DIVINE WISDOM AND THE HOLY SPIRIT

Anne Baring has devoted her long life to the central theme of this book, subtitled ‘The Forgotten Feminine Face of God.’ This is her third and final major work, beginning with The Myth of the Goddess (1993, co-authored with Jules Cashford), then The Dream of the Cosmos (2013 & 2020) and now this masterwork published in her 90s. Anne has become an indomitable spiritual warrior on behalf of our spiritual nature and the divine feminine, whose fundamental role is to nurture and protect. In some essential ways and with the same sense of urgency, this book builds on Messages from a Transcendent Dimension reviewed in these pages two years ago in calling for a fundamental shift of orientation to bring our culture back into balance.

The thematic and historical scope of the book is quite remarkable. It begins with the primordial trauma of two great civilisational cataclysms, and the gradual separation of nature from spirit, leading to the final loss of the divine feminine. It is important to stress that the Holy Spirit as Sophia has traditionally been feminine, as in the Shekinah in Kabbalah and Asherah as the consort of Yahweh, whose presence was obliterated by the Deuteronomists in 623 BC, an act which split nature from spirit and led to the rise of monotheism. She (the Holy Spirit) is also present in the Wisdom Texts and constitutes a necessary partner in the sacred marriage of the mother – father of the cosmos representing soul and spirit. Two major chapters are devoted to the Mysteries and the Gnostics, highlighting the cultural role of Alexandria as a nexus of esoteric traditions. Women were teachers of gnosis, and there is a section on the extraordinary figure of Hypatia. Crucially, gnostics rejected the image of Jesus as a saviour, regarding him instead as a wisdom teacher showing the way of awakening the light within, through metanoia and ultimately transfiguration and ascension. The text Pistis Sophia is one inspiring example of gnostic cosmology (pp. 118 ff).

Anne draws on channelled material both in her extraordinary chapter on the Essenes and on Mary Magdalene, who represents the gnostic spirit based on direct experience, as opposed to doctrinal correctness of the letter represented by Peter. The legal and institutional aspects triumphed politically with the establishment of the Catholic Church as the official religion of the Roman Empire after 325 AD. Our evolutionary destiny is reunion with the Light of the divine ground (p. 133), profoundly expressed in such texts as The Hymn of the Pearl and The Trimorphic Protennoia. (p. 141) Running through the historical exposition of these various marginalised groups is the rejection of such communities devoted to the inner life of the soul and seeking peace, harmony, love, and truth. Again, the core message is beautifully expressed in channelled material maintaining that ‘Light is our source, our goal, and our destiny.’ (p. 153) Jesus is presented as one whose whole being was a focus of the great cosmic energy of unconditional love working through the heart and maintaining that the nature of the Spirit is Truth and Love and Freedom. This is surely a perennial message and one that speaks so clearly to our time. To know ourselves at the deepest level is also to know God and that we are one another.

The next major section is devoted to Mary Magdalene/Myriam of Bethany, characterised by the Catholic Church as a penitent whore, especially since the intervention of Gregory the Great. This is an unconscionable travesty and deep affront to the divine feminine that is only now being rescinded. Mary became a bearer of shame and guilt, carrying the unhealed wound of western civilisation that split nature from spirit and banished the goddess. The Gospel of the Beloved Companion reviewed some years ago in these pages and only published in 2010 by a community descended from the original Cathars is an eyewitness account written by Mary Magdalene herself, key passages of which correspond to a text recognised by scholars, namely The Gospel of Mary. Annine van der Meer has provided a masterly commentary on this text in Mary Magdalene Unveiled (her new book is reviewed in this section). The joint mission of Yeshua and Mary was to anchor the cosmic energy of Love and to exemplify the sacred marriage. Adding to the cultural impact of the Cathars in the 13th century was the cult of the Black Madonna, the rebuilding of Chartres Cathedral, the quest for the Grail, the Troubadours and courtly love bringing in a new image of the feminine, and the work of the Knights Templar whose patron was Mary Magdalene. There is also an important chapter on Esclarmonde de Foix as a leading teacher in the Cathar Church of the Holy Spirit. Again, we find this essential experience of awakening to the light of wisdom within.

