Teaching

and Ordination
of Clerics

Haute Église Libérale

Indépendante Orthodoxe-Syriaque

HIGH LIBERAL CHURCH INDEPENDENT ORTHODOX-SYRIAC

Haute Église Libérale Indépendante Orthodoxe Syriaque

High Orthodox Independent Syriac Orthodox Church

Extraordinary Rite of the Rose+Croix

Teaching and Ordination of Clerics

© Copyright Jean Solis, December 2018

All rights reserved

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 CHECKLIST FOR CEREMONY

For the ordinand:

- his alb;
- his cingulum (alb cord);
- his Christian symbol to wear around the neck:
small Christian cross, or small tau (Franciscan type).

For the bishop:

- a pair of scissors that cut very well, or a straight razor, or a very

sharp dagger.

(In the case where the ordinand has no hair or too short to be cut, you
will make the gesture symbolically, you can also inform him in
advance to let them grow a little).

- Ordination bull at Clericate.

(She will ideally carry the Nomen of the Cleric, Nomen he will always
keep.

It will be wise to inform the Cleric well before the day when he will be
conferred the clericate so that he has time to choose it in conscience,
knowing that he can choose at any time of his career).

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 PRIOR TEACHING

Teaching must be read before ordination. However, if time or

circumstances do not allow it, its study by the new cleric will be all
the more controlled. In any case, one will make a serious examination
of the knowledge of the cleric before giving him the degree of
doorman.

The celebrant is of course bishop. He can validly confer the sacrament

alone with the ordinand.

The presence of all the parochial or diocesan clergy is however

desirable, as well as the signatures of these as witnesses at the bottom
of the bubble beside the seals of the bishop.

The reading of the teaching is to be proscribed in the presence of

exoteric or superstitious clergy, even if they are friends, and to avoid
in front of very profane or naive faithful.

Thus, ordination will be done in public only if one omits the teaching,
which will be the subject of a separate presentation in private with the
ordinand.

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The bishop :

He who must receive the degree of cleric: get up and approach.

Our Church is apostolic, that is to say that our bishops are, in direct
line and without interruption, witnesses of living Christos in the
succession of one of the 7 apostles who founded the thrones of the
first great churches: in other words preconciliar dioceses and
patriarchies such as Orthodoxes, Catholic, Coptic, Armenian or
Indian.

They are:

- James the Just or the Greater, brother of Iesous, in Jerusalem;

- Simon Peter in Antioch and Rome;
- Mark in Alexandria;
- Andrew in Byzantium and Constantsa;
- Thaddeus-Jude (perhaps brother of Iesous)
in Etchmiadzin and Edessa;
- Bartholomew in Armenia and India;
- Thomas (twin brother of Iesous)
in Edessa, Calcutta and Cranganore (Malabar).

It is not only in memory of the Menorah, which means "flame" in

Hebrew, but also and especially to remember our apostolic founders
that we light the seven-branched candelabrum in some of our rituals.

Our Church is called HELIOS, the Greek acronym for "The Sun", in
tribute to the fact that for the majority of early Christians Christos was
a solar symbol, and even a primordial solar incarnation.

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We will find much later this idea, especially with St. Francis of Assisi.
This acronym is also a reminder that Greek was the first canonical
language of the Christian liturgy.

HELIOS means:

High Orthodox Independent Syriac Orthodox Church.

I will explain each of the terms.

HIGH to remind us on the one hand that it is autocephalous, that is to

say that it governs itself without any external political influence.
On the other hand, it is above the separating dogmas and secular lies
of many other Christian communities.
In this sense, it is not even religious according to Cicero's definition
that religion corresponds to the modern meaning of the word
"scruple". The literal translation of the Latin Religare is not
necessarily "to connect" as we often think, but especially "to attach" to
the meaning "to hinder", as otherwise Islam means exactly
"submission".

The HELIOS thus raises the true nature of Christianity, which is not
religious, but philosophical, practical, and magical in the noble sense
of the term.
We emphasize the saying that "religion is for those who are afraid to
go to hell, spirituality is for those who come back". We can thus
understand that it is in the harsh reality that it is necessary to forge its
knowledge, and not by the superstition that you should take refuge in
Hope.
This triple qualification of philosophical, practical and magical
confers on the HÉLIOS its originality the most essential and the
deepest compared to the other current communities, and yet the most
natural and the most primitive as for the sources of the whole
Christianity: it is GNOSTIC.

