But perhaps no former planetary grouping can be as striking as that of the two most shining planets Venus and Jupiter for the account that we seek. And if we read the only identified account of the Star of Bethlehem literally, as established in St. Matthew, then what we actually necessitate is the appearance of not just one, but two “stars.” The original appearance would have been viewed well in advance of the Magis reaching in Bethlehem, and the other at the remainder of their long journey.
In Hellenistic star divination, Jupiter was the male monarch planet and Regulus (in the constellation Leo) was the magnate star. As they moved from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, the star “went before” the magi and then “stood over” the site where Jesus was. In astrological renderings, these words are told to refer to inverse motion and to placing, i.e., Jupiter come out to reverse track for a time, then quit, and ultimately resumed its normal procession. In 3-2 BC, there was a series of seven conjunctions, including three between Jupiter and Regulus and a strikingly tight conjunction between Jupiter and Venus near Regulus on June 17, 2 BC. “The unification of two planets would have been a wonderful and awe-inspiring event” - according to several astronomers.
Others have suggested a connection between a double occultation of Jupiter by the moon in 6 BC in Aries and the Star of Bethlehem, particularly the second occultation on April 17. This case was quite particular to the sun and would have been tricky to observe, even with a small telescope, which had not yet been manufactured. Occultations of planets by the moon are rather frequent, but an astrologer to Roman Emperor Constantine wrote that an occultation of Jupiter in Aries was a sign of the birth of a divine king.
“When the imperial star of Zeus, the planet Jupiter, was in the east this was the most robust time to confer kingships. Furthermore, the Sun was in Aries where it is rarefied. And the Moon was in very close junction with Jupiter in Aries.”
Many say that Jesus was very great and that His teaching is perfect, but nobody wants to follow the path of true spirituality and be great like the Master, no one wants to go towards Him by truly imitating Him; and you must know that all of us can also be the same.
37. Man wants to save himself staying away from spirituality and ignoring his spiritual nature and that cannot be.
38. What is the use of many to believe in a life after this one, if they do not devote their existence to advance in spirituality, thus acquiring merits for eternity?All their faith is confined in trusting that after death their spirit will go to a hereafter, and most of them wait at the last instant to restore all lost time and erase all their blemishes with one act of contrition.
This is a sad misunderstanding, because errors can only be mended with deeds full of spirituality which require having obeyed the demands of the conscience and time to make amends for all the sins committed. And concerning the repentance of those who are about to depart to the spiritual, it is a fact that very few weep at that moment for the wrongdoings they have caused, and that their concern instead is an egotistic one, for terror to punishment, to sentence or to damnation, according to how they imagine it.
Is it not true that you need a doctrine which amply speaks to you, prepares you and opens your eyes toward the light, as the Heavenly Father does through His Word?
41. Behold how necessary it is for you to extend this message of love and spirituality throughout all places on Earth. With it, you would be doing with your brethren a true deed of charity.
The incorporation of Aristotelian thought into the dogma of Catholicism was not the first attempt to have alchemy co-opted or hermeneutically imbued into the whole system of thought. The fact that Aquinas did this under the tutelage of a Dominican Bishop who is regarded as the forbear of Goethe and Illuminized thought has not escaped me. Frater Albertus Magnus is a name still to be reckoned with in the present day as a person by that name heads the International Alchemical group in Salt Lake City. The fact that Melchizedek and Solomon or others in the family of Jesus are adept esotericists and alchemists should not surprise any real scholar. But let us assume Jesus had good intentions and later scriptural or priestly manipulators sought to bring his real and deep understanding more completely into the Christian model of spiritual growth. Here is a report from Pelikan about a fraud or attempt to do this which was accepted as church dogma for a millennium until the Thomist ideologues made the great furtherance of this under the Jesuit teaching system.
