Today’s topic, the serpent and the messiah, has been addressed on this blog before by Anny, but today I am going to look at it from a few additional angles. I recently had a great discussion about it with a friend. This friend doesn’t agree with esoteric teaching because she is a mainstream Christian, but we greatly respect each other’s views and enjoy a healthy debate from time to time. [Read more…] about The Paradox of the Serpent and the Messiah
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The Serpent and the Cherubim
In his articles Genesis Chapter 3: The Allegory of the Serpent Ego and Transforming the Serpent Ego Joshua writes again about the meaning of the serpent. He had already done so quite a few times before and also I myself addressed the subject more than once, both in articles and in comments. That shows how important this subject is. Putting all the presented interpretations together, they show the serpent as both negative and positive, [Read more…] about The Serpent and the Cherubim
The Great Controversy: Irenaeus and the Development of the Orthodox Church Part 6
This post will cover Irenaeus and Valentinus, and the seeds of Orthodoxy that were beginning to develop in the second century. If you have been keeping up with the first five parts of this series, then you already know that the earliest Christianity had very different beliefs than today’s Orthodoxy. The earliest Christians relied heavily on Jewish tradition. They followed a strict moral code, subjugating their lives to God through a consecrated lifestyle. They believed that the man Jesus completely fulfilled the Law of God and this earned him a great honor. To the earliest Christians, Jesus was savior because he showed mankind the way to the Kingdom of God through obedience and by the teaching of esoteric wisdom (the science of the soul). [Read more…] about The Great Controversy: Irenaeus and the Development of the Orthodox Church Part 6
The Development of Christianity: Part 3
In the first two posts of this series we laid some important groundwork about Paul and Gnosticism. Today I’m going to lay a little more groundwork about the synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of Thomas. This is all necessary before we get into the meat of how Orthodox Christianity and the Early Church formed.
Let’s do a brief recap. [Read more…] about The Development of Christianity: Part 3
The Four Living Creatures and The Gospels
The passages in Ezekiel describing The Four Living Creatures are mysterious and phantasmagorical. They are open to interpretations of all varieties, exoteric and esoteric. The Books of Daniel and Revelation also contain surreal images, but most of them are not as complex and elusive, and the symbolism is usually more obvious. For instance, Daniel’s vision of the various kingdoms that arise to rule his known world can be related to historical kingdoms. [Read more…] about The Four Living Creatures and The Gospels
Understanding the Messianic Prophecies, Part III
In this series we will continue to perform a temporary “about face” in our quest to discover wisdom. By reassessing the historical and literal validity of selected parts of the bible, we shall try to answer four questions. (1) Is the Messiah of the Gospels merely of allegorical importance, as one sect of the first century Gnostics proposed? (2) Does history and archeology regarding the Jewish people validate the existence of a flesh and blood Messiah? (3) Did this Messiah atone for the sins of others? (4) Do historical and allegorical messages in the bible oppose or complement each other? I shall explain later why the “about face” is necessary and only temporary. [Read more…] about Understanding the Messianic Prophecies, Part III
On the Sacred Path with Gilgamesh and Enkidu
How much of the bible is derived from stories told by cultures more ancient than itself? In my previous post “The Flood: Biblical vs. Mesopotamian Narratives” we found so many similarities in detail between Noah’s Ark and the flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh. The dimensions of the vessel, the use of birds to tell when the land became dry, the performance of sacrificial rites after landing, and so on, were all alike. The moral of the stories differ, of course. Noah and his family learn about God’s grace amidst judgment, whereas Gilgamesh learns humility in light of man’s earthly mortality. [Read more…] about On the Sacred Path with Gilgamesh and Enkidu
A Gauge to Determine Your Level of Conscious Development
Have you ever wondered what your current level of conscious development is? What if you had some information to help you gauge it?
