Candlemas. The Feast of the Purification.
The official last day of the Christmas Season!

As subject of meditation, this is linked to the “Fourth Joyful Mystery” and its spiritual fruit is coming into perfect obedience with Divine Law.

In the Theurgical system I use and teach, this subject leads us to approach Divine Law first by looking at Nature (see Romans 1:20). I say this because human accomplishment has not come about by contradicting the laws of Nature but by obeying them.

For example, look at our harnessing of electricity or of the atom. Not a single instance of our technology has come about by arguing against or overcoming the laws of gravity, friction, inertia, or any number of natural laws. But rather it has ALL manifested because human beings STUDIED the laws governing Nature, realized they could NOT go outside those laws, and then figured out how to work within those laws so as to make things happen.

As Francis Bacon once told us, “We cannot command nature except by obeying her,” and the state of modern science reflects the truth of that.

The Magus is not unlike the scientist in this regard, except that while the scientist studies the laws of Nature, the Magus studies the eternal Law of God. Call it what you will — Law of God, Law of the Universe, the Eternal Law, etc. — the bottom line is that the Cosmic Principles in question are every bit as real as the speed of light or the natural processes that created the Grand Canyon.

Thus, as the scientist learned to bring himself into obedience with the laws of nature and thus overcome what we once perceived as limitations, the magus has looks to the Law of God in the same way.

It’s by bringing oneself into conformity with the Eternal Law that we grow as eternal beings, and that we learn to overcome those things we believe as limitations. If the lives of the Saints the Church calls “Thaumaturge” or “Wonderworker” teach us any lesson, we learn that it’s also by the conforming to the Eternal Law that we finally learn to overcome the very Laws of Nature.

This is a big part of why I’ve always defined High Magic as “applied theology,” because the Magus is practicing theology whether he’s aware of it or not. This is also why I stress theological education, because theology is often called “faith seeking understanding,” and the constant refinement of one’s own theology because that’s self-understanding.

Our understanding of God is strongly related to our understanding of ourselves, and our understanding of God’s Law is strongly related to our understanding of God. Hence the Magus should seek understanding in all three areas as thoroughly as possible, so as not to be overshadowed with a false depiction of God’s Law. For it is only in a RIGHT UNDERSTANDING of the Eternal Law that a RIGHT PRACTICE can be lived (and it is a way of living!), and from there that RIGHT RESULTS can flow.

I exhort all to meditate on this next time they pray the Fourth Joyful Mystery, and also to think on it anytime they watch or read Science documentaries or Science Fiction, because it was the right understanding of Nature (again, Romans 1:20) that makes these further insights possible.