Initiation

Learning the letters of the great cosmic book

December 8th 2024

When children learn to read, they start by identifying the letters of the alphabet. Once they have learnt them well, they are gradually able to recognize them in the words they come across, until one day they can read whole sentences.
Similarly, in the course of their initiation, disciples pass through numerous phases during which they gradually begin to see and make out the letters of the great cosmic book, which are the elements of creation. And when St John writes at the beginning of his Gospel, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…* All things were made through Him’, it means that in the beginning, all the principles of the divine alphabet came into play: from top to bottom of creation, right to the physical plane, they reproduced the same structures they had created on high. Everything that exists on the physical plane can be considered as words, sentences, poems composed with different elements of the Word.
* Related reading:

Angels and other Mysteries of The Tree of Life

We often use the image of the scale to express not only the idea of intermediary between the bottom and the top, but also that of hierarchy: social scale, scale of values, scale of colors, etc. Likewise there is an angelic hierarchy which makes the link between man and God, is symbolized by...