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Bibliotherapy

A Little Guillaume Postel Sampler: Part 4 – Chapters XI & XII From The ‘Venetian Virgin’ (1555)

Sitting portrait of Guillaume Postel, French linguist, astronomer, Cabbalist, diplomat, professor, and religious universalist, engraved on a copperplate by Esme de Boulonois; from the book ‘Académie Des Sciences Et Des Arts’ by Isaac Bullart, published in Amsterdam by Elzevier in 1682.

A tongue commanding many languages, the soul of this portrait encompassed all of them; the intellect of this man admired throughout the ages, had an understanding in all the ancient human Arts, making him recognized and loved by all of those who confess one mighty God.’ From the Hebrew legend of the main title engraving printed a hundred years after Guillaume Postel’s death.

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Today’s sharing from the Blue House of Via-HYGEIA, is part 4 of our little Guillaume Postel sampler, also devoted to Mother Johanna, with chapters XI and XII of his 1555 publication, ‘The Venetian Virgin‘, written in Italian-here in a French translation by Henry Morard, published by Bibliothèque Chacornac in 1928. A Via-HYGEIA English translation from the French edition.

We cannot stress how much Postel’s ‘Mother Johanna Theology’ is important and particularly relevant to our current epoch. And this is why we shared mainly from it in our previous sampler part 2 and 3. It contains solutions for many of our societal problems, such as toxic masculinity and how the lost feminine-chased away for obvious reasons by patriarchal organized religions-can help heal and restore balance and harmony in our dystopian life.

The solutions are spiritual, as change must come from within, then irradiate out. Postel points to transformative keys, also found in Suhrawardi and Mopsik, for instance, when they mention the ‘Sakina‘ or the ‘Shekinah‘.

Again, we are giving glimpses of a writer’s World and attractive Ideas; we don’t understand why, up to now, this whole treatise still has no full scholarly English translation? Did François Secret not prove, once and for all, Postel’s Worth to our contemporary society? So, why wouldn’t a brave publishing company take up this great opportunity and offer to the English speaking community the words of wisdom of such a great luminary?

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Reproduction of the 1555 original Italian edition of the ‘Venetian Virgin’. From the copy of the Basel University.

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We start with two extracts

from chapter VIII & IX

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Chapter VIII, page 22

‘…And first of all, everything is drawn from the intestines to feed the body, by the imaginative virtue and we ought to remember the first principle, which is the seed of the Father which is White make the WHITE CHYLE white, and immediately after by Imagining itself, the second principle, which is the Motherly seed, which is RED, makes the RED BLOOD; so that the liver (where this part of the Made-Intellect, or general Imaginative function, has established its residence), receives from one part all white food and colors it in red in itself, making it blood, so to send it to the heart.

Then it provides to the whole body, according to the coloration and the substance of the diverse parts, the nourishment and food that are in all similar to the part that wants the food. In summary, it is the ‘vicar’ and the general moderator of all of this elementary world. It is the might sought after by all the excellent philosophers, which composes together the similar parts and makes the organs, or instruments. It is the might called ‘Colcodam‘, because it is common, corporeal before any body and that it precedes all things; it is the Divine Art or the Divine Wisdom, which is of an administrative nature as long as it is commanded by the two superior powers. It is that might that provides things from bottom up, as the formal might in the brain sends and organizes them from up to bottom.’

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Chapter IX, page  26 

‘…In order to give the essence to the son, it is necessary for the Father to be the first, alike Heaven, and that His lateral substance is taken from the Mother, alike the Agent’s Possible Intellect and then from those two the Son is produced in the inferior world, alike a combination of the Imaginative Nature and the Made-Intellect, or alike a combination of the Agent Intellect and the Agent Possible. But as for the setting and conservation of the world-because who is placed in the middle is better guarded between his parents than if placed in the extremities-the Mother has set her seat in the root of the inferior tree: the Son composed of the two by the operation of the Holy Ghost therefore dwells in the Medium or Middle place.

The two extremes, the Fatherly Grace and the Maternal Nature, are conjoined with the Medium which is responsive to the heart: It is possible because the Might of the Celestial Realm engenders the Ether, and the Ether engendered by the Celestial Realms cooperates to the generation of the inferior; because the Mother and the Material Intelligence move as in one place, as the Father aims and seeds, the Mother also plants and nourishes from within herself and then moves on and rests down here above the Center, and puts in the care of the Middle place Her children, and above all, her First born.’

