Glossary of Madrian Terms A-C

This was originally meant to be a dictionary, but became more like an encyclopedia. It contains much knowledge about non-physical existence that makes absorbing reading, though, unfortunately, it is not complete.

Glossary of Madrian Terms A-C

ABSOLUTE DEITY: The Dark Mother; the first Person of the TRINITY; the unknowable First Principle from Whom all else proceeds (see TRINITY).

ABSOLUTE GOOD: The Goddess is Absolute Good (Catechism, 33). All other Good is movement towards the Absolute Good. Just as the North Pole is absolute north. When we say "north" we mean "towards the North Pole"; once we have reached it we can go no further north. From there, all directions are south. In exactly the same way, when we say "good", what we really mean is "towards the Goddess". All acts of kindness, prayer, beauty and all good things are steps towards the Goddess. All acts of evil are steps away from the Goddess. Ultimately, the only true test of whether an act is good or evil is to ask whether it is a step towards or away from She Who is Absolute Good.

ACADEMICISM: See ENCYCLOPAEDISM.

ACCIDENTALISM: See EXTERNAL THEORY OF EVENTS.

ADVENT: The period leading up to the Nativity of Our Lady, beginning on the first new or full moon after 1st Astraea and lasting about a month.

ALL GENIAE [Janyati], Day OF: 28th Astraea (See GENIA [Janya]).

ALL HERAS [Helati], DAY OF: 9th Rosea (See HERA).

ALTAR: There are two Altars: the Altar of Sacrifice and the Great Altar (of Communion). During a rite, the earthly Altar becomes one with the celestial Altar; and the Daughter, as Priestess of the World is the true Hierophant of every earthly Rite. (The 'altar' of a shrine is not a true Altar in the strict sense).

ANDROMORPHISM: The process by which the image of the Goddess is transformed into a male form. It is a symtpom of religious decadence. In all religions, the original Creator is depicted as female. As they grow further from the Divine inspiration Andromorphosis sometimes takes place, particularly when the society becomes PATRIARCHAL. Sometimes andromorphism takes the form of an arbitrary change of gender, while the name used for Deity remains the same, as was the case with Ea in Syria, Siva in India and Atea in Polynesia. Sometimes by a gradual change. For example, in Greek mythology the original Creative Principle is Metis, the female intelligence. By the time of Orpheus She had been changed into the bisexual Metis-Phanes, both male and female. By Classical times, She had become the all-male Phanes. Yahweh (Jehovah), the Jewish god, was originally the Goddess Iahu. The dying and rising Saviour of humanity, known originally under many names: Persephone, Ishtar, Inanna, the hanged Artemis of Arcadia, etc. was transformed into male forms: Attis, Osiris, Christ, Tammuz, etc. Andromorphism is always marked by a weakening of the religious impulse, and bya  more outward and social approach to religion, which often becomes a political instrument of the patriarchal state. (Andromorphism, andromorphosis, andromorphise. Andromorphism is a DISSONANCE).

ANIMALISM: All the higher human impulses have their origin in the spiritual. Thus we love earthly BEAUTY because it is a faint reflection of the Divine; we are capable of love because the spark of Divine LOVE is within us. To evade this truth, MATERIALISM puts forward the theory that all human motivations are simply sophisticated forms of animal instincts. It is based on the belief that HUMAN BEINGS are not incarnate spirits, but simply animals, and is closely connected with PSEUDO-EVOLUTIONANISM and the CAVEMAN THEORY OF HISTORY. The most popular theory of animalism is a vulgarised version of the doctines of Sigmund Freud, which seeks to reduce almost all human motivations to the sexual instinct. This provides the foundation for the prevalent popular EROTOCENTRISM. See also CORPORALISM.

