Isis and Nephthys: March Equinox 2015

foreground image: Book of the Dead, Papyrus of Ani, c. 1250 BC (modified), Wikimedia commons (link).

background image: Zodiac Wheel, Opus Medico-Chymicum, Johann Daniel Mylius, AD1618 (link).

As the earth speeds past the point of March equinox, days in the northern hemisphere begin to grow noticeably longer than nights, "crossing over" from the half of the year in which night rules over day, and ascending into the "upper half" of the year in which day, light, and warmth become more and more dominant.

The spinning earth will hurtle past the exact point of the equinox at 2245 UTC on 20 March this year, which corresponds to 1845 or 6:45 pm for observers in North America on the east coast, and 1545 or 3:45 pm for observers in North America on the west coast (and, if you are not in one of those two slices of the planet, you should be able to calculate the local time for your particular spot on the spinning globe based on the difference in longitude to your location from the line of UTC).

As previous posts have explained, the equinox marks the crossing of the plane of the ecliptic (the arc along which the sun appears to travel each day, due to the fact that we are standing on a spinning earth) and the celestial equator (that imaginary line in the sky that is 90 degrees down from the north celestial pole, or 90 degrees up from the south celestial pole, which are best visualized using the diagrams in this previous post, in which the celestial equator is the third and largest of the circles in each diagram), such that the sun's daily arc is north of the celestial equator during the day, which means it will be "above" it and closer to the apex-point of the sky for viewers in the northern hemisphere, and "below" it or closer to the horizon for viewers in the southern hemisphere.

Other significant actions will be taking place this year on the same day -- even as the "ship" of the earth passes "broadsides" to the sun (in the "earth-ship metaphor" in which the prow or bowsprit of the ship equates to the north pole, and the lantern in the stern of the ship equates to the south pole, as described in this previous post from winter solstice of 2011, the solstices being the two points at which either the bowsprit or the stern are pointing at the sun), the moon which is orbiting in circles around the earth is also passing directly between the earth and the sun itself, creating the monthly phenomenon of New Moon. The moon will pass that point of New Moon at 0938 UTC on 20 March.

Additionally, because the moon will simultaneously be crossing the ecliptic plane as it passes through the point of New Moon this month, it will create an eclipse of the sun which will be visible to many observers in northern portions of the eastern hemisphere. 

Because the moon does not orbit the earth on the plane of the ecliptic, but along a plane that is inclined to the plane of the ecliptic, it does not create an eclipse every time it passes between the earth and the sun. However, during its monthly orbit, its tilted orbital plane crosses once from "above to below," and once more from "below to above," the plane of the ecliptic. These lunar "crossing points" are referred to as the two "lunar nodes," also known as the "draconitic points." When the moon crosses through a lunar node at the point of New Moon, it blocks the sun for observers on some parts of our globe, and creates a solar eclipse (and when it passes a lunar node at the point of Full Moon, the earth blocks the sun and creates a lunar eclipse). These lunar nodes or draconitic points are discussed in this previous post, along with some diagrams and helpful links.

So, as the earth hurtles past one of the two annual "crossing points" that cause the ecliptic line to cross the celestial equator, the moon is also passing through one of the two monthly "crossing points" at which its path crosses the ecliptic, and it is doing so at the point of New Moon, to create a solar eclipse (the moon is "crossing down" on this particular New Moon).

Truly a stunning array of crossings! And one which cannot fail to produce feelings among us here on earth that these motions must somehow have significance in our own lives and persons.

In fact, the March equinox, when we leave the "lower half" of the year (for those in the northern hemisphere), was invested with profound significance in the ancient systems of sacred metaphor. 

It was encoded in myth and sacred scriptures and legends as the point of crossing up out of the land of bondage, or out of the underworld, such as in the Old Testament story of the escape from Egypt by means of the crossing of the Red Sea (see discussion in this previous post).

It was also seen as a place of sacrifice, as was the downward crossing point on the other side of the year, at the September equinox. 

As discussed in this previous post, the story of Abraham taking Isaac up the sacred mountain in order (he thinks) to sacrifice him contains numerous clues which show that it encodes the point of the year of the March equinox, when the sun and its ecliptic path are "climbing up" towards the summit of the year (for observers in the northern hemisphere). Because the upward crossing point at the March equinox took place each year when the sun was rising in the sign of Aries the Ram (during the precessional Age of Aries, discussed here and explained further in the video here), that story of sacrifice involving a trip up the mountain concludes with the substitutionary sacrifice of a Ram rather than of Isaac himself.

Similarly, the sacrifice of the Passover lambs took place immediately prior to the escape from enslavement in the land of Egypt (the "house of bondage," an esoteric and allegorical portrayal in myth of the lower half of the year), and the crossing of the Red Sea discussed earlier. The lamb is another indicator of the sign of Aries the Ram, the sign in which the sun would rise on the spring equinox during the Age of Aries. This is why the date of the Passover is tied to the March equinox, as is the Easter celebration of the sacrifice and subsequent rising of the Christ (described in Revelation 13:8 as "the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world"). 

These sacred writings are describing the annual crossing upwards, from death (the lower half of the year) to life. 

But it is very easy to make the mistake of concluding that this discovery means these ancient sacred stories are "only" about the natural phenomena of the annual cycle, the return of spring, the rebirth of flowers and growing things, etc. 

In other words, some who have noticed the undeniable connection between the scriptures and the motions of the heavens have concluded that this somehow diminishes their message, and makes it less about spiritual things and merely an ancient attempt to explain and perhaps to honor our amazing physical world.

This conclusion would be mistaken. 

It is in fact self-evident that the ancient scriptures and sacred traditions of humanity are concerned with  imparting profoundly spiritual truths, in addition to the fact that they demonstrate an incredibly sophisticated understanding of the glories of our universe and the motions of the earth in relation to the sun, moon, planets and stars, and the cycles of the seasons and the heavenly bodies and even the cycles of the subtle motion of precession.

The originators of the myths and sacred stories and ancient scriptures of the world do not go to the trouble of encoding all these motions in their stories about men and women, gods and goddesses, giants and demons and spirits, just because they were trying to explain where lightning came from or why eclipses occurred: they were using these cycles of heavenly bodies that we can see in order to impart knowledge of what we cannot see -- the invisible realm of spirit which lies within and behind everything in this physical universe, and which may actually be the true source from which the material universe is projected. 

And, by the very act of turning the motions of these heavenly bodies into stories involving men and women, they are showing that we are intimately connected to the entire universe, and that thus we ourselves have a physical and a spiritual nature, a dual nature just like the dual nature of the infinite universe which we ourselves embody and reflect and even contain. 

This dual nature -- of both the macrocosmic universe and the individual man or woman who contains and represents the universe as its microcosmic reflection -- is conveyed in the world's myths through the dual nature of the zodiac wheel (divided into the upper half and lower half, the land of spirit and the land of incarnation), the dual symbols of the equinoxes (one marking the crossing point down, into material incarnation and hence into the underworld of incarnation and death, and one marking the crossing point up, into the realm of spirit and spiritual life), and the dual nature of the moon (passing from New Moon to Full Moon, and crossing through the lunar nodes upwards and downwards just as the ecliptic crosses upwards and downwards during the solar cycle).

As has been discussed in countless previous posts, this dual nature of our incarnate existence is seen in the ancient symbols of the Cross and the Ankh, each with its horizontal beam (representative of being cast down into matter, and hence representative of our physical, animal nature while incarnate in these physical bodies) and its vertical pillar (representative of the spirit rising up, the invisible aspect of our nature which overcomes and transcends the physical body and which, unlike the body, does not experience physical death).  