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That is to say, it carries an experimental knowledge transmissible to
those who seek it.
Gnostics, convinced are we then of the poverty of the material
universe if it is not transmuted by the spiritual awakening. But both
the material and the spiritual worlds must be well understood and
lived at the same time.
We are convinced also of the absence of an original sin, and of a guilt
that would be the consequence. In this sense, those of our rituals that
evoke this notion of primitive fault are to be understood with
hindsight and a certain second degree.
Our sacramental operations, which restore the initiatory dimension of
primordial Christianity, are an exercise in overcoming material
illusions. They also reject the idea of an exclusive truth.
The apostles, of whom we are the humble and therefore fallible
successors, were initiates to the degree of their capacity to work in the
awakening. They are also, and like us, individuals undergoing the
limits of their incarnation and their own egos.

In our methodology, as gnostics, so initiated in search of lucidity, we

have endorsed 7 virtues, from the Latin Virtus "force", as the
following:

 Cardinals: Courage, Temperance, Strength and JUSTESS.

 Theological: Faith, Charity and KNOWLEDGE.

CHURCH comes from the Greek term Ecclesia which simply means
"gathering" but especially "spiritual community". This word church
does not initially designate a building, but an egregore. This word was
created by french novelist and poet Victor Hugo as a poetic hapax. He
meant "soul of a group" from Stanislas de Guaita, then "force
engendered by a powerful spiritual current" after Robert Ambelain.

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Our Church exists therefore that its members work in prayer with the
same intentions, not by an administration or buildings.

LIBERAL draws our attention to two great characteristics of our

community.
The first is the freedom for all its members to adopt all sorts of
spiritual, philosophical or moral opinions or options, as long as they
do not impose anybody on them.
So is it with these endless discussions of the big communities about
the sex of the angels, the Trinity, the simple or multiple nature of
Christos, and so on.
So it is with popular debates on the social, marital or sexual options of
each, etc.
The second is the benevolent acceptance of the opinions of other
Christian or spiritual communities and their members, as long as they
do not attempt to impose themselves on the world by force, blackmail
or threat.
We will oppose it as soon as they try to fight our own refusal of
dogmatics.

INDEPENDENT reminds us that our Church obeys nothing or

anyone but herself in matters of politics or philosophy, let alone in
matters of religion.
This notion of religion applies to us only through the
misunderstanding and ignorance of many lay people.
No leader or pontiff outside our elected Patriarch can claim anything
superior to us by virtue of apostolic succession. Thus, no pope,
patriarch, catholicos, or any other scholar or guru of any kind can
present himself as superior.

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Our patriarch is apostolic bishop in the title of the other leaders of
community, descendant of apostles, like the "popes", neither more nor
less. Our patriarch is a sovereign prince and a power legitimized by an
election reflecting a popular consensus that is lacking in many other
Christian groups.

ORTHODOX-SYRIAC does not reflect a canonical, protocolary or

conciliar submission or genuflection to the great historical patriarchies
of orthodoxy. However, we respect these jurisdictions as seniors.
This Orthodox-Syriac term is a homage to the origin of the first
apostolic succession of our contemporary history: the cathedral throne
of Antioch, where sat Peter in the year 37 of Our Lord.
A part of our rites, however, borrows from classical orthodoxy, both
Western and Eastern, especially with regard to the traditions upstream
of the first councils.
In the history of Christianity, uniformity has followed diversity, not
the other way around. From the beginning, we find a multitude of
doctrines, rituals, observances. The New Testament already speaks of
these differences. Each community was developing its practices.
These communities were unaware of forming a new religion. In their
eyes, they were a branch of Judaism or Neoplatonism. They did not
necessarily make worship of Jesus as the only incarnation of God in
history.
Some, influenced by Essenism, proposed the idea of successive
incarnations of the Messiah, the most recent of which took the name
of Jesus.
For others, the historical consistency of Jesus or the reality of his
actions did not matter. They have no more for us.
In the rites that bring us together, we hear heterogeneous or even
contradictory allusions to this subject.

