THE GREAT STAR GODDESS

Published in the Occult Press Review

Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

November 1923

(pages 5-7)

[By Frater Achad (Charles Stansfeld Jones)]

The subject of our present essay is the Great Star Goddess, or in other words Nuit, Lady of the Starry Heavens. The idea of such a being may appear strange to some of my readers, but I wish to point out how fundamentally important such a conception is, particularly in this New Æon.

As has already been explained in The Egyptian Revival, the beginning of mythology with the Mother and Boy, with the Son preceding the Father, is of most ancient origin. It represents the old Sut-Typhonian tradition and is still to be found in the Mother and Child of Rome at this present day. Not until a later period did the early Egyptians account for creation by means of the Father, and then only in a limited manner. The true Father of All, being absolutely invisible and spiritual, remained unrecognized, while the sun, originally recognized as the Son of the Mother, became looked upon as the Father and Creator and worshipped as such under the name of Ra or Atum-Ra.

The Great Mother was in the most early times symbolized as the Hippopotamus, but soon afterwards—still in the pre-dynastic period—She was recognized as the Mother of Heaven, the Great Star Goddess. The idea of the sun as Her Son was much nearer the truth than the later conception when he became looked upon as the Father of the Universe, for this is both unscientific and incorrect and represents a much narrowed view of the matter.

We must realize that the sun is the Father of this planet; it is only when we stop there that we become restricted in our ideas. Yet upon this basis practically all the present forms of religion have been built.

While people held to this conception as a basis of religion, the tendency was for them to neglect the consideration of even grander and wider ideas, but since the sun and his attendant Solar System is one of the most readily understandable Symbols of God, it is not to be wondered at that the Symbol should have gradually taken the place of the Reality in the hearts and minds of men, or, to put it another way, that they should have failed to grasp the Reality when such a splendid Symbol was ever present in nature.

Although this Solar Symbolism is the basis of so many religions it has also, in course of time, tended to become concealed under less natural symbols, and this, in most instances represents a further degeneration. For true religion must have a natural as well as a spiritual basis combined with a human one; and the human element must proclaim and show forth in life and work, the truths of both Spirit and nature.

In the case of Jesus, for instance, we find a Great Master who was able to make every detail of his life symbolical of the Solar processes, even to the extent of being crucified in the same way that the sun is “crucified” upon the cross of the Heavens. Thus, too, the death and resurrection of the sun, in the day and in the year was typified in the death and resurrection of this Master so as to show mankind by example the truth of the doctrine of the Microcosm and Macrocosm, and that “That which is above is like unto that which is below.”

So our own lives should conform to nature’s processes. Every man and every woman is like a mirror or reflector of the Great Universe. Each contains, at least potentially, the possibility of becoming a perfect image of the All. Otherwise it would be impossible for any man to say “I and my Father are one” and it would be but a foolish admonition: “Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” We accept such statements because they are in the Bible, but do we always realize that we are expected to carry them out? We shall not be able to attain to perfection until we have become like unto our Father in Heaven, our “Thought World” must conform with the Divine Ideas in the Universe around us.

But we shall not be able to accomplish this while our conceptions of the Universe are distorted in any way; we must learn to deal with the Universe as it is, not only as it appears.

At the time of the founding of the Christian religion, and of many earlier ones based on similar ideas, science had not advanced as far as it has today. In those days people, even the most educated, believed the sun moved around the earth, so that when he disappeared at night it became a matter of faith and hope that he would reappear again the following morning. People realized how tremendously important the sun’s influence was to the children of earth, how in truth he is the giver of life to this planet, as well as the dispenser of Light and Love among men.

Thus the earlier peoples made sacrifices to the sun. They knew that in human beings the “youth” was very virile, they realized how as old age approached the life forces declined. They thought this too might apply to the sun, that perhaps someday he might fail to rise in the morning, so they sacrificed human life to the sun in order to regenerate and strengthen him. Sacrifice of some kind became a religious duty, and this gradually took the form of self-sacrifice until we find the great Osirian formula “This is my body which I destroy in order that it may be renewed,” taking the prime place in religion as part of the great mystery of the ever renewed life force of the sun which has its counterpart in the body of man himself.

Thus in the Christian religion we have the Holy Communion or Eucharist wherein it is believed the Body and Blood of God may be communicated to man for his upliftment.

It may well be, when the Inner Mysteries are fully understood, that a race of beings will arise who are capable of renewing their physical bodies and of greatly lengthening life on this planet. In the distant past there was a tradition of very long-lived people, and there may be some foundation for this belief and a possibility of re-discovering the secret. In fact it may never have been entirely lost and our failure to understand it may be on account of our lack of understanding of natural processes as symbolized in the Macrocosmic Sphere. We cannot expect to live the Universal Life unless we first learn to conform to universal processes.

