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ecosophia
Here's the second Gnostic Lesson, which is the material covering the first of the UGC's minor orders, the Order of Cleric. (Yes, you can insert the mandatory Dungeons & Dragons reference here; just remember you're starting out at experience level 0.) The work of this lesson should take you at least a month. It's seemingly very simple -- but the simplicity conceals unexpected lessons. (Yes, by the way, the image is another Carl Jung painting -- this time an illustration from the Red Book.)
Gnostic Lesson Two
The Order of Cleric
The training of the Cleric is dedicated to the analysis of our physical bodies. Throughout these lessons, emphasis will be placed on heightening both your physical, emotional (psychic), and spiritual intuition; we hope also to impart to you, the seeker, useful techniques for harnessing and controlling your whole being to aid in the quest for spiritual enlightenment. We are not our mere physical beings, we are more than creatures of matter—but we do have material bodies, and need to include them in the process of our inner development.
This is an important step in our spiritual evolution. It is important for us to realize that we are not our bodies, that we are more than our physical bodies, but it is also important for us to realize that we aren’t in material existence by accident. As Clerics, we remind ourselves we really are spiritual beings and know we are temporarily inhabiting material bodies for good reason.
The Order of Cleric is associated with the faculty of taste. Modern ways have taught us to ignore our subtle sense of taste and only rely on our gross sense of taste. This allows food vendors to pump us full of salt, white sugar and refined fats—all of which are bad for our health. Excess salt is implicated in a range of health problems, including heart disease. White sugar and refined fats are difficult for our bodies to process and are also implicated in a range of health problems. They taste good to our gross sense of taste but they are not good for us.
Fast food equates to "eat fast." Eating while working or "on the run" equates to "eat fast." Eating quickly is one way to bypass your subtle sense of taste. Eating a lot of salt, white sugar and refined fats is another. Fast food is a double whammy to your taste buds. It's also a double whammy to your intuitive maturation. We'll cover this in Part Two of this lesson.
One way to slow down and treat our food and drink with the respect they deserve is to take up the practice of saying grace before each meal. Saying grace is a form of blessing, and the sacrament of blessing is the special privilege of the Order of Cleric. This, too, will be covered later on in this lesson.
You are encouraged at this point to add prayer to your routine of practices. Prayer doesn't need to take forever and it doesn't need to be complicated. Just find time to stand, kneel or sit down and talk with the Divine. Relax and breathe deeply. Be yourself. The Divine knows who you are, and won't pay attention to anything but the real you anyway. Just talk with the Divine as you would talk with a wise and sympathetic elder.
There are many techniques of prayer which you can find discussed in books on the subject. Far more important than technique, however, is the recognition that prayer is a relationship. You are making contact with the Divine, who is everywhere and in everything, the unfailing source of all that is. In truth, you’ve never been out of contact with the Divine. What’s happening now is that you’re making the contact consciously, accepting and acknowledging what has been going on all along.
As a Cleric you are empowered to continue following your own spiritual path. Clerics are enjoined to remember that each of our spiritual paths is unique. Others may follow a similar path, but the path followed by each of us is unique to us. Spiritual paths may cross, as indeed they do as we grow spiritually, and what seemed correct yesterday may not be so today. This is part of the learning process we all go through as we spiritually mature.
Being a Cleric is being a student. It is our responsibility as Clerics to continue studying your spiritual path, and continually to determine the right and proper path for us as individuals. Clerics see the alb—the white robe that is the symbol of clerical standing in the Universal Gnostic Church—as a symbol for both the mastery of our material body and the rebirth or refining of our current material body into our future glorified spiritual body.
The Sacrament of Blessing
One of the rights and duties of the Minor Order of Cleric is the sacrament of blessing. This is a ritual for recognizing and enhancing the beneficial and nurturing aspects of the Divine within a person, place or thing. A blessing raises the vibration of the object or entity being blessed if and only if such raising of vibration is acceptable to that being blessed.
Blessings are commonly used to bless food and drink, rooms, home, objects that appeal to the one doing the blessing and other people. But anything, any place and any time may be blessed. It is always appropriate to ask for consent before giving a blessing, but it is also appropriate to give a blessing when consent is not an option.
As we travel a spiritual path, our awareness of non-physical entities becomes more and more acute. Some of these entities are Earthbound for one reason or another. Blessing them is one thing we can do to help them become more and more aware of their own spiritual path.
