Book of the Nephilim 2

There's insight - but not proof - in the Dead Sea Scrolls

2010-01-25T10:05:00.000-08:00

http://www.jsonline.com/features/religion/82527532.html

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel
Jan. 23, 2010

They speak of a Teacher of Righteousness and a pierced messiah, of cleansing through water and a battle of light against darkness.

But anyone looking to the Dead Sea Scrolls in search of proof, say, that Jesus of Nazareth was the messiah presaged by the prophets, or that John the Baptist lived among the scroll's authors, will be disappointed.

What the scrolls provide instead, scholars say, is a window into a world of religious ferment 2,000 years ago that gave rise to Judaism and Christianity as we know them today.

"It is an entire library from this crucial period that opens up to us the interreligious debate that is the background for everything that happened after," said Lawrence H. Schiffman, chairman of New York University's Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, who has written extensively on the scrolls.

Fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, heralded by many as the greatest archaeological find of the 20th century, are on display through June 6 as part of the Milwaukee Public Museum's latest exhibit, "Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible: Ancient Artifacts, Timeless Treasures."

Excavated from caves in the Judean desert in the 1940s and '50s, the scrolls date from about 250 B.C. to 68 A.D., a period of social and political instability just before the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.

Written on parchment and papyrus in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, they include the oldest-known copies of the books of the Hebrew Bible - what Christians call the Old Testament - and numerous other texts, from biblical commentaries to lists of religious laws governing the daily lives of their authors.

Their initial discovery, in 1947 by Bedouin shepherds in caves above the Dead Sea, is the stuff of Hollywood, a cloak-and-dagger tale of international intrigue set in the final days of the British Mandate before the creation of Israel.

The term scrolls is misleading. Only a small fraction of the 900 documents were complete texts, discovered wrapped in linen and stored in earthen jars. The remainder were painstakingly reconstructed from thousands of fragments excavated from 11 caves, some as small as a fingernail and encrusted with centuries of grime and bat guano.

Who created them?

Today, most scholars believe the scrolls were the library of an apocalyptic sect of Jews who rejected the priesthood that controlled the Jerusalem Temple and moved to the wilderness at around 100 B.C. to prepare the way of the messiah - or in their case, messiahs, one royal, one priestly. The sect, they say, stored the scrolls in the caves surrounding their settlement, a place we now call Qumran, that was destroyed by the Romans in 68 A.D.

Most identify this group as the Essenes, a sect described in the historical writing of Josephus, Philo and Pliny the Elder.

But alternate theories abound: about the authors of the scrolls, the nature of Qumran itself and whether it has any ties at all to the caves and the scrolls. One view, promoted by Norman Golb of the University of Chicago, argues that Qumran was a fort unrelated to the caves, and that the scrolls were deposited for safe keeping by Jewish groups fleeing the destruction in Jerusalem.

That's not supported by the evidence at Qumran, said Jodi Magness, an archaeologist in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of "The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls."

She points to the cylindrical jars she says are unique to Qumran that also were found in the caves, and notes that some caves were accessible only through the settlement.

"All the people who identify Qumran as not sectarian - as a fort or a villa or a pottery house - they're all predicated on divorcing the scrolls from the site, and you cannot," she said.

Clues from the past

More important than who wrote the scrolls, scholars say, is what they reveal.

Early on, the content of some scrolls - with their allusions to a son of God, a suffering messiah and cleansing through ritual bath - led to some speculation that Jesus and John the Baptist were connected to the Qumran sect.

Others suggested the scrolls either prophesied the coming of Christ, or that messianic predictions were so commonplace in the Judaism of the day that the scrolls undermined the uniqueness of Christianity.

Most scholars reject those ideas.

They note that Jesus, who died around 30 A.D., preached an inclusive philosophy, contrary to the exclusive Qumran sect, where members lived a priestly existence that emphasized ritual purity. And while there are intriguing similarities between John the Baptist and the sect - his priestly lineage, the location of his ministry, and his message that the coming of the messiah was at hand - there's no evidence, they say, to tie him to Qumran.

"If you look at what Jesus was doing, he was going out of his way to come into contact with the most impure members of Jewish society - prostitutes, lepers, corpses . . . " Magness said. "Nobody who was a member of the Qumran sect would have gone near those people."

Early link

Many scholars, including Magness, believe John may have had an early connection to Qumran, but that he would have severed those ties by the time he was ministering to Jesus.

"If he was ever associated, he probably split from them, because his understanding of washings, his baptisms, were different from the ritual bathing at Qumran," said James C. VanderKam, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame and a principal editor of the official scrolls publication team in recent decades.

As for undermining Christianity, scholars say the scrolls have, instead, illuminated it.

Though no New Testament figure is mentioned, the scrolls show the vigorous debate going on among Jews at the time over apocalypticism and messianism - the ideas that the kingdom of God was at hand and that a savior would deliver them to a better life.

The earliest followers of Jesus did not see themselves as a separate religion but as Jews, scholars point out. They differed from the Qumran sect because they believed the messiah had come.

"The Christian claim that Jesus was the messiah wouldn't have meant anything if we didn't know that all Jews were expecting a messiah. That point is tremendously illustrated in the scrolls," said Schiffman.

"I would argue that the scrolls enhance one's faith rather than undermine it," said Nathan Jastram, chairman of the theology department of Concordia University in Mequon, who worked on the Book of Numbers as part of the Dead Sea Scrolls publication team.

"Our faith isn't just a philosophy, it's based on actual events and people, and it makes a difference that that (history) is accurately transmitted," said Jastram, who is Christian.

"The New Testament doesn't claim Jesus invented a new religion, but that he fulfilled what the Old Testament prophesied."

Like Christianity, today's rabbinic Judaism, which stresses interpretation and study of the Torah, grew out of that same period of tumult leading up to the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. The scrolls contain much about their authors, but also about the competing sects - the Pharisees and Sadducees - against which they rebelled.

They reveal, scholars say, a Judaism that was much more diverse in beliefs and practices than was previously thought.

"The scrolls show a brand of Judaism that we'd lost sight of," said Eugene C. Ulrich, professor of theology and Hebrew scripture at the University of Notre Dame and chief editor of the biblical texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls. "We used to think there was a mainstream Judaism, and now it appears that it was much more of a spectrum like we have today in Judaism and Christianity."

Biblical insight

Another important contribution of the scrolls has been to expand scholars' understanding of the evolutions and translations of biblical texts.

Until the discovery of the scrolls, the oldest known translation of the Hebrew Bible dated from 1009 A.D. "What they showed us is that the texts we do have from our Medieval Bibles have been amazingly accurately preserved," said Ulrich.

At the same time, however, it is just one version.

"There used to be variant editions of many of the biblical books in the pre-Christian period, and it's the scrolls that show us that," he said.

That discovery has led scholars to alter their views of some texts. What were previously seen as errors in transcriptions in some cases now appear to have been correct translations of alternate texts.

In the end, what the scrolls do is take scholars 1,000 years closer to the origins of the Bible - a significant development in a field of study that lacks any "autographs" indicating an original author or date.

Said Ulrich of Notre Dame: "These are an entire millennium older, much closer to what the Bible was like at the time it was written."

Dead Sea Scrolls prove Bible unoriginal

2010-01-25T09:41:00.000-08:00

http://freethoughtnation.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=280:dead-sea-scrolls-prove-bible-unoriginal&catid=45:general

Sunday, 24 January 2010 16:31
Acharya S
(Photo by Berthold Werner)

"They speak of a Teacher of Righteousness and a pierced messiah, of cleansing through water and a battle of light against darkness.

"But anyone looking to the Dead Sea Scrolls in search of proof, say, that Jesus of Nazareth was the messiah presaged by the prophets, or that John the Baptist lived among the scroll's authors, will be disappointed."

News items are circulating about how "hints" and "insights" contained in the famous Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in caves near the ancient site of Qumran can be found in the Bible. In other words, certain ideas in the scrolls also appear in the New Testament, meaning, of course, that the impression of Christianity as a "divine revelation" appearing whole cloth miraculously from the very finger of God is clearly erroneous.

Few scholars today claim that any of the Dead Sea Scrolls ("DSS") date to the time after Christianity was allegedly founded by a "historical" Jesus in the first century of the common era. Indeed, it is agreed that most of the scrolls pre-date the turn of the era and that none of them show any knowledge of Jesus Christ or Christianity.

In my book The Christ Conspiracy, I demonstrate that Christianity is an amalgam of the many religions, sects, cults and brotherhood traditions of the Mediterranean and beyond. One of the major influences on Christianity is that of Jews, obviously, including those mentioned in the New Testament, i.e., the Pharisees and Sadducees. Ancient Jewish historian Josephus also mentions the sect of the Essenes, who are traditionally associated with Qumran, in a "by default" argument. However, scholar Solomon Schecter - who discovered a scroll at Cairo that was later found at Qumran - points to a heretical sect of Sadducees or Zadokites, as they are called in both the Bible and DSS. In The Christ Conspiracy, I discuss this Zadokite origin of the DSS and this group's obvious influence on the New Testament.

What this rumination all means, of course, is that Christianity is, as I contend in my books, largely unoriginal, representing not fresh and new "divine revelation" but, again, the amalgamation of not only the ideas of the Zadokite authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls but also influences from the Essenes, Jews, Samaritans and many others.

Hints of the Scrolls in Bible

To understand how the Dead Sea Scrolls influenced early Christianity, just turn to the New Testament.

Take, for example, the Great Isaiah Scroll, a facsimile of which is on display as part of the Milwaukee Public Museum's Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. Written around 125 B.C. and the only scroll to emerge virtually intact from the caves at Qumran, its messianic message is quoted in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, John and Luke, the earliest of which wasn't written until around A.D. 65.

The scrolls' so-called "Son of God" text reads much like the story of the Annunciation in the Gospel of Luke. And the Scrolls' "Blessing of the Wise" echoes the beatitudes of Matthew's Sermon on the Mount....

This early dating of the gospels, it should be noted, is based only on the a priori assumption that the story they relate is at least partially true in recounting a "historical" Jesus who truly walked the earth at the time he is claimed in the gospels themselves. There is no external evidence whatsoever for the existence of any canonical gospel at this early a date. In fact, the canonical gospels as we have them do not show up clearly in the historical record until the end of the second century.

Moreover, the Sermon on the Mount - supposedly the original monologue straight out of the mouth of the Son of God Himself - can be shown to be a series of Old Testament scriptures strung together, along with, apparently, such texts from Qumran. No "historical" founder was necessary at all to speak these words, as they are a rehash of extant sayings. (Even in this patent literary device the gospels cannot agree, as Luke 6:17-49 depicts the Sermon as having taken place on a plain.)

It is easy to see why the Catholic Church would blanche upon the discovery of these scrolls, as it could be - and has been - argued that these texts erode the very foundation of Christianity. It appears that this news, however, when released slowly has little affect on the mind-numbing programming that accompanies Christian faith.

The bottom line is that the existence of the Old Testament and the intertestamental literature such as the Dead Sea Scrolls shows how Christianity is a cut-and-paste job - a fact I also reveal in The Christ Conspiracy, in a chapter called "The Making of a Myth," which contains a discussion of some of the texts obviously used in the creation of the new faith. These influential texts evidently included some of the original Dead Sea Scrolls, serving not as "prophecy," "prefiguring" or "presaging" but as blueprints of pre-existing, older concepts cobbled together in the New Testament.

Queen Jezebel: Biblical Bad Girl Had Power

2010-01-17T10:51:00.001-08:00

http://www.livescience.com/history/071108-queen-jezebel.html

By Heather Whipps, Special to LiveScience

Jezebel, the queen whose name became synonymous with all things lewd and wicked, probably wielded a fair bit of power in ancient Israel, suggests a stone document seal newly traced to the Biblical "bad girl."

Originally discovered in Israel in 1964, the intricate seal was suspected all along to belong to Queen Jezebel, but confusion over the letters engraved on the stone left some uncertainty. Recently, closer scrutiny of the seal's engraving revealed markings characteristic of royal objects.

"The lion-sphinx with female head and female Isis-Hathor crown, which is unique, this clearly points to a queen," said Marjo Korpel, an Old Testament scholar at the University of Utrecht who conducted the research.

The seal confirms that Jezebel, who eventually met a gory demise, was a powerful figure in the ancient world who conducted business independent of her husband.

Complete results of the University of Utrecht study are published in a recent volume of the Journal for Semitics.

Royal symbols borrowed from Egypt

Jezebel, whose life in the 9th century B.C. is chronicled in the Bible, was married to King Ahab of Israel. As a Phoenician, the Queen was considered pagan and attempted to sway the people of Israel to abandon their God and accept her chief deity Baal, partly through forging her husband's seal on documents, according to the scriptures.

The Bible says nothing of her own seal, but archaeologists have long believed that the stone discovered in 1964 was Jezebel's, despite the ambiguity of the symbols and the name depicted on it.

Multiple icons on the seal, as well as its above-average size, indicate that it belonged to a queen, the recent investigations concluded.

"The lotus (below the Horus falcon) was a symbol of gender definition and refers to a female owner," Korpel told LiveScience, "[while] the winged sun disk was a well-known symbol of royalty in and outside Israel."

Other symbols on the seal also reinforce the connection to a monarch, such as the Horus and double-cobra, a figure probably adopted from Egypt, she said.

A misspelling of the name "yzbl"—the queen's moniker in ancient Hebrew—also had archaeologists confused. However, by comparing the seal to similar examples from the time, Korpel found that an upper edge that had broken off likely contained the two missing letters that would have correctly spelled Jezebel's name.

Pagan queen had power

With her own seal, Queen Jezebel was able to exert a powerful influence upon people around her, much like the Egyptian queens, Korpel said.

"The biblical texts already prove that she was a powerful woman. The queens in Egypt ... all have in common their prominent roles in religion, politics and representational art, and their status as principal wife. This also seems to count for Queen Jezebel," said Korpel.

Unlike Egypt, however, Biblical Israel did not look favorably upon powerful women. Jezebel was ultimately perceived as a threat and foreign idol worshipper, accused of prostitution, murder and sorcery, and tossed from her window to be ravaged by dogs.

