Saint Germain/fi: Difference between revisions

Saint Germain ruumiillistui 200-luvun loppupuolella Pyhä Alban nimisenä pyhimyksenä. Hän oli Britannian ensimmäinen marttyyri. Alban eli Englannissa sinä aikana kuin Rooman keisarin Diocletianuksen hallitessa vainottiin kristittyjä. Hän oli pakana ja hän oli palvellut Rooman armeijassa. Hän asettui Verulamium nimiseen kaupunkiin, joka myöhemmin sai nimen St. Albans. Alban piilotti pakomatkalla olleen kristityn papin, joka käännytti hänet. Kun sotilaat tulivat etsimään tätä, Alban antoi papin karata ja pukeutui itse tämän papin asuun.

Alban has been revered by the people of the Isles since his death in <small>A</small>.<small>D</small>. 303. As the Reverend Alban Butler writes in his ''Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and other Principal Saints,'' “Our island for many ages had recourse to St. Alban as its glorious protomartyr and powerful patron with God, and acknowledged many great favours received from God, through his intercession.”

<div lang="en" dir="ltr" class="mw-content-ltr">

=== Teacher of Proclus ===

Saint Germain worked from inner planes as the Master Teacher behind the Neoplatonists. He inspired the Greek philosopher Proclus (c. <small>A</small>.<small>D</small>. 410–485), the highly honored head of Plato’s Academy at Athens. He revealed his pupil’s previous life as a Pythagorean philosopher, also showing Proclus the sham of Constantine’s Christianity and the worth of the path of individualism (leading to the individualization of the God flame) which Christians called “paganism.”

<div lang="en" dir="ltr" class="mw-content-ltr">

Under the Master’s tutelage, Proclus based his philosophy upon the principle that there is only one true reality—the “One,” which is God, or the Godhead, the final goal of all life’s efforts. The philosopher said, “Beyond all bodies is the essence of soul, and beyond all souls the intellectual nature, and beyond all intellectual existences the One.”<ref>Thomas Whittaker, ''The Neo-Platonists: A Study in the History of Hellenism'', 2d ed. (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1928), p. 165.</ref>

</div>  

Proclus’s writings extended to almost every department of learning, from philosophy and astronomy to mathematics and grammar. He acknowledged that his enlightenment and philosophy came from above and he believed himself to be one through whom divine revelation reached mankind.

<div lang="en" dir="ltr" class="mw-content-ltr">

Proclus acknowledged that his enlightenment and philosophy came from above—indeed he believed himself to be one through whom divine revelation reached mankind. “He did not appear to be without divine inspiration,” his disciple Marinus wrote, “for he produced from his wise mouth words similar to the most thick falling snow; so that his eyes emitted a bright radiance, and the rest of his countenance participated of divine illumination.”<ref>Victor Cousin and Thomas Taylor, trans., ''Two Treatises of Proclus, The Platonic Successor'' (London: n.p., 1833), p. vi.</ref>

</div>

<div lang="en" dir="ltr" class="mw-content-ltr">

=== Christopher Columbus ===

{{Main|Christopher Columbus}}

Saint Germain was also embodied as Christopher Columbus (1451–1506), discoverer of America. Over two centuries before Columbus sailed, Roger Bacon himself had set the stage for Columbus’ voyage to the New World when he stated in his ''Opus Majus'' that “the sea between the end of Spain on the west and the beginning of India on the east is navigable in a very few days if the wind is favorable.”<ref>David Wallechinsky, Amy Wallace and Irving Wallace, ''The Book of Predictions'' (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1980), p. 346.</ref> Although the statement was incorrect in that the land to the west of Spain was not India, it was instrumental in Columbus’ discovery. He quoted the passage in a 1498 letter to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella and said that his 1492 voyage had been inspired in part by this visionary statement.

<div lang="en" dir="ltr" class="mw-content-ltr">

Columbus believed that God had made him to be “the messenger of the new heaven and the new earth of which He spake in the Apocalypse of St. John, after having spoken of it by the mouth of Isaiah.”  “In the carrying out of this enterprise of the Indies,”<ref>Clements R. Markham, ''Life of Christopher Columbus'' (London: George Philip and Son, 1892), pp. 207–8.</ref> he wrote to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in 1502, “neither reason nor mathematics nor maps were any use to me: fully accomplished were the words of Isaiah.” He was referring to the prophecy recorded in Isaiah 11:10–12 that the Lord would “recover the remnant of his people...and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.”<ref>''Encyclopaedia Britannica'', 15th ed., s.v. “Columbus, Christopher.”</ref>

</div>

He was certain that he had been divinely selected for his mission. He studied the biblical prophets, writing passages relating to his mission in a book of his own making entitled ''Las Proficias'', or ''The Prophecies''—in its complete form, ''The Book of Prophecies concerning the Discovery of the Indies and the Recovery of Jerusalem''. Although the point is seldom stressed, it is a fact so rooted in history that even ''Encyclopaedia Britannica'' says unequivocally that “Columbus discovered America by prophecy rather than by astronomy.”

{{Main|Francis Bacon}}

As Francis Bacon (1561–1626), he was philosopher, statesman, essayist and literary master. Bacon, who has been called the greatest mind the West ever produced, is known as the father of inductive reasoning and the scientific method, which to a great degree are responsible for the age of technology in which we now live. He foreknew that only applied science could free the masses from human misery and the drudgery of sheer survival in order that they might seek a higher spirituality they once knew.

<div lang="en" dir="ltr" class="mw-content-ltr">

“The Great Instauration” (meaning the great restoration after decay, lapse or dilapidation) was his formula to change “the whole wide world.” He first conceived of the concept as a boy, and when he later crystallized it in his 1607 book by the same name, it launched the English Renaissance.

<div lang="en" dir="ltr" class="mw-content-ltr">

Over the years Bacon gathered around himself a group of writers who were responsible for almost all of the Elizabethan literature. Some of these were part of a “secret society” he called “The Knights of the Helmet,” which had as its goal the advancement of learning by expanding the English language and creating a new literature written not in Latin but in words that Englishmen could understand. Bacon also organized the translation of the [[Bible translations|King James Version of the Bible]], determined that the common people should have the benefit of reading God’s Word for themselves.