Reflections by Olivia Robertson

Listen on YouTube

Friends, companions on the way to find the secret of Alchemy, which transforms evil, which is transient to Divine Good, which is eternal. Hear my thoughts on a River of Tears: tears of all who suffer, who do evil, who suffer evil, suffering people, suffering animals.

Communion with Deities and Angels are most convincing when these come unexpectedly, even against one set ideas and bring one new understanding of both sorrow and joy.

This happened to me with enduring consequences, in Arizona in 1997, when FOI members drove me around the magnificent red rocks of Sedona. My interest was in extraterrestrial visitors and the unspoiled magnificence of Nature. Hence, I resented the rock revered by Native Americans as the Eagle being demoted by Europeans settlers as the Coffee Pot. Was there no respect for an ancient mythic heritage?

But what particularly illustrated this criticism was the impertinent intrusion of a Christian chapel actually carved with a winding stone stairway leading to it. I hate carvings in stones and figures put on mountains. I regard mountains as sacred - sacred to Deities and the Spirit of the land. But I've always objected to heads of presidents being carved into rocks, though this is curious, I respected similar figures of the pharaohs of Egypt: Ramses the second being huge in the same way in Egypt - well that seemed to be alright. So I refused to visit this chapel, but vaguely noticed that it was dedicated to Mary Magdalene, in whom I took little interest.. . then . .

Now sometimes odd incidents that almost shock one. I was staying with another FOI Priestess, who one morning said she was going to take me somewhere, but did not tell me where. It was to be a surprise. So off we went amidst the rosy splendor of blood red rock, starkly silhouetted against a hot blue sky. When suddenly she turned abruptly and drove her car up a steep, rough road. She parked and we both got out. I looked around, then up. Towering above me was the very chapel that I refused to visit. Reluctantly I climbed up the steps, saying nothing. We entered the small chapel in the rockface, with just a few people seated before a main altar, obviously Catholic.

I noticed a side shrine on the left, formed by a silhouette of a woman. Within this was a statue. Out of respect for the Goddess, I approached it, intending to give a short prayer and then leave. I went on my knees. Something happened! Something that I had never before experienced. Suddenly I was totally submerged in a river of body-shaking tears. I could not control this, though I tried to do so. I was weeping for all the cruelty and sufferings of the world, including my own loss of my brother. I wept for the abused and their abusers. I wept for past and coming cataclysms, and I knew this River of Sorrow flowed deeply, blackly in the depths.

But still aware of my own faith in self discipline and good behavior, I decided on leaving this conspicuous place and joined others on a pew. This did not help at all! I was wracked by sobs. Friends on either side banged me on the back and this, their kindness, made it worse. I sobbed the more. Finally, as if by its own exhausted momentum, my stream of tears ceased. I muttered some sort of apology. But the Priestess of Isis who brought me there said, "This was the surprise. These are the tears of Mary Magdalene weeping for the world."

So this gives an idea of what is the substratum of our own sorrowful planet. Those who laugh, bury their tears. And those who weep, forget to laugh.