Behold 5 sisters. Their names are Knowledge, God, Life, The Soul, and Freedom. And in the love of these 5 sisters is the key to the Universe.
Foreword: Greetings, my friends,
As I’m sure you know, there are dozens of little books like this one, all promising the keys to the Universe, inestimable power, and personal happiness.
It’s a lot to ask, and for most, far too much to promise.
I make no such promises. I set before you five of the greatest secrets of life as conceived by my religion.
They alone can do nothing for you. It is what you do with them that matters.
The path to knowledge and a happy, effective life does not lie in what someone else does or does not conceive. They can tell you anything, however true or false –it is nothing. So long as it is theirs, it cannot truly affect you. To help your life or understanding in any way, the knowledge must come to dwell within your own heart, for only then are you truly free, and only then can you truly know.
Real knowledge is and must be more than repeating by rote, for the imitation of knowledge is not knowledge and will not give you comfort if prewritten words run dry.
There are many paths to knowledge, and much knowledge to be had, but none of it can do you any good at all if you do not come to believe and understand it for yourself.
Knowledge:
This is the first of the five sisters and the greatest secret I could give you if you listened to me for a thousand years –if you do not truly know them and accept them, all the secrets in the Universe are only so many mental knickknacks.
So many people today say that they can give you true knowledge, as if it were a gift. Put your faith in them, send your money to them, buy their pamphlet, or do what they say, and for so small a price, you shall become wise, by osmosis.
Well, this is stuff and nonsense! No one can lead you down some primrose path to knowledge simply because it is convenient to them to do so. The path to understanding is a path which you must walk yourself, and of you own volition, not a celestial conga line open for the price of a $.30 ticket.
Other people can guide you; advise you; instruct you; aid you. But they can’t believe for you. They can’t know for you. In times of pain, they cannot be a strength within you, however much they may offer from without. And the strength within is the true comfort.
The people who tell you that all you have to do to possess the secrets of the Universe is to read a certain book, or buy a certain pamphlet, or watch a certain television program and send money - they are either simpletons or charlatans, for so much is not gained by so little.
To blindly accept the words of another is not to be loyal, or faithful, or pious – it is merely to be blind.
One must use one’s own good sense and listen to one’s own inner bell when one seeks a path to knowledge, for one is not simply drug along to peace and happiness no matter who promises to drag you. And so many make the promise, and so many shout along the way, that it can only be through discretion and inner guidance that one can possibly tell which paths have anything to offer, and which are merely meaningless diversions.
There is nothing you must know more than that a clever advertisement or a high production value has no relationship to the actual value of wisdom offered. A wise person may well investigate everything he or she encounters. But it is a fool who believes everything that is claimed merely because the claimant swears it is so.
Thus the first sister is not merely knowledge, but the knowledge thereof – the harder of the two, by far, to acquire.
As it is commonly said, there are no atheists in foxholes, (which isn’t, however commonly said, as true as it is arrogant) so too it is one thing to claim knowledge and another thing to know.
Knowledge, as we discuss it here, is the knowledge of existence. Why we exist, how we exist; how we can affect our own existence and the quality of it. The knowledge of the nature of God.
There are many paths to such knowledge, many roads for many travelers. Just as many different roads once led to Rome from the many corners of its empire, so too, many roads lead to God from the many levels and corners of our existence.
A road which serves one well, may make another uncomfortable. A road which seems fresh to one, another may call lonely. A road which one finds familiar another may despise as common. Not all roads are the same length. Some are rocky, some are smooth. Some are narrow, some are wide and winding. All will ultimately lead to God, because God can wait for the last struggling traveler – God has time.
Some people think that God is in a hurry, but why would God hurry? God is an artist, and the best work always takes time.
All these roads which lead to God are equal. They all will deposit you at the same end. But some of them will take a lot longer, and may be significantly harder on your feet.
The second of the five sisters is the knowledge of God.
God:
Sooner or later, you will know God. You will choose your own way to get there, and no one can simply hand it to you. Again, its not so hard to encounter knowledge, but it only matters if you make it your knowledge – for anyone can say they believe, but if you don’t really accept it, it can never help you.
And just as God can wait a million years for you to arrive, so too if it takes you a million years, well, that’s all right. God will understand. God doesn’t hate you. God wants you to find your way. God will wait. God isn’t waiting for any excuse to slap you down –God is above that.