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Each one is forged (or not) an opinion from which he undertakes not
to preach an alleged truth.
The Gnostics did not emerge several centuries after the dogma was
established, for example after the Constantinian eradication of the
beginning of the fourth century. They were there from the beginning,
and even before, since they quickly demonstrate a form of continuity,
sometimes very assumed, between older cults and the new
Christianity.
But like all primitive Christian waves, they did not form a compact
group endowed with a definite doctrinarian system.
Their writings having often been destroyed by their adversaries, they
were known only by the polemical books of the latter, such as
Tertullian or Irenaeus.
The late archaeological discovery of Gnostic texts or collections
completely changed the situation. Among the most important are the
Pistis Sophia between 1760 and 1856, the Berlin codex in 1869, the
Nag Hammadi codex in 1945, the Tchacos codex around 1975, and so
on.
Gnostics agreed that one could find the Divine in oneself. In other
words, the Christian could experience the presence of God directly,
without intermediary - thought that will be found later in the
Protestants.
Despite the fierce struggle of the institution, we find traces of their
influence in the Orthodox teachings until the end of the thirteenth
century. Better still, despite their destruction, these movements
periodically resurface, but we must not imagine groups that would be
perpetuated in secrecy over the centuries by exact filiations.
These sects keep reappearing for a simple reason: no one can stop a
human being from spontaneously reproducing a forgotten spiritual
experience.

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Also, from the Cathars to Lutheran reform, Christian theosophists like
Jacob Boehme, to the Christian Science of Mary Baker Eddy, the
same experiences run through the centuries.
Beyond their diversity, Gnostic teachings generally share four points
of view.

1. They are convinced of the primacy of the spiritual reality over the
temporal ephemeral.
2. Their conception of a spiritual reality unaltered by the material
plane leads them to a vision of redemption different from that
promoted by religious dogmas.
They do not generally adopt a model that thinks in terms of sin,
forgiveness, salvation by the merits of a third - was it the Messiah
himself according to certain conceptions.
3. For them, redemption consists in freeing oneself from the illusion
of identification on the material world. Because they conceive of
salvation in a non-religious form, they apprehend the life of Jesus in a
different way.
Armed with such ideas, it was in the power (and the duty) of every
Christian to work on this concrete demonstration. If salvation was an
individual step, the community helped everyone respect their own
journey.

4. The notion of infallibility had no place. In their communities, rituals

and sacraments played a role primarily initiatory, and not stultifying
or gregarious.

Christian gnosticism today has for essential purpose to reveal the

Christian philosophy in conformity with the universal religious
feeling, and thus, truly "catholic". In Greek Katholikos means
"general" or "universal".

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Christian gnosticism is objectively related to other authentic, non-
imperialist and non-bloody spiritual expressions. For example, non-
sacrificial varieties of paganism or Western animism such as druidism,
Asatru, authentic shamanism, Native American religions ... or
peaceful monotheistic religions such as Zoroastrianism, Yazidism,
Mandeism and of course Buddhism.
Gnosis is not compatible with any form of religious or political diktat.

In conformity with the primordial reality of the Christian message, the

HÉLIOS receives in the Eucharistic celebration any person animated
by the respect of what it represents and its members.
It ordains in its clergy selected individuals as sociable, friendly,
normally integrated in social life, and open-minded, regardless of their
origin, race, sex or orientation, and otherwise ostensibly engaged in a
dynamic of progress.

Since at least the end of the second century AD, the Apostolic
Churches have divided their spiritual teaching into nine "Ecclesiastical
Orders" or, in fact, nine degrees together constituting the “Sacrament
of the Order”.
The last three grades are somewhat jurisdictional. Only the very last,
bishop, holds spiritual fullness for all others, as well as the customary
prerogative of governing local communities.
Large churches, in their spiritual decadence and growing
misunderstanding of their own spiritual deposit diluted in obscure
theologies, have for the most part abandoned this hierarchy or emptied
it of their substratum.

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These degrees are:

1 - the clericate, minor order, or secular, or external, first Christian

rank in the extension of the Levitical priesthood of
Abraham's tradition;
2 - the ostiariate, minor order;
3 - the readership, minor order;
4 - the exorcistate, minor order;
5 - the acolytate, minor order;
6 - the sub-deaconate, minor or major order according to the place;
7 - the diaconate, Major order, corresponding to the last Levitical
degree;
8 - the presbyterate, Major order, grade of sealing of the
priesthood of Abraham and the advent of that
of Melchizedek;
9 - the episcopate, the only plenipotentiary in whose name all
precedents without other administrative hierarchy
them.

It should not be forgotten that the qualification of "minor" is in a sense

only administrative. The traditional and esoteric content of these
degrees is absolutely fundamental and their absence is reflected in the
current incompetence of many ministers of religion.

