When it comes to the question of ordaining women, we may first ask the rhetorical question: "Are all Ordinations the same?" Clearly, the answer is no. Neither the Roman nor the Episcopal Church uses exactly the same forms we use. I have seen a very casual ordination by an independent Bishop, without Mitre and Crosier. It is important for us to note that, especially in the forms we use, we are dealing with Occult forces, forces we can clearly feel but little analyse with our categorising minds.

The Master KH indicated severe personality deformations, in the case of five individuals whose ill-considered goals made them insist they would be his chelas,² personality changes that few, no, not one of us, would care to experience:

"Out of 5 lay chelas chosen by the (Theosophical) Society and accepted under protest by us, 3 have become criminals and 2 are insane."

Clearly, the purpose of becoming a chela of the Master was more all-encompassing of the personality than the purpose of simply becoming a channel for the transmission of the appropriate powers of the Christ -the purpose of the priesthood- but clearly, the linking of the imperfect Human to a Master, at any level, can have its startling effects.

Where it comes to the effects of our Ordinations on our personality and physiology, many of us have our personal experiences and interpretations. My own experience is a heightening of emotional response to my environment. A factor I have also noted in other male ordinands.

The Very Rev. W. H. Pitkin wrote³ that several personality characteristics could put inordinate stress on the individual. He states:

I think that it is the general experience of those of us who have received the Diaconate and the Priesthood, that we are subject to some very real powers, forces, flows of energy not our own, and that these things subject us to greater or less strain of one sort or another…

If we were perfectly…self-forgetful as "perfect channels of His wondrous power," no doubt we should be protected. But few of us are, and so some of the force seems to "Kick back" and cause trouble in any center of weakness in our spiritual makeup…With some it accentuates the sex nature, and there are some who have become so unbalanced as to necessitate their withdrawal from the ranks. This danger has long been recognised;…With others it has been known to accentuate the elements of pride still unsubdued in them, building up in them a sense of their own inerrant judgement, leading to a dominant, intolerant and even openly quarrelsome state which renders the individual of little or no service to the One he vowed to serve by assuming the "sweet but heavy burden."….

There is a third reaction observed, and that is a gradual loss of interest, a drying up of the spiritual fount, and a sinking back into the ordinary ways of the world…

One curious effect of the power of the Episcopate is… where it acts to stimulate the desire to Ordain. Multitudinous ordinations are characteristic of some Bishops without due regard for the needs of the church nor of the calibre of the ordinands, and this in spite of the most solemn warnings contained in the Episcopal consecration service…this manifestation can do the Church much harm;

A number of anecdotal stories relating to the ordination of women underlie the reticence of our Bishops to Ordain our ladies with the current LCC forms. In a telephone conversation with an independent Bishop, who uses the LCC rite but disagrees on the issue of ordinations, the question came up as to what happens to the women he Ordains. The answer was: "I do not know; I loose contact with them." In one of his newsletters,⁴ about fall 1997, he stated concerning a lady he had consecrated:

"To update you on Bishop …’s physical condition following her stroke last March: overall progress has been satisfactory - if you have a lot of patience!… She has recovered her speech to a great extent, unless she has become very tired, or is under unusual stress. We just learned (by divine accident) about a speech rehabilitation program…She did take a serious fall of the front porch (about a four foot drop), but x-ray and MRI at the local hospital disclosed no abiding damage, Deo gratias!… "

The question put to him by mail, if we should put her on our healing list received no answer. In a more recent Newsletter⁵ he mentioned that: "Bishop … ", as well as two other ladies, "are active affiliates of the Interfaith Alliance."

Clearly we are dealing with opinions and limited, poorly studied, observations. Most of our knowledge is anecdotal and inadmissible scientifically and/or legally. Such anecdotal stories are suggestive to many of us who have experienced the power of the Ordination or Consecration, but do not conform to our modern standards of proof. A rigorous study of the interaction between our Ordination process and "Feminine" characteristics is extremely difficult because, in part, the difficulty of defining those characteristics from a bio-socio-cultural perspective. A recent book⁶ examines the interaction of environment and biology, as two mutually enforcing factors. A review of the book⁷ notes that the impact of culture would also change the definition since other forms of nature would have to be examined.

Even so, biological factors are involved. Bishop Leadbeater’s statement⁸, based on his own clairvoyant observations, that "The forces now arranged for distribution through the priesthood would not work efficiently through the feminine body", is a clear warning to those who would be willing to experiment. If the failure of ordinands was not so embarrassing to both the ordainer and the ordinand a more rational, documented study, would be possible, e.g., relating personality profiles to potential success as a priest in a statistical study.

We may argue that times have changed and that women are taking a more active part in society, and therefore more capable of handling the forces. Occult transformations, however, relate to the basic personality and not to the conditioning of cultural patterns. The bio-psychological aspect of our personality can only undergo a slow evolutionary process, unlike the cultural adaptations of mind and nature.

The Occult influence of our LCC Ordinations and Consecrations must not be underestimated. We are linked to our Master in specific ways, ways that have been developed by centuries of (inspired) experimentation. Those ceremonial forms must be handled with care and sensitivity. Since our lack of clairvoyance gives us no timely warning as it did for C.W.Leadbeater, I cannot fault any Bishop who wishes to avoid sharing in the Karma of negative results, even if his karmic load is lightened by his Master.