Bible Possibly Written Centuries Earlier, Text Suggests

2010-01-17T10:47:00.000-08:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100115/sc_livescience/biblepossiblywrittencenturiesearliertextsuggests

Clara Moskowitz
LiveScience Staff Writer
LiveScience.com
Fri Jan 15, 9:40 am ET
Scientists have discovered the earliest known Hebrew writing - an inscription dating from the 10th century B.C., during the period of King David's reign.

The breakthrough could mean that portions of the Bible were written centuries earlier than previously thought. (The Bible's Old Testament is thought to have been first written down in an ancient form of Hebrew.)

Until now, many scholars have held that the Hebrew Bible originated in the 6th century B.C., because Hebrew writing was thought to stretch back no further. But the newly deciphered Hebrew text is about four centuries older, scientists announced this month.

"It indicates that the Kingdom of Israel already existed in the 10th century BCE and that at least some of the biblical texts were written hundreds of years before the dates presented in current research," said Gershon Galil, a professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Haifa in Israel, who deciphered the ancient text.

BCE stands for "before common era," and is equivalent to B.C., or before Christ.

The writing was discovered more than a year ago on a pottery shard dug up during excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa, near Israel's Elah valley. The excavations were carried out by archaeologist Yosef Garfinkel of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. At first, scientists could not tell if the writing was Hebrew or some other local language.

Finally, Galil was able to decipher the text. He identified words particular to the Hebrew language and content specific to Hebrew culture to prove that the writing was, in fact, Hebrew.

"It uses verbs that were characteristic of Hebrew, such as asah ('did') and avad ('worked'), which were rarely used in other regional languages," Galil said. "Particular words that appear in the text, such as almanah ('widow') are specific to Hebrew and are written differently in other local languages."

The ancient text is written in ink on a trapezoid-shaped piece of pottery about 6 inches by 6.5 inches (15 cm by 16.5 cm). It appears to be a social statement about how people should treat slaves, widows and orphans. In English, it reads (by numbered line):

1' you shall not do [it], but worship the [Lord].
2' Judge the sla[ve] and the wid[ow] / Judge the orph[an]
3' [and] the stranger. [Pl]ead for the infant / plead for the po[or and]
4' the widow. Rehabilitate [the poor] at the hands of the king.
5' Protect the po[or and] the slave / [supp]ort the stranger.

The content, which has some missing letters, is similar to some Biblical scriptures, such as Isaiah 1:17, Psalms 72:3, and

2nd Human Greater Than Their Creator

2010-01-10T16:12:00.000-08:00

http://one-evil.org/wisdom/wisdom_14_skills_greater.htm

The Biblical account of the human soul is one of the soul being a "gift". Yet there exists a most ancient account that contradicts this version. Instead, the higher human soul was an unintended consequence of the creation of 2nd humans- the homo sapien sapiens- of which we are all members.

While the stories are heavy in allagory and mystery, the essential theme is that upon our genetic creation, something within the alien DNA when merged with the 1st human DNA produced the reconnection of a knowledge code- the SOL-CODE long lost within our evil alien creators.

Thus the first humans glowed with knowledge and wisdom and holiness beyond their function- they were as great gods, far greater than our genetic creators.

Homor sapien sapiens (2nd humans) have always been greater in divine potential than their genetic creators- alien prisoner gods, now arch-demons

The loss of the power Yaltabaoth stole from Sophia to Mankind

"The body moved and gained strength, and it was luminous..."

"And in that moment the rest of the powers became jealous, because he had come into being through all of them and they had given their power to the man, and his intelligence was greater than that of those who had made him, and greater than that of the chief archon. And when they recognized that he was luminous, and that he could think better than they, and that he was free from wickedness, they took him and threw him into the lowest region of all matter.

"But the blessed One, the Mother-Father, the beneficent and merciful One, had mercy on the power of the mother which had been brought forth out of the chief archon, for they (the archons) might gain power over the natural and perceptible body. And he sent, through his beneficent Spirit and his great mercy, a helper to Adam, luminous Epinoia which comes out of him, who is called Life. And she assists the whole creature, by toiling with him and by restoring him to his fullness and by teaching him about the descent of his seed (and) by teaching him about the way of ascent, (which is) the way he came down. And the luminous Epinoia was hidden in Adam, in order that the archons might not know her, but that the Epinoia might be a correction of the deficiency of the mother.

"And the man came forth because of the shadow of the light which is in him. And his thinking was superior to all those who had made him. When they looked up, they saw that his thinking was superior. And they took counsel with the whole array of archons and angels. They took fire and earth and water and mixed them together with the four fiery winds. And they wrought them together and caused a great disturbance. And they brought him (Adam) into the shadow of death, in order that they might form (him) again from earth and water and fire and the spirit which originates in matter, which is the ignorance of darkness and desire, and their counterfeit spirit. This is the tomb of the newly-formed body with which the robbers had clothed the man, the bond of forgetfulness; and he became a mortal man. This is the first one who came down, and the first
separation. But the Epinoia of the light which was in him, she is the one who was to awaken his thinking.

"And the archons took him and placed him in paradise. And they said to him, 'Eat, that is at leisure,' for their luxury is bitter and their beauty is depraved. And their luxury is deception and their trees are godlessness and their fruit is deadly poison and their promise is death. And the tree of their life they had placed in the midst of paradise.

"And I shall teach you (pl.) what is the mystery of their life, which is the plan which they made together, which is the likeness of their spirit. The root of this (tree) is bitter and its branches are death, its shadow is hate and deception is in its leaves, and its blossom is the ointment of evil, and its fruit is death and desire is its seed, and it sprouts in darkness. The dwelling place of those who taste from it is Hades, and the darkness is their place of rest.

"But what they call the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which is the Epinoia of the light, they stayed in front of it in order that he (Adam) might not look up to his fullness and recognize the nakedness of his shamefulness. But it was I who brought about that they ate."

And to I said to the savior, "Lord, was it not the serpent that taught Adam to eat?" The savior smiled and said, "The serpent taught them to eat from wickedness of begetting, lust, (and) destruction, that he (Adam) might be useful to him. And he (Adam) knew that he was disobedient to him (the chief archon) due to light of the Epinoia which is in him, which made him more correct in his thinking than the chief archon. And (the latter) wanted to bring about the power which he himself had given him. And he brought a forgetfulness over Adam."

And I said to the savior, "What is the forgetfulness?" And he said "It is not the way Moses wrote (and) you heard. For he said in his first book, 'He put him to sleep' (Gn 2:21), but (it was) in his perception. For also he said through the prophet, 'I will make their hearts heavy, that they may not pay attention and may not see' (Is 6:10).

"Then the Epinoia of the light hid herself in him (Adam). And the chief archon wanted to bring her out of his rib. But the Epinoia of the light cannot be grasped. Although darkness pursued her, it did not catch her. And he brought a part of his power out of him. And he made another creature, in the form of a woman, according to the likeness of the Epinoia which had appeared to him. And he brought the part which he had taken from the power of the man into the female creature, and not as
Moses said, 'his rib-bone.'

"And he (Adam) saw the woman beside him. And in that moment the luminous Epinoia appeared, and she lifted the veil which lay over his mind. And he became sober from the drunkenness of darkness. And he recognized his counter-image, and he said, 'This is indeed bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.' Therefore the man will leave his father and his mother, and he will cleave to his wife, and they will both be one flesh. For they will send him his consort, and he will leave his father and his
mother ... (3 lines unreadable)

"And our sister Sophia (is) she who came down in innocence in order to rectify her deficiency. Therefore she was called Life, which is the mother of the living, by the foreknowledge of the sovereignty of heaven. And through her they have tasted the perfect Knowledge. I appeared in the form of an eagle on the tree of knowledge, which is the Epinoia from the foreknowledge of the pure light, that I might teach them and awaken them out of the depth of sleep. For they were both in a fallen state,
and they recognized their nakedness. The Epinoia appeared to them as a light; she awakened their thinking.

"And when Yaltabaoth noticed that they withdrew from him, he cursed his earth. He found the woman as she was preparing herself for her husband. He was lord over her, though he did not know the mystery which had come to pass through the holy decree. And they were afraid to blame him. And he showed his angels his ignorance which is in him. And he cast them out
of paradise and he clothed them in gloomy darkness. And the chief archon saw the virgin who stood by Adam, and that the luminous Epinoia of life had appeared in her. And Yaltabaoth was full of ignorance. And when the foreknowledge of the All noticed (it), she sent some and they snatched life out of Eve.

The Apocryphon of John
(Nag Hammadi Scroll- dating Egypt 80-200AD)
(part listed)
Yaltabaoth’s seduction of Eve to produce sons
"And the chief archon (Yaltabaoth) seduced her and he begot in her two sons;
• the first is Eloim, who had a bear-face.
• the second is Yave, who had a cat face.
• Yaltabaoth set Eloim over the water and the earth,
• Yaltaboath set Yave over the fire and the wind;

• Eloim is un righteous
• Yave is righteous

• Eloim was also called by Yaltabaoth as Abel, while
• Yave was also called by Yaltabaoth as Cain with a view to deceive
(someone?)

Eloim has a bear-face and
Yave has a cat-face. The one is righteous but the other is unrighteous. (Yave is righteous but Eloim is unrighteous.) Yave he set over the fire and the wind, and Eloim he set over the water and the earth. And these he called with the names Cain and Abel with a view to deceive.

"Now up to the present day, sexual intercourse continued due to the chief archon. And he planted sexual desire in her who belongs to Adam. And he produced through intercourse the copies of the bodies, and he inspired them with his counterfeit spirit.

"And the two archons he set over principalities, so that they might rule over the tomb. And when Adam recognized the likeness of his own foreknowledge, he begot the likeness of the son of man. He called him Seth, according to the way of the race in the aeons. Likewise, the mother also sent down her spirit, which is in her likeness and a copy of those who are in the pleroma, for she will prepare a dwelling place for the aeons which will come down. And he made them drink water of
forgetfulness, from the chief archon, in order that they might not know from where they came. Thus, the seed remained for a while assisting (him), in order that, when the Spirit comes forth from the holy aeons, he may raise up and heal him from the deficiency, that the whole pleroma may (again) become holy and faultless."

And I said to the savior, "Lord, will all the souls then be brought safely into the pure light?" He answered and said to me, "Great things have arisen in your mind, for it is difficult to explain them to others except to those who are from the immovable race. Those on whom the Spirit of life will descend and (with whom) he will be with the power, they will be saved and become perfect and be worthy of the greatness and be purified in that place from all wickedness and the involvements in evil. Then they have no other care than the incorruption alone, to which they direct their attention from here on, without anger or envy or
jealousy or desire and greed of anything. They are not affected by anything except the state of being in the flesh alone, which they bear while looking expectantly for the time when they will be met by the receivers (of the body). Such then are worthy of the imperishable, eternal life and the calling. For they endure everything and bear up under everything, that they may finish the good fight and inherit eternal life."

I said to him, "Lord, the souls of those who did not do these works (but) on whom the power and Spirit descended, (will they be rejected?" He answered and said to me, "If) the Spirit (descended upon them), they will in any case be saved, and they will change (for the better). For the power will descend on every man, for without it no one can stand. And after they are born, then, when the Spirit of life increases and the power comes and strengthens that soul, no one can lead it astray with
works of evil. But those on whom the counterfeit spirit descends are drawn by him and they go astray."

And I said, "Lord, where will the souls of these go when they have come out of their flesh?" And he smiled and said to me, "The soul in which the power will become stronger than the counterfeit spirit, is strong and it flees from evil and, through the intervention of the incorruptible one, it is saved, and it is taken up to the rest of the aeons."

And I said, "Lord, those, however, who have not known to whom they belong, where will their souls be?" And he said to me, "In those, the despicable spirit has gained strength when they went astray. And he burdens the soul and draws it to the works of evil, and he casts it down into forgetfulness. And after it comes out of (the body), it is handed over to the authorities, who came into being through the archon, and they bind it with chains and cast it into prison, and consort with it until it is liberated from the forgetfulness and acquires knowledge. And if thus it becomes perfect, it is saved."

And I said, "Lord, how can the soul become smaller and return into the nature of its mother or into man?" Then he rejoiced when I asked him this, and he said to me, "Truly, you are blessed, for you have understood! That soul is made to follow another one (fem.), since the Spirit of life is in it. It is saved through him. It is not again cast into another flesh."

And I said, "Lord, these also who did not know, but have turned away, where will their souls go?" Then he said to me, "To that place where the angels of poverty go they will be taken, the place where there is no repentance. And they will be kept for the day on which those who have blasphemed the spirit will be tortured, and they will be punished with eternal punishment."

And I said, "Lord, from where did the counterfeit spirit come?" Then he said to me, "The Mother-Father, who is rich in mercy, the holy Spirit in every way, the One who is merciful and who sympathizes with you (pl.), i.e., the Epinoia of the foreknowledge of light, he raised up the offspring of the perfect race and its thinking and the eternal light of man. When the chief archon realized that they were exalted above him in the height - and they surpass him in thinking - then he wanted to seize their thought, not knowing that they surpassed him in thinking, and that he will not be able to seize them.

"He made a plan with his authorities, which are his powers, and they committed together adultery with Sophia, and bitter fate was begotten through them, which is the last of the changeable bonds. And it is of a sort that is interchangeable. And it is harder and stronger than she with whom the gods united, and the angels and the demons and all the generations until this day. For from that fate came forth every sin and injustice and blasphemy, and the chain of forgetfulness and ignorance and every severe command, and serious sins and great fears. And thus the whole creation was made blind, in order that they may not know God, who is above all of them. And because of the chain of forgetfulness, their sins were hidden. For they are bound with measures and times andmoments, since it (fate) is lord over everything.

"And he (the chief archon) repented for everything which had come into being through him. This time he planned to bring a flood upon the work of man. But the greatness of the light of the foreknowledge informed Noah, and he proclaimed (it) to all the offspring which are the sons of men. But those who were strangers to him did not listen to him. It is not as Moses said, 'They hid themselves in an ark' (Gn 7: 7), but they hid themselves in a place, not only Noah, but also many other people
from the immovable race. They went into a place and hid themselves in a luminous cloud. And he (Noah) recognized his authority, and she who belongs to the light was with him, having shone on them because he (the chief archon) had brought darkness upon the whole earth.

