For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. ~ Romans 8:19-23

And every day there were what are called the Green Hills; that is, the low line of the Castlereugh Hills which we saw from the nursery windows. They were not very far off but they were, to children, quite unobtainable. They taught me longing — Sehnsucht: made me for good or ill, and before I was six years old, a votary of the Blue Flower. ~ C S Lewis, Surprised by Joy

Sehnsucht

The fullness of existence, life’s true richness, does not consist solely in health and happiness but in an ever expanding range of joy and sorrow; and the broader the range, the richer life becomes. ~ Valentin Tomberg

Besides the Green Hills, Lewis describes similar experiences and reached a conclusion:

Joy comes from an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. And anyone who has ever experienced Sehnsucht will want it again.… I doubt that anyone who has tasted it would ever exchange it for all the pleasures of the world. … It is a desire for something longer ago or further away or still about to me.

The satisfaction of every desire, beyond physical needs, is not necessarily energizing. One common example is sexual desire, for which there is the time of energized anticipation which enhances all the senses. That all ends in the spasm, as Marcus Aurelius called it. That is why the French refer to the orgasm as la petite mort, the little death. Life force is spent, there is exhaustion with nothing to look forward to, apart from endless repetition of the same.

To the common mind, the unsatisfied desire should bring sorrow, not joy. That is because our emotional life is poorly developed, actually, according to Western esoteric teachings, the least developed soul faculty. As one develops the emotional center, a deeper feeling of joy and sorrow may emerge. Ibn Arabi composed a series of poems on longing, mixing joy and sorrow, such as this one:

Gentle now, doves
of the thorn berry and moringa
thicket, don’t add
to my heart-ache your sighs.

Gentle now,
lest your sad cooing
reveal the love I hide,
the sorrow I hide away

Kahlil Gibran wrote on this topic:

Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

The one who is incapable of, or afraid to face, his sorrow, will never feel great Joy.

True Love and Friendship

Aristotle famously distinguished three types of friendship:

• The Friendship of Utility: This type of friendship results when people are bonded through a commitment to a project. It may be random as in the case of people who meet, for example, through school, university, military service, or work environment. Or it may be deliberate as when people undertake a common project. In most cases, the friendship seldom endures beyond the common environment or project.
• The Friendship of Pleasure: In this case, the parties get pleasure from their relationship. They may be drinking buddies, poker, or other game, players, for example.
• Spiritual Connection: In rarer cases, the friends may share an intellectual or spiritual kinship.

These have their analog in the marriage relationship, which was described in Lucinde, one of our inaugural essays. These are:

• Utility: The most fundamental utility is raising children, which is the primary goal of marriage. Then, a father might need to find a husband for his daughter. That happened to my prosperous great-grandfather, who had four daughters. When a financial reversal hit Sicily, he had to send to America to find husbands for all of them, whom he could no longer afford. Due to their age difference, I doubt that my grandfather knew my grandmother very well, but he returned to Sicily to marry her.
  Among the bourgeoisie, a marriage may serve to cement a business relationship. The Rothschilds took advantage of this, for the obvious reason.
  The nobility would arrange marriages to assure political alliances. Over time, the rulers were effectively of a different race from their subjects.
• Pleasure. Clearly, pleasure is an expected part of marriage. Yet a man might keep pleasure and utility apart. In that case he might take on a mistress, just as a source of pleasure. The Shiites have an interesting solution to satisfy that longing: the temporary marriage.
• Courtly Love. This is analogous to Aristotle’s spiritual connection. It was discovered in the esoteric schools that the same romantic feeling can arise without the physical element, thereby avoiding the little death. The Joy of experiencing a spiritual, intellectual, and emotional connection with someone else far exceeds physical pleasure. The former is rare, the latter, common. Nevertheless, the poignancy of separation brings pain, although without it, the Joy is incomplete.

Dance of the Seven Veils

And when the daughter of the same Herodias had come in, and had danced, and pleased Herod, and them that were at table with him, the king said to the damsel: Ask of me what thou wilt, and I will give it thee. ~ Mark 6:22

The dance of the seven veils is a modern reconstruction of Salome’s dance. It was so seductive that Herod was willing to give up half his kingdom, but instead was asked for the head of John the Baptist. In an instant, the joy of the dance turned to sorrow, although Herod was compelled to honor his promise.

A modest version of the dance was performed by Rita Hayworth who did not remove the seventh veil. A more seductive and erotic version was performed by Maria Ewing. With grace and allure she removed each veil in turn, leaving the audience always longing for more. Nevertheless, there is disappointment when she unveils completely and appears fully naked on stage. There is no more Sehnsucht and she appears ordinary.

By analogy, a woman’s soul has seven veils. She desires to be known, but not so easily and not by anyone at random. One veil at a time, she reveals her soul. However, she should never remove the seventh veil; the mystery is more powerful than the revelation.

Knights of Christ

Magic, we could say, is the materialism of the future knights of Christ ~ Papus

And he gives expression to his hope that in the future there will be an intervention from beyond this closed circle by future magicians (“knights of Christ”) who will open the closed circle and transform it into a spiral. ~ Valentin Tomberg

Magic means:

• We create our own reality
• Faith can achieve anything

Obviously, it is not a question of altering the material conditions of life, but of reaching higher states of being. A closed circle cannot do so because there is no opening to a higher  state. But a spiral symbolizes that as we die to one state of being, we are reborn to a higher state. There is the stubborn awareness, experienced as a deep longing, that we are not in our true home, and that another twist of the spiral will bring us closer. Those who are satisfied with this life are described in the Quran:

As to those who believe not in the Hereafter, we have made their deeds pleasing in their eyes; and so they wander about in distraction. ~ The Ants

Believers, on the other hand, live in exile and there is a longing for the Paradisial State, which we know is our true home. The knight errant wanders with a purpose, seeking the Holy Grail which Adam left behind when he was exiled from Eden. Seth, however, was allowed back to Eden in order to retrieve it. Hence, the Primordial Tradition can be traced back to Seth. Boris Mouravieff expresses that explicitly.

In the series “GNOSIS” the author has done his utmost to expose in a modern form the esoteric Doctrine which dates according to the Tradition from before the Deluge — back to Seth, the third son of Eve. Completed and revealed by Jesus after his resurrection to Peter, John, and James, this Gnosis was later conserved from generation to generation in esoteric form in the oriental Orthodoxy — to be brought out of its occultism in our time.

Saint Augustine recognizes that Tradition, albeit without specifying a precise source.

Now the Grail is back in Paradise which, according to Dante, rests atop the Mount of Purgatory. Hence, the Joy of Paradise can be realized only through a path of pain, suffering, purgation, and sorrow.