cdsmiller17

The Woman at the Well

There is a very long passage in the New Testament which can only be described as strange. So many others have pointed out that Jesus’ actions here are peculiar for a Jew in Samaria. Evidently, he had a particular reason for doing so.

The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.

Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his flocks and herds?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to everlasting life.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

“I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where you must worship is in Jerusalem.”

Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and truth.”

The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

The Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”

The Harvest

Up to this point no one else was around. Did Jesus share his story with the disciples later, or did someone ‘interview’ the Samaritan woman? Anyway, he makes a point of making the point of the story.

Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked,“What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”

Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”

But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”

“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest?’ I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop of eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.” (John 4:1-38)

Is this Jesus’ way of explaining how the deeds in one life can be seen to be the seeds sown for reaping by future incarnations? I believe so: his understanding of reincarnation is the basis of so much of his teachings, although he veiled the truth behind allegory and parable. Also note, the two numbers that were mentioned in this passage: 6 (the hour) and 4 (months). These add up to 10, yet again.

Palm Sunday

I’m going to now change tact by following the events of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

The next day the great crowd that had come to the Feast heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the King of Israel!”

Jesus found a young donkey {ass’ colt} and sat upon it, as Scripture says, “Do not be afraid, O Zion; see, your king is coming, seated on a donkey’s colt.”

At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these had been written about him and that they had done these things to him. (John 12:12-16)

Although it is not stated in the passage above, there is a good reason why Jesus road into Jerusalem on the foal of an ass. But we’ll need to side-step into the South of France again to discover the reason.

Les Bergers d’Arcadie

According to David Wood, in his book Genisis, he came across an image of a donkey while searching the maps of the area around Rennes-le-Château: Admittedly this was no horse, it was a donkey or ass, but my mind was adjusting to these devious clues. Could this be suggesting the ass upon which Jesus rode into Jerusalem? It was indeed surprising when I discovered that the biblical donkey or ass could be specifically identified in French as a Jerusalem pony and even more surprising when I found the translation was Roussin d’Arcadie.

The link with Les Bergers d’Arcadie was obvious enough and we have already established the connection between the Et in Arcadia Ego theme and the argha, or container, or womb. Here Poussin again confirms, or at least contributes, to the concerto of coincidence. We now have a Roussin d’Arcadie and a Poussin d’Arcadie. But even more significant we have a color: roussin means rust-colored — red, and I remembered the old name for the Templar stronghold of Château d’Albedun, it was Rousse and it was located close to the upright or male axis of the temple, on the long axis of the cross of 14 stones! I knew of the significance of the ass in mythology and to appreciate how fine this association is becoming, we must turn to a well-known classic, The Golden Ass of Lucius Apuleius.

The Golden Ass

The story tells of a rich young nobleman, the author Lucius Apuleius, a native of Madaura, which was a Roman colony in North Africa. His parents were Greek and his father followed the respectable career of magistrate.

In the story Lucius claims to have become infatuated with a slave-girl with whom he had a tempestuous love affair. This was, however, a fringe benefit, for his main aim was to spy upon the slave-girl’s mistress, a competent witch, and in so doing learn the secret of her power. The particular skill of this lady was her ability to transform humans into animal form. Lucius aspired to spend a short time as an owl, but because of a technical hitch became an ass, in which form he remained for a year. The text then relates his adventures in the animal form and, with few exceptions, these need not concern us. However, certain aspects of the story and the life of Lucius are relevant to our inquiry. For instance:

The ass, as the Goddess Isis herself reminded Lucius at Cenchreae, was the most hateful to her of all beasts in existence, — but she did not account for her aversion.

The explanation for her hatred is quite simple, for the ass was identified with, and sacred to, the god Set who was responsible for the death of her husband, Osiris. At that time the ass represented lust, cruelty and wickedness and, according to Plutarch, not only rustic-colored asses, but also men with sandy-red hair were sacrificed as judicial compensation for the murder of Osiris. We are told Lucius was initiated into the mysteries of Isis and Osiris and Aesculapius, becoming a priest in all these doctrines. The links with Rennes-le-Château were becoming stronger for, as you will recall, all these deities are connected with our temple. The dedication of Lucius to Isis is understandable as it was she who restored him to human form and, to add to our collection of coincidences, she achieved this by arranging that she should eat ‘roses’. Lucius gave a detailed description of the goddess when she first presented herself to him, parts of which we should consider.

