Odilia Carmen Chirica

"The name of Shri Bhagavan Dattatreya has occurred sometimes in these essays, but he is still practically unknown outside India. More lamentable still is the fact that although still worshipped by millions of Hindus he is thought of more as a benevolent God rather than a teacher of the highest essence of Indian thought. In the basic essence which runs through the 3 patterns of thought which I have classified as the Diamond Dharmas, we find their earliest expression in the Guru teachings of Dattatreya, which preceded them all and later became embraced in Brahma Vidya. Shri Dattatreya was a dropout of an earlier age than the period when Veda and Tantra merged to become one single cult. It was men like Dattatreya who helped to make this possible. Three of his close disciples were kings, one an Asura, and the other two belonging to the warrior caste. Dattatreya himself was regarded as an avatar of Maheshwara ( Shiva ), but later was claimed by Vaishnavas as the avatar of Vishnu. Not s...

by  St Bonaventure INTRODUCTION St Bonaventure was a Franciscan Monk born in central Italy in 1217. He joined the Order in 1243, and wrote a number of masterpieces including a biography of St Francis, and many other treatises. The most widely-known of his works is that dealt with here, "The Soul's Journey into God", a dense  summa  of medieval Christian spirituality. It is based on a vision of the Seraph, the six-winged angelic creature which had provided St Francis his critical mystical experience, and it was whilst meditating on this vision that St Bonaventure realised that "...this vision represented our father's rapture in contemplation and the road by which that rapture is reached." The actual Latin title of this work is  Itinerarium mentis in Deum , and it is of interest to this present work that Itinerarium can be translated as "plan for a journey (itinerary), which is part of the function served by any initiatory sys...

"The following is a pictorial key to the spiritual journey. It is archetypical, that is, these images/energies are present in each one of us, and the journey is also the same for each one us. Look carefully, feel, and see if it resonates with you. The images are drawings from Johfra Bosschart, a Dutch modern artist (1919-1998). Johfra is a rather unknown painter. Nevertheless his works are magnificent. The drawings on this page appeared as illustrations in The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, published by Lectorium Rosicrucianum, a Rosicrucian order founded by Jan van Rijckenborgh in Belgium (now an international order). The images give a quick overview of the spiritual journey. If you desire to know more, read the The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz. This anonymous text appeared in 1616 in Strasbourg, Germany as the third pamphlet of an order called Fraternity of the Rose Cross. Nothing is known about the author or about the order itself. Thus the text stands ...