The Genesis Of Revelation by Peter Admore

THE

GENESIS

REVELATION

BY: JOSEF AND LYDIA ANNE MATHEUSON

CONTENTS Page THE CHRISTMAS TREE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTERS:

TITLE

ONE

CAN WE TAKE THE BIBLE AT FACE VALUE

TWO

GENESIS ONE

THREE

OUT OF THE DUST

FOUR

THE VERY SUBTLE SERPENT

FIVE

THE TREES OF THE GARDEN

SIX

BE AWARE

SEVEN

WHAT DO WE BELIEVE?

EIGHT

JOSEPH‟S GARDEN

112

NINE

THE GNOSTIC THRONE

126

TEN

THE SCROLL

140

ELEVEN

THE SEVEN SEALS

149

TWELVE

THE POLITICS THAT KILLS THE GNOSIS

178

THIRTEEN

NEW BEGINNING

193

FIGURES FIGURES:

TITLE

PAGE

ONE

POLARITY

TWO

THE SIX DAYS

THREE

PAX

FOUR

THE ORIGINAL STAR AND CUBE

FIVE

FLAME, WIND AND BREATH

SIX

THE BURNING BUSHES

SEVEN

THE WINGED SUN DISC

EIGHT

THE ZIGGURAT

NINE

THE MENORAH

TEN

RAM IN THE THICKET

ELEVEN

RAM FROM BRITISH MUSEUM

TWELVE

YONI, VESICA, AND WOMB

THIRTEEN

THE KABALA

FOURTEEN

THE VERY SUBTLE SERPENT

FIFTEEN

FEMININE, MASCULINE UNION

106

SIXTEEN

JOSEPH’S CARPENTUM WHEELS

119

SEVENTEEN

THE CUBIC NEW JERUSALEM

129

EIGHTEEN

THE CUBIC THRONE OF GOD

132

NINETEEN

THE ARK OF THE COVENANT

133

TWENTY

THE HIGH PRIESTESS

139

TWENTY ONE

THE SEALED DEED SCROLL

144

TWENTY TWO

THE FOUR KNIGHTS

155

TWENTY THREE

DEATH AND JUDGEMENT

156

TWENTY FOUR

THE KNIGHT’S COIN

157

TWENTY FIVE

THE KNIGHTS AND THE ALTAR

158

TWENTY SIX

THE TOWER AND LIGHTNING FLASH

159

TWENTY SEVEN

PAX AND CANON

164

TWENTY EIGHT

TEMPERANCE AND THE DEVIL

167

TWENTY NINE

PLAN OF TEMPLE AND QUMRAN

168

THIRTY

ADAM KADMON

169

THIRTY ONE

THE FLAMING SWORD

199

THE CHRISTMAS TREE

We have recently had that wonderful season of the year called Christmas, a season full of fun, laughter, food, drink and presents. Some of us even go to church - perhaps midnight on Christmas Eve. And that lovely addition to our festivities, the Christmas tree is seen everywhere - in churches and cathedrals, private homes, hotels and parks, inside and outside, all lit up and twinkling. How many of us by fair means or foul, arrange for a lovely little pine tree to be installed in our homes. We go down to the local forest and cut down a sapling that is just the right size for our room, tie it on to the trailer or squeeze it into the boot of our car and bring it home. Or, perhaps, we go down to the local stall run by one of the service groups - Rotary or Lions and buy one from them, all proceeds going to a good cause, of course. We carefully put the sapling, now minus its roots and nicely squared off at the base so that it will be easy to set up, into a bucket or similar, pack stones or bricks around it to keep it nice and stable and then comes the most exciting part. Out come all those lovely decorations - the baubles and tinsel, the fairies and the angels the pretend presents and little chocolates, and finally - the piece de resistance - the lights! If we are lucky we can even get them to twinkle on and off, on and off, on and off. What fun! Then we step back and admire our handiwork. How lovely it all looks. Slowly the days pass, the pile of presents under the tree gets bigger and bigger. We find more decorations in the shop and pop them on till the tree is covered, and beautiful, and bright, and shining, and the lights twinkle, the tinsel sparkles and catches the light and reflects it back to us; and suddenly.....It is Christmas morning. The children are awake early. The presents are attacked and the hours spent wrapping are destroyed in a single moment as they quickly read the card to see the giver and then unwrap the pretty paper to expose the gift. Excitement runs high; there are squeals of delight and giggles; everyone is laughing, or almost everyone - there is always someone who really wanted a pony for Christmas. Perhaps we go to church then; but, more usually, it is time to prepare the dinner - turkey, chicken, ham, lamb, new potatos and peas, or salad; Christmas puds - big, juicy, full of fruit, steaming with brandy sauce au flambe - or maybe, strawberries and pavlova, or fruit salad. Gracing it all is our beautiful Christmas tree. Coffee, cigars, brandy, and it is all over for another year, with only the dishes to do. It is on those sort of days that many of us wish we had asked Santa for a dish-washer! Beset by a lethargy brought on by good food, fine wine, too little sleep, we lie down for a nap - just to sleep it off before we start on Christmas tea. Our tree is still there, twinkling and beautiful, saying nothing. The season runs its course, guests come and go, but there is a subtle change come over our tree. It starts to wither and we are having to vacuum up the pine needles as they drop off. We don't really see what is happening because of all the decorations that so cleverly hide the 4

tree, that so cleverly keep it looking good - all those pretty, artificial baubles. New year is over and the twelfth night is almost upon us. My goodness, we must get the tree down or it will be unlucky. Out come the boxes, down come the decorations to be given a quick dust over and a bit of a wash to remove any fly specks. Pop them into their boxes, carefully now, we will want to use them again nest year and they are so expensive to buy. Be careful with those lights! Are there any bulbs missing? I must remember to buy some before next Christmas. There now, all those are carefully put away on that high shelf in the hall cupboard. Now then, lets get rid of that messy tree. Goodness gracious it is all yucky and dry, and those needles are dropping everywhere. Out to the rubbish heap with it, it is mucking up the living room. Thank goodness that messy job is over for another year! We turn our back on that sad little tree and hurry indoors to catch up on some other pastime and we have missed the point! Utterly; entirely; disastrously. That little, forlorn, nearly dead tree, stripped of all its artificial glory is us. Us. You and me. Each one of us. The real us. We have thrown our real self away and, like Esau, have bought a whole mess of pottage. We have chopped off our roots, our life-giving roots, those roots which provide us with all the nourishment and sustenance that we need - that nourishment and sustenance that helps us to grow from mere saplings into giant trees. We have covered ourselves with baubles and bangles and bright coloured beads, and pretend that we are beautiful; but we are dead. "Let the dead bury the dead", says that called Jesus. The baubles and bangles and bright coloured beads, the tinsels and the lights, are the philosophies with which we have clothed ourselves and cluttered our minds. All those isms. All those enes and ites that we think we are. All those gaudy trappings and rites and rituals are not us. They only hide ourselves from ourselves. There is no mystery to unravel that we have not already raveled........There is no ladder to climb that we have no already built............There is only Life......Life that we live. Life that we love. Life that is us. Life that is all. For us to become as giant trees, fulfilling our role in the whole, we must go back to our roots, those life-giving, life-sustaining roots and draw our nourishment into ourselves, from ourselves. That everlasting spring of water welling up from within.

THE GENESIS OF REVELATION

INTRODUCTION

This book is about the origins of many of the ideas and symbols found in the Bible; both Old and New Testaments. It is not a scientific work in that it does not set out to prove a point of view but rather just outlines ideas that others might wish to consider and research for themselves. The material produced in this book is drawn from personal experience and the reading of vast numbers of books, over a fifty to sixty year period, about the Middle Eastern Antiquities. Where possible we refer to the book and author from which various ideas have come but in many cases this is not possible as records were not kept or have been lost. In the case where there are no records we apologise to the authors concerned and should they recognise their ideas we would be keen to hear from them. We also apologise in advance for any errors we may have made whilst trying to understand their work. When we criticise some point of view or belief we are not pointing the finger at any one person or group. As a culture we have grown up with ideas that are accepted because they have been around for a long time, not necessarily because they are right and as a result many religious beliefs have been built on foundations that are far less certain than most people realise. In general it is the idea that people should believe anything that we are criticizing. If we cannot know what is the point of belief; isn‟t belief just another word for ignorance? Since this book was first produced Lydia Anne and I (Josef Matheuson) have written “The Little Read Hand Book” which is really a summary of many of the ideas first found here and developed as a result of further experience. We are also putting together a pictorial book that will be a compilation of all the symbols we have found in the Bible and the way in which we think they should be understood and their relationship to each other. In the meantime we hope that this book provides some insight into an alternative way of looking at the construction of and reason for the Bible. The use of the word man in this book is not intended to exclude women; quite the opposite. As you read through you will realise that we offer a philosophy that demands inclusiveness but it is far too difficult to write this type of material without the freedom to use a word that can be recognised as being inclusive of both sexes. We use the word man in this sense and ask that you read this book accepting that we intend the word man to mean man and woman.

GENESIS OF REVELATION CHAPTER ONE CAN WE TAKE THE BIBLE AT FACE VALUE

For too long we have believed strange doctrines and ideas associated with biblical interpretations. Many of these interpretations are based on the assumption, without very much in the way of evidence, that many, if not most, of the stories related in the bible can in some way be considered factual. For example; even if Jesus wasn't really God he must have been a great and unique teacher. We are not so sure and this book is an attempt at an alternative point of view which starts with the assumption that because many of the stories of the Bible fly in the face of rationality, let alone common sense, they are probably symbolic. Therefore, to make any sense of them requires a different approach and we suggest that the correct one will be to treat all biblical information as being mostly symbolism built on and around some actual historical events. When studying the bible it is important to keep in mind that mistakes have occurred during translation. Some are insignificant, some are not, but most give an incorrect picture of what was probably intended by the original scribe; an example is the incorrect translation of the Old Testament word for young woman when applied, in the New Testament as virgin, to Mary the mother of Jesus. Even though modern translators know of this error no effort has been made to correct it and so misunderstanding is continued and compounded. It is this type of error, other alterations made with the full knowledge of the translators, and symbols and codes that are dealt with in this book. Some theologians still like to think that the original Old Testament Biblical texts were written in Hebrew and that if Hebrew texts older than the existing Aramaic examples are found it will prove the antiquity of the Bible. However, as yet, there is no proof of this and in fact, as time goes on, the evidence more strongly suggests that this is not the case. The Septuagint Old Testament material was copied by Greek scholars, around 250B.C.E, from scrolls in the Alexandrian library but nobody knows in what languages these sources were originally written. As there was a large population of Hebrews in Egypt at that time the scrolls may well have been written in Hebrew; they may also have been in Coptic or Greek. The oldest extant Old Testament writing in the Hebrew language is a copy of the book of Isaiah that was found among some of the Dead Sea scrolls. While some scholars consider this to be proof that the Old Testament was indeed originally written in Hebrew most disagree with this point of view and accept that it is merely a copy from some other language, probably Aramaic or Greek, and that it was copied into Hebrew because the translating scribe wanted to give the work an air of antiquity. In our opinion many of the Old Testament writings are probably no older than about 400B.C.E but they were written in the style and manner we find them to give the impression of antiquity. This was a common ploy in those times and we find it used time and again by various writers and copiers of the apocryphal books. The scribes in those days 7

thought that making their works appear older than they actually were gave them more authority with their readers and congregations. That in many cases the style and language of the literature can be dated to far earlier times than 400B.C.E. is simply explained by showing that the authors uplifted material from sources outside their own culture, such as Egypt and Mesopotamia, and incorporated it into their own mythology without changing anything except the names of people and places. We do similar things today with nursery rhymes in which the words have not been changed for some hundreds of years and in many cases are meaningless to, or badly interpreted by, us. The same applies to authors such as Shakespeare who is widely read and even more widely badly quoted and misunderstood. We havenâ&#x20AC;&#x;t changed the language he used as it has taken on somewhat of an aura of sanctity in relation to his works and his words and ideas are, therefore, often misconstrued. About 600C.E. when the Masorites (a group of Jewish monastics) translated the Aramaic and Greek Old Testament texts into Hebrew, they invented a system of vowels for the Hebrew language - something it had not possessed before. Thus, at this point, the translation was from Aramaic to Hebrew not the other way round and the insertion of vowels made it possible for the first time for Hebrew to be read universally. But it also meant that any doctrines based on Old Testament writings and established by this point, both Jewish and Christian, became somewhat fixed. The actual meanings of words without vowels had previously been debateable but once the vowels had been inserted agreement as to the meaning of each word was reached by consensus and this left very little room for further debate. Once the insertion of the vowels into the Old Testament writings was complete this new translation became the standard and canon within the majority of the Jewish communities and also became a major source of information for Christian translators. Of course consensus among the Masorites was reached by first assuming that the stories were actually Hebrew history and did relate to the Israelites. This assumption must have coloured the interpretation and vowel insertion. We agree with the many historians who believe that no Hebrew texts older than about the first century B.C.E. have been found simply because there are none. The reasons these scholars give for their assumption is that because Hebrew originally had no vowels it was too hard to read and too many mistakes could be made in the reading of it, let alone its translation. The Hebrew language is one of the most ancient languages and the vowel sounds it needed (just like any other language) were extracted from the consonants as the material was being read. In English it would go something like this: Jck nd Jll wnt p th hll t gt pl v wtr. We accept that this says that Jack and Jill went up the hill to get a pail of water but there are many opportunities in that phrase to make errors that could lead to quite a different meaning, particularly if your first language was not English and you were translating into your own tongue. Although it is possible to deduce vowel sounds from a reading of the consonants alone there is no guarantee that the chosen ones are correct, even if in the majority of cases they are and a Hebrew example would be the name originally given to Benjamin, the son of Jacob, which is Benoni. In Hebrew where Ben means son and Nn or nun means fish it would have been written Bnn, or just Bn. Is this word to be read as son of Oni, or son of Nun or even son of fish. â&#x20AC;&#x17E;Bâ&#x20AC;&#x; is also pronounced beth and means house so this might mean that Bnn actually means house of fish; the possible permutations are enormous. Considering all this would intelligent teachers of the time commit their life's work to writing 8

in a language that was guaranteed to be misunderstood by later students? Also, the average Israelite of the Old Testament times did not speak Hebrew; it did not become the dominant language of the nation until the twentieth century. In historical times, the average Israelite spoke the language of whatever country happened to be dominating them at the time. During one period it was Egyptian, at another Aramaic, and during another Greek; so there really was little point in writing Israelite teachings in Hebrew. The Israelites were busiest putting pen to parchment from 350B.C.E. onward and it was during this period that the growth of various mystic teachings took place in Judea and from these grew the Essenes as we now know of them. At that time there was also a large traffic in all kinds of knowledge in written form within the Mediterranean world, involving everybody from the Egyptians to the Greeks. So why communicate with others in a language that nobody understood while everybody else was using either Aramaic or Greek. We therefore reiterate that, in our opinion, Hebrew was not used to write the Old Testament Bible. Originally it was produced in either Aramaic or Greek, and the texts were later translated forward into Latin and backward into Hebrew and this all happened between 250B.C.E. to 600C.E. It is also our opinion that it was the Essenes and their predecessors (possibly those whom the Bible calls the prophets) who were not only the translators of the Bible, but its main compilers. However, Hebrew wasn‟t the only ancient language with major problems, ancient Greek was another. The New Testament was originally written in Greek and it had no punctuation or any word separation and therefore it was often very difficult to know when one had come to the end of a word, sentence or paragraph. Compounding these problems even further was the fact that the form of Greek used in writing the Gospels for instance, was spoken mainly among the lower classes of society and was a dialect common to slaves in the part of the world that the Romans called Syria. Even today translating from one modern language to another is very difficult and in the case of some words and ideas, almost impossible. Imagine the nightmare it must have been, in days gone by, when the original ideas had been espoused by uneducated people and compilers and translators did not have the benefit of hindsight, libraries full of documents or computers and the internet; each new translation merely compounded the errors. Because of the above mentioned language problems we think translators and copiers have not really understood what they have been reading and the Bible has been very badly interpreted. That, however, is not the end of our problems. The original writers frequently wrote in code and often included mystical symbols the meanings of which, once understood, could be totally different from the literal text. In 1st Corinthians, chapter two, the Apostle Paul says in verses six and seven, “Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glorification.” In 2nd Corinthians chapter three he says, “----who has made us competent to be ministers of the new covenant, not in the written code, but in the spirit; for the written code kills, but the spirit gives life.” Yet, throughout much of the next three chapters he uses many words and phrases which can have multiple meanings, whatever language they are read in. Paul then goes on to say in Verse seven, “But we have this treasure in earthenware vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to 9

God and not to us.” This passage refers to a number of things that would have been well understood in Paul's time, even though we have been able to see only the poetic and surface nature of what is being said, about the indwelling nature of Christ, as understood by Paul. In those times it was the practice to put valuable scrolls -- the treasure-- into earthenware jars and seal them so that they could be kept in good condition for long periods and it is in this type of pot that many of the Dead Sea scrolls were found. In Jeremiah, chapter thirty two we find this very thing being described; and in Revelations, chapter five we find a scroll the construction of which is the same as that described in Jeremiah. This type of scroll was known throughout the Roman Empire as a tied or sealed deed and pertained to important legal matters -- the treasure. Most Christians would accept that the Old and New Testaments are to be considered legal agreements between God and Man and this being the case they would, in the early days of the Church, have been understood to be tied deeds. In Revelations John points out that there was nobody in Heaven or on the earth who was able to open the scroll, or sealed deed, and in fact there wasn‟t as only the courts had the authority to open them and reveal what was within. But, more importantly, it is revealed by John that the covenant is a tied or sealed deed with an open and hidden or arcane form. (For reference see Yigael Yardin's books on the antiquities, specifically Bar Kokhba). This very same thing is said by the Apostle Paul in chapters four and five of 2nd Corinthians. There he explains that it is the outer, or open, that is perishable but the inner, or arcane, is eternal. He also explains that it is only God, the great Judge, the Heavenly court that can reveal to us through the spirit the reality of that which we bear within us (all italics are ours). In verses sixteen and seventeen, after having made this point, Paul goes on to say, “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once regarded Christ from a human point of view (which on its own suggests some other meaning to the idea of Christ than the one portrayed on the surface of the Gospels), we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. These are exactly the same words and the same imagery used by John in Revelations, once he has finished describing the scroll and its importance.” Therefore, although Paul writes about speaking the truth openly it seems that in much of what he is saying there are inner meanings to be found; meanings hidden from the masses and those who do not seek the hidden wisdom of God or are not open to the spirit. (Refer to Ephesians chapter three). There are many sources other than the Bible that provide information suggesting that many ancient documents similar to the Bible included hidden arcane meanings. The Dead Sea scrolls, many of the non-canonical books, some of the pre- Christian Jewish teachers and also some of the writings of the early Christian teachers and mystics. So why would the authors of the Bible, many of whom lived and worked with the authors and scribes of the aforementioned writings, not also include hidden coded material in their own works? Also many of the latter books of the Bible, although they appear to be original and dealing with original matter, are actually commenting on material which has appeared, elsewhere in the Bible, at an earlier time. Many of the minor Old Testament prophets are of this nature as are some of the books which we have thought of as quite old. Deuteronomy, Joshua and 10

Chronicles are a few examples. But much of the New Testament has developed in this way as well. Some of the Gospel material is extracted from the Old Testament and some of the Epistles, of Peter, Paul and others are comments on earlier writings. Both Peter and Paul quote the prophets and Paul comments on large sections of the book of Genesis. There appears to be very little material, in the Bible, which is original and very early. In fact most of it was not written before about 350B.C.E. and that which was is mostly commenting on events that took place in Palestine no earlier than about 650 to 700B.C.E. But that which is older than this, and this would mostly be small sections of Genesis and maybe the book of Numbers, is obviously, very early and non- Hebrew. Some of it is Egyptian, some Chaldean and much of it is Persian myth. However, regardless of how old it is most biblical material is extracted from that which went before and builds and comments on this previous source material. It does so to the extent that much of it has become self fulfilling prophecy or very circular thinking. All the writings of both the Old and New Testaments use the same type of symbology and consistently apply the same meanings to symbols throughout. These symbols are used repeatedly in passages which are supposed to be referring to the plain and open truth while at the same time saying that some aspect of the story is hidden. In the Gospels Jesus says to his disciples 'To you it is given to understand the meaning of the scriptures, to all others are given the parables.' and 'The Kingdom of God is all around you and you see it not.' It has been well established, by numerous biblical historians, that the writers of the Gospels and much of the Apocryphal literature often used codes. To enable their readers to decipher it the authors of encrypted works inserted a key in the margin of the scroll so that, as long as you knew how to use the key, you could read the inner message. If you did not have the key or did not know how to use it the material you were reading may well be a nice story but, with regard to the actual inner meaning, quite meaningless. Over the years and various translations the keys have been, mostly inadvertently, removed. While we know that the material we have is literally fairly close to the original we have no idea what it is that the keys would have revealed to us. For many centuries we have been like blind men in a library. In the late twentieth century, John Michel, author of â&#x20AC;&#x17E;City of Revelationâ&#x20AC;&#x; attempted, with some success, to open the code using ancient Greek Gematria. John Michel found that part of the key to the code was a Greek symbol called the Tetrachtus (tetraktys). This is a diamond shaped symbol with cross-hatching depicting sixteen smaller interior diamonds; the sixteen inner diamonds and the larger exterior one amounting to seventeen in all. In mystical writings this symbol is often referred to as the net. If a number, starting at one, is given to each of the diamonds of this net and then each of these numbers is added together by the time the seventeenth has been added the sum is one hundred and fifty three (153). In the Gospel of John, chapter twenty one, there is a story which tells of a miraculous event and the meeting of the disciples and the risen Jesus. This story has been told many times and has a special place in many peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x;s thoughts when they meditate on the miracle of the resurrection and the ascension of Jesus. But is this what it is really about; verses eight to eleven suggest that it is not, for they describe the net and the number of fishes in it is one hundred and fifty three. Most theological scholars do not accept that the original Aramaic writings of the Bible were written in code, though given the material produced in this book, which has been available to 11

all scholars for many centuries, it is hard to understand why not. There is, however, one present day scholar, Dr. Barbara Thiering, who is prepared to say that the authors of the New Testament and many of the other non-canonical books thought that the Old Testament was written in code. According to Dr. Thiering these scribes tried to break and read the code and in writing their own New Testament period works they tried to emulate what they thought they had found in the Old Testament. The code they thought they had found, the code they then used in their own material was called Pesher. There is a very interesting conundrum in this idea. It has never been proven that the New Testament scribes did not discover a code and present day scholars, Thiering included, scoff at the idea that they did. These same scholars are, however, unable to demonstrate that it did not happen and scoffing of this nature has, in the past, been somewhat of a two edged sword often coming back to haunt the scoffer. Because of the way in which these scribes interpreted the old writings and encoded the New Testament period writings they had an enormous influence on the rise of the Messianic movement which led to both the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple and the rise of Messianic Christianity. This may have been intentional but it may also have been the result of a misunderstanding of their ideas by those who came later. This misunderstanding may have been that the surface unencrypted stories were all there was to be understood about the New Testament and later scholars may not have realised that they should have been looking for an inner message. In the New Testament there are, for example, some very simple codes; one of which is like, or may actually be, Gematria. In John's Revelation, for instance, the New Jerusalem is described as being of the measurements, 12 x 12 x 12 stadia or furlongs. In Gematria, or similar systems, 12 x 12 or 144 means the whole and using this system a cup is a whole and a plate is a whole but 12 x 12 x 12 means the whole of wholes. A dinner set, including all the plates and cups is a whole of wholes. The universal infinity is also a whole of wholes and John's city in Revelations is, therefore, the infinite universe. Another means of encoding is to use double meanings and Dr.Thiering has pointed out that the word for bread in the Dead Sea scrolls should be understood to mean Levi or Levitical -- meaning Priest or Priesthood. If we use this word in the manner suggested by Thiering in the context of the Gospel stories about the birth of Jesus we find something of great significance. The Gospels tell us that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and apart from all the other elements of the story, which when read symbolically take on quite different meanings; the name Bethlehem is very interesting. In Hebrew it can mean house (beth) of bread (lehem). This, following Thieringâ&#x20AC;&#x;s thinking, would mean that Jesus was born in or was created by the priesthood. If we did not take this any further we might still be able to reconcile this with what we have believed about the birth of Jesus for the last two thousand years. But there is something else to be said, something that was quite clear to the source writers. Within the Levitical Priesthood there were different orders, just as in the Catholic and Anglican churches today there are different orders of Priests and Nuns. In some of these orders, in both the Old and New Testament times, the Priest was referred to as an Elder. The Apostle Paul talks at great length, in his letters, about the Elders of the Church, and John in his second and third letters refers to himself as the Elder. James is referred to as the Elder and 12

some people have thought that this describes James as the elder brother of Jesus. Tradition has it that James became the High Priest at Jerusalem so it is more likely that the term Elder refers to this; meaning that he was a priest. In the book of Revelations the author tells us that there were twenty four Elders, or priestly orders, about the throne of God and then he says that the Lamb came from among these twenty four. If we are going to be consistent in our interpretation we must accept that the Lamb refers to Jesus in some shape or form and that this Jesus is the same one as in the Gospels. Thus, when the Gospel story states that Jesus was born in the house of bread, it means the same thing as Revelations when it says that the Lamb came from among the twenty four Elders. That is Jesus, or whatever Jesus is a symbol of, came from at least one of the Levitical priestly orders, communities or schools. Then, In 2nd Corinthians chapter four verse seventeen, the Apostle Paul tells us that 'this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond comprehension'. In Greek, the word for glory means seemly, in the sense of renown, praise or honour. The Hebrew equivalent, on the other hand, means weighty, as in heavy responsibility. Therefore this passage seems to be dealing with a dual meaning, for it was written in Greek but can also have a Hebrew meaning; the sad thing is that for all this time we have been trying to read the Bible literally-- as if it were not encoded. Then there are symbols. In the ages to which we are referring above dreams, visions, hallucinations, disembodied voices and the like phenomena were thought to be visitations by angels or messengers of the Gods and it seems obvious to us that the angels referred to in the Bible fall into these categories. Everything, according to us, about angels is symbolic; they are heavenly, not of this normal reality and they are like the birds of the air in Genesis and fly across the firmament of the heavens and are, therefore, able to communicate between God and man. They are intuited or come swiftly, quick as a flash of lightning - an image which John uses in Revelations and they can both reveal and conceal. There are angels at the entrance to the Garden of Eden, they are called the Cherubim, and they are there with the flaming sword and it is thought that these two guardians are there to keep us all out. We have all failed see that angels are guides as well as guardians and swords, particularly bright shining ones, can be used as pointers or sign posts indicating the way in. The flaming sword itself is a combination of three symbols; the upright of the blade, the horizontal of the hilt and the flame. The blade, or vertical, represents the male or masculine in that it is and has always been a symbol for the penis. This is the Father, the Spirit and masculine God. The Horizontal represents the female or feminine in that it symbolises the vagina. This is the yoni of Hinduism and is the Mother Earth, Mother Nature, the physical, the female nature spirits and the feminine Goddess. The flame is consciousness; it is mind it is all the thought processes including logic, intuition, emotion and all the creative senses. The flame is the fire of life, the spark of union between the masculine and the feminine and as it is the symbol at the foundation of the written Hebrew language it represents language; the great medium of communication between conscious beings. The flame is also a form of the serpent symbol. The serpent is part of all mysticism and it can be either male or female. When male it is winged and of the sky and comes from the heavens and when female it is of the Earth and is the Life force of the Earth. They are seen entwined 13

together in the caduceus symbol used by the medical profession and the wand of Mercury the messenger of the Gods. This symbol is also called the Tree of life but it is actually the guardian of the way not the tree itself. When the serpents are entangled in this way they represent both the masculine and feminine at the same time and this is the ancient meaning of the crucifix not that which is presented in Christianity. Obviously we can no longer interpret Judaism or Christianity as simplistic moralistic religions for they bear mystical teachings and information which can only be found by accepting this. There are many kinds of symbols; father, mother, sky, sea, moon and sun being just a few and all symbols, including triangles, squares, cubes, spheres and many other geometric forms have risen within man's dreams and visions since time immemorial and Carl Jung developed this idea much better than we ever could. They have always carried a mystical message and they have also had the potential to become a language. In fact all written languages use them in some form and the mathematical language uses them in their entirety. So it is with angels, swords and languages of fire, male and female, physical and spiritual union, mother and father and the energy that arises out of matter. Symbols of all kinds can not only become a written language but are already a language that speaks to us from within. These are the guardians and revealers of the Tree of Life and like all symbols they have the potential for transforming our universe if we would just learn their language as they have the twofold function of keeping out the unwary and guiding in the seeker. Jesus said, 'I am the way'. To master the way we must go past it, through it, as through a door but if we remain with it and spend the passing aeons studying and worshipping it, then obviously it has become the guard that will keep us out. Throughout the ages various geometric symbols have been used and studied by the mystic and scientist alike. They have been meditated on from Egypt to China and included in the mysteries of Chaldea and the teachings of Pythagoras. The Bible tells us that Moses mastered the mysteries of the Egyptians, which means he must have been a student of the geometric sciences and mysticism on which Pythagoras based his teachings. Carl Jung spent most of his life studying and writing about these symbols and had a great deal to say about Pythagoras and the people from whom he learnt. It is clear from what all these people, both ancient and modern, say that we ignore at our own peril those things that symbols have to say about our relationship to the universal whole, both physical and spiritual. It would be very odd, therefore, to find that the book we consider to be one of the greatest writings on spiritual matters chose to ignore the matter of symbols. We can see that it does not however, as it is full of stars (of David and Bethlehem; stars decorating the Tabernacle in the wilderness and about the Throne of God); it has the crucifix at the Garden of Eden and Golgotha, the moon, the sun, the triangle, square, cube and pyramid and many, many more. The Bible is full of measurements of all these mathematical symbols and speaks about them in exactly the same way as Pythagoras and other teachers of the time. Surely, if the Bible includes the same information as the other teachings and it is presented and interpreted in the same way, it is begging us to use it and understand it in the same way.

THE REVELATION OF GENESIS CHAPTER TWO

GENESIS ONE

The first chapter of the biblical book of Genesis, like all the other chapters, gives a word picture of the relationship which exists between the finite and the infinite. It portrays a relationship which is inseparable and enfolded and describes the polarity that is at the very root of the creative process the masculine and the feminine aspects of the whole - and the seemingly dual nature of being. Throughout the Bible we find many instances of writers referring to the end of the age; in the Gospels it is portrayed as the passing of the old heavens and earth and the beginning of the new. Many of the prophets of the Old Testament say similar things but the message is usually presented as leaving Egypt or Babylon and the crossing of the Red Sea or the Jordan River and entry into the Promised Land. In all these examples the idea being presented is the same as that used in the first chapter of Genesis - that is, a new beginning, a new era begun by the passage through water. The Apostle Paul explains that when we enter the new world of the Christ through baptism in water it can be likened to a new birth and we all know that at birth we have left our old world of the womb and water and entered into a totally new environment. The old is no longer of any consequence and all is begun anew and to all intents and purposes the old world never existed. In this first chapter of Genesis all that went before it is likened to chaos because, historically, the amalgam of ideas relating to the gods was indeed chaotic. Every tribe, every village and every subculture had its own concept of what did and did not pertain to the gods and how these gods should be approached. There were gods in the trees, the waters, the stones and the seasons, in the days, the months and the years. There was magic, portents and spirits to be appeased and ritual for every occasion. The new idea, of one that is universal, constituted so dramatic a change that it brought about a rebirth of mankind and the beginning of a new creation. The old order had been totally overwhelmed and was now meaningless within the context of the new; therefore the old previous world order was without form and void. The idea of one universal God reformed man's perception of his environment and began creating the heavens and the earth anew. This idea did not recreate the world as that would have suggested that the old order could in some way have some effect on the new. That was not the case; this was totally new because it was based on the previously unknown experience of universality. In the foregoing chaos the physical realm was outside and beyond the understanding of man and was controlled by a myriad of gods, demons and spirits and darkness was upon the face of the deep. Man was ignorant of the depth of reality; indeed, of his own being as there was no conception of the nature of the heavens or the Earth. Then the Persian prophet Zarathustra, Zoroaster or Zaratut depending on which language you are using, burst upon the scene and although we know very little about him, historically, we are still reeling from the impact of his thoughts.

His teachings began to become public and put into writing about 500B.C. but Zarathustra may well have lived and promulgated his ideas on thousand years before that. He was the prophet of the Persian God, Ahura Mazda the God of Light. Ahura Mazda means golden light and Zarathustra was symbolised as the golden camel, the bearer of the light. The significance of this name is understood once it is realised that the camel, for the people of that time, was the prime means of transport and therefore bearer of all goods, services and news. In Judaism Lucifer is the bearer of the Light and in Christianity both John the Baptist and Jesus have this title and, as will be seen later, this is no coincidence. The theology of Zarathustra was of one God, the Universal and this idea was found, in more recent times, among the Essenes whose basic philosophy was Zarathustrian not Judaism. The Essenes had many of their communities in the Judean wilderness and it is from here that John the Baptist comes wearing a camel skin or camel hair coat and so John, clothed with the garments of the camel is a Zarathustrian teacher just as the Apostle Paul, clothed in the garments of Christ the lamb, is a teacher of Christianity. The disciples and priests who followed after Zarathustra wrote down the things they thought he had taught and from these writings were derived the first canon of religious writings known as the Zend Avesta. It is in these writings that much of the Hindu, Buddhist, Judaic and Christian beliefs originate. These original writings were written in the form of sutras, or wise verses, which is a style that was carried over into all later teachings of the above mentioned religions and the verse form of religious writing has an almost sacred connotation because of this. If one looks at the roots of Zarathustrian, Christian and Buddhist thought and the ideas expressed in the first chapter of Genesis, there is no duality. There is only one source of all things, whatever we may like to think about that source or the way it manifests in our lives. There are no apologies made, all things come into being and all things play a part in forming the creation; it is our own lack of understanding that produces in our minds an image of duality. As a result of this lack of insight the followers of Zarathustra created in their sutras a duality that has come to be understood as the teachings of Zarathustra and from this duality of the disciples and interpreters has come the duality and demons of Judaism, Hinduism and ultimately Christianity and Islam. In Hinduism we find all the old ideas of gods, demi-gods, spirits and heavenly powers much as they were prior to the time of Zarathustra for this is the basis of the old religion which was fostered by the Brahmans as a means of building and controlling a complex society. Overlaying these old ideas is the concept of the universal God and the Hindu gods have been drawn together under the one umbrella by calling them aspects of the One God. However brilliant the concepts of Zarathustra they were not accepted anywhere in their entirety; in the Indo-European cultures the duality of Hinduism resulted and in the Middle Eastern cultures the duality became Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is a very grave mistake to think that any of these religions are not dualistic, for they most certainly are and even some sects of Buddhism have fallen into the trap. Universality, for most people, is an impossible way to see the world and so they build a bridge from the old world ideas into the new. This bridge is mostly made of the old ideas expressed in a new way and so in Hinduism the old gods became melded into the new one universal. This means of course that most people live neither in the old world nor the new and very little spiritual development takes place and because of this Hinduism is pretty much the same today as when it left Mesopotamia and travelled to India on the backs of the camels of migrating tribes. But, also because of this, we are able to get a snapshot of what religious thought was like around the time of Zarathustra.

The original Genesis writings, as found in the Jewish Bible not the Christian Old Testament, tell us that the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters like a dove nestling itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s young. This passage brings to mind the story of the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist; there the Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove, marking the beginning of his ministry. This was the Genesis of the Gnosis of Jesus and the baptism was the water out of which the new world order would be born. However, all spiritual teachings use the ideas of birds and wind, or the breath of God to depict the spirit as an attempt to depict the unseen forces and energies of the universe as they flow, drive and energise all things. The dove, which has been variously depicted as the dove of peace, the swastika (a square form of the dove) and the running legs of the Isle of Man are all symbols for the wind. They are depictions of windmills, brought to life by the wind or spirit. Once alive this symbol can be seen as the dove which gently enfolds the new birth or a flower such as the lotus which opens to the light of the new day and the beginning of new thought. It is symbolic of the experience one undergoes when the realisation manifests that there is more to this universe than one has so far perceived from within the confines of one's own beliefs. The breath of the spirit, the winds of change begin to sweep through one's life and the nestling in us becomes awakened, blinks in the light and spreads its wings. The bud begins to open its petals and Genesis says "Let there be light". The Apostle Paul said, 'be ye transformed by the renewal of your mind' and this is what is being spoken about here in Genesis chapter one. It is the sudden, intuitive, flash of inspiration that grabs us and through which we move, suddenly, from our old concepts into a totally new mode of thinking and being. This flash of insight- of light- brightens up our whole world view to the extent that it makes all that we had thought before seem mistaken, childish and, like the womb, irrelevant in relation to the world we experience after birth. This insight usually brings the recognition that we need to rethink the total structure of our concepts but it does not usually bring instant total knowledge of a new world order; that has to be worked through and formulated over a period of time in the light of the new inspiration. The concepts of Einstein and quantum physics have been going through this process for the modern world. First comes the inspiration of the individuals and then follows the effort required to understand that which even the original thinkers had doubts about. This is what the first chapter of Genesis is saying about the light, or enlightenment; first comes the insight, the flash which illuminates the darkness, and then comes the building of the various structures which will enable us to understand that insight. Eventually this process leads others to seek a new vision or insight to overcome the weaknesses or shortcomings contained in the original structure. Then again begins a new creation and the ending of the old order of things. Enlightenment means beginning to perceive both the physical and psychic structures that are hidden behind the chaotic beliefs which we have previously used to shelter ourselves from reality. It is the beginning of cohesive consciousness, that state in which the universe is seen as a whole, rather than a loose collection of separated bits and pieces that have somehow managed to congregate together. Before the light of the flash of inspiration, however, must come the word and Genesis, at this point, says 'and God said' as before there can be enlightenment there must be the recognition of the need for it and the words â&#x20AC;&#x153;let there be lightâ&#x20AC;? is that recognition. The flash of inspiration, by its very definition, must come from that intuitive realisation of the need for a new concept and unless that concept becomes manifest in real terms it has not been comprehended. Therefore the utterance of a word naming and representing that new concept also signifies the comprehension of the new consciousness of reality which has been intuited and expressed as the light. This act of conscious

comprehension is expressed in John's Gospel as 'In the beginning was the word'- the same word which is referred to in Genesis. To express the need for and then name a new concept is the beginning of comprehension and the realisation of other than self. Just as saying 'and God saw' is also an act of conscious comprehension, an act of perception. God "said" is active and the outward breath; God "saw" is passive and the inward breath - the outflow and intake of data. From the analysis of information comes the new realty. And there was Light! The very ability to conceive of the idea of light brings it into existence. Originally man was not able to perceive that the world was spherical, and therefore to man it was not. But the instant he understood that it was spherical it was so. No longer can we live on a flat Earth even though we do many things as if it were flat, such as build houses and navigate short distances; we know that in reality everything we do is affected by the curvature of the planet. History is littered with all manner of outmoded ideas of reality. We no longer accept that the universe revolves around the earth and we know that we are part of both a solar system and a galaxy and we are but a very small part of a very large universe. All these changes to our thinking have expanded our horizons and forced us to move out of our old worlds into the new. The old are, now, no more than worn out toys in a child's toy box and we look back on them and wonder but they are no longer real. The separation of light from darkness parallels the beginning of man's ability to perceive and distinguish differences and the ability to distinguish that which is self and that which is not; this is called polarisation. Polarisation does not lead to concepts of good and evil, it is merely the process of conceptualising things. In the old chaos of gods, spirits and demons there was very little concept of the difference between what went on in the physical world and what one thought about those happenings. Polarisation allows one to accept that there are events and there are thoughts about those events and that the two are not necessarily the same. Symbolically this stage in understanding can be represented by the point. It is the spark of awareness, a point of light in a dark universe of ignorance that is the chaotic waters of the infinite universal subconscious that has not yet risen to the light. The firmament, the next stage in the creation in Genesis, is that which separates the known from the unknown; the threshold which we cannot pass for that which is on the other side has not yet impinged itself upon our consciousness. This unknown is the void of infinite being which even the spark of light with its new concept of universality is incapable of comprehending. It is the heavens and the realm which in the fullness of time we shall enter but from which, for now, we remain isolated even though we realise that somehow it affects all that we do. Everybody has a different way of dealing with this area of their existence. Some ignore it, pretending it does not exist, others treat it as the realm of the gods we have left behind and still others of the gods or demons we have yet to confront. For some it is the convenient too hard basket into which they consign all those things they cannot or do not wish to deal with and in doing so give up the responsibility and their freedom to God. The firmament is symbolised with a circle and so that which is inside the circle is the present reality while that which is outside is the void. Inside the circle is the point which is the spark of consciousness. These two, the circle and the point, together are the beginning of the Yin Yang symbol; the astrological symbol for the sign of Pisces and it is the sign of light and dark and therefore polarity.

FIG. ONE GOD POLARITY

THE WATERS

POLARITY

YING YANG LIGHT AND DARK

POLARITY

POLARITY The Spirit, like a Dove, moves over the face of the waters.

Most people think that this sign, whether it is called Pisces or Yin Yang, represents duality. This is a far too narrow point of view as polarity is not duality. Light and dark is a pair, up and down is a pair and positive and negative is a pair; without the one the other does not exist. Therefore, Yin Yang does not represent duality, it does not separate and it is symbolic of complementary pairs. If any part of the symbol is taken away the whole disappears as it exists only when all its parts are present; it is a whole and as such is a symbol for the totality and depicts the true nature of all things. Once brought together that which appears dual reveals a truth which cannot be seen otherwise and in the seeing of this truth the two complement each other and disappear; the new is born in our consciousness and it is whole. There are always polarities in wholeness, it cannot be otherwise and it is the polarity which reveals the whole. Even the fact that there is a boundary to our understanding, represented by the circle, displays a polarity. That which we know is inside of the circle and that about which we have no knowledge is outside of the circle; together, the known and the unknown, they make the whole. A thing does not cease to exist just because we know nothing about it, neither is it separate from the whole or evil; it is simply unknown. The circle of the Yin Yang is simply an arbitrary boundary with which we say that at present this line defines the limit of our knowledge and abilities but it will expand as we are able to deal more fully with further aspects of our vision of enlightenment. The only problem with boundaries is that we forget that they are arbitrary and temporary and unfortunately, over a period of time, we begin to consider those things outside the boundary as somehow more sacred than those things inside and dogmas and creeds begin to appear. This happens, not only in spiritual matters, but also in scientific and the move away from Newtonian physics to quantum theory has led to a major revolution in scientific thought but, for many scientists, it has been a painful process and many sacred cows have had to be despatched. Sadly some scientists have found their cows far too sacred. The waters of Genesis, which are above and below the Firmament, are the universal everything and we must never forget, lest we die, that our conceptual structures are temporary. No finite structure can encompass the infinite and should we not take account of this there is nothing surer than the winds of change will, in due course, sweep across the waters and the waves will carry away our outmoded ideas and our way of life. We will then be faced with change we do not welcome and accepting it will be the more difficult. Many people in many cultures have experienced this type of catastrophic end to their worlds. While we are attempting to understand where we stand we must always be open to new vision and experience for the universe is flowing, surging and sweeping about us and it will tolerate inflexibility for only a very short while. Then, when the tensions between reality and our conceptual structures become too great, it will demand drastic and often catastrophic changes in our understanding. This then is the Yin Yang and the beginning of Genesis and it does not talk about duality but complementary pairs; any boundary we perceive simply represents the limits of our understanding to this stage. The outside of the boundary we call heaven because it is the infinite and the macrocosm whereas the inside of the boundary is that state of being, those waters of consciousness, to which we can relate; we call it reality and it is the microcosm. The boundary, the firmament, should be an ever expanding frontier. Once we understand the nature of the whole in which we exist, though we may never comprehend the whole at all, we can begin to define those borders of our reality which we are able to perceive and we can begin giving ourselves some sort of framework to build upon. Within the firmament, as described by Genesis, there are the seas and the dry land. If symbols are consistent we must use them that way and so if the waters at the beginning of creation are the

universal all, but not conscious, so the waters or seas within the firmament must represent the same thing but in a finite manner. Carl Jung called it the collective unconscious and it is the collective mass of being, the oceanic womb of Mother Nature out of which conscious life arises. In this ocean of being sparks of consciousness begin to arise and seek order among the chaos and then this order is established by the building of networks of patterns; by seeing relationships between seemingly separate things and events. These patterns of order separate and categorise and form islands of knowledge which allow us to create some sense and bring some meaning into our world. This is the dry land. In Jewish mysticism the seas are the nations of gentiles and therefore, the whole world except for the Jews and the dry land, which is completely surrounded by the seas, is the nation of Israel which has been created by God for the chosen race and in this way Judaism brings order out of chaos for its followers. So far we have created the Yin Yang symbol which includes the infinite, the finite, the point of consciousness, polarity and the firmament. Once we add to this symbol the seas and the dry land we have all the keys that open the rest of the first chapter of Genesis to reveal that it is portraying the zodiac symbol. The zodiac is made up of twelve signs that are call houses, doors or stones. They are each ruled by either the sun or the moon and so each is either a day and therefore light sign or a night and therefore dark sign. The Yin Yang or Pisces sign revealed this to us; it is a sphere and the line which separates the light from the dark is like the terminator line which encircles the earth separating the actual day and night. If then we call each sign of the zodiac, in turn, either evening or morning we find that we end up with six days each an evening and a morning as stated in Genesis. When we do that we find that each of the houses of the zodiac hold signs which represent each of the days of creation as depicted in Genesis chapter one. There is the fish of Pisces, the beasts of the earth in Taurus and Aries; Aquarius used to be called the Phoenix and was the birds of the air. Both Pisces and the crab live in the seas and in Capricorn is one of the great sea monsters. But there is also another part to this symbol for the astrological zodiac has a star inside it with the points of the star touching the cusps of the houses. The Gospels record that teachers called the Magi came to the birth of Jesus and that they did so by following a star. The Magi were Persian astrologers and therefore the star they would have been following would have been the zodiac star. These Magi were considered to be very wise men who were teachers of astrology. Today we think of this as a fortune telling parlour game but astrology really means knowledge of the stars in the sense that it is the same word astronomy. While they may have read more into the stars than was actually there (although this is debatable) the Magi actually did know quite a lot about the stars and the planets; they could not have created the maps and calendars that they did otherwise. They were astronomers and they most certainly did follow the star. This teaching organisation of the Magi was spread right throughout the Middle East and there were many of them in Judea. The story of the birth of Jesus is trying to tell us that the Magi were in Judea and they recognised the birth of the new concept as this was the birth of the gnosis or knowledge, in Judea. The Magi enquired after the health of the new born concept and made sure that this was a teaching to which they could lend their authority then they left the gifts of their teachings which were symbolised by gold, incense and ointments.

Scholars have long been puzzled about why so many of the teachings of Jesus seem to be so familiar, as if they were the same as other teachers of other times and cultures. The answer is, of course, that they do come from the same ancient source and in this case they were passed on by the Zarathustrian Priests and the centre piece of this precious teaching gift is the star in the zodiac circle. Not the five pointed star as used today by the soothsayers but the six pointed star which is called the Star of David or Seal of Solomon. Although the Jews use this star as their symbol it is not theirs alone for it is used by most religions and dates back so far into antiquity that its origin is unknown. It is even found inscribed on ancient stone megaliths and in ruins whose builders have long since disappeared. It is found, in some ruins, as a star in the centre of a zodiac circle and as such may be as old as ten thousand years. In this form the star has three lines running through its centre and terminating at points of the star which are opposite each other. They are like the spokes of a wheel and as the spokes pass through the centre they intersect the point at which we started and thereby make the seventh day of creation; the day of rest. The zodiac, which for clarity from now on we will call the star symbol, was the most important teaching tool the Magi had for with it they were able to teach and demonstrate most of the ideas they were trying to impart; everything from astronomy to spirituality. One of the most important signs in this star symbol was the house of the Phoenix which was a two headed eagle representing the birds which fly across the firmament of the heavens. This does not mean that they fly around the curvature or across the diameter of the circle that we are using to depict the heavens, but that they fly through the circle boundary and back. They pass across it and return from wherever it is they have been and bring with them those precious insights with which we are able to expand our own understanding and our own boundary. The Phoenix has two heads, which means it is able to be conscious of two realms at the same time - the physical and the spiritual together. Aquarius, the new symbol for the sign of the Phoenix, is the water carrier and is depicted as a person with a jar of water which is being poured out onto the earth. It is being poured out from above to below and is the water from the waters above and therefore from the realm which we are at present unable to know. This is therefore very similar in meaning to the symbol of the Phoenix. Through the behaviour of the bird or the flowing of the water something from the unknowable is beginning to impinge on our consciousness. Both of the Apostles Peter and Paul also speak about the pouring out of the Spirit and relate this imagery to the baptism of Jesus and how through this symbolic death and resurrection we enter not only into a new life but also into a new knowledge of the Kingdom of God. At the baptism of Jesus the Spirit was portrayed as a dove, a bird of the air that flew across the firmament from God in heaven and alighted on the head, or entered into the consciousness, of Jesus. Therefore the birds and those other messengers of the Spirit, the angels with their wings and flashes of inspiration, or the visions of totality some of us experience from time to time, are one and the same thing. They are those elements of our being which keep us in contact with our true reality even when, in our seemingly separated state, we find this beyond our comprehension. However, all of the signs of the star symbol represent an archetype or some aspect of our consciousness, as described so well by Carl Jung. Some of these archetypes arise out of what has been called the collective unconscious and can be likened to the great sea monsters or the fish of the sea. Others arise from what many describe as their higher self, their universal being or the cosmic mind and they seem to be images of things greater than we are able to comprehend. Moses

refers to these when he is given the heavenly pattern for the earthly Tabernacle in the wilderness and Paul says that we do not understand the heavenly for as yet we see through glass darkly. But no matter where they come from these archetypes all symbolise those aspects of our psyche with which we have to deal on our path to development as individuals, cultures, or as a species. Every aspect of our being is recorded in the star symbol. Because we often do not appreciate what we are experiencing, when these images appear in our lives in whatever form they may take, we have called them gods, demigods, demons and devils. Because of our inexperience we tend to miss the messages they bear and the result is our continuing state of darkness. However, as clearly stated in the book of Genesis, the star symbol has also depicted within it the heavenly stars; those small sparks of light or knowledge which help us to plot our course through the darkness until the light of day suddenly dawns on us. In Revelations Jesus is depicted as being one of these stars where he is named as the bright morning star. Also within the darkness of lack of knowledge is the moon, the great light or teaching which shines in the darkness. This is the spiritual knowledge which is always there, that is always passed down from age to age so that we will have something to hang on to; something to illuminate the way for us during the darkest part of the night and one of its names is the Ageless Wisdom. The moon, however, is a periodic light and represents the manner in which the ancient teachings have been handed down age after age, or season after season. They always appear to wane and die yet, at seemingly the eleventh hour, always reappearing in an apparent new form. The moon is reborn each season, each month, twelve of which appear in the star symbol circle. The moon is the feminine aspect of the symbol and in this sense it is the mother, the womb or seed-bed on which the light of day will eventually dawn. Ultimately the darkness will fade and the new day will dawn and the true light of consciousness will reveal reality to us and all our dreams of the night will fade away. The sun, on the other hand, is the masculine element and demands more of us than the nurturing of the mother. It demands that we use the daylight hours to our fullest potential. In this sense the sun and the moon are the two greatest archetypes and in the mysteries they are the masculine and the feminine and represent the balance in all things; they are a complementary pair. The sun and moon do not create duality for they are harmony and it is through harmonising everything within ourselves that we are able to achieve true discernment, not judgement, and bring into our lives the seventh day of rest or harmony with the wholeness which this star symbol essentially represents. The realisation that this first chapter of Genesis is speaking in a symbolic way and that the symbols it uses are universally experienced and are therefore, universally constant, brings about a different level of understanding of the rest of the Bible. For example, the trees are symbols for all those teachings and philosophies, religions and theologies through which we can grow; Christianity has as its centrepiece symbol the tree called the crucifix and we know about the Tree of knowledge, the evolutionary tree and family trees. Philosophies, religions and scientific schools are also trees and they have various branches of learning; some of which are quite large and others very small. The animals or beasts of the earth represent various ways that we can feed on, or experience, these teachings at the different levels of experience and understanding. Some students just browse their way through life not really looking much higher than their everyday experience others, however, stretch their minds and imaginations and like the giraffe reach for the highest branches; some even take flight and leave the rest of us earthbound. Within the context of this imagery the Bible itself is a tree and a mystery teaching. The Apostle Paul is not slow in saying so, nor is he slow in saying that

this mystery should be de-mystified. It is now possible for us to do this for with the star symbol all the stories of the Bible can be opened and when they are they present us with quite a different perspective. The story of Elijah is a good example of this. He is portrayed as having departed into the wilderness in order to be on his own and commune with God with the intention of breaking a drought and bringing the rain. During this sojourn he is fed by the ravens until, at the end of his hermetic retreat, the rains which he was seeking begin. We will return to the rains in a later chapter and will see that it is a symbol for the appearance of the Spirit of God and the beginning of the gnosis but the point of this part of the story is that while Elijah waited for the rain he was fed. In the wilderness of Judea, called the Herimos, many individuals prepared to undergo awakening, enlightenment and the revelation of the Spirit of God in their lives; some of them were called hermits (hence Herimos) and some were members of Essenic and other Gnostic communities. In order to partake of this enlightenment these individuals were often fed by the ravens as this bird is symbolic of two things each of which is part of the other. The ravens are birds which fly across the firmament and therefore represent the insights one is seeking in order to achieve an enlightenment or communion with God and they were also one of the orders of monks within the various communities who sought enlightenment and communion with God via insight and vision by crossing the firmament in trance and similar forms of psychic practice. There are examples of these hermetic practices in the Old and New Testaments and the Dead Sea and Nag Hammadi scrolls and other Gnostic works which would seem to confirm that these practices were commonplace. Therefore, to be fed by the ravens was to devour their teachings and develop or grow thereby. In Revelations John says that he was given a little book and told to eat it, to devour it and be fed by it. At first he found the book sweet in his mouth meaning, we think, that he thought it was good; but once heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d had time to digest it or think about it he found it to be bitter for, we think, the knowledge it contained was unpalatable and was not of sound substance or good for growth. So the ravens in the wilderness have dropped their seeds of ideas into the fertile mind of Elijah and when the rains of the Spirit come and water this fertile ground, growth takes place. Paul says that one sows, another tends the growth and yet another reaps the harvest - surely this is the same imagery. Elijah is the archetypal disciple and in a grander context the teacher who, having had his vision, comes back to the people and shares it with them in ways that they can understand. It is as though the drought breaks and a new teaching, or a new way of looking at reality becomes apparent and all grow a little thereby. All of the ancient mystery schools used animal symbols, such as the raven, to depict the level of comprehension of the various disciples and even today we are familiar with thinking in terms of symbolic birds and we do not find it strange to depict politicians as either hawks or doves. For the Egyptians and the Zarathustrians, God the Great Spirit, was depicted as an eagle; for Christians it is both a dove and an eagle. For Hindus the Spirit is symbolised in many different kinds of creatures, each sect having its own representation, each one a manifestation of God as understood by that sects adherents. It is interesting to note that the eagle, as understood by the Zarathustrian Essenes, was the Phoenix and the philosophy of these people is manifested in this symbol. The Essenes were not just peaceful monastic scholars for, as we shall see later, they came to believe, along with their idea that the path to the Kingdom was a path to enlightenment, that the world was very much a part of a war that was raging in the heavens.

