Star of the Hero, Nicholas Roerich, 1932
“On earth as it is in heaven” is a phrase from the Lord’s Prayer but it expresses a much older sentiment.
The ancients looked into the skies and saw the power of the divine there. The vast over-arching, starry sky, which they envisioned as a dome over the earth, was the primal deity—or sometimes simply the home of the invisible primal deity, the father-mother of everything—while the planets and stars were this deity’s children and messengers of its desires and will.
Heaven—the perfect primal state of balance, harmony, perfection, and beauty; of order wrought from primordial chaos. Heaven—the source and template of how things were meant to be on earth. Heaven, they must have thought, held the Wisdom that organizes life, that creates the templates, that sets the patterns of sun, moon, stars, seasons...life, death...male, female, and of how life works.
As can be seen by the great number of sacred mountains, pyramids, omphaloi, and temples containing a Center or Holy of Holies type chamber, humankind has always sought not only to communicate with the Divine Source, but to bring its power, harmony, and balance down to earth. Stone circles with alignments to the moon, various stars, and solstice and equinox points mutely attest to some of these ancient attempts. Major earthworks, such as the Glastonbury Zodiac and others, may also be examples of attempts to align earth landscapes with the star patterns in the sky, and thus bring the star powers to earth. Perhaps people believed that this bringing of heaven to earth helped humanity access and commune with the Divine, or even become divine themselves.
At the very least, these endeavors definitely seem to be attempts to connect the earthly realm with the divine powers of the sky realm, because it was thought that earth was intended to be a reflection of beauty and perfection of the heavens.
“As above, so below,” which sounds like a statement of fact or belief, may well have been perceived as a divine mission.
There are many ways we humans have tried to create heaven on earth through the ages. We noticed seeming earth-sky correspondences in land formations and rivers, and sanctified those spots by building sacred sanctuaries there. We’ve built churches, temples, and tabernacles as places for the Divine presence on earth to dwell. Often we’ve built them in accord with the principles of sacred geometry—the better to house this divine energy in a suitably harmonious place.
We have done rituals in these tabernacles, tents, temples, and churches, basing our ceremonies on the seasonal movements of sun, stars and planets. We have created works of beauty—art, dance, and music inspired by the divine presence as we saw and felt it on earth and in the sky, to lift our hearts and minds to the heavens and try to touch this vast over-arching power of divinity and bring at least some of it down to earth.
But in this Aquarian Age the most suitable dwelling for heaven on this earth, for the Divine Presence, is within the human heart and consciousness. And this was actually the true meaning of the teachings of Jesus.
His greatest message, perhaps only now being fully acknowledged after 2000 years, is that the bringing of heaven to earth must include humanity, too. It is fine to build sanctuaries, temples, and “Holy of Holies,” but the real tabernacles for the Divine Presence—the Holy Spirit, the Shekhinah who is the Feminine Presence of the Divine—must be the tabernacles in our hearts and minds. Humans must learn to revere not only themselves, but each other, as well as the Earth and all Her creatures, recognizing in all life that spark of the Divine which unites us all. All life is sacred; we are all related.
This transformation can happen only in the heart and consciousness, and will change how we live our lives.
When this has been accomplished the “Second Coming” has occurred. Osiris and Isis, Yahweh and his Asherah, Christ and Sophia / Shekhinah—the masculine and feminine aspects of the One Divine Source—are reunited, wholeness is achieved, and by living this, the rift between heaven and earth is mended.
(c) Margie McArthur, 2013
