by Rev. Daniel S. Seneker
To all who shall see these presents, greetings. My name is Daniel S. Seneker, and I am currently a Second Degree Priest with the Correllian Nativist Tradition. Through this work I wish to expound upon, rather than alter, the Wisdom found in the “Five Mystic Secrets”. The original work was intended to be a brief introduction to the topics therein broached, if my understanding of it is correct, so I will endeavor to add some additional insights as Goddess inspires.
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In the forward to the “Five Mystic Secrets” is the following:
“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.”
Lady LaVeda added to this that she made no such promises, which was for good reason. The results of reading a work being dependent upon proper understanding, integration, and application of the knowledge therein contained. Lady LaVeda, in essence, conveyed that you must make the knowledge yours by truly understanding it. Making knowledge one’s own can be a daunting task, for it often requires not only ingesting that knowledge, but digesting it and integrating it into one’s being. Such a process can, in most cases, only occur through experience, which is why the Goddess brings many and diverse events into our lives. The need for experience and the integration into our true beings of such knowledge is the reason for the “year-and-a-day” requirement that is imposed upon aspiring Clergy in our Tradition. As to “personal happiness”, this can only occur when one learns to accept “life on life’s terms”. All of modern man’s many innovations cannot erase the foundation upon which this world and Her inhabitants is based: that foundation being, namely, the natural order of things. Modern societies, communities, etc. all function based upon certain natural principles. The foremost among these principles is that of balance. To attain happiness, a person must learn to accept all of life’s events: both the “good” and the “bad” as essential components to what I call “the tapestry of life”. Life’s tapestry exists as a means to facilitate learning, and only through such learning can one expect to rise above the tempest and reach calm, sane, space. As to balance, this is a Universal principle based on the concept of give and take. When a person eats food, for example, she/he is taking. In the same vein, when one is eaten, fed upon, etc. that person is in the mode of giving. This “giving” is the essence of what it means to pray for someone, for what it truly means is that you are acting as prey for that person so that she/he can gain strength, etc. If a person gives continuously without taking, then she/he will quickly run out of things to give. To “take” has gained the attached connotation of “evil” and to “give”, “good”. The answer to personal happiness lies in achieving balance. A common theme in the mythoi of many of the world’s religions is that of the struggle between order (good) and chaos (evil), this struggle being a way of conveying the natural principle of balance. In one myth of Ancient Egypt the champions of order and chaos fight (symbolizing this struggle) and the god Thoth alternately heals whichever of the champions is currently being overwhelmed to ensure that neither side gains victory. Pharaoh had both crook and flail, which is echoed in the Hebrew god’s rod and staff: a rod to discipline and a staff to comfort. Either rod or staff alone can destroy a person. Too much comfort and easy life can spoil a person rotten, while too much discipline can turn a person into a monster. The real Truth, therefore, lies in balance between the two sides. Personal happiness can only come after realizing that one exists as part of a larger tapestry: the Universe, and exists as but a small portion thereof. Once one ceases to struggle and embraces all that life has to offer, having learned that all of it is to her/his benefit whether perceived as “good” or “bad”, then, and only then, can personal happiness be achieved.
“The path to understanding is a path which you must walk yourself…”
No one can walk your journey for you, for by this you would not learn. There are times, as a Wiccan Priest, when someone may ask you to perform some spell work for them, which can at the time seem like the beneficent thing to do. There is, however, an old adage:
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life.”
Such things as doing spellwork for another, thus, amount to giving that person a crutch rather than healing them. At a certain point in a young lion’s life it must learn to hunt for itself. Training in spellwork is, therefore, the real prize, and such training can only be integrated through experience. Power cannot be given by “osmosis”: it must be earned. Knowledge, it is said, is power, but I might add that knowledge is only power when properly integrated. As Lady LaVeda said “you must understand it for yourself”, making the knowledge your own, which is the essence of integration.
“Thus the first sister is not merely knowledge, but the knowledge thereof…”
The “knowledge thereof” is Wisdom, or the ability to put knowledge into practical use.
“The second of the five sisters is the knowledge of God.”
Perhaps the most poignant phrase in all of the document is, “You are a piece of art in progress”. God, you see, is the Master Craftsman, and all of us who are on the journey are in a constant state of refinement. Just as dross is removed from gold as it is refined, so too do outmoded portions of our makeup become “refined out” and discarded when they are no longer of utility. Such parts, however, are useful until the lesson they would teach has been learned, which is another reason why each must walk her/his own path.
“Only the quality of your life is affected by whether you seek out God or not.”
When a person reaches the point in her/his life when she/he chooses to seek out God/dess it is often because she/he needs more from this life than what the merely mundane has to offer: a sense of the Ultimate and a meaning of life. According to Correlianism, the purpose of our lives is to learn so that we can eventually become reunited with God/ dess. The way in which we learn is by the journey and the experiences that life has to offer. The true meaning of our experiences, and the purpose, generally only become evident when a person chooses to seek out God/dess.
“…all roads will ultimately go to God…”
Seeking out God/dess, thus, is a means to secure help in the journey, but the journey must still be traveled by the seeker. The mother lion can teach her cub how to hunt, but she will not hunt for the cub beyond what is necessary in rearing it. You must make the journey your own, no one can travel it for you. The good news is that the Ultimate is at the end of the journey waiting for you to come to Her. God/dess can be reached by every path known, but some paths, namely those that choose to ignore God/dess, are particularly long and painful.
The third of the Five Mystic Secrets is Life. Lady LaVeda wrote that “life is eternal”, which means that the immortality of the soul is secure regardless of our actions. One of the most despicable means to secure followers is to appeal to a person’s fear of death, and even more to threaten the person with eternal torment in “Hell”. Such a person, having been so threatened, would come to God/dess out of fear rather than Love, setting her/him back light years on the journey. Fear is the illusion, but Love is the Ultimate.
