The Esoteric Meaning of the Twelve Days of Christmas

The esoteric meaning of the Twelve Days of Christmas has been known since ancient times - actually, since before Christmas itself, since, prior to the birth of Christ, the Winter Solstice and the rebirth of the Sun were celebrated as sacred mysteries.

Everyone knows the song, "The Twelve Days of Christmas". It's sung and illustrated everywhere you turn during this season.

But why twelve days? What is the importance of this period?

As I've tried to show in previous posts, this length of time has great significance. The twelve days were always a time of feasting, celebration, joy and goodwill. Christmas, and the festivals that preceded it in ancient Egypt, Babylon, Rome, Greece and all over the Northern Hemisphere, was never just one day. 

Only in modern times has mankind forgotten the real meaning of the winter festivals, turning them into orgies of consumerism. Few now remember what it is they are supposed to be celebrating.

Esoteric studies in astrology and astronomy showed ancient philosophers - which, of course, included first and foremost the Sarmoung Brotherhood - that this time of year was exceptionally sacred.

From the farthest reaches of the Universe, energies sent to Earth now are of the very finest, most spiritual nature. They are sent to all forms of organic life, and convey the ideal pattern that the year's unfoldment is meant to bring. They proceed from the heavenly realms closest to the Most Holy Sun Absolute, and reach us in their undiluted form only at this time.

Seeds now dormant in the earth receive the pattern of their growth. This genetic pattern is inherent within the material from which the seed is made, yes, but the vivifying energies of the season that follows the Winter Solstice are essential for the seed to germinate.

Likewise, the animal kingdom also receives the energies needed for continued growth and for new births to occur.

In the case of Man, the three-brained being, these energies are intended to reach our Essence at this time. They will allow Essence to understand the pattern of its growth during the coming year. They will nourish the new birth that takes place at Christmas and allow it to unfold in the intended direction. Essence may now receive these vivifying, nourishing, creative energies deep within, but only those who are conscious will be able to use them for their own transformation.

Indeed, for many three-brained beings their Essence has become surrounded by a thick "crust" of Personality, and even False Personality. In these cases, the finer energies of the Twelve Days fall on stony ground and are lost.

For those of us trying to awaken, however, then as well as attempting to live in an atmosphere of joy and to keep our emotional balance amid the conflicting energies of Earth that surround us now, our spiritual growth depends on our consciously assimilating and cherishing these sacred energies. Without them, no growth takes place. 

If we have prepared well during Advent, the new birth in Essence that takes place at Christmas now receives everything necessary for its own growth and wellbeing, so that our whole planetary presence will be able to attain a higher level of understanding during the coming year. What's more, our Essence will be strengthened so that in time it may direct our actions, using Personality to achieve its aims, rather than the other way round. 

This is our Aim in the Work. 

The concentrated period of Twelve Days lasts until January 6th, the time when traditionally the most intense celebrations of Christmas come to an end. It's considered unlucky to take down one's Christmas tree and decorations before that date, at least in England, and this tradition embodies the ancient knowledge of the importance of this time.

For many, indeed, the holy energies of Christmas continue to resound, though in an attenuated form, right through to February 2nd, Candle Mass.

The meaning of these dates is that, on January 6th, the increased time and strength of the Sun's rays= is visible in the heavens. What we have celebrated in our earthly world is now apparent above, and we can relax somewhat in our efforts to encourage the Sun to be reborn!

But the sacred energies I've described will continue to be transmitted, even though the planet Earth now moves out of direct alignment with those furthest reaches of the galaxy, right through until the beginning of February. Then, the increased light of the Sun becomes more and more obvious, and the emphasis in the natural world is towards physical growth and reproduction.

In ancient lore, the Earth is seen as completing one breath during the cycle of the year. We can see this in certain Work diagrams. The Earth begins to breath in, as it were, at Midsummer, and the breath is retained throughout the period of the Winter solstice. Then, during the Twelve Days of Christmas, the gentle out-breathing begins, until the complete exhalation takes place at the next Midsummer.

During each solstitial period, approximately four days, the Sun literally appears to stand still; this is the meaning of "solstice". At this point, the Earth is "holding its breath", leaving a space of time at the end of the inbreath, when the breath is retained, and again at the completion of the outbreath.

Such teaching is found throughout esoteric studies, and can be traced in the Egyptian, Babylonian and Greek Mysteries. It was well-known to the Sarmoung Brotherhood, of whom I firmly believe the Three Wise Men were members.