The state of Cleric is fundamental and founder of all the active

approach of the Christian. In the ceremony to follow, the equipment
and rites very bare should not forget the operational power and reach
of a message that call and transcend more than twenty centuries of
Christian sacramental initiation.

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They are based on two main active symbols:

- the tonsure.

The sacrifice of the hair, in the continuity of older cults, makes it

possible to offer God the emblem of his own strength and to renounce
the illusions of earthly seduction;

- the alb.

Dress necessarily white by name (in Latin Alba means "white").

Figuring our future glorious body, today called aura or energetic body,
it calls us to work on this spiritual alchemy that will allow us to avoid
the dissolution of the Noûs during the First Death and to access the
Metanoïa.
This mystical door of the Second Death is revealed in the Book of
Revelation.

The degree of cleric, the first on a scale of nine, is the resonance of the
most humble class of Levites, those devoted to the service of the
humblest tasks near the Tabernacle at the time of sacrificial Judaism,
under the orders of the High Priest.

For the rest of your career, remember that the sign of the cross is from
right to left the two fingers joined or crossed, and that the sign of faith
- that of the ancient and early Christians - is to cross the arms on the
cross chest of St. Andrew.

May Our Lord help you in your quest.

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ORDINATION CEREMONY IN THE ORDER OF CLERICS

(If we begin ordination directly, the bishop says:

That the one who must receive the degree of Cleric rises and
approaches.)

The bishop, facing the Altar:

 Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit!
All:

 Both now and always, and unto the cycles of cycles. Amen.

Bishop: Let's give thanks to God!

All: God, who to my soul restores his youth!

Bishop: Our help is in the Name of the Lord.

All: Who made Heaven and Earth.

The bishop turned towards the ordinand:

Brethren and sisters, let us pray to our Lord Iesous Christos for his
servant who, for His love, has decided to shed his hair as a sign of
humility.
May He confer on Him His Holy Spirit, Pneuma-Hagion, in order to
preserve forever the garment of Light that will replace its dark form.
As in his soul, the day will succeed the night.

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May He give him/her the strength to resist the embarrassments of the
profane life and the mundane trivialities.
Finally, with this external transformation, may His Divine Hand give
him/her an increase of force, keep his eyes from all mental or carnal
blindness and grant him/her the Light of Eternal Grace, He Who lives
and reigns with
 God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The ordinand approaches the bishop. The bishop cuts some of his
hair:
a) on the forehead,
b) on the neck,
c) on a temple,
d) on the other temple,
e) on the fontanel,

and burn them in the censer, which he immediately recharges with

perfume, then implores turned to the ordinand:
Let us Pray!
Almighty God, do, we conjure you, that your servant (servant) whose
hair we have just sliced in tribute to Your divine love, always
persevere in Your charity. Keep it spotless forever in the way of
heavenly return.
 By Christos, our Lord. Amen.
The bishop goes to the lectern and reads to the faithful:
Psalm 24.
The earth is the LORD'S, and the fulness thereof;
the world, and they that dwell therein.
For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the
floods.
Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD?
or who shall stand in his holy place?
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He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his
soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.
He shall receive the blessing from the LORD,
and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
This is the generation of them that seek him,
that seek thy face, O Jacob. Selah.
Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors;
and the King of glory shall come in.

The bishop returns to the altar and says:

Lord, listen to our prayers and deign to bless Your servant to whom
we will impose in your blessed Name the garment of Light and of
salvation so that, by your grace, persevering faithfully in the ways of
the Church, he (she ) deserves to reach eternal life.

 By Christos, our Lord. Amen

The bishop has the ordinand dressed in the alb.

Then, back to the lectern, the bishop says:
Stand up !
Reading of the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew (22. 11-14).
And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man
which had not on a wedding garment:
And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a
wedding garment? And he was speechless.
Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take
him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping
and gnashing of teeth.
For many are called, but few are chosen.

