The Tao Te Ching: "Be like water"

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

The preceding post presented evidence to suggest that the ancient wisdom which informs many of the sacred traditions around the world may have had a deep common source, or that while manifesting itself in different outward appearances in different cultures and time periods around the world, one stream can be detected surging through all of them.

In particular, that post and previous posts related to this discussion (such as this one and this one) argue that when these ancient traditions are understood to be esoteric and allegorical in nature, then their deeper unity can be perceived: different metaphors may be employed, but upon closer examination it is found that these varying metaphors are all attempting to convey a very similar message.

On the other hand, there is abundant evidence to support the conclusion that replacing the esoteric and allegorical approach with an approach that understands these texts primarily as describing literal and historic events and personages leads almost by necessity to divisions and separation and contentions.

These divisions can even lead to a cutting-off from the connection to the universe itself, and to the invisible flow of the universe referred to in some ancient texts as the TAO or the Way (a word which itself may, we saw, be linguistically related to a host of other sacred names around the world, including PTAH, JAH, BUDDHA, MANITOU, and others).

It is both interesting and valuable to examine some of the principles of Taoism and see how they resonate with principles in other ancient cultures seemingly far-removed from ancient China. One well-known passage from the Tao Te Ching, found in the section traditionally numbered 8 out of 81 (although earlier texts only discovered in the last decades of the twentieth century and discussed further below appear to have arranged the sections quite differently), reads as follows:

上 善 若 水

水 善 利 萬 物 而

不 爭

處 眾 人 之 所 惡

故 幾 於 道

居 善 地

心 善 淵

與 善 仁

言 善 信

政 善 治

事 善 能

動 善 時

夫 唯 不 爭

故 無 尤   (link).

This section has been translated:

Best to be like water,

Which benefits the ten thousand things

And does not contend.

It pools where humans disdain to dwell,

Close to the Tao.

Live in a good place.

Keep your mind deep.

Treat others well.

Stand by your word.

Keep good order.

Do the right thing.

Work when it's time.

Only do not contend,

And you will not go wrong.

Translation by Stephen Addiss and Stanley Lombardo (link).

The final character in the first line of traditional characters above, and the first character in the second line, is the symbol for "water": 

水

The passage says twice that water "does not contend." This is expressed by the traditional characters 

不

and

爭

which mean "not" and "contend," the first symbol sometimes being described as a bird, flying up to a ceiling and not being able to fly out (therefore expressing the concept of "not") and the second symbol being composed of two characters stacked on top of one another, the top character resembling a "claw" and originally carrying that meaning (it looks like a horizontal bar with three "fingers" extending downwards) and the lower character being a symbol for "manual dexterity" and being derived from the basic character for "hand," which looks like this: 

手

Thus the symbol for "not contend" or "it does not contend" is composed of a symbol meaning "not" and a symbol that expresses "grasping" or "clawing" or using the hand to seize and clutch and grab.

We can readily appreciate that water in fact does not contend: it is a well-known and oft-stated aphorism that water always "seeks the path of least resistance." Water seeks the lowest places, something that this section of the Tao Te Ching points out, while commenting that these are the places where people (indicated by the symbol

人 

in the third line of characters as shown above) "disdain to dwell" -- and then saying that these places are somehow those that are actually "close to the Tao." 

This is interesting, because it is at this point that it becomes clear that the text is referring to something more than a literal concept: it is probably not telling us that in order to become "close to the Tao" we have to actually seek out certain low-lying swampy pieces of terrain and crouch down there. The text is referring to something that is invisible, something that is a principle related to the universe and the Way that it operates, through an examination of the principles that we can see in water.

From this rather famous passage from the text, we can perceive that aligning with the Tao seems to have something to do with "not contending," with emulating certain aspects exhibited by water in its efficiency and its lack of "grasping" or "clawing," and with aligning ourselves with the invisible energy of the universe and the direction that it takes us, rather than seeking out the things that are perhaps most highly sought after by society (the comment that water "pools where humans disdain to dwell" indicates that the things most highly valued by society may not always be the best guide or indicator of the direction we want to seek).

The character for the word "Tao" itself is actually composed of the symbol for a road and the symbol for a head (which itself is based upon the symbol for an eye), and appears in the computer version of the symbols in the text cited above in the following manner (you can see it at the end of the fourth line of characters):

道

This symbol looks rather prosaic as rendered by a computer, but when written by a calligrapher is a singularly beautiful and expressive character (below is an example from a manuscript of the Tang dynasty, which has been dated as written by a calligrapher in AD 676):

image: Wikimedia commons (link) -- I've taken the liberty of adding a cutout of an enlarged image of the character for "Tao" (Way or Road) from the text, and pointing out its location within the text. 

The word usually rendered into English as "Tao" which is indicated by the above character is actually pronounced dao in Mandarin Chinese (poutongwa), and douh in Cantonese (Guangdongwa) and means "way" or "road" (but also "Tao" and is also used to refer to Taoism in general).

It is interesting to think of this "Way" as being somehow akin to the path followed by water, which unerringly seeks out the most efficient and effective and least contentious Way, a Way that has no need for contending -- and then to think about examples in daily life that seem to embody this principle. 

For instance, one might think of a motion in a familiar sport, such as basketball or tennis: shooting a basketball is a fairly complex skill, as is striking a tennis ball effectively with a forehand or backhand or an overhand serve. There is a set of motions that is most effortless, most efficient, and generally most effective for shooting, say, a three-point shot in basketball or hitting a powerful forehand in tennis. 

However, when we first begin to try to perform these motions (or when we see someone who is just learning to do it, perhaps a child or a teenager or some other beginner), what often happens is that the beginner will find his or her way into using a set of motions which are not the most effective or efficient -- a set of motions which we might say are not, strictly speaking, "good form," but which give the person a sort of "artificial" success.

You might see children who are not quite strong enough to shoot a basketball properly at a full-sized hoop, for example, using a variety of "compensating" motions in order to get the ball to the proper height to go into the basket -- but which you realize are habits that must eventually be corrected as the child gets older and stronger, because they are actually not the most efficient motions or the motions that will produce the most consistently accurate shots, because they actually are motions that "work against each other" in some way. 

Sometimes, we ourselves (or people we see who are learning a sport such as basketball or tennis) will "hold on" to these bad habits, because they produce a modicum of success, and we are afraid of losing that success by unlearning those motions and replacing them with the more effective motions. Coaches sometimes see a lot of resistance from a player who is comfortable in some bad habits which the coach knows are holding the player's shot back in certain important ways. 

This may be a good example of the concept being expressed about being "like water" and "not contending" -- a shot which is using "bad form" is actually "contending" against gravity or against the principles of physics or some other principles "of the universe" in some way, which holds it back and makes it more awkward and more self-defeating than it should be.

Obviously, this rather "physical" example can then be applied to all kinds of non-physical aspects of our lives in which we are doing things in ways that are "contentious" or "not like water" or "not in alignment with the Tao" and which in doing things that way we create all kinds of "turbulence" between ourselves and those around us, or within ourselves, or both. We can even feel the resistance of the universe itself when we are stubbornly refusing to "align ourselves" with the principles of that flow, just as a tennis or basketball player can often feel the ways in which their refusal to align their shot with the principles of "good form" may be causing them to sabotage their own efforts.

Interestingly enough, calligraphy itself and the painting of traditional Chinese characters can be an expression of alignment with the Tao. Producing beautiful traditional characters such as the page of text from the Tang dynasty shown above requires alignment with certain principles which are every bit as demanding as those required in a basketball or tennis shot, and requires the practitioner to learn how to overcome bad habits and inefficient motions that can be every bit as self-defeating as those which players can develop in any sport. One can do a simple search for the words "Tao" and "calligraphy" on the web and find a host of interesting texts on the subject.

Even more intriguing is the fact that the desired characteristics of Taoist calligraphy are expressed in terms of the human body: the characteristics are categorized into the areas of "bone" (the actual structure and form of the characters, as well as their size and "posture"), of "blood" (the consistency of the ink, which is mixed by the calligrapher using a stick, a stone, and a small amount of water), of "flesh" (the thickness and flow of the strokes themselves, and their proportion in terms of being neither too "fat" nor too "skinny" in their conformation), and of "muscle" (movement, energy, spirit, and vital force) -- see for instance this text among many other possible discussions.

This itself expresses the concept of "microcosm and macrocosm," in that the letters themselves are acting a role as a "microcosm" of the human body and, by extension, the human life lived in alignment with the energy of the Tao or the universal flow. Alvin Boyd Kuhn discussed manifestations of this same principle in regards to the letters of Hebrew and Greek and other writing systems within the esoteric traditions of other ancient civilizations in other parts of the world.

As alluded to above, during the 1970s previously unknown manuscripts containing the text of the Tao Te Ching were discovered in tombs in Ma-wang-tui (also frequently written as Mawangdui). These texts, sometimes known as the "silk texts" because they were written on sheets of silk, date to the middle or even the first part of the second century BC, and were much older than previous extant texts of the Tao Te Ching by about 500 years (since that time, in the 1990s, new and even older texts containing lines from the Tao Te Ching have been found in another tomb, this time on thin bamboo strips).

This discovery prompted one scholar of Chinese language and literature to decide that the Ma-wang-tui texts cast so much new light upon the text of the Tao Te Ching that it was worthy of a new translation and examination: the 1990 translation by Victor H. Mair. Towards the end of his edition, Professor Mair (the Chair of Chinese Language and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania) embarks upon some examination of the resonances within Taoist thought and expression to other ancient sacred texts and thought, including the texts of ancient India.

At one point he makes an extremely important observation concerning a passage from the sixth stanza of the Mundaka Upanishad and the section of the Tao Te Ching traditionally numbered 11 (but numbered 55 in Professor Mair's 1990 translation, based on the Ma-wang-tui texts):

The whole second khanda (section) of the Mudaka Upanisad has so many close parallels to the Tao Te Ching that it deserves the most thorough study by serious students of the Taoist classic. Here I shall cite only a part of the sixth stanza, which bears obvious resemblance to one of the most celebrated images of the Old Master:

Where the channels (nadi) come together

Like spokes in the hub of a wheel,

Therein he (imperishable Brahman as manifested in the individual soul [atman]) moves about

Becoming manifold.

The corresponding passage from the Tao Te Ching (chapter 55, lines 103) has a slightly different application but the common inspiration is evident:

Thirty spokes converge on a single hub,

but it is in the space where there is nothing

that the usefulness of the cart lies.

In one of the earliest Upanisads, the Chandogya, we find an exposition of the microcosmology of the human body that certainly prefigures Taoist notions of a much later period:

A hundred and one are the arteries (nadi) of the heart,

One of them leads up to the crown of the head;

Going upward through that, one becomes immortal (amrta),

The others serve for going in various directions. . . . (translation adapted from Radhakrishnan, p. 501). 156-157.

This correspondence, as Professor Mair makes clear, is most significant and most remarkable. The use of the imagery of spokes is common to both, and both clearly use the metaphor of the spokes of the wheel to refer not only to an aspect of the wider universe but also to the human body and to human life, connecting each of us not only to the universe but specifically to the invisible part of the universe, the "space within the wheel," where the invisible divinity is located, and who is also manifest within the human soul.  

Not only does this continue the "macrocosm-microcosm" theme which can be shown to be an absolutely fundamental aspect of virtually all the world's esoteric sacred texts and traditions (including the texts of the Old and New Testament), and not only does the concept of the "hidden divinity" have important connections to the concept of "Namaste and Amen" discussed in numerous previous posts (which also connects to the scriptures of the Bible, as well as to important themes present in ancient Egyptian sacred mythology), but it is very likely that these passages which Professor Mair here focuses upon also contain powerful echoes with the text of the extraordinarily important "Vision of Ezekiel" and the "wheels within wheels," which I have discussed at length as being a metaphorical description of an understanding of the motions of the celestial machinery -- the same understanding which is depicted in the models of the heavens known as armillary spheres. 

Note that in both of the passages cited above -- one from the Tao Te Ching and one from the Upanisads  -- the metaphor of a wheel with spokes is used, and in the Upanisad it is said that Brahma dwells "therein" or in the center of that wheel, exactly as the Most High is described as being enthroned upon or above the wheels in the Vision of Ezekiel. 

