A Memorial Day meditation on natural universal law

By almost all accounts, Memorial Day began in the United States at the conclusion of the Civil War, or shortly thereafter.  It was originally often called Decoration Day, and was a way to remember those who had lost their lives during that conflict.  Activities almost always included decorating their grave sites.  For some time Memorial Day was celebrated on the 30th of May, when flowers would be in bloom in abundance (according to sources cited here), but was officially changed to the final Monday of the month of May in 1971.

The American Civil War involved two extremely important issues of natural law: whether or not human beings could be held as property, and whether or not human beings could be compelled to "submit to, and support, a government that they do not want" (in the words of abolitionist philosopher and lawyer Lysander Spooner, who was an outspoken proponent of the concept of natural law's superiority in all cases to "artificial" or "human law").

Today, it is generally recognized that the idea that human beings can be held as property is a gross violation of natural (or universal) law.  However, it is not generally recognized that the idea that human beings can be compelled to submit to and support a government that they do not want is also a violation of natural universal law.  

Spooner argued that both are gross violations of natural law, and argued that while it was lawful to use force to stop slavery, and that the American Civil War was lawful to the extent that force was initiated to stop that hideous violation of natural rights, it was not lawful to initiate force to keep someone under a government that they did not want, and that it was regrettable that the justification of the war was usually framed in those terms by those who were arguing for it (rather than as a war against slavery).

Unlike other abolitionists of his day, Spooner argued that the Constitution of the United States did not and could not make slavery legal in any way.  William Lloyd Garrison, one of the most prominent abolitionists of the time, believed that the Constitution did indeed sanction slavery, and for this reason Garrison publicly burned a copy of the Constitution during an anti-slavery rally on July 4, 1854 (150 years ago this July).  He also publicly called the Constitution a "Covenant with Death and an Agreement with Hell."

Spooner, however, argued that no human law could sanction crime, violence, or wrongdoing -- either by governments or by individuals -- and then went on to demonstrate rather conclusively that this proposition was firmly established well before the ratification of the US Constitution, that all of accepted human law was based upon this principle (and here he cited clear quotations from the accepted authorities of the day, including Blackstone), and that both the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution could be clearly demonstrated to have "freed every slave in the country" at the time of their signing, even if it could be argued that there were any legal slaves prior to the Declaration or the Constitution (and, he added, he firmly denied that there could have been any legal slaves even prior to those dates).  

Spooner published his argument that slavery is unconstitutional and that the Constitution in no way supports it in The Unconstitutionality of Slavery, 1860.  This important text can be read in its entirety online here (in the form of a pdf) and here on the site of Project Gutenberg (in various online formats).

While these debates may be seen by some to be relics of the nineteenth century, now that the idea that human beings can be legally made into property has been rejected (or has it?), in point of fact the natural law issues Spooner argues in his treatise are every bit as relevant today as they were in 1860 when The Unconstitutionality of Slavery was first published.  

First of all, it is by no means clear that one can separate the proposition that no human being can be made into property (the first important natural-law issue at stake in the American Civil War) from the proposition that no human being can be made to submit to and support a government which he or she does not want (the second important natural-law issue at stake in the same war).  Is holding someone in a club, association, group, or political state against his or her will consistent with human freedom?  Spooner argues persuasively that it is not, and demonstrates that both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution agree with his position.  

Second, while the immoral laws which supposedly made slavery "legal" during the time Spooner was writing his anti-slavery arguments have now been stricken from the books in the United States, his larger argument that illegal laws -- that is to say, those which violate what he on the very first page of his treatise terms "natural, universal, and necessary principle" -- have no true force of law, is still an extremely contentious and important subject for consideration.  Spooner argued that no man or woman has an obligation to obey an immoral -- and hence unlawful -- human statute, and that in fact he or she has an obligation to resist it and to stop it from being immorally enforced in violation of the rights of others.

Spooner's clearest expression of this principle can probably be found in the second chapter of his Defence for Fugitive Slaves, published in 1850, which argues against the law requiring citizens in the northern states to apprehend fugitive slaves or face legal repercussions. There, he writes:

The rescue of a person, who is assaulted, or restrained of his liberty, without authority of law, is not only morally, but legally, a meritorious act; for every body is under obligation to go to the assistance of one who is assailed by assassins, robbers, ravishers, kidnappers, or ruffians of any kind.

An officer of the government is an officer of the law only when he is proceeding according to law.  The moment he steps beyond the law, he, like other men, forfeits its protection, and may be resisted like any other trespasser.  An unconstitutional statute is no law, in the view of the constitution.  It is void, and confers no authority on any one; and whoever attempts to execute it, does so at his peril.  His holding a commission is no legal protection for him.  If this doctrine were not true, and if, (as the supreme court say in the Prigg case,) a man may, if he choose, execute an authority granted by unconstitutional law, congress may authorize whomsoever they please, to ravish women, and butcher children, at pleasure, and the people have no right to resist them.

The constitution contemplates no such submission, on the part of the people, to the usurpation of the government, or to the lawless violence of its officers.  On the contrary it provides that "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."  

 [. . .]

To say that an unconstitutional law must be obeyed until it is repealed, is saying that an unconstitutional law is just as obligatory as a constitutional one,-- for the latter is binding only until it is repealed.  There would therefore be no difference at all between a constitutional and an unconstitutional law, in respect to their binding force; and that would be equivalent to abolishing the constitution, and giving to the government unlimited power.  27-28.

In the Unconstitutionality of Slavery, Spooner reiterates the same argument, saying that if all laws are defined as being legal by the simple fact of their being enacted as a law, then:

Under this definition, law offers no permanent guaranty for the safety, liberty, rights or happiness of anyone.  It licenses all possible crime, both by governments and individuals.  The definition was obviously invented by, and is suited merely to gloss over the purposes of, arbitrary power.  We are therefore compelled to reject it [. . .]. 14.

This is an extremely important subject, worthy of careful consideration, as pertinent today as it was when Spooner published those arguments in 1850 and in 1860.  They should cause us to ask ourselves what "laws" today are actually in violation of natural law, and to what degree we ourselves are guilty of what Spooner called "submission, on the part of the people, to the usurpation of the government, or to the lawless violence of its officers."  

In the United States, it is certainly possible to celebrate on Memorial Day the fact that those who fought to stop slavery were fighting on the side of natural law, but it is also possible to ask whether those who fought to take the lands of the Native Americans, a task that the US Army took up in earnest not long after the Civil War was over, and a task that was led by many former Union generals, were also fighting on the side of natural law (the answer is clearly "No").  The same question can be asked of the use of the US armed forces to take over the Hawaiian Islands or the Philippine Islands in the decades following the subjugation of the remaining Native American tribes in the western US (and the same answer is clearly "No" in both of those of those cases as well).  

More recent history raises similarly disturbing questions, when considered in light of the subject of natural universal law.  Spooner argued that everyone naturally has an innate sense of natural law, and recognizes violations of it.  Most notably, he makes this argument in his 1882 tract entitled "Natural Law, or the Science of Justice."  But if this is the case, we must ask ourselves how egregious and widespread violations of natural law are tolerated by so many?  

If slavery is so obviously a violation of natural law, why was it so widely tolerated in the United States during the years that Spooner was writing his tracts and William Lloyd Garrison was burning copies of the Constitution?  If taking the land of the Native Americans by force, and violating every treaty made with them, is so obviously an example of arbitrary and illegal use of force, then why was it so widely supported in the United States during the years following the Civil War?  The same can be asked of the heinous atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis and by other murderous state entities during the twentieth century, all clear and egregious violations of natural law which were to some degree tolerated before they were stopped.

One answer to that question is the fact that Spooner's argument that "laws" which violate natural law have no actual legal force, and that men and women have a moral obligation to oppose such laws at all times, is not widely understood -- and is even opposed in many circles.  Another answer is given by Spooner himself at the end of the 1882 tract just cited (on page 20), in which he states that human legislation which is in violation of natural universal law almost always makes use of what he calls "pretences and disguises" by which violators of natural law "attempt to hide themselves" (hide the illegality of their actions and usurpations).  

While he does not elaborate upon these "pretences and disguises," it has been argued on the pages of this blog that these pretenses and disguises can be grouped under the heading of "mind control."  The argument that forms of mind control almost always accompany violations of natural law follows the line of argument advanced by Mark Passio, who is cited in previous posts such as "Blackfish and mind control" and "Lysander Spooner, natural law, and human consciousness." 

