The caduceus, also known as the Staff of Hermes, is an ancient Greek symbol. We invariably see it as representing medicine but that is a mistake:
The caduceus is often incorrectly used as a symbol of healthcare organizations and medical practice, particularly in the United States of America, due to confusion with the traditional medical symbol, the Rod of Asclepius, which has only one snake and is never depicted with wings – the logo of the World Health Organization uses the Rod of Asclepius as its basis.
Wikipedia
The use of the single snake goes back in the Old Testament to the time Moses lifted up the snake to heal the people.
So, now, this brings us to the point of the image: the Serpent from the Garden of Eden.
Here are a couple of thoughts from Carl Jung:
And this:
The Ophites, a Gnostic sect known in France through the Middle Ages:
This was the long way to arrive at the title of this post. We are indebted yet again to Oriental thinking when it comes to spiritual knowledge. The Middle Way takes us from point A to point B without having to pass go. It’s your ‘get out of jail free’ card.
When your Kundalini starts to rise, you are being initiated into the spiritual realms.
We came to this show a bit late, since we didn’t have Netflix until May. I’d seen it on the lists but hesitated until last night. Now that I had a first look (episode one) I can see how controversial it could be for fundamental Christians and Muslims alike. And I’m sure the Israelis aren’t thrilled either. After all, the Messiah is supposed to be Jewish.
The series focuses on the modern world’s reaction to a man who first appears in the Middle East, whose followers claim him to be the eschatological return of ‘Isa (Jesus). His sudden appearance and apparent miracles spark a growing international following, casting doubts around who he really is, a case investigated by a CIA officer
Wikipedia
Even in the first episode, it is obvious that this young man absolutely identifies with his father, God, and calls himself The Word. But his knowledge of what other peoples’ thoughts are, and their concerns, shows me that there is nothing hidden from him. That makes him ‘different’, for sure. But is he the only One? In my humble opinion, no.
When he ‘escapes’ his jail cell, you get glimpses of other potential ‘miracles’ he could perform, including walking on water. But I’m speculating. There are nine other episodes to watch. The show was cancelled in March.
We were driving to Kitchener and back on Saturday when I saw a message similar to the one above. I say similar, because this is evidently the American version.
According to Tom Harpur’s The Pagan Christ (Pages 86-88)
In Luke’s Gospel, we read how Jesus’ parents took him to the temple for what today is called his bar mitzvah — his entry into adult responsibility to the Torah. But Horus and all the other Christ figures also came of age in a special rite at twelve. (Today, bar mitzvahs occur at the age of 13 for boys, and the equivalent for girls, the bat mitzvah,at age 13.)
Significantly, both Horus and Jesus were accompanied by twelve disciples, as were Mithras and Dionysus. After reading Massey and Kuhn, I discovered that this has a deeper spiritual meaning than appears at first sight. A vast flood of light is let in upon Gospel interpretation if it is understood that the twelve disciples of Jesus symbolized the twelve powers of spiritual light energy to be unfolded by man in twelve labours (or stages) of growth, all imaged by the twelve signs of the zodiac. Kuhn says that from the first it should have been seen, “without cavil,” that the twelve apostles were so much more than agents used by a historical personage to found an earthly ecclesiasticism. For when the Gospel Jesus told them they would sit with him on the twelve celestial thrones and judge the twelve tribes of Israel, they moved at once from the realm of personal history into that of “cosmic hierarchism.”
Egypt gave the twelve followers a more definitive name and function. The twelve were astronomical powers, rulers or ‘saviours of the treasure of light.’ Because light was the crowning product of all cosmic operation, the saviours of it were the culminating depositories of dynamic agency. They became the twelve great spirit-children of Ra’s unimaginable might. With Horus, they became the twelve who accompanied the god to earth as sowers of the seed and later reapers of the divine harvest. In John, Jesus uses the same sowing and reaping metaphors to describe the mission of his twelve disciples. He says, “I tell you, look around and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting.” Without exposing you to a further mass of detail, let me say simply that the evidence seems incontestable that the twelve disciples represent twelve deific powers, and not men.
In the ancient gnosis, as the soul advances through the scale of evolution, he or she passes through twelve grades of being, adding to his or her estate the quality gained at each level, until his or her absorption of the essence of all nature is complete. These twelve qualities of perfected spiritual understanding are what are represented by the twelve astrological signs of the zodiac. In the ancient wisdom, the sun’s journey through each sign, acquiring the special powers of each, symbolized the soul’s round of the elements and the acquisition of the twelve intelligences. It all had as its basis the passage through the heavens of the solar god, who symbolized the unseen divinity behind and through all things. We are made up of body, mind, and spirit. For each of these there are four elements: fire, air, earth, and water. Combined in the one grand synthesis that constitutes a human being, these twelve aspects create the potential for Christ consciousness.
