Dearly beloved readers:
With great pleasure I am writing to you to dedicate a few words about this wonderful engraving that is entitled…
… CHILD WITH BOW AND ARROW AND ALL-SEEING EYE OF GOD
This artistic work was made by Boëtius Adamasz, also called Bodius, in the year 1624. The artist lived between the years 1580 and 1633. He was a citizen of the Netherlands. He worked in collaboration with another Jesuit brother named Herman Hugo on the emblems of Pia Desideria, one of the most widely read devotional books, printed in Antwerp, Belgium. Subsequently, his forty-five engravings integral to this work were reused in various ways.
It was one of the most pious works known in seventeenth-century Europe. The central theme of these works was always divine love and the human soul, and many authors claim that the artist always liked to represent these virtues in childlike forms, whether associating their engravings with Eros Cupid or with the baby Jesus.
In those times we must remember that, according to what our Patriarch V.M. Samael Aun Weor taught us, in many Catholic Christian monasteries there lived many monks who dedicated themselves, in secret, to scrutinizing the alchemical books seeking in a sincere way to self-realize. Proof of this was the great Master Rabelais, author of the work Gargantua and Pantagruel. Nor can we forget Atanasius Kircher, great alchemist of that time.
To enter fully into the subject of our study, we must first observe that at the top of this engraving we see in the sky an eye accompanied by three arrows and two ears.
Obviously, the auditory forms and the eye represent the forces of God, who SEES EVERYTHING AND HEARS EVERYTHING, because for the BEING there are no secrets neither in the heavens nor on earth thanks to his OMNISCIENCE and OMNIPRESENCE.
The three arrows that direct or point to the heavens symbolize the three primary forces of creation and the longings of the soul on Earth in wanting to know the divine mysteries. These three forces are up there, in the superior worlds of Consciousness, and therefore those arrows are directed toward the sky.
When the V.M. Samael reveals to us the astrological sign of Sagittarius in his ZODIACAL COURSE, he explains that the arrow sent by the human centaur pointing with it toward the sky symbolizes the longings of the human creature, which must take us to the heavens of supreme Consciousness. These three arrows to which we refer are accompanied by a sentence written in Latin and which reads in this way: “Ah, ut nam heu”. Translation: ‘Ah, poor me!’.
And, certainly, illustrious reader, the soul or embryo of soul that we carry within is chained to the Law of Karma, and therefore it is, likewise, tied to the Wheel of Samsara. That is the cause of our constant sufferings in this valley of pain we call life.
We must also take into account that the arrows or darts possessed by the creature reflected in this engraving undoubtedly allude to the erotic darts, without which our radical transformation to reach sufficient spiritual stature to allow us to live in the Kingdom of the Father is impossible. For this reason, many authors associate the human figure that we see here with the mythological Eros-Cupid… This reflects what our Patriarch, V.M. Samael Aun Weor, emphasizes to us when he tells us: “Only with the power of love is it possible to achieve our liberation”. No doubt we are told, not of profane love or lustful pseudo-love, no; we are told of the love that is the brother of death. This has to be understood very well.
We are told that many authors saw the very child Jesus of the Christian tradition reflected in that child who illustrates our engraving, and they were not mistaken, because anyone, man or woman, who works in the alchemical magisterium can come to incarnate the Christ child, who will then become man and become our particular Salvador Salvandus, because everyone has his own. That is the mystery of millenary Gnosticism.
Note that next to the child you can see a mask. This mask represents the human personality, the transient one. Let us not forget that the word personality comes from Latin and precisely means ‘mask’. With all this we must understand that, really, before God, before the BEING, we are nothing…
It is equally striking to see that at the height of the heart it is easy to see an arrow that shows us the human figure pointing toward the heavens, as if indicating to us that our destiny is there, in the heights, in the bosom of the Great Reality.
Accompanying our engraving is a phrase written in Latin that expresses:
"Domine, ante te omne desiderium meum, et gemitus meus a te non est absconditus. Salmo 37".
Translation: ‘Lord, before you is every desire of mine, and my lamentation is not hidden from you.’
I give you now, my dear companions of the path, some sentences to be taken into account:
“Virtue renders evil more jealous than vice does.”
Euripides
“In the bosom of a virtuous man there is a God.”
Seneca
“It is not enough to merely possess virtue as if it were an art; it should be practiced.”
Cicero
“If virtue guides us, we will have fortune as our companion.”
Cicero
“Virtue must be common to the peasant and the monarch.”
Confucius
DO UT DES.
─’I give so that you may give.’
KWEN KHAN KHU
