To Love Is To Know Me

To love is to know me,

my innermost nature,

the truth that I am:

Through this knowledge

my lover enters

at once into my being.

All that he does

is offered before me

in utter surrender:

My grace is upon him,

He finds the eternal,

The palace unchanging,

The Palace of Peace.

- Bhagavad Gita

Prayer to Our Lady

We offer our adoration to Thee,

O Mother of compassion.

Be favorable unto us,

Be gracious unto us.

Be Thou ever beneficent.

May Thou reveal unto us

the innermost of all truths!

Even if our acts and our thoughts

Fail to comply with scriptures

And are contrary to the teaching of truth,

Withhold not Thy grace.

Being favored by Thee,

May we remain true

To the spirit of Love.

A Just-Finishing Candle

A candle is made to become entirely flame.

In that annihilating moment

it has no shadow.

It is nothing but a tongue of light

describing a refuge.

Look at this

just-finishing candle stub

as someone who is finally safe

from virtue and vice,

from both pride

and shame.

-- Rumi

The Repose of Love

The repose of love is a weariness,

its onset a sickness,

its end, death.

For us, however,

death through love is life.

We give thanks to our Beloved

that she has held it out to us.

- Ibn al Faridh

The Prophecy of the True Horn

Into darkness will I fade,

Into a night that Man has made,

But through that gloom shall gleam the Sun

When I am lost, and again am won.

Release! Release! I call to thee

In New Lands across the sea;

Let another, on narrow pathways, come to me.

Furthest and Highest,

Yet not beyond reach.

Choose thou well a path that will teach

How the Sunken is raised

And Emptiness is filled

And a wandering heart

Can finally be stilled.

Seek the Great Stone!

Mark it well with a sign,

That the one who shall follow

Shall see it is mine,

And, seeing, shall ponder

and certainly know

As the Ancients have writ:

"As Above, so Below."

And I shall guard the Source of Greatness:

Waiting by a teardrop

From neither joy nor sorrow born,

In silver bound, beneath the ground --

I am the Spiral Horn.

-- De Historia et Veritate Unicornis

Sources

Barks, Coleman and John Moyn, trans. The Essential Rumi (San Francisco: Harper, 1995)

Eliot, T.S. Selected Poems. (New York: Mariner Books, 1967) "Ash Wednesday."

Farrar, Janet and Stewart. The Witches' Goddess: The Feminine Principle of Divinity (Washington: Phoenix Publishing, 1987).

Hope, Murry. The Ancient Wisdom of the Celts. (London: Thorson's, 1995) pp. 164-165, citing Green, Michael, De Historia et Veritate Unicornis p. 64.

Johnson, Clive, ed. Vedanta: An Anthology of Hindu Scripture, Commentary and Poetry. (New York: Harper & Row, 1971).

Nerval, Gerard de (author) and Geoffrey Wagner (translator). Aurelia and Other Writings. (Exact Change, 2004),

Picknett, Lynn and Clive Prince. The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ (New York: Touchstone, 1997) quoting Florence Farr (p. 203)

Prabhavananda, Swami. Narada's Way of Divine Love: Narada Bakhti Sutras (Madras, India: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1972).

Solovyov, Vladimir (author), Judity Deutsch Kornblatt (author). Divine Sophia: Wisdom Writings of Vladimir Solovyov (Michigan: Cornell University Press, 2008).