The celestial fire

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

The Bibles of antiquity have but one theme: the incarnation. The vast body of ancient Scripture discoursed on but one subject -- the descent of souls, units of deific Mind, sons of God, into fleshly bodies developed by natural evolution on planets such as ours, therein to undergo an experience by which their continued growth through the ranges and planes of expanding consciousness might be carried forward to ever higher grades of divine being.    

-- Alvin Boyd Kuhn,

Esoteric Structure of the Alphabet and Its Hidden Mystical Language. 20.

The world today is pausing to honor the life and work of Leonard Nimoy.

He is of course most closely associated with the character of Spock in the series Star Trek, a series which depicted travel across the stars but which was certainly no less concerned with the exploration of the human condition.

He is also inextricably connected with the concept and act of blessing. 

Blessing can be accurately said to be an essential part of his identity, one with which he is universally identified and remembered. 

The outpouring of response today to the news that Leonard Nimoy has sprung the bonds of earth to again be among the stars from which we all came has overwhelmingly referenced his blessing "Live long and prosper," which was delivered with his intrinsic dignity and sincerity and accompanied by the famous hand gesture which he introduced during the first season of Star Trek.

It is no secret that this hand gesture represents the Hebrew letter shin and that it has profound connection to the sacred act of blessing -- which has previously been argued within these pages to be the act of evoking the divine spirit which dwells in each being in the universe and indeed which infuses every aspect of the universe itself at all times and at every point.

Mr. Nimoy on many occasions related the story of the deep impression that the act of ritual blessing made upon him as a child, during which this hand gesture was extended as part of the invocation of the divine and the ceremony of blessing (see for example this video clip showing one such explanation he gave).

In seeking to understand more fully this benevolent or beneficent side of Leonard Nimoy -- this profound association with the act of blessing, which he connected to this particular hand gesture embodying this important letter shin and the expression "Live Long and Prosper" -- let us briefly explore just a few important aspects of this symbol.

In the relatively short treatise entitled The Esoteric Structure of the Alphabet and Its Hidden Mystical Language, Alvin Boyd Kuhn (1880 - 1963) says of alphabets that:

along with every other symbolic device of ancient meaning-form, even the alphabet embodied the central structure of all ancient literature, -- the incarnation, the baptism of the fire-soul in and under body-water. [. . .] The celestial fire emanated from primal source as one ray, but soon radiated out in triadic division, and finally reached the deepest heart of matter in a sevenfold segmentation. But in its first stage of emanation it was always pictured as triform. The YOD candle-flame being its type-form, the Hebrews constructed their letter which was to represent the fire-principle with three YODS at the top level, with lines extending downward to a base, on which all three met and were conjoined in one essence. This gives us the great fire-letter SH, shin, -- ש

21-22.

Kuhn then demonstrates that this letter is used in the Hebrew word for fire itself, which is esh but which he asserts on a linguistic basis is also related to AeSH and ISH, with ish being the word for "man, who embodies this single, double and triple fire" (22). The word ash, he notes, is the byproduct of fire in English, but also the great tree of life Ygdrasil in Norse mythology, the very tree upon which Odin had to hang in order to obtain the symbolic technology of writing, as well as the tree from which mankind was originally fashioned, according to some expressions of Norse myth (the reader may remember that in the past we have addressed the fact that Kuhn, writing in the early part of the 20th century, often used the terms "man" and "mankind" but explicitly stated throughout his writings that what he said applies to both men and women, and that we should not assume that he intended to refer to "men" when he used the term "mankind").

Going further with the significance of the letter shin, Kuhn explains that the Hebrew word for the sun, shemesh, also embodies the concept of spirit-fire plunging down into incarnate water and then rising back to the realm of spirit:

As a globe of fire its nature would be expressed most fittingly by the letter shin (SH), with its threefold candle flame, the three YODS, above; the place of water into which it nightly descends would be indicated by M, and the place of its final return, the empyrean above, by SH again. So the word thus constituted would turn out to be SH-M-SH (shemesh); and this is just what it is. It is the old basic story of divine fire plunging down into water, the universal trope figure under which all operation of spirit in and upon matter was dramatized. 30.

From the foregoing discussion, we can begin to understand why extending one's arm and hand with the form of the Hebrew letter shin, representative of the divine threefold fire which is plunged down into incarnation, can be a gesture of blessing: it is a reminder not to forget the divine fire within, our origin among the empyrean of the stars -- the spirit plane -- and it is a blessing that seeks to elevate the invisible spirit in each of us and in all creation itself, along with all the positive aspects connected to our "higher nature" (the opposite of cursing, which seeks to put the spirit down, to degrade others and make them less in touch with spirit and more under the control of matter and the "lower nature").

Elaborating upon the same line of argument, Kuhn says:

As a symbol designed to depict the immersion of fiery spiritual units of consciousness in their actual baptism in the water of physical bodies, the letter form that dramatizes the actual event, and the letter sound that onomatapoetically mimics the sound of fire plunging into water, this alphabet character shin is certainly most eloquently suggestive. 34.

And here we can begin to draw our analysis back to the well-beloved character whom Leonard Nimoy brought so memorably to life and whose expressions of blessing have become so powerful to a world in such great need of blessing. For Mr. Spock, of course, was a Vulcan, from the planet Vulcan -- named expressly and explicitly for the god of fire: Vulcan, known to the Greeks as Hephaestos (and who, by the way, was not only the god of fire but was also cast down to earth at one point by Zeus).

Coincidence? 

Not likely. Perhaps a manifestation of the benevolent synchronicity operating within a conscious universe, but such a connection between the hand gesture now so inextricably associated with Mr. Spock and the planet for whom his very people are named can hardly be written off as meaningless.

And, we can go even further. For, as countless previous posts have explained, the concept of the plunge into incarnation was represented in ancient Egyptian myth by the casting down of the Djed column -- where the divine spark was submerged in matter, forgotten and hidden. A major part of our work in this incarnate life was seen to be the raising up of the Djed column, which is to say the remembrance of the divine fire, the reconnection and elevation of the spirit and the elevation of the "higher aspects and impulses" of our being -- in short, all the calling forth of benevolent spirit associated with the concept of blessing!

Now, one whole series of previous posts explored the fact that the ancient Egyptian Cross of Life, the ANKH, was absolutely symbolic of this idea of raising the Djed column, elevating the spirit, and blessing (and, in fact, ancient Ankhs were often depicted as incorporating the symbolism of the Djed column in their vertical pillar). See for example "Scarab, Ankh and Djed." 

This same vitally-important symbolism of the raising of the Djed column can be seen operating in both the Old and New Testaments, in the symbol of the cross in the New Testament, for example, and of the lifting up of the brasen serpent by Moses upon a staff in the Old Testament. 

Now, you may have caught the fact that the Ankh-Cross itself was a symbol of life, a symbol of the giving of life, and thus a powerful symbol of blessing. This connects directly to the words of blessing which Spock -- and Leonard Nimoy -- would pronounce and with which he is so closely connected: "

Live long and prosper."