FIG. TWO

Six Days The great round stone door

Six Days Evening Morning

Each sign is ruled by the Sun or the Moon These are the houses, ages, signs, stones or doors of the zodiac

Aquarius used to be the Phoenix

Two Birds Heads

The Yin Yang is a sphere; it is the earth on which the sun is shining. It is day on one side and night on the other.

The dry land is an island continent in the midst of an ocean. In this two dimensional picture the sea in front and behind the symbol cannot be depicted

The Sea Signs

Pisces Dry Land

Aries Taurus

Cancer Gemini

This was a war of the forces of light against the forces of darkness and evil and this war would ultimately be won by the forces of light. The Essenes came to believe that they were a part of this force of light and were charged by God to do what they could to further the cause. They therefore established an army of light, the members of which were soldiers of light; not in the poetic sense that the Apostle Paul uses but in the very real sense of going to war. The Essenes saw the Romans as the physical embodiment of the forces of darkness and therefore went into battle against them and were convinced that when they had defeated the Romans a new era would begin and the world would be ruled by God's Messiah. The army that they formed is what the Bible and Josephus Flavius, the Jewish historian of the period, called the Zealots and it was as a result of their uprising that the Romans eventually destroyed the Temple and Jerusalem. Like the Phoenix the Essenes were two headed because they mistook the symbol of complementarities as being duality and therefore they ended up casting themselves into the fires of their own destruction just as others, both before and since, have done. Today there are many people who believe that the Spirit can bring messages from 'the other side' and it is claimed that some of these messages come from our dearly and sometimes not so dearly departed. Some of these messages are even said to come from 'The Source of Life' itself. In either case the messages and messengers have symbols of recognition and they are acknowledged by the adherents to these beliefs to be coming from either higher or lower spirits. The lower can be likened to the fish which swim in the sea of the collective unconscious and may be considered to be memories- or echoes of those memories- of our passed friends and loved ones. But while these spirits may be recognised as being extensions or aspects of our collective selves, by bringing them to the light of day, via trance or meditation, we credit them with some degree of autonomy. This is where we run into problems, because when we accept their separateness we begin fracturing our own being and we lose sight of their true nature. We impart to them an authority or power over us that they would not otherwise have. The higher spirits, the birds, are the intuitive insights or connections between our everyday mind activity and that which we picture as our higher self; some would say our soul. They are vision, idea, ideal and inspiration. But if we persist in trying to understand these things as being the manifestation of some greater (or even lesser) being within our lives, as many do, we ultimately reach the impasse in which our universe is inhabited by gods, angels, spirits and shades all guiding or ushering us along various paths which are supposed to lead us to ultimate enlightenment, nirvana or heaven. Our real enlightenment would come instantaneously were we simply to drop all this pretence and accept that, for good or ill, all of these so called spiritual entities are ourselves or aspects of ourselves screaming for release from the depths of a self imposed hell. The symbols or names by which these higher spirits, the birds, have been known reveals to us something of their point of view and a few of the more recent such spirits made themselves known as White Eagle, White Dove, Running Wolf, Lazarus, Stephen and Seth. There are many more and some have taken oriental names which to the westerner sound mystical and mysterious; it is a shame that we have not also achieved the oriental understanding of what these spirits are. In the East, at least as far back as Buddha, these spirits have been considered to be helpful and useful teachers, up to a point. They are also known to be devious. For aeons these spirits have been called Devas and eastern mystics have written and taught that in following them one must always be aware of the pitfalls presented by them. Buddha made it quite clear that true enlightenment would

only come once one had walked away from, and gone beyond, the teachings of these beings. The Bible tells us that man has fallen below the level of the angels but the return of mankind to the light and the Kingdom of God will result in greater enlightenment at a higher level of awareness than the angels - the Devas. Nevertheless they do have many important things to say. The fact that they manifest at all from time to time should itself be taken as a message for us for by appearing they are saying that there is something we need to understand about ourselves and our psychic functions; be that of an individual or cultural nature. The real message is that we persist in separating or fracturing reality and are, therefore, fractured in ourselves. Without saying a word and just by appearing both the birds and the spirits are crying out for holism in our minds. The stories they tell and the philosophies they espouse are merely reasons or vehicles for being there in the first place; we would be better to ignore these and realise that the only message they need to present is their presence as this alone tells us all we need to know. One of the more recent spirits was called Seth. He spoke through Jane Roberts while she was in trance and the teachings are recorded in a number of books. Seth is a very interesting name for a spirit to give itself for it is one associated with the earliest parts of the Bible and originally came from the Egyptian mysteries where it was known as the demi-god or angel Set. In comparing what we know about Set with that which was produced by Seth we find that it is the same pattern of teaching, or archetype, manifesting. In New Zealand, during the 1970s, another group was in touch with a spirit called Stephen who, it was claimed, was Stephen the proto-martyr found in the biblical book of The Acts of the Apostles. While the material produced during these sessions, which took place once a fortnight over a period of about ten years, has not been published, on comparing the essence of it with the writings of the earliest Christian Gnostics, very little difference is found. Yet none of the members of the group knew anything about Gnosticism of any kind and most of them would still deny any knowledge because they have not made the connections. It is clear that the name taken by the spirit usually defines the philosophy that will be produced by them. The star symbol also reveals that a particular point of view will bring about a certain type of spiritual experience and that experience will manifest certain types of spirits, visions and insights. It does this by showing that each astrological house is an archetype or focus of attention which we will play out in our lives once we attach some importance to it. It is a little like being on a train where the passengers are entirely Christian orientated. Each station along the way has Christian names and is surrounded by towns and houses in which people are experiencing reality in a Christian way. But if we get on the same train and all the passengers are Buddhist those same stations will have Buddhist names and the people in the Buddhist houses are having Buddhist experiences. With this in mind the star symbol tells us that, at some point along our path of developing awareness, we will come to a station which is named for those philosophies that seek enlightenment through climbing to the tops of the trees of spiritual knowledge, spiritual hierarchy and rebirth. This station is called Capricorn, the spirit of the psychic seas and the goat which clambers to the highest peaks and is among the most agile tree climbers. Another station is named for those teachings which portray man as being both animal and spirit, or god/man and these teachings say that we must overcome the animal nature and ascend to our true state of total Godliness; this is Sagittarius and is about reincarnation and karma. It is not until we see that each house represents an aspect of ourselves, and that they must all be brought together in ourselves,

that we will be whole. Then we will understand that those magical or spiritual happenings in our lives, those mysterious psychic happenings- the birds of the upper mind and the fish of the lowerare simply manifestations of our own universality which, up to now, we have been unable to comprehend and therefore, seem somewhat chaotic and outside ourselves. But when we do realise this, it is as Genesis says; we have dominion over the birds of the earth. That is, we get the birds back into the trees and the fish into the sea, we get ourselves together and they are both free to swim and fly as they will and we are free to listen to their chirping and wonder about their beauty if we wish. Being is the waters of the first verses of Genesis. This is the universal state of pure being and is neither conscious nor unconscious, but just is; that about which in the final analysis we can know nothing. The infinite is just that, non-finite, and therefore unknowable; it is a state or condition that can be experienced but the instant we attempt to define that experience we have lost it. Attempting to define it creates the chaos and no matter how often we try the more difficult it becomes. No matter how many try we all see something different. That is the nature of infinity. Every other symbol that is used in Genesis, after this initial image of the universal pure being, from the light through to the creation of man represents greater degrees of focused consciousness and, therefore, more complexity and sophistication. The further away we move, in our thinking, from the totality expressed in the first verse of Genesis the more detail we become aware of in relation to a smaller and smaller number of things. In the scientific world there is a method for finding the most likely answer to a problem called Occam's razor. Basically it says that the simplest answer which has the least complexity and most comprehensively explains the question is probably the correct one. If we apply this to the spiritual thinking that we have been afflicted with over the last four to five thousand years we would have to say that very few teachers have heard of Occam's razor. As long as we persist in seeing things in a linear time/space bound fashion our understanding of our universe may indeed become more complex, detailed and sophisticated and it may become more ordered and structured but we may not necessarily be any more enlightened about ourselves. So chapter one of Genesis and the star symbol is about becoming aware; a process which always it seems first moves toward greater complexity so that we can come to understand the roots and development of consciousness. This brings about an awareness of the need for enlightenment through simplicity and wholeness and the end of the process is that we come to see ourselves as that which is symbolised by the whole circle and the star, uniting all things in ourselves. This star symbol has one interesting characteristic that is not found in any other star. If a pentagram is drawn with one short line running from the completed star's peak to the centre, the result is the symbol for the perfected physical man, as understood by the mystics. Leonardo Da Vinci drew a well known form of this with the man with outstretched arms inside it. This is the Animus as described by Jung and it is the star that represents Jesus and it is used in the Church as such; it is the dividers of the Masons and is used to draw the perfect circle which represents God. Then if that very same pentagram is inverted the result is the symbol for the feminine element of creation. It is the Anima and the Gnostic symbol for the feminine. For most people who have entered into the teachings of the various mystical orders this symbol has come to mean, not only the goddesses of old like Isis, Diana or Venus, but also wisdom and healing which are attributes of the serpent (as in the medical caduceus) which is also associated with this inverted pentagram.

FIG.THREE

Pax is the symbol inside the star; it is the inner peace. The star is man made in the image(s) of God.

Feminine/physical

Masculine/Spirit

Union

This is why, in the Garden of Eden, Eve and the serpent are united in the one deed; they are both feminine symbols and the serpent represents the energy that flows through the earth mother. This explains why this symbol, the inverted star, became equated with the dragon, Satan and evil when the Christian church repressed women and femininity. However, if we place the inverted star on top of the upright pentagram so that they share the same centre and so that the points of the "legs" of

the inverted star touch the points of the "arms" of the upright star the six pointed star that we described initially is the result. The masculine and the feminine, the physical and the spiritual are now united and bring all together in the One; Adam and Eve are now reunited and this is the symbol for Cosmic or Universal Man. In various cultures and religions, including Christianity and Islam, the circle and point (symbols of infinity) the hexagram, Pax sign and pentagram are all used to represent God and in the star symbol infinity is represented in the union of them all. If we now put this star symbol inside the circle of the zodiac, with its days and nights as described in Genesis, we have arrived at what chapter one of Genesis calls man made in the image(s) of God. Finally, if we join all the points of the star with a hexagon (the Greeks symbol for God) inside the circle, a real piece of magic happens. The symbol now includes a cube on the six faces of which there is a cross (x) the Gnostic symbol for the Christ. This cube is the same symbol that John depicts at the end of his Revelations when he say that he saw a city coming down from heaven to the earth that was measured in three dimensions as 12x12x12 stadia; in other words it was a whole or universal cube. In that vision John says that the appearance of the cube is the marriage between the bride and the bridegroom which will bring about the birth the new heaven and the new earth. This of course sums up my point which I have described as the union between the two pentagram stars. Our reality turns out to be shadows playing on the walls and the zodiac constellations with which we have foretold the future have turned out to be figments of our imagination, as in truth they are, for were we to look at them from some other part of the galaxy they would not look the same at all. Our reality depends on our point of view and so it is not the stars of the constellations which influence us, from birth to death, but every mortal and immortal thing. Once we unite all aspects of ourselves and see that we are both the finite, which we experience daily and the infinite, which we persist in either denying or projecting on to some godlike being, all of the mystery vanishes and a totally new life is conceived.

FIG. FOUR

The original Star and Cube

New Jerusalem

THE GENESIS OF REVELATION CHAPTER THREE

OUT OF THE DUST

Chapter one of Genesis presents us with an image that the rest of the Bible attempts to deal with and that image is the star symbol. This symbol has become known as the zodiac which is the foundation stone of astrology; astro meaning star and logic meaning rational thought. Originally this was not prognosticating nonsense but a science and considered to be part of the path to enlightenment and universal consciousness; we suppose that most of us think in much the same terms today as we insist that education is a must for a rational and enlightened awareness of our universe. As it is depicted in chapter one of Genesis the symbol is archetypal and expressed as being the root of our being. It not only appears in Genesis and Revelations but, as we have mentioned and will expand on later, it arises in our own consciousness and subliminally bears upon everything we do and think. It is the experience of this psychic manifestation of the star and the comprehension of it that various mystics have named enlightenment and Christ consciousness. Through the experience and comprehension of this archetype within and throughout our lives we are able to come to a totally new world view and participate in communication with that which some call God and others the whole or our higher self. This archetype is not generated by anything or anyone and it is not the manifestation of God, in spite of what the mystics say; nor is it an angel or demi-god. Those things are just names for an aspect of our own consciousness that we have not fully understood. It has no beginning in time, nor ending; it simply is and is the relationship between all things as projected into our consciousness by the unconscious workings of our mind. From the moment of our conception all things that are transferred to us from our parents and all things that happen within our environment begin to build, within our minds, this archetypal representation of the totality in which we exist. It comes into existence because the universe exists and the universe is observed by us in the way we do because of it; neither comes before the other for each is the other. Consciousness is unable to distinguish between the thing itself from the representation of it but once our mind begins to function in a self aware manner it attempts to link all received information together in a rational manner. Although it must ultimately fail, because we cannot comprehend infinity, the working model, so to speak, becomes the star symbol. This symbol clearly shows that all is in all, through all and of all and clearly demonstrates that all things influence all other things at all times; it shows that when we encompass the universe within ourselves without reservation we have become that which is unknowable and indefinable and this can only be experienced and symbolised. The inability to comprehend this universality in even a minor way creates a separation between that which we actually are and that which we are prepared to accept we are and leads to a division in our psyche and 32

ultimately to the creation of a reality that is false. These false realities, in which most of us live, are the result of duality in our thinking and the lack of trust in our feelings and it is from this that we derive the ideas of gods, demons, angels, heavens and hells, reincarnation, divine rewards and retribution. We have become fractured in being and we will persist in this until such time as we are happy to accept the universe as it is presented to us at our birth. It is humankinds overpowering impulse to change the world, whether that is through religion, science, philosophy or greed. We seem to leap out of the womb crying out 'here I am, now letâ&#x20AC;&#x;s get on with it; where's my bulldozer and where's the nearest pile of dirt I can shift'? The world is full of people who think that their sole purpose in life is to ensure that everybody else accepts their agenda and for some any means towards this end are acceptable. It may not be good for our ego but the truth is that the overwhelming majority of thinking beings in this universe do not know that you exist and do not wish to live according to your lights. There may be many similarities in outlook, between one individual and another, but that is all there is. We all experience life from a different point of view and our experience of it will, therefore, be unique. None of us has the right to expect, let alone force, anyone else to agree with our point of view. We are fortunate if they do. Having said that let us now begin with Genesis chapter two which begins with the symbol of Cosmic Being and goes on to describe the manner in which most cultures and individuals experience it. This chapter uses the same imagery as chapter one but deals with it more in a cultural and time based sense than the previous chapter. It is as if we step back from the wall to get a better look at the image in the painting or mirror. Some tribal cultures have a myth which says that in the beginning the Mother and Father aspects of the universe were at all times together but their children did not like them this way, decided to part them and did so. The myth goes on to say that all will not be at peace again until the Mother and Father are once more united. Basically chapter two is dealing with this myth; but we must remember that we are dealing with a different culture today and we will need to translate for our modern way of thinking. Adam, the Cosmic Man, is brought forth from the dust of the earth, for it had not yet rained and there was no man to till the ground. Shakespeare says 'He ploughed her and she cropped' and it is in a somewhat similar vein that Genesis chapter two should be understood for in this case it is God, the Father who does the ploughing and the Mother Earth who does the cropping. Jesus, in the Gospels, says of himself that he is the sower of the seed, the planter of the vineyard and the tiller of the soil and in doing so he is connecting himself with the gardener of Genesis. This is reinforced by Mary Magdalene, at the tomb, when she says that she thought the risen Jesus was the gardener; the earth this gardener is tilling or ploughing by his presentation of the Gospel is the eternal Mother of us all. The vast majority of religions are feminine orientated which means that their Divine figure is a Goddess. Even those religions which worship a male God have within their philosophy strong images of the perfect woman and Christianity, Judaism and Islam are no exception. In all these philosophies, without exception, the female represents the earth, the soil, the ground and all attributes which go with attracting a mate and nurturing the offspring. She is also the 33

seas which are the waters teeming with life for all things physical are represented by the woman. It is most important to understand that when any earth/Mother symbol is used it represents the universally physical which is everything including the stars, galaxies, planets, atoms and sub-atomic particles; it means you and us and all things of the five senses and it is life, birth, death, transmutation and growth and the womb of all. Adam (who, at the beginning of this chapter, represents mankind male and female either as a culture, nation, society or individual) rises out of the Mother, the dust of the ground. The image of dust is used to represent the infinity of separated physical things- the universe of atomic particles and galaxies. The dust is also all those individuals who make up all the races of mankind throughout all time and so all nations, all cultures, and all peoples are the dust of the earth. But it had not yet rained and so a mist went up from the earth and watered all the ground. This water, mist, the spirit of the Mother, is emanating from the Mother and giving life to all that have their being in her. Baptism, throughout the Bible, is presented as an image of rebirth and of coming from within the womb through the waters of life. It is the life giving energy, the medium which supports the new life until such time as it can exist apart from the Mother; in other words the birth waters are the spirit of the Mother. In all Earth Mother religions we find expressions of these waters in the psychic abilities demonstrated by many of the priestesses and teachers. So it is not surprising that in the more masculine centred religions that talents such as clairvoyance, mediumship and intuition have been lumped together under the heading of witchcraft and outlawed or at least seriously frowned upon for these are manifestations of the spirit of the Mother and are the mist (one might say mystical) that rises from the ground of her being. Because the Mother represents everything, all physical space/time consciousness is a manifestation of her; be that normal/rational space/time or the more psychic types of consciousness which are prone to be somewhat "slippery" (many mediums are unable to give accurate time forecasts for their prognostications as they have no idea whether a given event will happen sooner, later, in the past or the future). As a species, as races and individuals, we are born and grow and develop within the bosom of the Mother and all our experiences are derived from this space/time womb. So while our religions, philosophies and sciences persist in trying to understand things from the perspective of space/time they are of the Mother only and are still in the womb. But, through all these space/time ideas, experiences and relationships we grow, develop and become the beings we are until such time as our rebirth becomes imminent. Throughout time Mother Nature has proven to be very prolific and has produced many paths of development. But her ground needs to be tilled and turned over, from time to time because, like any productive ground, it needs to be rejuvenated and fertilized. Through this cultivation comes the ability to be more selective in our growth and the ability to discern the useful plant from the weed. Annually, in festivals such as Easter and Christmas, we recognise the phases of the Mother's life giving processes and so acknowledge the benefits to be derived from cultivation. But in the early stage of the second chapter of Genesis there was no Man to till the ground and so things were still in their wild and natural state; as at the beginning of the first chapter of Genesis 'In the beginning was chaos'. Adam was formed from this wild and natural chaos out of the dust of the earth. In so saying the writers of the book of Genesis 34

agree with the evolutionists (but whether that be evolution as applied strictly to this planet or the universe as a whole remains to be seen). Man (and the name Adam in Hebrew simply means man just as Eve means woman), the physical being, was formed by Mother Nature and his mind by the religions and philosophies of the Mother Earth Goddesses throughout the ages and that was the full extent of the consciousness of man at that time. Man saw the Mother in all things, his thoughts were of the Mother, and his images of other worlds were of the Mother; Man's complete psyche was of the Mother and this can be seen in the images of the earth Mother that were made for many thousands of years. Our whole spiritual life and beliefs in afterlife were of the Mother and to a very large degree they still are; we still talk about rebirth, not re-ejaculation and the cosmic egg not the cosmic sperm and so while Man remains in this paradigm, either as male or female, he/she is still in the womb. But of the dust came man, to meet his destiny- and it rained. The story does not say it rained, it says that God breathed into Adam's nostrils; but rain it did. We have seen in chapter two of this book how Elijah went into the wilderness and was fed by the ravens until such time as the drought was broken and it rained and we also saw how this equated with the coming of the Spirit of God. In the book of the Acts of the Apostles, where Peter first preaches to the people of Jerusalem and refers to the descent of the Spirit as the disciples had just experienced it at Pentecost, he quotes a passage from the Old Testament book of Joel. This quote speaks of the Spirit being poured out 'like the former and the latter rains'. In the Genesis story of Noah God heralds the change from the old to the new world by pouring forth a great deluge of rain. At the time of renewal the falling rains break through the firmament and bring the Spirit in their wake. In Greek, the language of both the Old and New Testaments, the word for breath is pneuma and is the source of our word pneumatic. It is this word that is used to express the idea of the Spirit of God for in those days the spirit was indeed thought to be something like the wind or breath of living beings. Essentially the ideas of wind and breath, the moving and flowing life giving energy, have been combined to represent the spirit which is not of the Mother but is the unseen and as yet un-experienced Spirit of the Father. We have already described the meaning behind the story of the dove in the baptism of Jesus and how when this dove moves over the face of the waters she is in fact nestling and nurturing her young; now she represents the wind or flowing energy which disturbs the surface of the waters and it is this disturbance that enables the rain to break through the firmament and bring life and enlightenment. Another symbol that is used in the Bible for the Spirit is fire. It is usually depicted as a flame and is found as the foundation symbol of the Hebrew language. Sometimes it is portrayed as the fire which rises from below in which case it is the spirit of the Mother; in Revelations we are told that the Spirit which is seen by John about the throne of God is in the form of seven candlesticks, or the Menorah. On each candlestick is a flame and this is a fire which rises from oil or gas, coal or wood and is therefore a symbol for the spirit of the Mother. But sometimes the fire falls from above. Elijah, in a story separate from his drought breaking, waits for the fire to fall onto his altar of stone and wet wood and the disciples of Jesus wait in a room on the day of Pentecost for the fire which eventually falls on their heads. In both cases this is the fire from above and is of 35

FIG. FIVE

Yodh/Hand. The foundation of the Hebrew alphabet. The flame of spirit

The flames of Yodh, the hands, the spirit

The fire of Pentecost

These are both the same symbol. They are the dove of Genesis and the Gospels; they are windmills that become active with the arrival of the wind/breath/spirit

The wind stirs up the waves and the waves bring the particle and anti-particle; the positive and negative.

the Father. When the fire from above is united with the fire from below the two flame symbols form a cross with each arm curved and is the previously described dove. This dove therefore is both a fire/spirit symbol and a wind/water/spirit symbol. Because of this, in a sense, it can be seen to symbolise one of the prime states of the universe, the energy wave, and the alchemical union between fire and water. This is the union between the Father and the Mother, the physical and the spiritual, the particle and the wave and all these are symbols for the same thing. So when it rains the fire falls, the breath of the Spirit comes and it is this Spirit which was breathed into Adam following which he became a Living Being, the Cosmic Man as distinct from just human. The coming of the breath is the act of union between the masculine and the feminine, the process which is played out again in the Gospels as the conception of Jesus. It is the union of the infinite with the finite, the particular and the universal. It is in this union that we rise up, transcend and are born out of the boxes of our old concepts - the womb - into the universality which is our true nature. Later, in Genesis, God speaks to Abraham and tells him that his descendants shall be 'as the sands of the sea' - an interesting concept about which we will have more to say later. For now it is sufficient to show that this is the same type of statement which says that Adam and his descendants rose out of the dust of the earth. The most obvious thing about the sands of the sea is that there are an enormous number of them; far too numerous to count. They are also in and under the sea as well as on the shore and they are, therefore, the body of the Mother. Now the Mother of Jesus, our second Adam, is called Mary and the name Mary is derived from Maria which means seas and one of the Catholic Churchâ&#x20AC;&#x;s name for Mary is Star or Queen of the sea; a name she shares with Isis and Venus. So Maria is the seas, the sand of which Abraham was told his descendants would be; he was being told that the earth Mother would again unite with the Father and Cosmic Man appear again. Why did God breathe life into the man he lifted out of the dust through his nose? We are going to put forward two hypothesise both of which sound very strange and one more so than the other. But we are convinced that there is an element of truth in both of them. In the both the Old and the New Testaments we find exactly the same imagery; Cosmic Man, the Living Being, arises as a result of the breath of the Father Spirit. In the Gospels it is suggested that this Spirit entered Jesus as it alighted on his head and we will refer back to this when we get to the second hypothesis. In Genesis on the other hand we are told that the breath enters Adam through the nostrils (still a part of the head) and it is said so off handedly that one could be excused for thinking that this is exactly what happened. But we think that there is more to it than that because, as we have suggested with the name Maria there is often more in a name than meets the eye. We mentioned in chapter two that the ancient Hebrew language had no vowels and this meant that it was often difficult for translators to know which word they were looking at and often even the context was not helpful; biblical translators often give more than one meaning for a word for this reason. If a translator gets a word wrong, yet it still fits the context, the whole meaning of the complete text can be translated incorrectly. Then again, if the original writer wishes to disguise something in the original text it is a simple matter to use a word or words 37

which can easily be translated in a number of ways; you will recall that codes were discussed in chapter one. As far as is known Greek was the original language of the Septuagint; the oldest Jewish Bible text and there are no known copies of Genesis older than this. It is also known that after the Septuagint had been translated from whatever documents existed at that time Jewish scholars were very unhappy with it as they seemed to think that there were many errors of both language and concept. This book has gone on to be the foundation of the canons of both Judaism and Christianity but its birth was not without its detractors. Now there are a number of Greek and Latin words which all look very similar and could easily be confused by translators and we are suggesting that it is one of these that has been written as Adams nose when, in fact, something else was meant. These words are Gnosis, noesis, nasus, nasci, Agni and agnus. All of these words have the same ancient root in a word that means „to know‟ even though at first glance they all seem to mean something different and in ancient times it was thought that the activity of the brain as in thinking, dreaming and ideation were manifestations of the activity of spirit and, therefore, the breath or wind. In order they mean to know, to know, nose, to be born, Hindu God and lamb. Agni is a god of fire and therefore is the spirit, the wind and the breath and we have included it for this imagery but also to show just how far from its root a word might diverge in appearance but still carry some of the original meaning. Gnosis and noesis are just two spelling variations of the word that means to know and agnus means to know the mother (with the special emphasis as a lamb does. This special emphasis is to point out that lambs know their mothers even when they are wandering among a huge flock of sheep and a single bleat from the mother will bring them running). Nasci means to be born or birth and is the result of what the Bible calls „knowing him‟, and nasus is the nose which is the organ through which the breath and wind enter the body and, therefore, the organ through which we come to know the spirit. It seems to us that there may have been quite a muddle between all these words and that the real interpretation should be something like nous which means mind, or noesis which means to know. If this is indeed the case then the passage should read that God breathed his Spirit into the mind of Adam. This generated the gnosis which brought about the nasci and this is the very same idea that is behind the mystics concepts of the Gnosis. We think that when interpreters of the past have been trying to pass on the message behind the idea of the Gnosis, one or more of them, being unfamiliar with local variations of whatever language they were interpreting, have used the wrong word and then found themselves confronted with a dilemma; the text did not fit the context. To overcome this problem they have written in nose because gnosis no longer fitted the context and neither does the word nose really, but it has stuck. Before this theory is rubbished let me ask you this. Is it more rational that Adam was brought to life as a result of God breathing into his nose, or that he was enlivened by being spiritually awakened by an experience of the gnosis. As the latter is exactly what happened to Jesus when the dove alighted on his head or consciousness and to the disciples when the flames rested on their heads we are sure that Adams nose had nothing to do with the experience but his head or mind did. There is, however, the second hypothesis. Much of the myth and symbolism of the Bible comes from the Egyptian religious myths and in Egypt during the time of the Pharaohs a bird was used to represent the spirit with which the God/man was imbued at the time he took the throne. In this case it was a hawk rather than a 38

dove and it is depicted as enclosing Pharaohâ&#x20AC;&#x;s head with its wings or sitting on his forehead along with a serpent. When an Egyptian died it was most important that as soon as possible the personâ&#x20AC;&#x;s body was taken through the ceremony called the opening of the mouth. This was because the Egyptians believed that the soul departed the body through the mouth and could not do so while the mouth was closed. At the time of embalming, which was started just after the opening of the mouth, the brain of the deceased was withdrawn from the head through the nose and so it seems to us that the Egyptians must have accepted that all consciousness, both brain and spirit, was associated with the head and as it was through the head that the breath (spirit) passed then this breath must also have had something to do with consciousness. In this case must not the spirit have entered the person through the head and maybe through both the mouth and the nose? We actually prefer the first hypothesis but maybe we are wrong. Whatever the truth is millions of people throughout time have been and are familiar with the process or event called the gnosis. Today it is called the baptism of the spirit or the path to self realisation. In all cases it has been recorded as being a deeply spiritual and meaningful experience; one that can be likened to being reborn or entering into a totally new world and universe. So the gnosis is the genesis of the new world and it is in fact the nasci or new birth; it is not surprising therefore that the Apostle Paul said 'you must be born again' and neither should it be a surprise to realise that the symbol of the lamb need not refer to the sacrificial lamb. It may refer to the new born of the gnosis that begins life in the new world as the agnus knowing that they are dependent upon but growing away from the mother. The creature, the man of the Mother Earth has now become a Living Being in full communion with God. This idea is not new, it has been expounded at length in the New Testament and was the philosophy taught by the Gnostic Christians and all mystics prior to them in one form or another. Many sects of Buddhism and Hinduism also teach exactly the same idea. What we see as the real gnosis is not the negative detestation of all things physical that has been passed down to us as the teachings of the early Christian Gnostics. To a very large degree this is the propaganda that the Roman Church used in the drive to repress the Gnostics and in doing so they minimised all things to do with the Mother and repressed the women of the world. The gnosis that we are talking about is found in all religion and is encapsulated in symbols of love, growth and birth. It is the love of all things and the continual search for greater understanding of both ourselves and the universe in which we are. In this gnosis there is no judgement, no chosen people, no saved or damned, there is only Life and once an individual awakens to the idea that there is more to reality than their own small group of beliefs the gnosis process begins. The dropping of concepts and the willingness to allow the universal to make itself known are the keys to stepping into the void and into a new reality. This story about Adam is telling us that through the gnosis man steps away from the animal being of Mother Nature and the myriad cultures and ideas of the dust of the earth into a new state of being but most people overlook the fact that it also says that we step away from the Father. Paradoxically this is how the Mother and the Father become reunited; it takes place within ourselves. For when there is a new birth the children of that birth must learn to walk on their own in their own universe and even though the Mother and the Father contribute equally to the new life neither can go where the child goes. In seeking all things spiritual, in 39

seeking to become the children of a heavenly father, we deny and repress all those qualities and aspects of our being which are of the Mother and feminine. We become like the archetypal Gnostic of old and abhor all things of this world of death which is the Kingdom of Satan. On the other hand if we deny the spirit and seek only those things of the mother physical, material world, we become lifeless and visionless, confined to a prison of time and space. When the breath comes and we open our noses (minds), when the gnosis begins at the genesis of the new, something quite dramatic happens. Within the individual, or even the society if there is sufficient consensus, that is prepared to take the step in faith knowing that all that has been conceived up to that point is of little consequence in the face of infinity, a total breakdown takes place. The old ground is completely reworked, turned over and resown and both the physical and spiritual disappear. Within the paradigm of consciousness now developing there is no place for ideas of separation and elitism for the spirit has become the bridegroom and the physical the bride of the spirit. Their union ultimately brings about the birth of the new child - new life, the Cosmic Man. Now it is neither animal creature nor spirit, but a symbiosis of them which is not separate in any sense, but whole and universal. When this new man comes into the garden he is the master of it and has dominion over all things in the sense that all things are in him and of him and he must tend the garden to assist it to grow that all may come to see the light. In this garden there are many life forms that are the children of the Mother and the Cosmic Man now brings purpose, pattern and consciousness into this garden we call the universe which is our source that bore us and brought us to life. In this context we ought to be very aware of the impact that we and all things we do have on the natural environment. The move today by increasingly large numbers of people to ensure that this planet is not destroyed by our stupidity is certainly in line with the thinking of this second chapter of Genesis. But this chapter deals not only with our physical and spiritual state from the point of view of physics it also speaks about our perception of, and relationships with, all religions and philosophies because these are also the body of the Mother in as much as they are the womb of developing awareness and consciousness. Cosmic man stands between the Mother and the Father, between the finite and the infinite and between the masculine and feminine philosophies and unites them all in him/herself. We take DNA from each of our physical parents; not the total but a selection of elements which we unite within ourselves in a way that is uniquely our own. So it is with Cosmic Man. This being finds within all the philosophies of the Mother and within the universal spirit of the Father, those elements which are obviously theirs alone and out of those elements grow the new vision of this living being. In the garden which is seeded and watered by the Father, but growing within the Mother, there are many trees and flowers which are all nourishing and it is this nourishment which develops the embryonic beings that are searching for their own gnosis. These sources of food are known as the mystic trees such as the Kabala, the Bodhi, Christmas, Phallus, Maypole,

FIG. SIX

Caduceus

Crucifix and flaming sword Kabala

Two star symbol

All of these symbols are called trees. Altogether they make a reasonable grove or forest.

FIG. SEVEN

God of Light

These are the two wings given to the woman in the Revelation of John.

Pine and the Oak grove. There are also many flowers and shrubs such as the Lily of the valley, the Burning bush also known as the Menorah, the rose of Sharon, the Lotus and the bulrushes and reeds. These are of course all symbols for various religions and philosophies, both exoteric and esoteric. They are the symbols for the various teachings that the world has followed, both now and in the past and within these teachings are found various levels of adeptship; even within Christianity. Within many of our organizations, schools, clubs and political systems there are grades and levels of attainment and we often denote these with symbols with which we are all familiar, if we give it just a momentâ&#x20AC;&#x;s thought. These symbols are the animals of the world and of the garden and they represent the animal man that we are before the breath comes. Among them are the lion, the lamb, the bull, the ox, the camel and the fish; in our political structures we have the hawks and the doves and in the financial markets we have the bulls and the hawks. Our religions are symbolised by the lamb, the eagle and the fish and altogether they represent the life of the Mother and the manner of life and outlook of each of the individuals and cultures within the Mother/garden. It is this garden and these plants and animals that the Cosmic Being comes to till and that is the mystic message of the second chapter of Genesis; but it also has an historical message which, as it unfolds, reveals that this chapter of Genesis is also talking about a specific culture and its attitude to what today is called the path(s) to enlightenment. This culture originated in Mesopotamia somewhere between 3500B.C.E. and 2500B.C.E. in the period that we think is more likely the time of the birth of Zarathustra than the later dates that have been proposed for that event. Although Zarathustrianism has become synonymous with Persia (Iran) its birth was elsewhere. It became the state religion of Persia some time prior to 500B.C.E. and therefore, it must have had a period of growth and development before this. All state religions have been heresies before they became accepted and some of them have had a very difficult time for a very long period. Christianity, for example, was a small Jewish sect for hundreds of years before it became the religion of Rome and we are sure the Zarathustrianism did not fare much better. It is not known where Zarathustra was born, or if he existed at all; he may have been a mythological person created by the early scribes of the religion to satisfy the needs of the new creed. But somewhere prior to 2500B.C.E. there began to develop a group of philosophies and ideas that gradually became incorporated as the Holy book called the Zend Avesta. This book is basically a collection of wise sayings and theological ideas, written in the style of the psalms and proverbs of the Old Testament, which are attributed to Zarathustra. If the history of other books, such as the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Koran is anything to go by we can assume that the Zend Avesta was not finally formalised until many centuries after the death of the person who was supposed to be its author. Prior to the appearance of Zarathustrianism, spiritual philosophy, fragmented as it was, could not lead to a comprehensive understanding of reality. Science, notwithstanding the philosophical scrambled egg view we have of the world today, is a classic example. In spite of a loosely accepted general philosophy of science every branch has its own point of view about the origin of things and even within the branches there is little consensus. This is because there is little cohesion or communication between the branches and everybody is 43

pushing their own pet theories. In the religious field all religions have their sects and each thinks it has the only right creed; Hinduism is an extreme example and as it is today Hinduism displays many of the attributes of religious thinking as it was prior to Zarathustra. In Christian myth, and alluded to in the Old testament book of Job, there is a story about Satan who was a Son of God or the great Archangel who thought he was the greatest of all the Gods. He came to Earth and taught that all the other gods either did not exist or were his messengers and helpers. When the other gods heard of this they laughed and cut Satan off from heaven and left him to roam the Earth until the end of time. He made his own Kingdom in the underworld and from there, with his minions, he strides forth across the world continually trying to win back his place and power in the heavens. This is the fall of Satan but is very much a parable about Zarathustra for when he appeared and started preaching that he was the prophet of the only One God called Ahura Mazda he became a pariah to the religious teachers and priests of the religions he was trying to supplant; he was the great heretic and of course the other priests and teachers said he was wrong and that their gods still had their place in the heavens. In this sense he was the same as Satan in that he was the bearer of the light; the Lucifer of his day. At the time he was doing this there were a multitude of gods and goddesses and their priests and priestesses were not going to give up without a fight. Most of them laughed at him and he had little success until, probably well after his death, his ideas became the religion of Persia. From there they spread to Judaism and through that religion to Christianity. Most of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x;s religions still laugh at Zarathustra; he is still the fallen angel. Hinduism rejected Zarathustra and has remained pretty much as it was before he appeared. Sure the various gods, demi-gods, spirits and sprites represent aspects of the one great God, but this is just the result of one religion absorbing all those about it and placing every ideology under one umbrella. All religion prior to Zarathustra was not a great deal different to this and of course Brahmanism, out of which Hinduism sprang, is a great deal older than Zarathustrianism. The Catholic Church has done something very similar in that it has absorbed all the old religions of the Roman Empire and turned all their gods into Gods saints and angels. Zarathustra tried to abolish this thinking when he set out to show that there was only one and everything else was fantasy. In some respects we might say that Hinduism is fortunate that it did not go down Zarathustraâ&#x20AC;&#x;s path, for all those that did have ended up in sectarian strife of the greatest magnitude. However, if we look at the facts, it will be seen that this has been caused not by Zarathustrian ideas but by the inability of people to drop their duality. At some point all these fractured images will have to be transcended otherwise there will be no growth and we will spiritually die. This happened in both Egypt and China and Egypt, at least, was only saved from further centuries of stagnation by the advent of Christianity and Islam; regardless of the friction between the two. One thing that Zarathustrianism did do remarkably well and this is seen in Persia and the Roman Empire, is that it brought political and cultural stability to enormous numbers of people who had previously been tribal or philosophically antagonistic. In doing so it created a climate that lent itself to growth away from the concepts of many gods and pointed people in a new direction. It may not have happened overnight but it is happening. 44

Zarathustrianism was a mystical religion and as such its teachings were full of symbolic utterances and images. The symbol for Ahura Mazda was the winged sun and the symbol by which people worshipped Mazda was the flame. Both of these appear repeatedly in Zarathustrian writing and of course the Bible and even today both of these symbols retain the same meaning as they did originally. It is thought, by most scholars of the antiquities and comparative religion, that because the sun symbol was used these people must have worshipped the sun. We are sure that in many cases this was so but just as Catholicism teaches that the bread really is the body of Christ, so the Mazdian priests would have taught that the sun was the body of God. But, just as the worship of bread and crucifixes and the honouring of special days is not the truth of Christianity and the worship of cows and rats and the practices of fakirs are not the truth of Hinduism, so the worship of the sun is not the truth of Zarathustrianism; nor is fire worship all there is to say about the message of the flame. The main symbol of Christianity is the crucifix which is just a couple of pieces of wood nailed together yet nobody suggests that people worship the cross in the sense that pagans are accused of idol worship; but many Christians do just this. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the central doctrine of the church, but even today, two thousand years after it was supposed to have happened people are still arguing, as they did from the first, about the significance of this event let alone whether it actually happened. All religious people believe they have the truth and they all believe that other peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x;s truth is superstition. We all know, whether we look for it or not, that there is more to the crucifix and the resurrection stories than just a simple crucifixion and magical rising from the dead. If there were not why have so many intelligent people believed such things for so long? The point is that spiritual teachings are always portrayed with symbols as they always point to things beyond our immediate comprehension and about which we do not have any normal language with which we may communicate. In this sense the sun symbol has always been a sign of enlightenment and the sacred flame of the Mazdian alters was a symbol of the pure spirit which rises up from the people of the Mother earth to blend with the pure sun energy of the Father. These Zarathustrian people were in the process of building the most advanced culture there had been to that time and in many ways it was well in advance of anything that existed in Europe until only three hundred years ago. Because they used fire as a tool it was no longer mysterious to them and it became a symbol for the life energy that arises out of matter. The sun was a symbol of the light, enlightenment, life, energy and spirit manifested in the heavens and the two symbols, together, represented the union between the two realms. The Magi, the priests of the Persian variety of Zarathustrianism, grew out of a body of people renowned for their learning and wisdom and it is for this reason that they were found at the birth of Jesus. The story of the arrival of the Magi at the birth of Jesus gives that story authority and credibility, something that until that time had been reserved for the Magi alone. The baton is changing hands at this point and as the Persian variety of Zarathustrianism is slowly withering so the Judaic and later Roman variety is coming into flower. Not only was the great Persian Empire slowly losing its grip on the world political stage, with that loss of power and prestige went also the power and authority of its God and prophet. The Roman Empire was becoming the great power, but in the days of the Republic and early Empire it was still held 45

in the thrall of many gods. However, as the baton of power moved from Persia to Rome so did God and He moved by being reborn into a new form. The star that the Magi followed to the new birth of God was the astrological star that we outlined earlier. It was by following the teachings of that star that they and their followers or disciples arrived at that point in their own thinking where they realised the 'Christ' or Cosmic Man. In doing so they also brought it to birth, or at least witnessed its birth, in their own culture. Prior to this political and religious earth shattering event, however, the Chaldeans, Sumerians, Assyrians and Babylonians, all of whom come within the general Mesopotamian culture, worshipped the sun and flame symbols and used them as symbols for the spirit of their God. Very much in the same way as the Zarathustrians who were to grow out of this culture and for this worship and the practice of the rites associated with their religion they built temples which were like stepped pyramids that they called ziggurats; a name that means the mountain of God. The people of Mesopotamia who, at the time being dealt with here, included all of Syria, Palestine and Nabataea, generally honoured their gods on the tops of high hills and these are the high places mentioned throughout the Bible. On these hills they would normally have their sacred flames on the fire altar; their sacrificial altar for the slaying of animals and also a booth or shrine. This practice was absorbed into the Judaic culture and is the source of their festival of booths. In fact, in most respects, the Jewish practices were no different to the rest of the Mesopotamian peoples and even their temple was on one of the highest hills in Jerusalem. This hilltop type of holy shrine was fine in places where hills were to be found such as Israel, which was known as Canaan at the time, and the Canaanites had many hilltop shrines and eternal fires. Jerusalem was one of the oldest and most holy of these and the book of Genesis notes this when it tells of the meeting between Abraham and Melchizedek, the high priest of Salem; as with the story of Jesus and the Magi, this alludes to a relationship between Zarathustrianism and early Judaism. But when there were no hills, at least within easy reach of those who were going to use them, ziggurats were built. No doubt whole books could be written about the mathematics and sacred geometry of these 'mountain' temples just as has been done with the Egyptian pyramids and the European cathedrals. That geometry is there but quite simply they were first and foremost ziggurats, stepped pyramids, whose shape had both practical application and religious significance and on the top of these pyramids was a flat plateau where the eternal flame and the holy shrine were found. The impact of Zarathustrianism was quite profound on cultures that were essentially tribal and this impact is encapsulated in the form and importance of these structures. Throughout the Sumerian and Chaldean area people retained the practice of honouring their parochial gods, just as we see in Hinduism. Their priests officiated from time to time at the ziggurat temple and at various festivals the many sectarian practices were combined into one. Much the same happens in Hinduism and exactly the same happened in Judaism while the Temple still existed. The only difference between Judaism and that described above is that in Judaism the different ideas about God are called sects, not different gods as they are in Hinduism and were in earlier religious cultures. Eventually the Mesopotamians began to see their separate,

FIG. EIGHT

Level of The High Priest and Priestess and the burning bush

Level of Ram in thicket

The various levels of Priesthood

The peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the dust of the earth

A representation of a Ziggurat; these were the mountains or gardens of God and on such structures were found the Ram and the Burning Bush.

FIG. NINE

FIG 10 THE RAM IN THE THICKET

FIG. 11 FROM THE BRITISH MUSEUM

parochial gods as messengers, aspects and manifestations of some great One that eventually became known as Ahura Mazda - the Golden Light. There was one of these mountains of God at Ur; another at Babylon and the Old Testament reveals many more. In every case, such as Isaac, Abraham and Moses, where they went up the mountain of God, or they met God in or on a high place, it would have been a ziggurat that was being spoken about. At the ziggurat of Ur, rediscovered in the late 19th century by Wooley the British archaeologist there was found a bronze and lapis lazuli statuette which is now in the British Museum. It is the effigy of a ram with its front feet in a bramble or thicket. That this statuette is what was being referred to in the story of the intended sacrifice of Isaac is to our mind beyond doubt and, among other things, probably refers to a time when child sacrifice was replaced by animal or even symbolic sacrifice. At another time Moses goes up the mountain and is told that he is on Holy ground; which means that he must have been in the precincts of a shrine. There he sees a bush which burns but is not consumed and again there is no doubt in our mind that this refers to the Menorah, the seven branched candlestick of the Jews, for they call this candlestick the burning bush. Also, in the book of Revelations, we find that this symbol represented the spirit of God and is, therefore, exactly the same as the original eternal flame of the Zarathustrians for in that book John says he saw seven candlesticks about the throne of God and that these were the seven Spirits of God. In the book of Exodus Moses is portrayed as being wise in all the mysteries of the Egyptians and as these mysteries are very similar in origin to those of the Sumerians and Chaldeans it would be unusual if he did not know what he was doing when he went up the mountain in Mesopotamia; even more so because the area of Mesopotamia where this happened is where his wife's family originated and Mosesâ&#x20AC;&#x; father-in-law was High Priest. The battle between Moses and the Egyptian priests that is recorded in Exodus as happening just before the Israelites leave Egypt really represented a political power struggle between Egyptian and Chaldean mythology and for a time Chaldea won. Power shifts of this nature were not uncommon and the results are well recorded in written history. Canaan for example was sometimes a client state of Chaldea or Babylon and sometimes a client of Egypt; very seldom, and not for long at any one time, did they manage to rule themselves. In the building of the ziggurat a natural phenomenon was taken into account- the rising of the sun. Remember, the symbol for Mazda the God of enlightenment was the winged sun disc so it was important that the temple, or mountain, in symbolising the place where man meets God must catch the first rays of the rising sun. To do this the temple was always built to the very east of the city or the towns and villages that it would serve and that is why in the story about the Garden of Eden we are told that the garden was to the east of Eden. But, you might say, this is a garden and we have been talking about mountains; this is a very good observation. The point of union between the garden and the mountains of God is, however, the fact that the mountains were planted with all kinds of shrubs, trees and flowers; symbolically and actually. Most people have heard of the hangings gardens of Babylon but they, generally, do not know that these plants were growing on a ziggurat. This was the case, however, and because these 51

mountains were planted in this way they were also the garden of God. The symbolic nature of all this plant life was quite profound, for the mountain- now the garden- was the place where all the minor religions came to honour the one great God and each of the sects is symbolised by a tree or a flower, an animal or a bird or something of that nature. That is why these symbols are mentioned in Genesis and as we have said earlier, even today we recognise the various religions by their symbols, the burning bush, the cross tree, the rose and the lily. The garden to the east of Eden is one of these mountains of God and it is on this mountain that the Cosmic Man, Adam (both male and female) is paramount. He has dominion because his relationship to God is more aware, or complete than that of the sectarians represented by the animals; and so he is husbandman to the plants, which are the philosophies, of the garden and shepherd to all the animals which are the sects. This is exactly the picture that the Persian myths and legends of Zarathustra would have us accept. Zarathustra was supposed to have been a student of a number of older ideas and philosophies until the day he had a vision and came down from his mountain of enlightenment, back to his people, and brought the chaos into some semblance of order by expounding his doctrine of the one God of light. This is the teaching alluded to in the Zend Avesta and in being its prime teacher Zarathustra is not only the teacher of righteousness, but is also the High Priest. Within the Christian religion we know that Jesus was not really a lamb, that the light does not mean daytime and the dark does not mean night, but that they mean, respectively, knowledge and ignorance, love and hatred or courage and fear. We know that baptism is not a wash and that the wine is not for drunkenness; but even with all this evidence some still contend that the original teachings of Zarathustra were a plurality, based on conflict. Good against evil, light against dark and nobody seems to have made the connection that none of the original teachers, neither Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu nor Zarathustra, or whoever they symbolise, ever taught duality. One thing they had in common is that they all tried to portray reality as a consistent and unified whole; it was later students (disciples) lacking insight who have perceived these teachings incorrectly. History shows that the teachers and priests of all other religions, who came after the original teacher, misconstrued the genesis ideas of that teacher; often for political reasons. Yet historians and theologians seem blind to the fact that the followers of Zarathustra were no different. The Chinese use the Yin-Yang to symbolise the idea of polarity between light and dark, yet they are not dualists as it is obvious that they are talking about balance and harmony. Even so, there are still those who persist in teaching that the Yin-Yang symbolises the war between the light and the dark and that at some time in the far distant future the light will prevail. This is not the real issue and never was in any of the ancient teachings of Buddha, Lao-tzu, or Zarathustra. What is being spoken about is the complementary nature of seeming polarities within the universal reality; it is the duality of our own thinking, our prejudices and our agendas which make it seem otherwise. When Gnostics of the past cried out against the evil of having to live in this world of shades, it was not the planet or Life itself that they could not abide, but the blindness and death and the plurality of the thinking of the people of the world- that world which is society in general. They were crying against a

society which persists in listening to the priests and politicians rather than the heart, a society which bows to gods portrayed by animal figurines rather than opening up to the universal. This is why the first chapter of Genesis opens with the light and the darkness and why the darkness is not seen as bad; it is why Jesus says later on that he is the light which shines in the darkness and yet the darkness has not overcome it. Darkness is not to be feared and rejected for it is only lack of knowledge, experience and insight and this will always be rectified by the light as it continues to shine. It is only theology and the narrow desire to support one creed against another that leads to the weird situation where light is good and darkness is evil. Darkness is the only place where light can shine; have a look into a dark room, or out into space and this becomes obvious. Light and dark together are the Yin-Yang symbol and are simply harmonizing polarity. In Genesis, when Man is created, it is clearly stated that he was made in the image of God. 'Male and Female made he Him'. The universe, the infinite, is therefore the complement of the polarities that are expressed in the idea of male and female and physical and spiritual. Everything is comprised of complementary poles, as for example, energy and matter in physics. So, into the garden we come and there we find the teacher- the High Priest- both male and female. We have only to look at Egypt, a culture that owes much of its religious philosophy to Chaldea, to complete the picture for here also we find the High Priest and Priestess and they are considered to be the highest people in the land; without political power it is true but because even the Grand Vizier, who was the real political power in the land, looked to God for final authority their power over the hearts and minds of the people was considerable. These priests, the Pharaoh and his wife, were the highest and, therefore, the first people of the land. This term, first people, is something we are familiar with even today for Presidents and Kings and their wives are known as the first man and lady of the realm. Therefore, Man, the Living Being, the enlightened one, the cosmic consciousness, the teacher of righteousness both male and female, dark and light, spiritual and physical, Adam and Eve are the first man and woman of this realm, this world. They are the High Priest and Priestess. They are in the garden on the mountain temple that incorporates their teaching and all the trees and the beasts of the earth are the symbols of the various sects and philosophies which come to this temple and its teachers to feed, learn and practice their various festivals. The Kabala, Caduceus, Kundalini, Crucifix, Menorah, Bodhi and all other sacred trees and flowers are there. They are the tools for the teaching of growth and development and the high priestly teachers are there to blend them all together, to till and cultivate them and ensure that they remain healthy. The Living Being has direct access to God, the universal light and the communication is two ways and open. Because of this the Living Being is naked before the universe, open and without concepts that might clutter the communication. All priests wear fine clothing and every garment has symbolic meaning but we all know that in the final analysis these garments mean nothing at all and are worn mainly to create the effect of importance; for even the meanings of the symbols that adorn the priestliest robes are forgotten and misunderstood by those who wear them. To communicate clearly with that which we call God we must get rid of this clutter and listen to our inner voice which keeps 53

telling us that we must be absolutely truthful, totally uncluttered and that we cannot pretend in any way, 'for God knows the very innermost recesses of our hearts'. The simple way of saying this is, 'we must be naked'; without concepts. Chapter one of Genesis reproduces the original vision of the star of Cosmic Man and chapter two tells us how this has been adapted to the culture of the times. It tells us about the beginning of the end of the animistic religions and the origins of the so-called universalistic religions. It also tells us that out of the garden flowed a great river- a teaching- and that it divided into four (this means that the tributaries went to the north, south, east and west to cover the whole world). Historically we know this to be true for we know that out of Zarathustrianism grew the great religions as we see them today. Hinduism, which is the closest example of the original river that we have, produced Buddhism which was, originally, a reaction to the excesses of the Hindu priests and teachers; particularly the Brahmins. In its reaction it attempted to revert to the original ideas of enlightenment through self knowledge and communication with the whole; but, of course, even this has become clouded with millennia of interpretation and dogma. Judaism also grew out of Zarathustrianism. It developed with the addition of Egyptian concepts and during the period called the Babylonian captivity it became almost indistinguishable from its Babylonian counterparts. Later many Persian and Greek concepts entered into Judaic thought via the Pharisees (variety of the name Parsee which means Persian) and the Essenes. This led to a dividing of the ways within the Jewish religious structures and two great separate sects developed. One continued to preach the coming of a future Messiah (a very Zarathustrian concept about the Son of God called Soshayanus) while the other preached that the Messiah had already come, but that for various reason he had been misunderstood. This latter sect was the beginning of Christianity which did not really become a power in its own right until the advent of Constantine. This schism in Judaism also led the growth of Rabbinical Judaism, something which had not existed before this time and was as great a departure from that which had existed before as was Christianity. Each of these great rivers will continue to flow and divide into new tributaries and each will be followed by a great number of teachers and their flocks because most do not see that the river originally started with just the smallest drop of rain. This drop, or spark, is the very thing that most try to ignore and often, through political machinations, it is the thing most repressed. It is the inner spark which, through the centuries, has been called the gnosis. It is the breath of God and is the union between the physical and the spiritual which, in the birth of the new, brings both of these old ideas to an end. This inner knowledge of the universe has always led the individual to a communion, a unity, with the universal which has been beyond the comprehension of the orthodox. Yet, paradoxically, while it has always been the genesis of new ideas it has also led to the development and growth of the orthodox. Consequently, not only does the gnosis promote spiritual growth, it also brings about the birth of political movements and cultures. The story of Oedipus is pertinent to this phenomenon, for the fathers of the new, be it religion or politics are, in the end, always repressed or have their teachings subverted by their children; those who become the high priests of the cultural structure which grows out of this new. Happily, however, cosmic consciousness of the 54

universal persists and again and again the same truths are revealed to those who open themselves to it. Then out of the dust of the earth we rise again to be rained upon, to be breathed into and become Living Beings and tillers of the garden. Buddha, after his enlightenment, came down from the mountain and lived not with priests but with ordinary mankind, Moses descended from the mountain and lead the people to the promised land and Jesus came down after his transfiguration and lead his people and disciples to the new world. In all mystical teachings we find this image; the enlightenment is always renewed and it always leads to normality. Wholeness demands an acceptance of not only the highest, but also the lowest; not in the nihilistic sense that some suggest that Buddha envisaged, but in a vibrant, open and childlike state of awareness that there is more to heaven and earth than one can ever know.