Such pretenses and disguises often include a "false narrative" or a false history, discussed at some length in this previous post.  An obvious example would be the narrative known as "manifest destiny" which was used to gloss over and attempt to hide the atrocities perpetrated against the Native Americans during the second half of the nineteenth century. Enough people in the United States bought into that narrative to prevent them from opposing the activities taking place in the western states, or even from seeing them as the gross violations of natural law that they so clearly were.

Prior to the Civil War, one of the false narratives which was used in order to disguise the criminality of holding human beings as property (in other words, in a state of slavery) was the argument that slavery was sanctioned by the literal interpretation of ancient scriptures (in particular those in the Old and New Testaments) -- a literal interpretation of the scriptures to which large portions of the populace subscribed.  

While today it is generally assumed (and taught) that the defense of slavery using the Bible was most prevalent in the southern states, the carefully documented study of this question published in 1987 by Professor of History Larry E. Tise entitled Proslavery: A history of the defense of slavery in America, 1707 - 1840 argues that this view lets the rest of the country off the hook, and is in itself a false historical narrative which was created after the war was over.  His research reveals that the institution of slavery was widely accepted and defended across the US prior to the Civil War, notably by members of the clergy in both the north and the south.  The book presents evidence that the clergy in the prewar US were an important "moral elite" and powerfully shaped opinion in the towns and counties across the nation, and that their support of slavery was a major factor in its acceptance by the populace.  

Professor Tise notes on page xvii the unpleasant fact that "ministers wrote almost half of all defenses of slavery published in America" prior to the war (and that this number only counts the defenses of slavery by ministers that were formally published, and does not count the even more widespread support given in sermons or in informal conversations).  Supporting his assertions with tables of evidence, he also demonstrates that the most outspoken of "proslavery clergymen on the whole were among the most successful members of their profession," and that: "Many of the officially designated heads of American churches -- bishops, moderators, and others in the national counsels of almost all churches -- were proslavery ministers.  Among churches with hierarchical structures, they could almost always be found at the top" (162-163).

Today, many would argue that the support found by those ministers for a gross violation of natural law in their interpretations of ancient scriptures were in fact misinterpretations of those texts.  All the more reason, then, to ask whether ancient scriptures, including those in the Old and New Testaments, are still being misinterpreted (albeit in other ways) in the present day -- and to ask whether they are being misinterpreted in ways which gloss over or even provide support for modern-day violations of natural universal law.

Memorial Day reminds us that these issues have real and very grave consequences.  Men and women are asked to fight and even to die for these causes.  In light of that extremely serious fact, the issues raised by Lysander Spooner regarding natural universal law -- and the ways in which pretenses and disguises have been used throughout history to cast a false veil of legitimacy over illegitimate and illegal violations of natural universal law -- are most appropriate for careful reflection on this Memorial Day.

Montessori and "thinging"

The Montessori method, originated by pioneer educator

Maria Montessori

(1870 - 1952), has a very special place in my heart.  I went through Montessori education from preschool to third grade, my children went through Montessori, my sister teaches at a Montessori school, and my mother has run Montessori schools in California for over thirty years.  Of course, with so much exposure to Montessori, many of our family's close friends and the fantastic individuals I was around while I was growing up also come from the Montessori community. Some of the most influential teachers I ever had were my early Montessori teachers, and I am tremendously grateful to each one of them to this day.

Not only is Montessori a wonderful approach to education, but it is also centered on respect for the child as an individual and a person, and respect for the child's own initiative and ability to learn by himself or herself.  Montessori also inculcates in the child a respect for other children and the ability to work with and help others.  All of these wonderful aspects of Montessori are evident in the above video, entitled "

A Montessori Morning

," and which shows in about four minutes a series of photographs taken during the course of three hours in the morning of a four-year-old named Jackson, along with his friends at the

Dundas Valley Montessori School

in Ontario.

In addition to all these outstanding characteristics (and there are many more I have not mentioned), Montessori also provides an excellent example of the

esoteric method

of enabling the human mind to grasp big or profound concepts (previous discussions of the esoteric include "

Wax on, wax off

" and "

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

").

Montessori uses ingenious physical materials to represent abstract concepts.  In doing so, it echoes the method employed by the sages responsible for the mythologies which make up the world's ancient sacred traditions, according to thinkers such as Gerald Massey (1828 - 1907) and Alvin Boyd Kuhn (1880 - 1963) -- although most conventional historians and academics erroneously approach ancient sacred texts and traditions as if they were intended to be understood literally.

Gerald Massey vigorously refutes the conventional view that the world's ancient myths were intended or anciently understood to be literal in the second and third sections of his essay "

Luniolatry, Ancient and Modern

," in which he explains:

They [meaning the conventional historians and professors of mythology, several of whom he cites in the essay] have misrepresented primitive or archaic man as having been idiotically misled from the first by an active but untutored imagination into believing all sorts of fallacies, which were directly and contradicted by his own daily experience; a fool of fancy in the midst of those grim realities that were grinding his experience into him, like the grinding icebergs making their imprints upon the rocks submerged beneath the sea.  It remains to be said, and will one day be acknowledged, that these accepted teachers have been no nearer to the beginnings of mythology and language than Burn's poet Willie had been near to Pegasus.  My reply is, 'Tis but a dream of the metaphysical theorist that mythology was a disease of language, or anything else except his own brain.  The origin and meaning of mythology have been missed altogether by these solarites and weather-mongers!  Mythology was a primitive mode of thinging the early thought.  It was founded on natural facts, and is still verifiable in phenomena. [. . .]

In modern phraseology a statement is sometimes said to be mythical in proportion to its being untrue; but the ancient mythology was not a system or mode of falsifying in that sense.  Its fables were the means of conveying facts; they were neither forgeries nor fictions.  Nor did mythology originate in any intentional double-dealing whatever, although it did assume an aspect of duality when direct expression in words had succeeded the primitive mode of representation by means of things as signs and symbols.

Alvin Boyd Kuhn picks up on the importance of Massey's concept of "thinging" and says:

As Gerald Massey says, thinking is in essence a process of "thinging," since thoughts must rest on the nature of things.  And things are themselves God's thoughts in material form. Lost Light, 42.

This "thinging" that Massey and Kuhn are talking about is perhaps best illustrated by the Montessori materials, some of which can be seen in the beautiful little video above.  For example, in the video above, Jackson works with the Montessori "sensorial material" project known as the trinomial cube beginning at about 2:30 into the video, through about 2:44 in the video (the video moves fast -- you can see the trinomial cube segment following immediately after Jackson and his friends have a snack, at about 2:25 -- immediately following the "window squeegee" scene -- just after Jackson finishes cleaning his dishes from the snack and puts them into a drying rack to air-dry).

The trinomial cube is an example of "thinging" the somewhat abstract algebraic concept of cubing a trinomial (a trinomial is a mathematical expression containing three variables, with the vairables commonly designated as

a

,

b

, and

c

).   If we have a trinomial (a + b + c), and we wish to

cube

it, we must multiply the trinomial by

itself

three times (this is the definition of cubing something).  In other words, we must multiply (a + b + c) (a + b + c) (a + b + c).

If you remember your algebra, you will remember that the way to tackle this particular operation is to begin with the first term in the first trinomial, and multiply it by each of the terms in the next two instances of the trinomial, and continue this process all the way through the operation.  The outcome of that process is illustrated rather well on

this discussion of the Montessori trinomial cube

, on the website of

Montessori World Educational Institute

.

After multiplying it all the way out, and adding it all together, one finds that the cube of (a + b + c) can be written:

 a

3 

+ 3a

2

b + 3a

2

c  + 3ab

2 

+ 6abc + 3ac

2 

+ b

3

 + 3b

2

c  +3bc

2

 + c

3

The trinomial cube used in Montessori classrooms makes this rather intimidating-looking formula into a thing, into a model which children such as Jackson can manipulate and explore at a very early age (remember that Jackson is four years old, and he can be seen assembling the trinomial correctly in the video).