The following guideline may be used for blessings:
1. Invoke the Divine (example: Dear Creator)
2. Ask for a blessing (example: please send a blessing to...)
3. Give the name of the person, place or thing to be blessed
4. Describe any benefit of this blessing (example: and lift their burden...)
5. Touch the person, animal or object to be blessed (optional)
6. Give thanks (example: Thank you, Creator.)
7. Close (Examples: Amen, So Be It, And it is so.)
If you prefer a simpler form, simply say the words “Bless you” or call upon the Divine, “I ask the Divine to bless you,” or use the words of your choice. You may also use the standard form: “In the name of (name of Deity), I bless you.”
Giving a blessing to others is one way to advance your own spiritual life, because by lifting up others you also lift up yourself. Any blessing you send to others also comes back to you. Some suggest that there’s an 80-20 rule which says 80% of the good you give to others accrues to them and 20% to you. Others suggest instead that there’s a 90-10 rule which means you accrue 10% of the good you give to others. But when you give evil to others, you accrue either 80% or 90% to yourself. Blessings are better.
Make it a habit to bless someone or something every day. The more you bless, the more blessed the world becomes.
Chewing, Nutrition, and Exercise
As strange as it may sound, one of the ways to increase your intuitive abilities is to chew your food. The truth is the more aware you become of the taste of the things you put into your mouth, the more your subtle energies are able to communicate with you. By becoming more aware of the tastes of different things, the more aware your mind becomes of everything and this enhances your psychic and intuitive abilities.
Have you ever tasted something and the thing you tasted wasn't there? You will if you haven't already experienced this phenomenon. If you have, welcome to the world of expanding intuition. If not, you can expect to taste things that aren't (physically) there as you continue your spiritual development. You may just be sitting there thinking of nothing in particular or you may be hard at work when you taste something, something you haven't put in your mouth. That taste is your intuitive mind telling you something. Pay attention. It may be a reminder to eat or drink something, it may be a memory, it may be your imagination, or may be a message from beyond. Be open to any possibility.
The sense of taste is enhanced by chewing your food. It's the act of breaking your food into small pieces that releases the essences picked up by our taste buds. When we gulp down food we don't taste it, we don't digest it well, we don't obtain full nutritional value from our food and we overtax our digestive system.
Fully tasting your food requires thoroughly chewing your food. According to medical studies, the human digestive system is designed to receive fully pulverized, saliva-drenched food. It is not designed to handle the big chunks of food the vast majority of modern people gobble down and dump into their stomachs. To fully masticate your food requires between thirty to one hundred chewing and grinding actions by your teeth. Learn to chew your food completely and slowly. Learn to enjoy the taste of your food., Make this your priority during this period of study as you become a Cleric.
Tasting your food is part of the process of coming to terms with your physical body. Eating a balanced diet is the second part of that process. You'll find as you advance on your spiritual path that you'll eat less food at meals and in-between meals: your eating habits will become more moderate. This is because overeating is a nervous habit that you overcome as you become more peaceful. Traveling a spiritual path brings you more peace and less anger with life in general and yourself specifically. It also decreases your levels of fear and sadness.
Our modern sources of food often do not contain the nutritional values they did twenty or thirty years ago. As we travel our spiritual path and become more and more intuitive, it becomes increasingly important for us to have not only a balanced diet but a nourishing one as well. Our immune systems need to be fortified. You may find that a diet rich in nourishing foods is all you need, or you may find that you need vitamin and mineral supplements in order to feel your best.
While studying to become a Cleric, review your own nutritional needs and decide if you need any antioxidants or vitamins added to your daily nutritional program. Make an effort to study your personal nutritional needs. Try changing your diet if your circumstances permit that. Be careful, however, not to get caught up in new-diet-itis! It so happens that most people feel better and have more energy if they change their diet, no matter what the new diet might be.
One person made media headlines a few years ago by going on a diet consisting solely of fast food from chain restaurants; he felt better and had more energy. Another got in the news by eating only potatoes. He also felt better and had more energy—for a while. In most people, new-diet-itis wears off in three to six months. That’s what drives diet fads: each new diet seems to work wonders—for a while.