In fact, as I explained in the previous examination of the details of the description in the Ezekiel text, there the wheel is specifically described as being composed of "strakes," which is a very precise term from the old craft of wooden wheelmaking, describing the curved outer segments of a wooden wheel -- outer segments which would be a perfect metaphor for the twelve segments belonging to each sign of the zodiac within the great celestial band or "wheel" of the zodiac.

Notice that in the passage from the Tao Te Ching, the number of spokes on the wheel is specifically given as thirty

spokes: is it not significant that each of the sections of the zodiac wheel (each of the "strakes," if you will) would have exactly thirty degrees, if there are twelve signs of the zodiac and if the circle is divided into three hundred and sixty measurement units called "degrees"? 

Based on these correspondences, it is almost certain that there are direct parallels between the esoteric message being conveyed (albeit using slightly different metaphorical details, and different versions of the divine name) by the ancient texts of the Upanishad, the Hebrew Scriptures, and the Tao Te Ching.

This is all very important, and points to profound connections between the ancient sacred knowledge of the human race, and to the fact that we should all actually be united by our ancient heritage, and not divided.

One very practical implication of the foregoing is the realization that one can learn from and incorporate the profound lessons conveyed by different sacred traditions, because they are all using slightly different expressions to try to point towards the same truths. If one aspect of the metaphor provides better insight, or feels in some way more accessible, there is nothing wrong with learning from it. As we have already seen, Buddhism and Taoism are almost certainly names which have linguistically identical origins, and which probably share the same linguistic heritage with the divine names of JAH and PTAH and MANITOU and many others.

The Tao Te Ching has a unique power of its own, a unique voice in expressing and conveying the ancient wisdom.

It describes the ideas of aligning with the flow of the universe in a way that might be particularly helpful in all kinds of "simple" ways within our day-to-day life. 

Thinking about having "efficient good form" in a shot in tennis or basketball as being a good example of "aligning with the flow" and not going against it, we can then think about expressing that same kind of alignment and efficiency and "non-contention" in the way we drive a car, or wash dishes, or open a door, or interact with people around us.

When someone starts "contending" with us, we can see if they are acting in ways that are not aligned with that universal flow, and we can ask ourselves whether that is a good reason to allow ourselves to also get out into contention and turbulence, or if we prefer to seek to stay aligned with the Tao and act more like water in a stream.

Of course, since none of us is perfect and since this material realm is full of systems which seem almost purpose-built to jostle us out of alignment with the Tao, this is a process that can fruitfully provide us with rewarding challenges, even if we are performing what might otherwise seem to be the most mundane of tasks or jobs. And even if we have relative success on one day, we won't become bored because the next day will probably teach us how much we still have to learn in this regard.

Ultimately, as the deeper connections touched on above seem to indicate, I believe that the process of aligning with the Tao that is the subject of the Tao Te Ching involves the awareness of, the acknowledgement of, and some interaction with the reality of the invisible aspect of the universe, and not just its physical forces.

And, as we have seen in many previous posts, this seems to be one of the most central messages of the world's esoteric texts and traditions, all of which I believe should be viewed as our shared inheritance from the remarkable messengers who gave us this sacred ancient wisdom.

Gung-hei faat choih!

恭喜发财

PTAH, JAH, TAO, and BUDDHA

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

The preceding post examined evidence found in the treatise on the Therapeutae, written by Philo of Alexandria sometime prior to AD 40 or 50, which suggests that -- in addition to pursuing an ascetic lifestyle characterized by a vegetarian diet, daily intermittent fasting, regular periods of longer fasting, long periods of meditation and prayer, simplicity of dress, lack of material possessions, and participation in a community of others who practiced the same lifestyle -- the Therapeutae studied ancient sacred writings with an eye to their esoteric content and message, and that at least some of the Therapeutae were able to enter a state of ecstatic trance in which they spoke messages which came from the realm of non-ordinary reality.

In that post, we also examined the arguments of Gerald Massey (1828 - 1907) regarding the importance of the many similarities between the ancient descriptions of the beliefs and practices of ascetic communities such as the Therapeutae and the doctrines described in many of the New Testament texts. 

Massey points out that early literalist Christian authorities such as Eusebius (c. AD 260 - c. AD 340) would sometimes try to argue that these similarities are evidence that the Therapeutae were very early communities of literalist Christians, but that in doing so those writers make a revealing error, because in doing so:

• these writers admit the undeniable similarities between elements of the Therapeutae descriptions and the sayings attributed to Christ or taught in the New Testament Epistles, but that . . .
• because the Therapeutae and other such communities -- and their teachings -- were in existence long before the time of the New Testament, this shows that they are part of a stream which is far more ancient, and which thus refutes the historical framework advanced by literalist polemicists such as Eusebius.

In other words, one way of expressing this thesis would be to say that surviving descriptions of ancient communities such as the Therapeutae contain evidence that places these ancient communities squarely within the current of the rest of the world's ancient wisdom traditions -- traditions which can also be shown to be founded upon esoteric sacred texts or mythologies, and to be founded upon a worldview which included ecstatic trance and which can be described as essentially shamanic -- but that the literalist-historicist system advanced by Eusebius and others during the subsequent centuries rejected both the esoteric and shamanic aspects and consciously and deliberately cut itself off from that same current of the world's ancient knowledge.  

Rather than representing a new and different teaching, the texts of the New Testament can be shown to be based upon the same system of celestial metaphor common to the rest of the world's sacred traditions, and to contain clear parallels to other systems of myth going back thousands of years (some previous posts discussing aspects of this evidence include "The shamanic foundation of the world's ancient wisdom," "Namaste and Amen," "Epiphany: revealing the hidden divine nature," "The Angel Gabriel," and many others). 

And, rather than representing an early example of a new Christian faith built upon a literal and historicist interpretation of these ancient scriptures, communities such as the Therapeutae can be shown to be part of a very ancient wisdom tradition, and one with strong parallels literally around the world. In other words, it fits into a stream which appears to connect humanity both across the distances of time and of space: one which not only flows back across time through millennia, but one which also appears to flow across vast stretches of geographical space, across continents and seemingly very different cultures.

And, when the literalists self-consciously cut themselves off from this stream, it can be said that they also in a way cut themselves off from a deep connection to the universe, insofar as their insistence on approaching the sacred texts as descriptive of literal, historical events which took place on planet earth can be seen as a deliberate repudiation of the celestial basis underlying all the stories of the Biblical scriptures, from Adam and Eve and the Serpent, to the story of Noah and his three sons, to the sacrifice of Abraham, the crossing of the Red Sea, the adventures of Samson, the horrible oath of Jephthah, the Judgement of Solomon, the events in the life of Elisha, the Vision of Ezekiel, and all the rest -- including the stories in the New Testament as well.

One important message conveyed by all of these stories is the connection between humanity and the wider universe -- the stories themselves depict stars, planets, constellations, and the sun and moon as human beings walking on earth and going through all "the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to" (as Hamlet says). In doing so, they implicitly suggest that we ourselves and our "motions" in this mortal life are in some way connected to and reflective of the motions of those heavenly actors.

Indeed, as many previous posts and the book The Undying Stars discuss at length, the deeper esoteric message of the Star Myths found in the Bible and in the rest of the ancient sacred traditions and scriptures around the world may involve a view of the universe in which there is an unseen spirit realm in addition to the visible material reality with which we are familiar, and the message that the material realm is in fact connected to, interpenetrated by, and even projected from the unseen realm.

By cutting themselves off from this understanding, the literalists were in effect cutting themselves off from and setting themselves against not only all the other cultures and sacred traditions of the rest of humanity but also the very "flow of the universe" itself -- that concept which is expressed in Taoism as the eternal Tao.

The details of the Therapeutae described by Philo, and the attempts by later literalists such as Eusebius to co-opt them into literalist Christianity, provide an invaluable window through which to observe this important concept in action. For the literalist system advanced by Eusebius and his colleagues can be seen to have strongly rejected what are arguably the most vital aspects of the Therapeutae way as described by Philo: their allegorical and non-literalistic hermeneutic with regard to sacred texts (which, as I have argued above, convey an esoteric message involving a deep connection between our lives on earth and the motions of the heavens and of the earth on its course around the sun, and to the spirit world which interpenetrates and thus connects everything in this visible universe), their high regard for knowledge obtained while in a state of trance (which is a form of direct and unmediated revelation to the individual, and which provides immediate confirmation of the invisible connection just described), and even their decision to abstain from the eating of flesh (which evinces a sense of connection to the other creatures of our planet, rather than the belief that animals are created for humanity's exploitation, which has led to the situation today in which animals in the food industry are regularly treated in the most inhumane manner imaginable, a situation only possible in a society in which large numbers of people feel no connection to these animals at all).

All of these aspects of the Therapeutae can be seen as belonging to the family of teachings which seek to align with what we could describe as the flow of the universe, or the Tao -- and they are the very aspects of the Therapeutae way which were not incorporated into literalist Christianity, which is in keeping with the above observation that the literalist approach to the scriptures almost of necessity represented a self-imposed isolation not just from the rest of the world's wisdom traditions but also from the flow of the universe itself.

And here is where another insight from Gerald Massey opens up a whole new vista of evidence to support this assertion. Beginning most explicitly in the fourteenth paragraph of the treatise entitled "Gnostic and Historic Christianity" which was discussed in the preceding post, Massey argues that the Therapeutae seem to be part of a tradition stretching back to the Pythagoreans, and that this connection was indeed advanced by at least one important ancient author.

The reader may remember that the Pythagoreans were strongly associated in ancient times with the practice of a vegetarian diet (see discussions here and here, for example), as well as the fact that the Pythagoreans practiced a deeply esoteric approach to number, with the study of number and geometry functioning very much as an ancient "text" from which they derived profound truths regarding the nature of the universe and of human existence, in exactly the same way that other esoteric communities derived the same understanding from written texts or sacred myth. Thus, the possibility of a continuity of tradition between the practices of the Pythagoreans and those described by Philo among the Therapeutae appears to be well-founded. It obviously argues that the practices of the Therapeutae are part of a stream that is much older than the literalists such as Eusebius would have us believe.

There is also the abundance of ancient texts which declare that Pythagoras was an accomplished healer, and that he believed and taught the healing power of music, rhythm and vibration -- and that he in fact "tuned himself up" every morning with a period of singing, dancing, and playing the lyre! This connection provides yet another support for placing the Pythagoreans and the Therapeutae within the same ancient stream, because as we have seen from Philo's description, the Therapeutae also placed great emphasis on the importance of harmonic and rhythmic singing, and of course their very name has come to be associated with healing the body -- a very important aspect of this group which connects them not only to the Pythagoreans but to many other similar groups found in other cultures as well (and see also this previous post).

Whether of not Pythagoras was a literal and historical human figure is actually open to debate, but the traditions surrounding his life state quite clearly that much of his knowledge came from Egypt, where he is said to have traveled in order to gain access to the ancient wisdom kept by the Egyptian priests.

Massey then offers some linguistic connections which lead to some frankly mind-blowing possibilities. He argues that the root of the name Pythagoras most likely stems from the ancient Egyptian god Ptah, which can also yield Putha and Put, and which may in fact be the original source of the name of the Buddha, and even of the Therapeutae!

Now, this is truly a revolutionary insight. Because, as noted in the preceding post, some of the features Philo describes regarding the Therapeutae -- such as the abstention from eating meat, the simplicity of dress, and the giving away of all possessions -- are not really features associated with the literalist Christianity advocated by Eusebius and his colleagues, but they are indeed features strongly associated with many expressions of "Eastern" traditions including Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and others. 

And, previous posts have made note of the parallels (which have been noted by other researchers as well) between some aspects of ancient Egyptian priests and priestesses (of Isis, for instance) and elements of Buddhist monasticism. Also, I believe Patricia Awyan in correspondence with me has mentioned the importance of the Ptah connection as well.

Taking the ball from Massey at this point and running with it a little further, so to speak, it can also be argued on linguistic principles that the word Tao could be said to have connections to the name of the invisible Ptah as well. And thus we see that the name of the Egyptian Ptah can be argued to have connections to Buddhism (if we insert a vowel between the first two consonants, which also leads to the connections to the name of Pythagoras) and to Taoism (if we do not).