Where it comes to predicting the future of our church there are no clear predictors of the chronological development of our world culture, a power attributed to the Father only by Christ. Matthew 24:34-36: "Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all these things be accomplished. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. But of that day and hour knoweth no one, not even the angels of heaven, neither the Son, but the Father only".

In Luke’s words (21:6-32) The day and the hour are not considered. Rather, a series of events are depicted in stead of chronological time. Here we have time in terms of causes and effects, the events that mark our life’s progress, the Karmic clock of our evolution. We have the daunting task to see the future in that sense and further to attempt to guess at its chronological development - to be open to the inspiration that tells us: now is the time to act.

Markus van Alphen¹ pointed out the nature of complementarity in our sexual duality. It is well for us to take that seriously, for the Feminine is as fundamental to our evolution as is the Masculine. Let us be clear also to make the distinction between attempting to make a categorical classification between what we think a woman or man should be -an attempt which will surely fail to meet the facts in many cases- and the ideal of the Feminine and Masculine, the ideal complementarity we should strive for in any future ceremony. There will come a time when more ‘feminine’ expressions of the Christ in us needs to be part of a proper ritual. The contentious character of the present state of the world highlights the poignancy of the central part of the Mass as it is currently constructed for its exoteric character. The statements: "THIS IS MY BODY" and "THIS IS MY BLOOD" in which the priest personifies the Christ, are clearly linked to the personal sacrifice of our Lord, essential in the process of establishing the character of His Church: the act that highlights more than any other act the pattern of the Good Samaritan he espoused.

The concept of sacrifice progressed over many centuries, from its horrible and bloody beginnings to appease a fierce and jealous God, to that of self sacrifice for the sake of another, the essential nature of effective existence in our Creator. In the mean time, secular society is still heavily engaged in a competitive form of interaction that all too often sacrifices the innocent for the sake of the organisation and sometimes to the whim of an individual. That is why the Eucharist offers us the ultimate Samaritan (the lamb) who lays down his life for an ailing world. That sacrifice was as essential as a counterpoint to the judgmental nature of ancient Rome, as it is for our current world. All too often we still presume the right to take lives if we feel our own threatened; how much easier is it to judge than give a better example. The central message of our Eucharist still needs to be imprinted in the hearts of humanity. Therein lies "The Work of Transformation," the work you and I must do to bring us, from a competitive- to a caring humanity.

In time there will grow a critical mass of people to whom that act of self-sacrifice seems ridiculous and meaningless for the outpouring of His healing and life giving power. It is my hope that within such a nucleus the more nurturing character of the Christ in us, that says,⁹"Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more!," can be developed in a more modern-affirmative service with the blessing of our Master and with the full understanding of the significance of That Holy presence in us.

For it is the presence of the Christ in us that must become the central image of a mind driven by the pure heart that encompasses all the life that touches it. It is the unfolding quality of His life on earth that is our essential heritage. Therefore we, with the full knowledge of That presence in us make it grow till it shines not merely as the chaplet of our souls but as the star, the sun of his pure dematerialised Love for all that lives and moves and has its being on this earth. The host now becomes not just the bread that He infused with His life, but His already existing life in us that grows till it completely fills the space of our being. We then make it grow to fill the structure we have built for that Light and it is that light, that all empowering life that will be poured out over our world at the end of the Service.

So then, where is our Karmic clock taking us in the mean time? Irrespective of how the Feminine may develop, in our Church or parallel to it, we still have a central message to offer to the world. The power, inner joy and beauty of our Eucharist is central to that mission. The Lord Maitreya told C.W. Leadbeater¹⁰ that "‘He thought the (LCC) movement would fill a niche in the scheme and would be useful to Him…He explained that this was a method of bringing the Holy Orders of the old plan into the new one,…He does not wish It (the Church) to be aggressive in any way, but to go on quietly for the present… "

The other message that is very slowly coming into other Denominations is the essential consistency between valid human experiences in Science and Philosophy, and that of our Religious world view. This essential Theosophical world view is the underpinning of the Universal Brotherhood the world must grow into to develop the fuller measure of its stature. In that sense we are a window on a broader undogmatic philosophy for other receptive religious communities as well as the lay world. Many parts of our Eucharist are already being used by others. If also we can maintain and hold the purity of our ‘New Age Theosophy’ before us, we shall be that beacon into the future for our Master.

1. The Liberal Catholic Vol. LXVII, No 2, 1999

2. Letters from the Masters of Wisdom, First Series, Letter 9, Compiler, C Jinerajadasa (Quest)

3. (in "Clergy Notes 1947-1957" Note 5 of June 1947)

4. Sekina Flame, Summer and Autumn 1997 (Sekina House)

5. Sekina Flame, Autumn 1999 (ibid)

6. The two sexes, growing up apart , coming together, (Cambridge U. Press, 1999)

7. Science, Vol. 285, p. 1681, 10 Sept. 1999

8. The Science of the Sacraments, 1975 edition p. 391

9. Liturgy, 3rd Sunday in Lent. John 8:11

10. On The Liberal Catholic Church, extracts from letters of C. W. Leadbeater to Annie Besant 1916-1923, compiled by C. Jinerajadasa, 1st letter, July 25 1916