Wax on, wax off

Above is the famous scene from the first Karate Kid movie (1984), in which Mr. Miyagi reveals to his student (whom he always refers to as "Daniel-San") the hidden meaning behind all of the hours of chores Mr. Miyagi has been assigning to him. 

This is perhaps one of the clearest and most-accessable examples of the concept known as "the esoteric" that can be found in popular culture.  Just about everyone has heard of "wax on, wax off," for the simple reason that it is a profoundly memorable and even moving scene, even thirty years after it was filmed.  In this case, waxing the car and all the other tasks (which Mr. Miyagi insisted must be done in a very strict and precise manner) was a way to teach something else: the "hidden" or "esoteric" meaning that lies behind the apparently mundane action of "wax on, wax off."

Although the esoteric is often defined as a "hidden meaning," note that Mr. Miyagi did not select his powerful teaching method in order to deceive Danny, or even in order to conceal something from Danny.  Mr. Miyagi taught his student that way because he knew that it was the best way to reach Daniel-San, and to convey something on a deep level to Danny's mind -- something that might have been difficult or even impossible to convey in any other way.  

Note carefully in the above scene that even when Mr. Miyagi finally reveals the esoteric meaning behind the mundane tasks, he does not do so by explaining them to Daniel-San: he forces Daniel-San to actually experience how it works, so that Danny knows what it feels like when it works.  This is a very different approach than trying to appeal to the rational, intellectual, "left brain" part of our thinking.  

If Mr. Miyagi, instead of having Danny spend days waxing the cars, sanding the floor, painting the fence, and painting the house, had tried to explain to his student what to do in order to stop a punch or a kick, then Danny would have had lots of questions as his "intellectual mind" tried to make sense of what Mr. Miyagi was telling him -- and Danny might (or might not) have believed that what Mr. Miyagi was telling him would work.  This is a very different approach, and for some very important things it is not at all the best approach (not even a good approach).  Believing something with your mind is very different from knowing it because you experience it for yourself, the way Danny did when Mr. Miyagi started to throw punches and kicks at him while yelling fiercely!

As it turns out, there are certain concepts which are best conveyed to our mind esoterically -- and that, in fact, are difficult to properly grasp through any other method besides the esoteric.  The martial arts, in fact, are almost always taught esoterically (usually through forms which contain hidden applications that can be appreciated only after their motions are internalized).  For a variety of reasons, the sages responsible for the ancient sacred scriptures and mythology systems of the world also chose to convey the ancient wisdom of mankind esoterically, through allegorical stories which could enable the mind to grasp truths which the "intellectual mind" would choke on.  

The ancient myth systems of the world were not designed to create belief, any more than Mr. Miyagi wasted any thought asking Daniel-San in the above video clip whether or not he believed in the blocks and hand motions and whether they would be effective.  They were designed to create the experience of knowing -- which in the ancient Greek was called gnosis.

My new book, The Undying Stars, demonstrates that the ancient scriptures of the world operate in exactly the same way -- esoterically.  They are all a form of "wax on, wax off" which contain an amazing esoteric message that is "hidden" inside.  This includes the stories of the gods of ancient Greece, of ancient Egypt, of ancient India, of the Norse, of the Hawaiians and the Maori and the Maya and the Inca and the Native American tribes and nations, and of almost every other culture around the world -- and it also includes the stories found in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.  

The masters who created these stories were not trying to deceive us, any more than Mr. Miyagi was trying to deceive Daniel-San by showing him how to wax the car or paint the fence -- and they were not trying to keep these truths "hidden" so that nobody could ever learn them.  Quite the contrary: the ancient scriptures and sacred traditions of the world were intended to lead men and women to consciousness, and to awareness of the truth about the human condition -- in fact, to gnosis.

But something most unfortunate for the human race happened along the way: for reasons of their own, a powerful group of families decided to suppress the ancient understanding and teach that they were not intended to be understood esoterically.  They argued that the ancient scriptures were intended to be understood literally first and foremost: that we were to understand the ancient stories as describing the adventures of literal and historical personages or beings, and not as metaphorical carriers of profound esoteric truths applicable to every single man and woman.  This approach can be thought of as the equivalent of telling Danny that his efforts of waxing the car or painting the fence have absolutely nothing to do with learning a martial art -- that there is no connection to learning a martial art, and that he should just focus on waxing the car and painting the fence, because that is all that there is to know about the subject.  

To be more direct, they taught people to accept the existence of a literal, historical individual called Christ rather than (as Paul says) "Christ in you" (an esoteric truth conveyed by the allegorical stories).  The original gnostic teaching of the stories of the New Testament (and the Old Testament as well) were all designed for the purpose of conveying esoteric truth so that men and women could achieve consciousness, overcome illusion and mind control, and experience gnosis.  The evidence suggests that those who wanted to suppress the esoteric truths constructed a literalist religion (built primarily upon belief rather than upon gnosis) and they married it to the military and economic might of the Roman Empire, creating an extremely powerful system of mental tyranny: using belief and illusion and propaganda and mind control, backed up by the violence.

The Undying Stars examines the evidence that these enemies of human consciousness and gnosis began a campaign to ensure that those teachers and texts imparting an esoteric and gnostic approach and opposing the literalist subversion were marginalized, burned, buried, or otherwise silenced.  Then, they expanded that campaign over the next seventeen centuries into the rest of the world, to eradicate the esoteric and shamanic teachings that had survived outside the boundaries of the Roman Empire.

Many readers of this blog, especially those with deep attachment to the Biblical scriptures or to the teachings of those who say that these scriptures are first and foremost to be understood literally, will no doubt be profoundly dismayed or even angered at such an assertion, and may decide they want nothing to do with any books that examine the evidence supporting such a view.  To them, I would say that I do not wish to insult or offend anyone's sensibilities -- I am not an "authority" and I am only offering the results and insights that I have experienced in my own personal walk.  There is a "note of caution to literalist readers" at the front of the book, explaining that the book itself examines evidence and arrives at conclusions which may be extremely damaging to the foundations of literalist belief, and some readers may prefer not to examine that evidence rather than threaten a paradigm in which they have significant personal and psychic investment.  

Some readers, however, may decide that if the books arguments and analyses are in error, they can be safely read and then rejected, but if they are correct then it might be preferable to know it.  The good news for literalist readers is that they likely are very familiar with the ancient scriptures, and this actually gives them a wonderful advantage: they have been "waxing the car" for years and years, even if no one has ever shown them how it relates to actually doing martial arts!

The fact is that the descendants of those enemies of human consciousness, who conspired to steal the esoteric teaching from humanity and get everyone focused on "waxing the car," were most likely careful to keep the ability to "do karate" for themselves!  If so, then those enemies of mankind could very well still be "doing karate" today against the rest of us, and getting away with it, because most of the world only knows how to "wax the car," without understanding the meaning behind the motions. 

Some reflections on my recent Project Camelot interview, and the errors of Zechariah Sitchin

Having now re-listened to my recent interview on Project Camelot, the thing that struck me the most about my interview is the fact that it seems to have devolved into a tug-of-war between my attempts to explain an esoteric theory, and the interviewer's desire to turn the conversation back to what I would classify as the literalistic.