First was the nature of her arrival, she rose from the sea and ‘stood on the waves’. Her beauty was so great, gods would fall down for her. On her brow was a shining disc supported by ‘two vipers’ which came from the partings in her hair. About her body she wore a black mantle bedecked with stars. From her left hand hung a ‘boat-shaped’ gold dish. On her divine ‘feet’ were slippers of ‘palm’ leaves. She introduces herself:

I am Nature — the universal Mother, mistress of all the elements, primordial child of time, sovereign of all things spiritual, queen of the dead, queen also of the immortals, the single manifestation of all gods and goddesses that are.

The palm leaves signify both victory and the female labia and the golden ‘boat-shaped’ chalice also equates with the female organ. For the ass to be reviled by Isis without reason given may also be explained by the fact that in its vulgar sense is the insulting equivalent of her name, which with more discretion is referred to as her ‘seat’. Furthermore, all this symbolism is evident in the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, and it is all feminine!

So, Jesus riding into Jerusalem on the foal of an ass is equivalent to being ruler over one’s base nature. He, a sandy-red haired man, was ready to be sacrificed. In other words, he is representing Osiris!

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:
Woman at the Well courtesy of teachingthem .com;
Palm Sunday courtesy of drbobgonzales.com;
Les Bergers d’Archadie courtesy of en.wikipedia.org;
The Golden Ass cover courtesy of http://www.amazon.com

Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect

A fascinating book, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature, contains contributions by a great many “thinkers” of this day and age. The most apt, for our study of this union of light and darkness, comes from Brother David Steindl-Rast in his The Shadow of Christianity: In contrast to some other traditions, Christians have not done particularly well in cultivating a practical method of integrating the shadow. This is part of the reason we have some of the problems that plague us today. In its enthusiasm for the divine light, Christian theology has not always done justice to the divine darkness. That has implications on the level of moral effort. If you are striving to be perfect and pure, everything depends on getting the right idea of what absolute purity and perfection mean. We tend to get trapped in the idea of a static perfection that leads to rigid perfectionism. Abstract speculation can create an image of God that is foreign to the human heart. On the level of religious doctrine, it’s a god that is purged of anything that we call dark. Then we try to live up to the standards of a God that is purely light and we can’t handle the darkness within us. And because we can’t handle it, we suppress it. But the more we suppress it, the more it leads its own life, because it’s not integrated. Before we know it, we are in serious trouble.

You can get out of that trap if you come back to the core of the Christian tradition, to the real message of Jesus. You find him, for instance, saying, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Yet he makes it clear that this is not the perfection of suppressing the darkness, but the perfection of integrated wholeness. That’s the way Matthew puts it in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus talks of our Father in heaven who lets the sun shine on the good and the bad, and lets the rain fall on the just and the unjust alike. It’s both the rain and the sun, not only the sun. And it’s both the just and the unjust. Jesus stresses the fact that God obviously allows the interplay of shadow and light. God approves of it. If God’s perfection allows for tensions to work themselves out, who are we to insist on a perfection in which all tensions are suppressed?

Meeting the Shadow

In his own life, Jesus lives with tension and embraces darkness. And as Christians we see in Jesus what God is like. That’s really what Christians believe about Jesus: in this man who is fully human — like us in all things except our alienation, our sinfulness — in this human we can see what God is like. And that human dies, crying out, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” At that moment darkness covers the whole earth, which is, of course, a poetic statement, not necessarily an historic account of what happened then. At that moment God reaches the greatest distance from God’s own being and embraces the darkness of utmost alienation. If God’s reality can embrace the one who cries out, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” and is, for all practical purposes, forsaken of God, and dies, then everything is embraced — death and life and every tension between them. And that moment is, according to the Gospel of John, not the prelude to the resurrection, not something that is then reversed by the resurrection, but is the resurrection. Jesus says earlier, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all things to myself.” According to the theology of the Gospel of John, the lifting up is the lifting up on the cross. His death on the cross is the moment of his glory. It’s an upside-down glory. It’s the ultimate shame for someone to be executed on the cross. But for the eyes of faith Jesus is “lifted up.” That is the resurrection. That is the ascension. That is also the pouring out of the spirit: he dies with a loud cry — that means with power, not with a whimper — and he hands over his spirit. At that moment the whole world is filled with the divine spirit. The vessel is broken and the fragrance fills the whole house. It’s all profoundly poetic. You cannot understand the Gospel of John without a sense of poetry. It is a poem from beginning to end. Because we have failed to read it that way, we get into all sorts of traps.

The moral implications of all this are deeply anchored in the Christian tradition from its earliest statements on. We touch here the rock-bottom of the Christian tradition. Yet this integration of light and darkness hasn’t been explored properly. This is the problem. Traditions do not always develop evenly. We have only had two thousand years. There are much older traditions. Give us another two thousand years and we may catch up.