It was also conveyed in the ancient myths involving the Djed column of ancient Egypt, which was cast down when Osiris entered the realm of death and was layed out horizontally, and which is then raised up to represent the same "vertical component" of spirit and triumph over death and incarnation.

The equinox points, then, represent the "crossing" points of the spirit, down into incarnation (depicted by the lower half of the year, and by the underworlds of myth, including the "house of bondage" of Egypt in the Old Testament, or of Tartarus and Hades and many others around the world) and up into greater spiritual awakening and transcendence (and ultimately into spiritual life beyond the body).

Alvin Boyd Kuhn has offered the tremendous insight that, in order to convey this important understanding of our dual physical-spiritual nature, these two crossing points were sometimes depicted in mythology around the world as the two mothers of the god, sometimes seen as two goddesses stationed at those two important crossing points of the year, the fall and spring equinoxes. There, they would give birth to the hero, or the god, one being a birth down into physical incarnation, and the other being a second birth or spiritual birth, upwards into greater consciousness and spiritual life.

He notes that these two goddesses, or two mothers, are depicted on either side of the Ankh cross of ancient Egypt in some important representations -- such as the Ankh with upraised arms shown above, from the Papyrus of Ani, in which the goddesses Isis and Nephthys are shown on either side of the Ankh itself, in the positions corresponding to the two equinoxes (the upraised arms represent summer solstice and the constellation of Cancer the Crab at the top of the year during the Age of Aries, as discussed in previous posts such as this one).

Elaborating on the importance of these two goddesses and the two births, Alvin Boyd Kuhn writes in Lost Light (1940):

Man is, then, a natural man and a god, in combination. Our natural body gives the soul of man its baptism by water; our nascent spiritual body is to give us the later baptism by fire! We are born first as the natural man; then as the spiritual. Or we are born first by water and then by fire. Of vital significance at this point are two statements by St. Paul: "That was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural"; and, "First that which is natural, then that which is spiritual." Again he says: "For the natural man comprehendeth not the things of the spirit of God, neither can he." [. . .]

Using astrological bases for portraying cosmic truths, the ancients localized the birth of the natural man in the zodiacal house of Virgo and that of the spiritual man in the opposite house of Pisces. These then were the houses of the two mothers of life. The first was the Virgin Mother (Virgo), the primeval symbol of the Virgin Mary thousands of years BC. Virgo gave man his natural birth by water and became known as the Water-Mother; Pisces (the Fishes by name) gave him his birth by the Fish and was denominated the Fish-Mother. The virgin mothers are all identified with water as symbol and their various names, such as Meri, Mary, Venus (born of the sea-foam), Tiamat, Typhon and Thallath (Greek for "sea") are designations for water. On the other side there are the Fish Avatars of Vishnu, such as the Babylonian Ioannes, or Dagon, and the Assyrian goddess Atergatis was called "the Fish-Mother." Virgo stood as the mother of birth by water, or the birth of man the first, of the earth, earthy; Pisces stood as the mother of birth by spirit or fire, or the birth of man the second, described by St. Paul as "the Lord from heaven." Virgo was the water-mother of the natural man, Pisces the fish-mother of the spiritual man.

[. . .]

The ancient books always grouped the two mothers in pairs. They were called "the two mothers" or sometimes the "two divine sisters." Or they were the wife and sister of the God, under the names of Juno, Venus, Isis, Ishtar, Cybele or Mylitta. In old Egypt they were first Apt and Neith; and later Isis and Nephthys. Massey relates Neith to "net," i.e., fish-net! Clues to their functions were picked up in the great Book of the Dead: "Isis conceived him; Nephthys gave him birth." Or: "Isis bore him; Nephthys suckled him," or reared him. 6 - 8.

Just to make the positioning of the two goddesses or two mothers discussed in this passage by Kuhn more visually clear to the reader, note in the diagram below that the positions of Virgo and Pisces are each directly before the crossing points of the year, and are outlined on the zodiac wheel in blue (for the birth by water, into physical incarnation) and red (for the birth by fire, into spiritual life) on the modified picture here:

One of the passages of the Book of the Dead that Kuhn quotes above is, interestingly enough, section 134, which can be found on page 39 of this online pdf version of the old translation by Budge (1895). That section is known as the Hymn to Ra on the Day of the Month (the Day of the New Moon) When the Boat of Ra Saileth. 

The title of that Hymn to Ra seems most appropriate for this particular day of the year, which is the Day of the New Moon as well as the Day of the Equinox, and of the equinox in which the sun in the Solar Bark is leaping upwards, across the horizontal line of the equinoxes, into the upper half of the year, out of the lower house of bondage and into the heavens!

In that hymn (as translated by Budge) we read:

The heart of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, shall live. His mother Isis giveth birth to him, and Nephthys nurses him, just as Isis gave birth to Horus, and Nephthys nursed him.

This is very significant, as Ani was a human priest of ancient Egypt, and yet he is here identified explicitly (by name) with "the Osiris" and he is told that he too shall have two births, by two goddess mothers, one of whom gave birth to him and one of whom nurtured him towards his spiritual birth.

In other words, this description is not a myth: it is teaching a truth that applies to actual human beings in this incarnate existence -- it teaches us of our dual physical-spiritual nature (in a universe which itself has a dual physical-spiritual nature), and that we are to be aware of and growing in awareness of our spiritual life even as we inhabit a physical body in a world that tries to tell us that the physical is all that matters.

Note also that just because Kuhn uses the masculine pronoun, and just because the ancient symbology uses two mothers for a male god (such as Osiris and Horus in ancient Egypt), does not mean that this truth is not meant to apply equally to every man or woman who has ever lived. Elsewhere we cited the extremely memorable and helpful quotation from Alvin Boyd Kuhn in a different work, in which he said that "the actors [in the sacred myths of humanity] are not old kings, priests and warriors; the one actor in every portrayal, in every scene, is the human soul."

And so, as we ponder this important day of equinox (and of New Moon!), we realize that it can point us towards deep spiritual truths concerning our own human condition. It can remind us of the invisible spirit-world around us, and within us -- and as we become more and more aware of the truth of this dual nature, it may cause us to be resolved to live a life that is more and more about blessing (lifting up the spirit of others and of creation, and our own as well), and not cursing (casting down the spirit, degrading, or brutalizing). 

This is what the ancients intended, when they encoded these awesome and majestic celestial motions into the actions of the sacred stories and scriptures of the human race.

And, as we participate in celebrations (such as Easter, or Passover, or Equinox observances, or others) which tie the motions of the heavens to our own motions and actions here on the ground, we declare the truth "as above, so below" -- that we ourselves contain an invisible and infinite spiritual side, the very truth that the heavens proclaim.

The Profound Lessons of the Lantern Festival

image: detail from Ming Dynasty painting, late 15th century, Wikimedia commons (link). 

While on the subject of important festivals and holidays taking place this month, let's briefly discuss some of the significance of the traditional Chinese celebration of the Lantern Festival, which takes place each year on the night of the fifteenth day after the date of the lunar New Year.

Because the traditional lunar New Year takes place on the first New Moon after winter solstice, a festival timed to take place fifteen days after a New Moon is a festival which will always correspond to the Full Moon (for a discussion of the lunar New Year and moon cycles, see here, for example).