The entire thrust of my theory centers around the following points: 

• That the ancient scriptures from cultures around the world are esoteric, and that in fact they all follow a unified esoteric system of celestial allegory (some clear and examples of this system can be found in this previous blog post and in the posts linked therein, as well as in the first three chapters of my book, which are available online here).
• That this ancient system of "star myths" can be shown to contain evidence of a view of the universe that includes the amazing concept that the material world which we inhabit is actually a sort of projection of information existing in a "hidden realm" (or "seed realm") -- a concept that the recent Lego Movie actually dramatizes in a very amusing way, and a concept which theoretical physicists in the twentieth century began to articulate as the "holographic universe" model in response to some of the evidence from what we now label "quantum physics."
• That the ancient sacred traditions make it clear that it is not only possible for the human consciousness to cross over the boundary between these two realms (what we would today call the shamanic journey) but that it is in some ways essential (see for instance the quotation from Mircea Eliade in the previously-linked post discussing the Lego Movie, as well as posts such as this one and this one). This ability can be described in terms of breaking through the artificial boundaries of an "illusory reality" and of creating "new realities," as described most powerfully by Jon Rappoport in much of his work.
• That this ancient wisdom appears to have been a legacy of some extremely advanced "predecessor civilization" about which we know very little and about which at this time we can know very little, as they left no written records but only incredibly intriguing monuments located at significant points all around our planet -- monuments which clearly suggest that they knew the size and shape of our spherical earth. While it is certainly possible that these monuments indicate contact with beings from other planets or star systems, it is by no means necessary to conclude that, nor have I to this day seen evidence which definitively points towards such a conclusion. 
• This ancient shamanic wisdom appears to have been in full operation right up until the time of the creation of literalist Christianity, which rejected the esoteric nature of the scriptural texts and replaced them with a literalistic hermeneutic (including the most central doctrine of literalist Christianity, the incarnation of a literal Christ figure, as opposed to the esoteric understanding of a "Christ in you," the teaching of the divine spark incarnated in each man and woman which all the esoteric ancient myths can be shown to teach, discussed in previous posts such as this one and this one and this one). 
• There is strong evidence that the imposition of literalist Christianity was accomplished by a specific set of historical circumstances involving the arrival among the highest circles of power in the Roman Empire of a group of people who understood about the shamanic "creation of reality" described above, and their subsequent takeover of that Roman Empire (through the twin vehicles of Mithraism and literalist Christianity). They then created the institutions of religious power and political power that would control western Europe right up to the present day . . . and would spread overseas to impact the rest of the world, with catastrophic results for many previously-shamanic cultures.  

Thus, the concept of the esoteric (and shamanic) nature of the ancient myths is absolutely central to my thesis. Unfortunately, the conversation was never allowed to delve into the esoteric, because although I tried to head towards the esoteric from my very first comments in the interview (referencing the "esoteric" nature of Montessori, which I believe to be a good example of the purpose of the esoteric technique), none of the esoteric subjects that I tried to raise, including examples which demonstrate that the Bible is composed of star-myth from first to last, which is not just a nice theory but can be shown to be absolutely incontestable or the fact that the undeniable connection between numerous ancient goddesses (including Ishtar) and lions strongly suggests that these myths are talking about the zodiac (where the constellation of Virgo follows the constellation of Leo) were explored with any follow-up questions or conversation.

Instead, the conversation was steered more than once towards whether or not I subscribed to the theories of Zechariah Sitchin, and (related to that) whether my esoteric approach has room for literal interpretations at the same time.

As I tried to explain during the interview and will explain a bit further below, I do not subscribe to the theories of Zechariah Sitchin, and the primary reason that I do not is that Zechariah Sitchin's hermeneutic is a literalistic hermeneutic, and I believe it is mistaken. He interprets the ancient scriptures (in this case, the myths of ancient Sumer and Babylon, but also the Old Testament scriptures which contain parallels to the myths of Sumer and Babylon) as describing literal history. Although the literal history that he believes the ancient myths (including those of the Bible) describe is a different history from that which most adherents to historic literalistic Christianity in its various permutations have taught down through the centuries since the takeover described above (a takeover which was essentially completed during the reign of the Roman Emperor Constantine), his books nevertheless take the ancient myths to primarily describe actual ancient history.

He does not interpret the events described in those myths esoterically.

For example, on page 171 of his first book The Twelfth Planet (published in 1976), Sitchin writes  the following in his discussion of a famous passage in Genesis chapter 6 (I will put all of the passages from Sitchin's book in blue, so that the reader can clearly distinguish between his writing and my comments upon his writing):

the sons of the gods

saw the daughters of man, that they were good;

and they took them for wives,

of all which they chose.

The implications of these verses, and the parallels to the Sumerian tales of gods and their sons and grandsons, and of semidivine offspring resulting from cohabitation between gods and mortals, mount further as we continue to read the biblical verses:

The Nefilim were upon the Earth

in those days and thereafter too,

when the sons of the gods

cohabited with the daughters of the Adam,

and they bore children unto them.

They were the mighty ones of Eternity -- 

The People of the shem.

The above is not a traditional translation. For a long time, the expression "The Nefilim were upon the Earth" has been translated as "There were giants upon the earth"; but recent translators, recognizing the error, have simply resorted to leaving the Hebrew term Nefilim intact in the translation. The verse "The people of the shem," as one could expect, has been taken to mean "the people who have a name," and, thus, "the people of renown." But as we have already established, the term shem must be taken in its original meaning -- a rocket, a rocket ship.

What, then, does the term Nefilim mean? Stemming from the Semitic root NFL ("to be cast down"), it means exactly what it says: It means those who were cast down upon Earth!

Clearly, Sitchin in the above discussion is taking the passage to be a literal account of some beings who physically came from another planet to this planet. That this is Sitchin's interpretation is completely clear from the rest of that book, and the fourteen others he wrote. Later in the same book there is a chapter entitled "Landing on Earth," and details such as the following descriptions:

Based on complex technical data, as well as hints in Mesopotamian texts, it appears that the Nefilim adopted for their Earth missions the same approach NASA adopted for the Moon missions: When the principal spaceship neared the target planet (Earth), it went into orbit around that planet without actually landing. Instead, a smaller craft was released from the mother ship and performed the actual landing.

As difficult as accurate landings were, the departures from Earth must have been even trickier. The landing craft had to rejoin its mother ship, which then had to fire up its engines and accelerate to extremely high speeds, for it had to catch up with the Twelfth Planet, which by then was passing its perigee between Mars and Jupiter at its top orbital speed. 281-282.

Clearly, a credible demonstration that the myths of ancient Sumer and Babylon (as well as the accounts in Genesis) were primarily descriptions of the motions of the sun, moon and planets among the background of the zodiac stars (the sun, moon, and planets always move through the zodiac band, along a pathway known as the ecliptic) could be seen as very damaging to the literalistic interpretation of the myths that Sitchin is offering in the above quotations and throughout the rest of his other books. 

I believe that such a demonstration is possible: in fact, I have offered such a demonstration in my own two books. 

In my first book, the Mathisen Corollary, I have an entire chapter on the Gilgamesh series of texts, demonstrating that the events and adventures described in the Gilgamesh epic primarily concern the motions of the planets among the zodiac band, as well as the motions of the great central axis of the sky which pierces the north celestial pole and which can be seen to have become "unhinged" due to the motion of precession. 