Le Serpent Rouge

In Genisis, we find that the union of the Seal of Solomon (a hexagram) and the Star of David (esoterically a pentagram) was found by David Wood in a ‘landscape’ Temple of Solomon.

Now with the clues from La Serpent Rouge, I concentrated my attention in a specific area. Aquarius and Pisces linked together read:

‘How strange are the manuscripts of this friend, great traveler of the unknown. They come together as white light but for one who knows, separately they are the colors of the rainbow; for the artist these six colors unite like magic in his palette and form black.’

‘This friend, how would you know him? His name is a mystery but his number is that of a famous seal. How can one describe him? Maybe like the pilot of the everlasting Ark of Noah, impressive like a pillar of his white rock looking beyond the black rock towards the south.’

To me there was absolutely no doubt about the interpretation. ‘Great traveler of the unknown’ was clearly the sun — Ra of Egyptian legend fame, and ‘friend’ indeed. The ‘manuscripts’ referred to previously under Aries as ‘parchments’ could only be messages of some sort, delivered in the form of sunlight which, ‘coming together’, appear to be white light, but this is in actual fact a composite of all the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. As painter’s pigment they combine to make black. But surely here we have seven colors? For a moment I was puzzled by the reference to the figure six.

Was his name a mystery? It certainly was according to the Ra-Isis legend. I had therefore already decided that it was the sun which was being referred to: did this confirm it? Esoteric, and particularly Egyptian, doctrine states that the number of the sun is 6 — in geometric terms, the hexagram. Or the famous Seal of Solomon, (SOL-OM-ON) means sun. It was proof enough for me.

The Number Six

Here’s how David Wood defines the number 6 – The Sun: Ra, the sun-god of many names, but he is said to have a secret name, known only to Isis. I believe it is a secret number.

As the universal source of power on the earth, he insists that he is acknowledged and worshipped by all earthly creatures — the sustainer of all living things. He provides the energy required by Thoth to execute the will of the Creator. He marks the passage of the day and the year — all his attributes are masculine and his symbol is the hexagram — the six-pointed star adopted by Judaism. This is also referred to as the Star of David and King David named his son Sol-om-on in deference to Ra.

His number is associated with cyclic motion and he controls the movement of the planets. His own time is measured in periods of 60 of our years (a hen period) and two of these represent one year of his life. These values are clearly shown at Rennes as the two intermediate circles. Their radii are 60 and 120 thousand inches and their presence is essential to the harmony of the geometry. It is also significant they are contained with the radius of Isis (180), which suggests her superiority, or at least that they fall within her understanding.

Balancing of Forces

To me, a conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn has symbolized the union of Church and State ever since I did the “horary” chart of the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales. The timing of their wedding must have been advised by Penny Thornton, because she was known to be in contact with Diana during that time period, and has referred to their individual, composite and wedding charts in her book, Synastry. What amazes me is that the Jupiter-Saturn was also conjunct to the Ascendant at 5° Libra, which surly must be a sign of some sort as it is Jesus’ birth Ascendant. But I find it interesting that, over the years, Charles has not been able to dominate the relationship as you might have expected him to do, given the difference of their ages and his (eventual) royal position of King — symbolized by the Scepter (1) and the Orb (0) — ruler over all.

From Transpersonal Astrology: According to the Master DK (Esoteric Astrology) the last quarter of the twentieth century is overruled by the spirit of Libra, and this is a guarantee that there will be a balancing of forces as humanity moves into the twenty-first century. This will prevent major catastrophes. If one examines the present-day global situation (with the ‘inner eye’) one cannot but notice that a balancing of forces is taking place. The balancing of yin-yang forces, of capitalism and Communism, of individuality and group-consciousness, of masculine and feminine energies, and so on, is self-evident. It should be remembered that every sign is in truth a great spiritual life, and the spirit of Libra is that great cosmic Life which brings about balance between the opposites. Astrologers are also aware that Saturn and Jupiter had their triple conjunction in the sign of Libra in 1980/1, and this conjunction has effect for twenty years, until the next one occurs. If the planet of restriction, containment and objective consciousness (Saturn; 3rd Ray) and the planet of expansion, abundance and subjective consciousness (Jupiter; 2nd Ray) conjunct in Libra, the sign of balance, then we can see why all forces are in a cycle of balancing.

So, if the positive and the negative are combined by the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, we must find a way of demonstrating this fact in a mystical way, the subject of our next chapter on Neptune.

Picture Credits

Linked Pages: Star: 9 – Jupiter/Saturn: The Star of David (part 1)
Prelude…
Nuclear Close Call: did a UFO almost trigger a missile launch?