GENESIS OF REVELATION CHAPTER FOUR THE VERY SUBTLE SERPENT

Chapter three of Genesis describes an interweaving of the cultural influences of Chapter two with the history and development of a particular religious point of view and the mystical process of enlightenment. It is, therefore, essential that we fully comprehend what is that the previous two chapters have been telling us. Above all else we must realise that these writings did not originate with the Jewish people but are the thoughts and wisdom of many peoples, both western and eastern, which have been assembled in such a way that they give the impression of being the history of one nation only. It could be said that they constitute a mosaic. Apart from this they are telling us that all is consciousness, or breadth of perception and that to experience reality as it really is we must be whole and in harmony with ourselves. We must be able to understand that all things are complementary and are not separate, individuated or time linked elements. The aspect of consciousness which we call physical life is the experience through which we can come to an awareness of that which we really are - Cosmic Man. This is our actual state of being at all times, whether we are aware of it or not and no teacher can instruct us about ways to experience this state of being; we either know it or we do not. This has been called a paradox, but it is not. The only thing that is paradoxical is that teachers throughout the ages have been trying to show us the way while it has been obvious that they really havenâ&#x20AC;&#x;t known what they are talking about and were doomed to failure. The Buddhists knew this a long time ago and state that only the pupil can be the pupil's teacher, and that the harder a teacher tries, the further from the truth the pupil is. The knack of being that which we are and have been all along is simply to stop believing, stop trying to learn the spiritual mysteries, stop building up the structures of self improvement and just accept that we are. If we open ourselves to experience, it will come, if we stop trying to define that experience it will continue to come; but if we try to define it or pigeon-hole it as one philosophy or another, or try to find the 'right' way, it will cease and we will wander into a wilderness of separation. We can have no concept of the infinite, so it is foolish to try. Using all kinds of imagery we can try to explain to others what we have experienced but if we are true to ourselves we will have to admit that it is impossible to communicate more than just a hint of what our enlightenment is like. This is because those that are still stuck in their old concepts of the world find the visions of the new quite beyond their comprehension for unless one has experienced it the idea of Cosmic Man is beyond belief. Yet Cosmic Man is and always has been and our myths, legends and religious writings have always been full of examples such as Adam, Enoch, Elijah and Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu and Zarathustra. Scientific investigation has revealed to us the power of evolution and shows that we are continuing to evolve. So long as we do continue in this vein then the new being that rises out of the sea of humanity will be 56

as incomprehensible to us as we are to the chimpanzees and like the Cosmic Man described in this book will be a communion of opposites. Sometimes Cosmic Man looks like an individual, sometimes a duo and sometimes a group but always, when seen from the right point of view, they are the one; and being one are also timeless. This is because time is relative and only relevant in the context of three dimensional observations and although it exists as an experience for humankind it is quite meaningless in the context of an infinite universe. Cosmic Man does not exist, therefore, in one given time and place but is an experience which is spread (or smeared) throughout time. He/she may be partly known and experienced five thousand, two thousand, five hundred and twenty years ago and may become apparent at various times in the future. All of these manifestations, however, are not different individuals who have all come to the same state and outlook but are individuals who have all, in consciousness, become the same whole Living being. This is not reincarnation for they are not one personality coming to new life again and again as they work out some form of karma. They are the one being that may incarnate as many individuals in the one age or as just one in any given age. When this being becomes aware they do not just become aware of themselves as being the end of a long line of incarnations but they know that they are all of those incarnations at the same instant and that all events they have experienced throughout time are just different facets of the one timeless experience. This Cosmic Man, whether en masse or individually, in the past, present or future, is not necessarily perfect. We have afflicted ourselves with this idea of perfection for too long and it must go for just as the quantum physicists have realised that there can be no perfect example or experiment so must we realise that there can be no perfect experience, only experience itself. What is a perfect infinity (God) and what is imperfect; maybe that which we perceive as imperfect is merely that which we need to stimulate us into further action, new relationship and the continuation of the process we call life. We ought to be discerning and allow that discernment to lead us to further growth and perception. We ought to be aware and caring and we ought to be just; but we ought not to be judgmental, for in judging any situation we are drawing upon finite knowledge about infinite influences and our limited knowledge of reality is bound to lead us to draw the wrong conclusions. The whole is quite satisfactory just as it is; it must be because it has managed to survive so far without our benighted intervention and we are sure that it will continue for a long while yet even though we, as a species, have decided that it can do with a large injection of our 'wisdom'. You can be sure that those who do, or see, evil have not thought things through. They that see good do not know the evil of it; and they that do good have judged, for otherwise they would not know of this goodness. It was pointed out earlier that Cosmic Man is a Living Being and as such must live, and that which the man must live is Life itself; there is no other option. What is Life with a capital 'L' but our own individual experience of and reaction to the day-to-day manifestations of the unknown without value judgement or imaginative conceptual constructions about the purpose of these events and it certainly is not trying to manifest reality as we would wish it to be. It is fashionable to say that 'we must live in the now' but this is not what we are talking about for, as with all elements of time, 'now' is relative and in the final analysis it is a manifestation of space-time and is dimensional whereas consciousness is without dimension and therefore 57

without time. Cosmologists, those who study the night skies, tell us that many of the stars they are studying are billions of light years away and many are so distant that the light which left them, soon after the big bang, is only now beginning to reach this planet. What we see when we look at those stars is what things were like many millions of years ago, not what they are like now. In looking at them we are experiencing the past yet we, who now look at these events of so long ago, did not exist when they were originally happening; in fact we were just a myriad of electrons scattered throughout the whole universe. We are the future of those events and they are our past, time has become enfolded and under these conditions it is a meaningless term. The One consciousness or mind, being outside of time, side-steps all these issues and provides the potential for a much greater awareness and the degree to which we are prepared to be aware dictates how much of that potential will be expressed and the degree to which we will perceive the expression of that potential. It seems to us that it is the conscious perception of experience which gives life meaning but to be aware of the nature of consciousness one has to accept and just be. Stop thinking about things like perfection and whether or not we live in the past, present or future, these things are all the result of three dimensional thinking and, therefore, are not open ended. Perfection is death; probably the only real kind of death and that which we call death is only change from one state of being to another. Birth is such a change and so is the decay of the body yet from the point of view of the child in the womb birth could be seen as a death, death to the world of water in which it lives and is nurtured. Perfection, were it possible, would bring absolute stasis and with no movement, growth or thought one would cease to exist in any meaningful way. Life is the acceptance of the unknown and the continual demands it makes on us and is always new and inexperienced; as such it is prone to mistake. The perfect never make mistakes because they never do anything; there is no need to do anything for all is perfect. The search for perfection arises from the need to be fulfilled but it is misdirected because it assumes that all is not as it ought to be and fulfilment can only come from acceptance of what is and growth takes place after this. The Cosmic Man has rejected perfection and grasped Life and is, in the third chapter of Genesis, in the garden and involved with all the trees and animals there. In this garden all the trees are for the benefit of man (both male and female) and he grows through the eating and digesting of them, for life is on-going and we are never in a state of knowing it all. There was never a path or philosophy which stated that when we became enlightened we would know all there is to know for one can never completely know the infinite; it can be experienced, but that is something quite different. To believe that we can know all there is to know, somehow all at one time, is an error that many have made and it is the result of misinterpretation. What has been said in the past is that whatever we wish to know can be known. Jesus said ' I send you another comforter, the Holy Spirit, and when he comes he will lead you into all truth'. None of this says that we are going to be able to know it all, all at once. It does say that as we need, or wish, to know something, it will be available; but as there is an infinity to comprehend, how can we know it all?

We know that we will be told that what happens at enlightenment is that we shift consciousness from the time bound realm of the third dimension into another in which it is possible to perceive things in their totality and to understand the nature of all things; to a degree we accept this as we have had this experience. But on resuming our normal, everyday, three-dimensional state of being we could not remember it all. In fact we remembered very little of it although we do remember having the experience. This is our very point as remembering anything at all requires that we function within space-time because recall of memory is a function of this state. So it does not matter how often or for how long one enters into a state of one consciousness unless you return to space-time you will not remember your experience. When you do return, however, you will not be able to remember although the experience may be recalled element by element over time. In space/time, however, it will take an infinite amount of time to recall an infinite amount of remembered experience and this is called the experience of life. As we perceive this space-time realm to be as important to life and experience as that other in which timeless perception and memory is possible we cannot agree that we are better off if we leave this realm altogether and enter into only that other as if it is some kind of heaven or nirvana. This is the realm of experience and relationships, this is the realm where all potential and memory are manifest through the experiences of our lives whereas the other is timeless and without the possibility of experience or recall of memory. That is not the realm of events but it is the realm of infinite potential and is the realm of the Father; this is the realm of the Mother so why separate the two? Why not blend the best of both worlds as is done in the womb and create new life? Apart from all the above surely it is self evident that enlightenment has nothing to do with how much you know nor when you know it; enlightenment is about your attitude to the condition you find yourself in. It is, therefore, also self evident that growth and development is an ongoing process and the experience of life is the life blood of the universe and so as the Cosmic Man enters the garden he must realise that all knowledge and all experience are the fruit of all the trees of philosophy, the sciences and all other fields of the search for understanding and awareness; the trees are there to be eaten. Where do these trees, these philosophic trees of the sciences and religions, and the mysteries of the Kabbala, Bodhi, Kundalini and Crucifix come from? It takes thinking minds to create philosophies and other minds to consider them and so the answer is twofold. First, the concept of God creates them because the instant we think that God (whatever that may mean to us and whether it be a religious or scientific god) is the answer to our attempts to explain the unexplainable we immediately create an environment in which all kinds of arguments will arise as attempts to either confirm or deny the proposition and secondly, they grow out of the dust of the Earth. Not dust as we normally think of it but, as explained earlier, out of the mass of humanity as it grows, socialises and blends through marriage and travel. There are many philosophies which appear, not because they are God orientated, but because they enable us to live together, to be part of social or ethnic groupings or to have common social goals. These very mundane physical causes of philosophy are the Mother source and they arise out of our natural needs, not out of our ideals or desires. All philosophies, natural or supernatural, are symbolised in some way to distinguish them from one another and many 59

of them, as we have shown earlier, are so designated by trees, flowers or animals. Therefore, that man grew out of the dust of the earth before realising cosmic consciousness simply means that an individual- or many individuals - through eating of the fruit and absorbing the teachings of the many philosophies available, grew in understanding to the point where the reality of wholeness was experienced and cosmic awareness gained. So the trees grow out of the seeds of ideas which are planted in the fertile minds of the dust of the earth, both by those who have travelled this path before and by our inter-actions with each other and they are encouraged to grow by our attempts to comprehend 'God". That Man comes down from the mountain and back into the garden, having grown out of it through experiencing communion with the infinite, tells us something about both Cosmic Man and ourselves as we strive to achieve the same. It tells us that Cosmic Man's experience of reality is found in the same place as our own - not in some paradise far away and just as Moses and Zarathustra, Jesus and Buddha all came down from their mountains of transfiguration/enlightenment to continue life in the normally accepted fashion Cosmic Man, as portrayed by Adam, must do likewise. Just as less aware life forms cannot know anything about the nature of Man so space/time bound man can be no more aware of Cosmic Man than he can be of God. Yet there is only one difference between man and Cosmic Man, between Adam and the dust of the earth and it is a difference that only Adam can be aware of; he is able to commune with the infinite which we call God, at will. This one difference is as meaningful for the relationship between Adam and the dust of the earth as the attribute of self knowledge is for Mans relationship with all other creatures on this planet. There is an enormous void of comprehension between them. In the garden Adam talks and walks with God and this does not mean that Adam spends a lot of time praying for the story mentions that the infinite not only walks in the Garden with Adam He also reflects with him on the state of things. It is for this act of communicating directly, in dialogue not monologue, that God has created Adam. The western world has real trouble with this idea because we are so locked into the thinking that God is an all powerful King, ruling from on high with messages and edicts written once, for all time. Either that, or God only speaks to those whom he chooses and they must be pure and sinless. We seem to ignore the request by God, 'come debate with me' and many people, even those who say they both love and believe in God, their loving father have, over the centuries, begged us to divest ourselves of these childish images and even today in this age of scientific enlightenment it is not wise to reveal that one speaks to the universe. But an enlightened view of God, the universal, begins with an act as simple as that; realising that our concepts need to be changed. So, Adam goes back into the garden to continue life and experience and to encourage the growth of new trees and promote the expansion of awareness among the various adherents of the philosophies who are symbolised by the various animals of the garden and are those that feed on the trees. Before Adam there was no Man to till the soil but obviously, once Adam appeared and became enlivened, there must have then been a Man to do this. Cosmic Man is, therefore, first and foremost a farmer or gardener; he is a shepherd and vine tender and tilling the soil is just another expression for those who promote the growth of the animals and plants 60

which are the various philosophies and their structures. A very interesting parallel to this story is found in the Gospels for after the crucifixion Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb of Jesus and there she finds someone standing outside the tomb. The story suggests that at first she thinks that this is the gardener, Cosmic Man, but then realises that this is not the case and becomes aware that it is a teacher for she calls him Rabbi which, the story explains so pedantically, means teacher. What we read into this story, but what it actually does not say, is that at no time does Jesus or the author contradict Mary and say that she did not see the gardener. The reason for this is that the teacher, if he really was that which the gospels were trying to portray, was in fact the gardener as well; it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x;t a case of either or. While we continue to try and define God we are going to continue to have ideas about the infinite that are little better than wishful thinking. God, by definition, must be infinite but if god is a finite being then that being is bound by space-time and consequently is not God. This finite being may be very powerful, very intelligent and very wise and it may live a very long time but that does not make it God. God, the one in whom all things (the emphasis is on things- which are manifestations of space/time) exist and have their being, must be outside space-time; if not, god is just another thing and all things cannot exist in that. On the other hand there are people who would eat their cake and have it too as they would have us believe that God is both an individual personality and ego at the same time as an infinite being. In fact many of these people believe that when we die and are elevated to the higher realms we somehow also retain our own individual identities at the same time as being infinite beings of 'light'. These ideas only lead to confusion for infinity, no matter how we might like to define it, is indefinable. This is a problem for most people but it is the very thing which must be accepted and, from this acceptance, stems all else that will lead to an enlightened understanding of being. Process theology tries to deal with this issue also, by accepting that we cannot define the infinite, while persisting in creating temporary models to 'assist' us in understanding our environment. The idea proposed is that we are the result of our relationships and experiences and that it is through defining ourselves, in relation to them, that we come to know ourselves and each other. Consequently a particular person may be described as a white woman who lives at a certain address, works as a school teacher and has three children and a husband who is a Pacific Islander. Within such a paradigm each choice we make, as a result of the events which we experience, leads us into new territory which helps to redefine us as a continuing process. Within each choice, it is said, we participate to some degree in the creative process and the continuing rebirth of new life and experience. Therefore, God is to be found, totally, within our lives - not on a throne, or in some amorphous blob, but in the decision and the act of choosing. To a point we agree with this idea; but, as everything we do is a matter of choice- even choosing to do nothing- then God is to be found in absolutely everything and we, therefore, must be God. But this is not the intended end to the process point of view. From that point of view we are definitely a part of and within God and God is a part of and within us but we are not the totality of each other. Yet the logic of this argument must lead us to the conclusion that we are. Process theology is only an extension of behavioural psychology brought into the 61

realm of spirit by adding God to the choosing process. In every other respect it is the same because behavioural psychology is based on the idea that all our actions are conditioned reflexes and that this conditioning can be modified, by ourselves consciously, once we are aware of what has conditioned the reflex. In some cases we do not even need to go this far; we need only to re-programme ourselves to accept a conditioning which will over-ride, or side-step, the annoying reflex. Behavioural psychology is, therefore, a psychology of choosing and, preferably, choosing while aware. Using this process our lives become a reflection of the choices we make because our choices dictate the kind of relationships we will enjoy, or endure, and the relationships are what we are. We agree, to a point, but it only applies to the space-time dimension of our existence. Not only do these arguments ignore the genetic factor, which to all intents is timeless as it is there at the beginning, is there at the end and impinges on our lives all our life without any conscious control on our part, they also take no heed of what we are not. We all exist before we are named or are influenced by the family in which we grow up and at that time we are not labourers, teachers or lawyers; and we do not measure two metres tall or weigh seventy kilos. We have all been given the names by which we are known and we all, initially, develop our lives while in the environment of a family. Later we do work at an occupation and do spend time at leisure both physically and mentally. The body which we use has dimension and mass but we are none of these things. We are doing them and using them and as we do and use them we are indefinable and, essentially, unlocatable. This that we have called I is not just the sum of our relationships, just as any life form is more than the sum of its parts; this infinite being is timeless and spaceless but both time and space are required for any definition of relationship. This indefinable is that which we are becoming, is the totality of which we can never know, the whole, and is that which we can only experience. This is not God and God cannot be found at all in this paradigm for the idea of God supposes, as the process and behavioural people point out, something that we are not. Let us begin at the beginning again, remembering that the word God is a concept that we are using to try to convey the idea of 'the infinite', whatever that might be. Genesis does say that God created everything and that prior to this event there was nothing. It does say that in the beginning there was chaos and therefore lack of order; at least lack of perceived order or enlightenment. It does say that there was darkness, or ignorance, and that there was a void, or emptiness; thought without substance. It does say that God said 'Let there be light', or enlightenment which, thereafter, went on to create order, substance and rational structure. God is, therefore, a state of being which brings order out of chaos, rationality out of ignorance and superstition, enlightenment out of the darkness of unconsciousness. That God is not a thing that we may perceive but increasing consciousness and a changing state of awareness and being, depending on where we are in our development. In this sense everything is perfect for this 'God' is in all we do and is that state of being where we are at any given instant and what we do in that state and with this knowledge of 'God's' presence is entirely up to ourselves. For, from this point of view 'God' and we are completely one and the same thing, not separately definable, not separately experienced.

Many people wonder why God does not manifest more openly in their lives. Some think of God as the enforcer of moral precepts and think that those who refuse to abide by those precepts live lives outside of God. It is not a matter of whether or not God makes Himself more obvious in our lives, or whether we are living up to one standard or another. It is simply a matter of whether or not we wish to be aware of God or not. The infinite is what we are and if we choose to ignore ourselves we must live with the consequences, whatever they may be. Once we begin to understand the symbolic nature of the Bible, we begin to see that there are many things that we have believed about it that are simply our beliefs and our wishful thinking and it also becomes obvious that much of our believing is based on our judgement of others. The Bible does not talk about the end of the creation; nor does it talk about the end of this planet, it does not talk about the destruction of the world in hellfire and brimstone and the elevation of the saved into a heavenly paradise and does not mention imperfection in the creation. Many of the parables of the New Testament are open to interpretations of this nature because it would seem we, as human beings, love to draw negative conclusions rather than positive. John's Revelation seems to be doing nothing else than predicting the end of all things in a cataclysm of blood and fire and the hellfire preachers of the fundamentalist churches love it. But, as we will see later, they are quite wrong because Revelations is written in symbols for those that can read them and it speaks only about things that pertain to the individual at any given time. What the Bible does say is that when we begin to open ourselves to the experiences of reality, when we drop our beliefs- our wishful concepts- and seek reality, then our old world will begin to fade away and we will see everything with new eyes. Our experiences of life will be new and fresh and a new universe will begin to appear about us. Judgement day, of the kind that fundamentalists read into Revelations, cannot be inferred from the rest of the New Testament. A heaven and hell gained or lost by salvation via good works or the judgement of a God who sits on a throne pontificating throughout infinity are merely the misinterpretation of the writings and ideas of visionaries who were trying to prepare us for the psychological and spiritual traumas we would experience as we freed ourselves of the shackles of creed and belief. There is no doubt that as individuals go through the process of self-awareness, or enlightenment, they pass through stages that are traumatic and self-judgmental. Many are also seen as pariahs in their own cultures and become outcast, thrown into a hell of rejection, betrayal and self-doubt; to propose that this is a fitting reward for the mostly harmless lives of the greater part of the human race is, at least, misguided. Over the centuries many religious scholars have attempted to understand the evil they see in the world and have pointed to passages in the first chapter of Genesis, about the darkness, to try and explain the conundrum. To these scholars the darkness is the realm of the devil and his angels and from it arises all rot, all foul and evil things and 'here be dragons'. As we shall see later this also is nonsense for it has been inferred by these scholars that it was because of this realm of darkness that the light came in the first place. In the New Testament Jesus is reported to have said: 'I am the light which shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it' and this is seen by many to be proof that the darkness is the abode of all evil.

However, this is not what God or Jesus for that matter said about the darkness and so we should just ignore people who try to preach evil at us. In fact if the light came because of the darkness as these scholars suggest, we might just as well say that the darkness is the prime cause for without it there would not have been a need for the light. Where would that leave us? What was actually said in Genesis was, 'and God saw that the light was good'; that is all. It is we who have inferred as a result of this statement that the darkness must be bad; it is we who have inferred that because God saw the light and said that it was good that this means the darkness, the opposite pole of light, must also be the opposite pole of being good and so it must be evil. But evil is not the opposite pole of good as in the good light for good light is merely that which enables us to see well; not so good, or bad light, does not so enable us. Evil (if you believe in the concept) is the opposite pole of goodness, as in behaviour and it is not this type of goodness that is being expressed by God in Genesis chapter one. In not seeing the darkness God was unable to comment on it and as nothing was said about the darkness nothing was meant to be inferred from this lack of comment. That we choose to reach a conclusion as the result of a lack of evidence is our judgement and we will need to be prepared to live with the consequences. But in our opinion the darkness is neither good nor bad as it is possible to perceive varying qualities of light, but there are no qualities of darkness for darkness is not a reduction in the amount of light but a total lack and is not a thing in itself and therefore does not exist. There are many things that can be said about light and some of them attach a value to the light we are seeing such as it being soft, hard, cold and warm. It is only visible, in the first place, because of the type of sensory organ we use to sense our environment and if light didn't create shade (darkness) we wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x;t be able to see at all and in this sense light and dark are complementary polarities. The focus of consciousness we have previously called 'I', wherever it is located, looks out into the world and sees all bathed in the light of the sun and is able to relate to all that is happening; but we look out from an infinite, indefinable throne room of darkness; and yet even this is not the point. The point is that for thousands of years we have believed things that were not said, we have accepted things in the old writings which have supported our beliefs and ignored those things which did not; particularly if they supported someone else against us. We are very selective in what we accept and, as a result, many of our religious beliefs are not rooted in ideas as they were originally expounded but they are what we want them to be and are a reflection of our own concepts, not of reality. Somewhere out there, past the blinkers and dark glasses of false concepts we insist on wearing, is a real universe. We will never get total agreement as to what it actually is because we all experience it a little differently and so whether we use science, philosophy, or religion to try and understand, whether we be quantum physicists, religious teachers or cosmologists we cannot dogmatize a set of parameters which are going to fit everybody's experience. Neither should we, because with dogma we stop ourselves and others from responding to experiences which could change the concepts by which we relate, however holy those concepts might be; none of us can be that certain because not one of us has all the information. If we are ever to be the Cosmic Man, if we are ever to achieve our true potential, we must begin by allowing ourselves to grow and develop to wherever that might take us. Let 64

us drop our ideas of perfection, of reward for good deeds done and punishment for error because those are childish ideas. If we refuse to grow, develop and learn and if we refuse to take the next step into the unknown we will die because we will become perfectly immobilised through fear and stasis is the only death; nature demonstrates this repeatedly. Those creatures which refuse to continually adapt to the ever-new pressures of being simply vanish from the face of the earth. There are no favourites that receive special treatment; one must evolve or perish. In following this universal law Adam grows and develops through association and involvement with all things in the garden and it is this involvement which draws us away from the cast, the static and the concrete, to the fluid and vibrant field of life. Within this garden we will always be coming upon those things that will stretch our potential to the limit and as we pass through each experience our personal firmament will expand and encompass ever increasing realms of relationships and understanding. But within this garden, we are told, there is one tree of which we should not eat; and once we understand what is being described we will understand why we should not. The belief that there is such a thing as a tree of good and evil is an assumption that has led many people to the wrong conclusion; neither is there a tree of knowledge. However, by presuming it to be one or other of these two some people have come to consider the tree to be evil and even believe that we should not take part in the continuing process of developing knowledge. Because of this wrong assumption whole libraries have been destroyed and because we have considered knowledge to be evil we have been admonished to have only faith- a faith that comes from belief. To really understand this tree we must use its full and correct title which is „The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil‟. According to its title this tree has a particular type of knowledge and that is „the knowledge of good and evil‟. No other kind of knowledge is associated with this tree and this type of knowledge is the perception of reality that leads us to think that there is good and evil and we are capable of discerning the one from the other; when we eat the fruit of this tree we become the judges of other people and cultures. All the trees of the garden have their place and this one is no exception; all the trees are for food and nowhere does it say that this one is not. The story only says that this tree's food is not for Adam and once we realise the true name of the tree and that Adam was the High Priest then we realise that he was not to eat of it as it was up to him to lead, not judge. But the animals in the garden- those disciples of the various philosophies- eat of all the trees and as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was planted in the dust of the Earth (all the peoples of the world) and as it grows out of this dust and their relationships, it is an expression of us all. That Adam should not eat of this tree does not mean that all others should not; in fact, the story tells us, for some creatures it was their food. The serpent is found in the garden and it, obviously, is one of the beasts of the earth that eats of the trees and not only does the serpent prosper from the food it eats it also considers it good enough to offer to Adam. So at this point we must dispel a number of myths surrounding the serpent and thereby clarify its position in the scheme of things and we start doing this by stating that Genesis does not say that The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is evil; if it was evil what is it doing in God‟s garden, he is the only one who could have 65

put it there. Just as the knowledge of life brings also the knowledge of death it does not follow that life is death and knowing that poisons kill does not mean that you will use them for that purpose; the knowledge of evil does not mean that the bearer of that knowledge is evil. Genesis is very clear- all trees in the garden were good for food and all were planted by God and all the creatures of the earth were placed in the garden by God and this included the serpent. All manner of theological problems have been caused by the idea that the serpent was somehow evil from the beginning, was a special creation, was with God before the creation or was created good and then became evil, opposed God and fell from grace. None of these things are mentioned in the story and we should not read things into it. Around the world there are many religions that have the serpent as one of their symbols and these religions have been practised for thousands of years; Christianity is one of them. The crucified Christ is often depicted as a serpent lifted up on the crucifix and Jesus is quoted as saying â&#x20AC;&#x153;As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up.â&#x20AC;? The caduceus, the symbol of the healing profession, comes from the healing schools of the Egyptian, Greek and later Gnostic traditions. The Chinese have a whole range of traditional ideas associated with dragon lines and in Europe all the old religions have left evidence of association with the serpent and the British and European ley lines are the same type of thing as the dragon lines of Asia. The Bible, therefore, is not talking about something that was vague or mythological but about something that existed, was real and had meaning for many people at that time. Those people knew of the tree with which this dragon/serpent was associated, they knew of its philosophy or spiritual teaching and this, according to the Bible, was good for making one wise and the revealer of this wisdom, the serpent, was very subtle. In all ancient mystery teachings, religions and philosophies the subtle serpent is also the symbol for the feminine aspects of the whole which are the physical universe, the female, the earth itself and the earth energies. So we should not be surprised that, in the Genesis story, its effect on Adam should first be felt through the feminine aspect which is, in this case called Eve, as it was merely the Mother archetype being expressed. This Mother aspect is always the impulse behind the expression of healing and religions which have placed emphasis on the healing talents have always used the serpent to signify this. Judaism has Moses using this symbol in the wilderness as he attempts to counter a plague that was inflicted on the Israelites by God and Christianity has Jesus the miracle healer who is depicted as a serpent on the cross. Doctors and all manner of other medical professionals, western or eastern, use the caduceus as their symbol and the serpent has also been used as a symbol of wisdom from the time of the Egyptian mysteries through the Greeks schools such as that of Pythagoras and on into the secret mysteries of the western world of the last one thousand years or so. In the context of all the above attributes of the serpent the word subtle takes on a deeper significance because it can be interpreted in two different ways. One of those interpretations means devious and this is the way it has been interpreted by most scholars throughout the ages in relation to the Garden of Eden story. The other, and just as widely used interpretation of the word, is refined and it is this latter meaning which is expressed through healing, wisdom and the feminine principles of creativity, love and birth and it is this meaning which

should be given the word subtle in this passage about the serpent; when it is it becomes obvious why the serpent symbol was used to signify Christ on the cross. The Genesis story should then be read to say that the serpent, above all other creatures (followers of various teachings) of the trees, is the most refined, the most learned and the most skilled and it is also caring and loving and practises the healing arts for these are the meanings of the word subtle. It has gained all this and more by eating of The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and in this respect one must agree with the serpent when he says to Eve that to eat of the fruit will have the effect of opening her eyes and making her and Adam as gods. In comparison to the other animals in the garden, this is what it will do. But for all its good qualities, this tree has one which makes it impossible for its partakers to grow past a certain point. Therefore, to become aware of one's universal nature one needs to walk away from this philosophy even though, because of its many very fine ideals, teachings and worthwhile skills this is a very hard thing to do; in fact most would rather die than give it up. That aspect of this tree which makes it so difficult to deal with is its propensity to judge. Its whole foundation and structure is built on the idea that some things are good and some evil that some things are of God and some of the Devil. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the belief in sin and righteousness and it is the belief that the universe is divided up by a battle between the powers of light and the powers of darkness and it is these beliefs that divide. But this is only its most overt nature for the The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is also the tree of science and through science the tree teaches separation. It does this by revealing that there is this and that, matter and energy, this thing and that thing and that the universe is a conglomeration that is hot or cold, up or down, large or small, positive or negative, far or near. Science, among other things, is a judgement system that observes and defines differences. Once we understand the dual nature of this tree it is obvious that we have all been eating of The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil for a long time and, to a point, it is extremely beneficial. This great tree grows in the midst of the garden, as does the tree of Life but this does not mean that sometime in the future, in a garden plot somewhere in the Middle East, we will find this tree right in the middle of all the other trees. To be in the midst of the garden of philosophies means to be among and part of all the philosophies, schools, teachings, religions and creeds of the world. This tree is that aspect of all thinking processes, ideologies and sciences that enables us to think in a conscious way but also leads us to separation and it is summed up in one word- judgement. While we grow and develop toward our own realisation of the universe we will, and should, eat of all the trees and plants in the garden- each in their turn because each will help us to see a little clearer. But once we come to the light, like a tall tree breaking through the canopy of the forest, we should understand the necessity of not judging and that to go back to that tree is to die. For children living in an adult and often dangerous world part of their learning is based on commands and judgements. Because of their inexperience it is often difficult to explain to children why they should, or should not, do certain things; even so most of them learn all the things they will need in their more aware future as adults during this period of their 67

development. Then, once they become adult, they are free to make their own choices and to take responsibility for them; the time of command, control and judgement by their parents is over and we do not expect them to return to it. With this in mind, if we were to say to you that you could travel free of charge on our jet plane to any destination in this world you would, no doubt, be overjoyed and wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x;t it also be wonderful if we allowed you to get off anywhere you chose. But what if we said that you should not get off anywhere between destinations, for if you did you would surely die. We do not think that this would be seen as unreasonable or an infringement of your free will for you could choose to ignore our advice if you wished. Doing so would not bring evil into your life, nor would it make you sinful but it would, however, certainly change your life and you would most certainly die as you disintegrated from explosive decompression. Any person who suggested to you that we were mistaken and that you could, in fact, depart the aircraft quite safely at ten thousand metres would also not necessarily be evil or sinful. They may be badly mistaken and be displaying the fact that their particular learning had its shortcomings or they may be able to provide you with a pressure suit, oxygen supply and high altitude parachute. If on the other hand they had none of these things and showed no remorse as you died on exiting the aircraft they would, more likely, be exhibiting signs of mental illness rather than evil.

THE GENESIS OF REVELATION

CHAPTER FIVE

THE TREES OF THE GARDEN

The third chapter of Genesis is not only about judgement of the sin and righteousness kind; there are other even more subtle ways of separating people. Many religions and philosophies have mysteries or hidden and more advanced teachings and Judaism is such a one, in that it has adherents who follow the teachings of the Kabala. Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam also have their mystical sects and the disciples of them give their lives to the perfection of their thought and being by 'climbing' through the various levels of their particular tree. Christianity, at one time, had a very strong mystical base which has, sadly, long since been repressed; it was called Gnosticism. All these teachings differ somewhat, depending on culture, era, presentation and detail nevertheless, they are all basically the same in the end result they seek. Throughout all these mystery teachings is found a tree symbol in some form which may be the Kabala, Kundalini, caduceus or any one of a large number of variations; all these different schools claim that their particular symbol is the source of and depicts the process that they are espousing and is The Tree of Life. None of them, however, are The Tree of Life for that is life itself and the experiences it presents us. But, without a doubt, they are representations of The Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil for, as explained in the previous chapter, this tree is found in the midst of the entire garden because 'it grows in all religions. This tree, wherever it is found and in whatever form, always has a depiction of the serpent on it for both the serpent and the tree are parts of the one symbol and represent aspects of the teachings in a way they could not do separately. These symbols are very old and dated to far earlier times than those for which we have records and students researching the ancient megaliths in Europe and Britain have shown that the symbol of the tree dates to times earlier than Stonehenge and other such sacred sites. Some researchers have also shown, through the use of the so called sacred geometry, that the star symbol we extracted from Genesis chapter one is to be found in Stonehenge and other prehistoric ruins. These researchers suggest that the symbol was developed in ages past, incorporated into the design of many of the holy places of yore and, later, used as the ground plan and yardstick for the dimensions of many of the cathedrals throughout Europe. The use of the symbol in this way would have required the understanding of the double circle two star design that forms the basis of the Kabala because many angles and proportions can only be gained through the use of the 'vesica' which only appears when the double symbol is drawn (see figures for this). Throughout the world the 'vesica' is a common symbol and 69

wherever it is found, with one apparent exception, it means woman or the feminine and in Hinduism it is called the Yoni and understood to represent the vagina so it should not be a surprise, therefore, that we find it in the book of Genesis where it also means the woman; the exception is Christianity in which the vesica is known as the fish. In the story about the separation of Eve from Adam it is said that the woman is taken from the man by the removal of a rib. It will be remembered, from previous chapters, that the star symbol represents Adam both male and female and so if we are to draw a symbol which represents the separation it must depict the act conclusively. Through the circle of the original star symbol draw another circle of the same diameter with the circumference of each circle passing through the centre of each. In the new circle draw the same six-pointed star as is in the first with each star having a point in the centre of the other. The result is two overlapping circles in the centre of which there is a vesica in which there is a tree similar to the Kabala tree. If the vesica and the tree are imagined to be separated from the stars and their circles what is left is two five pointed stars with one of them being male and the other female. The lattice, or ribbing, which is the tree, has been removed and the separated male and female Adam and Eve have appeared. It is important to notice that the ribbing is integral to that area of the symbol which is called the yoni, or vesica and is representative of the vagina, the place of birth and new life. Adam, the whole Cosmic Man, no longer exists and in his place there is now only separated man and woman and a garden full of judgement. The vesica, in being removed, has carried away the two entwining serpentâ&#x20AC;&#x;s symbol of life that we called the ribbing which, if seen in the correct manner, forms itself into a replication of the original star symbol (see figures drawings for a depiction of this). It is a hexagram inside a hexagon inside a circle and it has three lines passing through its centre. It is quite important to realise that the ribbing was removed to create the separated beings and this began a sequence of events which lead to a separation from God. The only way to, symbolically, do this is to first remove both of the circles from the stars and when this is done man is no longer in direct contact with God (symbolised by the infinite circle), male is not in close contact with female and they are now naked. The garden has gone and all that is left is the one tree made up of the two opposing pentagrams which, in Judaism, is called the Kabala; so why is this tree called The Tree of Life? If we allow ourselves to become entwined in the judgmental teachings of purification, karma and other laws of spiritual improvement, we fall into the trap that is depicted in the Genesis story. We should also remember that this event did not happen to Adam and Eve, they are just symbols; it happens to us all in all ages and we play out the drama, archetypically, individually and as groups. There were a group of middle-eastern tribesmen, up to the end of the nineteenth century, called the Dragomen. They were nomads who lived in the deserts and were renowned as traders and guides. They would, usually for a heavy fee, guide the tourists of the day through the wastelands of the great deserts to the various notable places. There are records of them doing this as far back as the Roman Empire and there are also records of them having lost a number of their clients when the money ran out. They were most interesting people. 70

FIG.TWELVE

Male pentacle star and cell

The Yoni, Vesica, Womb. Within the womb is the six pointed Cosmic Man star. Pushing the two ends of the yoni together to form a circle also forms the star.

This is the yoni/vesica

The male and female parent stars.

Female pentacle star and cell

FIG. THIRTEEN

The Serpent on the Tree Is sometimes called the Kundalini KETHER the CROWN

All these are called Sephiroth, coins, leaves doors or houses. They are the leaves of the tree with which Adam and Eve clothed themselves

MALKUTH the EARTH The central coins from top to bottom are also called Chakras

Their name and clothing suggests to us that they have had a fascinating history and are possibly descended from a well developed culture, rather than being the remnants of some disappearing primitive tribal society. The reason we think this is that when the serpent was cast out of the garden it was reduced to crawling upon its belly in the dust of the earth. This means that the followers of the serpent, the disciples and culture of this teaching which used the serpent as its symbol, were reduced from being the most subtle and refined to that of the most unclean, lowest and coarsest. The Dragomen kept to themselves and they did not intermarry or support any other ethnic group or nation and as they were nomadic they were not well thought of by the nations among whom they lived. They spent most of their time in the sands of the desert and so the traditional clothes of the men consisted of breaches and a long coat which covered most of their body, including their legs and these were embroidered with fine needlework depicting the tree- shown as the vine- complete with leaves, branches and flowers and on this tree is the serpent; the whole representation of which is curled around most of the body of each person. Drago means dragon and as it is one of the names of the serpent god Dragomen means men of the dragon godâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; Drago. Without home or place to lay his head Drago, the serpent, wanders among the dust of the earth. Some scholars think that the Dragomen are descended from the remnants of the people who built the megaliths of Europe and Britain and this is an opinion we share. It is our belief (not supported by a great deal of evidence I must admit) that as the dragon culture collapsed these people were driven out of their own countries and left to wander stateless, just as happened to the Judaic people after the fall of Jerusalem and the collapse of the old forms of Judaism in 70A.D. To support themselves these dragon people became guides of tourists, reflecting their former status as guides of spiritual growth and learning. They became the guides of questers travelling through the wastelands to the fabled faraway lands and cities of paradise and instead of leading seekers to Valhalla and Eden they became the somewhat dubious guides of those seeking the glitter and glory of earthly glamour. It is important to reiterate that Genesis is not just symbolic for it also uses symbols to speak about nations, cultures and religions that were in existence at that time and if we are observant we are able to see remnants of many others of them today; not just the Dragomen. Because we have become unfamiliar with the symbolic language being used the stories in Genesis and other books of the Bible seem to be mythical fantasy legends rather than actual history and real knowledge and this problem is not confined to the books of the Old Testament but also arises in the younger books of the New Testament. It is not a problem of age so much as language for once a language stops being used, regardless of its antiquity or otherwise, it is no longer understood. If we wish to begin recovering some understanding of how symbols are used as language we have only to look at the type of symbols we use today for communicating information in ways very reminiscent of those bygone eras. For instance, we are all familiar with those nations called the bear of the north, the British lion, the American eagle or the nation of which we are members that calls itself the Kiwi. So, even today, we do not need actual national or personal names to know who it is that we are talking about and the Bible has used symbols in exactly the same way. The Dragomen were living symbols of the dragon teachers, interpreters and guides of the mystery teachings of old as 73

portrayed in the story of the Garden of Eden and just like those teachers of old the Dragomen required payment for their services. In the past this could have been done directly in money or kind, as it was in recent times, or by adherence to their philosophy. All mystery schools require some form of payment or bond from their pupils in spite of the fact that the original vision, which is at the root of their teaching, is always by revelation and comes free of charge; we suppose this is why it is suggested that there is a need to be wary of selling our soul to the Devil. Christianity is no different either for it requires its followers to give, as a sacrificial tribute or payment, their whole lives to their god Jesus and they are bound to the religion by the rite of baptism. The trees of the mystery schools and arcane wisdom teachings have always had stages, or plateaux of development, depicted on them which, as in the case of the Kabala, are called coins, houses, chakras or something similar. Each plateau along the way must be earned, sweated and laboured for and so this system ensures the retention of hierarchical structures even though the original vision had no such structure. From this has always grown those philosophies which consider some to be enlightened and others to be unclean. To foster this division all parts of the tree and path are represented to the follower in the form of a hidden wisdom or code which must be interpreted. It must be converted from a foreign language to one with which the student is familiar and in order for this to happen the mystery must first be written in the foreign language; then it must be hidden from the student. The ultimate object of all this subterfuge is the journey up the tree, which was not required in the first place and at the end of the journey, is the promised city or the wondrous paradise in that far off fabled land or personal enlightenment. Surely the easiest way to enlighten people is to be open and provide all the information available. The Dragomen had a very sinister habit which has modern parallels. When the travellerâ&#x20AC;&#x;s money ran out it was the practice of the Dragomen to vanish into the night leaving their clients stranded and many travellers lost their lives in the deserts as a result of this habit. Some modern mystery teachings behave in this way also as many teachers are quite happy to lead their pupils into the wilderness between worlds, which is that place where we have disposed of our old world concepts and have not yet perceived the new, but when the money runs out the spiritual explorer is deserted and left to their own devices. They are told that nothing is gained without pain and that if they die (spiritually or symbolically) along the way, so be it. In the next incarnation they can take the next step; always assuming of course that their coin is good. These poor souls are left without the water of the spirit and fighting their way through one mirage after another so if you think you have a heavy load of karma or are poor in spirit be prepared to be abandoned. But as long as you are prepared to pay for your sin and as long as you are able to travel with your guru and pay their coin, whatever that may be, they will take you to your next heartâ&#x20AC;&#x;s desire. On journeys such as these we travel from one desired state of being to the next desired state of being; always seeking the paradise of the greener grass over the fence but there will always be someone who is prepared to separate us from our birthright. We don't actually need to take these journeys as where we are is just where we ought to be; if, however, we choose to travel the various spiritual paths we ought to consider doing it just as a tourist- for the fun of it, for 74

the adventure, for this is the real value of such journeys. If we are seeking the real truth about life we ought to study life itself not some representation of it because the difference between the actual journey of life and the imagined one of the mysteries is the same as the difference between real life and watching a play or a movie about life. So The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is not only about judgement in the normal way, but also in the sense of presenting us with the idea that we should be somewhere that is better than where we already are or, in other words, that which is prayed and suffered for is better than that which is free. The Gospels deal with this idea very clearly and reject it. As we said before, one could see all this as being evil but it is not and the tree is the very structure that we need to grow and develop. It might be likened to the way in which we grow from birth to adulthood in that many of the things we think of as important for our growth and maturation as adults in social relationships are presented to us, as children, in the form of fantasy and fairy tales. We all enjoy fantasy, fairy tales and parables and they are valuable tools in the transmission of ideas considered important to any society; but if we fail to recognise that they are only vehicles for a truth and are not The Truth, ultimately we bring about our own downfall. If we persist in remaining in the womb and adhering to the rule and regulations of the womb past the point which is natural we will die but this does not make the womb evil but nor is it the complete truth about life. The womb is a part of the process of life and while we are in it we had better obey its laws and one of those is that it is death to linger long than required and the passage from the womb at the end of our term is our baptism into a greater life. This process you will note has lead us from one life, that of a water world with limited awareness to an atmospheric world with almost infinite potential and we didnâ&#x20AC;&#x;t need a teacher, guru or religion to tell us how to do it; all that was required of us was that we live our life as we found it. So having clearly understood this tree let us go back to the garden and see what effect this has on our Cosmic Being and why remembering that, as well as judgement, this tree brings love, healing, caring and an eternal God with whom we can share a heavenly paradise. The Eve part of Adam, symbolised by the serpent, represents the feminine and earthly aspect of Cosmic Mankind and she accepts this teaching as having relevance within the framework of her experience. Todayâ&#x20AC;&#x;s equivalent would be the many people who accept that science is going to answer all our questions about reality and while there is no question that science has brought many benefits to a multitude of people those who think that categorisation, reductionism and mechanisation are going to lead us to a true perception of life and 'meaning' must surely be mistaken; but it is certainly very beguiling. Then Eve presents her vision to the masculine, spiritual aspect of Adam- who also accepts it. The editor of our original manuscript made the comment that the following statement was rather bold; we think it is obvious more than bold. The Church (the spiritual and masculine) is today eagerly accepting ideas about reality that are being presented ever more confidently by the scientific community (the physical and the feminine). If the Church does not continue doing this it will lose the vast majority of its adherents and fall from its place of power and authority and so Adam and Eve are still falling into the same old trap. Religions (Adam) 75

which have become the repositories of a knowledge, morality and political structure largely gained from the physical world which defines that world in terms of good or evil and principles of physics have forgotten that the infinite is an experience and indefinable; they have succumbed to the vision of Eve and God has departed from their garden. How can this be, how can man fall back into the darkness if this being, Adam, is the result of an experience that some call enlightenment and others the gnosis? It happens because perfection is a false concept and can only lead to spiritual death. The teachers and priests lead us to expect the perfection, total knowledge and infinite wisdom of Adam (or to put it another way; Jesus is the ideal son of God who we should try to emulate. He has shown us, in his life that we can and ought to be sinless and it is only by accepting this vision that we can come into the presence of God). This is nonsense of course and was never the case and is not the point of Genesis chapter one. Enlightenment and the gnosis are not ends they are about moving from one state of awareness to something greater in an endless fashion. Jesus was not the end of anything except the old way of looking at reality; he was a door through which we needed to pass and progress forward from. Enlightenment and gnosis are always about learning and experience, about relationships, about growing and making mistakes and the only mistake made by Adam and Eve is a common one and was the assumption that, for their own good, not everybody can be allowed to be witness to the deep mysteries. These must be hidden from prying eyes and released only to those who have somehow demonstrated that they are worthy. How do we know this? We know this because the story says two things, one openly and one inferred- just as in all good mysteries. The open statement is that they ate of the fruit and knew that they were naked which means that they became aware or decided that whatever it was that they were, knew, portrayed or whatever their experience was, it should be hidden from prying eyes, covered over and clothed. And so it was that they clothed themselves in the leaves of another tree, the fig. The hidden statement is in the suggestion, something that was never actually stated, that Adam and Eve were the first people of this earth and this inference has been accepted almost without question. But we now know that this was not said because it is not true because the 'dust of the earth' statement lets us know that there were many people on the face of the earth at the time referred to in the Adam and Eve story; but the idea of being the 'first people' can be understood another, symbolic, way that actually makes sense. To use the earlier example, the president of a country and his wife are the first man and woman of the land and in a theocracy, the High Priest and High Priestess are the first people of the land. Adam and Eve, in assuming the role of High Priest and Priestess hid the truth about themselves by clothing themselves with the leaves of the tree that they favoured. In other words the knowledge became secreted behind the accoutrements of hierarchy, power and authority within their chosen religious organization. This isnâ&#x20AC;&#x;t something only Adam and Eve did; this is a comment on the way in which humans behave generally and it is a story which is repeated a number of times in Genesis. On two occasions it occurs in the life of Abraham and Sarah when Abraham conceals the truth about himself and Sarah in order to gain what they perceive as some economic or political gain. In the story of Abraham it is merely frowned upon and a moral is drawn from it but in the story of Adam and Eve it has disastrous consequences for they assumed that they could decide the manner in which the 76

infinite was going to express itself and in or through whom it would do this. They became the judges of those who would be led by them. Their mistake is a common one, made by all of us from time to time. They forgot that the enlightenment they had received had been given freely and without judgement. The gnosis does not happen to just good or worthy people and in this respect it is like being given life and being born. Birth is something which happens without distinction and yet we are forever debating the merits of this or that, whether or not this person should ever have been born, or whether the world would be better without that one, so it is with the gnosis. There is nothing you can do to gain it and if it appears in your life you can do nothing to get rid of it and like puberty and old age, you have to live with what you get. The human race is to a very large degree functioning at a very much lower level of psychic activity than full potential because most people in every generation do not see or experience the results of gnosis as they are continually disabled by those that judge anything they personally do not understand as being evil, and of the devil. Put simply, there is no price to pay, there is no tree to climb, and there are no rules or regulations that can bring the revelation. A caterpillar does not pay for its chrysalis, it only does what it is best at which is eating and growing until one day it gets an urge which it follows and eventually it enters into a totally new kind of experience of life. Likewise, all we have to do is let go and be, stop being frightened off by the naysayers because to do otherwise is death. It seems to us that up to this point, the story is saying that it is senseless to have mystery teachings, hidden wisdom and hierarchies of priests and teachers in a system which judges who is and who is not suitable to know about the deeper things of life, and then wonder why people cannot handle reality. The result of all teachings, such as the Kabala and hierarchical orders of learning, is that they all end up stratifying people according to their ability to learn by rote rather than accepting them for their natural wisdom. Surely, if the tree is to fulfil its potential it must be free to drop its seed where and when it will and all people must be free to take of the fruit as they feel the need to eat. It seems obvious to us that man has a natural urge to learn and to change according to that learning and the past two to three hundred years have shown that we do not need to be bound to any formal structure to do so. That within the scientific world we have agreed to confine ourselves to a system of experimentation is one thing but what has been done in the past by various religious structures is another. They decided not how we should learn but what we should confine our learning to (and we must say here that the present form of the peer review system in the scientific world is leaning in exactly that same direction and if disaster is to be avoided the system needs a severe overhaul). The generations that followed Zarathustra misunderstood what had been revealed and instead of remaining free, open and growing, a hierarchy of priests was constructed which imprisoned all who followed right to this present day. The High Priest and Priestess, who were originally the tillers of the ground, became the prison warders. The physical, feminine Earth Mother part of us is structure and there is no three or four dimensional experience without structure; but it is this very aspect of nature that is our 77

biggest problem. Because we are structure and our consciousness within the physical is structured, we tend to assume that structure is the natural and eternal state for everything. Eve always and very easily, becomes enamoured of structures and we should always be very aware of this aspect of ourselves. Because of this mesmerising effect of structure we often give no more than lip service to free will and spirit nevertheless, we should always make the effort to ensure that we are all free enough to learn in the fashion we find most comfortable for ourselves. We do not need High Priests and Priestesses of anything, be that religion or science, they are a hindrance because they tend to portray- intentionally or not- that one way is better than another. Every Adam and Eve, every High Priest and Priestess, every scientific authority and every head of any hierarchical structure puts on the clothing of their particular tree and this clothing always includes all the things we have mentioned; the judgement of good and evil, of who is worthy and unworthy, the concepts of priestliness and learnedness and purity and the concepts that go with subtlety and refinement. In doing this, however, the Adams and Eves always cut themselves off from their source which, mostly, is the people they are supposed to serve. In most cases the term tree as used above could be accepted as being purely symbolic of any organization. There is one case however, about which we are not so sure and so later we will attempt to show that far from being merely rewritten and revised by the Essenic communities of Judea the books of the Old Testament were almost entirely written by them in the first place and if not them then certainly their immediate forbears the so called prophets. In doing so we will show that the first five books, the books of Moses, are similar to the Manual of Discipline which was discovered among the Dead Sea scrolls in that they lay down the ground rules for patterns of behaviour within the Essenic communities. With this in mind it is of major importance to know that Adam and Eve clothed themselves in the leaves of the fig tree for within the Essenes there were two quite important sects; one called the 'Vineyard' and the other the 'Fig Tree'. Prior to the beginning of the first millennium of this era the Essenic branches known as the Vineyard and the Fig Tree amalgamated and much of the philosophy of the Fig Tree was absorbed by the Vineyard. It was from about this time that the Essenic movement became political which was a course fostered by the Hasmonean Messianic family through its subfamily members the Maccabees. This politicising of what was previously a mystical, monastic order changed forever the nature of the movement and led ultimately to the war with the Romans and the destruction of Jerusalem. There is no doubt in our mind that this was brought about because both religion and politics were being used hand-in-hand to promote the idea of empire ruled by the Messianic priesthood. The Essenes were overcome by the temptation to spread their message through a vehicle provided by the merchants of power and this is something that is not unfamiliar in other religions, including our own Christianity. This is the same story as that depicted by Adam and Eve and the result is the same for the Essenes lose their place in the garden, fall from grace and lose contact with their source and their God. Trees are a symbol of the knowledge which flows freely from the source, the universal being, and they are the symbol for the font of knowledge which we seek as we search for the source. 78