It was lost to the world for many centuries, though kept alive in underground traditions. It resurfaced for a time during the Neo-Platonic revival at the Renaissance, and again in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which was a period when much real knowledge was again given to the world; this, of course, is supremely exemplified by the Work.

Knowledge, we are told, becomes more available when our planet is passing through critical periods, times of extreme stress and danger. It is given out freely so that those who can respond, and contribute to the evolution of life itself, may play their part.

All our teachers in the Work, from Gurdjieff and Ouspensky on through Dr Nicholl, Mrs Pogson, Marian and others both known and unknown to the public, have transmitted such knowledge to us.

We honour their memory and continue the great tradition when we practice what they taught. And right now, celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas and responding to the sacred energies most present now, is our Work task.

A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Christmas Eve, and the sun is descending behind a bank of cloud over the Fens. The village shops are about to close. A few cars chase along the B roads, hoping to get home before dark; lights are coming on in all the farmhouses and cottages dotting the brown, ploughed fields.

Christmas Eve, and once again the world awaits a miraculous birth.

Christmas Eve, and the King's College Choir is getting ready to begin the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols that has been part of the English Christmas for decades.

For me, the sounds of the first carol, invariably "Once In Royals David's City", mingled with the scent of baking mince pies, heralds the real start of Christmas.

And for the last 25 years, the time I've been sober, Christmas has been a very happy, joyful, family festival, every moment of which I can recall with perfect clarity on Boxing Day morning!

Each Christmas in the Work brings with it the hope of a new birth for us, personally, as well as for the wide world and for everyone else on the Fourth Way. That new birth will, we all devoutly wish, bring new growth in Essence, new possibilities for the following year, that more and more we will live according to our deepest nature, our Real I, that particle of Conscious Humanity that longs to direct our lives according to the Will of the Absolute.

As we who are in recovery as well as in the Work know so well, it's all too simple to let the wish to Work become submerged in everyday worries and concerns.

Now, at this blessed, sacred festival of the Holy Birth, let us all draw sustenance from the memory of past Christmases in the Work, past Christmases in sobriety. Let us withdraw a while from the busy, fussy Personality I's, in ourselves and in others, and remember why we are really here on Earth, this planet that is very far down in the Ray of Creation.

We are here to transform, and to be transformed. To ascend the ladder that connects our earthly selves with the heavenly realm, to become a cell in the body of Conscious Humanity.

The Northern Hemisphere of this little planet now tilts towards the furthest reaches of outer space, beyond the edge of our galaxy, and brings us the chance to receive the highest levels of spiritual energy from those unimaginably far away stars.

Let us receive them in our Essence, and let Essence bring forth a new birth of understanding.

I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

A Short(ish) Post on Advent and Second Force

Advent can be a potent time for Second Force to manifest.

It's bound to happen this way. If we have a strong First Force, then a strong Second Force will rise to oppose it. We must look to the Third Force, the Reconciling Force, to resolve the conflicts and problems that are all too common at Advent.

What is our First Force at this time? Obviously, for those of us in the Work it will be preparing to celebrate Christmas, both in the inner and outer worlds. For people in life, without any religious faith, Christmas preparations will consist merely of material goods. Buying presents, stocking up with food and drink, decorating the home, going to Christmas parties - all these are part of life's Christmas rituals.

And they surely apply to Work students, too. We need to show on an outer level what Christmas means to us spiritually; we want to share our celebrations with others, and to experience that much-needed New Birth in Essence.

But for those in the Work, the inner preparations are much more important. For Catholic and Orthodox Christians, Advent is a time of extra spiritual reading, extra prayers, extra efforts of fasting and abstinence, and so it must be for us.

 For Christians, the season of Advent is quite distinct from that of Christmas itself. Advent is that quiet season of expectation, anticipation, and hope. Catholic churches will cover their statues and artwork with purple drapery, as in Lent, to symbolize the fact that Christ has not yet been born in the liturgical year.

On Christmas Eve, for the Midnight Mass, the churches will be decorated, and will display the traditional Crib for the arrival of the Christ Child. The Child will be symbolically laid in the manger during the Midnight Mass ceremony, and then Christmas will truly begin.