In the old religions of Egypt, Chaldea, and Greece, the twelve rays of genius in humans were variously represented by the Twelve Saviours of the Treasure of Light, the Twelve Reapers of the Golden Grain, the Twelve Harvesters in the Fields of Amenta, the Twelve Builders, the Twelve Carpenters, the Twelve Potters, the Twelve Weavers of the Pattern, the Twelve Fishermen, the Twelve Rowers of the Boat of Ra (with Horus at the prow), the Twelve Sailors in the Ship of Ra, the Sun. The Twelve Labours of Hercules, the Twelve Sons of Jacob, the Twelve Tribes of Israel, the Twelve Apostles, and the twelve knights of King Arthur’s [round] table all have the same zodiacal, evolutionary, and theological derivation.
And then there are the twelve months of the year. It was no accident that there were twelve gods with Odin in Norse mythology. The whole of the Bible, as anyone familiar with it knows, is permeated by the number twelve and multiples thereof. Twelve times twelve times one thousand gives the figure of 144,000, the symbol for all the “elect” of God in the Book of Revelation.
Well, what can I say? If it’s good enough for Tom Harpur, it’s good enough for me.
Who doesn’t like a good story? In the ancient past, knowledge was passed down through the generations by telling stories. Oral history was later written down.
Just as luck would have it (?) we watched Noah last night. The story is bleak, the acting is full of gravitas and the sources of inspiration came from more than the Book of Genesis. As entertainment, it hit the mark: it told us what might have happened to Noah and his family; it made the time sequences more believable than usual; and it showed how Noah was ‘called’ by God to build the Ark.
But is it true?
It is a long-standing fact that the story of Noah and the Flood came down through history as the Epic of Gilgamesh.
But does that make it any less effective as a story? No. Did we learn anything? Yes.
There are so many improbable things about Noah’s version that it can sometimes strain credibility. Like, the implication that humanity started again with one family (albeit a descendant of Adam and Eve): because other races had their own flood stories, it is obvious that Noah and his family could not have been the only survivors. But for the Hebrews, they needed an explanation about how they came to exist after the flood. And because the first five books of the Old Testament are attributed to Moses, the implication is that the Egyptians were the actual authors of the history of the Jews.
Tom Harpur, in his book The Pagan Christ, tackled this sticky situation by acknowledging that ancient history had prototypes of the Christ going back thousands of years before Jesus. He suggests that the Church cribbed most of the Gospel stories from other sources, and then claimed that Satan had sown his lies to discredit the New Testament before it was even written. That’s a bit extreme, in my opinion.
He, and others, are missing an obvious link. Between the ages of 12 and 30, Jesus studied extensively in India and Egypt. He would have been totally aware of how the Messiah was meant to appear in the late 1st Century BC. The stories, as they evolved in the Gospels were meant to ‘prove’ to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah. Who would have told them about the prophecies? Jesus himself.
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
This may not come as a shock to anyone who has done their research, but others may need to take a deep breath before I go on.
In Harpur’s view, Horus and Jesus are identical. Therefore, Jesus never existed as an historical person. In fact, the original Madonna and Child was Isis and Horus. How Egyptian can you get? But we forget that the Hebrews were captive slaves of the Egyptians until Moses persuaded Pharaoh to let his people go. (Even that story is an allegory…)
But the triple whammy for me is the total identification of Horus to Ra.
Ra was the Sun God. Horus was the son. There is a statement which is attributed to Horus about being ‘the light of the world.’ That is echoed in Jesus’ words. Does this mean that it was all plagiarized? No.
The Christ energy is in all of us (yes, even you…) and that Divine Spark needs fanning. Jesus, as the Christ, came into the world to ignite the fire. Seems that he was successful in spite of the Roman Catholic Church’s attempts to snuff the fire out. Now it is burning.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been more than two decades since we were introduced to Thomas Anderson (Neo). The first Matrix film broke through our self-imposed blindness to the truth that the world as we know it is a computerized simulation.
But did it help us? I guess that depends on whether we chose the red pill or not.
To my understanding, this story points out in visual form what Gurdjieff tried to explain a century ago: the energy in charge of this world lives off our collective fear.
I suspect most people missed that point. When Neo took the red pill, he found himself in a cocoon-style pod, plugged into the Machine.
While human beings are kept in the pod, the world they think they inhabit is actually just a computer simulation and all the events in that ‘world’ are used to produce reactions which then get harvested electronically by the Machine.
If I seem to be harping on this plot device, it’s because it is considered a ‘plot hole’ by a great many people. When a person is ‘woke’ they see the mechanisms for what they are.
Marcus Aurelius (April 26, 121 AD – March 17, 180 AD)
By any ordinary standards, Marcus Aurelius lived a ‘good life’. The fact that he was a Roman emperor from 161 to 180 and a Stoic philosopher doesn’t do him any harm. He was the last of the rulers known as the Five Good Emperors, and the last emperor of the Pax Romana, an age of relative peace and stability for the Roman Empire.
But what was he really like?
I know I don’t need to keep repeating this, but his birth time is unknown, so I rectified his chart by focusing on the age (16) he came into the political spotlight (Moon in Capricorn), and the age (58) when he died (Pluto in Aries on the cusp of his 9th House).