Thus we can immediately perceive that a celebration in which participants (and especially children) carry around lanterns through the streets and pathways and gardens underneath the first Full Moon of the year is declaring, establishing, and reinforcing a connection between the events taking place in the heavenly sphere and the events taking place here on earth, and between the motions of the heavenly bodies and our lives in these physical bodies: a proclamation of "as above, so below."

The image above, most likely painted in the year 1485, is a detail of a long series of painted panels showing the Ming Emperor Xianzong enjoying the Lantern Festival. To enjoy the entire painting, follow this link and then click on the image itself in order to enlarge it (until you do so, it will appear as a very thin strip across the top of the page, with its detail barely visible). Once you click on it, the entire series of episodes in the painting will be too wide to fit on most screens, so you can scroll left and right to view the entire painting, taking time to appreciate all the details included by the original artist, so many centuries ago.

In the image above, children can be seen carrying their lanterns suspended from long red poles. Some of the lanterns are in the shapes of animals or people, while others are more traditional globes with tassels. Vendors can be seen providing the lanterns to the children, from portable tables or booths, each with their own colorful canopies.

The progress of the moon, from New Moon to Full Moon, celebrated in the lunar New Year and the Lantern Festival, was understood by the ancient cultures around the world as conveying deep truths about our condition in this human life. Along with the motions of the sun, the planets, and the glorious backdrop of stars in the celestial sphere, the moon's monthly progress was understood as depicting for us the dual spiritual-physical nature of this universe we inhabit, and the dual spiritual-physical nature of our own human condition in this incarnate life.

In a short lecture on some of the spiritual truths that the ancients saw depicted in the motions of sun and moon, entitled Spiritual Symbolism of the Sun and Moon, Alvin Boyd Kuhn (1880 - 1963) said of the moon:

It is a reflector of the sun's light, and this reflection is made at night, when the sun is out of sight of man! The moon is our sun-by-night, and it is well to delve more deeply into the implications of this datum. The moon conveys to us the sun's light in our darkness. What does this mean on the wider scale of values? It means this: as the night typifies our time of incarnation, the diminished solar light reflected on the lunar surface is an index of the fact that by no means the full power and radiance of the sun (our divine light or spirit) can fall upon us or shine for us while in the life in body. As the moon stands for the body, the reflected light of the sun upon it and from it to us betokens that we can have access only to as much of the spiritual glory as our bodies can give passage to, or give expression to, or become susceptible to. In incarnation we are in spiritual darkness, or have access only to that spiritual force and radiance that can get down to us through the intervening medium of the physical mechanism. [. . .] When in incarnation, we are deprived of the full glow of our inner light. Our god is then as the hidden sun, and we must get its rays through a reflecting-medium, the body. [. . .] It thus also symbolizes the human body, which is surely not the light of spirit, yet in its structure and in its outward countenance, it reflects and bears witness to the divine spirit that animates it, the god hidden within. A man's spirit shines out on his face as the sun shines on the moon! 7 - 8.

Note that, as with other authors from previous generations, Kuhn is accustomed to using the term "man" to refer to "humanity," but that he is quite explicit, both in this lecture and in his other work, to indicate that he is referring to both men and women equally when discussing these great spiritual truths.

It is also important to note that Kuhn is not in any way indicating that he believes the moon's importance is somehow "lesser" as a heavenly teacher than the importance of the sun or any other heavenly light: he is simply saying that by nature of the moon's unique properties, the ancients saw it as perfect for conveying certain truths about our human condition that related to the fact that in these bodies we inhabit, our divine invisible spirit nature is hidden, and not seen directly or in full force. The contrast between the moon and the sun was seen as perfect for conveying that message.

Later in the same portion of his lecture, Kuhn goes on to explain that the moon was in no way inferior as a symbol of our human condition and as a teacher of our purpose in this life of remembering the spiritual that is within and behind everything physical that we see, in other beings and in ourselves, and calling forth the spirit, raising it up, and in doing so blessing them and creation:

But the most sublime element in the spiritual symbolism we are trying to depict comes next in the development of our theme. This is the eternal meaning connected with the sun's light on the moon that we are desirous of impressing in unforgettable vividness upon the imagination. This is the great fact which we would have you call to mind whenever you gaze upon the silvery orb from night to night. As the young crescent fills with light and rounds out its luminous circle, it is writing our spiritual history! It is preaching to us uncomprehending mortals the gospel truth about our own divination. The growing expanse of light on the moon, we repeat, is the sign, symbol and seal of our own transfiguration into godhood! The spark of divinity implanted in our organisms must, to use one Biblical figure, gradually leaven the whole lump; to use another, must illuminate the whole bodily house. [. . .] As we gaze upon the lunar crescent and see it go on toward the full, the vision should fortify us with the profoundest and sublimest truth about this mortal existence of ours, viz.: that we are in process of filling our very bodies with the mantling glow of an interior hidden light, which will steadily transform our whole nature with the beauty of its gleaming. 9.

The existence of Lantern Festivals such as that celebrated in China and other nearby countries and cultures on the fifteenth night after the lunar New Year "brings down" the message of the heavens to us here below, so that we can be reminded of our true condition as beings dwelling indeed in physical bodies, but possessed of an invisible, interior, submerged and hidden divine spark. The fact that children are the ones given the lanterns to carry about seems to emphasize this message -- their carrying about their "little moons" serves as a way of teaching it to them (through symbolism) and of reminding those of all ages who see this drama enacted each year of this message which the world always seems to be conspiring to make us forget.

Lest any skeptical readers doubt that the celestial connotations of this festival have long been part of the culture that observes this annual festival of lanterns, they should consider this beautiful poem by Xin Qiji

辛棄疾

(AD 1140 - AD 1207) which evokes the Lantern Festival and is "set to the Tune of the Jade Table" -- a very well-known poem in China:

东风夜放花千树， 

更吹落，星如雨。 

宝马雕车香满路， 

凤箫声动， 

玉壶光转，

一夜鱼龙舞。

蛾儿雪柳黄金缕， 

笑语盈盈暗香去。 

众里寻她千百度， 

蓦然回首， 

那人却在， 

灯火阑珊处。

Personally, I am not currently capable of reading and translating all of that, but it is included for those who can, as translations inevitably must sacrifice some aspect of the poetry (here's the source). The translation found

here, from An Introduction to Chinese Literature by Liu Wu-chi (page 122), reads as follows:

At night the east wind blows open the blooms on a thousand trees,

And it blows down the stars that shower like rain.

Noble steeds and carved carriages -- the sweet flower scent covers the road;

The sound of the phoenix flute wafts gently;

The light of the jade vase revolves;

All night the fish and dragons dance.

Decked in moths, snowy willows, and yellow-gold threads,

She laughs and talks, then disappears like a hidden fragrance.

Among the crowds I have sought her a thousand times;

Suddenly as I turn my head around,

There she is, where the lantern light dimly flickers.

The possibility that the opening two lines of verse (which are rendered rather nicely in this translation as "One night's east wind adorns a thousand trees with flowers / and blows down stars in showers") refers to not only the lanterns of the festival but also the people themselves, who are themselves stars  "blown down in showers" to earth and incarnation by the night's east wind (that is, a wind which originates in the east, but proceeds towards the west and thus towards the place of incarnation, where stars plunge beneath the western horizon, out of the heavens and into the realm of earth and water), would seem to be very defendable.

In other words, the poem evokes the Lantern Festival, and the poignant search for the woman the speaker has seen talking and laughing, but who disappears among the crowds . . . but it also evokes our condition in this incarnate life , in which we are like stars blown down from another world, searching for something of great beauty which we have glimpsed but lost among the jostling crowds of this physical world, but which we suddenly encounter again when we are least expecting it (perhaps when we are not even trying: in the peace of utter stillness).

