Hortus Conclusus

Marriage:

Holy, thrice holy, is the unification of woman and man into the most intimately merged togetherness in life on earth! –

Holy is the ardour of the sexes to unite! –

Holy is the mystery of propagation and giving  birth! –

Holy is the invisible bond which unites what long ago became so that it can create a place for new becoming! – – –

Blissful are the man and woman who comprehend these things and recognise each other in loving union, like the origin of all being recognises itself as ‘man’ and ‘woman’ in the eternal union of love! – – –

Blissful is the house which becomes God’s most sublime temple here on earth, for a true marriage is lived therein, entered into before the countenance of eternity by people who know the sublime dignity of their humanity! – – –

What is fulfilled here is a wonder rich in mystery known to few in this world, and even hidden from those who bring it about! – – –

How ineffably foolish it sounds to my ears – how vastly removed from all wisdom, – for one to speak of ‘perfection’ where man and woman avoid each other on their life’s road for the sake of what is supposedly the higher unfolding of the soul! – –

Formed as part, it imagines it can create perfection; – it is devoid of any sense that it can only attain this perfection by merging as one with the other part with which it was once united in the spirit, but here on earth is physically separated! – –

Lamentable rather is the man, lamentable the woman on this earth, if one part  fails to find in its life the other part appropriate to it, with which united it would form a whole, completed in the form which the resonance of the isolated pole cannot give! – – –

Lamentable, like many other things in this earthly world, is whatever is obstructed in a similar way from attaining the true development for which the latent possibility would certainly exist…

To  the knowing it often seems in such cases as though nature itself wants to take mercy on those banished to unredeemed half-humanity by arousing its creative fantasy into fashioning, through a physical opposite, an idol of the other sex in the outside world as a pathetic surrogate for the compensation lacking on earth.– –

Those familiar with the history of ecstasy and mysticism will not find it difficult to find plenty of examples of this phenomenon…

Certainly such experiences are reinterpreted and evaluated as the most sublime spiritual experiences; yet possible experiences of this kind can always be explained simply in terms of physical stimulation and arousal! – – –

No person on earth – man or woman – who is physically capable of marriage, and does not see himself or herself excluded from it by merciless fate or for other irrevocable reasons, can experience on earth his spirituality with ultimate clarity as long as he voluntarily flees the real compensation of the sexes embedded in nature! – – –

Here nothing can be ‘accommodated’, twisted, and argued!!

No one who thinks he can ‘perfect’ himself on earth and sees marriage as an obstacle to progress  or even as something to be avoided, can achieve his goal, – whether it is only hidden selfishness which succeeds in blinding him, – or whether ‘religious’ delusion leads him to this mad belief, – here where the Godhead inclines most deeply towards him, he must beware of the ‘devil’s’ attempts to lure him into a participation in ‘holiness’ which leads merely a phantom existence  as the crazed spawn of the fantasy-filled brains of ascetics, and which unfortunately has found, and continues to find, catastrophic worship in this phantom world! –

The most holy human mystery is for the debauched ones reason to stimulate the nerves, and in satisfying this stimulation: to seek desire.

They have gone astray and do not fulfil their human dignity, and they defile the holiest of things with dirt! –

Gone astray also have all who seek to progress along the path to perfection without recognising their need for the opposite pole in order to become a whole! – – –

Gone astray have those foolish and arrogant enough to believe they find in their unmarried state confirmation that they are on the right path; they think they are most sublime because they, – supposedly for the sake of the ‘kingdom of heaven’, – renounce the union of marriage with the other sex! – – –

Naturally, the unmarried can indeed walk on the path to perfection alone and reach their highest goal some time in their own way; though they can never attain that fulfilment on earth which only marriage would open up to them. – –

As a part they can only ever seek to achieve partial perfection; in earthly life they will never achieve that clarity which is only achieved where man creates the new union of a whole, – united from male and female – in a true marriage. – –

Yet the unmarried will only be able to achieve partial perfection in their own way if there are genuine reasons, not invented by the madness of man, which prove before God that the unmarried state is not chosen! – –

Such reasons are much rarer before the judgement of God than delusion would have it…

Let no man call upon them who has not given seriously consideration to the matter in deepest self-contemplation, and has not become certain that he has heard God’s voice in the silence of peaceful self-immersion! – – –

Let no man, on the other hand, seek union with the opposite sex out of pure lust, and before he has received instruction within himself that such a union will only promise salvation if he knows himself to be willing to bear alone eternal responsibility for it, – completely regardless of whether the other person in the marriage is willing to bear it for himself, or is ignorant of this duty! – –

It is an ancient madness which says that ‘marriage is good’ but ‘not marrying’ is ‘better’. He who – vulnerable to such folly – first expressed it certainly had a sublime insight into many spiritual mysteries; thus a great spiritual burden has been placed on the consciences of all later generations…

It is time for the delusion of the wise man to finally lose its power!