Further, while some may protest such a connection, it is linguistically feasible to suggest a connection to the sacred name JAH along these same lines as well, which is the version of the divine name used in Psalm 68 and verse 4.

Additionally, we might also argue that there are sound reasons to suggest a connection between the name of Ptah and the Egyptian name Sahu, which was associated with the constellation of Orion. 

The likelihood that Orion was associated with the Egyptian god Osiris is well-known, has been argued for over a century by many researchers, and is I believe well-established by the evidence offered by researchers such as Hertha von Dechend and Giorgio de Santillana in Hamlet's Mill, and Jane B. Sellers in Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt  (see also the discussion in previous blog posts including "Dawn of the Golden Age," "Precession = the Key," "Hamlet, Hamlet's Mill, and Astro-Theology," and "Capella, precession, and the end of the Golden Age").  

However, there are strong connections between the characteristics associated with Osiris and many of the characteristics of the god Ptah, who was also anciently depicted as being swathed in mummy-clothes as was Osiris, and who fulfills a role very similar to that of Osiris within some aspects of ancient Egyptian theology, particularly that associated with Memphis which is sometimes known as the "Memphite theology." Further, in ancient depictions of Ptah, he is regularly shown holding a Djed-column scepter, which is a symbol that is also strongly associated with Osiris and with Orion. 

Thus, the possible connection between Ptah and Sahu -- already defensible on linguistic grounds alone -- appears to have further evidence to back it up. 

It can also be noted at this point that Osiris (and other "Osirian" figures in other myth-systems, including Saturn and Kronos) was a deity associated with grain, and with teaching humanity how to cultivate the fields for food (and, in some myths, with teaching humanity to refrain from eating one another as food -- he was a "civilizing" figure in many ancient myths, dwelling on earth and presiding over a Golden Age of peace). Thus, the fact that the Pythagoreans and the Therapeutae were practitioners of vegetarianism suggests that this proposed connection to Sahu in addition to Ptah is defensible from multiple angles.

We can even go so far (although this is, admittedly, wandering rather "far afield") and suggest the possibility that the word Shaman itself may somehow connect back to these shared sounds of Sahu, Tao, JAH, and Ptah. 

It is true that the word Shaman is of Tungusian origin, from a land and a people very far removed from ancient Egypt. And yet, it is equally true that one of the most essential characteristics of the Shaman, in cultures around the world, is his or her role as a healer. That this healing technique almost always involves singing, chanting, and the playing of harmonic flutes or rhythmic drums seems to argue some kind of parallel with the practices attributed to the Pythagoreans and the Therapeutae, and hence the possibility of a linguistic connection between these names is not too outrageous to make. 

It is also well-attested that Shamans around the world express their voyages to the spirit world in terms which are frequently celestial in nature, and in fact the evidence of possible shamanic aspects of ancient Egyptian sacred tradition and of some kind of connection between ancient Egyptian knowledge and shamanic technique found around the world is abundant, and worthy of careful consideration (some of it is discussed in previous posts such as this one and this one).

And so, what we are seeing is that there are strong arguments to be made for a connection between all of these different expressions of ancient wisdom, and of a consistent stream which stretches back deep into the time of ancient Egypt, and which can already be seen to potentially unite some aspects of Taoism, Buddhism, and Shamanic culture. The Therapeutae described in Philo's text appear to be squarely within that ancient stream, and the fact that their sacred texts sometimes express the sacred name in the form JAH can be seen as a connection to PTAH, TAO, and even BUDDHA. 

The chart below shows one way of outlining these connections:

This chart, following the argument of Massey, depicts the different linguistic permutations as being descended originally from the ancient Egyptian name of Ptah, and there are certainly good reasons to decide that ancient Egypt's incredible antiquity argues for Egypt as the original source and fount of all the others. After all, Ptah may be an even more ancient god than Osiris, and Osiris and his myth-series was already fully developed by the time the Pyramid Texts were inscribed, some of the most ancient  texts known to history, some of which were written as early as 2300 BC (which argues that the Osiris myths are even older than that, and the Ptah myths may be older still).

However, it is also certainly possible to posit that all of these different names descended directly from some still more ancient source, and that they all resemble one another only because they all resemble some original name from this now-unknown original source.

The diagram below shows this possibility, and adds yet more names from the world's sacred traditions which may serve to show how widespread and indeed universal this ancient stream really may be:

Here, in addition to the names already discussed, are added several more whose linguistic connections may be disputed, but which are certainly defensible as possibilities under the generally accepted principles of linguistic transmutation of related sounds.

In the first line we see the names PTAH, TAO, JAH and PUT, which have already been discussed. Below these are Pytahgoras, Buddha, and Therapeutae, but also Manitou, which is a name from the Native cultures of North America which can be used to describe both the denizens of the spirit world (the Manitous) but also when singular is used to indicate the Great Spirit.

In the next line below that, we see listed Sahu and Shaman, but also the Native American sacred name Ta-Iowa or Taiowa, which is a name which the Hopi elders used when they passed on their sacred traditions to Frank Waters and Oswald White Bear Fredericks in order to ensure that their ancient wisdom was not lost or forgotten, and which can be found in written form in The Book of the Hopi. The linguistic connections of this name to the sacred name of JAH can hardly be disputed. It is also difficult to ignore the fact that this name has been preserved as the name of one of the United States: the state of Iowa, discussed in this previous post.

These examples from the Native American sacred traditions shows that this stream not only stretches across millennia but that it also spans the globe. It is the stream within which the Therapeutae can be seen to be firmly planted, but from which the literalists such as Eusebius were consciously separating themselves.

That previous post on Iowa and the sacred name also discusses the likelihood that the names of Zeus and Jupiter (or Iu-Pater or Zeus-Pater) fit within this same family of names and can be shown to be linguistically connected to JAH and TA-IOWA.

The implications of all this apparent connection between the sacred myths and sacred scriptures of the world (to include those which ended up in the Bible, but which were radically reinterpreted by the literalists) are indeed profound.

This analysis would suggest that, although they have superficial differences, there are important fundamental connections between the worldviews that are expressed around the globe and across the ages in the messages of the Tao, of the Buddha, of ancient Egypt, of the Pythagoreans, of the Biblical texts esoterically understood, of Greek myth, of Native American spiritual teaching, and of shamanic cultures in general.

It also suggests that all of these traditions emphasize an interconnectedness of all creatures as well as an interconnectedness between individual men and women, and between humanity as a whole, and the rest of the earth and indeed the entire universe, including the invisible realm which flows through the entire universe and every being within it. 

We can also see in many of the specific descriptions and practices of groups such as the Therapeutae, the Pythagoreans, and many expressions of this spiritual stream in Buddhism and Taoism an emphasis on the importance of living in harmony with the invisible flow and energy of the universe, or with the Tao (to use the name given to this concept in one of these related traditions). The knowledge of ways to preserve or restore health to the human body which is obviously very central to many of these related traditions can be seen as a direct and logical aspect of this emphasis on trying to align with and remain in harmony with the energy of the universe or the Tao.

And, indeed, this emphasis can be clearly seen in the stories contained in the New Testament Gospels themselves.

However, although some literalist Christian writers try to argue that groups such as the Therapeutae represent early members of their literalistic system, the similarities are only superficial, and it is clear that the literalists rejected the most important features of the Therapeutae approach, the features that connect the Therapeutae to the wider and deeper current which flows also through the Pythagoreans, the ancient Egyptians, and connects even further to Buddhism and Taoism and to shamanic cultures around the globe.

In setting themselves against this ancient stream, the early proponents of literalism may or may not have realized that they were setting themselves against all of these things. And yet it is quite evident from the above analysis that this is in fact exactly what they did do. 

Because of this, and because of the fact that "western culture" can be seen to be directly descended from and most powerfully influenced by the heirs of Eusebius and the system that they put into motion, it can be clearly demonstrated that modern western civilization today is directly at odds with the flow of the universe in numerous important and world-threatening areas. 

Additionally, it can even be said that modern western society discourages harmony in many ways, and that it contains powerful structures which seem almost purpose-built to hinder individual men and women from aligning themselves with the Tao, and even some which seem purpose-built to actually act to the detriment of the health of their physical bodies in many ways -- the opposite of the goal of healers and healing communities such as the Pythagoreans or the Therapeutae.

And, it can certainly be said that modern western society is built around principles which are basically the exact opposite of the practice attributed to the Therapeutae of giving away their possessions and living with very little "stuff."

If we examine the scriptures themselves, we might ask ourselves which approach seems more in line with those ancient texts: that which resulted from centuries of literalist influence, and which we see manifested in modern western civilization today, or that pursued by the Therapeutae and other communities who lived prior to the rise of literalism, or who were far enough away from the Roman Empire to avoid falling under its sway in the subsequent centuries.

The good news is that, as the analysis above demonstrates rather conclusively (I think), it is really the divisions between us that are artificial: all cultures and all people (including those  whose connection to the ancient wisdom was stamped out by the rise of literalism in Europe during the Roman Empire and in subsequent centuries) are actually connected by this ancient stream, which exhibits different surface characteristics in different places and different time periods, but whose core practices or teachings can almost always be shown to share a few important common features. 

And, whether we recognize it or not, we are all actually connected one to another, as well as to the earth and to the infinite universe, and to the invisible realm which may in fact be the most important element which connects it all.

It is the self-imposed separation initiated by the literalists from the rest of the world's traditions, and from what we could hardly do better than to refer to as "the Tao," which is really the artificial separation, and indeed the illusory separation.

Even the very names show that this separation is an illusion, and that JAH, TAO, PTAH, TA-IOWA, BUDDHA, and all the rest reveal that we are all part of the same stream which flows around and through us all and connects us with one another and with the universe. 

The Therapeutae

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

The ancient philosopher Philo of Alexandria (c. 25 BC or 20 BC - c. AD 50), devotes the bulk of the text in one of his most well-known surviving works, De Vita Contemplativa ("On the Contemplative Life"), to discussing the important group of followers of the ancient Hebrew Scriptures who were known as the Therapeutae.

Some of the aspects of the Therapeutae as described by Philo include the following:

• They lived in ascetic communities which were open to both men and women, although living most of the time separated by sexes and coming together for special meals and celebrations in which all participated.
• Philo tells us that while such communities could be found in many countries, they were most prevalent in Egypt.
• They gave away their possessions and left the bonds of society and of family, not (Philo explains) out of any misanthropy, but rather out of desire to benefit others by giving away their wealth and to be free of "undue care for money and wealth" and to devote their time to the pursuit of holy mysteries.
• They typically sought out desert places in order to retreat from the crowded life of cities and pursue a spiritual path with a balance between solitary contemplation and communal activity.
• They made their dwelling places far enough apart from one another to give themselves plenty of room for solitude and contemplation, but close enough together to be able to defend each other in the case of attack by robbers.
• They held the ancient scriptures in extremely high regard and devoted much of their time to their study.
• They spent much of their time in meditation and prayer, with prayer specifically mentioned as being offered at the time of the rising of the sun and the setting of the same.
• They favored very simple clothing and food, nothing that was expensive or ostentatious.
• They followed a vegetarian diet, bringing nothing to their table (Philo tells us) that has blood.
• They did not drink wine but rather water.
• They fasted regularly, and in fact seem to have fasted throughout the daylight hours each day according to Philo, saving food and drink for after sunset, as well as at times fasting for longer periods, such as three days or even six days.
• They did not use slaves at a time when slavery was commonly accepted, but instead "look[ed] upon the possession of servants or slaves to be a thing absolutely and wholly contrary to nature, for nature has created all men free" and regarded slavery as a product of injustice, covetousness, and evil.
• They had a high regard for singing and sang sacred songs, psalms, or chants, and that they did so with a dignified rhythm and sometimes with men and women all together, forming two choruses which at times sing different parts and at times all sing the same, and at times break into stately forms of dance and choreographic expression to accompany their singing. 

Translations of Philo's text are easily found on the web, where those interested can consult his descriptions for themselves -- one such site can be found here.

