From https://deanic.com/2017/04/05/the-meaning-of-the-day-of-lustrationkala-from-a-janite-perspective/
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Madria Erin, in her most engaging and thoughtful post on Kala, asked the question, what is the full thealogy of the day, if the Daughter is not dead?
Our Scriptures teach that the Holy Daughter suffered a torturous Descent down through the Realms before Her Death. These scriptural verses, taken altogether, are seemingly inspired by the Mythos of Inanna, Persephone, and the Passion of the Christ. Our scriptures continue with the story of how after Her death, the Holy One went to the deepest, darkest realms in order to carry the Light of the Mother to every corner of existence. (Jesus was said to have descended into hell, after death, to free the souls waiting there. Persephone, of course, spent six months in Hades.) On the Holy Feast of Eastre, as evidenced in the Mythos of Persephone, the Daughter was rescued and resurrected by Her Mother.
And though, I cannot speak for Filianists, I would assume that Kala is spent in the remembrance of the Passion and Death of the Holy Daughter. (We must keep in mind that there were many dead and resurrecting pre-Christian gods. This timeless myth extends thousands of years B. C.)
There is an hauntingly beautiful Filianic lament in honor of Mari-Anna that is often chanted on this day. {Anna is the name of the Holy Daughter in Filianic Tradition. Though it is said to come from the name Hannah, it also stems from Inanna and Jana as in Di-Jana or Di-Anna. Jana is correctly pronounced Yanna}.
We must also be mindful of the fact that the name, Demeter, translates to God the Mother and Persephone (per seph o nay), before Her Descent into Hades, was called Kore (Kor-eh or Kora), which means the Maid/Maiden or Daughter. It was after the Divine Kora returned to the Earth from the Underworld that She was called Persephone. (1)
I and both of my bishops, believe that the Eleusinian Mysteries, served in honor of Demeter/Persephone, were truly based upon the Divine Mother and Daughter.
These ancient rites were liturgical in nature and had a Divine Communion Rite. The Eluesinian Mysteries were based on a Mother-God and Daughter-God Who were separated, the Daughter descended into hell, and Her resurrection was celebrated, annually. During this Rite, devotees truly believed that they were receiving the Body of Demeter,’ God the Mother’, through the Communion Bread.
The deeply meaningful and mystical Communion Rite of the original Madrian liturgy, part of which is to be found in our scriptures, was inspired by the Myth of Persephone. Though Persephone did not die, per se; rather, She was trapped in the underworld where Her Mother shattered the gates of Hades in order to rescue Her; this Mythos may be considered symbolic of a death and resurrection. Certainly, the resurrection of all life on Earth followed the return of Persephone from the under-world.
In Sophian Tradition, there is also a Communion Rite that may be based upon Proverbs.
Just as Filianists and other Matriarchal scholars have managed to discover the pre-Patriarchal roots of many Goddess-based myths, in Janite Tradition, the Cosmic Drama of the Holy Daughter is founded upon the pre-Patriarchal Mythos of Sophia/Shekinah (see http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/GnosticGoddessFallenSophia.pdf).
The Divine Sophia is pan-religious, meaning, She is not confined to one religion. She is actually pre-Christian and all may worship Her. She is the Image/Form that Janites use for the Holy Daughter. Included in the Mythos of Shekinah/Sophia is the Divine Shattering.
Sources for this Myth of the Divine Shattering of Shekinah/Sophia may be found within certain traditions of Kabbalism, in Gnostic schools of thought and in ancient Syrian Gnostic Christianity.
In Kabbalism, this Descent is not considered to be the punishment it is in Gnostic Christianity; it is a voluntary act on the part of Lower (meaning immanent—so Daughter-Form) Shekinah out of Her love for the Children of Israel and this Descent through lower-vibrational density resulted in the Shattering of Her Soul.
Unlike Kabbalism, the Christian Sophian Tradition, unfortunately, blames this Shattering on a mistake that Sophia supposedly made by trying to create without Her Male Partner. We, and many modern Christians and Sophian devotees, do not accept this Patriarchal view of Lower (again, meaning immanent-so Daughter-Form) Sophia. She is said, in ancient sources, to always do the will of Her Mother (Higher Sophia) and so, She descended down through the Realms, like the Shekinah (they are One and the same Being) to be immanent with the Children of the Earth, but this torturous Descent down through the ever increasingly denser and darker dimensions eventually caused Her Soul to Shatter. This Shattering, as taught in Shekinan/Sophian Mythos, did not cause Her death, rather, it caused Her to become the World Soul or the Holy Soul of the World (of all of us and all of Nature).
In contrast to the Mythos of Persephone, the Divine Sophia is not saved by Her Mother. Rather, She, like Quan Yin, chooses to remain immanent with us. She becomes an integral Part of us, to unite as One Being with us, until the day we desire nothing but Perfect Love and so at that ending of the time of our Soul Journey, She ascends with us, assuming our souls unto the Celestial Mother in the Heavenly Realm of Bliss, the Pleroma, our True Home.
