Odilia Carmen Chirica

by  St Bonaventure INTRODUCTION St Bonaventure was a Franciscan Monk born in central Italy in 1217. He joined the Order in 1243, and wrote a number of masterpieces including a biography of St Francis, and many other treatises. The most widely-known of his works is that dealt with here, "The Soul's Journey into God", a dense  summa  of medieval Christian spirituality. It is based on a vision of the Seraph, the six-winged angelic creature which had provided St Francis his critical mystical experience, and it was whilst meditating on this vision that St Bonaventure realised that "...this vision represented our father's rapture in contemplation and the road by which that rapture is reached." The actual Latin title of this work is  Itinerarium mentis in Deum , and it is of interest to this present work that Itinerarium can be translated as "plan for a journey (itinerary), which is part of the function served by any initiatory sys

"The following is a pictorial key to the spiritual journey. It is archetypical, that is, these images/energies are present in each one of us, and the journey is also the same for each one us. Look carefully, feel, and see if it resonates with you. The images are drawings from Johfra Bosschart, a Dutch modern artist (1919-1998). Johfra is a rather unknown painter. Nevertheless his works are magnificent. The drawings on this page appeared as illustrations in The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, published by Lectorium Rosicrucianum, a Rosicrucian order founded by Jan van Rijckenborgh in Belgium (now an international order). The images give a quick overview of the spiritual journey. If you desire to know more, read the The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz. This anonymous text appeared in 1616 in Strasbourg, Germany as the third pamphlet of an order called Fraternity of the Rose Cross. Nothing is known about the author or about the order itself. Thus the text stands

" Walking one evening along a deserted road, Mulla Nasrudin saw a troop of horsemen coming towards him. His imagination started to work; he saw himself captured and sold as a slave, or impressed into the army. Nasrudin bolted, climbed a wall into a graveyard, and lay down in an open tomb. Puzzled at his strange behaviour, the men – honest travellers – followed him. They found him stretched out, tense and quivering. ‘What are you doing in that grave? We saw you run away. Can we help you?’ ‘Just because you can ask a question does not mean that there is a straightforward answer to it,’ said the Mulla, who now realised what had happened. ‘It all depends upon your viewpoint. If you must know, however: I am here because of you , and you are here because of me .’" from the book  "The Expliots of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin"  by  Idries Shah ...in truth,  OdiliaCarmen