The way the model cube "things" the expression of the cubed trinomial shown above is ingenious.  You can see that in the full formula, the cube of each variable appears one time each,

a

-cubed,

b

-cubed, and

c

-cubed appear at the beginning, the "middle," and the end of the formula, respectively.  The  variable

a

is represented by the largest dimension of the blocks in the cube -- when

a

is cubed it is represented by the largest cube in the model, painted red on all surfaces, of length

a

on each side of the cube.  The variable

b

is the next-largest dimension of the blocks in the cube: when it is cubed it is painted blue on all sides and appears as a cube with sides of length

b

(a shorter distance than length

a

).  Finally, the variable c is the shortest of the dimensions represented in the cube; when

c

appears as a cube (which it does one time in the above formula for a cubed trinomial), it is depicted as a cube in which all faces are painted yellow, and the sides are a length

c

(shorter than

b

, which in turn was shorter than

a

). 

Note that in the solution formula above, the term following 

 a

3

 is 3a

2

b.  The term 

a

2

b is "thinged" in the Montessori trinomial cube as a solid with a face that is length a on each side (that is, it is a physical representation of 

a

2

 and it is painted red on the square face), but which is only a depth of

b

(these sides,

b

in length, are painted black).  Thus, the Montessori trinomial cube represents 

a

2

b as a solid with a 

height and width of

a

and a depth of

b

, and it contains three such solids, to match the 

a

2

b in the solution to the cubed trinomial.  

The model of the trinomial has solids to represent each of the terms in the full formula above.  It has three that are again a height and width of

a

but this time only a depth of

c

, to represent the next term which is 

3a

2

c (and again, the face representing

a

-squared is painted red).  It has three solids which are

b

in height and width and

a

in depth, to represent the 

3ab

2

 (and this time, of course, the face representing

b

-squared is painted blue, while the depth representing a is painted black -- colors are only used when a term is either squared or cubed, otherwise the side is black).  And it has six solids which have a height of

a

, a width of

b

, and a depth of

c

, which are black on all their sides, and represent the term 6abc.  To help visualize all of this, follow this link to the excellent schematic on the

trinomial cube page

of

Wikisori

, which lays it all out visually.

Now, the interesting thing about all of this is that the child learning how to work with the trinomial cube (and its slightly less-complicated cousin, the binomial cube, which represents the binomial a + b multiplied by itself three times) is not taught anything at all about the way that the cube is an ingenious physical representation of a rather advanced and very abstract algebraic concept.  That would not really be helpful to a four-year-old child.  

However, when the child is old enough, and is being introduced to binomials or trinomials in algebra, then the teacher can explain the connection to the old, beloved, familiar binomial cube and trinomial cube, and show the "esoteric" connection between the physical model and the formula they are learning.  What a flash of recognition will go off in the young person's mind!  It is exactly akin to the sudden dawning of recognition experienced by Daniel-san when Mr. Miyagi showed him what "wax on, wax off" was really all about!

You can, in fact, see for yourself that the

webpage for the binomial cube

on the

Montessori World Educational Center

website expressly states: "Do not explain to the child why you are setting the cube out in this order, or talk about the mathematics of the cube."  Is this because the Montessori teachers do not want children to know the "esoteric secrets" of the binomial cube?  Of course not!  The whole point is to eventually help the child to learn about binomials, in a way more profound than the child might ever be able to understand otherwise.  But trying to explain it in a "left-brained" way first would just invite confusion and questions as the analytical "left-brain" tries to absorb the abstract and complicated concepts involved, likely causing the brain to "choke" on it (and possibly never feel comfortable around binomials or trinomials ever again).  Instead, the webpage advises: "The math is presented to the children when they are older and are ready for it."

This example from Montessori (and there are many others that could be used, such as the

bead-chains

which you can see Jackson and his friend working with after the trinomial cube segment, beginning at around 2:47 and going to about 3:00) really illustrates Massey's point about the value of "thinging" an abstract concept (a point Alvin Boyd Kuhn also underscores as being of supreme importance).  It is easy to see the source of Massey's frustration with conventional academics who insist that the myths were simply a bunch of "fallacies" which ancient men and women believed literally.  

Kuhn disagreed with Massey, however, in saying that these exquisite mythical metaphors, which so wonderfully "thinged" profound spiritual concepts, could not have originated as a "primitive mode" of early thought.  He argues that these incredible metaphors betray the handiwork of sages who already understood completely the deepest spiritual truths, saying:

Primitive simplicity could not have concocted what the age-long study of an intelligent world could not fathom.  Not aboriginal naiveté, but exalted spiritual and intellectual acumen, formulated the myths.  Reflection of the realities of a higher world in the phenomena of a lower world could not be detected when only the one world, the lower, was known.  You can not see that nature reflects spiritual truth unless you know the form of spiritual truth.  Lost Light, 71-72.

In other words, no one could start with the physical model and come up with the spiritual truths -- the makers of the model had to know the spiritual truths

already

.  We can immediately agree that the designer of the trinomial cube had to understand the full formula of

a

3 

+ 3a

2

b + 3a

2

c  + 3ab

2 

+ 6abc + 3ac

2 

+ b

3

 + 3b

2

c  +3bc

2

 + c

3

before

designing the wooden model.  By this analogy, it stands to reason that the designers of the exquisite esoteric myths of the world understood the profound spiritual truth they wished to convey before they ever created the myths -- the myths were not the product of "an active but untutored imagination," as Massey thought.

Furthermore, it is also evident that one could learn the trinomial cube as a child (as a four-year-old, for example), and never fathom the connection to the trinomial expression shown above -- even if they later became quite advanced at mathematics and algebra and learned all about trinomials!  To make the leap from the model with the solid forms painted red, blue, yellow and black on their various sides, to the formula shown above, is not necessarily intuitive until the connection

is shown

to the student.  This concept is expressed in the New Testament book of Acts, in which a man is depicted reading an Old Testament scroll (Isaiah), and is asked if he understands what he reads.  He replies: "How can I, unless someone guides me?" (Acts 8:31-32).

What a tragedy it would be if the stories in the ancient scriptures were really intended to act as a sort of "trinomial cube" pointing to profound spiritual truths, but those who were able to teach the connection were prohibited from doing so!  It would be as if children were prevented from being shown the true purpose of the Montessori materials, such as how the bead chains teach multiplication and squaring and cubing of the various digits from 1 to 10.

What a tragedy if all those who knew the esoteric connections were, at some point in ancient history, marginalized and suppressed by people who wanted to teach that these stories should all be understood

literally

first and foremost, and if these literalists did their best to destroy or cast out all the texts which opposed that literal interpretation or said that the scriptures were not really literal but rather esoteric.  

Fortunately for the human race, the finely-crafted "Montessori materials" which are the ancient metaphors of the myths of all the world's cultures (including those which were preserved in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments) are still with us today, and can be turned over in our minds as we might turn over a finely-crafted trinomial cube.  The connections to the spiritual concepts that these stories were intended to teach (via the method of "thinging") were not entirely eradicated by the literalists, but survived in various channels over the long centuries, and have been elucidated by various teachers in various texts.  The connections can be made again.  

Shamanic - Holographic

Shamanic poles raised beside Lake Baikal on Olkhon Island, next to Shamanka or Shaman's Rock; 
image credit: Simon Matzinger, Wikimedia commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shamanic_poles.jpg

Previous posts have made the assertion that virtually all of the world's ancient sacred traditions incorporate celestial allegory, and that this celestial allegory is central to their esoteric message (see list of links in this previous post for discussion of some of these).  

The system of celestial allegory remains the same across traditions which are superficially very different, but which share at their core a common system in which the sun, moon, and the visible planets, along with the silent and majestic backdrop of the fixed stars (and especially those groupings of stars along the ecliptic path, the twelve constellations of the zodiac) have identifiable characteristics which can be used to identify them in the widely varying mythologies from very different cultures and even from different millennia.  As some of the posts linked above assert (and as The Undying Stars argues at some length), the scriptures which were included in the Old and New Testament can be shown to be built upon this same esoteric system of celestial allegory.

This aspect of the Biblical scriptures has been noted in the past, although different authors have advanced widely different arguments regarding the reason that the world's sacred stories would be so fixated upon the motions of the heavenly actors.  One of the more cogent and well-supported arguments  comes from the writings of Alvin Boyd Kuhn, who explored the subject at great length in two major works, Lost Light (1940) and Who is this King of Glory? (1944), as well as in many shorter studies and essays.  His thesis involves the argument that the sacred traditions of the world incorporated examples from nature in order to more clearly convey profound truths regarding spiritual matters -- to use the visible in order to teach the invisible -- and that they fastened upon the motions of the heavens as being among the most majestic natural spectacles in all of physical creation, as well as being ideally suited for allegorizing the aspects of the incarnation of the soul in matter and its eternal survival through endless cycles.  Aspects of Kuhn's argument have been discussed in previous posts such as "A Hymn to the Setting Sun, and the ultimate mystery of life," "The horizon and the scales of judgement," and "The undying stars: what does it mean?" as well as the post linked above regarding the question of whether the Bible in fact teaches reincarnation.