Readers who are familiar with some of the texts that have come to be known as the New Testament will recognize some of the characteristics attributed to these Therapeutae in some of the admonitions and recommendations in certain New Testament passages, including the singing of hymns, psalms and sacred psalms (urged in Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3), and the passage in Luke in which Jesus says his disciples must "hate" father and mother and wife and children and brethren (Luke 14:26), which is very similar to Philo's statement that those who left society to join these spiritual communities "desert[ed] their brethren, their children, their wives, their parents, their numerous families, their affectionate bands of companions . . ." 

Indeed, the later author and polemecist Eusebius (c. AD 260 or 265 - AD 339 or 340), who was a bishop in the hierarchical and literalist Christian church, recognizes so much in the descriptions given by Philo that Eusebius states very plainly that these ascetic communities described by Philo represented  the "multitude of believers" converted by the gospel author Mark when he traveled to Egypt: see chapter 16 of Book II of the Ecclesiastical History written by Eusebius (links to all the Books of the work are available online here, and the link to Book II is here). Eusebius further declares in Chapter 17 of Book II (which contains numbered paragraphs -- the paragraph numbers are preserved below in the quotation):

3. In the work to which he gave the title On a Contemplative Life or on Suppliants, after affirming in the first place that he will add to those things which he is about to relate nothing contrary to truth or of his own invention, he says that these men were called Therapeutae and the women that were with them Terapeutrides. He then adds the reasons for such a name, explaining it from the fact that they applied remedies and healed the souls of those who came to them, by relieving them like physicians, of evil passions, or from the fact that they served and worshipped the Deity in purity and sincerity.

4. Whether Philo himself gave them this name, employing an epithet well suited to their mode of life, or whether the first of them really called themselves so in the beginning, since the name of Christians was not yet everywhere known, we need not discuss here.

Eusebius is here plainly declaring that the Therapeutae and Therapeutrides were the first Christians, going by that name prior to the common use of the term "Christian" itself! 

This, Gerald Massey points out (whose arguments regarding the suppression of the original Gnostic nature of the Biblical scriptures by the later literalists was discussed in the preceding post, among other previous posts), is a "fatal admission" on the part of Eusebius, because in arguing that the description given by Philo indicates that the Therapeutae must have been early Christians, and in arguing (as he later does in paragraph 12 of Book II, Chapter 17) that the texts the Therapeutae esteemed so highly were very probably "the Gospels and the writings of the apostles, and probably some expositions of the ancient prophets contained in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and in many others of Paul's Epistles," Eusebius is either completely overestimating the speed with which all those "New Testament" writings were produced (since Philo's description of the Therapeutae was most likely published in AD 40), or else he is inadvertently revealing the truth that all those writings listed were in existence much earlier than AD 40, or were based upon texts that were in existence much earlier than AD 40 (see Massey's Gnostic and Historic Christianity, paragraph 34).

Now, let's examine this argument a little bit. It seems at first to be fairly flimsy: Massey seems to be placing too much weight on the writings of a literalist bishop who was writing sometime around the first two decades of the fourth century (probably completing it prior to AD 323), long after Philo wrote his De Vita Contemplativa. Of course Eusebius could have been making a mistake (or being deliberately disingenuous), so what's the big deal?

And, based on the timeframe of Philo's publication (not later than about AD 50, when Philo died), it would seem that Eusebius was "too hasty" in claiming the Therapeutae as early Christians, and in assuming that the texts they revered and meditated upon must have been early copies of the Gospels and the Epistles. From our perspective in history, it seems very unlikely that the "multitudes" of Therapeutae described by Philo could have possibly had time to spring up and develop the rather rigorous patterns and traditions of ascetic living and worship that Philo describes, and extremely unlikely to the point of impossibility that they could have been doing all that rigorous textual study and exegesis described by Philo upon New Testament texts like the Gospels and Epistles, since virtually no scholar today believes that all of those Christian texts were even written down by the time Philo penned his treatise. Certainly we can ascribe the remarks of Eusebius as simply overly-optimistic or over-zealous, and move on -- right?

And yet Massey, whose analysis often proves to be extremely penetrating, even if there are areas of his analysis with which I strongly disagree, sees in these assertions by Eusebius a "fatal admission" (meaning that Massey believes this admission is "fatal" to the historicist or literalist position which Eusebius held which treats the characters in the scriptures as literal historic persons, and which attacks "pagans," "Platonists," and those who do not share this literalist and historicist version of Christian faith).

Massey does not explain very much further to help us see why this position from Eusebius is so damaging to the historicist approach. He only states by way of explanation that:

it is impossible to claim the Essenic Scriptures [Massey presents arguments to support his conclusion that the Therapeutae and the Essenes were closely related or indeed the same general school] as being identical with the Canonical records, without, at the same time, admitting their pre-historic existence, their non-historical nature, and their anti-historical testimony. They could only be the same in the time of Eusebius by the non-historical having been falsely converted into the historical.

Again, it would seem that the rebuttal that "Eusebius just made an error" would defeat Massey's argument here . . . except for the fact that Eusebius himself identifies the actual actions and practices of the Therapeutae as obviously reflecting the teachings found in the Gospels and Epistles! 

In other words, even if the Therapeutae described by Philo did not have the texts

Eusebius says that they had (and there is no way that they could have, unless those texts were more ancient than the time period during which the Christ of the historicists was said to have lived, which is the possibility that Massey believes is the correct solution), the very fact that these Therapeutae were described by Philo doing things that would later be incorporated in the Gospels and Epistles (a couple examples of which were mentioned above) is a strong indication that the New Testament concepts and teachings pre-dated the historical period during which the literalist Christ is said to have lived. This is especially true because Philo, who probably wrote this treatise by AD 40 and certainly by AD 50, is describing these practices as though they are already long traditions.

This is why Massey believes that the descriptions in Philo's text are so damaging to the literalist position. Massey believes that the literalist approach was a later invention, in fact a subterfuge, through which a group of men converted a "non-historical" (that is to say, "allegorical" or "metaphorical" or "esoteric" or "Gnostic") set of spiritual teachings into a "historical" (that is to say, "literalistic, describing events that literally took place in history") faith. 

And, in fact, we can find some additional extremely interesting aspects of Philo's description of the Therapeutae which appear to add further powerful support to the argument Massey is making regarding the later appropriation by historicists such as Eusebius of teachings or practices that were essentially anti-historical or esoteric and Gnostic.

Interestingly enough, they are the same two characteristics that were argued in the preceding post which declared that the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible are essentially shamanic! That is to say, the two features which that post argues generally go together: an understanding of the techniques of what can be termed ecstatic trance or shamanic out-of-body travel, and an understanding that the ancient scriptures of the world (to include those texts found in the Bible) are allegorical in nature and that their allegorical nature is intended to point to this shamanic understanding.

In Philo's description of the Therapeutae, he distinctly says more than once that their long study of the sacred texts, and their group exposition of the meanings of these ancient texts, involved an allegorical approach, and a search for the hidden (or esoteric) meanings in those texts. For example, in his description of their reading and interpretation of sacred writings, Philo says that the Therapeutae would finish their communal meals and then wait in great anticipation and an even deeper and more reverential silence than that with which their conduct is ordinarily marked as they waited for some one of their number to rise and carefully, patiently, and without any attempts at showy eloquence or cleverness, explain the deeper aspects of some passage of their sacred scriptures. The words with which Philo describes their approach to scripture exposition are significant:

the writings are delivered by mystic expressions in allegories, for the whole of the law appears to these men to resemble a living animal, and its express commandments seem to be the body, and the invisible meaning concealed under and lying beneath the plain words resembles the soul [. . .]

The approach to the scriptures as primarily containing mystic expressions in allegories, and the statement that their invisible meaning is concealed under and lies beneath the plain words, could not be more clear in indicating that the Therapeutae understood their sacred texts to be esoteric in nature.

This, all by itself, appears to demolish the attempts by Eusebius at co-opting the Therapeutae described by Eusebius into the literalistic faith that Eusebius and his colleagues were enforcing during the reign of Constantine. The approach as described is the opposite of the historicist approach. It would also seem to be highly unlikely to have developed to the degree described by Philo in such a short time after the publication of early New Testament texts, even if anyone still believed the Therapeutae could have gotten access to those texts at such an early date. The presence of the type of austere communities devoted to perceiving the esoteric meanings behind and beneath the plain words of the texts speaks to the fact that these texts were undoubtedly of great age themselves.

It is also significant that the Therapeutae appear to have contrasted the "plain words" (what is also called the "exoteric" sense of the passage) as perceived on the surface with the "spirit" that is invisible, and to compare the exoteric sense of the words to "a living animal." The metaphor Philo uses (and which he may well have repeated from the Therapeutae themselves) is most telling. Previous posts (such as this one and this one) have noted the penetrating arguments of Alvin Boyd Kuhn, who maintained that the ancient system used the symbol of the Cross in exactly the same way: with the horizontal component of the Cross symbolizing the "animal" nature of our material existence, when we are "cast down" into this physical world, with that horizontal bar running parallel to the ground in the same way that an animal does, and the vertical component of the Cross represents the spirit which is hidden inside each one of us and in fact within all of creation, and which -- while invisible -- is no less real and which is in fact the truly important aspect of our existence which must be remembered, recognized, and "raised back up," so to speak.

And, in a pattern found throughout the world, where allegorical myths can also be shown to be essentially shamanic in nature, these Therapeutae who valued the ability to seek out the invisible meaning of their sacred texts also appear to have valued and practiced the techniques of traveling to what has been called "non-ordinary reality" or by a host of other names, including the Invisible Realm, the Spirit Realm, and the Dreamtime, and brining back communications from that non-ordinary reality.

Philo tells us that among these communities:

Therefore they always retain an imperishable recollection of God, so that not even in their dreams is any other object ever presented to their eyes except the beauty of the divine virtues and of the divine powers. Therefore many persons speak in their sleep, divulging and publishing the celebrated doctrines of the sacred philosophy.

Philo does not go further than this, and at first glance it is easy to simply skip over it as a rhetorical exaggeration on Philo's part, going over-the-top in his idealized description of the Therapeutae to the point of saying that they even dream of only virtuous and spiritual matters (no impure or even simply mundane dreams among this community). 

But, while we might write these lines off as a clumsy and unbelievable embellishment by Philo, he doesn't merely state that they only dream of spiritual and virtuous matters: he states quite clearly that many persons speak in their sleep, and when they do so they divulge sacred matters which might otherwise have remained hidden.

When he adds that detail, it changes the tone of what Philo is saying altogether. He is not simply saying that the Therapeutae are so single-minded that they even dream about spiritual things: he appears to be indicating that many members of their communities regularly enter into a state in which they speak messages divulging hidden teachings. This mode of communication is strongly suggestive of the messages brought from the Invisible World by other practitioners of sacred ecstasy or trance, such as the Pythia of Delphi. 

Philo also states during his descriptions of their communal songs and chants and even dances that the participants seem to enter a state of "intoxication" at times (especially when they are continued all night until sunrise).

Both of these features -- an esoteric approach to sacred scripture, and a regular use of the techniques of ecstatic trance -- have been strongly condemned by the literalistic and historicist Christianity that polemicists such as Eusebius advanced (some might counter that church fathers including Eusebius did not deny the allegorical aspects of scripture, but no one can argue that they would have strongly condemned any suggestion that the scriptures were primarily or even exclusively allegorical, and that they were not intended to be understood literally and historically).

And this evidence appears to be powerful support for Massey's general argument, which is that the historicist bishops and polemicists, such as Eusebius, successfully stamped out a much older approach and co-opted many aspects of its teachings and many of its scriptures and turned them to their own ends.

In fact, Massey provides substantial evidence that the ancient wisdom that was historicized and co-opted by the literalists stretched back into much greater antiquity -- and that it can be clearly seen in some of the most ancient texts and teachings of Egypt in forms which suggest that the outlines of the doctrines of the Therapeutae, and the outlines of the texts that the literalists later appropriated, existed for millennia before showing up in the writings of Eusebius or Philo.

Indeed, it can hardly be denied that many of the features of the Therapeutae lifestyle shown in the list above have not characterized most of what we would recognize as "Christian teaching" through the centuries. 