ANTHROPOCENTIRSM: The reverse of THEACENTRISM. The religious view of life puts the Goddess at the very centre; thus giving both a realistic picture of human existence, and the key to a complete and well-rounded way of life. The FALSE SELF is constantly striving against the Theacentric life, and seeks to lead the soul into a way of life in which purely human aims and ideals are made central. Anthropocentirsm is the human centred life. But by a strange paradox, the human centred-life does not achieve the human aims which it sets out to achieve. We do not become happy by saying "let us be happy". We are most happy when we concentrate on something outside ourselves, whether a piece of work, another person, a game or a piece of music. Similarly, human beings cannot find satisfaction by deliberately seeking it, but only by turning outside themselves to the one Source of all true contentment. In some cases the anthropocentric view sees religion itself as a means to human social ends. This is particularly common where ANDROPMORPHISM has taken place. (ANTHROPOLOGY: See PRIMITIVISM).

APPLE: The apple is a symbol of eternal life. It is associated with the element of earth and the FEAST OF DIVINE LIFE. If an apple is cut in half from the side, the seeds form a perfect five-pointed star.

APROSOPISM: See COSMIC APROSOPISM.

ARTEMID: Noun: a member of the Order of the Daughters of Artemis. Adjective: of or belonging to that Order.

ARTEMIS, DAY OF: The fifth day after the New Moon. The second Natural Rite of the lunar month.

ARTEMIS, FESTIVAL OF: 23rd Samhain [Vois]. The Festival of our Lady as Mother of Ekklesia and of the institution of COMMUNION.

ASTRAL BODY: A subtle body co-existent with the physical body. It is through this body that we experience emotion. See also BODY.

ASTRID: A member of the Order of the Silver Star.

ATHENE: The GENIA [Janya] of wisdom, knowledge and intellect.

ATHENE'S DAY: 7th Astraea.

AURORA: The dawn OFFICE.

AUTUMN: The third season, comprising Mala [Abolan], Samhain [Vois] and Hathor [Werdë]. See SEASONAL MYSTERIES.

AVALA: The Paradise of the Daughter, to which those who have lived as good Madrians are received after death. The word Avala comes from the Indo-European root abol meaning APPLE, the symbol of Eternal Life, and is also cognate with "evening" (Cf the German, Abend). Traditionally, Avala lies "west of the sunset", and is the land of the golden apples of immortality.

Avala is also the name of the evening OFFICE.

B

BEAUTY: Beauty is the perception of good through the senses. Perfect Union with the Goddess is a state of absolulte beauty, perceived not through the senses, but through the entire spiritual being of a purely spiritual creature. All earthly beauty is the reflection of that absolute beauty which was known by all souls before the beginning of time. It is the unconscious recognition of this reflection which fills our souls with happiness. All true art is a glimpse of Heaven.

BODY: A body is a material vehicle which can sometimes be used by a soul at certain stages of her development. MATTER, as it affects us in this life, takes three forms: the physical, the emotional and the mental.* We have bodies operating on each of these planes of matter. The most obvious and familiar body is the PHYSICAL BODY. Interpenetrating the physical body is the ETHER BODY, or life body. This is a subtle and invisible substance which is necessary to the continued existence of all living things. All organisms, and all organs within the organism are preserved in their form and shape by the currents and movements of the ether body. As soon as the ether body is dissipated (shortly after death) the process of decomposition begins. Human beings have the ether body in common with both plants and animals, whereas minerals have only physical substance. Although the ether body is invisible to the naked eye, it can be seen by means of Kirlian photography.

More sublte than either the physical or ether bodies is the ASTRAL BODY. This is the seat of conscious existence, and therefore of emotion. It is widely held that under certain circumstances this body can temporarily leave a living physical body (this phenomenon is known as astral projection). Human beings have the astral body in common with animals but not with plants.