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And now we move on to Chapter XI

From pages 29 to 31

‘She said (Mother Johanna), that the glorious figure of Christ, would show up where He wanted, as much in the Heavens than anywhere else He would please to be; always there is the City of Jerusalem (Alike Rome, where the Emperor or the Pope is seated); and that in that Jerusalem he gathers in Him, as much by mysticism than Personally, all of His lambs, in other words: the men and women of the world; so that when He wants, he appears alone, all the others are hidden within Him; and also when He wants, all or those he choses, have a distinct personality and a true Essence with which, when and as many time He pleases, they are shown in the places He chose; This is also how the Angels operate.

She then showed me by means of material white figures that He continuously takes in His own substance, white garment of His size and then reduces them to the size of an infant, He would dress them on the soul of each member of his gathering; therefore they are in Him-self, which means in the Substance of His Souls and their two bodies we have spoken earlier, and He gives them to clothe themselves, THE WHITE GARMENT, so that they may be restored in His Celestial Substance, as they were in Adam’s; then, clothed in such manner, they must all be placed within the very MOTHER OF THE WORLD, who always said: ‘I am not, and nobody knows where I come from, because I was extracted and taken out of the substance of my Husband, being without merit myself, by His sole Will and by His infinite Mercy; because He has done in me and with me what He had pleased. He made me to be the personal Jerusalem, as He is the personal Paradise. And for this very reason, that all of His sheep are gathered in me, united by a SUPERIOR GARMENT, in the same manner they are clothed with the white garment’.

She said then: ‘Christ, my Husband, does such things first in Himself, and then in me, in such manner that-as Satan has destroyed desecrated and destroyed the Celestial or Fatherly body, also the Etheric or Maternal body, leaving life only to the Elementaries body with which the humans have lived for a thousand years-He reconstitute with His own Substance these two garments, the Celestial originating from Him alone, and the Etheric body originating from Him and me altogether‘.

And finally, she said: ‘This is why I have to leave you and abandon soon this terrestrial body, so that being in Heaven, I can send you our double garment. Inasmuch God made me the Strong Woman Solomon wrote about (Via-Hygeia note: In the ‘Song of Songs‘, the Shulamite, also echoed by Proverb 31: 10-31) and whose servants and sons are all clothed with the double garments. Therefore, it is under this very figure, the world’s humblest that I want (to the great confusion of Satan) that all are again clothed of this double garment, being now in my second Coming, the Restored Stone of the mentioned ‘Song of Songs’, 1500 years after my first Coming and rejection‘.

But, she said: ‘I will send you some beautiful gifts within those two garments, and you will be our First-Born son, so that you can testify by Intellect and Reason, of the truth of these mysteries.

These two gifts will be: The first one: Perfection of the Brain or Restored Intelligence; the other being the vindication of the Heart, or True Repaired Reason; it is  by mean of these two weapons, that when I will come from Heaven to visit you, the manner to subjugate all Humanity will be given, so to bring it back into God’s Obedience.’

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A Via-Hygeia Note: Chapter XII is a first person account by Guillaume Postel, sharing with us his spiritual re-birth after the passing of Mother Johanna, and he details its process in very precise words. They are precious confidences, as they are lived experiences and not just a mere mental exposition of ideas…

Chapter XII

From pages 31 to 37

History of the First-Born of the World’s Mutation, or the Restitution in its place and office, in which he was in first state when he was born of the carnal Father as much as from the carnal Mother

Because, I have already mentioned or spoken of the Avent or Return of the Mother of the World in this World in which she chose me as her first-born, it seems conceivable now to describe the process of the Mutation, or first Resurrection operated in me, in conformity to what she has promised me two years ago, before she got rid of this prison of mud.

But, before I reach this very part, it is necessary to know exactly the condition of our human nature, and to understand what are the habit, proportion & conformity that exist in our animal body in relationship with the spiritual nature of the body of Christ.