Picture credits:
Christ Tempted by Satan 2 courtesy of http://www.pinterest.com;
Le Serpent Rouge cover courtesy of http://www.amazon.co.uk;
Genisis cover courtesy of http://www.pinterest.com;
Scepter and Orb (UK) courtesy of http://www.pinterest.com.

The New Covenant

This conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn can be interpreted as a manifestation of light and darkness joining forces to bring about a “new covenant” with God.

Then came the Festival of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was in the temple area in Solomon’s Colonnade. The Jews gathered about him, saying, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”

Jesus answered, “I did tell you, but you do not believe. The miracles I do in my Father’s name speak for me, but you do not believe because you do not belong to my flock. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” (John 10:22-30)

Two separate hints are given in this passage: 1) Jesus was in the temple area of Solomon’s Colonnade; and 2) he referred to his flock which means he was reminding his listeners that he is a Shepherd, in the same occupation as his forefather, King David. The image of the star of David (or seal of Solomon) is implied, which therefore symbolizes the joining together of the dual roles of king and high priest.

Transfer of Power

In The Star of Bethlehem Mystery, we are told that the conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn has a lot of significance: In his Commentary on Daniel, Abarbanel {1437-1508} wrote that conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation of Pisces signified not only the most important events but also events which referred especially to Israel. The Rabbi argued that as the conjunction had taken place three years before the birth of Moses, an event which heralded the first deliverance of Israel, so it would also precede the birth of the Messiah and the final deliverance of Israel… What would Saturn, Jupiter and Pisces signify to the Magi astrologers? The problem is that we know little about the details of astrology nearly two thousand years ago. As the New Testament scholar Raymond Brown points out, we cannot be sure how the Jews in the time of Jesus made their zodiacal calculations. The same scholar, however, goes on to say that ‘Pisces is a constellation sometimes associated with the last days and with the Hebrews, while Jupiter, an object of particular interest among Parthian astrologers, was associated with the world ruler and Saturn was identified as the star of the Amorites of the Syria-Palestine region’. The claim has been made that this conjunction might have led Parthian astrologers to predict that there would appear in Palestine among the Hebrews a world ruler of the last days, an apocalyptic king…

Rosenberg gives another reason why the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction was so important. From a very early time Yahweh, the God of Israel, was also identified with El, the High Father God of Canaan and Phoenicia. Sanchuniathon, a priest of Beirut, stated in his account of the Canaanite religion that El was the god of the planet Saturn. In Greek mythology, Kronos, who was associated with Saturn, had been dethroned by Zeus, who was manifest in the planet Jupiter. In the Canaanite religion this incident is paralleled by the rivalry between El and Baal. Kronos gives Zeus ‘all the measures of the whole creation’, because Kronos is ‘the originator of times’. If we take the Greek material to be a reflection of a Canaanite idea then there is a possibility that Jewish and Babylonian astrology would also regard a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter as signifying the transference of power from one planetary supernatural deity to another. To the Greeks and Phoenicians, El (Kronos) had given all his powers to his son Baal (Zeus). In Jewish theology El, or Yahweh, was still the universal ruler, and the transfer of powers symbolized by the periodic planetary conjunctions meant something slightly different. Yahweh was giving to his Messiah a proportion of his power and authority so that the Messiah might scatter the wicked principalities that held sway over the Earth, condemn them to punishment and exalt the righteous in their stead. The planet Saturn in this cosmic drama represents Yahweh, while the planet Jupiter represents his son the Messiah.

A Wicked Generation

As the crowds increased, Jesus said, “This is a wicked generation. It asks for a miraculous sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so also will the Son of Man be to this generation. The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, and now one greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here.” (Luke 11:29-32)

The conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn takes place in Jesus’ birth chart at 17°-19° Pisces in the 6th House. We learn from Spiritual Astrology that the dynamic Jupiter in Pisces person needs to know that: In deciding to take a leap of faith and greet the many facets of life with a basic trust in the universe, you can experience the joy of having your vision fulfilled at every moment. When you accept circumstances as they are, with your vision on the perfection behind the appearance — on the Divinity behind the clay — you can undergo joy and personal expansion of being able to assist people in realizing their potential. Self-trust is increased as you use your natural trust in the unseen workings behind the appearances of life as a personal foundation.

Jupiter in the 6th House: Social opportunities can be forthcoming when you expand your ability to serve the world. The areas of health and helping professions bring social rewards.