I picture the Divine Shattering of the Holy Daughter like an hologram that has been shattered into a million pieces. Each shattered piece (us) is still a reflection of the Whole and yet, the Core of the Original Wholeness is still intact because the Holy Daughter is God and God cannot disintegrate. She cannot die.
The Holy Daughter is like the Central Piece of the Original Hologram. Though the fragile, rarefied outward pieces of the Daughter’s Soul was Shattered (and Sophia is said to have had a rarefied Body—Soul), Her Essence, Her Spirit, did not, could not, shatter, disintegrate. Thus, the Original Immanent Image of the Celestial Mother, She Who is the Holy Daughter, was Shattered, and yet, remained Whole in an of Herself and we, Her Divine Sparks, each were ensouled with Her Soul. She is the Soul of our souls and the Spirit of the Divine Sparks within us. This is the Divine Mystery of the Feasts of Moura and Eastre in the Janite Tradition.
Returning to the holographic analogy: As found in Stanislav Grof’s, the Holotropic Mind: ‘Unlike normal photographs, every portion of a piece of holographic film contains all the information of the whole. Thus if a piece of a holographic plate is broken into fragments, each piece can still be used to reconstruct the entire image.’
To reconstruct the entire image. That is why Sophia, the Holy Daughter, seeks the Sparks within us, so that She may recreate the Original Image and render us back into that Perfect Hologram in order to reunite us with the Celestial Mother, the Origin of the Image.
But, just as with the brain, where the whole is carried in the part— as the brain is damaged or sections removed, the more it is cut up, the more the memory, though it remains intact, becomes fuzzy, just so, an hologram becomes fuzzier the more it is shattered. Thus, we of the Shattered One are but imperfect, fuzzy reflections of the Divine Daughter, Who is the Immanent Image of the Celestial Mother, Who, in turn, Who comes from the Source, the Great Mother and so we must seek, through Her Grace and Her Sacraments (2) to become ever more perfect reflections of Her. And, we do so out of love of Dea, and, as our scriptures teach, out of love for Her children. We do so by striving through every thought, word and action to draw ever closer to the Holy One rather than retreating further away from Her.
To summarize: In Her desire to be immanent with us, we who are the Children of the Earth/the Children of Dea, after our fall into density, the painful Descent through the denser, lower vibrational Realms proved to be too much for the delicate, rarefied Soul-Body of the Holy Daughter, one which was not protected by a material body and so, it Shattered. We became One in Soul with the Holy Daughter. We contain souls that were given to us out of Her Sacrifice; we contain within our souls Her Divine Sparks.
In Kabbalistic teaching: The Shekinah plays another very important role in the story of creation, and in particular in the Great Plan of humankind. It is believed that in man’s fall to a denser, less perfect state of being in the physical, the Shekinah stayed with us as we separated from God or were exiled from the ‘Garden’. Thus, the Shekinah, once again, was voluntarily removed from God/En Sof in order for us to have our experience. She has always stayed with us, wherever we were exiled or isolated or shut out, the Shekinah was always there in exile and isolation with us. http://www.universalkabbalah.net/Shekinah.
On this day (Kala in the Auroran and Filianic Traditions), Janites spend a day in somber remembrance of this greatest, most heart-rending, soul wrenching, sacrificial myrrh-infused, stopped moment out of time when all the Cosmos holds its breath; the most knee-bowing, head-veiling, thunderstruck, awestruck, Shining Being witnessed, Ultimate, Primordial Love Sacrifice of the Most Pure and Holy Daughter. She literally gave Herself to us. And, She never left us. She stayed.
In this way, She lives every single moment of every single day with us. Whether we are in pain; whether we experience joy; whether we glory in love or suffer abandonment, She is literally part of us and we of Her and so, She experiences exactly as we do with all our pain, emotions and bliss.
This is the full thealogy of the day of Divine Shattering in the Janite Tradition.
Janites practice the ancient rite of lustration/purification and veil in solemn observance of Her Descent and Shattering on this day, 28 Moura/March 19 (March 18 on a leap year).
May the Queen of Heaven, She Who is the Divine Shattered One; She Who is the Holy Soul of the World; She Who is the Queen of Heaven, bless you and be with you. Blessed is She.
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ArchMadria Pamela Lanides
- The meaning behind Persephone is a little bit of a mystery. It could derive from the Greek pertho (“to destroy”) or from phone (“murder”). She may be a Greek and Roman goddess, but that doesn’t prove that her name comes from either language. In fact, the multiple spellings of her name in ancient sources suggest that the Greeks found her name difficult to pronounce, which would suggest that it was foreign to them. Some historians believe that worship of her, as well as her mother Demeter, predate the Olympian pantheon. http://bewitchingnames.blogspot.com/2012/10/persephone.html. (Though this is the most common guessed meaning of Persephone, there are those who believe it may mean She Who lightens the darkness.)
mydevotionstoDEA 