Two previous posts have explored at some length the amazing number of words which Alvin Boyd Kuhn believed could be linguistically and conceptually related to this powerful concept through the root sound of the ancient word Ankh -- see "The Name of the Ankh" and "The Name of the Ankh Continued: Kundalini around the world."

Now, what would happen if we combine the fire-symbol of the letter shin with the word Ankh itself? Alvin Boyd Kuhn has anticipated just such a question, and in fact he refers back to the earlier independent scholar Gerald Massey (1828 - 1907), who apparently also explored this avenue of thought:

Massey traces even the great name of mystery, the sphinx, from this ANKH stem, preceded by the demonstrative adjective P (this, the, that) and the starting S, thus: S-P-ANKH. Massey was well versed in the abstrusities of the hieroglyphics and his surmise on this is as good as that of others. The word thus composed would mean "the beginning of the process of linking spirit and matter," which indeed is the sphinx-riddle of the creation. The sphinx image does conjoin the head of man, spirit, with the body of the animal, lion, representing matter. It is precisely such values and realities that the sages of antiquity dealt with and in precisely this manner of subtle indirection. When will modern scholarship come to terms with this recognition! 38.

Now, this line of argument is most incredible, because in the above passage we practically have the name of Spock himself. Look at the term S-P-ANKH which Kuhn, following Massey, argues to be the linguistic and symbolic and esoteric origin of the word sphinx , and you will immediately perceive that if we emphasize the "velar fricative" sound of the KH (which became the voiceless velar fricative sound indicated by the letter "x" in the word sphinx) it will automatically de-emphasize the preceding sound of the "n" and give us rather directly the name of Spock!

Now, this is a rather incredible development, and the reader can be excused for exclaiming at this point that there is just no way that they were thinking of the esoteric origins of the word sphinx and S-P-ANKH when they came up with the character-name Spock!

And yet, we do not have to argue that "they" were thinking along these lines at all -- it might have been "the universe" that created this unbelievable synchronicity, independent of conscious human awareness, acting through creative human conduits.

But, it is most remarkable to note that one of the other extremely distinctive characteristics of Mr. Spock in the Star Trek series is his constant effort to present a dignified expression of calm, composed gravitas, almost never showing emotion and especially not grinning or laughing or smiling (except on very rare occasions): what can only be described as a most sphinx-like characteristic!

And so, we see that Leonard Nimoy and his blessing-speaking character Mr. Spock connect with us on a profound level, and impart to us wisdom which stretches back to a very ancient source. 

When Mr. Nimoy held up his hand in that symbol of shin, he was blessing. He was silently saying (if I may paraphrase, or interpret the symbolic content discussed above): "You are divine fire -- you have an inner spark -- you, and everyone you meet, contain this spirit-fire submerged in water, so to speak, plunged into matter, but you must not forget where you come from -- you come in a real sense from the stars -- you come from the realm of spirit, and you can remember that and elevate that -- Blessings."

It is an expression of reminder, of recognition, of elevation of the spirit and consciousness, and of blessing which is very much analogous to the gesture and greeting contained in Namaste.

And now, Leonard Nimoy has crossed over this plunge into water, this crossing of the Red Sea which is symbolic of our incarnation in this body. He has left us with these benevolent and beneficent blessings and teachings, beautifully and elegantly expressed. And he goes to be among the stars, the realm the ancient wisdom teachings of the world depicted as the realm of the stars.

We can all agree that he will not find that journey to be one with which he is unfamiliar or for which he is unprepared.

Peace and blessings.

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 "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 vision of Ezekiel and the Tetramorphs of the Four Gospels

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

Many present-day readers of the New Testament, particularly those from Protestant traditions, may be unaware of the very ancient association of the four New Testament gospel books with four specific figures: that of a winged Man, that of a winged Lion, that of a winged Bull or Ox, and that of an Eagle (winged, of course).

Robert Taylor (1784 - 1844), an ordained minister in England in the early 1800s, was sentenced to three years behind bars and was defrocked for the offense of giving "astronomico-theological lectures" in which he explained the celestial foundations of the imagery and events described in the scriptures of the Bible -- what today is often referred to as "astrotheology." 

Taylor argues that the eventual removal of these images from the pages of printed Bibles was done in order to prevent readers from figuring out something very important, saying at one point: 

Not till the days of the interference of our Protestant and Dissentarian preachers in the publication and circulation of Bibles and Testaments, was an authorized edition of the four gospels ever put forth, without presenting an equally authorized representation of the four evangelists with the four royal beasts by which they are respectively distinguished, -- the lion, for Matthew; the angel, for Mark; the bull, for Luke; and the eagle, for John. But the Protestant priests, the most deceitful of all deceivers of the people, beginning to fear that the people might acquire wit enough to ask for the meaning of those four royal beasts, have swindled away the old title-page, and substituted one with only two royal beasts in it: "The lion and the unicorn, a-fighting for the crown." Devil's Pulpit (1857), 326.

In other words, Taylor (who at times displays a rather slashing sarcastic wit) is saying that out of fear that the people would begin to ask questions, the old title pages in English Bibles which had in the past contained the images of the Four Evangelists with their four respective creatures were now replaced with a new title page that removed those four creatures and instead had an image of the royal arms which depict the heraldic lion of England and the heraldic unicorn of Scotland.

What could Taylor mean, and why would he indicate that religious leaders of the literalistic Christian traditions (with whom he was obviously none too happy, since they had had him locked up for teaching a connection between the scriptures and the stars) might have wanted to begin to phase the images out of the Bibles in order to avoid having the people start inquiring as to the meaning of them?

In order to answer that question, we will have to proceed systematically, along a fascinating trail . . .

For centuries, these four creatures were depicted in conjunction with the four gospel texts of the Gospel According to Matthew, the Gospel According to Mark, the Gospel According to Luke, and the Gospel According to John. 

Below, for instance, is the decorative illustration that marks the beginning of the New Testament in the 1599 Geneva Bible -- one of the very first translations of the scriptures into the English language (see discussion here regarding the 1536 execution of William Tyndale and the

unnatural laws making it illegal to possess the scriptures in translation for many centuries). Obviously, this Protestant text was published before Taylor says that the Protestant religious leaders began to decide it would be best to replace such title pages with title pages that did not show the four special creatures:

It contains a wealth of imagery, including symbolic images of the twelve tribes of Israel arranged along the left border as we look at it on the page, accompanied by illustrations representing the twelve disciples of the New Testament arranged along the right border as we look at it on the page, and then within the rectangle of the inner portion we see a symbolic representation of each of the Four Evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, in that order if we begin in the upper left corner as we look at it on the page and proceed left to right along the top and then left to right along the bottom), with an image of the Lamb bearing a Cross in the center position along the lower row, in between the images of Luke and John.