God did not make you to play hockey with. You are a piece of art in progress. God has spent good time starting you, and isn’t going to botch it now just because you may take longer to complete than someone else.
At the same time, while all of this is true, it is also ultimate. There is no time limit; there is no deadline. God has all the time in the world and then some. When you arrive doesn’t matter, only that you ultimately shall arrive.
You must go to God. God will not come to you. And when you do, you do so as a fulfillment of your existence, not God’s. If you never did arrive, (though every by-road ultimately leads to the same place, after however much wandering) God would not be diminished by your absence. It would be your loss.
God is eternal. The actions of men and women cannot diminish God. God does not require your worship or your acknowledgment to exist and flourish. God existed before there was anything else, and will surely not cease to exist because of anything we could do or not do.
As a Pagan, I revere God as my Mother Who created all other existence out of Her own primeval existence, and shall hence forward refer to Her as such – though God is surely as much my Father as my Mother and Her existence cannot very well be limited by the names which we put on Her.
God is not an old man with a long white beard living on a cloud someplace. Nor is God a stately woman with oak leaves in Her hair living a sacred grove. These are our images, for our convenience. They do not matter in any wise at all to God.
God existed when the highest forms of life on Earth were dinosaurs and She existed in no less a stead than now, though dinosaurs built no temples to Her. She was no less a God for the lack of temples and altars, and She loved the dinosaurs no less than us. They lived for a purpose, and their lives had meaning, and they learned the lessons of those lives as well as we do ours.
God existed when the only expression of immortal souls on Earth were microbes and amoebas. They offered Her no praise. They wrote no hymns or sacred books. Yet they lived and died and learned the lessons of their lives as well as we. And the Mother of all things did not whither and die because the tongues of men and women moved not in Her praise.
Her existence is independent and eternal. We do not influence it. We cannot bolster it. We cannot weaken it. God does not exist for us, or because of us, or for our sake. God exists because God exists.
Perhaps in some far off life, you were a dinosaur. Perhaps then you conceived of God as an eternal dinosaur, and the world Her egg. Or perhaps you were an ameba, or a giant fern. Someone had to be.
God does not require your validation to exist. She has no need, as some religious leaders suggest, to go running after worshippers begging for their allegiance and making bargains of what She will trade them for their worship.
It is the worshipper who requires God, not God the worshipper.
Though, it may be a blow to your ego, you are not the cog on which the wheel of the Universe turns. You are not a sale made in a celestial supermarket war between good and evil. Not a soldier in an army to protect God’s throne. The Universe does not hang on the actions of your life. That is an appeal to your vanity. No matter what you do, the Universe will be just fine. It always has been. There is no Divine civil war. There never could be. The Universe is and always has been firmly under God’s control and Her reign is no wise endangered, least of all by us.
Only the quality of your life is affected by whether you seek out God or not. Not even the fate of your Immortal soul is affected, for all roads will ultimately go to God, by however circuitous a path. Only the quality of this one life, and whatever effect it may carry over to the next life, is affected.
But isn’t that enough?
If our first sister is the ability to know, and our second sister is the knowledge of God, our third sister is the knowledge of the nature and pattern of life.
Life:
God created life. Our life, and all life.
She did not mess up the job.
God does not mess up.
The first important point about life is that it is eternal. The body dies, the soul goes on. It is immortal.
This is no revolutionary idea. We have always believed it, even before we were us. The Neanderthals, a kind of being not quite the same as we, buried their dead ceremoniously, with a view towards afterlife, before what we today call “mankind” even existed as a species.
Yet to truly accept the concept of eternal life is such a release! One is freed from so many of the frustrations and sadness of life – not to mention the fears. Like putting a light on in the darkness, it changes everything. For, accepting life as eternal, what fear in this entire world is left to one?
Now almost everyone –particularly anyone likely to be reading this booklet – gives lip service to eternal life. But how many really believe it?
They say it because they are afraid no to believe it, but they do not really believe it either. They have not truly taken the belief into them.
In my family, it is said “send the dead forth in joy”. A funeral is not the occasion of sadness and desolation. For if life is eternal, how can death hold either fear or horror?
