Who is the Daughter?Who is the Daughter?We are approaching the Nativity Festival — the birth of the daughter. can you explain what this means? Who is the Daughter? Why is She born?
You have read the Creation story. At the end of that story, the first daughter of creation — that is maid, humanity — has embraced the snake. She is separated from the Mother. She is no longer in union with Her. The brightness of the Mother is now too great for her to look upon. The world is no longer the perfect, Golden World. It is in some sense estranged from the Creatrix.
So the Mother gives birth to Her Daughter, who is “not separate from Her, but one with Her, and the Child of Her Light”. And yet she is also separate from the Mother. She becomes Maid. Perfect maid. “God became maid that maid might come to God”.
So what do we mean by “Maid”? Was the daughter a human being on this earth? Is this what the Christians call the Incarnation, or the Hindus an Avatara?
No. The Daughter was not incarnate at some particular place and time on this world or any other. Or if She was, that is only secondary to the great Nativity we are talking about here. When we say that she became Maid, we mean she became a being with the power of choice; a being separate from the Divine Unity of the Mother; a creature who can die. This did not happen at some particular place and time. It happens now and eternally. It is the very basis for the continued existence of the universe. The Mother is the Creatrix of the universe and the Daughter is its Sustainer. Because if the universe were ever really separated from the Mother, even for an instant, it would simply cease to exist. So in order for the universe to exist in separation from the Mother, the Mother must separate Herself from Herself to sustain it in its separation. That is a hard thing to understand; it is a Mystery. But it is fundamental to understanding the Daughter.
So the Daughter is able to die, and she did die. But her death was not final.
No, death is final. But the Daughter’s death is more absolute than any death we can know. She entered into complete separation from the Mother. That is the most terrible thing possible. We don’t ever have to die that complete death because She died it for us.
So when did these things happen? The Daughter’s birth and her death?
Before time?
Out of time. They are not time-bound events. They happen eternally. They can only not happen when the world does not exist, because they are the basis for the world’s existence and our existence. On this earth we have the Year, which places these events in cyclical time for us. We are time-bound creatures and this is a time-bound universe so things have to be expressed in temporal terms. These events are woven into the very fabric of time; and on this particular world, that is expressed by the pattern of the year. So every Nativity the daughter is born and every Easter She dies with the Old Year and is reborn with the New. These festivals are not commemorations of past events. They are ways that we can participate in eternal events. They are days upon which time-bound maid touches, aligns herself with and participates in extra-temporal realities
And if I were not a Filianist, would I still need the Daughter?
You most certainly would. In parts of the Tellurian East the Daughter is known as Kuan Yin, the Regarder of the Cries of the World. She is the Celestial Bodhisattwa who refuses to enter into Nirvana until all the world is saved “even to the last blade of grass”. That is the Bodhisattwa’s vow. Refusing to enter Nirvana — which, in our terms is another way of saying Union with the Mother — is the same thing as leaving that Union. Remember that at this level of Spiritual actuality, temporal succession is no longer a factor. Kuan Yin is the Daughter who accepts the burden of separative existence in order that we, and the world, may be sustained and ultimately redeemed. If you read the legends of Kuan Yin, you will read of the terrible physical mutilation she willingly undertook. This is the Passion of the Daughter. In reality, it is not a physical thing. Physical suffering is only a way of expressing that pain of separative existence for the Being who is Perfect and who “belongs” in Oneness . In Hinduism we read how Sita gave herself to death and how Her body was dismembered. In Christianity we see the Immaculate Heart of Mary pierced by a dagger. The sacrifice of the Daughter keeps coming back to us.
But Aristasian religion does not seem “sacrificial” like Christianity. There is more stress on nativity than Easter.
Yes. The Daughter is joyful even in Her sacrifice. Her triumph over death is absolute. This being the case, we have no need to emphasise that sacrifice continually. We see the Daughter as the Sustainer of the world and as our dearest Friend most of the time. A few times a year — primarily in the month of Moura — we remind ourselves of certain of the sacrificial realities that allow us to enjoy that relationship.
And
should we see Her as our Mother too?
It sounds contradictory, but in some contexts, yes. The daughter is Matre Nouritrice the Nourishing Mother, the Sustainer of the World and of ourselves. We may say that the Mother gave us birth, but it is by the Milk of the Daughter that we continue to live. When we worship the Mother — perhaps through an image of Sri Lakshmi — we must understand that we can only see the Mother through the Daughter. Again, this is a Mystery that is hard for us to understand but, as our spiritual life deepens, these things become clearer within our hearts.
Of course, if we are worshiping from a Deanic rather than a Filianic perspective this Truth may not be so prominent but, in some way, it will always find expression (cf the passage from the Devi Gita quoted in our Nativity Essay). We may adore Dea as the loving all-powerful Mother, or as the noble and heroic Daughter. Of course the Two are ultimately One.