It is possible to agree with Kuhn's arguments, while simultaneously arguing that these celestial metaphors at the heart of the world's ancient traditions go even further -- and indeed, this is the approach taken in The Undying Stars.  While Kuhn was extremely insightful in his analysis, and uncovers profound esoteric teachings while plumbing the depths of the ancient metaphors, there were some scientific developments which had not yet come to light at the time he was doing most of his writing.  One of these was the development of holograms visible to the naked eye, which require the use of a light source producing extremely coherent light such as a laser (discussed in this short YouTube video), and the other was the discoveries by theoretical physicists that our universe actually resembles or behaves like a hologram in many important ways.  

The Undying Stars demonstrates that, in many incredible ways, the system of allegory found in the world's ancient sacred traditions (including the Bible) can be seen to anticipate the "holographic universe" theory which modern physicists only began to discuss in the 1960s (after the invention of lasers and holograms produced using coherent light).

In creating a hologram, a beam of light is first split and one part of the beam is sent to the object being captured on the holographic film, and the other part of the beam is routed is such a manner as to reach the holographic film from a different angle and create an interference pattern with the first beam.  By capturing the interference pattern in the holographic medium, a light source can be used later to create a holographic image of the original object, even though the object is not actually there.  This holographic projection is called a hologram.

As explained for example in Michael Talbot's Holographic Universe (1992), many theoretical physicists have found the metaphor of the hologram to be extremely helpful for describing a model of the universe which fits the often counter-intuitive discoveries of quantum physics, which began to come to light in the first part of the twentieth century and (after much argument and head-scratching) have become widely accepted among the scientific community and are generally regarded as proven.

In this model, physicists posit that in some ways, the information which makes up the universe which we inhabit (or which we think we inhabit) can be said to be stored in a form that is very much like the information stored in the holographic film or holographic medium described above.  According to this model, the universe we inhabit (or believe we inhabit) is in many ways very much like the holographic projection or the hologram.  There are many recorded lectures available on the web in which professional physicists discuss this model, and the evidence which led physicists to begin to propose it (most of them take about an hour -- the explanation in this paragraph is a gross over-simplification). 

The important point for this discussion is the fact that all of the ancient scriptures of the world can be shown to be teaching a cosmology, or a vision of the universe and of the experience of men and women in that universe, which is holographic.  And they convey that teaching esoterically, through the system of allegory described above.

Even more astonishing is the fact that the ancient scriptures of the world not only appear to describe a holographic universe, but they also appear to teach the possibility of crossing over between the ordinary material world of the holographic projection (or hologram), which we normally inhabit (or at least feel like we inhabit) and the hidden, compressed world where the information for that projection is actually stored (the holographic medium or the holographic film, in the metaphor we are using to explain it here).  This ability to cross between these two realms is often described today using the term "shamanic," because this ancient ability survived into modern times primarily among shamanic cultures, but there is strong evidence that all the ancient sacred traditions of the world could be described as shamanic, in that they taught both the possibility and the supreme importance of crossing between those two aspects of our holographic universe.  

The Undying Stars attempts to articulate the connection between the ancient system of celestial allegory and this ancient emphasis on the shamanic.

For more on this subject, see the discussions in "The centrality of ecstasy, according to ancient wisdom," and "The Pythia."  Authors who have demonstrated that the ancient cultures of the world were essentially shamanic include Jeremy Naydler (see this and this previous post) and Lucy Wyatt (see this and this previous post).

Gerald Massey, who declared that all the sacred repositories of ancient wisdom "included a knowledge of trance-conditions," argued in various places (including the essay "Man in search of his soul during fifty thousand years, and how he found it!" which is the source of that "trance-conditions" quotation), believed that the ascent to the other realm was symbolized by the raising of the tat cross (the ancient Egyptian symbol sometimes depicted as the backbone of Osiris, and usually rendered into our alphabet as the Djed column by more modern scholars), which symbolized the ascension of the spirit in a man or a woman, just as the same column lying on its side or horizontally represented the animal nature or the material prison of the body (emblematic of the coffin or the corpse, in which the spirit is imprisoned during the incarnation in this realm, or of the animals and four-footed beasts who go about in a horizontal fashion).  

Massey briefly mentions the tat cross in conjunction with other symbols of spiritual vivification in section 40 of that essay, and dwells in more detail upon its importance as the Tree of Knowledge, a symbol found across many cultures and traditions which is related to the same tat cross or Djed column, often in conjunction with the symbol of the serpent, and often in close vicinity to a body of water or a sacred pool (see for instance Massey's discussion in sections 8 and 9 and 34 through 36).  The same symbology is evident in the photograph above of shamanic poles raised in modern times near Lake Baikal (this previous post includes a photograph from 1904 of a Buryat shaman from the same region). 

We may not be accustomed to thinking of the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as being "shamanic" in nature (in fact, such thinking has been strictly prohibited for many or most of the past seventeen centuries at least), but it can be demonstrated that the same symbology is present and in fact extremely prominent and important in those scriptures, from the first chapters of Genesis right through to the Revelation.

The fact that the ancient sacred traditions of the world can be shown in some sense to be both "holographic" and "shamanic" is extremely significant, especially if (as authors such as Lucy Wyatt and Jeremy Naydler have demonstrated) the techniques of shamanic experience were seen as critical for the health and well-being of the cultures who knew and used them, and as a source for beneficial knowledge and technologies which even today we cannot fully understand.  

Does the Bible teach reincarnation?

Previous posts have presented evidence that the ancient scriptures and sacred teachings of the world are all founded upon celestial allegory -- see for example:

• "Mars, Venus, and the Pleiades" (Greek mythology, Roman mythology)
• "Dangerous liaisons: Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury" (Greek mythology, Roman mythology)
•  "Aristotle's 'ancient treasure'" (Greek mythology)
• "Heimdall" (Norse mythology)
• "Possible Egyptian and Babylonian connections to the Hero-Twins of the Maya Popol Vuh" (Egyptian, Babylonian, and Maya mythology)
• "The Great Square of Pegasus (and more evidence for ancient contact across the oceans)" (Norse, Babylonian, African, Sumatran and North American mythology)
• "Leo, the Lion King, Hamlet and Horus" (Egyptian mythology)
• "The Pythia" (Greek mythology) 
• "Why St. Peter was crucified upside-down" (New Testament / early Christian tradition)
• "Columba, the Dove" (Old Testament, Greek mythology)
• "The Beehive and its significance" (Old Testament, New Testament)
• "Gemini, Canis Minor, and the Hairy Twin" (Old Testament, Babylonian and North American mythology)
• And the discussions found in the first three chapters of The Undying Stars, which can be previewed online here.

Previous posts have also provided evidence that one of the reasons that the ancient sacred traditions of the world chose to use the motions of the sun, moon, stars and planets to convey their esoteric message is that those motions provide an almost perfect analogy for the successive incarnation of the soul (when they set, plunging into the western horizon and hence into the mire and clay of the material realm), as well as the triumphant exultation of the soul as it rises again at the end of each successive incarnation into the freedom of the heavenly realm of air and fire.  For posts which lay out the evidence for this argument, see for example:

• "Know thyself"
• "New Year's and the Egyptian Book of the Dead"
• "The horizon and the scales of judgement"
• And, "The undying stars: what does it mean?"

These posts provide plenty of exposition of the metaphors found in the ancient myths to support the thesis that they taught a vision of the human experience which involved the descent and incarnation of a pre-existing soul, the survival of that soul, and some number of repetitions of the incarnation process (i.e., reincarnation).

Those posts, and the new book The Undying Stars, also argue that the scriptures of the Old and New Testament reveal themselves to be close kin to the other sacred traditions of the world, in that they also consist of beautiful celestial allegories, and they also teach the descent and incarnation of a pre-existing soul, the survival of that soul, and some form of reincarnation.  