The book, The Science of Spirituality (Lee Bladon), has such a section. Much of Bladon’s information is based on the study of religious texts and its esoteric interpretation, as well as the integration of science, philosophy, and psychology. His chapter on the levels of consciousness made perfect since when it comes to explaining human behavior, as well as my own! [Read more…] about A Gauge to Determine Your Level of Conscious Development
Fragmentation and Ascension
We all know what happens to water dropped from a significant height. It quickly starts to break up or fragment and the further it falls the more it fragments. That’s the way I understand what it is that we do when we, as Light/Consciousness/Being, descend/project downward from The Source and I believe the following to be, for the most part, true.
This fragmenting of Consciousness/Light occurs in a downward projection through the Dimensions. This is yet an even greater example of As Above, So Below. Here are the Dimensions mapped out according to the Planes of Existence and the human body:
11th Dimension – Christ Plane. Top of head. [Read more…] about Fragmentation and Ascension
Part V: Section Two: The 7-Day Creation, The Flood, and The Birth of Christ
Illustration Left: The Dove, symbolic of the Holy Spirit, approaches the Grail to be Baptized. Note the three Holy Colours: Blue (Heaven), Scarlet (Sacrifice), and Purple (Royalty).
The 7-Day Creation has been a source of great confusion over the years. Some believe it to describe a literal week in which God created all things, but this interpretation appears quite irreconcilable with reality: for instance, plants cannot survive without light, yet we read that they were created before the Sun. Readers of a more progressive nature take it to mean Ages – God created all in Seven Ages, thousands of years, etc. This is likely done in response to the past 200yrs of scientific discovery, but also finds support in Scripture where we read that To God each day is like a thousand years, a thousand years like a day. But is this what was intended? [Read more…] about Part V: Section Two: The 7-Day Creation, The Flood, and The Birth of Christ
Part III: Creation: Saturn, The Cube, The Sabbath Day and The Blackening
The Seven Planets: Their Names and Gods
Returning again to the numbers of the first segment, from a cosmological standpoint the correspondence between seven and thirteen makes perfect sense: the 7-day Creation corresponds to the 7 Classical Planets, and Aries (the Ram) could be viewed as either the 1st or the 13th Zodiac. Certain signs will be explored in great detail in a later installment.
The seven days of the week in English and other languages have been named for each of the seven ‘planets’ of antiquity [from Gr. “planetese,” wanderer], and are also named for characters of Classical Myth. [Read more…] about Part III: Creation: Saturn, The Cube, The Sabbath Day and The Blackening
Part Two: 37, 137 and the Genesis of Light
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” – Genesis 1:1
This sentence, in it’s original Hebrew, has a standard gematria value of 2,701: It is the 73rd triangular and the 37th hexagonal number. It only has two factors, 37 and 73 (the two values of Wisdom seen in Part I). It is 7 words long and consists of 28 letters. 28 is the 7th triangle and the 3rd hexagon (a miniature of the gematria figurates). The first word is 6 letters. 6 is the first perfect number (1+2+3=6), while 28 is the second perfect number (1+2+4+7+14=28). [Read more…] about Part Two: 37, 137 and the Genesis of Light
Part One: Introduction: 37, 73, 137 and Qabalah
Ciphers and Cryptography: A Very Brief Foundation
The use of ciphers and subtle allusions in mysticism, philosophy, literature and religion, though generally ignored or unknown in modernity (by and large), are indeed well-established practices (such as the three literary practices in Qabalah, all of which involve some form of cryptography: transpositioning; substitution; skip-codes; re-arrangements of text into columns, as with the 72 Names of God; interpretation as number; etc).
“Ciphers are hidden in the most subtle manner: they may be concealed in the watermark of the paper upon which a book is printed…bound into the covers of ancient books…hidden under imperfect pagination; they may be extracted from the first letters of words or the first words of sentences; they may be artfully concealed in mathematical equations or in apparently unintelligible characters…they may be word ciphers, letter ciphers…they may be discovered in the elaborately illuminated initial letters of early books or they may be revealed by a process of counting words or letters.” – Manly Palmer Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, p. 491. [Read more…] about Part One: Introduction: 37, 73, 137 and Qabalah