The twenty-seventh bead in the blessing cord is the blessing of love. It is the blessing of water in Netzach. In a first run-through of all the words I thought would be the focus of these blogs, I listed this one as “emotion” or “feeling.” Though I think this is still true when we begin to feel the emotions in this sphere, the heart of them all is love. This idea of the heart of emotions being love came from a vision in one of my meditations. In it, I had Aphrodite rise from the sea and grow to be crowned by the stars. She told me that the highest form of emotion was love. She went on to tell me how the power of love was what brought things together and separated them. I asked for more clarification and she told me that love of others draws us together with others and that love of self and experience separated us. She then went on to say that neither was better then the other, just different, and each was a part of our spiritual journey.
This made me think of the alchemical operations of separating and coming back together to create a more purified whole. The processes of alchemy are always about separating to purify and unifying to create something more potent. This is what Nature does at a slower rate, for she is the great alchemist. This thought of how love was both separating and joining astounded me as so intrinsic to the understanding of its force that I had to share it with you.
Aphrodite then reminded me of the comic Promethea and the journey of the characters in the comic to Netzach. The characters go into the waters of Netzach and as they dive down they experience a whole gamut of emotions. The deeper they go the more they experience the knowledge and power of love. Until they come face to face with Aphrodite herself and feel divine love. Aphrodite wanted this to be the focus of this meditation for people to feel the heart of love beneath the waves of consciousness.
I thanked her for her insight and when I returned I laughed about how it would be weeks before I was able to write this blog. Aphrodite apparently wanted to get her request in early!
Meditation of Love
Hold the twenty-seventh bead of your blessing cord. The bead of love, the bead of water in Netzach.
Count yourself down in to a meditative state.
Allow the screen of your mind to expand until it is a sphere around you. Feel the sensation of rising as a green light begins to fill the sphere around you. Resonate the god name of Netzach: Yod-heh-vau-Heh Tza-ba-oth.
The green light surrounds you and becomes a mist. As the green mist begins to fade, you find yourself at the edge of a vast ocean. You can only see so far out into the ocean before there is green mist clouding the horizon. The water is a luminous green, as if it was lit from within by an underwater aurora borealis. You walk up to the edge of the water and, as soon as your feet and toes touch the water, you can feel that this water is different. It is warm like bath water. When you touch it, you feel connected to it and everything, as though this ocean was more than ocean. This is the ocean of consciousness, a symbolic interface to the collective consciousness of all beings. You begin to walk forward deeper into the water. The delicious warmth of the water caresses you. As you get to chest level you feel yourself taken by a gentle current, pulling you out into the ocean. It pulls you under, but you can strangely still breathe normally and easily.
As you float down deeper into the ocean, memories and emotions begin to flood up. You may see them reflected in the waters or in bubbles. Let these feelings flow and release them. Let the current carry you through them. They are your consciousness clearing old emotions so you can embrace what comes next more fully.
Deeper and deeper you go into this illuminated ocean, until you begin to see a brighter light coming closer and closer. This light takes the shape of Aphrodite and, as you draw closer, you can feel the love in the water. It blots out all other feelings. As you get closer, you see that Aphrodite is bigger then you thought. She is a giantess filled with love. As you come closer she may give you a message or just allow you to look into her eyes and feel the enormity of her love for all. You feel your heart opening more then it has before, opening to love, and filling with it.
When you are ready, thank the goddess as the current pulls you back the way you came. As you rise, you notice the feelings you cleansed away don’t return and don’t have any effect on you. You are filled with the love of the Goddess. Finally you break the surface near where you began and can feel the sand beneath your feet. You wall back on to the shore. As your feet leave the ocean, you can feel the separation, but you are full of love and know that you can connect and separate at will.
Green misty light begins to fill the area, obscuring it from view. The green begins to fade as you feel a gentle descent. The screen of your mind begins to return to its normal size.
Count yourself up into waking consciousness.
Ground and center yourself.
Contemplation.
What emotions do you feel when you think about love? There are many kinds of love, each one has conditions to it because we love our selves. How has loving yourself separated you from others? Is this a bad thing? How has your love of others made you lose yourself in Union? Is this a bad thing?