This thesis, of course, is completely at odds with the conventional teaching that the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments differ markedly from the "pagan" mythologies, in that (among other things) they purport to describe historical, literal personages (rather than gods, goddesses, and other supernatural beings who personify forces of nature, which is the way "pagan" mythology is usually described in the conventional view), and in that the Old and New Testament supposedly teach that men and women live only once, and afterwards face judgement followed by an eternity in either heaven or hell (some traditions would argue that the Old Testament does not teach such a doctrine, but it is safe to say that the vast majority of the literalist Christian traditions do teach such a doctrine, and have for centuries argued that the Old Testament scriptures support them in their teaching of that doctrine).

The thesis that the Old and New Testaments are also allegorical, celestial, and meant to convey an esoteric message which includes reincarnation breaks down the wall which the literalists have erected between their literalist faith and the ancient traditions of nearly all of the world's other cultures.

But, is it really possible to claim that the Old and New Testaments can be interpreted as open to the doctrine of reincarnation -- or even that they positively intended to convey such a teaching?

In fact, it is quite possible to support such a claim.  

First, as some of the discussions in the previous posts linked above should demonstrate, the evidence that the Old and New Testaments are built upon celestial metaphor is extremely strong, and almost impossible to deny.  Thus, even if one cannot find any literal expression of reincarnation teaching in the texts themselves, it is possible to argue that the esoteric interpretation of these astronomical metaphors involves the teaching of successive incarnation of the soul in a body, as the second set of previous posts linked above all argue.

Beyond that, however, there are passages in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments which appear to indicate that reincarnation was once an aspect of the message they intended to convey, and that it was only later that the literalist doctrine -- with its full-scale denial of the doctrine of reincarnation, and declaration that such a doctrine constitutes heresy -- arrived on the scene.  

For instance, Chris Carter (author of Science and Psychic Phenomena, Science and the Near-Death Experience, and Science and the Afterlife Experience), points out in Science and the Afterlife Experience that "there are at least two references to reincarnation in the New Testament" (footnote on page 19).  He explains:

At one point the disciples ask Jesus if a blind man sinned in a previous life, and Jesus did not rebuke them (John 9:1-2); at another point Jesus describes John the Baptist as the prophet Elijah reborn (Matthew 11:11-15).  footnote, page 19.

Both of these examples are extremely notable, and worthy of careful consideration. Additionally, there is another passage in the New Testament in which Jesus has an opportunity to denounce the possibility of reincarnation, and again (as in John 9) does not do so, and that is the story concerning the "confession of Peter."  Here is the account as it is recorded in the gospel of Mark, chapter 8:

And Jesus went out, and his disciples, into the towns of Caesarea Philippi: and by the way he asked his disciples, saying unto them, Whom do men say that I am?
And they answered, John the Baptist: but some say, Elias; and others, One of the prophets.  Mark 8:27-28.

At this point, if the concept of reincarnation were truly as erroneous and dangerous as the literalist church later portrayed it to be, we might expect the text to inform us that Jesus set the disciples straight by saying words to the effect that the people were way off base with those speculations, and that there is no such thing as reincarnation, and he is very disappointed that anyone would think that he could possibly be Elias (that is, Elijah) or "one of the prophets," come back again in a new incarnation.  

But, the text does not say anything of the sort.  Instead, the next verse tells us that Jesus then asks them "But whom say ye that I am?" and this is answered by Peter in his "confession of Christ," in which Peter says: "Thou art the Christ" (Mark 9:29).

In Lost Light, Alvin Boyd Kuhn points to a very significant verse in the Old Testament prophecy of Isaiah -- a book which literalists often argue contains  a series of specific prophecies relating to the incarnation of a literal, historical Christ.  One of the oft-quoted chapters of Isaiah in this regard is Isaiah 53, a chapter which contains the well-known passage: "But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed" -- beautiful and comforting and timeless teachings, although perhaps misinterpreted by the literalists these many centuries in some of the applications to which that they put these scriptures and other scriptures.

Later in the same chapter, verse 9 tells us: "And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth."

Strangely enough, the translators of the 1611 Authorized Version (often called the "King James Version") place a textual note here at the word "death" in verse 9, where they are candid enough to inform the reader that the original Hebrew actually reads "deaths" at this point:

If the Hebrew text actually says "deaths," then why would the 1611 translators render it as "death" in their English translation, instead of "deaths" the way the original scriptures say? Isn't strict accuracy of translation of the original texts considered extremely important to many literalists?   

One extremely obvious possible reason that this word is translated as "death" instead of "deaths" (even though the original Hebrew text admittedly reads "deaths") is that such a translation clearly invites a re-incarnational interpretation!  Had the King James Translators used "deaths," the verse would read: "And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his deaths."

Alvin Boyd Kuhn remarks:

Here is invincible evidence that the word carries the connotation of "incarnations," for in no other possible sense can "death" be rationally considered in the plural number.  In one incarnation the Christ soul is cast among the wicked; in another among the rich.  This is a common affirmation of the Oriental texts.  And his body is his grave.  Lost Light, 173.

These prominent examples, from both the Old Testament and New Testament scriptures, strongly suggest that the scriptures as originally taught, and as originally understood, were intended to teach a message of reincarnation, or successive incarnation -- but that later doctrine (literalist doctrine) arose which sought to suppress their allegorical, esoteric nature and to instead substitute a rigid literal interpretation of all the teachings (a literal interpretation such as the doctrine of eternal punishment in hell, which almost certainly has an esoteric and non-literal meaning, if one knows how to read the scriptures according to the system of metaphor which they and all the world's other sacred traditions anciently employed, as discussed here).   

Even more powerful evidence in support of this theory (if more powerful evidence is possible than that described above) can be found in the ancient texts which were rejected by the literalists in the formation of their canon of the New Testament, for example in the various gnostic texts which were declared to be the "invention of heretics" by literalist leaders during their struggle to marginalize and anathematize gnosticism and the gnostic teachers.  

Some of these texts, most of them now completely unfamiliar due to the fact that they were condemned by the literalists in the fourth century and lost to humanity during all the intervening centuries, were unearthed at the base of a cliff near the current Egyptian village of Nag Hammadi in the middle of the twentieth century.  They were probably condemned and rejected from the canon by the literalists because their teachings are either openly gnostic or because some of the stories they incorporate are so bizarre that they cannot possibly be interpreted literally, and must be esoteric in nature.  Some of them rather strongly suggest that a doctrine of successive incarnation was part of early teaching among those that the literalists later suppressed.  

Whatever community cherished these texts in ancient times probably took them to that remote location, sealed them in a jar and buried them some time during the fourth century AD, the same time that the literalists were forbidding "heretical" texts and persecuting those who taught from them or even kept such texts.  Perhaps those who buried them hoped someday to come back and retrieve them, or perhaps they simply could not bear to destroy them.  For whatever reason, they apparently never did come back for the buried library of codices, and they were preserved in their secret location for sixteen hundred more years before coming to light.

For example, in the Apocryphon of John (a title which could also be rendered "The Secret Teaching of John" or "The Secret Revelation of John") -- which is found twice in the Nag Hammadi library, in two slightly different versions (not being literalists, those originally in possession of the Nag Hammadi library apparently had no problem having different versions of a similar story or account).  In this text, the author (taking the persona of John) describes a vision after the teacher has ascended in which the heavens appear to open and a being descends, whom the text says is "the Spirit" but to whom John puts questions, often addressing it or him as "Christ" (or, in some versions of the Apocryphon of John, as "Lord").  This divine teacher at one point expresses a teaching which appears to establish a doctrine of reincarnation.  

Here is the "short version" of the two found in the Nag Hammadi library, which matches a version of the Apocryphon of John which did in fact survive outside of the Nag Hammadi jar and had already been known to scholars (part of the Berlin Codex, BG 8502,2).  In section 23, for example, the text says:

I said, "Christ, when the souls leave the flesh, where will they go?"
He laughed and said to me, "To a place of the soul, which is the power that is greater than the counterfeit spirit.  This (soul) is powerful.  It flees from the works of wickedness and it is saved by the incorruptible oversight and brought up to the repose of the aeons."
I said, "Christ, what about those who do not know the All -- what are their souls or where will they go?"
He said to me, "In those, a counterfeit spirit proliferated by causing them to stumble.  And in that way he burdens their soul and draws it into works of wickedness, and he leads it into forgetfulness.  After it has become naked in this way, he hands it over to the authorities who came into being from the Ruler.  And again they cast them into fetters.  And they consort with them until they are saved from forgetfulness and it receives some knowledge.  And in this way, it becomes perfect and is saved."
I said, "Christ, how does the soul become smaller and enter again into the nature of the mother or the human?"
He rejoiced when I asked this, and he said, "Blessed are you for paying close attention!  