In the UK, which retains so many Catholic traditions, we celebrate the entire season of Christmas through to January 6, Twelfth Night. Only then do we take down our Christmas tree and other decorations. Superstition has it that it's bad luck to remove them before that date - and in many Catholic countries the end of the season is marked by Twelfth Night parties and gifts, just as in Shakespeare's time.

When I lived in the US, I noticed with dismay that many Christmas trees were thrown out on December 26th - our Boxing Day. There they lay, forlorn and abandoned, as if Christmas had consisted in only that one day. For many Americans, and increasingly for many Britons too, that has become true. Christmas is one day - then on to the orgy of spending on Boxing Day! There is no time to digest the new impressions that should be falling on Essence during Christmas.

In the Work, while we too must make material preparations to celebrate Christmas, they take second place to our spiritual life. We may increase the length of our meditations, add extra readings from Scripture and Work books, and make special efforts to remember ourselves as we go about the bustle of everyday life.

No matter how far ahead we have tried to prepare for Christmas, however, there is always Second Force during Advent. We meet it in the outer world, in the form of travelling delays, crowded shops, fatigue, lack of time. It's important not to become identified with any of that. Instead, we find we must make extra efforts to remember ourselves in the midst of all this apparent chaos.

In our inner world, however, no matter how difficult our outer circumstances may be, Advent can always be a fruitful season. Gurdjieff said that when the outer world presented him with "roses, roses", then in his inner world there were thorns. And vice versa! He asked his students which they thought he preferred.

 He was trying to show them that the struggle with Second Force can serve to increase our wish to be, to keep the aim of experiencing a New Birth in Essence. Second Force is difficult, even painful at times, but it is necessary, otherwise we grow slack and complacent.

Whether we meet it in the right way, of course, depends on keeping the Third Force of the Work in our consciousness. Christmas, for us, is not simply a time for parties and celebrations. It is that, of course, and quite rightly, though in Work groups not too much celebration takes place before Christmas Eve; but inwardly, the joy we hope for at Christmas is the result of constant efforts to remember ourselves in the preceding weeks, creating the higher hydrogens that allow our Higher Emotional Centre to speak to us.

It is in that Centre, symbolized by the Virgin Mary, that Christ will be born in us. That Centre is pure of any negative emotion, which is why the Blessed Virgin is such a powerful symbol for us. She is Immaculate, as is our Higher Emotional Centre. Nothing dirty, nothing spoiled by life, touches her.

For people without any spiritual beliefs, Advent and Christmas can become a very negative time. There is bound to be a good deal of stress, because of the importance of the celebration to come and all the expectation we place upon it. And conversations can run negative because of this - people can begin talking about how they hate Christmas, how the stress is making them tired and ill, and so on.

In our Work groups, Marian always gave us the task of turning these inevitable life conversations around so that a potential negative energy was transformed and the situation redeemed by our goodwill. No matter what other Work tasks we had, this was always extremely important.

Without the Third Force of the Work or of Christian Love, life takes over during Advent and Christmas and makes them barren of hope. Presents are never up to expectations. Parties end in fights and disputes. Hangovers, quarrels, family separations - all can bring about more entropy and more chaos in life.

But with the Work as our Third Force, we can transcend the latent negativity and any stress we are experiencing, and use the extra effort to create a beautiful and fulfilling Christmas birth.

May the Christ Child be born in you this Christmas!

Hanukkah,Advent and the Cosmic Cult of the Sun

Just as Christians celebrate Advent and the birth of the Divine Light in human form at Christmas, so Jews celebrate Hanukkah during this season. As I write this post, we're in the second day of the eight-day Hanukkah festival, which children particularly enjoy because they get to eat doughnuts, chocolate coins and pancakes, and receive gifts each evening at the lighting of candles.

Hanukkah is the celebration of the rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem in 164 BC. The temple had been defiled by the Greeks, reflecting the way Greek philosophical ideas were also starting to undermine the religious faith of many Jews. The Greeks believed in the power of logical thinking above all else, and used this belief system to try to weaken the spiritual faith of the Jews.

The Maccabeans defied the authorities and cleansed the Temple. Their redemption of this holiest of holy places necessitated lighting the precious space with an oil lamp, or Menorah, but when they had retaken the Temple they found that there was enough oil for only one day. The ritual had to continue for eight days, but although there seemed little hope of that happening, the Rabbis went ahead and lit the first lamp, showing their faith in God.

