Bridal Chamber

Blossoms don’t open themselves.

It takes a sunbeam to ignite the rose.

I was asleep until you placed

a ruby on my chest

awakening the expiration

of this gentle song, the whisper

of Spring in a Winter garden.

So’ham, So’ham, So’ham...

One breath pours wine into

the burnished cup of another.

Some say that this is just

a sound without meaning.

I say it means the Magdalene

has met Jesus

in the Bridal Chamber

of your heart.

This little poem is from from my book, 'Wounded Bud' (see below). I offer it for morning meditation on the sacrament of the Bridal Chamber. What is the sacrament of 'the Bridal Chamber'? For early Christian Gnostics it was the final initiation into the mystery of the Heart. It is in our own heart that Shiva and Shakti, Christ and the Magdalene, Divine Masculine and Feminine, unite as the Self, wedding the lunar and solar currents of prana that wind around the spine, called Ida and Pingala, in one radiant choral silence. That is why the heart chakra is called 'anahata,' the 'unstruck sound.' It is in that depth of meditation that the mantra, the divine name, dissolves into a vibration of continuous luminous creative energy bubbling up from divine silence. This is the sound, the Logos, that creates the universe. As a Vedic text declares, 'Adau Bhagavan Shabda Rasahi': in the beginning the Lord manifested the whole universe out of a current of sound,' which echoes the first verse of the Fourth Gospel, 'In the beginning was the Word.' This experience of union in divine love, not out of body, but in the very physiology of the heart, is the essence of Yoga.

The 3rd Century 'Gnostic Gospel of Phillip,' found in the Nag Hammadi scrolls, declares:

"In the Breath of Christ's Spirit,

we experience a new embrace:

we are no longer in duality, but in unity....

All will be clothed in light when they

enter into the mystery of this sacred embrace....

What is the Bridal Chamber,

if not the place of trust

and consciousness of the embrace?"

Painting: 'The Bride' by Dante Rossetti