Because the image is not terrifically high-resolution in the "big picture" above, below is a zoom-in on the images of each of the Four Evangelists from this page, each of whom can be seen to be accompanied by one of the four special figures mentioned above: the winged Man with Matthew, the Lion with Mark, the Ox with Luke, and the Eagle with John.

above: Matthew is depicted writing the text of the Gospel According to Matthew, while the winged Man looks on. From the Geneva Bible of 1599.

above: Mark is depicted writing the text of the Gospel According to Mark, while a Lion crouches in front of his desk or writing surface. From the Geneva Bible of 1599.

above: Luke is depicted writing the text of the Gospel According to Luke, while an Ox appears to be curled up, perhaps in a sleeping posture, by his side (if you are having trouble making out the Ox, his "face" is towards the viewer, and you can see his two horns going up on either side of his "face" and his two ears sticking out pretty much horizontally, just below his two horns). From the Geneva Bible of 1599.

above: John is depicted writing the text of the Gospel According to John, while an Eagle is positioned at his left elbow (on the right side of John as we look at the image). From the Geneva Bible of 1599.

The association of the Four Evangelists with these four specific creatures in sacred art is, in fact, extremely widespread, particularly in art from past centuries, and can be seen depicted in sculptures inside of (or even on top of) churches and cathedrals, in stained glass windows, and in other forms of art. Below is an example of another common use of this theme, around the four quadrants created in what is sometimes called a "groined ceiling" (a specific type of vaulted ceiling):

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

In the image above, which was selected because it has a label for each of the four creatures (many times this imagery is unlabeled), we can clearly see the winged Man in the right-hand quadrant as we look at the image, holding a scroll which refers to Matthew (it says "St. Mathaus"), and then if we proceed counter-clockwise we see the Lion of Mark (the scroll reads "St. Marcus"), the Eagle of John (the scroll reads "St Johannes"), and the Ox of Luke (the scroll, somewhat damaged, reads "St. Lucas").

While the associations illustrated above have become solidified in Christian tradition, there is actually room for debate as to which Evangelist corresponds to which specific creature. The correspondences as usually depicted (and as shown in the illustrations above) can be traced back to Jerome (AD 327 - AD 420), in his fourteen-book commentary on the scroll of the Prophet Ezekiel (as we will see, these four specific creatures come from a very important passage in the first chapter of Ezekiel, in which we read the account of the vision of Ezekiel). However, Jerome's younger contemporary Augustine (AD 354 - AD 430) assigned the correspondences slightly differently: he reversed the assignments for Matthew and Mark, giving the Lion to Matthew and the Man to Mark.

However, writing about two hundred years before either Jerome or Augustine, the early literalist Christian bishop Irenaeus (c. AD 130 - AD 202), was probably the first known writer to connect these four creatures from the vision of Ezekiel to the Four Evangelists. In his Adversus Haereses ("Against Heresies"), he explicitly lays out this connection, and then argues for the assignment of each of the four creatures. Once again, there are two places in which his assignments are the same as those of Jerome, and two places in which his assignments are reversed, but unlike Augustine the difference is with Mark and John. Irenaeus assigns Mark the Eagle and John the Lion. 

If you're getting confused, there is a "matrix" at the bottom of this post to show the different correspondences; the important point to take from this is that there is widespread agreement from the early "church fathers" of literalist Christianity that the Four Evangelists each correspond to one of the four creatures, but there is clear disagreement as to which corresponds to whom.

The text in which Irenaeus argues for the connection of these creatures from Ezekiel's vision to the four New Testament gospels is found in Book 3 of his Against Heresies, in Chapter 11 and Paragraph 8. You can read a translation for yourself online in various places -- here is a link to one example. You will find the passage 3.11.8 beginning on page 852 of that online version. Here is what Irenaeus says (added "clarifications" are in brackets, and come from that translation linked above, not necessarily from Irenaeus):

It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For, since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the Church is scattered throughout all the world, and the "pillar and ground" of the Church is the Gospel and the spirit of life; it is fitting that she should have four pillars, breathing out immortality on every side, and vivifying men afresh. From which fact, it is evident that the Word, the Artificer of all, He that sitteth upon the cherubim, and contains all things, He who was manifested to men, has given us the Gospel under four aspects, but bound together by one Spirit. As also David says, when entreating His manifestation, "Thou that sittest between the cherubim, shine forth." For the cherubim, too, were four-faced, and their faces were images of the dispensation of the Son of God. For, [as the Scripture] says, "The first living creature was like a lion," symbolizing His effectual working, His leadership, and royal power; the second [living creature] was like a calf, signifying [His] sacrificial and sacerdotal order; but the "third had, as it were, the face as of a man," -- an evident description of His advent as a human being; "the fourth was like a flying eagle," pointing out the gift of the Spirit hovering with His wings over the Church. And therefore the Gospels are in accord with these things, among which Christ Jesus is seated.

From this point, Irenaeus goes on to give his reasons for assigning the Lion to John, the Ox to Luke, the Man to Matthew, and the Eagle to Mark.

Although he assumes that the reader knows where he is getting these quotations describing "the cherubim," he does not explicitly state in the passage quoted that they come from the first chapter of Ezekiel, but that is where they do in fact come from. There, in the first chapter, we read:

1 Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.

2 In the fifth day of the month, which was the fifth year of king Jehoiachin's captivity,

3 The word of the LORD came expressly unto Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar; and the hand of the LORD was there upon him.

4 And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire.

5 Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man.

6 And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings.

7 And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf's foot: and they sparkled like the colour of burnished brass.

8 And they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides; and they four had their faces and their wings.

9 Their wings were joined one to another; they turned not when they went; they went every one straight forward.

10 As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle.

11 Thus were their faces: and their wings were stretched upward; two wings of every one were joined one to another, and two covered their bodies.

12 And they went every one straight forward: whither the spirit was to go, they went; and they turned not when they went.

13 As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire, and like the appearance of lamps: it went up and down among the living creatures; and the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning.

14 And the living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightning.

15 Now as I beheld the living creatures, behold one wheel upon the earth by the living creatures, with his four faces.

16 The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the colour of a beryl: and they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel.

17 When they went, they went upon their four sides: and they turned not when they went.

18 And as for their rings, they were so high that they were dreadful; and their rings were full of eyes round about them four [note: a margin note from the actual King James Version translation of this text states that the second mention of the word "rings" in this verse might be alternately translated as "strakes," which in modern usage is often applied to parts of an aircraft, but at the time of this translation referred to the curved segments that were joined together to form a wooden "strake wheel," as shown in the illustrations on this page about old wheels].

19 And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them: and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.

The vision of Ezekiel continues on, and is extremely important, but at this point we have all the clues needed to begin to decipher what could be going on, and why Irenaeus in the passage cited above from his text Against Heresies declared that it is simply "not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are," and why he connected each of the four to one of the likenesses of the living creatures described here in the vision of Ezekiel. 

This may, in fact, be one of the most important passages in all of scripture. Why? What could it mean?

