“I hear the voice of the seven planets, who whisper to one another, ‘Blessings on the Father of the poor one: he is the one who tends the fruit tree. We have no Father and no one to tend our tree.’ Welcome to anyone life knows, and sorrow to whomever life ignores. Welcome to anyone life knows, and who stays on earth free from the world of imperfection where the planets live. They sit on rebel thrones and work with a whip. Gold and silver excite them, and they cast war into the world. They cast war into the world, and they will roast in fire. The evil will roast in fire, their glory gone. But my family and I will ascend and see the place of light where the sun does not go down, where lamps of light never dim, the place, the house to which your souls are called and invited in, souls of our kin, of the good, and of our believing brothers and sisters. There life is extolled.” ~Song from the Mandaean liturgy

Voice of Seven Planets

To man ancient peoples, the planets were also gods, and I think it is in that sense that this song refers to the seven planets. It is odd, though, that this song has them praising the true God. This may also be an allegorical reference to the energy centers of the human body.

Blessings on the Father

As this song is from the liturgy of the Mandaeans, it should naturally begin by blessing the Father, although He really doesn’t need our blessing, we need His. The statement that this Father of the poor is the one who “tends the fruit tree,” means that He is the one responsible for life and creation. As for being the Father of the Poor, “the poor” are those who have not been trapped in the constant pursuit of material gain. They don’t necessarily live in poverty, but they place spiritual growth above the endless pursuit for material goods that so many engage in these days.

Those who whisper that they have no Father are the ones listening to the false gods of matter. They are lost souls unless they become awakened.

Life Knows

You might think that life knows everyone, but this is talking about those who have become spiritually awake and are living eternally, as opposed to those who have only a temporary life in the realm of matter. The soul is always immortal, but if you don’t awaken it and unite with it, you are not one of those who have eternal life.

Rebel Thrones

Those who sit on rebel thrones and seek gold and silver are the leaders who have turned away from God and embraced materialism. They are rebels because, in the distant past, kings took advice from priests and followed God’s Law. Today, few if any political leaders truly follow God. As the song says, these evil ones will eventually “roast in fire,” but that should be taken as an allegory. The point is, they won’t go to Heaven unless they change.

Place of Light

The song ends by saying that those who follow The Way, will go to the Place of Light, where the sun never goes down. This, of course, is Heaven, the highest dimension of reality, the highest level of consciousness that we humans can reach.

“The Phrygians also say that the Father of all is an almond, not the tree, but that preexistent almond that has within itself the perfect fruit, palpitating and moving in its interior. It tore open its own womb and brought forth its invisible and unnamable and ineffable child, of whom we are speaking. To tear open is to tear open and cut through, just as physicians call scarifications the incisions that they make in inflamed bodies or in those that contain some tumor. So the Phrygians call almond the being from which the invisible one came forth and was begotten, and “through whom everything came into existence and apart from him the nonexistent was made.” The being so born is called a flute player because what was born is a harmonious breath or spirit. “God is a spirit. Therefore the true worshipers will worship neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem, but in spirit.” The worship of the perfect ones is spiritual, not carnal. The spirit is there where the father and the son are named, the son born of the father. He is the many-named one, many-eyed, incomprehensible, toward which every nature strives, and each in its own way. He is the expressed word of god, which is the word of declaration of the great power. So the word is sealed and hidden and veiled, lying in the dwelling on which the root of all is founded, the root of aeons, powers, thoughts, gods, angels, envoy spirits—existent and nonexistent, generated and ungenerated, incomprehensible and comprehensible, years, months, days, hours, and an indivisible point from which the smallest being will come forth, part by part, to grow. The nonexistent, underived, indivisible point will, by its own thought, become an incomprehensible greatness. This is the kingdom of heaven, the grain of mustard seed, the indivisible point existing in the body, which no one but the spiritual ones alone know. This is the meaning of the words, ‘there are no words or language, whose voices are not heard.’” ~The Naassene sermon

Like an Almond

I doubt that the Pyrygians said the Father of All was an almond. I think it is more likely that they said He was like an almond, at least in certain ways. To some of the ancient civilizations, the almond symbolized Purity, perfection, faith, fertility, hope, grief, and luck, and in Numbers 17:8 and Hebrews 9:4, Aaron’s rod sprouts sweet almonds for the followers of God’s laws, with the promise that forsaking these laws will turn the almonds bitter and inedible.  So to say that the Father was an almond is to say that He is perfection, purity, and the source of all hope for humanity.