They give freely of their fruit to whoever will take of it, they do not control and they simply yield for whoever attends to them. As soon as one makes rules and regulations as to who should eat, or when, the tree is not able to fulfil its potential. The Kabala, the mystical tree of the Jews, is just such a symbolic or figurative tree and the way it has been passed down through the centuries is more of the arcane and esoteric than open and exoteric. It is our opinion that when the two branches of the Essenes, the Vineyard and the Figtree combined they also took up the Kabala as their tool of teaching and used it as a means to hide those teachings from the masses and reveal it only to those disciples that they deemed worthy. Each stage of development through the tree of Kabalism is signified by symbols and these have various names. They were often called coins, houses and, more importantly, leaves. These leaves are those that Adam and Eve clothed themselves with and this means that they applied to their 'teachings' the clothing of the leaves of the arcane teachings; the leaves of the fig, or figurative tree. The Dragomen literally had clothing covered with the symbols which included the leaves of the tree and priests of all religions wear garments on which are depicted the symbols of the religions to which they belong. Exodus gives a graphic example of the imagery associated with this type of garment when it describes the adornment created for Aaron and his priesthood and history shows just how well this type of clothing does conceal. In the past it was the habit not only to make garments with the mystery symbols but also to construct all sacred buildings and other religious structures along the lines portrayed by the symbols; ziggurats, pyramids, temples and cathedrals the world over are proof of this. Symbols were carved into and built into the very fabric of these buildings and the purpose of it was to put before all people at all times these symbols of consciousness which were intended to foster enquiry and eventually lead the enquirer to enlightenment. It did not seem to be realised that people would become so used to seeing them that they would eventually stop seeing them altogether; or that, even though they were right out in the open but not taught openly, people would lose the ability to understand them. The crucifix is an example of this. For two thousand years it has stood before us and all that has happened is that people have become mesmerised by it and nobody has taught that maybe it actually means something quite deep. Because we have been mesmerised we have tended to worship that which we think it stands for without considering that this may not be the case at all. The problem becomes so profound that, in the end, even those organizations that were originally instrumental in erecting these structures have forgotten what they are there for and, worst of all, the people for whom they were built fall into superstition, ignorance and belief. So we, like Adam and Eve, have clothed ourselves and our concepts of reality, churches, our priests and all our repositories of wisdom with the leaves of deep and arcane teachings and judgement and instead of involving ourselves with reality we study the pictures on the clothing and then, in what we term in-depth study, we study the warp and weft of the fabric itself and draw conclusions about our experiences from this. We have fulfilled the warning of chapter three of Genesis and have separated ourselves from the source, the result of which is we can no longer talk with God in the garden. This is the next step down in the process of a descending spiral of mystification about our true nature and our ability to commune with that. 79

In this process of descent we find that even our intermediaries are of little value for the priests no longer know what they are priests to and Man, the son of God, is dead and we may as well let the dead bury their dead for God is dead also. The alternative to this depressing picture is that which was presented to us in the first chapter of Genesis and that was that Man and God are the one thing, the One being; a picture of reality that has been presented for thousands of years, well before even Judaism and Christianity. In Celtic Britain and Europe there are many examples, among which is Stonehenge, of structures that incorporate in their plans all the same symbols as those which Christianity calls the symbol of Christ. These include the vesica symbol which Christianity calls the fish, the six pointed star called the Seal of Solomon, the crucifix and the cube which is the most important section in the book of Revelations. All of these symbols and others we have discussed or will talk about later refer to the infinite, dimensionless and indefinable nature of God. They also describe that the aspect of our being we call „I‟ is of exactly the same nature as God and, consequently, they are the same. If we accepted Einstein‟s concept of equivalency- that where two forces behave in exactly the same way we should treat them as if they were the same, as science does, then we should also accept that if „I‟ and God always manifest and are always experienced in exactly the same way they are the same thing. This is dramatically different from traditional religious thought but it is the meaning behind all the symbols and it is a very ancient teaching. It is this understanding which is dead and well buried and because of this we can no longer commune with the totality and we have all entered a purgatory of unreality and fantasy and instead of seeking reality we continue relentlessly along the paths of judgement and clothing, getting further and further away from clarity and truth. As we left the garden of Genesis the last things we saw were the flaming sword and the cherubim and now we have come to believe that they are the end of the road and we need go no further. Most people would say that they have never seen the flaming sword, let alone the cherubim and so how do they know whether they represent the end of the road or not. We have all seen the sword for it is the cross of the crucifixion that has been thrust into the ground in the same way that King Arthur‟s Excalibur was thrust into the rock. And the cherubim are the angels that are best depicted in John's Revelation and in the tomb in the Gospels. The term cherubim just means angel and the word angel means messenger and the word Apostle means one sent as in being a messenger and so our whole Western religious tradition is chock full of cherubim. Our religious structures have accepted that both of these images stand between ourselves and God and it is only by their ministrations that we can approach God; we can only do this by accepting the sacrifice of the cross and the teaching of the Apostles. This is not so and in fact it is nonsense for the sword and messengers are not guardians or mediators of the way, they are not door keepers to make sure the riff raff don‟t get into heaven; they are signposts and guides pointing the direction we should go and that is all. They are there before the eyes of us all and have been for thousands of years and they have cried out to the people of each generation, not to follow them but to go through them back into the garden, even telling us how to do that. We have all ignored them and chosen the

other road; that road down which we can divide the world into the haves and the have nots at all levels including the spiritual. The next part of the process for us, Adam and Eve, after we have created this dichotomy between our physical and spiritual reality (where our real self has been deified and called God), is for that God to clothe us in animal skins. For if we allow ourselves to be led into the wilderness of the concept that there is a unique, omnipotent being which is in some way separate from ourselves and this is exactly what we do when we deny our own universality, then it is inevitable that we will end up in animal skins for the higher we elevate God the lower we place ourselves. There are two ways of looking at this part of the narrative; the first is symbolic and the second is much more real. Symbolically, the putting on of animal skins relates to the drop in awareness we experience when we begin to separate ourselves from reality and each other. The breakdown in communication that results leads to a situation in all our philosophies of life and society in which we become unable to trust each other or even life as a whole. Essentially we lose the feeling that life has meaning for us and we seem to become puppets of destiny. In this situation our outlook on life has become that of disciples and students not partners and equals, our place in the structure of our religions becomes that of competitors and judges of each other's actions and beliefs, equality disappears and the pecking order of the natural world manifests itself among us and we become its prisoners; we become one with the beasts of the earth. Our religious organisations can also be recognised by the skins which we insist on wearing and so Christianity is the lamb and the fish, Hinduism is the cow, ox, or rat; each sect having its own depiction. It is through these symbols that we try to define the manner in which we should, or can, experience that reality we do not want to admit to. That same drop in awareness that leads to this state of affairs, symbolically, also leads to an actual belief in the wearing of animal skins. Throughout the ages it seems that people have striven toward more and more individualism and this seems to be the result of the search for God (the Self) and the need to purify ourselves in the sight of that God. Even in the technological world of today we seem driven to prove that we are somehow superior to the natural order, as if we are separate from it and the further down this road we go the more it seems we demonstrate that we are not separate. This leads people to conclude that we are animals and so we strive even harder to prove that we have risen above this. There is nothing in this way of dealing with life that is a clearâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; headed and rational understanding of the uniqueness of each individual thing and each expression of the whole, including ourselves. That is how the whole of nature, of which we are indeed a part, functions but just because they are unique and seemingly separate if our liver cells thought they could do the work of our brain cells we would be in real trouble. Each of us needs to be aware of our uniqueness but life insists that whatever is done as an individual must also harmonise with the whole and if there is no harmony there is no life. We do not mean harmony in the sense of complete peace and passivity, for we do not think that life functions like this; the real living experience is somewhat like living on a razor edge and if we try to deny that we also deny the magnificence of being. The harmony we mean is that unity of purpose which we find in our bodies where millions of individual cells live out their 81

individual existences in a manner which ultimately creates and maintains the structure which we call our body. It is not a creation of coercion, but one in which the actions and byproducts of one aspect are utilised by others for the benefit of those others, and in the process all benefit. Every cell must know its function and not confuse itself with the doings of other types of cells but each cell must also function as if it were the whole body of which it is a part as its relationships with all about it are as important as its own existence. We see animals living in and functioning as a pack and birds flock, fish school, and bees hive or swarm. In looking at ourselves we see very similar nesting habits and pack creations and we conclude that we must be the result of animal development. Yet somehow, at some time, through our extra development and evolution, we have lost that group consciousness which animals seem to possess, and now we have to make special rules and have special rule makers to keep us in line as social animals. We have become blind to what it is we really are. Through evolution, we may very well have grown out of the real dust of the earth, or chemical soup, but we are not animals anymore. The type of consciousness we now possess has removed us for all time from the realm of the animal and should lead us to see something that they have not the slightest chance of seeing. Self-awareness is not self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is being aware that we are aware and that we are thinking and separate individual beings who perceive and categorise our environment. Self-awareness is that being which is aware of what and who it is and these two beings are quite different and while some animals share with us the former none are capable of the latter. The second is infinite, without dimension and indefinable. It is not an animal but has evolved out of the animal realm and has transcended that but the vehicle it uses within the third and fourth dimensional experience, which it calls the human body, is indeed an animal vehicle and may be self-conscious. Whilst we continue to confuse self-consciousness and self-awareness we are confusing self with body and the origins of that body. But this does not mean that the body is a separate and individual organism and it does not mean that the Self and the body are in any way independent of each other, as we shall see shortly. What it does mean is that the animal realm is transcended by self which recognises the source of those animal behaviours we see within ourselves and in doing so it is able to consciously transmute those behaviours in a creative fashion. Trees do not exist in isolation and they need all other life on this planet to survive; bacteria minerals, waste products of animals and many other things all contribute to the life of tree. So all life, past and present, provides the foundation for the being which we call a tree. Our lungs require oxygen to ensure that all the functions of our bodies continue as they ought and this oxygen is produced by trees and other plants. Therefore, both our lungs and the trees are the one process, not separate things. Other parts of this process are all those things, past and present, which continue to contribute to it. Plants of all kinds are exterior functions of our body and this body, along with all others, is an exterior function of all plants and so we are in and of each other. We do not have a symbiotic relationship with other life forms there is only one life form on this planet and we are an aspect of it. For us to exist at all, both the plants and our self, we need the sun and there is no such thing as a star (including our sun) which exists in isolation. All stars exist only in relation to each other and they only do this in 82

galaxies and groups of galaxies and all of the elements which we find on this planet could only have come into existence after various stars had come into being and gone through the process of first and second generation stellar creation therefore our personal physical existence is dependent on the chemical and atomic processes of the entire universe as we find it. Our bodies and the processes that cause them to function in the way that they do are the result of the universe being the way it is. It is this universe, being the way it is, that keeps them functioning and evolving in the way that they do and we do not, nor will we ever, have a lot of say in the way the universe deals with us. In spite of what we like to think about our own brilliance and capabilities and regardless of any changes we make to either ourselves or our environment we are still entirely dependent upon what is possible within the parameters already given; which is the universe. We have made much of the fact that man has been able to create nylons and other plastics and we have been able to form chemicals that have never before existed naturally. The point is that these could not have been brought into being had the potential for them not been there in the first place. They could not have been made had the basic building blocks not already existed and as they do it is quite likely that the end results, such as plastics, also exist naturally somewhere else in the universe. But, more importantly, it took consciousness on this planet to create these combinations and consciousness is a natural manifestation within the universe as we experience it; if it were not we would not exist. Therefore, one might say and indeed we think one is forced to say, that plastics have been created naturally through the natural function of the universe using what we call human consciousness. This, of course, makes nonsense of the argument that some put forward which suggests that because of our consciousness we are somehow different and separate from nature and that, therefore, we have a right to dominate and form nature to our own ends. The truth is that consciousness of all kinds, including our own, has always risen and will always rise in the natural universe as it is the natural result of the existence of that universe. Every aspect of experience in the universe is the process of the coming of consciousness; there is no separation. If we recognise and are able to comprehend this then it becomes obvious that we do not stop at our skins or even within the bones of our skulls. We are infinite beings and each one of us is the other, we are all things and all things are each one of us, there is only one â&#x20AC;&#x17E;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x; and it is observing the world from within you and equally from within us. We are a point of consciousness, a focus of mind, which is located at that position in space/time we call 'my body'. We are each a unique point of view of the universal One which is subject to the wave/particle limitations revealed in quantum physics, just as everything is. So long as we chose not to see the wave (the indefinable) and recognise that we are a universal field of being or if we chose to confine our thoughts about ourselves to that which is enclosed by the body (which is the observed particle) then we have indeed chosen to encompass and clothe ourselves with animal skins, animal bodies and animal minds. The instant we begin to see the reality of the state of self awareness we can do nothing but recognise the validity of the particle (the body) but we must also recognise our wavelike and infinite nature and see that we are no longer confined to our clothing of skin. Until we do all we see are the skins.

Because we have become so confined in our thinking we can only become more and more enmeshed in our error and this will ultimately lead us to the conclusion of this part of the story of Genesis which is being cast out of the garden and believing that the cherubim and the sword are there to keep us out rather than guide us in. This conclusion has already been accepted by large numbers of people who believe and teach that the world of the physical and the body is a world of sin and suffering and that we will all be better off on that day when the end of this order arrives and we are elevated to the realms of heavenly, spiritual bliss forever. They fail to understand that if we elevate or deify the wave/spirit and ignore the particle/physical, quite naturally, this world will make no sense and the same applies if we deify the particle/ physical (as some do) and try to ignore the wave/spirit. It is all separation and leads to ignorance. At the conclusion of the third chapter of Genesis the serpent is told that it will go on its belly for all the days of its life. In the original zodiac the serpent was depicted as one of the houses and its image was the same as the flying serpent of the old Celtic and Chinese mythologies. With the collapse of these philosophies that were being portrayed by the myths the authority of the serpent as a teaching of refinement was no longer recognised and the serpent was cast down to the earth, just as the book of Revelations points out. At this time the symbols of the heavens and consequently the zodiac were re-organised and the serpent no longer openly appears among the twelve houses but now goes upon its belly in the dust of the earth as the dragon lines of China and Japan and the ley lines of Europe. In the Kabala the serpent is openly displayed but it is cast downwards, or drawn with its head toward the earth. It is symbolically synonymous with reincarnation and rebirth and in all mythology it represents the feminine qualities of creation so, in this respect, it is significant to note that the word 'belly' is an archaic word, dating from the time of the serpent religions, for the womb. All the days which are being spoken about in the Genesis story are the signs of the zodiac in which each age, represented by a two thousand year long sign, is also called a house, a stone and a day. Therefore, 'to go upon your belly all the days of your life' is to be condemned to rebirth through reincarnation after reincarnation and this eternal reincarnation was the very idea Buddha was rebelling against when he broke with the teachings of Hinduism and declared that the karmic and reincarnational cycle could be overcome. After the serpent is told to go on its belly Eve is told that her children will be born in pain and that her desire will be for her husband. Taking the last part first it becomes obvious that what we are looking at is the desire of the physical (feminine) to become more spiritual, a desire which is lived out by the bulk of mankind through their apparent need to become more pure in the eyes of a patriarchal godhead. It seems to be an overpowering desire to cast off the physical garments and rise up to be glorified as youthful and eternal spirit. For thousands of years we have believed that it is only through the pain of death and self-sacrifice that this can happen and many religions of the middle-east particularly (though it is not confined to them) have taught this. Yearly and at the change from one zodiacal house to another God, or the son of God, must sacrifice himself and be reborn to ensure that the creation continues on the path set for it at the beginning of time. Involved with this philosophy is the practice of blood sacrifice through the slaughter of animals and, originally, humans. 84

FIG. FOURTEEN

The very subtle serpent

caduceus

The object of these minor (animals and humans instead of the son of God) sacrifices was to ensure that God did not become too upset with the supposed sins of man in between those times when God made the ultimate sacrifice himself. The religious practices and temple rituals of the Jews were examples of this. Judaism, as portrayed in the Old Testament, was a religion of redemption and rebirth through pain, blood and suffering and this was the womb from which the children of Eve were born. There is no doubt that in the Old Testament Eve was originally represented by Jerusalem as this city is often called the woman or the bride of God and the song of Solomon is a poem in praise of her. The Apostle Paul explains quite clearly, and there can be no misunderstanding on this point, that Jesus crucified, raised up and having entered into the sanctuary on our behalf, is the High Priest and the bridegroom and he is the second Adam. Paul also points out that the Church is the second Eve, the bride of this Jesus and so if he is the High Priest then Eve is the High Priestess and Paul says there can be no greater desire for the Church than that we desire to be one with and wed to our Lord. This desire then is the desire of Eve for her husband. This imagery is not unique to Christians as it has arisen often and the Zarathustrians, Moslems and many other less public religious beliefs are evidence of having, in their own various ways, a desire for their husband the masculine God. Such imagery symbolises the recurring pain we inflict upon ourselves as we continue to believe that we need to be pure and sinless to be able to commune with 'God' and experience the eternal reality. If we accept this philosophy we are the children of Eve, the physical earth mother, who are continually born in pain and suffering and there will be no end to it; just as, whilst we persist in the fantasy, there is no end to reincarnation. Adams problem is summed up in the few words: 'cursed is the ground because of you'. The rest of the passage says that Adam is a man lacking awareness of the Mother which means that, in his mind, the earth/physical is to be avoided at all costs because to be born and be material is the worst of all possible conditions and that all attempts possible should be made to escape it, never to return. Anybody who has been to a spiritualist church and heard the spirits say that we are like unknowing children trapped in our gross bodies in this lowly earth plane will recognize the sentiments in Adamâ&#x20AC;&#x;s curse. Adam, the masculine or spiritual man, seems sentenced to toil and strive for ever to become ever more spiritual. No state of being that he finds himself in is ever quite good enough and the physical realm is certainly not to his liking; it is all the weeds and tangled matted undergrowth of a jungle he would rather escape. The physical world is a vale of darkness, of sweat and tears and returns nothing but evil; he would much rather be in his fantasy ideal world of the spirit. This is a common enough point of view in all religions and in the past it was very pronounced among some Gnostic groups and is very evident in the Essenic writings. Today, all over the world, priests and ministers urge this view and the spiritualist mediums inferred above manifest entities that tell us, â&#x20AC;&#x17E;we poor children on the earth plane, that we must put all our endeavours towards elevating ourselves away from our prison of the flesh and seek only this glorious state of perfection in which they exist'. But then they also add that when we get there we will find that we still have an eternity of growing to do and this ensures that the hierarchy persists and we donâ&#x20AC;&#x;t get too uppity. 86

Adam is told that his condition will persist until such time as we make the conscious decision to accept that the physical universe has indeed got some worth and we (Adam) return to and accept the earth, the Mother, for the paradise it actually is and stop repressing the feminine. This story about Adam and his return has nothing to do with returning to the dust of the grave as in, 'ashes to ashes and dust to dust'. The dust of the earth in the story about Adam refers to all that comprises the Mother Earth and that includes all the people who live on and in her. So it has to do with how we understand our place in this universe through acceptance of the physical life provided by the Mother Earth and it has to do with being able to see this physical universe as the perfection it is, just as it is. The instant that we stop running away from the Mother she stops running away from us and begins revealing herself to us; so when Adam returns to the dust of the earth we begin re-entering the garden. Until such time and until we bring all things together within ourselves and cease judging and separating, until we begin giving all things their due credit we will continue on the rounds of our various fantasies and we will continue to claim such silly things as ours is the only true way. The universe stands before us and beckons us to be one with it and to do this all we have to do is walk into it, walk away from our dreamtime images and our hallucinations, drop our fears and take a step into reality. I realise that for many this is like being asked to step off the edge of a cliff in the faith that God will make it safe; but it is not like that at all. The garden is all about us, it always has been and all we have to do is look and we will see it. Our ability to commune with the source (of our being) has always been available to us and still is and once again all we have to do is stop ignoring it. It is called intuition, synchronicity, dreams, visions, and a multitude of other things, even coincidence. Accepting this free gift of Life may, indeed, seem like stepping off a cliff in comparison to your present beliefs but God will not make it safe for you; God will not even save you. There is no need for this because God is part of the fantasy, God is in your unreality and when you step away from this you step into the reality of Life which is everlasting. We have always been infinite beings even though we have feared death, God, life, and those who have stepped outside our framework of beliefs. We have been told by many wise people of all cultures and throughout all time to let go of our fears and experience reality; we have also feared that they were of the devil. Even so, reality has been there all the time and all we need to do is accept and be.

GENESIS OF REVELATION CHAPTER SIX BE AWARE

At this point in our studies it is very important to understand that we are dealing with a process, the nature of which we must learn and comprehend for, shortly, we will begin looking at the New Testament and if we have not understood the process we are going to have problems assimilating the following material simply because our culture has a very emotional and often irrational involvement with the New Testament. The first three chapters of Genesis deal with the roots of our consciousness, the manifestation of those roots in our lives and the various ways in which we deal with, or fail to deal with them. They portray the process of the development of consciousness that has been going on since the beginning of time and will continue until the universe goes out of existence; if that ever does happen. Exactly the same process has been described by the Buddhists and Hindus and many other mystic religions throughout the ages; it is merely couched in different language. This book has focused on the process of the development of mankind from the stage of self-consciousness to cosmic-consciousness, that which some call Godconsciousness or holism which is experiencing the universe as a whole. The same process applies at all levels of change, growth and development and the essence of it is that if you wish to move forward to a better or wider understanding of your environment to any degree at all, there is only one way to do it; you must take a step into the unknown. This stepping out can only begin at the point in space and time where we are and that will always be in the old world order into which we are born, in which we are educated and in which we absorb the wisdom of our times. This is our womb, our mother, the universe as we perceive it and is the waters of all life and consciousness. A shadow passes across the surface of our mind and stirs something within the depths of our consciousness and in becoming aware of this we have caught a glimpse of something that does not fit our usual view of the universal picture; our world has been disturbed. This can happen in a number of ways, none of which need to be mysterious, although we must agree that occasionally we do experience this ruffling of the waters in ways that seem, at the time, to be supernatural. Yet the disturbance may be caused by the reading of a book, or a holiday taken outside one's normal sphere; anything which may inject an element of uncertainty. We also use the words 'a shadow' purposefully for in the past this was the very word used to describe spiritual experiences because, in many ways, the spirit can be likened to wind or insubstantial shades. People who claim to have seen ghosts often describe them as being just like a slight shadow moving about the room and so the word shadow has become synonymous, over many centuries, with ghosts and spirits. In Genesis, where it says that the 88

spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters, it is this part of the process which is being discussed; the wind, or shadow, of change was disturbing the tranquillity. Why was it doing this? For no reason at all! This is the nature of the third dimension; it is subject to the fourth dimension of time which, in itself, is dimensionless. Time flows within and through the three dimensions and manifests as constant change and so if anything in the three dimensions is a constant it is change itself. Therefore, the winds of change are often just time itself. As the shadows disturb our inner calm and ruffle our surface world view we will ask questions like; 'who am I?' 'Is there any eternal truth?' 'What is reality?' and in asking these questions we are saying 'let there be light! We need to know, we cannot deal with life any further with the information at hand. Let there be light! Enlighten us!' This is an on-going process of development in thinking creatures and so there is never a time when this is not happening because if there was there would be no thinking and if this does not continue to happen we vegetate, stagnate and die. This is why it has been said, 'Let the dead bury the dead; you follow me.' In the kingdom of the universe there is only one way to continually grow and that is to be continually open to new information and be prepared to act upon it. Then once the new information has been perceived it must be comprehended and the method for doing this is always the same and essentially it is this process of comprehension that the rest of Genesis is dealing with. We pointed out in an earlier chapter that one of the major first steps in creation is the manifestation and use of polarity and in the psychological creation process polarisation comes out as, 'what is constructive or destructive?' 'Where do the extremes lie?' 'What can we expect of the new information and what must we reject as superfluous?' At this stage many people make the mistake of accepting all new ideas as being relevant simply because all the information comes together, in one package, but in most cases this is a mistake. For example, when man first tried to fly we made the mistake of thinking that we needed to imitate what the experts, the birds, were using and so we tried to make feathers, we tried flapping wings, we even tried to make our vehicles look like birds but it was not until we realised that flying could be achieved simply with shape and airflow that we actually began to get somewhere. Ninety per cent of what we had accepted as relevant turned out to be impedimenta. We are sad to say that in the case of the development of consciousness most of the things that people accept as being relevant are usually only garbage. By now it must be obvious that all the information about 'God' which is carried along with the useful information is part of the impedimenta. It has arisen because in the paradigm of the old consciousness, that is self-consciousness, God is all those manifestations of reality which we were unable to deal with and it is for this reason that we think that the first verses of Genesis should read something like this...."In the beginning, our concepts of God created the universe as we experience it". Everything we experience, including God, depends on our own observations and the concepts we build as a result of those observations. This includes our responses to both the original perceptual stimuli and the secondary stimuli, which are generated by concepts about that 89

original stimulus. The basic responses of the single cell, the more complex responses of the multi-cellular organism and the responses of the trees and most of the animals of this world have no mechanism which would enable them to be aware of God let alone conceive of such an entity. It is not until self-consciousness becomes a possibility that God can enter the picture because it is not until self-consciousness arrives that distinctions between self and not-self, or polarisation, are possible; God, of course, is in the realm of not-self. Once the state of self consciousness and polarisation are achieved we focus on new information with the intention of relegating items to either the self or not self files and often those things which are not-self get put even further to one side and into the 'too hard bin', or the ' to be dealt with later file'. Of course we must recognise that these are metaphors and generalisations because to some degree our religions and philosophies are real attempts to come to some sort of understanding about the "not-self"; but mostly we only allow into our arena of thought those things that are obviously self or, at least, self like and all else is consigned to the realm of God. This is the separation of the light from the darkness and the creation of the firmament which divides the waters above from the waters below. But, as we undertake this shuffling and categorising, we come to realise that there are effects in the God-zone which can have positive or negative influences on our self-zone, and because these are beyond our self-zone of activity they are also beyond our control. We try to divide the God-zone once more to enable us to become conscious of those subtle influences which we may wish to encourage, even though we cannot predict or control their manifestation in our lives. We can also try to be conscious of those things we should try to avoid even though we know that, most times, they will occur and disrupt our lives seemingly in the most perverse fashion. The self seems to be prepared to go to incredible lengths to devise complex and wondrous schemes to try to ameliorate the effects of that which we, at this point, know to be beyond our ken; simply because experience indicates that those things which are beyond self are somehow wild and chaotic and this could pose a threat to self. Religions and philosophies fall into this category of God zone control mechanisms and the shamans and wizards of these schemes are our priests and mediators; those who are prepared to stand on the borderland between the sea-shore of sanity and the raging sea of chaos. The two zones they have divided the God-zone into, in the process of making it more comprehendible, are heaven and hell, the heavens and the underworld, Olympus and Hades or similar realms and they each have their very own very High Priest, Jesus and Satan respectively in the first case although these are only two of the many names that they have had throughout the ages. Polarisation, mediation, definition, categorisation, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction, cross-referencing, data storage, data retrieval and the production of a paradigm which relates together as many pieces of data as possible within the context of one's environment; this is the basis of the process we have seen in Genesis chapters one to three. Throughout these chapters the Bible is referring to all changes in development that apply every time we make a move from one level of looking at reality to another. It is talking about the continuing process of creation not a once only event and it is also talking about that special case of moving from the state of self-consciousness to that state we have called cosmic consciousness or self awareness and some others have called enlightenment. To fully 90

understand this part of the process it is necessary to realise that, in all cases, the stories are telling us to put all things together, to stop polarising, to join the male and female within us and to be both spiritual and physical at all times and to stop seeing things only from the point of view of the three dimensional self. In other words it is saying there should not be two zones and that if the self was prepared to step into the chaos of the unknown maybe the storm would cease and maybe we would find that we can walk on water. Although we ought to retain a strong sense of individuality when experiencing the totality of the universal sea of Being we definitely should not be self centred and we ought not limit any possibility by refusing to develop a self-zone as opposed to a God-zone, although we must now allow this to be plastic, or fluid; for in reality that which we have called the God-Zone, and formerly feared is simply all of that which we have not yet experienced. This means that we should be prepared to move into the unknown, into the chaos of all influences, having more confidence in our ability to retain some sense of identity because, in doing this, we achieve that state of being which is able to experience infinity and the effects of endless new influences in our lives and, from them, derive some meaning for ourselves without building concrete and immovable concepts about that experience. Is not this, after all, the end purpose of becoming self-conscious in the first place; the perception of meaning. That the term infinity defines ultimate meaninglessness is irrelevant for the manifestation of consciousness is, of itself, the response of the universe to this very meaninglessness and is the ultimate response. Through consciousness, the universe says, 'The meaning I choose is the meaning I choose'. Once we break the shackles of self (centred) consciousness and see that self consciousness (ego) is the very tool we need to break out into the realm of self awareness and the whole consciousness we also perceive that the consciousness we have become is this very same universal response and we give whatever meaning we wish to our experience of life. At the beginning of the story was chaos out of which we needed to escape to develop and retain our sanity and our self. At the end of this same story is exactly the same chaos into which we must now merge ourselves in order to realise that the chaos is only the infinite potential of our own being. Even though we use the word with apparent abandon in this book it is our opinion that the word consciousness is used in a far too sweeping manner. When using this word one often means awareness or perception and sometimes it is used in the sense of being fully aware while at other times only partially so. It covers everything from the response of a plant to the light of the sun, to the abilities of a super genius and more. We think it should be re-defined and that it would be much better for us to speak of things like 'response consciousness' when we are talking about things like single cells and plants and maybe 'proto-self consciousness' when referring to the type of awareness we see in some of the more intelligent animals such as dogs and horses and then 'self-consciousness' when talking about any creature that is aware of its own existence. Self awareness should be reserved for those who know who and what they are. If we did something like this we might find it easier to deal with the subject in a meaningful way and it might lead to possibilities of understanding that were not available 91

before. For instance, if there are these different categories of consciousness then maybe there are others that we could look at, maybe proto-response consciousness and proto-cosmic consciousness. We assume that cosmic consciousness has some reality because many people throughout the ages have left records of experiences to which they have given somewhat similar names. We must also assume that proto-response consciousness and even preconsciousness must also be possible states for all descriptions of cosmic consciousness and the paths to it have been described as arising out of the chaos of nothingness. Whether or not this is so we think this kind of categorisation is an advance on the old idea of the sub-conscious and the super-conscious because these earlier ideas suggest to us that somehow there is a state of consciousness which is akin to being asleep, or even dead, and at the other end of the scale there is a state of consciousness that is so superior or advanced that we no longer think in a rational/logical way and that, in an instant, we know. To us, both these extreme states are not consciousness of any recognizable form as consciousness, by definition, requires that one be a living being aware in a time definable manner; anything else is indefinable, unthinkable and therefore not conscious. As all consciousness seems to be some form of response, whether that be thinking or unthinking, we find it unlikely that consciousness can be determined by the prefixes, "sub" or "un". At the beginning of the New Testament we find that, as in Genesis, the emphasis is on the new birth, rebirth, or stepping out into the unknown. The message, once again, is that when we are reborn we do not just move between worlds of experience that are only modulated states of the same consciousness, but that we are born from one to the other and the process is just as dramatic as the process of physical birth and once it has happened there is no going back. When we are born into and begin to grow in this physical world we bring with us many of the attributes that we have developed while in the womb. Throughout our lives we manifest these attributes which we call our personality, our inherited qualities and our abilities and yet, for all that, in many ways we are the same as the foetal creature although we can never return to that world of water. Never again can we live our life according to the paradigm of consciousness we experienced in the womb and, to a large extent, this is why many of us, if not all of us, cannot remember this previous experience of life in a world of water; there was nothing in that experience that related to our present day life. So the move between states of consciousness is more like that much overworked phrase, the quantum leap, but in this respect it gives us a key to evolution that we may not have had before. It also tells us that our efforts to encourage some of the more intelligent animals to become self-conscious are likely to fail because they do not need more information or more experience. Somehow they need to make a leap, as we must have done at some point, into the field of experience that as yet they have not perceived, regardless of their contact with us. Pre-conscious nothingness explodes into proto-response consciousness and we have no idea how this happens. Does there have to be a reason and do we always have to know how a thing is done? How does an electron instantaneously leap from one energy level to another, how does it collapse from an infinite field to a locatable particle because we observe it? We take far too much of our experience of this three-dimensional universe for granted and we 92

assume without thinking. For example, consider a wheel at rest. We apply some form of energy to this wheel and, we say, it begins to move; but it did not begin at all it just moved. It did not slowly begin to move and it did not slowly stop resting; these things cannot happen because an object is either moving or at rest. They are two quite distinct states of being and one cannot go from one state to the other gradually. At rest the energy level of an object is not high enough for it to pass into the state of being called motion. That energy level can be gradually increased and at a certain point that level of energy will become high enough for the object to move into that state called motion; but that change of state is not gradual but instantaneous and timeless. Physicists would have us believe that we cannot experience quantum effects in the macro-universe but we have just demonstrated two in this paragraph. One was the observation of the change of state and the other was the instantaneous and timeless nature of the quantum leap. So it is with consciousness and the change from one state, or energy level, of consciousness to another. When we are experiencing the world with one set of concepts, we can gradually change or modify them but, at some point, the changes and modifications bring so much pressure to bear upon our general world view that it becomes obvious that we must make a change to our whole paradigm; the energy level increases, a crisis is reached and we make a sudden change in direction, we change our way of thinking and we change the way we live; we become new people as though we had been reincarnated. The modifying process is just tinkering and is used to make the world we experience as comfortable as possible and sometimes we will put up with enormous contradictions within our world view to avoid change. Paradigm change is instantaneous and often projects us into virgin and uncharted territory. This process is not something that happened once only at some time at the beginning of history and the Genesis story is about the ongoing processes that take place in our psyche. They are the very dynamic of our own conscious existence, right now, and they are like a quantum field out of which manifest the virtual particles of ideas which, in their turn, can bring forth concrete hypotheses, or even theories. The field of infinite potential experience is the chaos of ideas, feelings, relationships and perceptions out of which we derive those concepts which we call our own framework of reality. It is the pre-conscious sea of being, the quantum field of infinite wave/energy/psyche - wild and stormy. Step by step out of this sea rise the various states of being which we describe as different levels of consciousness. It would seem to us that there is a great gulf between the first proto-response and the much later self-consciousness that needs to be explored; but we are sure that we do not move gradually from one state to the next any more than the energy level in an atom changes gradually. In the atom this energy level change is called the quantum leap, in consciousness transitions these changes are called rebirths and are like, or may even be, evolutionary changes. What we are calling cosmic-consciousness is another quantum leap that takes us away from being individual units and lifts us into that realm of consciousness which, in physics, is defined by the uncertainty principle. In this state we are like both the particle and the wave (the individual self and the universal whole) but we cannot experience both at the same time. In fact time has nothing to do with the latter state. Between the borders of the type of 93

consciousness we have called proto-self and self there is a phenomenon called the pattern or cyclic event and it is this we encompass when making the leap between the two realms. For those creatures within the proto-self realm all life is controlled by these patterns of behaviour and cyclic events. They are called instinct which is both learned and genetically inspired behaviours; yet among the creatures that respond to these patterns there is virtually no awareness of them. It may be that what we see in the chimpanzee's use of tools is the beginning of higher awareness, as some believe. We think this is a dubious proposition however, because there are many creatures which use tools or exhibit tool using behaviour without giving any indication that they are seeking to comprehend a wider reality and to us this is the key; there needs to be an inner urge. Not all make the leap from proto-self to self-consciousness equally as the outcome depends entirely on the amount of energy which is put into it; just as the quantum leap of sub-atomic particles depends on energy input. But once we have made this leap of consciousness we encompass these patterns and cyclic behaviours to the point that we become aware of them in ourselves and in our environment. Then we begin to define them in terms of time and relationship and, rather than merely responding to them, we now attempt to adapt both the environment and ourselves so that we may harmonise with these patterns and cycles and derive the maximum benefit from them. In the words of some popular physicists we have transcended the old paradigm and in doing so manifest its potential in ways that could not have been apparent had the transcendence not taken place. Likewise, between the realm of the self-conscious and that which we have called cosmic-consciousness, there is a borderland that manifests phenomena which Carl Jung called synchronicity. Such phenomena are remarkable to us in as much as we have not yet encompassed them in our own consciousness nor transcended through them into cosmic-consciousness and, thereby, established these phenomena within ourselves in a fashion that would lead us to self awareness. Today synchronicity is a fashionable word for a phenomenon about which many people are talking; but this talk merely indicates that we have become aware of a realm that is still other than ourselves. We have not yet realised that everything we do within the realm of time and space, which is the realm of self, is controlled by, and is, synchronicity. We are still behaving towards this phenomenon and others like it, as animals do toward what we perceive as the laws of nature, the cycles and patterns. All structures, all events, all experiences are synchronistic; were it not so there would be no relationship in either time or space and, therefore, no time and no space itself. Self-consciousness, and hence the three dimensions of space and the fourth of time, depend for their very existence on synchronistic probability. Coincidence and chance are words which we should remove from our vocabulary, at least as far as this subject is concerned. They are two dimensional ideas and are simply effects which manifest through lack of awareness of cycles and patterns and reflect varying degrees of chaos and disorder within constructs of two dimensional minds. But by definition selfconsciousness is the ordering and structuring of chaos into a state of space and time that, for each of us, bears some degree of meaning. That this meaning, in the final analysis, is relevant only to the individual is in itself irrelevant for the drive to self-consciousness is the result or response of the universe to infinite chaos. The establishment of some meaningful order does 94

not demand that this order be infinite or eternal, merely that it be meaningful and it is in this sense that coincidence and chance are meaningless for they both define disorder and lack of meaning and yet it is the very urge to derive meaning which powers the leap from proto-twodimensional consciousness to self-three-dimensional. Synchronicity, on the other hand, defines a high degree of order and meaning and it is the comprehension of this that leads to the next breakthrough which is the encompassing of that synchronicity. The more we are able to become aware of synchronicity and the more meaning we are able to perceive in it within our lives the closer we are to perceiving, via the quantum leap of consciousness, that the chaos we perceived in the past is merely the result of our own short-sighted vision. Chaos it is indeed, but only in the sense of being infinite potential. Chaos is the infinite potential of experience that we are able to tap via synchronistic probability and the patterns and cycles that we are able to manifest from it are limited only by our ability to perceive meaningful relationships. In this sense it is a little like an idea. No proto- self-conscious creature is able to generate ideas and act on them in a conscious fashion though sometimes they do by accident, or through the actions of man, neither are they able to continue repeating them consciously. By contrast in the self conscious realm, we are limited only by our ability to perceive patterns or relationships between things and the ways in which we may make these function to our advantage and these relationships are always perceived in the ideas we generate and repeat before we manifest them into the physical world as objects and systems. Today, by and large, synchronicity is stumbled upon by accident or revealed to us by those who have already made the leap. We do not yet see that we are limiting ourselves because we do not see that we are able to generate an infinite number of experiences some of which, in the past, were called miracles but all of which will be normal consciousness in the future. Then we will recognise that all the patterns and cycles are the result not of laws of nature which are space/time related but of synchronicity which is a matter of perception; the clues have been left for us but we have refused to see them. For example, the constellations (or patterns) of stars that are used by astrologers have been plotted for thousands of years. Even today astronomers and navigators use them in various ways and yet we know that these patterns do not really exist and we know that their appearance depends entirely on our point of view. What we have not seen about these patterns, recorded so long ago, is not that they, in themselves, have some momentous effect on our lives but that all things synchronise in one way or another. It is this synchronicity, depending on the meaning that we give to it, that has an effect on all that we do. The zodiac has just as much meaning and effect in the lives of those that reject it as it does for those that accept it as meaningful and it does so because both must put some degree of thought into it and must make a stand on it. For some meaninglessness can be a very strong drive. But whether or not you think the zodiac constellations have any effect on your life they do and this is because navigation depends on them and the launching and guidance of spaceships about the solar system depends on them and much of the science of cosmology depends on knowing where our planet is in relation to other cosmological objects and this needs the constellations. Usefulness can be derived out of ultimate meaninglessness. 95

It will have been noted by now that chapter one of Genesis deals with the zodiac and you will be aware that the very early parts of the Gospels talk about the presence of astrologers at the birth of Jesus. Throughout the New Testament many references are made to astrology and in Revelations many astrological terms and images are used. This use of astrological symbols in both the Old and the New Testaments is not surprising once it is realised what it is that is being discussed. From Genesis onwards it is always the same thing, the awakening of cosmic consciousness and the development of self awareness within the individual and thereby the individualâ&#x20AC;&#x;s various cultures. Astrology and its symbols point out the nature of synchronicity, the effects of conceptual constructs and that self-consciousness tends towards greater, rather than lesser, degrees of complexity. On the other hand cosmic consciousness, or holism, is more about perception and experience without conceptual constructs. It understands that conceptual constructs are about space and time and that ultimately space/time is relative to the observer and is merely a tool which we are able to take up or put down as we choose. In the next chapters we will be dealing with perception and point of view from historical and religious stand points and we are sure there will be a few surprises about the way in which one's inherited structures, concepts and conditioning can influence one's whole perception of reality. We will also show why it is necessary to deal with this inherited baggage before the Cosmic Man, Adam, can appear within us and for some this may be a psychologically painful experience.

GENESIS OF REVELATION CHAPTER SEVEN

WHAT DO WE BELIEVE?

We now move into the New Testament because there is little more to be said about the Old Testament at this stage. The first three chapters of Genesis cover the subject of the mystic path pretty well and the rest of the Old Testament is the result of cultural interpretation of these initial chapters. Later, when we look at some of the other books, such as Exodus, we will see that much time has been wasted by people trying to resolve various theological problems raised by the Old Testament. Many theologians consider the teachings of Jesus to be the answer to the terrible problem of original sin which it is thought was that sin generated by the acts of Adam and Eve and the conundrum of how evil came to exist in a God created world. Consequently they are not overly concerned with the nature of any event which took place after the first three chapters of Genesis. By and large, most other Old Testament stories are treated as either interesting tales about man's consequent attempts at reconciliation with God, or they are ignored altogether. Today there is a school of theology which looks at the Genesis story a little differently. Instead of the fall and original sin they see the casting from the garden as being in the best interest of manâ&#x20AC;&#x;s development and so this has become the original blessing and while this is a more positive and hopeful approach, we think they have still missed the point. Genesis is not about a God who once created the universe and man out of chaos, resulting in what we see and experience. It is not about the on-going relationship between this God and man, be that of blessing or sin. Genesis is about the spiritual and mystic nature of being, of Life, and the changes in perception that are required before we can see and experience that which we already are. Even so, most theologians still adhere to the old ways and both schools have usually considered Genesis to be their starting point and the New Testament to be the answer to the story of Adam and Eve, be that sin or blessing. Most of the Old Testament is considered to be relevant mainly only to the Jews as it is their law and the Law is their covenant; it may have something to teach in the sense of morals or the way in which God deals with man but by and large it is theirs, not ours. The exception to this rule would be the Apostle Paul as he attempted to link the new revelation of Christianity with the promise to Abraham and thereby 'legalise' the church. This was seen as an important requirement by many in the early church, particularly at the time of Constantine, for without the Jewish foundation much of that which was presented as Christianity would not have made sense nor could the Church have claimed divine inspiration for their creed and canon.

Looking deeper, however, it is surprising to find that while Christianity might be about sin, blessing, old and new covenants and even Abraham, the New Testament is not. In fact it is about the same things that we have shown are in the first three chapters of Genesis and that is the development of a different perception of the universe, holism and the history of the schools and people who promoted this teaching and the effect that the culture of the times had on it. Therefore, the greatest mistake that can be made by theologians and other commentators is to read the Bible using present day concepts of reality and logic. It will not work and will always lead to misunderstanding. The attitudes of the people of early Christian times towards such matters as sin, suffering, spirituality, psychic phenomena, government, wealth, poverty, private property, travel, marriage, birth and death were, in many ways, different to our own and so we should not make inflexible comparisons between then and now. In many cases someone whom the Old Testament would call a righteous man we would throw into prison and people often have difficulty with their belief structure simply because they try to compare their own way of life, culture and expectations with those of a time when the speed of a galloping horse was considered a very high velocity. When reading the Bible or, for that matter, other literature of those times we must take into account all sorts of things that would have then influenced people's reasoning. Today many fringe religionists think that at some point in the not too distant future UFOs are going to land on this planet and take on board all those 'righteous in the sight of God' and carry them away to some kind of paradise. Among the ancient Greeks it was assumed that the same thing would happen; it was not UFOs that were going to do this however, but Pegasus the flying horse. This idea of bodily ascension was not uncommon and the Apostle Paul refers to it in his letters but in order to see that it was, and is, common and that it is an idea that has arisen in diverse cultures we have to understand the symbols those cultures have used and why. Much more information is available to us than we may have imagined and some of it is rather surprising. We now know that some Greeks and early Christians believed exactly the same thing as some UFO enthusiasts of today; that was that they were going to be lifted up by a mythical flying vehicle and so this dates UFOs somewhat and allows us to look at the subject with less hysteria. It is our contention that the angels of the days of the early church and before, the mythic beings such as Pegasus and the Roc and many others, were nothing more than depictions of a phenomenon which today is called flying saucers. When the nature of flight was still a great mystery people would of course describe the scenes that surround UFOs using images with which they were familiar. We are aware that the subject of UFOs is open to a great deal of speculation but we are sure that within a century or two people will be defining UFOs by whatever images they are familiar with then and will also be wondering what we meant by flying saucers. The New Testament therefore consists of stories within stories which often carry multiple levels of meaning and we shall find that many of them did not originate in Judea, but in other countries about the Mediterranean and in other times and cultures. They have all been brought together from those various sources for a common purpose but that purpose has largely been obscured by our inability to understand the imagery; simple and clear though it 98

may have been to the writers, it has been lost to us by time. We are also going to find that even time itself has been distorted and as in Genesis days often mean years, centuries, or ages of the zodiac. Events have been located in symbolic places that never existed, or which symbolically carry names of other places. For example, Babylon often means Rome and Jerusalem often means Qumran and the name Egypt can mean either Rome or Qumran and examples of this are found in the writings of the monastics of the Dead sea. People have been invented or caused to vanish, they have often been given symbolic or code names and sometimes an office is given a personal name. An example of this latter use would be if we called the office of Pope, John or Paul, and then treated the history of the papacy at the time of a Pope Paul or a Pope John as if it were the history or life of that person. All this was in the cause of a movement which, beginning as a spiritual teaching, fell into the old trap of Adam and Eve and became political. Its prime aim became the overthrow and replacement of the Roman political structure and while trying to fulfil this aim it subverted and prostituted a spiritual way of life and teaching that had enlivened the imaginations of hundreds of thousands of people throughout many centuries. Had this teaching been allowed to survive it may have brought democracy, equality of the sexes, health, education and some degree of prosperity to the greater part of the population of the Mediterranean world about fifteen hundred years earlier than what actually eventuated? Of course, once politics became the driving force this could not be allowed. The very ideas that were being promulgated for the edification of the masses were turned against them and instead of the freedom promised by democracy, republicanism, equality, and spiritual maturity we became enslaved to something that, in reality, was no more than the Emperor of Rome deified. Once the Roman Empire was established the greatest threat to it became the freedom of speech and among the greatest proponents of free speech were the various Gnostic movements among which must be numbered some of the Essenic communities. The fierce repression of the various Gnostics and their labelling as heretics and the eventual replacement of the Empirical political structure of government by the religious structure headed by the Bishop of Rome should not be seen as a schism in the body politic, a revolution or the downfall of an evil system. The evolution of the empirical structure into a theocracy began centuries before it became a fact and this is highlighted in the attempts by various emperors to have themselves deified; with not too much success, even after they eventually gained the honorary title of god. The repression of the Cathars and later the so-called witches should not be seen in historical isolation for this was the same policy that was originally instituted by the emperors, carried forward by Constantine who had himself crown Messiah and then continued by his heirs, the Popes of Rome, for exactly the same reasons. In the last one hunderd years we have seen a similar process taking place whereby the democratic ideals of the early communists were subverted by those with autocratic leanings to the point where the political structure of many nations became a vehicle of personality deification and all attempts to fight this were repressed in the same manner as the heretics of the past. Marx, Lenin, and Mao were but the most obvious examples of this deification process and as communism was collapsing people within the Christian world stood in wonder 99

at the speed of the events and asked, 'How is it that so many people allowed themselves to be repressed for so long, by so few?' The reality of history is that for fifteen hundred years most of the Christian world was repressed in exactly the same way by an equally small number. It was so thoroughly done that most people do not yet realise what has been happening and most are not yet aware that the problems we are facing in our societies today are in some respects the result of these long centuries of repression and ignorance. Included in these problems are people who cannot handle freedom and democracy or need the support of a patriarchal God to help them face reality and there are millions of people who are still chained to the superstitions of the old Roman theocracy and are likely to be for many years yet. As others, like the Eastern Europeans, come out from under the heel of their communist masters we shall see how long it takes them to adjust and deal with the same problem and will they hanker for the security of the old system or worse return to the blanket of Christianity. To understand our culture, where we have come from and where we are going we need to realise that the beginning of the New Testament is not at the birth of Jesus, nor at the arrival of John the Baptist for, as we shall see further on, these are portrayals or explanations of teachings, or the history of them, which were given or developed at a later date. The beginning of the New Testament was nearly four hundred years after the time which we have normally accepted for it began at the councils of Nicea, Constantinople and Chalcedon and it was at these councils that the canon of beliefs that became known as Christianity was hammered out by politically motivated people who used not only debate but also sword, poison and blackmail to achieve the result that they desired. From these councils Constantine gained a canon that allowed him to install Christian Bishops into the places of political authority previously held by Mithraic and Lupercalian priests. With the Bishop of Rome as his spiritual head Constantine managed to gain a form of legality for his reign and empire as he converted Rome from an ordinary empire to a theocracy; the canon was absolutely necessary in this process. Without it there was no formal Christian religion, just a loose collection of ideas and philosophies which were not legal under the previous emperors. Virtually every centre of Christian teaching had its own interpretation of what Christianity was all about and often they also had their own set of writings, many of which were obviously fraudulent or borrowed from older religions. All of these different centres or sects were, prior to Constantine, merely a variety of Judaism. But by producing a canon the messianic sects of Judaism were drawn together under the umbrella of one religion which was then formalised and codified. Once this was done it was possible for Constantine to legalise the religion and use it to retain control of the Roman civil service. By this means the priests of the former schismatic and fractured Jewish sects gained power and dominance over all the other Jewish sects and the priests of Mithras. The long held dream of the zealots and the Messianic family of Judea about which we read in the New Testament and other books of the era was at last fulfilled. Most people do not realise that prior to these events Christianity, as a body, was non-existent and compared with some other religious bodies was a very insignificant sect. Zarathustrian Mithraism, a mystical teaching, was by far the most dominant religious body in the Roman 100

Empire and prior to the edicts of Constantine it almost overcame and replaced the Christian teachings simply by being more popular. In addition Gnosticism, as taught by Marcion, was spreading very rapidly and winning converts at a time when the Roman variety of Christianity was going into decline. So those bishops who survived the councils in which the Christian religion was formed were quite prepared to use political means to gain spiritual ends and the two were not considered to be contradictory. This happened with all the so called great religions and that includes Judaism, Zarathustrianism and Islam. It has, it seems, been an acceptable formula among those who perceive spirituality as being a means to change the world rather than themselves. It seems to us that there was no essential difference between the foundation philosophies of Judaism and Zarathustrianism because the former grew out of the latter and was originally only a sect of it, not becoming a religion in its own right until the creation of the canon in 250B.C.E. Until then there were many and varied ideas in Judea of what it was God was and how one should worship and believe in that God and the mixture of beliefs included everything from the teachings and ideas of the indigenous Palestinians to those of the Egyptians, Greeks, Babylonians and Persians. It is quite incorrect, to our way of thinking, to suggest that the Jews were the first to appreciate that God should be understood as one, as opposed to a pantheon of minor gods. Or that, in coming to this conclusion, they provided the world with its first concept of a God which was something more than just superstition. In no way were they any different from the other cultures among which they found themselves and many of the images they used in their writings are pure Zarathustrianism. It was Zarathustrianism, more than any other philosophy, which brought the concept of one God to the Middle East and it was originally no more dualistic than any other teaching we know of; in fact its inner mysticism is the same as Taoism and Buddhism. I would suggest that the dualism of today's Christianity is far more marked than it ever was in Zarathustrianism and it was because of its Zarathustrian roots that the early teachings of Christianity were not dualistic either. This dualistic nature of Christianity has grown up at the hands of those who wish to instil fear rather than trust; it has developed at the hands of theologians and priests who have no knowledge of the underlying mysticism in their religion. During the period of the formation of the Judaic canon, under the auspices of the Maccabean High Priests and Messiahs, all the old religious beliefs were consolidated into one formally accepted religious structure just as happened at a later date with Constantine. This included the mystical communities which we have come to know as the Essenes and it was during this time of change that they became politicised and divorced from their other Mediterranean brethren. This canon and the politicising of Judaism have given us the impression that Judaism was a unique and original revelation given only to the people Israel. This is not true for the message that is contained in the writings of the Jewish religion is exactly the same revelation given to all people throughout time. Its uniqueness was in the decision, taken by the priests and political leaders of Judea, to stand alone and to present their sectarian canon as being the only valid writings. In this sense they were no different from the Roman Catholics who have 101

opposed the Greek orthodox teachings, the Protestant interpretation of the Bible and latterly the fundamentalist churches who also present to their adherents the idea that they are the only true church since the time of Christ. As with the messianic Jews of two thousand years ago the fundamentalists of today are infatuated with the idea of the coming of the Messiah/son of God. This teaching is first found in the teachings of the Zarathustrians and their saviour was Soshayanus the son of God Ahura Mazda. No other sect gave these teachings as much credence as the messianic Jews and no sect since has been as fanatical about them as are present day Christian fundamentalists. The Judaic variety of Zarathustrianism, powered by the now parochial and political Judaic Essenes and led by the messianic pretenders, the Maccabees, spread rapidly throughout the Mediterranean because in all the large cities there were Jewish communities in constant contact with each other. As this new political force spread throughout the Mediterranean a battle began to rage, a battle which is hinted at in the Acts of the Apostles, the letters of Paul and detailed in the Revelation of John. It was this battle for the minds and souls of man that brought about the division of the various communities and centres of teaching - some into the new Judaic camp, some into that which we call Gnostic and some into that which was originally called the way and had included the non-political Essenes. In later centuries, after they had been dethroned by Herod, The Maccabean Zealots split the Jewish world because they demanded allegiance in their conflict with the Romans, not just from the Jewish people in Judea but those in the Diaspora as well. Even after their defeat in Palestine the Zealots were able to continue their struggle, underground, because they had established such a strong groundswell of support throughout the Roman Empire. The mystic mystery-centred schools, which had previously at least tolerated each other, often working together and sharing teachers began to distrust each other and the earthen vessel, mentioned many times in the Bible, was broken into many pieces. Christianity was originally one of these breakaway Judaic mystical sects of Essenic teaching that did not claim any political allegiance and in most other ways it was no different to any other Judaic sect except it claimed that the Messiah, the son of god, the Zarathustrian Soshayanus, had come. As a result of Maccabean political pressure this situation eventually changed and this messianic sect became more political than just about any other. Although there were other Judaic sects who also claimed to be the followers of a messiah, both before and after this time, most were considered to be fringe fanatics and most Judaic teachings did not accept that the messiah, son of god, had come and many were, and still are today, of the opinion that he was most unlikely ever to do so. The point of a mystery or mystical teaching like Essenism is to teach a truth using symbols and images that initially appear to be literally true but which, eventually, the pupil perceives to be symbols of something much deeper and more meaningful than the 'truth' portrayed on the surface. The son of God imagery falls into this category and therefore, because they were understood to be mystics and mystery teachers and because it was realised that their messiah imagery was largely symbolic these Messianists were tolerated. But, when the messiah idea became politicised and was used as the foundation for a throne and system of government as it was in Judea by the Maccabees it became a major threat to stability and society. 102