It has been famously seized upon in modern times as a possible vision of extraterrestrial craft by Ezekiel, who (it is argued) was trying to do his best to describe the advanced flying ships that he witnessed, as "wheels within wheels" with an "appearance of a flash of lightning" or "like burning coals" or "lamps," described as "going up and down," and being "so high that they were dreadful." Of course, the vision of these fantastic four "living creatures," with their wings and their hands and their four faces, has been interpreted by those in this camp as being Ezekiel's best effort to describe the alien beings who might have been piloting these amazing ships.

Is this why, in Robert Taylor's opinion, the leaders of the literalistic Christian churches (the ones who were so upset with Taylor for teaching astrotheology) wanted to remove the images of the four living creatures from the title-pages of the New Testaments? Did Taylor realize that the vision of Ezekiel was a vision of UFOs, and did he believe that in order to keep the people from finding it out, the illustrations began to be expurgated from the printed versions of the scriptures during the Protestant times, when more and more people were actually looking at the Bible for themselves?

Nope. That's not what he thought.

Taylor argues that the real identity of these four living creatures is indicated by Irenaeus himself, in the beginning of the passage cited above. Taylor says:

The reasoning, then, of the Christian father, Irenaeus, that there were four gospels, because there were four seasons of the year, after all the contempt which those who have invented the absurd conceit of a supposed historical basis of these divine poems would cast on it, is indeed the true and real account of the matter. Astronomico-Theological Lectures (1857), 269 - 270.

That sentence is a bit of a mouthful, so let's rearrange it to make it easier to see what Taylor is saying: 

The reasoning, then, of the Christian father Irenaeus, is indeed the true and real account of the matter. There were four gospels because there were four seasons of the year -- despite all the contempt that those who have invented the literalist approach will cast upon this argument. The literalist approach creates the "absurd conceit" (the "ridiculous fantasy or fabrication") that all these divine poems ("metaphors, allegories, language full of imagery") actually represent historical events -- and this approach misses their meaning altogether [this is my own free rearrangement of Taylor's quotation from pages 269-270, with a little paraphrase thrown in and some explanatory "translation" in quotation marks].

Taylor argues that the four seasons to which Irenaeus refers in conjunction with the four gospels are represented in the four accompanying symbols, which stand for four zodiac constellations: 

• the Lion obviously represents Leo, 
• the Ox of course corresponds to the Bull of Taurus, 
• the Man is the only male human figure among the zodiac twelve: Aquarius
• the Eagle is located directly above the Scorpion in the night sky, and hence is another way of referring to Scorpio.

Each of these corresponds to a season, Taylor explains: the Lion to summer, and Aquarius to winter, with the Bull corresponding to spring and the Scorpion to the autumn or fall.

We could go even further and note that which Taylor does not explicitly state (although he does hint on page v of the introduction to Devil's Pulpit), which is that the selection of these four specific stations on the zodiac wheel are by no means random: they represent the zodiac constellations which governed the four critical points of the annual cycle during the Age of Taurus, when the spring equinox sunrise took place in Taurus, the summer solstice in Leo, the fall equinox in Scorpio, and the winter solstice in Aquarius.

These four zodiac constellations no longer govern those four critical points of the year: the ages-long process of precession (sometimes called "the precession of the equinoxes") has moved the background stars twice since then, and going on a third time. Much of ancient myth corresponds to the zodiac as it would have been in the Age of Aries, which came after the Age of Taurus, which is depicted in the diagram below (which should be quite familiar by now to readers of this blog or the book The Undying Stars):

In the above diagram, the mighty "cross" of the year is depicted, as it was in the Age of Aries, when the Spring Equinox took place at the junction between Pisces and Aries, at the left side of the wheel in the "9 o'clock" position (the progress on the above layout is clockwise: the sun will rise in each sign shown for about one month, before moving to the next sign in a clockwise direction). 

The arrival of Aries, then, signified the arrival of spring equinox, and thus this entire Age was designate the Age of Aries. As the year progressed, the sun would climb higher and higher in the sky on the way to the summer solstice, which took place at the end of the sign of Gemini and the beginning of the sign of Cancer the Crab: thus, the wedge on the wheel belonging to Cancer is shaded in red. 

The sun would then begin to decline back "down" towards the fall equinox, which took place right after the end of the month in which the sun rose in Virgo the Virgin, and entered the sign of Libra the Scales or the Balance (at the "3 o'clock" position at the right-hand side of the circle as you look at it on the page above).

From there, the sun's path would continue to get lower and lower in the sky -- and its rising points further and further south for observers in the northern hemisphere -- until the time of the winter solstice, which was then taking place in between the signs of Sagittarius the Archer and Capricorn the Goat. Thus, Capricorn is also shaded in red: the two red wedges of Cancer and Capricorn thus make up the "vertical bar" of the great "cross of the year," the vertical bar running from the winter solstice at the bottom of the year straight up to the summer solstice at the top of the year. You can see the importance of the Age of Aries in the fact that the two tropics are still designated by the signs that governed the beginning of the high-point and the low-point for the annual cycle during that Age: the Tropic of Cancer (northern hemisphere) and the Tropic of Capricorn (southern).

Similarly, the "horizontal bar" of the great cross of the year is indicated by the two signs shaded in black, which during the Age of Aries would have been Aries and Libra.

The motion of precession, which is discussed in this video that I made a few years back to try to illustrate the concept using a very clear and easy-to-grasp series of images, actually "delays" the background stars of the zodiac, causing the sun to rise in the preceding zodiac constellation after a long period of approximately 2,160 years. Hence, in the Age prior to the Age of Aries, the sun was rising in the constellation of Taurus on the spring equinox, instead of in Aries (Aries precedes Taurus, and so the motion of precession eventually delayed the background stars enough for the sun to rise in the constellation Aries on spring equinox instead of in Taurus). 

Here is the same diagram shown above, but this time labeled for the great cross of the year in the Age of Taurus:

And now we begin to perceive the significance of the "four living creatures" of the vision of Ezekiel, and of the insistence of Irenaeus that the gospels themselves must also be four and only four in number, and correspond to the four living creatures of Ezekiel. For in the Age of Taurus, we can see that the spring equinox corresponds to the Bull, the summer solstice corresponds to the Lion, the fall equinox corresponds to Scorpio (which is located at the base of the shimmering path of the Milky Way, and  contains flying upwards above Scorpio the constellation of Aquila the Eagle), and the winter solstice corresponds to Aquarius the Water-Bearer.

The correspondences are undeniable, and the significance of this fact is profound.

If Ezekiel's vision of the heavens corresponds to the zodiac wheel, and includes clear reference to the four zodiac constellations governing the stations of the two solstices and two equinoxes, then this is a very powerful piece of evidence supporting the argument that the ancient scriptures of the Bible consist of esoteric metaphors describing the motions of the heavens.

