Crown of Asphodels
Description
by
Helena Blavatsky
It was said unto me: "Write this, that those who look for the Dawning of the Soul may read and understand." The Crown of Asphodels is formed of five blooms.
The whole nature of man lies like a landscape, grey and colourless and silent, until the little chill wind arises which is the herald of the dawn; under that little breeze, springing up in the darkness, the soul of the man stirs in its sleep, as the trees and the flowers and the grass blades stir and shiver in the dawn breath.
13 point font
**************
Excerpt:
The stir and the shiver in the soul of the man are the first feelings of vague discontent with his life; of disillusion and disappointment; of undefined fear of the future, when there comes a momentary realisation that after life follows death. These feelings come to everyone sooner or later: they may come in the form of a fulfilled desire, which, being fulfilled, does not reach unto its true ideal; in the form of a love, ardently desired, that proves unsatisfying when it is obtained; or they may come in the sudden realisation that youth is passing, that at the end of the longest road of life the gate of death stands open into the unknown Beyond. But however it comes, it is the chill precursor of the dawn.
It does not last; it passes in a breath, and as it passes there comes the wonderful pale lightening over all the land before the first sunrays are visible.
The whole aspect of the landscape changes; the peaceful, slumbering silence passes into a watchful unrest; the shadows deepen and darken; what light there is, is ash-grey and cold and dreary. The warm security, the pleasant hush of the darkness are gone; the light and warmth and colour of the sun will come; but in that short moment before the dawn there is emptiness and nothingness, an absence of any hope or promises. And so it is in the soul of man before the dawn of the soul life has flooded it with the eternal sunshine. The easy, pleasant slumber in the satisfaction of the material life has passed into an uneasy expectation, a fearful questioning, a shrinking from the void that slumber had filled.
And then, in a moment, the first sunrays dart from the edge of the horizon - the dawn is here. The awakened soul waits in a trance of expectation till the full flood of light has flowed all over it, making a new heaven and a new earth. All the shadows, all the grey dreariness have fled away from the sunbathed world. All the beauty and the colour and the brightness undreamed of in the slumbering darkness stand revealed in that pure light of the dawn.
The dawn of the soul life comes not in the same way to every soul, or at the same time. To many it comes only in the moment of passing from this life to the other. To a few it comes while they are still alive upon this earth. For some that moment before the dawn, that moment of chill emptiness, lasts from the awakening until the end of this life. For those to whom the dawn arises while they are still on earth, it is day for ever after. Clouds may come up hiding the sun, rain may darken the heavens, but still it is day. An he who has seen the dawn knows that surely behind the clouds, above the rain, the sun is still shining.
To all of you who shiver still in the little cold wind before the dawn, I say: take heart, the shadows will pass, the emptiness will be filled; be sure of that. As certainly as the sun rises upon the earth, so certainly shall the dawn of the soul life glorify every soul of man in the time that is appointed for it.
36 pages - 5½ x 8½ softcover