Christianity is not generally associated, for instance, with vegetarianism. 

Christianity is not widely associated with an emphasis on communal living and the renunciation of possessions and property (with some notable exceptions from time to time). 

Christianity is not historically associated with the rejection of the idea of having slaves or even servants, and the teaching that to do so is evil and contrary to nature (again, with some important exceptions). 

While there are notable historical exceptions, which could be profitably examined and discussed, it cannot be denied that historic, literalistic Christianity has generally taught quite emphatically that the killing of animals for food, the amassing of property, and even the keeping of slaves are all explicitly condoned by the sacred scriptures (not condemned: condoned). 

However, there are some other traditions around the world where the above teachings were widely taught, and practiced, and where they influenced entire cultures and civilizations -- in some places (especially those which were not conquered by the Roman Empire, which by the time of Constantine was increasingly dominated by literalist Christianity) aspects of some of these teachings continue right down to the modern era.

Clearly, the descriptions of the Therapeutae by ancient authors (as well as the possibly-related sect of the Essenes, of whom more at a later time) constitute an extremely profitable line of study, and one which appears to contain powerful evidence to support the theory that a literalist re-interpretation was mistakenly -- or, as other evidence seems to suggest, deliberately and deceptively -- substituted for a far more ancient esoteric approach, and that this switch took place during the first four or five centuries AD within the Roman Empire.

Examining some further aspects of this line of investigation may well turn up some additional surprises, which will be the subject of future posts to follow!

The Bible is essentially shamanic

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

"I was in a deep sleep on my face toward the ground . . . " Daniel 8:18.

Previous posts have been exploring the evidence that many of the events in the Biblical scriptures describe the motions of the celestial realms, in metaphorical language. 

In "Samson and the seven locks of his head," we saw that the Samson series in the book of Judges contain numerous clues pointing to the conclusion that these stories describe the motion of the sun through the signs of the zodiac.

In "The vision of Ezekiel and the Tetramorphs of the Four Gospels," we saw that the vision of Ezekiel described in the first two chapters of the book of the prophet Ezekiel contain details which precisely correspond to the turning of the heavens as modeled in an armillary sphere, complete with "wheels" for the celestial equator, the ecliptic path, and the solstitial and equinoctial colures, and that the wheel of the ecliptic was described as being composed of "strakes," which correspond to the segments of the ecliptic band belonging to each of the signs of the zodiac.

In "The Four Evangelists, and the Cherubim and Seraphim," we explored evidence which suggests that the four evangelists themselves (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) embody the four first-magnitude stars Regulus, Fomalhaut, Aldebaran, and Antares, and the additional possibility that the cherubim and seraphim described in the Bible correspond to the brightest first-magnitude stars, or perhaps to first-magnitude stars and planets.

And in "The Angel Gabriel," we looked at some of the evidence which points to the conclusion that this angelic messenger corresponds to the planet Mercury, and thus to other divine messengers in other myth-systems, including Hermes, Thoth, and the Norse god Odin, all of whom are associated with crossing the boundaries to the unseen realm, and who are sometimes depicted as bringing messages in dreams, or as bringing the gift of communicating through runes or symbols.

I believe that all of this evidence strongly suggests that the Biblical texts, in common with other sacred texts and stories from around the world, are profoundly shamanic in nature, using celestial imagery and the heavenly realms in general as a metaphor for the unseen realm or spirit world, which shamanic cultures the world over can be broadly shown to understand as intertwining and interpenetrating this physical or material universe, and in fact to be the true source from which our more familiar visible world is actually generated or projected.

The shamanic aspects of the Bible (in common with the other mythologies of the world's cultures) are explored and discussed at length in The Undying Stars, as well as in many previous blog posts such as here and here. This post will examine a few more aspects of this thesis.

First, it is very noteworthy that the visions which in the above-linked discussions can be shown to depict the motions of the celestial realms, as well as other similar visions described in the Biblical texts, are often described in conjunction with the seer of the vision falling into a deep sleep, sometimes with  the additional detail that they are lying with their face to the ground at the onset of the vision.

In each of the visions of Ezekiel, for example, the text (which describes the visions in the first-person perspective) states "I fell on my face," or "I fell down upon my face" as the divine glory which marks the beginning of a vision appears (see Ezekiel 1:28, Ezekiel 3:23, Ezekiel 9:8, and Ezekiel 11:13).

In the book of the prophet Daniel, Daniel is twice described as being in a deep sleep during which he meets an angelic being and has a transcendent vision: in Daniel 8:18 he says, "I was in a deep sleep on my face toward the ground," and in Daniel 10:9 he says, "then was I in a deep sleep on my face, and my face toward the ground."

And, in the extremely important vision of Abram in Genesis 15, we read in verse 12: "And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him."

These descriptions of falling into a deep sleep and then obtaining a vision of the spirit world are extremely characteristic of shamanic experience the world over. Similar descriptions can be read again and again in the encylopedic catalog of shamanic technique collected in Mircea Eliade's

Shamanism: Archaic techniques of ecstasy (1951), many of them reported by first-hand observers in previous centuries visiting cultures where shamanic traditions had remained largely undisturbed by modern incursions.

Below is an image from an observer of the shamanic culture of the Sami people of the far northern regions of Scandinavia, showing a noaidi with drum (on the left as we look at the image on the page) and stretched out upon the ground another Sami entering into a state of ecstatic trance:

Other similar drawings depicting Sami techniques of ecstasy, such as the one labeled "Figure 4" a little more than halfway down this webpage discussing the Sami drum (in that drawing, the artist shows the vision of the spirit realm as being populated by demon-figures, probably indicating disapproval on the part of the person making the drawing itself).

The degree to which these images correspond to Biblical verses such as "then was I in a deep sleep on my face, and my face toward the ground" is extremely noteworthy.

In the New Testament as well, there is a passage in 2 Corinthians which appears to refer to an ecstatic experience, and an ecstatic experience by the apostle Paul (although he relates the event in the third person, while including hints that he is describing his own experience). At the beginning of the twelfth chapter, we read:

1 It is not expedient for me doubtless to glory. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord.

2 I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven.

3 And I knew such a man (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;)

4 How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful [margin note offers as an alternative translation "possible" rather than "lawful"] for a man to utter.

Based upon this text, as well as a host of other evidence which he discusses in more than one of his essays, poet and esoteric scholar Gerald Massey (1828 - 1907) argued that Paul was actually teaching a doctrine which can broadly be described as Gnostic, meaning that Paul taught an allegorical understanding of the scriptures and that Paul experienced a personal vision of the spirit world on at least one occasion, but that forces during the first four centuries AD supplanted the original Gnostic teachings of Paul and others with a completely different system based upon a literalistic interpretation of the scriptures rather than a Gnostic one.

In an essay entitled "Paul the Gnostic Opponent of Peter, not an Apostle of Historic Christianity

" (Massey uses the term "Historic" to describe those teaching that the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were intended to describe historic events that took place in literal history), Massey says:

Paul, on his own testimony, was an abnormal Seer, subject to the conditions of trance. He could not remember if certain experiences occurred to him in the body or out of it! This trance condition was the origin and source of his revelations, the heart of his mystery, his infirmity in which he gloried -- in short, his "thorn in the flesh." He shows the Corinthians that his abnormal condition, ecstasy, illness, madness (or what not), was a phase of spiritual intercourse in which he was divinely insane -- insane on behalf of God -- but that he was rational enough in his relationship to them. [. . .] Paul's Christ, the Lord, is the spirit; his gospel is that of spiritual revelation, the chief mode of manifestation being abnormal, as it was, and had been, in the Gnostic mysteries.

The Gnostic Christ was the Immortal Spirit in man, which first demonstrated its existence by means of abnormal or spiritualistic phenomena. It did not and could not depend on any single manifestation in one historic personality. And when Paul says, "I knew a man in Christ," we see that to be in Christ is to be in the condition of trance, in the spirit, as they phrased it, in the state that is common to what is now termed mediumship.

Being in the trance condition, or in Christ, as he calls it, he was caught up to the third heaven, and could not determine whether he was in the body or out of the body. Paragraphs 24 - 26.

Along with these admissions that he is prone to being "caught up" into the state of ecstatic trance, Paul also declares plainly that the stories in the Hebrew Scriptures are intended to be understood as an allegory. 

Writing in the fourth chapter of his epistle to the Galatians, Paul presents an argument in which he explains that the story and circumstances regarding the birth of the two children of Abraham (namely Isaac and Ishmael) are given as an allegory in order to convey spiritual truths, saying:

22 For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman.

23 But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise.

24 Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar.

25 For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.

26 But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.

This passage is clearly of tremendous importance. First of all, Paul directly and bluntly states that these events "are an allegory" (Galatians 4:24). Then, he goes on to explain what he believes this allegory was intended to convey to us.

He says that the two women by which Abraham is said to have had the two sons are actually two "covenants." The first woman, Agar (more commonly spelled and referred to as Hagar in most later English translations), actually "is mount Sinai in Arabia," Paul says, "and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children." Then, Paul declares that in contrast to the "Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children," there is a "Jerusalem which is above" and which is free -- and that this Jerusalem "above" is in fact "the mother of us all."

What could he mean?

In light of the discussion above, and in the posts linked at the beginning of this discussion, and all of the evidence pertaining to the worldwide symbolism of the zodiac wheel and the great cross of the year which depicts a horizontal component representing the spirit or the Djed column "cast down" into material incarnation and a vertical component representing the spiritual nature being called forth and "raised up" again, I believe that this passage from Galatians 4 should be interpreted as follows: 

The two sons of Abraham, one by a bondmaid and the other by a freewoman, are an allegory. They represent two covenants, a word which literally means "coming together" [the prefix co- meaning "with" and related to or shortened from the prefix con-, which is still seen in the Spanish language meaning literally "with," and the word venire in Latin meaning "to come" and seen in other English words such as intervene meaning "come between" and invent meaning to find "come upon," as well as in the Spanish descendant word venir meaning "to come"]. These two "coming togethers" or covenants are, in the zodiac wheel, found at the two points of equinox, where the ecliptic path crosses the celestial equator two times during the year, once at the fall equinox when the sun is on its way down to the winter solstice, and once at the spring equinox when the sun is on its way back up to the summer solstice, the very pinnacle of the year. These two points can be allegorically seen as representing two different births: one of them the birth from the bondswoman, after the flesh, and the other of them the birth from the free woman. If you need me to spell this out to you, the one from the bondswoman which is the birth "after the flesh" is the birth into the material realm, when we take on a physical body, and are born into this human life. On the great cross of the year, and in the allegories of the sacred stories, this takes place at the point of fall equinox, when the heavenly sun passes down into the lower half of the year, representing the experience of each one of us: we are each a heavenly spirit from the unseen realm, sojourning in this material realm for a time. This is what I mean when I say that this birth gives us "the Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children" -- this is all of us, trapped here in this material realm below, imprisoned within a physical body in order to learn and do and accomplish certain things which could only be accomplished by entering into this realm. But everything here is based upon a heavenly pattern, a spiritual pattern -- everything here contains and reflects and is patterned after and even projected from the other realm, the heavenly realm, the realm of spirit. That is what I mean by the "Jerusalem which is above, and is free." The covenant that marks the beginning of that "upper realm" is of course the spring equinox. A major part of what we are supposed to be doing in while we are toiling through this "lower realm" is to be remembering and recognizing the fact that we  and everyone around us each comes from the spirit realm, from the "Jerusalem above which is the mother of us all," and we are to be elevating and uplifting the spirit in ourselves and in others, and in fact in the entire creation, all of which contains and is interpenetrated with and projected from that unseen world to which we travel when we go "out of the body." Got it?

In other words, it is most significant that the same Paul who tells us that he experiences the ecstatic condition of being "caught up into paradise" also tells us that the scriptural characters and events are actually "an allegory," and that in fact the allegory has to do with the lower realm into which we are born as if into a prison, and the upper realm to which we actually all belong, and which in fact is "the mother of us all." 

