The sixth “memorial stone” which the soul picks out of the river of death to make a garland or a Gilgal (circle) around the Tabernacle of her heart is the topaz. Its hue is a mixture of a dominant pale yellow mixed with green and blue shades. The yellow shade refers to the Christification in the green hue of the emerald of Christ's Holy Humanity ingrained with the blue hue of the sapphire or His Divinity bathed in the Light of Glory.  In Hebrew the noun phit-da or topaz means a dwelling place or a place of pasture as in Greek, or topazion, a noun derived from the noun topon or place. It is the great Shepherd of the souls – the Holy Spirit – who leads the souls to the pastures of salvation, to their right place or topon in the live of grace in front of the lamp stand. This He does through the Son as was stated above in order to reveal the glory of the Father. Thus He is also called the Spirit of Glory. In order to remind us on this sublime role of the Spirit, Jesus said while still on earth,


The truth which the Spirit leads the soul to in the illumination of the topaz in her gradually growing divine knowledge is the mystery of the eternal life, “An eternal life is this: to know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (Jn 17. 3).
    The lamp stand was the only tool in the Sanctuary which was of pure gold inside and out, but the other tools were made of the acacia wood and covered by gold as they refers to the Christification of the soul. As representative of our Lord it is only our Savior who has been a pure and hammered gold in His incarnation in this earthly Tabernacle and is thus our pattern in the live of grace. This is the precious message which the Blessed Virgin gives us when she points with her hand to her Son on the holy icons as our Hodigitria: LOOK AT HIM!

In order to make the soul able to discern her Beloved in this image of the lamp stand the Holy Spirit must cure her off still another impediment of the priests: the opthalmia or spiritual blindness. The Greek word opthalmia is revealing in this context as the treatment of this infirmity is called “opthalmology.” The word is derived from the Greek words opthalmos (eye) and logos (word, knowledge, speech). It refers thus directly to the Word (Logos), the Son of God and the healing of the soul in its growing knowledge of Him when it sees Him speak within by her cured eyes. And just as the lamp stand prefigured the sacrament of the Anointment of the sick, this cure or opthalmology refers directly to the ointment of the Christ's eye or by the words of the Swedish contemplative Hjalmar Ekström,


In her joy when the darkness of this spiritual night lightens in the first roseate of coming daybreak the soul brings forward a still more sublime offering of praise,


The salt was believed to have a purifying effect on the offering (2 K 2. 20; Ezk 16. 4 and Mt 5. 13) and to express stability of the covenant between God and His people. The union of the soul and her God has become so intimate now that she enter the stage of courtship and thus her Beloved begins to bring His becoming bride gifts of the betrothal which we will discuss later. Thus the soul can discern the eminent beauty of the lamp stand and eminently beautiful it was and reveals abysmal inscrutability, both as regards the nature of ourselves and the community of the children of light, the Church as our Lord's mystical body. It reveals the vine that St. John spoke of in the fifteenth chapter of his Gospel,  “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine dresser.” Our Lord Jesus Christ is the vine and our heavenly Father the vine dresser, the One who watches over the growth of this vine. And He is a good vine dresser that watch closely the growth of the vine and its branches, “Every branch in me that bears no fruit He cuts away, and every branch that does bear fruit He prunes to make it bear even more.”
  
The vine of His Father is an outstanding tree and not a wild vine and does neither mature nor bear fruits without attention and watchfulness. The vine dresser has to watch it grow and mature and when it is ripe the time has come to prune or cut the branches. All the branches that do not bear fruit are cut off the trunk so they do not hinder the growth of the healthier one's. Then the vine dresser take a knife and cuts an opening in the bark that goes deep into the trunk and grafts a new and healthy branch in the opening that can be nourished by the life giving fluid of the sap that streams from the roots of the vine. This is how the vine is pruned until it is able to bear good fruit, the vine berries of salvation. It is not until the newly grafted branches have become one with the trunk and are nourished by its sap that streams from the roots of the vine to all its branches, that the vine can bear good fruits.  It is in this way that the divine predestination grafts us on this vine but the trunk or stem is Christ,  “I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remain in me, with me in Him, bears fruit in plenty: for cut of from me you can nothing do.”
 
This is how God prunes His vine both in the Old and New Covenant and St. Paul urged the Romans to bear in mind how the divine vine dresser prunes His vine, the community of the Church. Only thus this living body can become a worthy bride for such a God, blameless and without flaws,


This is indeed what God will do if the soul and His beloved become the victims of pride, this source of all other vices and St. Paul urged the ancient Church to keep in mind: that it was grafted into the trunk of the vine of life instead of being a natural vine, “After all, if you, cut off from what was by nature a wild olive, could then be grafted unnaturally on to a cultivated olive, how much easier will it be for them, the branches that naturally belong there, to be grafted on to the olive tree which is their own” (Rm 11. 24).  