In fact, I believe that almost all ancient myth from around the world can be demonstrated to consist of just such esoteric metaphors describing the motions of the heavens, and outline the evidence for this conclusion in over fifty different examinations of specific myths and sacred stories that are linked on this page (the "Star Myth Index"). 

The fact that the stories of the Old and New Testaments are also built upon this exact same system actually unites them with the rest of the world's sacred traditions. It was the creators of the literalist approach who falsely divided the Biblical scriptures from the rest of the world's sacred traditions, and then set about opposing and attacking the rest of the world's traditions, which they had now set themselves apart from. Obviously, this separation stretches back to the time of Irenaeus, who was an important and powerful proponent of the literalist approach and a tireless enemy of those who did not subscribe to the literalistic historicizing approach.

Once we understand that the "four living creatures" described in the vision of Ezekiel correspond exactly to the four zodiac points of the great wheel of the year during the Age of Taurus, the rest of his vision begins to become clear. His vision does not describe UFOs, but rather the motions of the great wheels which turn in the sky as the zodiac with its colures (or hoops) that pass through and connect the solstices and the equinoxes -- an understanding of the mechanism of the heavens which is replicated in the familiar and beautiful armillary spheres, whose very name means "composed of rings."

Below is an image of an armillary sphere:

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

Like most armillary spheres, it represents the heavens as seen from earth, and consists of a ring that represents the celestial equator and a ring that represents the plane of the ecliptic: these two cross at the points of the equinoxes. It also consists of one hoop which passes through the equinox points and then through the north and south celestial poles -- this is called the "equinoctial colure" -- and one hoop which passes through the solstice points and then through the north and south celestial poles -- this is called the "solstitial colure."

Below, those points are labeled in case you aren't familiar with these concepts:

Now, as you can see, the armillary sphere is constructed with an "axle" that runs between the two points labeled "N. Celestial Pole" and "S. Celestial Pole," which means that the entire "sphere of rings" will turn around this central axle -- just as the sky as seen from an observer on earth appears to "turn" around a central hub at the north celestial pole (or the south celestial pole, if you are observing from the southern hemisphere). Then, altogether as if they were connected, the rings of the celestial equator and the ecliptic will turn, and athwart these will turn the two great "vertical hoops" of the sosltitial and equinoctial colures, carrying along with them the four important points of the two solstices and two equinoxes.

Let's go back and examine the vision of Ezekiel again, and you can see that this is exactly what the text is describing.

In verse 4: "behold, a whirlwind came out of the north." This can be understood as referring to the fact that the heavens appear to turn around the central point of the north celestial pole. This is elsewhere described in myth as a mighty whirlpool: the two images both refer to the same thing -- the circling of either air or water around a central point (the "vortex" of the whirlpool or whirlwind -- which is the north celestial pole, if you are in the northern hemisphere, as Ezekiel evidently is, since he says that this whirlwind "came out of the north").

In verse 4 as well: "a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it." I believe this almost certainly refers to the great cloud of the Milky Way galaxy, which crosses the heavens like one of the colures, basically along the line that divides Sagittarius and Scorpio and runs up to form the line between Taurus and Gemini.

In verse 5: "Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures." These four living creatures are the four points on the ecliptic hoop through which the solstitial and equinoctial colures pass: they are the images of the zodiac constellations at those four points. 

In verse 9: "Their wings were joined one to another; they turned not when they went; they went every one straight forward." This can be understood as referring to the fact that the four creatures are all turned by the same force -- their "wings are joined one to another." The phrase about them "turning not" but always going "straight forward" may seem confusing, until you understand that the five visible  planets go across the face of the heavens in a very different manner: they all go into what is called "retrograde motion" at some point (when the earth is "overtaking them"). This concept of retrograde motion in the visible planets is discussed here and here, and it is very important. But, the zodiac constellations represented by these four living creatures are not visible planets, and they will not undergo retrograde motion. They will always go "straight forward" across the sky, and they will never be seen "turning back." 

In verse 13: "their appearance was like burning coals of fire, and like the appearance of lamps." This and the other descriptions almost certainly refer to the fact that the constellations are composed of stars in the sky -- which are "like lamps" in the heavens, or burning coals.

In verse 15: "behold one wheel upon the earth by the living creatures, with his four faces." This refers to the fact that the four zodiac signs are born along by one wheel -- the ring of the ecliptic, labeled above on the armillary sphere. It is "by the earth" because it is very close to ring of the celestial equator.

In verse 16: "they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel." This refers to the fact that all four are actually part of the same ring, which turns as a "wheel in the middle of a wheel" as can plainly be seen by contemplating the motion of a turning armillary sphere such as the one depicted above.

In verse 18: "As for their rings, they were so high that they were dreadful, and their rings [or "strakes"] were full of eyes round about them four." This verse, which hitherto seemed so confusing, is now revealed as an apt description of what we have been discussing so far. They are "full of eyes" because they are full of stars (this explains how they had "eyes inside" as well, as described in other verses not quoted here). The rings that are "so high that they were dreadful" are probably the two colures, which run up to and through the celestial north pole and then down to the celestial south pole. The "strakes" are the segments of the wheel of the year -- in fact, it is a perfect metaphor for the segments of a zodiac wheel. Below is an image of an old wooden straked wheel:

image: Wikimedia commons (link). Modified by adding the blue arrows showing strakes and the yellow box labeling the strakes. 

And in verse 19: "and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up." This could refer to the motion of the constellations as they turn across the night sky, lifting up from the eastern horizon, crossing the vault of the heavens, and then going back down to sink into the western horizon. But, I actually believe it refers to the separation between the plane of the ecliptic and the celestial equator -- with the celestial equator being metaphorically referred to as "the earth" here. The fact that these two are "split apart" as they are means that throughout the year they create a sort of yawning motion like the opening and closing of the mouth of a great fish or something of that nature. You can see some animations of this motion in the link inside this previous post discussing this phenomenon. 

From the above explication, it is I believe completely clear that the vision of Ezekiel refers to the celestial mechanics of the turning wheels of the heavens -- and does so with reference to the constellations that governed the "cross of the year" during the Age of Taurus. This is powerful confirmation of the theory that these ancient scriptures concern the action of these celestial forces -- and, as I have discussed at length in other blog posts and in the book The Undying Stars, they do so as part of an esoteric system of allegory designed to convey profound truths about the nature of the universe and of human existence in this incarnate life. 

But, as we have seen from the preceding discussion, this allegorical description of the mighty machinery of the heavens is not confined to the vision of Ezekiel: one of the most important early proponents of the religion based on the New Testament scriptures has explicitly informed us that this description applies with equal force to the four gospels describing the life of Jesus. These four living creatures, who are sometimes referred to as "the tetramorphs" (which means "four-forms") or sometimes altogether as "the tetramorph," are specifically connected to the Four Evangelists and the telling of the story "according to" each of them.

