Category Archives: Cathars

Catharism a refuge for women – talk by Gwendoline Hancke at ‘The golden thread of the free mind’

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To bring up ‘a free space’ for women in medieval society of Southern France, might at first sight seem to be a paradox or even an anachronism. In the Languedoc of the 13th century however, women of all social classes moved in social and religious structures that were dominated by men.

Yet, through their prestige in the Cathar teachings and their priestly role in religious life, women could in a modest way open the gates of that male domination. Precisely because the Cathar religion was so deeply rooted in Continue reading →

On the wings of love – talk by Maria Bartels at the Symposium ‘The golden thread of the free mind’

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In the castles of the Occitan nobility and in the houses of the Cathar faithful, in the hymns and the poetry of the troubadours and in the sermons of the “perfects”, there was a word that was perhaps at the very heart of Occitan culture and society in the 12th and 13th centuries: amor.

However, two distinct Greek concepts underlie the Latin term amor: eros and agape, concepts that originally had nothing what­ soever to do with each other and which are, in fact, opposed to each other. What worlds are concealed behind them, and in what way do they form the basis for Catharism and the fin’amor? How did these two kinds of love come together in the Occitania of those days? And how can they still come together in our own souls? Continue reading →

Freedom of conscience in Occitan Catharism – talk by Eduard Berga Salomó at the Symposium ‘The golden thread of the free mind’

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The history of the human being is the history of the conquest of freedom. Freedom as a species, in prehistoric times; freedom as a people in the first civilizations; individual freedom in our Christian era.

Christianity has paved the way for individual freedom in the West by offering everyone the possibility of receiving the Spirit in their own inner being, through the baptism of the Paraclete and through the formation of Continue reading →

God is love – talk by Mirjam Duivenvoorden at the Symposium ‘The golden thread of the free mind’

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There are places on earth where time and eternity seem to meet; where the boundaries between today, yesterday and long ago disappear – places that fill us with profound peace, joyful wonder, or even a great inner upheaval, because something hitherto unknown in us awakens and now expresses itself in us with remarkable force. Places where we feel small, submerged in something infinitely vast, but nevertheless we feel so ‘at home’ because we recognise a profound connection to its greatness, knowing that we belong, that we have a place in it.

These are places where the Spirit, that breathes when and wherever It will, found an entry into Continue reading →

Gnostic-Christian initiation with the Cathars – book by Rachel Ritman

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In the Spiritual School of the Golden Rosycross, we often speak about the Chain of the Universal Brotherhood. This name implies that there has been a divine intervention for humanity, always and everywhere, to acquaint it with the origin and the destiny of all life. In all times and everywhere, there has been a reaction to this intervention, and people have appeared who devoted their lives to finding and obeying this destiny.

In this way, countless people have shaped an Continue reading →