A few examples of evidence supporting such an assertion include the fact that Gilgamesh chops down the "tallest cedar in the forest" (the one whose top pierces the sky) and then uses it to fashion a special door, one "through which only gods can pass" (a clear reference to the gate of the equinox, where the ecliptic path crosses the celestial equator, encoded as a gate in numerous ancient myths from  cultures around the world -- and the Ishtar Gate of Babylon is almost certainly such a symbol as well, since Ishtar is almost certainly Virgo, and since the sign of Virgo occupies the point of the fall equinox), as well as the fact that Gilgamesh slays the Bull of Heaven and then throws the haunch of the bull in Ishtar's (or Inanna's) face (an event with clear celestial implications, as Taurus the Bull is a prominent zodiac constellation, and the haunch or "hindquarters" of the Bull was an ancient myth-code for the Big Dipper in both ancient Egypt and in the symbology of Mithraism). 

In my more recent book, The Undying Stars, I spent quite a bit of time demonstrating that the stories in both the Old and New Testament are also star-myths. Included is an extended discussion of the Genesis story of Adam and Eve and the Serpent, with clear connections to specific constellations and their motions across the sky. This story was not intended to describe a literal event, but is an esoteric allegory, as were other events discussed by Sitchin as if they were literal history (a literal Noah, taught agriculture for the first time after the flood by the alien visitors figures prominently in Sitchin's imagined history [see for instance his Twelfth Planet, page 413], but I demonstrate that Noah is a counterpart of other flood-surviving figures in other mythologies who are clearly connected to a specific figure in the zodiac, and that their agricultural endeavors can be clearly linked to the symbols associated with that zodiac figure).

The very "descent" of the Nephilim, "cast down" to dwell upon earth, can be demonstrated to have a very clear esoteric and allegorical meaning: these passages describe our human condition in our incarnate state! 

As discussed at length in my book, and in numerous previous posts (many of which have been linked above), the ancient scriptures of the human race were so insistent on allegorizing the motions of the stars in part because they saw the plunge of the stars from the ether of heaven into the earthy or watery horizon (the western horizon) as the perfect metaphor for our incarnate condition: we are each carriers of a divine spark (our individual spirit) which has been plunged into a material body made up of "earth and water" (the "clay" out of which Adam was fashioned in Genesis). We are the Nephilim! We are the ones who came down from the world of spirit, enticed or seduced by the receptive (that is to say, allegorically speaking, female) world of matter. The very word "matter" (as many have pointed out) contains a feminine connotation, related as it is to the word mater or "mother" (as in, "Mother Earth").

This esoteric interpretation of the passage from Genesis 6 would seem to rather undermine the entire thesis of Zechariah Sitchin. 

As I said in the interview, I believe it is commendable to note that our ancient history on this planet is almost certainly very different from what we are taught by the conventional historical paradigm.  To the degree that Sitchin realized this, and sought an answer that was different from that forced down our throats by the proponents of conventional history (in spite of the criticism that was leveled at him for doing so), I believe his efforts can be seen as commendable (as long as they were honest efforts, and not intentionally deceptive, in that they read as literal texts which clearly are not intended to be taken literally).

However, I believe his literalistic approach was wrong, and that the myths he used to fashion his theories can be clearly demonstrated to be metaphorical and esoteric.

I also believe that, to the extent one follows the literalistic theories of Zechariah Sitchin, one will miss the real shamanic-holographic message that the ancient myths are intended to teach -- as surely as one will miss it through the literalistic hermeneutic imposed by conventional forms of Christianity since the second century AD (and especially since the fourth century and the reign of Constantine). 

I can only hope that, in my most recent interview, the constant steering of the conversation away from the esoteric had nothing to do with a desire to avoid getting into the shamanic and holographic truths of the ancient myths. Whatever the reason behind it, the unfortunate thing is that we never did get to discuss that subject to any significant degree at all.

At the top of this post is an image from an ancient Babylonian cylinder-seal. I have never analyzed this seal before, but to one who is familiar with the system of celestial allegory present in the world's mythologies, certain interpretations suggest themselves, and I would hazard to point them out as yet another example of the fact that the ancient Sumerian and Babylonian art and myth was primarily describing zodiac figures (as part of a profound spiritual allegory, and not as a description of the flight paths of ancient alien visitors):

In the above version of the same seal (the resolution is higher in the image at the top of the post, and you can find the original image here), I have added my own labels. This interpretation may not be correct (I just looked at this particular seal for the first time today), but I would be willing to defend this interpretation and can offer more back-up evidence for the above labels (from other myth systems around the world) than I have time or space to offer here.  

Very briefly, it is quite evident that we are probably looking at a zodiacal metaphor from the fact that the figure under the foot of the man on the far right of the seal is bull-like (despite its anthropomorphic face). It has bull-horns on its head, and a reclining bovine body. It is probably Taurus, as will be supported in the further analysis below.

The figure with its foot upon the back of this bull-like being is probably the Sun itself. This figure is holding out a cutting implement with his right hand. As Alvin Boyd Kuhn demonstrates, and as I discuss in The Undying Stars, the sun was allegorized in ancient myth as an axe or cleaver, because it cuts a path across the sky. This symbol of the solar axe is prevalent in ancient Minoan art, for example, but also in other cultures as well.

The first figure in the procession of figures coming in from the left of the image is holding in his hands some kind of smaller animal, as if offering it to the figure on the far right whom I have identified as the personification of the Sun. This animal appears to resemble a sheep and probably signifies the sign of Aries. 

The fact that the cleaver or cutting-tool of the Sun is positioned between the bull-animal (which is being trod down) and the lamb-animal (which is being offered) probably indicates the "crossing point" of the spring equinox, and the advent of the precessional Age of Aries. The Age of Aries followed the Age of Taurus, which is why the bull in the seal is being stepped on (debased or put down -- his precessional Age is over). This imagery was likewise featured in the Mithraic temples (in Mithraic iconography, the Bull was being slain).

If the order of the imagery as we go from right to left is correctly identified as going from Taurus to Aries, then the next sign as we proceed would be Pisces. Here we see a woman-figure, rather than the two fish we would expect for Pisces. This seems to be a problem for this interpretation! But look at the way the woman is holding her hands, up and parallel to one another -- very representative of the constellation Pisces. And, in fact, Alvin Boyd Kuhn has convincingly demonstrated that ancient mythological allegory depicted the annual zodiac year as having not one but two mothers: one at Virgo and one at Pisces (the two signs just before the equinoxes). See his discussion in Lost Light on pages 14 and 15, for instance. Thus, the woman with her two hands in a gesture suggestive of the two fish of the constellation Pisces may well be identified with that zodiac sign, especially since she is in the correct location if the two animals are indeed Taurus and then Aries (going from right to left).

Behind her, we see another figure, striding along and holding a sort of baton in such a way that it seems to be pointing into his side. I have labeled this Aquarius, which is correct if we are right about Taurus and Aries: Pisces would come next (the woman with her hands raised parallel) and then Aquarius behind Pisces. There are good and cogent reasons to believe that this man behind the Pisces figure is indeed Aquarius -- not least that mysterious baton going into his side.

Whether you agree with the above interpretation or not, I believe it is very likely the correct interpretation of the Babylonian seal. In any case, it is a far more likely and a far more supportable interpretation than that the figures represent space aliens. I would argue that other seals from ancient Babylon and Sumer, which Sitchin uses in his analysis to support his case, are more likely allegorical and zodiacal (or planetary, in some cases) than literal.

