery of the Essene’s Dead Sea Scrolls included a copper scroll which contained an inventory of the items. Among items listed, were an enormous amount of ancient manuscripts as well as the Ark of the Covenant, the Ten Commandments and the Tables of Testimony, in addition to material treasure.
P 213 Laurence Gardner describes the Tables of Testimony as having the cosmic equation and the divine law of number, measure and weight, and says that “The mystical art of reading the inscriptions was achieved by the cryptic system of the Qabala.” As you can see there are many ways to spell Kaballah. The tablets were said to be made of either sapphire or lapis lazuli stone. p 219 Gardner wrote “In addition to the Jerusalem bullion, the Templars also found a wealth of ancient manuscripts in Hebrew and Syriac, providing firsthand accounts that had not been edited by any ecclesiastical authority. In the light of these, it was widely accepted that the Knights possessed an insight which eclipsed orthodox Christianity - an insight which permitted them the certainty that the Church had misinterpreted both the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection.”⁷⁵
The Knights Templar’s goals during the Crusades were, first of all, to retake the Holy Lands that they believed were given them by God, and secondly, to recover the treasures and artifacts hidden under the Temple Mount. Gardner reveals that our family genealogies were written on the walls underneath the Temple. Legend relates that the Ark of the Covenant was, for a time, hidden in Chartres Cathedral in France. The Templars religion was Johannite Christianity, the beliefs passed down by John the Baptist to Jesus and then to St. John the Divine. The personal symbol of St. John was a Holy Grail chalice entwined within the coils of the Kundalini serpent. The Knights Templar transferred the Kundalini power to others via a kiss. This is possibly done with a kiss to each area in the body where the chakras are located. Since one of these is at the area of sexuality or generation, it’s quite possible that this rite would seem alarming to outsiders who didn’t understand the reason behind the practice, if they did, in fact, kiss in ‘alarming’ places.
Another so-called alarming aspect of the Templars is the depiction of Baphomet, which is symbolic of the dark aspect of the Goddess that was depicted by Eliphas Levi in the mid 1800’s - long after the formation of the Templars and Freemasons. His version is truly grotesque and disturbing. He claimed that he modeled it on the gargoyles on the cathedrals of Europe. The Templars called the Holy Spirit the Master Builder and the Freemasons refer to Her as the Great Architect. Both refer to the physiological changes in the human body that the Holy Spirit makes in cleansing toxins from our food, water and air from our bodies, and also the toxicity of our unresolved emotional trauma and “illusory belief systems.” The author of Guardians of the Holy Grail describes the transformation;
PP 94/5 The ancient Serpent on the Tree, the first teacher of Gnostic wisdom, would then enter the Holy of Holies, the skull of the Knight and activate the Ajna Chakra or Third Eye of intuition, along with the remaining two-thirds of his brain power, to bring forth the timeless Gnostic revelation of “Be still and know that I AM God.” After the Kundalini serpent had completed its ascension to the top of the ‘tree’, the Templar Knight would be full of its Holy Spirit power and a true Human Holy Grail. Then, with his abundant Serpent Power a Templar Knight could heal himself and others, and he could also transmit some of his own power into a new Knight through the vehicle of touch and/or the Templar kiss, thus initiating a brother’s process of alchemical development.

Victoria LePage wrote that the Templar-built cathedrals of Europe were covered in symbolical carvings that represent a coded prophecy preserved in stone for future generations, as a countdown to the Aquarian Age, the Age we are in now. She wrote that the Rosicrucian’s prophesied a day of cultural rebirth approaching that would “see the renewal of the unitive hopes and values of the first Christians.” According to her, the Rosicrucian’s cherished what they believed to be a more creative vision of the religion Jesus Christ had founded, “one that conformed more truly to the holy principles he had laid down while on Earth: to gather all mankind under a universal religion of Peace.” She states that it was to be a spiritual revolution in the “fullest and most positive sense, an overturning of everything that had gone before.” She believed that it entailed the uniting of the three Semitic religions under the combined leadership of Qabalist’s, Gnostics and Sufis. Mysteries of the Bridechamber p 348