Death, like life, perforce unites all living things. Can you imagine the difference it makes not to fear it?
What is it in this entire world which does not die?
Even the mountains rise up and fall down. The seas dry up as other seas begin.
Surely, you will die.
And yet the knowledge of eternal life cannot but invalidate the fear so many feel for death – if like our first sister they can truly accept the idea.
God did not mess up the world. And death is not a pathological condition. It is as it was meant to be. God intends for all living things to die. Death is meant to come – God planned it that way from the first. Death is not an end to life, it is a change, and all things must die. Without death there can be no rebirth. And just as the sun sets each night to rise again each morning, just as the trees turn brown and cast away their leaves to sprout again each spring, so too for us, rebirth invariably follows death.
There is no reason to live at all if one only lives once –for what can one do in one life that God our Mother would possibly have considered important enough to expend so much effort and care in our creation? Very few people (not even counting the millions who have died at birth, in infancy, and childhood) do anything in their lives particularly good or bad – leastwise on a scale to impress God. Most lives are very humble compared to God. A Hitler or Ghandi might have a life meaningful enough to impress God if the purpose of life were really a pass/fail test of the quality of a soul. But what about a woman who spent her life in a nineteenth century cotton mill? A man dead at nineteen in Vietnam? An Amazon Indian who never lived above subsistence level? Are any of these really worthy of eternal damnation for the petty acts of underprivileged lives? Could any of them even have the opportunity to be really evil? And by the same token on such flimsy grounds which of them could be truly said to be worthy of eternal paradise?
One life is not enough to do or be anything for the vast majority of people. If God were going to judge them on it, how many of them would be any use to Her at all? To sit in a heavenly choir all day and so nothing but sing Her praises maybe, but that is a remarkably trivial excuse to have gone to so much trouble for, isn’t it?
But after many lives a soul could be well educated for eternity, and a credit to God, as well as useful to Her, truly deserving of an eternal existence as a single life could hardly make it.
And an end product worth the effort.
The God Who created this Universe was a practical, thoughtful God. Not a vain, self indulgent, dreamer.
As God is our Mother, so life and death are Her right and left hands. Her two faces. An eternal cycle in this world.
To Pagans, the forms of God are never literal. They are to help us understand the complex nature of God.
God is like a diamond, and all Her different forms in all the religions of man are the glittering facets She wears.
Life and death are two of the most important of these facets in our religion. They have always been enshrined and honored by us through many eras and cultures.
In Egypt, they were the lovers Isis (life) and Osiris (death). Also the combatants Horus (life) and Set (death), and Ra (life) and Aapep (death). To the Aztecs, Quetzalcoatl (life) and Texcatlipoca (death). They were Ishtar and Tamuz, Persephone and Hades, Apollo and Diana, forever loving. They are Apollo and Pan, St. George and the Moor, eternally at odds.
We live, we die, we live again. For centuries. Millenia. Now that is an excuse to create a Universe.
And whether shown as lovers or combatants, the dance of life and death is the dance of forever, the dance of the soul, stepping lightly between this world and the Other.
The Soul:
Now for the fourth sister.
They fourth of five secrets to a happy and effective life is the knowledge of the soul.
What I have heretofore said about God, and about the cycle of life and rebirths, has also largely explained the nature of the soul.
That it is eternal, not temporal. That it lives many times in this world, in many forms. And that the purpose of its entering this world is for experience, and not as some sort of punishment.
God desires to build up, not to tear down. For it is easy to tear down. There is no honor, no accomplishment, and no satisfaction in destruction. Creation, not destruction, is the true joy of existence.
Having reiterated this let us look upon our fourth sister who is, not the nature of the soul, but its function in everyday life.
You, as a living thing, and like all living things, have two parts. An oversoul, or soul proper, which can be though of as being like a diamond. And an undersoul, one of the diamond’s many facets.
The oversoul is the total of all your soul’s experiences, in this world and on the Otherside, since it came into existence.
The oversoul includes all of the innate abilities of the soul, as well as all of its acquired knowledge.
All of the so-called paranormal abilities – clairvoyance, psychokinesis, astral travel, and all of the hidden abilities – reflect the powers of the oversoul.
If the oversoul can be said to be the hidden part, then the undersoul is the part which is visible.