… can all be traced to Proclus, the great systematizer of Neoplatonism in the fifth century C.E.; and through him much of it goes back to Plotinus, and ultimately even to Plato himself. Although both Plotinus and Proclus were critics of Christianity, they also owed much to it; {Which might have to do with Christianity having borrowed much from the school of thought they were part of.} and, in turn, their Christian opponents shared much of their Neoplatonism with them, especially these very elements of the mystical vision.
Therefore it did not come as a shock when, in the sixth century, there appeared a corpus of Greek writings that seemed to have blended Christian and Neoplatonic elements almost indiscriminately and that bore the name of Dionysius the Areopagite. This Dionysius was, in the report of the Acts of the Apostles, the only man named together with the women who ‘joined and believed’ {Thus it is likely that the Dianistic or people who saw what was happening to women in the behemoth of Constantinism were motivated to try to correct things a little.} at Athens in response to the preaching of the apostle Paul; {Today there are many scholars who say the Epistles to Timothy once thought to be the work of Paul are not the work of Paul.} by the second century he seems to have been known as the first bishop of the Christian church at Athens; in the sixth century he suddenly produced this massive collection of Christian Neoplatonic speculations; and in the ninth century he came to be identified with Saint Denis, patron saint of France and third-century bishop of Paris.(5) {Eusebius is mentioned in his Biblio. Eusebius is a merchant and purchaser of the bishopric of Paris, I believe.
The matter of intrigue from far away Turkey and the Basilidae there who are part of the Semites like Sargon requires more research on my part but I suspect this is another example of the Benjaminite/Maccobean/Elephantine/Rothschild/De Medicis continuum and their desires at work.} Certified as it was with such impressive and all-but-apostolic credentials, the thought of Pseudo-Dionysius was accepted as authentic almost without dissent in the sixth century, and it retained its authoritative position, again almost without dissent, for an entire millennium, not being seriously challenged until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.” (6)
There is no question as to Plato being a noble and an alchemist. The matter of his connection to the Sargon lineage and Hyksos in Egypt where his relative Critias was a priest is a matter of suspicion I continue to track and wonder about. For a certainty I do find the esoteric precursor to Hegelian dialectic by these alchemists does exist. I would refer a serious researcher to the chortling done by Fulcanelli about the inculcation of alchemic rituals and symbols into Christendom that can be found in his book on the Cathedrals which the Templars did build atop Druidic or pagan sites.
“Although Pseudo-Dionysius was undoubtedly the source for much of it, a major inspiration of Christ-mysticism was the interpretation of the Song of Songs (or Song of Solomon{Key to study by Masons today}) as a Christian allegory. As most scholars would agree today, be they Jewish or Roman Catholic or Protestant, the Song was originally a poem celebrating the love between man and woman. But throughout its history it has in fact been read allegorically, and it may even be that it came into the Jewish canon that way. Defending its canonicity at the council of Jamnia in 90 C.E., which stabilized the canon of the Hebrew Bible, the celebrated Rabbi Aqiba declared: ‘The whole world is not worth the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel, for all the Scriptures are holy, but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies.’ From this interpretation comes the rule promulgated by the rabbis: ‘He who trills his voice in chanting the Song of Songs in the banquet house and treats it as a sort of song has no part in the world to come.” (7)
Such is the nature of exclusionary elitism so prevalent in this foul cultus along with its fellow Judaeo/Christian/Islamic kin that continue to breed Armageddon and Rapture end games and wars, as if that is somehow what God might want.
The Occultation or Usurpation of Religion and the Zohar:
“An English version of the Zohar, a guiding text of Jewish mysticism, offers new insights.
- By David van Biema
- TIME Magazine: April 19, 2004 issue
The road winds like a Talmudic discourse, first one way and then another, up toward Daniel Matt’s home in the Berkeley, California, hills. ‘There’s a more direct route that my wife likes’, admits Matt, 53. ‘But I find this one more interesting.’
