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Zoence draws on and synthesises the essence of the ancient Wisdom traditions, and presents the core truths with new discoveries and insights for the world of today and tomorrow.
These core truths are taught and shared by means of various types of events, as well as videos, books, essays and information sheets.
The Swan Mystery
The Zoence Academy & Mystery School works with the great myths, and in landscapes associated with the myths.
The great myths are associated with mysteries, which have been enacted by the mystery schools since ancient times. A mystery is a drama enacted on a stage. It is the acting out of an allegorical story or myth that contains wisdom, points to wisdom, and inspires wisdom. The mystery is the origin of theatre.
The word ‘mystery’ comes from the Greek mystery schools. The mystery schools were schools of initiation. The mysterion (mystery) was the 2nd degree of initiation, and was both enacted on stage by mystai (mystics) and also watched by mystai, with the actors and audience creating a Gemini or Didymos (twinship) effect.
The Gemini/Didymos effect is a mystery in itself, and is the fundamental law of life. Basically, it refers to polarity, which when expressed in a loving way, balances and unites the opposites in mystical marriage, after which it develops into friendship – loving friendship, which is the ultimate twinship, and produces delight, happiness, which is light.
When the mystes (mystic) could see the wisdom in the mystery, he became an epopt (seer). After further development the epopt would be able to perceive that the myth was also associated with the landscape, and that the landscape was the greater stage on which the myth was to be enacted.
As the Shakespeare plays follow this tradition, with each Shakespeare play being a mystery, this is why, in As You Like It (Act 2, Scene 7), Jaques says, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
The Zoence Academy & Mystery School, together with its twin, the Francis Bacon Research Trust, has been enacting a mystery on the stage of Europe since the early 1990s. Europe was named after the myth of Europa and the Bull by the ancient seers, as they saw that mainland Europe had the shape of a bull, rising out of the Black Sea and flying over the Mediterranean Sea. On its mighty neck and shoulders they saw Europa manifested as the British Isles, which they called the Blessed Isles of the Hesperides.
The Europe and Bull myth is a shortened version of the Dionysian myth, which Orpheus reformed, emphasising that the Divine Being is Love, as manifested by Eros, the First-born male-female Light of Love. Dionysus is the younger Eros, the individual Eros, but has to master many tests in order to become the likeness of the universal Elder Eros, the First-born.
Dionysus is first born as a bull calf, called Zagreus. He is tested by the Titanic forces, but ultimately he has to sacrifice his life out of love for others. Zagreus is caught by the Titans and torn to pieces, but his loving heart is rescued by Pallas Athena and raised up (ascended) in the form of a swan.
The Greek Leda and Swan myth is about the Didymos twinship, with two sets of twins, which puts the Dionysian myth and mystery into a greater context and helps to explain it. The Latin Gemini myth, based on the Greek Dioscuri myth, which is about the immortal and mortal twin brothers, helps further.
This myth is manifested in the landscape of Europe, the stage on which the mystery of the myth is meant to be enacted, as the ancient initiate seers did. This is what we have been doing, are doing, and will be doing. Right now we are at the Swan stage.