The MENTAL BODY is the seat of intelligence. Some commentators subdivide this into higher and lower mental bodies. Only animate creatures (ie creatures having anima, a soul) possess the mental body, which means that human beings do not have it in common with the majority of animals. It is often held that certain individual animals are animate and do possess the mental body. If this is so, it is not because they have "advanced", or "evolved" to that stage (a creature without a soul cannot "evolve" into a creature with a soul, for both the soul and intelligence are divine attributes and not products of "evolution"), but because an intelligent soul has become incarnate in that particular animal. It is also held that the MOIRA [werdë] of such a soul will frequently draw her to the company of human beings. See also INTELLIGENCE.

BRAIN: The brain is the most highly sophisticated and sensitive mechanism known to maid. Like a radio receiver, it is able to pick up the messages of the EGO transmitted through the vibrations of the ASTRAL BODY, and translate them into physical actions. In HUMAN BEINGS, the brain is also used by the MENTAL BODY, and becomes the centre from which INTELLIGENCE operates in the physical organism.

CATHOLIC: The word catholic means "universal", therefore Madrianism is the only truly catholic religion. In every nation and area of the world, the first and original Divine revelation was Madrian, and the first religion was a form of Madrianism. As one writer put it: "In all myth throughout the world, from the sun's rising beyond the farthest shores of Asia to its setting west of the farthest islands of the vast Pacific, the first Creator of all is a Goddess. Her names are as many and varied as the peoples whom She created and who worshipped Her as the First Principle." It is only later, with the decline of true religion, that ANDROMORPHISM set it, and religions grew apart from the universal catholic faith of all humanity.

CATHOLIC (2): Noun; a Catholic Madrian.

CATHOLIC MADRIANISM: HARMONIC Madrianism, whose essential tenets are stated in the Catechism of the Children of the Goddess and the Creed, and which is based upon the revelation of the eternal Truth of the Goddess in the sacred MYTHOS.

CAVEMAN THEORY OF HISTORY, THE: This fallacy speings from the mistaken belief that the human SOUL and INTELLIGENCE are products of "evolution" (See PSEUDO-EVOLUTIONISM). It states that the earliest human societies were crude and uncivilised (thus, in modern usage, the word "primitive" is made to mean at once "early" and "barbaric"). According to this view, stone-age society is the type of the early human community. In point of fact, there have been "stone-age" societies in every age; as there are to this day in parts of Africa and Australia. And as far back as we can go, there have always been highly civilised societies. Western history opens with the great civilisations of the near east which are already very old. The belief that there must once have been a stage at which all people were uncivilised is unsupported by any evidence, and comes from the dogma of MATERIALISM that there is no God, and therefore She cannot have created intelligent creatures.

We cannot know for sure whether the human body was created quickly (by specific creation) or slowly (by evolution), and it is not a matter of great importance. What we can and do know is:

1. That the human body is a vehicle for the temporary habitation of intelligent souls.

2. That as soon as an intelligent soul became incarnate in a human body, a HUMAN BEING was created which was every bit as intelligent and uncivilised [read: civilised?] as ourselves.

If the human body was created slowly by evolution, there must, of course, have been a long period before it was fit for the use of intelligent souls. During this period it would have been a mere animal. An animal which could never in any number of millions of years have evolved a soul. For both soul and true intelligence are divine gifts, and not products of evolution or any other natural process. The body cannot grow a soul like an arm or leg; it can only receive a soul from without.

Because they had descended from a higher place, the earliest human beings were probably the most rather than the least civilised. The co-called "primitive" tribes and societies in all ages are merely degenerate groups, as is shown by the fact that most of them have the remnants of a highly sophisticated mythology and system of metaphysical thought which they no longer understand. (See also PRIMITIVISM and PROGRESSIVISM)

CHARISMA: (from Greek charis: grace, favour, gift) The gift of Grace conferred by the Goddess, particularly through Her SACRAMENTS. When we talk of charismative INITIATION either of an initiand or a PRIESTESS, we usually mean that a soul have been received by the Goddess without the mediation of a Sacrament; but Sacramental Initiation is in the strictest sense charismatic.