In order for everyone to perfectly understand these things, I would like that all believers of the Christian faith read with the greatest diligence and attention a very small book, small in size, but great in words and thought, written by Doctor Schwenckfeld upon the difference between these two bodies that exist in Christ, according to this saying of Saint Paul: ‘And if I know well Christ, nevertheless I know Him not anymore according to the flesh’; because like that we will be aware of the difference of the two bodies in Christ, the carnal or animal & the spiritual one; it will be then more easy for us to know of them both in His Limbs.

A portrait of Caspar Schwenckfeld. Engraving by Robert Boissard from a sketch by Theodor de Bry; between 1597 and 1599.

And for this task, we will need to call in Aristotle and Gallen in order to help stand up under the Hammers of Reason what we have to say. Because we have said earlier that it was clearly established that the first principles of the natural composition of our body cannot be also alike the most perfect of these Elements to which subject all the doctors, without exception, Aristotle included, are in agreement in saying that there is a spiritual body that comes alongside the Soul and does not originate from the human seed; this body is similar to the fire of the Stars, because this heat, natural and ethereal, provides life and that this fire also destroys all things-by this I mean the Elemental fire. Nevertheless, the 3 other Elements can participate in the composition of the mixed-bodies.

By this, we see that two bodies in one, one spiritual-similar to the fire of the Stars-and one extracted out of the four Elements after the principle of life was planted there, in the manner of a light filled with Celestial and Ethereal bodies, in which we find the power of the radical natural & humid heat.

Therefore, we saw two sorts of bodies in one body or in one dwelling. And it is about this very subject that Aristotle states that in the body there is a separable part like the Mens or Soul and that that part separable and incorruptible is located in Man that hosts a Divine part. It is all what natural reason can fathom, without considering further that, even though that part, similar to the substance of the Stars, is incorruptible by nature, nevertheless, the damage of the original birth (the original Vice or sin), placed within the first parents with the bitter Menstrual Sap, make it that they cannot have in themselves Eternal Life; only after Man will be re-connected with his two spiritual Parents, repaired and restored in his original purity; and this purity, would still exist in us, if according to Aristotle, our first parents wouldn’t have destroyed it.

Saint Paul says: ‘My children that I make rebirth or grow in the maternal belly until Christ is born again and dully formed in us.’ and elsewhere: ‘When Christ will appear to be our life, then, like Him, you will appear in glory.’ and elsewhere: ‘We are the bone of His bones and the flesh of His flesh.’ And finally: ‘If I live, it is not ‘I’ that lives, but it is Christ in me that does.’ With these quotations-many others can be summoned-we see that Christ in His own Person in the heights of the Heaven has His sensible body, visible and personal, according to which he is, not for His own sake, but for His limbs and children.

Therefore, it is necessary, that from His Personal and Sensible Body, alike from the trunk of human life, countless spiritual bodies are extracted for the making of His limbs (alike the branches out of the said trunk) He is made even more glorious, honored and satisfied than by just the mere experience of Himself; it is here assumed that the End is more valuable than the means used for it. Because of this, the first degree of the spiritual substance is given to the Holy Wife (sponsa), like with Adam in Eve, with this difference that it is in fact the opposite: from Adam in Eve, the left and inferior side was extracted; whereas with the New Eve, it is the final body, more perfect (that is the spiritual one), than the animal and sensible one, that is given for the Regeneration of all His Children.

Therefore, besides the animal body, together with that superior part of the body taken from the Elements that we possess, we ought to receive the garments of the spiritual bodies tainted and extracted from the Blood and infinites Merits of Christ, manifested in both sexes, alike with Adam and Eve whom were to distribute the said immortal substance.

It is for this reason, that before I was made aware of this mystery of the perfect Restitution, the Mother of the World, in Venice (where I was posted to care about the spiritual needs of the poor in a Hospital and her of their material needs) promised me to send and give me the superior body of the corporeal and immortal substance, the corporeal immortality, or my Celestial Dwelling of which Saint Paul wrote about to the Corinthians. But Satan’s envy having prevented me to officiate Charity at the place chosen by her and which was suddenly occupied by a crowd of hypocrites, I left in 1549 and went to Jerusalem to seek the books of the New Testament in their Arabic translations, all this was shared in my foreword of my first book, the ‘Orbis Terrae Concordia‘.

