"Beneath the silver pencil of the poet, sorrow can be turned to sweetness and beauty arise from ashes."

   Biblical commentators consider this work of Jeremiah to be a lament for the fall of the city of Jerusalem. For an esoteric Christian it holds quite a different meaning. Historical facts are used throughout the Bible to conceal deeper truths.

   Woman is the mother of the race; through her it has been propagated. Also, through the receptive, formative, feminine principle in both man and woman is all real spiritual progress accomplished. The masses of humanity have failed to take cognizance of this fact. Recognition of the feminine within man, its nature and development, is the chief objective of occult studies. Unfoldment and expression of this principle leads to communion with the "Still small voice." It was the Eve principle that "fell" in the Garden as man lost his spiritual consciousness. When lifted up it becomes the "Woman clothed with the Sun" of the Book of Revelation.

   The Lamentations of Jeremiah bewail the non-recognition of this feminine principle in humanity and its fall. The Song of Solomon is a paean of triumph for its reawakening and union with the masculine or will principle. Such a consummation is the true ideal attainment, the finding of the kingdom of heaven within. The prophet gives the keynote of its development in the words: "How long wilt thou go about 0 thou backsliding daughter? for the Lord hath created a new thing in the earth, a woman shall compass a man." (Jeremiah 32:22)

Lamentations 1: 3, 6
Judah has gone into captivity, because of affliction, and because of great servitude; she dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no rest: all her persecutors overtook her between the straits.
And from the daughter of Zion all her beauty is departed; her princes are become like harts that find no pasture; and they are gone without strength before the pursuer.

   Judah (Leo, the heart or love nature) is captive and overtaken within the straits, signifying lack of harmony between the masculine and feminine principles as a result of the latter's fall. This lack of equilibrium causes the inequality between men and women in the world today. Inequality between the sexes in outer life can never be adjusted apart from a change of consciousness, an achievement for each one individually. Equality between the sexes will not come about until the masculine and feminine potentialities in each man and each woman are brought into harmonious unity.

Lamentations 2:1
How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the way of his anger!

   This refers to the fall of man from a spiritual condition into a consciousness of mortality along with his fall from the etheric realms into the physical — a key to the truth conveyed in the Genesis account of the Garden of Eden.

Lamentations 2:8-10
The Lord hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion; he hath stretched out a line, he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying: therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished together.
Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken her bars; her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is no more; her prophets also find no vision from the Lord.
The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, and keep silence: they have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloth: the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground.

   The words gate, garden and wall refer to the feminine aspect of Nature. The Lord (cosmic Law) "hath stretched out a line" of vibratory power. Physical matter cannot vibrate at the rate of etheric substance. Therefore, when man lowered his consciousness through wrong living it was essential that he have a vehicle in harmony with his altered state of knowing; the result was his gradual fall into the present density of matter. As a consequence spiritual Law is but little understood; the veil of mortality is drawn before things of the spirit.

Lamentations 2:13, 14
What thing shall I take to witness for thee? what thing shall I liken to thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? what shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion? for thy breach is great like the sea; who can heal thee?
Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee; and they have not discovered thine iniquity, to turn away thy captivity; but have seen for thee false burdens, and causes of banishment.

   The concrete or purely intellectual mind, unillumined by spirit, sees only vain and foolish things. "Though there be prophesies they shall fail, though there be knowledge it shall vanish away." Love, the true, power of spirit, endures forever.

   The third chapter of Lamentations expresses the wail of an imprisoned spirit in its longing for freedom from the alien land of materiality (limitations of the physical body):

Lamentations 3:52-55
Mine enemies chased me sore, like a bird, without cause. They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and cast a stone upon me.
Waters flowed over mine head; then I said, I am cut off. I called upon thy name, O Lord, out of the low dungeon.

   The fourth chapter of Lamentations begins a dirge over the fall and closes on a note of victory over the lower nature (the daughter of Edom). it portrays present world conditions and the evolutionary status of the race.