It’s healthier and less stressful to simply work out a diet that keeps you healthy and happy, and stick to that. One very useful tool for this purpose is a food diary. To keep a food diary, all you have to do is note down each day what you ate, and then at the end of the day, how you felt, how energetic you were, and whether you had any symptoms of illness. That’s a quick way to find out if you have food sensitivities—if you feel really ill the next day every time you eat something, for example, try leaving it out of your diet for a month and see what that does for your health—but it also gives you a broader guide to what makes you more or less healthy. Try it and see.
While you’re doing this, pay attention to how much exercise your body needs. Some people get more exercise than they need, while many more get less. Exercise doesn’t have to involve going to the gym or running laps; there are many forms of exercise, and there is also the habit of doing things with your muscles rather than with machines—walking instead of driving or taking transit, for example. If you already have an exercise routine that satisfies you, that’s good. If not, try out some new options and see how they work for you.
Ceremony of Commitment for a Cleric
Once you have put at least a month into the work outlined above you will have completed the traditional requirements to become a Cleric in the Universal Gnostic Church. This title confers no special privilege upon you. It doesn’t give you the right to tell other people what to do, or to preen yourself on your supposedly superior spiritual status. It simply reflects a commitment on your part to enter into a relationship with the Divine and to bless the world around you.
The ceremony is optional (unless you wish to proceed to monastic vows or ordination—in that case it is a requirement). We suggest it to you as a way of honoring your acceptance of the work before you. It's a ceremony of commitment, which affirms that you understand what it means to be a Cleric and accept whatever the Divine may ask you to do. In order to perform this ritual, you will need certain things.
First, you will need a chair and a small table to serve as an altar. Cover the altar with a cloth, and if possible, put two candles in candlesticks, and an incense burner on the altar. In addition, you will need holy water and a small amount of holy oil, and these should also be on the altar; instructions for preparing these are given further down in this lesson. You will also need a small pair of sharp scissors, which can be in any convenient place.
Another thing you will need is an alb—that is, a plain white robe with a cord belt. This is the traditional garb of a cleric in the Universal Gnostic Church; you will put it on during the ceremony, so fold it up and leave it someplace convenient near the altar. You may wish to write out in advance the prayers and vow discussed below, and have them in a convenient place as well. You will also need a room or other space large enough that you can set up the altar in the middle and walk around it in a circle, and an hour or so of uninterrupted time.
The ritual itself consists of nine steps. Step One is setting up your temple. This simply means setting up the chair and the altar and making sure you have all the items you will need, and then lighting the candles and the incense.
Step Two is to establish sacred space around your chair and altar. This can be done in any way you prefer. If you are a student of any magical or esoteric tradition, for example, the opening ceremony you use for that tradition is appropriate for this.
Optional ceremony for sacred space: If you do not have some other way of establishing sacred space, one option is to provide yourself with a cup of water. Take up the cup, and circle around the outside of the space, dipping your fingers into the water and flicking droplets around the space. When you are finished, say, “May this place be purified in the name of (whatever name you use for the Divine).” Put the cup down, pick up the incense burner, and circle around the outside of the space, carrying the incense with you and waving the smoke around the space with your free hand. When you are finished, say, “May this place be consecrated in the name of (whatever name you use for the Divine).” This completes the ceremony.
Step Three is to say a prayer in which you thank the Divine, using whatever name you prefer, for all the gifts bestowed upon you. Ask for Divine blessings upon this holy space, the holy altar, the holy items placed upon the altar and ourselves. Ask the Divine to be present and to accept you as a Cleric. You may use a spontaneous prayer, or write out a prayer in advance.
Step Four is to vow to the Divine to uphold the office of Cleric and to serve as a Cleric to the best of your ability; and then ask the Divine to assist you in keeping and fulfilling these vows.
Step Five is to cut a few strands of your hair. This symbolizes the tonsure, the shaving of a portion of the head that is used to mark entrance into the clergy in several faiths. By doing this you are symbolically offering yourself to the Divine.
Step Six is to purify yourself with holy water. This is done by dipping your fingertips into the water and using them to moisten your eyelids, your ears, your nostrils, and your lips with holy water. Dip your fingers into the water between each of these. While purifying yourself, say something like this: “I purify my senses so that I will be able to perceive the spiritual realms of existence, so help me (name of the Divine being used).”