So Constantine did not elevate an already existing canonical Christianity to the position of governing civil servants, because there was no such canon or church at that time. Even the word Christian was not widely used because most people belonging to this essentially Essenic way considered themselves nothing more than a Messianic Jewish sect. What Constantine did was to choose from among all the sects of Zarathustrianism one that was not already in office, as the Mithraic sect was. He also chose one that was not too closely aligned with Persia, Rome's enemy, as the Mithraic sect most definitely was and he chose one that had shown some ability to organise itself. He did this because it was the custom to have the priesthood, not laymen, running the civil service because in most cases the religious leaders were the best educated. He had to change the civil service away from the Mithraic priests at this time because they had become overly corrupt, making decisions that seemed to be favouring Persia and not supporting Constantine as emperor. Also, the religion of the army of Rome was Mithraic and as Constantine wanted to shift the capital of the Empire away from Rome to Constantinople, which was very close to the borders of the Persian Empire and very likely to be influenced by both the culture and politics of Persia, he needed not only to secure the support of his civil servants but also to ensure that his army was not going to mutiny on religious grounds. Changing the religion of the whole Empire was his way of achieving these goals. Then he also seems to have done something quite remarkable; he clasped the serpent to his bosom so to speak. The sect he chose to become the new state religion was the one that had been most heavily influenced by the Maccabean Zealots. Remarkable one might think, until it is realised that Constantineâ&#x20AC;&#x;s family, the Flavians, had befriended and assisted this sect from the time of Vespasian and the siege of Jerusalem right the way through three hundred years of persecutions and repression until Constantine himself took control of the empire. Once the Christian canon had been formalised and legalised the Christian religion became law and all non-Judaic Zarathustrians, along with all other religions, suddenly found themselves controlled by bishops and elders whom they had previously considered to be in error. This is why Christianity grew so rapidly; not because of evangelism but because it had, so to speak, a captive audience. For this audience a book, such as the New Testament, was desperately needed because most of the brand new Christian Church members had no idea what it was that they were being forced to believe. Once the New Testament had been constructed many of these new Christians did not recognize the stories in it even though most of the writings came from mystic communities throughout the Mediterranean to which they had previously belonged. This was because the stories had been altered by the new priests of Rome so that the message which rose out of the new book matched Constantineâ&#x20AC;&#x;s needs in the new theocracy. In later years many of the leaders of these now outlawed schools were branded as heretic because they rejected the new canon and did not have historical binding ties with Israel/Judea in their own teachings. This was because the Messianic doctrines that were accepted by Constantine rose out of the messianic concepts held by Simon Petra and these were completely tied to Judea as becomes painfully obvious in the Acts of the Apostles. The Judean sect members who had been instrumental in carrying these concepts forward in time and out into the Roman empire taught that it was absolutely necessary to attend the Temple at Jerusalem or maybe, as Barbara Thiering suggests, the community at Qumran and 103

they persisted in using the Torah as their book of Law. No other non-Jewish community of the way, or Essenic mystics did this. It is thanks to this division in the early Christian ranks that we have in the New Testament the hidden information that we do as on becoming associated with Constantine this messianic Judaic sect had to distance itself from the Herodian Rabbinical teachings of the rest of Judaism. So in compiling the stories that eventually became the canon of the Church, writings other than the Torah had to be used and these came from already existing religious bodies in the Empire. Among these were the Gnostics and Zarathustrian mystics, who were also teaching the wisdom of Christ but were suggesting that this came from a spiritual event not an actual one as in the Maccabean Messianic creed and Constantineâ&#x20AC;&#x;s Christianity. The leaders of these other communities were persuaded, by the use of various incentives provided by Constantine, to bow to the will of the Roman bishops. In the process of surrendering their freedom to the new Hierarchy they were, however, able to have included in the canonical writings, using cunning of their own variety, symbols and language that left their own message for those who were prepared to spend the time unravelling it. From all this it is clear that there is no real New Testament, nor is there a real Old one, at least not as we have understood them. When they were created they were political documents put together to bind a body of people to a new political structure; they still are political documents as nothing about their history or origins has changed. On the one hand the Old Testament was the founding political document of the Judean Nation cobbled together by the Maccabees and on the other hand the Roman Empire was saved from collapse and utter ruin by a very astute politician, the Emperor Constantine and his creation of the New Testament. We think he actually did us a disservice. In the cases of both the Old and the New Testaments the symbolic material included in the writings is the same as the teaching of the Essenic/Gnostic tradition dating well into the past. It was taught in Egypt, Chaldea, Sumer and who knows what cultures before them, long before the nation Judea existed and before Judaic Essenism became politicised and, as we have said earlier, it is found in the ruins of sacred structures all around the world. Therefore there is a third major writing (not covenant) in the Bible which predates either of the other two. It was pointed out by the Apostle Paul that the Jewish covenant is the Law; which is basically the five books of Moses that are the Jewish interpretation of some rather suspect snippets of history. These books have been put together with the books of the Prophets, the minor prophets and some suspect history contained in writings likes Judges, Samuel and Chronicles etc. All together they are the Jewish Bible which has since been tampered with by the Christian Church to some degree and called the Old Testament. The Apostle Paul also said, in support of his own theology, that there was another covenant, separate to but created and entered into, at about the same time as the Jewish covenant which was made with the gentile nations in mind; this other covenant, he says, was made between God and Abraham. Of course this is not correct, no covenant was made because, quite simply, a promise was made and accepted. There were no witnesses, no rituals, no laws and no blood of sacrifice to seal the deed as there was in the Jewish covenant and as was common practice in those days in all 104

cultures. Apart from this, in the New Testament book of Hebrews, the Apostle Paul probably puts an end to his own hypothesis for there he argues that the New Testament is a will and, what is more, that this will was signed and sealed with the blood of the dying testator. A will only comes into force when the testator dies and so if the testator is resuscitated the will is invalid and there can be no debate, Jesus– the testator– is alive and the will and testament is not valid. See Hebrews chapter nine verse fifteen to seventeen: „Therefore, he [Jesus Christ] is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred which redeems them of the transgressions under the first covenant. For where a will is involved the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive.” So if it can be shown that Jesus, according to the New Testament itself, is still alive there can be no New Covenant or will for it cannot come into force until his death; in fact, because he is part of the Trinity the new will cannot be enforced until the death of God. The whole foundation of Christianity is built on the idea that although Jesus did actually die he was resuscitated. It does not matter if you call it resurrection or give it any other name; after three days in the tomb he was resuscitated and I refer you to the following passages: Mark chapter 16 verse 14: “Afterward He [Jesus] appeared to the eleven themselves as they sat at table; and He upbraided them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw Him after He had risen.” Luke chapter 24 verse 36 - 39: “……. Jesus himself stood among them. But they were startled and frightened and, supposed that they saw a spirit. And He said to them, „why are you troubled, and why do questionings arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I, myself; handle me and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.” John chapter 20 verse 27: “Then He said to Thomas, put your finger here and see my hands; and put out your hand, and put it in my side;” Acts chapter 1 verse 3: “To them He presented himself alive after His passion by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days,………” It doesn‟t matter that Jesus ascended into heaven, according to the New Testament, and that he is no longer available for direct communication. It doesn‟t matter where the testator is until their death as their whereabouts has no bearing on anything at all. When Jesus ascended, according to the New Testament, he was alive, solid, physical, touchable and he definitely

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was not dead, he was not a spirit or a ghost; he was a living person and according to that same New Testament he is still alive. The will is not in force, is not valid and cannot be enforced.

FIG. FIFTEEN

Feminine Masculine Union

This Cross, when folded along the dotted lines, forms the cube of the New Jerusalem

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Today, as has been the case for some time, we have both Jewish sects, the Rabbinical and the Christian, claiming to be the chosen people. Both also claim that their own variety of covenant proves this but, as have other sceptics before us, we have found that when we put these claims to the test they do not stand up to scrutiny. In one sense, however, the Apostle Paul is right, the promise to Abraham is to all people and it has nothing to do with Jewish law but Paul does not go far enough. This promise has nothing to do with either sect, but it does have something to do with teachings far older than either and this can be demonstrated from those writings themselves and, once we see it, we are also able to understand the New Testament period a lot easier. Abraham represents an early migration of Hebrews into the Chaldean controlled regions of Mesopotamia. Through intermarriage another tribal nomadic group was developed and this we know as Isaac. Again, through intermarriage, this group divided in two and became Jacob and Esau. We will deal with Jacob later, but for now let us look at Esau. It is not difficult to see that the Jewish theologians were not comfortable with Esau for they have not much written about him; apart from the few passages in Genesis and the odd curse and condemnation in the minor prophets of the Jewish Bible; but there is a considerable amount said about him indirectly. For instance, after saying that Jacob is Israel, and we know that is a country, the story of these brothers tells us that Esau is Edom and this also is a country; a more powerful, larger and wealthier country than Israel with a longer established royal house. Edom was approximately where we find Jordan today, but also included much of Lebanon and it was also called Seir and Nabataea, depending on the era and it is from this Edom that Israel (Jacob) gains the birthright. In those days the birthright meant genealogical lineage and therefore, authenticity, which provides us with a conundrum. For the lineage and authenticity which provided the Israelites with the right to claim to be the chosen of God, obviously was not theirs at all. The birthright, according to the Israelites own interpretation of history, originally belonged to Edom and it is this country from which Herod the Idumean comes to claim the throne of Judea and in doing so reclaims the birthright of Esau (Idumeans were the people of Edom). There was a town in Nabataea through which, after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot and his wife had to pass. When someone died in Nabataea it was the practice to bury them in a cave or small niche cut into the face of a bank or cliff. This niche was then sealed and a pillar erected outside and this pillar represented the buried person just as our own tomb stones do. When Lot and his wife were passing through this town she died and was buried there and she became a pillar of Salt for that was the name of the town- Salt. The name of the Capital of Nabataea was Petra, meaning rock and the town of Petra was made of buildings which were carved into the rock face along the valley in which the town is situated. One of the entrances to that valley is a narrow defile called the Sique and this very narrow cleft in the rock may well be the same cleft which is mentioned throughout the Old Testament and occurs first in the story of Moses in the book of Exodus. Arabs who live in the area certainly associate Petra with Moses. Even today the people of the Middle East state that they have as much claim to be descendants of Abraham as do the Jews and that Islam is the 107

correct interpretation of the promise to Abraham. That may or may not be so but when Jesus is quoted as saying to Simon that "on this rock (Petra) I will build my church" I have no doubt that it was Petra, the town, that was being referred to. This is because in the Middle East, under the Romans, Petra was the legal, political and business centre of the world and nobody of those times could mention Petra without the audience automatically thinking of that town. As Esau was the original holder of the birthright later claimed by the Israelites Nabataea must have been the source of the lineage, both royal and spiritual, that the Judean Maccabeans and Herodians laid claim to. Therefore it is to Nabataea and Petra that we should look for knowledge of the teachings of the past and when we do we find that they are the same as other mysteries throughout the Mediterranean. So there cannot be any covenant, old or new, which refers specifically to Judea because the promise was to Abraham, then Isaac and then Jacob who had deceived Esau and taken the promise from him; surely everything written after this is only Jacob's justification. So as we begin looking at the writings of the Gospels it is important to realise that we should no longer do this from a point of view which suggests that they are sacred. They are the writings of people who wished to transmit or save information which they considered valuable for political/religious reasons. So to unravel these writings we need to understand the idiom and symbols those people used at the time of writing and it is pointless trying and read them from the standpoint of our present biblical beliefs. Although many parts of the stories are relatively easy to read, as we use similar imagery in our languages today, some parts are quite difficult because the imagery and symbols used and the meanings applied to them can be quite strange to our way of thinking. In all cases we must try and see their intention and try and keep our interpretations clear of our own imagination as much as possible because, in many cases, our world view is quite incompatible with theirs. As the stories unravel it will be clear that the new interpretations are self supporting and because they are we are convinced that the general thrust of those interpretations is correct. There are some passages, however, which present some difficulty and they probably do so because we do not yet have sufficient background information and fail to understand the idiom relating to that material. It is only a matter of time before we do have sufficient background knowledge and understanding of the idiom and I am sure that the present studies of the Dead Sea scrolls and other similar documents will provide us with much of what we need to complete the work. From what we have found to date, however, it is now obvious that the Bible writings are a collection initially brought together to form the canon of the Judaic religion. This was done for exactly the same reasons that the Talmud was later produced (about 100C.E.) and that was to formalise a set of beliefs and practices which would enable a group of people to retain a separate identity in the face of pressures which were coercing people all over the Mediterranean into a homogenous whole, that was being called, firstly Hellenic and latterly Roman. This same thing happened in the British Empire prior to the formation of the British Commonwealth. Within that empire people began to lose their feeling of distinctness and therefore felt they were losing their identity. For those people who felt that this was not a 108

good thing the coming of the Commonwealth and the collapse of the Empire enabled them to break out of that homogeneity and a resurgence of nationalistic ideals resulted. Many of these peoples have, to some degree, gone through the same process as that of the Jewish people of the time of the Greek and Roman Empires. They have attempted to re-establish the myths of their origins and history and although many of those legends are in fact fantasy through them some people have found an identity that they feel they need. The writings that made up the Jewish canon were derived, by and large, from the writings, myths and legends of Egypt, Chaldea and Sumer. There is only a very light thread of Judean Hebrew history running through any of it and that is biased, as is all history, to present the Judean people as favourably as possible. These writings were originally produced by people who were teaching mystical paths to enlightenment, in monastic orders or mystery schoolsthe forerunners of the Essenes. The Hebrew religion was, in the beginning therefore, no different from that of all the nations and peoples surrounding Judea and its teachings and theology was derived, bit by bit in mosaic form, from these people; but the establishment of the Jewish canon changed all this. From 350B.C.E onwards the Jewish people experienced the resurgence of nationalistic ideals, including the desire to establish their own royal house. This meant that they had to formalise, at least in their own minds, just who it was they thought they were and upon what foundation of history and from what family they could establish a royal house. To do this they had to produce a reason for considering themselves a separate people, why they should have a lineage of kings that were unique to them and from where those kings should originate. This resulted in the five books of Moses which provide the general Middle Eastern myths about the creation and Abraham the Patriarch of all Semitic people, in Judaic form and also books such as Kings and Chronicles which attempt to provide a history and lineage of the family of David, out of which the king might come. The books of the prophets, all written after the 'exile period', provide the justification for this nationalistic separation of Judea from its 'brothers' and lay the foundation for the process. All together these books make it clear what it was to be a Jew, as distinct from all other surrounding peoples and they, therefore, became binding and sacred. It was not until Jerusalem was destroyed in 70C.E. that there was a need for a further addition to this and this was provided by the writers of the Talmud for the Herodian Rabbi and, later, the New Testament for the Messianists. Although the names of the actual compilers of the original Old Testament canon and the places where they compiled have largely been lost in the mists of time- purposely or not- the production of the Talmud gives us a snapshot view of the likely process which was gone through. The Talmud was needed, mainly, because the Jews had compromised themselves by producing a canon of books which declared them to be God's chosen people. They could not bring themselves to lose face by accepting that they had been wrong for this would have led to the death of their God. The fall of Jerusalem and Masada was such a resounding defeat and humiliation that it was obvious to most people that God did not favour the Jews, but there were some who could not accept this. For these the creation of the Talmud was a necessity. Judea was now a nation without a God given country or Temple of its own and the original canon no longer pertained to many of the circumstances that the Jews found themselves in. 109

Therefore, into the Talmud was written all those things which a Jew needed to do whilst living among people who were not Jewish in order to retain that individuality which was perceived as being uniquely Judaic. In this way a nation in dispersion was formed and it took a hundred years of argument and violence to do this. We are sure that the creation of the original 'covenant' was little different. It may have happened over a shorter period of time, though this is debatable as well, but there would have been just as much argument and just as much coercion. But once this canon of the Jewish Bible, creating the separation, was completed it had to be defended for now it was this alone which provided the base on which the nationalistic fervour could develop. The Greek and Roman wars were the result of this. In the process of establishing a theocratic nation the Judaic people repressed the people and the teachings of that country which they now inhabited and attempted to do likewise with others surrounding them. The Essenic Way, which was essentially the monastic teachings of the whole Mediterranean region became, in Judea, the political and legalistic communities of the Maccabean Essenes while, in those countries that the Maccabean Zealots could not influence to any degree, it continued in much the same way as previously but became known as Gnosticism and mysticism. Then, with the instalment of the Messianic Bishops into the civil service of the Roman Empire many centuries later, the same process was begun, for almost the same reasons, which was the development of nationalistic spirit and the result was both the Christian canon and the repression of freedoms. The death and burial of Jesus at the hands of the Jews and the Romans was the repression of The Way; the resurrection of the glorified, messianic, saviour/king is Roman/Jewish politics.

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THE GENESIS OF REVELATIONS

CHAPTER EIGHT

JOSEPHâ&#x20AC;&#x;S GARDEN

Today the crucifix is generally considered to be the symbol exclusively of Christianity because it is believed to have originated with the crucifixion of Jesus. However this is not the case, its origin is much earlier than this and highlights the need for us to look at history with an open mind. The cross comes in many forms, of which the crucifix is one, and is a symbol that is as old as consciousness itself and is found in the religions of Europe, Egypt, Asia and Mesopotamia. Wherever it is found it always symbolises the union between the male and female, the feminine and masculine and the physical and spiritual; the upright member is the symbol for the phallus and the horizontal is the vagina. In all mysticism, the earth and all that is physical is symbolised by the mother/wife/daughter and the spirit is symbolised by the father/husband/son and the marriage between the two, symbolised by the cross, represents the conception, within ourselves, that there is more to reality than meets the eye and this realisation can lead to a new birth and a new way of perceiving. That Jesus, depicted as a man, died on the cross is not a surprising belief under the circumstances for the development of a patriarchal religious society in Judea and then in the Roman Empire led to the repression of all things feminine, including the feminine mystery religions. When the masculine is deified the consequence is that the feminine dies and as this happens so does the masculine reality become distorted and perish, for both aspects find their life in each other. The cross, the symbol for union, is itself the Christ and so if a man alone is presented as the Christ, he must die, for the Christ can never be man alone; the same would apply had the feminine been deified in like manner because both masculine and feminine must always be united. This concept of unity presented by the feminine/masculine Christ cross symbol, portrays the path down which we travel in our search for cosmic man within ourselves and was the teaching of those communities symbolised by John the Baptist. Throughout the Mediterranean there were communities that were Essenic in nature, if not in name, and following the teachings of John the Baptist they had grown out of older communities which were symbolically named Elizabeth the mother of John (In the Hebrew language the letter beth, as in Eliza/beth, means house and so Elizabeth means the house of Eliza or Elisha). These older communities of mystics were the disciples of those teachers known, in the Bible, as Elisha and Elijah and they were based in Judea in the wilderness area known as the Herimos. While they remained there they were not considered to be much of a problem by the politically minded; but once John came out of the wilderness and started teaching in the towns and villages, they were perceived as becoming a real political threat. So 111

much so, we are told in the Gospels, that the wife of Herod demanded the head of John the Baptist and that this is what she got. What we are not told is that John was a member of the Maccabean/Hasmonean family that had, at the time of the rebellion against the Greeks, politicised the Essenic communities and it was this family who considered themselves to be the house of David and the rightful heirs to the throne and the title of Messiah. Once we understand this we can see why politics entered into the picture and the real reason why John's head was removed. Through the writings of Josephus Flavius and the Dead Sea scrolls we know that something akin to the following took place. The Maccabees were at the forefront of the wars which drove the Greeks out of Judea and to do this they had to gain total political control of the country and maintain it. In so doing they became instrumental in encouraging the establishment of the canon of Judaism and after they did this any group or person who would not agree to this canon, or the Maccabean claims, were considered to be rivals and expendable. The old communities of the wilderness fell into this category, in our opinion, because they were not of the same religious tradition as the Jews and had originally grown out of the indigenous culture. That earlier culture was, in turn, part of a general Middle Eastern religious culture reflecting the mystical teachings derived from Zarathustrianism. It is fairly well established that one of the leaders of these communities was assassinated by the priests of Jerusalem because of his stand against the new canon which included claims on the Messiahship. This was the well known Teacher of Righteousness, often quoted by the scholars of the Dead Sea scrolls, those scholars who persist in maintaining that there was ever only one such holder of that office. But John the Baptist quite clearly preached righteousness as the only way to come into the presence of God and so very obviously he also was a teacher of righteousness. We maintain, therefore, that John the Baptist and any other person in his position were merely the symbolic holders of the office of Teacher of Righteousness in the same way that the various Popes are merely the figureheads for the office of Pope and to highlight one of them only, as if there had only ever been one, as the scholars of the Dead Sea scrolls unwittingly do, is to miss the point; the office was a continuum. As long as the monastics of the wilderness and their Teacher of Righteousness remained in the wilderness they were no threat to the Maccabeans. However, when they started spreading themselves, their teachings and their ideas about the messiahship into the towns and cities they became a threat that could not be ignored. The response was, not to eradicate them, but to remove the heads of the organisation and replace them with Maccabean puppets and this was, we think, when the Dead Sea scrolls Teacher was murdered. Then along comes Herod who is set on overthrowing the Maccabean/Hasmoneans and eventually succeeds in doing so. In the Gospel story about this event we meet his wife and tradition has it that she was a Maccabean/Hasmonean woman. But we must remember that we are looking at symbols and it will be recalled from previous chapters that the male and female are always wed and two parts of the one thing and in this case Herod represents the Kingship and so the wife must represent the High Priest as they, the King and the High Priest, were the first people of the land. There are a number of instances throughout the Bible where the High Priest is referred to as the Kingâ&#x20AC;&#x;s handmaiden and some instances where the High 112

Priest‟s assistant is referred to as his hand maiden. This strange way of referring to various office holders is found once again in Jewish records about the rebellion and defeat of Simon Bar Kokhba and is commented on by Yigael Yadin the well known Israeli archaeologist. In these records it is stated that Bar Kokhba, towards the end of his rebellion against the Romans, had fallen out of favour with the Head Rabbi‟s secretary (there were no more High Priests by that time) because of the way he had conducted some of his battles and the manner in which he had dealt with civilians. The Rabbi‟s secretary was the person solely responsible for deciding who did and who did not meet with the Rabbi and so to lose favour with the secretary was a major disaster and meant that Simon Bar Kokhba could no longer get audiences with the Head Rabbi and so he would no longer be recognised as a leader of the Jews. It is said in those reports that Simon was cut off from, could no longer speak to, or lost the ear of the Rabbi‟s handmaiden. Doesn‟t this sound an awful lot like another Simon who cut off the ear of the High Priest‟s assistant in the Garden of Gethsemane? The High Priest in Jerusalem was the symbolic wife of the King and even in the early days of Herod‟s reign it was the Maccabeans who claimed to be the only family able to produce the holder of this office. As Herod‟s wife (High Priest) at the time he took power as King was Hasmonean he soon deposed him, reformed the priesthood and replaced all the Maccabean/Hasmonean priests with a selection of his own and thus created and instituted Rabbinical Judaism based on the Synagogues. The beheading of John the Teacher of Righteousness, in this case, was probably the time when the Maccabeans, their priests and teachers and Herod finally part company. Somewhere around the time of 150-100B.C.E. at the time of the murder of the Teacher of Righteousness, the Maccabees became very involved in all matters relating to the wilderness communities and it is only at about that time that those communities appear in our histories. We know them as the Essenes but, back then, they were known as the Therapeutae and as said above, the way of Elijah and Elisha and, rather than remaining the exclusive, passive, meditative people they had been in their wilderness retreat, they slowly developed into a political force which, when required, produced some of the most fanatical warriors the Romans ever faced. They became convinced that they were in the forefront of a war which God was leading and that their mission was against Satan, personified by the Romans. Just prior to the reform of Judaism by Herod is the event that the Bible calls the Baptism of Jesus. Jesus represents a stream of philosophic thought that was born around the same time as John but where John and his forebears were older than any Judaic teaching Jesus was unique for that country because he, who or whatever he symbolises, was born in the Hellenised period of Jewish culture. It was because of this Hellenic effect on the Jewish culture that his Mother was called Maria (Maria/Mary means the seas and She is the Queen of the seas; the same as all the goddesses of those days, such as Venus, Astarte and Isis and you will recall that the seas or the sands thereof, refer to all the people of the earth). Jesus, therefore, can be seen as a Hellenic development of the monastic teachings of John that was destined to take those teachings out in to the whole Gentile world. These two philosophic strands, one the teaching of the old school Teacher of Righteousness and the other the teachings of the new school blend together in Judea in a way that did not happen in any other Mediterranean 113

religious centre at that time and this blending was called the baptism of Jesus by John and represents the union between the physical teachings of John and the spiritual vision of Jesus which resulted in a new less parochial vision of the world. Prior to the development of politics within Essenism, the Essenes taught of the coming of Cosmic Man who would be tri-natured and three persons (very much like God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit). He would be the King, High Priest and Teacher of Righteousness and they structured their communities along these lines with a head teacher, a head administrator and the voice/communicator with God; a structure that was later used by the Maccabees to support their political dominance. This idea of trinity was originally found in the Zarathustrian myths where we find that the son of God will come to earth at the end of the ages, defeat all the powers of darkness and through him the light will rule for evermore. The name of this son is Soshayanus and he is the active nature (or principle) of God, Ahura Mazda. He is God's right hand, His voice and he alone speaks for God with total authority and so, in Soshayanus, we have the model for the voice of the Essenes. If we now split his name into two parts, using the letter â&#x20AC;&#x17E;Yâ&#x20AC;&#x; in each part, so that they become Soshay and Yanus and read from right to left in the instance of Soshay and left to right in the instance of Yanus we find we have two familiar names; Yanus which is John and Yashos (Yeshua or Joshua) which is Jesus and when we read the name Soshayanus from right to left as the Hebrews would have done we see that John does indeed come before Jesus, just as the Gospels state. In these two names we now have two major parts of the Essenic trinity which are the right and the left hands of God and with Ahura Mazda as the head we have revealed the three aspects of the trinity. In this case Yashos would actually be pronounced Esus (eesoos) or Isis and would have been feminine. Originally this teaching was symbolic and was never meant to be taken literally. It spoke of the mystical arrival of the Cosmic Man, Adam, within our own personal life but once the Judaic canon came into force this idea became the perfect vehicle for the claimants to the Judean throne and this is the way in which it was used. It is from this that the Church later developed its own imagery regarding the coming of the Messianic King and later yet Constantine developed his own ideas on the Messiahship which included himself. In the story of Jesus in the Gospels we find that he is born among the Hellenic/gentile culture for he is born from among those elders (as Revelations calls them) who were of the mystical Gnostic or Essenic variety and not the temple orthodoxy. He was given the encouragement of the Magi who were the teachers of Zarathustrianism mysticism and the support of many shepherds who were the pastors or ministers working among their parish flocks out in the mission fields. The growth and development of Jesus takes place in both Egypt and Judea and if the symbolism in the Dead Sea scrolls is to be believed, this means that the development period was spent in learning both the orthodox Temple and Gnostic varieties of teaching. That time was spent among the Essenes is obvious from the Gospel story because we are told that Mary went and visited Elizabeth and spent some time with her. We are also told in the Gospels that because of the persecution of Herod the family of Jesus fled into exile in Egypt but we are fairly sure that this means that the youthful teaching structure and political force escaped the reforms and threats of the Herodians by losing themselves among the wilderness 114

Essenic communities and we think this because the works of Josephus suggest that this was so because the Romans, as they demolished the Jewish nation during the wars of the Zealots and Bar Kokhba, made every effort to find the leaders of the revolts among the leaders of those same wilderness communities. Also in the book of Revelations John tells us that the new born child‟s mother fled into the wilderness with the two wings of the Zarathustrian eagle which are the same as the two hands of God just referred to above. The baptism of Jesus by John is the formal recognition of the right for both sects to co-exist as equals and it is also a symbolic reference to the fact that the one, Jesus, was born out of the other, John as indicated in the name Soshayanus and as further indicated in the name Jesus itself, as explained above, for it is actually Jesse, Yeshua, Joshua or Yoshua and as there is no „J‟ or Ý‟ in the Hebrew alphabet; the 'y' is actually shaped like a little flame and pronounced yoth but is sounded, when at the beginning of a word, more like an „I‟. Therefore the name Yeshua or Jesse would actually sound something very much like Esu (Esus), Isu (Isus) or Isi (Isis) and may even have been pronounced as Esse; of course Esse is what you are if you are an Essene. So, was an Essene a follower of Jesus? Maybe, depending on what you mean by that. Remember that Jesus grew out of the philosophy symbolised by John and John grew out of those communities called the house of Elisha. It is our understanding that the teachings of both Elisha and John were centred on a mystery that prepared the disciple for experiences which can be symbolised as the Mother. That is, as with Adam, the breath or spirit had not yet come, God was still „out there‟ separate from the individual and spiritual experiences were magical and from higher planes of reality. But the spirit, as symbolically portrayed by Jesus unites man and God into One experience and the spiritual qualities cannot be separated from the physical and this lifted Essenic thought into a wider understanding. It is this wider concept, brought by the spirit, which the shepherds left their flocks to find and having found and comprehended it, they returned to their flocks throughout the Mediterranean with the good news. All of these shepherd-or pastor-lead groups were centred on the teachings of the Teacher of Righteousness and this teacher belonged to the Hebrew tradition that united a teacher, the place of teaching and the teaching itself with the same name; they could individually or jointly be called the same thing and that was the Yeshiva and Jewish universities are still called this. Two thousand years ago the Yeshiva taught the philosophy of union or unity- the way of righteousness or enlightenment (righteousness is an archaic word for enlightenment), a path that Buddhism still calls the way of pure being. In Hebrew there is no letter „V‟ and so the letters „W‟ or mostly „B‟ are used instead. „V‟ as in yeshiva would be either beth and have the meaning house (all Hebrew letters have meanings like this; n, for example, means fish) in which case yeshiva could mean the house of Jesse or Esse; or it would be the letter „WAUW‟ - pronounced vov; and in this case the name yeshiva would be pronounced Yeshua. Indeed we think that the death which is portrayed as the crucifixion of the man Jesus is actually the eradication of the Yeshiva by the Herodians and the Romans after the various rebellions and that this did not happen at about 30C.E. as has been thought but at the same times as the destruction of Jerusalem, the siege of Masada and again, later, after the rebellion

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of Bar Kokhba and the general Dispersion. During that fifty to sixty year period the teachers, their teachings and their places of learning were almost completely destroyed. When the teachers came out of the wilderness communities to teach in the towns and villages they seem to have done so at about the same time as Johnâ&#x20AC;&#x;s communities recognised the new authority of Jesus. But not long after this the communal structures came under pressure from the Herodians and the Romans which left the Jesus teachers with no place to lay their head; in other words because they were being harassed they could not afford to have centralised places of organisation in which they could be discovered. The Yeshiva teachers therefore, once they separated from the communities of John, spent the early period of establishment in villages on fringes of the wilderness and in centres outside of Judea. Once a group which could support itself had been organised, which included some of the former disciples of John, the focus became the establishment of town based centres of learning; some house based and some in public places, although by and large most of these, as we can see in the Gospels, were still outside of Judea. Some scholars have found reference to this separation between the old and new schools of thought in the Essenes in the Dead Sea scrolls where it is mentioned as the time of the divergence between those sects which wanted to defeat the forces of darkness through political action and those who wished to continue teaching the enlightenment as before. The former have been associated with Judas (Iscariot) and we have little doubt that this is a correct assumption for it looks as if the name Iscariot is just a pun on the word Sicarii- an extremely fanatical band of Maccabean zealots- and the name Judas symbolically refers to all Maccabeans and their army, including the Sicarii, because Judas Maccabeus was the original heroic founder and leader of this organisation. Some scholars would like to be able to pin the name Judas Iscariot on the Zealot leader Judas the Galilean and whilst we agree that this would be very convenient we think it would not be entirely accurate. We think this because although Judas the Galilean was one of the major leaders of the Zealots revolt against the Romans which culminated in 73C.E. he was actually only one among quite a few. And although their actions brought about the death of the Yeshiva teachings as a by-product of the revolt Judas the Galilean did not do it on his own. Judas Maccabeus on the other hand was the great hero figure held up as an example to all the zealous rebels throughout the whole of the reign of the Maccabean/Hasmoneans and it was this image that ultimately created the fanatical warlike ethos in Judea that eventually brought the whole house tumbling down. We do think that the events called the crucifixion of Jesus, which were supposed to have happened in 33 C.E. actually happened over a period of time ending in 135C.E. and that this was the result of the general political machinations of the Maccabeans over hundreds of years. In that scenario Judas Maccabeus, the heroic symbol of the struggle, fits the image of Judas Iscariot much better over a long period of time than does Judas the Galilean. That Judas appears at both ends of the Jewish nationalistic period, at its birth as Judas Maccabeus and at its death as Judas the Galilean, we find both synchronistic and interesting. The Yeshiva that grew out of the John communities and became known as Jesus had no fixed place of learning and so they became itinerant teachers and taught in the public places. Those public places in those days were called the Gate in Palestine and the Portico in Greece or 116

Greek inspired cultures. The Romans knew the portico as the forum and, for them, it was derived from the Greek tradition of speaking and teaching in an open place. The Jews knew it as the Gate and as such it is referred to many times in the Old Testament. Around some of these porticoes were planted trees, shrubs and flowers and because of this the porticoes were also known as the grove or garden of the portico; in all cases they were open, public places of free speech. In Jerusalem there was a garden portico and it was also referred to as the portico or gate of the Xystus (pronounced zistus; refer to John Allegro's book The Copper Scroll). This portico got this name Xystus because the area concerned was not only planted with many trees and shrubs but it was also paved with flagstones and Xystus means paved or polished flagstone area. A bridge was built from this Xystus, across the centre valley of Jerusalem, connected to the palace of the High Priest and so the freedom of speech and religious expression were directly linked. In Christianity we find the idea of this bridge in rather garbled form as the title Pontiff literally means bridge and is used to represent that bridge which crosses the gulf that separates man and God. All of this symbolism was derived, initially, from the very ancient idea that the High Priest, in trance, would cross the spiritual divide (the firmament) and bridge the gap between the minds of man and God. But, in 33C.E. or thereabouts, a very dramatic event took place. The council chamber of the Herodian led Sanhedrin- the location of which is uncertain prior to this time- was built on the Xystus, effectively cutting off the teaching and freedom of speech in this area. This council chamber was called the Chamber of Hewn Stone as this was the material of its construction and being a new construction it was the newly hewn stone chamber. The creation of this newly hewn stone chamber effectively repressed and buried the teachers of the Xystus but this burial was not the short event that we find recorded in the New Testament. It took place over many decades and was the result of pressure from the Herodian priests and High Priest and in the final analysis it was not really completed until after the councils of Constantine, but there seems little doubt that the burial began at the Xystus. There are many instances in the Bible where time is compressed and this makes it seem as if some events happened earlier or later and over a longer or shorter period of time than they actually did. When reading the New Testament we must always keep in mind that it was written well after any of the events recorded and the encrypted material is depicting events which took place over decades as if they happened in one or two years and events which took place over centuries as if they happened over decades. This is because the authors of the material are using the Genesis method for recording time which states that days may be weeks, months, years, decades or centuries and it is up to the reader to decipher the encryption as best they can. If the Sanhedrin council chamber is actually the newly hewn chamber in the garden of the Xystus then Joseph of Arimathea, the provider of the burial chamber in the garden in which Jesus was encrypted must have been closely associated with the council of the Sanhedrin. He is reported as being a wealthy and learned man and friends with members of the Sanhedrin. Joseph must have been both wealthy and a man of some influence otherwise he could not have gained an audience with any person in authority let alone get permission to take a body off the cross; but he seems to have done both these things in very quick time and with a 117

minimum of fuss. We think that this Joseph is actually a symbolic name for both the father of Jesus and a person who appears in our history books but did not, at the time wish to be openly known to be associating with the Xystus teachers. All of these Gospel stories are full of symbols and the story of the father of Jesus is no different. The story of Joseph the father suggests that he was a humble carpenter and yet it is obvious, if one actually reads the story, that he was a member of the Royal Maccabean family, so was his wife and his son was called King of the Jews; a carpenter he most certainly would not have been. Today everyone thinks that Joseph, being a carpenter, would have been the builder of houses but if he built houses for the lower classes he would have been a mud dauber and if he built for the upper class he would have been a stone mason; in neither case would he have been a carpenter. In any case the word carpenter refers to something else entirely. The word carpenter comes from the Latin word carpentum and this refers not to houses but to two wheeled carts of the kind drawn by horses or oxen and they had a huge wheel on either side of the tray of the cart (this is where our words carriage and car come from). If you look in the figures associated with this book you will find the two symbolic wheels which are being referred to when Joseph is symbolised as a carpenter. People who worked with wood in those days were more likely to be referred to as hewers and in the idiom of those days hewer was also a colloquialism for a scribe and so Joseph the father of Jesus is a symbolist who is familiar with the wheels of the two star symbol and he is a scribe and being both of these he is also an encrypter (this also will be explained later). The Gospels tells us that Jesus was entombed by Joseph of Arimathea; the word entomb can also mean encrypt and so we can suppose that the body of Jesus (the word corpus can refer to a dead body or a written work) was encrypted by a scribe and as we know that Joseph encrypted Jesus we can assume that this scribe was Joseph, an associate at least, of the Sanhedrin. Therefore the newly hewn stone chamber was indeed the tomb and the cryptic writings were the burial clothes provided by Joseph. The crucifixion is really about the development of a theology which emphasised the masculine or patriarchal side of society and when this happened the result was the repression of the feminine and women; consequently the male, unwillingly pinned to the symbol of the Christ alone, also died and so this whole story is about the eradication of the so called heretical sects and their replacement with the acceptable canonical form. It was done in order to form a religion which could be presented to the people to bind them together into one 'nation'. This form had to contain within it sufficient of the original teachings to make it acceptable to the mass of people but in such a way as to pose no threat to the new political power and it had to present the Messianic Kingly image in such a way that it supported the new structure and gave legitimate authority to it. In the Gospels this is portrayed as the releasing of Jesus Bar Abbas and the placing of the sop in the mouth of Jesus and both of these stories must be read in tandem for they are parts of the same event. That Yeshiva (Jesus) which the politicians wished to be rid of is publicly ridiculed and presented to the people as foolish. The same tactics were later used by the Roman Church against the Gnostics and it is, in fact, a tactic used quite commonly in political circles of power. Once the public image of the Yeshiva had been brought to total ruin another 118

FIG.SIXTEEN

The Axle of the Carpentum

The two cart wheels for Josephâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Carpentum

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concept was presented and it is suggested to the people that a person or organisation which has been at the forefront of the revolts in Judea - he is mentioned as having stirred up the people - be released to them in place of the other and this one is called Jesus Bar Abbas, which means Jesus son of the father. This name can be read to mean that this Jesus was of Patriarchal descent as the son of the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob for example) could mean the son of the father. Jesus (the son of Mary and Joseph) says to the Jews and of himself, 'You say that you are the sons of Abraham, I say that before Abraham was I am". He is therefore saying that he is not the son of the Patriarchs and therefore not the son of the father in this way. The name Bar Abbas can also mean son of God, if father is taken to mean God and those Essenes and Zealots who were at war with the Romans considered themselves to be the sons of Light and the sons of God and used these terms of themselves. They thought that they were on a divine mission to defeat the powers of darkness and that the war with the Romans was a holy war. This is quite the opposite attitude of the Yeshiva who would not have had anybody call him (them) the son of God or the Christ and only called himself (themselves) the son of man and meaning normal human beings. This religious and political concept of the son of God which had been drawn from the Zarathustrian and Egyptian myths was presented to the people along with various creeds as a sop to replace that teaching which had been removed from the Essenic communities. This was what was happening at the crucifixion when the Yeshiva is fed vinegar and gall with a sop on a reed. In Greek the word for reed is Kanon (English canon) and that word means both an ordinary rod or stick and also a measuring rod or standard (as in a standard of belief). This word Kanon, in the form of canon, has been used by the Christian Church from its very inception to mean those books, such as those in the New Testament which it uses to measure whether or not a person is a Christian. The Kanon that was presented to Jesus on the cross carried with it a sop and a sop is something that is given in place of the original or genuine; a baby is given a sop, instead of the breast or bottle to stop it crying. So something, connected to the canon, was placed in the mouth of Jesus and whatever it was it was not the genuine thing. In other words beliefs were put into the mouth of Jesus (the yeshiva) as if he had spoken them and this was a sop that was very bitter and hard to swallow. The result is that the people have become enamoured of the idea of the son of God called Jesus the son of the father (Jesus Bar Abbas) and the sop of teachings he was reputed to have spoken and as the sop has gained more strength and grown so has the truth died and the corpus of teaching was buried. The sop includes, not only the son of God idea, but also that this son was a messianic king, he was born of a virgin, was a sacrifice for sin and that he was resurrected and ascended; it is all the propaganda of those who would rule at the right hand of power as the bishops did under Constantine and none of it is true. There are none of the elements of the sop in the original and oldest writings of the pre-church period and various analyses of the Gospels, revealing the Q material, reinforce this further by showing that most of what we consider to be the story of Jesus has been added bit by bit as the theological need arose over a very long period of time. We also quite clearly need to know that Herodian Rabbinical Judaism as it has come down to us today did not begin until after the fall of Jerusalem and really not until after the completion 120

of the Talmud, nearly one hundred years later. Herodian reformed Judaism as it was before the destruction of the Temple gave the Rabbi more authority than theyâ&#x20AC;&#x;d had under the Maccabeans and it flourished and expanded throughout the whole Mediterranean, wherever there were Jewish communities; had the Zealots not created the havoc that they did maybe it would have become the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x;s dominant religion. But with the utter defeat of the Zealots by the Romans all that disappeared and had the Rabbinical leaders not retired to Damascus and created a new canon of Jewish beliefs called the Talmud Judaism, as we now know it, may not have survived at all. After the defeat the Temple, the festivals, the rituals and the sacrifices were all gone; and for most the dream of the New Jerusalem and a new temple died two thousand years ago. Now most Rabbinical Jewish leaders become quite embarrassed at the mention of the coming of the Messiah- as happened in New York in 1991C.E. Once Jerusalem had fallen, Masada had been destroyed and the Yeshiva had been repressed in Judea the remnants of the Maccabean messianists dispersed, along with the many other refugees, throughout the Empire where, in due course, they began to filter slowly back into the system through the synagogues and sanctuaries. These are the Judaizers and those who preach the importance of lineage so opposed by the Apostle Paul but it is from these people that present day Christianity has inherited the teachings of the Father, the lineage of Abraham and Jacob and the family of Jesus which is the house of David, of which we have two different versions in the Gospels. It is from these people that we get the theology of the Messianic King yet to come and it is the pupils of these who became the Bishops of Constantine. At the same time that all this was taking place the Yeshiva teachers in communities throughout the Mediterranean, that were not overthrown or infiltrated by Jewish Messianists in the Judaic wars, were continuing as usual. They were not Jews, neither were they Christian; they belonged to all countries and all religion was a side issue. In the Roman Christian theocracy these people became known as the Gnostics and were quite unprepared for the horrors to come. With reference to Palestine today, we cannot sympathise with the Jewish people as we do not think that history is on their side; we cannot accept their 'chosen people' stance and we do think they have brought much of their suffering on themselves. They never did conquer the whole of Canaan and make it their own; we think that is a myth. In fact they were probably only residents in a country that never changed hands at all and this residency only started after the freeing of the slaves by Cyrus. But even had they conquered the whole this would only prove that it had belonged to other people in the first place. However, we have to state, categorically, that it was not Rabbinical Judaism which destroyed the Yeshiva as Rabbinical Judaism was created to protect the Jewish people against the further excesses of those who were responsible. Those who did destroy the Yeshiva were the messianic Jews who became known as the Christian Church; they began the destruction during the wars with the Romans and they completed it through the Romans (that is the Roman Church) when they took over the reins of the civil service. After all these years the Church is still preaching the same sop and is still telling us that the Jewish Messiah is going to rule the world and that those who do not bow to this rule will be thoroughly tortured in Hell by their sadistic version of the Almighty. They still display before 121

all the people the symbol of their last great shame, the dying Yeshiva and they still insist that this was the right thing to do, that it was Godâ&#x20AC;&#x;s will and had to be done. So say they: "We preach Jesus crucified" and "Jesus had to die or we could not be saved." They happen to be the only ones in the world who think so and not only are they the ones who did the repressing they continue to think that this is a divine mission of theirs and all those things associated with the Mother teachings are now called the deep things of Satan by the Christians. There was one Joseph Ben Matthias, a Jew of the Maccabean/Hasmonean family who was captured by the Romans during the siege of Jerusalem and during his incarceration he asked that he be allowed to write them a history of the events then taking place. He was given permission to do this and so he wrote his history and also became adopted into the family of the Roman Emperor, Vespasian. Vespasian was a son of the family known as the Flavii and so Joseph became Josephus Flavius. This Josephus was an inscriber of fine words and his histories, commentaries and biography are still known and read worldwide. He was also well known in high places among the Jews and particularly among the messianists of whom he had been a member. He was a commander of a unit of the Zealot army and had been the Zealot Governor of Galilee. He was well known in the Sanhedrin and recognised as a great scribe and commentator on Jewish religious works and was often asked to interpret or give his opinion about ancient writings and dogma. It was this Joseph who was spoken about at the burial of Jesus and it was his writings which are used as the crypt (codes and grave/n clothes) in which the truth is buried. This starts to take place when the council chamber is built over the Xystus, as this is the newly hewn stone 'tomb'(chamber) in which the Sanhedrin met and Josephus, according to his autobiography, was a member of this Sanhedrin. The Bible calls this period the 'trial of Jesus by the Sanhedrin' and it takes place after Judas Maccabeus (the symbol for the Maccabean Zealot movement) had betrayed the Yeshiva movement and taken over the communities. The Bible says that Judas did this for thirty pieces of silver and it was for it was the practice of the communities to take in three hundred new entrants each year. As they entered the communities these new entrants had to pay a small amount toward the cost of their tuition and accommodation and as they were generally poor people this could never be more than a token gesture and so it was set at a tenth of a shekel. There being three hundred entrants the total amount for the year was thirty pieces of silver and so these new entrants became known colloquially as the thirty pieces of silver. Once the leaders of the communities had been supplanted by the Zealots all that was left were the lower members, the thirty pieces of silver and when Judas (of the Bible) accepted the thirty pieces of silver from the High Priest he was a symbol of the Maccabean Zealot administrators taking over and running the communities. In doing this the Zealots dislodged some of their opponents and gained a large number of young men who could very easily be trained into the idea that they were sons of God and charged with fighting a holy war; and in this way was the Yeshiva buried. This can be a very confusing scenario because we have become used to thinking about time periods, events and people that were, without our realising it intentionally confused. The events surrounding the death and burial of Jesus the Yeshiva did not culminate in 30 or 33C.E. during the time of Pilate in Judea, he is merely another symbol; they culminated at the 122

fall of Jerusalem and Masada and the events that are symbolised by the resurrection took place quite a long time after this; but that is another story. Any doubt about this should, however, be dispelled by understanding who Joseph of Arimathea was. There is no actual place called Arimathea, there never was and any such location in Judea has been called this by Christians since the destruction of Jerusalem. Arimathea is a code name that was probably created by the person who wrote the Gospel narrative for the author is telling us what Joseph did, it is not Joseph telling us what he did himself. But once the imagery is understood it is very clear just who he was talking about and this clarity proves the timing of events we have just mentioned above because they could not have happened before this person was born. In Judea at the time of these events there were two main languages, one was Greek and the other was Aramaic. Most Jews spoke at least some of both of these languages but most of them were known by the Hebrew form of their names, even though most of them did not speak Hebrew as it had not been in common use for some centuries. Joseph Ben Matthias, for example, is the Hebrew form of the name of the person who in Aramaic would have been known as Joseph Bar Matthea. In Hebrew the word Ari means lion and, for example, Ariel means lion of God (ari-el) so if we take this Hebrew word for lion and attach it to the front of the Aramaic form of Josephâ&#x20AC;&#x;s name we get Ari-Matthea. Among the Jews of the time the word Ari was used to represent a person of importance, of high social status or someone held in great respect. We think that it is probably from this root that we get our term to lionize a person when we speak about them with respect and praise. Together the two parts of the name mean the great or well known Joseph Matthea and unless there were two very similar people living during that period Joseph of Arimathea is none other than Josephus Ben Matthias and Josephus Flavius. In the story of the betrayal, trial, crucifixion and burial of Jesus we have the whole sad story of what politics did to the Yeshiva movement in Judea and later throughout the Roman Empire; from the time it was first compromised by the beheading of John the Baptist. In the Gospel story as a whole we have a record of the birth, growth and development of this teaching in Judea and the Mediterranean world and we are told of the way in which the two groups, â&#x20AC;&#x153;John and Jesusâ&#x20AC;?, blended and supported each other. Then we learn how, after "John" was taken over, the other concentrated on the towns and villages until such time as it also was overcome by political forces. This record is written as if these events happened in a short thirty-year period when it is more likely that the period was three hundred years. Even though much of the Gospel material was written prior to 200C.E. most of it was not first produced in the form we find it today. Marks Gospel is one of the earliest writings and it is thought that both the Gospels of Matthew and Luke derive most of their material from this source. As it was originally and as it was used by the writer of the other two Gospels, Mark did not contain any material relating to any matter concerning Jesus until his baptism; neither did it contain any material relating to any matter after the crucifixion. As well as this it is obvious from analysis of the material that much of Marks Gospel is copied or borrowed from writings which existed earlier so most of what we read and accept as being the story of Jesus has in fact been added to the original text. There are some very good works available today which have analysed the Gospels and discovered much of the original and source material of 123

Mark's and it is clear, from this analysis that the story as it was originally is quite simpler and very different. But it is because of all these changes and additions to the original material, much of which was not undertaken until the councils of Constantine, that a person such as Josephus, who was not born at the supposed time of Jesus, can be made to look like a mature man in the story and this is why the writings of Josephus can be used to bury the truth and is why the Rabbinical Jews can be portrayed as the culprits, even though they did not exist at the time; at least not in the way they are depicted in the Gospels. When Judas (Iscariot) saw that all was lost he committed suicide and when the Zealot movement (symbolised by Judas Maccabee and led by Judas the Galilean) saw that all was lost they committed suicide at Masada. Both events, it seems to us, are the same. But the Messianic drive did not completely die as it was, some years later, resurrected by Simon the son of the Star - Simon Bar Kokhba- a Jewish claimant to the throne of the Messiah who lived in and fought the Romans from Petra up to the year 135C.E. when he and many of his followers were trapped and killed by the Roman legions. This is Simon Peter and he took the remnants of the Zealots who survived the destruction of 70 to 73C.E. and re-established the messianic dream in a movement that even after his death took that dream, eventually, out into and conquered the Roman Empire.