[. . .]"

Clearly, these teachings are conveying something that seems very alien to those familiar with the literalist interpretation of the ancient scriptures but unfamiliar with texts which the literalists long ago condemned.  Although there is much here that clearly pertains to more than just the topic at hand, the passage can certainly be interpreted as teaching the possibility of multiple incarnations.  Note the teaching that the souls of those who do not yet "know the All" after they leave the flesh are described as undergoing "forgetfulness" followed by being "again cast into fetters."  This phrase is almost certainly describing incarnation -- that is to say, "imprisonment" of the soul in this body of flesh and blood.  Following this passage, the divine speaker (Christ or the Spirit) explains the way the the soul which is cast again into incarnation can encounter "another who has the Spirit of Life in it," and can follow and obey and then "be saved," after which "of course it does not enter into another flesh."

There are other ancient gnostic texts which also demonstrate that the concept of successive cycles of incarnation was accepted and taught, prior to being suppressed by those who were promoting a new approach to the scriptures, one which rejected the fact that they are esoteric in nature, and who taught that they must be interpreted literally and not esoterically.  They worked hard to eradicate the teachings and the texts which would show that this literal approach was in actuality the novel approach, but some passages in the New Testament -- and especially the verse in the Old Testament scroll of Isaiah discussed above -- survive to tell the tale of how the original intent of the scriptures was not what we have been led to believe.

The fact that the Bible has clear signs of once containing a doctrine of successive incarnation -- and their employment of the very same system of celestial allegory (albeit with different actors playing the metaphorical roles, in different costumes and upon different "stage") -- shows that the ancient scriptures of the Old and New Testament are very much part of the same continuity of ancient wisdom which flows through the sacred myths of the ancient Egyptians, Sumerians, Greeks, the Norse, the Maya, the Inca, and the Pacific Islands, and which informs the teachings of the ancient civilizations of India, China, Tibet, and many other cultures around the world.

It is the literalist interpretation which is relatively "new" and which seeks to cut the Biblical scriptures off from the rest of humanity -- and that interpretation may not be sustainable based upon the scriptures themselves.

The Pythia

image left: Wikimedia commons (link).

The previous post discussed the centrality of ecstasy in the world's ancient sacred traditions, and featured a piece of ancient artwork thought to date to about 440 BC, depicting the mythical encounter between King Aegeus and the Pythia or priestess of Delphi.

This artwork is extremely beautiful in its own right, but it also opens an incredible window onto the ancient esoteric system discussed in the past several posts and in my most-recent book, The Undying Stars.

The priestess at the famous Temple of Apollo at Delphi was known as the Pythia, because ancient tradition held that the site was originally home to a female serpent or dragon known as Python, which Apollo slew with his arrows to claim the site for his own.  The Python slithered deep into a fissure leading down to the underworld and died in agony, and from her body issued fumes which (according to the myth) were responsible for putting the priestess into the trance-condition as she sat upon a tripod in the sacred cave over the fissure.  In this altered state of consciousness, she would pronounce her oracular sayings.  

In the ancient myths, the Pythia is sometimes described as carrying a disc of water from the sacred spring at Delphi, as well as a laurel-leaf (the laurel was sacred to Apollo), both of which were instrumental in achieving the condition of trance or ecstasy.

The symbology in the ancient artwork depicting the Pythia, above, is very revealing.  It clearly depicts the Pythia in the distinctive seated posture which recalls the stars of the constellation Virgo, which is shown in the upper right of the image above.  Note the extended hands of the Pythia, one of which holds the sprig of laurel and one of which holds the disc containing the sacred water, would be immediately recognizable as corresponding to the extended hand of Virgo to an ancient viewer familiar with this important zodiac constellation.

Below the star-chart of Virgo in the diagram above is a depiction of the goddess or titaness Rhea, who is also depicted in the same distinctive seated posture, and likewise has a hand extended in identical fashion to the constellation of Virgo.  She appears to hold a large hoop or disc above the bowl -- this can also be seen in other depictions of Rhea, such as this one and this one.  We have already discussed in this previous post that Rhea is almost certainly a manifestation of the Great Goddess, the Queen of Heaven, who is called Cybele, the Great Mother, and many other titles in many other ancient sacred traditions.

The disc held by Rhea or Cybele in these depictions corresponds in its location to the cluster of stars which can be seen in the same area (above the extended arm) in the star chart of the constellation Virgo.    The lion portrayed reclining at the base of Rhea's throne almost certainly represents the zodiac constellation of Leo, which appears to be a recumbent lion as drawn in many star charts, such as the one included in this previous post (third image down on that page), although I myself prefer the outline suggested by H.A. Rey which outlines a lion striding forward rather than reclining.  The fact that Virgo follows Leo across the sky each night explains the fact that many of the various manifestations Great Goddess are depicted in ancient artwork as riding in a chariot pulled by lions, or riding upon the back of a lion herself.

Returning to the image of the Pythia, then, we see that the disc of water in the ancient painting above appears to correspond to that same grouping of stars seen above the arm of Virgo in the star-chart, which also corresponds to the disc or hoop held by Rhea or Cybele. The sprig of laurel in the Pythia's other hand is also noteworthy, in that it is strongly reminiscent of the sheaf of wheat often associated with the constellation Virgo, and specifically with her brightest star, Spica.  This sheaf of wheat is of course also associated with the goddesses Demeter and Ceres.

What does all this mean?  The diagram below shows the now-familiar zodiac wheel, discussed in numerous previous posts, and one of the most-important keys to understanding the esoteric system of allegory which connects all the world's ancient myths.  The earth's annual circuit causes the sun to appear to rise in a different zodiac sign throughout the year, progressing through all twelve zodiac signs during the yearly voyage (for an explanation of this phenomenon using the analogy of the "dining room table," see this previous post and the YouTube video embedded therein).

One of the reasons that the constellation of Virgo is so important is that she is the only woman among the twelve zodiac signs, which probably explains why she plays so many different roles even within the same system of mythology (for instance, appearing as both Rhea and Demeter in the Greek myth-system).  Another reason that she is so important is her location on the zodiac wheel.  In the Age of Aries, depicted above, Virgo is located at the critical point of the autumnal equinox (indicated by the red "X" on the right-hand side of the diagram as you look at it).  As explained in this previous post, the ancient sacred traditions often allegorized lower half of the zodiac wheel, in which the nights are longer than days and in which the sun's path across the daytime sky is sinking lower and lower towards the southern horizon (for observers in the northern hemisphere) on its way to the lowest point of winter, as Hell (or as Sheol, Hades, Niflheim, Jotunheim, the underworld, the realm of the dead, the kingdom of Osiris, and in some myths as the depths of the sea).

Thus, the constellation of Virgo is located at the very entrance or gateway to Hell, or Hades, or the underworld, or the realm of the dead.  Returning again to the description of the Pythia, we note that she sits suspended over the underworld itself (the fissure, from which the fumes and vapors of the Python arise), just as Virgo is poised at the very edge of the underworld in the zodiac wheel.  The serpentine constellation of Scorpio, which can be seen to be two stations further down below the autumnal equinox, may correspond to the Python in the legend of Delphi, or the constellation Hydra which is also very close to Virgo in the night sky may correspond to the Python (my bet would be Scorpio).

The importance of all of this allegory, however, is very easy to miss.  Once you see the connection between the myth itself and the celestial drama of the sun, moon, stars and planets, it is important not to stop there.  The ancient sages who imparted the sacred myth-systems to humanity were not trying to trick us when they created these exquisite metaphors.  This wasn't just some exercise to hide a bunch of astronomy inside wonderful stories.  The stars and planets and signs of the zodiac -- as wonderful as they are to behold and as much as they fill us with awe when we gaze up into the infinite heavens on a starry night -- are not the ultimate focus of these treasures of ancient wisdom that make up the world's sacred scriptures and traditions.  They were designed to impart profound truths about the nature of the human condition, and the nature of the cosmos that we inhabit -- and to point us towards what is perhaps best described as "consciousness."