"And he made a plan with his powers. He sent his angels to the daughters of men, that they might take some of them for themselves and raise offspring for their enjoyment. And at first they did not succeed. When they had no success, they gathered together again and they made a plan together. They created a counterfeit spirit, who resembles the Spirit who had descended, so as to pollute the souls through it. And the angels changed themselves in their likeness into the likeness of their mates (the daughters of men), filling them with the spirit of darkness, which they had mixed for them, and with evil. They brought gold and silver and a gift and copper and iron and metal and all kinds of things. And they steered the people who had followed them into great troubles, by leading them astray with many deceptions. They (the people) became old without having enjoyment. They died, not having found truth and without knowing the God of truth. And thus the whole creation became enslaved forever, from the foundation of the world until now. And they took women and begot children out of the darkness according to the likeness of their spirit. And they closed their hearts, and they hardened themselves through the hardness of the counterfeit spirit until now.

"I, therefore, the perfect Pronoia of the all, changed myself into my seed, for I existed first, going on every road. For I am the richness of the light; I am the remembrance of the pleroma.

"And I went into the realm of darkness and I endured till I entered the middle of the prison. And the foundations of chaos shook. And I hid myself from them because of their wickedness, and they did not recognize me.

"Again I returned for the second time, and I went about. I came forth from those who belong to the light, which is I, the remembrance of the Pronoia. I entered into the midst of darkness and the inside of Hades, since I was seeking (to accomplish) my task. And the foundations of chaos shook, that they might fall down upon those who are in chaos and might destroy them. And again I ran up to my root of light, lest they be destroyed before the time.

"Still for a third time I went - I am the light which exists in the light, I am the remembrance of the Pronoia - that I might enter into the midst of darkness and the inside of Hades. And I filled my face with the light of the completion of their aeon. And I entered into the midst of their prison, which is the prison of the body. And I said, 'He who hears, let him get up from the deep sleep.' And he wept and shed tears. Bitter tears he wiped from himself and he said, 'Who is it that calls my name, and from where has this hope come to me, while I am in the chains of the prison?' And I said, 'I am the Pronoia of the pure light; I am
the thinking of the virginal Spirit, who raised you up to the honored place. Arise and remember that it is you who hearkened, and follow your root, which is I, the merciful one, and guard yourself against the angels of poverty and the demons of chaos and all those who ensnare you, and beware of the deep sleep and the enclosure of the inside of Hades.

"And I raised him up, and sealed him in the light of the water with five seals, in order that death might not have power over him from this time on.

"And behold, now I shall go up to the perfect aeon. I have completed everything for you in your hearing. And I have said everything to you that you might write them down and give them secretly to your fellow spirits, for this is the mystery of the immovable race."

Fallacy that Humans are Cursed by Original Sin

2010-01-10T16:06:00.000-08:00

Original Sin theories are psychopathic evil, not theological!

http://one-evil.org/acts_belief/belief_original_sin.htm

Original Sin is the belief that all human beings, except a few chosen by the church are cursed by the inheritance of sin and guilt from their ancestors back to the time of Adam and Eve on account of their actions in defying God. Therefore, unless a person pledges loyalty and adherence to the rules of the church, even if they never commit a criminal or morally reprehensible act, their soul remains in jeopardy of eternal damnation and suffering.

The concept of Original Sin is arguably one of the most perverse lies and wholly evil frauds ever conceived in the history of human civilization. It has absolutely no foundation from any scriptural statements of Jewish Scripture, nor from any statement alleged to have been made by Jesus Christ, nor even by the heretic Paul of Tarsus. It is a wholly heretical concept against all teachings even of the counterfeit movement known as christianity. Yet this heresy remains in force as official church doctrine of mainstream christian churchs in the 21st Century today.

The founder of the concept is Augustine of Hippo (354-430) who introduced the idea in his works The City of God (418) and On Christian Doctrine (420/422).

The fact that Augustine was not able to provide one shred of evidence as to how such a thoroughly evil idea could be construed from scriptures that by his lifetime had already been re-edited on several occasions was immaterial to its strongest supporters.

The potential of the concept to be used as a primary driving force of fear, of mass murder and perpetual warfare against "heretics" was immediately recognized. The evil genius of the concept of original sin is in placing the authority of the church organization and its doctrines as the only hope of being "saved".

Secondly, it provided a twisted kind of moral support to the argument of the official churches in their war against groups seeking to live according to the original teachings of Jesus in harmony and free of the influence of the church of Rome, Alexandria and Constantinople.

Not everyone agreed with the perversions of "Saint" Augustine, a man personally responsible for the murder and torture of thousands of innocent men, women and children at Calama, Algeria around 386.

The movement against the evil of Augustine became known as Pelagianism after Pelagius (354-440) who argued during the lifetime of Augustine that there was no moral, or scriptural basis for such a lie.

The lack of any credible evidence however, did not deter the church authorities then or since. In fact, by the late middle ages, The Catholic Church had extended the lie of Augustine to encompass unborn infants, saying children who die without being baptized are condemned to eternity in limbo.

This perversion was even reconfirmed at the Council of Trent 1545-1563. It was only in 2007, the Vatican finally recognized the unsustainable evil of this position and was forced to clarify its position that unborn babies can no longer be cursed by the concept of limbo.

Sometimes, a feeble attempt is made by theologians to claim the basis for original sin can be connected to Paul the Apostle, such as Romans 5:12-21 and 1 Corinthians 15:22. This is without any solid basis. To deny the lie of Augustine remains heresy by the standards of most mainstream christian organizations today.

Vatican reveals Secret Archives

2010-01-02T07:20:00.000-08:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/vaticancityandholysee/6917990/Vatican-reveals-Secret-Archives.html

Vatican reveals Secret Archives
Nick Squires
The Telegraph
Fri, 01 Jan 2010 15:52 EST

In a letter dated 1246 from Grand Khan Guyuk, pictured, to Pope Innocent IV, Genghis Khan's grandson demands that the Pontiff travel to central Asia in person

A 13th-century letter from Genghis Khan's grandson demanding homage from the pope is among a collection of documents from the Vatican's Secret Archives that has been published for the first time.

The Holy See's archives contain scrolls, parchments and leather-bound volumes with correspondence dating back more than 1,000 years.

High-quality reproductions of 105 documents, 19 of which have never been seen before in public, have now been published in a book. The Vatican Secret Archives features a papal letter to Hitler, an entreaty to Rome written on birch bark by a tribe of North American Indians, and a plea from Mary Queen of Scots.

The book documents the Roman Catholic Church's often hostile dealings with the world of science and the arts, including documents from the heresy trial against Galileo and correspondence exchanged with Erasmus, Voltaire and Mozart. It also reveals the Church's relations with princes and potentates in countries far beyond its dominion.

In a letter dated 1246 from Grand Khan Guyuk to Pope Innocent IV, Genghis Khan's grandson demands that the pontiff travel to central Asia in person - with all of his "kings" in tow - to "pay service and homage to us" as an act of "submission", threatening that otherwise "you shall be our enemy".

Another formal letter in the archive highlights the papacy's political role. In 1863 Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States, wrote to Pope Pius IX claiming that the civil war raging across America was entirely due to "Northern aggression".

"We desire no evil to our enemies, nor do we covet any of their possessions; but are only struggling to the end that they shall cease to devastate our land and inflict useless and cruel slaughter upon our people."

Other letters in the archive are more personal. In a 1550 note, Michelangelo demands payment from the papacy which was three months late, and complains that a papal conclave had interrupted his work on the dome of St Peter's Basilica.

A yellowed parchment covered in neat black script reveals details of the 14th century trials of the Knights Templar on suspicion of heresy, after which members of the warrior-monk order were pardoned by Pope Clement V.

Some of the documents are already well-known, including a parchment letter written by English peers to Pope Clement VII in 1530, calling for Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon to be annulled.

An entreaty written to Rome by another British monarch, but in very different circumstances, is also reproduced in exquisite detail. In 1586 Mary, Queen of Scots, wrote from Fotheringay in Northants to Pope Sixtus V, a few months before she was beheaded for plotting against her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, pledging her eternal allegiance to Rome.

The document includes letters written to Hitler by Pope Pius XI in 1934 and one received by his controversial successor, Pius XII, from Japan's Emperor Hirohito.

"An aura of mystery has always surrounded this important cultural institution of the Holy See due to the allusions to inaccessible secrets thanks to its very name, as well as to the publicity it has always enjoyed in literature and in the media," Cardinal Raffaele Farina, a Vatican archivist, writes in the preface to the book, which was produced by a Belgian publisher, VdH Books.

One of the most unusual documents is a letter written on birch bark in 1887 by the Ojibwe Indians of Ontario, Canada, to Pope Leo XIII. The letter, written in May but datelined "where there is much grass, in the month of the flowers", addresses the pontiff as "the Great Master of Prayer" and offers thanks to the Vatican for having sent a "custodian of prayer" (a bishop) to preach to them.

Although scholars have had access to the secret archives since 1881, they remain closed to the general public.

Rabbis to US Ambassador: Time to 'Go Biblical' with Arabs

2010-01-02T06:52:00.000-08:00

Does 'going biblical' mean 'massacres'? This is called genocide!

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/135283

Rabbis to US Ambassador: Time to 'Go Biblical' with Arabs
Gil Ronen
Israel National News
Thu, 30 Dec 2010 19:03 EST

A delegation of the Rabbinical Congress for Peace (RCP) met with U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mr. James Cunningham, today and called for a reassessment of the entire U.S. policy vis-à-vis the Israelis and Palestinians. The rabbis told Ambassador Cunningham that it was time to try the Biblical approach to the dispute over the Land of Israel.

"The past 17 years have proven without a shadow of a doubt that every square inch ceded by Israel to the Palestinians was transformed into a platform of hatred and terrorism," RCP Director Rabbi Avrohom Shmuel Lewin told the ambassador. "In other words, the 'land for peace' formula in the Israel-Palestinian context, besides being a formula that goes against the Divine will, is ineffective, obsolete, and an exercise in futility. Most of all it is a dangerous policy that only leads to bloodshed and instability in the region and harms vital American interests in the region as well," Lewin said.

'Land for peace doesn't work'

The delegation was headed by Rabbi Joseph Gerlitzky, Chairman of the RCP, who is also the Rabbi of Central Tel Aviv where the US embassy is located. Rabbi Gerlitzky presented the ambassador with the Halachic (Jewish legal) ruling signed by over 350 prominent rabbis in Israel that it is forbidden to give up even one inch of territory controlled by Israel today because it will bring bloodshed and instability to the region.

"In the name of the overwhelming majority of rabbis in Israel," he said, "we request of you Mr. Ambassador, to convey our Halachic message to President Barack Obama that it is time for a complete reversal and reassessment of U.S. policy in the Middle East. The 'land for peace' policy never worked and harms U.S. interests in the region and the world at large."

Left to right: Rabbi Sholom Gold, Mr. Marc Sievers of the US Embassy, Rabbi Dov Lior, Rabbi Joseph Gerlitzky, Ambassador James Cunningham, Rabbi Moshe Havlin, Rabbi Avrohom S. Lewin. The Rabbis handed the ambassador a Halachic Ruling signed by over 350 rabbis in Israel that forbids giving up land controlled by Israel today.
The ambassador was visibly moved by Rabbi Sholom Gold, a leading rabbi in Jerusalem, who described the suffering that the Jewish People have endured ever since the implementation of the Oslo Accords and the agreements that followed. "It's all a play of words, there is no peace process," he said. "From the day that we started conceding and withdrawing we did not have one day of rest and peace. Why should our enemies want to make peace with us when they see that with terrorism they get what they want? Even the U.S., Israel's supposedly best friend, sides with them in demanding a freeze and evacuation of settlements. Is the triumph of Arab terror one of American interests?" Gold asked.

Going Biblical

Rabbi Dov Lior, the Rabbi of Kiryat Arba-Hevron, said: "G-d gave the US the power and influence to affect the rest of the world and supporting Israel is the key to America's success."

Ambassador Cunningham told the rabbis that he does not see how the problem can be solved "without taking into consideration the Palestinians," to which Rabbi Gold remarked: "Ever since we started taking the Palestinians into consideration the situation only worsened."

The ambassador asked the rabbis, "So what is your solution to the problem?"

Rabbi Gerlitzky replied: "You must switch the entire approach to the situation. We all believe in the Holy Bible and up until now we tried every formula except for that which is delineated in the Bible. Let's try it and who knows, Mr. Ambassador, maybe this is your defining moment, that G-d Almighty has placed you in this capacity in order to precipitate a new course which will bring a true peace to the entire region."

Jordan asks Canada to seize Dead Sea scrolls

2010-01-02T06:42:00.000-08:00

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/jordan-asks-canada-to-seize-dead-sea-scrolls/article1416369/

Jordan asks Canada to seize Dead Sea scrolls
2,000-year-old Hebrew artifacts, which Jordan claims were illegally taken by Israel in 1967, are on display in Toronto
Jan. 02, 2010

Jordan has asked Canada to seize the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea scrolls, on display until Sunday at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, invoking international law in a bid to keep the artifacts out of the hands of Israel until their disputed ownership is settled.

Even if Canada ignores the request, it will make other countries think twice before accepting the controversial exhibit.

Summoning the Canadian chargé d'affaires in Amman two weeks ago, Jordan cited the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, to which both Jordan and Canada are signatories, in asking Canada to take custody of the scrolls.

Jordan claims Israel acted illegally in 1967 when it took the scrolls from a museum in east Jerusalem, which Israel seized from Jordan during the Six-Day War and subsequently occupied. The Hague Convention, which is concerned with safeguarding cultural property during wartime, requires each signatory “to take into its custody cultural property imported into its territory either directly or indirectly from any occupied territory. This shall either be effected automatically upon the importation of the property or, failing this, at the request of the authorities of that territory.”

This means Canada must act, says Jordan. “The Government of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan would be grateful if the Government of Canada would confirm … whether it is prepared to assume its international legal responsibility, and the means by which it intends to do so,” it wrote.

While confirming that Canada has received a message from Jordan, a spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade said yesterday that “differences regarding ownership of the Dead Sea scrolls should be addressed by Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. It would not be appropriate for Canada to intervene as a third party.”

The ROM's exhibition of the scrolls, mounted “in partnership with the Israel Antiquities Authority,” opened on June 27.