I believe that the bigger lesson here is that one cannot use the events described in scriptures to try to support literal histories: the events described in the ancient myths are esoteric and allegorical, and not literal. It is not surprising that many look towards a literal interpretation of some sort, almost as a first instinct: that is the way they have been interpreted in western culture since the Roman Empire and the dawn of literalistic Christianity, an approach which has powerfully shaped western civilization since the second, third, and fourth centuries AD.

But, I believe it is an approach which has distracted and diverted us from the real message of the ancients, and the real treasure hidden in the ancient wisdom of the world's mythologies: the shamanic message, and a message of breaking out of the limitations of a false reality and creating new and positive realities to change things for the better. 

It is too bad that this literalistic tendency was able to divert and distract the course of my recent interview, to the point that we never really discussed that shamanic message, that reality-creating message. To that degree, the interview was reflective of much of western history for the past seventeen centuries.

Like a finger, pointing a way to the moon . . .

In the above segment showing an exchange from the film Enter the Dragon (1973), Bruce Lee famously explains to his young student:

"It is like a finger, pointing a way to the moon . . .
Don't concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all that heavenly glory!"

In doing so, the groundbreaking film brought into the popular awareness an ancient principle which was recorded in writing at least as early as the inscription of the text of the Shurangama Sutra, which according to tradition was translated into Chinese in AD 705 from an ancient Indian sutra or scripture (sutras are writings, as opposed to other sacred teachings which were not written down but memorized and passed verbally from generation to generation).

As discussed in this essay by Professor Ron Epstein, published in 1976, there is some controversy over whether or not the Shurangama Sutra is actually a translation of an older sutra or whether it was actually created by the minister Fang Yung, who lived during the period that it was supposedly translated into Chinese.  In any event, because records regarding the authenticity of the Shurangama Sutra exist from as early as AD 754, we know that it was in existence by at least that year, and probably before.  Further, whether it was originally penned by Fang Yung or was in fact a translation or at least an adaptation of earlier scriptures, its principles resonate with teachings that are much older, and it became a very influential text in Ch'an Buddhism in China (which is philosophically related to Zen Buddhism in Japan -- both the Chinese word Ch'an and the Japanese word Zen are probably linguistically related to the Sanskrit word dhyana).

You can read a translation of the Shurangama Sutra for yourself at various places on the web, including here (online pdf).  The metaphor of the finger pointing to the moon is found on page 60 of that particular translation and file.  There we read:

This is like a man pointing a finger at the moon to show it to others who should follow the direction of the finger to look at the moon.  If they look at the finger and mistake it for the moon, they lose both the moon and the finger.  Why?  Because the bright moon is actually pointed at; they lose sight of the finger and fail to distinguish between brightness and darkness.  Why?  Because they mistake the finger for the bright moon and are not clear about brightness and darkness.

Whatever other deep matters this passage is illuminating, the analogy of the finger pointing to the moon provides another powerful illustration of the concept of the esoteric (the inner or the hidden) and the exoteric (the external or the literal), and the danger of losing sight of the esoteric truth by a mistaken focus on the literal or exoteric.  This concept was discussed in a previous post using an example from the 1984 film Karate Kid (for a variety of reasons, some aspects of the martial arts have traditionally been taught using esoteric methodologies, as that post mentions).

The finger in this illustration is only an aid, pointing to a higher truth (represented by the moon).  To lose sight of the higher truth because one mistakes the finger or the "teaching aid" for the truth itself would be analogous to losing sight of the martial art that the waxing of cars was intended to teach, and to focus exclusively on waxing cars.

Shockingly, there is abundant evidence that this is exactly what has happened through the literalist interpretation of the stories found in the ancient scriptures which became the Old and New Testaments of the Bible -- the literalists have fallen into the exact mistake warned against in the Shurangama Sutra: "they look at the finger and mistake it for the moon" (and in doing so, they lose both the moon and the finger).

For example, in this previous post entitled "No hell below us . . ." I argue that the scriptures describing hell which are found in the Bible were intended to be read metaphorically, and to refer to that portion of the year in which the sun's daily path (the ecliptic) is below the celestial equator -- and particularly to the winter months at the very "bottom" of the annual cycle, that part of the year on either side of the winter equinox, which is metaphorically speaking the very Pit of hell.  In other words, these scriptures are intended to convey an esoteric message, but literalists have interpreted them as describing a literal place called hell where souls are consigned for eternal torment -- a mistake of the same magnitude as mistaking the finger for the moon.

Another example would be mistaking the twelve disciples for literal historical figures, when they are almost certainly representative of the twelve signs of the zodiac and the characteristics associated with each.  Angrily insisting that they must be studied first and foremost as literal men living in the Roman Empire is akin to reversing Bruce Lee's dictum in the above film clip to say, "Don't focus on the moon -- you must only focus on the finger, such as the disciples in the stories, and must never consider the possibility that they are only a guide to point you towards something else!"

Further evidence that the ancient scriptures of the Bible (and of many other sacred traditions found around the globe) are primarily esoteric in nature rather than literal can be found in my new book, The Undying Stars, which also examines some of the history behind the replacement of esoteric truths with a mistaken literalist hermeneutic.

The Undying Stars also discusses the profound truths that these esoteric ancient scriptures may have been intended to convey.  In other words, it examines the question which one may be thinking upon reading the above discussion, which might be expressed something like this: "OK, if you are saying that the twelve disciples represent zodiac signs, or that the passages about hell represent the lower half of the annual zodiac wheel, then why would anyone write sacred scriptures about that and make such a big deal about those scriptures for so long?  What's the point of making a bunch of stories about the stars?"

One important thing to notice in both the segment from Enter the Dragon and from the Shurangama Sutra is the fact that in both cases, the moon itself is also being used as a metaphor for something else!  In other words, the teachings are not just talking about "the moon," meaning the massive rocky body orbiting our planet at an average distance of 238,857 miles.   They are using the moon in a metaphorical sense, just as they are using the overall metaphor of a finger pointing to the moon in a metaphorical sense.  The moon in both examples is meant to stand for a higher-mind that is beyond the intellect, a thinking that is beyond or above our ordinary form of thinking (in fact, it is meant to convey a truth which is difficult to express in a sentence, which is why it is best grasped through a metaphor and through the esoteric).

In just such a way, the stars and the motions of the heavens to which the ancient scriptural texts (including those which found their way into the Bible) are themselves an analogy for something else. The ancient scriptures are not just "a bunch of stories about the stars" -- they are esoteric stories related to the motions of the heavens and the heavenly bodies, but they are much more than that.  They use the motions of the heavens and the heavenly bodies to express profound truths about the human condition and our purpose in this life, as well as to imply a sophisticated cosmology that appears to anticipate modern quantum physics by many thousands of years.

The sophistication of this ancient cosmology suggests that extremely ancient civilizations may somehow have been possessed of extremely advanced science and even what we can only call advanced technology, and may help to explain some of the ancient accomplishments which are extremely difficult to explain using the conventional historical paradigm.  This fact may also help to explain why someone would want to subvert the ancient scriptures which teach it, and to get everyone focused on the finger (and only the finger) . . . and to miss all that heavenly glory!

