Abram's victorious exploit in rescuing Lot was followed by a transcendental experience which ranks among the most beautiful and significant episodes recorded in the entire Old Testament. It was Abram's meeting with Melchizedek, a man of mystery of whom nothing is known concerning his residence, his birth, his years, his future. He appears for a moment, bestows his blessing upon Abram, and passes again beyond the veils of physical perception.
Melchizedek was the "king of Salem" and "the priest of the most high God." Coming to Abram, he brought forth bread and wine, "and he blessed him and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth: And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand." (Genesis 14:18-20)
Melchizedek was the king of peace (Salem), while Christ Jesus, Prince of Peace, was, according to Paul, a "high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek." He was not only a personality but a principle.
In Melchizedek and Christ Jesus are blended the two principles of head and heart, intellect and intuition, Fire and Water. The accomplishment of this union is the specific task set for the New Age. It is, moreover, the fundamental purpose of earthly experience.
Speaking of this blending, the Talmud declares:
The Law may be likened to two roads, one of fire, the other of snow. To follow the one is to perish by fire; to follow the other is to die of cold. The middle path alone is safe.
The bread and wine placed before Abram are symbols of spiritualized powers of heart and head. These were the faculties that were quickened to a higher degree of activity and brought into a closer union by the presence and the blessing of Melchizedek.
Abraham, whose mission it was to guide the Fifth Epoch, post-Atlantean peoples during their formative years, was instructed in the mysteries pertaining to this work by Melchizedek; and the Immortal Twelve, who were sent forth to spread the gospel of the New Dispensation, received the deepest teaching the Master had to offer them when celebrating their last Communion together in an upper room (spiritual exaltation) in the city of Jerusalem (city of peace).
The two events, being of like spiritual import, are significantly linked, not only by the form of the rite itself but also by the place in which they occurred. The ordinance of consecration was instituted for the Old Testament Era by Melchizedek in Salem, and by Christ Jesus — in the same city, which had then come to be called Jerusalem.
As the New Age now being inaugurated moves toward its zenith, increasing numbers will enter, like the Disciples of old, into the same mystic upper room in Jerusalem, the city of the Great King, and there realize the sublime state of mind married to heart in indissoluble bonds of the spirit.
In early Greece the powers of illumination and immortal life were conferred upon those who partook of the sacred ambrosia and the nectar of the gods, these having the same significance as the bread and wine of the Church.
Whenever the Sun by precession ushers in a New Dispensation, the leaders who receive the New Covenant partake of the Bread of Eternal Life and drink Wine from the Chalice of Immortality. With the beginning of the Cycle of Aries, Abram, the leader of the new post-Atlantean race, received this sacrament from the priest-king, Melchizedek. The most Blessed Master introduced the deepest teachings for the Cycle of Pisces when celebrating the Last Supper with His Disciples. It was the inner instruction the Disciples received concerning powers of the spirit when eating the bread and drinking the wine dispensed by the Christ that caused early Churchmen to speak of the Eucharist as "the medicine of immortality."
It was after Abram's meeting with Melchizedek that the Lord came to him in a vision. The question Abram then asks of the Lord contains the key to an understanding of a chapter which is one of the most profoundly occult in the Bible. "What wilt thou give me," he queries, "seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?"
The name Eliezer means help of God. It signifies the awakened powers of divinity within. Eliezer is the pious and faithful steward of Abram's household (here signifying his body), and is of Damascus, a city which, as used in the Bible, signifies a center of illumination and a place where flowers are in perpetual bloom. Hitherto barren of progeny, Abram now asks the Lord, in effect, what he is to bring forth seeing that the God within is now functioning as a center of light ' and that the spirit is in command of his personal attributes and faculties. That this was an experience on inner planes is indicated by the statement that his meeting with the Lord was a vision. The spiritual aspect of the entire experience is, moreover, indicated by the Lord's promise to Abram that the heir he sought would come forth out of his own being (bowels) and that his spiritual offspring, would be without number, as the very stars in heaven. Abram believed for the unbelieving part of man pertains to the senses and has no share in the perception of a soul functioning on the high level of consciousness to which Abram had ascended.
The Lord also promised Abram that unto his seed would be given the land that stretches "from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates;" the spiritual reaches of that land has already been referred to.