While Jordan has acted only recently in asking Canada to take custody of the scrolls, the Palestinian Authority has made its position known since April, when Salam Fayyad, Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, wrote to Prime Minister Stephen Harper concerning what it argues is the illegal use of the scrolls.

Jordanian and Palestinian officials insist they do not want Canada to determine who owns the scrolls, but simply to place them under Canada's safekeeping until their ownership is determined.

The ancient Hebrew scrolls were part of one of the greatest archeological discoveries of the 20th century. Discovered in 1947 by Bedouin Arabs living in the area northwest of the Dead Sea, the first seven scrolls found their way into Israeli hands and became a prize exhibit of the new Israeli state's national museum.

The majority of the Dead Sea scrolls, however, were uncovered in the seven years following the initial discovery in an operation supervised by Jordan on land it occupied west of the Jordan River. The scrolls, many consisting of thousands of fragments, were taken to the Palestinian museum in east Jerusalem for study.

While neither the Jordanian nor the Israeli museum talked to the other, scholars in both camps believed the scrolls were the library of an ascetic Jewish sect called the Essenes, described by first-century historian Josephus as living in the Qumran area. The scrolls had been hidden in caves, it was believed, to hide them from the Romans.

Having received a formal request to take custody of the scrolls, Canada appears to be under some obligation to take action.

The Cultural Property Export and Import Act, Canada's own legislation to enact the Hague Convention, states: “If the government of a State Party submits a request in writing to the Minister for the recovery and return of any cultural property that has been exported from an occupied territory of that State Party and that is in Canada in the possession of or under the control of any person, institution or public authority, the Attorney-General of Canada may institute an action in the Federal Court or in a superior court of a province for the recovery of the property by the State Party.”

It adds that in the event that the Attorney-General institutes legal action to recover such property, “The court may … order that the property in respect of which the action has been taken be turned over to the Minister for safe-keeping and conservation pending final disposition of the action.”

From the start, Israel has argued it is not asserting its ownership of the scrolls. “We are the custodians of the Dead Sea scrolls,” says Pnina Shor, head of the conservation department at the Israel Antiquities Authority. “As such, we have a right to exhibit them and to conserve them.”

Israel argues that the short-term, temporary exhibition of scrolls in another country does not constitute “exportation” under the Hague Convention, and that all the scrolls in its possession are part of Jewish heritage.

Palestinian experts acknowledge the scrolls are Jewish, but argue that they are also part of Palestinian heritage just as ancient Roman and Byzantine ruins comprise part of their history.

Pharaoh's chariots found in Red Sea?

2010-01-02T06:34:00.000-08:00

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=19382

Pharaoh's chariots found in Red Sea?
'Physical evidence' of ancient Exodus prompting new look at Old Testament
Posted: June 21, 2003
By Joe Kovacs
© 2009 WorldNetDaily.com

"And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided." (Exodus 14:21)

One of the most famous stories of the Bible is God's parting of the Red Sea to save the Israelites from the Egyptian army and the subsequent drowning of soldiers and horses in hot pursuit.

But is there evidence that such an event did in fact happen – and if so, precisely where did it take place?

The issue is surfacing some 3,500 years after the event is said to have taken place with reports of Egyptian chariot wheels found in the Red Sea, photographs to document it and new books by scientists that could lead to a whole remapping of the Exodus route and a fresh look at ancient biblical accounts.

Wheel of fortune
Is this a chariot wheel that chased Moses?

"I am 99.9 percent sure I picked up a chariot wheel," Peter Elmer tells WorldNetDaily after two diving trips to the Gulf of Aqaba branch of the sea. "It was covered in coral."

The 38-year-old forklift mechanic from Keynsham, England, traveled to the region with his brother, Mark, after being inspired by videos of explorers Ron Wyatt and Jonathan Gray, who have documented artifacts that in at least one case authorities have confirmed to be a chariot wheel dating to the time of the Exodus.

"I believe I actually sat in an ancient chariot cab," Elmer said, referring to his time exploring a submerged item in what he describes as an underwater scrapyard. "Without question, it is most definitely the remains of the Egyptian army."

But despite all of Elmer's excitement, others who have been to the same location are not so sure what is being viewed underwater are the remnants of the great chase and urge extreme caution regarding the unsubstantiated claims.

"All kinds of people are finding coral and calling it chariot parts," says Richard Rives, president of Wyatt Archaeological Research in Tennessee. "It's most likely coral covered with coral. ... Opportunists are combining false things with the true things that are found. These people are making it up as they go to be TV stars."

Rives was a longtime partner of Ron Wyatt, an anesthetist and amateur archaeologist who died of cancer in 1999. Before passing away, Wyatt devoted years searching for and documenting physical evidence for events mentioned in the Bible. In addition to chariot wheels, Wyatt claimed to have found Noah's Ark on the mountain next to Ararat in Turkey, the "true" Mount Sinai in Saudi Arabia and the Ark of the Covenant with the Ten Commandments near the site of Jesus Christ's crucifixion.

Among those who accompanied Wyatt on many of his excursions is his wife, Mary Nell. She's concerned about over-exuberance regarding new claims, but the Spring Hill, Tenn., woman tells WorldNetDaily she's "convinced" there are chariot parts located on a subsurface "land bridge" connecting Egypt to Saudi Arabia through the Gulf of Aqaba.

She cites Ron's discovery of a wheel hub that he brought to the surface in the late 1970s as proof.

The hub had the remains of eight spokes radiating outward and was examined by Nassif Mohammed Hassan, director of Antiquities in Cairo. Hassan declared it to be from the 18th Dynasty of ancient Egypt, explaining the eight-spoked wheel was used only during that dynasty around 1400 B.C.

Curiously, no one can account for the precise whereabouts of that eight-spoked wheel today, though Hassan is on videotape stating his conclusion regarding authenticity.

When Mary Nell went diving with Ron, she says it was very easy to assume (wrongly) that every item on the flat bottom had historical significance.

"[At first] I thought everything was a chariot wheel!" Mrs. Wyatt exclaimed, noting how difficult it is for the untrained eye to distinguish an artifact from a piece of coral. "I'm just trying to be cautious about over-identifying too much. ... It is God's truth, and we can't hype it up. We can't add to it."

However, she notes a big problem for explorers and scientists is that the Egyptian government no longer allows items to be removed from the protected region. Thus, someone claiming to find an artifact will have a hard – if not impossible – time verifying its authenticity, a classic catch-22.

The watery grave

"And the waters returned, and covered the chariots, and the horsemen, and all the host of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them; there remained not so much as one of them." (Exodus 14:28)

The Bible account makes it clear that once the Israelites had marched through the parted sea on dry ground, that the waters rushed back to completely engulf the doomed army of ancient Egypt.

With that in mind, many of the items being seen in the Gulf of Aqaba have been photographed by divers for comparison to the Exodus story.

Many other photographs show formations in a circular pattern with projections that could be spokes, but those items remain at the bottom and have not been authenticated.

Another issue is the route of the Exodus, and which body of water the Israelites crossed. Many travel maps and Bibles indicate a crossing point in the Gulf of Suez, the western branch of the Red Sea. But those may have to be updated if the Aqaba location is confirmed as the true location for the miraculous event.

"The truth is, no one really knows where the crossing of the Red Sea took place," says Carl Rasmussen, a biblical geographer and professor of Old Testament at Bethel College in St. Paul, Minn.

Rasmussen compiled the "Zondervan NIV Atlas of the Bible" and personally thinks the crossing took place somewhere along what is now the Suez Canal.

Some scientists from Europe say the current maps are wrong, and the Wyatts are right – that the crossing began at the Nuweiba beachhead, went through the Gulf of Aqaba, and then into what is now Saudi Arabia where they claim the "true" Mount Sinai is located.

For years, scholars have speculated as to the location of the actual Mount Sinai where Moses received the Ten Commandments from God. At least 13 sites have actually been claimed on the Sinai peninsula as being the correct spot.

But Ron Wyatt believed it was in Arabia, even referenced as "mount Sinai in Arabia" by the Apostle Paul in Galatians 4:25.

So he and his sons made their way to "Jebel a Lawz," the mountain of the Law, which is known by the locals as "Jebel Musa" – Moses' mountain.

Unfortunately for the Wyatts, they were arrested and held in prison. His wife says someone had phoned embassy authorities for the Muslim country, claiming that Ron was spying for Israel. They were released after spending 78 days behind bars.

Rasmussen doesn't agree with the Arabian Mount Sinai theory.

"I believe the strongest candidate is Jebel Sin Bisher," he told WorldNetDaily. "The sites in Saudi Arabia have very, very weak scriptural backing, in spite of the hype."

Now, a new book by Cambridge University physicist Colin Humphreys titled "The Miracles of Exodus" supports not only the claim for an Aqaba crossing, but also the location of Mount Sinai in Arabia.

"If my book is correct, and I believe the evidence is very strong," says Humphreys, "then world maps will need to be redrawn to relocate Mount Sinai. History books, travel guides and biblical commentaries will need to be rewritten."

Throughout his work, Humphreys provides scientific explanations to corroborate the accounts of the Old Testament.

"'The waters piled up, the surging waters stood firm like a wall,' is a remarkable description of what the mathematics reveals to be the case for water pushed back by a very strong wind," he writes.

"What I have found is that the events of the Exodus are even more dramatic than is generally believed," Humphreys said. "The Exodus of the ancient Israelites from Egypt really is one of the greatest true stories ever told."

A Swedish scientist who believes the Red Sea was split says while Humphreys is correct about the Aqaba crossing, there are no natural, scientific explanations for the parting miracle described in Scripture.

Walls of water as depicted in 'The Ten Commandments' (Paramount Pictures)
"The wind did not separate the water," says Lennart Moller of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. "No person could be in that wind and survive. ... If God has created all the Earth, it's no problem for Him to separate the water for a while."

Speaking to WorldNetDaily from the isle of Gotland in the Baltic Sea, Moller, the author of "The Exodus Case," says the key in finding the correct route of the Israelites is to understand that the Hebrew reference to "yum suph" does not mean "sea of reeds" as many scholars have claimed.

Moller says it refers specifically to the Gulf of Aqaba, and while he's not formally affiliated with the Wyatts, he agrees with them that a host of other evidence can be found on the Arabian side of the water, including remains of the golden calf, pillars, altars and the even the rock the Bible says Moses split to bring forth water for the Israelites.

Regarding the items found beneath the waters, Moller believes there are remnants not only of chariots and wheels, but also human and animal skeletons.

"There was a disaster [there] a long time ago," he said. "Whatever that is, it's open to interpretation."

He also notes that the downward and upward slope of the Aqaba crossing path actually falls within current U.S. standards for handicapped ramps.

And while Mary Nell Wyatt warns overstating the claims by divers and authors could do more harm than good, she does believe there's a reason why her husband was led to discover what Ron called "God's attention-getters."

"God preserved all these evidences," she said, "[otherwise] there would have been nothing left. ... God has been lost today. Even Christians still can't believe this all happened. ... We need to pray for the Lord to help us get people to see it."

Back in England, Peter Elmer says people have mockingly asked "Why should a forklift mechanic from Keynsham be able to go to the same place Moses was?"

He takes the criticism in stride, pointing out "Jesus used fishermen, tax collectors and publicans. Why not a forklift mechanic?"

When Same-Sex Marriage was a Christian Rite

2009-12-17T11:33:00.000-08:00

http://colfaxrecord.com/detail/91429.html

Thos Payne
Colfax Record
Sun, 24 Aug 2008 00:00 EDT
© SS. Sergius & Bacchus - 7th cent.

A Kiev art museum contains a curious icon from St. Catherine's Monastery on Mt. Sinai in Israel. It shows two robed Christian saints. Between them is a traditional Roman pronubus (a best man), overseeing a wedding. The pronubus is Christ. The married couple are both men.

Is the icon suggesting that a gay "wedding" is being sanctified by Christ himself? The idea seems shocking. But the full answer comes from other early Christian sources about the two men featured in the icon, St. Sergius and St. Bacchus, two Roman soldiers who were Christian martyrs. These two officers in the Roman army incurred the anger of Emperor Maximian when they were exposed as 'secret Christians' by refusing to enter a pagan temple.

Both were sent to Syria circa 303 CE where Bacchus is thought to have died while being flogged. Sergius survived torture but was later beheaded. Legend says that Bacchus appeared to the dying Sergius as an angel, telling him to be brave because they would soon be reunited in heaven.

While the pairing of saints, particularly in the early Christian church, was not unusual, the association of these two men was regarded as particularly intimate. Severus, the Patriarch of Antioch (AD 512 - 518) explained that, "we should not separate in speech they [Sergius and Bacchus] who were joined in life". This is not a case of simple "adelphopoiia." In the definitive 10th century account of their lives,

St. Sergius is openly celebrated as the "sweet companion and lover" of St. Bacchus. Sergius and Bacchus's close relationship has led many modern scholars to believe they were lovers. But the most compelling evidence for this view is that the oldest text of their martyrology, written in New Testament Greek describes them as erastai or "lovers". In other words, they were a male homosexual couple. Their orientation and relationship was not only acknowledged, but it was fully accepted and celebrated by the early Christian church, which was far more tolerant than it is today.

Contrary to myth, Christianity's concept of marriage has not been set in stone since the days of Christ, but has constantly evolved as a concept and ritual.

Prof. John Boswell, the late Chairman of Yale University's history department, discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient Christian church liturgical documents, there were also ceremonies called the "Office of Same-Sex Union" (10th and 11th century), and the "Order for Uniting Two Men" (11th and 12th century).

These church rites had all the symbols of a heterosexual marriage: the whole community gathered in a church, a blessing of the couple before the altar was conducted with their right hands joined, holy vows were exchanged, a priest officiated in the taking of the Eucharist and a wedding feast for the guests was celebrated afterwards. These elements all appear in contemporary illustrations of the holy union of the Byzantine Warrior-Emperor, Basil the First (867-886 CE) and his companion John.

Such same gender Christian sanctified unions also took place in Ireland in the late 12thand/ early 13th century, as the chronicler Gerald of Wales (Geraldus Cambrensis) recorded.