The two go together: knowledge of the absolutely central importance of the ecstatic or trance condition (which can also be contacted through dreams and many other methods which are as varied as are the myriad different cultural expressions and experiences of the human race), and knowledge that the sacred stories are allegorical in nature and intended to convey to us the understanding of the importance of the spiritual realm from whence we come and to which we journey when we go into non-ordinary reality.

If that upper realm is the mother of us all, that means that we are all actually "native" to the spirit realm. The scriptures, with their celestial allegories, are meant to tell us that and remind us of that fact. So are the teachings of spiritual seers such as Paul.

The scriptures themselves plainly proclaim that they, along with the other sacred traditions the world over, are in fact shamanic in nature. The broadly shamanic (or broadly Gnostic) understanding of the scriptures was very widespread during the early centuries of Christianity, during the period that the advocates of the historical interpretation were hard at work establishing a literalistic and hierarchical form of Christianity to supplant the Gnostic understanding, and during which the literalist Christian authorities published numerous texts which had as their express central purpose the demonization of the Gnostics and everything that they taught and did. 

Massey also refers to these opponents of Gnosticism, who became the "fathers" of the literalist Christian faith, as "the literalisers" and the "de-Spiritualizers." 

We can see that these two labels place them squarely at odds with Paul himself, who taught an allegorical rather than a literal understanding of the texts, and who taught that the purpose of the allegory was to convey an understanding that is Spiritualizing or broadly shamanic in nature: an understanding of this material universe as being interpenetrated by and indeed generated from an invisible spirit realm, and an understanding of our human nature as being essentially native to the realm of spirit but temporarily plunged into physical incarnation, which is akin to a state of bondage.

This knowledge is extremely uplifting and empowering. It is plainly and abundantly evident throughout the scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments. The only real question we should ask ourselves is why someone would want to suppress it?

Birthday of Bob Marley. Respect.

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

February 06 is the birthday of Bob Marley, born this day in 1945.

His music explored and articulated a wide range of subjects, especially overcoming and transcending injustice and oppression. It is rightfully widely beloved by so many because it is so consistently uplifting.

Below are some examples for your enjoyment and hopefully upliftment! Please continue at the bottom for a few additional comments.

"Rastaman Chant"

"Put it on"

"Small Axe"

The spiritual current running through the music of the Wailers is strongly evident on each of the above tracks, as are direct references to Biblical scriptures.

And yet in one of the band's most well-known songs, "Get Up, Stand Up," with its message of individual and social consciousness, there is an overt message decrying the negative role of religion (and specifically literalist Christian religion) intertwined through the song, most notably when Peter Tosh's unmistakeable voice breaks in to denounce "isms, schisms."

Clearly, while the band was rejecting the variations of the religions built upon those scriptures (most of them identified with names or labels ending with "-ism"), and the role that they have played in the oppression of the people, they did not see it as contradictory to use the scriptures themselves to convey a message of greater consciousness, blessing, and hope. See for instance the extensive and uplifting incorporation of scriptural themes in "Small Axe" (above), or in another song from the same album, "Hallelujah Time" (gorgeously sung by Bunny Wailer).

And in fact, watching videos of Bob Marley singing his music (whether live in concert

or in the studio such as in the clip of "Rastaman Chant" included above), it can hardly be denied that he exhibits the characteristics of ecstatic transport when he is pouring out his song.

From the above discussion, it can be said that Bob Marley's music embraces what can be shown to be the original shamanic, uplifting, and consciousness-raising message that is actually contained within the world's ancient scriptures (from around the globe), while simultaneously rejecting the system which has actually taken those same scriptures and used them to teach a message that is often 180 degrees out from the original intent, and which has undeniably been used to oppress, to enslave and to wage war on consciousness.

In this sense, we can understand why Bob Marley's message and music appeals on such an incredibly widespread level around the world: because we actually have a universal, shared shamanic heritage, which certainly has widely different expressions and features in all of the different cultures and geographies and eras of our human experience, but which ultimately can be shown to shared shamanic features, such that we cannot say that shamanic experience "belongs" only to one group or place or time period.

It is the shared inheritance of all humanity.

The shamanic element of the Wailers' music (I believe) is also evident in the lyrics to the song "Put It On," particularly in the first stanza, in which the word "them" functions as a definite article which refers to "spirit" in the singular, but also apparently in the plural, and to which the title of the song almost certainly refers, meaning both "putting on the spirit" and also being in touch with the spirit realm and the (plural) spirits.

In "Put It On," Bob Marley sings:

Feel them spirit

Feel them spirit

Feel them spirit

Lord, I thank you

Lord, I thank you

Feel all right now

Feel all right now

Feel all right now

Good Lord, hear me

Good Lord, hear me

I'm not boasting

I'm not boasting

I'm not boasting

Feel like toasting

Feel like toasting

I'm gonna put it on

In the morning

I'm gonna put it on

In the night

I'm gonna put it on

Anytime, Anywhere

Good Lord, help me

Good Lord, help me

No more crying

No more crying

No more crying

Lord, I thank you

Lord, I thank you

Cuz

I'm gonna put it on

I'm gonna put it on

I'm gonna put it on

Feel all right now

Feel all right now

Lord, I thank you

Lord, I thank you

Lord, I thank you

Feel all right now

Feel all right now

Bob Marley, February 06, 1945 - May 11, 1981.

Respect.

The "Recent Zodiac" Canard, or: One of the most common arguments used by opponents of astrotheology, and why it is almost certainly wrong

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

I believe that there is overwhelming evidence to support the conclusion that virtually all of the world's ancient myths and sacred scriptures and stories -- to include those contained in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible -- are based on a system of allegorizing the motions of the sun, moon, visible planets, and stars (especially the stars in the zodiac band).

This general thesis is not new: ancient writers and philosophers, including Aristotle, can be seen in their surviving writings to make reference to or even to advocate this understanding.

More recently, this thesis that the world's myths and sacred stories (including those in the Bible) describe the motions of heavenly bodies has been given several different labels; among these are "astrotheology" and "mythicism" (or, "the mythicist" position, as distinguished from the "historicist" position).

Frequently, opponents of "mythicism" or "astrotheology" will assert that it cannot possibly be correct, because (they declare) the zodiac constellations were not even codified until some time in the 1st millennium BC, perhaps around 700 BC. 

Examples of this assertion, used as a counter-argument to astrotheology or mythicism, can be found fairly readily. For instance, in an essay found on this web page, Christian author and associate professor in theology at Houston Baptist University Mike Licona states while arguing against any zodiac foundation for the twelve tribes of Israel as described in the Old Testament (parenthetical "footnote" designations preserved in this block quotation are in the original essay by Mike Licona, and can be found on the bottom of the page linked):

Were the 12 tribes of Israel representative of the 12 signs of the zodiac as she claims? (9) She asserts that Simeon and Levi are Gemini. Judah is Leo. And the list goes on. She also claims that when Jacob set up 12 stones representing the tribes that they were really representing the 12 signs of the zodiac.(10) But this is impossible. Genesis was written approximately 1,000 BC and contains the story of the 12 tribes of Israel which would have occurred even earlier.(11) The division into the 12 zodiacal signs did not occur until the Babylonians made the divisions in the fifth century BC.(12) Therefore, reading astrology into the twelve tribes is anachronistic. 

Note that the fifth century BC refers to the years between 500 BC and 401 BC, or the years generally numbered in "the 400s" on the BC side.  If the zodiac was not known until that late date, it would be very difficult to argue that ancient texts including the ancient Egyptian pyramid texts (circa 2350 BC), the ancient Sumerian and Babylonian epics preserved on clay tablets such as those found in the library of Asshurbanipal (some as old as 2400 BC or even 2600 BC), the ancient Hindu Vedas (possibly as early as 1700 BC), or even many of the scriptures preserved in the Old Testament of the Bible (the Hebrew Scriptures) could possibly have been built upon a system of celestial metaphor which uses the zodiac as its central foundation!

Other modern authors place the "invention" of the twelve-sign zodiac slightly earlier than the fifth century, some of them arguing that the twelve-sign zodiac is a product of the first half of the first millennium BC, which would be the centuries beginning with 900 BC to 801 BC, then 800 BC to 701 BC, then 700 BC to 601 BC, then 600 BC to 501 BC, and finally 500 BC to 401 BC. All of these would qualify as the first half (the first five centuries) of the first millennium BC.

The latest century of that first half of the first millennium BC would be the century already mentioned above, by Dr. Licona in his essay, in which he states definitively that "the Babylonians made the divisions in the fifth century" and footnotes this proclamation with a personal email he received from astronomer Jay Pasachoff -- see footnote 12 at the bottom of his essay on the same page already linked.

Even granting the possibility that the zodiac system was created in one of the centuries preceding the fifth century BC, perhaps in the sixth, seventh, eighth or ninth century BC, it would still be too late to form the basis for texts written in the year 1000 BC or for those written even earlier (especially those written as early as 2300 BC to 2600 BC, as some of the pyramid texts and ancient Sumerian tablets are judged to have been written).

In addition to the email from astronomer Jay Pasachoff (who is the Chair and Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy at Williams College, and who received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard and who is no doubt a distinguished astronomer)  referenced in Dr. Licona's essay as the source of his assertion that the zodiac was not divided into the familiar twelve signs until the fifth century, Dr. Licona also cites a different email which he received from Professor Noel M. Swerdlow, who is a Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago, in which Professor Swerdlow states, in the process of "debunking" the idea that the ancient myths (including those in the Old and New Testaments) might contain references to the shifting of precessional ages, such as the shift from the Age of Aries to the Age of Pisces:

In antiquity, constellations were just groups of stars, and there were no borders separating the region of another. In astrology, for computational purposes the zodiacal signs were taken as twelve arcs of 30 degrees measured from the vernal equinox. Because of the slow westward motion of the equinoxes and solstices, what we call the precession of the equinoxes, these did not correspond to the constellations with the same names. But . . . within which group of stars the vernal equinox was located, was of no astrological significance at all. The modern ideas about the Age of Pisces or the Age of Aquarius are based upon the location of the vernal equinox in the regions of the stars of those constellations. But the regions, the borders between, those constellations are a completely modern convention of the International Astronomical Union for the purpose of mapping . . . and never had any astrological significance. I hope this is helpful although in truth what this woman is claiming is so wacky that it is hardly worth answering.(5) So when this woman says that the Christian fish was a symbol of the 'coming age of Pisces,' she is saying something that no one would have thought of in antiquity because in which constellation of the fixed stars the vernal equinox was located, was of no significance and is entirely an idea of modern, I believe twentieth-century, astrology.(6)

In both of the quotations cited above, and in Mike Licona's article in general, the astrotheology position in general is being attacked by attacking the arguments put forth in a specific book written by D. M. Murdock / Acharya S, and the condescending language such as "this woman" and "wacky" is certainly a very regrettable although not unrepresentative example of the kind of tactics sometimes employed to try to marginalize the person making the arguments instead of dealing with the arguments in a more dispassionate and objective and respectful manner.

However, as noted previously, this general thesis has been argued for centuries -- even for millennia -- going back to Aristotle and to others in the ancient world. It is not going to "go away" simply by using a condescending tone and labels such as "wacky."

Further, the belief offered at the end of the quotation cited above, that the different "ages" of the zodiac are "entirely an idea of modern, I believe twentieth century, astrology" is demonstrably false. Many proponents of a "mythicist" or "astrotheological" approach in previous centuries, including the Reverend Robert Taylor (1784 - 1844) have presented extensive evidence in support of the conclusion that the world's most ancient myths refer to the zodiac, and to the subtle motion of precession and the shift in ages that it causes once every 2,160 years (approximately, if we use the rounded "precessional constant" of 72, which can be found to be present in very ancient myth in numerous world cultures, as well as in very many of the extremely ancient monuments and megaliths around the globe).

Further, it is now generally accepted that ancient symbolism such as the tauroctony scenes found in the Mithraic meeting-places known as mithraea and which can be definitively dated back to the first centuries AD almost undoubtedly refer to the transition of precessional ages (in their case, for reasons which may prove to be very significant, the symbolism appears to commemorate the end of the Age of Taurus). This fact by itself conclusively demonstrates that the assertion that "in which constellation of the fixed stars the vernal equinox was located, was of no significance and is entirely an idea of modern astrology" is completely incorrect.