Meanwhile, we also learn what the dynamic Saturn in Pisces needs to know:

You possess the skill and social responsibility for bringing your private dream and ideals into the world. By acknowledging yourself as creator of your private visions and dreams, you can gain confidence in the ability to bring about a true manifestation of what has already been created in your imagination.

You have the power to demonstrate your private dreams. By committing yourself unconditionally to manifesting those dreams that serve humanity, you can accept the opportunities that are currently available. Through consistent, daily demonstration of your spiritual ideals, no matter how seemingly insignificant, you can gain a sense of achievement. This leaves you with the knowledge that you have contributed to the manifestation of society’s ideals in a realistic way.

Saturn in the 6th House: Shows the need to acknowledge the desire to express a strong sense of duty. Saturn offers the responsibility of doing a good job without disrupting your life through over-work.

Past Life Memory?

The authors of Spiritual Astrology hint at the New Covenant (as symbolized by Jesus) between God and Man in their passage about the past lives of Saturn in Pisces individuals:

In this lifetime it’s time to dissolve ego identification with all past accomplishments. You can become immersed in feelings of vague frustration and helplessness that keep you from manifesting your dreams. This is because the vision is changing: The old cycle of identity is dissolving, and the new is not yet on the threshold. But visions of a new identity and what the new cycle of manifestation will be like do occur.

It can be frustrating when you try to implement the new vision. This is because your destiny is to allow the vision of the new to give you enough confidence to release old forms of ego expression that are not working in the current incarnation. In this way you can become identified with the source, rather than activity, and your destiny is fulfilled.

The Law Rewritten

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says,‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.

“Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for the whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

“It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to commit adultery, and anyone who marries a woman so divorced commits adultery.

“Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.’ But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rains on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:17-48)

Picture Credits

To be continued.

Linked Pages: The Star of Bethlehem: Chapter 1 – Prologue
Lessons for This Day (and Age)
Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View

Picture credits:
Baal courtesy of pinterest;
Ichthus courtesy of melaniejeanjuneau.wordpress.com;
Saturn in Pisces courtesy of http://www.sunsigns.org;
Sermon on the Mount courtesy of http://www.forerunnerchurch.org

Typhon-Set

Many people going through transformations in these days recognize Pluto’s continual influence in bringing to light hidden motives and agendas. If Pluto can be equated to Set, or Satan, I think that his purpose is to purify our baseness by exposing it to Divine Light and Fire. David Wood, in his book Genisis, recognized that the union of a six-pointed star (hexagram) and a five-pointed star (pentagram) in the landscape near Rennes-le-Château created a seven-pointed star, thereby demonstrating the secret of the 7 Elohim or Creator-Gods.

7 The Typhon-Set: The sum of the female 3 and the masculine 4, the androgyne, the intermediate state of existence between the entities of spirit and the animal endowed with intelligence. This is Set, the Typhon, the serpent of Eden, Satan or Lucifer. He brought the light of intelligence into the animal and so created ‘thinking’ man. For this crime he was ‘cast down’ for 999 years. Those who have the ‘understanding’, meaning the biped animal, man, who have feet, hence 12, the equation is quite simple. The answer is in Revelation XIII, 18 for 666 with 12 ‘under’ or dividing it is 55.5 and it was with Isis (18) that this multiplication took place (55.5 x 18 = 999).

Plutarch (De Iside) confirms 7 and discloses the active principle of Set as 56: …that Typhon escaped out of the battle upon an ass after a flight of SEVEN days…even the Pythagoreans looked upon Typhon to have been of the rank or order of Demons producing according to them…the even number FIFTY-SIX…

The number 56 is easily understood when one appreciates the body of Set (7) and Isis (8) multiplied.

Set-Typhon

If my reading of the ‘secrets’ contained at Rennes and Atlantis is correct, man is faced with the ultimate ‘Catch 22’ situation. The Christian teaching casts Satan as evil, but his crime was to infuse an animal with intelligence, and we are the result of that crime. The simple way to rectify it would be for God to bring about the total annihilation of mankind, but this would constitute another crime, the destruction of a creature of intellect, which God would never do.

Can we blame our parents for our existence when the remedy is in our own hands?

Or have we unknowingly already made a decision which would release the ‘gods’ from their dilemma?

Are we, even now, creating the weapons and circumstances to bring about the ‘purification’ of the earth?

Isis, maligned by Christian doctrine, offers the only solution, elevation!

The Union of Opposites

Pluto in Virgo equals purification of the earth, and Isis combined with Osiris equals elevation of ‘earthly’ (i.e. evil) man.

