A Spiritually Enlightening Online Magazine. July's Theme: "Key to Heaven"
Volume 3 Issue 5 ISSN# 1708-3265

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Illuminations Aleesha Stephenson About the Cover Jerry Wenstrom Dragon's Daughter Part Six (Conclusion) Jennifer Monaghan Daughter of the Dragons The Poem Jennifer Monaghan Living dead haunt Southeast Asia David Suzuki PhD Cloth of The Mother Goddess Isadora Gabrielle Leidenfrost Heavening SpiritPainter Is THE Key To Heaven In Your Pocket? Rev. Cheryl Jewett Animals Are the Key to Heaven Jean Hofve, DVM Thoughts, Feelings and a Little Robin Redbreast Iris Perrin Why Humans Make Lousy Lovers Jean-Claude Koven Freeing Yourself From Consensus Reality Marsha Bartek Ascending to Prime Matrix Julia Rogers Hamrick Could The Key To Heaven Be A Liver Sandwich?! Martin Avery Wiccan Voices Anne Ellis Lifetalks Dawn Baumann Brunke Technically Tarot Jeannette Roth Aunty Nasty Nasturtium Blackwitt Meditate a Moment Featuring: Aleesha Stephenson Tales of a Country Vet Dr. Bruce Burton DVM Walk Your Talk Aleesha Stephenson Wyrd Lynx John Sacelli Da… Funny Pages! Featuring: Jeannette Roth Tarot Readings Dan Pelletier Songs for the Journey Home Dwariko von Sommaruga and Catherine Cook Good Spirit Xavier Rudd Well Worn Path Raven Grimassi and Stephanie Taylor Tibetan Master Chants Jonathan Goldman Da Vinci Code Dan Brown My Camino Sue Kenney

Heaven and Hell. We all know what those are. Heaven is THE LIGHT, Perpetual Divine Brilliance, while Hell is the absence of light, ETERNAL DARKNESS. Light and Darkness. Good and Evil. God or Devil. Couldn't be clearer, right?

Well, no. Linguistically, it doesn't work. 'Heaven' is not light, and 'hell' is not darkness. In fact, Hell is a cognate of the Greek Helios - the Sun God. And Heaven is 'haven' - a place of safety. For the migrating Semitic tribes so closely associated with the stories of our Torah, Bible and Koran, Hell was the implacable desert sun. And 'haven' a shady oasis, a place to escape the sun. Hell was Light, and Heaven was Darkness.

How is it that our spiritual conceptions of heaven and hell have come to rest 180° opposite their physical origins?

The Key is in that image of the Yang and Yin chasing each other, with the white dot of Yang at the Center of Black Yin, and black dot of Yin at the center of White Yang.

Dante understood it: the Way In Is the Way Out. No one arrives in Heaven who hasn't been through Hell.

Rollo May (a prominent psychotherapist) had a sign over his door: Either Way Hurts. You can enter the pain, feel it, pass through, and arrive at peace. Or you can ignore the pain. Drug it. Make it someone else's fault. Try to outrun it through work or sex or mental gymnastics. The Key is the same: no one comes to peace who hasn't been through hell. No one finds their soul without doing their personal work.

The Doors understood it: The night destroys the day. The day destroys the night. Try to run, try to hide. Break on through to the other side.

Everything becomes its opposite. The utopian idealism of Karl Marx (who would have hated being called an idealist) becomes the cruelty and absolutism of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. The Republican Party of Lincoln becomes the Republican Party of Nixon, Reagan, the Bushes, Rumsfeld and Cheney.

Anatole France once wrote a book about Heaven. As I recall it, his hero is a rebel who desires to overthrow the king and create a happier world. He seeks like-minded souls in the coffee shops of France, and ponders which revolutionary cabal to join. Finally he settles on one which seems the most radical. Only to find this is a secret organization of Fallen Angels who believe the ills of the world are caused by the Devil who has usurped the throne of Heaven and pretends to be God. They marshal their forces, and mount a successful attack, throwing out the rogue deity and supplanting him with their own leader. But the world fails to improve, and our hero finds himself as an old man still haunting the coffee shops, listening to the mutterings of the next group of rebels who plan to take the throne.

