4.
The Sabian Procedures

The Message of Ezekiel

The prophet Ezekiel, as one of the giants of spiritual insight, is as great in importance as he is elusive when it comes to any dependable knowledge about him. His book in the Old Testament canon is in about the worst textual condition of any, and it has been the subject of controversy from the earliest times. Indeed, there are few questions about it that can be answered with any certainty. The throne-chariot vision, the ingestion of wisdom in the form of a scroll and the various repetitive details of the commissioning constitute a first three chapters that probably are of a single authorship and that are the basis of the Sabian recension. Out of all the mystery involved comes the power of this inspired material, and it is of exceptional value as a catalyst for the developing realizations of candidates on the Solar path of initiation.

With the epitomized Master Thesis of Ezekiel, one of the most brilliant of conceptions in all the arcane tradition, the mind may catch itself up in the broad creative sweep of the cosmos itself. In the astrological symbolization is given an expression of the illimitable meshing of all things in common cycles and mutual consummations.

The Calling of Ezekiel that frames the master thesis is the cabalistic self-ordering compacted into this small compass and revealing the achievement of fitness as an expanded perspective made manifest through a self-conscious adequacy of being. The key realization is that whatever is fit must act in the full of the fitness, if it is to continue adequate and creatively aware of itself and of its place in a general context of significance. Thus the candidate takes cognizance of what, in his way of thinking about it, must be a commission and a challenge.

The Commission of Ezekiel is the realization difficult above all realizations. Whatever is true to itself is arrogant to that which would challenge it from without, but yet is ever and infinitely receptive to that which comes from within as an expression of the inner self. In consequence the commission under the Solar Mysteries must be self-bestowed, not so much from the inward awareness of the self that springs to expression prematurely and so is arrogant and only stirs up ugliness from others but from the inwardness that listens first to the voice within and so learns to speak to an inwardness of others that lies behind their own superficial arrogance.

The Ordination of Ezekiel is gained by every seeker who is caught up in the wonders of the cosmic order to which Ezekiel gives testimony in the master thesis and who thereupon adds a new testimonial of his own out of his different and necessarily unique and personal experience. The external form of this testimonial of the aspirant may be another master thesis of sorts, or whatever else might serve to dramatize the ability of a worker under the Lodge to enter the inwardness of others and so call to them with the true effectiveness of the Solar initiate. The aspirant is fit in the ultimate sense when his perspective is universal, or embraces every last facet of individual difference in those about him.

The Ministry of Ezekiel exhibits the gift for speaking with authority. This is the supreme mark of a genuine illumination, and ultimately it must be gained by every aspirant under the Solar Mysteries. It is the individual's mode of expression expanded so that it speaks to each other man and woman only as he has somehow become the total of all of them within himself, and thereafter is able to voice whatever may be the best of each of them in turn.



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