Folding the Fabric

Maranatha & the Four Elements

Since the passing of Gordon White I have been going through some of his newer materials, the stuff I missed in the past two or three years. Among the list of poignant synchronicities discovered in seeing what Gordon was up to in that time is the Maranatha prayer.

It is said that Maranatha was an utterance by Jesus in Aramaic, his native language. It means either “The Lord has come.” or “Come, Lord.”

It would seem that St. Cyprian independently sent us both the message to start working with this prayer at around the same time, which I find fascinating and a bit validating.

Catching up with Gordon’s videos, he suggests using it as a call to the One, the consciousness that is everything experiencing itself; God above gods.

When first started exploring this a few years back as suggested by St, Cyprian, I found the same vibratory frequency encoded therein and it was striking to me just how similarly this felt in practice to the standard Buddhist mantra. This led me to investigate the Buddha that existed before Siddhartha Gautama (the human man) and to learn that the Buddha is limitless, quality-less consciousness which existed at the very beginning of everything, and from which all conscious beings originate.

This doesn’t actually fall very far from my experiences of El, God in the highest. If you read my work you probably know that I differentiate between El and Yahweh, as do many historians and scholars, and as did the ancients. Let’s have a peek at Deuteronomy 32:8-9 real quick, but rather than whitewash the proper nouns present in these two verses into “the Lord” or “God”, we’re going to leave them as they were actually written.

⁸ When the Elyon divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.

⁹ For Yahweh‘s (YHVH) portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.

Aside from making much more sense as a passage now that we’ve allowed for two spirit persons to be present within it, it also (along with scores of other historical evidences) plainly invalidates the a-historical myth of monotheism. Monotheism only existed at this time depth for Zoroastrians.

There is a distinct difference between these two figures and beings when it comes to practice as well. They feel completely different, which makes it somehow even more annoying that most Christians would deny this observation. Not because they legitimately disagree, but because they likely do not have the experiential reference points by which to make such a distinction and doing so would likely accrue guilt and flirt with heresy, or because they simply failed to study their sacred texts without projecting a pre-decided and steadfast doctrine onto them. Another point for the gnostics.

For me, El is that One. So is the Buddha consciousness. There is no conflict here.

They syncretize quite well, as they are simply two names and descriptions from two different places which are attempting to get at the same thing. Interestingly, they both each have a human ambassador who is quite important to the overall praxis regarding these ideas of the One. They only showed up 500 years apart, too. With over 300,000 years of homo sapiens history, that’s practically within the same breath. Perhaps Gautama Buddha was the inhale and Jesus the exhale. I digress.

If you’re like me and you were raised in a way which piled on loads of static to deal with when it comes to Jesus before you can even begin to deal with the mess inherent in the texts and traditions associated with him, then sinking into and sitting with some Buddhist frameworks may just be what the doctor ordered to help re-frame those Christian ideas which are valid magical technologies in such a way as to steal them back from the hands of your oppressors and harness their power for your own good works.

Within the Thai Buddhist traditions of which I am something of a superfan, there is a strong emphasis on working with the elements. Five including space/spirit, when unmanifest, and four when addressing the elements in the manifest material world. In the pre-manifest aspects, these great beings (Mahabhutas) are the foundational building blocks of all cosmic creation, in service to being itself at the highest level. In manifest form they are communities of beings whose natures fit within their respective elemental kingdoms and they compose the material world.

Within the SE Asian systems, the Mahabhutas are referred to in short-form within countless katha and spells as Na Mo Put Taa Ya. The manifest elemental currents, however, are referred to as Na Ma Pa Ta. Na for Water, Ma for Earth, Pa for Fire, and Ta for Air.

You may have noticed that when breaking down the Maranatha prayer into distinct syllables you will get Ma Ra Na and Ta.

Only one of these syllables varies from the SE Asian elements, the realization of which knocked my socks off, and a strange unintended logic can be found therein, even from this English-speaking Westerner’s perspective.

Ma is Mother is Earth. The Ma sound associated with the mother is fairly common across several cultures, and the earth is fairly universally (literally) our mother.

Ra is the only variance here from the SE Asian system’s Pa, however instantly we recognize the Egyptian and Māori solar deity in Ra, lending an ease in affording a shift in utterance while the mind can still being drawn to the fire.

Na instantly reminds me of Nautilus, with Nausicaa and Nammu being close runners-up.

Ta again takes us to that Mecca of magic we call ancient Egypt, with the slight variance Ptah, who breathed things into being and named them with his tongue (quite airy).

When chanting Maranatha, the feeling of something like heaven arrives. There is a descent of the One into the ritual space and it’s presence is palpable. If one begins to associate the elements with each syllable, we have the opportunity to call upon the One at the very beginning of all things, and the elemental forces of the material world, quite literally within the same breath.

We are aligning with the One, drawing it in, but we are doing things in the world. We are folding the fabric of both reality and space-time so that they touch, so that the material (or our inherently elemental magical work) is aligned with and supported by that great One-ness. This is a deceptively simple invocation of both Kether and Malkuth using the same word Jesus spake. If Jesus used this as a prayer then when we say it he is saying it with us, as an ancestor of practice. This single-handedly abolishes that Neo-Platonic idea of the created world somehow falling far from the Holy and the One, an idea which (contrary to popular belief) the Christians did not inherit from the Israelites.

With this single utterance we can infuse the spirits back into the material world, breathe the life back into it, both for ourselves in our own minds as well as practically within our magical work.

Calling to the elements directionally, opening ceremony, even empowering magical items or balancing the elements within your own body are all valid lines of inquiry with this practice in your tool belt. The applications of this technology are numerous and should be explored.

A follow-up to this little side quest will be available for paid subscribers and will contain a usage of this technology within the context of a road-opening spell to use whenever you may need one.