Dictionary of all Scriptures & Myths

CRANBERRY (MARJA) 

A symbol of the Divine germ or seed which develops in the purified part of the lower nature, and becomes the Higher Self born in the Soul.

"Come, O virgin, come and pluck me,
Come and take me to thy bosom.
Like a cranberry in feature,
Like a strawberry in flavour.
But the Virgin Mariatta
Could not pluck the woodland-stranger.
Thereupon she cut a charm-stick,
Downward pressed upon the berry,
When it rose as if by magic,
Darted upward to her bosom." - J. M. Crawford, Kalevala.

When the soul is purified, it cries to the Self to come and take possession. The Divine Seed is the Son of the Highest; His nature is sweet, for it is Love. "O taste and see that the Lord is good." But the purified lower nature cannot be more than receptive; it could not of itself draw down the Spirit. Hence it adopts the means at hand, and so, through the buddhic functioning, the higher emotions press, as it were, downwards on the spiritual germ, with the result that the Divine Life suddenly starts from latency into actuality.

"Where did that compassionateness come from? I think there is a plain answer to the question. It is that all along there has been wrapped up in the human soul a seed of Christhood - I think that is the word - waiting for its opportunity to germinate. The Christ-quickened soul reveals hitherto latent spiritual capacities whose emergence stamps it as a new creature, the same yet not the same, the lower mastered by the higher, every faculty brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. It is the same self, but regenerated, made truly manifest. As the Apostle Paul puts it, 'The earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.'" - R. J. Campbell, Serm., *The Eternal Man*.

See Also

BODHISATVA (Great)
BUDDHI
EGG
LEMMENKAINEN
HUITZILOPOCHTLI
MARJATTA
SEED
SEED (Good)
SERPENT (Water)
VIRGIN