Welcome to new visitors from Esoteric Thoughts! (and to returning friends)

Big thank-you to Esoteric for inviting me over to his channel Esoteric Thoughts for another stimulating and enjoyable conversation, this time with Professor Dennis R. MacDonald of the Claremont School of Theology, whose area of scholarship involves the Iliad and the Odyssey of Ancient Greece and the evidence of undeniable parallels between these ancient poems and the texts which are included in what we call the New Testament.

The video of our conversation is entitled "Academia & Astrotheology Discuss Homer" and it was recorded on 25 August 2022. 

There will be a Part Two of this interview to be posted later which will cover some of the evidence and artwork that I prepared for this conversation which we did not have time to address due to time constraints.

I very much appreciate Dr. MacDonald's scholarship and his courage in bucking the academic consensus of his area of study to present his evidence for the abundant thematic and structural parallels between the Odyssey and the Gospels -- evidence which I too have noticed and which I have addressed in previous blog posts such as "Parallels between the Odyssey and the Gospels." 

While Dr. MacDonald was obviously very resistant to many aspects of the arguments that I am putting forward regarding the evidence that the characters and events in both the Odyssey and the New Testament texts are based on an ancient world-wide system of celestial metaphor which connects virtually all the world's ancient myths, scriptures, and sacred stories, I appreciate his willingness to discuss these subjects. I feel that there were also points during our conversation where he clearly seemed to pick up some of the arguments that I was making and "run with the ball" to offer some excellent insights related to the two sets of texts.

Welcome to any new visitors who are encountering my work and this site for the first time as a result of this conversation between me and Dr. MacDonald, facilitated by Esoteric. I hope that you enjoyed the discussion and found it valuable, and I hope that you will continue to explore these important subjects -- and share them with others who might find them helpful as well. 

And of course, welcome to returning friends! You can find other previous conversations I have had with Esoteric in the Podcasts section of my website, or by searching the YouTube channel of Esoteric Thoughts. If you enjoy them, please take the time to thank Esoteric for all his hard work and effort in producing this excellent content!

Part Two of my conversation with Esoteric of Esoteric Thoughts: the Odyssey and related subjects!

Welcome back to visitors from the Esoteric Thoughts channel and to those finding my work perhaps for the first time based on my recently-posted two-part interview with Esoteric, which also featured Professor Dennis R. MacDonald of the Claremont School of Theology in Part One of the conversation.

Welcome also to returning friends -- I hope everyone will find this second part of our exploration of the Odyssey of Ancient Greece to be positive to your life in some way.

Here is a link to Part One of the conversation -- I will post both of these in the "Podcasts" section of the Star Myths of the World website for future reference. While visiting that Podcasts section, you can also find other previous discussions with Esoteric on his Esoteric Thoughts channel, as well as appearances I've made on other podcasts over the years.

The above Part Two conversation took place on 26 August, 2022.

Please share with those who would be interested in these subjects, and please consider giving some positive feedback to Esoteric for all his work that goes into making this channel for us and the world!

Easter: the Birth-Day of the Gods

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

When we begin to realize that virtually every single story in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is built upon celestial allegory -- especially if we have taken them literally for years, even decades -- it can at first feel like this knowledge "ruins" the great annual festivals that we once understood as commemorations of literal-historical events.

Especially the holidays of Christmas and Easter can suddenly feel strangely alien to us, because their celebration has been for so long promoted and controlled almost exclusively by those who insist upon celebrating these holidays as literal and historical, to the point that we "concede ownership" and unconsciously  adopt the mindset that the primary meaning of these annual events belongs to those who take them literally.

The unspoken assumption, if we were to put it into words or conscious thought (which we rarely ever do) is that these holidays have the most meaning for the literalists, and the idea that neither Christmas nor Easter has anything to do with literal, historical events which took place on planet Earth (although they can be shown to have taken place in the circling stars of the sky, and in fact are still taking place there, over and over each year) would be an unwelcome intrusion best kept quiet lest it "diminish" the meaning and sacredness of these special days. 

But what if, in fact, it is the literalist-historicist approach which is actually intruding upon the meaning of holidays such as Christmas and Easter?

What if the insistence upon seeing these stories as episodes in the life of someone else, no matter how revered and holy that one is, and no matter how well-intentioned we are in this insistence, actually ends up subverting their original meaning -- to the point that they are assumed to teach something that is almost "180-degrees out" from what they were originally intended to teach? 

Just such a radical assertion is argued by Alvin Boyd Kuhn in an essay entitled Easter: the Birthday of the Gods, and backed up by some of the clearest explanation found in any of Kuhn's thousands of pages of writing regarding the meaning and the purpose of the esoteric allegorical system which underlies the sacred scriptures and mythologies of the human race.

This blog has previously presented literally dozens of examples from the Old and New Testament scriptures which point very strongly to the conclusion that these stories, in common with other myths from all around the world, are esoteric in nature and that they are all united by a shared system of celestial metaphor as well as by a shared "shamanic-holographic" vision of this universe and our human experience within this earthly existence.

This shared esoteric, shamanic, and celestial foundation actually unites all of the world's sacred traditions, even as those who insist upon literalistic and historical interpretations of the scriptures almost invariably use their literalistic approach to divide humanity (generally into the two groups of "those who also interpret our scriptures our way" and "everyone else"). This fact in-and-of-itself gives us a hint that the literalistic approach tends to completely invert the conclusions reached by the esoteric approach and that it tends to wind up with conclusions that are "upside down" from the esoteric understanding.

It thus becomes very important to understand whether or not the world's ancient texts are actually literal, or if they are esoteric, and the two different approaches will lead to two very different understandings of the meanings of the stories themselves, and the meanings of the annual days associated with the different parts of the stories.

In Easter: the Birthday of the Gods (which can be read online in slightly less-than-complete form here and here, but which is so clearly and succinctly argued that everyone interested in these subjects might want to consider obtaining an actual physical copy for his or her own collection), Alvin Boyd Kuhn powerfully explains his view that all the world's scriptures and sacred stories are in fact esoteric, and his belief regarding the reason that the ancients chose to use metaphors from the natural world (to include the majestic cycles of the heavenly spheres) in order to convey their esoteric teachings.

On page 27 out of 31 in the second of the two online versions of Kuhn's Easter essay linked in the preceding paragraph, he writes -- speaking of those who gave the world their various ancient sacred traditions (whom he generally refers to as "the Sages" in all of his books and analysis) --

[. . .] those venerable Sages never wrote religious books in the form of veridical personal or national history. What they essayed to write was embalmed in forms of suggestive typist, such as myth, allegory, drama, number graphs and astrological pictography. By these methods they put forth the great truths of life and consciousness in forms of representation that would eternally adumbrate their reality to the human mind, however dull. Knowing that the essence of spiritual experience and the mind's realization of high truth are things that can not be expressed or conveyed by words alone, in fact never are fully communicable by language, they resorted to the only method that can impress true meaning even unconsciously on the brain. Every natural object and phenomenon in the living world is an objective pictograph of an elemental truth. Every object in nature mirrors a cosmic or spiritual truth. Man needs but to gaze at and reflect upon outer nature to find glyphs of the basic principles of knowledge appertaining to a higher world and level of consciousness. The laws and ordinances of spirit are adumbrated in nature's operations and spectacles.

