Sword: Difference between revisions

The word ''sword'' can also refer to “[[spoken Word]].” This is reflected in the ancient [[Pythagoras|Pythagorean]] maxim, “Do not stir the fire with a sword.”<ref>Helena P. Blavatsky, ''Isis Unveiled'' (Pasadena, Ca.: Theosophical University Press, 1960), Vol. 1: Science, p. 247.</ref>  

Methuselah’s sword appears again in Jewish lore. Tradition says that thousands of years later [[Abraham]] used the sword of Methuselah in his conquest of the kings<ref>''Legends of the Jews'', vol. 5, p. 165, n. 63.</ref> in about 2100 <small>B</small>.<small>C</small>. These kings had invaded the Jordan valley where Abraham’s nephew Lot had settled. Abraham routed the kings and rescued Lot and others who had been taken captive.

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Some have not believed me when I said, “I came not to send peace but a sword.”<ref>Matt. 10:34.</ref> Throughout the ages, I have loaned my sword to special initiates. The well-known legend of Arthur pulling the sword from the stone derives from an initiation of [[Maitreya’s Mystery School]]. The time did indeed come when I did tell the disciples to take the sword.<ref>In  Luke 22, Jesus  says: “Now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip, and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one. And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough.” He didn’t expect them to arm an army, but perhaps they would need to defend themselves as they went forth to preach his gospel.</ref>...

I am not an advocate of war by any means at any price. But I AM fully engaged in the slaying of unseen demons and [[discarnate]]s who prey upon my own from the [[astral plane]]. And I AM fully willing to challenge the mighty and the kings and the potentates. Therefore, seek the initiation of the spiritual sword.<ref>Jesus, “The Foundation of Christendom That I Have Laid,” {{POWref|30|18|, May 3, 1987}}</ref>

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<blockquote>Understand that it is a rod of sacred fire fashioned by the Divine Mother out of your own sacred life-force. Therefore, the sword that is taken from the stone of Matter is a spiritual fire. Legend would have it that it is a magic sword. Beloved, the spiritual fire does dissolve on contact all unlike itself.<ref>Jesus, “The Foundation of Christendom That I Have Laid.”</ref></blockquote>

 

Genesis depicts a sword of sacred fire for protection or defense. When the L<small>ORD</small> God banished Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden, he placed at the East Gate of the garden “cherubims and a flaming sword, which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.”<ref>Gen. 3:24.</ref>

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My sword of blue flame is yours for the asking. Will you render a service to the hosts of Light? Then call for my sword of blue flame to manifest in your own right hand and use it. Wield it everyday to cut around yourself....

This sword is God’s sword. He has passed it to me from the mighty Elohim Hercules. It is a focus of the power of God. It is a focus not only of the power to keep men out of Eden if they are unfit to enter, but of the power to cut away from them those conditions which drove them forth from Eden to begin with—if and when they are ready to surrender those conditions.<ref>Archangel Michael, July 7, 1963.</ref>

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But we will now give a few historical instances going to show that some daimons, or elementary spirits, are afraid of sword, knife, or any thing sharp. We do not pretend to explain the reason. That is the province of physiology and psychology. Unfortunately, physiologists have not yet been able to even establish the relations between speech and thought, and so, have handed it over to the metaphysicians, who, in their turn, according to Fournié, have done nothing. Done nothing, we say, but claimed everything. No fact could be presented to some of them, that was too large for these learned gentlemen to at least try to stuff into their pigeon-holes, labelled with some fancy Greek name, expressive of everything else but the true nature of the phenomenon.

 

[[File:Peter Paul Rubens - Aeneas in the Underworld.jpg|thumb|''Aeneas in the Underworld'', Peter Paul Rubens]]

We will not ask which of the ancient writers mention facts of seemingly-supernatural nature; but rather which of them does not? In Homer, we find Ulysses evoking the spirit of his friend, the soothsayer Tiresias. Preparing for the ceremony of the “festival of blood,” Ulysses draws his sword, and thus frightens away the thousands of phantoms attracted by the blood of the sacrifice. The friend himself, so-long-expected Tiresias, dares not approach him so long as Ulysses holds the dreaded weapon in his hand. Aeneas prepares to descend to the kingdom of the shadows, and as soon as they approach its entrance, the Sybil who guides him utters her warning to the Trojan hero, and orders him to draw his sword and clear himself a passage through the dense crowd of flitting forms....

Glanvil gives a wonderful narrative of the apparition of the “Drummer of Tedworth,” which happened in 1661; in which the scin-lecca, or double, of the drummer-sorcerer, was evidently very much afraid of the sword. Psellus, in his work gives a long story of his sister-in-law being thrown into a most fearful state by an elementary daimon taking possession of her. She was finally cured by a conjurer, a foreigner named Anaphalangis, who began by threatening the invisible occupant of her body with a naked sword until he finally dislodged him. Psellus introduces a whole catechism of demonology, which he gives in the following terms as far as we remember:

“You want to know?” asked the conjurer, “whether the bodies of the spirits can be hurt by sword or any other weapon? Yes, they can. Any hard substance striking them can make them sensible to pain; and though their bodies be made neither of solid nor firm substance, they feel it the same, for in beings endowed with sensibility, it is not their nerves only which possess the faculty of feeling, but likewise also the spirit which resides in them.... The body of a spirit can be sensible in its whole, as well as in each of its parts. Without the help of any physical organism, the spirit sees, hears, and if you touch him feels your touch. If you divide him in two he will feel the pain as would any living man, for he is matter still, though so refined as to be generally invisible to our eye.... One thing, however, distinguishes him from the living man,...: that when a man’s limbs are once divided, their parts cannot be reunited very easily. But, cut a demon in two, and you will see him immediately join himself together. As water or air closes in behind a solid body passing through it, and no trace is left, so does the body of a demon condense itself again, when the penetrative weapon is withdrawn from the wound. But every rent made in it causes him pain, nevertheless. That is why daimons dread the point of a sword or any sharp weapon. Let those who want to see them flee try the experiment.”

One of the most learned scholars of his century, Bodin, the Demonologian, held the same opinion, that both the human and cosmical elementaries “were sorely afraid of swords and daggers.” It is also the opinion of Porphyry, Iambilichus, and Plato. Plutarch mentions it several times. The practicing theurgists knew it well and acted accordingly; and many of the latter assert that “the demons suffer from any rent made in their bodies.” Bodin tells us a wonderful story to this effect in his work ''On the Daemons''....

“I remember,” says the author, “that in 1557 an elemental demon, one of those who are called thundering, fell down with the lightning into the house of Poudot, the shoemaker, and immediately began flinging stones all about the room. We picked up so many of them that the landlady filled a large chest full, after having securely closed the windows and doors and locked the chest itself. But it did not prevent the demon in the least from introducing other stones into the room, but without injuring anyone for all that. Latomi, who was then Quarter-President (a magistrate of the district), came to see what was the matter. Immediately upon his entrance, the spirit knocked the cap off his head and made him run away. It had lasted for over six days, when M. Jean Morgnes, Counsellor at the Presidial, came to fetch me to see the mystery. When I entered the house, someone advised the master of it to pray to God with all his heart and to wheel round a sword in the air about the room; he did so. On that following day the landlady told us, that from that very moment they did not hear the least noise in the house; but that during the seven previous days that it lasted they could not get a moment’s rest.”<ref>''Isis Unveiled'', Vol. 1, pp. 362–64.</ref>

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