Welcome back to this fifth unit of the Master grade. I hope you’re enjoying the work of this grade so far!
The current unit is, again, a comparatively slow one – at least on first glance. There is a lot going on below the hood, though, as I hope you will come to appreciate during the course of your work on this unit. 🙂
So let’s dive right in, shall we?
Coursework
- To Practice – Blessing Walk, Healing Hands, Foot and Hand Reflexology, Muscle Testing, Essene Healing Breath
Continue with the practices you’ve learned in the Candidate, Apprentice and Healer grades, ideally daily.
If you practice another form of meditation, e.g. discursive meditation (which you could use to meditate on the theoretical study texts of the Master grade 😉 ), you can use it instead of the Essene Healing Breath – the choice is yours.
- To Study – The Tree of Life, Part Five – Paroketh
Study Part 5 of John Gilbert’s “The Tree of Life”, and/or use it as basis for your discursive meditation. As always, you are not supposed to blindly believe this text as gospel, but instead to study it thoroughly, contemplate it, and to come up with your own ideas and thoughts about it.
Note that the lessons on the Tree of Life are not included in the MOE pdf files, i.e. you will have to read them online, or print out/reformat the online version from JMG’s Dreamwidth site for your personal use:
Online Version (only part 5, i.e. the lower half)
- To Practice – Bridge of Love: Step Three
Study the instructions for Practice Three of the Bridge of Love. Connect them to the Tree of Life in any way you see fit.
Practice the the Bridge of Love up to the third step daily while you work on this unit. (But as usual, only proceed to this third step when you feel ready for it.)
Online Version (only the section labelled “Practice Three” – note that it refers to “a Glyph of the Tree of Life” which for some reason isn’t included online; I suppose it is the colourful image which can be found in the pdf version)
PDF Version (pages 9 and 10) - To Practice – Ear Reflexology
Continue to practice Ear Reflexology, ideally daily, as explained in a previous unit.
Online Version (only the part from “Essene Ear Reflexology” down to “The rest of the outer ear is the outer portion.”. The “Advanced Essene Healing Techniques” belong to later units.)
PDF Version (pages 26 and 27)
Reflection Question
While you do the work of this unit, take some time to reflect on the following question:
Who or what is a Master Teacher?
Meditation Topics
For the Master grade, again, there is a lot of meditation fodder in the study texts. I’m not going to pull these topics out of the study texts for you, though – that’s up to you to chew on for yourself!
But if you should need fodder for your discursive meditations beyond what you have found in this unit’s texts, the following topics should give you something to work with:
- Where are there bridges in your own life?
- What is the purpose of a bridge?
- What can you not achieve with a bridge?
- What are the meanings of a triangle?
- Which kinds of things can you build from triangles?
- Which kinds of things can you not build from triangles?
- What is the downward flow from Divine to Manifestation?
- How can you productively use or work with this downward flow?
- What is the upward flow from Manifestation to the Divine?
- How can you productively use or work with this upward flow?
And if you have enough ideas on your own and don’t need any from this list, that’s even better!
Commentary
There isn’t much to comment on this time, just two short notes:
The Bridge of Love in Practice
I think the instructions are rather straigtforward. One thing to note, though: Make sure you understand them and follow them, especially with regards to the energy flow (i.e. direction, and the order of the different spheres)! This is really important, and easy to get wrong if you only do a casual reading.
If in doubt, draw a draft of the Tree of Life and follow the instructions with a pen until you are sure you understand the instructions. Then transfer them to your own body, e.g. by touching the respective spots in the right order.
And remember, as the instructions say, that the image of the Tree of Life is like you looking at somebody else – what is on the left in the image is on your right, and vice versa!
Bringing things together
The further we get into the Bridge of Love (BoL), the more the BoL and the Tree of Life essays come together and complement each other. Of course, this offers a lot of potential material for meditation and study, and for application in your everyday life or on specific issues – so many, in fact, that I could probably turn this into a course all on its own.
(And just for the records, such a course isn’t on my immediate agenda, but then weirder things have happened…)
For the purposes of this MOE course here, I don’t want to go too deep into John Gilbert’s Tree of Life material, as it is only a complement to help you better understand and work with the main MOE material. I will thus leave it to you to explore any potential connections and implications you feel drawn to explore.
Within the course, studying the Tree of Life material will keep us (or rather: you 😉 ) busy for the next couple of lessons. Afterwards, we will turn back to some study material which is a core part of the Modern Order of Essenes.
Outlook
In two weeks (on Sunday March 22nd, 2026) we will continue with Unit 26.
Until then, I’m looking forward to your comments and your feedback, and I hope you enjoy this unit of the Master grade! 🙂
Janus says
Dear Regine,
I am slightly confused on the representation on the Tree of Life with the ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ energies and would kindly request you clarity this for me 🙂
In the Apprentice course, we empowered the hands with the ‘feminine’ elements (Water and Earth) on our left hand and the ‘masculine’ elements on our right hand. Then then we put the hands together the energy flows from the right hand (masculine) to the left hand (feminine). So far all clear.
You state in the latest Master lesson that the representation of the tree of life in the pdf we should see it as if we are looking at someone else so the left and right are reversed, which I am reading to mean that the Father God (2) is on our left and Mother God (3) on our right.