124

GENESIS OF REVELATION

CHAPTER NINE

THE GNOSTIC THRONE

So far it has become obvious that we are looking at a cauldron of events spread over a period of about three hundred years, maybe more that involved politics, religion and the Gnosis and at no time was this period as calm and stable as the Bible would have us believe and at no time were these three aspect of man's thinking - politics, religion, and the Gnosis- completely separated. We have seen that the root of the turmoil was a philosophic teaching regarding the spiritual nature of man that was eventually taken up, in a somewhat modified way, and incorporated into that which became the religious and political structures of society for almost two Millennia. In the process of this incorporation the original gnosis was almost lost and forgotten but, in spite of this, the consciousness of Man and the societies we live have been rejuvenated and thrust forward into another dimension of comprehension of reality and the universe in which we live. That the Gnosis became hung on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil as patriarchal religion and buried in the tomb of the Church (which insists that unless Jesus is crucified there is no salvation) is ultimately of no consequence. The Gnosis of two thousand years ago became a thing of the priests and it became the same event as the Garden of Eden in which the Gnosis was canonised and dogmatised into the basis of the teachings of Zarathustrianism. In „Eden‟ the Gnosis was turned into a form that could be politicised and structured into a hierarchy and from this hierarchy a base of authority and teaching arose which produced the priesthoods and the forms of worship that were socially acceptable. So it was with the second Adam, Jesus, and the second Eve, the Church, as the Apostle Paul puts it. As the new Gnosis began and the way was perceived communication began to form between man and „God‟ the universal whole; not in any structured way but in a manner that many people, particularly the conservative and orthodox of the old schools, found quite irrational and eventually unacceptable. A short study of the early Gnostic movement and some of their writings is quite enough to demonstrate the point and it is because of this perceived irrationality that much of the Apocrypha and it‟s like are not accepted by many Christians today; to them it is pure nonsense, understandably so, for the one major problem with writings like John‟s Revelation is that unless one has been there oneself one cannot see the message. So orthodoxy tries to make sense of the message and structure it into forms that they think are acceptable and try also to make the manifestation of these types of messages fit their timetable. One talks to God in church, through an intermediary using rituals that can be controlled by the Church. Sadly 125

God doesn't work like this and in this way the message of the revelation and the ability to receive the message dies. That the religion which was formed and became formalised and politicised during the period of the Christian councils is also of little consequence for this is the manner of the process in all cases and this includes Zarathustrianism, the Egyptian, Islamic and Buddhist religions. There is no other way for man to communicate with man in a rational and constructive manner and everything of social consequence must pass through this same political process; we consider as much of the new revelation as we can handle and let the rest be. We could, if we wished take the whole step and if we did we would find that there would be no problem, but most of us are not prepared to do this as most of us always tend to believe that we are not worthy and so God would not want to talk to me; and so we take small tentative steps and we take a journey along a path that does not really exist. The purpose of the Gnosis is twofold. In the first instance it is to awaken and develop within the individual the desire to stir from the tomb of accepted orthodox thinking and to encourage that individual to make a commitment to further growth and sometimes, the Gnosis can persist for the lifetime of the individual. Secondly, through the influence of these individuals who survive the trauma of change associated with revelatory experiences society is to some degree awakened to a new aspect of reality. This may be something not previously perceived or experienced within that society, although it may have been perceived or experienced by earlier societies and either accepted or rejected by them. In doing this the Gnosis brings on its own death because no society will progress beyond that which it perceives as it's reason for being. The Western world perceives itself as being the champion of both technological development and democracy and to some degree this is probably true. But it depends on which part of the West one belongs to for some see the technology and others the democracy as being more important. These Western reasons for being have allowed the Gnosis of today a little more breathing space than in the past and so we see this awakening many individuals throughout the world; they in their turn are awakening society to many new views of reality. At some point in time society in general will settle on those aspects of this Gnostic view which are the most important for it to deal with and will then begin restructuring itself along these lines. Once this restructuring is complete any aspect of the gnosis not included in the new structures will have to wait for another day. We are seeing this happen with the environmentalist movement which, of itself, is part of the gnosis for society is trying to develop a rationale as to what should be accepted as environmentally safe and what should not. Once this has been agreed to, no matter whether or not in the final analysis it is completely correct, that will be that. Then the environmental movement will gradually fade away and this will happen, probably, for no other reason than that they will be considered dangerous to the new social view because, in the light of the new agreement, any further demands will be considered extreme and an unnecessary burden on society. So the movement will have enlightened society to a new dimension of experience and having so enlightened will, itself, die. Many people, in the past, have found trying to shift 126

society into a new framework of experience is like trying to breathe life into a block of concrete; in fact it is so difficult that it takes fanatics and extremists to do it. The sad thing is that these people are always idealists and confuse ideals with reality and worse, because of this, they often do not know when to stop. This was the case two thousand years ago and many of the problems that have been recorded as the persecution, martyrdom and genocide of the people who were the founders of the early Church, and in fact just about any other religious or political movement, could probably have been avoided if the people- who were the gnosis of the time- had known when to stop pushing. History has conclusively proven that no amount of extreme action will make a society move any further than it has to and the distance it moves is usually no further than that which is required to negate the annoying itch caused by the agitators. Even then, if the itch persists, an arm or leg of the body politic will be removed rather than move any further. During the course of their revelatory experience many such radical individuals have usually become aware that time is relative and that the revelation does not recognise time at all. In this respect the revelation of two thousand years ago was not a repetition of the revelation of the previous era, nor is it being repeated now; it is the same experience in every respect and it is not bound by time in any way. Therefore it really does not matter if it takes the whole history of the human race to lead mankind into a Gnostic understanding of their relationship with the rest of the universe and why the visionaries who experience these revelations do not carry this insight through into practical application we will never know. At every occurrence of the revelation these inspired people think they have to do everything immediately; according to them it is imperative that all men change their thinking today, this instant, and if they fail to do so the end of the world will come. They seem to think there is no tomorrow and so, in this way, these visionaries bring much of their own suffering upon themselves. We have spent some time on this point because reading the code in the Bible reveals that much of the Bible is written from the point of view of Gnostic writers. It also becomes clear that in many cases they are putting the blame for their downfall onto others; the orthodox, the political and all who, in general, could not care less about change. In their idealism and in their enthusiasm for their vision they have failed to recognise how things work in the reality of society. They have failed to see that the orthodox and the political, in their own ways, can be just as caring about the welfare of their fellow human beings as are the visionaries themselves. The Gnosis is about growth and turning points of self-knowledge and the Gnostic, or visionary, is not necessarily more knowledgeable or mature than any other person in the society to which they belong. They are merely the forerunners, until such time as they fulfil the potential of their own vision and encompass the Cosmic Man in their own lives. Until such event they are merely presenting a potential scenario that the society may follow. Often the visionary does not understand that the choice is still with the society and if it chooses to reject the vision, then that is what it does and nothing more can be said about it. In the final analysis, once the process of vision has taken its course, we still have to live with our neighbours and them with us. Surely the greatest reason for being for any society is that the greatest number may live together in harmony, safety, health and well-being however those 127

things are perceived from time to time. The vision is both the goals being presented to society and a pointer to the means that we might use to achieve them and this is most clearly pointed out in the Gospels where it is said that the most important thing we can do is love our neighbour with the word 'love' in this case meaning respect and care for as an equal. If we lose the ability to care for and respect our neighbours then our vision, however much potential it might have, is worthless. The recognition of this need to love our neighbours negates the passage about loving Godwhich we think is an addition to the passage- because love of neighbour, in whom God is all, through all and of all, is the love of God. 'Love God' does not need to be said but the saying of it demonstrates that the speaker did not really know what it meant to say; 'Love your neighbour'. This love your neighbour point of view which is encapsulated in the symbol of Jesus is that which is espoused by the Gnosis for without this understanding there can be no growth and no revelation. This is why the Apostle Paul was so adamant that any gift, without love, was valueless, but that love brought with it all gifts. It is our relationships with each other and our environment, universally, that is important and this is Life and the message of the Tree of Life. If we have this love of neighbour then all else will come to us and we will experience those same things as in the Gnosis but if we first seek phenomena and think that these things take precedence over all else, most certainly we are going down the wrong path. With this in mind we can now begin reading the book of The Revelation of John for this is the next step in understanding what the Gospels have to say. Revelation is not a prophetic book, as has been assumed; its purpose is not to foretell gross and horrifying events affecting the whole of mankind which are to be followed by the eventual destruction of the heavens and the earth and their replacement with an idealistic, paradise like kingdom of the Christian god. It is quite simply a commentary on the manner in which the Gnosis is born, its development and outcome, within both the individual and culture and the way in which it was dealt with around the Mediterranean two thousand years ago. This book can tell us a great deal about ourselves and complements both the Gospels and Genesis and as with the first chapters of Genesis it is as relevant today as when it was first written. The first thing we need to be clear about is the end of the book for when the writer talks about the New Jerusalem he is explaining exactly the very same things as we found in the first three chapters of Genesis, particularly chapter one. The male and female (masculine and feminine), and the cubic or universal city are its main focus and it is to this imagery and its meaning that the whole of the rest of the book is pointing. According to Dr. Barbara Thiering the Essenic community at Qumran was also called the New Jerusalem and it seems to us that the pre-Maccabean Essenes were the original authors of the Gnosis in Judea and it is the teachings of this Gnosis and these people that came to be called â&#x20AC;&#x17E;Jesusâ&#x20AC;&#x;. This teaching was pointing its disciples to a new way of looking at the feminine/physical and masculine/spiritual relationship which had originally been symbolised by the old Jerusalem. It seemed logical, to the original builders, to call the centre of this new teaching the 'New Jerusalem', the more so because the structure of the community at Qumran, its buildings and interior layout were designed according to that symbol which is portrayed in 128

FIG. SEVENTEEN

The cubic New Jerusalem of Revelations

The twelve stones, twelve tribes, twelve Apostles, and twelve gates are the twelve signs of the Zodiac surrounding the cube which measures 12 x 12 x 12

129

Genesis and was the foundation for both the Tabernacle in the wilderness and the Temple of Solomon in the old Jerusalem; it is for these same symbolic reasons that John uses the name „The New Jerusalem‟ in his Revelation and anybody associated with the Essenes or other Gnostics would immediately have known what he was talking about. All the imagery John used throughout the whole of Revelations would have been understood by his readers at the time it was written because he was not using any secret or hidden images merely just ordinary everyday imagery that we have trouble reading today simply because two thousand years later we do not use the same language and we have been looking at John‟s imagery through the glasses of the Christian theology with which we have been afflicted. In the Revelation John often speaks about being 'in the spirit' and when he says this he is referring to the same thing as we understand when we say that a person went into trance. Many people today, religious or not, talk about entering altered states of consciousness and this is all John means and being “in” or “with” the spirit are just the words used in those times when one was talking about seeing visions while in a different state of mind. As being 'in the spirit' and being 'lifted up' mean the same as going into trance John was not a Christian in the sense that we understand that term today. Most other writers of this genre in those days would not have accepted that they had anything in common with today‟s form of Christianity because they were all visionaries in the sense that they expected to see visions and have other psychic experiences and they accepted the idea of a continuing revelation of the universal reality and would not have accepted a revelation that was complete, once and for all, at any given time. John was a Zarathustrian Gnostic and Essenic because he uses the term New Jerusalem; if he were not he would not have used the images, symbols, codes and style that he does. He belonged to the original Essenes, not those who separated themselves politically and eventually came to be known as the Christians and he therefore feels the need to warn his readers about the perils of Judaic Essenism and that sect which he calls the 'beast which rises out of the sea'. He was not warning mankind generally, there was no need to do this as most people were not interested in anything he or that Judaic sect might have to say. In any case his message is always to the seeker of the light and so his warnings apply only to them and he is suggesting to those individuals and groups who are concerned with the message of the New Jerusalem symbol that there are strange, irrelevant teachings and dogmas about and that straying into these can only lead one away from the Garden. His only interest was these people. In his book John was trying to provide a reference work for those who came after him so that when they saw the same things that he had seen and when they had the same experiences that he‟d had they would be encouraged to continue. He hoped to help them avoid some of the pitfalls along the way and attempted to show that there was a common thread to all Gnostic experience and that the experience was familiar to all peoples the world over even though, to those not sharing the experience, it all seemed irrational and unbalanced. The imagery he used to do all this is common to all the schools of enlightenment from Egyptian Gnosticism 130

to Hinduism, Buddhism and Moslem Sufis; that this is not understood is only because it is couched in the imagery of Judaism and Judaic/Roman Christianity that was inflicted on it by the authority of the early Christian empire. The symbols and their meanings were universal and there are many colloquial terms used for universally understood experiences. Being in the spirit is one and being lifted up is another, righteousness is an archaic term for enlightenment and rebirth is a term for entering into a totally new experience. When John is in trance he sees the throne of God and because we no longer understand what he was describing and have created many wild fantasies about it all those parts of the book which hinge on understanding this one thing have also been misunderstood. John says that from the throne of God there issued voices and flashes of lightning and it was these in association with the name that tells us what the throne was. Throughout the Mediterranean as well as many other parts of the world mystic communities had priests and priestesses whose purpose, among other things, was to go into trance. The seers of Delphi are examples of this and the Nabataeans (Esau), the neighbours of Judea, practised trance as a matter of course in their religious life. In all cases these priests would go into trance in front of a wooden or stone altar. In the case of the Delphic oracles they originally used a wooden altar but, over quite a long period of time, this was gradually phased out and replaced with a stone altar of the same proportions. It is not known whether the Nabataeans ever used a wooden altar but they certainly did use a stone one and it was of the same proportions as the altar of Delphi. The proportions of these altars can be found in the symbol demonstrated earlier which is the two stars and two circles symbol which develops into the basic Kabala tree. The stars and hexagons in this symbol describe a cube with four long sides, twice the dimensions of the two ends and it is this cube that provides the dimensions of the altar used by the priests and priestesses. Whenever God was to be communicated with for prayer or other supplication, for learning or simply to try and find out which way the fates were moving in one's life the priest would sit, kneel or squat in front of the altar and go into trance at which time he was lifted up into a different state of consciousness and it was believed that while in this state God would speak to the priest or priestess from within the stone altar. We are not sure why it should have been from within though research in Britain does suggest that the Celts believed that quartz enhanced the psychic activity and was found in many if not all of their altars. Also, in all cases, the dimensions of these altars coincide with the so-called sacred geometry depicted by the Genesis symbol and by many of the megalithic structures found in many parts of the world but whatever the reason the belief was that God only spoke out of the stone and those stone altars were called the throne of God. This was the throne that John saw and from it issued the voices that he heard and once God had spoken and answered whatever question was asked the enlightenment achieved on that subject is pictured as a flash of inspiration or lightning. The Kabala tree symbol is of the same dimensions as the throne and it is worth noting that often this image is drawn with an extra symbol on it that is called the lightning flash; wherever this lightning flash is found it means sudden and swiftly inspired understanding and that is its meaning in the Kabala. 131

FIG. EIGHTEEN

The cubic Throne of God or, when horizontal, the Ark of the Covenant

The Kabala and the lightning flash

132

FIG. NINETEEN

133

Sometimes this inspiration comes unbidden and in this case the symbol of lightning is used as if flashing down out of heaven; then we say, “It hit me like a bolt out of the blue.” Interestingly there are two altars of this type which have the potential for producing actual electrical discharges. The first is the Israelites Ark of the Covenant which, the Bible suggests to us, did produce electrical discharges and this effect has been replicated by experimenters in the U.S.A. The other is the quartz stones of the Celtic temples as they can produce an electrical discharge via the process known as the piezo-electric effect which happens when quartz is put under pressure or stimulated in some way, such as directing a beam of light onto it. Surrounding the throne seen by John were the twenty four Elders who were symbolic of the twenty four priestly orders that had among their members those who were trance mediums and therefore, practitioners of this „in spirit‟ means of communication and with them he saw 'four living creatures'. The four creatures or beast of the earth, represent the same things we found in Genesis and so also does the word „living‟ mean the same thing as we found it used with respect to Adam becoming a living being and so it must always be used in the sense that it was applied to Adam. This being the case we are being told that there were four great teaching traditions in existence at that time which were in touch with God- at least as far as John understood it and they were all using the very same techniques of trance and the throne of God; and from these four great traditions rose the twenty four priestly orders of teachers mentioned above. Because the rest of the Bible does not mention an altar called the throne of God and because the Jews did not go into trance it will be said that we have disproved our own theory. On the contrary, our theory is proved because they did have an altar which was the throne of God and they did go into trance. This book of Revelations, entire chapters in the book of Exodus and much of the rest of the Old Testament quite clearly state that indeed the Israelites and therefore, the Jews did speak to God through the throne of God and if this is the case and we will show that it is, we must take a fresh look at our religious foundations; the facts insist that we do. When the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness, as Exodus would have us believe they did, one of the first things that God revealed to Moses was the way in which he should construct the Ark of the Covenant. God told Moses that he should be sure to get the proportions of the Ark exactly right because, if he did not, communication between God and Moses could not continue. This Ark was to be made of wood and its proportions were to be the same as those that were used in the thrones of God among other peoples. Even so we would not need to know all this if we did not have the next piece of information. God told Moses to construct, on the Ark, something he called the mercy seat. The mercy seat was in fact a throne and called so by later prophets and priests; and so the Ark of the Covenant becomes a throne of God. God then tells Moses that it is from this throne that He would talk to both Moses and Aaron his brother; Moses was still able to talk to God without the throne but for Aaron no other way was possible. Next we are told that once the throne was finished nobody should touch it for if they did they would die; many years later one of King David's 134

men did touch it with his hand and was killed instantly. This wooden throne was overlaid with gold and covered with a heavy cloth and when the Ark was carried from place to place it was picked up by the priests of Aaron, using poles which passed through rings on the sides of the Ark, and it swayed from side to side as they walked. The friction of the cloth swaying against the gold generated a charge of static electricity and this charge would have been held by the Ark for some time and would not have been discharged until something touched it shorting it to earth. Any person who was unfortunate enough to touch the Ark after a dayâ&#x20AC;&#x;s journey could well have been badly injured or even killed; as John says in Revelations, lightning flashes issued from the throne of God. Contrary to what we have been lead to believe about the lack of knowledge about electricity in those days it would seem that this Ark-electricity storage unit was not unique. A type of Leyden jar which could only have been made by the Greeks of about 300B.C.E. or their contemporaries was found at the bottom of the Aegean Sea in the late 1970s or early 1980s. One would have thought that this discovery would have created much stir in the archaeological world but no, not even a ripple. In spite of this lack of enthusiasm for information about the electrical knowledge of the ancients it appears that the Egyptians also knew about it. They may have actually been the source of the Israelitesâ&#x20AC;&#x; information on how to build their generator because the floor plan of the Egyptian Temple of Heliopolis, which is depicted in the hieroglyphs on the ruined walls of that Temple, quite clearly shows a replica of the Ark of the Covenant among the Temple furniture. The Egyptian temple was far older than the Ark and so it seems that the Israelite's Ark is a replica of that which was originally found in the temple. In Exodus Moses is described as having been 'raised in the arts of the Egyptians' and so it would be surprising, therefore, if a piece of equipment designed to fulfil exactly the same function as the throne with which he must have been familiar was not built according to the same pattern. It may even be possible that the Egyptians were depicted as having pursued the Israelites to their death in the Red Sea not because they were keen to get their slaves back, this is a very high price to pay for slaves after all, but to recover their doorway to God that, maybe, the Israelites had purloined from them; maybe the story of Moses building the Ark is just a cover story to hide the real events. In either case the Israelite people did know about and use the throne of God in the same way as other people of the region; in their structures of spiritual and psychic beliefs they were not unique merely a variety. As we look further into what John has to say in his Revelation we realise just how much information we have been able to extract from this very small passage about the throne and as we see this wealth of knowledge that pours forth as we continue to probe we will understand that this demonstrates the main purpose of the symbol which is to encapsulate, in the smallest possible number of words volumes more information than ordinary words alone can ever do. At the very beginning of his writing John tells us that his revelation is not of Jesus to us, or the world at large, but of Jesus to John himself. This is an important piece of information for it tells us the John is squarely in the camp of the Gnostics as they claimed that Jesus was not revealed by the life and death of a man in Judea but by personal insight and it was this claim which led to their repression by those who would come later and insist that Jesus only came 135

once, in the flesh, by birth through a woman, as a Jew and that he died and then bodily ascended to be with God. It was the teaching of the Gnostics that the life of Jesus, as with the life of Sophia (a Gnostic story recorded in the book the Pistis Sophia), was a symbol for the experiences we all go through as a result of the mystical experience which leads to the condition called enlightenment; 'Jesus' is the example of, and symbol for, the mystical way and it is that way and his experiences of it that John is depicting. John goes on to tell us that he saw, in the hand of the one upon the throne, a scroll and to begin with the word 'one' here should properly be read in capitals, 'One', because it is with this image of One that John completes his revelation. When, at the end of his book, he describes the New Jerusalem as being the bride which is to unite with the bridegroom (that is the masculine/physical and feminine/spiritual as found in Genesis), he is obviously talking about the One Universal. The number 12x12x12 used in the passage about the bride when she is described as the Heavenly City refers to the Greek Gematric code. In that crypt 12x12x12 means the Whole of Wholes or everything, the totality or the Universal One and it is this One that bears within its right hand a scroll. It is of never ending wonderment to us that theologians and other scholars see so little in these passages because they are, in fact, a mine of information. For instance, God is always portrayed as having two hands one on the right and one on the left and these hands are the creative aspects of God. It is said that Jesus sits on the right hand of God because he is male, depicted as being the Christ and as such is symbolising the active principle of God from which the new order originates. In the Gospels we find it said that he, Jesus, was at the beginning and all things are in him and made through him and without him there was nothing made. The left hand, ignored by Christians and considered unclean by both them and the Moslems, is the hand of the feminine/female. It is this hand which is always portrayed as being evil and sinister and we may find that this, as with so much of this book of Revelation, has been read incorrectly. In the Latin language, in which the book of Revelations was originally written, the word used to mean the right, as in right hand, is 'dexter' and it is from this Latin word that we get our English word dextrous; in the sense of being dextrous it can easily be used to represent the active principle. The Latin word which meant the left was 'sinister' and it simply meant the left side but, obviously, with time and cultural mores about the use of the left hand for unclean matters and through misinterpretation and colloquial usage this word came to mean evil. We think it is quite sad that this has been allowed to happen as one hand cannot work and be the creative principle on its own. So to summarise; the One that sits upon the throne is the Whole, the Universal, with whom it is possible to communicate by way of trance (at least) and it bears a scroll within its right hand. This right hand is co-equal with the left hand and together they are the active principle which has become known as the Christ. However, from the point of view of the universal One no single male or female could bear the title Christ as it takes the active union and participation of both hands to be the active principle. This is borne out by the imagery surrounding the death of Jesus where the three women, in one Gospel three Marys, are at the foot of the cross and on the earth as he has been 136

raised up to where he dies. The deification of the male must repress the female and vice versa and ultimately be the death of both. Life will not be experienced until both aspects complement each other as a harmonious whole. If we go now to chapter eleven in the Revelation we will find that what is contained in the scroll which is held by the One is of paramount importance to this understanding of the two hands. Those passages between the vision of the scroll and its opening in chapter eleven we will come back to later for they are also important but before we can understand them fully we need to know what the scroll is actually all about. In reading this chapter eleven we must remember that none of the writings of the Bible, including Revelations, originally had chapters and verses as these were added at quite a late date and were put in to make it easy to remember where various passages were, thus facilitating its study. The numbering also helped those who wished to emphasis some elements more than others in their various creeds and canons as it is much easier to quote out of context when passages are broken up into, seemingly separate, verses than it is when passages must be read in their entirety to obtain the sense and context. It is also easier to support a dogma when one can put breaks in to passages where they suit oneâ&#x20AC;&#x;s own purpose. It has been assumed that when the original passages were broken up into chapters and verses various guidelines were used to get the separation points as accurate as possible; but in a number of cases, it has been recognised, errors have been made. This may very well be so but it is also clear from the history of the founding councils and the subsequent history of the Church that some of the errors were not as unplanned as one might like to think. In the case of the division between chapters eleven and twelve we think the error was more likely planned than that it has just gone unrecognised. If we read Chapter eleven as ending at "and the Ark of the Covenant was revealed in heaven", we are then led to the impression that the beginning of Chapter twelve is a new vision. This is thought to be so because the previous material is only pertinent to the seven churches and we have been in church groups and classes where this has been stated as fact. Many people believe that the section of the Revelation which begins at Chapter twelve is a totally different writing and is about things that take place after John has finished communicating with the seven churches of Asia; others that this is merely a re-statement of the first eleven chapters using different imagery. The author John, however, does not say either of these things. It is our opinion that this confusion arises because we think in terms of chapters and immediately we drop that idea it is apparent that there is no division between the end of Chapter eleven and the beginning of Chapter twelve. It also becomes apparent that what John is describing in Chapter twelve is the result of the end of Chapter eleven and that what he is referring to is the contents of the scroll which includes the imagery of the Ark. John says at the end of Chapter eleven and leading into the beginning of Chapter twelve, " and the Ark of the Covenant was revealed in heaven and (or as well) another portent (vision or revelation), a woman clothed in the sun with the moon at her feet". It is this which is revealed by the unrolling of the scroll which is in the right hand of the One who sits upon the throne (of God). 137

The woman, in this vision, is the High Priestess as depicted in the mysteries, in the Tarot, and the Kabala. She is the central character in Gnosticism and is found among the Essenes as the Earth Mother, she is a worldwide symbol for the earth and the Greeks called her Gaia. It is because she is the earth that the moon is at her feet as her head, her consciousness, is the physical and she, the earth, is of course clothed in sunlight; today we would say that the earth is bathed in sunlight. This earth, according to John, has a crown upon her head which consists of twelve stars or diadems. These are the stars or signs of the zodiac (which can only be perceived in their present form from the earth) and they form a circle about her head, the physical world that is like a crown. It is the realisation of what this symbolism is all about that allows us to see the similarities between what John is relating and the imagery of the Gospels for in them the crown of the zodiac is depicted immediately before that part of the story where Mary, the mother of Jesus, is about to give birth; then the astrologers appear to honour the new born child and of course astrologers bear with them at all times the crown of the Zodiac. All that is required of us, to recognise what John is trying to communicate, is that we accept that this is very ancient symbolism from times long before Christianity; this can be shown to be so because this astrological crown is the same symbol that appears in Genesis Chapter one and there it is symbolising the crown of consciousness. This crown is also found in the Kabala symbol and is considered, by Kabalists, to be the doorway between the consciousness of man and the Mind of God. This woman, as depicted in Chapter twelve is the same archetype as Mary, Diana, Astarte, Isis and every other Mother image that has ever been experienced and is not confined to Christianity alone. It is the revelation of this Mother- the feminine in us- that brings about the revelation of the Father- the masculine- as we found in Genesis. Therefore John, through this book of Revelation, is telling us that comprehension of the meaning of the Ark brings with it the understanding of the feminine but this only comes through a change in the way we perceive reality and consequently a more willing openness to new experience. Before we can experience the One we must enter into a new state of consciousness as portrayed by the throne and the trance state of John and this is achieved by going within, meditating, or contemplating (in the language of the mystics), as one does when entering a trance state. We will now go back with John and begin to unravel the seven seals. We will begin to see that he is indeed talking about things hidden but also many other things which are purely historical and which historians and theologians have tended ignore.

138

FIG. TWENTY THE TAROT CARD OF THE HIGH PRIESTESS

If you can see beyond the imagery you will discover every element and symbol described in this book.

139

THE GENESIS OF REVELATION

CHAPTER TEN

THE SCROLL

In the book of Revelations John describes the scroll as being comprised of a sealed copy and an open copy and the scroll is sealed with seven seals that no one in heaven or on earth was found worthy to open; all of these statements are full of meaning. Let us start with the last statement first; that no one on heaven or on earth was found worthy to unseal and open the scroll. This passage is saying that there is no spiritual teaching or philosophy that, on its own, can reveal the inner parts of the scroll and as the scroll represents ourselves there is no teacher who can reveal to us our most sacred inner self. When John said that the scroll was sealed he meant that the contents were hidden by being encoded or of arcane symbolism. Even today the word seal is often used instead of the word code and we would all understand, if told that a message had been sealed, that it had been encrypted to conceal its meaning. So not only is this telling us that this scroll is of a particular type, it is also depicting the mysticsâ&#x20AC;&#x; understanding of reality as they experienced it. They recognised two levels of reality such as the one in which we live our lives and die and another being the arcane world and hidden reality that, according to the mystic, is the only true reality which is entered into by letting go of all our concerns and concepts about the outer illusory world in which most people pass their whole existence and making the mystical journey within. The scroll is sealed with seven seals and this tells us that John wants us to understand that he was referring to a special kind of scroll used in those days for legal matters, but he is also talking about the seven ages of Man, seven levels of consciousness, the seven levels of being in the Kabala, the seven chakras of the Hindu mystics, the seven stages of development from "unclean" to grand master found in all the mystery schools and the seven days, or stages, of creation as found in Genesis. These seven seals complement the seven spirits and the seven candlesticks which John also talks about. However, even though John wants us to think of this scroll as being representative of all those symbols of seven, because this type of scroll was also one that was physically and actually used in those days to gain full insight into the nature of what we are dealing with here in Revelations, it is necessary to see how it was constructed and the manner in which it was used. For many centuries historians and theologians have thought that this scroll was just as any other and was completely rolled and sealed closed or, at the very least, that it was rolled on 140

two rollers much the same as the Torah which is found in Jewish synagogues. It has also been thought that as the scroll was rolled up it was sealed at various places along the way. For instance thirty centimetres of the scroll may have been rolled so that all the words in that section were no longer visible; being inside the rolled up section, then a wax seal was applied to keep it sealed. Then another portion of the scroll was rolled around the outside of the first section until all further words pertaining to the subject associated with that section were also completely unobservable and then they were sealed with wax as well; and so on to the end of the scroll. Apart from the fact that no scroll of this nature has ever been found it would have been very difficult to construct in this way as the wax seals would not remain intact and so we are sure that this is not the type of scroll that John's was talking about. Nevertheless, it has been assumed that it was this type of scroll that was being described and it has also been assumed that the breaking of those seals, one after the other throughout the interior of the scroll, enabled the reader- in this case John- to see the contents of the scroll and relate them as they became visible, one section after another. It is from this assumption that the present day interpretation of the Apocalypse and Armageddon arises and this has caused many people to hold great fears for the future of themselves, their families and mankind as a whole. These fears have no foundation once one realises that the scroll could never have been read like this and that the chapters beginning with Revelations six and finishing with the end of Chapter eleven are not talking about the content of the scroll. Those chapters are talking about the meaning of the seals themselves and the content of the scroll is not discussed at all until the end of Chapter eleven. That this is the case is proved by the description that John gives of the scroll. He describes a scroll that was never completely rolled up and because he was able to see, from the very start, that the scroll was sealed with seven seals those seals must have been at the beginning of the scroll and on the outside of it where he could see them, not hidden by being scattered throughout a rolled up scroll. In fact, unless special circumstances applied, there was no need to break the seal and unroll the scroll to read whatever it was that it contained. Scrolls with open copies and sealed copies could always be read while they were still sealed and it was so this very thing could be done that they were made the way they were. How do I know this? If one reads the Bible without religious blinkers and preconceptions, if one seeks out the findings of historians and archaeologists, all the imagery speaks for itself. In this case John is quite explicit and uses images that must have been well understood during the time to which his book applies for everybody was familiar with sealed deeds or scrolls and many people used them in their normal everyday lives. The reasons that we have not understood what we were reading up to now are manifold, but among them is simply the fact that we no longer use this type of scroll and have not done so for some centuries. However, John is describing a scroll that had been used for many centuries up to the time of his writing and this is demonstrated by the fact that he is describing the same type of scroll that we find mentioned in the book of Jeremiah, Chapter thirty two. In this chapter Jeremiah is told, by God, to buy a field. When Jeremiah did this he had the transaction recorded on a scroll that had a sealed and an open copy and he had it witnessed by a number of people. This was done in front of the men at the gate (see Xystus and the open forum of previous 141

chapters) who had the authority of the Elders and acted as a court. Wherever 'the men at the gate' is mentioned in Judaic tradition what is being described is the officially recognised court of teachers or judges who were authorised by tradition to act as witnesses, like our Justices of the Peace or Magistrates. The Roman forum also filled this exact same function and the elected knights and representatives of the plebeians met in the forum and court was also held there. In the Persian tradition, which is where many of the Jewish traditions come from, the Magi were the teachers who sat at court in the Gate. The scroll that Jeremiah had witnessed to prove that he now owned the piece of land, after being sealed and signed, was put into an airtight jar so that it "would last a long time" to quote the passage in Jeremiah, a practice we have now become very familiar with since finding the Dead Sea scrolls. In the late twentieth century, during a very successful search of caves along the Israel- Jordan border, Yigael Yadin- an Israeli soldier and archaeologist- discovered some very interesting artefacts among which was a scroll bound in a very unusual way. It was realised very quickly that this scroll was of the type that had been known as a sealed deed and that it was an example of scrolls used two thousand years ago, and more, as legal and binding documents. Prior to the discovery of this scroll historians had only read about them as no surviving copies had ever been discovered; it seems obvious to us that in every respect the scroll discovered by Yadin was the same as that described by Jeremiah and also by John in Revelations. This sealed scroll or deed was used if a person bought or sold a piece of land, was wed, bought or sold a house, entered into a business contract or in any other way made some contract with another person and both parties took part in completing one of these scrolls and were bound by its contents. These scrolls were the origin of the documents that present day lawyerâ&#x20AC;&#x;s call tied or sealed deeds and this is also why deeds, until very recently, always came bound with a small red ribbon. The scroll that Yadin discovered was in the bag of a woman who had been a supporter of Simon Bar Kokhba and it had been a child maintenance contract between the woman and the family of her dead husband. The process used in making those old scrolls was as follows: A piece of parchment, papyrus or vellum was chosen; all of these materials had one side which was smoother than the other and was better for writing on. On this better side, on the top half of the piece of material the agreement, or contract, was transcribed by the lawyers using the full legal description in formal legal language. When all parties, including any potential witnesses, were satisfied that this was an accurate record of the agreement the scroll was turned over and on the other, rough, side and starting from the other end the very same things were written, but much more briefly and in the local language or dialect and idiom. An example of this might be that the legal explanation would be written in Latin, the legal language of the Roman Empire, but the other side, if being written for the inhabitants of Greece, would have been written in the dialect of Greek spoken where the parties in the deed resided. If the parties were Jewish and living in Egypt the translation may have been either in Greek or Coptic. On the other hand, if they lived in the Judea of two thousand years ago, the local language and idiom could have been Aramaic, Greek or Latin but whichever was used it would always have been a language 142

that both the parties could understand. If the legal language had been Hebrew, as it would have been in the case of Jeremiah because Hebrew was the language of the Jewish priests and lawyers, then the translation would almost certainly have been in Syriac or Aramaic, the languages of the general population at that time. When all concerned- the lawyers, the parties and the witnesses- were sure that both copies agreed the scroll was rolled so that the legal description was completely inside the roll and then it was rolled for a further two to four centimetres so that all words were concealed by blank scroll material; probably about half of the scroll on the last rotation was blank. This ensured the total secrecy of the legal part of the scroll writings but the scroll could not be rolled so far that any of the writing on the rough copy was rolled into the interior. This had to remain totally on the outside and there were about seven or eight centimetres of blank scroll material between the roll of the scroll and the last lines written on this open section. Then a hole was punched through that part of the open section which was hard up against the roll of the scroll and close to one side and a thong was passed through this hole, looped around the scroll and tied; this knot may then have been sealed with wax. If the knot was sealed with wax the scroll was called a sealed deed but if the knot was not waxed it was simply known as a tied deed. Once it was either tied or sealed, a witness signed his name or applied his mark across the knot or seal in such a way that, if it was broken, the signature or mark could not avoid being disturbed. This process was repeated for as many witnesses as there were who wished to sign and each one signed across a new knot or seal formed by passing the same, unbroken, thong around the scroll and through a new hole each time. Each hole was about two to four centimetres apart depending on the number of witnesses and, therefore, each one was a little closer to the opposite edge of the scroll. In the case of the scroll in John's Revelation there were seven seals and, therefore, seven witnesses and each of the seven knots and seals would have been evenly spaced across the scroll, the first at one edge and the seventh at the other. Because this scroll was used for all manner of legal matters and it was quite illegal for anybody but a lawyer of judge to open a sealed deed and they could only do so in court. If there were any disputes about the contents of the scroll, about its rightful owner or any matter which might arise during the transfer or enforcement of the agreement, the scroll had to be opened in the presence of the judges and unlawful opening, depending on the importance of the contract detailed on the scroll, could be punishable by death. The Old Testament has always been considered, by those who adhere to it, to be a covenant or legally binding agreement between God and Man and is, therefore, a sealed deed. This is why John uses this imagery in his revelation for by portraying the covenant as a sealed deed he is saying that it has both an open and a sealed or arcane meaning. By also saying that no one in heaven or on earth was found who was worthy to open the scroll he is suggesting that it was quite wrong to tamper with the contents of the covenant, as many had done, and probably, because of that tampering, the real meaning of the contents was being lost. As we mentioned earlier, it is evident why anybody reading John's book, at that time, would have realised the importance of what he was portraying for they all knew about sealed deeds but it also evident that John thought that people were taking the outer meaning too literally and 143

FIG. TWENTY ONE

The seven witnesses would have signed across the knots or over the wax seals

This is the open copy of the scroll. It would have been written in the common tongue on the other side, not this.

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The legal language would have been completely inside the scroll and unreadable from without

were unable, because of the tampering by scribes who did not themselves understand, to see the inner hidden meaning. The scroll is both an open, exoteric, document and a closed, sealed, hidden and therefore esoteric one at the same time. It is a mystic or Gnostic teaching and the Covenant or Testament as revealed by John is something more than just a recording of events that were supposed to have happened to the Jews and this is emphasised by what follows. After John describes the scroll there comes from between the four living creatures, the throne and from among the twenty four elders, a lamb. The four living creatures, as previously described, represent the four main philosophic streams then in existence and the twenty-four elders represent the various priestly orders within these streams. This is why the elders are depicted as being between the four living creatures and the throne as they cast their crowns, or go into trance, before the throne and represent their order members and interpretation of the covenant before God the Great Judge. The crown, which is clearly described in the Kabala symbol, represents the crowning glory of the head- the consciousness and it is the casting of this consciousness toward God, or the giving it over to Godâ&#x20AC;&#x;s will, that allows one to enter the trance state. John describes the Lamb as coming from among these priestly orders and he does this in a passage that does not say the lamb was standing by itself at some place in the midst of the elders but distinct from them; he says that the lamb came 'from among' them just as a prime minister comes from among the elected members of Parliament or a tree comes from among a forest. So we must read this passage as saying that the lamb was among and one with the priests and priestly orders or that it was the product of all the priests. To fully comprehend what is being said here we need to look more closely at the Gospels for we think the same story is being portrayed here and, of course in the Gospels we read that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. The name Bethlehem, in Hebrew according to the Dead Sea scrolls scholar Dr.Barbara Thiering, means house (beth) of bread (lehem) and she also suggests that studies have shown that colloquially the Levitical priests at the time of the Essenes were known as â&#x20AC;&#x17E;the breadâ&#x20AC;&#x;. This was because a major part of their duties was in the breaking and the distribution of the holy shew bread during various Jewish religious festivals. The house of the bread, therefore, was the Temple, the synagogue and the organisational structure in which the priests functioned. So it was not only the part, the Temple, but also the whole of the Judaic religion, which could be called the house of bread. The name Bethlehem now takes on a startling new meaning for it was there that Mary could find no place in the inn, or public house, in which the child might be born. That there was no room at the inn is also significant as, all over the world, an inn is known as and represents a public house. It may be a side issue but in a sect of Mithraism, which like Judaism is a derivative of Zarathustrianism, the place of worship was a public house where ales were served in honour of the demi-god Bacchus and was the origin of our own taverns and inns. However, that there was no room at the public places of the house of bread means that the priests of the orthodox Temple and synagogue sects could not find a place in their creeds for

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this new teaching; so Mary and Joseph settled themselves in the manger and the new teaching appeared, in due course, there. A manger is where animals are housed; particularly cattle. We know there were no sheep or goats there because the shepherds were out in the fields tending to them; later the shepherds were visited by an angel of the Lord and as a result of this visitation they attended the birth of the new teaching, but in the early stages of the labour they were conspicuous by their absence. Throughout the New Testament, the Apostles are referred to as shepherds and teachers of all religions and philosophies are symbolised by this image; and we can safely assume, because the shepherd teachers of the Gospels hearkened to the message of the messengers (the angels) that they were priests who were not of the Temple or the inn, but were associated with the manger although, at that time, busy in the fields looking after their parishioners. In the Church, today, we refer in exactly this way to the missionary fields and so we think that these shepherds are those priests and teachers who were in the towns, cities and countries of the Roman Empire in which there were Essenic missions and that they were ministering to those flocks. We are fairly sure that this is the case for the Greek word that the New Testament uses for shepherd is pastor and of course the Christian Church has taken this word and made it its own; it now has pastors who are called shepherds and it has pastoral duties and pastoral services. However, those who were in attendance throughout the labour and birth of the new teaching are more accurately described by the imagery of the manger and would be living in Judea as they are not out in the fields. But like the shepherds they were not mainstream or orthodox for they are not of the public house temple or synagogues and so they would be represented by those creatures which live in mangers and are not sheep. This is where, for us, the symbolism of this story become really interesting and wondrously convoluted. The creatures that live in mangers and are not sheep are mostly cattle and in nearly all cases are the young of the cattle because they of all the beasts need the protection of a manger during the cold winter months which is when this event is supposed to have taken place. So we would expect there to be calves in the manger and Christian tradition tells us that this was in fact the case; that they get their metaphors mixed somewhat and place lambs in there as well is quite beside the point. In the Old Testament, in the book of Exodus, we are told that during their excursion in the wilderness and while Moses was up the mount communing with God the Israelites started worshipping the golden calf; and there are two major symbols to unravel here. The first is that it was the High Priest Aaron who bowed to the wishes of the people and led them in this worship. The Aaronic priests were those who attended to the Throne (the Ark) through which they communed with God in trance while the Levitical priests were the lawyers and scoured the scriptures seeking out where people might be going astray from the word of God. Secondly, because we like to jump to conclusions the calf of Aaron is always depicted as a golden bull of the oxen variety and although many Mediterranean people did in fact worship such an idol there is no evidence in the Bible or elsewhere that it is this to which the Exodus story refers. In fact a little deduction will show us that this is not the case at all.

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The region in which the Israelites were supposed to have worshipped this calf - and it is only a calf that is mentioned, not a bull- was part of Mesopotamia and under the cultural and political influence of those people who were the foundation of the religion of Zarathustra. We mentioned in an earlier chapter that Zarathustra was known colloquially as the golden camel and the young of camels are also known as calves and so the golden calf is obviously a symbol for the young religion of Zarathustrianism. We also mentioned earlier that although Zarathustrianism became the state religion of Persia at around 500B.C.E. it must have been in existence before this and probably for quite a long time. Here is evidence that it existed prior to the slavery in Babylon though it is not evidence for how long before as the accepted dating of the period of Moses may be quite wrong. It is increasingly obvious that Christianity grew out of Essenism and that many of these Essenic people were Jews with a religious point of view that was heavily coloured by both Hellenic and Zarathustrian ideas, with the emphasis on the latter. We must repeat it here for it is not widely accepted, that the Essenes were not orthodox Jews in any sense; they were Zarathustrians. This is easily proven and those that doubt we ask you to go and read the Dead Sea scrolls without your blinkers on. Those people, the Essenes, followed the God Ahura Mazda and they feared his opponent Ahriman; they also believed in the imminent arrival of the son of Ahura Mazda Soshayanus. The fact that these people were living in a Jewish country and were Jews by descent is quite irrelevant; they were not Jewish by religion. These followers of the Zarathustrian philosophy would have been graded into varying levels of adeptship and these grades would have been given the names of various animals. Therefore, if any religious group in Judea at that time could be described as the young, or calves, of those who lived in mangers it would have been the Essenes. These people were led by Aaronic and Levitical priests- the bread- and were, therefore, quite correctly of the house of bread- Bethlehem but they were of the Golden Calf, the Camel and did not associate at all with the inn, the public house or Temple that, at around this time, had been taken over by the reforming priests of the Herodians. But it is because the people of the manger were Zarathustrian that they also associated with the Magi, the wise men, who came from the east as, at that time, the main centre of Zarathustrianism within the Mediterranean world, was Persia and the teachers of that religion were known as the Magi. And there were not just three Magi associated with the birth of the new teaching, there were many. This can be extrapolated from the fact that the philosophy of the Zarathustrians was known as the three wisdoms because they believed that one should think only good thoughts, speak only good words and do only good deeds; these people were all known, because of these three wisdoms, as the thrice wise men. Although the main centre of Essenism, from our point of view, was in Judea, Essenes were spread throughout the Roman world and as history shows, new ideas were very slow in moving from one centre to another. Therefore, the shepherds or teachers of Essenism who were out in the fields did not know about this new development until an angel, that is a messenger or apostle of the Lord came to them and revealed the things which were taking place at home. As a result they all rushed home and caught up on events and no doubt pledged their allegiance to the new teaching; liking what they saw and heard they gave it their 147

blessing and then went back to their far-flung flocks and began teaching it. In the book of Revelations John is therefore telling us that the lamb (whatever that represents) which takes the scroll, comes from among the priests. The Gospels tell us which sect of priests and that it was the Essenes. So now we need to find out what the lamb is and why it is able to do that which we have been told is illegal; that is, open the scroll.

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GENESIS OF REVELATION

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE SEVEN SEALS

The lamb as it is portrayed in our present religious literature is a very complicated symbol but in this chapter we hope to show that complication is unnecessary. In the Christian Church Jesus Christ, prior to the crucifixion, is represented by the lamb because he is supposed to be the sacrifice offered to God for the sins of all of mankind. In accepting this role he becomes this sacrifice and, in being it, he opens the doorway to God for all mankind who, prior to this, were shut out of any relationship with Him (God) because of their inability to overcome their sinful nature without Divine intervention. After the sacrifice has taken place, once for all, sin is no longer the issue between man and God so long as we accept- within our minds and souls- that this act did indeed take place. Consequently we are with the triumphant Jesus resurrected or reborn from our grave of the world of sin and we enter into a relationship with God which is akin to a child and its Father and all is forgiven. This type of theology is spelt out in the Gospels, reinforced by the writings of the Apostle Paul and, it is thought, bolstered by the passage in the book of Revelations that we are now dealing with. This whole idea of the sacrificial lamb is drawn from the Jewish interpretation of the five books of Moses and the commentaries on them by some of the prophets. When we read the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Numbers we find that the Lamb was a very special kind of sacrifice and in some cases it was specified as needing to be female. Also, when it was sacrificed, it was always done for the sin of the person offering the lamb and nobody else; among the sins covered by the sacrifice of the female lamb were those that the person had not previously been aware of. So, had some person approached us and told us that at some time past we had committed a sin against them or society and to that point we had not been aware of this, had we been an Israelite of the time we would then have taken a female lamb to the Temple and had it sacrificed on our behalf. So if the lamb which is mentioned in Revelations and spoken about by the Apostle Paul and all theologians since was the same lamb image as spoken about in the Old Testament, there is only one conclusion we can come to. If the Lamb was the Lamb of God, as we are assured it was, it could only have been offered by Him and not by any other and if it was offered by Him then it was offered for His sin as it could not be offered for the sin of any other and, therefore, it could not be offered for the sins of mankind; if these were sins which God had only recently become aware of then not only would it have been God's lamb it would also have been God's female lamb. This interpretation is supported by the writings of Carl Jung in his book about Job. In this he 149

suggests that the biblical story of Job presents Job as being more moral than God was and Jung suggests that this conclusion led many Jewish teachers of the day to conclude that God owed mankind a sacrifice for his sins against mankind and their natural humanity. In essence, he points out, there were moral issues in God‟s behaviour that needed to be addressed as these issues amounted to sin on the part of God; sins of which God had previously accused humankind. Surely this is quite plainly a case of projection on God‟s part; at least on the part of those who wrote about these matters in the first place. To justify and obscure God‟s behaviour man has been accused and the saddest part is that we have not objected. Jung also suggests that increasing numbers of teachers began to realise that Judaism had met its Waterloo in the book of Job and that without radical changes to its religious and spiritual foundation Judaism was dying, would soon be dead and then could be buried. It is Jung's contention that the concept of Jesus as the Lamb of God arose to fulfil this desperate need; the forgiveness of God by man and not, as we have been led to believe, the reverse. It wouldn‟t actually need Jung to spell this out if our church leaders had, through the Christian era of the Western world, provided us with accurate historical information for the way in which the Maccabees and later their descendants, the Zealots, went about destroying Judea, the Temple and Judaism all in the name of and for the sake of God was in itself enough to emphasise that God, or at least the idea of Him, had been the cause of an enormous amount of unnecessary pain and suffering and that change was required. This is the very reason that the Rabbi began again with the Talmud and the Christian Church was born; Both Herodian Talmudic Judaism and Christianity were a response to the desperate cry of the times which was probably something like, 'if this be God we are better without Him'. Most Jewish spiritual leaders of that time realised that a new world view was needed. It is significant in relation to this point of view regarding the lamb that the old warlike and fearsome law making God seems to die with the dying Jesus and the God of the resurrection is something that seems to be quite foreign to the previous Jewish point of view in that it was now personal, spiritual and fatherly. It is indisputable that prior to the rise of the Roman Church under Constantine many of the churches did vary widely in their interpretation of what the crucifixion meant and that this variation included the two extreme poles one of which perceived the new revelation to be entirely without a Godhead and the other that continued to perceive God as being the ultimate lawmaker and arbiter of the world of man. Whether any of them took quite the point of view that Jung expresses is debatable but I do think that point of view needs to be taken seriously, particularly as there are many people, today, expressing the same dissatisfaction with the performance of God in their lives that Jung is referring to. It is for this reason that we are presenting the ideas included in this book and it is for this reason that we think we should have a completely new look at the ideas associated with the lamb. We think that, particularly in the New Testament and especially in Revelations, the image of the lamb represents the Gnosis or Gnostic movement which has, as a matter of history, been ridiculed, pilloried, repressed, crucified and buried by the orthodox teachers and priests. We think it fills the image of the lamb to perfection and we also think that in presenting the ideas it did two thousand years ago, which speak about a spiritual growth and relationship with the whole that 150

is totally devoid of the Jewish God YHWH, it left itself open to martyrdom. There are many commentaries on early Christian Gnosticism, none of which are very supportive of the ideas presented by the Gnostics but it must be pointed out that in the first instance these commentaries were reporting on imagery drawn from not only Judaic sources but also older Egyptian and Mesopotamian Gnostic schools and possibly even some European ones for consumption by Jewish Christian Messianists. Also the commentaries were written by those in the early Roman Church who were trying to completely repress the Gnostic ideas. They eventually succeeded in doing this and by the time the second generation of writer came along they were merely commenting on the original writings and there were no Gnostics left to defend the conclusions which were being drawn. It is not until fairly recent times that we have been able to read original Gnostic works such as the Pistis Sophia, the Nag Hammadi scrolls and some of the Dead Sea scrolls and have begun to realise that many of them are quite sane, worth reading, have a lot to say about the origins of our beliefs that don't quite fit the orthodox ideas and that writings such as John's Revelation are of the same genre. Many of the Gnostic writings portray YHWH as being less than the ultimate being of the universe and in some cases He is described as simply being the hand or active principle used by the ultimate universal God in the creative process. Some writers suggest that YHWH went beyond the bounds of what was acceptable and expected and others suggest that on the path to understanding and enlightenment we need to overcome those constraints that were incorrectly imposed on us by YHWH. A few authors even suggest that YHWH has egotistically taken on the role of the one great being and that the enlightened masters are waiting in the wings, so to speak, for that day when he will be overcome and the world freed of his domination. In this respect he was seen by many Gnostics as being the same person as Satan. So if we ignore what the commentaries have to say and read the original material for ourselves and also indulge in a bit of reading between the lines we can see that the Gnostic authors were urging their readers to drop the concepts of God that they have previously held and consider a universe that does not include a God concept at all. We are sure that, had the Gnostics publicly produced these ideas in either Judea or Roman Christendom, they would have been crucified and figuratively at least they did and they were. In John's Revelation he points out that the lamb, which we have all assumed was slain, merely looks as if it were for these are the very words used, "as if it were slain". On the strength of these few words we must change our point of view about the lamb for had John meant that the lamb was slain he would surely have said so, this being the central dogma of the Christian creed. He does not do so and therefore he must be pointing out that the lamb symbol has some other meaning. One of the ideas associated with any lamb must always be new born for lamb really means the same as baby and like all babies of any creature when new born a lamb will be covered with blood and afterbirth and will indeed look as if it has been slain. The act of birth is also the act of death in as much as birth always transfers the one being born from one world, or arena of experience, to another and the process of birth is totally and utterly final; there is no going back. We die to the world from which we are born at the same time as we are enlivened 151

to the new and seen from this point of view the lamb accurately displays much of the philosophy of the Gnostics and certainly throws light on many statements contained in the New Testament. The Gnosis is, we believe, the gnasci or nasci (as outlined earlier in chapters about Genesis), which in ancient Latin meant to be born. It is not well known but the words Gnosis, gnasci and agnus (as in Latin for lamb) all come from the same Greek source word; gnosis means the beginning of knowledge, gnasci means the beginning of conscious life and agnus means that which knows the mother. So it would be easy for people who were familiar with Latin to substitute one word for the other. All the alternatives have the same source, their meanings are only slightly different but still relate to knowing and all still fit the context but, whichever one was used, it completely altered the message. And so instead of a Gnosis that was actually repressed, terrorised, crucified and eliminated in the process of trying to tell us we had no sin that could keep us from the Universal Whole, we have a lamb which was sacrificed for our supposed sins against a warlike, law making, vengeful God. However, John tells us, the lamb was not slain, it only looked as if it had been because it was new born. This lamb is the new born gnosis, the new revelation, the new vision of man‟s relationship with the Universe and it has been brought out from among the priests and it stands apart from them and alone. Only this new born gnosis is able to take the covenant from the hand of God, open it, reveal the inner contents and thereby decide the case for or against the actions and morality of God; the verdict we will see later. When the lamb comes out from among the priests they continue to worship their God but, as there is obviously no reaction against the lamb by God, they eventually change their tune (they sing a new song says Revelations) they no longer worship their old God but now, as priests throughout history have seemed to be inclined, they begin to worship this new demonstration of power and entirely missed the point. John says “they sing a new song and cast their crowns at the feet of the lamb”, today the same thing would be said with the words „they changed their tune to fit the circumstances and sought the continuation of their priesthood by their change of allegiance‟. Before this continuity could be granted however, the scroll had to be opened and checked to see if the original message on the interior agreed with the message on the exterior that had been amended by priestly edict from time to time, so the priesthood is essentially currying favour. But as the scroll could only be opened in court they are also acting as this court and are, therefore, about to be their own judges. This is in line with another Gnostic idea, also found in the writings of the Apostle Paul, that there is only one judge of any consequence that we need to be concerned about and that is ourselves. As said above the intention of opening the scroll is to decide whether or not the teachings that have been presented in the open surface stories of the covenant by the priests and teachers of the old school, are in fact verified by the arcane or hidden and sealed teachings of that same covenant. These passages in Revelations are, therefore, informing us that the priests of the old school stand accused by the new school of not accurately passing on and teaching the 152

ancient knowledge contained in the biblical myths and legends and, as we have said, the verdict cannot be known until the scroll is opened and this does not happen until Chapters eleven and twelve. The chapters in between these and the earlier chapter five in which the lamb took the scroll are word pictures of the witnesses who signed their identification and their agreement with what is contained in the covenant- both the outer, open teaching and the inner, arcane. There are seven seals and therefore seven witnesses; they are seven teachings and seven centres of that teaching and if the hypothesis about their origin is correct we should find within these seals the seven main stages of growth to enlightenment, or spiritual development, as portrayed by some of the old cultures. We may find reincarnation, the seven chakras, the seven levels of the Kabala, seven stages of discipleship and maybe others. The seals of the scroll are the keys to the inner of the document which is symbolic of the Bible (in all crypts and codes the words seals and keys mean the same thing; remember that Jesus was buried in a tomb or crypt and here is a crypt we are about to open). They are also the keys to our own personal and general cultural inner, both of which are defined by our experiences and our religious teachings and beliefs. The four horsemen of the apocalypse are the first four keys but they are not prophecies of doom and gloom as has been supposed. The very negative, Christian, end of the world interpretation of these images has meant that they have been seen as seals in the sense of locks when they ought to have been understood as keys which, when turned, begin to unlock. There is an ancient mystical device called the Tarot which is a set of cards from which our present day playing cards are derived. It is thought by some that they were first created by Jews of the Spanish Diaspora of the Middle Ages and by others that they come from either Babylon or Egypt. What we are about to unfold demonstrates that, if nothing else, they are older than the Spanish Jews. Within the Tarot there are a total of seventy eight cards; twenty two of them are called the Major Arcana and fifty six the Minor Arcana. Arcana, means both the old as in archaic or ancient and the hidden as in arcane and so the Tarot represents both the hidden and the ancient (mystics would say the ancient and hidden wisdom). The Major Arcana are supposed to speak to us symbolically of things of the spirit, particularly in regard to our â&#x20AC;&#x17E;higher selfâ&#x20AC;&#x; and the Minor Arcana of those things earthly such as our physical selves and lives. Just as in our playing cards there are four suits of cards in the Minor Arcana and each of these suits is headed by a card called the knight seated on a horse in just the same way as playing cards are headed, depending on the game, by a King, ace or Jack. Each of the horses is white, black, red, grey or pale and each knight is portrayed bearing symbols which are very similar to those found in the four horsemen passage in Revelations. In ancient Latin the word Equestrian means one who rides a horse with special emphasis on a knight and in Rome, at the time that Revelations was written, there were a group of government officers who were knights by special dispensation and these knights were known as Questers (equestrians) and since that time knights, Questers, Quests and the unravelling of mysteries seem to have gone hand in hand. One knight, said John, goes forth to conquer; a word which originally had strong overtones of going on a quest, hence con-quest and this knight carries a bow which we have all, since that time, interpreted as being of the archery variety. One of the knights of the Tarot, however, is depicted as having a bough which can 153

also be, and at one time was, spelt bow and this bough in the Tarot picture is obviously depicting something similar to Aaron's rod which budded. In the Exodus story of the creation of the Ark of the Covenant Aaron's rod lies alongside the laws of Moses in the Ark. these laws, therefore, are arcane because they are old and because they are in the Ark as the word ark is derived from the same source as the word arcane. We have described in an earlier chapter how the word rod in ancient Greek was kanon and this means to measure, or a measuring rod. The knight who bears the rod, therefore, represents a quest or search for the ancient arcane laws and the establishment of an official or legal canon of those laws. We find something similar in the story of Noah in the Old Testament for when the flood is over Noah and his family come out of the Ark. At that time Noah is told by God that there will be a sign in the heavens which will be a reminder of God's promise to Noah that never again will the earth be destroyed by flood. The sign that Noah is to look for is a rain/bow and it is described as the arch of the rain/bow. As the words arch, arc, and ark all have the same root and one that is common with arcane we are sure that the arch/bow/bough of the Tarot cards also means arcane. In summary the arcane rod means the arcane canon of law or knowledge. Another knight carries a sword and this very clearly connects with the Tarot for, as we now know, the sword refers to the two edged sword of language codes, which is what we have found in Revelations, and they can have double or allegorical meanings which cut two ways. So this knight takes peace from the earth, symbolically, by separating meanings and disturbing the status quo by finding new ways of reading previously accepted interpretations. The next knight in revelations is depicted as having some power over the ability to buy and sell and indeed this is also the attribute of the next knight in the Tarot for this knight is depicted as carrying either a pentacle (a five pointed star) or a coin, depending on which pack one is looking at; sometimes both symbols are used on the same card with the star depicted on the coin and this is found mainly in older packs. The name of this knight, therefore, is either the pentacle or the coin and so we will call it the coin. This knight is concerned with the arcane teaching called the Kabala which is a mystery teaching originating in the Middle East and particularly with the Jews. Each stage of the teaching, or level of awareness, through which the student passes while being taught in one of these mystery schools is depicted on the Kabala tree symbol by a circle or disc and these were called leaves or coins. In the Kabala the lack of ability to accumulate or trade the coins or, in other words, the lack of ability to grow in knowledge about their meanings, leads to spiritual poverty. This knight also depicts a symbol we now only associate with the Masons but which, in earlier times, belonged to and was used by most, if not all, mystery schools; the dividers, the drawing instruments which are used for measuring distance and are very helpful in describing circles. These are depicted in and by the pentagram itself and the circle which represents the coin is a circle which is being measured by the dividers. The next horseman is not announced in the same way as the others but is heralded by the voice from the throne. This knight rides the grey horse and as the measurer of grains and fluids he is the knight of cups found in the Tarot. The cup he carries in his hand is not a drinking cup however; it is the standard of fluid or grain measure. This knight and the 154

FIG. TWENTY TWO THE FOUR KNIGHTS

155

FIGURE TWENTY THREE

156

FIG. TWENTY FOUR

The coin that one of the Knights carries

In red is the Masonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dividers for describing the circle; in blue is the isosceles triangle.

