The Gospel of Philip carries a teaching so old: that death entered the world through separation, and that the wound at the origin of things heals only through union. Philip calls it the bridal chamber. Voices circling from different centuries, different forms, arriving at the same door.

When Eve was in Adam, there was no death; when she was separated from him, death came. If she enters back into him, and he accepts her, there will be no more death.
Gospel of Philip, saying 71 (Leloup)

The mystery which unites two beings is great; without it, the world would not exist. What gives substance to the world is Anthropos. What gives substance to Anthropos is an intimate and enduring relation. Seek the experience of the pure embrace; it has great power; contemplate the Presence in this impermanent body.
Gospel of Philip, saying 60 (Leloup)

“Sacraments always work better when there is a correspondence between the micro and the macro. And then they mirror each other. And what we do in the bed chamber becomes a mirror and an intensification of what we’re trying to do in our lives. And we bring our lives into what we’re doing in those chambers. Sexual expression should never be casual, whether in marriage or out of it. The gift of intimacy is a holy gift, and it can bring us to holiness.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Conscious Love, 6:03 disc4 track9

The bridal chamber is not for animals, nor for slaves, nor for the impure; it is for beings who are free, simple, and silent.
Gospel of Philip, saying 73 (Leloup)

“Thomas Keating had no idea how much temporal time flowed in meditation, but he talked about a rising tide of silence. Silence became this deafening volume of divine presence. Silence was actually the nuptial chamber of originary presence. You know, this is where you meet the eternal, the timeless coming into form. And there’s something in your being that knows that and can pick it up. You realize that silence has force, has heft, has intelligence, has substance.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Integral light Dec 2021, 46:24 1.1 Temporicity

No one but the couple themselves knows when they will come together in intimate union. Marriage therefore is a mystery for anyone in this world who has taken a mate. If natural union occurs in secret, how much greater is the hidden mystery of spiritual marriage which takes place in truth rather than in flesh, out of pure love rather than in passionate lust, in the full light of day rather than in the darkness of night.
It is only the Lover and the Beloved that belong in the Bridal Chamber. No one else can behold them there unless they too become Bride and Groom.
Gospel of Philip, Analogue 67 (W Bauman)

If woman had not been separated from man, she would not die with man. Her separation was at the origin of death. Christ comes again to heal this wound, to rediscover the lost unity, to enliven those who kill themselves in separation, reviving them in union.
Man and woman unite in the bridal chamber, and those who have known this sacred embrace will never be separated.
Gospel of Philip, saying 78-79 (Leloup)

“Mary Magdalene is so essential to the celebration of Holy Week. It is she who sends him forth, to anoint him and seal him as one going to his death, to the intimate bridal chamber of love. Anointing in love, place me as a seal upon your heart — as the Song of Songs says it — becomes the tenor, becomes the ground on which the whole drama of the Paschal Mystery, the sacrifice, the dying, and the resurrection plays out.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Holy Week 2024 in Rockland, 60:00 02 – Revisiting Atonement Rockland 2024

“Ontological indigence merges seamlessly into the fullness of canonic love itself. The two become one, as I suspect they were on the cross. The heart’s innermost yearning is finally free to express itself fully, nothing held back. The fusion occurs at the moment of death, and that fusion unfolds in the domain of love. I realize that I have already tasted it, not only on the meditation cushion, but in the deepest moments of connection with a human beloved, and that this is what it will finally be like. I relax, breathe deeply, and prepare myself to go simply and unconcernedly into that inner chamber of love.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Mystery of Death 2022 Holy Isle, 59:10 mystery of death day 5 tuesday afternoon

THE SECRET EMBRACE

Before being born into the world of time, 
The silence of pre-existence was all absorbing.

The transition from eternity to time
Is full of sufferings, fears, and little deaths.

But, in the transition from death
To eternal life,

The silence of pre-existence
Bursts into boundless joy.

All that can be manifested emerges 
From the endless creativity of
That Which Is.

But
The Secret Embrace 
Of
The Source of all creation
With
Infinite Transcendence
Can
Never be revealed.

Thomas Keating, shared by Cynthia Bourgeault prior to publication.

Those who were separated shall be united, and all who are empty shall be filled, so that everyone may enter into the Bridal Chamber where they will be born into the Light. Their birth shall not be as a result of some unseen union that flares up like a fire in the night and then is extinguished, but rather, as the result of the mystery of Spiritual Marriage, consummated in the full light of day whose light never ceases nor shall ever be put out.
Gospel of Philip, Analogue 71 (W Bauman)

THE CHAMBER

Before the dividing,
She was in him.
Light inside a flame,
A word in its meaning.

Then came the long winter.
The self, discovered,
separate and exposed.

There is a room.
The door opens to the free,
the simple,
the ones gone quiet enough
to hear the latch.

In that room she returns,
simple, and silent.

He opens.
Pure embrace,
Unceasing light—
as winter dissolves
when the first warm wind
finds the field.

William Britten

Logion 22

Yeshua noticed infants nursing
and said to his students,
“These little ones taking milk
are like those on their way into the kingdom.”

So they asked him,
“If we too are ‘little ones’
are we on our way into the kingdom?”

Yeshua replied,
“When you are able to make two become one,
the inside like the outside,
and the outside like the inside,
the higher like the lower,
so that a man is no longer male, and a woman, female,
but male and female become a single whole;
When you are able to fashion an eye to replace an eye,
and form a hand in place of a hand, or a foot for a foot,
making one image supersede another —
then you will enter in.”

---

Quotations from the Gospels of Thomas and Philip are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)

Quotations from the Gospel of Philip from Jean-Yves LeLoup, Gospel of Philip, (Inner Traditions: 2004)

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