This seems to me to contradict the earlier elemental attributions and flow of energy in the Apprentice grade? It seems more right to me what the energy from the Creator God flows ‘clockwise’ from Father God (2, right side of diagram, right side of my body) to Mother God (3, left side of diagram, left side of body)?
I am also working through JMG’s Celtic Golden Dawn and I saw a comment on the Dreamwidth channel that these 2 systems are compatible, and in that system the right side of the body is the ‘masculine’ side of the Tree of Life and the left side the ‘feminine’ side but there we are instructed that the right side of the diagrams correspond to the right side of the body and vice versa.
Please help me understand so I am sure I am doing this right, thank you again for offering this wonderful course! 🙂
Best,
Janus
Regine says
Hi Janus,
That’s a very good question – thanks for bringing it up! 🙂
Yes, the Divine Father is on the left (the sphere at your left ear), and the Divine Mother is on the right (the sphere at your right ear), cf. “Practice One: Formulating the First Triad” of the Bridge of Love exercises.
There are several (potential) points of confusion here. Let me try to separate them apart and deal with each one individually:
First, and I’m going to write a bit more on this in one of the upcoming units, the Healing Hands and the Bridge of Love are two separate things. In my experience, they draw on different kinds of spiritual healing energy. And they clearly work with different kinds of energy flows within and around you. I.e. this isn’t a contradiction, but two different things which shouldn’t be mashed up.
Secondly, the Bridge of Love (and the corresponding mapping of the Tree of Life onto your and everybody else’s body as per the MOE) works with energy centers, not with halves of your body. There are spheres besides/at your ears, for example – but they don’t simply extend downwards. I.e. the left ear sphere doesn’t just “rule” over the left side of the body, but also has cross-connections to the right. Also to note that there is no “rulership” of the higher spheres over the lower. Instead, this is a complex web of interrelations.
Thirdly, while John Gilbert’s tradition calls the two spheres at ear height “Divine Father” and “Divine Mother”, these names are symbols for complex and deep underlying concepts. They aren’t the same as “masculine = exapnsive energy” and “feminine = receptive energy”.
Fourthly and more specifically, the Bridge of Love and the Healing Hands work with different energy centers in your body. In particular, the hands aren’t part of the Bridge of Love. Thus again, there is no inherent contradiction here, but simply two different systems and two different energy flows.
Finally, your point about the Celtic Goldwn Dawn system: I’m not familiar with it and thus can’t compare them directly. But “compatible” can mean a lot of things, and there is a wide area between “compatible enough to not clash with each other to mess you up” and “directly integrated and based on the exact same concepts”. Since the MOE is part of a series of traditions which, to the best of my understanding, aren’t based on Golden Dawn, I’m inclined to think that “compatible” in this case simply means “can be practiced alongside each other without any negative effects” (although this is just a guess as, again, I don’t know enough about the Celtic Golden Dawn to tell for sure). However, JMG keeps stressing that John Gilbert’s Tree of Life is rather idiosyncratic, and should not be mixed with the Golden Dawn Tree of Life, for example, as the two of them are not a good fit. I’d reckon that this is one of the points where the two would clash…
I hope this helps to clear things up!
At last, some heartfelt advice: The flow of the “Lightning Bolt” has a specific direction, and I would very strongly advise you to stick to this flow as it is laid out in the texts. Working against it will, in the best case, not do much – and worst case, you might mess things up in your own energy body. Please stick to the instructions in this case!
All the best to you,
Regine
Janus says
Hi Regine,
Thank you for the very detailed response, this certainly does clarify things for me! I have a tendency to look for unifying patterns and put things into neat boxes which can be tricky sometimes 🙂 OK so we this one now clearer, I have another question for this lesson please.
As you suggested I have drawn up the Tree of Life with corresponding parts of the body. Here are the energy flows I have matched accordingly:
First Triad:
(Divine Creator) Above Head> (Divine Father) Left Ear > (Divine Mother) Right Ear > (Divine Creator) Above Head
Second Triad:
(Divine Mother) Right Ear > (Love) Left Shoulder > (Power) Right Shoulder > (Harmony) Heart > (Divine Creator) Above Head
The manual states here that ‘The flow of the Creative Energy in the second triangle comes from Divine Mother to Love, across to Power and diagonally down to Harmony. This flow of Creative Energy is also called the Lightning Bolt or Lightning Flash.’
My confusion here is that on the Tree of Life diagram there is no path linking Divine Mother (3) and Love (4)?
It is going to require some work getting my head around this, I am still practicing the first triad!
Thank you!
Best,
Janus
Regine says
Hi Janus,
Glad to be of help! I suppose JMG would say these are all fine themes for meditation… 😉 (which they are, btw!)
Funnily enough, I asked JMG the exact same question back when I started practicing the Bridge of Love… 😀 If you click on the link, his answer to my no. 1. is the relevant one… 😉
Thanks for asking these questions, and for studying the material closely enough to ask in the first place! 🙂
Regine
Janus says
Hi Regine,
Thank you, that explanation and the diagram is very helpful for me! Wish you a pleasant Sunday 🙂.
Best,
Janus