Man (men and women) incarnates (is born) in a body on earth. Once he passes beyond an entirely natural life, at one with the animal kingdom, a deep yearning may arise, to pass beyond the boundaries of earthly life, and return from whence he came. This happens, even if the memory of that Edenic place is vague. When such an awakening occurs, a flame is ignited within a woman or a man, that can never be extinguished. The things of this world don't fully satisfy any more. The path of return is the only path that provides real peace.

Tales of heaven, sacred gardens, angelic realms, the courts of Jove, the Grail, each speak of a state of being far removed from time and space; beyond a world of scarcity, pain and death. It is natural that the chance to 'ascend' from down here to up there, appeals to many who hear of that possibility, whether within a religious context or without. Mighty Norse warriors would happily die on the field of battle to obtain Valhalla, even as a Buddhist priest might set himself alight to free his country and achieve Nirvana.

The questions arise: what ascends and how does the ascent take place?

In this article, the first of these will be considered.

God neither ascends not descends, being omnipresent. There can be no thing that is not of God and in some way contains the Divine. As suggested in Part 1, the apparent descent of Spirit is like a death, a crucifixion or dismemberment, in which Spirit is sacrificed in order that Cosmic Form may have being and reality.

The descent of the Divine is thus only analogical and the ascent will similarly be symbolic rather than actual. What is being described here is not something that happens within time and space, but is a transcendental reality above time and space and condition. This mystery of the relationship of the Divine to the Creation, is often given expression through myth and within the great religious stories. To call these mysteries 'stories' is to recognise they are not literally true, but through their imagery they convey a far greater truth that goes far beyond the material world. The Christian story can be seen in this way, as being a powerful universal truth. Egyptian or Greek or Indian stories could equally be chosen but may not be so familiar.

The key events in the life of the Master Jesus may be summarised in this way:

1. Birth in a cave or stall
   
   
2. Baptism
   
   
3. Testing in the desert
   
   
4. Teaching and entry to Jerusalem
   
   
5. Crucifixion
   
   
6. Resurrection
   
   
7. Ascension
   

There are many other parts to the story but to understand the meaning of ascension, these ones are the most important. They are also found in different ways in other universal narratives about saviours. Each of the stages above could be the subject of much study and discourse but in the context of ascension, the first three are more to do with the descent of the Spirit and the final three, including the crucifixion, to do with the ascent.

The birth marks the entry of spirit into matter (the cave). Baptism is the awakening, the realisation of spiritual purpose. This is followed by the testing by the 'devil' namely the various possibilities and fruits and limitations, of a purely earthly life. Buddha, seated under the Bodhi tree has a similar test before his enlightenment and period of teaching.

The teaching is a major purpose of the Saviour or Master and is delivered within time and space for that time period, and for those people. The more universal aspects of the Teaching are revealed in the birth, life, death and resurrection, and these are so fundamental that no subsequent church councils could play with and distort that narrative.

The story of the crucifixion also could be explored at great length. It echoes the stories of Osiris and Dionysius, in the sense they are also dismembered gods. Just as the seed 'dies', in order to be reborn as the new plant, so the saviour must be dismembered that the spirit (within man) might be renewed. This is part of the return, because without this sacrifice, mankind would be held in the bondage of ignorance and would have no way out of the coffin of time and space and incarnation.

On death, the body of Jesus is laid in (returned to) a cave. At the third day the resurrection occurs but those close to Jesus do not recognise him. Stories in the gospels show how he is frequently unknown at first and can appear and disappear at will. His body is not quite the same as the body prior to crucifixion.

After a further period of teaching, the disciples (only) can see the ascension into heaven. This indicates the fully spiritual nature of the ascension event, that only those initiated are able to see. Prior to the crucifixion, the disciples fall asleep, they have not developed the spiritual capacity to see the things of the Divine Realm at that point.

The ascent in this and other religious narratives is the ascent of the God-Man, the Son of God, the Divine within Man. It is the way of return for all mankind and the path each individual will surely follow.