The word "adumbrated" comes from the Latin word for "shadows" -- umbra -- along with the prefix "ad-" which means "toward" or "ahead of" and thus literally "foreshadowing" or "pre-shadowing" or (more expansively) "conveying ideas to us through shadows or representations or 'magic-lantern shows' so that we will grasp them through the 'fore-shadowing,' rather than trying to explain them to the mind in words, which does not work for some types of deep spiritual truths or concepts."

In other words, Alvin Boyd Kuhn is here expressing an idea which was also put forth in the writings of the esoteric scholar R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, who asserted that the ancients did not use "esoterism" in order to hide truths, but rather in order to convey them! In a short but extremely helpful little book entitled Esoterism and Symbol (first published in French in 1960 as Propos sur Esoterisme et Symbole and translated into a first US edition in 1985), Schwaller begins his discussion with the proclamation:

Esoterism has no common measure with deliberate concealment of the truth, that is, with secrecy in the conventional sense of the term. [page 1; italics in the original].

Having told us what it is not for, Schwaller does not, however, proceed to tell us exactly what esoterism is for, in so many words . . . but as we follow his discussion throughout the rest of the book we realize that Schwaller is showing us that esoterism is designed to convey something he calls "intelligence-of-the-heart," which cannot be conveyed through the methods normally used for the purposes of "cerebral intelligence." The entire category of spiritual truths, Schwaller argues, were seen by the ancients as of a nature that is qualitatively different from anything that "cerebral intelligence" is able to grasp -- and that the esoteric was employed in order to impress these great truths upon the "intelligence-of-the-heart," bypassing the mechanism of the cerebral intelligence, which has its own proper sphere for which it is very useful but which becomes an actual obstacle when it comes to matters of spirit.

Schwaller writes:

Spirit is found only with spirit, and esoterism is the spiritual aspect of the world, inaccessible to cerebral intelligence. 3.

This is what Alvin Boyd Kuhn is also saying in the passage quoted above, in which he says that the ancient Sages used "myth, allegory, drama, number graphs and astrological pictography" in order to "eternally adumbrate their reality to the human mind, however dull." He is not, I believe, talking about some human minds being more or less dull than others, but rather saying that there is an aspect of human mind, in all of us, which is inherently dull when it comes to matters of spiritual understanding -- the aspect of our mind which Schwaller de Lubicz calls our "cerebral intelligence."

The cerebral intelligence has its place -- it is, indeed, an essential tool that we need every day of our lives -- but it "chokes" on certain types of learning.

This is exactly why, for example, Mr. Miyagi in the original Karate Kid chooses to teach Daniel-San through the unforgettable "wax-on, wax-off" method, in what may well be the best cinematic representation of the concept of "the esoteric" ever put into a movie -- and why martial arts are traditionally passed on through exactly this type of "esoteric" methodology. If Mr. Miyagi had instead tried to teach Daniel by sitting him down and explaining the angles of the arm and elbow and shoulder and body needed in order to stop a charging opponent's punch, Daniel-san's "cerebral intelligence" would have "choked" on the explanation, and spit it back out, and started firing off all kinds of questions about "what if this" and "what if that" and "will this really work" and "what about this other?"

Alvin Boyd Kuhn says that "the essence of spiritual experience and the mind's realization of high truth are things that can not be expressed or conveyed by words alone, in fact never are fully communicable by language." Instead, the esoteric is in fact "the only method that can impress true meaning even unconsciously on the brain."

And here we begin to perceive the reason that taking stories and rituals which are intended to be understood esoterically and instead turning our intelligence loose on them as if they are supposed to be understood as literal and historical events for us to analyze can lead us to do more than just "miss the point" of their esoteric significance: it can lead us to come up with a completely different conclusion altogether, and one which in fact undermines and even totally reverses the message that the stories are trying to convey.

And this, says Alvin Boyd Kuhn, appears to be exactly what has happened with the sacred myths collected in the books which make up what we call today "the Bible," and in particular with the Easter story.

And that terrible misinterpretation, Kuhn argues, is made infinitely more serious when we consider the wonderful truths which the Easter story is intended to convey -- for Kuhn has an extremely "high view" of the spiritual meaning of the Easter story, to the point that he says that when we grasp what it is telling us, words fall short and "the one remaining mode of expressing the profundity and the majesty of our uplift is song" (from page 2 of the version linked previously).

For, the Easter story as found in the stories of the so-called "New Testament" (which themselves are but a "re-casting" of the same themes found in slightly different form in the sacred mythology of ancient Egypt, and found in many other forms in the other sacred scriptures and myths of other cultures literally across the globe) expresses a very specific point in the cycles experienced by each and every human soul.

According to Alvin Boyd Kuhn's analysis:

Easter is the ceremonial that crowns all the other religious festivals of the year with its springtime halo of resurrected life. It is to dramatize the final end in the victory of man's long struggle through the inferior kingdoms of matter and bodily incarnation in grades of fleshly existence. Other festivals around the year memorialize the various stages of this slow progress through the recurring round of the cycles of manifestation. Easter commemorates the end in triumph, all lower obstacles overcome, all "enemies" conquered, all darkness of ignorance vanquished, all fruits and the golden harvest of developed powers garnered in the eternal barn of an inner holy of holies of consciousness, all battles won, peace with aeonal victory assured at last. 3.

In other words, he argues, it refers to a point towards which we all are working in our successive visits into this realm of incarnation, this realm in which our spirit-nature is "planted in" our physical nature as a seed is planted in the earth, in order to grow: it "adumbrates" that point when the work of such cycles of incarnation is complete, and the soul triumphantly soars into an entirely new realm of consciousness.

If all that seems just a little too much to swallow (if, in other words, the "cerebral intelligence" chokes upon encountering such assertions), Kuhn in this essay Easter: the Birthday of the Gods provides what may be the best, succinct explanation found anywhere in his extensive writings of the way that the esoteric celestial allegories found throughout the world's mythologies (and operating quite clearly in the Easter story, as discussed in the previous post about the zodiacal symbolism in the gospel accounts of the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem and the Betrayal by Judas Iscariot).

As you read through the extended quotation reproduced below from pages 4 and 5 of Kuhn's essay on Easter, you can follow along on the now-familiar zodiac wheel discussed in countless previous posts (see for instance here, here, here and here), which is arranged such that the June solstice (summer solstice for the northern hemisphere) is at the top or "twelve o'clock" position on the wheel (in between the signs of Gemini and Cancer, in the Age of Aries used in so many surviving ancient mythologies including those in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible), and the fall equinox is at "three o'clock" (between Virgo and Libra), the winter solstice is at "six o'clock" (between Sagittarius and Capricorn), and the glorious spring equinox after which Easter is celebrated (as is Passover from the Old Testament, both commemorations representing the successful crossing of the lower half of the year, which symbolized the physical incarnation here in this body of earth and water).

Both of the important equinoxes are marked with a red "X," because at the equinoxes the sun's ecliptic (along with the sun and also -- generally speaking -- all of the visible planets appear to travel) crosses over the celestial equator, and as it crosses either "down below" this line or back "up above" this line, the days either change over to being shorter than the nights (on the way "down" to the winter solstice) or to being longer (on the way back "up" towards the top of the year):

And here now is Alvin Boyd Kuhn's explanation of the esoteric or spiritual use to which the "venerable Sages" who gave the sacred stories to the various cultures of humanity employed the above awe-inspiring annual cycle:

Using solar symbolism and analogues in depicting the divine soul's peregrinations round the cycles of existence, the little sun of radiant spirit in man being the perfect parallel of the sun in the heavens, and exactly copying its movements, the ancient Sages marked the four cardinal "turns" of its progress round the zodiacal year as epochal stages in soul evolution. As all life starts with conception in mind, later to be extruded into physical manifestation, so the soul that is to be the god of a human being is conceived in the divine mind at the station in the zodiac marking the date of June 21. This is at the "top" of the celestial arc, where mind is most completely detached from matter, meditating in all its "purity."