“Yet to truly accept the concept of eternal life is such a release!”
I find that the fear of death is paramount among the woes of (most of) mankind, for what has one gained from a lifetime, regardless of actions “good” or “bad”, if she/he becomes “erased” upon death. “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity” is the conclusion reached by Solomon, who is said to have been the wisest man to ever live. Yet all is not vanity, for life is eternal! Every action we perform, every word we utter is stored in what is called the Akashic record. The Akashic record is like a Spiritual supercomputer that remembers all things. The events of one’s life, therefore, are not lost after death, but are remembered in the Akashic record and also by the person’s oversoul. An oversoul consists of the parts of a person that have transcended life in the flesh and live upon a higher plane, assisting the incarnation through the journey.
“One life is not enough to do or be anything for the vast majority of people.”
Death is a natural part of life, but it is not the end. Death is a period of transition between one life and the next in an endless cycle until one becomes reunited with Deity. The cycle of life, death, and rebirth is the significance behind the “infinity” symbol, which is a sideways 8:
The cycle of life, death, and rebirth is also evident in the Wiccan Wheel of the Year, with our 8 Sabbats, which are divided into a light half and a dark half (order and chaos). The journey, thus, consists of a series of lives, each one adding to what was learned in the previous lives in a gradual process of refinement leading, eventually to reunion with Deity.
“God is like a diamond, and all her different forms in all the religions of man are the glittering facets she wears.”
We are all, therefore, a part of the Ultimate, but existing in the material world is existence on a lower plane than that of the Ultimate, for the Goddess chose to descend into matter to reunite with the God. In so doing she separated Herself into the many incarnations now evident in the world with the eventual goal of reuniting all within Herself after having gained the knowledge that can only be learned by physical existence. This is not meant to imply a lack of knowledge on the part of the God/ dess, but rather that God/dess desired to enjoy the journey with us, for she is with us through every trial and tribulation: all working toward the greater good.
The fourth of the five sisters is the Soul. The Soul is basically divided into two parts: the Oversoul, which consists of those parts of us which exist on a higher plane than the temporal, and the Undersoul, which is the current incarnation. The totality of the structure is divided into seven parts:
Physical
Emotional
Mental
Astral
Egoic
Monadic
Divine
The Undersoul consists of parts 1-3, while the Oversoul is parts 4-6 with part 7 being the Ultimate. The physical is pretty much self-explanatory: it is our bodies. The emotional is the world of contrasts: Love, Hate, Patience, Hastiness, etc. The mental consists of logic and rationality. The astral is the plane wherein we create our reality. The Egoic (or Soular) is the part of us that exists as a unique part of Deity, it is what is under construction through our various incarnations. The Monadic consists of 9 parts of the Goddess that she separated out of herself to begin the descent into matter. These 9 parts represent basic personality types. The Divine is the All-in-All: the Ultimate. The Ultimate, thus, exists at the center of all things and branches out into every direction into more and more differentiated forms, which result in the individual incarnations we experience as people. In modern Correllianism, we refer to the Oversoul as the Higher Self and the Undersoul as the Lower Self.
“Life is the undersoul. The oversoul is death, or eternal life.”
Otherwise said, the Oversoul consists of the parts of us that persist from lifetime to lifetime. When an incarnation passes from this life, beyond the veil that separates the carnal from the Spiritual, she/he becomes a part of the Oversoul. In some people the veil of separation is thin, allowing them to manifest the abilities of the Oversoul in the incarnation. Such abilities include clairvoyance, clairaudience, astral travel, etc. People in which the veil is thin are said to have been “born old”, meaning they have lived many lives before and are closer to eventual reunion with Deity. The Undersoul and the Oversoul could be thought of as the contrasting qualities of order and chaos. We, therefore, each have these two qualities present within us and these vie with one another at times to produce reality as we know it much like a blacksmith shapes work between the hammer and the anvil. Living a happy and fulfilled life can be achieved by developing a third quality: that of balance. Otherwise said, the mundane must be balanced with the Spiritual. It is perfectly fine and good to take enjoyment out of mundane things, but one must not become obsessed and thus controlled by the mundane. The reciprocal is also true: a person who constantly has her/his “head in the clouds” is not of much practical use to society. Yet it is this very dichotomy between order and chaos that allows for the Universe to exist at all! These forces are made manifest, on the physical plane, as the subatomic particles protons, electrons, and neutrons of which all things are comprised. Thus, it can be seen, that these forces are good and necessary and a part of a larger Harmony.
“What better way to learn 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 an education!”
The fifth, and final, sister is Freedom. Lady LaVeda wrote that “YOU are master of your own fate” and “you yourself possess the key.” If your life is a mess YOU must take responsibility for that mess and work to set it in order. A life that is a mess is an example of a person that “has their head in the clouds” and is, therefore, of little or no practical use or it is an example of a person that is obsessed with the material, which often takes the form of such things as alcohol and/or drug addiction or placing too much value in material possessions, which can lead to rotting of the soul. All of these things are an example of a life that is out of balance. As I wrote in the beginning of this work, all of mankind’s innovations do not place her/him above the principles upon which this Universe was founded: namely the Harmony between the three concepts of order, chaos, and balance! All three are necessary and good, but balance must be foremost for it is in balance that peace can be found. This cosmic balance is the primary reason and function of karma. Otherwise said, if you perform an action to harm a person and fail to right the wrong by making amends, then karma will bring misfortune your way. Karma is not a Divine flyswatter, but rather a basic principle of the Universe that exists to maintain the balance.
“What is the hallmark of Nature if not variety? God loves things that are new and different. She likes bright colors and original ideas.” LIVE!