The Resurrection

Venus represents the fifth Initiation, Resurrection, the modern name being Reincarnation.

Early in the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary of Magdala went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter, and he reached the tomb first. He bent down and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)

Then the disciples went back to their homes, but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

“Woman,” he said, “why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”

Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher).

Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary of Magdala went to the disciples with the news that she had seen the Lord and that he had told her this. (John 20:1-18)

The Morning Star

According to the Dictionary of Astrology, Venus is the Morning Star:

In esoteric lore, one of the names given to the Pentagram, and in exoteric lore to Venus, which draws a pentagram in the skies in her conjunctions with the Sun. This form is exoterically linked with Venus, and esoterically with what historians call the ‘orans’ gesture, which is itself an imitation of the five points of the pentagram (echoing the two feet, the two out-stretched arms, and the head). Strictly speaking, it is not an ‘orans’ (praying) gesture so much as an image of the departed soul, symbolized in the “astral” plane, at the beginning (in the ‘morning’) of the soul’s post-mortem existence — hence the link with the ‘morning star’ Venus.

From The Star of Bethlehem Mystery: Since there were no clocks, Venus the morning star, the herald of the dawn, was readily recognized as a time keeper. Furthermore, Palestine and Babylon were at a latitude of about 30 to 35 degrees north, so that the celestial paths of the rising Sun and planets were more steeply inclined to the eastern horizon than they were in the more northern latitudes, where London and New York lie. Consequently the Sun appeared to rise much more suddenly and the dawn twilight was a much shorter phenomenon. Twilight therefore gave very little warning of the dawn. In many countries the rising of the ‘Morning Star’ was taken as the herald of the day.

Thoth

The author of Many Happy Returns quoted a particularly moving excerpt from the Edgar Cayce readings, which I found symbolic of this soul energy in the “astral” plane:

We find {Edgar Cayce} in the beginning, when the first of the elements were given, and the forces set in motion that brought about the sphere as we find called earth-plane, and when the morning stars sang together, and the whispering winds brought the news of the coming of man’s indwelling, of the spirit of the Creator, and he, man, became the living soul. (294-8)

From Genisis: Of all the symbols contained in early science the one most reviled by the Christian Church is the pentagram. This five-pointed star is held to represent all that is evil, particularly in its inverted form… The French occultists Eliphas Lévi, in his Transcendental Magic, stated that the pentagram signifies the dominance of the mind over the elements and that the demons of the earth, the air and water are enchained by it. Elsewhere he claims that the pentagram is dangerous in the hands of the uninitiated…

‘The Pentagram,’ continues Lévi, ‘profaned by men, burns ever unclouded in the right hand of the Word of Truth and those who set at naught the Sign of the Cross, tremble before the Star of the Microcosm.’ The pentagram was, in fact, the secret sign of the initiated Pythagorean — initiated, that is, into the hermetic secrets of Trimegistus or Thoth, the Egyptian god of magic. To reveal its meaning to the uninitiated was punishable by death.

Some pertinent questions

The whole approach by David Wood, in his book Genisis, was to uncover a figure on the landscape around Rennes-le-Château in the Cathar territory of the South of France. He succeeded, and demonstrated in many diagrams that the “secret” of Rennes-le-Château was the symbol of the regeneration of human life after death: this symbol was a pentagram, encircled by the ‘Ark Crescent of Nut’ and the ‘Boat Crescent of Isis’, being penetrated by a hexagram (Star of David/Seal of Solomon) in what he termed the ‘Temple of the Stars’. This amounts to a physical representation of the ancient ‘Ark of the Covenant’. As this is a particularly sexual image, the Roman Catholic Church may have tried to suppress its publication.

In his book’s introduction, David Wood asks: Was there something which could survive this passage of time and was still there, waiting to be found?

For centuries Rome considered the pursuit of scientific knowledge to be evil, and I wondered if the valley held something of this nature. Alternatively, could it be historical or religious knowledge potentially damaging to the infrastructure of the Roman Catholic Church?

In 1828 the Abbé Gregoire stated, and others have agreed with him, that Christ delivered to St. John the Evangelist a secret doctrine which was in time in the keeping of the Cathars and the Templars. Could this be why these two organizations were persecuted and why so much attention was given to the Languedoc?

Could there be great secrets from the past, which Rome had decided would be better kept from general knowledge?

Did something exist there which could expose this organization as being far less than it claimed to be? I considered all these questions, and I concluded that if anything had to be hidden, it would need to be done using a formula which was unlikely to be known by the Vatican.