And then, the story goes, God performed a great miracle. The oil, which had been kept pure and undefiled during the times of spiritual darkness, miraculously burned for eight days. The entire Temple was cleansed and dedicated once again to the worship of God, Yahweh, the great Spirit beyond all human comprehension and logic.

Without Hanukkah, we would have no Christmas. If the Jewish religion had died out, there would have been no Jewish Messiah, no Jesus Christ. It would have been as C.S. Lewis describes the fallen land of Narnia, "Always winter but never Christmas".

Today, the festival of Hanukkah is celebrated in Jewish homes around the world with the lighting of candles, increasing by one every night, until finally all eight candles in the special Hannukiah, or Hanukkah menorah, are burning brightly.

The ceremony is accompanied by prayers and songs, and special foods are eaten - specifically, doughnuts and potato pancakes, or latkes. These foods are round and golden, and remind us of the round foods eaten at Christmas, to encourage the Sun to return. Gifts of gold foil-wrapped coins are exchanged, small symbolic Suns.

These facts, together with the emphasis on the importance of light in the Hanukkah story, hint that although there is a religious story, as well as a piece of verifiable Jewish history, attached to the festival, its origins must lie much further back in time, reflecting the universality of solar worship and the importance of the Sun in the Northern Hemisphere.

If the Sun dies, then life is extinguished. If there is no inner light, spiritual life perishes. The festival of Hanukkah reminds us of the supreme importance of the external and internal Sun in our lives. And this links us once more to Advent and Christmas, and to our primal need for light in both forms.

We also celebrate Advent with carols and candle lighting. In this celebration that anticipates the coming of the great Light of Christ, however, we also find echoes of the very ancient solar religious cults that our own ancestors followed.

Many Christians are horrified at this suggestion - that various elements combine in our modern religious celebrations - but to me, this only underlines the deep, archetypal forces of spirituality linked to the cosmos which play a paramount part in the world's great religions.

When you reflect on the importance of the harvest and of the crucial need of the Sun to bring about new growth, then the threat of the "death" of the Sun, which happens every year at the time of the Winter Solstice, must have terrified our ancestors.

They would therefore come together for huge seasonal festivals at sacred sites, would feast and sing and offer prayers to the gods, and generally - and horrifyingly, to us - accompany their rites with sacrifice. If there had been a good harvest and if the weather had been fine, the gods might be appeased by an animal sacrifice, but if the harvest had failed, especially if the weather had been particularly bad, then the elders of the tribe might conclude that a human sacrifice was necessary.

It would have been considered a great honour to be sacrificed for the good of the tribe. Such sacrifices took place throughout Europe, including the British Isles, and we may trace their rituals through the perfectly preserved "bog people" that have been discovered at archaeological sites. That they were ritual sacrifices may be seen from the fact that three types of killing were used: usually stabbing, poisoning and garotting. The power of the number three was considered very great in many ancestral religions, so a sacrifice had to be carried out in triplicate.

Perhaps the king or chief of the tribe, if his powers were waning along with that of the Sun, would accept the need to be sacrificed. Sometimes an important man or woman would volunteer to become the sacrifice. But there was a universal belief that human sacrifice was the only way of appeasing the gods when their wrath was evident, or when the powers of the Sun God himself seemed to be diminishing. The heavenly gods must be fed by animal or human blood.

Only with the coming of Christianity did these dreadful practices cease.

In some of our current Christmas carols, we may trace the outlines of a ritual long abandoned, but still half alive in the memory of the tribes.

The most obvious example is one of my own favourite carols, "The Holly and the Ivy".

First, a bit of background: Druids, the priests and priestesses of the Celtic religion, held many beliefs about trees. Each tree had an important role to play in the spiritual world as well in the physical realm, and a whole language was based on the meaning of each tree. The name "Druid" can be derived from the Celtic word for a wise person, "wid" or "wit", and the word for oak, "der" or"derry". So the Druids were the wise ones who gathered by the oaks, and performed rituals for the benefit of the people.

"The Holly and the Ivy" clearly reflects this practice, together with the shamanistic beliefs of the worshippers of Cernunnos, or Herne, the mighty hunter. Animal foods were vital in the winter, and the god of hunting must be invoked to help continue the tribal food supply. The deer must be made to run into the tribal hunting grounds, and you can hear this in the words of the hymn.

I'm going to italicize the "ancient" words, which I believe represent the ancestral rituals that preceded the coming of Christianity, and you can see what I mean here:-

The holly and the ivy,
When they are both full grown,
Of all the trees that are in the wood,
The holly bears the crown.