Same-sex unions in pre-modern Europe list in great detail some same gender ceremonies found in ancient church liturgical documents. One Greek 13th century rite, "Order for Solemn Same-Sex Union", invoked St. Serge and St. Bacchus, and called on God to "vouchsafe unto these, Thy servants [N and N], the grace to love one another and to abide without hate and not be the cause of scandal all the days of their lives, with the help of the Holy Mother of God, and all Thy saints". The ceremony concludes: "And they shall kiss the Holy Gospel and each other, and it shall be concluded".

Another 14th century Serbian Slavonic "Office of the Same Sex Union", uniting two men or two women, had the couple lay their right hands on the Gospel while having a crucifix placed in their left hands. After kissing the Gospel, the couple were then required to kiss each other, after which the priest, having raised up the Eucharist, would give them both communion.

Records of Christian same sex unions have been discovered in such diverse archives as those in the Vatican, in St. Petersburg, in Paris, in Istanbul and in the Sinai, covering a thousand-years from the 8th to the 18th century.

The Dominican missionary and Prior, Jacques Goar (1601-1653), includes such ceremonies in a printed collection of Greek Orthodox prayer books, Euchologion Sive Rituale Graecorum Complectens Ritus Et Ordines Divinae Liturgiae (Paris, 1667).

While homosexuality was technically illegal from late Roman times, homophobic writings didn't appear in Western Europe until the late 14th century. Even then, church-consecrated same sex unions continued to take place.

At St. John Lateran in Rome (traditionally the Pope's parish church) in 1578, as many as thirteen same-gender couples were joined during a high Mass and with the cooperation of the Vatican clergy, "taking communion together, using the same nuptial Scripture, after which they slept and ate together" according to a contemporary report. Another woman to woman union is recorded in Dalmatia in the 18th century.

Prof. Boswell's academic study is so well researched and documented that it poses fundamental questions for both modern church leaders and heterosexual Christians about their own modern attitudes towards homosexuality.

For the Church to ignore the evidence in its own archives would be cowardly and deceptive. The evidence convincingly shows that what the modern church claims has always been its unchanging attitude towards homosexuality is, in fact, nothing of the sort.

It proves that for the last two millennia, in parish churches and cathedrals throughout Christendom, from Ireland to Istanbul and even in the heart of Rome itself, homosexual relationships were accepted as valid expressions of a God-given love and commitment to another person, a love that could be celebrated, honored and blessed, through the Eucharist in the name of, and in the presence of, Jesus Christ.

Notes on the findings of Prof. John Boswell concerning the performance of same-sex marriages by the church from the 4th century to the present.

DNA of Jesus-era shrouded man in Jerusalem reveals earliest case of leprosy

2009-12-17T11:23:00.000-08:00

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-12/thuo-doj121609.php

DNA of Jesus-era shrouded man in Jerusalem reveals earliest case of leprosy
Rebecca Zeffert
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:14 EST
© Prof. Shimon Gibson
This is part of the tomb where the shrouded man was found. Note the remains of plaster around the entrance.
Burial shroud proves Turin Shroud not from 1st century C.E. Jerusalem.

The DNA of a 1st century shrouded man found in a tomb on the edge of the Old City of Jerusalem has revealed the earliest proven case of leprosy. Details of the research will be published December 16 in the PloS ONE Journal.

The molecular investigation was undertaken by Prof. Mark Spigelman and Prof. Charles Greenblatt and of the Sanford F. Kuvin Center for the Study of Infectious and Tropical Diseases at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Prof. Carney Matheson and Ms. Kim Vernon of Lakehead University, Canada, Prof. Azriel Gorski of New Haven University and Dr. Helen Donoghue of University College London. The archaeological excavation was led by Prof. Shimon Gibson, Dr. Boaz Zissu and Prof. James Tabor on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

The burial cave, which is known as the Tomb of the Shroud, is located in the lower Hinnom Valley and is part of a 1st century C.E. cemetery known as Akeldama or 'Field of Blood' (Matthew 27:3-8; Acts 1:19) - next to the area where Judas is said to have committed suicide. The tomb of the shrouded man is located next to the tomb of Annas, the high priest (6-15 C.E.), who was the father in law of Caiaphas, the high priest who betrayed Jesus to the Romans. It is thus thought that this shrouded man was either a priest or a member of the aristocracy. According to Prof. Gibson, the view from the tomb would have looked directly toward the Jewish Temple.
No second burial © Prof. Shimon Gibson

This is a sample of hair of the shrouded man, which had been ritually cut before burial.

What is particularly rare about this tomb is that it was clear this man, which is dated by radiocarbon methods to 1-50 C.E., did not receive a secondary burial. Secondary burials were common practice at the time, where the bones were removed after a year and placed in an ossuary (a stone bone box). In this case, however, the entrance to this part of the tomb was completely sealed with plaster. Prof. Spigelman believes this is due to the fact that this man had suffered from leprosy and died of tuberculosis, as the DNA of both diseases was found in his bones.

Historically, disfiguring diseases - particularly leprosy - caused the afflicted individuals to be ostracized from their communities. However, a number of indications - the location and size of the tomb, the type of textiles used as shroud wrappings, and the clean state of the hair - suggest that the shrouded individual was a fairly affluent member of society in Jerusalem and that tuberculosis and leprosy may have crossed social boundaries in the first century C.E.

Disproves Turin Shroud?

This is also the first time fragments of a burial shroud have been found from the time of Jesus in Jerusalem. The shroud is very different to that of the Turin Shroud, hitherto assumed to be the one that was used to wrap the body of Jesus. Unlike the complex weave of the Turin Shroud, this is made up of a simple two-way weave, as the textiles historian Dr. Orit Shamir was able to show.

Based on the assumption that this is representative of a typical burial shroud widely used at the time of Jesus, the researchers conclude that the Turin Shroud did not originate from Jesus-era Jerusalem.

The excavation also found a clump of the shrouded man's hair, which had been ritually cut prior to his burial. These are both unique discoveries because organic remains are hardly ever preserved in the Jerusalem area owing to high humidity levels in the ground.

Social health in antiquity
© Prof. Shimon Gibson

This is a sample of the shroud which shows the simple two-way weave used for burial shrouds in 1st century C.E. Jerusalem.
According to Prof. Spigelman and Prof. Greenblatt, the origins and development of leprosy are largely obscure. Leprosy in the Old Testament may well refer to skin rashes such as psoriasis. The leprosy known to us today was thought to have originated in India and brought over to the Near East and to Mediterranean countries in the Hellenistic period. The results from the first-century C.E. Tomb of the Shroud fill a vital gap in our knowledge of this disease.

Furthermore, the new research has shown that molecular pathology clearly adds a new dimension to the archaeological exploration of disease in ancient times and provides us with a better understanding of the evolution, geographic distribution and epidemiology of disease and social health in antiquity.

The co-infection of both leprosy and tuberculosis here and in 30 percent of DNA remains in Israel and Europe from the ancient and modern period provided evidence for the postulate that the medieval plague of leprosy was eliminated by an increased level of tuberculosis in Europe as the area urbanized.

Does Death Exist? New Theory Says 'No'

2009-12-16T11:17:00.000-08:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/does-death-exist-new-theo_b_384515.html

Robert Lanza, M.D.Scientist; author, "Biocentrism"
Posted: December 8, 2009 04:06 PM
Does Death Exist? New Theory Says 'No'

Many of us fear death. We believe in death because we have been told we will die. We associate ourselves with the body, and we know that bodies die. But a new scientific theory suggests that death is not the terminal event we think.

One well-known aspect of quantum physics is that certain observations cannot be predicted absolutely. Instead, there is a range of possible observations each with a different probability. One mainstream explanation, the "many-worlds" interpretation, states that each of these possible observations corresponds to a different universe (the 'multiverse'). A new scientific theory - called biocentrism - refines these ideas. There are an infinite number of universes, and everything that could possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death does not exist in any real sense in these scenarios. All possible universes exist simultaneously, regardless of what happens in any of them. Although individual bodies are destined to self-destruct, the alive feeling - the 'Who am I?'- is just a 20-watt fountain of energy operating in the brain. But this energy doesn't go away at death. One of the surest axioms of science is that energy never dies; it can neither be created nor destroyed. But does this energy transcend from one world to the other?

Consider an experiment that was recently published in the journal Science showing that scientists could retroactively change something that had happened in the past. Particles had to decide how to behave when they hit a beam splitter. Later on, the experimenter could turn a second switch on or off. It turns out that what the observer decided at that point, determined what the particle did in the past. Regardless of the choice you, the observer, make, it is you who will experience the outcomes that will result. The linkages between these various histories and universes transcend our ordinary classical ideas of space and time. Think of the 20-watts of energy as simply holo-projecting either this or that result onto a screen. Whether you turn the second beam splitter on or off, it's still the same battery or agent responsible for the projection.

According to Biocentrism, space and time are not the hard objects we think. Wave your hand through the air - if you take everything away, what's left? Nothing. The same thing applies for time. You can't see anything through the bone that surrounds your brain. Everything you see and experience right now is a whirl of information occurring in your mind. Space and time are simply the tools for putting everything together.

Death does not exist in a timeless, spaceless world. In the end, even Einstein admitted, "Now Besso" (an old friend) "has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us...know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." Immortality doesn't mean a perpetual existence in time without end, but rather resides outside of time altogether.

This was clear with the death of my sister Christine. After viewing her body at the hospital, I went out to speak with family members. Christine's husband - Ed - started to sob uncontrollably. For a few moments I felt like I was transcending the provincialism of time. I thought about the 20-watts of energy, and about experiments that show a single particle can pass through two holes at the same time. I could not dismiss the conclusion: Christine was both alive and dead, outside of time.

Christine had had a hard life. She had finally found a man that she loved very much. My younger sister couldn't make it to her wedding because she had a card game that had been scheduled for several weeks. My mother also couldn't make the wedding due to an important engagement she had at the Elks Club. The wedding was one of the most important days in Christine's life. Since no one else from our side of the family showed, Christine asked me to walk her down the aisle to give her away.

Soon after the wedding, Christine and Ed were driving to the dream house they had just bought when their car hit a patch of black ice. She was thrown from the car and landed in a banking of snow.

"Ed," she said "I can't feel my leg."

She never knew that her liver had been ripped in half and blood was rushing into her peritoneum.

After the death of his son, Emerson wrote "Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature."

Whether it's flipping the switch for the Science experiment, or turning the driving wheel ever so slightly this way or that way on black-ice, it's the 20-watts of energy that will experience the result. In some cases the car will swerve off the road, but in other cases the car will continue on its way to my sister's dream house.

Christine had recently lost 100 pounds, and Ed had bought her a surprise pair of diamond earrings. It's going to be hard to wait, but I know Christine is going to look fabulous in them the next time I see her.

Colossal Flood Created the Mediterranean Sea

2009-12-13T17:40:00.000-08:00

http://www.livescience.com/environment/091209-mediterranean-sea-flood.html

Colossal Flood Created the Mediterranean Sea
By Andrea Thompson, Senior Writer
09 December 2009

The Mediterranean Sea as we know it today formed about 5.3 million years ago when Atlantic Ocean waters breached the strait of Gibraltar, sending a massive flood into the basin.

Geologists have long known that the Mediterranean became isolated from the world's oceans around 5.6 million years ago, evaporating almost completely in the hundreds of thousands of years that followed.

Scientists also largely agree that the Mediterranean basin was refilled when the movements of Earth's crustal plates caused the ground around the Gibraltar Strait to subside, allowing the ocean waters of the Atlantic to cut through the rock separating the two basins and refill the sea.

But exactly how the waters cut their way through and how long it took them to do so wasn't known.

A new study that used seismic data and holes drilled into the rock at the strait revealed that the ocean water cut a 124-mile- (200-kilometer-) long channel across the strait over the course of several thousand years.

The team that conducted the study estimates that the water flowed across slowly at first, over a period of several thousand years. (Though slow in this case is still three times the rate of discharge of the Amazon River today.) But 90 percent of the water likely came over in a rush over the course of several months to two years. Peak rates of water level rise in the basin may have been as high as 33 feet (10 meters) per day, the study authors report.

But rather than rushing over in a giant version of Niagara Falls, the flood likely took the shape of a huge water ramp several miles wide, descending from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, the study, led by Daniel Garcia-Castellanos of the Institut de Ciencies de la Terra Jaume Almera, CSIC in Barcelona, Spain.

The study's findings are detailed in the Dec. 9 issue of the journal Nature.

Ancient Book of Mark Found Not So Ancient After All

2009-12-12T06:00:00.000-08:00

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091211203717.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Ancient Book of Mark Found Not So Ancient After All
ScienceDaily
Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:00 EST

The University of Chicago has found after careful study that what was previously was thought be a very old copy of the Gospel of Mark in its library is a modern fraud.

A biblical expert at the University of Chicago, Margaret M. Mitchell, together with experts in micro-chemical analysis and medieval bookmaking, has concluded that one of the University Library's most enigmatic possessions is a forgery. The book, a copy of the Gospel of Mark, will remain in the collection as a study document for scholars studying the authenticity of ancient books.

Scholars have argued for nearly 70 years over the provenance of what's called the Archaic Mark, a 44-page miniature book, known as a "codex," which contains the complete 16-chapter text of the Gospel of Mark in minuscule handwritten text. The manuscript, which also includes 16 colorful illustrations, has long been believed to be either an important witness to the early text of the gospel or a modern forgery, said Mitchell, Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature.

"The mystery is now solved from textual, chemical, and codicological (bookmaking) angles," said Mitchell, who first became intrigued by the codex when she saw it as a graduate student in 1982. Comprehensive analysis demonstrates that it is not a genuine Byzantine manuscript, but a counterfeit, she said, "made somewhere between 1874 and the first decades of the 20th century."

Mitchell said experts from multiple disciplines made the findings possible. "Our collective efforts have achieved what no single scholar could do -- give a comprehensive analysis of the composite artifact that is an illustrated codex. The data collected in this research process has given us an even deeper understanding of the exact process used by the forger," said Mitchell. "It will, we hope, assist ongoing scholarly investigation into and detection of manuscripts forged in the modern period."

Since 1937, when Edgar J. Goodspeed a University of Chicago biblical scholar, acquired the Archaic Mark, the manuscript has been an enigma. As early as 1947, scholars speculated about its authenticity. Because it is the closest of any known manuscript to the venerable 4th-century Codex Vaticanus for the text of Mark's Gospel, Mitchell said, it was believed to be "either a very important textual witness (from the 14th Century) or a forgery based upon some late 19th-century critical edition of the Greek New Testament incorporating the readings of the Vatican manuscript." The modern blue pigment in the illustrations, indentified in 1989, would support the latter, but Mitchell explained this finding was not definitive because the pigment could have come from a restoration effort on an earlier manuscript.

