It was when I was studying to become a Witch that I first encountered the phrase ‘As Above, So Below,’ which I now know to be a paraphrase of a ninth century Hermetic text from an Arabic source. I liked this phrase from the beginning as it expressed something I believed but had struggled to articulate so elegantly. I believe that there is a sacred connection between our earthy human existence and the grandeur of the cosmos—our very bodies are composed of star dust.
I was delighted to discover a more specific description of that connection in the Journey of the Universe, by cosmologist Brian Swimme & Mary Tucker, founder of the Forum on Religion & Ecology at Yale. They discuss the creation of the universe in terms of natural cycles of expansion and contraction, which they also refer to as ‘attraction,’ or gravity. They write “All of space and time and mass and energy began as a ‘single point’ that was trillions of degrees hot and that instantly rushed apart. (p. 4)” That expansion is on-going, billions of years later.
Continue reading “As Above, So Below—A Cosmic Tale by Mary Gelfand”
Feminism and Religion 