A little after, this true Saint Ḥannāh-with her General and pure Spiritual Body that was extracted from the anima of her Spouse (spons)-which is the Mine (quarry) of Eternal life, abandoned her mortal shell; so that, returning to Venice after two years and hoping to see her again, I discovered that she went out of this prison (out of this life). Then I went to France without thinking anything further about all of these past events, oblivious of the many miracles and the Divine teachings that I have seen embodied in her or heard from her.

And after living for a year, sometimes at the Royal Court and sometimes in Paris and Angers, in 1551, in a moment where I wasn’t thinking about anything related to the past, after having fulfilled my duties for Christmas and being fully present to the festive spirit, I felt Mother Johanna all around me. She gave me such a disposition that without any kind of fever, illness or weakness, she took away the need for me to eat and to sleep as well; so that, with an empty stomach and without any actions of my sensations, I could ‘sensibly’ hear the great and terrible mystery of the Immutation, or of the corporeal sensible and intelligible Innovation and Mutation through which the Spiritual Body is filled and re-planted upon the purged trunk of the mortal and animal body.

First of all, she wanted to review part after part of my bodies, following in this the inner particles and starting with natural or vegetative life, and from there on to the vital life up to the animal life. Nothing was left that wasn’t disassembled, undone and brought back to in its primal state. Only the mask or the external appearance of the mortal and animal trunk was maintained alive.

The material and corporeal part having thus being undone, the same thing happened with the spirit and finally with the part of the Soul that I name ‘concupiscible‘, ‘Irascible‘ and ‘Rational‘; and the sole souvenir of this changes brings in me now such a great Terror, just by remembering it, by the sole apprehension of God’s Jugement that I was…dying; I tell you, all the Men of the world would prefer suffering a thousand deaths than to feel any part of such a change process! (A Via-Hygeia Note: We wish to evoke here Cagliostro’s ‘Second 40 days Regimen‘ and highlight how much the above and below descriptions of the change process show familiarities of experience between Postel and Cagliostro).

Having thus felt this sensation that I was dying, I felt the urge to absorb the communion wafer and write my last Will, awaiting what I felt like my last moment on Earth being hit by God’s severe Edict and now abandoning myself to his infinite mercy; it is this moment, when Aristotle’s Soul, or in other words the immortal and Spiritual body that comes from outside goes away together with the Animus and the Anima. And suddenly, sensibly, My Truly Glorious Mother, reproaching me my lack of faith & gratitude, sent me all together with my first spiritual body (known to Aristotle), the Garment and Super-Garment of Redemption and of Restitution with the forgiving of my sins; it was for me such a brisk change of feelings: from despair & fear towards an infinite joy!

The first main Garment was initially received by me through the Holy Baptism and all the baptized wear this white garment, as described in ‘Quasimodo’s mass at Easter’s Octave‘ which is named the ‘Sunday of those clothed in White‘; it is this white garment the Ismailis evoke when they say, even though they are not partaking of the Christian rites, calling themselves Muslims: ‘I have received the white linen garment on my head.’

I am telling these things because it is customary that the use of the color White for the baptized in the Primitive Church had for an origin as much the reason of the Whiteness of the Father’s seed in Christ ( Restored by His first Coming) than the outmost whiteness of Purity and Innocence.

This Super-Garment coming from the Mother’s part, of a Red coloration, was given to me so to repair the original vice (or sin) down in the inferior parts and up in the superior parts as well. This Restitution of the Reason into the Maternal Redemption and the Intelligence into the Fatherly Restitution was operated so that, in this life, I would become The ONE WHO UNDERSTANDS and the ONE WHO TRAVELS. (A Via-Hygeia Note:Here I am: I am noble and a traveler.’ In Cagliostro’s ‘Spiritual Autobiography And Testament‘)

I have truly become this, to such a extent, even me, I do partake of the Spiritual Nature of Christ, my Father, and I understand Him and all the Angelical Virtues of the Hierarchy, with the exception of His Divinity and His Eternal Reward, as they are both infinite things, that, because of this, are unfathomable for all creatures but through the dispensation of faith.