In 2006, the University of Chicago Library digitized the Archaic Mark, making it available to scholars worldwide and stimulating renewed interest in it. The following year, in response to that growing interest in the mysterious manuscript, Alice Schreyer, Director of the Special Collections Research Center, convened a committee to lead a complete and definitive examination of the material components of the Archaic Mark.

The Library commissioned materials analysis from McCrone Associates, and enlisted the aid of Abigail Quandt, a rare books expert and preservationist at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.

Last January, Joseph G. Barabe, a senior scientist at McCrone, took 24 samples of parchment, ink and a range of paints used in illustrations. Barabe analyzed the samples using an array of techniques -- polarized light; energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry; the scanning electron microscope for elemental analysis; X-ray diffraction; Fourier Transform infrared spectroscopy; and Raman spectroscopy. Under microscopic analysis, Barabe and his colleagues found no evidence of retouching of any kind in the manuscript, disproving earlier suspicions of restoration attempts.

Barabe determined the Archaic Mark was created after 1874 -- using materials not available until the late 19th century -- on a parchment substrate dating from about the middle of the 16th century. Carbon dating determined the animal hide was from some time between 1485-1631.

The rest of the authentication team confirmed and helped interpret Barabe's findings.

Quandt carefully reconstructed the steps the modern forger took to produce the manuscript, from preparing the parchment, to the painting of images and inscription of text, as well as the application of the modern coating, cellulose nitrate. Quandt also identified specific ways in which its production defies usual Byzantine procedures, and she determined that the reused parchment contains no recoverable text underneath.

Mitchell completed the analysis with a study of the textual edition the forger had used. She confirmed and refined Stephen C. Carlson's proposal that the modern edition from which the forger copied the text was the 1860 edition of the Greek New Testament by Philipp Buttmann. Mitchell identified telltale readings in the Archaic Mark that arose from the original 1856 edition of Buttmann's critical text, reproducing errors later corrected in the flurry of collations of the famous manuscript Vaticanus between 1857 and 1867.

Mitchell, Barabe and Quandt have detailed these findings in a paper scheduled for February publication in the journal Novum Testamentum.

God's beliefs mirror our own

2009-12-08T12:41:00.000-08:00

http://futurity.org/society-culture/gods-beliefs-mirror-our-own/

God's beliefs mirror our own
Steve Koppes
Futurity.org
Mon, 30 Nov 2009 06:31 EST

People often set their moral compasses according to what they presume to be God's standards, say researchers from the University of Chicago. "The central feature of a compass, however, is that it points north no matter what direction a person is facing," they note.

University of Chicago - Religious people tend to use their own beliefs as a guide in thinking about what God believes, but are less constrained when reasoning about other people's beliefs, according to a new study.

Nicholas Epley, professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business [1], led the research, which included a series of survey and neuroimaging studies to examine the extent to which people's own beliefs guide their predictions about God's beliefs. The findings - published in the Nov. 30 early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) [2] - extend existing work in psychology showing that people are often egocentric when they infer other people's beliefs.

The PNAS paper reports the results of seven separate studies. The first four include surveys of Boston rail commuters, Chicago undergraduate students, and a nationally representative database of online respondents in the United States. In these surveys, participants reported their own belief about an issue, their estimated God's belief, along with a variety of others, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Major League Baseball's Barry Bonds, President George W. Bush, and an average American.

Two other studies directly manipulated people's own beliefs and found that inferences about God's beliefs tracked their own beliefs. Study participants were asked, for example, to write and deliver a speech that supported or opposed the death penalty in front of a video camera. Their beliefs were surveyed both before and after the speech.

Nicholas Epley, professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, led the research, which included a series of survey and neuroimaging studies to examine the extent to which people's own beliefs guide their predictions about God's beliefs.

The final study involved functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure the neural activity of test subjects as they reasoned about their own beliefs versus those of God or another person. The data demonstrated that reasoning about God's beliefs activated many of the same regions that become active when people reasoned about their own beliefs.

The researchers note that people often set their moral compasses according to what they presume to be God's standards. "The central feature of a compass, however, is that it points north no matter what direction a person is facing," they conclude. "This research suggests that, unlike an actual compass, inferences about God's beliefs may instead point people further in whatever direction they are already facing."

But the research in no way denies the possibility that God's presumed beliefs also may provide guidance in situations where people are uncertain of their own beliefs, the coauthors note.

Researchers from Australia's Monash University contributed to the study that was funded by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Templeton Foundation, and National Science Foundation.

Gospel According to Judas

2009-12-06T11:36:00.000-08:00

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/04/02/elaine_pagels/print.html

April 2, 2007
Gospel According to Judas
The recently unearthed Gospel of Judas “contradicts everything we know about Christianity,” says religious historian Elaine Pagels.
by Steve Paulson

As almost every child knows, Judas was the disciple who betrayed Jesus, selling his life for 30 pieces of silver. If there's an arch villain in the story of Jesus, it's Judas Iscariot. Or is it? The newly discovered Gospel of Judas suggests that Judas was, in fact, the favorite disciple, the only one Jesus trusted to carry out his final command to hand him over to the Romans.

Rumors about the gospel have circulated for centuries. Early church fathers called it a "very dangerous, blasphemous, horrendous gospel," according to historian Elaine Pagels. We now know that the manuscript was passed around the shadowy world of antiquities dealers, at one point sitting in a safe deposit box in a small town in New York for 17 years. Pagels herself was once asked by a dealer in Cleveland to examine it, but he only showed her the last few pages, which revealed little more than the title page. She assumed there was nothing of significance. Finally, the manuscript was acquired by the National Geographic Society, which hired Pagels as a consultant to study it.

More than any other scholar, Pagels has brought the lost texts of early Christianity to public attention. A Princeton historian of religion, she wrote the 1979 bestseller "The Gnostic Gospels" -- the book that launched the popular fascination with the Nag Hammadi manuscripts found by Egyptian peasants in 1945. That book, which won both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, was later chosen by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of the 20th century. Pagels went on to write a series of acclaimed books about early Christianity and, along the way, recounted her own personal tragedies -- her young son's death after a long illness and, just a year later, her first husband's death in a hiking accident. It's no surprise that Pagels has felt compelled to wrestle with some of religion's thorniest subjects, like how to make sense of suffering and evil.

For much of her career, Pagels has straddled two worlds -- the academic and the popular. She's often the go-to expert when a magazine needs a comment on the latest theory about Mary Magdalene or some other bit of revisionist Christian history. But her standing among the scholars who study early Christianity is more complicated. Conservative scholars tend to dismiss the Gnostic texts as a footnote in Christian history, hardly worth all the hype that's been generated by "The Da Vinci Code" and other racy stories. Not surprisingly, these scholars have questioned Pagels' interpretations of early Christian texts.

With Harvard historian Karen L. King, Pagels has written a new book, "Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity." The authors argue that this recently discovered gospel offers a new understanding of the death of Jesus. I spoke with Pagels by phone about the bitter quarrels among early Christians, why it's a bad idea to read the Bible literally, and the importance of this new discovery.

When was the Gospel of Judas written?

As far we can tell, probably at the end of the first or early second century.

So it's clearly not written by Judas himself, or even dictated by Judas.

That's right. And most New Testament scholars would say the gospels in the New Testament -- all of them attributed to disciples or followers of disciples -- were probably not written by the people whose names are on them. If you say, "the Gospel according to Matthew," you might not be pretending to be Matthew if you wrote it. You might be saying, this is the gospel the way Matthew taught it, and he was my teacher. So these are certain followers of Jesus who collected and transmitted his teaching.

Does this Gospel of Judas reveal something new about early Christianity?

Yes, the Gospel of Judas really has been a surprise in many ways. For one thing, there's no other text that suggests that Judas Iscariot was an intimate, trusted disciple, one to whom Jesus revealed the secrets of the kingdom, and that conversely, the other disciples were misunderstanding what he meant by the gospel. So that's quite startling.

It's shocking to suggest that Judas wasn't just one of the disciples but was actually the favorite disciple of Jesus.

That's right. And also the idea that he handed over Jesus to be arrested at the orders of Jesus himself. This wasn't a betrayal at all. In fact, it was obedience to a command or request that Jesus had made.

But how do we reconcile this with all the other stories we've ever heard about Judas? He's the symbol of treachery and betrayal.

Well, he has become the symbol of treachery and betrayal. But once you start to look at the gospels one by one, you realize that followers of Jesus were trying to understand what had happened after he was arrested and killed. They knew Judas had handed him over to the people who arrested him. The earliest gospel, Mark, says Judas handed him over, but it doesn't give any motive at all. The people who wrote after Mark -- Matthew's and Luke's gospels -- apparently felt that what was wrong with the Gospel of Mark was that there was no motive. So Matthew adds a motive. Matthew says Judas went to the chief priests who were Jesus' enemies, and said, "What will you give me if I hand him over to you?" And they agree on a certain sum of money. So in Matthew's view, the motive was greed. In Luke's gospel, it's entirely different. It says the power of evil took over Judas. Satan entered into him.

I think Luke is struggling with the question, If Jesus is the son of God, how could he be taken by a mere trick, by a human being? And Luke is trying to show that all evil power was concentrated in Judas. So they are very different stories. However, other gospels, like John's, suggest that Jesus not only anticipated what was going to happen but initiated it. The Gospel of John says that he told Judas to go out and do what he had to do, which Jesus knew was to betray him. So the Gospel of Judas just takes the suggestion one step further. Jesus not only knew what was going to happen but initiated the action.

There's something else that's striking about the Gospel of Judas. The writer is very angry, and he's especially angry at the other disciples.

Yes, that's where we realized that it's not just a story about Jesus and the disciples. It's a story about this follower of Jesus -- the Christian who's writing this story, maybe 60 years after the death of Jesus. Even using the name of Judas is a slap in the face to the tradition. You realize that whoever wrote it was a very angry person. And we were asking, What's going on here? Why is he so angry? And we discovered that it's very dangerous to be a follower of Jesus in the generations after his death. You know, they say his disciple Peter was crucified upside down. And Paul was probably beheaded by the Romans. James was lynched by a crowd, and so were Stephen and other followers. So leaders of this movement were in great danger. And other Christians were also in danger of being arrested and killed because they followed Jesus. The question for many of them was, What do you do if you're arrested?

And to acknowledge that you were a Christian would probably kill you.

Exactly. All you had to do is say no. Or you can try to escape or bribe the people persecuting you. And many did. The only answer that most Christians agreed was right was to say, "Yes, I'm a Christian." You defy them and you go heroically into the lions. So we've always thought of Christianity as a religion that glorifies martyrdom. Now we realize that we've had that impression because the people who weren't in favor of martyrdom had their writings buried and burned and trashed and ridiculed. And they were called cowards and heretics.

So the Gospel of Judas is a kind of protest literature. It's challenging leaders of the church. Here the leaders are personified as disciples who are encouraging people to get killed, to "die for God," as they called martyrdom. This gospel is challenging them and saying, when you encourage young people to die for God, you're really complicit in murder.

Are there also theological issues at stake? This gets at the meaning of suffering, and the nature of evil as well.

It does. This was at a time when all followers of Jesus were struggling with the question, Why did Jesus die? What does it all mean? In the New Testament, the gospels say he died as a sacrifice. Paul says Christ, our Passover lamb, was sacrificed for us. Why? Well, to save us from sin.

But this author is saying, wait a minute. If you think God wants his son to be tortured and killed before he'll forgive people their sins, what kind of God do you have in mind? Is this the God who didn't want animals to be sacrificed in the temple anymore? So this author's asking, isn't God a loving father? Isn't that what Jesus taught? Why are we saying that God requires his son to die for the sins of the world? So it's a challenge to the whole idea of atonement, and the idea that Christians -- when they worship -- eat bread and drink wine as if it were the body and blood of Christ. This person sees that whole thing as a celebration of violence.

You can see why some early Christians would have attacked this gospel. This is very threatening to other Christian accounts of why Jesus died.

It contradicts everything we know about Christianity. But there's a lot we don't know about Christianity. There are different ways of understanding the death of Jesus that have been buried and suppressed. This author suggests that God does not require sacrifice to forgive sin, and that the message of Jesus is that we come from God and we go back to God, that we all live in God. It's not about bloody sacrifice for forgiveness of sins. It suggests that Jesus' death demonstrates that, essentially and spiritually, we're not our bodies. Even when our bodies die, we go to live in God.

Does this raise questions about how we should think about the Resurrection? In orthodox Christian accounts, this is considered a resurrection of the flesh.

That's right. The idea that Jesus rose in the flesh is very important for a lot of Christians. And certainly for the martyrs. When people were going to get themselves killed, some of them were asked, Do you believe that you're going to be raised from the dead in your body? And many of them said yes, of course we do. That's why we're doing this. So those promises of bodily resurrection and heavenly rewards were very important for many Christians.

Some of the things we're talking about would seem to have great resonance in the Islamic world. Do you see any parallels between this Christian history and what we're seeing among Muslim martyrs today?

I do. The author of the Gospel of Judas wasn't against martyrdom, and he didn't ever insult the martyrs. He said it's one thing to die for God if you have to do that. But it's another thing to say that's what God wants, that this is a glorification of God. I think he would have spoken in the way that an imam might today, saying those who encourage young people to go out and supposedly die for God as martyrs are complicit in murder. The question of the uses of violence is very much at the heart of the Gospel of Judas. If you have to die as a martyr, you do because you don't deny Christ. But you don't go around encouraging people to do it as though they would get higher rewards in heaven.

Can you put the Gospel of Judas in perspective, alongside some of the other Gnostic texts that have come to light in recent decades -- the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene? Do these really change our understanding of early Christianity?

Before, we had a puzzle with just a few pieces. Now we have many more pieces. We begin to see that in the early Christian movement, people discussed and struggled with all the issues that we now think of as normative Christianity, like, What does the death of Jesus mean? There wasn't one kind of understanding of Jesus in the early Christian movement. Actually, there were many.