The undersoul begins with birth and builds throughout one’s life, but it does not cease with death, it is forever a part of the oversoul. Just as the experiences you had as a child are still a part of you, so too, and in the same way, every life remains with the oversoul.
The closer the undersoul is to the oversoul, the more of the oversoul’s abilities will be available to the individual – this is why the fourth sister is important.
In many Pagan religions, the undersoul and oversoul have been portrayed as lovers -Siva and Sakti, in Hinduism, Apollo and Diana, in Mediterranean and modern Paganism, Adonis and Venus.
There are the same two lovers, Life and Death, Whom I have discussed applied on an individual theme. Life is the undersoul. Death, or eternal life, the oversoul.
Some people are born into this life with these two forces in close contact. This has to do with previous lives they have led and the amount of experience their souls may have had. Sometimes such people are said to have been Born Old. Such was the phrase which was used in my family.
For these people, the veil is thin, and they may manifest great psychic or other abilities from an early age, seemingly uncalled for.
This is not always a blessing, for such abilities can be very powerful, and difficult to handle. Very much like an electric current the powers of the soul can be unpredictable and dangerous, as well as beneficial. And for this reason the images which represent them, such as Loki, the Coyote, Set, or Hecate, are complex with both positive and negative sides.
One Born Old may never need instruction, but seem merely to reach out for what is already there, within them. Even if they seek to ignore or deny their abilities, these remain with them, sometimes quite obstreperously.
They cannot simply be shrugged off.
Other people –most people– are born with a much greater distance between the undersoul and oversoul, and must work to bring them together. They must seek and apply knowledge if they are ever to know the abilities and wisdom which dwells within them.
Most people realize that there is an understanding that they are lacking in their life, but they do not realize that they can find it within themselves. Instead they look for someone else to give it to them, as if another person could learn, understand, and believe for them.
This lack, this barrier between the under and oversoul, is linked to the abilities of the present physical body. Limitations may be placed upon the undersoul by the circumstance of this life, but they are not insurmountable.
The undersoul, you see, acts as a blinder on the oversoul. It shuts out many, and sometimes all, of the oversoul’s abilities and memories. But this barrier is a curtain, not a wall, and can be seen through, or even drawn aside.
Everything which is alive has a soul. And all souls are the same – in essence, if not always in experience.
If a child is born with a mental disability it is not because his or her soul reflects such a disability. It is the undersoul, the personality intended for this life, which is different, the oversoul having the same capabilities as any other.
If a person is in a car accident, and afterward, he or she no longer has the same mental ability as before, or even retains the same memories as before, does it mean that something has changed within the soul? No. It is the outer face, the undersoul, which is affected. The oversoul remains as it has ever been.
And just as the gap between the undersoul and the oversoul can shut out many of one’s true abilities, so too can the gap be bridged and these abilities tapped.
Just because Joe Psychic can do things you cannot does no mean he has powers you do not. It means that Joe Psychic has a narrower gap than you do, because – in this life or another-he has worked to narrow it. Similarly, because sister Jane is a Rhodes scholar while brother John suffers from Downs Syndrome, it is not because there is a difference in their souls, but because there is a difference in their undersouls. Each soul has the same abilities, but expresses itself differently in this world.
There is a reason for this; a reason that we are in this world at all. And what other reason could this be than to learn?
Some say to decide an eternal fate – to choose between good and evil. But how many people in their lives do anything either good enough to deserve eternal reward, or bad enough to deserve eternal punishment? I dare say few.
The average life is not lived on a scale grand enough to edify or offend the public general, much less God – Whose standards one would assume to be higher, what with eternity and all for reference.
To be a marker in a paper war between good and evil, one to be the victor?
Such an existence would be remarkably little cause to have created such a Universe. And it would be a remarkably unimpressive God Who would have to fight a numbers war for dominance in a Universe It created in the first place.
Besides, a God unable to foresee such a battle, unable then to avoid it, and finally, unable to end it quickly, would hardly have been capable of weaving the very complex and lovely web of this world in the first place, the excellence of the latter precluding the ineptness of the former.
No. As I have said before, God is not deposed or embattled. The Universe is exactly where and how it should be. It is just as God meant it to be, and our lives fulfill the purpose for which they were intended-experience.