In order to emphasize the fact that the lamp stand represents our Lord and Savior God ordered Moses to have it made of hammered gold as thus His Son was hammered in His Holy Humanity on earth in His passion. The pure and hammered gold which appears before the eyes of the soul where she stands here in the illumination of the lamp stand reveals its heavenly origin. By the lamp stand God wishes to inform the soul regarding what awaits ahead in the live of grace, just as the lamp stand lit up the area in front of it in the Holy where the priests walked. The gold itself reveals the infused virtues which begin to bloom here. The gold is an outstanding metal that is hidden in the depths of the earth. The gold miners must use all their skill and ingenuity when they seek the gold veins which are hidden in the adamantine rock layers deep under the surface. When they have at last discovered the gold it is brought up to the surface where they separate the gold from the gravel and mud and clean all filthiness out of it by melting it in an urn. When it has been purified it is poured into a mold In order to form it into blocks.
  
    Sometimes they make also thin plates of gold by walloping it and thus a small piece of gold can cover as much as 3,5 square meters and it can be as thin as 1: 250.000 part of a centimeter. The gold has also high durability and can last for ages without withering. It is in this way that God chooses to reveal His boundless and overwhelming love – His gold of Christification – that the smallest stir of His love can cover every sin and vice that we commit which is much by human standards. It is an admonition of the fact that God alone is the source and cause of all the virtues. When the soul feels the touches of the Fathers hands as blows the divine goldsmith is actually giving her share in the beating of this gold as it was hammered in the holy passion of our Lord on earth. It was this beating that Job felt when he said, “You have grown cruel to me, and your strong hand tormented me unmercifully . . . blow me to pieces in a tempest” (Jb 30. 21, 22). This is how Job experienced this night of the spirit, a night that “gnawed his wounds without sleep” (Jb 30. 17), this purification under the caring hands of the heavenly Father.

In a letter of consolation to a friend who had suffered much the Swedish contemplative Ekström mentioned these lovable touches of the Father's hand when it inflects its wounds of love upon the essence of the human spirit,



The sufferings in the night of the spirit are creative sufferings because when used for the advantage of other they work miracles. The great change that takes place in this formation of the Royal Image of Glory in the essence of the soul is that the soul learns gradually to live in the center of her being. She becomes one with God and becomes thus a thoroughfare of grace streaming forth as a river of life from the essence of her inmost being having molding effects on all her actions. The Light of Glory begins to shine in the heart of such a soul, just as it shone continuously in the Sacred Heart of Jesus while He dwelt on earth. Such a soul becomes literally speaking a living Tetramorph on earth in the garden of her heart,


But before it comes to that the Holy Spirit must cure the soul completely of its disordered habits and impediments. This He does here at the lamp stand as a prefiguration of the sacrament of the sick or the sacrament of Anointing. This truth gives us still further and deeper insight into the intentional plan of God concealed in this sacrament. Foremost this sacrament is a sacrament of the living and this is what is emphasized by the reformed rite by Pope Paul's VI’s Apostolic Constitution when he stressed the theological dimension of this sacrament,


Thus the Holy Spirit adorns the soul here at the lamp stand or almond tree to eternal glory with still another item of the vestments of a true high priest in the common Royal Priesthood of the New Covenant: the ephod. God choose also the almond tree as a token of “the eternal priesthood of Melchizedek” (Heb 5. 6). This we see in an authentic way in Numbers when God ordered Moses to take 12 branches for each tribe of Israel and put them before the mercy seat of the ark in the Holy of holies,


Aaron's staff – the almond branch – became thus a prefiguration of the eternal priesthood of Christ  and thus the ephod which the soul is clothed in her is an inseparable part of the vestments of the Royal Priesthood of the New Covenant,


The high priest's ephod was a kind of armory and covered the shoulders, chest and back, or the holy area illuminated by the lamp stand.  The waistband was made of the same material as the ephod and its heavenly origin is unquestionable. It was the prefiguration of the Lord's waistband at the Last Supper, a token of perfect obedience. When the soul is ready to be girdled by this waistband of love she will walk the Way of the Cross in complete obedience. This is the mystery represented by this waistband: to submit completely to God's will,


The topaz reveals thus how the soul has maturated in the live of grace since she dwelt in the courtyard. In the dark night of the senses her injured arm was cured which refers to a sick will. At the lamp stand she stretches out these spiritual hands of the intellect and God captivates her will. She will never again turn back to her former estrangement in the desert when the Spirit has girdled her with His waistband of complete obedience. This waistband is an indistinguishable part of her wedding garments, the Ornaments of the Spiritual Marriage as Ruysbroeck called them.
    Only a soul who is ready to follow her Royal Image on the Way of the Cross is worthy to become a bride, a virgin soul in the eternal birth of the Word. When the Spirit asks the soul, “Do you love Him?“ (Jn 21. 17) and it confesses its love, He girdles it with this token of complete obedience in love. When His Majesty sees how willingly His becoming bride puts on this waistband, His love blazes up in vehement flames and He desires to chose her as His beloved in impeccable union. When He witnesses her purity, obedience and spiritual poverty He gives the soul participation in the splendor of these wedding garments.
   Thus the soul will be lead within into the bridal chamber of its heavenly Bridegroom clothed in the splendor of the infused virtues which she embraced willingly in the prayer of union,


The maidens of her retinue are the soul's three powers which now are led into still further depths of union in the Christification in their willingness. Thus is how the King of Life touches the soul with His golden scepter and fulfills all her desires.

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