What ascends? Is it a bodily ascent, an ascent of the mind or an ascent of the soul? Each of these deserve consideration. In the first article on this subject the value of the Hermetic teaching of the Triple Nature of Man was explored. Man has three distinct principles, one of Body, one of Soul and one of Spirit. In this view, the mind of man is not presented as a separate principle; it is sometimes described as the 'companion of the Soul'.

A body is a vehicle that enables the individual soul to be in contact with the world (wherever and whatever that world may be). Without such a vehicle, the soul will be centred everywhere and anchored nowhere. This would make the achieving of consciousness of the world nigh on impossible, because all knowledge would impinge on the soul simultaneously.

It is said that 'bodies are subject to corruption'. A physical body, within the realm of limitation cannot be immutable, and it is evident that it will wax but to wane. The length of the life of any body may be variable but eventually a body needs to fail so that the soul can be freed to extend its experiences elsewhere.

Does this mean that the body does not ascend? The answer is complex. The very utilisation of the matter that constitutes a body (believed now to change entirely, molecule by molecule over seven years) gives dignity to that matter commensurate with the dignity of the individual dwelling within that material shell. In that sense, the matter itself is raised through a spritualisation.

The description above, of the universal template offered by the story of the Master Jesus, indicates two higher bodies. One, a 'resurrection body' or body of light, came and went at will and proved sufficiently different to Jesus' physical body from a few days earlier, that he was not recognised. The other, is the body in which Jesus ascends.

The celestial body The literal truth of the narrative of the resurrection, is for the individual to decide, but the philosophical truth is that all men and women have a higher body, that is not subject to the laws of earth in the same way as the physical body. It is suggested that this body does three things.
It is the creative source of the perfection, of the physical time and space body; it sustains the physical body throughout its sojourn on earth; and also it receives the fruit of all the acts undertaken by the soul whilst in the body. In this final aspect it could be called the body-of-truth, and is described as luminous.

This luminous body may be considered to potentially have access to what are known as the natural heavens. The doctrine of 'heaven' in its various forms, across different traditions and teachings, indicates a place far 'above' this world, with all that is good and true and beautiful, present to the consciousness and enjoyed. The soul, through this body, goes to a place it has prepared for itself, for it will ascend according to the degree it is awakened and the degree it is virtuous. In this sense, it is indeed true that the body ascends. But it is not the body actually of the earth but a more subtle vehicle. The ascent of the earthly body will be considered below.

The natural heavens although perpetual in nature are not Eternal as such and there is still a separation from God. In Eden, Adam and Eve are not God, and the return to the Edenic realms is not to become God. Yet, in the story of Jesus given above, there is a final ascension described, into the very heavens, to sit at god's right hand. This relates to what has been called the Glory Body, the Shining Self, and this is the final ascension where the Soul is spiritualised and operates through a vehicle, if such a word can be used in this context, within the Eternal Realms.

Perhaps the most obvious ascension is one in consciousness. As the mind and soul unfold more and more understanding of the holy universe in which they find themselves, a consciousness grows that has been called Cosmic. As the mind turns inwards in order to know itself and the soul, so there may be a growth in wisdom that is described as Microcosmic consciousness or real self-knowledge. The journey of the mind is from the particular to the universal. Gradually, through experience and reflection, the potentiality of the mind is unfolded so that universal truths become more attractive and understood.

The mind is said, rightly, to touch that of which it thinks. When it can encompass the higher and higher aspects of reality, so it becomes in touch with them, ascending to them. No limit is set on this ascent. The highest aspect of the mind is described as nous in the Ancient Greek system of thought. This is at one with the Mind of God. to reach nous is to be in touch with God consciously and fully.

Will our beautiful Gaia ascend? What of our solar system, galaxy and beyond?

It is enough to recognise that the Soul, as a principle, is set higher than any material world. The acts of mankind, of necessity, must affect the realm in which he dwells, for he is a ruling and regulating principle. As minds expand and deepen in understanding and as souls unfold their latent powers, so must the environment they find themselves in respond in kind. All of this, as with everything else, is under the kind and watchful eye of Providence. It cannot but be anything except for the greatest good of all.

It is the purpose of Mankind to enable the return of the Cosmic Creation back to its Source. On its own the Cosmos will ever tend outwards to fuller and further expression. But through the minds of men and women, gathering it into their consciousness, the Cosmos is returned from whence it came with a greater beauty and perfection. Such is the nature and destiny of Man.

