Or, What Mark 5:25-34 Really Means

Judeo-Christian esoteric tradition holds that the "veil" between the lower and higher worlds can be penetrated by inner attunement and prayer. It teaches that the veil has a dual purpose: although it hinders our ability to know God, it also protects our finite self from knowledge it could not absorb or assimilate - in effect protecting us from dissolving in the infinite.Yet the goal of mystical devotion is exactly such knowing and such dissolution - a blending of the soul into the all-pervasive divinity. Mystics agree that this merging cannot be fully sustained while the in the incarnate state; only after death is it truly entered completely. [Image: Shrine Mont among the trees, seen from the approach.]

New Age gnostics -- in a wave building on medieval theology -- have further articulated the notion of our relationship to the infinite: they believe that vortices of spiritual energy combine the characteristics of a veil which separates us from ultimate reality, and of a portal or door which allows us to access dimensions of energy and awareness that vibrate on a higher frequency. Thus on one level, such a veil keeps us ignorant; but on another, coming in contact with it receptively -- using the Christian metaphor -- can be like touching the robe of Jesus through which blessings flowed (see below).

There are many references to the filtering or veiling principle in both the New Testament and the Old. Episodes involving Moses and Hashem (God) in the Torah, show that the face of the Lord cannot be looked upon directly in all its radiance and majesty because man is too weak to withstand such power. Revelation is partial: it leaves the protective veil in place and yet shows us something about the divine. But - so goes this doctrine - in certain places on the planet the veil is made thinner, and from these places the energy spouts in vortex-like whorls, or passes back and forth like Jacob's ladder. Thus vortices can be a sanctuary or altar: an opportunity for rending or fraying the fabric of ignorance. New Age Christians believe that when we "touch" the veil at a vortex point, it parallels the touch - upon the hem of Jesus - of the woman who could not stop bleeding (Mk. 5). The blessing of Jesus flowed out toward the woman, as if from a "wound" in the fabric, and cured her. Interestingly the French verb "blesser," - and its Latin root - means to wound.

From this perspective, then, healing vortices are founded in holy text. From a Christian point of view -- and especially from that of a Christian gnostic -- to the extent that vortex energies are healing, or that they bear or reveal truth, they are an outflow of the energy of the Christ. "Not all earth energies are equal." There should be nothing surprising or challenging about this notion -- after all, what do the masses of worshippers believe about a place like Lourdes? or a smaller number, about the pool of Siloam? But the prominent Biblical example of the invocation of subtle energies and of their effect, was through the blessing Jesus bestowed upon the woman who had bled for 12 years (in Mark 5:25-34).

Mark 5:25-34 (King James Version)

25And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years,

26And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse,

27When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment.

28For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole.

29And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague.

30And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?

31And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me?

32And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing.

33But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth.

34And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.

The hemorrhaging is a reference to perpetual menstruation, which is itself an analogy or symbol for infertility, and analogically to a spiritual malaise to which Jesus addresses his attentions. A woman who is continually bleeding cannot conceive a child and this, as every story of the Bible, contains several symbolical levels. The bleeding is meant to be taken as real, and as symbolical. Esoterically Mark 5:25-34 refers to spiritual infertility - our collective inability to receive and serve as host to the "seed" of divine knowledge. We have ears, but we do not hear; or we hear, but we do not heed. Instead of conceiving (developing and nurturing our relationship to the presence of the divine in the universe), we bleed out the very lifeblood of the message.

The number of years the woman had bled, twelve, is of course a number symbolic of the whole physical dimension and of the Church. Twelve disciples, twelve tribes, twelve zodiacal signs. To say that the woman had bled for 12 years means that she had "run the gamut" - exhausted all remedies. [Image: Stoney Creek.]

Thus Jesus cured her spiritual infertility. To stop bleeding is to stop our chronic and pathological rejection of higher consciousness. Mark 5 shows how in healing the woman who bled, Jesus established the possibility of spiritual fertility (salvation) for all humanity; at least that is the mystical interpretation of the event. The blessing, once given by Jesus, is now invoked at all points and places where grace is outpouring spontaneously in response to the presence of the faithful - just like the womb receives the seed and hosts it in the process of human conception. The energy is an outflow of grace, and energy vortices are holy places. Whether the Basye - Orkney vortices have such quickening properties remains to be seen . . .