On the very same day I was reborn, the Sun rose high in the sky and I could, through my restored eyes, stare at it; I couldn’t detach them from it for almost an hour and the beauty of its rays was so great that in comparison all the glittering and colors of all the Earth’s jewels appeared pale, shallow and unpleasant! And what cannot be described properly is that: All around its outlines a circle of an infinite beauty and luminosity was pulsating in the color scale of the Rainbow!

And if there wouldn’t have been for some witnesses, some Atheists and Lutherans I have invited (as recalled in Sampler 3, ‘The Great Victory of the Women of the New World’-Chapter IX) to come to see the things that were happening in me, I would have kept this Vision for myself, like many other Perfections. Incidentally, in order to prove my state, they gave me some deadly poison to drink. Thanks to it, I could give them the Proof of the Immortality of the Substance I had received.

As for the Animal and Sensible body, as soon as the Immortal Garment (As much Celestial from the Father and Ethereal from the Mother) entered in my body, it started to penetrate in a sensible manner in all its parts, in such a way that its movement was felt even in my bones, my flesh and all the other sensible parts. After the whole body had being re-newed and re-done, it reached the brain; this action was so much felt like the workings, movements & operations of a thousand Angels, that upon a great number of points of the body, the skin of the old body could not bare this so sudden an action that is would slash in small and finer strips.

This is then when my mouth started babbling, exactly like when Moses was in front of the Burning Bush when the Lord summoned him. Since the time of my re-birth, my Nature has remained more than ever changed and I bare signs of this that seem openly supernatural. I remain in such a disposition, that neither the fullness of food nor the need to eat or drink have any power over me. Most of the food I take is reduced in thin air and dissolves in it, as I only ingest via the natural channel one hundred of the food. I also could spend most of my remaining time without sleep.

Here are recorded all the things related as much to Mother Johanna, the Mother of the World, than to me and that are identical or similar to all the ‘First-Borns of the Restored World‘. We find testimonies in great numbers and places, such as in the authority of Hebraic secrets, like in the Divine and Scarce books of the ‘Zohar‘, as well in the ‘Pirqe Avoth‘, the ‘Midrashim‘, the ‘Yalkut‘, the ‘Haggadoth‘, etc…, and mainly with the commentators of the Ten Sephiroth and of the Merkavah and all the books of Kabbalah. We can show through this that in the Hebraic sacred Scriptures, there are countless paragraphs that are in their gist of a masculine nature and elsewhere they are written in a feminine nature, so to demonstrate the depth of the Divine Mysteries in which this Motherhood and Its Son, the Restorer of all the offspring, are mentioned with praise in the sacred Scripture.

Similar is the ‘Book of Divine Ordination‘ given to Andrea Marcello to demonstrate why the Mother of the World wanted to root, here in the Venetian land, the proof of the Second Avent of Christ and to chose there Her First Born.

But the deep Reasons for all of these manifestations and why I am in such a State and Devotion are to show the World, the True Motherhood in the same manner Christ came to show the True Fatherhood, in other words: HIM the Divinity and me Nature restored by the Mother. This context is given and fully developed into a treatise named: ‘NEWEST TESTAMENT’. This work is in Latin, so it may be spread easily and made familiar to all instructed men.

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Source

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Appendix

‘There is a suggestion that Postel had some influence on Tintoretto and it is suggested that the figure with the long white beard in Tintoretto’s below painting ‘The Adoration of the Magi’ in the Scuola Grande Di San Rocco, in Venice, is in fact Postel’ (From Jen Smith’s Blog, ‘Med Meandering‘).

Mother Johanna would be the woman humbly kneeling bottom left, her left hand on her heart while her right hands over laundry just washed and there are two doves in from of her. Note that Postel is looking at her in awe, not to the upper scene, where the baby Jesus is looking at him with a blessing gesture.

 

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Coming Soon:

Part 5, Two Unpublished Text By Guillaume Postel,

Edited And Commented By Francois Secret:

Amen, Which Means ‘Per Artem&

‘The Difference Between Jesus and Christ

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More about Guillaume Postel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_Postel 🌿 About Caspar Schwenckfeld: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspar_Schwenckfeld
A Little Guillaume Postel Sampler: Part 4 – Chapters XI & XII From The ‘Venetian Virgin’ (1555)

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