It is time for marriage, commonly considered to be a ‘sacrament’, or in plain words: – as a means to secure one’s salvation, – though the unmarried state is declared to be incomparably ‘holier’, finally to be lifted out of its defilement which  is expressed by the notion that: –  the mature woman, alienated from the most sacred fulfilment of her womanhood, is superior to every woman who has attained the dignity of motherhood; –  and that the sterile selfish man who consumes his masculine power within himself and robs the earth of the worth of his blood, is superior to the man who on this earth has become the father of new life! – – –

It is truly time for marriage to defend what is holiest about it when the ‘immaculate conception’ denies the act of procreation so that the ancient ‘pagan’ tale has been adopted without hesitation  to ascribe the birth of the most divinely sublime man to a ‘virgin’ as is customary in ancient myths, – not suspecting that those ancient myths give a deeply veiled account of the birth of God in human hearts, – the birth of the ‘son of God’ in the soul which the spirit of God alone can impregnate…

Most worthy of all reverence is indeed that woman who became the mother of a son whose light-filled teachings prepared salvation for the whole world, if one would trouble oneself to act according to them inasmuch as one still really knows about them! –

Yet, one should not honour the father of this son any the less, for: whoever sees the son here also sees the one who begat him, since the blood legacy must already exist before it can become legacy! – – –

Here the denial of propagation from the blood of the father is simply an expression of contempt which in another place declares that the unmarried state is ‘holier’ than marriage! – – –

It goes without saying that ‘marriage’ does not mean for me: a coarse, instinct-enslaved condition of cohabitation in order to extinguish the passions of one another’s senses! – –

‘Marriage’ does not mean for me sexual intercourse which sees in the child only evil threatening its desire! – –

‘Marriage’ is also not the irresponsible procreation of new life which cannot be given the conditions for beneficial self-development! – – –

Truly: there is on this earth no state of life which demands as much control of oneself, as much feeling for the other and as much awareness of responsibility than true marriage! – – –

Only those who fulfil all these high demands can hope to find the happiness of marriage that so many seek and so few experience; for most while claiming it – as their ‘proper right’, – believe it attainable without realising that man must – like all happiness – construct it for himself and create it for  himself! – – –

In this book I shall now speak of what true marriage is and what it demands.

I will show that it does indeed require undeviating willingness, trained will and power to establish a marriage in the way it should be, – that it is, however, much easier to create a good marriage and its  happiness than the many unhappy marriages would have us believe…

May the following be a preparation for all those who face marriage.

May those who have been married for a long time – happily or unhappily – choose from my words the things which can still be of use to them!

May those, however, who see no way out from the most serious question whether to dissolve the marriage they once entered into with the joyful hope of happiness, since all possibilities of finding  that happiness seem to have died a long time ago, ask themselves after reading this book whether they are really justified in seeking this dissolution, and whether they are willing to carry the responsibility for it before the countenance of eternity?! – – –

Certainly what is irrecoverably broken should not stand in the light of new happiness!

Certainly one should not remain in a lifelong bond of marriage where disappointment follows upon disappointment, and every day produces only misery and sorrow, until its last curse!

Nevertheless: – many marriages have been dissolved amongst men without in any way manifesting to God the damage which might have justified this dissolution…

Often enough a new serious start to the marriage would have laid the foundation for new and now lasting happiness had not all the bridges between each other been prematurely pulled down because new happiness at another person’s side had already caught one’s eye. – – –

Those who will hear and feel that this concerns them, – let them hear !

Those who must remain far from marriage, – whether it is refused to them by fate, or whether duty compels them to remain unmarried because they could never bear the responsibility for marriage, – – let them put this book aside as it has not been written for them! –

I write here for those who are not prevented by any unalterable reason, or reason given before God, to strive for perfection in the unity of marriage. –

What is put into words here is meant only for them!

Naturally I am very familiar with the deceptive spectres of false feeling which would attempt to shake the sanctuary of marriage like ancient walls to be brought down in order to find the path to freedom.

I cannot warn urgently enough about this fatal deception!

From the wild herd community where – to be concise and crude about it – every woman still had to give herself to every man capable of forcing her, an indescribably long path has finally led man on earth to the lofty temple in the spiritual world which unites one man with one woman. – – –

Animal nature was subordinated to the spirit, even if it still struggles against obeying it willingly.

And even if there are still today millions who are not on this level, – even if whole peoples only see in woman the bearer of children and the vessel of desire, or even see her as the working animal traded like precious cattle so that the number of women  a man ‘possesses’ is a witness to his wealth, like his herds on the pastures, – nevertheless, it has long been recognised on a higher level that only marriage uniting one woman to one man fulfils divine spiritual law. – – –

Woe unto those who undermine their own marriage with unbridled lust, – those incapable of seeing members of the opposite sex without desire! – –

Let it not be called ‘coincidence’, but let a will be felt  at work here if a marriage, kept carefully pure of any unfaithfulness, cannot be reached by that dreadful plague which brings through brief moments of untamed lust curse and misery upon  generations! – – –

Nature shows even of itself, in all clarity what it demands, from earthly man today!

Whoever it is and whatever the motivation,–: the person who sinfully undermines the marriage binding one woman to one man by ignoring the bond and commitment of such a marriage is heaping the most burdensome guilt upon himself: he sins against all mankind and causes cosmic confusion, – – quite apart from the monstrous desecration of the temple erected in the pure essential spirit whenever a marriage is consummated! – – –

Only sublime grace can atone those burdened with this guilt for crimes committed against marriage, and only: if such atonement is sought by them! –

No less weighty is that guilt heaped upon themselves by all those who dare to blow up a form which appears to them to have outlived itself since they know not how to fill it with true life! – –

All efforts to create a new and better form of union between the sexes on this earth will always be in vain: – for what mankind has been able to achieve in the marriage of one man with one woman has its foundation in the innermost formation of the Godhead! – – –

Those who seek to destroy here the things sublime insight has constructed are not conscious of the consequences of their doing!

A sanctuary of the spirit the wisest on earth have spent thousands of years building would thereby be destroyed! – – –

Future millennia would have to elapse for it to be rebuilt, assuming this were possible if it was lying in ruins! – – – – – –