Nevertheless, this quotation from the email from Professor Swerdlow which is cited in the Mike Licona attack on astrotheology has become a kind of unassailable "proof" among some critics, who use it to claim that astrotheology has now been "conclusively debunked." One can, for instance, copy all or part of the block quotation above and then paste it into the search window of a web search engine, and find a lengthy list of other essays or screeds claiming that this quotation all by itself nullifies any arguments that the world's sacred texts (especially the Bible) could possibly have a basis in zodiac imagery.

A few examples include "Astrotheology Conclusively Debunked," "Zeitgeist Part One Refuted," and "New Agers, you've been had. The age of Pisces, age of Aquarius is a modern invention!"

Note that conventional academia, correctly perceiving that the subtle phenomenon of precession could not have been detected prior to the development of a fairly sophisticated astronomical science, including the means for observing and accurately measuring the precise location of certain stars when observed on specific days of the year, as well as the discipline of recording those measurements for many decades or even centuries, almost universally maintains that Hipparchus (c. 190 BC - 120 BC) was the first to "discover" precession, in 127 BC. Of course, this would be even later than the supposed invention of the zodiac, making it even more "impossible" for extremely ancient myths to incorporate precessional metaphors into their sacred stories.

It would seem that, with the zodiac supposedly not invented until after 500 BC (or, at the earliest, perhaps some time around or after 700 BC, certainly not before 1000 BC) and precession supposedly not discovered until around 127 BC, the mythicist or astrotheological approach is built upon an impossibility, an anachronism, a case of "seeing things that aren't there." Can we then conclude that anyone who accepts such arguments "has been had"?

Only if those assertions about the late dates of the understanding of the zodiac and of precession are correct.

It can be decisively shown that they are almost certainly not correct.

As has already been intimated, there is extensive evidence from around the globe, both in the form of myth and in the form of ancient monument, which powerfully refutes the conventional positions repeated by most academics today.

The authors of the seminal text Hamlet's Mill (1969), Hertha von Dechend and Giorgio de Santillana, assembled an extensive collection of arguments in support of what could be labeled the mythicist or astrotheological approach, including evidence that not only the zodiac but also the phenomenon of precession was evident in some of the most ancient myths and sacred texts on the planet. Many of the scholars they cite being from centuries prior to the twentieth (for which they have at times been attacked by "debunkers" who claim that all their sources are now "outdated").

They were fully aware of the controversial nature of the evidence they were presenting, and the fact that it would upset the conventional apple cart in a major way. They pointed out that astronomers were generally not well versed in literature and comparative mythology, and that literary professors were often fairly ignorant of celestial mechanics and the causes of subtle phenomena such as precession. That  excuse is a charitable explanation for the lack of attention to the abundant evidence within the world's mythologies of an ancient worldwide system of celestial metaphor: now, nearly fifty years after their encyclopedic work was published, it may be time to conclude that more than simple academic compartmentalization is at work in keeping the abundant evidence which supports the astrotheological thesis marginalized to the degree that it continues to be.

The Wikipedia entry on Hamlet's Mill contains only three "external links" -- one of them a link to an online version of the text, one a link to a German-language webpage honoring one of the authors, and one a link to a lengthy criticism of the authors of Hamlet's Mill and its general thesis. The link to that lengthy criticism comes first in the order of external links, and has for years. Some years ago, I wrote a post responding to some of its arguments, entitled "Has Hamlet's Mill been debunked?" which eventually led the author of that piece to insert some paragraphs questioning my qualification to assess the subject matter, and criticizing some of my arguments in defense of the importance of the thesis presented in the work of de Santillana and von Dechend.

That extremely long webpage criticizing Hamlet's Mill (the only discussion of the thesis included in Wikipedia's "external links" list) concludes in its very third-to-last sentence with this familiar proclamation:

The fatal flaw with this speculation is that it [the argument for pre-Hipparchan precessional knowledge, upon which much of the discussion in Hamlet's Mill revolves] relies on the assumption of an ancient evenly divided 12-constellation zodiac before its clearly documented invention by the Babylonians in the 1st-millennium BCE.

Clearly, this is an argument of great importance to the opponents of astrotheology, and one which they believe is decisively in their favor.

We might, before offering clear evidence from ancient myth, ask how anyone can be so sure when the zodiac was invented. How can one know at this remove, over 3000 years later, the time of its supposed invention? Is it not at least possible that certain knowledge was kept secret for centuries prior to appearing in records which survived the eons of intervening time between their day and ours? Or even that certain knowledge might have been widely described but only in texts or formats which did not survive the intervening ages?

But, we don't need to resort to those objections, as valid as they are. The ancients managed to provide what I believe to be conclusive evidence in very early myth and text documenting their understanding of the precession of the equinoxes, and their convention of marking it using the same zodiac constellations that we use today -- texts which survive in their original formats even to this day.

Among the most ancient texts we have are the ancient Sumerian tablets, some of which contain the Gilgamesh epic (or "Gilgamesh series" of texts), which scholars agree was composed no later than 2000 BC and which some scholars argue to be referenced in Sumerian texts going back as early as 2600 BC (although the consensus is that an earliest date of 2200 BC or 2100 BC for tablets with the Gilgamesh series is probably a safer estimate). Later Akkadian tablets from Old Babylonian culture contain numerous texts of the Gilgamesh epic, probably from 1800 BC to 1700 BC as a safe estimate.

These are texts of almost-unbelievable antiquity. They certainly predate the supposed time of the development of the zodiac used by "anti-astrotheology" writers to confidently declare astrotheology theory "impossible." They predate the accepted "discovery" of precession by even further spans of time.

And yet one does not need to be a lifelong scholar of the Akkadian or Sumerian languages or a specialist in the tablets on which the Gilgamesh series of texts are preserved to recognize the precessional and zodiacal metaphors present in the events of the story. These precessional and zodiacal elements are especially evident to those who understand the pattern as it is found in literally dozens (and probably hundreds or even thousands) of other myths from around the world. I outline well over fifty of them in previous blog posts, most of which are linked in this handy Star Myth Index here.

In my first book, The Mathisen Corollary (written at a point in time at which I was recognizing the celestial foundations of non-Biblical myth, but at a point in time at which I was still accepting the "historicist" or literalist interpretation of the Biblical stories), I explain the clear zodiacal and precessional metaphors present in the Gilgamesh epic (particularly on pages 80 - 90). Some of the most obvious include the following:

• Gilgamesh and Enkidu chop down "the highest of trees, the cedar whose top reached the sky." This cedar is located on a sacred mountain, "the mountain of both heaven and earth," and a dwelling place of the gods and goddesses. To reach this heaven-touching cedar, Gilgamesh and Enkidu must go across a total of seven mountains: likely connected to the sun and moon plus five visible planets. The felling of this central sacred cedar almost certainly has connections to the "unhinging" of the central axis of the sky, which is a metaphor for precession in myth the world over. This is one strong clue that the Gilgamesh series of texts was composed by ancients who perceived the motion of precession.
• The fall of the tree is described in terms of a whirlwind. This is a metaphor used frequently for the central point around which all the stars in the night sky appear to turn (the celestial north pole, which is the point that is "unhinged" by precession, as if the "central pole" or "tree" supporting the heavens has been brought down), as well as for the motion of all the stars in the sky (not just those closest to the central point of the celestial pole). Other myths make use of the whirlwind metaphor in this regard, including the important Vision of Ezekiel in the Old Testament book of Ezekiel, and the authors of Hamlet's Mill demonstrate that other mythologies use a similar metaphor of a whirlpool to describe the same celestial motion. 
• The next episode after the toppling of the central cedar sees the goddess Inanna or Ishtar send the Bull of Heaven to attack Gilgamesh (as retribution for resisting her advances). Gilgamesh promptly slays the Bull. This can almost certainly be seen as a reference to the zodiac sign of Taurus, and the ending of the Age of Taurus which is caused by the action of precession, the very same celestial motion caused by the "unhinging" of the sky's central axis which was represented by the felling of the great cedar whose top reached to the heavens. Note also that the association of a goddess with the bull is very likely a reference to the zodiac constellation of Virgo as well -- the connection between a Virgo-goddess and the Taurus-bull is discussed for example in this discussion of the goddess Durga of the ancient Vedas, who slays a bull-headed adversary named Mahishasura.
• Then, Gilgamesh declares his intention to use the great cedar he has cut down and fashion from it a new door, a door through which only gods and not human beings may pass. This is the final clue we need to declare that the above metaphors from the Gilgamesh series are almost certainly related to the precessional motion of the sky's central "axis-pole," and the movement of the equinoxes out of the zodiac sign of Taurus caused by that central pole's unhinging. The equinox points, as the authors of Hamlet's Mill point out, is encoded in myth the world over by the metaphor of a door: specifically, a snapping door that yawns open and shut, just as the two lines of the celestial equator and the ecliptic path of the sun seem to yawn open and shut as the year progresses, snapping shut at the two points of the equinoxes and reaching the maximum "yawn" at the two solstices. The fact that the sun, moon, and planets (which are named for the gods) progress along the path of the ecliptic and hence "go through the door" of the equinox is the likely explanation for the fact that the ancient texts have Gilgamesh declaring that this new door he will make will be a door for gods only, and not for earth-bound humans. It is a new door because the motion of precession has moved it into a new zodiac sign. The Heavenly Bull was slain in conjunction with this new door because the door has moved out of the sign of Taurus.

The above evidence, from very ancient texts which (amazingly) we can still hold in our hands today (these are not transcriptions and cannot be accused of being later "interpretations" or "interpolations"), should decisively debunk the debunkers, and put to rest any arguments that the zodiac was unknown until after 500 BC, or that the phenomenon of precession was unknown until 127 BC. There are other ancient texts and myths, including those of ancient Egypt, which also can be shown to contain clear precessional clues and metaphors.

But, to stay with the ancient Sumerian and Babylonian metaphors just discussed from Gilgamesh, we can see a couple more clues in the "cylinder seal" depicted below. It contains an image of a kingly male figure holding an inverted Bull, in an apparent gesture of triumph (the Bull is clearly vanquished, perhaps even slain):

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

This may or may not be an ancient depiction of Gilgamesh himself, slaying the Bull of Heaven, but even if it is not, it is likely related to the same celestial metaphor.

An even more dramatic example can be found in the ancient cylinder seal depicted below:

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

That series of images attempts to show all sides of the cylinder in question, as well as a top-view of the cylinder showing the hole down the central axis. Let's "zoom in" on one specific image from this cylinder, so that we can better examine and discuss the zodiac imagery (we'll look at the second image from the far right of the series of images above):

In this part of the cylinder, we seem to be looking at a lion and a man (lion on left as we observe it on the page, and man on the right). They are either wrestling or at least "touching hands" together, and in between them there is a vertical pole of some sort, with at least the lion's paw appearing to touch the top of this pole.

What could this mean?

I believe that a very likely possible explanation, in light of the extensive use of a very similar pattern in myth around the world is that the lion and the man in this seal represent the constellations Leo the Lion and Aquarius the Water-Bearer, the two signs opposite one another at the two solstice positions during the Age of Taurus -- see again the Vision of Ezekiel zodiac metaphor discussion, towards the bottom of the post where I have placed images depicting the zodiac wheel and indicated the "great cross" constellations during the Age of Taurus.

Numerous previous blog posts have discussed the abundant evidence from around the world that the vertical line on the annual cross of the zodiac wheel corresponds to the line between the solstices, and that this vertical component was represented as a vertical pillar, as the Djed column of ancient Egypt, the backbone of Osiris, and the vertical portion of the Cross in Christian and other symbology (see also here and here).

The presence of a vertical pillar in between a lion and a man on this ancient cylinder seal indicates the possibility that it is intended to reference the zodiac signs associated with the solstices in that ancient precessional age, and that it also refers to knowledge of the zodiac system and metaphor system at work in many other myths from around the globe and across the ages.

Some readers may object to the identification of the man in this seal with the constellation of Aquarius, pointing out that the headdress of the man appears to be horned (perhaps indicative of Taurus again). However, it is also clear that this man has a short baton at his side, which is indicative of the outline of Aquarius (see for instance the discussion here). I believe there are other examples of art from ancient Babylon showing a man with a baton in the position that would be expected to belong to Aquarius: I discuss one of them here.

