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WHEN reading this morning the work of Eliphas Levi on "Magic," I came upon the following sentence:--"In the Zohar, one of the chief books of the holy Kabbala, it is written, 'The Magic Serpent, son of the Sun, was about to devour the World, when the Sea, daughter of the Moon, put her foot on his head and crushed him.'"
At this instant a writing was presented to my spiritual
eyes, in which I read the following explanation of the Deluge of Noah:--
"'The Flood came,' says the Scripture, 'and swept away the wicked.' The Flood, therefore, is not the wickedness itself, as some have supposed, but that which destroyed wickedness, and bore the righteous unharmed on its bosom. The Flood is Aphrodite the Sea-queen and Maria the Star of the Sea; or, as the name signifies, Sea-salt, or Bitterness of the Deep. 'The Woman shall crush the head of the Serpent.' Maria, the God-woman, or feminine presentation of the supreme power and goodness, delivers mankind and destroys evildoers. She is the Water of Regeneration; the Sea through which, as Paul the Mystic says, we must all pass. She was in the beginning, because she is God, and the Spirit of God, or Divine Cloud, dwelt upon her. 'We all passed through the Sea and through the Cloud.' Jesus the Saviour went down into her, and received in her His chrism, while at the same time the Divine Hermes overshadowed Him.
"Maria the Sea is the water mystically appointed for the washing away of Sin. Therefore as the Flood she purifies the world, and bears on her immaculate breast the Ark of the Divine Covenant which contains the Elect." 1
And when I had read this, it was impressed on my mind as a prophecy having special significance for the present age.
19:1 Paris, September 28, 1878. Referred to in Life of Anna Kingsford, pp. 279-280.
20:1 Like Eve, Maria and the Sea are mystical synonyms for the Soul, which is called "Bitterness of the Deep" because--consisting of the universal substance--she attains her perfection through painful experience. Concerning Hermes, see Part II, Nos. XII and XIII (6). E. M.