Nostradamus

"With a name so timid will she be brought forth
That the three sisters will have the name of destiny;
Then she will lead a great people by tongue and deed,
More than any other will she have fame and renown.

Nostradamus, Century 1:76


Notes:

Three sisters: Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati
(alternatively the three nadis of the subtle system)

a great people: the Sahaja yogis

Woman-Saviour

The Woman-power (1842)

Woman-Saviour now we muster
To await thy advent sure,
In the cluster of thy lustre,
Come and leave the earth no more?
Then before thy gentle look,
Swords shall quail and warriors fail,
And the spear, a shepherd’s crook,
Shall adorn the daisied dale.
Woman-power! Incarnate love!
Human Goddess come and be,
If the Bridegroom’s tears can move,
Bride unto Humanity.
Thou alone of all can save us
Let us be what thou would have us!

John Goodwyn Barmby (1820-1881) in his younger years was involved in several short-lived attempts at communal living, first in France and then in England, particularly after his marriage to Catherine (1817?-1853). They founded and ran the Communist Church [Commune-ist] in London (1841-1849), but met with derision from their contemporaries.

Goodwyn Barmby wrote to a friend in the early 1840s:

But the Free Woman who shall give the womanly tone to the entire globe is not yet manifested.

Catherine Watkins Barmby in her pioneering feminist pamphlet, The demand for the emancipation of women (1843), insisted that

We have the priest, we therefore demand the priestess, the
Woman teacher of the word, the woman apostle of God’s law!

For further info see Barbara Taylor, Eve and the New Jerusalem: socialism and feminism in the nineteenth century (London: Virago Press, 1983). Catherine Barmby is regarded these days as an early feminist, and you'll see why when you read her 1843 pamphlet, ‘The demand for the emancipation of woman, politically and socially’, a fascimile of which is in Taylor's book. Its also on the web:
http://www.binghamton.edu/womhist/awrm/doc9.htm
Barbara Taylor's recent article on Catherine Barmby in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is good too.
I have a section on Goodwyn Barmby and William Blake in my book, The Wisdom Tradition.

Perhaps we shall witness

Perhaps we shall witness at the end of history, as in its beginning, a Feminine World Age; perhaps woman will once more redeem herself and man from his mania of destruction.


Otfried Eberz (1878-1958), Vom Aufgang und Niedergang des mannlichen Weltalters (The Rise and Fall of Male Supremacy)(1929-31)
(English translation by Susanne Schaup)

There is joy enough

C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

The Great Divorce: a dream (1946), pp97-99:

The reason why I asked if there were another river was this. All down one long aisle of the forest the undersides of the leafy branches had begun to tremble with dancing light; and on earth I knew nothing so likely to produce this appearance as the reflected lights cast upward by moving water. A few moments later I realised my mistake. Some kind of procession was approaching us, and the light came from the persons who composed it.

First came bright Spirits, not the Spirits of men, who danced and scattered flowers - soundlessly falling, lightly drifting flowers, though by the standards of the ghost-world each petal would have weighed a hundredweight and their fall would have been the crashing of boulders. Then, on the left and right, at each side of the forest avenue, came youthful shapes, boys on one hand, and girls on the other. If I could remember their singing and write down the notes, no man who reads that score would ever grow sick or old. Between them went musicians: and after these a lady in whose honour all this was being done. …

‘And who are all these young men and women on each side?’
‘They are her sons and daughters.’
‘She must have had a very large family, Sir.’
‘Every young man or boy that met her became her son – even if it was only the boy that brought the meat to her back door. Every girl that met her was her daughter.’
‘Isn’t that a bit hard on their own parents?’
‘No. There are those that steal other people’s children. But her motherhood was of a different kind. Those on whom it fell went back to their natural parents loving them more. …
‘Every beast and bird that came near her had its place in her love. In her they became themselves. And now the abundance of life she has in Christ from the Father flows over into them.’

I looked at my teacher in amazement.

‘Yes’, he said, ‘It is like when you throw a stone into a pool, and the concentric waves spread out further and further. Who knows where it will end? Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life’.

A Prophecy

Anna Kingsford (1846-1888)

An English physician, mystic and visionary who served as president of the Theosophical Society, and later founded the Hermetic Society. Her visions were recorded in her book, Clothed with the sun (published 1889)(a reference to Revelations 12:1).


A Prophecy of the Kingdom of the Soul, mystically called the Day of the Woman [based on a vision received in Paris, February 7, 1880)

1. And now I show you a mystery and a new thing, which is part of the mystery of the fourth day of creation.
2. The word which shall come to save the world, shall be uttered by a woman.
3. A woman shall conceive, and shall bring forth the tidings of salvation.
4. For the reign of Adam is at its last hour; and God shall crown all things by the creation of Eve.
5. Hitherto the man hath been alone, and hath had dominion over the earth.
6. But when the woman shall be created, God shall give unto her the kingdom; and she shall be first in rule and highest in dignity. …

12. So that man the manifestor shall resign his office; and woman the interpreter shall give light to the world.
13. Here is the fourth office: she revealeth that which the Lord hath manifested.
14. Hers is the light of the heavens, and the brightest of the planets of the holy seven.
15. She is the fourth dimension; the eyes which enlighten; the power which draweth inward to God.
16. And her kingdom cometh; the day of the exaltation of woman. …

20. For the woman is the crown of man, and the final manifestation of humanity.
21. She is the nearest to the throne of God, when she shall be revealed.
22. But the creation of woman is not yet complete: but it shall be complete in the time which is at hand.
23. All things are thine, O Mother of God: all things are thine, O Thou who risest from the sea; and Thou shalt have dominion over all the worlds.

I have seen

In the perpetual iteration of that beautiful image of THE WOMAN highly blessed – there, where others saw only pictures or statutes, I have seen the great hope standing like a spirit beside the visible form.


Anna Jameson (1794-1860), English feminist and art critic, Legends of the Madonna (1852)

A great era has begun

Vassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)

This pioneer of abstract art was eloquent in his writings on the approaching spiritual epoch and the role that art would play in this new spirituality.


Blaue Reiter Almanac (1911)

A great era has begun: the spiritual “awakening”, the increasing tendency to regain “lost balance”, the inevitable necessity of spiritual plantings, the unfolding of the first blossom. We are standing at the threshold of one of the greatest epochs that mankind has ever experienced, the epoch of great spirituality.

The New Century's Goddess

Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1870)

This Danish writer, best known for his short stories for children, attempted to diversify into what he called “philosophical stories”, several of which had visionary and prophetic qualities.


The New Century’s Goddess (1861)

The muse of the twentieth century we shall never know, but our children may and our grand-children certainly will. Yet we cannot help wondering what she will look like or what songs she will sing: which strings in man’s soul she will touch, and to what heights she will raise her age.

Andersen is coy as to where this Goddess will appear, tantalizing the reader with:

One lovely morning she will arrive. She will come riding on the back of the modern dragon, a locomotive, through tunnels and over bridges…

and in answer to the rhetorical “and when will she appear”, Andersen has a prophetic comment to make:

Soon the Great Wall of China will crumble. The railroads of Europe will reach the closed archives of Asian culture. The two streams of culture will meet and the rapids of the double river will have deeper tones than have ever been heard before.