One of the perks for winning the fiction category in the Indie Spiritual Book Awards is that The Star Family gets its own book trailer. Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGj73omnsMI&feature=youtu.be
Mystery and Ritual in Theresa Crater’s The Star Family
Review
I recently wrote a review for the book Masculinity, Senses, Spirit, which “examines the complex interrelationship between gender, sexuality, and the realms of the spirit and the senses in the Atlantic world from the Eighteenth century to the present,” (from Amazon). Yeah, it’s a bit on the academic side. But I wanted to read it because I’d discovered the research of Craig Atwood, whose research was important to my latest novel. He wrote about the teachings of Count Zinzendorf in the Eighteenth century that included more gender equality and sacred sexuality.
Yeah, the Eighteenth century. In my childhood church. I was intrigued, so did a lot of research. Then I got carried away and wrote a novel, released last year, The Star Family.
My First AudioBook
Collecting Readers
Reblogged from Mysteristas:
When my first novel was published, it was before the age of social media. Not that long ago, really. I didn’t hear much from readers directly. My publisher was a middle-man. I did get forwarded a letter or two, but that took a long time. It took a while to answer, too. And I had an option of whether to engage or not.
Now I hear from readers directly and immediately.
Like, “I couldn’t put it down.”
“Do you think that ritual in the end of Beneath the Hallowed Hill would actually work?”
That one stumped me.
This appeared on my Facebook page recently: “Like The Star Family? I LOVED this book! I could not have asked for more of my interests in one novel. Religion, sexuality, green energy, big oil, sacred geometry, chemtrails, ley lines, aliens, physics, trafficking, the Koch bros, ancient technology, and don’t get me started on the MUSIC! I could hear every note and each nuance. I completely related to Jane, wise yet naive, a pillar of strength and still fragile. If I didn’t have an enormous backlog of books waiting to be read, I’d read it all over again.”
Be still my heart. Thank you, Jennifer Knotsmed.
Or “Your new novel is great. When’s the next one coming out?”
I want to say, “Can’t I just lie here in a heap for a day or two to recover before you ask me that?” What a compliment, though.
Mostly I hear about my readers’ pets, what other books they’re reading, how their day is going. I learn a bit about their world views—all courtesy of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.
The divisions have been removed. Most writers are no longer those mysterious beings who sit in their rooms and spin out their web of words so mysteriously like the Lady of Shallot. We’re present, visible, warts and all.
Is this a good thing? Have we lost anything? We’ve certainly gained the joys of hearing from more readers.
Sacred Geometry: The National Mall
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In The Star Family, I wrote about the sacred geometry of Washington, D.C. I had Knight walk Jane down the National Mall and explain it as a Tree of Life. Also there was a magical battle to reclaim this tree for the light.
Many people have spread this idea that the National Mall is built as a Kabalistic Tree of Life. Some dispute this idea, pointing to the fact that L’Enfant’s original plan stopped just past the White House and the far side was still marsh. Masons have continued to influence the architecture in D.C., however, embodying spiritual principles in stone, wood and landscapes.
Many place the Capitol at the foot of the Tree, representing Malkuth, Earth. This is where the ideals of liberty and freedom are supposed to be made manifest in law. If the Capitol is the foot of the Tree, then the Lincoln Memorial is the top, representing Kether, pure consciousness. The Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s second inaugural speech are inscribed there. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his moving “I Have a Dream” speech from its steps.
I’m not sure how Chokmah and Binah are represented on the National Mall, but the next levels do seem clear. The White House stands at Chesed, the station of Mercy, the place of ideal rulership. The Jefferson Memorial represents Geburah, ideal justice. Inside, Jefferson’s idea of a world ruled by justice inspires the visitor. The Jefferson Memorial is backed up by the Pentagon, a five-pointed star, a prominent symbol for this fifth station on the Tree.
The Washington Memorial is the heart of the Tree, Tiphareth, represented by an obelisk. In ancient Egypt, the name for obelisk was “Ib-Ra,” with “Ib” meaning heart: the heart of the sun. The Washington Memorial stretches high into the sky to capture the sun, the planet of this sphere, and channel that energy back down to illuminate the Tree and spread that light all through the governing bodies of the U.S.
The National Museum of Art, the Sculpture Garden, the National Archives and American and National History hold Netzach’s place on the Tree. Netzach is Victory, expressing the bounteous energy behind the arts and literature. Across the mall, we find Hod represented by the Air and Space Museum and the Department of Agriculture. Hod takes the exuberant energy of Netzach and brings form to it. The intellect and science reign more on this side of the mall, balancing the arts.
Yesod is probably the fountain in front of the Capitol. Yesod is the Moon, the Imagination. Perhaps it needs to be better represented on the mall. The Capitol Building receives all this energy and is topped by a statue of Liberty. Malkuth is represented by a Queen on her Throne.
