RHEA KYBELE, by Ron McVan

RHEA KYBELE, By Ron McVan

The spirit of God, the Cosmic creature energy, in order to
objectify itself, needs a material medium through which to
manifest, in the same way that any force requires a medium
or a material substance through which it can work and manifest.

In the ancient Mystery Schools there was a certain measure of power attributed to the moon to magnetise the soul for earthly incarnation and to demagnetize it for it its astral abode. In a general way, these assertions, to which initiates attached a meaning that was once real and symbolic, signified that the soul must pass through an intermediary, stage of purification and free itself from the impurities of earth before continuing its journey. G.I Gurdjieff a well known and respected mystic of the early 20th century often made the claim that when a person dies their soul goes to the moon.
The non-corporeal (astral) body, though far finer and more perfect than the earthly one, is not immortal as is the monad which it contains. It changes and becomes purified according to its different environments. The spirit is perpetually molding and transforming it into its own image; it never leaves it, however, though it unrobes itself of it by degrees. It is constantly clothing itself with more ethreal substances. This was one of the teachings of Pythagoras, who could not accept the idea of abstract, spiritual entity, the formless monad. Spirit in itself, whether in the far-reaching universe or on earth, must have an organ; that organ is the living soul, whether beastial or sublime, obscure or radiant; it continues to retain, the human form, the image of God. In his life-form the individual is necessarily only a fraction and distortion of the total image of man.
Though invisible, most people today accept the reality of electricity, magnetism and gravity. Still there are those who have difficulty comprehending the spirit world around us. The invisible plane of human existence offers the greatest challenge and the greatest hope for mankind.
A doctor whose professed views on life were on a strictly material plane was noted to make the comment, "I have cut many a body open, and I have never found a soul." To which it may be answered, "Undoubtedly true, but while you were dissecting a brain, did you ever see a thought?"
Of the four elements through which the constellations of all beings are formed, Earth---represents the solid state, Water---the liquid state, Air---the gaseous state, and Fire---the imponderable state. The fifth, known as the Ethric element---represents a state of matter so fine and vivid that it is no longer atomic and possesses the property of universal penetration. It is the original cosmic fluid, the astral light or soul of the world. The great sage Pythagoras used an already ancient combination of divinity names back in his day to describe this element, which he referred to as the "Rhea Kybele". ( 'Rhea' was a high goddess and mother of Zeus. Kybele also a mother goddess 'Cybele' was known to have been a concubine of Zeus, much like the relationship between Wotan and Freyja. Also, not unlike Freyja, Cybele traveled about in a chariot drawn by cats) Esoterically, the word 'kybele' means: "the rolling light---the divine spouse of universal fire, or of the creative spirit which, becoming concentrated in the solar systems, attracts the immaterial essences of beings, seizes them and forces them into the whirl of lives."
Thus, in the astral light the past of the worlds trembles in vague images, and the future is there, also, with the living souls inevitably destined to descend into flesh. This is the meaning of the "Veil of Isis" and the "mantle of Cybele" into which all beings are woven. Further, this universal medium, this astral light, is a phenomenon of vision and ecstacy. It is at once the vehicle which transmits the movements of thought, and the living mirror in which the soul contemplates the images of that material and the spiritual world.
The Rhea Kybele reigns everywhere---it is the mighty soul of the world, the vibrating and plastic substance which the breath of the creative spirit uses at will. It is the very ether that serves to cement together all the worlds, the mediator between the invisible and the visible, between spirit and matter, between the within and the without of the universe. Serving as substance to the astral body of the soul, it is likewise a garment of light which the spirit is ever weaving for itself. The fluid becomes transformed, it rarefies or densifies according to the souls it clothes or worlds it envelopes. Not only does it embody spirit and spiritualized matter in its living bosom, it reflects in a perpetual mirage both things and the thoughts and the wills of mankind. In the ancient pagan Mystery Schools, from which the Christian bible borrowed heavily, it is revealed in John 1:10, "The light was in the world, and the world was made by it, but the world knew it not."

