From its earliest apperception, the Christian monotheistic proposition has been rooted in mysticism: the belief that God is an asomatous entity with which one can efficaciously communicate, and through which one effectuate cause, action and result in this physical plane of existence. The belief that God is not just a creation of mythos to be feared and worshiped by the ambivalent acolyte, but a substantive entity to be sought, understood and interacted with.

While there is a significant number of people who search for the actuality of God, the plurality of the Church today has deteriorated into a cesspool of political and social ideology. This is not to say the church as it stands today is a bad thing: for without the moral compass of the Christian church, the world would be a much worse place. However for some monotheistic believers, to simply worship God is not enough: for many, the only path to eternal inner peace is to apperceive God in the truest sense.

Before and during the renaissance period, the Christian church actively sought the true existence of God through vision and ritual. In the early church, each vision explicated added to the efficacy of Christian theism, and with each step forward, the Christian mystic drew closer to understanding how to communicate directly with God. Many of the Christian rituals we follow today were formed through mysticism during this early period of the church.

This is not to say every parishioner in the early church was a mystic. Just as with any period, the plurality of the church struggled with the concept of there being an omnipotent God, much less, able to conceptualize how to communicate with such an entity. The mystics were those who cloistered themselves in monasteries seeking the reality of God.

The last time God was known to have appeared on earth as an asomatous entity was when he appeared on Mount Horeb to Moses as a burning bush that did not consume its self with flame. (i.e. bestowment of the Ten Commandments by God) However, God is said to have appeared to man one more time in a furnace where three young men had been cast by King Nebuchadnezzar. While three men were cast into the flames, a forth became visible to all present, and none in the fiery furnace were harmed. The forth man in the flames was described as being like "the Son of God" in the flesh. This was well before the birth of Jesus.

God is known to have appeared on earth only once as a substantive human being. There has been much ambiguity as to how Jesus could have been both God and the Son of God. The child born to the Virgin Mother was a physical human being with all the vulnerabilities of every other human being. The Spirit, the Soul, the life-force that made Jesus a living being was God incarnate. During the lifetime of Jesus, God, (the Soul of Jesus), spoke directly to human beings.

After the death of Jesus by crucifixion, God has not spoken directly to any living human being. For the past two millennia, many have falsely believed, (and still believe), God speaks directly to them; however, what they hear is the voice on an intercessor, such as the Virgin Mother, or that of another Saint. With that said however, a very small number of mystics, (Christian and other), have found a way to connect with the asomatous existence that lies beyond our physical plane of existence. One might say: rather than God appearing before man on earth, the mystic appears before God in another reality. The Christian refers to this place as Heaven, while the mystic sometimes refers to it as the metaphysical reality that lies beyond, (or outside), of our physical plane of existence.

Having a religious doctrine based on faith is one thing, proving the reality of that doctrine is quite another. The life-mission of the Christian mystic is to prove the existence of God, not to everyone on earth, (for that is not possible), but to him/her self. The tools of the Christian mystic are his spiritual consciousness, the science of metaphysics and visions. It is through these tools the Christian mystic seeks the reality God.

The exact mechanism by which the mystic appears before God in an incorporeal plane of existence is unclear; however, the physical memory of the metaphysical event is retained in the physical consciousness as a vision. Because the conscious mind, (conscious awareness of our physical existence), has no clarity of anything existing beyond the laws of physics, it must interpret what it sees into what it can understand. Once the memory of a metaphysical event is lodged in the physical consciousness, it must be interpreted.

Today, the breast and milk of the Virgin are no longer part of Christian rituals; however, as evidenced by art and artifact, both were part of the Christian search for God before and during the renaissance period. It must be noted: to the mystic, it is not the physical presence of virginal milk in a vision, but what it symbolizes. The Virgin symbolizes purity of mind and spirit, and the milk of the Virgin symbolizes comfort and wisdom. In some visions, virginal milk symbolizes comfort of the suffering, while in other visions, the transfer of milk from the Virgin to the mystic appears to symbolize bestowment of Divine Knowledge.

While we do not yet fully understand the significance of virginal milk, we do know it was integral to the early Christian search for God. By studying art, artifact and literature left to us by our ancestors, as mystics, we are better able to interpret our own visions.

Essay/Commentary by Hudson