The holly bears a berry 
As red as any blood,
As Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
To do poor sinners good.

O the rising of the Sun
And the running of the deer -
The playing of the merry organ,
Sweet singing in the choir.

As a child, I wondered what on earth the deer had to do with Christmas! And the answer, of course, is nothing! But the deer had everything to do with the old religion, and the seeking of the tree spirits and the god of hunting to sustain the tribe. Shamans would even don antlers and act out the ritual of hunting, as is still carried on today in the Horn Dance of Abbots Bromley, in England.

The first verse is clearly the start of a very old song about the tree spirits, and then comes the mention of blood, symbolizing sacrifice. Very shrewdly, the early Christians replaced the second half of the second verse, and of all subsequent verses, with the Christian doctrine, as in,  "As Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ ...".  There is no room to quote the entire carol here, but if you can get hold of the words, you'll see what has happened.

They also replaced the second half of the chorus, which is repeated throughout the song, with "The playing of the merry organ ..."; again, this banished the old religion and brought the song firmly into line with Christian practice.

Nevertheless, the sudden irruption of the "running of the deer" into a Christmas carol is in its way as shocking as the quick switch in Monty Python's famous Lumberjack Song! You know, the song which starts out with the very butch, macho lumberjack chopping down trees, and soon brings in his enjoyment of putting on women's clothing, etc., etc. Both songs are a kind of subversion of the original meaning.

If you're lighting Hanukkah candles during this week, or lighting candles on an Advent wreath each Sunday, please spare a thought for our poor ancestors, ignorant of the true nature of God and of spirituality, but aware that above all we humans need Light.

Our bodies and souls depend on it. And we must prepared to make great sacrifices in order to increase the Light in the world.

Advent: Waiting for a New Birth in Essence

At this time of year - the end of November and the start of December - the Earth is in a very quiet, dormant state.

When we look outside, we see that leaves have fallen, the trees now rear their skeletal arms to the sky, while the grass has stopped growing and few plants keep their greenery. To the unobservant eye, everything seems dead or dying.

Yet this is not quite true. When we look closely, we see tiny buds forming on shrubs, waiting for the days to lengthen again and the sun to reappear. There is the promise, but not yet the fact, of new birth.

The conscious men and women who planned the major religious festivals for the Northern Hemisphere chose this time to celebrate the birth of the Saviour, the Christ, Light of the World, leader of Conscious Humanity. Since prehistoric times, the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, has been the point when human beings held feasts and rituals to urge the dying Sun to return.

Excavations at Stonehenge, Avebury and elsewhere, have - as I mentioned in the post on November - shown that huge gatherings took place during the seasonal rituals. Enormous heaps of animal bones and broken pottery testify to the great "barbecues" of prehistory, accompanied, no doubt, by ritual drumming, chanting and shamanic rites, as still take place in Siberia and the tundra.

When the time to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ was selected, the winter solstice was the obvious choice to inaugurate a new feast. It would take place at the same time as the previous religious rituals, because it was the natural, cosmic season for new birth, new hope, to be celebrated. And so we have Advent, the season of waiting, leading up to Christmas, on December 25th; the date on which the length of time the Sun shines can be almost imperceptibly seen to increase.

All the festive accoutrements of the West testify to the solar past of these rituals. We eat mince pies and Christmas puddings and Christmas cake - all traditionally round, to imitate the shape of the Sun and show how much we hope for its increase. We set fire to the Christmas pudding, to show the Sun what we wish it to do, as though reminding the great star of its chief duty. We even hide gold or silver coins inside it, miniature Suns, to be discovered and held up to the Sun by the children of the family.

We hold family feasts, as men and women have done from time immemorial, to strengthen our spirits and to welcome and "encourage" the newly reborn Sun, the Christ, to illuminate the Earth.

Of course, I'm describing the customs and traditions that I grew up with in England, but all over the Northern Hemisphere there are similar actions and symbols that relate to the same idea. I have no idea how residents of the Southern Hemisphere celebrate Christmas! Their yearly cycle is the opposite of ours, and the major religions all developed in the Northern Hemisphere, giving a different cosmic flavour to our celebrations.

In the Work, we look to the period of Advent and Christmas as the time when we prepare to celebrate a new birth in Essence.

This description puzzled me when I first came into the Work. How could Essence have anything resembling a birth? Surely it was there, fixed, for all time?

