The Chapel


The Pahutakawa Tree There is an old Maori legend about the Pahutakawa tree at the northern tip of New Zealand where the Tasman Sea comes together with the Pacific Ocean. On that spot huge rocks form a perfect v-shape that plunges into the water. On top of those rocks grows a great Pahutakawa tree whose roots grasp the rocks all the way down to the sea. The Maoris believe that after death their souls must travel through these roots into the ocean in order to reach their island heaven.	The Celestial Tree Across the primordial sky stretch the great branches of the Celestial Tree. The ancient Egyptians believed the tree's aureole to be the source of stars and that the sun rose up from its core. On either side of its huge knotted trunk dwelt a god and goddess. Thoth, god of art and science, inscribed the Book of the Dead. Safekh, goddess of art, music and learning sang as she strummed her flowing hair. Together they wrote upon each leaf the names, numbers and deeds of each person on earth recognizing their merit and ensuring them everlasting life.	Yggdrasil World Trees appear in many mythologies, the Cabala of the Hebrews and the Saxon Irminsul being two examples. The trees are cosmic maps of the Otherworlds our ancestors recognized. They are also called Trees of Life -all life, not just human. The more familiar "wheel of the year" showing the elements and compass points is a flat diagram of earth. World trees must be thought of in 3-D. The tree is a living cosmic axis with its roots in the Underworld, linking with the trunk on the soil of our Earth and its branches in the air of the Otherworld of spirit. These three levels or planes of existence are found in the Celtic system and are the reason that three was a magical number. Yggdrasil of the Northern Tradition also recognizes these three levels but divides them into nine worlds or fruits of the tree. Nine is also an important magical number. The maypole, the besom and the staff all represent Yggdrasil and proper use of these enables travel between the worlds. <<Continued>>	The Sacred Book of Nature To the eye of the seer every leaf of the tree is a page of the holy book that contains divine revelation, and he is inspired every moment of his life by constantly reading and understanding the holy script of nature. -Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Sufi Message

Voices of the First World
Many people have begun to realize that unless the human race listens to the "voices of the first world," the voices, that is, of those original human cultures that lived in naked and reverent intimacy with nature, it may well die out. These "voices" still speak to us in those tribal cultures that have survived against immense odds into the modern era--in, for example, the Kogi of Columbia, the Aborigines of Australia, the Hopi and Navaho of North America, the Eskimo of the Arc-tic Circle, and the nomads of the Himalayas. What do these voices have to tell us? They tell us of our essential "inter-being" with nature; they tell us of the mystery of the world we inhabit, which they know to be everywhere sustained and saturated with divine presence; they tell us of the necessity of profound respect for everything that lives and happens; they tell us of a peace that is the birthright of all those who honor the Great Web of Life; they tell us of the urgency of humility before the majesty of the universe; they tell us again and again of the depth of our responsibility as human beings to be guardians of the natural world.
- Andrew Harvey, The Essential Mystics

Hieroglyphs of Nature
The magic we crave and our attraction to the supernatural are nature in their essence. This is because the tree, the plant, the landscape, and the serpentine river zigzagging downhill on its way to the ocean are all golden hieroglyphs capable of bringing a deep understanding to those willing to pay attention. Indeed, to the indigenous it seems that the tree is the essence of consciousness.
- Malidoma Patrice Some, The Healing Wisdom of Africa

Evolutionary Biologist

“Nothing is totally impossible. Miracles are just events that are extremely improbable… In the vastness of astronomical space and geologic time, that which seems impossible in ‘middle world’ might turn out to be inevitable.”

-Richard Dawkins, speaking at TED

Ionic Platonist Prayer

“May I be no man’s enemy and may I be the friend of that which is eternal and abides. May I never quarrel with those nearest to me; and if I do, may I be reconciled quickly. May I never devise evil against any man; if any devise evil against me, may I escape uninjured and without the need of hurting him. May I love, seek, and attain only that which is good. May I wish for all men’s happiness and envy none. May I never rejoice in the ill-fortune of one who has wronged me… When I have done or said what is wrong, may I never wait for the rebuke of others, but always rebuke myself until I make amends… May I win no victory that harms either me or my opponent… May I reconcile friends who are wroth with one another. May I, to the extent of my power, give all needful help to my friends and to all who are in want. May I never fail a friend in danger. When visiting those in grief may I be able by gentle and healing words to soften their pain… May I respect myself… May I always keep tame that which rages within me… May I accustom myself to be gentle, and never be angry with people because of circumstances. May I never discuss who is wicked and what wicked things he has done, but know good men and follow in their footsteps.”

