[Dialogue] Chartres Mystery School

[LAURELCG at aol.com]

This is from Jim Garrison, who succeeded Matthew Fox as president of the 
University of Creation Spirituality and changed its name to Wisdom University.  I 
thought some of you might be interested in this report and the upcoming 
courses.  Jann McGuire



Dear Friends,

 

I want to report on our recent Intensive in Chartres July 2-8, during which

I think all of us felt a special movement of spirit and depth of resonance

with both the cathedral and with each other that consecrated our efforts and

transformed our initiatory journey into something holy. It was a remarkable

experience to re-create and re-interpret the Seven Liberal Arts curriculum

of the original mystery school and to do so on its 1,000 anniversary. We

held our classes in the very seminary where the original school took place.

The profundity was deepened by the opportunity, provided by Lauren Artress,

to be in the cathedral alone to enter the crypt and walk the labyrinth to

the chants of a choral group singing the very songs sung during the eleventh

century. 

 

During our seven days together, we studied the first of the Liberal Arts,

Grammatica, which was understood by the ancients to be about the Word and

how to receive the Word. The guiding planet of Grammatica was the moon in

the recognition that even as the moon reflects the light of the sun, so the

Word reflects the light of reality. Grammatica was under the aegis of

Donatus, the foremost Latin grammarian of late antiquity.  The structure of

the week involved a deep exploration of this realm, along with an

exploration into astrology, alchemy and sacred geometry, the foundational

sciences for the Liberal Arts. There was also an arc of seven initiatory

rites that were designed in the spirit of realizing the divine human through

adoration of the divine feminine.

 

We are profoundly grateful to Colette van Praag who we retained as an

independent contractor for the six months leading up to the first Intensive,

serving as Director of Program and Artistic Development. She did an

extraordinary job in helping to birth the New Chartres School. I am also

grateful to the faculty who participated: Lauren Artress, Lynn Bell, Apela

Colorado, Karuna Erickson, Kabir Helminsky, Alex and Allyson Grey, Caroline

Myss, and Rupert Sheldrake. All of them played a unique and complimentary

role.  Our staff also did a splendid job.

 

Our next Intensive will be one year from now July 7-13, 2007 on the theme of

Dialectica, in the spirit of Mercury and under the aegis of Aristotle.  The

over-all theme will be 3The State of the World:  Wisdom and the Apocalypse.2

Given what is happening in the Middle East right now, this choice may prove

to be prescient.

 

For all those interested in joining the next Intensive, you might want to

register now to reserve a place.  We have already received several dozen

inquiries and registrations and want to give priority of place to those who

were there at creation while at the same time making room for those who feel

the calling to enter into the process now.

 

To register, click here:

 

https://www.wisdomuniversity.org/new-school-registration.htm

<file://localhost/new-school-registration.htm>

 

In preparing yourself for the next Intensive, we would want to draw to your

attention the opportunity to deepen your exploration of many of the themes

we only had time to touch on during our week together as we explored the

theme of Grammatica.  In particular, there is a rich opportunity to go much

deeper with Alex Grey on 3The Mission of Art2 during a Wisdom University

Intensive at his Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in New York September 24-28. Alex

is one of the great artists of our time. For more information click here:

 

https://www.wisdomuniversity.org/60101.htm <file://localhost/60101.htm>

 

There is also an invaluable opportunity to immerse yourself in the

primordial wisdom of the earth energies with Apela Colorado during another

one of our Intensives in Oakland October 23-27. This is a rare opportunity

to go deep into the Indigenous Mind with a subtle and nuanced shaman and

elder:

 

https://www.wisdomuniversity.org/febintensive-indigenous.html

<file://localhost/febintensive-indigenous.html>

 

For those of you who read or watched The DaVinci Code and are interested in

the history of the mystical aspects of Christianity that came to such

magnificent flowering in the architecture of Chartres cathedral, we have an

Intensive in Oakland November 4-8 with Bruce Chilton on 3Mary Magdalene,

Judas Iscariot and the Origins of Gnostic Christianity.2  Bruce Chilton is a

professor at Bard College and is a magnificent lecturer, who we hope to

involve in one of our later Intensives of the New Chartres School:

 

https://www.wisdomuniversity.org/60102.html <file://localhost/60102.html>

 

Sam Keen completes our post Chartres Intensives with a deep and compelling

week December 4-8 in Oakland on 3Healing the Body:  Stories that Wound,

Stories that Heal.2 In many ways, healing the body is the essence of the

first Liberal Art on Grammatica:

 

https://www.wisdomuniversity.org/60115.html <file://localhost/60115.html>

 

Finally, allow me to express my sincere gratitude to the Black Madonna and

the builders of the original Chartres school.  We all came together three

weeks ago to honor her and them, called by a deep yearning to relink with

that which can only be discerned with closed eyes. We came to commemorate

what a community of mystics achieved a thousand years ago in a time, like

ours, of war, corruption and greed, when the great western powers were

mobilized against Islam.  The founders of the Chartres School reached out

across that divide and embraced the Sufis. In so doing, they received great

gifts in return: the architectural formulae necessary to build Gothic

arches, ceilings and stained glass. Something similar beckons to us today,

not necessarily of brick and mortar, but something equally compelling but

only discernable if only we are humble enough to tap into the illumination

of the mysteries.  

 

All of us found our way to Chartres for a reason. We came to one of the most

continuously honored sacred sites in the world, and we consecrated ourselves

to live in the possibility of commemorating the achievement of a thousand

years ago by seeking to achieve something of significance of our own.

 

We have seven years to incubate this possibility and this prayer for the

realization of the divine human through adoration of the divine feminine,

the special whispering of spirit that is Chartres.

 

I will be back in touch soon.

 

Many blessings,

 

Jim