Further support for the assertion that this poem is working on such multiple levels (even as the Lantern Festival itself is working on these multiple levels) can be found in the imagery of the "fish and dragons" in the final line of the first stanza, referring to the lanterns in the shapes of fish and dragons, carried by the revelers through the streets, but also evoking the tradition in China that carp can eventually transform into dragons. Both creatures, of course, have long barbels at their mouths, which suggests that dragons may once have been carp, or that carp may one day become dragons: but carp are creatures of water and hence represent our lower, human condition in these human bodies, seven-eighths of which are water, while dragons are creatures of air and fire, and represent the unbound power of the spirit-nature, which we all contain.

The poet's choice of creatures, fish and dragons, in the lanterns described as dancing through the night at the festival thus carries the idea of our dual nature, just as the lanterns themselves with their glowing inner candle shining within the delicate outer paper wrapper also depict an aspect of our condition in this incarnate passage through night, when we carry an inner divine spark dimly glowing through our fragile "reflecting-medium" of the body (as Alvin Boyd Kuhn describes it in the passages cited above).

The fact that this poem is "To the tune of the Jade Table" might also be a hint, in that the "Jade Table" may poetically refer not just to a specific tune about a piece of furniture but to this green table of the earth upon which we have been blown by the east wind to blossom like spring flowers on the trees, or upon which we fall as a rainstorm, even though we are (spiritually speaking) stars who come to earth from the realm of spirit.

And then there is this legend associated with the origin of the Lantern Festival itself, which says that in ancient times, a beautiful bird beloved of the heavenly Jade Emperor flew down to earth, and the people in their ignorance chased the bird and killed it. Engraged, the Jade Emperor vowed to destroy the people by raining fire down upon them, and what is more to do it upon the night of the fifteenth lunar day of the year.

The Jade Emperor's beautiful daughter heard of this terrible plan, and sent warning to the villagers of earth. One of the people, an old man who was very wise, came up with an idea to avert the storm of fire. He instructed all the people to hang lanterns on that night, so that the Jade Emperor and his heavenly army would look down and see what looked like a river of fire already blanketing the towns and villages. The old man also instructed them to set off firecrackers all night, so that the heavenly army would think that all the people were already perishing. In this way, they would no longer feel the need to rain fire down upon the villagers.

And so, the lanterns and fireworks averted the vengeance of the Jade Emperor for the loss of his favorite bird of heaven, and the event is still observed all these thousands of years later on the same night (and perhaps to ensure that the Jade Emperor continues to hold off the rain of fire -- who knows).

The story can also be found in this and other children's books describing the origin and meaning of the Lantern Festival.

Now, this story is a clear giveaway that the Lantern Festival has celestial origins and foundations, because a descending heavenly bird and fire from heaven should by now ring bells for readers who have followed some of the more than fifty "Star Myth" explanations detailed in previous posts, showing the celestial foundations of myths, scriptures, and sacred traditions from around the world.

Below is an image of the portion of the sky which I believe contains the constellations that form the foundations of this myth regarding the origin of the Lantern Festival. The heavenly view will first be presented without my explanatory markings, as it appears in the excellent open-source planetarium app from

stellarium.org

:

Note the smoky column of the Milky Way galaxy, rising up from a point just to the left of the large red "S" that indicates the center of the southern horizon (this screen view simulates an observer in the northern hemisphere, looking towards the south). You may be able to see the curving tail of the sinuous Scorpion constellation just above the horizon, pointing right into the Milky Way.

I believe the Milky Way represents the threatened "rain of fire" from heaven, but also the celestial counterpart to the Lantern Festival that is taking place down on earth. When the Jade Emperor and his heavenly captains see the glowing river of lights from the lanterns of the people, they stay their hand and do not release the storm of fire. The Milky Way represents the lanterns of the people, which the Emperor and his commanders see, causing them to avert the threatened vengeance.

Below is the same screen-shot, but this time I have drawn in and labeled the other constellations I believe play the roles of the Bird of Heaven, the Jade Emperor himself, and his kind and lovely daughter, who warns the people:

The Bird of Heaven who flies too close to earth and is pursued and killed by the people is probably the great Eagle, Aquila. The Eagle and the Swan face one another in the Milky Way galaxy itself, and they figure prominently in many myths around the globe. For more on Eagle and Swan, and how to find them, you can check out this index of stars and constellations that have been featured in previous posts, and look for Aquila and Cygnus. It also has an outstanding image of the Milky Way as it looks rising up from the horizon to an observer out in the desert, away from city lights.

The Jade Emperor is most likely the constellation Bootes, the Herdsman. The reason I believe he is played by Bootes is the fact that Bootes is seated, as if on a throne, and the Jade Emperor is usually presented (not surprisingly) the same way (see below). In some images of the Jade Emperor, one leg is even tucked-in at a sort of "semi-cross-legged" angle, which may be reflective of the short, bent leg of this constellation.

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

Even more importantly, Bootes is a northern constellation, and one who is very close to the pivot of the heavens, the central point around which all of the celestial attendants must turn: the north celestial pole. His "pipe" reaches nearly to the handle of the Big Dipper, and the Dipper of course points to the current Pole Star, Polaris. This fact would make Bootes a strong contender for the Jade Emperor, who holds court at the very center of the heavenly dome.

Another good reason to believe that the Jade Emperor is played by the celestial giant Bootes is the fact that Bootes is very close to Virgo and appears as her father (or grandfather) in many, many Star Myths around the world (see for example this one).

We obviously have a "daughter" appearing in this story: the daughter of the Jade Emperor, who takes pity on the people of earth and warns them of her father's terrible plan. The daughter is almost certainly played by Virgo in this Star Myth about the origins of the Lantern Festival.

Connections like this in the foundational myth of the Lantern Festival indicate that its celestial significance was well understood by at least some segment of the culture down through the millennia that this annual celebration has been going on.

And so, the festival of lanterns enacted each year at the Full Moon of the first month after the lunar New Year serves an important purpose: it connects heaven and earth, and reminds us that, though we move about on this terrestrial surface (this "Jade Table") in these human bodies, we are also truly spiritual beings, from another realm not mingled with earth or water -- the realm of invisible spirit, the realm of the gods.

The lanterns and the firecrackers themselves serve to remind us and re-awaken us to that fact -- and they seem in fact to be symbols most excellently selected to do so. Below is another segment from the Ming Dynasty painting shown earlier -- in this portion, several people are setting off fireworks, and the Emperor himself can be seen enjoying the festivities from a porch above, under a yellow awning or silken tent.

image: detail from Ming Dynasty painting, late 15th century, Wikimedia commons (link). 

And so, let us conclude with a final quotation from the lecture by Alvin Boyd Kuhn mentioned above, in which the spiritual significance of the moon in its phases, and the message the ancients believed that this glorious and nearest of heavenly bodies conveys to us, progressing as it does each month not only from New Moon to Full Moon and back again, but also from the western horizon (where the New Moon is first seen, trailing the sun which has "lapped it" again at each New Moon and then proceeds to get further and further "ahead" of the moon in its course across the sky) to the eastern horizon. He says of the moon:

As just seen, the new moon is conceived in the west, the region of all beginning or entry upon incarnate life, the place of descent into the underworld. It has its birth and begins its career of growth in the west, moving night by night further toward the east. Man, the soul, enters his journey toward divinity in the west, and life by life moves further toward the east, the place of fulfillment and glorious resurrection. What more fitting, then, that the rising of the moon in its full glory, when it typifies the completed and perfected human-divine, the man become god, should take place in the east, the gate of the resurrection! The young new moon appears and mounts in the west; the full moon in the east! 13 - 14.