What better way to lean than by experiencing every situation in every way? Every emotion, good or bad. Every level of existence from ameba, to dinosaur, to man, and beyond.
Now that is and education!
And that is a soul that would be truly pleasing to God. A truly excellent end product, which justifies the creation of the Universe, not as some half-baked whim, but as a thoroughly practical and thoughtful act.
And now at last, we are ready for the fifth sister and her name is Freedom.
Freedom: This sister tells you that you need not be shackled in place, and that if you are, you yourself possess the key.
Her’s is a secret to take to heart. Her’s is the secret of action. If there is anything in you life you do not like, you can change it – try!
If there is anything not in your life that you desire, you can have it – reach!
You hold yourself back! YOU are the master of your own fate, and alone the responsibility is yours alone.
Scary, isn’t it?
If you reach for something, you may not get it. But if you do not reach, then surely you will not get it. It’s your choice, every time –and a choice, to be sure, to be made with good sense and intelligence. But still, your choice.
It is a choice you were created to make, not give away or hang about the neck of a scape-goat.
Taking responsibility in your life is not disobedience to God. God gave you the responsibility in the first place. If God wanted you to be unable to make choices and stand on your own feet, She would hardly need have created you, now would She? Why would God go to the trouble of setting all this up just so She could spend her time matching a hundred billion people’s socks for them?
Making your own mistakes is the point of existing at all – so that you can learn from them.
So you are making your own successes.
God doesn’t need you to build Her sandcastles for Her. Nor does She need to build sandcastles “through you”. God can build Her own sandcastles. Don’t take my word for it – have a look at the Mojave desert, or the Grand Canyon. When you build a sandcastle, it’s there for you to enjoy and take pride in. God doesn’t need the credit for your sandcastles, as some people suggest She does. She gave you the ability so that you could build it to uplift yourself.
When you do something good, you deserve the credit for it – God rejoices over your sandcastle, She isn’t jealous of it.
And when you do something bad, you must take the responsibility for that too. The devil didn’t make you knock over Billy’s sandcastle, you chose to do it. If you want to make it right again, then you must do something as nice as that was mean to make up for it. That is Karma. And until you make up for the bad things you’ve done by doing good things, you’ll just get more and more lost on the road to God.
But God will wait for you.
Freedom is responsibility.
God doesn’t’ want you to be intelligent and creative. She wants you to be worthy and useful. And She can wait for however many lifetimes it takes for you to become that. After all, She’s already waited this long.
If God just wanted a bunch of sheltered, inexperienced servants, She would never have had to create a whole Universe to get them. And if She needed a bunch of sheltered, inexperienced servants, well then She would have floundered at the start when She was on Her own.
God wants variety! Open your eyes and see it about you!
What is the hallmark of Nature if not variety? God loves things that are new and different. She likes bright colors and original ideas.
God doesn’t’ want everyone to be the same. If God wanted homogeny you’d see it in Nature –surprise! It isn’t there.
God doesn’t want to put you in a pigeonhole or a bracket. She doesn’t want you to walk on a straight and narrow path either –She wants you to look to the sides and see the flowers! Look above and see the clouds! Walk in the grass and explore!
This is God’s real will.
She wants you to be free. To be happy. And to succeed. She is a helping hand, not an obstacle, on your path.
There is nothing to hold you back, not even death for death is not real, only a temporary rest on the Otherside between lives.
Only your own fear can hold you back. Fear, or bad planning, self-doubt, and ill will towards others.
So be free, and take advantage of the world that’s been created for you! For your only gaoler is yourself.
So be it. These are the five. The secrets to a happy and successful life. Those who believe them are without fear. For what is there to fear when you know in your heart that life is eternal. That God is nice, and likes you, and wants to see you do well. And that within you awaits the peace and serenity you seek, waiting only for you to look inside, and truly believe what you say you believe.
With that knowledge, truly believed, you can pursue anything, without fear. You can develop the powers within, or go bravely into the world – what could hold you back?
But none of it can help you unless you come to truly believe it, for if you do not truly accept any belief you lay claim to, it will leave you wanting in the lurch.
All this being so, I say “May the blessing be and may you succeed in all you do. Whatever you do, do it with love, and good things shall be yours.”
Thank you, Lady Elizabeth Greenwood