When Copernicus introduced the theory that the earth revolved on its own axis and rotated around the sun, he met with the opposition which is the portion of all forerunners of truth. Galileo, who supported his theory was subjected to the Inquisition. Yet today their ideas are accepted as facts without question. But we can readily understand that those who knew the basis of their religion in Solar Symbolism must have fought hard to prevent such a conception being given to the people.

Since then people have gradually realized that the testimony of the senses is insufficient, that is to say all things are not what they seem. Thus some have looked upon the Universe and Matter as an illusion, going to the opposite extreme. The Idealists of which Bishop Berkeley is a great example have brought forth such teachings as Christian Science, which some think neither Christian nor Scientific. Yet they have a part of the truth though they are too narrow to see it fully.

Religion has not kept pace with science in all respects. The old Sut-Typhonian tradition of the Mother and Child, the Great Star Goddess and her Son, the sun, was in many ways more scientific and correct than the later ideas of the sun as God the Father.

Compared with the thought content of the mind of “the man in the street”, such conceptions as those of the Solar system and the possibility of Solar Consciousness are very great and wonderful. The majority of people are so busy thinking of themselves and their own small affairs that they are unable to enter into the life of their city, still less of their country, and much less of the life of the planet in its relation to the sun and other planets in the Solar system. To obtain a view-point equivalent to that of the sun; to look at things from his point of view, would indeed seem the goal of life to most people; but even this is but partial and while we are content to stop at that possibility we cannot hope for the most perfect illumination. The flower of the past race have succeeded in this attainment in many instances, but little mention has been made of a goal beyond. Humanity was not ripe for such a teaching, and it remained for this New Æon to herald it.

Jesus Christ lived the Solar Life, but he said “No man cometh unto the Father but by me” and he meant that he was but the half-way station between man and the Secret Father. People have been content to stop at the Son or sun, without desire to go on to the Father, the Spiritual Sun behind the sun.

The light from our sun, who seems so important to us, takes but eight minutes to reach our earth. The Light from even the nearest of the other stars takes a great deal longer than this, and in some instances 1000 years or more is required for their light travelling at the rate of 186,000 miles a second to reach us on this tiny planet.

This will give us a glimpse of the extent of the Great Star Universe, the Body of our True Mother the Star Goddess, Nuit. Our sun is but one of the smallest of Her children, how could he be the father of the whole Universe?

It is only since the incoming of this New Æon that the Adepts have clearly formulated this idea in regard to religion and have discovered the lost Father. It is now possible to return to the pre-dynastic doctrine of the Great Mother, for the problem has been solved and a perfectly scientific conception become possible.

We realize that the Mother is Infinitely Great, Who then is the Father? THE INFINTELY SMALL! The Invisible Centre of All, who is everywhere Present since the Circumference of the Universe is Infinitely Great. Who then is the Son? THE WHOLE MANIFESTED UNIVERSE in TIME and SPACE. The CHILD of Two Infinites. We call the Father Hadit, and He is the “Flame that burns in every heart of man and in the core of every star.” We call the Mother Nuit, for She is Matter in the deepest metaphysical sense. We call the Son Ra-Hoor-Khuit, the Lord of the Æon.

We cannot grasp the Infinites, they are both invisible to our understanding. If we seek the Hidden Self—the Father within us—He escapes us and all we are able to perceive is the light of the Son, our Starry Nature. If we seek the Infinitely Great, our minds fall back and all we can comprehend is but a glimpse of the Star Universe. The Stars are Children of Light, our Brothers and Sisters. Beyond and above is the Great Mother—the Universal Substance. Yet She is everywhere present, everything in Time and Space is made from the substance of Her Body, acted upon by the Invisible Spirit—the Father of All. And we are each one of us their representatives; we, the Crowned Children of the New Æon. Each is an unique unit in the great Body of Ra-Hoor-Khuit, the Crowned and Conquering Lord.

And so, as we come to understand the Universe we begin to comprehend the Son and through Him the Father who is the very inmost essential Self of our being. We cannot see that Self for we ARE manifestations of IT. For Hadit tells us “I am Life and the giver of Life; therefore is the knowledge of me the knowledge of death.” We shall never know death for we are the Children of Life, Light, Love and Liberty. But we may know and look up to our Great and Glorious Mother whose message to the children of earth is this “I give unimaginable joys on earth; certainty, not faith, while in life, upon death; peace unutterable, rest, ecstacy; nor do I demand aught in sacrifice.”

Is this not good news, children of earth? Arise and claim your inheritance as children of the Invisible Father and of the Mother of Heaven, the Great Star Goddess!