157

FIG. TWENTY FIVE

The cubic Altar and Throne of God The Knights are the Heads of each corner or face of the cube

Death and Hades under the Altar Malkuth, the earth

158

FIG. TWENTY SIX

The crown of Kether and the lightning flash

159

previous one really should be bracketed together for they both represent aspects of physical measurement. Then a fifth horseman appears, although he is called the fourth and soon we will see why. He is not one of the four knight Tarot cards but he is, nevertheless, in the Tarot where he is also depicted as a knight and he is the only other knight of the whole Tarot pack. He is not called a knight, by John, because in the Tarot pack he is not called a knight either. In the Tarot the name on the card on which he appears is the same as the name which John gives him and that is Death. The four knight cards of the Tarot are the heads of the four suits of cards and they are the highest cards of the minor Arcana. The Death card, on the other hand, depicts a knight, does not call it a knight and it is one of the major Arcana. So we have already found that there have been errors in understanding the seals because the first four seals actually refer to five horsemen not four and it is the knowledge of these five that leads us to an understanding of what it is they are depicting. John then says that Hades follows after him but this does not refer to the Death card, nor the Death knight as has been thought, but to the seal that follows after Death for depicted here, in this fifth seal, are the souls of the dead in Hades. The last part of verse eight in Chapter six of Revelations says that, â&#x20AC;&#x153;they were given power over a fourth of the earthâ&#x20AC;? and this is written in such a way as to seem to be referring only to the last knight or Death and Hades but this is just another case of the punctuation being put in the wrong place because it actually refers to all the knights; and for us, it would have been clearer had John said that the Hades seal comes after the last of the Knight seals. As we said earlier these knights are the first or head cards of the Minor Arcana of which there are four suits and they are the cards of the earth because they represent the physical whereas the Major Arcana represents the spiritual or heavenly. The knights therefore represent the mystical four corners of the earth, the four winds, four cardinal points of the compass, four elements of earth, air fire and water and, therefore, each of the knights do have power over a fourth of the earth just as Revelations says. In Rome of those times there were various levels of government just as there are in any age and in every country. The two main bodies were the Senate which was made up of the twelve major families and a number of other families which had managed in various ways over the centuries to grasp a little of the power for themselves and then there was the Forum. The Senate basically represented the power of money and land and the forum represented the power of the mass of the people, the plebeians. In the Forum there were various power groupings and among these were the Equestrians. They were named as such because it was actually illegal to ride war horses and be armed for battle in the streets of Rome but some people, in the very early days of the Republic had been given, because of some great deed they had done, the privilege and honour of being able to ride their war horse, while wearing their war armour, through the streets. Over time the actual act of riding the horses and wearing the armour had been disallowed but the symbolic honour and title remained. These Equestrians, as part of the government, were some of the most powerful people in Rome as they were responsible for that part of the civil service that controlled the manufacture and 160

distribution of arms such as swords, the growing and distribution of wine, barley, wheat and other grains, the minting of the Roman currency and all the bookkeeping required by the government. In Rome there was a thing called the grain distribution and this was an annual measure of grain to which all citizens of the city of Rome were entitled to by law. If the grain harvest failed or the grain ships were attacked by pirates or for any other reason the grain was not able to be distributed there was major trouble in the city of Rome; the knight equestrians were responsible for this grain distribution. Once one knows these few things it is quite clear where John got his imagery from, what he was talking about and just how clear the message would have been to people of his day. It has only become mumbo jumbo to us because we don‟t live in the Roman culture of two thousand years ago. If one were to draw the double Genesis star as outlined in earlier chapters of Genesis one would see that within that symbol there is a cubic shape, twice as high as it is wide; among Kabalists this is called the throne of God and the Altar. At each corner of the top of the altar Kabalists draw a small circle which is called, in Hebrew, a Sephiroth but is known in the Tarot as a coin or seal and each of these four is occupied by one of the knights just spoken about. The knights are at these corners as each of them is the head of one of the four suits of the Tarot and each suit represents one of the four corners of the earth or east, west, north and south. This is very similar to the imagery of the altar of Moses, as described in Exodus, which had on each corner something called a horn. In a later part of this chapter we will find that a horn is a trumpet and that the trumpet is closely associated with the altar and the throne of God, in just the same way as the knights are. When the Kabalists draw this two star symbol they do so without including the two circles and they also draw two extra lines; one from either end of the lowest, horizontal line of the lower star. These are drawn on an angle, so that they meet in triangular fashion „V‟ lower down, as if another star was going to be drawn below the first two. The joining point of these two lines they call Malkuth, which is the Hebrew word for the earth and there is placed the fifth Sephiroth. So the cubic altar symbol rests upon the earth which is the fifth seal as mentioned in Revelations and this Malkuth, or earth seal is controlled or constrained by those lines which connect back up to the four corners of the altar known as the four knights; therefore they do, indeed, each have power over a fourth of the earth. The souls mentioned in the fifth seal or key are under the altar and as the altar is all about speaking to God through trance mediums the people under the altar are there because they are under, or controlled by, the power and authority of the voices that issue from the altar and the medium priest who serve it. These voices, do indeed cry out, just as described by John and they tell us about the sovereign Lord God Almighty who is to Judge us all and avenge the righteous for the sins of the unrighteous against them. Anyone who has ever been to a séance will know just how much these spirits love to tell us how unworthy we are. This is the quest through judgement, sacrifice and the vengeance of karmic reincarnation, eternal retribution and fundamentalist law. The sixth seal starts with the male and the female symbols as in mystery teachings, which the Tarot and Kabala are; these are always depicted as the sun and the moon. In this case they are 161

darkened and dead, or dying, and the moon is hidden by blood. The woman, symbolised by the moon, is considered unclean because of menstruation and must be hidden away, according to the old patriarchal theology and so this seal refers to the death of the masculine/ feminine Christ concept which we previously mentioned because the death or repression of the one has the consequence of destroying the other. As a result of this, the stars of the Genesis symbol fall from the sky and are no longer part of the divine revelation because it is the stars, portrayed in Genesis and followed by the Magi of the Gospels, which reveal the masculine/feminine Cosmic Man. The sky (heavens) vanished into the interior of a scroll like the one described at the beginning of this chapter and become hidden and arcane. When the Kabala symbol is drawn in the fashion of Kabalists it does not have the two circles surrounding it and a number of internal lines are left out. This has the effect of disguising the fact that the symbol was originally based on the two stars and so the stars have fallen or been cast out of the heavenly image. This seal is, therefore, depicting religion which has no concept of the masculine and feminine cosmic being and has lost awareness of what the â&#x20AC;&#x17E;heavensâ&#x20AC;&#x; are really like. Then the priests and teachers of this form of religion, the spiritual leaders of man, take to the caves and the stones of the mountains which are their structures of creeds. With these concretions of concepts that have been built up one dead stone of dogma on another they have formed their ziggurat like holy mountains which have become churches and temples and in these, rather than in the real world, they seek the vision. The old mountain or garden of God has gone; as its circles and internal struts have been removed it has crumbled away and fallen and with the stones, that is its teachings, that are left (represented by the Sephiroth) there has been cobbled together a very infirm structure which the present generals and kings (that is priests and teachers) seek to keep between themselves, their followers and God. This part of Revelations is dealing more with what we have lost than what we have retained, with the lack of insight of our teachers and the fear of God which has come upon us. Then, at the beginning of Chapter seven we see that this leads to a situation in which the spirit is no longer present in the trees (the philosophies) or the earth and the sea (the Mother) because, John says, the wind or the breath which is the spirit is held back. Immediately after this we are shown the same symbol for the dust of the earth (the nation of Israel) and the sands of the sea (all other people) that I outlined at the beginning. In this section John uses the Gematric code number of 12x12 and so he is telling us that the wind does not blow on all the sands and all the dust, without exception, which means that all the religions, teachings and philosophies throughout the Roman Empire are without an awareness of spirit. In essence, as far as John is concerned, they are waiting on the arrival of the Spirit and are in the same circumstance as the world was before the beginning of the first chapter of Genesis and before the dove alighted on the head of Jesus. And so to summarise; in the first six seals of Revelations we have had described six different types of religious quest which are six of the witnesses and users of the sealed scroll or Covenant and in these six seals we are given a very brief look at the same creative process as described in the first chapter of Genesis. 1) The quest for consciousness (let there be light). 2) The separation and division of the sword (the firmament). 162

3) 4) 5) 6)

The dry land, the beasts of the earth and trees (the various teachings). The fish of the sea (the souls or spirits under the earth). The birds of the air (the angels). The sixth day or seal which is the dust of the earth and the sands of the sea from which, in Genesis, Adam was formed.

The difference between the version of the six days of creation found in Genesis and this version in Revelations is that the latter is written in the negative and each seal mentioned thus far is also describing a different aspect of the physical universe in which we live; something that is not so obvious in Genesis. The first is the measuring rod and is the first dimension of distance. The second is the t shape of the sword and defines the two dimensions of length and breadth; it is also said to take peace from the earth. The Latin for peace is Pax (which is symbolised by the combined P and X symbols seen in figure 27) this symbol describes Pi-D (Ď&#x20AC;D), the circumference of a circle and, therefore, defines the two dimensions. The third which is two horsemen together displaying the symbols of the dividers inside the circle and the measuring cup define volume, and structure which gives us the third dimension of space. Death is also known as Father Time and so that card is symbolising the fourth dimension and this is why it is important to have noted that death was the real fourth horseman. The next seal is judgement which is another word for discernment or the mental ability to discern and experience the foregoing four and so this defines logic and rationality. The sixth seal is energy for it is described as wind, earthquakes, gravity (that is the falling of the rocks and the mountains) and other motion. The seals then, on one level, are the Tarot, the languages of the arcane, the Kabala, spiritualism and the suffering, sacrifice and judgement of orthodox but spiritless religion. They are those organisations and individuals who claim to recognise the authority of the Covenant and they are, therefore, its witnesses. They are also all representatives of limited, three- dimensional, measurable mind constructs; bound by time, they are ministers to and of the laws. The seventh seal is the day of rest and all those who recognise the Sabbath are also witnesses to the Covenant. This seal is the silence of half an hour for this is the time in which nothing should be done and it is that part of the scroll on which nothing is written. It separates the outer and open part of the scroll from the inner arcane part and represents the nothingness out of which all is created. There is a great void, a nothingness, which stands between the heavens and the earth, the open and the arcane. From Chapter eight until Chapter eleven verse nineteen of Revelations everything that is written takes place on the seventh day, the day of rest, because it is not until we get to where God's Temple is revealed in heaven that we have moved out of that day and the Minor Arcana. All of the imagery is still dealing with the earth but from the last part of Chapter eleven onwards, it deals with heavenly images. In Chapter eight the seven angels are each given a trumpet. The first Chapter of Revelations tells us that the angels are the seven stars and are in or at the seven churches which are represented by the seven lamp stands. The seven lamp stands are actually just one lamp stand which is the Menorah, the Jewish lamp with seven branches which is also called the burning 163

FIG. TWENTY SEVEN

Pax sign made up of the Greek alphabetic symbols Chi and Rho

The shepherds crook as carried by Pharaohs, Popes, Cardinals, etc. It is the measuring rod; the canon

164

bush and, as explained earlier, it is a tree. This lamp stand burns olive oil (and is, therefore, a symbol for the olive tree) and in doing so a flame is produced at the top of each branch. This flame, as previously shown, represents the spirit (which is in each church) and this is an important point for it is also through the trumpet that the breath passes and this breath is also a symbol of the spirit (you will recall that the Greek word 'pneuma' was used to mean both breath and spirit). In Chapter one John says that he heard a loud voice 'like a trumpet' and we think this refers to and was a colloquialism for a trance medium through whom the spirit voices passed as communication associated with the throne of God, the altar we have just been discussing, took place; we think that wherever John mentions trumpets he is referring to this mediumistic practice. The menorah, as well as being a lamp stand, looks like seven horns or trumpets and it stands on the altar of God which is described in Chapter eight. So we also think that the Menorah represents seven trumpets or spirit mediums which are all connected to the one source of spirit, emphasised by the flames which all burn from the same source, and it has as its authority the altar of God on which it rests. This means that the churches and their mediums, through which the spirit speaks, have the foundations of their teachings in trance mediumship and the throne of God and that it was through these instruments that God spoke using the spirits, or angels, as His intermediaries. As the throne of God being described by John is portrayed in the two star Kabalistic symbolism we can be reasonably sure that he wants us to realise that as well as trance mediumship the two star Kabala is part of the teaching structure of the churches; the word Kabbala literally means to receive, as in intuition, trance or from another person but it has an emphasis which leans toward received wisdom. There is a lot of fire mentioned in Johnâ&#x20AC;&#x;s Revelation such as the fire which is thrown upon the earth and this can also be seen in many Tarot Major Arcana as the Hebrew language alphabetical symbol of the flame. This alphabetic symbol is the same as the flame that sits upon the Menorah branches and it is the same flame as that which sits upon the heads of all the disciples on the day of Pentecost. It is the flame symbol which, in the Hebrew alphabet, means hand. As mentioned earlier in relation to the two hands of God, the flame symbol in the Hebrew alphabet is pronounced 'yoth'. It is spelt 'ydh' and means 'hand'. In human experience, the hand is the active, creative member and in mysticism the hand symbol means 'active principle'. In all those passages of the Revelation where fire is mentioned, therefore, it is being used to represent the active, creative spirit of God and it is not the destructive and death dealing force the Church would have us believe; in ancient Greek philosophy this principle would be called the Word or Logos. John's Revelation is, therefore, revealing the throne of God and states that the voice or medium is active in the churches; this voice, emanating from the throne of God, breathes or reveals the spirit of God and as it breathes new life into our minds it consumes and devours the dross of the old life. The seventh seal then leads us out of the third and fourth dimensions and into the realm of the universal spirit but not before emphatically making the point, through the imagery of all six previous seals that the early life and knowledge of the church came through the use of spirit mediums. After the seventh seal is broken the thong with which the scroll was bound is withdrawn. It was only 165

one thong that was passed through all seven of the holes and appeared to be seven separate thongs, just as the seven apparently separate candlesticks are really only one. As the thong is withdrawn, one hole at a time, the air, breath, pneuma or spirit is able to pass through the hole for the first time and as it does we hear the voice of the spirit come out of the mouth of the trumpet/medium; the trumpet and the hole are the same thing. It is worth noting at this point that the Essene communities, from which the Christian Church grew, had as the highest person within the community one that they called the Teacher of Righteousness or, colloquially, â&#x20AC;&#x17E;the voiceâ&#x20AC;&#x;. It was the purpose of the voice to reveal the word or the will of God to the congregation. We have no doubt that the Christian idea that the Bible is the word of God is a distortion of this original concept for, originally, the voice would go into trance to contact and then reveal God's Divine will through the words that he uttered which were then recorded into a book that, no doubt, came to be revered as holy. This does not mean that those people within the religious structures of two thousand years ago were automatically lifted up in to the spirit just by being baptised members. What John was saying is that the potential was there as long as the angel was listened to and the inner experience sought. Sadly, few were given the opportunity and this aspect of the Church was put to one side and instead of being doors the keys became seals which kept the doorways closed. These closed doors kept the wind of the spirit out and we lost awareness of many of the meanings of the teachings and trance became suspect even though the original communities were obviously built on it. But if we do listen to what the angel messengers are blowing through their trumpet mediums we begin to raise up our vision from the earth somewhat and the altar of sacrifice and sin becomes the throne of God and our en-trance to reality. We begin seeing from a different perspective, a different dimension and a different state of consciousness. If we, once again look at the two-star symbol and at that part where the top of the cube, or throne, begins we see that a third of all the signs of the zodiac houses are contained in the area called the yoni, or vesica, the overlap of the two circles. This means that, if we remove this vesica-and we must if we first remove the two circles as the Kabalists do, the uppermost star is only five-pointed and does not contact those signs of the Zodiac within the vesica area which represent the earth. This is all that is being said by John in Revelations Chapter eight up to verse twelve, when he describes a third of the earth being afflicted with various problems. A third of the fire signs, earth signs, the sun and moon sign and the twin signs no longer have the sixth point of the star connecting them to the rest of the star and the zodiac symbol used by astrologers today is an example of this for it has only a five-pointed star, whereas the original Genesis symbol uses a six-pointed star and it is this that John is outlining here. In the practice of the Tarot, in the use of the Runes and in other forms of divination there is a process called casting. One casts the Tarot cards, the Rune stones, an Astrological chart, or the entrails of some creature. In the Kabala symbol structure there are two main parts; there is the upper part called the Crown and there is the lower part called the Earth. Some parts of the symbol can be said to be pointed at or directed to the Crown and some are pointed at or 166

directed to the Earth. In the language of the Kabala some are cast at the Crown and some are cast at the Earth. In Chapter nine John describes the upturned female star of the lower part of the two star symbols. He says that the star is fallen to the earth, Malkuth and in another part of the Revelation he says that it was 'cast down to the earth' and quite simply all that both these statements mean is that it is upside down, or cast downwards, and pointing to the earth. This female symbol has become known, in various religions, as the Devil star or the star of Satan, and it can be seen on the Tarot card called the Devil as the Devil's head.

FIG. TWENTY EIGHT TAROT CARDS

167

FIG. TWENTY NINE

God, Kether, Crown

Holy of Holies

Holy Place, courtyard of the priests

Outer court of the Jewish people

Malkuth, court of the Gentiles

The Kabala; plan of the Temple and Qumran.

Also known as Adam Kadmon

168

FIG. THIRTY

The various parts of Adams body are developed from the Kabala structure.

Head of Adam is the yin yang symbol of Pisces.

Shoulders

Neck Arms HANDS

Abdomen

LEGS

FEET

A name given to the Kabala is Adam Kadmon

169

John then goes on to describe the various heavenly signs of the Zodiac, such as Scorpio, Sagittarius, Virgo, Leo and Libra which, through the use of only the five pointed star, are not in complete contact with the earth signs of the zodiac such as Taurus, Aries and others. When we lose contact with these heavenly aspects of ourselves we become unconscious of our inner as these aspects of ourselves speak to us through trance, dreams and visions; if we ignore these communications or are unaware of them the result is the separation of the spirit and the physical which we have all suffered from through the construction of religious law and dogma. This separation is symbolised by the vesica and it is from this womb that we must be reborn to re-contact all those heavenly aspects of ourselves that John tells us we are presently divorced from. Next we see a description of the open part of the scroll- that part which is not hidden and which symbolises the surface interpretation of scripture. It is this surface story which has been used to establish dogma and it is in the hand of the angel which stands, or has his foundation, on the sea (the gentiles) and on the land (the Jewish nation) and he speaks like a lion. This angel then is being portrayed as having his foundations, in both Judaism and the Gentile world but he speaks, or is in thought and teaching, basically Jewish. John reads and absorbs the contents of this book and finds it a little bitter for him. Initially the message contained in the scroll sounds good because he says that it was as sweet as honey in his mouth but once he digested or thought about it he realised that his first impression had been wrong for it was bitter in his stomach. Therefore, although the message in this scroll had, at first, seemed Gnostic it was not for from it is derived a canon which is the measuring rod given to John. This canon is a theological group of ideas brought together to form a measure, or standard, for a particular religion and the verses which follow in John's Revelation are all dealing with this canon of beliefs. It is impossible to use this canon to measure any person who is outside its influence and outside this particular set of beliefs and so these people are the great unclean and unwashed and they trample over the Temple and the canon because they do not recognise its authority. This is, of course, a problem faced by all religions and so many of them have resolved it with forced conversions. The angel who produces the rod of the canon is, in the Tarot, called Temperance. This is a word that comes from the Latin tempare and it means to regulate- another word for measure and therefore, another word for canon; in the Tarot this angel does indeed have one foot on the land and one on the sea. All that John has told us to this point, from the breaking of the first seals all the way through to the last, is simply that the seals are religious ideas, practices and beliefs which arise out of the various interpretations of the Old Jewish Covenant. These beliefs have been made into binding creeds and these are symbolised by the thong and the seals that bind the scroll and to reveal the inner meanings of the Covenant it is necessary to break the seals and undo the binding. As the Latin word, ligare, meaning to bind or tie, is from where our word religion is derived (re-ligare), we think the case proves itself.

170

The blowing of the various trumpets throughout the Revelation and the heralding of what is to come is the withdrawing of the thongs from the holes in the scroll after each seal has been broken; it is the unravelling of that by which we have been bound. This unravelling is done with the assistance of spirits (angels) blowing or speaking through their trumpets or mediums and before the days of the orthodox creed most churches had their resident medium and spirit teacher. This is the breath of God that enlivens the dust of the earth and helps to raise the new man out of that dust to become the living being we saw described in Genesis. Now that the seals are gone, the thong or binding has been removed and the religious dogma and imagery of the open outer copy has been put to one side let us see whether or not the leaders and teachers of these dogma and images have been true to the intent of the message on the inner copy of the scroll. Now, as the next few verses clearly state, “the day of the Christ has surely come”, for the Temple in heaven is now open and revealed to us. We have now come to the most crucial part of the book of John‟s Revelation and in the next few verses we will find out whether or not what we have believed for so long, that which we have read from the open part of the scroll- the surface stories of our religions- does in fact equate with the inner. But before that happens we want you to reflect on the things that have so far been said; for this inner and outer have far more than just one level of meaning and these various levels need to be explored. The Temple at Jerusalem and the Essenic monastery sanctuaries were laid out very much as just outlined in the description of the altar as found in the two star symbol and the Kabala. They had an inner court where the Menorah stood and an altar standing before the holy of holies (the inner sanctum which we are about to enter) within the inner court. Leading into this court but outside it was the court of the priests and it was from these priests that one was selected to be the High Priest and every year he alone entered into the inner sanctum; in the Gospel story of the birth of John the Baptist this event is described. Outside of all this was the court of the Jews and further out yet was the court of the unclean which was for the people of all other nations. It is in this court that we find the multitudes of Revelation who trample over the Temple. We cannot be sure of the organizational structure within the Temple for the only information regarding it comes from the time of the reforms of the Herodian Priests and we have no doubt that they were influenced by Herod whose own religion was Idumean and, therefore, Nabataean, not Judaism. In the case of the sanctuary of the Essenes which, as we have said, was laid out like the pattern of the altar as portrayed in the passages of Revelations we have just dealt with, the priests and teachers took up their places in this sanctuary as described by John. At the head was the voice because he was the way into the Holy of Holies as that could only be entered through trance and he sat before the throne of God altar. Below him in level of office were the priests and they stood about the voice and throne just as described by John; beneath the priests were the administrators and below that were the delegates of subsidiary monasteries. They were called the fingers as there were ten of them and altogether they were the hands or active members of the body of God‟s people. Then there were the teachers within the monasteries who normally did not form the body of the inner community and these 171

teachers are those shepherds whose flocks we find mentioned in the Gospels who were sent by the angels, or delegates, to recognise and demonstrate allegiance to the new born Christ. The evidence we have found in the Gospels and that which arises from the Dead Sea scrolls would seem to suggest quite strongly that something like what we have just described would be close to the truth. If we accept the findings of Dr. Barbara Thiering regarding the hidden teachings called Pesher then we would have to also accept that method of writing symbolised by the inner and outer scroll is to be found in various Essenic writings. So if the Dead Sea scrolls and the Bible conform to and follow this style, and the Bible does at least if what we have found so far is anything to go by, then there must also be many other old documents which have been written in this manner. If this is the case then the Christian religion, regardless of what it has become, must originally have included the inner and outer teachings and it must have been a mystery teaching very much like Gnosticism. This means that the teachings we are aware of now must have originally been based only on the teachings of the outer version of the scroll. If they were not and they had included the inner mysteries we would have been aware of this and known that there was more to our religion than just the childish myths that we are expected to believe is the truth. Lastly, the inner and outer scroll pertain to our own outer or social ways of relating to each other and the inner personal way in which we come to terms with life the universe and ourselves and we must learn to blend both the former and the latter in ways that enables development in both realms and ensures that the one truthfully reflects the other if we are to achieve any degree of self-awareness, let alone become the new Cosmic Man. John's suggestion is that religion and all concepts associated with it are the outer part of the scroll and as we move into the inner part of ourselves we become aware of the reality they reflect, albeit somewhat inaccurately, and we leave these reflections and shadows behind. Genesis says much the same in that Adam grew out of the sands of the sea and the dust of the earth and although he continued to develop through association with all the trees in the garden he began communicating with the Universal directly without the aid of dogma, creeds or priests. When the separation of Eve from Adam took place, however, direct communication was no longer possible and the result was the death of man. It did not take place instantly but was brought about by the gradual repression of the now separated feminine and as the feminine was repressed and died within us and our societies, so did the masculine die for the one cannot exist without the other. This process is well described in the Old Testament and is repeatedly portrayed as the wives of the various Patriarchs having less and less to do with the functioning of the tribes until such time as they become little more than child bearing animals. In fact the flocks and herds of the Patriarchs get far more notice and were considered far more important than the women; this is amply demonstrated in the story of Jacob and Esau and their birthright. Of course the inner symbolic meaning of the flocks and herds is the congregations of the various sects, but the outer stories certainly do leave the lot of women with much to be desired. As one reads these stories and certainly by the time we get to Joseph and the other sons of Jacob, one would think that the Hebrew people had only sons, and daughters were never born to them 172

and because of this these sons could not take wives from within their own tribes and were forced to find them from within the neighbouring nations. When we arrive at the Gospels which, we must remember are still set in the Old Testament period, not only is the feminine spiritual imagery well dead and buried but now also the man. The image of the ideal man is now found dying on the cross which ironically is the symbol for the union between the male and the female or masculine and feminine. But die he must, this man, for society by this time has well and truly destroyed any life that women may have originally had. The teachers of the laws, the teachers of God, the creators of religious structures have placed all their imagery and concepts of the ideal man on the male only and have then pinned this to secret teachings such as the Kabala thereby not only denying the feminine, but also most of the rest of mankind. Now, with the old wisdom lost and the feminine repressed it is not possible to enter into the Holy of Holies, the inner place, and know oneself except through the secrets of the priests and teachers; and, sadly, even they have forgotten what these secrets are. Maybe it is time for us to unravel the Gordian knots (seals) in the same way the Alexander the Great did; maybe we should just cut the knot as if it is an umbilicus, just ignore the priests and walk in to the holy place. Let us now look at the last verses in Chapter eleven of Revelations and the first verses of Chapter twelve and see what John says there is to see in the Holy of Holies. First he says that Godâ&#x20AC;&#x;s Temple in heaven was opened. In Judaism the Holy of Holies in the Temple was considered to represent heaven and this is why at the death of Jesus it was important for the Gospels to say that the veil, in the Temple, was rent as this allowed Jesus entry into the Holy of Holies, or heaven. The Apostle Paul talks about this at length in the book of the Letter to the Hebrews. So now that the Temple is open we also can enter into this place and in there we see the Ark of the Covenant which is the Throne of God. This simply means that we are now able to read the arcane part of the scroll which is now unsealed and unrolling before our eyes, as the thong has been removed or, now that we have begun to drop our religious bindings we are free to seek those inner recesses and deal with whatever we find. This is emphasised by John because he says that there were flashes of lightning, voices and peals of thunder (loud voices) which are the flashes of inspiration, intuitive insight, internal communication and the mediumistic voices which we have come to realise the throne is all about. There is, however, also an earthquake and heavy hail. As we enter into that which has until now been the preserve of those who thought they were something special, such as High Priests, we begin to hear voices not previously heard and receive messages we had previously thought were reserved for the talented trance mediums, or other mystical people. These events cause our world to be turned over, our old concepts are shaken and it seems as if all we are familiar with will be destroyed, as in an earthquake. We are shattered and we are pelted with new ideas of reality which had, until now, been frozen into hard and fast dogmas as if set in stone. Then we realise what it is that we have done for that which sits upon the throne of our own inner appears to us. John describes this new portent by using another of the Tarot cards- the High priestess, every aspect of which is 173

depicted here in John's writing. She holds the Torah in her hand, she sits upon the throne, she wears the symbol of union, she has the moon at her feet and a crown of twelve stars upon her head and she is before the door which leads to the garden. She is the Anima of mankind and it is she who is not found in the outer teachings and religions and so the verdict must be that the outer scroll is invalid for we had to bypass it and its tampered teachings before we could find the inner woman. Carl Jung spent a great deal of his life attempting to show that both Judaism and Christianity had the feminine aspect missing from the Godhead and that neither of these philosophies would adequately explain reality until the feminine aspect was included. He apparently wasted his time for he has been ignored by the orthodox. As I have shown, Revelations says the same thing (as do other books of the time like the Pistis Sophia and the Shepherd of Hermas); and once the seals are broken and the inner writings revealed, it can be seen that the woman was there all the time. She has been ignored, repressed and ridiculed by the teachers of the open part of the scroll and the exoteric writings and our religions have become patriarchal. The early Essenes and Gnostics, early Christianity of the Celtic variety (which was monastic and Gnostic) the Cathars of France and Spain a thousand years later and mystics of all kinds always opposed this patriarchal viewpoint. The dragon or serpent was, as we said earlier, also a symbol for all things feminine and is the symbol for the earth spirit- the energy of the Mother. It is for this reason that it was said that it stood â&#x20AC;&#x17E;beforeâ&#x20AC;&#x; the woman (in the Garden of Eden); not because it was standing in front of her but because it was the symbol that stood for women and the feminine long before the image of Eve for it is the oldest symbol. In some ways it is the better symbol for the Eve symbol can be interpreted to mean a woman or female only, whereas the real meaning is actually feminine and universal physical, the archetypal Mother and as a consequence of this the archetypal woman. It does not mean a woman, or women, as such- just as man or mankind does not mean a man or men. The feminine and earth mother elements are found in all people male and female just as the masculine spiritual elements are also found in both male and female. So in Chapter twelve of Revelations the serpent, which represented the feminine, who stood before and was older than the woman, was about to devour or accept into itself, in the same way John devoured or accepted the teachings in the small scroll, the imagery and teachings of the male child of the woman and so bring forth the sacred marriage between the two of them, when suddenly there was a change of emphasis and the male, or masculine, was deified and raised up to God and his throne. It is not surprising that the older teachings became angry, for now the feminine which they represented were beginning to be repressed and as the male, not the masculine, became more dominant by being raised higher and higher toward Divinity the feminine was cast further and further down and the woman, not the feminine, was portrayed as the mother of God. In doing this the outer teachings became emphasised and divorced from the inner and the male is deified and rules with a rod of iron which is the inflexible canon or creed. The dragon is cast down to the earth, said John and this amazing statement confirms all that I have said above. 174

The dragon is the serpent and the inverted five pointed star is a symbol for the dragon and the feminine. This star is cast down to the earth as it is inverted and its, previously, highest point now touches the signs of Aries and Taurus ( the earth signs) and it points toward Malkuth the earth sign of the Kabala. As the serpent represents the feminine, so does this star in just the same way as the star, right way up, represents the masculine. All that John is trying to reveal to us here is that which we have already outlined above and that is that as the male is being deified, or raised up, so is the female being cast down, or repressed, the one must follow the other as day follows night; turn the symbol over and the opposite will happen because the symbol as it appears on the outer of the scroll, as the Kabala symbol without the circles, is incomplete and misunderstood. The dragon now attempts to overcome the teachings about the woman who, it is said, has given birth to this deified male and in doing so it pours water from its mouth in an attempt to flood her away. This is, of course, no different to the story of Noah, the baptism of Jesus or, indeed, the baptism given by John the Baptist to all his followers or even the baptism of the Church. In all cases the water represents the washing away of the old, unclean and unwanted world and its replacement with the new by rebirth and the passage through the waters of that birth. The waters like a river represent the out-pouring of spiritual knowledge that comes to awaken and re-incarnate those who were in error and dead to the truth. Historically speaking the Gnostic mystics of the time attempted to overcome the teachings of Messianic Judaism/Christianity by flooding the market, so to speak, with all manner of literature and building many centres of learning and sending out itinerant teachers. That the water came from the mouth of the dragon simply means that it came from the â&#x20AC;&#x17E;voiceâ&#x20AC;&#x; and the throne of God. In the end they were thoroughly put down by the Roman Church, although it took many centuries and, the end finally came at a time that John never saw - with the destruction of the Cathar movement in France, and the gaining of political control over the knights Templar. We are told by John, that the dragon was a liar and had always been and this is an incredible pun which must have been used because everybody associated with the Messianists must have known what it meant. Sadly, this also was hidden to such a degree that it is only in the last century that we have once again become familiar with it. Messianic Judaism arose out of the Essenic movement which was originally a Gnostic form of mystery teaching. At some point, more fully explored by others, this movement became more political than spiritual and at that time the idea that the Cosmic Man was male rather than masculine/feminine was born. This fitted well into the Judaic culture because it was already very patriarchal but it also then led to another division in Judaism as it divided into those who perceived the Messianic kingdom as relating to Judea only and those who set out to bring the Messiah to the whole Roman Empire. Among the former group was a person called Simon Bar Kokhba. He died around 135C.E. but prior to this was recognised as the Messiah by a large proportion of the Jews; the pun referred to above relates to his name. Those who thought he was the Messiah and supported his movement called him Simon Bar Kosiba, which means Simon son of the star and as it was recognised that the star was a symbol for both Israel and the Messiah this was a very strong stand to take. That they only recognised the male aspect of the star is irrelevant to the pun. Those, however, who opposed 175

Simon and did not consider him to be the Messiah, and toward the end of his life there were many of these, called him Simon Bar Koziba which means Simon son of the liar. The point being made here is that the word liar- Koziba- can be punned to mean star- Kosiba. This means that the dragon, which was from the beginning called the liar and cast down, is not but was from the beginning the star as we have previously pointed out. Following all these amazing events the woman is given the two wings of the eagle to fly into the wilderness and there she is hidden. The wings of the eagle are those on either side of the Zarathustrian sun disc (see diagram in figure seven) and as the woman is clothed in the sun (which is between the two wings of the sun symbol) this must mean that she was taken into the Zarathustrian wilderness, the Herimos, where we find the Zarathustrian Essenes. She is there hidden among the teachings of the monasticâ&#x20AC;&#x;s who have not joined in with the Messianists but, sadly, they are wiped out during the Jewish-Roman wars. It must be pointed out here that the dragon and the woman were not enemies for the dragon was the older symbol for the same message as presented by the woman. The conflict arose because the priests of the messianic sects deified the male child that the feminine/woman had produced as the new vehicle of the old message. The dragon was about to concur with, or accept this new vehicle and be wed to it when the deification took place. As this happened the mother of the male child, Mary, also became somewhat idealised and it was this deified child and the idealised woman that the dragon opposed. The woman who fled into the wilderness as part of the Zarathustrian Gnosticism was not Mary but the far older feminine principle. It is nice to know that all was not complete failure, for the Celtic Church and the early Marcion Gnostics grew out of the remnants of these people and it was in the Celtic Church above all others that the dragon and the woman were found living in harmony, at least until the next momentous act of which John would have been unaware, for by then he was dead; but the deified male and his priests of the Christian Church all but eliminated the Celtic Church from about 500C.E. onwards and when they had done this they then set about destroying the Cathars of France and Spain around about 1000 to 1100C.E. But before we go on to that we must look at a perplexity which has brought to birth all manner of weird interpretations and this is the number 666. In fact that number does not exist except in non-Latin versions of the Bible for in Latin the number is written as DCLXVi and this can be interpreted, if you are so inclined, to read Duce, Lux, Via which could mean the Lord of the way of the Light. However, in an arcane fashion John could have wanted us to accept that the number, even though it sounded like six hundred and sixty six should have all the extraneous bits deleted and the bare 666 left; a bit like ancient Hebrew without the vowels. If this was the case quite a lot of sense, other than it meaning the Lord of the Light, can be made out of it for at the end of the book of Revelations John talks about the coming marriage between the Universal masculine and the Universal feminine. When that takes place, he says, all our previous concepts of the world, God and the Universe are swept away and we begin to look at things from a different perspective. This union of all things takes place at the same time as he repeats the number for the Universal all, the whole, which we discussed in an earlier chapter and that number is 12x12x12 and it makes no difference whether it is written as stadia, furlongs, miles, inches metres or centimetres. 176

We previously mentioned that the number he used during earlier passages of the Revelation 12x12 or 144, meaning all as in all peoples or all religions or all whales in the sea. When another 12 is added as in 12x12x12, or 144x12, this means all- as in the Universal whole and is the sum total of all whole units. It is not the multiple that is the important number but the multipliers and 144 is not the key, it only reveals the key and that key is the numbers which make up 144 and they are 12x12. Therefore it is not 1728 which is important but the numbers it contains which are 12x12x12. Just as it is not 1728 which is the symbol for the Universal whole, but 12x12x12 for this is the number which describes the cube which is the symbol for the mystical, infinite, Universal City. This number can be written as 12x12x12 or 12/12/12 or even 121212 and half of this number is 6x6x6 or 6/6/6 or 666. So if the totality number appears at the end of the book once the totality of the message has been presented when we are half way through the book of Revelations and have focused on the revealing of the Feminine, which is only half the picture and when we have realised what the serpent represents and what has been done to the teachings of the ancients, John gives us a timely reminder. He says that we should not stop here, for if we do we will end up with a version of the story that is just as badly distorted as any we have seen. He says that this is only half the story, half way through the message and only half of our real being by calling it 666, or 6x6x6 which is half of 12x12x12.

177

GENESIS OF REVELATION

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE POLITICS THAT KILLS THE GNOSIS

The Gospels, as with the rest of the Bible, have more than one level of meaning and the sayings of Jesus himself state this for he is quoted many times as having said that there was the teaching for the ordinary mass of the people and then there were the parables. One level is the morality contained in the teachings and life of the person called Jesus; another level is the myth and mystery of his life and death. Many people, because they have been led to believe that there is only one level of teaching, are confused. That is why priests and theologians are so adamant that Jesus did in fact exist; in spite of the lack of evidence for his life, for them he had to have existed, otherwise their beliefs, teachings and calling is nonsense. This confusion has arisen because, as said in an earlier chapter, the outer story has been attached to 'Jesus bar Abbas', Jesus the son of the Father. Because he is not the real meaning underlying the stories in the Gospels the inner messages have been lost. Within the Gnostic monasteries and schools the first and second levels of knowledge were originally taught together but they were not intended to be kept together indefinitely. Once the pupil realised that the teaching was mystical and about him/herself the first level should have been left behind, in the sense that it has been learnt, it is understood and continual repetition cannot make that knowledge any stronger. The personality, life and myth of Jesus were only the vehicle for the messages which were exactly the same as those that had been taught to young people for thousands of years. No young person should ever have been left with the impression that Jesus was a real person or that there was nothing more than the very surface message in the writings. That they were has psychically disabled society and will continue to have this effect for a long time yet. As well as the myth in the inner story, there is also a level of history of which we have, until now, been unaware because nobody has known that there is a code to be read, let alone anyone to read it. Having said that, there have been people who were able to read it but they rather foolishly let this be known in times of intolerance and they have been ridiculed, tried and executed as heretics or, at the very least, treated as harmless idiots. This encrypted history is the story of Gnosticism in Judea and, to some extent, in the Mediterranean generally. It is the history of its birth, development and subsequent downfall; consequently, to some extent, it is also the history of those who opposed it. It covers the whole of the Biblical period from Abraham to the fall of Simon Bar Kokhba. We have not heard this side of the 178

story before because those who opposed mystical Gnosticism presented such a bad picture of it that it has not been taken seriously. Instead it has been presented as the philosophy of madmen, extremists and impractical dreamers and it has also been suggested that Gnostic teachings were only ramblings believed by witches, wizards and the disciples of the Devil. As we have been finding, mystic Gnosticism was, in reality, the foundation of the Christian Church but it was eradicated by those who sought political power for the Church, rather than real knowledge. This history tells us about the beginnings of the Gnostic philosophy which taught that the truth and God could only be found within the individual and it tells us about its growth out of the Egyptian, Babylonian and Chaldean mysteries as it describes the way in which the philosophy was continually confronted by political pressure until such time that the pressure became too much to bear; then, the foundation was lost and with it the soul of the Church. From time to time, phoenix like, the same spirit and thirst for life and knowledge has reappeared and developed into the various Gnostic movements in the early Celtic Church, the Christian Gnostics and later the Cathars of Southern France. We hope that what we are seeing around the world today is the same drive for freedom, equality, harmony, the realisation of the divinity of all life and the infinite nature of our being that was previously expressed through the mystic teachings. Our urge to eradicate discrimination of any kind seems to be suggesting that this is the case; long may it continue! In the past national pride, social status and boundaries have hindered the message of the Gnostics and most people seem to have been unable to break those shackles and even with the best of intentions the Gnostic Churches have ended up promoting themselves rather than the message and they and the orthodoxy have always ended up labelling each other as angels of Satan. The Gnostic teachers should always have just concentrated on presenting the facts and they should have left recriminations and blame out of their teachings. Because they did not the lack of freedom and equality is to some degree their responsibility as well; however, today, possibly for the first time we have the beginnings of a worldwide community, however faltering, of the kind dreamt about by Gnostics throughout the ages. By the time we arrive at the last great Gnostic movement- the Cathars (including the Knights Templar) they were, in the end, so easily manipulated by the leaders of the Roman Church that, as a result of some very skilful propaganda on the part of those leaders, the populace generally came to believe that Gnostics were demons and disciples of Satan and as a philosophy it has not been taken seriously by anyone since then. Political religion is what we have experienced for the last two thousand years and if it has not been about who will rule which country or state, it has been about what we should believe; and, because we believe this or that, we have been aligned with one country or another and even one side of the street or the other. Mystical Gnosticism is different because it cannot flourish except in a climate of freedom and equality and it teaches a spirit that can be found in any religion, country, era or individual equally. Religion and politics are social inventions. The latter creates structures with which we attempt to deal with each other on economic and nationalistic matters while the former attempts to define how we should think about God from the point of view of man in the society we create. Because there are as many points of view about God as there are members 179

of the human race, this also becomes political. Mystical Gnosis attempts to lead its pupils into an experience defined as holism without trying to define what that is and it assumes that the experience will lead mankind into better political and spiritual relationships; therefore the Gnosis does not recognise boundaries of any kind and will live with the politics of any country and so they are something like cross border spiritual nomads. The stories in the book of Genesis prior to the story of Abraham have nothing at all to do with the Jews as they are a compilation of stories drawn from all kinds of sources and spiritual ideas common to people as far apart as China and Europe. They are drawn from the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh and the religious symbolism of the whole of Mesopotamia and Egypt but the Hebrews, of which the Jews were a very small group were not, originally, of Mesopotamia but probably originated somewhere in the Slavic or Balkan region. And from Abraham to Jacob Genesis is talking, not about individuals, but about nomadic tribes who, in their wanderings, settlings, incursions and wars as they migrated from Europe into Egypt and Mesopotamia absorbed much of the culture and myth of those people they came into contact with. Neither are the sons of Jacob just individual people they are sub-tribes of the main tribe of Jacob and so nor is Joseph an individual but a tribe that goes down into Egypt and rules that country from behind the throne or the figurehead of the Pharaoh. This Joseph, son of Jacob, did not, therefore, go down into Egypt alone as we have been led to believe by the Bible but such a massive tribal migration took place that Egypt was overrun. This was something that happened periodically as nomads looked to Egypt for help in times of need and so it was not an amazing prophecy when Joseph foretold that there would be seven years of famine for this always eventuated when these migrations took place. The Semitic tribes often raised camp and moved into the Middle East in search of food and grazing when things got tough, through drought, war, or over population at home. Because they did this on a regular basis the Egyptians had developed a policy that enabled them to survive the enormous problems these incursions produced. They employed the Semites in doing public and often heavy manual and unpopular work that the Egyptians didnâ&#x20AC;&#x;t want to do themselves in return for the short term provision of emergency food and the long term provision of grazing land. They werenâ&#x20AC;&#x;t considered slaves as such, although the word slave does come from Slav, but their conditions were certainly little better and they were expected to work right up until such time as the migration was over and all the Slavs went home. Many years ago Emmanuel Velikovsky put forward the theory that these Semitic Hebrews were the Hyksos who invaded and ruled Egypt for three hundred years; whilst most scholars disagreed with him because they could not get the timing to match Egyptian records, we think that he was probably correct but it was his timing that was wrong. The Hebrews as a whole group were known to the Egyptians as the Habiru and among the Habiru was a very warlike group of nomads the Egyptians called Hyksos. Like the rest of the Habiru they were Semitic and because of the huge flocks of sheep they owned and the lavish lifestyle they enjoyed the Egyptians gave them the extra title of the Shepherd Kings. We think that the Genesis description of Abraham, Isaac, Esau, Jacob and his sons fits the Egyptian description very well. Velikovsky tried to equate the Hyksos with Jacob, whereas we think they were symbolised by Joseph and that Joseph was a migration that took place three hundred years 180

before Jacob. This idea is reinforced by the Bible itself when it says that Joseph ruled Egypt as the Grand Vizier, which is exactly what the Hyksos did and that Jacob and Josephâ&#x20AC;&#x;s brothers did not come into Egypt until they had been invited there by Joseph. This is also what happened when the Hyksos ruled Egypt for once they had gained the upper hand and held the reins of power they imported many of their nomadic brethren to help them enjoy the pleasures of living in Egypt and being waited on hand and foot by the Egyptians. Genesis is therefore a record, not of just the Jews or Hebrews, but also of the various religious ideas and myths that they came into contact with during their wanderings and the way in which those ideas and myths were taken up and claimed as their own and the reason the Jews had for presenting Genesis in the way they did was to provide a legal justification and framework for the ensuing religious structure of Judaism. But once we realise that those stories are not actually of Jewish origin they open up a window on the history and the development of spiritual ideas that has not been available to us before. When the Egyptian people eventually rebelled against the Hyksos, they drove them out and regained control of their own country and in doing so they drove them into that country we have come to know as Canaan and this is where the book of Exodus begins. However, if we think that Exodus lands us on the solid ground of real history we will, once more, be disappointed. This is no more real history than any other book in the Bible as it also is written on at least two levels; one of which is to do with the Essenes, and the other to do with an interpretation of history which gives credence to a particular canon of beliefs. Although the story of the exodus really begins with the usurpation of power by the Hyksos and the repressive manner in which they ruled the Egyptians there is too much history there for this book and so we will begin with Moses in his reed and pitch boat. The reed and pitch boat, in which Moses was floated on the Nile by his mother, was a symbolic boat which is found incorporated into religious rituals all over the world. The Egyptian priests used this same symbol in their own ways during various religious festivals as it represented the passage of the new-born through the waters of birth in to the new world. According to the Bible this boat was found by members of the Egyptian Royal household among the bulrushes and the child Moses was taken to live with them; he had indeed travelled through the waters from the old world of a slav to the new world of Egyptian Royalty. The bulrushes in which Moses was discovered were not real bulrushes either, they were symbolic and were the pillars of the Temple to Ra which were constructed to look like enormous bulrushes. Moses was brought up in the Royal household of Egypt and in that country, at that time and even during the reign of the Hyksos, the Pharaoh and his Queen were the High Priest and Priestess of the Egyptian religion which held all its sacred festivals and rituals, including the rite of rebirth through water, in the Temple of Ra among the symbolic bulrushes. Therefore the upbringing of Moses was religious not secular and he would have been very knowledgeable about the Egyptian religion and his ability to deal with the priests would suggest that he was in fact a master. Moses on the run, for being a manslayer (a murderer in other words, a fact that seems to have been overlooked by God when he provides Moses with the Ten Commandments) goes to live 181

with a family which, through marriage, eventually becomes his own. His father-in-law is a priest of the religion of the land in which they live and in that country is a mountain of God on which Moses has a vision of God and sees a burning bush. That mountain was a Ziggurat of Mesopotamia and the burning bush was the seven branched candlestick, the Menorah; it has the same relevance to the ziggurat as the ram caught in the thicket; they are both sacred Temple objects. What is being suggested in these passages is that just prior to the time that the Hyksos were driven out of Egypt their religion was an amalgam of ideas from both Egypt and Chaldea. We think that Moses living in the royal household is a symbol for the Hyksos leadership who, as they dwelt among the Egyptian elite became enamoured of their culture and mystical teachings; they desired both of these things for themselves but recognized that they would always be thought of, by the Egyptians, as uncouth barbarians. It seems to us that when Moses takes up the cause of the, so called, Semite slaves he is symbolising the recognition of the Hyksos of their actual roots and as they were not able to coerce the Egyptians into revealing all they wanted to know about the mystical religion they went to Mesopotamia and joined forces with the priesthood and mystical school there. This seems to be reinforced by the story in which Moses returns to Egypt and challenges the Egyptian priesthood with the magic he has learnt from his father-in-law. If this challenge had been successful the priesthood would have collapsed, no further resistance would have been possible by the Egyptians, the Bible would never have been compiled and Egypt and Mesopotamia would have become one Empire. But the challenge was not successful and instead of collapsing the priesthood was given a new lease of life and Pharaoh was encouraged to oppose the Hyksos leadership for the first time in three hundred years. â&#x20AC;&#x153;His heart was hardened against themâ&#x20AC;?, the Bible says, no doubt meaning that he now took a hard line and revolted. In the ensuing revolution, which in our opinion Exodus records, the river ran red with the blood of the combatants, the fields were not worked and when the floods came, as they do each year in Egypt, stagnant pools developed and frogs bred to plague-like proportions. When the pools dried out and the land was not worked insects found themselves a paradise and also bred rampantly. As the crops rotted, the frogs died and rotted and the animals, left untended while the war was fought, died and decayed; as well as this the number of dead bodies of the soldiers increased and as all this decay abounded so did the flies. As a result of these horrifically unsanitary conditions and the malnutrition caused by the lack of farm produce, boils appeared on man and beast alike and all of this is a common scenario under civil war conditions. The conditions were appalling for both sides and Moses (the Hyksos), repeatedly went as envoy to the Pharaoh asking for a truce or surrender but in every case the Pharaoh turned him down. This war was very costly for the Egyptians but they did not back down because they saw that their God had not been bettered by the God of the Hyksos and they saw a chance to free themselves for good, even though it might cost every family in Egypt at least one of its members. This price is recorded in Exodus as the death of the firstborn because, in all wars, it is the first-born or oldest sons, who are the first to die but not only did every family suffer in this way by the time the revolution was over Egypt's economy was ruined. The Hyksos did not escape unscathed either, as they also lost their first born. The 182