As we have seen, there is some confusion even amongst the early "church fathers" as to which of the four creatures corresponds to which of the four gospels. This may well be because trying to connect a gospel to a creature based on the perceived characteristics of, say, a Lion or an Ox (as Irenaeus and the rest do in their discussions) is mistaken: it may well be that they should be connected based on the characteristics of the specific season (or the solstice or equinox) rather than to the characteristics of the animal or creature whose constellation governed that season. In other words, if one of the accounts has a "summery" aspect, then perhaps it should be connected to the living creature that looks like a Lion and corresponds to Leo and the summer solstice, and if another account has a "wintery" aspect, then perhaps it should be connected to the living creature that looks like a Man and corresponds to Aquarius and the winter solstice.

Robert Taylor follows such a procedure, and comes up with his own assignment of the four creatures, different from Irenaeus or Jerome, but interestingly enough in agreement with the layout proposed by Augustine. 

Taylor simply argues that because Matthew is the longest, and since days are longest in summer and specifically at summer solstice, then Matthew must correspond to the Lion (as Augustine in fact assigned it as well). 

Since Mark is the shortest, and since the days are shortest at winter solstice, Taylor assigns Mark to the Man who represents Aquarius and the winter solstice during the Age of Taurus. 

The other two correspond to the equinoxes, and Taylor notes that in fact Luke and John are both of them nearly equal in length and that both are shorter than Matthew but longer than Mark. He gives Luke the Ox (as do all the others -- on this point everyone seems to be in agreement), and John the Eagle (here he is in agreement with everyone but Irenaeus). 

It is interesting that all of them have Luke assigned to the Ox, which corresponds to the sign in which the year "starts" during the Age of Taurus. This is interesting because it is Luke who gives us the most comprehensive gospel account of the birth of Jesus. This connection may or may not be valid, since of course the birth narrative is full of winter solstice imagery, but it is interesting, especially since the signs clearly correspond to the Age of Taurus and since this is the one correspondence agreed upon by all the commentators we have examined.

It is also interesting that Taylor's proposal matches up with Augustine. We know of Augustine that he was highly trained in Platonic philosophy -- and it is quite clear that the Platonic school in ancient times was a preserver of the exact type of esoteric knowledge that we are discussing here.

It is also extremely noteworthy that we are using the zodiac constellations from the Age of Taurus -- an Age of great antiquity. Much of the imagery from the Old Testament seems to celebrate the arrival of the Age of Aries, including the famous incident of Moses smashing the tablets of the law when his brother Aaron insists on establishing an idol of a Bull calf. The New Testament gospels, of course, often use imagery suggesting that they are heralding the advent of the Age following the Age of Aries: the Age of Pisces (which is now drawing to a close, as we enter the Age of Aquarius).

So, where did these patterns corresponding to the Age of Taurus come from? I believe they may be an important clue pointing to the fact that the scriptures of both the so-called "Old" and "New" Testaments come from extremely ancient sources, and very likely from ancient Egypt. This is another discussion, but it is a very important one.

Finally, it is of course ironic that Irenaeus is here referring to a passage with deep foundations in celestial metaphor, and that he is doing so as part of his massive work

Against Heresies

, the entire purpose of which was to counter the arguments of the Gnostics (broadly speaking -- there are technical distinctions within the broad concept of the Gnostic approach, and Irenaeus attacked many of these in turn within his work, such as the Valentian teachings and many others). The very essence of what I would broadly term "the Gnostic approach" (as opposed to the literalistic-historicist approach that Irenaeus was championing) is the idea that these scriptures should not be understood as describing literal or historical events and figures, but that they are to be understood esoterically. 

In other words, if one were to argue that Jesus was not a literal or historical character but that these scriptures were designed to enable the individual to perceive the "Christ in you," that could generally be described as a more Gnostic understanding of the scriptures -- and it would generally be strongly condemned by "orthodox" literalist Christianity.

And yet, the insistence that the four gospels that tell us the story of the Christ all correspond to the great wheel of the year is to point to the fact that these stories in fact

are

all about "the Christ in you." Because, as many previous posts have labored to explain, the up & down motion of the sun through the year, and the daily motion of the sun, stars, and planets from one horizon to the other and then "down into the earth," can be understood as a powerful allegory for the experience of each and every human soul, plunging down from the spirit realm into incarnation, and toiling through the space "between the horizons" (between the equinoxes, in the lower half of the circle) before ascending again into the heavens, perhaps to repeat the cycle over and over (at least for a few trips, until whatever we are learning to do down here is learned). 

From the above discussion of the four "tetramorph" living creatures of the Lion, the Ox, the Eagle and the Man, it is almost certain that this is in fact exactly what the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are actually intended to convey.

And

that

is why the images of the four living creatures started to disappear from printed texts and their connections to the four gospels started to become less emphasized, after printing presses became prevalent and Protestantism put Bibles in just about every household that wanted one, in stark contrast to previous laws preventing people from reading these sacred texts for themselves.

Epiphany: revealing the hidden divine nature

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

The traditional celebration of Christmas continues for twelve days, beginning with the midnight birth of Jesus at the juncture between December 24 & December 25 (three days after winter solstice, which generally falls on December 21st most years, as discussed in this previous post) and ending with the celebration of Twelfth Night at the juncture between January 5 & January 6, with its ultimate conclusion celebrated at Epiphany on January 6th. 

Epiphany is a word which means to "show forth" and refers to the revealing of the divinity of the Christ in the gospels stories. 

The word epiphany itself contains the Greek prefix epi- meaning "to" or "towards" or "upon" (and which is found in the word epistle, meaning "a formal written letter or message" which combines the "to" prefix and the verb stellein, "to send;" and in the word epithet, meaning "a title or label given to someone or something," which combines the prefix epi- with the verb tithenai, "to place upon;" and in the word epitaph, meaning "an inscription upon a tombstone," which combines the prefix epi- with the noun taphos or "tomb") and the Greek verb phainein, meaning "to show" (and which is found in the English word diaphanous, meaning "of such a fine texture as to be transparent or translucent," which combines the Greek prefix dia- meaning "through" and the verb phainein meaning "to show").

The same day which is referred to as Epiphany in most western church traditions is referred to as Theophany in the eastern or Greek church traditions, which literally means "the revealing of God" or "the appearance of a god or goddess to a man or woman," from the Greek word theos, "a  god," and phainein, "to show". 

The day of Epiphany is traditionally associated with three specific events in the gospel accounts which have to do with the revelation or recognition of divinity in the Christ: with the visit of the Magi (or "Three Kings," who come and give honor to the Christ child and give symbolic gifts), with the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist in the Jordan (in which the heavens open up, a voice proclaims "This is my son," and the Spirit descends like a dove), and in the wedding at Cana (in which the first public miracle is performed, in the changing of water into wine).

Some of the esoteric, symbolic, and celestial aspects of the visit of the Magi have been discussed in this previous post. There are indications that the baptism by John the Baptist in the Jordan, and the wedding miracle at Cana, both have celestial foundations as well -- and that their intended meaning concerns not the events of historical personages thousands of years ago, but rather the condition in which every man and woman finds himself or herself during this incarnate, material life.