With this added insight from Alvin Boyd Kuhn, we can now see that the "Lantern Festival Night" poem by Xin Qiji incorporates both the motion of the incarnation or the "descent into the material realm" (with its reference to the wind that moves towards the west, and which sends stars to fall down to earth like rain, or causes flowers to bloom on the trees, representative of our incarnation in these fragile physical forms which are akin to flowers or to paper lanterns) and the motion of the movement back towards the east -- the motion of greater spiritual awareness and awakening -- in the evocation of the motion of the moon from New Moon to the Full Moon, a motion during which the moon's position at the same time each night will be seen to be further and further east in the sky.

The moon is currently voyaging back towards the point of New Moon, having passed through the night of Full Moon and the night of the Lantern Festival, but it is still the "first moon" of the lunar year, and we can get up early in the morning and see it in the sky before dawn (rising less and less distance ahead of the sun each day), and think about the spiritual truths that the moon conveys to us.

In fact, we can do so throughout the year, and as we do so give thanks for the moon's constant reminder that we and the universe are composed of a physical aspect but that within each of us there is a spiritual component which we should be bringing forth in every way that we can.

One night's east wind adorns a thousand trees with flowers

And blows down stars in showers

Fine steeds and carved cabs spread fragrance en route

Music vibrates from the flute

The moon sheds its full light

While fish and dragon lanterns dance all night

In gold-thread dress, with moth or willow ornaments

Giggling, she melts into the throng with trails of scents

But in the crowd once and again

I look for her in vain

When all at once I turn my head

I find her there where lantern light is dimly shed

Happy Pi Day! 03 14 15

Your humble author, working on pi-cutting skills: West Point, 1987.

Since it is the fourteenth day of the third month (which can be abbreviated 3.14), this day is often playfully referred to as "pi day," in recognition of the fact that the transcendental number pi (which goes on forever and has no discernible pattern to its endlessly-unfolding decimal sequence) begins with 3.14 . . .

And, because this is the year designated AD 2015 (which means that this day in this year can thus be abbreviated 3.14.15), this particular "pi day" is the only one since 1915 that has reflected the "first four digits of pi" after the decimal place (the first 9 digits of pi after the decimal place are 3.141592653 . . .

Mathematically, of course, pi relates the diameter of a circle to its circumference: the circumference of a circle can be expressed as 

π

d, where "d" is the diameter of the circle.

Because of pi's intimate relationship with the shape of the circle -- a shape with great symbolic significance, representative of the heavens above and hence of the world of spirit -- pi has long been treated with reverential honor and respect.

At the ancient monastic academy of West Point, for example, the act of cutting any pie or cake was once treated as a ritual of tremendous importance, as can be witnessed in the photograph above (which was not staged), in which a circular dessert pie is being inscribed with a knife-line across its diameter, while gentle coaching and advice is offered in order to ensure that the ceremony is done precisely in accordance with tradition.

This level of attention to detail is appropriate, because the act of placing a dividing line across the circular space of the pie is symbolically akin to coming into contact with the infinite.

Mathemagician Marty Leeds, who is very attuned to the symbolic significance of number, and especially of the transcendental number pi, explores the profound spiritual significance of pi in his book The Peacock Tales, reflecting:

I was spellbound by pi's infinite digits, its powerful trinity and its mysterious transcendence. [. . .]

[The] cosmic birth was the act of a great try-unity, first manifesting itself within itself and then releasing that potential by dividing itself; and pi is the ratio and geometric symbol given to us to help us remember and understand this story. God manifesting itself in the beginning of time as the sphere of creation is recognized in the circumference of pi, the division of itself recognized in pi's diameter, and the expansion of our universe recognized in pi's ever-unfolding, infinite digits.

In short, the mathematical constant of pi is a representation of the creation of our expanding universe.

15 - 17. [Italics and boldface type in the original].

Later in the same book, Marty dives deeper and deeper into the profound meaning of pi:

In the study of sacred geometry, the circle represented Heaven and the square represented Earth. This motif is seen within the Freemasonic Square and Compasses (the compass being Heaven and the square being Earth), within the ancient Chinese cosmographic concept known as Gai Tian (the square earth is a chariot, the round heaven its canopy) as well as utilized by the Buddhists in the building of the sacred, mound-like or semi-hemispherical structure known as the Buddhist Stupa. It is important to note for our study that the place where God resides, Heaven, is geometrically symbolized by the circle. If one takes a length of string and makes it a triangle, a square, a rectangle, or any other sort of a polygon, the amount of space that string creates will always be smaller than if one makes it a circle. The circle encapsulates the most amount of space with the least amount of effort. Bringing the circle out into three dimensions to make it a sphere will encapsulate the most volume. This geometric fact is one of high symbolic value. The circle is expressing something about the nature of its own being. It is speaking to you. It is representing, within its own essence and qualities, the limit or sphere or creation. [. . .]

The circle also leads us to the first number in existence, zero. If we were to attribute zero to a geometric form, the most obvious form we could equate it to would be the circle. The number (or non-number) zero expresses the concept of nothing. [. . .] The circle, by encapsulating the most space, yet simultaneously being a representation of the zero, or NO THING, condenses all time and all space into one geometric form. Put simply, the circle represents the concept of all or nothing. As far out into the abyss we wish to go, and as close to nothingness as we may conceive, the circle represents both. 125 - 127.

Pi connects the finite to the infinite, in that it relates a finite linear diameter (or radius, which is half the diameter and which is the distance between the points of a compass used to sweep out a circle, the compass thus being symbolic of the circle which it creates when it is used) to the shape that represents the infinite and the ineffable.

The architects of the Great Pyramid incorporated pi into the very structure of that massive monument, which has a perimeter around the base that is 2π times the height of the pyramid.

Similarly, the monument we know today as the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan in modern-day Mexico has a base perimeter which is 4π times the height of the pyramid.

These structures can thus be understood to symbolically unite heaven (the circle) with the earth (the square) and to act as symbolic link between the finite and the infinite, between the material realm and the realm of spirit.

In the second passage above from

The Peacock Tales, Marty Leeds also mentions the Square and Compasses of Freemasonry, which can be seen to point to the same connection between heaven and earth, material and spiritual, finite and infinite. The right-angle square tool clearly evokes the square, while the compass device evokes the circle: Heaven and Earth.

Interestingly enough, there is an important part of the heavenly sphere which contains two constellations that can be seen as evoking the very same profound concept of connection between heaven and earth, the infinite and the finite. These two constellations are the Great Square of Pegasus and the constellation known as the Triangulum, or Triangle, which is located close by. 

The Great Square, of course, evokes the square which represents bounded, limited, physical space: the earth (which goes around the sun in an annual circuit that is bounded by the "four pillars" or the "four corners" denoted by the two solstices and the two equinoxes). 

The Triangle evokes the instrument of the compass which is used to sweep out a circle. Hence, the two constellations, providentially located in the sky so close together, evoke the connection between Heaven and Earth, spiritual and material, infinite and finite.

The Triangle is actually also located very near to the critically-important constellation of Aries the Ram, whose brightest stars are also three in number (and which in fact are not quite so bright as those of the Triangle, making the Triangle a very useful tool for locating Aries, as discussed in this previous post).