In recent years, there's been a huge debate over what to make of the Gnostic Gospels. And plenty of Christian scholars and theologians say there's good reason they were not admitted into the Christian canon. They say the Bible presents the most reliable story of Jesus based on eyewitness accounts. For instance, Ben Witherington has written, "The four canonical gospels have stood the test of time and other apocryphal gospels and texts have not ... This is because the canonical gospels are our earliest gospels and have actual historical substance, while the later gospels have none."

Well, Witherington has a particular point of view to prove. I would say it's very hard to date these other texts. Some of them are as early as the gospels of the New Testament, like the Gospel of John. But what's different is the emphasis. Let me give you an example. The Gospel of Thomas says that all who recognize that they come from God are also children of God, instead of teaching that Jesus is the only son of God through whom one must be saved. It's a teaching that is akin to what the Quakers and some other Christian groups teach, including some Greek and Russian Orthodox groups. The divine is to be found in everyone, and we can discover, at some level, that we're like Christ. It's not a complete contradiction, but it is somewhat different.

But aren't there crucial doctrinal issues at stake in terms of what it means to be a Christian? For instance, was Jesus the son of God? Was the return of Jesus an actual resurrection of the flesh?

In the fourth century, the Council of Nicaea established certain doctrines about what it means to be orthodox: belief in one God, maker of heaven and earth, and one Jesus Christ, his only son and Lord. So Jesus Christ is the only one who brings salvation to the whole world. There are, of course, Christians who believe in Jesus but also wonder whether people can't find God in other religions -- if they're Jews or Muslims or Buddhists and so forth. There's nothing Jesus himself said that contradicts that, as far as I can see. But fourth-century Christian orthodoxy did set out the doctrines you're talking about.

Some people say the historical study of early Christianity really doesn't matter to a person's faith. Being a Christian means you believe in certain things, like the Resurrection, like the Virgin Birth. These are matters of faith, not of historical research. You can choose not to believe those things, but then you're not part of the Christian creed. How do you respond to that argument?

Well, it's absolutely true that the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection can't be verified historically. On the other hand, if you start to look at it historically, you find out that there are plenty of people who call themselves Christians who see those very things differently. There have been Christians from the beginning -- St. Paul is one of them -- who say the Resurrection is not a matter of this kind of body. Paul talks about resurrection as a matter of being transformed. Yes, it's about the body, he said, but it's more like a body of the stars or the moon or the sun -- a body of light. So there are many ways that people have understood themselves to be Christians.

This has huge implications for so many people today, especially those who simply can't accept these kinds of miracles. It does raise the question of whether you can be a Christian if you don't believe any of the Bible's supernatural stories.

I don't think you have to discard all the supernatural stories. The Bible is really about what is beyond the natural. But there are other ways of understanding. For example, the Gospel of Philip, which some people called a heretical text, actually says Jesus had human parents as you and I do. His parents were Mary and Joseph. But when he was born of the spirit, he became the son of the Heavenly Father and the Holy Spirit. In Syriac and Hebrew, the spirit is spoken of in feminine forms, so metaphorically, one could speak of her as a divine mother, just as one speaks of God as a divine father. So there are Christians who didn't reject the Virgin Birth, but said wait a minute, why would you take it literally? Why don't you take it as an image for spiritual reality?

You have spent decades studying early Christian history. Do you consider yourself a Christian?

Yes, I do. And the reason I can is that I understand that there are countless people who've been Christians for 2,000 years, in many different ways. It's not a matter of one version, you must believe this exactly the way I tell it to you. Christian theologians have always said that the truth of God is beyond our understanding. And so we speak in metaphors. Paul said we see through a glass darkly.

I've heard that you didn't grow up in a religious family.

Well, it was a Protestant family, nominally. We went to church, but my father had rejected the Bible for Darwin. He decided the Bible was a bunch of old fables and that evolution was right. So I was brought up to think the Bible was just kind of irrelevant. I grew up and became deeply and passionately interested in it and went to a church and was born again. I was 14 or 15. It was quite wonderful, and I loved what I found there.

Even though your father was a confirmed atheist.

It did shock him, yes. Of course, that's one way adolescents like to shock their parents. I didn't do it for that reason, but it had that effect. The power and the passion of that kind of evangelical Christianity was very real for me. And it was a discovery of something very important -- a spiritual dimension in life that I was not able to ignore. On the other hand, after a year of living in that church, one of my friends in high school was killed in an automobile accident. The people at the church asked, was he born again? And I said, no, he wasn't. And they said, well, then he's in hell. And I thought to myself, I don't believe that. That doesn't match up with what I'd heard about God. So at that point, I decided I had to find out for myself what I could about the early Christian movement, what I believe about it, and what is being said in the name of Jesus that I found not true.

That's fascinating. Basically, it was because you couldn't buy into that fundamentalist version of Christianity that you launched your career as a historian of Christianity.

That's the truth, yes.

Well, this does raise the question of what we mean by God and what we mean by transcendence, and whether there is a transcendent reality out there. Is that discussion of transcendence meaningful to you?

Oh, certainly it is. If we don't understand how important spiritual life is to people, I don't think we're going to understand human beings or the 21st century. There are many people who said religion is essentially over now, and everyone will become rational. They don't understand that the way humans are has a lot to do with religious experience.

Your late husband, the eminent physicist Heinz Pagels, wrote very eloquently about the mysteries of science. Did he influence your thinking about this intersection between science and religion?

Oh yes, he was deeply interested in philosophy and religion and science, and understood how profound and complicated those issues are. When you're dealing with science, for example, you're dealing all the time with metaphors. So to assume that religious language isn't metaphor doesn't make sense to me.

There's a big debate right now over whether religion and science are two totally different domains, as Stephen Jay Gould once said, or whether they overlap. Where do you come down on that?

That's a very tough question. I think religion and science both have a lot to do with understanding and imagination, but they certainly explore the world in very different ways. For example, when the eminent physicist Stephen Weinberg wrote in his book "The First Three Minutes," "the more we know about the universe, the more we know it's pointless and meaningless," my late husband said, "That doesn't make any sense." Einstein thought the more we knew about the universe, the more we knew about the divine intelligence. There are many ways to make inferences from physics. And inferences like that are not scientific at all; they're philosophic.

Of course, there's still a huge debate about whether Einstein was religious or not. The atheists want to claim him for their camp, but religious people say he was actually quite open to religious ideas.

Part of the problem is that Einstein used the language about God as a metaphor. When he said, "God does not play dice with the universe," he meant the universe is not put together in an accidental way. It does show a kind of intelligent process in it. Einstein was speaking about God in the way that physicists would -- aware that language like that is always going to be metaphorical, speaking beyond our understanding. But many people took him literally and said he's a religious man. Scientists said he was just using language carelessly.

Isn't that part of the problem that we get into when we talk about metaphor and the religious imagination? If you don't take scripture literally, how do you take it?

You can take scripture seriously without taking it literally. If you speak about the Resurrection of Christ, all we know historically is that after Jesus died, his followers became convinced that he was alive again. Now, what does that mean? They told many stories. Some of them said, I saw him with my own eyes, I touched him, he actually ate food, he was not a ghost. That's in Luke's gospel. And others said, I saw him for a moment and then he faded -- the way many people say they've seen people they knew who died. What I'm saying is there are many ways that people who believe in the Resurrection speak about Christ being alive after his death without meaning that his body got out of the grave and walked.

It sounds like you're saying that it's perfectly possible to take the Bible very seriously, to be a Christian, and yet not to believe in the supernatural miracles that so many people simply cannot accept.

Well, that may be. I don't dismiss all supernatural miracles, like a healing that can't be explained. Those do happen sometimes.

You've been studying these texts for decades. Has your scholarly work deepened your own faith?

Yes. And the scholarly work is part of the spiritual quest. Opening ourselves to exploring as much as we can about this can be, in fact, an act of faith. At Princeton, there's a course in the study of New Testament that some evangelical students were warned not to take. They called it "Faith Busters 101." And some of them come just to flex their muscles and see if they can sit there and stand it while somebody teaches them about how the gospels were written. But what they usually discover is that learning about those things doesn't change the fundamental questions about faith.

Does faith necessarily involve some leap into mystery, into something that can't be explained?

I think it does. Earlier this year, I was asked to do an interview with somebody who had written a book to demonstrate that Jesus had been raised bodily from the dead. And they expected me to say that was impossible. But I can't say it's impossible. From a historical point of view, there's no way you can comment on that. It's just not susceptible to that kind of analysis. So there's a lot that history can't answer and that science can't answer. I mean, there's a lot about all of our lives that we have no rational understanding of. And so faith comes into our relationships with the people we love, and our relationship to our life and our death.

There seems to be a rather vigorous movement among scientists to try to explain the origins of religion. I'm struck by how often these theories come from atheists. And I think the underlying impulse is to demystify the divine. But can religion really be explained from the outside, by people who are not themselves religious?

Probably not. For example, suppose you found the basic brain chemistry that explains religious perceptions. In fact, there are neurologists in New York trying very hard to understand precisely that. And you find that when people who've clinically died say they've had a near-death experience, they've gone into a brilliant light and then they've come back from some place. This is the flashes of light on the brain as it expires. Well, it may be. And it may not be. Is this a trick that our brain plays on us? Or is this intimations of some other kind of reality? I don't think science is going to answer that question.

Isn't there an inherent limitation to any of those brain-imaging studies? Because there's the whole question, Are we just imagining this? Or is there really some contact with the divine?

Exactly. For example, there's a study now at New York University about epilepsy. We know that epileptics often have an experience of seeing an aura. They can have an epileptic convulsion and they have a kind of vision. It was understood in ancient times to be demonic possession. So if people then say, epilepsy has a certain relationship to electrical activity in the brain, and that's what precipitates these experiences, does that mean that they are not real? I don't think that answers the question.

What do you make of the recent claim by the atheist Richard Dawkins that the existence of God is itself a scientific question? If you accept the idea that God intervenes in the physical world, don't there have to be physical mechanisms for that to happen? Therefore, doesn't this become a question for science?

Well, Dawkins loves to play village atheist. He's such a rationalist that the God that he's debunking is not one that most of the people I study would recognize. I mean, is there some great big person up there who made the universe out of dirt? Probably not.

Are you saying that part of the problem here is the notion of a personal God? Has that become an old-fashioned view of religion?

I'm not so sure of that. I think the sense of actual contact with God is one that many people have experienced. But I guess it's a question of what kind of God one has in mind.

So when you think about the God that you believe in, how would you describe that God?

Well, I've learned from the texts I work on that there really aren't words to describe God. You spoke earlier about a transcendent reality. I think it's certainly true that these are not just fictions that we arbitrarily invent.

Certainly many people talk about God as an ineffable presence. But if you try to explain what transcendence is, can you put that into words and explain what it means?

People have put it into words, but the words are usually metaphors or poems or hymns. Even the word "God" is a metaphor, or "the son of God," or "Father." They're all simply images for some other order of reality.

There's one aspect of the Bible that's especially troubling. What do you make of the many passages that condone violence? Killing infidels seems to be what God wants.

You mean in the Hebrew Bible?

Yes, I'm particularly thinking about the Hebrew Bible.

Well, yes. When you read the discussion of holy war in the Hebrew Bible, it's violent, definitely. This was a war god, identified with a particular tribe, with particular kinds of religious war. Christians often don't read that now. But when I talk with Jewish leaders, they say, yes, we remember that very well because we remember the Crusades. And the Muslims of course say the same. They say, why are you talking to us about violence? Christians have done violence in the name of Christ for nearly 2,000 years.

So how should we read those passages that are so violent?

That gets us back to the question, Can you read the Bible seriously without reading it literally? There are parts of the New Testament which encourage slaves to remain slaves. Do we take that literally? Those were fighting words during the Civil War when some Christians said slavery was part of God's plan and some people should live and die as slaves. I think few would agree with that now. But it was a position that one could seriously take on the basis of many biblical passages.

You're saying that we have to understand context.

I think we do. You were saying that some people believe faith has nothing to do with history. The fact is, somebody wrote those texts. They wrote them in a world in which slavery was taken for granted. That's a different world. So if we don't understand that, well, it says, Slaves, obey your masters, for this is right.

Long-Lost Gospel of Judas Recasts 'Traitor'

2009-12-06T11:32:00.000-08:00

http://www.temcam.com/fellows/showarticle.php?article=240

April 6, 2006
Long-Lost Gospel of Judas Recasts 'Traitor'
by Cathy Lynn Grossman
(article co-written by Dan Vergano)

Lost for centuries and bound for controversy, the so-called gospel of Judas was unveiled by scholars Thursday.

With a plot twist worthy of The Da Vinci Code, the gospel — 13 papyrus sheets bound in leather and found in a cave in Egypt — purports to relate the last days of Jesus' life, from the viewpoint of Judas, one of Jesus' first followers. Christians teach that Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, but in this gospel, he is the hero, Jesus' most senior and trusted disciple and the only one who knows Jesus' true identity as the son of God.

"We're confident this is genuine ancient Christian literature," said religious scholar Bart Ehrman of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He and others on the translation team spoke at a National Geographic Society briefing, where they released a translation.

The manuscript claims that Jesus revealed "secret knowledge" to Judas and instructed him to turn Jesus over to Roman
authorities, said Coptic studies scholar Stephen Emmel of Germany's University of Munster, one of the restoration team members. In the gospel text, Judas is given private instruction by Jesus and is granted a vision of the divine that is denied to other disciples, who do not know that Jesus has requested his own betrayal. Rather than acting out of greed or malice, Judas is following orders when he leads soldiers to Jesus, the gospel says.

Other theologians, biblical scholars and pastors say this contrary text is not truly "good news" (the meaning of "gospel") and will make no difference to believers as Easter approaches. The Bible, they say, is a closed book, nearly universally accepted as the official church teachings since the fourth century.

"Just because you can date a document to early Christian times doesn't make it theologically true," said Pastor Rod Loy of the First Assembly of God in North Little Rock "Do you decide everything you read on the Internet is true because it was written on April 6, 2006? Fiction has been around for as long as man."

Found by a farmer

Radioactive-carbon-dating tests and experts in ancient languages establish that the document was written between A.D. 300 and 400, the team said. Written in Coptic, an old Egyptian language, the gospel was unearthed by a farmer in a "tomb-like box" in 1978, said Terry Garcia of the National Geographic Society. It is part of a codex, or collection of devotional texts, found in a cave near El Minya, Egypt.