The lower half of the zodiac wheel did not only represent hell or the depths of the sea: it also represents incarnation, the state into which a human soul descends when it leaves the immaterial world of spirit (corresponding to the upper half of the zodiac wheel) and enters the material realm.  The endless cycles of the stars, planets, sun and moon, rising above the eastern horizon and crossing the sky only to plunge back down again beneath the western horizon, typed the progress of the soul plunging down into matter and incarnation to toil its way through this life and at the end to rise into the blessed realm of pure spirit, only to incarnate again several times in order to experience and learn the things which can only be learned by taking on a body.  Whether or not one actually accepts that this is a true description of the nature of human existence and the nature of the immortal soul, there is substantial evidence to support the assertion that this is exactly what the ancient myth systems of the world were intended to express, as discussed in previous posts such as this one, this one and this one.

The description of the Pythia, then, is one that teaches us something very profound about the human condition.  She is suspended over the chasm of the underworld, exposed to the deadly vapors of the body of the dragon, and she is described as one who is able to enter into a trance-condition and receive divine messages in doing so.  In this way, she is very much an allegorical or esoteric depiction of the human condition -- each one of us, in fact, is like the Pythia, suspended at the borderline between the world of spirit and the world of matter.  While it may not be correct to say that we should all be able to enter into the trance-state, like the Pythia, and cross over into the other realm, it is probably correct to say that we should acknowledge that we have both a spiritual component and a material component -- we are not only matter, as argued by the strict materialists who wish to deny any transcendent component to human existence or any spiritual side to men and women.

It is also true that, even if not every individual has out-of-body experiences or is capable of undertaking shamanic journeys, these are only the clearest manifestations of the fact that our minds have the ability to transcend the material realm.  Studies have revealed that positive thinking can have real impacts, for example, on human health -- which means that through something as non-material as thought we can actually create real changes in something as physical and material as our body and our health.  Quantum physics also demonstrates that human consciousness can actually impact and influence (in some fashion that is still not even close to being completely understood) the location, and even the past location, of small particles such as subatomic particles and even some molecules.  

All of these examples (and there are many more) demonstrate that even "ordinary" people have the ability to venture across that boundary between the material and the immaterial realms (just as the Pythia sits at that border between the material and the immaterial, and is capable of crossing it).  Some men and women can display more dramatic manifestations of this truth about the nature of human existence, but all of us seem to have some potential for it (and in this way, it is really true to say that there is no such thing as an "ordinary" person).

Understanding how to see the celestial metaphors contained in the world's sacred traditions is an important first step to perceiving the profound and incredible messages they were trying to teach us.  But once you see the connection (such as the clear evidence that the Pythia was depicted by ancient Greeks using symbology which points to the sign of Virgo the Virgin), it is important not to simply stop there and say, "OK, she's Virgo -- I guess that was the hidden message!"  That connection is just the beginning.

Clearly, the Pythia can still convey a divine message from the "other realm," if we listen to what she is trying to tell us.

The centrality of ecstasy, according to ancient wisdom

Aegeus consults the Pythia (c. 440 BC). Wikimedia commons.

In an important text entitled "Man in search of his soul during fifty thousand years, and how he found it!" poet and Egyptologist Gerald Massey (1828 - 1907) declares:

The ancient wisdom (unlike the modern) included a knowledge of trance-conditions, from which was derived the Egyptian doctrine of spiritual transformation.  [See section 17 of Massey's text].

This statement is worth careful examination.  First, judging by the second half of the sentence ("from which was derived . . ."), it is evident that Massey considers the ancient wisdom of which he speaks to have predated ancient Egypt, and to have been the even more ancient source from which the Egyptian doctrines were derived.  In other words, Massey is referring to a wisdom which predates one of the most ancient civilizations known to history.

Second, we see that the heart of his sentence is the declaration that this ancient wisdom concerned "knowledge of trance-conditions," and that this knowledge was somehow intimately involved with the concept of spiritual transformation.  

By "trance-conditions," the rest of the essay makes clear, Massey is referring to the process of "entering the spirit world as a spirit" and then returning to the material world of everyday life.  Even further, he explains that in trance one actually "enters the eternal state" (both quotations from section 17).  From this contact with the eternal state, one can gain the knowledge that comes only by personal experience, which the ancients called "gnosis."  

Note that in the previous post entitled "Wax on, wax off," describing the famous scene from Karate Kid (1984), it was pointed out that in the video clip that Mr. Miyagi never actually "explains" anything to Daniel-San: Daniel-San experiences it for himself (no matter how many times you have seen it in the past, or how well you think you know that scene, it is worth watching it again for its beauty and power).  Neither does Mr. Miyagi ask Daniel if he "believes" the moves will work: Daniel-San experiences that for himself too.  

Massey makes this very point in part 20 of the same essay where he asks:

What do you think is the use of telling the adept, whether the Hindu Buddhist, the African Seer, or the Finnic Magician, who experiences his "Tulla-intoon," or supra-human ecstasy, that he must live by faith, or be saved by belief?  He will reply that he lives by knowledge, and walks by the open sight; and that another life is thus demonstrated to him in this.  As for death, the practical Gnostic will tell you, he sees through it, and death itself is no more for him!  Such have no doubt, because they know.

In the first quote cited above, Massey declared that the ancient wisdom (in contrast to the modern) included this very knowledge: the knowledge of ecstasy, of leaving the "static" of physical realm ("ecstasy" comes from "ex-stasis," or outside of the static or solid).  The ancient wisdom was centered around the experiential knowledge -- the gnosis -- of the non-material realm: this is what distinguishes the ancient wisdom from the modern, which Massey plainly says is completely impoverished in comparison to the ancient gnostic wisdom.

The Undying Stars explores the evidence that all the ancient vessels containing the ancient wisdom (wisdom which predates even ancient Egypt) have ecstasy and gnosis as their central concern.  In other words, the ancient wisdom can in an important sense be described as being in some sense shamanic.  The ancient Egyptians appear to have possessed a shamanic tradition of out-of-body contact with "the spiritual realm" or "the eternal," as shown by Lucy Wyatt and other researchers who are cited in her book Approaching Chaos (2010).  The ancient Greek civilization had oracles who entered into a trance-state, including the most famous of the ancient oracles, the Pythia at Delphi.  There were also the ancient mysteria, found in many ancient cultures, which involved profound experiences and possibly altered states of consciousness, all designed to impart gnosis to the participants.  

There is substantial evidence of a similar centrality of "ecstasy" or "trance-conditions" in many other sacred traditions around the globe, including those whose shamanic wisdom survived right up through the nineteenth and even the twentieth centuries (and, in some more remote locations, survives to this day).

The Undying Stars further makes the argument that the esoteric texts which were incorporated into the Old and the New Testaments were also originally intended as vessels to convey this very same ancient wisdom, just like all the others.  It was the literalists who destroyed this understanding and who insist that their texts have no kinship with all the other closely-related sacred traditions of the world.  It was the literalists who denied the clear fact that these texts (those in the Old and New Testaments, just as much as those of ancient Egypt or of ancient Greece) are meant to be understood gnostically -- that is to say, esoterically rather than literally, perceiving that they are designed to convey the same knowledge born of the experience of the eternal.  And it was the literalists who labeled all the other sacred traditions of the world as "pagan" or "heathen" and who commenced a centuries-long campaign to destroy their ancient knowledge, convert their people at the point of the sword to the literalist religion, or kill them if they would not convert (see, for example, the history of the brutal campaigns of Charlemagne, who is pictured in this previous post).

In doing so, those behind the campaign against the shamanic and ecstatic and gnostic have robbed humanity of its ancient heritage, inflicting untold death and misery in the process.  Further, if the experience of the ecstatic is essential to the kind of knowing described above by Massey, they have robbed a large number of individual men and women of the opportunity to develop a vital gnosis of their own.  

But there is much more to the loss even than that, because the evidence also suggests that the ability to cross over into the other realm and return with the knowledge available there benefited the entire community or civilization, and may well be the source of technical and medical knowledge which could not be obtained otherwise, which shamanic cultures demonstrate (including that of the ancient Egyptians), and which conventional historical paradigms absolutely cannot explain.  If so, then the deliberate eradication of the shamanic, first in the areas conquered by the Roman Empire and then -- systematically -- in other cultures in other parts of the globe, may have stunted the civilizations that have developed ever since.  Who knows what shape cultures would take today, and what capabilities and peaceful arts we might enjoy, had the esoteric vessels that carried the ancient wisdom not been deliberately fouled by the literalists.