The Moon and Venus form a Yod pointing at his Leo Rising @ 21 Leo 30′. According to the Encyclopedia of Astrology 20 degrees Leo is a ‘degree of Faith.’ I think we have a hit. The planet of ‘introspection’, Neptune is therefore in the same sign, but the 12th House, while the planet of ‘higher intelligence’, Uranus is in Virgo in the 1st House. I believe this is why Stoicism was so attractive to him. Uranus forms an inconjunct with Pluto, and that may have been the constant battle between his basic approach to life and his ‘job’ being ruler of the Roman Empire. Even now, he is better known for being a philosopher than an Emperor.
Do you see that slightly lopsided pentagram in the centre of his chart? Interesting, eh?
My cousin Doug’s wife, Margot, mentioned this excellent book in 2007 when I visited them in London, UK that spring. As you may have surmised by my manuscript that I compiled in 1996, I had already reached the conclusion that Tom Harpur comes to in the course of his research for this book. That doesn’t diminish its importance in my eyes. In fact, that makes this all the better for the open-mindedness of his approach.
The implication is that Kabbalah existed before Creation, and the Law of One is a reflection of that Truth. In our ‘recent’ history, the Egyptians seem to have kept alive the ancient spiritual traditions as ‘mysteries’, by implication, the Hebrews were shown these things through Moses. These ‘ancient spiritual traditions’ may have originated in Atlantis, or even before that civilization. The Gnostics were the recipients of these ‘hidden’ sparks and kept alive the flame, even when the ‘established’ Christian Church tried to snuff it out in the ‘Dark Ages’.
But I think the following Ascension ‘reading’ by David Wilcock, shows the Ra complex in a brand new light (at least for me):
When you are so surrounded by the heavenly host, it is indeed rather foolish for you to be so concerned about an imminent alien invasion, if you will. There would never be a possibility for something like this to take place, as you are indeed heavily protected and quarantined from the outside world, if you will, at this point in time. We come to you on a narrow-band vibration, a band that you can perceive early in the morning as you rise into full waking consciousness; a band that will be speaking to you with greater and greater clarity in every moment.
But can you hear the call? Do you understand the words of the Father as they are spoken from His lips to thine own mind? Canst thou assemble the sentences properly, as they have been heard in the early waking delirium that is so commonly discarded with the fury of the alarm clock and the hot shower? Indeed, do you rest comfortably with the notion of species-to-species contact and communion, or even spirit-to-spirit contact, knowing full well that the being you wish to contact is the Christ himself?
What surprise comes to you at the realization that this very Christ is now designed to become literally your personal savior, but not in the sense that the fundamentalists would have it? Rather, it is that spark in you. It is you, and you are it; there is no separation. Therefore, you can call it what you will, but its effects are the same. Your own Divine spark is awakening within you, and thus the phrase in the Bible: “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one can come unto the Father but by me.”
Free, Wynn; Wilcock, David. The Reincarnation of Edgar Cayce?: Interdimensional Communication and Global Transformation (pp. 290-291). North Atlantic Books. Kindle Edition.
In the next few days, I will be re-reading Harpur’s book and commenting on different aspects of his revelation as we go along.
This following quote was printed on the first page of the text (in a slightly different form of words, but essentially saying the same thing):
You might remember the childhood rhyme, spoken while you performed a hand pantomime:
“Here is the church. Here is the steeple. Open the doors and see all the people.”
There are hand gestures to go along with it to up the dexterity ante: Face hands toward each other. Lock fingers together facing down. Hold both index fingers straight up against each other.
Well, the secret, of course, was the interlinking fingers. When you turned your hands over to open the church, the fingers were the ‘people’.
But I’m not here to tell you that. My mission today is to give you one of the easiest confidence boosters to master: steepling.
Steepling is a powerful nonverbal behavior which occurs when the fingers are pressed towards the sky in an almost church-like steeple or prayer position. An example of when you may see the steepling gesture is when somebody believes they have the right answer as steepling tends to be associated with a sign of confidence.
Here’s what the trick is: you might not be feeling super confident (when in an interview or answering difficult questions), but putting your hands together makes you appear to be confident to others. That instills their confidence in you.
Besides, the position of your hands will seem like you are poised in prayer.
(And, just so we’re singing from the same hymn sheet, note that the steepling movement brings the two sides of your energy – left hemisphere and right hemisphere – into alignment. In other words, you complete the electrical circuitry of your body, and become One.)
Another strange sequence in my dream last night: I was using my Kepler 7.0 program to erect a chart, and the date 1492 appeared for the year, triggering a ‘before and after’ image. The ‘before’ was an innocent time in the life of the North American continent. The ‘after’ was the chaos of modern times.
We have not done well as stewards of the land.
I have already written about Christopher Columbus, so I won’t go there again. In looking for the link of my e-book, “At This Point in Time” I discovered that it has fallen off Amazon.com’s records. So, here‘s a link on Amazon.ca.
The issue of his continuing heritage as an American icon is coming under increased scrutiny. People are seeking to pull down his statues, and to remove any reference to him. So, what will that accomplish in the end? Nothing valuable, that I can see.
Revising history is a very tricky business. The Native Peoples of North America want most of us to go back to where we came from: if only we could…