Below is a screen-shot of the sky showing the position of the Great Square (outlined in green) and the Triangulum (outlined in red), both of which are outlined along with Aries (also outlined in red, only the brightest three stars being connected in this illustration).

As you can see from the above diagram, which I created using the outstanding open-source planetarium app Stellarium (available at stellarium.org), on this particularly significant "pi day," the earth is located on the opposite side of the sun from the portion of infinite space containing the stars which make up the constellations of the Great Square and of the Triangulum. 

This means that in order to "look towards" the Square and the Triangulum on this 3/14/15 day, one must look towards the sun itself. You won't be able to see these constellations in the night sky on this day, because when we are on the "night side" of the earth (the side turned away from the sun) we will be facing an entirely different sector of the heavens.

This seems somehow appropriate and even significant, since the calendar day itself that we designate as 3/14/15 is a date on the solar calendar (and the year AD 2015 itself is a year which commemorates the year of the Lord, the Christ, who can be shown to have strong connections to our sun, the enabler of all life on earth and the single most-essential intermediary through which or through whom we relate to the heavens beyond).

Ultimately, one of the most important messages of this mysterious and transcendental number pi is what it tells us about ourselves: that we ourselves, like pi, at once touch both the finite and the infinite, occupy the interstices of Heaven and Earth, matter and spirit. 

Pi day can help remind us of this truth -- a truth which the exigencies of the physical world often work to obscure. 

It is a perfect day to pause and meditate further on these truths.

And, once we become aware of it, pi can continue to remind us of these concepts more than just once a year -- whenever we encounter a circle in the form of a sacred drum, for example, or consider the infinite vastness of the night sky that opens up within the circle of the horizon.

Happy Pi Day!

For those interested in previous posts which touch on the concept of pi, see also:

• "Black Elk and the sacred circle"
• "Scott Onstott and the metaphor of form"
• "The conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn"
• "Ross Hamilton's Star Mounds"

Also, in light of the photo above, it is interesting to note that the Chinese character for "knife" is:

刀

"The peace of utter stillness . . ."

image: Ruins of the temple of Asclepius, Elea. Wikimedia commons (link).

Special thanks to a reader who recently introduced me to the work of Peter Kingsley, with whom I had previously been unfamiliar. 

I have now read one of Dr. Kingsley's four books, In the Dark Places of Wisdom (1999), which can accurately be described as "momentous in its implications" (in the words one prominent author has used to describe Dr. Kingsley's work).

The momentousness of the implications comes from Dr. Kingsley's discovery that something has been stolen from the culture that we today know as "the West" -- something so essential, that it is in fact the very thing which we each long for in our lives, and which we can wear ourselves out in pursuing and never reaching. 

In the Dark Places of Wisdom describes the problem:

And here's a great secret: we all have that vast missingness deep inside us [. . .] the more we feel that nothingness inside us, the more we feel the need to fill the void. So we try to substitute this and that, but nothing lasts. We keep wanting something else, needing some other need to keep us going [. . .]. 34-35.

Because of what has been stolen in antiquity, he argues, western culture has become "a past master at the art of substitution," but "It offers and never delivers because it can't. It has lost the power even to know what needs to be delivered, so it offers substitutes instead" (35). 

What we are seeking is described by Dr. Kingsley at one point as "the peace of utter stillness" (36), and of course we can never find this by rushing after it, searching for it everywhere -- but ironically there is a way in which it is accessible to every one of us, at all times.

According to his thesis, the knowledge of how to access "the peace of utter stillness" still exists in places outside of western culture, and because of this many moderns have assumed that such knowledge "never took root in the West" (115). "But," he says, "that's not the case." In fact, this knowledge was once at the heart of western culture -- and may indeed lie at the heart of its greatest ancient achievements. It's just that it has been covered over by what may be described as "a conspiracy of silence" (230).

He implies that the blame lies with the invention of a new definition of philosophy, in Athens, under Plato. Plato, the book argues, could almost be seen as a "parricide," who inherited the great ancient wisdom and then betrayed it -- metaphorically speaking, killing his own father. 

And the "father" that Platonic philosophy killed, Kingsley argues, was represented by an actual historical figure, one whose name has survived to this day: Parmenides of Elea.

Based upon new archaeological discoveries of marbles and inscriptions which had lain forgotten at the site of ancient Elea (or Velia, as it was also known and as it is spelled throughout In the Dark Places of Wisdom), along with the body of what had already been known about Parmenides (including the surviving fragments of his own writings), Peter Kingsley shows the reader that Parmenides came from an ancient line of wisdom-lovers who practiced the technique of achieving that "utter stillness" through the entry of a state of consciousness "described as neither sleep nor waking," in which they made contact with "another level of awareness and another level of being" (80).

In other words, Peter Kingsley has found yet another incredibly important line of evidence which demonstrates that what we today describe as "shamanic" (a word which he uses in the book) is in fact the shared inheritance of all humanity -- not least of all that portion which would later come to be known as "the West" -- but that in western culture this inheritance has somehow been lost, or stolen. 

The details are amazing and fascinating, and deserve to be read in their entirety in the book itself. Below are just a few noteworthy quotations, many of which appear to resonate very strongly with material that has been presented in this blog and in my 2014 book The Undying Stars, where similar conclusions have been reached based upon other sources of evidence -- which is just what we might expect to find, if in fact something like the loss posited in In the Dark Places of Wisdom has indeed taken place in western culture (due to font limitations, some diacritical markings over vowels, present in the original quotations, are not included here):

• "Always we want to learn from outside, from absorbing other people's knowledge. It's safer that way. The trouble is that it's always other people's knowledge. We already have everything we need to know, in the darkness inside ourselves. The longing is what turns us inside out until we find the sun and the moon and the stars inside" (67).
• "And the fact is that Parmenides never describes himself as traveling out of darkness into the light. When you follow what he says you see he was going in exactly the opposite direction" (51).
• "The underworld isn't just a place of darkness and death. It only seems like that from a distance. In reality it's the supreme place of paradox where all the opposites meet. Right at the roots of western as well as eastern mythology there's the idea that the sun comes out of the underworld and goes back to the underworld every night. It belongs in the underworld. That's where it has its home; where its children come from. The source of light is at home in the darkness" (68).
• "There used to be experts at incubation -- masters at the art of going into another state of consciousness or allowing themselves to go if they were drawn there. Sometimes they did this for the sake of healing others, but the point of incubation wasn't really the healing at all. That's simply how it seemed. What was most important was the fact that the healing comes from another level of being, from somewhere else. For these were people who were able to enter another world, make contact with the divine receive knowledge directly from the gods" (101-102). 
• "The purpose was to free people's attention from distractions, to turn it in another direction so their awareness could start operating in an entirely different way. The stillness had a point to it, and that was to create an opening into a world unlike anything we're used to: a world that can only be entered 'in deep meditation, ecstasies and dreams'" (181).
• "Ancient Greek accounts of incubation repeatedly mention certain signs that mark the point of entry into another world: into another state of awareness that's neither waking nor sleep. One of the sings is that you become aware of a rapid spinning movement. Another is that you hear the powerful vibration produced by a piping, whistling hissing sound." In India exactly the same signs are described as the prelude to entering samadhi, the state beyond sleep and waking. And they're directly related to the process known as the awakening of kundalini -- of the 'serpent power' that's the basic energy in all creation but that's almost completely asleep in human beings. When it starts waking up it makes a hissing sound" (128).
• "The recipe is strictly esoteric, only for transmission from a spiritual 'father' to his adopted 'son'" (129).
• "For us a song and a road are very different things. But in the language of ancient Greek epic poetry the word for 'road' and the word for 'song,' oimos and oime, are almost identical. They're linked, have the same origin. Originally the poet's song was quite simply a journey into another world: a world where the past and future are as accessible and real as the present. And his journey was his song. Those were the times when the poet was a magician, a shaman. [. . .] The words shamans use as they enter the state of ecstasy evoke the things they speak about. The poems they sing don't only describe their journeys; they're what makes the journeys happen. And shamans have always used repetition as a matter of course to invoke a consciousness quite different from our ordinary awareness: a consciousness where something else starts to take over. The repetition is what draws them into another world, away from all the things we know" (122 - 123).