My guides, who never tire of their own humour, tell me earnestly that things were once different; the Devil was one of the Old Gods who ran the world when justice prevailed and Heaven, or the Heavens, was an orderly place. Satan was Seth, the Egyptian Set, whose domain was evening and the Fall. He was one of Four, the Divine Tetrad: OSIRIS - (O Sire of Us), the Rising Sun; ISIS (she IS who she IS, the midday Sun); SET, the SET-ting Sun; and NEITH, the Night, or Dark Lady. Osiris was married to Isis, Set to Neith; each deity deferred to and recognized the authority of the next, and harmony reigned among the gods, spheres, orbs, stars and worlds.

But then someone (we shall not name names) began to 'rage against the dying of the light.' We became afraid of death and surrender, and blamed Set (Satan) for the Fall. Day was separated from Night, Light from Darkness, and Man from Woman. We call that Hell now, and burn in the flames of someone's Bright Idea that Eternity is Unending Light. Or our egos (which we're busy calling souls here) should be immortal.

Even our physicists now tell us the universe could not exist or hold together without Dark Matter (the Dark Mother). All the Lights of Galaxies and Suns and Many-Colored Worlds are Whirled about the Black Holes of Matter-Eating Mistresses whose Mysteries become the Birth-Mothers of new Star-Sons.

Gravity is the grave. What matters to us most deeply is our depths and deaths, the death of matter and the birth of spirit. But, though it may be shocking to some, it is equally important that spirit (or energy or light) should die in order that matter be born. For, as Madonna put it, we are all material (or Ma-Terra-All) boys and girls. The birth and death of matter and of spirit, in fact of all which matters to us, are matters of the greatest mystery, for, truth be told, the Key to Heaven turns both ways. The Way In is the Way Out; yet the Way Out is also the Way In.

The Key to Heaven is the journey into the Self. Or, as I sometimes practice it, into the Womb of the Earth Mother (since All Center is One with All C\enter). A return back through all the twists and turns of evolution which have created me; an unraveling, or giving myself back to the Source. Which then recreates me. When I have fully surrendered, when I have given myself away, then I am in Heaven.

Or perhaps, as at sometimes in our lives we all suppose, Sex is the Key to Heaven. In Angelish (the Original Language) we call this the Kin Key, or the Kinky. The ecstatic excitement of meeting the unknown. The Voo Doo (or Vous Do) of Knowing You.

But Sex too is a meeting and mating of Dark and Light, Yin and Yang. It lies within, just as the act of sex with another lies within a greater mystery and purpose.

The Key to Heaven is inside. In the Dark within the Light within the Dark.

And then, just when I know this most fully, the Key to Heaven is outside. It is my meeting with The Other.

In-Out. Yin-Yang. Woman-Man. Heaven-Hell. The Key. The Ki. The Kee. The Eek. Shriek of pain which becomes the thrill of discovery. The Key.

While experiencing a series of Shamanic Visions in the early 1980's, John Sacelli met his totem Lynx (links) who introduced him to a series of inter-dimensional, alternative and past life adventures, and also to 'Angelish, the Original Language'. Angelish is the basis for the angeLynx Oracle deck, which John has developed along with visionary artist Chris Deschaine. John has conducted workshops in Polarity Therapy, Kundalini Yoga, Deep Tissue Massage, Soul Circles, The Dreamtime and Shamanism across North America.

To learn more about the Vows of El, or Angelish, the Original Language, or the angeLynx Oracle Deck, go to www.angeLynx.com or www.johnsacelli.com. For an angeLynx or Star Logic reading, contact John via email or call: 773 761 0252.

Be sure to read the review of AngeLynx in our May 2006 Issue.

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