"As our body is a part of the universe,
our soul is a part of the soul of the universe."
.................Plato

Our human eye can only glimpse pure astral light in a condition of lofty ecstacy, but it is polarized in all bodies, combines with all terrestrial fluids and plays diverse roles in electricity and terrestrial and animal magnetism. Baron Karl von Reichenbach, who is well known for his theory on the Odic Force, referred to the Rhea Kybele as the "Odic fluid". ( a word derived from the Teutonic god Odin) In the year 1850 he released writings on the subject under the title, "Researches on Magnetism, Electricity, Heat, Light, Crystallization and Chemical Attraction".
For the great spirits of antiquity, the Gods were never anything more than a poetical expression of the subordinated forces of Nature, a speaking image of its inner organism; it is as symbols of cosmic and animic forces that these god-archetypes live indestructible in the consciousness of the various races of man. This diversity of our ethnic gods and nature forces, the intimates of thought, are dominated and penetrated by the supreme God, or pure spirit of the absolute Monad. If one is to question whether our ethnic gods are real, one might also question if we ourselves and the world we have created out of our collective thought is likewise real.
The words "animic" and "animism" are derived from the latin "anima" meaning, "breath" or "soul". The hypothesis of animism was greatly advanced by Pythagoras, and later by one of his more popular devotees, Plato. This hypothesis demonstrates that an immaterial force animates the entire universe---the natural phenomenon that things animate and inanimate are held to possess an innate soul.
In the year 1871, a professor of Anthropology at Oxford, Sir Edward Tylor, suggested in his book, "Primitive Culture", that animism was the 'minimum' definition of religion and the explanation of its origin. The earliest philosophers probably made their first step by the obvious inference that every man has two things belonging to him, namely, a life and a phantom. These two are evidently in close connection with the body, the life is enabling it to feel and think and act, the phantom serving as its image or second self; both, also, are perceived to be things seperable from the body, the life as being able to go away and leave it insensible or dead, the phantom as appearing to people at a distance from it. Tylor went on to argue that primitive man assumed that the 'life' and the 'phantom' were "manifestations of the same soul".
Tylor described the anima, or soul, thusly: "It is a thin, unsubstantial human image, in its nature a sort of vapor, film, or shadow; the cause of life and thought in the individual it animates; independently possessing the personal consciousness and volition of its corporeal owner, past or present; capable of leaving the body far behind, to flash swiftly from place to place; mostly impalpable and invisible, yet, also, manifesting physical power, and especially appearing to man walking or saleep as a phantasm separate from the body of which it bears the likeness; continuing to exit and appear to men after the death of that body; able to enter into, possess, and act in the bodies of other men, of animals and even of things"
The famous Sir James Frazer, author of the classic and influential book, "The Golden Bough", was a disciple of Tylor. Frazer believed that from the earliest times the innumerable multitude of spirits, both good and otherwise, were of necessity reduced to a comparatively small number of deities; animism then became replaced by polytheism. It was believed that from this stage of the worship of many gods (polytheism) that this would bring man to a finer comprehension of the one solitary deity (monotheism), The Absolute Godhead.
What worlds have existed and have been traversed through infinite time to bring us the divine light and the light of genius throughout our history we know not; but great lives of demi-god legend have been lived, the realms of the superman do exist. The conscience of nations is not mistaken; the prophets have not lied in calling these men "The Sons of Gods". Their mission is demanded by eternal truth; they are protected by invisible legions, and the living word speaks in them and through them in their actions!
Alexander the Great lived a brief thirty-three years and was commanding armies at the mere age of sixteen. A student of Aristotle, this legendary conqueror, initiated, as was also his father, Philip, into the Pagan Mtsteries of Samothrace, proved himself as worthy a legend in the flesh as was Achilles of Homer's Iliad. With a mere handful of Greeks, he crossed Asia as far as India and established a world class empire. Alexander's sword typified the last flash of the golden Greece of the high God Orpheus, son of Apollo illuminating both East and Western Worlds.

"He buries gold who hides the truth" ......................Pythagoras

Men of such caliber have borne different names in history. They are primordial alfa-men, adepts, great initiates, sublime geniuses, who transform and metamorphosize humanity. So rare are they that they may be counted upon our fingers. Providence scatters them here and there at periodic intervals of time, like stars flashing across the universe. And from the universal fire of the rolling astral light, that our distant ancestors called the Rhea Kybele, will come others---The Great Ones---to assist our people in desperate times of the ages. It may be difficult, but certainly not impossible, for carnal man to communicate with the higher, non-corporeal realms, but he must be fundamentally influenced by what we might refer to as the Grand Commotion of History---through the proper timing, place and circumstance, he enters the eye of the storm---then the eternal truth springs forth like a flash of light. When man listens to the divine call, a new life is created in him; now the rising Overman no longer feels himself alone, but in communion with his Gods and all truth, ready to proceed eternally from one verity to another. In this new life, through elevated thought and biological determinance, he will then become one with the divine universal will, with the crutial and important task of answering the call and urgent needs of his people!

"Man in the world of action loses his centering in the principle
of eternity if he is anxious for the outcome of his deeds, but
resting them and their fruits on the knees of the Living God he
is released by them, as by a sacrifice, from the bondages of
the sea of death. Do without attachment the work you have to
do...... "
............from "The Hero With A Thousand Faces" Joseph Campbell

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