Lamentations 4:1, 2, 21, 22
How is the gold become dim! how is the most fine gold changed! the stones of the sanctuary are poured out in the top of every street.
The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, how are they esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter!
Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, that dwellest in the land of Uz: the cup also shall pass through unto thee; thou shalt be drunken, and shalt make thyself naked.
The punishment of thine iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of Zion; he will not more carry thee away into captivity: he will visit thine iniquity, O daughter of Edom; he will discover thy sins.

Lamentations 4:4-8
The tongue of the suckling child cleaveth to the roof of his mouth for thirst; the young children ask bread, and no man breaketh it unto them.
They that did feed delicately are desolate in the streets; they that were brought up in scarlet embrace dunghills.
For the punishment of the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the punishment of the An of Sodom, that was overthrown as in a moment, and no hands stayed on her.
Her Nazarites were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing was of sapphire!
Thew visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets: their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick.

   Young children are the neophytes — those who, amidst depravity and degradation, still seek to find the true way leading to life eternal.

   The Nazarites, an esoteric group, were still in possession of inner teachings concerning things of the spirit. They outlined two paths of development, namely, the mystical and the occult. The way of the mystic is the path of faith; it finds expression in teachings of the Church. Those who follow this line of development build a soul body purer than snow and whiter than milk. The way of the occultist is the path of knowledge and good works. Its followers demand an answer to all matters in doubt and require that the intellect be satisfied before the heart may speak. Such wear a garment of the soul more "rudy in body than rubies."

   The latter remains the ideal of esoteric Brotherhoods which guide the evolution of earth, but few there be in the world today who possess any knowledge of spiritual mysteries. Few there are even among the so-called religious leaders who understand the nature of the soul body and the method of its development, or who make any effort to teach their followers anything about the subject. And yet, throughout the Bible, the supreme Textbook for the Western World, teachings pertaining to the soul are plainly delineated, and Scripture makes clear what a lack of such knowledge means to the human race.

Lamentations 5:4, 8-11, 14
We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us. Servants have ruled over us: there is none that doth deliver us out of their hand.
We gat our bread with the peril of our lives, because of the sword of the wilderness.
Our skin was black like an oven, because of the terrible famine.
They ravished the women in Zion, and the maids in the cities of Judah.
The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their music.

   The waters of eternal life (conserved essence of the holy life force) has been sacrificed to Mammon. Servants of the lower nature rule over the race. Men are no longer sons, but servants. The bread of life is laid waste and man makes materiality his god.

   The luminous soul body is woven by pure and holy living: that is, through conservation of the life essence. Its misuse is the cause of soul famine. Soul famine, in turn, is externalized in world affairs. The bodies of famine victims are black compared to the luminous radiance of the "diamond body" of an adept. Yet this achievement, so rare among men, was actually planned for attainment in the present evolutionary epoch. Mankind is more than five thousand years behold his evolutionary schedule. Extension of the senses, conscious knowledge of inner planes, ability to function in the soul body apart from the physical body, are some of the lesser abilities that should now be a common attainment of the race in this post-Atlantean, Fifth Epoch. Instead, it is the rare heritage of a few foremost spiritual leaders.

Lamentations 5:16, 18
The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned! Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it.

   The foxes (desire nature) walk upon the mountain of Zion because the crown (spiritual or firsthand knowledge) has fallen from our heads.

   Despite ominous shadows of evil and wrong-doing cast by Josiah's successors, workings of divine Law in the lives of the few who remained faithful brightens the dark picture with gleams of golden light, attesting to the protective care of divine Hierarchies for that Remnant about which the prophets sing.

   In Jeremiah's lifetime there appeared several prophets who aided in the Great Work: the priestly Zephaniah in the reign of Manasseh, Nahum in the reign of Jehoahaz; Obadiah in the final tragically changing days of Zedekiah. Never can the night be so dark but what somewhere the light still shines and may be seen by those who seek it. When it is night in the West, the Sun is shining in the East. When it is night in the Orient, the Sun shines on the Occident.

   "Seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you" is a Temple maxim as old as Wisdom itself, and as infallible.

 — Corinne Heline