COMMUNION: The central SACRAMENT of Madrianism, through which the SACRIFICE of the Daughter becomes actual in our lives. Through Her Sacrifice, we transcend the KEAR which cuts us off from the Mother, and gain real Communion with Deity. In the actual Communion, the bread is transformed into the spiritual body of the Daughter. This Sacrament has been performed in all ages, and imitations of it were invented by certain masculist religions, following the Eleusinian Communion, where Mother and Daughter were called by the names of Demeter and Persephone. It was instituted by the Daughter Herself (See The Mythos of the Divine Maid, VII, 16–23); this institution is especially celebrated at the FESTIVAL OF ARTEMIS, and also at the EXALTATION.

CONSCIOUSNESS PRINCIPLE, THE: One of the central principles of the PROFANE world-view. This is in essence the belief that the conscious mind is capable of knowing all that there is to know. It involves valuing REASON above INTELLIGENCE, and is an important factor in producing INTELLECTUAL HUBRIS. The consciousness principle is not only a denial of MYSTERY, but also implies a complete MATERIALISM, since only material things can be fully understandable to incarnate creatures; but even according to the strictest materialism, it would be a surprising coincidence if the brain of one particular animal just happened to be capable of understanding all phenomena, even those which had nothing to do with its survival or even its environment.

Human beings have an inbuilt feeling that they are capable of understanding all things. That is true. But when one denies all intuition, and all supee-rational truth — "the truth which cannot be spoken", because it is beyond language — believing mere reason to be the only faculty of understanding; then that truth becomes a falsehood: the falsehood that all knowledge can be reduced to conscious propositions which can be put into words. This falsehood must come into being whenever people fall into the materialistic error that HUMAN BEINGS are merely "rational animals", with no soul and no supra-rational faculty.

In conformity with this error, the universe must be "flattened out" and "disinfected" of all super-rational truth. "Supernatural" facts must be explained away somehow, even by the most contrived and ridiculous hypotheses. Human behaviour must be reduced to "evolved" animal instincts and explainted in terms of pseudo-sciences such as economics and sociology.

The consciousness principle also grossly oversimplifies all the facts of human life. At its most extreme form, believing that all human ills can be cured by some simple rational formula such as socialism or some new method of education; or forgetting that language is an indescribably subtle complex of nuance and connotation, formed over thousands of years, and believing that it can be replaced by artificial "rational" languages such as Esperanto.

The consciousness principle has greatly assisted the forces of darkness by rendering many people incapable of understanding what MYTHOS is and why it is necessary to the human comprehension of Divine Truth.

CORPORALISM: The belief that the body is the root and origin of human existence. This springs from the MATERIALISTIC belief that there is nothing beyond the physical, and the ANIMALISTIC belief that all human motivations are "evolved" instincts. It leads to a number of errors, especially: the error that the person ceases to exist when the body dies; and the error that a person "is" her body, rather than simply inhabiting it. It also leads to an excessive desire to "explain" human actions, feelings and beliefs in purely physical, social and economic terms, ignoring the moral and spiritual aspects of human existence. Ultimately, corporalism denies the freedom and individuality of the human being, treating her as a mere product of her environment. (Corporalism is closely linked to EROTOCENTRISM and EROTOLATRY).

COSMIC APROSOPISM: Usually called simply Aprosopism. This is very prevalent, and makes a special appeal to the modern mentalist. Apart from strict atheistic materialism, it is certainly the most active factor in leading souls away from the Goddess in the world today. Aprosopism means literally faceless-ism, and put simply, it is the doctrine that God, or the universe, has no face. Of course, materialists believe that there is no overall Personality in the universe, and that all things are mere accident; and it is certainly true that aprosopism first made its appearance in the west when materialistic philosophy was becoming generally accepted. But aprosopism means not strict materialism, but a vague Theism which denies the Personality, the "face" of the Goddess. Thus the overwhelming personal experience of the Divine is avoided, and in its place is put a comfortable, "sensible" philosophy which leaves the ANTHROPOCENTRIC, fale-self-centred life intact.