Some people on the web have suggested that all this mysticism is satanic. Why? Because it uses pagan imagery. Because the National Mall is supposed to be aligned to Sirius. More learned writers say the whole city is aligned to constellation Virgo and dedicated to the Goddess. But satanic? The Masons are one of the recipients of a stream of wisdom that has been passed down through the ages, through different religious and spiritual expressions of those ideas. Seeing the common teachings in different religions is not evil. It is the opposite.
Has the United States harnessed all this idealism and expressed it perfectly yet? No. We are still striving for a more perfect union, just like it says in the preamble of the constitution. Have the opposite energies sometimes flowed through the Tree that is the National Mall? I imagined this in The Star Family. Next time you walk there, imagine the balanced expression of each of those Ideals manifesting themselves to flow through that grid and bring us more in harmony with our ideals.
Comenius and the Rosicrucians
In The Star Family I suggested that Comenius was a Rosicrucian, therefore having strong ties to mysticism and the Western Metaphysical tradition. How true is this?
First, who is Comenius? Born Jan Amos Komenský in 1592 in in the town of Nivnice in Moravia, a Province of Bohemia now in the Czech Republic, he was orphaned at the age of 12 after his parents died from plague. Raised in the Unity of the Brethren, known as the Moravian Church in the US, he resisted Ferdinand II’s attempts to return Bohemia and Moravia to Catholicism. He went into hiding during the Thirty Years War, and then fled to Poland where he kept what is now called “the hidden seed” of the church alive to reblossom in 1722 in Saxony.
Best known for educational reform, Comenius supported universal education for all (including women and the poor), taught logical thinking over memorization, stressed the importance of physical activity for children, compassionate guidance over harsh punishment, and developing concepts from the simple to the complex.
He espoused teaching “all things, “ a philosophy he called “Pansophia,“ “a doctrine of universal harmonies, and a connection between the inner world of man and the outer world of nature” (Yates 217). Comenius said he was influenced toward this idea and writing encyclopedias by Johann Valentin Andreae. Remember him? One of the seventeenth century founders (or publicizers) of the Rosicrucian movement.
Both Comenius and Andreae attended university at Heidelberg at the same time that Frederick and Elizabeth began their rule of the Palatine. Remember their aim was to create a Rosicrucian state there, according to Frances Yates. See how it’s all coming together? So Comenius was influenced by the Rosicrucians in his youth, and as Yates points out, the philosophy and teachings of the Unitas Fratrum most likely influenced Andreae and the Rosicrucians just as much.
He continued to read Rosicrucian documents as evidenced by his long discussion of them in his famous Labyrinth of the World (see Yates 210-219). Both Andreae and Comenius moved away from using the title “Rosicrucian” when the organization went into disfavor in Europe, but they continued to teach the same ideas.
I found the last piece of evidence that convinced me Comenius was a member, perhaps even the head, of the Rosicrucian Order in Rosicrucian Question and Answers with Complete History by Harvey Spencer Lewis, their Imperator from 1915 to 1939. In a list of “either Masters of various Lodges or [those who] assisted in bringing the mystic fraternity into their respective countries” (89), Comenius’s name is found right below Andreae’s on page 91.
Comenius lost two families to religious persecution. His library was burned twice. He lived most of his live in exile from Bohemia. He and members of his family achieved many things that I don’t have the space to discuss here. Comenius is buried in Naarden, Holland.
The Sacred Spring
The climax of The Star Family takes place at the source of a sacred spring that flows out into Washington Park. Does such a place exist?
Washington Park exists. I played in the park as a child in a mossy grotto with a creek, rocks, a couple of deep pool (well, they were deep for a child), and crayfish. Water trickled down the rocks, creating a special feel. I used to tell my friend Susan that a good witch lived there in a childish attempt to express how magical I felt the place to be.
Here’s a picture of it from 2013 when I visited in the spring. It’s much smaller than I remembered it, but I am taller now.
I don’t know the source of this creek. The little stream runs down a hill across the street from the park in a small open space that has never been built on. As far as I know, no cave exists like the one I added to the novel.
Imagine my delight when I discovered there definitely is a spring in Washington Park. Michael Breedlove talks about it in his article “Secret sites, hidden history, and natural wonders inside the city.” This spring on the hillside near Gloria Avenue used to feed Forgotten Lake in Washington Park, “a grand lake that offered sailing in the summer and ice skating in the winter.” Drained decades ago, the only remaining evidence of it is the steps to the lake on a sloping hill near the Gloria Avenue entrance. I wonder if this is the same spot. It’s hard to tell from both his description and picture.
Digital Forsyth has two images of a spring house in its archives. They come up when you search for “Washington Park,” but the captions say one is from Old Salem Park and the other says Wachovia Park, “established in 1884 out of a strip of woodland separating the Salem Academy and College and Salem Cemetery.” That’s where the May Queen used to be crowned at Salem College before that practice was stopped. I have Jane walk here with her friend Roxanne in the novel.
It’s interesting that we think we’ve made something up, but it turns out there’s some truth in it after all.