The Chapel

"The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone subdued by the insatiable demand of harmony in man. The mountain of granite blooms into an eternal flower, with the lightness and delicate finish, as well as the aerial proportions and perspective, of vegetable beauty."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The literature of religious experience abounds in references to the pains and terrors overwhelming those who have come, too suddenly, face to face with some manifestation of the mysterium tremendum. In theological language this fear is due to the incompatability between man's egotism and the divine purity, between man's self-aggravated separateness and the infinity of God."

Aldous Huxley

"Do I ignore what is generally called the spiritual nature of man? No, it is the corona, the flower of life, the fruit of which is altruism, the desire to help ourselves and others to higher and better thoughts and actions---in other words, to a more perfect state of harmony with environment."

Luther Burbank

"The scent of Jasmine travels only with the wind, but the fragrance of holiness travels even against the wind. The influence of the holy ones extends everywhere."

The Dhammapada


The Pahutakawa Tree There is an old Maori legend about the Pahutakawa tree at the northern tip of New Zealand where the Tasman Sea comes together with the Pacific Ocean. On that spot huge rocks form a perfect v-shape that plunges into the water. On top of those rocks grows a great Pahutakawa tree whose roots grasp the rocks all the way down to the sea. The Maoris believe that after death their souls must travel through these roots into the ocean in order to reach their island heaven.	The Celestial Tree Across the primordial sky stretch the great branches of the Celestial Tree. The ancient Egyptians believed the tree's aureole to be the source of stars and that the sun rose up from its core. On either side of its huge knotted trunk dwelt a god and goddess. Thoth, god of art and science, inscribed the Book of the Dead. Safekh, goddess of art, music and learning sang as she strummed her flowing hair. Together they wrote upon each leaf the names, numbers and deeds of each person on earth recognizing their merit and ensuring them everlasting life.	Yggdrasil World Trees appear in many mythologies, the Cabala of the Hebrews and the Saxon Irminsul being two examples. The trees are cosmic maps of the Otherworlds our ancestors recognized. They are also called Trees of Life -all life, not just human. The more familiar "wheel of the year" showing the elements and compass points is a flat diagram of earth. World trees must be thought of in 3-D. The tree is a living cosmic axis with its roots in the Underworld, linking with the trunk on the soil of our Earth and its branches in the air of the Otherworld of spirit. These three levels or planes of existence are found in the Celtic system and are the reason that three was a magical number. Yggdrasil of the Northern Tradition also recognizes these three levels but divides them into nine worlds or fruits of the tree. Nine is also an important magical number. The maypole, the besom and the staff all represent Yggdrasil and proper use of these enables travel between the worlds. <<Continued>>	The Sacred Book of Nature To the eye of the seer every leaf of the tree is a page of the holy book that contains divine revelation, and he is inspired every moment of his life by constantly reading and understanding the holy script of nature. -Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Sufi Message

Voices of the First World
Many people have begun to realize that unless the human race listens to the "voices of the first world," the voices, that is, of those original human cultures that lived in naked and reverent intimacy with nature, it may well die out. These "voices" still speak to us in those tribal cultures that have survived against immense odds into the modern era--in, for example, the Kogi of Columbia, the Aborigines of Australia, the Hopi and Navaho of North America, the Eskimo of the Arc-tic Circle, and the nomads of the Himalayas. What do these voices have to tell us? They tell us of our essential "inter-being" with nature; they tell us of the mystery of the world we inhabit, which they know to be everywhere sustained and saturated with divine presence; they tell us of the necessity of profound respect for everything that lives and happens; they tell us of a peace that is the birthright of all those who honor the Great Web of Life; they tell us of the urgency of humility before the majesty of the universe; they tell us again and again of the depth of our responsibility as human beings to be guardians of the natural world.
- Andrew Harvey, The Essential Mystics

Hieroglyphs of Nature
The magic we crave and our attraction to the supernatural are nature in their essence. This is because the tree, the plant, the landscape, and the serpentine river zigzagging downhill on its way to the ocean are all golden hieroglyphs capable of bringing a deep understanding to those willing to pay attention. Indeed, to the indigenous it seems that the tree is the essence of consciousness.
- Malidoma Patrice Some, The Healing Wisdom of Africa