Great Rite or hieros gamos

In relation to the qadishti priesthood and my own personal spiritual practice, I have reflected a great deal on the implications of "The Joy of Sumer: the Sacred Marriage Rite," that is elsewhere referred to as the hieros gamos or "Great Rite," and arguably an aspect of the bit Akidu in Babylonian tradition, although I am less certain of the historicity of that association.

The goal is pretty simple. Let the energies of deities flow through you and your partner and permit it to marry you, in a sense, to the Cosmos. Through radical affective affirmation, the highest expression of love, you become
one with your partner, the Gods, and the Universe as a whole.

It is wonderful and personally fulfilling if this unfolds with one special person, but the potential in spreading love between and among larger groups of loving people, of energizing an entire community of spiritually elevated
souls, is utterly mind-boggling. The fact that this is possible within a few years of the Maya end-date of December 21, 2012 leaves me wondering just what the ancient seers knew. If you bring a community together in love, how can you get them to hate? If you bring the world together in love, how can you get nation to fight nation or brother to rob brother?

I, too, feel a calling as a steward to Mother Earth, and intuit that love is the key through which planetary and human healing will take place. I expect resistance. People fear change. Rulers fear the loss of power. The greedy
fear the loss of money and with it control.

It is not without reason that the hieros gamos was treated as one of the most sacred, if not the most sacred, rituals of the year. The en was literally a priest-king, indeed a living embodiment of deity. Little doubt this position evolved from a religio-magickal priesthood of such veneration and age as we can only guess. The ancients knew the power inherent in such connections, and they understood the need to subjugate the masses through the control of love and marriage.

A community built of lovers, or better yet a number of interrelated communities of lovers, spreading joy slowly and steadily, and with an eye on security and stability in interpersonal relationships, has the potential of greatly altering the direction of humanity and our relationship with Mother Earth. Living lightly on the land is a concomitant aspect of the relationship between panfidelity and deep ecology, and I should note for those who are wondering, that, yes, there is a qualitative difference between the umbrella term polyamory and panfidelity. The latter means faithful to all. It's a subject worthy of discussion at some length and I will refrain from embarking on it in the here and now, but would be pleased to continue the conversation in a later e-mail.

ilim te-araku t-shalmu,
kelevh qadesh