Tore Open Its Womb

Aying that God tore open His womb is an odd way to put it, but nonetheless an accurate way to say that Gog created everything from Himself as He was all that existed. If you think that God is male and doesn’t have a womb, you are thinking of God as a human, which He isn’t. God is not male or female, and yet He is both, because God is everything, so in the sense that He has a center of creation from which all things are “born,” He does have a womb.

Invisible and Unnameable Child

Here, again, the quote uses allegory. This is not a reference to Jesus, though it may be a reference to Christ. Jesus was a man who was, for a time, a messiah and a Christ, but the Christ spirit is immortal and has existed forever. The Naassene sermon calls him unnameable because Christ is a name we have given him, not what God named him.

True Worshipers

It is true that God is spirit so we must worship Him in spirit. When the Naassene’s say that true worshipers don’t worship In Jerusalem or on a mountain, they mean that worship is a spiritual thing rather than a physical one. So it is not necessary to go to a special place to Worship, except to go to your own spirit and spiritual faculties. In order to do that, you must awaken and develop those spiritual faculties. The best way to do that is to use the Light of the Spiritual Sun or Son of Righteousness.

The Word is Sealed

It was true that the word was “ sealed and hidden and veiled,” but it is no longer so. It is being revealed through the Light of the Son of Righteousness, but only to those ready to hear it, and willing to use this Divine Knowledge to further the Goal of God to redeem the world, rather than to benefit themselves. We benefit from spiritual development, but the primary goal should be to redeem the world.

“Life is the constant accumulation of knowledge, the storing up of the result of experiences. The law of cause and effect is in constant operation, and we reap what we sow – not as a matter of punishment, but as the effect following the cause. Theology teaches us that we are punished for our sins, but the higher knowledge shows us that we are punished by our mistakes instead of for them. The child who touches a hot stove is punished by reason of the act itself, not by some higher power for having ‘sinned.’ Sin is largely a matter of ignorance and mistake. Those who have reached a higher plane of spiritual knowledge have borne upon them such a convincing knowledge of the folly and unwisdom of certain acts and thoughts, that it becomes almost impossible for them to commit them. Such persons do not fear there is some superior being waiting to strike them to the earth with a mighty club for doing certain things, simply because that intellighence has laid down an apparently arbitrary law forbidding the commission of the act.

“On the contrary, they know that the higher intelligences are possessed of nothing but intense love for all living creatures, and are willing and ready to help them, so far as possible under the workings of the Law.” ~William Walker Atkinson

Cause and Effect

Cause and Effect is something we learned about in science class in grade school. If great force is shot out of the engines of a rocket (cause), the rocket will be pushed upwards (effect). But many don’t understand that this law also applies to human behavior, in which case it is often called Karma. Most people think of cause and effect as being an immediate thing. The rocket doesn’t wait until weeks after the engine is fired to launch into space. But with karma, the effect may be delayed for days, weeks, or even years. Yet it is still a form of cause and effect.

Reap what we Sow

It is part of this law that we must reap what we sow, or perhaps more accurately, as we sow. The effect may be a very obvious thing, but not always. A person who swindles people out of a great deal of money (cause) may not ever go broke but may suffer from incurable and painful illnesses (effect).

Occasionally we will see an obvious case of instant karma where the effect matches the cause, such as the story a few years back of the guy who loved to fish but didn’t catch fish to eat. He would just throw the fish onto the deck of his boat to die slowly. One day while he was doing that, a shark jumped up and grabbed him, pulling him into the water and killing him. Obvious tit-for-tat.

Not Punishment

Atkinson is correct in saying that the working of this scientific law is not punishment. For centuries, many have said that God punishes us for doing wrong, but that is not the case. It is simply the law of cause and effect at work. God may be disappointed in us at times, but he doesn’t punish us. It is Satan who punishes those who don’t listen to him, not God. Of course, some will argue that since God must have created the law of cause and effect, He is punishing us indirectly. I would disagree with that because God is simply letting the law function to maintain a certain amount of order in the universe, and help us learn from our mistakes. That isn’t punishment.

Higher Intelligences

Atkinson says that the spiritually developed person understands the law of karma, and avoids violating it, even though they know that “higher intelligences” do not punish us, but instead love us despite our faults. That is true, but we must understand that what Mr. Atkinson calls higher intelligences should more accurately be called higher levels of consciousness. Intelligence is associated with the brain and the physical world and is the realm and power of Satan. God, on the other hand, is the Supreme Consciousness.

Advanced spiritual people also understand that if they use spiritual knowledge and abilities for material purposes, they will find their spiritual gifts fading, or disappearing entirely.