I began to understand the mystery after some time in the Work, when I had actually experienced some growth in Essence. Of course, this is not limited to the Advent and Christmas period, just as Christ's coming into the world may be experienced at any time during the year, when we remember all that Conscious Humanity has done for mankind.

At Advent, however, the Earth is in a propitious place for self-remembering and for receiving higher influences.

If you think of the way the Earth orbits the Sun, and how it is tilted away from the Sun during our Winter season, we can see that this means a corresponding shift towards the orbits of other planets in the solar system, and beyond that, to the galaxy itself.

And, as the yearly cycle brings us to the time of Sagittarius and Capricorn, the Earth is positioned in such a way that it is actually closer to different parts of the galaxy.  In the period from the beginning of Advent to the Feast of Candlemass, the orbit of our solar system crosses the orbit of the Dog Star, Sirius. Since our Sun orbits Sirius, it can be said that in some ways Sirius is the "Sun" of our own Sun. Influences from that very high realm reach us directly now, as we are closer to Sirius itself.

It's interesting to remind ourselves that Gurdjieff sometimes spoke of the need "to bury the dog deeper", as he was writing "All and Everything", and that some scholars think he may have been referring to the influence of Sirius here.

In any case, these very special cosmic influences, which include the unimaginably fine substances from which Essence itself is made, come to us most of all at the season of Advent and Christmas, right through to the beginning of February and the celebration of Candlemass.

During this period the cosmic position of the Earth is most propitious to working on ourselves. Efforts made at this time will be helped by the galaxy itself, making it the most suitable and likely time for a new birth in Essence to take place.

What does this mean for us?

We know that for Essence to grow, to experience new birth, it must be fed by Personality. And Personality feeds Essence when we work against our habitual little I's, our negative emotions, our worries, our habitual likes and dislikes.

Advent, therefore, is the traditional time for sacrifices to be made. Many Orthodox Christians eat a vegan diet in these four weeks, giving up their attachment to meat, fish and dairy foods. In the West, Catholics generally undertake some sort of voluntary fast or abstinence, and, just as in Lent, make extra donations to charity with the money saved, thus symbolically feeding Essence (love, or caritas) by the sacrifice of Personality (our habits).

As all this takes place, Essence begins to grow, experiencing an expansion of its capabilities. No longer limited by these petty I's, Essence may express itself more freely in our lives. The Essence within, often pictured in art as a small child or a baby, begins to grow and mature. Eventually, it will be able to direct our lives for us, so that we live according to our Essence needs, not according to what our Personality wants, or even - heaven forbid - according to the dictatorship of False Personality.

What we wish is for Essence is to be able to express itself in us, until, after many long years of work, our lives are shaped by the pattern that Essence knows is right for us. And this will be to live according to our Fate. To live according to the will of Real I, which is reached through Essence, and is the truly sacred place where we meet with the God of our understanding.

Essence in us is so often neglected, its needs and desires relegated to the background as we become caught up in the passions of the Personality and False Personality.  At the time of Advent we begin to understand that it can grow only from what is truly humble within us, not from the puffed-up False Personality or the Know-it-all Personality.

It's no coincidence that the Feast of St. John the Baptist takes place at the exact opposite part of the yearly cycle from that of Christmas, on June 24th, Midsummer Day. In the Bible, St. John symbolizes the full potential of the human Personality. Of him, Jesus says that he is the greatest of all the children of men, but of himself, John - recognizing the limitations of Personality - says only that "He (Christ, Essence) must increase, while I must decrease". No clearer example could be given of the relationship of Personality to Essence. There are many very useful I's in Personality, but even the greatest of these I's must subordinate itself to the rulership of Essence.

This truth is pictured in the True Myth of Christmas, where the Cosmic Christ, the Logos of God, comes to us not through the pomp of a royal palace, but in the lowly, neglected, overlooked stable. And this most royal of all births takes place at midnight, in darkness, unheralded by mankind, amongst the lowliest of people.

 Kings visit Him, to be sure, for they must acknowledge their place in the cosmos as servants of the Most High, just as even the highest, most developed I's in Personality must give way to the rule of Essence.

But it is the humble creatures, Mary and Joseph, the animals and the shepherds, who are the first to hear the angelic voices and to bow to Essence.

At Advent, we move more deeply within and concentrate our Work on helping Essence to grow. This is the real meaning of the season, and the entire Universe moves to help us when we do so.