-Eusebius, a late Ionic Platonist, (cited by Stobaeus) quoted in Five Stages of Greek Religion, page 188

Sacredness of Life

"By means of all created things, without exception, the divine assails us, penetrates us, and molds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, whereas in fact we live steeped in its burning layers . . . This palpable world, which we are used to treating with the boredom and disrespect with which we habitually regard places with no sacred association, is a holy place."

-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, *The Divine Milieu*

Spirit

"Let the body think of the spirit as streaming, pouring, rushing and shining into it from all sides."

-Plotinus

God in Idols and All Things

God Himself, the father and fashioner of all that is, older than the Sun or the Sky, greater than time and eternity and all the flow of being, is unnamable by any lawgiver, unutterable by any voice, not to be seen by any eye. But we, being unable to apprehend His essence, use the help of sounds and names and pictures, of beaten gold and ivory and silver, of plants and rivers, mountain-peaks and torrents, yearning for the knowledge of Him, and in our weakness naming all that is beautiful in this world after His nature- just as happens to earthly lovers. To them the most beautiful sight will be the actual lineaments of the beloved, but for remembrance’ sake they will be happy in the sight of a lyre, a little spear, a chair, perhaps, or a running-ground, or anything in the world that wakens the memory of the beloved. Why should I further examine and pass judgment about Images? Let me know what is divine, let them know: that is all. If a Greek is stirred to the remembrance of God by the art of Phidias, an Egyptian by paying worship to an animal, another man by a river, another by fire- I have no anger for their divergences; only let them know, let them love, let them remember.

Maximus of Tyre, The Defense of Idols

Trippy Vision

I returned to my starting point. I was standing in front of an ugly door, but as I looked closer, it was not plain or green but it was a Buddhist temple, a Hindu column, a Moroccan ceiling, gold spires being formed and re-formed as if I were watching the hand of a designer at work. I was designing red spirals which unfurled until they formed a rose window or mandala with edges of radium. As each design was born and arranged itself, it dissolved and the next one followed without confusion. Each form, each line emitted its equivalent in music in perfect accord with the design. An undulating line emitted a sustaining undulating melody, a circle had corresponding musical notations, diaphanous colors, diaphanous sounds, a pyramid created a pyramid of ascending notes, and vanishing ones left only an echo.

-Anais Nin

The Last Pagan Prayer

"I pray to all the gods and goddesses to guide my reason in the speculation which lies before me, and having kindled in me the pure light of truth, to direct my mind upward to the very knowledge of the things which are, and to open the doors of my soul to receive the divine guidance of Plato, and, having directed my knowledge into the very brightness of being, to withdraw me from the various forms of opinion, from the apparent wisdom, from the wandering about things which do not exist, by that purest intellectual exercise about the things which do exist, whereby alone the eye of the soul is nourished and brightened, as Socrates says in the Phaedrus; and that the Noetic Gods will give to me the perfect reason, and the Noeric Gods the power which leads up to this, and that the rulers of the Universe above the heaven will impart to me an energy unshaken by material notions and emancipated from them, and those to whom the world is given as their dominion a winged life, and the angelic choirs a true manifestation of divine things, and the good daemons the fulness of the inspiration which comes from the Gods, and the heroes a grand, and venerable, and lofty fixedness of mind, and the whole divine race together a perfect preparation for sharing in Plato's most mystical and far-seeing speculations, which he declares to us himself in the Parmenides, with the profundity befitting such topics, but which he (i.e. his master Syrianus) completed by his most pure and luminous apprehensions, who did most truly share the Platonic feast, and was the medium for transmitting the divine truth, the guide in our speculations, and the hierophant of these divine words; who, as I think, came down as a type of philosophy, to do good to the souls that are here, in place of idols, sacrifices, and the whole mystery of purification, a leader of salvation to the men who are now and who shall be hereafter. And may the whole band of those who are above us be propitious; and may the whole force which they supply be at hand, kindling before us that light which, proceeding from them, may guide us to them."

-Proclus, Neo-Platonic philosopher at the Library of Alexandria