One of the symbols most detested by the church is the pentagram, which it considers to be the sign of the devil. This, coupled with Henry Lincoln’s references to it, made me decide to examine the possibility of pentagonal geometry at Rennes-le-Château. Equally important were the references to the Ark of the Covenant and, by association, this directed me to the ground plan of the Temple of Solomon.

Ark of the Covenant

In his calculations, David Wood returned time and time again to the sum total of 1080, the total perimeter of the Ark of the Covenant, its mercy-seat and the shew-bread table. And in his visual reconstruction of the Ark of the Covenant, he showed it to be a symbol of the generative organs of the female:

The cherubim on the Seat of Mercy are Metatron and Sandalphon. The wings of these cherubim are stretched forth on high, indicating, I would submit that they pass over or encompass the head of the seated person. The wings represent the labia or ‘lips’ of the vagina and the seated person would therefore be simulating a child in the process of being born…

In Indian temples, where the sexual imagery is displayed more obviously, the Yoni is the female organ and the Linga is the male. The word Yoni is also understood to be the same as Iune and the Iune of the Israelites was the ‘dove’. Both of these words can be equated with the Syrian word Io (Isis). The connection between Isis and Magdalene is there again for, as the priestess of Ishtar (Isis), Magdalene was keeper of the doves at Magdala (Place of the Doves) in Galilee.

The Yoni is depicted as a crescent-shaped boat, with ot without the mast in position, which is the Linga or phallus. The crescent-shaped boat was also used in religious ceremonies in Delphi, where it was called the Argo — hence the Greek Argonauts. Delphi was in Arcadia and so was Argia — meaning the place of the Argo. Arcadia means Arca or Argha and Dia the sacred Argha. Furthermore, Arca actually means box. The word argha defies simple analysis. That it means female generative power is certain, but it implies much more. It encompasses serpent, boat, cycle, the number 600 and above all the place of the seed or the origin — the womb.

“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes {serpents} and as innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16)

The Bride-Chamber

The esoteric initiation is the Bride-Chamber is also represented by Venus, as a symbol of Isis. This is discussed as part of the Gnostic traditions by the author of Jung and the Lost Gospels:

Everyone who becomes an offspring of the bride-chamber will receive the light… If anyone does not partake of it while he is in the world, he will not partake of it in the other place. One who has partaken of that light will not be seen, nor can such a one be detained; and none shall be able to afflict such a one even if he should abide in the world. And again when he departs from the world he has already received the truth in the aspect of the images. The world has become the aeon already. For the aeon is for such a one a Pleroma, and it is in this manner: it is disclosed to such a one alone, not hidden in the darkness and the night, but hidden in a perfected day and a sacred light. (127)

But the bride-chamber is concealed. It is the holy of holies… There is a glory that is superior to glory, there is a power which is above power. Thus the perfect things are revealed to us, and so are the hidden things of the truth; and the holy things are disclosed, the bride-chamber calls us to enter. (125)

The supreme mystery of the bride chamber (sometimes called the spiritual marriage or the mystery of the syzygies) is the decisive event in the reunion of the divisions of the human being… Iranaeus, interpreting the teachings of the followers of Valentinus, describes this mystery as the marriage of the human spirit to an angel of the Redeemer who resides in the heaven world above this earth. In modern terms one might define this mystery as a sacred rite of individuation wherein the person becomes a true individuum, or indivisible unity.

The true peacemaker according to {the Gospel of} Thomas, is the one who has made peace within himself. A cognate theme is expressed in the following saying: Blessed are you who have become unified and have become the elect, for you shall find the kingdom; because you come from it, and you shall return to it again. (49)

The Parable of the Foolish and Wise Virgins

I think we now have the link we need: if you imagine the pentagram as pointing to five visible (outer) initiations and five invisible (inner) initiations, at the same time, the completion of the Initiate’s life will encompass ten initiations in total. That is why the number 10 has cropped up so many times with its counterpart the five-pointed star, the pentagram.

“At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. The wise, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. The bridegroom was late, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep.

“At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’

“Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’

“’No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both of us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’

“But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut.

“Later the others also came. ‘Sir! Sir!’ they said, ‘Open the door for us!’

“But he replied, ‘I tell you the truth, I don’t know you.’

“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.” (Matthew 25:1-13)

Picture Credits

To be continued.

Linked Pages: Star: 7 – Mars: The Warrior Star (part 1);
Star: 7 – Mars: The Warrior Star (part 2)

Picture credits:
The Bright Morning Star courtesy of http://www.bibleapocalypse.com;
Thoth courtesy of http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk;
Ark of the Covenant courtesy of http://www.crystalinks.com;
Metatron courtesy of http://www.abovetopsecret.com;
Syzygy courtesy of multisenserealism.com;
Blake – Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins courtesy of en.wikipedia.org.