Then the swing of the movement begins to draw it "downward" to give it the satisfaction of its inherent yearning for the Maya of experience which alone can bring its latent capabilities for the evolution of consciousness to manifestation. Descending the from June it reaches September 21, the point where its direction becomes straight downward and it here crosses the line of separation between spirit and matter, the great Egyptian symbolic line of the "horizon," and becomes incarnated in material body. Conceived in the aura of Infinite Mind in June, it enters the realm of mortal flesh in September. It is born then as the soul of a human; but at first and for a long period it lies like a seed in the ground before germination, inert, unawakened, dormant, in the relative sense of the word, "dead." This is the young god lying in the manger, asleep in his cradle of the body, or as in the Jonah-fish allegory and the story of Jesus in the boat in the storm on the lake, asleep in the "hold" of the "ship" of life, with the tempest of the body's elemental passions raging all about him. He must be awakened, arise, exert himself and use his divine powers to still the storm, for the elements in the end will obey his mighty will.

Once in the body, the soul power is weighed in the scales of the balance, for the line of the border of the sign of Libra, the Scales, runs across the September equinoctial station. For soul is now equilibrated with body and out of this balance come all the manifestations of the powers of consciousness. It is soul's immersion in body and its equilibration with it that brings consciousness to function.

Then on past September, like any seed sown in the soil, the soul entity sinks its roots deeper and deeper into matter, for at its later stages of growth it must be able to utilize the energy of matter's atomic force to effectuate its ends for its own spiritual aggrandizement. It is itself to be lifted up to heights of cosmic consciousness, but no more than an oak can exalt its majestic form to highest reaches without the dynamic energization received from the dart at its feet can soul rise up above body without drawing forth the strength of the body's dynamo of power. Down, down it descends then through the October, November, and December path of the sun, until it stands at the nadir of its descent on December 21.

Here it has reached the turning-point, at which the energies that were stored potentially in it in seed form will feel the first touch of quickening power and will begin to stir into activity. At the winter solstice of the cycle the process of involution of spirit into matter comes to a stand-still -- just what the solstice means in relation to the sun -- and while apparently stationary in its deep lodgment in matter, like moving water locked up in winter's ice, it is slowly making the turn as on a pivot from outward and downward direction to movement at first tangential, then more directly upward to its high point in spirit home. So the winter solstice signalizes the end of "death" and the rebirth of life in a new generation. It therefore was inevitably named as the time of the "birth of the Divine Sun" in man; the Christ-mas, the birthday of the Messianic child of spirit. The incipient resurgence of the new growth, now based on and fructified by roots struck deep in matter, begins at this "turn of the year," as the Old Testament phrases it, and goes on with increasing vigor as, like the lengthening days of late winter, the sun-power of the spiritual light bestirs into activity the latent capabilities of life and consciousness, and the hidden beauty of the spirit breaks through the confining soil of body and stands out in fulness of its divine expression on the morn of March 21. This brings the soul in a burst of glorious light out of the tomb of fleshly "death," giving it verily its "resurrection from the dead." It then has consummated its cycle's work by bursting through the gates of death and hell, and marches in triumph upward to become a lord of life in higher spheres of the cosmos. No longer is it to be a denizen of lower worlds, a prisoner chained in body's dungeon pit, a soul nailed to matter's cross. It has conquered mortal decay and rises on wings of ecstasy into the freedom of eternal life. Its trysting with earthly clay is forever ended, as aloft it sweeps like a lark storming heaven's gate, with "hymns of victory" pouring from its exuberant throat. From mortality it has passed the bright portals into immortality. From man it has become god. No more shall it enter the grim underworld of "death." 4-5.

These are incredible concepts, but there is little doubt that Kuhn's analysis as outlined above must be considered a very defendable explanation of the insistent personification of the "stations" of the great zodiac wheel, found in virtually every single ancient sacred tradition of the human race, on every continent of our planet and indeed on all the scattered islands of the great Pacific and other oceans as well, and that it may in fact be the reason why those unknown ancient Sages chose to employ it, and what they intended us to understand from these stories.

And, although Kuhn himself does not go this far, I can show you to my complete satisfaction (and I believe to yours as well) that it is equally evident that the events depicted in the Easter week contain this very cycle in its entirety, from the

• Triumphal Entry at the beginning of the week, replete with imagery of the top of the zodiac wheel, to the 
• Agony of Christ and the Crucifixion "outside the gates" of the city -- that is, at the point of the fall equinox, which is one of the two "gates" of the year through which the sun and all the visible planets must pass as they "cross over" the line of the celestial equator and descend down into the lower half of the year (or back up, at the other equinox), and which represents the throwing down of the soul into the "grave" of the incarnate body, to cross through this incarnate life in which we are all struggling on this earthly surface, and finally turning back upwards to the
• Resurrection and the "rising up" out of the lower realm, which takes place on the other side of the year at the spring equinox, which is replete with imagery that has to do with both the fish of Pisces and the lambs and ram of Aries, and which represents the ultimate triumph of the soul, after the lessons and necessary consciousness-raising that take place during the cycles of incarnation in the "underworld" of this material realm.

Obviously, in the Easter week series of stories, the one point of the wheel which is not really emphasized is the point of the "birth of the Christ-consciousness," which is emphasized at a different special celebration on the annual calendar: at the sun's turning-point back upwards after the winter solstice, which is celebrated as Christmas. But the starting point of the summer solstice (in the Triumphal Entry and the "Upper Room"), followed by the "casting down" point of the fall equinox (with the Crucifixion) and the "raising up" point of the spring equinox (Resurrection) are all very clearly depicted and emphasized.

Now, in the above extended quotation of the passage found on pages 4 and 5 of Alvin Boyd Kuhn's Easter thesis, when he speaks of "the divine soul" or "the soul entity" or even "the soul power," he is referring to the individual soul of each and every person. He is not referring to something outside of any one of us: an examination of the bulk of Kuhn's work makes it abundantly clear that he believes that those who gave us the sacred stories intended for us to understand that they are not about ancient men, women, heroes or demigods, but that they are about each and every reader or hearer of the story: the "star" of every story is in fact your own soul.

In a different passage from a different essay by Alvin Boyd Kuhn, quoted at the end of this post from the time of the winter solstice, he writes:

Bible stories are in no sense a record of what happened to a man or a people as historical occurrence. As such they would have little significance for mankind. They would be the experience of people not ourselves, and would not bear a relation to life. But they are a record, under pictorial forms, of that which is ever occurring in the reality of the present in all lives. They mean nothing as outward events; but they mean everything as picturizations of that which is our living experience at all times. The actors are not old kings, priests and warriors; the one actor in every portrayal, in every scene, is the human soul.

Therefore, Kuhn asserts, we will necessarily go astray if we "externalize" or literalize the sacred myths: they must be grasped by, and applied to, each and every person for himself or herself.