There is one more aspect of this discussion which is worth considering, and that is the logical possibility that those who deliberately suppressed the esoteric, gnostic, shamanic understanding of myths and sacred scriptures like those found in the Old and New Testament (and then destroyed the gnostic and esoteric and shamanic understanding of other cultures as well, forcing them at the point of a sword to accept the literalist religion) kept the ancient knowledge for themselves, while denying it to everyone else.  Given the evidence that the ability to cross the boundaries between the realms may have been connected with the inexplicable medical and architectural achievements of ancient civilizations (and some of the knowledge of modern-day shamanic cultures found in remote regions, such as isolated parts of the Amazon rain forest), there are some rather thought-provoking ramifications if that is indeed the case.

It may be that the first step towards regaining some portion of what was lost begins with the appreciation for the esoteric system of interpreting sacred traditions, scriptures, and myths, coupled with an awareness of how this esoteric approach points to the outlines of an ancient cosmology which understood the nature of the visible and invisible worlds (and our place in them).

Why St. Peter was crucified upside-down

image: Crucifixion of Peter, Lorenzo Veneziano (1370).  Wikimedia commons.

As The Undying Stars discusses at greater length, the stories of the Old and New Testament -- although most certainly intended to convey profound truth -- were not intended to be interpreted literally.  That is to say, they were not intended to be understood as preserving the historical record of the lives of literal individuals, any more than the myths of Hercules or Osiris were intended to be understood as depicting literal events (although those myths, too, were designed to convey profound truth to men and women).

As asserted in previous posts, all these ancient sacred traditions and scriptures allegorize the motions of the celestial spheres -- the sun, moon, planets, and starry heavens.  This is as true of the scriptures which were selected for inclusion in what we call the Old and New Testaments as it is for the myths of the ancient Sumerians, ancient Egyptians, ancient Greeks, the Norse, the Celts, the Maya and Aztec and Inca and many other peoples of the Americas, the Hawaiians and Maori and other Polynesian islanders, Australia, ancient India, China, and other parts of Asia -- in fact, cultures across the planet.  

How exactly such a system became so widespread across so vast a geographic dispersion and so vast a span of ages (from the most ancient civilizations at the dawn of recorded history to cultures which managed to maintain their traditional sacred wisdom right into the twentieth century) is a tremendous mystery, and one which completely confounds the conventional historical paradigm which the educational systems are dedicated to preserving.  Such a fact is so damaging to the conventional paradigm, in fact, that it is rarely if ever mentioned.  

Beyond the question of how it happened is the question of what this universal system of allegory actually means -- what profound truths it was intended to convey.  It might also be phrased as the question of why the motions of the stars and planets would be considered so mightily important.  This question is explored more fully in The Undying Stars, and some aspects have been touched upon in previous blog posts, including:

• "A Hymn to the Setting Sun, and the ultimate mystery of life"
• "The horizon and the scales of judgement"
• "Know thyself"

and

• "The undying stars: what does it mean?"

To illustrate that the stories of the New Testament were not intended to be understood literally, one need only consider the example of the apostle Peter, the first among the apostles, the apostle who is given the keys to heaven, and who according to very ancient tradition was crucified like his savior, but insisted upon being crucified upside-down because he was not worthy of the same death as his lord. 

The fact that there are twelve disciples (a number which recurs frequently in myth) should immediately alert us to the possibility that, instead of literal flesh-and-blood people, Peter, Andrew, James, John, and all the rest personify houses of the zodiac, and the characteristics of that part of the year in which the sun is rising in their particular sign (using the arrangement of the Age of Aries, for reasons outside the scope of this post but discussed in the book and by previous authors referenced in the book -- and covered as well in the excellent teaching videos of Santos Bonacci).

Using the same diagram shown in the previous post entitled "No hell below us . . ." (in which it was argued that the doctrine of a literal hell is yet another example of the misinterpretations which arise from a literal approach to the scriptures, and a harmful one at that), we can immediately see that Peter's portrait in the stories of the New Testament point to the strong possibility that he represents the sign of Aries itself, the leader of the twelve zodiac signs during the Age of Aries, and the sign which stands at the very "gates" of the upper half of the zodiac wheel:

As explained in that previous post which opposed the literalist doctrine of hell, the horizontal line in this diagram indicates the line of the celestial equator, which the sun crosses twice per year in its annual ascent towards the "summit" of the summer solstice and then in its descent towards the "pit" of the winter solstice (for more explanation of what causes this, see for instance here, here and here).  

Each of these "crossing points" are marked with a large red "X" in the above diagram: these are the two equinoxes.  The "X" on the left side of the diagram as you look at it, between the Fishes of Pisces and the Ram of Aries, is the spring equinox.  The gold arrows indicate the direction of the sun's travel through the signs in its annual circuit, and so you can see that the sun is heading up towards the summit of the year when it passes the spring equinox (left X in the diagram).  Conversely, the "X" on the right side of the diagram, between the Virgin of Virgo and the Scales of Libra, is the fall or autumnal equinox.  Here, the downward-arcing arrow indicates the path of the downward-arcing sun as it passes through the fall equinox and into the lower half of the year, all the way to the very "Pit" of the winter solstice (allegorized as the very Pit of Hell).  

From this discussion, we can immediately perceive why Peter is depicted as the leader of the apostles -- he personifies the first sign of the new year, located first after the point of the spring equinox.  We also note that Peter is depicted in the gospel narratives as being somewhat "headstrong," as befits a personality who is allegorizing the Ram of Aries.  We can also see why Peter is depicted as being given the keys to the kingdom of heaven, for he stands at the very "gates" of the upper half of the year (the half in which days are longer than nights, and the half that stands for heaven if the lower half of the year stands for hell).

Peter maintains this position as guardian of the "pearly gates" in popular culture, such as in countless jokes, as well as in US Army "running cadences" in which various military characters are described as having "met Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates," where they are usually told to drop and knock out some push-ups!

As the discussion in The Undying Stars explores at greater length, the "crossing points" of the equinoxes are often allegorized in the ancient celestial metaphor system (of numerous mythologies and ancient cultures) as being places of sacrifice.  Some of this discussion can be found in the first three chapters of the book, available for preview online here.  

In the New Testament, of course, these sacrifices at the equinoxes take the form of crucifixions.  The primary crucifixion of course is the crucifixion of Christ, which is surrounded by imagery consistent with the crossing in the autumn, when the sun and the year are sliding downwards towards the lower half of the year.  There is, however, evidence in the canonical scriptures themselves of another crucifixion at the spring equinox (after which Easter is celebrated) and it is surrounded by imagery consistent with spring and the signs of Pisces and Aries.  

Further, there is strong evidence in early Christian tradition that Peter was crucified.  This tradition is apparently attested to by Origen of Alexandria, an early Christian but one who may well have taken a gnostic approach to the stories of the New Testament -- that is to say, strongly non-literalist.  Origen lived before the final triumph of the literalists and the purging of non-literalist scriptures and teachings (and probably of non-literalist teachers as well), and he was anathematized (condemned as a heretic) by later literalist theologians after his death.  He would certainly have understood the esoteric reasons why Peter, who represents a zodiac sign located at the sun's crossing of the celestial equator, would be appropriately depicted as having been crucified.

Further, according to ancient sources (including Origen), Peter insisted on being crucified "upside-down" -- inverted -- because he did not think it appropriate to be crucified in the same manner as the Lord.  Looking again at the diagram above, and understanding that the crucifixion of Christ is primarily surrounded with autumnal imagery (bread and wine, for instance) and described in the "Apostles' Creed" as being crucified and then descending into hell ("he was crucified, dead and buried; he descended into hell"), we can understand that the crucifixion of Peter was on the opposite side of the wheel from that of his lord.  From this fact, we can understand why Peter was depicted as being crucified upside-down: why he in fact insisted upon it, according to the ancient accounts.  In this way, the position of Peter as being located on the opposite side of the wheel is reinforced and graphically depicted.

All of these details were clearly intended to convey the message that these events are not to be understood literally, but rather are meant to be understood esoterically.  They are like the proverbial "finger, pointing a way to the moon" -- but tragically, we have been strictly instructed for seventeen hundred years to concentrate closely on the finger, and to ignore the glorious heavenly truths to which the finger is trying to point us.