Step Seven is to anoint yourself with holy oil on your third eye which is above the bridge of your nose in the center of your forehead just above the eye ridge. Your third eye is above this ridge in the center of your forehead. In anointing yourself, say something like this: "I anoint myself to perform all the duties of a Cleric, so help me (name of the Divine being used).”
Step Eight is investing yourself with the alb. First bless the alb and dedicate it to helping you establish a holy space whenever you put it on. Then put it on.
Step Nine is to close the ceremony. Say a prayer of thanksgiving, thanking the Divine for the blessings that have been conferred on you. Then extinguish the candles, put everything away, and go about the rest of your life.
Please note that the point of this ritual is not to impress anybody, including yourself. You gain no special status nor any authority over other people by becoming a Cleric. The point of the ceremony is to humbly and sincerely communicate with the Divine, take your vow, and bless the work the Divine will hereafter ask of you. Having completed the ceremony you are a Cleric. You are now ready to go forth and do such work as the Divine asks of you.
Holy Water and Holy Oil
You will need these for your ceremony of commitment, and for other ceremonies and practices to come. They are simple to make. Holy water is simply water that has had a few grains of blessed salt dropped into it. Holy oil is simply olive oil that has been blessed.
To make holy water, place a few grains of salt on anything non-metallic—a wooden spoon, for example, or a small piece of note paper. Bless the salt, following the instructions given earlier for the sacrament of blessing, and then put it in the water, blessing the water as you do so.
To make holy oil, simply put a small amount of pure olive oil in a bottle or other container and bless it, using the instructions given earlier. If you like, you can mix in a small amount of any essential oil you wish, but this is not required.
Subtle Lessons and 2 Questions on Holy Water and Oil
Date: 2023-07-27 10:35 pm (UTC)Two quick questions, if I might:
1) does the source/treatment of the water have any particular effect on the resulting holy water? I've been trying to collect rain water whenever there's a thunderstorm, since I bless/hallow things in Thunor's name, but I've taken to putting it through a coffee filter to keep it fresh longer.
2) for holy water or oil, is it helpful to avoid containers with metal components, for etheric purposes? I currently keep my holy water in a mason jar, but it has a stainless steel lid, and I've been wondering if I'm doing it wrong.
Thanks,
Jeff
Re: Subtle Lessons and 2 Questions on Holy Water and Oil
Date: 2023-07-28 02:29 am (UTC)2) If the mason jar has an ordinary canning jar lid, there's a thin layer of plastic on the inside to prevent that very problem.
Re: Subtle Lessons and 2 Questions on Holy Water and Oil
Date: 2023-07-30 06:06 pm (UTC)Winifred Hodge Rose
Re: Subtle Lessons and 2 Questions on Holy Water and Oil
Date: 2023-07-31 12:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-07-28 12:05 am (UTC)I know these are part of the lessons of the FHR. If I am currently working in that system, would I have to something different to participate in these UGC lessons as well?
(no subject)
Date: 2023-07-28 02:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-07-28 06:52 pm (UTC)Given how important consent is in magical workings and even prayer, I want to make sure I'm understanding the last part of this sentence. What did the UGC mean by "when consent is not an option"? At first, I thought I might understand what that meant, but now I'm actually not so sure. For example, if I have a friend who is in a car accident and is now comatose, I wouldn't be able to ask his consent to give him a blessing. But, I also quickly realized that someone is empowered, like power of attorney or being the next of kin, to make decisions on his behalf. I could always ask that person for permission to give him a blessing. Or, since pretty much anything can be blessed, is this "when consent is not option" referring to something else entirely?
Maybe I'm overthinking it, but I want to make sure my practice is always ethical.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-07-28 09:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-07-29 10:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-07-29 06:05 pm (UTC)A Question
Date: 2023-07-30 07:12 am (UTC)As there will be more ceremonies, is it important/necessary to speak to the same Divine being in all of them?
Thank you!
With deep regards,
Markéta
Re: A Question
Date: 2023-07-30 05:05 pm (UTC)Blessing
Date: 2023-07-30 05:55 pm (UTC)Winifred Hodge Rose
Re: Blessing
Date: 2023-09-07 01:14 am (UTC)I picked this book up on your recommendation and it is excellent. Thanks! I would definitely second your nomination for recommended reading for the Order of Cleric.
Frank