[The remainder of this post will examine evidence that the stories in the Biblical scriptures were not intended to be understood literally. Those not comfortable examining such evidence may not wish to read further].

We have already examined evidence that the figure of John the Baptist has strong connections with the zodiac sign of Aquarius, a figure who is of course associated with water and the pouring out of water, and also with the beginning of the ascent back up from the lowest point on the "zodiac wheel." We have seen that the constellation of Aquarius in the sky appears as a man carrying a jug or jar of water, in a distinctly pitched-forward posture, with an outstretched forward leg (see star-chart below). 

This leaned-forward posture, we argued in that previous post, was also responsible for the story about John the Baptist losing his head, since when rising in the east his head would still be beneath the horizon when the body has already cleared the horizon, and when setting in the west there would be a point at which his head was still above the horizon when his body had already sunk below it.

That previous post also showed sacred art from centuries ago depicting the beheading of John the Baptist, in which the Baptist is painted in a kneeling, pitched-forward posture, with his hands bound and positioned about where the "forward leg" is located in the constellation above. One could even argue that the beheading legend might also come from envisioning the jug of Aquarius as the severed head of John, with the streams of water transformed into blood in that case (and, it must be admitted, the small diamond-shaped head of the constellation is quite faint, making this view of the constellation a very plausible possibility).

Based on this identification of John the Baptist and Aquarius in these specific episodes, it is certainly likely that the episode of the Baptism of Christ also derives from the figure of Aquarius as identified with John the Baptist, and that the pouring out of water from the vessel carried by Aquarius is the foundation for the baptism of Christ by John. 

And, as it turns out, sacred art has for centuries depicted John the Baptist in the act of baptizing Jesus as having the same distinctive features of the constellation Aquarius, including the position of the legs, the upraised arms and water vessel, and the streams of water flowing down (see for example the image in the fresco at top, painted during the first half of the 1400s).

The constellation directly below the streams of water coming from the jug of Aquarius is the Southern Fish or Piscis Austrinis, which is discussed and shown in star-charts in this previous post from 2012. Interestingly enough, in the sacred art from previous centuries in which John is depicted with features of Aquarius, the figure of Jesus is often portrayed with his hands together in the anjali mudra (see discussion here), which is also a "fish-like" hand gesture and one that is sometimes used to depict a fish swimming in the water in some children's songs that use hand gestures, for example. The fresco at top demonstrates this hand position.

Sometimes, the figure of Jesus is shown as being even more "fish-like" in form, not just with the hand gesture but with the position of the body as well, such as in the image below, painted in 1601:

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

Sometimes, the figure of John is shown as having a long staff, usually surmounted with a cross-piece to make it cruciform: the image above shows such a crucifix in John's hand. This feature probably derives from the outstretched "forward leg" of the constellation Aquarius itself. Below is another image of the baptism scene, this one from the 1500s, in which John is shown with such a cruciform staff:

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

The Aquarius symbology should be evident in all three of the above figures of John the Baptist. The image of the descending dove in between the glowing clouds, present in all three images and in the scripture accounts of the baptism scene, should be evident enough: it is the important constellation Cygnus the Swan, flying "downwards" through the clouds of the Milky Way. Below is an image using the free open-source planetarium application from stellarium.org showing the constellations in question:

As the labels in the diagram indicate, the scripture accounts tell us that the descending Spirit appears and descends when "the heavens opened" -- literally when the heavens were "cloven" or "rent" (like a torn garment). See for example Mark 1:10, where the scriptures read: "And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened [or "cloven" or "rent"], and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him."

You can see from the Milky Way shown in the Stellarium application and the image above that this word "cloven" or "rent" is a very apt descriptor for the Milky Way as it rises up behind Aquarius and as the majestic constellation Cygnus flies "down" it. In fact, this feature of the Milky Way Galaxy which we can see from our observation point on earth is often referred to as the Galactic Rift or the Great Rift. This is almost certainly a clue included in the text to help confirm that the constellations indicated above are those being described.

There are reasons to believe that the Wedding at Cana, in which water is turned to wine, connects to the constellation Aquarius as well (for one thing, Noah was also described in the Old Testament as the first to make wine, and we have already examined evidence that he was associated with Aquariusas well).

It is possible that all these events and episodes actually represent literal and historic events, which just happen to also match up quite precisely to specific constellations that had been positioned in the sky long before they ever happened. It is also possible to argue that these events were foreseen and then were "pre-figured in the stars." 

However, both of these explanations are more difficult to maintain due to the fact that multiple scriptural accounts appear to match up to the same constellations. 

It appears much more likely that these scriptures, just like myths from virtually every ancient culture around the globe, were not actually intended to preserve literal and historical events which took place on planet earth, but that they are exquisitely-crafted celestial allegories designed to convey esoteric truths. If multiple stories around the world, and multiple stories within the Old and New Testaments themselves, can be shown to derive from the very samesets of constellations, then a very likely explanation is that the same constellations gave rise to many different esoteric myths which "dress up" those constellations in different ways, in order to convey profound knowledge which is difficult to grasp except through metaphor.

If so, then what could this series of stories connected with the Epiphany (or Theophany) be trying to convey?

For a possible answer, consider again the quotation from a 1936 lecture by esotericist Alvin Boyd Kuhn, cited in this previous post and discussed further in the subsequent post on the Three Kings (who are also closely associated with the Epiphany), in which Kuhn asserts:

The Bible is the drama of our history here and now; and it is not apprehended in its full force and applicability until every reader discerns himself [or herself] to be the central figure in it! The Bible is about the mystery of human life. Instead of relating to the incidents of a remote epoch in temporal history, it deals with the reality of the living present in the life of every soul on earth.

In other words, the Epiphany is about the mystery of human life, and it is not apprehended in its full force and applicability until you realize that you yourself are the central figure in it! 

The baptism scene, with its recognition or revelation of the divinity in the one whom the scriptures describe as descending into incarnate form, and then being "placed beneath the waters" in the baptism scene, describes and depicts the condition of every human soul which has plunged into incarnation, when we leave the realm of spirit (the realm of the upper elements of "air" and "fire") to be clothed in a body of "clay" -- that is, a body composed of the lower elements of "earth" and "water" (seven-eighths water, as we have been told).

These stories convey the message that each and every one of us carries within us a divine spark, which has been plunged into the water and obscured inside our material form. Immersed in this world of physicality and materiality, it is all too easy to be completely blinded to that "invisible realm" or realm of spirit, and to live as though we are completely material beings, denying or forgetting our spiritual nature altogether. One of the purposes of these texts is to cause us to remember -- and one of the purposes of the celebration of Epiphany, it seems, is to help us to remember that we ourselves, and every single human being we ever encounter, contain a "hidden god," a divine spark.