All of this evidence should establish rather decisively that the zodiac as a measure for the wheel of the year was indeed known long before the conventional "fifth century BC" estimate that is so confidently trotted out as a settled fact that demolishes the mythicist or astrotheology approach. Indeed, while the above evidence is fairly dramatic, it is only one possible ancient culture which has left physical evidence that fairly proves the far earlier knowledge of precession and the zodiac: as mentioned, other myths and texts including the ancient Egyptian pyramid texts could be used to prove many of the same points. And, from a completely different set of metaphors, many ancient monuments around the world -- including the Great Pyramid itself -- seem to encode precise understanding of precession from literally thousands of years prior to the supposed discovery of precession by Hipparchus in 127 BC.

It is hoped that such evidence will be of use to those who have perhaps been fooled by those confidently claiming that the astrotheology approach is "impossible," "anachronistic," and "wacky." Not only does it show that astrotheology is a very plausible thesis, it also shows that those confidently declaring that nobody cared about the constellation above the sunrise on the morning of March equinox until the twentieth century are the ones who are anachronistic.

It might also be hoped that this evidence would change the minds of some in academia, and prompt a re-look at the work of scholars from previous generations such as Hertha von Dechend, Giorgio de Santillana, and the many even earlier scholars they cite in Hamlet's Mill, not to mention the work of earlier philosophers such as Robert Taylor or (here's a wacky one) Aristotle. 

However, there may be more at work in academia's reflexive rejection and marginalization of this theory and those who advocate it than simple "compartmentalization" or lack of available evidence. These cylinder seals and Akkadian and Sumerian texts have been around and available for study for many decades now (as has the work of the authors of Hamlet's Mill, as well as that of the earlier researchers they cite). It may be that someone wants to suppress this theory, not because it is wacky, but because it is right.

The Angel Gabriel

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

In the ancient scriptures preserved in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, one of the most important heavenly messengers is the angel Gabriel. 

Gabriel is the angel who appears to the Virgin Mary to proclaim that she would conceive a child who would be called the Son of God, an event known as the Annunciation described in the first chapter of the Gospel According to Luke.

Only a few verses earlier in the same first chapter of Luke, Gabriel is also described bringing a proclamation to Zacharias, the husband of Mary's cousin Elisabeth, that Elisabeth will bear a son who will be called John (this son is John the Baptist). 

And, in the Hebrew scriptures of the Book of Daniel, Gabriel appears as a messenger in chapters 8 and 9, to explain to the prophet Daniel the meaning of a vision which appeared to Daniel.

Previous posts have discussed the evidence which suggests that the angelic beings known as the cherubim and seraphim may correspond to the brightest stars in the sky: there is certainly evidence which would argue that the cherubim described in the Vision of Ezekiel correspond to the four first-magnitude stars in or near the zodiac constellations of Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius.

Does the angel Gabriel, then, also correspond to a bright star, in the same way that the cherubim seem to correspond to specific first-magnitude stars?

Actually, although the passages describing Gabriel in the Old and New Testaments are fairly brief, I believe there are enough clues included in these texts to conclude that Gabriel is not one of the fixed stars, but rather corresponds to one of the five visible planets -- and that in fact Gabriel corresponds to the planet Mercury, who is of course "the messenger of the gods" in ancient Greek and Roman mythology.

Previous posts have discussed the extensive evidence that the names of the gods were derived from the motions of the planets, rather than the other way around. This is what we would expect, if the world's ancient myths and sacred stories are actually built upon a system of celestial allegory, encoding the motions of the heavenly actors in order to convey esoteric meaning to us about the nature of this universe and the nature of our human experience in it (a message which is in fact shamanic and holographic in nature, as many previous posts have discussed and as future posts will examine further).

Beginning with this understanding, it should be fairly obvious why the planet Mercury appears in mythology around the world as a heavenly messenger: Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, and makes the fastest orbit of any of the five visible planets, completing the journey in only 88 earth days. I believe that this fact may well account for the number of legs attributed to Sleipnir, the fantastic eight-legged steed of Odin, a Norse god who exhibits attributes of Hermes or Mercury (and who gives his name to Wednesday in English, the same day of the week named for Mercury in many Latinate or Romance languages).

The fact that Mercury's orbit is closer to the sun than that of the earth also means that for an observer on earth to see Mercury, he or she must look towards the sun. Mercury, and Venus for that matter (which also has an orbit closer to the sun than that of the earth), can only be seen if we are looking in the general direction of the sun, and this means that these inner planets are generally only visible to the naked eye when the sun is either just dipping down below the western horizon at sunset and in the hours immediately afterwards, or just getting ready to appear above the eastern horizon at sunrise and in the hours immediately preceding it. 

Venus, being farther from the sun than Mercury, can range up to almost fifty degrees ahead of or behind the sun (this distance is referred to as the planet's elongation), while Mercury never achieves elongations greater than thirty degrees, and is thus always seen in the bands of the sky that are bathed in the partial glow of the morning dawn or the evening twilight (see discussions and calculations on this and this website, for example, or the helpful diagram and discussion on Wikipedia here).

This proximity to our sun, the most important star in the heavens and the giver of all life on earth, is another important reason why mythical figures associated with the innermost and fastest planet are depicted in myth bringing the message or the tidings from the divine realm to humanity. This role may also explain why gods in various mythologies who are associated with this planet -- including Thoth in ancient Egypt, Hermes and Mercury in ancient Greece and Rome, and Odin in Norse mythology -- are associated with the mysterious science of writing and letters, the systems of esoteric symbols which enable us to preserve knowledge and to convey hidden wisdom across great distances and across the millennia, and which themselves are seen as messengers from the hidden world and intermediaries between the invisible realms and our ordinary reality.

There is an extremely revealing passage in the first chapter of Luke, in which Gabriel brings the announcement to Zacharias that his wife will bear a son, and Zacharias responds with a reaction of doubt, citing his and his wife's advanced age (Luke 1:18). Gabriel then says:

I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God; and am sent to speak unto thee, and to shew thee these glad tidings. And, behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be performed, because thou believest not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season. Luke 1:19-20.

Here, the angel explicitly states that Gabriel is the angel who stands "in the presence of God" -- a most apt description of the planet which is the closest to the fiery orb of the sun, and which can only be seen very shortly before sunrise or very shortly after sunset, and always in a sky which is at least partially lit by the warm glow of our central solar orb.

The fact that Gabriel describes himself in these words is a very strong indicator that his character represents this planet in the Biblical texts.

Mercury-figures are also associated with speech in addition to writing, of course (as befits their status as the bearers of divine wisdom), and so the emphasis Gabriel places in the passage above to the fact that he is sent to speak unto Zecharias, and to reveal to himglad tidings, as well as the punishment Gabriel gives to Zecharias for not accepting the message (temporary loss of speech until the words are fulfilled in their season) are also important indicators that Gabriel represents Mercury.

The iconography and art created down through the centuries showing the angel Gabriel often depict this figure with many characteristics shared by Hermes and Mercury, including some type of wand (sometimes composed of flowers) corresponding to the caduceus typically carried by Mercury. Below are several examples, each one depicting Gabriel carrying a short wand of some sort in the left hand, although you have to look closely in some of the images in order to see the wand (continue reading below for a bit more discussion):

above image: Wikimedia commons (link).

above image: Wikimedia commons (link).

above image: Wikimedia commons (link).

above image: Wikimedia commons (link).

above image: Wikimedia commons (link).

above image: Wikimedia commons (link).

above image: Wikimedia commons (link).

above image: Wikimedia commons (link).

The similarity of many of these artistic depictions of the angel Gabriel to ancient depictions of Hermes should be readily apparent, including of course the slender wand, the wings, and the running posture. 

Another very important shared aspect of the imagery of both Gabriel and Hermes/Mercury is the slightly (or even strongly) hermaphroditic characteristics of their depictions in art. This aspect is very readily apparent in many of the images shown above. It can probably be explained by understanding how the position of the orbit of the planet Mercury contributes to the behavior of the planet in the sky.

Previous posts have demonstrated evidence that conjunctions of planets in the sky are often depicted in myth as sexual dalliances. One of the best examples of this interpretation can be found in the illicit liaison of the goddess Aphrodite (played by the planet Venus) with the god Ares (played by the planet Mars), described in numerous ancient Greek sources including the Odyssey, and interpreted even by ancient writers as an episode which corresponds to the conjunction of those two planets (see discussion here).

As discussed above, the planets Venus and Mercury are interior planets to observers on earth: their orbits are interior to the path followed by earth because they orbit closer to the sun than does our planet. They will always be seen fairly close to the horizon, because they appear above the eastern horizon prior to sunrise when they are ahead of the sun, or above the western horizon after sunset when they are trailing the sun. They will never be seen arcing independently across the middle of the midnight sky, because if we on earth are turned away from the sun (as we are at midnight) we are looking out into space away from the interior planets, where we could expect to see Mars or Jupiter or Saturn but never Venus or Mercury.

Because of this, the planets whose orbits are exterior to earth's orbit (the so-called superior planets Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) can often be seen much further from the horizon than Venus and Mercury, who are "tethered" to the sun, so to speak (Mercury being tethered even more closely than Venus). Thus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn can sometimes be seen steadily approaching Venus (for example) from the wider sky, as if those farther wanderers were approaching or "pursuing" a more modest maiden who waits for their advances. There are many myths in which Ares and Zeus pursue sexual liaisons with Aphrodite, and Hephaestus (who exhibits attributes of Saturn) is actually depicted in Greek myth as Aphrodite's husband (although she seems to prefer the swifter and more athletic Ares or Mars). See for example the previous post entitled "Dangerous liaisons: Jupiter, Venus and Mercury."

Because Mercury is actually interior even to Venus, it is Venus who can "range" further from the horizon (and from the sun) than can Mercury, and therefore when conjunctions take place involving Mercury and Venus, it is Venus who often seems to be "pursuing" Mercury -- and this fact is also reflected in myth, with Aphrodite being lured by Hermes rather than pursued by him. There are also many myths in which Aphrodite or Venus is depicted as pursuing a shy and unwilling youth, such as in the story of Venus and Adonis, a pattern which has numerous important mythological parallels, and which is almost certainly related to this quality of the planets Venus and Mercury. Because, metaphorically speaking, approaching is a "masculine" attribute, and receiving or being approached or pursued is a "feminine" attribute, the poetic allegorization of the planets in the stories of the myths depict Mercury or Hermes as possessing some feminine aspects, even though he is typically understood as a male god.

For this reason (and perhaps for other reasons as well), Hermes or Mercury and all the other manifestations of this heavenly actor in the world's ancient mythology are boundary-crossing deities, and hence Hermes/Mercury is a transcendent being (more discussion here). The angel Gabriel embodies this aspect of transcendence, because Gabriel crosses easily between the realm of the unseen, the realm of the divine, and the realm of incarnate men and women whose general experience is characterized by "ordinary reality." 

The message that Gabriel bears is a transcendent message as well: a message of a profound miracle, of a manifestation of the invisible Spirit, of the human birth of one who is divine. 

Ultimately, as I have tried to explain in many previous posts such as this one and this one, I believe that this message from Gabriel, the one who "stands in the presence" of the divine, is a message to each one of us as well. These ancient myths, which encode the cyclical motions of the sun, moon, stars and planets, convey to us that our universe is composed of both the physical realm which we can see, and the invisible realm of spirit which we normally cannot. 

Further, they convey to us the urgent message that we ourselves can be seen to be beings -- transcendent beings -- from the other world who have taken on flesh and been born into the physical incarnation: we each contain the invisible spark of divinity, even though it is easy for us to forget it (or even, like Zacharias, to deny it or refute it or reject the message for a time, which of course can have negative consequences for us).

We should be very grateful for the ancient wisdom of our planet, preserved in the world's ancient myth, and which still streaks across the void and across the millennia like a messenger from the invisible realms to speak to us, and which continues to pour forth good tidings through the circling motions of the awesome celestial actors in the universe above our heads, and of which we are an important part.