That’s not surprising. Matt is embarked on a solo journey through one of the most influential and maddeningly difficult works in the history of religious literature. After six years of his labor, Stanford University Press has published the first two books of his translation of the Zohar, the wellspring of Jewish mysticism, or Cabala. He will do nine more volumes, all rendered from the Zohar’s original Aramaic. The work has received ecstatic advance reviews (’A superbly fashioned translation and a commentary that opens up the Zohar to the English-speaking world’, blurbed lit-crit colossus Harold Bloom), and two weeks ago it won a $10,000 Koret Jewish Book Award for ‘monumental contribution to the history of Jewish thought’. Beneath the praise runs an undercurrent of awe that someone was crazy enough to take on the job.
The Zohar’s elusiveness dates to its appearance in the Spanish region of Castile around 1280. Written in Aramaic, a language Jews had not composed in for centuries, the book was attributed to a great rabbi of a millennium earlier. But in fact, in the 1930s scholars determined that it was penned by one Moses de Leon and his associates in the 13th century.
De Leon had every reason to fake his work’s pedigree: the Zohar was far too radical to be accepted without a fabricated imprimatur. An utterly original 1,800-page mix of Torah commentary, parody, erotic poetry, numerology and experimental narrative devices, it crams some 400 subplots into a Chaucer-like {Chaucer is an alchemist too.} tale of a band of traveling sages. The book’s form alone, says Matt, is ‘a challenge to the normal workings of consciousness.’
Its theology is wilder still nothing less than the division of God’s personality, which Judaism had always seen as a unity, into 10 interacting emanations, two of them female. One of these, the Shekhinah, was the Zohar’s obsession, the portal through which it pulled believers willy-nilly into the divine drama. Only their prayer and good deeds could save her from hordes of demons and effect her mystic marriage to God’s male aspect, a reunion described in sometimes erotic detail. ‘Without arousal below’, de Leon noted, ‘there is no arousal above.’
Remarkably, his book caught on. By 1600 the Jewish world saw the Zohar as its third holiest text, preceded only by the Bible and the Talmud. Cabalistic study and meditation flourished, and zoharic principles formed the basis of Hasidic Judaism. The Zohar’s use faded as Judaism absorbed the just-the-facts influence of the European Enlightenment, but it left behind dramatic mementos such as the Bar Mitzvah coming-of-age celebration and the gorgeous Friday-evening song welcoming God’s “Sabbath bride”. The Zohar also informs the current Cabalistic resurgence, so fascinating to Jews and spiritual adventurers like Madonna. And this created new demand for an authoritative English version.
Enter Matt. By 1995 he had taught Jewish mysticism at the university level, written a book comparing Cabala and scientific cosmology, and translated some Zohar excerpts. Nevertheless he was stunned when Margot Pritzker, wife of the chairman of the Hyatt Corp., who was studying the book, offered to bankroll a full translation. ‘I told her, optimistically, that it might take 18 years’, Matt says. ‘And she said, ‘You’re not scaring me.”
The result is not for everybody. From its opening, an extended discourse on the image of a rose in the Song of Songs (”Just as a rose has 13 petals, so Assembly of Israel has 13 qualities of compassion on every side”), the first volume only plunges further into esoterica. Matt’s commentary, which offers tidbits about ancient water clocks and the silkworm’s arrival in Spain, along with his exegesis of mystical concepts, is often twice as long as his translation. Yet there are those eager to use it. Says Samuel Cohon, a Tucson, Arizona, rabbi who has ordered 40 copies at his congregants’ request: ‘I thought; ‘It’ll be too hard’. But there’s a great desire to get at the source. If this is a profound text, then let’s see why.’
Matt still has the slightly dazed look of an Ahab whose white whale has arrived un-hunted. He hopes to finish his task by age 70. It’s not time that he will regret. ‘When I wake up, it’s all I want to do’, he says. ‘I feel like I’m inside De Leon’s mind now. I know the tricks he’s up to. And he’s a genius. This is the most astounding book in Judaism.’ It is a judgment his own work makes even clearer.” (7)
I am open to the possibility that the knowledge or tricks he finds are in the Zohar and De Leon’s mind are long-standing knowledge systems which had been kept secret by the likes of the Tartessians of Spain and Southern France in a line of schools going back to pre-Christian eras. I have many inter-connections which have been made in other books and we have again touched a few of them in regards to the Templars and Rennes-le-Chateau in this book.