A beautiful chapter reinterpreting the story of Cinderella embodies the sacred marriage, where the separated masculine and feminine must seek each other: ‘dark and light, earth and heaven, moon and sun, mother and father, sister and brother, bride and bridegroom. All these relationships form the tapestry of human experience which is the foundation of myth, fairy tale and religion.’ (p. 239) The Sacred Way of the Rose ‘symbolises the hidden feminine Wisdom Tradition and the Way of the Heart.’ As such, ‘The rose is the greatest mystic symbol of the West, just as the lotus is for the East.’ It is also associated with Venus, and is the primary symbol of the divine feminine. Here we reach the essence of the book’s spiritual message as the Sacred Way of the Rose: ‘The Path of Longing that connects us to the invisible ground of the soul. It is the Path of Wisdom that fills the rose garden of our heart with the power of love and connects us with each other, with the soul of nature and the soul of the cosmos.’ This is the visionary way of the heart ‘which connects us to deeper levels of reality and opens our soul to awareness of our divinity and immortality and to the realisation that Love is our origin, our guide and our destiny.’ (p. 252) This is what we have tragically forgotten and must urgently recover if humanity and the Earth are not only to survive, but to thrive. An essential precondition, to which a chapter is devoted, is the healing of the heart and the recovery of the soul.

The narrative now takes an unexpected and more controversial turn in looking at Covid-19 and Transhumanism as examples of abuse of power. The philosophical starting point is the ideology of scientific materialism that denies any transcendent meaning or purpose, and ‘offers an open invitation to totalitarianism and transhumanism.’ Anne’s motive is to warn and protect humanity, and her analysis begins with a personal story where her housekeeper suffered severe side-effects from her first AstraZeneca vaccination, leading to two years of debilitation that was finally cured by a nicotine treatment recommended by Dr Bryan Ardis and whose modality was to bind the Covid-19 spike protein as the pathogenic agent present in both Covid-19 and the mRNA vaccination. There is no space to summarise the detail of this part of the argument, which is thoroughly researched and draws on the testimony of patent specialist Dr David Martin (p. 297) and former pharmaceutical executive Dr Mike Yeadon (p. 305 ff.). As readers will have experienced, governments put enormous psychological pressure on people to comply and conform. The startling and disturbing context revealed by these two men is one of bio-terrorism and bio-weapon development, which will come as a shock to many readers, and which was also articulated at official presentations to the European Parliament in 2023. See also my earlier review of RFK Jr’s The Wuhan Cover-Up.

The chapter on Transhumanism presents the worldview behind these developments and its connection with the emergence of a centrally digitally-controlled authority involving the controlled demolition of liberal democracy and the institution of global technocracy, a novel, biodigital form of totalitarianism, according to Dr David Hughes. Such a society was already envisaged in the 1970s by Zbigniew Brzezinski – ‘dominated by an elite whose claim to political power will rest on allegedly superior scientific know-how.’ I have discussed this in detail in reviews of the work of Patrick Wood in previous issues, and the transformation of Covid-19 from a public health emergency to an authoritarian bio-defence policy in my review of Debbie Lerman above. These developments involving NBIC (nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science) are being coordinated by, among others, the World Economic Forum and the UN. Harald Walach’s recent report on Transhumanism and Gregg Braden’s book Pure Human reviewed in the previous issue provide further background for interested readers. The bottom line is that ‘we now need to to come together to create a new kind of civilisation, based on beliefs and behaviour that respect Nature’s wisdom, the miraculous immune system of our bodies and our evolutionary destiny on this planet.’ (p. 340)

The final chapter highlights the sacred marriage as an evolutionary imperative, ‘reconnecting the Great Above with the Great Below, orienting our lives to the Light and Love of the Divine Ground.’ (p. 345) Only this ‘will serve the deepest longing of our heart, the deepest wisdom of our soul.’ Our modern technological culture ‘has banished the heart, love, and the whole feeling aspect of life. It has banished wisdom, and philosophy as the love of wisdom’ - we have become one-eyed, left-hemisphere centric, living in a decadent culture promoting lies, deception, and corruption. Instead, we must return to and prioritise the traditional values of the Feminine Principle: wisdom, compassion, love, justice, truth, harmony, and beauty. The new story is grounded in the oneness of life revealed in quantum physics, ecosystems, and collective consciousness in a unified field of awareness, returning to the core of our being. This is Anne’s prayer and vision, our collective awakening to the revelation of cosmic life as a divine unity. Her final book is an essential tract for our troubled times as a balm for the famished soul, the parched mind and the wounded heart.