Although some of the centuries-old traditions and ceremonies which have accompanied the celebration of Epiphany in many cultures may not be familiar to all readers, many of them are very powerful and are still carried out to this day in some communities. Many of these old traditions seem to imply the message of the plunge of the divine spark into matter, where it is hidden, and where it must be found and then "raised up."

One of these is the ritual known as the Blessing of the Waters, in which a cross is taken to the ocean, or to a lake or large river, and immersed in the waters. In his masterful 1940 text Lost Light, Alvin Boyd Kuhn explains that the cross itself is a symbol of the incarnate condition of every man and woman in this material life: we have a physical component, represented by the horizontal bar of the cross, and a spiritual component, represented by the vertical bar of the cross. 

The placing of the cross into the waters represents our plunge into the material realm: the raising up of the cross from the waters represents the recognition or revelation of the divine nature which can be hidden and even forgotten but which can never be completely denied. One of our important missions in this life is to recognize and elevate this divine spark in ourselves, in others, and indeed in all of creation around us. Epiphany, which takes place on our annual cycle when the sun begins to climb back up out of the deep pit of winter solstice, is marked by rituals which convey this important task.

In many cultures, the cross is actually flung into the water, where youths then rush to be the first to find it and retrieve it -- raising it up from the depths. This ritual continues every year to this day. Below is a video showing one such ceremony, in a community within the Greek Orthodox faith (where Epiphany is called Theophany):

Alvin Boyd Kuhn gives his explication of the symbolism of the cross and the water -- and he makes clear that the cross has also long been used as a symbol in many "non-Christian" traditions, including those of the ancient Egyptians and of many of the cultures of the Americas:

In a very direct sense the cross is connected with the flood of water that must be crossed, with the baptism and the lower sea voyage. [. . .] This most ancient, perhaps, of all religious symbols (by no means an exclusive instrument of Christian typology) was the most simple and natural ideograph that could be devised to stand as an index of the main basic datum of human life -- the fact that in man the two opposite poles of spirit and matter had crossed in union. The cross is but the badge of our incarnation, the axial crossing of soul and body, consciousness and substance, in one organic unity. An animal nature that walked horizontally to the earth and a divine nature that walked upright crossed their lines of force and consciousness in the same organism. [. . .]

The Toltecs called the cross the Tree of Sustenance and the Tree of Life. [. . .] The cross is a symbol of life, never of death, except as "death" means incarnation. It was the cross of life on earth because its four arms represented the fourfold foundation of the world, the four basic elements, earth, water, air, and fire, of the human temple, and because it was an emblem of the reproduction of new life, and thus an image of continuity, duration, stability, an eternal principle ever renewing itself in death. The whisperings of esoteric fable report that the very tree on which Jesus was hanged was grown from a sprout or seed from the forbidden Tree of Life in Genesis! There are many instances of the cross burgeoning into fresh life. The savior is not nailed on the tree; he is the tree. He unites in himself the horizontal human-animal and the upright divine. And the tree becomes alive; from dead state it flowers out in full leaf. The leaf is the sign of life in a tree. The Egyptians in the autumn threw down the Tat cross, and at the solstice or the equinox of spring, erected it again. The two positions made the cross. The Tat is the backbone of Osiris, the sign of eternal stability. And Tattu was the "place of establishing forever." 414 - 416.

This passage explains that the ritual of throwing down the cross and raising it back predates literalist Christianity as it was formulated in the first through fifth centuries AD. It was a ritual in ancient Egypt associated with the Djed-column (Kuhn uses the form Tat, the older version of writing this same word in our lettering system -- today it is more commonly written as Djed). In fact, Kuhn explains that the Egyptians had a legend in which Isis lost the Tat column in the sea (Lost Light, 420-421) as well as a ritual in which they cast it down into the waters of the Nile (page 306). Also, in the video above you can see that the cross thrown into the water to be brought up again is wreathed in leaves, which relates well to Kuhn's discussion cited above about the cross blossoming with leaves as a sign of life.

After reading this and watching the video, the centuries-old paintings and frescoes showing John the Baptist in the river scene carrying a wooden staff in the form of a cross become even more full of powerful meaning.

Kuhn argues that the ritual of throwing down the cross into the waters and raising it up again represents the divine spark in each of us, thrown down into incarnation and hidden, which we must recognize and elevate. The rituals in which one swimmer finds the cross and brings it up, and then is recognized as special for the entire year, seems to drive home the lesson that "every reader [must] discern himself [or herself] to be the central figure" in the myth or sacred drama. In a very real sense, the concept of the epiphany or the theophany is "all about you" -- you are the "star" of the show, just as the swimmer who lifts up the cross first is the "star" of the drama for that year.

Other traditions from Epiphany or Theophany around the world which emphasize the same message include the tradition of baking a single black bean into a cake: the feast guest who finds the bean in his or her piece is "king" or "queen" for the festival. This again speaks to the symbolism of the "hidden god" or the "hidden divinity" inside each man and woman: this is the message of our human incarnation, conveyed in all the ancient scriptures of the world, according to this interpretation.

And here we return to the fact that in the paintings above showing the Baptism of Jesus, which is associated with Epiphany or Theophany or the revelation of his divine nature, the figure of Jesus is depicted with his hands in the distinctive position of "prayer," associated with the word "Amen" in Christian tradition, and with the benediction "Namaste" in India and other cultures.

This previous post explored the fact that the word "Namaste" means "I bow to you," and by extension "I bow to the divinity in you," and even "The divinity in me recognizes and acknowledges the divinity in you." Similarly, the word "Amen" which is associated with this very same position of the hands is the name of the ancient Egyptian god "Amun" or "Ammon" or "Amoun" -- the hidden god.

This confluence is most appropriate for Epiphany, in which the hidden divine nature is revealed.

We could go on and on contemplating the amazing and profound truths which this examination opens up for us to explore. However, one practical application which seems to be something we can think about every day (and one that I am working on in my own life) is the concept of blessing and not cursing. If we take seriously the fact that every man and woman we meet is possessed of an internal divine spark, then we should want to look at them with positive intentions, seeing beyond the physical and material and "animal" responses we might have when -- for example -- they cut us off in traffic (or stop at a green light long enough to get through it themselves and cause us to miss it).

It may seem strange at first, but reacting to such a situation with real thoughts of blessing towards them produces a whole different set of reactions than reacting with cursing (even if they never even know what was going through your mind or said in your car).

And there are many more applications much more profound than that one.

Previous posts have explored the definition of blessing as being related to the recognition and elevation of spirit, in ourselves, in other people, in animals and plants and streams and rocks and in entire the rest of the material universe.

And the concept contained in the ancient scriptures and traditions regarding Epiphany -- not just in the New Testament scriptures but in the sacred traditions of ancient Egypt and in other ancient cultures around the world -- seem to be pointing us in the very same direction.

Remains of an ancient Egyptian Djed-column (or "Tat cross" as Alvin Boyd Kuhn and other earlier writers usually refer to it), Wikimedia commons (link).