Author of Diverse Druids
Guest ‘expert’ at World-Mysteries.com
Columnist for The ES Press Magazine
To those even vaguely familiar with the field of science-and-religion, John Polkinghorne hardly needs an introduction. In the 1970s he left an impressive career as professor of mathematical physics at Cambridge University to become an Anglican priest. Using his training in both science and religion, he has written several books that seek to bridge those two worlds.
Science & Theology News asked Polkinghorneabout his most recent book Science and Providence and what contribution it makes to the field of science-and-religion.
What inspired you to write this book?
I wrote the book because I thought it important to show that science was consistent not only with a picture of God as the source of cosmic order and fruitfulness but also with a theistic understanding of divine providence at work in the history of the world, operating through interaction within the open grain of natural process. This is the kind of God to whom religious believers pray, and science, properly understood, does not forbid them to do so.
How does this book fit into the field of science-and-religion?
The topic of divine action, raised in the book, was the subject of much subsequent discussion to which I also made further contributions. It is clear that science, carefully evaluated, has not demonstrated the causal closure of the world, so the defeaters, who were claiming that physics kept God out of history, have been defeated.
For you, what is the most challenging part of writing?
The challenge in all interdisciplinary writing, including writing on science and religion, is to be clear in setting the arguments before the reader, who often will not be an expert in all the topics discussed, while being scrupulous in giving a truthful and accurate account of the ideas involved.
What is the most rewarding part of writing?
The greatest reward comes from being able to help people gain a deeper understanding of issues of great significance.
What advice would you give to new writers in the field?
I would particularly encourage more writers whose expertise lies in the human sciences, such as psychology and neuroscience, to make more contributions to the literature. This part of the frontier between science and religion is clearly an area of great importance, and one that is still relatively under-explored.
Britt Peterson is an editorial intern at Science & Theology News.
I understand how primitive folk who reject contact with Higher Intelligence, who vainly dismiss our Great Creator God’s Instruction Manual for Mankind, who foolishly reject such divine revelation and extraterrestial message for their own idolatrous ideas, tinsel traditions and self-righteous liberal standards, could easily feel threatened by or misjudge those who nobly choose to lead an alternative lifestyle that is based upon absolutes rather than the fickle feelings or passing fads or personal phases an individual, society or country might be going through.
May such folk have a proper change of heart (Isaiah 55:7-9), attitude and direction and learn to love and walk in the Light and not fear it (John 3:19-21), as it will soon be the golden rule of law for all Earth under King Messiah who will come to restore law and order, saving mankind from chaos and confusion and near extinction from such self-destructive ways that will demand divine intervention and deliverance:
Jeremiah 30:7
7 Alas! For that day is great,
So that none is like it;
And it is the time of Jacob’s trouble,
But he shall be saved out of it.
Daniel 12:1
1 …And there shall be a time of trouble,
Such as never was since there was a nation,
Even to that time.
And at that time your people shall be delivered…
Matthew 24:21-22
21 For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. 22 And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved [alive]; but for the elect’s [the Twelve Tribes of Israel] sake those days will be shortened.
Two Witnesses in Jerusalem will testify to this glorious truth, this GOOD NEWS, heralding the coming of our King in the spirit of Elijah,announcing that our Great Creator God is going to intervene in the affairs of men to save us from ourselves and preserve planet Earth!
David Ben-Ariel is a Christian-Zionist writer in Ohio and author of Beyond Babylon: Europe’s Rise and Fall. With a focus on the Middle East and Jerusalem, his analytical articles help others improve their understanding of that troubled region. Check out Beyond Babylon.