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In Hosea ii. 16 we find this remarkable statement: "And it shall be at that day, saith the Lord, that thou shalt call Me Ishi, and shalt no more call Me Baali"; and with this we may couple the statement in Isaiah lxii. 4: "Thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah; for the Lord delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married."
These verses were written both in Arabic and in French, and the poet of Paris and his friends had found them beautiful as the dawn, and as the palm trees of Ourlana by the Artesian wells. All the girls of the Ouled Nails were celebrated in these poems Aishoush and Irena, Fatma and Baali.
Hephzibah may therefore be translated as "a guarded one," thus recalling the New Testament description of those who are "guarded into salvation." It is precisely this conception of being guarded by a superior power that distinguishes the worship of Ishi from that of Baali.
Now the change from Baali to Ishi indicates an important alteration in the relation between the Divine Being and the worshipper; but since the Divine Being cannot change, the altered relation must result from a change in the stand-point of the worshipper: and this can only come from a new mode of looking at the Divine, that is, from a new order of thought regarding it.
In Hosea 2:16, after reproving Israel for her unfaithfulness in the past, the Almighty, through His prophet, employs the following language, viz: "And it shall be at that day, saith the Lord, that thou shalt call Me Ishi, and shalt call Me no more Baali," and again in the nineteenth verse, "I will betroth thee unto Me forever; yea I will betroth thee in righteousness and in judgment and in loving kindness and in mercies; I will even betroth thee unto Me in faithfulness; and thou shalt know the Lord."
Our old enemies, doubt and fear, may seek to bring us back under bondage to Baali, but our new stand-point for the recognition of the All-originating Spirit as being absolutely unified with ourselves must always be kept resolutely in mind; for, short of this, we are not working on the creative level we are creating, indeed, for we can never divest ourselves of our creative power, but we are creating in the image of the old limiting and destructive conditions, and this is merely perpetuating the cosmic Law of Averages, which is just what the individual has to rise superior to.
The world that is ruled over by Baali is a world of "miserable worms of the dust" and such crawling creatures; but the world that is warmed and lightened by "Ishi" is one in which men and women walk upright, conscious of their own divine nature, instead of dodging about to escape being crushed under the feet of Moloch as he strides through his dominions.
"And it shall be at that day, saith the Lord, that thou shalt call me Ishi; and thou shalt call me no more Baali." "Baali" means "lord," "Ishi" means "husband," and between the two there is a whole world of distinction. To call the Great Power "Baali" is to live in one world, and to call it "Ishi" is to live in another.
Baali means Lord, and Ishi means husband, and so the change in relation is that of a female slave who is liberated and married to her former master. We could not have a more perfect analogy. Relatively to the Universal Spirit the individual soul is esoterically feminine, as I have pointed out in "Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning," because its function is that of the receptive and formative.
Now the word Ishi means my husband; while the word Baali means my Lord, and the language, therefore, points to an experience or a relation of marriage. The bride is exalted immeasurably above the servant.
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