From Jung and the Lost Gospels, quoting The Gospel of Thomas: Jesus saw children who were being nursed. He said to the disciples: These children who are being nursed are like those who enter the kingdom. They said to him: Should we then become children in order to enter the kingdom? Jesus said to them: When you make the two one, and when you make the inmost as the outermost and the outer as the inner and the above as the below, and when you make the male and female into a single unity, so that the male will not be only male and the female will not be only female, when you create eyes in the place of an eye, a create a hand in the place of a hand, and a foot in the place of a foot, and also an image in the place of an image, then surely will you enter the kingdom. (22)

Once again we find the image of small children, this time nursing at their mothers’ breasts. The nursing babe may be taken as a metaphor for the human, who having been born from the matrix of the unmanifest is still close to the nourishing power of the archetypal psyche. Individuation (entering the kingdom) brings the human ego into a state wherein this intimate closeness with the deeper sources of spiritual nourishment is re-established. The disciples misunderstood Jesus, interpreting his statement literally, so that a more explicit statement on his part is indicated.

The next portion of the saying demonstrates the intent of the metaphor more impressively. The union of the opposites within the psyche brings complete renewal, so that no portion within the human being remains unchanged. Introversion and extroversion, matter and spirit, good and evil, animus and anima having become welded into a new, indivisible unity; the person has become a totally new being and as such has entry into a kingdom of ultimate, numinous meaning.

The Star of Set

What struck me as strange was how the phrase ‘an image in place of an image’ actually fits the concept of the union of a six-pointed star (‘the above as the below’) and a five-pointed star (‘the inmost as the outermost…’) creating the image of the seven-pointed star (‘make the male and the female into a single unity’) at Rennes-le-Château perfectly. But David Wood seemed a bit disturbed when he discovered the truth about our hybrid nature of spiritual being and animal body, and yet others have told us these things before.

For example, in Edgar Cayce’s Story of Jesus: Returning to Egypt, {the High Priest} Ra-Ta planned and erected two new temples for the development of the subhuman mixtures — The Temple of Sacrifice, which was both a spiritual and physical hospital or health center — and the Temple Beautiful, which was concerned with advanced training in vocation, especially in Art and Music.

The body was worshipped then as sincerely as most of the…spiritual worship today; for bodies were changing in form as their developments or purifications were becoming effective in the temples. These bodies gradually lost, then, feathers from their legs…many lost hair from the body, gradually taken away. Many began to lose their tails, or protuberances in various forms. Many paws or claws were changed to hand and foot, so that there might be more symmetry of the body. Hence…the body became more erect, better shaped to meet the various needs.

Those who had achieved such transformation, to be sure, were considered to have the body beautiful — beauty as something divine, for the divine has brought and does bring such various beauties of form or figure to the body; for “the body is the temple of the Living God”. (294)

Temple of the Stars

And that last phrase puts it all into perspective: the image of the seven-pointed star is only a symbol of the truth. This is confirmed H.P. Blavatsky in Isis Unveiled: But if, following the ingenious exoteric description of the Bible, there are yet Masons who persist in regarding {the Temple of Solomon} as once an actual structure, who, of the students of the esoteric doctrine will ever consider this mythic temple otherwise than an allegory, embodying the secret science? Whether or not there was ever a real temple of that name, we may well leave to archæologists to decide; but that the detailed description thereof in 1 Kings is purely allegorical, no serious scholar, proficient in the ancient as well as mediæval jargon of the kabalists and alchemists, can doubt. The building of the Temple of Solomon is the symbolical representation of the gradual acquirement of the secret wisdom, or magic; the erection and development of the spiritual from the earthly; the manifestation of the power and splendour of the spirit in the physical world, through the wisdom and genius of the builder. The latter, when he has become an adept, is a mightier king than Solomon himself, the emblem of the sun or Light himself — the light of the real subjective world, shining in the darkness of the objective universe. This is the “Temple” which can be reared without the sound of the hammer, or any tool of iron being heard in the house while it is “in building.”

Transfiguration

The significance of 7 shows up in several saying of Jesus, but I think the one about forgiving a sinful brother epitomizes his teachings well:

“If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.” (Luke 17:3b-4)

Finally, the story of the Transfiguration in the Gospels appears to have been written by a science fiction writer, for its otherworldliness; but that may be the point exactly…

About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went onto a mountain to pray. As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendour, talking with Jesus. They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem. Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him. As the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, “Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters {sanctuaries} — one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” (He did not know what he was saying.)

While he was speaking, a cloud appeared and enveloped them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. A voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my Son whom I have chosen; listen to him.” When the voice had spoken, they found that Jesus was alone. The disciples kept this to themselves, and told no one at that time what they had seen. (Luke 9:28-36)

The transfiguration/transformation of hu-man into spiritual man is still under the reign of our free will. Either we choose to evolve or we reject that choice. From the beginnings of time, God has had a plan to save his/her creatures.