What does ascension mean? Since before the millennium the new spirituality has spoken of a coming time, often relating to the Mayan Calendar, when humanity or part of humanity would ascend.


If indeed there is ascension, and if it has been foreseen over hundreds if not thousands of years, then the ancient wisdom will also have a part to play in explaining what will or may happen, as well as the emerging understanding as we move further into 2012.


The Christian story, which contains profound echoes of other earlier traditions, provides clues as does the understanding of the Ancient Egyptians, the Greeks and their academies and mystery schools.

Questions like this require an ontological map. One of the most profound maps of Reality is the Hermetic (named after the wily Messenger of the Gods, Hermes, and also the remarkable teacher known as Thrice Greatest Hermes or Thoth). Most people are aware of the teaching "As Above, so Below," but not all could differentiate between what is above and what is below, and that can lead to confusion and misunderstanding. A less well known Hermetic Truth is the Division of Reality into three quite distinct aspects. These are The Divine, The Cosmic and The Human, or God, Cosmos and Man. When 'Man' is used in this context it refers to the individual Principle of Humanity embracing both men and women.

The Divine neither ascends not descends in essence. It just IS. For God can be described as Infinite Being; as the Source and End of All; as The ONE; and the UNITY beyond unity. This Supreme Perfection (for the Divine can be nought else) moves no-where for He/She is everywhere.

But stories about the Divine represent the descent as a death. Osiris, the Egyptian Deity is slain by his brother. Krishna is crucified, as of course is Jesus. Adonis, in the Sumerian religion, is slain and resurrected. In these stories or myths, a profound truth is presented, that the Eternal Spirit 'dies' that the world may live.

God does not descend, but 'sends his beloved son' who must die to be within the limitations of time and space. Through the symbolism of these great religious myths, part of the mystery of the entry of the Eternal into the Temporal is shown. God in time and space must be divided, for both time and space can be measured and God is beyond all measure. From our perspective in time and space it is as though the Divine has died.

What of the Cosmos? Has the Cosmos descended? Some teach that the world we dwell in is a fallen world brought down by original sin. Some teach that the world is fallen, brought down by industrial waste. Yet in its natural state, the Universe operates with a perfection that can be barely imagined, but is evident in the beauty of the rose, the subtlety of a sunset and the magnificence of galaxies. Nature always and everywhere operates perfectly. It perfectly reflects the interventions of humanity when these influence it, as they surely do.

The very word 'Cosmos' springs from the Greek, meaning harmonious order. The Greeks believed the visible Cosmos, took its perfection from the Idea of the Cosmos in the mind of God. Where mankind dwells, is in the outworking of that perfect Idea.

The Cosmos has only descended in the sense that it is being gradually revealed across all time and throughout all space. It is for ever (and a day) reflecting the utter perfection of the Divine Archetype of which it is the outermost expression. In the Hermetic System it is sometimes described as the Macrocosm. It is the vastness of all the orders from the highest to the lowest and embraces all that is not purely Divine and is not purely Man. The apparent 'fall' of the Cosmos is only in the lack of understanding and wise stewardship by mankind as a whole. It will always be the infallible mirror revealing to mankind the actions taken by mankind. The beauty to be found in all aspects of the natural world, when seen from a broad enough perspective, speaks of her Divine origins and final destiny.

Has man fallen? Man has to descend if men and women are to incarnate or become involved in bodies. Without a body, man cannot experience the Cosmic Home and would remain for ever ignorant - even if that ignorance proved blissful - of the Macrocosm. The nature of the fall or descent of Man cannot be understood without a grasp of his and her threefold nature.

Man is Spirit, for he embraces a spark of Divinity, which is never lost, no matter how far he travels from his source.

Man is Body, for without a principle of Body, man could not experience the realm in which he finds himself. The Body draws from the part of the Cosmos in which man dwells. So one Principle comes from God and one utilises the Cosmos.