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Beloved sons, know that the dressing of the king's guests with a view
to the supreme marriage, these nuptials which symbolically represent
the union of Christos and His Church, this alb is in reality the image
of this Body of Light, says still glorious body, succeeding to the
successive and symbolic garments of foliage and animal skins of
which the Book of Genesis speaks to us in its first verses.
Already the Pre-Christian Tradition knew this garment of Light: "The
glory of the angels is perceived by the Gnostics as a kind of garment
..." Moshe Ben Nahman Gerondi tells us in his Commentary on
Genesis, Chapter 18.
"And so you will actually be resurrected in your own shape in a
second generation, clothed in an incorruptible garment with your
living soul and with your spirit ...", adds another Book: The Testament
in Galilee of Our Lord Iesous-Christos.
One of the four apostolic fathers who gathered the secret teaching of
the Savior from the very mouth of the holy apostles, Hermas, Bishop
of Cumae in Italy, tells us in his famous written Pastor (XII, 15):
And the tower, I asked, what does it represent in my vision?
This tower, the pastor replied, is the Church ...
And those twelve virgins who are they? ...
These are the spirits of sanctification.
No one can be admitted into the Kingdom of God without being
clothed by them with their own habit ...
If you only receive the Name of the Son of God, without receiving
their clothing from the hands of the virgins, it will serve you nothing.
For these virgins are virtues, powers of the Son of God,
and if you carry His Name without possessing His virtue,
you bear His Name in vain ...

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Hence again, the advice of Ecclesiastes (9.8):
Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no ointment.
That is to say: that your works are pure and clear because it is they
who weave in the afterlife and for eternity, the garment that you will
wear at the end of this present life.
That is why on this day when you are bound to the eternal Light for
eternity, I put you on the first time of this immaculate robe.
May it symbolize for you the luminous form which, according to the
plans of God, is to be your own spiritual dwelling place on the day of
the Great Sabbath ...
The bishop girdles the ordinand with the cingulum.

He continues :
May this cord which tightens your loins, as a sign of Temperance,
remind you of that bond of silver which will be disintegrated on the
next day of your death. May he release an enlightened soul in a rot-
proof body, in order to grant you the right to cross the Mystic Gate.
In addition, receive the sign of Eternity.
The bishop imposes on the forehead of the ordinand the cross in
pendant or the wooden Tau, and passes him around the neck.

He says since the lectern:

Therefore I sign you, that you may bear on the forehead and the heart
the sign of eternal life, according to the words of Revelation 7.2-3:
And I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of
the living God: and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to
whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, Saying, Hurt not the
earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of
our God in their foreheads.

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Reading of the Pistis Sophia:

Rejoice and rejoice, says the Lord, for when I came to the world from
the beginning, I brought with me twelve powers, as I have told you
from the beginning.
I received them from the hand of the twelve Saviors of the Treasure of
Light, according to the Order of the First Mystery.
These Powers, I threw them into the womb of your mothers from My
arrival in this World and they are now in your body ...
And the twelve Virtues of the twelve Saviors of the Treasure of Light
that I had received from the hands of the twelve middle decans,
I threw them into the sphere of the archons, with their liturges,
and the decans of the archons brought them ...
So I shut them up in the bodies of your own mothers.
So, when the time was fulfilled,
you were born without you having souls from the archons ...
That's why I tell you the truth:
I will make you perfect in all the Pleromas,
from the Mysteries of the Interior to the Mysteries of the Outside.
I will fill you with the Spirit, the Divine Pneuma Aegion,
so that you will be called pneumatic and perfect of all Pleromas.
And in truth, I tell you again,
I will give you all the Mysteries,
those of all Heaven of My Father
and those of all the Places of the first Mysteries,
so that whatever you bring on earth,
we introduce it into the Light from above
and that which you will reject on the earth,
it is also rejected from the Kingdom of God,
My Father who is in Heaven ...

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The bishop goes to the altar:
God Almighty and Eternal,
deign to forgive our mistakes and our faults.
Purge your servants of all servitude of the habit of the profane,
so that by symbolically stripping away the ignominious livery of the
dark world, they will forever enjoy Your grace.
And just as we have traced on their heads the image of Your crown by
practicing their tonsure, so by Your grace they deserve to acquire
internally the eternal inheritance,

 You who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit
in all cycles of cycles.
Amen.
Be seated, except the ordinand.
The bishop says to the ordinand:
Beloved Son (Daughter), remember that day when you entered the
Eternal Church.
Having taken part in the privileges and precious graces reserved for
clerics, be careful not to depart from them.
On the contrary, strive for a holy, dignified and upright life to God
and the Lord grant it to you
 by His Holy Spirit. Amen.
Here ends the ordination that will be sealed
(if need be: in a moment) by the rite of the Eucharist.
Here we can applaud; all those who wish to do so can be allowed to
come informally to embrace the new cleric.
(OTHER ORDINATIONS IF NECESSARY)
EUCHARISTIC CEREMONY
ACCORDING TO THE EXTRAORDINARY RITE

 TELOS 
HELIOS-TSP.SVS-a.d.06.12.2018

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