Evelyn Underhill, as quoted in Divine Light and Fire: Man is free and holds the keys to hell as well as to heaven. Within the love-driven universe which you have learned to see a{s} whole, you will therefore find egoism, rebellion, meanness, brutality, squalor; the work of separated selves whose energies are set athwart the stream. But every aspect of life, however falsely imagined, can still be “saved,” turned to the purposes of Reality: for “all-things hath their being by the love of God.” Its oppositions are no part of its realness; and therefore they can be overcome.

To “Bring Eternity into Time,” the “invisible into concrete expression”; to “be to the Eternal Goddess what his own hands is to a man” — these are the plainly expressed desires of all great mystics. One and all, they demand earnest and deliberate action, the insertion of the purified and ardent will into the world of things. The mystics are artists; and the stuff in which they work is most often human life…

It seems that the ‘artists’ who created the Temple of Solomon image at Rennes-le-Château took the concept of transformation of the human into the divine and made it a manifestation of the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, the subject of our next chapter.

Picture Credits

Linked Pages: Star: 8 – Pluto: The Transformative Star (part 1)
Star: 8 – Pluto: The Transformative Star (part 2)
The Cathar Prophecy of 1244 AD

Picture credits:
Set-Typhon amulet courtesy of theheadlesshashasheen.tumblr.com;
Pandrogyny courtesy of ionamillersubjects.weebly.com;
The Star of Set courtesy of illuminations2012.wordpress.com;
Temple of the Stars courtesy of illuminations2012.wordpress.com;
Transfiguration courtesy of livethefast.org.

Pluto in the 12th House

According to the authors of Spiritual Astrology, the dynamic version of Pluto in the 12th House means that: You can be willing and determined to go beyond your greatest fears by surrendering to the power of your vision. When you take the risk of trusting life to support you, knowing you are acting in accord with right action, you may express your spiritual vision. This can result in a temporary disruption and invalidation of your private sense of security. It leads to the purging of repressive unconscious fears and the purification of a new contact with the unseen forces of life.

You can claim high consciousness by revealing the perceptions of hidden causes and profound inner meanings of others’ lives. You can expose the truth of the visions that you see regardless of the consequences. Taking the risk of fully expressing your vision releases power. This allows you to both experience and perceive a deeper relationship with self…

As you cease to identify with the power of the intangible insights that flow through you, you experience true spiritual security. This allows you to share your perceptions without taking the reactions of others personally. By being selflessly committed to taking the risk and revealing the spiritual visions you receive, you can be led past your greatest fears and into self-mastery.

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like all other men — robbers, evil-doers, adulterers — or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all my income.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He could not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14)

Why is there evil in this world?

Often we do this: setting ourselves up as examples to others (and God) of perfection when we know that evil thoughts and selfish motives exist in us. From Physicians of the Soul: Why God allows evil to exist in the world has never been resolved, and probably never will be. Is evil a real force, is it the absence of God, is it the result of free will, is it the rejected half of the Self, or is it chaos itself? These are all probably part-truths about evil. One thing we do know, however, is that the man who is thought by Christians to be the “Son of God” said that we should “resist not evil.” And he also advises us in his Lord’s Prayer to pray to God the Father to “deliver us from evil.” This may be the best advice that has ever been given to human beings. When we turn to God, who is the Whole One {‘whole’ (0) ‘one’ (1), the inverse of 10?}, to deliver us from evil, rather than struggle against it with the ego (which often results in greater evil), then Jesus is saying, there is nothing that the world, or even the devil himself, can do against us…

Finally, everyone would agree that the crucifixion of Jesus was an evil thing, and it was; but without the crucifixion, how could the message of Christ have spread throughout the world? In each case I have cited, and in many others in the Bible, a person of faith was involved, Joseph, Moses, and Jesus, and somehow through mysterious Providence, an apparent evil was transformed into a greater good, and a higher purpose was achieved. In each case, it happened through a synchronicity of events far beyond the ken of any individual ego to comprehend, predict, or control.

But despite what we know inside and have been taught by others about ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, we have still “bought into” the concept of the promise of happiness, as symbolized by the attaining of material possessions. But the reality is less than satisfactory, at least in my own experience.

Some Words of Wisdom

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

“No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.” (Matthew 6:19-24)

Is Consumerism evil?