Typical aprosopistic 'gods' include such abstractions as "Universal Intelligence", "the Life-force", "the Great Spirit", "the Eternal Laws", "Cosmic Law". Laws are very popular in certain types of aprosopism; also every type of "Force" or "forces". Even terms such as "the Absolute", or ABSOLUTE GOOD, which, taken in the proper sense, are perfectly correct definitions of the Goddess, can be made into aprosopistic pseudo-deities. The most DISSONANT forms of Aprosopism deny also the Divine Unity, speaking of laws, rather than the Law, forces rather than the Force, spirits rather than the Spirit, etc. On a more sophisticated level, one often hears such statements as "I believe in an immanent God, but not a transcendent God", which is the metaphysical equivalent of saying "I believe in the front of this sheet of paper, but not in the back."

Aprosopism is particularly insidious because it often takes Truths which in themselves are perfectly HARMONIC (especially when applied to ABSOLUTE DEITY, the Dark Mother), and misunderstands or misrepresents them in such a way that they appear to conflict with other truths of equal importance, thus creating DISSONANCE. In particular, such Truths as that God is unknowable, and that She is beyond being and unbeing are brought into an illusory conflict with almost all the other Truths of religion. This is helped by the CONSCIOUSNESS PRINCIPLE, which encourages the belief that unaided human reason is sufficient to discover Absolute Truth, and even to over-rule Divine revelation.

The most harmful characteristic of aprosopism is that while it does not involce a conscious rejection of belief in God, it invariably ends by transferring that belief into the realm of abstract theory and rendering it void in all practical and personal respects.

CREATURE: Any thing or living being created by the Goddess: that is to say, all things in existence other than the Goddess Herself. The term is more often used of living beings (including human beings) than of inanimate things.

CROSS: The Cross of equal arms is the symbol of the season of MOURA, and of the death of our Lady. Based on the number FOUR, it represents MATTER. Not, in this case, physical matter, but the lowest depths of matter – the most complete separation from God – into which Her Daughter descended: thus, the Cross is the symbol of absolute DEATH – the death which no human soul can undergo, for no CREATURE can ever be absolutely separate from the Goddess: for complete separation from Her would be non-existence. The MYSTERY symbolised by the Cross is that the only Being ever to suffer complete separation from the Goddess was the Goddess Herself.

CROSS OF RESURRECTION: Usually called RESURRECTION CROSS. A cross of equal arms with a circle superimposed upon it, each arm extending a little beyond the circumference of the circle. The circle, like the full moon, is a symbol of complete or Divine Perfection. Here, the cross represents not only the Divine Sacrifice, but also its glorious result – the extentsion of the light of the Daughter in all four directions of fallen matter, so that there is no place to which Her Love does not reach. Within itself, the Resurrection Cross contains the resolved paradox of Divine Perfection – the Cross eternally extending in all directions to infinity, the Circle already perfect and circumscribed. The union of Being and Becoming; the point which is at once infinity; the instant which is at once eternity. The Resurrection Cross is one of the central symbols of the Madrian faith, being both a sign of the absolute Perfection to [read: from] which we came and which we must return, and of the perfect SACRIFICE of God the Daughter which is the only means by which the soul may come again to that Perfection.

CULT: Any systematic and regular practice of ritual worship other than COMMUNION. The term is usually applied to the CULT DOMESTIC, but can also designate for example, the regular devotino of an individual or a group to a particular Genia [Janya], perhaps centring around her shrine.

CULT DOMESTIC: The whole religious life of a Madrian household, centring on a regular domestic Rite of Sacrifice. A Madrian household is defined as any group of Madrians who live together and all who are dear to them. The "priestess" of this Cult is the spiritual head of the household, who is usually the mother (although, of course, the household may not necessarily be a family).

*cf Catechism, 53.