mystery of aspiring through passion to communion with God and of placing the rose of Divine Love upon the cross of marriage union in Borderland wedlock.
Although a book entitled "In the Pronaos of the temple of Wisdom," by Franz Hartmann, occurs a list of Rosicrucian symbols followed by the significant remark: "He who can see the meaning of all these allegories has his eyes open."
Many of these symbols are evidently phallic, and yield easily to the interpretation that they are symbols in the training of the occultist in the three degrees to which I have already referred.
But, despite the good work done by the Rosicrucians in lifting Borderland wedlock to a higher plane in the estimation of the public, it was not all plain sailing yet. The Church that conservator alike of the useful and the useless things of the past clung to the old belief of witchcraft days: When one of her mystics either nun or priest became thus espoused, the Church seems to have a middle course between the old and the new. Usually she termed such experiences "Congressus cum daemonius" and bent her powers to exorcising the evil one. But occasionally, as in the case of St. Teresa, the nun was a clear-headed woman of known integrity and purity. "Congressus cum daemonius" was out of the question where such a woman was one of the parties to the union in these instances. By what me can only call an inspiration from on high, the Church promptly decided that the congressus was diabolical, but leaven sent. And, since the nun was the professed "bride of Christ" what more natural than that her experience should be viewed as a mystical union with this Divine Bridegroom? In this, the Church acted according to her light, and I think it must be admitted she did fairly well, considering the ignorance and prejudice of the times.
Latin scholars will notice that the laws of Latin syntax require a word to J>e supplied in translating this phrase a general term, such as the word "something," or "that which belongs to." As this grammatical construction was used by a very learned Catholic priest when discussing the
