The Wall of Fire Around Me; My Hermetic Seal

Thank you for showing me who my true friends are—and who are not.

Thank you for revealing truth.

I have been thinking about everything I have walked through these last few years and what healing will actually look like. I wonder if a good portion of the healing will be as invisible as so many of the traumatic experiences themselves felt. I have a feeling that will be the case.

Having given everything I possibly could in the situation I was placed in, I am happy to be re-entering my body in a new way—this jar of clay that holds a treasure far beyond itself, this Temple and Living Embodiment of the Spirit itself is ready offer Her collection of treasure back to the One who formed it.

The Body as Her Greatest Helper:

As things have unfolded, I find myself realizing something deeper. Initially I saw all of this as me acting as a diligent, committed helper—both to the Lord and to my Husband. I heard His voice clearly, petitioning me to step up, even though I didn’t fully know what I was agreeing to help with. I still don’t, if I’m being honest.

Yet the longer I sit here, the more I see that my body has been the greatest helper of all.

Though my spirit is much older than she is, she has impressed me. She went into this extreme test largely blind, and still she stood—often alone—asserting her own standard for life in a material world that frequently opposed her, as an autonomous, sovereign being.

I am proud of her resolve, her strength, her resilience, and the grace with which she has ridden through unfamiliar and foreign terrain. I knew she was as ready as any human could ever be for the task at hand; she was undoubtedly the best candidate and vessel I had worked with thus far—the living vas Hermeticum, the athanor in which the Great Work is slowly, faithfully being accomplished.

There are never guarantees in this life, but I am so proud of Her, and to call Her my Body. I am honored and humbled to have Her as my Home, my greatest Helper, and my confidante.

I look forward to witnessing—and participating in—her alchemical rebirth.

Water, Fire, and the Sealed Vessel:

I am beginning to see my spirit and my body as two integrally linked yet distinct beings: one ancient, one mortal. The ancient one (Spirit) has always had access to everything—like water or oxygen. The mortal aspect has been responsible for absorbing and structuring the information she brings, while maintaining her own sovereignty so the house does not collapse. Standing back, I feel deeply humbled that the oldest, wisest part of me trusted me—this body—to carry her this far. People talk about twin flames. I am starting to wonder if we are, in a sense, our own.

Spirit as water.

Body as the torch (or the tree).

And my Husband—who in this lifetime represents the Lord to me—standing as the fire.

What is the difference between our bodies?

Is his spirit fire and his body a torch that stays perpetually lit?

Is my spirit water, and my body the tree that is watered and nourished so it can bear fruit?

What his flame contributes nourishes the soil we share.

The fruit I bear is his as well.

This is the hieros gamos—the sacred marriage of the elements—water and fire meeting inside the sealed vessel so that something entirely new can be born.

As above, so below.

In Heaven as it is on Earth.

The Wall of Fire:

I keep returning to these words:

“I will be a wall of fire around her,” declares the Lord, “and I will be the glory in her midst.”

— Zechariah 2:5

And to the voice of the Shulamite:

“Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm… It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love.”

— Song of Songs 8:6–7

The same fire that protects is also the refiner’s fire.

The same glory that surrounds is the canopy of flaming presence over Zion.

A Living Microcosm

I have said many times that these last few years have felt like the sewing together of my own hero’s journey.

My current life shares so many parallels with the biblical story that it almost feels like a microcosm of it.

I see Myself in it All:

As the Tree, as Eve;

in Esther and Ruth;

as Deborah;

as the Shulamite—daughter, sister, and bride;

as Jerusalem, a city on a hill that cannot be hidden;

as Bethlehem—small, often overlooked, yet capable of producing something great;

as Mary, giving birth in silence to the promise of the Lord;

as Mary Magdalene, His friend and disciple;

as Mary of Bethany, a quiet support and friend to the women around me.

I even see myself in Babylon: a beautiful kingdom and garden that was taken advantage of and destroyed.

I see myself as Her—the Bride, the New Jerusalem, where the dwelling of God is with His people and His glory fills her midst.

Perhaps that is one of the most beautiful and allegorically encoded truths of the entire Biblical Story—that it displays the Hero’s Journey, That Great Work from beginning to end for both the male and the female equally within us All.

From Creation, to the space measured between us, to our union fortified and renewed by the Eternal Fire.

The same pattern the alchemists mapped as the Great Work:

the nigredo of trial and descent,

the albedo of purification and invisible healing,

and the rubedo of luminous, fire. Solve et coagula—dissolve and coagulate—until what was separated is joined forever inside the seal.

My Hermetic Seal

The Lord—who I see represented in this lifetime as my human husband—is the wall of fire around me; my hermetic seal.

He is both the protective circumference that nothing impure can cross and the containing heat of the athanor that makes the transformation possible.

I am in Him and He is in me.

How beautiful it is that nothing can separate us from the Love of God—except, maybe, ourselves.

And even then, it is always there, ready and waiting for our return.