Again from Physicians of the Soul: I think of our smoke-belching factories, and our day shifts and night shifts of mass production and joyless labor. What is all this for? For a world of “things”? A world of gadgets, appliances, department stores, supermarkets, crowded airline terminals, noisy superhighways jammed with commuters, steel-skeletoned glass-walled buildings filled with white collar “employees” working their lives away in their cubicles, and computerized everything! Is this what life is about? It reminds me of the line in the song “St. Peter, don’t you call me for I can’t come, I owe my soul to the company store.” I am not sure that this is what the Son of Man had in mind for us. Rather, he says we should “seek first the Kingdom of Heaven,” and when we do, all the things we need will be ours as well. I have heard that the American Indian placed prayer and communion with the Great Spirit as their highest value. They lived in perfect harmony with nature with the simplest technology for at least 25,000 years before the white man came from Europe. I heard a Chumash chief say that his people still lived in Eden. He said that the white man’s cities resembled his tribe’s conception of hell!

The Eucharist

I believe that Pluto in Virgo symbolizes the third initiation, Transfiguration, the mid-point of the soul’s journey. But let us not forget that the mystic version of this initiation is the Eucharist, in which the things that are harvested from the earth — bread (wheat) and wine (grapes) — are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ.

In Divine Light and Fire, Peter Roche de Coppens quotes Charles Leadbeater: The Eucharist, as we know it, is not altogether new. It was celebrated in some older religions but has now reached a more perfect form. It was found in Mithraism. Bread and wine and salt were used, but the form of their rite was somewhat vague. There is a secret ceremony in the Egyptian Mysteries in which consecrated bread — a sort of cake — was given, but never to the general public; only to a very small and especially prepared group something like a Masonic Lodge. As soon as a man partook of this sacrament, the others bowed to him, saying “Thou art Osiris.”

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.” (Matthew 5:13)

Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.” (John 6:35)

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

Is this Alchemy?

Jesus demonstrated that he was familiar with the emblems of that Egyptian mystery, which transformed ordinary elements into a spiritual awareness, an alchemical process.

Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Our forefathers ate {manna} and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever.” (John 6:53-58)

Madame Blavatsky wrote in Isis Unveiled: Nor does the Mystery of the Eucharist pertain to Christians alone. Godfrey Higgins proves that it was instituted many hundreds of years before the “Paschal Supper,” and says that “the sacrifice of bread and wine was common to many ancient nations.” Cicero mentions it in his works, and wonders at the strangeness of the rite. There had been an esoteric meaning attached to it from the first establishment of the Mysteries, and the Eucharistia is one of the oldest rites of antiquity. With the hierophants it had nearly the same significance as with the Christians. Ceres was bread and Bacchus was wine; the former meaning regeneration of life from the seed, the latter — the grape — the emblem of wisdom and knowledge; the accumulation of the spirit of things, and the fermentation and subsequent strength of that esoteric knowledge being justly symbolized by wine. The mystery related to the drama of Eden; it is said to have been taught by Janus, who was also the first to introduce in the temples the sacrifices of “bread” and “wine” in commemoration of the “fall into generation” as the symbol of the “seed.” “I am the vine, and my Father is the husbandman,” says Jesus, alluding to the secret knowledge that could be imparted by him. “I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

Transformed by the Divine

According to the author of Divine Light and Fire: The Body of Christ and the Blood of Christ are subjects which arouse in the aspirant the most profound feelings of devotion and love, increasingly so as his or her path in the Mysteries evolves. The Seer or Initiate has prepared himself or herself in the ways of Initiation to see with new eyes, hear with new ears, feel with a pure heart, and live deeply into each part of the Mass. Thus, in the Chalice of the Holy Blood can be perceived Spiritual Love, the cup of our salvation, offered to us once again in Communion. It is apprehended as well as the Divine Fire. In the Bread and in the Body of Christ is Spiritual Consciousness, all that was and is given to us by our loving God that we may come in time to know Him. And this is apprehended as the Divine Light. These together engender Spiritual Life and Spiritual Will, aligning and integrating human will with the Will of God. This, moreover, is also the culminating experience of all valid Mysteries and Initiations: to consciously commune with the Divine and to become transformed by the Divine.

Transformed by the Divine…what a wonderful expression.

Picture Credits

To be continued.

Linked Pages: The Star of Bethlehem: Chapter 1 – Prologue
Star: 8 – Pluto: The Transformative Star (part 1)

Picture credits:
Pharisee and the Publican courtesy of http://www.lampofthebody.com;
Universe and Stars courtesy of christrescuemission.org;
Consumerism courtesy of wholedude.com;
Eucharist courtesy of holyangelssanangelos.org;
Alchemy courtesy of aetherforce.com;
Bubble of Love courtesy of of u2rbeloved.com.