And this again is where, according to Kuhn in the essay Easter: the Birthday of the Gods (and according to quotations which Kuhn brings in to his essay from psychologist and scholar of mythology Carl Jung, who says the very same thing), the externalization of the Bible stories, and their use to encourage the veneration of a supposed external and historical-literal figure -- even a figure so admirable as the figure of Jesus in the gospels -- can lead us seriously astray, to the point where we not only miss the actual message of the story but end up with a message that is directly opposite from the original esoteric message.

Because, as Kuhn discusses in the extended quotation cited above, during the discussion of the September equinox and the "casting down" into the Balance of Libra and the reawakening of divine consciousness at the nadir-point of winter solstice, our sojourn in the incarnate body is a time of our own soul's passing through the "Scales" between the horizons, and of our own need to awaken the higher divine spark of consciousness within: not a time to look at the external stories and conclude that someone else has passed through the balance for us and awakened consciousness so that we don't have to!

And yet, that is exactly how the stories are interpreted by the majority of the literalist-historicist camp, lo these past seventeen centuries: the one in the stories has done those things, so that we don't have to.  

It is exactly, if I might bring in some films which did not appear until long after Kuhn wrote this essay, someone were to watch the movie The Matrix (1999) or The Truman Show (1998), and conclude: "I'm sure glad that Neo took that Red Pill -- so that I don't have to!" or "I'm so happy for Truman, that he finally 'woke up' and walked out of that 'dome of illusion' -- now I don't have to!"

Such a response would undoubtedly confuse the creators of those films -- because the whole point of the movie is that you, the viewer, need to consider waking up like Truman to the illusionists manipulating the world within the dome, or waking up like Neo to the illusion of the Matrix.

The point is not to curl up inside your "pod" in the Matrix -- or inside your little house in the dome -- and say, "I'm sure glad Truman, or Neo, woke up for me!" And the makers of those movies would probably be both surprised and dismayed if everyone interpreted their films that way.

According to Alvin Boyd Kuhn, we are not at the point described by the Easter symbolism just yet: we are still on the Scales of the Balance, down here in this mortal existence: and what we do here has an enormous impact on the progress of our invisible soul. As he says elsewhere, everything we are doing "down here" in the body is making its mark upon the record of the mighty Scales, as depicted in many "vignettes" or scenes in the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, whose correct name as Kuhn notes in the Easter essay is in fact the Book of Going Forth by Day, envisaging the future point of Easter and the soul's "Day-Break" of triumph (scene from the Book of the Dead of the scribe-priest Ani is depicted below).

The danger of the literalist misinterpretation, in Kuhn's opinion, can be seen in the "dismal" record of literalist Christianity down through the centuries since it took hold, and since the tragic triumph of literalism over esoterism during the second and third centuries "A.D.": seventeen centuries of "bigotry, superstition, persecution, hatred, war and the most fiendish inhumanity ever to be entered into the world's annals" (Easter, 16).

Ultimately, Kuhn argues in this essay, the question of whether Easter is about what the literalists say it is about, or whether it is meant to depict one of the most glorious parts of the esoteric teaching outlined above thus becomes an incredibly important question. He says, as he draws towards his conclusion,

Easter meaning and Easter ecstasy will forever elude us if we can not understand it as the drama, not of one man's history long passed [. . .] but of our own life history, the scenario of our transfiguration yet to come. [. . .] if we for a moment permit it to lure us into the belief that another man's alleged conquest of death in the long past in any degree relieves us of the evolutionary task of achieving our own resurrection, the myth becomes the source of a tragic psychological calamity for us. For to the extent we look to a man, or a miracle, or any power outside ourselves, to that extent we will let the sleeping divinity within us lie unawakened. 28-29. 

And thus, it may well be that -- far from being those with an esoteric understanding of Easter (or Christmas) who are intruding upon holy ground that "belongs to" those who take these stories literally -- it is the literalist-historicist approach that has in fact intruded upon, and thrown over, the ancient sacred meaning of these significant annual days of commemoration.

To the extent that this overthrow has led to the teaching of something entirely the opposite of what the sacred stories were actually intended to teach, this is a tragic mistake that calls out to be remedied. It is very similar to the way that the stories of Adam and Eve or of Shem, Ham and Japheth have both been used to divide humanity and pit men and women against one another, even though if these are understood as the esoteric celestial allegories which I believe they can be shown to be, they actually teach a message that should unite men and women instead of dividing them. 

And, to the extent that this overthrow has led to "persecution, hatred, war and the most fiendish inhumanity," the question of which understanding of Easter is a twisting of the message to mean the opposite of what it was intended becomes a very important question, and not a "merely academic" question at all.

If the esoteric understanding outlined above is closer to the intention of the "ancient Sages" who gave these sacred treasures to humanity so many millennia ago, as I believe that it is, then it is a very dangerous thing for the majority of the people to conclude that they can just "curl up in their pod in the Matrix," because Neo already woke up and achieved consciousness so that I don't have to.

Alvin Boyd Kuhn argues that Easter is one of the most beautiful symbols in all of the New Testament version of the esoteric myths. I believe that when we understand it esoterically, it actually becomes even more beautiful, and more meaningful for our lives, than ever.

image: Wikimedia commons (link).

Welcome again to new visitors from Esoteric Thoughts! (and to returning friends)

Thank you again to Esoteric Thoughts for having me over for a conversation about myths and stars and their meaning for our lives. 

This is "Part Two" of our conversation, in which we are discussing the well-known episode found in Genesis chapter 9, of Noah and his sons after the Flood, in which Noah plants a vineyard and makes wine, resulting in drunkenness and embarrassment.

Here is the link to the Esoteric Thoughts channel, and here is the link to the above video about Noah's drunkenness. 

Here for convenience is the link to my blog post about the first part of this interview on Esoteric Thoughts, which contains a link to the video of "Part One" (and here is a link to that Part One video for ease of reference as well).

This discussion contains evidence which argues that the story of Noah's drunkenness and nakedness, and the subsequent actions of his three sons Shem, Ham and Japheth, is a celestial story and one that is built upon a foundation of metaphor involving specific constellations which we can still see in the night sky. The conversation was recorded on 16 October 2021.

I hope you will find something in this video which will be positive to you in some way: please share as appropriate and please give Esoteric Thoughts some encouraging feedback for all the hard work which goes into the production of the Esoteric Thoughts channel in distributing this type of information to the world.

Welcome to new visitors from Esoteric Thoughts! (And to returning friends)

Special thank-you to host Esoteric for inviting me back to his show, Esoteric Thoughts, for another conversation -- this time featuring researcher John McHugh and myself in a discussion of the esoteric and celestial aspects of the stories of the Bible and of other ancient myths.

Our conversation is entitled "Challenging Astrotheology: John McHugh and David Mathisen." 

Welcome to any new visitors finding this page for the first time after seeing this video on Esoteric Thoughts (and welcome back to returning friends)!

This video and discussion was recorded on 11 December, 2022.

You can also see my previous appearances on the Esoteric Thoughts channel here:

"Astrotheology with David Warner Mathisen: Genesis 28"

"Noah Drunk and Naked: Literal or Celestial?"

"Language of the Myths"

"Academia and Astrotheology Discuss Homer: Dr. Dennis MacDonald and David Mathisen"

"Astrotheology and Homer, Part 2"

Please feel free to share with those for whom this material would be positive in some way.