Each of these quotations deserves careful and deep consideration. As does the entire book, and the message it is trying to tell us.

It is fascinating to note that in this ancient tradition of which Parmenides (or Parmeneides) was part, the entry into the condition of being "beyond sleep and waking" was understood to be essential for the "fields" of both healing and of properly ordering society and human activity. This same connection is also found in shamanic cultures around the world, and we have also seen that it appears to have been a central feature of the Therapeutae of the ancient world, discussed in this previous post.

Regarding the thesis that it was Plato (and the mindset of Athens in general) who is responsible for the loss of this ancient wisdom, I would say that it is very clear that Plato himself gives hints that his writing  (and especially his "story-form" writing) is not meant to be understood literally -- that Plato's writing is itself esoteric in nature -- and Peter Kingsley acknowledges that in this book.  

Indeed, he provides many quotations from Plato which indicate that Plato as well believed that the rules for ordering society had to come from the realm of the gods (and specifically from Apollo, who is not only the god of the sun but also of music, of healing, and of laws for the proper ordering of society and one's own life), which seems to undermine the argument that Plato or the Platonic school turned philosophy into an exercise in dead and dry "ratiocination" (to use a 19th-century term) rather than one of ecstatic travel into non-ordinary reality.

And, as I have explored previously, there is an important exchange in the dialogue known as the Phaedrus in which Plato has Socrates point to the temple at Delphi -- the most important oracle in the ancient world, and the place in which the priestess (the Pythia) would "cross over" into that same realm "beyond sleep and waking" in order to receive information directly from the divine (in this case, of course, from Apollo, whose importance is powerfully and insightfully explored throughout In the Dark Places of Wisdom). 

And so I am not so sure that Plato was actually the culprit.

I personally believe that there is strong evidence to support the conclusion that the actual forces that sought to destroy the esoteric and "shamanic" elements at the heart of what would come to be called "western culture" were not the Platonists but rather the creators of literalist Christianity, who spent the years that we (and they) designate as the second and third centuries AD vehemently opposing esoteric interpretations of the scriptures that they held sacred, and especially the various different schools and groups known as the Gnostics, and who eventually maneuvered into the capitol of the Roman Empire itself -- whereupon, during the reign of the emperor Theodosius, they extinguished both the Eleusinian Mysteries and the Oracle at Delphi.

Nevertheless, I am in complete agreement with Dr. Kingsley regarding the answer to the "vast missingness deep inside us," and the fact that we are all designed for and capable of "the peace of utter stillness," and that in fact we are in contact with this infinite stillness of the divine realm at all times, and we can access it through a nearly infinite variety of different techniques of ecstasy.

I am also in agreement that this ability to journey to the hidden realm is part of the ancient heritage of all humanity -- of the "western" part as well -- but that in the West it has been stolen, and suppressed, for well over a thousand years and nearly for two thousand.

This knowledge cannot be hidden forever. It is right there, in each of us, ready to be found.

Many thanks to Peter Kingsley for his work in revealing an incredibly important part of this story, and to Mr. J____ for pointing me to it.

a few additional previous posts with some resonance to the subjects discussed above include:

• "Your song"
• "Buddha bless you"
• "The shamanic journey described in the Pyramid Texts"
• "The horizon and the scales of judgement"

One Foundation

video link 

From the 1973 album Burnin' by The Wailers, these are the lyrics to "One Foundation," written by the immortal Peter Tosh. The words sung by Peter Tosh (lead vocals on this song) are in non-italicized  (upright) text, and those in italics are sung by the accompanying artists: 

Got to build our love

On one foundation

Got to build our love

On one foundation

Got to build our love

On one foundation

[or] There will never be

No love at all

There will never be

No love at all

Got to put aside

Man's segregation

Got to put aside

Them organization

Got to put aside

Them denomination

There will -- there will never be

No love at all

I mean there will never be

No love at all

Got to build our love

So build our love

on one foundation

On one foundation

We got to build our love

Come let us build our love

On one foundation

On one solid foundation

Got to build our love

Got to build our love

On one foundation

On one foundation

Or there will never be

A single drop of love

You won't have no

True freedom, yeh

Got to come together

We are birds of a feather

We got to come together

'Cause we are birds of a feather

We got to come together

'Cause we are birds of a feather

Or there will never be

Lord have mercy

No love at all

There will never be

Yeah yeah

No love at all

We also got to realize

We are one people

Yeah

We got to realize

That we are one people yeh

We got to realize

We are one people

Or there will never be

No love at all

There will never never never be

No love at all

Got to build our love

On one foundation

We got to build our love

On one foundation

Got to build our love

On one foundation

Got to build our love

On one foundation

Got to build our love

On one foundation . . . 

I believe it can be demonstrated that literalist interpretation of sacred texts tends to lead towards what this song describes as "man's segregation" and "them denomination," while esoteric interpretation tends to reveal the underlying unity between the messages of the ancient scriptures and mythologies of virtually all of the world's cultures.

This divisive tendency in literalist interpretation has been explored in some previous posts, including "The sacred celestial metaphors refute racism and sexism," "Shem, Ham and Japheth," "PTAH, JAH, TAO and BUDDHA," and "'Vision A' or 'Vision B'."

The reason that the literalist approach tends towards divisions, segregations, and denominations, is that when sacred texts are interpreted literally, this often leads to the conclusion that one group is literally descended from or blessed by the divine, to the exclusion of all others. 

It also leads very commonly to the conclusion that only those who accept the specific form of literal interpretation favored by that particular group can expect to be blessed in this life and especially in the afterlife, and that all others will be punished in the afterlife -- in some cases, eternally (for some discussion of the reasons I believe the doctrine of eternal punishment in hell is a misinterpretation of texts which are meant to be interpreted esoterically and metaphorically rather than literally, see "No hell below us . . .").

This represents a very severe form of dividing humanity, of setting some people outside of the "family" of those who are supposedly accepted and deserving of love and blessing -- and thus represents the very opposite of what is being urged in "One Foundation." And it can clearly be seen to be in operation among numerous groups to this very day.

The belief that some men and women are more valuable, more blessed, more worthy, or more connected to divine favor than others is actually a reprehensible teaching, and can and very often does lead to the sanctioning of violence (the violation of rights, including the right to security in their physical person) against those deemed to be less favored.

On the other hand, I believe that it can be demonstrated that the ancient scriptures and sacred traditions can be shown to teach that each and every man and woman is equally connected to the divine, that each in fact embodies the universe (each is a "microcosm" of the infinite "macrocosm"), each is inherently possessed of infinite and unmeasurable value. Such a realization, of course, would lead directly to the conclusion that violence against another such being is inherently wrong, and cannot be excused by any appeal to membership by one in some favored group to which the other does not belong.

