Nativity
Hail to the light of the glorious morning!
Hail to the first gentle rays of the dawn!
Hail to the star that has guided us onward!
The Nativity season is perhaps the most powerful natural festival of the year. Even the most profane societies seem drawn as if by a sort of magnetism into a massive celebration of - they know not what.
This festival has almost always been connected with the birth of the Divine Child from the supreme virgin Goddess. So it was in ancient Egypt and the Middle East. So it was in pre-Roman Britain, and in the common Celtic religion which covered the whole of north-west Europe.
The Nativity period, then, manifests a primordial mystery of religion, which, until recently, lay buried in the ancient past, and yet which has never died, but bursts fresh upon the world each year in a tide of joy and excitement.
But what is it? Why has it such power? The truth is simple. That God Herself has come to us - not in Her glory, but has cast Herself down to be born as we were born, not in some remote past, but in the eternal present and to suffer as we will never suffer.
That God in the highest has brought Herself forth as a little Child, that She may be with us in the lower spheres of being and may lead us again to our true spiritual home.
We who have turned from Her, [...] suddenly see Her again, come not in anger, but ready to give Her life that we may be led back to the perfection we have lost. Neither sorrowing nor reproachful, but calmly smiling amid our rejoicing sisters, the Geniae of Heaven.
This knowledge it is (for in the depths of her unconscious no soul has ever lost it even for an instant) that pierces the heart with joy, and fills all but the most worldly heart also with a strange and sweetly melancholy longing.
She is with us. She has come among us and within us. She will never leave us, whatever happens; and as soon as we accept Her, she will lead us back to our lost home. That is the reason for the joy of this season. That and no other.
The Inner Meaning
Once we have learned the secret of Nativity, and that secret has begun to be truly accepted by us and so to flood and permeate our inner being; the Nativity Experience - which we have always had in one form or another - takes on a far deeper significance. The knowledge of its ancient and eternal meaning now possessed by our surface consciousness vibrates in harmony with the soul-knowledge deep within us which has always held the Truth.
A sort of reaction takes place between the Truth permeating down from the surface of the mind, and that same Truth, now released and activated, surging up from the depths, which can be a truly transforming experience.
This is true of all religious Mysteries, of course, but Nativity, even more than Eastre in a certain sense, has a crucial position. For Nativity is the beginning of everything. It is the Act by which God brings Herself back to us after we have become utterly cut off from Her. Without Nativity there could be no spiritual aspiration at all for the fallen soul. She would be totally and irrevocably cut off from the Light.
If ever, even for a moment, we allow ourselves to experience our inner knowledge of the fact that we have deliberately cut ourselves off from the light of Eternity and cast ourselves into the cold and darkness [for the sake of knowledge]; when for a moment that fact seizes us, the heart stands still and the blood runs cold. And there is always a part of us, deeply buried, which does know this..
The star of Nativity, which shines forth upon the darkest hours of the year is an eternal symbol of the Divine compassion and courage which stands resolutely between our souls and the outer darkness.
We no longer look to human inventions, but rest with relief and joy in the unfailing strength of our Mother. Let us end, therefore, with Her words, spoken before every Rite in every Madrian home and group during the Advent of Nativity:
"Rejoice, poor wanderers of the earth and exiles from the house of your Mother, for to you shall come a guide and a deliverer." Sister Alethea.
Source : The Coming Age, Unknown issue (to be updated)