Abram asked the Lord whereby he would know that he was to inherit that land. Said the Lord: "Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtle-dove, and a young pigeon." (Genesis 15:9)
Abram did so. But it was not a bloody sacrificial ceremony that Abram was called upon to perform. As we have just observed, the entire experience recorded in this chapter occurred on a superphysical level and the words describing it must be considered in terms of symbols if the meanings here embodied are to be apprehended in the slightest degree. It must always be remembered that the deepest spiritual truths are never committed to writing but are conveyed by word of mouth from teacher to disciple in accordance with the disciple's worthiness and understanding. Since this is so, such references as are made in writing to the experiences of the soul are by their very nature obscure and enigmatic to all except those who have attained a state of consciousness and a soul development that makes first-hand corroboration possible. The Bible contains but mutilated fragments of the ceremonialism of the exoteric religion; its inner mystic truths must be proved by a spiritual investigator's first-hand contacts.
Returning to the question of animal sacrifice, such was not the offering of Abram at this time. The "wings which the soul fashions for high ascent" are not built out of the agony and death of any living thing, but from the forces of sympathy, compassion and an all-embracing, unifying love which includes all God's creatures, from the greatest to the least. Inner soul qualities requisite for the high attainment reached by an Initiate like Abram can be formed in no other way.
Let us apply the astrological key to the sacrifices required of Abram. The heifer is a symbol of Taurus, and its sacrifice means renunciation of sexual desires and a love that is purely personal. The goat is the symbol of Capricorn and signifies the sacrifice of worldly power and ambition. The sheep is the symbol of Aries and represents resurrection of the life powers through chastity and transmutation. The turtle-dove and pigeon are symbols of Libra, the Balance, and refer to Subtle experiences that test judgment at this stage of attainment. The sacrifice was made in Mamre (strength) near Hebron (Unity).
Genesis 15: 12,13,17
And when the sun was going down a deep sleep fell upon
Abram; and, lo, a horror of great darkness fell upon him,
And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall
he a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and
they shall afflict them four hundred years.
And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was
dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed
between those pieces.
Here is an outline of all that can be given publicly concerning the process of a certain Initiation. It tells of the ecstasy of spirit which accompanies the "great darkness." When Abram lost consciousness on the physical plane he was awake in the inner or etheric realm. In God's Book of Remembrance he then reads in cosmic pictures the future events connected with the Fifth Epoch peoples whom he is to lead. Abram's seed, fruits of the spirit, are not in their home world when on Earth. They are strangers, passing through and serving in the world of matter, afflicted by its limitations until the lower quaternary form (400 years) has been transcended by the trinity of spirit.
Heat, smoke, and fire are inseparable from the refining processes that lead to Illumination.
Sarai and Hagar are both representative of the love principle: the one in its higher manifestation, the other in its lower expression. The task of every disciple is to transmute the lower into the higher, and this is the spiritual significance of Abram taking Sarai's (higher nature) Egyptian handmaid (servant from the land of darkness) unto his bosom. This occurred after Abram had dwelt ten years in Canaan (holy land), ten being the number under which man and woman work together toward regeneration.
Hagar, the unregenerated nature, was placed by Abram under the dominion of Sarai, the regenerated. Said Abram to Sarai, "Behold, thy maid is in thy hand; do to her as it pleaseth thee."
Sarai "dealt hardly with her," so she fled. Yet she did not escape. An Angel pursued her and, finding her by a fountain of water in the way of Shur (beside the Red Sea), bade her return and submit herself to her mistress. This is the love that will not let us go. Rebellion persists for a time, yet the work of redemption continues.
"And Hagar bare Abram a son; and Abram called her son's name, which Hagar bare, Ishmael." Ishmael, being born of the lower nature, is described as a wild man; his hand was "against every man, and every man's hand against him." He represents the masculine or will principle in its lower expression. That the processes of generation are at work is indicated by the fact that after Hagar had borne Ishmael, she called the name of the Lord, and the well beside which it occurred was called Beer-la-hai-roi (well of the living one). This well was between Kadesh (sacred) and Bered (blessed), indicating the increasing ascendency of the higher nature and the growth of spiritual understanding.
— Corinne Heline