Between these two Principles lies the Soul. She enables Man to become all he and she may be. She is unique, for no two souls are identical and yet she enables everyone to find a right relationship with all else, for even as the Body is in the image of God, so the Soul carries the likeness of God. If this was not so, individual men and women could never return to their Source; to return to their origin, that origin must dwell within them as a potential. It is the Soul that is the principle of that potentiality.

So the question now might be, has the Soul fallen? The wonderful myth of Persephone, taking the flowers from the Plain of Enna and eating the pomegranate seeds, shows how the Soul is captured by Hades (becoming incarnate in this realm of shadow and illusion) but returns to her true Mother Demeter, for half the time. In other words, the Soul dwells both within and beyond time and space. The more deeply she enters into the realm of matter, the more she tends to forget her true homeland. The acts of an individual soul, through an individual body, produce disharmony or a higher harmony within the perfection of the Cosmic Home. Great disharmony (evil acts) require that the soul understands what it has done. A higher harmony, graces the natural beauty of the Cosmos with a transcendent perfection, even as a gardener may, with wisdom and quiet labour, produce a beauty that goes beyond that of a wild moor or desolate mountain.

Thus the state of man arises from the acts of his or her own soul, and no soul need 'fall', though many do.

Has the Body fallen? This is a much more subtle question that may at first appear. Wherever the Soul is active, it needs a principle of body, it needs a vehicle. this will apply from the manifestation in the basest of all worlds to the expression of the highest bliss and greatest being, when the Soul, as is sometimes said, journeys within God. Then, most assuredly, the Soul will be clothed in glory: a glory body.

The Spirit cannot really descend, but does so analogically and from above this looks like death, from below it is the sacrifice of the saviour. The Cosmos rests ever perfect in God's Mind's Eye and also is spread forth in the manifested realms, infinite in extent and uncountable in number; it is always perfect in expression but may contain within it the potential of higher and higher perfection, as those that dwell upon and within it, namely mankind, learn to act with a wisdom worthy of their celestial home. The Soul must descend if she is to awaken from blissful ignorance. Her acts determine if she dances lightly within the worlds she finds herself, or if she falls to be bound in iron chains until she finds her way of return.

The alarming screech of a peacock plunges Tatania into a puzzle that is perhaps hers: a previous life in revolutionary France. Veryan Williams Wynn has crafted a great tale – part mystery, part thriller, part ghost story, as two cousins struggle to make sense of hauntings, apparitions, sudden chills and the fate of ancestors who need to be freed from the spirit trap.
Along with Tatania and her stalwart cousin Marcus, we follow clues leading to a mysterious French Chateau, snowbound labyrinths and the bony depths of the catacombs deep beneath the streets of Paris. The Spirit Trap is a great yarn and a page turner for teenagers.The alarming screech of a peacock plunges Tatania into a puzzle that is perhaps hers: a previous life in revolutionary France. Veryan Williams Wynn has crafted a great tale – part mystery, part thriller, part ghost story, as two cousins struggle to make sense of hauntings, apparitions, sudden chills and the fate of ancestors who need to be freed from the spirit trap.
Along with Tatania and her stalwart cousin Marcus, we follow clues leading to a mysterious French Chateau, snowbound labyrinths and the bony depths of the catacombs deep beneath the streets of Paris. The Spirit Trap is a great yarn and a page turner for teenagers.

Devilish Indeed!

A serial killer is quietly collecting victims, along with their pension books and memorabilia. He loves the terror in the eyes of his dying victims, old ladies and nubile female students. He reaches climax as they expire. His crimes have gone undetected and his profession gives him access to new possibilities. The arrival of Detective Inspector Ally McCready in the Swansea police force starts a cat and mouse chase. When the killer, Norris, realises she is onto him, it becomes a cat and rat game for him.
But Ally has a past of her own, returning to work after a long sexual harassment case, which she won, creating tensions for the male staff she works alongside. She also has a defunct marriage and errant son. 
Noble handles this mix deftly, providing a police procedural that is well informed and genuinely gripping. The nasty bits are written with verve, avoiding gratuitous horror while allowing a lot of suspense to build. The Deeds of the Devil is a thriller because the characters are believable and (mostly) likeable. With McCready we have a character who can return for further cases - as indeed she should, pitting her forensic psychology skills against the more plodding facts and evidence driven traditionalists.