Exodus story tells us that by placing the symbol of blood over their doors the Hebrews were passed over by the Angel of the Lord and they were saved. They also had the meal of the Paschal lamb and this became a feast for evermore known as the Passover and it is said to celebrate the fact that the Lord spared the Hebrew first born children. It seems more likely to us that the blood over their doors was a symbolic way of saying that â&#x20AC;&#x153;there is blood on this houseâ&#x20AC;?, just as it is said today when a family member has been involved in murder or other form of violent death. I think the symbolism of the New Testament confirms this in that Jesus dies just prior to the Passover and he is called, by the Christians, the Pascal Lamb. If he really was the Lamb he would have had to die just before the Passover, as did the original lamb, so that it/he could be prepared before the feast. In the Gospel story, however, the reason given for taking him off the cross is not that the Passover was near but that the Sabbath was also close and criminals could not be left on the cross during the Sabbath. But it is very clear from the Gospel stories and the Apostle Paul's letters that Jesus is symbolically the first-born of God who becomes the sacrificial lamb and so this lamb is a symbol for the first-born who has died, not the first-born who has been saved from death. Taking this imagery back to the original Passover in Egypt we would have to say that the lambs represent not the first-born Hebrews saved but the Hebrew first-born who died and the feast was a memorial not a thanksgiving. The term Passover may well have come into the story because by the authors and scribes omitting one or two salient points from the story the facts have been passed over- a term that is sometimes used to the mean the same thing as glossed over. That the Angel of the Lord passed over the houses of the Hebrews in which a lamb, or first-born, had been sacrificed is another way of saying that the messenger who was passing on or recording this event passed over this detail and did not record it, except in the symbolic fashion that we find it. At the end of the revolution we find recorded in the Egyptian records that the Hyksos headed out through the Sinai wilderness toward Canaan and we also find that the Bible now agrees with these real historical records. But if what we have outlined above about the revolution is correct why did the Egyptians chase the Hyksos out into the wastelands as if to get them back? Why did they pursue them to the shores of the Red/reed Sea? We think that the point missed by most scholars is that the Egyptians were not pursuing the Hebrews to get them back but to make sure that they did not come back and they were prepared to take some more losses to make sure that they did not. But whatever they were doing we can be sure that there was no miracle parting of the Red Sea involved because the Red Sea and not even the swamp lands that have been called the reed sea because of all the bulrushes and other reeds that grow there, was ever involved as some scholars have tried to suggest that they were. The Bible says that once the Hebrews had arrived in the wilderness and had time to recover from their ordeal Moses ordered the construction of the Ark of the Covenant and to date we have all assumed that this is how the Ark came into being. If the Bible says something is so it must be so; but not this time. In the Hieroglyphic paintings on the walls of the ruined Temple at Heliopolis an object is depicted which is the exact replica of the Ark described in Exodus. It takes pride of place in the Temple as this was the Throne of God in the Egyptian Temple and was the priests medium of communication with their God. We suggest that on leaving 183

Egypt the Hyksos stole this Throne and as they were leaving the Temple they passed through an artificial lake immediately outside the Temple. It was on this lake that the reed and pitch boat of Moses was floated at festival times and it was from this lake that the pillars of the Temple, looking like huge bulrushes, rose. This lake was also called the sea of reeds and it is through this sea of reeds that the Hyksos fled with the Throne. So although the Egyptians were ensuring that the Hyksos did not come back when they chased them through the sea of reeds they were also attempting to recover their Throne of God. They failed and because they failed history records the Ark as having originally been the property of the Hebrews. It would seem that the Royal house of Egypt also suffered some kind of disaster as the story says that Pharaoh died in the sea of reeds. Maybe, because he could not recover the throne and as he was the High Priest of the religion which used it to commune with God, he was removed from that position. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x;t think Egyptian records show this and if not then maybe this section of the story needs rethinking. There are many inconsistencies in the Exodus story which have not been taken into account; had they been we would never have accepted any of this myth. For example, when the Hebrews left Egypt they were supposed to have been escaping from slavery. How is it then that they were wealthy in gold, silver, copper and gemstones, with which we are told they built the Ark and the Temple utensils? Where did the rich fabrics come from for clothing of the priests, the covering of the Ark and the hangings in the Tabernacle? Where did all the expensive timbers come from? These people were supposed to have been destitute refugees and yet after all the horrendous things they had experienced at the hands of the Egyptians and after having built the Ark and the Tabernacle and furnished everything that went with them these hungry dissatisfied people were able to find enough gold left over to make themselves a statue of a golden calf, and no small one at that. These were not poor slaves; they were the ex-rulers of Egypt. The Hyksos had taken advantage of the Egyptian goodwill and through this eventually took control of the country. These ex-rulers had not only taken the Ark when they left the country they had taken all manner of other things which they considered theirs by right. They were, also, not used to the arduous life of slaves and their continual moaning to Moses about the conditions they found in the wilderness is proof of this; if they had been slaves the wilderness would have been like a Sunday picnic to them. But these people were used to soft living and creature comforts and that is why, unlike any ex-slave, they wanted to go back to Egypt. The history of Egypt states that when the Hyksos left Egypt they fled into Canaan and Seir, an early name for Nabataea. In Exodus we are told that after leaving Egypt the Hebrews became very thirsty and Moses smote a rock and water poured forth from the cleft in the rock. In Biblical terminology to smite is to attack in a warlike fashion and in historical terminology the capital of Nabataea was Petra and Petra means rock. From Petra there runs a narrow wadi and through this wadi runs a stream; for centuries this wadi has been known as the cleft in the rock. So when the Hebrews left Egypt they smote Petra and gained the water which ran from it and, the Bible says, they remained there for some time; in this the Bible seems to agree with the Egyptians. We think the evidence is very strong for accepting that the Hebrews of Genesis and Exodus are the Hyksos of history and the books of Genesis and 184

Exodus have been put together in the way they have to provide the Hyksos with a slightly better record than that to which they are actually entitled. Accepting that Joseph was symbolic of the Hyksos also explains why there is a hiatus in the biblical information about the Hebrews between the times of Joseph and Moses. There is nothing that could be recorded about these times as to do so the authors would be writing about the rulers of Egypt and would have had to admit the truth. It is our opinion that with the death of Moses the book of Exodus finishes the story of the incursions of the Hyksos and there is no further historical information about them, or their Habiru brethren, as they settled in Canaan and Seir and became almost indistinguishable from the indigenous population in both countries. This is what the Egyptians recorded and they should know as they set a garrison in the Sinai desert and left it there for many decades just to ensure that the Hyksos stayed where they were. We suggest, therefore, that the books of Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy and Joshua were all added at later dates for several different reasons. Like other books of the Bible, Exodus has two or more levels of meaning; there is the surface level we have all known about and there is obviously a second level we have just found. There is also a third level that reveals the identity of the writers to us. Scholars of the Dead Sea scrolls have become aware that the Essenes spent vastly more time than all other Jewish sects writing and re-writing the books of the Bible and it does not take much imagination to appreciate that the book of Exodus could very well be a symbolic blueprint of the office of the Teacher of Righteousness (Moses) and his relationship to the High Priest (Aaron) in the wilderness. From this point of view the book is symbolically presenting to us the foundation and nature of the office of the Teacher of Righteousness, what was expected of that office and the relationship between the Teacher and the High Priest. It also lays out the rules and regulations for the office of High Priest and the way that both the High Priest and the Teacher should relate to the general populace. That this is what the book is really about is even more clearly seen once one realises that the Essenes did in fact understand their Teacher of Righteousness to be a charismatic character after the likeness of Moses. Exodus clearly points out that the Teacher was one who spoke directly with God and that he was the fountain or source of the vision. The Aaronic priests attended to the Throne of God and in the absence of a Teacher, which happened from time to time, they would act as stand in voices. It was up to the Levitical priests to interpret the vision for the people in ways that could be translated into laws, and rational and understandable teachings. We think that this is the manner in which the Essene communities functioned, but instead of being called Moses, the teachers were called “The Teacher” and “The Voice” and if this is indeed the case then Leviticus is probably the Essenic handbook for the priests within the communities and Deuteronomy is the hand book for the disciples and new entrants We believe that when these books are read in conjunction with the Dead Sea scroll books such as the Manual of Discipline, as complementary material, this point of view will prove to be correct. However, this leaves us with a slight conundrum for it does not explain the books of Numbers or Joshua and they both seem out of place. Numbers may be explained by accepting that there must have been some ancient material on which the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy were 185

based and Numbers may have been that material; it is already obvious that both Numbers and Deuteronomy replicate almost all the information contained within each other and this seems pointless. But Numbers lacks the distinctly Hebrew/Jewish flavour of Deuteronomy and so it may have been originally from some non-Jewish source. We do wonder if it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x;t the document we will be discussing shortly, which was found in the dilapidated Temple of Solomon just before the invasion of the Babylonians. Joshua on the other hand cannot be explained like this but it does have an explanation which we think you will find fascinating. The books of Judges and Samuel, which are supposedly written by the descendants of the people who conquered Canaan, are not talking about a victorious conquering people fully in control of their land. They are talking about a people who never fully conquered the Canaanites, who were never fully settled in the country they claimed to be theirs by God given right and who were constantly at war with each other, tribe against tribe; even in their new land they couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x;t shift their tribal habits. History and archaeology show that in fact the Habiru conquered very few of the Canaanite towns and villages and the Canaanites or Palestinians were always living in the country in dominant numbers alongside and intermingled with the Israelites and later the Jews. The Hebrews settled into Canaan and Nabataea both as defeated Hyksos and some as settling nomads; Nabataea they may have smote but there is no historical or archaeological evidence to suggest that they ever conquered or dominated either country. They inter-married and took on much of the local culture including the religion and the Bible says as much itself. By comparison with Exodus the religious beliefs of the Hebrews reported in the books of Judges and Samuel are very primitive. Where are the Levitical priests? Where is the Tabernacle? Where are the sacrifices and where are the sacrifices sacrificed? Why are the people using seers instead of Priests and why do these seers go to the high places rather than the Tabernacle where they might talk to God at the Ark, why do these books have a theology that is quite foreign to Exodus and why is the most precious treasure of the Israelites, the Ark, stored in a farmers house? In the land of Canaan, which was the promised land and one flowing with milk and honey and the presence of God, the people are believing in primitive concepts of God, they have not settled their tribal issues in spite of the overpowering presence of God that was demonstrated to them in the wilderness, they do not have the sophisticated priesthoods that God set up for them and do not have a Teacher of Righteousness. Who are these people? Instead they have primitive judges who run round in animal skins and do almost anything but cast the bones to get Godâ&#x20AC;&#x;s attention and there is nothing written in these books which would lead one to think the people had any knowledge of Moses and the heroics he was supposed to have performed. We contend that the book of Joshua does not usher the people of the Exodus into the Canaanite period covered by the books of Judges and Samuel because this would be putting the more enlightened (Exodus) before the most primitive. Exodus is obviously a later theology than the books of Judges and Samuel and has been added to the Bible canon in the manner we find it to give an impression of antiquity; therefore, Joshua must also have been added at a later date.

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We are of the opinion that Joshua was added at about the time of the Maccabean wars with the Greeks in order to justify the use of politics, subversion and warfare to promote the interests of a theocracy. When the book of Joshua is read with this in mind a number of similarities between Maccabean practice and the events reported in Joshua become apparent. The term commander for instance, found in Joshua but in none of the books of Moses, was used as a rank in the Maccabean army. The soldiers of Joshua also had an intense sense of the need for ritual purity just as there was among the Maccabeans and the Essenes. We also find that the writer of Joshua proudly portrays his God of the Ten Commandments and the Laws, leading the Hebrew people into situations where they have to break all those laws with the supposed justification that they need to do this to claim the promised land and this was the exact reason given by the Maccabees to justify their own excesses. The Maccabees considered themselves to be the house of David and so, obviously, did the characters in the book of Joshua and also maybe its authors for the name David is actually a title and simply means commander and so to be of the house of David is to be of the line of commanders who are fighting for God and country; which is of course the case with Joshuaâ&#x20AC;&#x;s soldiers. The Maccabees believed that God was leading them and at times God would make exceptions for them; they had to produce a book with which they could convince the people that this was actually so. If Joshua is an addition, then the story of the Hebrews in Canaan begins with the books of Judges and Samuel and it is the history of very gradual assimilation- the Hebrews of the Canaanites and the Canaanites of the Hebrews. The religion which is the result is certainly not that which is presented in Exodus and therefore, Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy have all been added at a later date by the Essenes or their forerunners as a coded message about their own establishment in the wilderness. The history at the beginning of Exodus was probably written from traditional sources, including Egyptian records found in Egyptian libraries, to create the illusion of antiquity. The proof of this point arrives in Second Kings Chapter twenty two just before all the people of Canaan are taken into Babylon as slaves. This happened to many people at the time, not just the Jewish people and just as the Assyrians raided various surrounding countries to restock with slaves, so did the Babylonians from time to time. This time we are clearly told that the whole country was left barren and so we must conclude that all the inhabitants, regardless of race or ethnicity were captured. In Second Kings we are told that just before this event the priests of the dilapidated Temple of Solomon were doing repairs to the Temple when they found a scroll within the Temple. It was realised that the scroll was a book of the law and that it was law and religious lore that the priests and people had not been practising (shades of Revelations), it is this that we think may have been the book of Numbers. In fact this book had been so long out of use that the writing was not generally understood and had to be interpreted before anyone could understand what it said. Then it was decreed by the King that the laws and lore contained within the book should be put into common usage. Not as it was remembered, for it had been forgotten and nobody knew of it or could recall it ever having been known before, but as it was written. What then was the religion of these people before this? And who were these people and their priests? They could not have been Jews for obviously they were unaware of 187

the need to do those things which are peculiarly Jewish- circumcision being one of them. So, was it Jews that were taken to Babylon? We think not; at least not in anything but name alone. No, it was all the inhabitants of Canaan and essentially that was the end of history for those races and that country. The Bible tells us a number of things about the exile in Babylon, few of which agree with our assumed interpretation; things like the people of Canaan being in Babylon for a long time and it in fact says that those who went never returned. The Bible also says that they were there for seventy years. We have already discussed biblical symbolic time and Jubilees and how seven represents the endings and beginnings of cycles. It is these cycles that are hidden in the story of Noah, the baptism of Jesus, the universal city of the Revelation of John and now, the story of the exile; and so the people of Canaan never did return to their country. When people did come back to Canaan it was no longer known by that name; it had the Persian name of the province beyond the river and the people who came to this province of the new Persian Empire had indeed been slaves but they may not ever have been Hebrews. Because many slaves did not know where their homeland was, when Cyrus passed his decree that freed them, it was agreed that ex-slaves could live anywhere in the Empire they chose so long as they did so in harmony with the original inhabitants. So there was a very mixed group entering and settling in the province beyond the river. To some degree it is these that those who have been called Jews had trouble with when they attempted to build their Temple; these and those people who had drifted in and settled after the land had been stripped of its original occupiers by the Babylonians. Among these latter people were a large number of Nabataeans. The priests of the people who settled in the province beyond the river and built a Temple believed in the same God that told Cyrus to free the slaves; this is accepted by the minor prophets such as Nehemiah and Ezra and knowing what we do now they were Zarathustrians and their Temple must have been to the God Ahura Mazda. These priests came face to face, on arrival in the province, with Nabataeans and their version of religion and the minor prophets of the Old Testament are all records about the battle that ensued as one religion fought against the other in attempts to gain control of the minds and souls of the people and through them the political control of the new country. In the end, in the far distant future at that time, we think the Nabataeans, through Herod, won the battle and Herodian Rabbinical Judaism was the result; sadly the country was lost again in the process. The Nabataeans who had moved and settled in the province beyond the river are those people who became known as the Idumeans and Samaritans. They worshipped exactly the same God as the one which became known as the God of the Jews and they had exactly the same religious practices, feasts and festivals. They claimed descent from Abraham and they claimed that God spoke to them through their priests, from a throne of God (as found in Nabataea) whilst the priest was in trance. The only difference between these two peoples was that the Idumeans did not recognise the Temple or the need for it. They insisted that God was found on the high places, just as experienced by Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses and Samuel. The people who worshipped in the Temple, although to be utterly truthful 188

it was built on one of the old high places, were descendants of the Zarathustrian migrants who, by the time we get to the era of Herod the Idumean King of the Jews, have forgotten all about their Zarathustrian roots and have almost totally absorbed the religion of the Nabataeans to the point where they are claiming it as exclusively their own. It is clear to us that the religion we find the 'returned exiles' practising, in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, is the indigenous religion of the Idumeans biased to suit their own needs by the Zarathustrian ideas absorbed in Babylon and, in other words, Jacob (the â&#x20AC;&#x17E;returning exilesâ&#x20AC;&#x;) usurped it from Esau (Nabataea). That is has been claimed to be unique to the Jewish people is nonsense because those people who claimed to be the returning exiles knew nothing of any religion that their forebears may have adhered to and they certainly had no knowledge of the religion that Ezra and Nehemiah wanted them to practice. This is quite clearly pointed out for us in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah for there it is openly stated that these people had foreign wives, yet to be good Jews they ought not. These people had been in Babylon a long time and, on entering the new land, had brought with them their wives, whom at that time they did not consider foreign, as they were surely entitled to do. So why were their wives all of a sudden foreign? Even some of the priests had these, so called, foreign wives; how then could they be priests? As well as this, we found earlier, when the Canaanites were dragged away to Babylon they went without any knowledge of any religion which may have been called Judaism as there was no religion of this kind in the land at that time. Now, not only did they have foreign wives but they were not even circumcised and did not know that they were supposed to be; they ate non-kosher food, did not know of any of the feasts or festivals and they had Babylonian names. All in all we think we can safely accept that these people had no connection with any religion that may have existed previously and that this was, in fact, a totally new beginning. There were no people called the Jews and they did not even arise here. In fact they did not appear as a unified body of people with a unified canon of religious beliefs until the rise of the Maccabeans and the wars against the Greeks. This is when the Maccabeans with the sword, fear, fire, threats and not so gentle persuasion melded the people of Palestine/Canaan into a homogenous whole, gave them a canon of beliefs and called the resultant nation Judea. The books of Daniel and Ezekiel give quite a wrong impression of events relating to Babylon, because those books were not written until about two hundred and fifty years after the first settlers arrived in Palestine, from Babylon. Some scholars think they may even have been written a late as the first century C.E. These books give the impression that life went on quite normally for the exiles in Babylon; but in reality they were slaves and as such most had miserable lives and no rights at all. The idea promoted by these books and some of the apocryphal ones that the Jews were granted special dispensation to worship their God, rather than the Babylonian variety is nonsense and this is proven by the facts recorded about their wives. How can they have been ignorant of so many things about their religion yet still be practising it in Babylon. This brings us to the next act in the saga for not long after the beginning of the development of this Jewish religious philosophy and their disenchantment with the Zarathustrian theology 189

derived from the period of the captivity, the Greeks entered the picture in the person of Alexander the Great. All the religious variations of the Mediterranean then became influenced by Greek thought and this influence was enormous. For some the influence was too much and it led to a great deal of social upheaval. The Essenes were in the forefront of these battles for mind and soul that were raging around the Mediterranean in those days; not just in Judea as we have believed; there is no doubt that these battles did wax particularly hot in Judea nonetheless. The Essenes did not arise overnight and we think it is too simple to date them as late as 150 B.C.E. as has been done for we think that their forerunners were the prophets and people like Samuel, who lived in the wilderness as hermits; Elijah and Elisha being other examples. As mentioned earlier Elijah was the forerunner of John the Baptist and he was so popular with the Jewish people that even today many think that if the Messiah comes he will either be Elijah reincarnated or will be introduced to the world by Elijah in a John the Baptist type role; Jesus is even quoted as saying that one may believe that John was Elijah come again. We are also told that John the Baptist was born to one Elizabeth and we have already explained the meaning of this name. This story is telling us that John- the Essenes- was born out of that movement or teaching which became synonymous with Elisha and therefore Elijah. Those teachings of the prophets go back to, and through, those indigenous people of Canaan who were the Idumeans and Samaritans and not those people we call the Jews. In this Jesus can again be quoted, for he says to the Jews “My father you do not know” and “Before Abraham was I am”. Originally these people, the Essenes, must have been teaching much the same things as recorded of Elijah and Samuel and this would have included communication with God through trance mediums and spirit. But interestingly as the bulk of the people fell away from Zarathustrianism and followed the God of the Nabataeans, the prophets and their disciples, who became the Essenes, took up many of the concepts of Zarathustrianism and included in these were Ahura Mazda, Ahriman and Soshayanus. As the Jewish people became more dominant in Judea, so did they control more of the political and the religious organization; by 150B.C.E. the date the Essenes first come to our attention, they are having a running battle with the priests of the Temple and eventually, prior to the wars with the Romans, the Essenes become political and an extension of the Maccabees. This process really began with the decision by the Maccabees, headed by Judas, to drive the Greeks out of Palestine; a goal they accomplished around 140B.C.E. To achieve this the Maccabean family had to take complete political and military control of the country and, in the process, they turned what had been a loose collection of religious ideas and structures into the foundation of that which became the Jewish religion. The Essenes were eventually drawn into this and consequently perished, as far as their spiritual teachings were concerned; for in changing the philosophic direction of the Essenes the Maccabees also changed the structure of the communities. Previously there had been the Abba (Father, Voice) or Abbot and after him there was the secular administrator whose work it was to feed, clothe and house all members of the community. Alongside him there was the High Priest who was in control of the spiritual welfare of all the members and together, these two would interpret the utterances of the 190

Abba, or voice, into practical applications within the arena of their responsibility. On becoming political this structure was altered. The Abba remained but was now almost infallible and the secular administrator became the King/Messiah and, therefore, totally political; the High Priest retained his previous position. During the wars with the Romans and at the collapse of the Jewish political infrastructure, these three offices were amalgamated into one which became the Christos/Messiah, High Priest and King. Because the battle was lost this office became that to which the Messianic Jews looked and hoped for future salvation from the rest of the world. This was a political structure and the communitiesâ&#x20AC;&#x; main purposes from then on became safe houses for Zealots fleeing from Roman soldiers, storage for weapons and training grounds for new Zealot soldiers. Because there was now no mystery teaching and no pupils of the mystery the teachers and disciples of the original Essenism left Judea and set up their main centres in places such as Petra and Rome. They had no political axe to grind all they wanted was to be teachers of the gnosis. The reason that Judas's thirty pieces of silver became valueless, as reported in the Gospels, was that each year the Essenes took in three hundred new pupils who, because they were generally poor, were unable to pay much toward their expenses. However, to ensure that the pupils retained their integrity and took responsibility for their own lives they were asked to pay a tenth of a shekel. As there were three hundred pupils the total amount paid was thirty pieces of silver and so these pupils became known, colloquially, as the thirty pieces of silver. So as the Essene communities lost their teachers they also lost the pupils and the zealots found that instead of silver they had a handful of sand. The upshot of this was that the Zealots leaked information to the Romans to the effect that they would find the rebel leaders in these communities which resulted in the Romans storming and demolishing them and taking prisoner the few teachers and pupils left. It must be remembered that the Essenic-mystic teachings were present throughout the Mediterranean but it was only in Judea and the Judean centres throughout the Roman Empire that these political changes were taking place and it was not until Constantine established the Christian Church of Rome that all others were affected. It is because of this that it was said that the Jews were responsible for the death of the Christ. So we are back full circle to the beginning of the New Testament canon, to the various councils which decided that Jesus (the person not the Yeshiva teaching) had a mother, that she was a virgin and that her name was Mary and then wrote all this into the Gospels. Essentially the need for Mary as the mother of Jesus and a virgin arose because of the disruption, at the councils, being caused by the Ephesians which we read about in the Acts of the Apostles. The Ephesians had a roaring tourist trade among pilgrims who went there to visit the shrines of Diana. The Ephesian metal workers made amulets of Diana which they sold to the pilgrims and it was worth a small fortune to them. If, at the beginning of Christianity, they had been forced to give up this trade the economy of the city and province would have collapsed. Mary was the sop given to them to replace Diana and in effect all that happened was that the name Diana was changed to Mary and because Diana was a virgin, Mary became one also. What was not understood by the theologians, as they had never studied the subject, was that Diana and all the other goddesses like her represent the Earth, new birth, creation and all other mystical, feminine 191

qualities. So, unwittingly, they were including in their canon many of the ideas of those who they called heretic. Mary however, for whatever reason she was given, is an excellent choice of name for Mary is called the Star or Queen of the Seas and she is, therefore, as we have pointed out earlier, the Earth Mother symbol; for the Earth Mother rules both land and sea. All Goddesses of any note, such as Isis, Astarte, Venus and Diana also had names like the Morning Star, Star of the Sea and Queen of the Sea; so Mary is obviously just another name for the same symbol. But Mary, it was claimed, was of the House of David and it was important for the Roman Church to state this because, at that time, the House of David was the only family that could produce a Messiah/King for the people of God. The sad thing about this is that, in the context of a loving, caring and peaceful saviour, it makes no sense at all. The title, House of David, was claimed by the Maccabeans and it was from this latter family that the Zealots grew. They, like the Maccabeans before them, were fanatical religious soldiers, totally political, quite happy to bend the rules when it suited them but exacting the most severe punishments on any others that did so. These Zealots are to be found in the group around the Messiah Jesus portrayed in the Gospels, the most obvious one being Judas and he would do anything that would benefit his movement. This included revealing the whereabouts of the Xystus teachers to the inner council of priests, in return for which, he gains control of the thirty pieces of silver. Although the Maccabees controlled the movement symbolised by the thirty pieces, for nearly two hundred and fifty years in the end it did them no good; Judas- the Maccabean armed forcescommitted suicide at Masada in 73C.E. Mary of the House of David is, therefore, a political figure and only belongs in the story of Jesus bar Abbas. Mary the Virgin on the other hand is a Mystical person and this image of the virgin is found in the old Mysteries of Egypt, Chaldea and Greece to name just a few. She symbolises the Temple virgins, of which the Vestal virgins are an example and they have come down to us as the nuns of Catholicism and Anglicanism; the virginal brides of Christ. Originally these women symbolised the Earth Mother who is, at one and the same time, pregnant, giving birth and virgin. They were the priestesses in the various temples and during their tenure had intercourse with men who came to the Temple to honour the Goddess. This intercourse was considered a holy function and symbolised the union between the Goddess and the male God and therefore, when the women left the Temple to return to normal life they were considered to be still virgin and could marry. Nevertheless, in doing this, they portrayed other aspects of the Earth Mother in that she is all women; she is mother, wife, daughter, lover and whore. If any of these priestesses became pregnant while carrying out their duty to the Goddess the child was called a child of God and was considered to be semidivine. Any such child was cared for, as an orphan, by the priestesses within the nunnery and it is obvious that in breaking the story down in this way that Mary, just like the rest of Judaism and its Messianic sect Christianity, is a mixture of both the original mystery teachings and an awful lot of political propaganda.

192

GENESIS OF REVELATION

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

NEW BEGINNING

What do you do when your God deserts you? What is to be done when promises are broken and hopes betrayed? What do you do when all the signs and portents tell you that the God who is supposed to be on your side, come what may, is nowhere to be found when the worst comes. In the rebellions against the Romans the Maccabean messianists invested all their hopes and the hopes of the people of Judea in what they saw as the fulfilment of their greatest dream; the coming of their kingdom. In doing so they portrayed themselves in the same mould as the prophets and Patriarchs of old and convinced themselves and the people that they were the natural heirs to this heritage. To ensure the fulfilment of this dream they were prepared to take the most drastic measures and justify them in the name of their God and religion, in the process the lives of thousands of people were ruined and a country, initially innocent, was destroyed. As a result, the world began to lose those teachers who had helped to bring civilisation and learning to the Mediterranean. In the end all these hopes and all the suffering was in vain for, in essence, the messianists had shown themselves to be the sorcerer's apprentices and the floodgates were opened by them and the world of the Mediterranean was plunged into centuries of ignorance. On the surface the history of religion in the Mediterranean area looks very complex, but underneath it is not quite so, for most of the religions of Persia, Greece, Rome, Nabataea, the Arabic nations in general and Babylon were varieties, or sects, of Zarathustrianism. This religion was openly a mystery or mystical teaching and within it there were a number of levels of teaching; the transition from one level to another depending on the degree of comprehension of the disciple or pupil. The surface teaching- that which was taught to the mass of the population- was what we see as the different religions or interpretations of the basic philosophy. Each one varied according to the culture in which it was being presented but underlying all this was the gnosis that was common to most religions which was revealed to the disciples by the teachers as they showed potential to learn. Within these mystic religions, most of which were monastic, the offices of administration were: the Abbot or Father, the Teacher and the High Priest. Only In Judea did the conversion of this structure to political ends make the office of Abbot synonymous with King and this set the path for future developments that led to the idea that the Maccabeans were divinely inspired and guided. This concept became so powerful that on many occasions the Maccabean family put their fate on the line by stating the outcome of a battle before it had begun and swearing that, if they were successful, this would prove that God was with them. This led to the idea that the 193

Maccabeans were in the process of bringing the Kingdom of God to earth and that the King of this Kingdom would be a Divinity ruling by Divine right and essentially the right hand of God. This really was a gross misinterpretation of the symbolic teachings of the mystics and the story of Soshayanus but even so this claim to divine right is not unique as most fanatics have claimed something like it as they carry out their self appointed mission; in the case of the Maccabees, however, it certainly has had world-wide repercussions. Within the mystic teachings, the son of God image has always been near the surface for it is a symbol of what we may become should we wish to look further than just the surface stories. It can be found as Osiris, Dionysus, Krishna and Jesus and in the Zarathustrianism of Persia, which the Western Christian world steadfastly ignores, it was Soshayanus and these were all symbolic names and should never be taken literally. These symbols reveal aspects of ourselves that we may otherwise not look at; the light as well as the dark. They are symbols of our own psychological processes and can lead us to ever greater understanding of the Universal nature of our whole being. Never, however, should they be brought into the reality of our world for they are not beings of space and time even though they are very powerful imagery; nuministic Carl Jung said. They are aspects of our psyche which have the ability to release in us all that is best as well as all that is worst. This is why they have always been portrayed as Gods and other beings which are in the realm of not self. In fact these aspects of our psyche often behave as if they are the ultimate Ego and many say that they and God are one and the same but, nevertheless, it is through this ego that we do contact the ultimate. It must be made clear, however, that if any of these godlike beings do appear in our own personal world, unless we are very careful, what we may be dealing with is unbridled ego for, in this case, we have projected our inner selves onto the outer world and lost control of it. John the Baptist was aware of this problem and says so at the baptism of Jesus. He would not recognise that Jesus, who was known as Bar Abbas, was the son of God and he would have no part in the release of this upon the people. He said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;I did not know him,â&#x20AC;? meaning the form of King Messiah that the people were seeking and eventually received from Pilate and Caiaphas; he also said that he was not worthy to unlatch the thongs of the sandals of this Messiah. This has been taken to mean that John considered Jesus to be more important than he was himself but we think that this was not so and that what he was actually saying was that in his opinion there was nobody who could legally or morally recognise this portrayal of the son of God Messiah. In the book of Revelations we are told that when the scroll was taken from the hand of the one who sat upon the throne it was found to be bound with seven seals and as we have seen, it also had a thong lashed around it. It was said of this scroll that nobody was found who was worthy to open it and we have shown that this was because it was illegal to do so; one might say that nobody was worthy to unlatch it. So how does this scroll have anything to do with the sandals of Jesus? Well sandals refer to the feet and feet refer to foundations, those foundations on which we make our stand and on which we establish our being. In the Old Testament book of Daniel for example, the term feet of clay is used and refers to people who, or things that, have shaky foundations. We also say that where we are born is where we have our feet and so the family seat, the place of our family home, is the place of our feet or 194

foundation; it is our roots. So the sandals to which John the Baptist was referring is that foundation which was being presented as Jewish belief and authorisation of the Messianic point of view. This foundation was the Jewish Bible, the Christian Old Testament, which included the so called five books of Moses and the many other works with which the Maccabeans had probably tampered to justify their actions. Therefore, it is the scroll referred to in Revelations, the sandals referred to by John and the thong he is unworthy to unlatch is also the thong of the scroll. John (the Essene) says that he cannot accept or teach that interpretation as he will not give the Messianic movement that kind of support, morally or legally. Because of this the Essenic leadership is overthrown and the backing sought by the Maccabeans is given to them by the new leadership as the movement becomes political. This is now the Essenic movement out of which the Church eventually grows; but Jesus (the Yeshiva) moves away from the new Essenes and comes into the towns and villages and at the same time, many of the disciples of John desert the now political movement and go over to the Yeshiva teachers. These are symbolised by Simon and Andrew but there are others and among them many zealots or Maccabeans (they really were one and the same thing), who are symbolised by both the names Zelotes and Judas. These radical converts may have been genuine in their desire for change, but they may also have been sleepers; whatever they were they would eventually lead the Yeshiva movement into hard times. These difficulties are foreshadowed when the Yeshiva teachers are confronted by the leaders portrayed, in the Gospels, as Satan and they are tempted to throw in their lot with the political movement. The Yeshiva is told that if they will throw in their lot with the Messianists together they will rule the kingdoms world and this offer is made a number of times as the storm front of war with the Romans draws closer; each time the offer is rejected. The Messianists needed the support of the Yeshiva teachers as they influenced a large percentage of the population and if they could not get it with persuasion they would eventually get it by the assassination of most of the leaders of the movement. We think that they missed the most important head of the Yeshiva movement which was the Teacher of Righteousness; the Zealots thought they had ensured his death by presenting him to the Romans and it was in fact reported that he had died. But it seems that he survived this treachery and escaped to Rome where he lived to an old age and worked to counter the growing power of the Messianists ideals. The rest of the story of the Gospels, the life and teachings of Jesus, is a condensation of the teachings and practices of the mystic communities who were healers, teachers, farmers, and promoters of all things to do with freedom and well-being; they were in most respects ordinary everyday people and most of the stories about the miracles and visions associated with Jesus are actually representative of the different levels of discipleship within the communities and the passage of the disciple from one level to the next. These stories have all been distorted with the development of the Christian Messianic concepts and an example of this is the fourteen Stations of the Cross found within the present Roman Church. These are called the mysteries of the Christ and yet how many people actually realise that this is exactly what they are- mystery teachings. Yet the whole conglomeration has been presented for centuries as if they were reports of factual events and the Church has even had the gall to teach that the bread, at communion, actually becomes the body of Christ at the same time that it states that this is a mystery. The whole mystery has become lost and misunderstood 195

because it was used to represent the appearance of God in the world as an individual man and the deification of that person. This is the reverse of the truth for all is the Whole, the Universal City as described in John‟s Revelation and the individual is raised up in consciousness through the realisation of that. This raising of consciousness happens to all individuals, it is not a matter of religious dogma and there are no rules or regulations concerning it. You do not have to believe it and you may even wish to ignore it for all eternity and that is your right but in as much as one person is raised in consciousness we are all raised with that person because we are all the same and one Whole. To see the true mystery, as it was originally outlined, we need to turn the story around and to do this we need to realise that the starting point is just prior to the crucifixion (or as we have seen it to date-just after the crucifixion) at the tomb. For this we do not need the assistance of Josephus Flavius Arimathea for the tomb is a symbol for our world, our own individual and personal world, in which we do not perceive the reality of the whole. We are dead and we are clothed in our tomb clothes which are the teachings of the various religions which we follow. Some of these teachings are very sweet and have a pleasant aroma and this is why the symbols of frankincense and myrrh are used and the tomb of our religion is in the midst of a garden which is the same as the one we found in Genesis. At some point in our life we may experience something that leads us to think that there may be something outside of our usual experience which we need to look at and if we do decide to take a new look at things we start to move out of our tomb. This change of perception may be and often is, assisted by angels (messengers) which are mystic happenings such as dreams, trance medium voices, and synchronistic experiences or just by more normal events or people, depending to some degree on who it is we are associating with (some people see UFOs and then become very mystical in their outlook on life; for further information on this subject read Keel‟s UFO Trojan Horse). But eventually this change may lead us to the point where we realise that all that we have believed is, at best, only partially true. As we rise from our tomb the perception that there is something more may lead to the conception of the possibility that this „more‟ may be directly experienced and does not require the intermediary of a priest; this realisation moves us toward the beginning of the union between the masculine and the feminine as symbolised by the cross. Acceptance of the cross is absolutely necessary and until this concept of union is grasped no further development can take place for the masculine cannot advance further alone and neither can the feminine; therefore the acceptance of the cross is the conception of new life. In taking on the union of polarities that are represented by the cross the seeker breaks through the veil of all old concepts and beliefs and starts down the traumatic road of trial and rejection and those things that are being tried and rejected are, on the one hand, all the old ideas, beliefs and habits of a lifetime and on the other, the seeker may be tried and rejected by former friends and associates. At some point along this path the individual will realise that the old is now gone and it can no longer be held on to. The new world stands before them and to grasp on to this new and accept it without reservation they need to do so with both hands. To do this they need to totally let go of the old and when they do so they also realise that the nails, with which they thought they were pinned immovably to their old ideas and beliefs, were illusory 196

and no more real than the sop and canon they had for so long been fed. As they grasp the new and let the old die away the disciples of the mystery come to the place that has been called the last supper; it is in fact the first supper and it is also celebrated with the eating and drinking of the bread and the wine. The bread is a very ancient symbol and is more commonly recognised as the hot cross bun that is eaten at Easter; it symbolises the seed of the male and is also represented by the Levitical priests as explained earlier. During the manufacture of bread millions of seeds are crushed and seemingly destroyed, just as the seed of semen seem to be destroyed en masse as they enter into the uterus of the woman. But as the bread enters into us and is absorbed by our bodies it leads to new life. In Judaism of the days of the Temple the Bread-the Levitical priests- once each year the High Priest and this person alone, like the one lone sperm, entered into the Holy of Holies which was the place that symbolised the origin of life. The rest of the bread, the priests, the rest of the seeds, had fulfilled their function and were, in essence, rejected. The wine represents the female for a number of reasons. The red wine looks like blood and the word which means of or like wine, ‟vinous‟ is a play on the word „Venus‟ who is, of course, the image of the Goddess known as the Queen or Star of the Sea. Also the words vinous and Venus are themselves plays on the word venous and this word actually means blood. Regardless of how the male dominated religions of the past and present would like the ideal world to be it, in fact, depends on the blood of the woman for the procreation of life; the blood is the most important symbol of the mysteries and it has absolutely nothing to do with family bloodlines and inheritance regardless of what the Messianic families wanted to believe and may still do. As well as this the grape looks like an ovum and is actually a single cell fruit very much like an egg and so it is an ideal image for the single ovum that unites with the single seed represented by the bread as we take these into ourselves and unite them therein and begin to create our new lives. This union at the first supper is the beginning of the new conception of reality and now a road will be travelled that will come to fruition at the birth of the new creation in the flooding waters of baptism. The progress of the disciples from this point to what is described in the Gospels as the baptism of John is a time of rapid growth and insight and many stages are passed through in just the same way as a child changes and grows within the womb of its mother. Then, symbolically, nine months after Easter, at Christmas, once the birth has taken place, the now totally different person, this new living being, becomes that which we have called the Cosmic Man. Let us go back over the story and fill in some details because a lot of light can be shed on the mystery at this point. There is nothing to be gained in dwelling on the misinterpretations any longer for the real story reveals, all too clearly, the truth of the matter. The tomb in which we begin is the same thing that Plato called the cave on the walls of which shadows play and we call these shadows reality. One day, for whatever reason, we go to the mouth of the cave and we see that we have been mistaken there is, we realise, more to life than just the shadows. Nevertheless, while we remain in the cave we are bound by our interpretations of the actions of the shadows and because our interpretations must always be inaccurate as the shadows are not reality merely reflections of it, there will always be many things that we cannot account for- mysterious things, ghostlike and Godlike mysterious things. The shock of suddenly 197

realising that our world view has been wrong would be too much for some; but others forge ahead for they are beginning to see the unity in all things and the more that the individual realises this unity the clearer it becomes that they have a lot of garbage to dispose of. The garbage which generally causes the greatest trauma is our God concepts and the dropping of them can be very distressing for some people. It is this pain which is behind the statement â&#x20AC;&#x153;My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?â&#x20AC;? It is the last gasp, so to speak, of one who has realised that there is no God that is going to save them; they are forsaken and they have forsaken all of the old world that included their beloved God imagery. The cross which symbolises the unity of all is not the end of the road it is merely the beginning of the process which will lead to the new birth. It is a sign post standing at the junction of the highways of our lives and is the symbol of the flaming sword which stands at the entrance to the Garden of Eden; in one direction it is the garden of the tomb and in the other it is the garden of new life. The angels, or messengers, which appear at the tomb and throughout the rest of the journey, are the Cherubim that stand with the sword at the entrance to the garden. They are also the Cherubim on the mercy seat of the Ark which stands in the Holy of Holies and all these angels symbolise the communion with the Universal which can and should take place, at any and all points along the way. As said earlier some of these angels are ordinary people who just happen to provide the right piece of information or advice at the right time, some are messages and advice gained from books or other types of physical records, some are psychic abilities and events that include mediums and some are even, for some people, UFOs. However they appear angels must not be thought of as divine or supernatural beings with power and knowledge superior to our own. They are messengers from one aspect of our own consciousness to another; they are within and of us. Also as we have said earlier, the cross is the symbol of the Christ as it is the union of all things physical and spiritual and at no time should one person, male or female, be attached to the image of the Christ; nor should the image of the Christ be attached to any one person. It is a universal symbol and it applies to all people and life universally. If any individual is associated with this symbol in the way that it has been done in Christianity that individual will die spiritually. At that time physical reality will become an illusion, a distortion of what it actually is and so both the masculine and the feminine are destroyed. The two hands of creation, one physical and feminine the other masculine and spiritual, become separated and fixed apart and this is why the man's hands are shown nailed to the cross. The only way out of this impasse is to symbolically remove the man from the cross and to see that it is the cross itself which is the reality. In the Hebrew alphabet one of the meanings of the letter sin is nail and another is mark as in the mark left by the nail. Symbolically when we cease to concern ourselves with the sin that the orthodox churches have laid on us we remove the nails that have been stunting our growth, stop missing the mark about the reality that surrounds us and both creative hands come together and union is affected within the individual; it is at this point that the veil of the Temple is rent. This symbolises the tearing of the hymen at the point of union between the man and the woman and, therefore, between the physical and the spiritual. The way into the Holy of Holies, the womb, is open.

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FIG. THIRTY ONE

The Flaming sword standing at the entrance to the garden.

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The road is a hard one but the disciple who comes down from the cross and successfully traverses this road arrives at the upper room which is that part of the Holy of Holies in which the conception will take place and the birth process begin. They will arrive there stripped of all their garments which symbolise the old ideas they once clothed themselves with and the facade they revealed to the world while keeping their real self hidden. In this upper room the individual discovers aspects of themselves bared and naked that they never realised were there and these are symbolised by the twelve disciples who, in turn, represent each of the houses of the zodiac, which themselves portray the major aspects of both our physical and psychological make-up (not in the sense of astrology). The journey down the pathway of trials has stripped us of all pretence and all covering that might hide any part of ourselves. There is no more judgement, no more polarity and therefore no more sin, for all is revealed openly and we are naked. The symbols of the male and the female have been devoured, consumed or absorbed by us and are beginning to be realised within ourselves and so the union of conception takes place. The symbol for the room in which all this takes place is the water carrier which Jesus instructs the disciples to follow to get to this upper room. This water carrier is the zodiac symbol of Aquarius and is that symbol, above Pisces and below Capricorn, in which a person is shown pouring water from within a jar. The water, as mentioned earlier, represents the waters of the womb and the jar itself therefore represents the womb and is indeed very similar in shape. All of these symbols and the ways in which they have been portrayed, are older by far than Judaism, in fact they so far predate history that there is no record for the time when they did not exist. They speak about the true nature of the human being and the way in which we may find the One and in doing this they tell a story that has not been taught in our religions for many centuries. If we start at the tomb and go the other way, the way which takes us through the resurrection and the ascension, we are still in the tomb for the resurrection is just what it says. It is the rebirth of that old imagery which is associated with the birth and perpetuation of the son of God Messiah. All of this imagery is just part of the surface story which in itself would not normally be a problem; all mystery teachings have this kind of myth. The problem with the Christian variety is that it has become politically reinforced to such a high degree, and the teachers of the alternative were so thoroughly wiped out, that we came to believe that it is literally true and all there is to know about the story. And if we persist in this fashion we do not enter into freedom and equality; we enter into more and more restricting forms of religious structures. This is the land of Hades mentioned by John in Revelations at the opening of the fifth seal; this is the abode of all those who would avenge the blood of their God and seek judgement on all who are not their brethren. We have an opportunity now to break the shackles of the past and to step out of this tomb and we urge as many as find themselves willing, to do so. Throughout the history and writings of Judaism and Christianity we get only faint glimpses of the woman, the Mother of all and she has been called Satan, harlot, witch and other nasty things. The lovers of the Patriarch have brought upon Western society the most terrible disease we could have imagined and the consequence is that we lack spirit and we lack 200

concern for our Mother, the Earth. We think that we have the right to dominate the Earth and in this attitude we are only reflecting our total lack of understanding about the feminine and this lack makes it almost impossible to behave as caring, loving, creative beings without the prop of an all powerful and fearful God. We think that our machines and our sciences make us lords of all we survey and that if there is a problem we just throw another machine at it. We do not know, even yet, that while we are in this mode of consciousness we are no different to, or better than, very clever monkeys. We are still just tool users. The Apostle Paul said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Love, and all else will be given unto you;â&#x20AC;? and how true that is. We could throw away all our machines and sciences tomorrow and if we immediately began truly caring for each other we would all be infinitely better off. I think it is good that we have our sciences and their end results but I am certainly not happy about the way most people think that this is the road to Nirvana. Science is about the how of things, not the why, for the why can only be found within and between us, with or without technology. People were no less happy when they did not have machines, or science but neither were they happier for humans have always only needed one thing and it is that which they seem to get least of. It certainly is not machines, nor is it dogma or religion; it is quite simply, love. If we were more loving and caring toward each other anything and everything else would be possible; but we might also find that we did not need much more. This loving is the life blood and spirit of the Mother which we are denying but most of the ancient religions were not as silly as we are and it was the Mother Goddess which took pride of place. It may be that this also went too far and the Mother became the Matriarch; if so the pendulum has certainly swung too far in the opposite direction and it is time we swung it back. But we ought not to do this as fanatical feminists would have it as that might only create the reverse problem again, but we certainly do need to care more, a lot more, than we do at present. The woman of Judaism is represented by the Temple, but she is so heavily clothed that one could be excused for thinking she was some kind of pack animal, as many did. In Christianity she is the Mary the Mother, Martha and her sister Mary, Mary Magdalene, the prostitute and she is the Church. One would think that the number of Marys in the Bible would have been a clue. In Christianity the woman is all those things which were taught in the old schools. She is the Mother, sister, daughter, lover, wife, and harlot for she is Life in general and the life of us all in particular. We wonder where we went wrong. Going into any church today is not a celebration of life or of Man or Woman. It is the dirge of death, the worshipping of the death of the Cosmic Man and the worship of blood sacrifice. It should be the realisation that the blood is the menstruation of the woman and that it is this blood which is the sign of fertility and life. The ideology that has been fed to us has had us believe that the old religions were sex crazed and on a fertility binge, and it is for that reason they were put aside. What a terrible distortion of the truth. As we now see, the truth is that the real events pertaining to the manifestation of life cannot be separated from fertility and sexuality and therefore, these things should be used as symbols for holistic growth for they are the only things that can possibly symbolise it. The Essenes, and the house of Elisha before them, are those schools that brought this knowledge into the Judaic world. They were not perfect by any means; no school has ever 201

been and they were in constant need of renewal and updating. They were human, just like the rest of us, but they did carry on the tilling of the garden and so we think that it is time we picked up this hoe again and began to till ourselves because we desperately need enlightenment. This enlightenment that we ought to be seeking is not about being able to walk on hot coals, or experience psychic phenomena; the movement of an eye or an arm are just as much psychic as anything else. Enlightenment is not about talents for the most unskilled person can be enlightened as enlightenment is a state of being. It is that condition which is called being in harmony with the universe, however grand or humble one's perception of that may be. Every teacher has called this love and all of them have said that it is eternal life and we think that is exactly what it is. Life has nothing to do with the length of time that we spend upon the face of this planet; it is not the span of time between birth and death. In Life, there is no birth and death for life is like consciousness in that it is not bound by space and time. We come into this world and within a very short space of time we are planning our existence as if we were able to see into the future and knew that we have a certain number of years to pass before we leave it once more. In doing so we plan for dull and boring times and we plan for those times when we will work and those when we will play; it is all very clear to us. Not only do we plan this way but when it does not quite work out the way we expect we claim the right to a certain quality of life and make representations to our governments and support groups to try and get someone else to provide for us that which we think we are due as our right. Some countries even have legislation which allows payments to those who have in some way suffered setbacks in their lives and are deemed to be worthy of reimbursement for loss of enjoyment. That is not life, it is nonsense, and those who think this way are not living, they are trapped in time; meaning that they think they have only a limited amount of time in which to fulfil their desires. Most philosophising about time misses the point. The present, the past and the future are all concepts of time we all share but how real are they in fact. The future exists only if we accept that time itself exists, and even quantum physicists are not too sure whether this is so. But even if time does exist we could not live in either the future or the present no matter how we plan for them for we are firmly stuck in the past. We are convinced that the potential future does affect the way we behave because many of the actions we take now are based on that which we assume will happen. The thing we forget is that there are an infinite number of possible futures waiting out there; waiting to become our reality. But for all that, we actually live in the past because all our senses pass on information so slowly and we react so sluggishly to that information that, by the time we notice an event, it has already gone and we can only deal with its effects. In all cases the only way we can deal with an event- to know anything about it at all- is to assume, or predict, from past experience that such an event is possible. We can even predict the probability of it taking place, although until it does take place it is no more or less real than any other possible event. But by predicting that it is possible for an event to take place we are able to prepare for it and record the effects of it's happening to ourselves or our environment; but this recording can only happen after the event. This is the way we deal with our lives and it is the way that science works. There is no guarantee that any event will take place, even if it has regularly done so in the past; but we live and behave as if it is guaranteed and this is what we call our living experience; we are 202

fooling ourselves. We constantly behave as if this state of uncertainty is anything but that and we live as if reality were set in concrete or like the passage of a series of movie film frames; each one following the other like clockwork. It is not like this at all and it only appears so because we choose to have certain reference points which we agree are proof of the passage of time. We all accept that at some time each one of us was born; that we live out a certain span and then die. What we fail to see is that we are all being born and we are all dying every instant and that each instant is the totality of all experience but we allow ourselves to be aware of only a very little. Think about this; each one of us and all else on this planet right at this moment is the result of all the experience that this planet has ever had. Every moment is the same; it has taken everything that has ever happened to bring us to this point. But there is more; every moment is new, every moment we change and we change because every moment brings new experiences which are caused by an infinite potential for new relationships. We are continually new. Within itself the universe has everything that will happen at any time in the future; not the potential for it, but the actuality. It has the potential for more than will happen but everything that will happen is already coming into being. It is not all apparent yet but the relationships are now developing which will lead eventually to all that will come about. This is not predestination, even though this becoming has been taking place for all time, because until an event takes place there is no way of knowing that it is going to and so to that point it is merely potential. We should not mentally stop this process and see things like a snapshot, although invariably we do, because then we force ourselves to see a universe of separate and individual things and events, but it is not like this. All is becoming and all is indefinable. This is the totality of being and the becoming of all experience. Each moment we are new, we are the experience and we derive meaning from it. We seek and find meaning in being and this is spirituality and it has nothing to do with fairies, angels or anything else of that nature and when we realise what we actually are angels, spirits and other manifestations of separation disappear for they are now part of us; the Whole. Time is a concept which is part and parcel of the other three dimensions and like the others it does not exist in any less than three or in anymore because the three dimensions and time are enfolded in each other. They too are like the mother and the father and so quite rightly they are called Mother Earth and Father Time. But these two parents bring forth the child (us) which is able to perceive a timeless reality and step into new meaning. The universe does not exist in the state it does for any reason and we are the ones that give it meaning and purpose; without us it would still exist but do so without meaning or purpose. The universe is neither planned nor just the result of accumulated past experience and atoms and sub-atomic particles do not exist because they must or because some eternal universal law demands it. We create all these frameworks of relationships, in which all things move and have their being, because we are so afflicted with this idea of time and space. All objects can only exist in relation to other objects and emptiness, nothingness and similar ideas are simply another form of object. The simplest way of understanding this is to see that no object can exist without the empty

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space between itself and some other object. If there is no space between there are no objects and as the space must exist for us to define objects that space must, in itself, be an object. Time also, if the above is true, is an object for time and space is inseparable and enfolded. Where objects are so too is time and so if objects and space/time are the same thing then all objects are not just the accumulated experience of the universe but every object is the totality of the universe as it has been, as it is and as it will be. Because the universe is becoming what it will be at every instant and as every instant is the same for every object then every point in time and space is the same. Everything that is has not just manifested as a result of causes; everything is that which is possible at that moment; everything that is possible, is. But that which is possible in the next instant may be a totally different set of things, not connected in any way with what went before. The proof of this is in the present theory of the origin of the universe. Much effort has gone into explaining what happened immediately after the Big Bang but virtually nothing at all into trying to explain to people that anything prior to that event is inexplicable. In terms of time and cause and effect the event we call the universe was not predictable at all and it has no causal connection with anything prior. This is probably because there was nothing before. As all that we experience is dependent, from our point of view, on cause and as it can be shown that there was no original cause all that we experience must be the result of our own interpretation of whatever it is we are experiencing. So time is irrelevant and so is space; these things do not exist and there is, therefore, only one thing left; „we are‟. Whatever we are is what we are and our perception of what we are dictates the way that we will experience this state of being. It is up to us alone, to decide whether we will enjoy, loathe, suffer or otherwise deal with what we are experiencing- whatever it may be. Right now we are infinite- whatever that may mean; we are all there is and how, knowing this, we relate to this new state and each other is for each of us to decide. We might choose, as we all do from time to time, to experience this as time and structures and therefore we reach a consensus, not once for all time, but as an ongoing process and as we do this we agree to abide by the restrictions this places on us. It would surprise most people to know just how little we do in fact fit into this consensus time framework during the course of each day. For most of us, most of the time, our individual time is very fluid and nothing like the agreed time and that in fact is why we wear wrist watches - to remind us what the consensus time is. We may choose to live to our experience without time or space and when we do we then enter into what we call spirit, or the greater mind, or some similar name and we no longer have separate identity. We may choose to try to do both at the same time but then we come face to face with all kinds of problems relating to what we call fantasy, hallucination and reality. We may also choose to switch back and forth between a number of different scenarios and those that do this we call mystics. Whether we are what we call alive or dead it makes no difference as each state is just another perception of time and time is not the ultimate state of being. There is no way of defining what is, one can only experience it. But whatever we do and for whatever reason we do it, there is in the final analysis only one thing which demonstrates our degree of enlightenment- or lack of it and that is summed up in the famous injunction; “Love thy Neighbour.” That is it, there is nothing else. Love opens all things to us. 204