It might be objected that such a doctrine of non-violence is unrealistic, in a world in which some (regardless of their actual inherent and inextricable connection to the divine) choose nevertheless to exercise violence against their fellow men and women. However, this does not follow at all: such a view would argue that the use of force is in fact permissible to stop someone who is in the act of inflicting physical harm upon another, and that such force is in fact only justified by the intrinsic value of each individual man or woman no matter who they are. Using force to stop violence is not a violation of anyone's rights but rather a protection of them (see further discussion in the post entitled "Why violence is wrong, even in a holographic universe").

Dogmas or ideologies which excuse the violation of the rights of other men and women can properly be described as a form of mind control, in that they are used to override our inherent knowledge that the violation of the rights of others is wrong (just as we inherently know that the violation of our own person and our own rights is wrong and unjust, and we naturally rebel against it, even from a very young age and without having to be taught it).

Such dogmas are not always based upon literalistic interpretations of ancient scriptures, but they certainly can be. And, to be fair, those who interpret scriptures literally do not always condone violence or the violation of the rights of others, or even the devaluation of some groups versus others. The point is that I believe that literalist interpretation can tend to invite such division.

"One Foundation" recognizes that these divisions between members of the human family are in fact artificial and based upon illusion, and that thus so are the reasons which are built up to excuse the violation of the rights of some men and women, or to excuse the elevation of one group at the expense of everyone else.

It smashes through these artificial divisions and segregations, and the man-made organizations which seek to institutionalize and enforce them. 

That is what great art does: it smashes mind control. 

So come let us build our love / On one foundation . . .

The Samson Myth is all about YOU

I have uploaded a new video diving into the profound message for each of us, hidden within the riddle of the Samson story.

Please share it with anyone whom you feel would be interested!

Blessings -- Namaste.

"Vision A" or "Vision B"

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

When Black Elk, a holy man of the Lakota people, expressed the difference between the life before the arrival of the European invasion and after, he said:

Once we were happy in our own country and we were seldom hungry, for then the two-leggeds and the four-leggeds lived together like relatives, and there was plenty for them and for us. But the Wasichus came, and they have made little islands for us and other little islands for the four-leggeds, and always these islands are becoming smaller, for around them surges the gnawing flood of the Wasichus, and it is dirty with lies and greed. Black Elk Speaks, 8.

There is a lot to notice in these two sentences. Black Elk chooses to characterize the difference between the two cultures by saying that his culture saw humanity as part of nature: they lived together with the earth's other creatures like relatives. In contrast, the bringers of the new culture clearly saw themselves as divided from nature, and created what Black Elk describes as "little islands" to physically separate people from the earth's other creatures.

This short passage also implies that directly related to these two opposite views of humanity's place in nature are two opposite views of nature itself: in the first, a vision of abundance, that "there is plenty for them and for us," and in the second, a vision of scarcity and a "gnawing flood [. . .] dirty with lies and greed."

I would argue that in these two sentences, Black Elk has pinpointed the most important negative consequence of the literalist twist that was imposed upon ancient scriptures in Europe (in the time of the Roman Empire) that actually changed their teaching from a message that is closer to the first position Black Elk articulates (we could call this "vision A" for ease of discussion) to the horrific vision of the "gnawing flood" and the ever-shrinking "little islands" described in the second half (we could call this "vision B").

In other words, the ancient scriptures actually articulate "vision A," but at a certain point in history they were twisted into "vision B." 

For example, this previous post discusses the Genesis account of Adam and Eve, as well as the Genesis account of Noah's three sons Shem, Ham and Japheth, and argues that if they are understood allegorically, or esoterically, they clearly convey a message that applies to all men and women equally, and a message that our physical form is only a "coat of skin" and that our common spiritual origin unites us all. Understood this way, they also convey a message that unites humanity with all of nature,  including the infinite starry heavens -- often expressed in the teaching "as above, so below."

However, the same stories when interpreted as describing literal and historic men and women named Adam and Eve, or Noah and his sons Shem, Ham and Japheth, have historically led to all kinds of racist ideologies, and have been used to divide men and women, to elevate one group and devalue another, and even to divide humanity from the other creatures (based on literalistic misinterpretations of the enmity with the serpent, the teachings that man has "dominion" over all the earth and its animals, and the teachings given to Noah about domesticating animals, for example).

In other words, the scriptures that became central to western European culture, and which should be seen as teaching "vision A," were given a literalistic twist at a specific point in history, which led to a culture that was largely guided by "vision B."

In fact, the Biblical scriptures when understood esoterically can be seen as teaching a vision of the natural world, and humanity's place in it, which can be accurately characterized as shamanic. This is because they actually can be shown to be clearly built upon the same foundation as the sacred stories and traditions found around the world, all of which contain clear shamanic elements and teachings.

The literalist takeover of these scriptures, and the campaign to deliberately eliminate texts and teachers who taught an approach which challenged this literalistic "vision B" view of the scriptures, can be demonstrated to have taken place during the years that western historians call the first four centuries AD.

It is very important to understand that, whatever good things western European civilization and culture produced in the centuries that followed (and it cannot be denied that it did produce many good things), this fundamental "vision B" understanding guided much of its development, and that it in fact continues to inform "western civilization" in very powerful and sometimes very destructive ways.

Because, as Black Elk so incisively explains in just two sentences, the vision that shaped "western" thought contains a powerful tendency towards self-imposed division of humanity from nature, as well as antagonistic division between humanity itself. Connected to this division, in Black Elk's view, is a vision of scarcity rather than plenty.

Perhaps nothing illustrates the ongoing influence of this "vision B" attitude better than the rush to create and release genetically-engineered plants and animals into nature. Previous posts have cited ancient philosophers, who wrote prior to the triumph of the literalist takeover, admonishing those whose vision of scarcity led them to horrible treatment of animals and mistrust of nature's bounty -- see for example the arguments of Plutarch and Ovid, both of whom articulate a vision of humanity as related to the animals and to the rest of nature.

Since those posts were written, a new and even more horrific example of what we might call a "runaway vision B" has emerged, with the deliberate creation of genetically-engineered mosquitos, which have already been released en masse in at least two parts of the globe, and which are slated for release in Florida in either January or February of this year (no word yet on whether that has actually taken place already, or if it is set to occur within the next couple weeks).

If there is a better symbol of the terribly misguided decisions that the self-imposed division from nature that "vision B" produces than the decision to genetically alter an insect that regularly feeds on human blood, I don't know what it is -- unless it is the decision to start releasing clouds of them into the wild in an act that can never be un-done.

But just wait a few months and there will probably be a new example even more ominous and un-natural than this one.

It should be starting to become clear to even the most unthinking adherent of the "vision B mindset" that something has gone terribly wrong. Black Elk saw the problem with crystal clarity more than a hundred years ago.

But, the good news is that "vision A" is actually the vision that is at the heart of the shared ancient heritage of all of humanity. It was treacherously supplanted by and replaced with "vision B" in a certain part of the world, in a single culture, many centuries ago -- and the results have been catastrophic for many other cultures around the world in the intervening centuries since that takeover. But if "vision B" could replace "vision A," then that means that there is hope that the process could be reversed -- perhaps even more rapidly than the original switch. 

People can and do change their entire outlook on the world, without violence and sometimes quite rapidly. I know this personally, as I have changed my own vision quite radically within the course of my own life.

The division from nature and from one another described above and in the quotation from Black Elk is clearly a self-imposed separation -- which means that it can also be "self-un-imposed."

We can still listen to the vision that Black Elk shared with the world -- before the gnawing dirty flood of lies and greed covers over the shrinking little islands altogether.

image: Wikimedia commons (link).