Divine Mother, Infinite Father, Love and Wisdom; Unto Thee Thy children ever turn, putting off the dust and ashes from their feet, putting aside the sandals of time and turning unto the Light Divine. May Thy manifold works and Thine Infinite Love sustain and guide them and be unto them the strength of Life Eternal. Amen.

Lesson

Beloved ones: If you were in the Temple toward which your footsteps now turn you would behold the Divine Mother clothed in sorrow; her head bowed with the knowledge of the grief and suffering of the world; with the Infant in her arms unrecognized by those who should receive the Divine Light.

In the far-off Kingdom around which the Pleiades circle, whose Central sun is sometimes supposed to be Alcyone, in the Life and Light that belong to the inscrutable Wisdom, the Queen of this Divine Kingdom reigneth. There all is perfect Love; and if those stars symbolize the Heaven of the Love lighted skies it is because of the Divine Love that dwelleth there.

When the Earth was ready for the baptism of which you are to leam tonight, One, greatest in that Kingdom, summoned all Her Daughters: "Which of you," said she, "will bear the message of the Meaning of Sorrow unto the Earth? Which of you will consent to enter the shadows, taking upon yourself whatever darkness may be there?" And when, from among the fairest, the brightest of the 379 fair ones said: "I, Divine Mother, will bear the message of the Meaning of Sorrow, if it needs must be." And thence it is said, by the Wise Ones of the Earth, and by the Angels and Arch Angels that knew, that one of the stars departed, and "the lost Pleiad" has been ever since sought among the starry Kingdoms, none knowing that the "Mother of Sorrow" was the Divinity Star which shone in the light of the splendor that by her absence was lost in the heavens.

Forever, in each Dispensation there is a recession from the perfect manifestation; forever the Divine Image is shadowed by the darkness of the world, and the selfishness of mankind; even as in the primal Eden, man wanders away from the Love of the Soul to the love of the senses; forsaking the espousals of the Kingdom of Heaven for those of the dust. So in the recession of each Dispensation the children of Earth have wandered from the primal light into the shadow of the senses; and there must be a time when there seems a total eclipse; and the persistency with which the human mind and the human spirit have endeavored to forget the Divine Life and the Divine Mother, is shown in all its shadows by following the pathway of the Dispensation of Sorrow.

In the Primal religions the veiled image of the Divine Mother was preserved; and even though disgraced and defaced by her sons and by her daughters, still there was some semblance of that Sacred Image in all the memorials of the past.

Not so, however, in that which we herein describe. Bending above the Earth is the image of Sacred Sorrow: This wondrous Angel who beareth the Lesson of Sorrow giveth unto the world the lesson that it seeketh, and needeth. And when from out the Heavens this fair Mother of Sorrow said, "I will go," she bent above the world, and she who holds dominion over the Divine Kingdom, the most Sacred Mother, said: "Go thou, since the children of Earth have wandered and must wander in the shadow, be Thou the Interpreter of their Sorrow; since in the darkness of the Earth they have deserted the Truths of the Primal Mother of Life, accompany Thou them in their pilgrimage, lest there should be utter despair."

When from the ancient tombs and monuments, from every entablature that bore the image of the Primal Mother, her name and Symbols had been erased; when even the history by inscription had been lost, because over-traced with other records that they might efface her name; when much of the contradiction in "Sacred Writ" was because of the erasure of the name of the sacred Mother; when even among the monuments of Egypt and the inscriptions within the Pyramids the writings are so lost and over-written that none can follow or understand, because they refer to this image of the Divine Mother that was sacred; when the sons of Time, jealous for masculine power and rule, must needs erase them, the time came, therefore,, when all human hearts turned away from the light of the Divine Mother. Then the Divine Mother with Her Child passed into Shadow, for the "Kingship" came - God was then named only in the masculine. She was hidden from sight and from all that was her own by the ensheathing shadows that were cast around her and that engulfed the children of Earth.

You will trace the image of this abandoned Mother, this Sacred and Divine life of Sorrow, that in the Babylonian picture of history is described as "the abandoned one" wandering into and through darkness, she who was symbolized in the Woman wandering around the Earth with her Child seeking for shelter and protection; for this was none other than the symbol of the Sacred Mother deserted of her sons. Doubtlesss Babylon at one time held all the sacred Symbols, as well as those that expressed the senses.

Some attempt was made in the Osirian religion to restore the image in "Isis" (who was veiled) in the light of the sun, who was also the Father; some attempt was made to have the ancient "Hor" restored to the Divine Mother, "Hor" signifying the sunlight, or rebirth from the Ramesian into the Osirian Dispensation. Largely this failed, for "Horns," the Child, was Motherless and Fatherless, (both unrevealed) though the Symbol of the Sacred Three.

The same was true in the beginning of the Brahmanical faith; there was an attempt to use the same relation between the Divine Father-Mother God and the Son, so that name might be restored, but that Name, as now recorded (or interpreted) in Hebraic Scripture, as well as in Brahmanical and Buddhistic records, Father-Son, makes the masculine terminology. The "Father-Son" is, perhaps, an apology for the Mother appearing as the Divine Symbol with the Child, and without companionship. Because in the masculine interpretation, in the passing of the world from the Divine First Truths the woman whose husband is not known (her companion) is regarded as deserted and is therefore discarded. The whole record, in fact, returns to the senses, lapses into external life. This lapse only could have caused the misinterpretation; and you see the conflict existing even in the Hebraic record. They turn away from the woman who is not acknowledged, unto the one who can be proclaimed without shame; but as if to restore and replace this, even through the different inconsistencies of the records of religions, there must be somewhere the acknowledgment of the Mother of Christ.

All of the Primal Religions bore the symbol of the Mother and Child. "Isis" was the Mother of life (and the conserver), of Love under the Osirian religion, although veiled; the Father was then untitled; then the Mother became untitled, or obscured in the changing of the Cycles. Her Angels - or numbers - announce the Child-life on Earth; hence when brooding above the Earth this Sacred "Mother of Sorrow" inspired those who knew, connected Dispensation the Fifth, that of Sorrow, with the "Lost Pleiad." Her symbol being the Five Pointed Star - the Pentagram.