Did the Daughter die for our sins?
That is a rather Western-Tellurian way of putting it, but one could see it in that way from a certain perspective. At the beginning of time we turned from Dea, and in one sense, it was that act that caused the estrangement between the world and God. In every moment since that time we have been making choices, which in Western trems would be called moral choices: that is choices which take us nearer to Dea or further from Her. In fact the very definition of maid is “she who has the power to choose”. So yes, our wrong choices, or “sins”, are the thing that has created the “cosmic rift” that the Daughter must die in order to heal. One can see this in terms of individual morality and sin, or in terms of the very nature of cosmic manifestation. Both perspectives are correct. In the East, as in ancient Greek thought, this fundamental axis of choice tends to be seen in terms of wisdom and ignorance rather than rectitude and sin; but this is really only a matter of emphasis, and each perspective — even at its strongest — contains a degree of the other.
When you say “we turned from Dea”, are you referring to some distant ancestress of contemporary maid?
No. I am referring to you personally. You have existed from the beginning of time. You have passed through various states of being: though many births. This is known as the Wheel of Werde. In the Tellurian East it is called Samsara. But the moment at which you stepped onto that wheel of rebirth was the moment at which you turned from Dea. And the moment at which you will step off it again is the moment at which you will fully return to Her.
It is because you turned from Her that there was a separation between yourself and Her; and it was because of this separation that She must come as Her own Daughter to rescue you.
The Daughter is your Way back to Dea: and until you take that Way, it is the Daughter Who sustains you in being.
Can you explain the Three Titles of the Daughter?
The Daughter has many Titles, but there are three in particular that help us to understand Her. These are: Princess of the World, Priestess of the World and Queen of Heaven.
As Princess of the World, the Daughter is, as we have explained, the sustainer of all worldly existence, both on this earth and on all planes of being below the level of Perfection.
As Priestess of the World, She is the Mediatrix between the world and Dea, just as the moon brings the light of the sun to the earth. She is the Bridge between earth and heaven, the “Barque of swift crossing” that conveys us over the sea of Samsara to the safety beyond.
As Queen of Heaven, She rules also the higher worlds. The Paradise of the Daughter, or Jewelled Island, is the Heaven-World for those who, without attaining final liberation and still in the “individual” state, are taken into the pure and blessed haven of the Daughter’s love.
To give an idea of the range of Aristasian approaches to spirituality I was asked to append a note to this piece.
My Aristasian family are non-Filianic Dianists (often called simply Dianists or Deanists, which is actually inaccurate because Filianists are Dianists too). Our devotion to Dia is very much as the Great Mother; the all-loving Creatrix. Like many Aristasians we often use the image of Sri Mahalakshmi, but not exclusively.
The idea of sacrifice plays really no part in our devotion. Nonetheless, I find that Filianic Thealogy enriches my spiritual life.
What are the differences between my family and a Filianist one? I think the difference is shown most on Hiatus [the day between the Old Year and the New, when the Daughter is dead]. Filianists veil all statues and pictures of Dia, because they believe She is not there for that one day*. We do not ever veil statues because we believe the Mother is always there. Though I understand that being without Her for one day teaches us how terrible an frightening a world without Her would be — if a world existing without Dia were not a contradiction in terms!
Even so, I would never start a business venture, plan an important trip or get married on Hiatus. That would just be foolish!
The Sustaining aspect of Dea we see more in terms of Maia or Mahamaya — the Mother as Sustainer of the world-illusion. Our perspective is essentially that of non-dualism — that all things that are not Dea are ultimately unreal and that all ultimately resolve into Her.
I certainly accept that Kuan Yin is more the sacrificial Daughter than the Mother, and it was recently pointed out to me that Hindu descriptions of the Great Mother usually state that She appears in the form of a sixteen-year-old girl, which rather underlines the idea that the appearance of the Mother to us is made possible by Her Daughter-aspect, if that makes sense.
We celebrate Nativity and hail the Daughter joyfully because Aristasian spirituality is inclusive and does not operate on a basis of “one religion versus another”. We do tend to see Nativity in terms of the Mother bringing Her light to the world, but one can’t help loving the Divine Child, even if she does belong to the next-door devotion!
* While one should beware of using expressions like “only symbolic” in relation to festivals, it is clear that Filianists do not believe that Dea has actually ceased to sustain the world on Hiatus — for in that case the world would physically cease to exist. We are participating in a spiritual reality, whose “paradoxical” nature is akin to the Mystery of the Daughter being utterly separated from Dea, and yet not ceasing to be Dea.
See also:
The Catechism of the Children of Dea