The farmer sold the codex to an antiquities dealer in Cairo, without alerting Egyptian antiquities officials. In a secret showing in 1983, the antiquities dealer, unaware of the content of the codex, offered the gospel for sale to Emmel and another scholar in a Geneva, Switzerland hotel room.

Given a hurried half-hour to examine the codex, Emmel first suspected the papyrus sheets discussed Judas, he said, based on a hasty glimpse of the text, which was littered with references to the disciple in Coptic. But the asking price was too exorbitant, as high as $3 million, Garcia said.

For the next 16 years, the document moldered in a Hicksville, N.Y., bank safe-deposit box, deteriorating until Zurich-based antiquities dealer Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos purchased it in 2000, alarmed at its fragmentation, Garcia said. National Geographic said it did not know the purchase price.

In 2001, the codex was acquired by the Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art in Switzerland, Garcia said. The foundation invited National Geographic to help with the restoration in 2004 and also reached an agreement with the Egyptian government to return it after its restoration.

Restoration of the thousands of papyrus fragments has made 80% of the gospel legible. The National Geographic Society learned of the find 2½ years ago, Garcia said. The society recruited the scholarly restoration team and got a $1 million grant from the Waitt Foundation for Historical Studies.

The gospel "is an intriguing alternative view of the relationship between Jesus and Judas," Emmel said. It also has Jesus relating a new creation myth and account of humankind's origins to Judas, which suggest God didn't create the world, contrary to conventional Christian belief.

The key passage has Jesus telling Judas "'you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me,'" Emmel said. The passage reflects the view that material things and the body are traps for the inner soul and also suggests a form of mysticism found in some early Jewish thought, said team adviser Marvin Meyer of Chapman University in Orange, Calif.

The Judas gospel is probably a copy of a heretical text denounced by a Christian bishop around A.D. 180, Emmel said. But other scholars, such as Michael Penn of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., say there is no way to be certain it is the same text, given the plethora of devotional texts that were floating around among early Christians.

The Judas papyrus is one of dozens of gospels found in recent decades whose texts fall outside the canon of today's New Testament Bibles. The canon was largely set at the Synod of Rome in 382 when the dominant Christian leaders of the time established the authority of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as the accepted version of Jesus' birth, life, crucifixion and resurrection.

Scripture, like history, was codified by the winners, by those who emerged with the greatest numbers at the end of three centuries of Christianity, said Michael White, director of the Institute for the Study of Antiquity and Christian Origins at the University of Texas-Austin, He has counted more than three dozen gospels that didn't make the canonical cut. The ones that did, he said, were not in total harmony but shared a theological view of the passion, the crucifixion and their significance that became the core of the new religion.

"In the ancient world, Christianity was even more diverse than it was today," Ehrman said. Not until later centuries did the standard devotional texts known as the New Testament become the bedrock of the Christian faith. Dozens of alternative gospels and creeds lost out in the process.

"I suspect the gospel of Judas was not one of the close calls in this process," said Penn, who was not on the National Geographic team.

The gospel of Judas is broadly representative of "gnostic" beliefs prevalent in the two or three centuries after the death of Jesus, said the Rev. Donald Senior of the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, who was an adviser to the restoration team.
Gnostic beliefs hold that secret and personal insights are the key to redemption, rather than faith in Jesus' resurrection, for example. Rather than shedding a new light on Judas' relationship to Jesus, Senior suggested, the gospel illuminates the diversity of thought among early Christians.

And as for Judas' supposed betrayal?

Craig Hill, professor of New Testament at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., would let the villain off history's hook, papyrus or not.

"What Jesus did — raising crowds and civic unrest — would have gotten him killed anywhere in the Roman Empire," Hill said.
National Geographic is banking on the new gospel to capture the modern imagination. It plans to feature the gospel in its magazine, books and TV special this Sunday (National Geographic Channel, 8 p.m. ET/9 PT). The Maecenas Foundation will give the manuscript to Egypt's Coptic Museum after the restoration is complete, Garcia said.

'No bearing' on the Easter story

The Judas gospel has "no bearing whatsoever on (the Easter) story, much less on the faith of the Christian church," said the Rev. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. He dismissed the gospel of Judas as nothing more than "an ancient manuscript that tells an interesting story."

No scholar has called the gospel a forgery. But one concern, Penn said, is that it was purchased from an antiquities dealer rather than discovered by an archaeological team.

Scholars fear that such purchases will drive further looting of archaeological sites.

Coptic scholar Rodolphe Kasser of the University of Geneva, who headed the restoration team, said the priority for scholars was saving the gospel before it deteriorated completely.

Tests of the gospel included radiocarbon dating conducted at the University of Arizona, and chemical analysis of the papyrus and ink used in the codex as well as its leather binding. Restoration involved computer and hand patching of the document to reassemble its pages.

"The publication team appears to have done everything possible to authenticate the gospel as an ancient work," said religious scholar Mark Chancey of Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

"There seems to be little doubt that it is, indeed, a late third- or early fourth-century work, and not a modern forgery."

Princeton University religious scholar Elaine Pagels, a restoration adviser best known for her work on the Nag Hammadi texts, said, "The gospel of Judas is an astonishing discovery that along with dozens of similar texts have in recent years have transformed our understanding of early Christianity."

She compared it to other gnostic works, such as the gospels of Thomas and of Mary Magdalene, denounced as heretical by the early church but "loved and copied and circulated by people who thought of themselves as Christians."

Many similar "apocryphal" gospels are attributed to important figures in early Christianity, Chancey said, though most scholars doubt that they were actually written by their purported authors.

"It is clear, for example, that Judas did not write this work," Chancey said. The gospel clearly reflects second-century developments, long after Judas, he said.

Experts do see some value in a Bible news flash that prompts modern believers to re-examine the character of Judas.

The Rev. James Martin, associate editor of the Jesuit magazine America, spent months last year as the theological consultant on an off-Broadway play, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. The script had Judas on trial and concluded that he went to hell as much for his suicidal despair as for betraying Jesus.

"He chose damnation rather than accepting God's forgiveness, and that is our fate if we are so proud we think our sins are beyond God's reach," said Martin.

Meyer noted that Judas has often been used by Christians to attack Jews throughout history.

"The view of Judas as this evil Jewish person who turned Jesus in fed the flames of anti-Semitism," he said, so providing a new view of Judas may help counteract such views.

Beyond Demonic Memes

2009-10-27T10:27:00.001-07:00

http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-07-04

Beyond Demonic Memes
Why Richard Dawkins is Wrong About Religion
by David Sloan Wilson

RICHARD DAWKINS AND I share much in common. We are both biologists by training who have written widely about evolutionary theory. We share an interest in culture as an evolutionary process in its own right. We are both atheists in our personal convictions who have written books on religion. In Darwin’s Cathedral I attempted to contribute to the relatively new field of evolutionary religious studies. When Dawkins’ The God Delusion was published I naturally assumed that he was basing his critique of religion on the scientific study of religion from an evolutionary perspective. I regret to report otherwise. He has not done any original work on the subject and he has not fairly represented the work of his colleagues. Hence this critique of The God Delusion and the larger issues at stake.

Where We Agree and Where We Part Company

In The God Delusion Dawkins makes it clear that he loathes religion for its intolerance, blind faith, cruelty, extremism, abuse, and prejudice. He attributes these problems to religion and thinks that the world would be a better place without it. Given recent events in the Middle East and even here in America, it is understandable why he might draw such a conclusion, but the question is: What’s evolution got to do with it?

Dawkins and I agree that evolutionary theory provides a powerful framework for studying religion, and we even agree on some of the details, so it is important to pinpoint exactly where we part company. Evolutionists employ a number of hypotheses to study any trait, even something as mundane as the spots on a guppy. Is it an adaptation that evolved by natural selection? If so, did it evolve by benefiting whole groups, compared to other groups, or individuals compared to other individuals within groups? With cultural evolution there is a third possibility. Since cultural traits pass from person to person, they bear an intriguing resemblance to disease organisms. Perhaps they evolve to enhance their own transmission without benefiting human individuals or groups.

If the trait is not an adaptation, then it can nevertheless persist in the population for a variety of reasons. Perhaps it was adaptive in the past but not the present, such as our eating habits, which make sense in the food-scarce environment of our ancestors but not with a McDonald’s on every corner. Perhaps the trait is a byproduct of another adaptation. For example, moths use celestial light sources to orient their flight (an adaptation), but this causes them to spiral toward earthly light sources such as a streetlamp or a flame (a costly byproduct), as Dawkins so beautifully recounts in The God Delusion. Finally, the trait might be selectively neutral and persist in the population by genetic or cultural drift.

Dawkins and I agree that these major hypotheses provide an excellent framework for organizing the study of religion, which by itself is an important achievement. We also agree that the hypotheses are not mutually exclusive. Evolution is a messy, complicated process, like the creation of laws and sausages, and all of the major hypotheses might be relevant to some degree. Nevertheless, real progress requires determining which hypotheses are most important for the evolution of particular traits. The spots on a guppy might seem parochial, but they are famous among biologists as a case study of evolutionary analysis. They can be explained primarily as adaptations in response to two powerful selective forces: predators remove the most conspicuous males from the population, whereas female guppies mate with the most conspicuous males. The interaction between these two selection pressures explains an impressive amount of detail about guppy spots — why males have them and females don’t, why males are more colorful in habitats without predators, and even why the spots are primarily red when the predators are crustaceans (whose visual system is blind to the color red), as opposed to fish (whose visual system is sensitive to the color red). Guppy spots could have been selectively neutral or a byproduct of some other trait, but that’s not the way the facts fell.

Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould: Strange Bedfellows

The late Harvard evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould famously criticized his colleagues for seeing adaptations where they don’t exist. His metaphor for a byproduct was the spandrel, the triangular space that inevitably results when arches are placed next to each other. Arches have a function but spandrels do not, even though they can acquire a secondary function, such as providing a decorative space. Gould accused his colleagues of inventing “just-so stories” about traits as adaptations, without good proof, and being blind to the possibility of byproducts and other non-adaptive outcomes of evolution.

Gould had a point, but he failed to give equal time to the opposite problem of failing to see adaptations where they do exist.

Suppose that you are a biologist who becomes interested in explaining the bump on the nose of a certain species of shark.

Perhaps it is just a byproduct of the way that shark noses develop, as Gould speculated for the human chin. Perhaps it is a callous that forms when the sharks root around in the sand. If so, then it would be an adaptation but not a very complicated one. Perhaps it is a wart, formed by a virus. If so, then it might be an adaptation for the virus but not the shark. Or perhaps it is an organ for detecting the weak electrical signals of prey hidden in the sand. If so, then it would be a complex adaptation.

Few experiences are more thrilling for a biologist than to discover a complex adaptation. Myriad details that previously defied explanation become interpretable as an interlocking system with a purpose. Non-adaptive traits can also be complex, but the functional nature of a complex adaptation guides its analysis from beginning to end. Failing to recognize complex adaptations when they exist is as big a mistake as seeing them where they don’t exist. Only hard empirical work — something equivalent to the hundreds of person-years spent studying guppy spots from an evolutionary perspective — can settle the issue.

Dawkins argued on behalf of adaptationism in his debates with Gould and would probably agree with everything I have said so far. For religion, however, he argues primarily on behalf of non-adaptation. As he sees it, people are attracted to religion the way that moths are attracted to flames. Perhaps religious impulses were adapted to the tiny social groups of our ancestral past, but not the mega-societies of the present. If current religious beliefs are adaptive at all, it is only for the beliefs themselves as cultural parasites on their human hosts, like the demons of old that were thought to possess people. That is why Dawkins calls God a delusion. The least likely possibility for Dawkins is the group-level adaptation hypothesis. Religions are emphatically not elaborate systems of beliefs and practices that define, motivate, coordinate and police groups of people for their own good.

For the Good of the Group?

To understand Dawkins’ skepticism about the group-level benefits of religion, it is necessary to trace the history of “for the good of the group” thinking in evolutionary theory. Groups can be adaptive only if their members perform services for each other, yet these services are often vulnerable to exploitation by more self-serving individuals within the same group. Fortunately, groups of individuals who practice mutual aid can out-compete groups whose members do not.

According to this reasoning, traits that are “for the good of the group” require a process of between-group selection to evolve and tend to be undermined by selection within groups. Darwin was the first person to reason this way about the evolution of human morality and self-sacrificial traits in other animals. Unfortunately, his insight was not shared by many biologists during the first half of the 20th century, who uncritically assumed that adaptations evolve at all levels of the biological hierarchy — for the good of the individual, group, species, or ecosystem — without requiring a corresponding process of natural selection at each level. When the need for group selection was acknowledged, it was often assumed that between-group selection easily prevailed against within-group selection. This can be called The Age of Naïve Groupism, and it ended during the 1960s and 1970s, thanks largely to two books: George C. Williams’ 1966 Adaptation and Natural Selection and Richard Dawkins’ 1976 The Selfish Gene.

In Adaptation and Natural Selection, Williams affirmed the logic of multi-level selection but then added an empirical claim: Even though between-group selection is theoretically possible, in the real world it is invariably trumped by within-group selection. Virtually all adaptations evolve at the individual level and even examples of apparent altruism must be explained in terms of self-interest. It was this empirical claim that ended The Age of Naïve Groupism and initiated what can be called The Age of Individualism, which lasted for the rest of the 20th century and in some respects is still with us.

Another theme developed by Williams was the concept of the gene as the fundamental unit of selection. In sexually reproducing species, an individual is a unique collection of genes that will never occur again. Individuals therefore lack the permanence to be acted upon by natural selection over multiple generations. According to Williams, genes are the fundamental unit of natural selection because they have the permanence that individuals (much less groups) lack.

In many respects, and by his own account, Williams was interpreting ideas for a broader audience that began with Darwin and were refined by theoretical biologists such as Sewall Wright, Ronald Fisher, and J.B.S. Haldane. The concept of the gene as the fundamental unit of selection, for example, is identical to the concept of average effects in population genetics theory, which averages the fitness of alternative genes across all of the individual genotypes and environmental contexts experienced by the genes. A decade later, Dawkins played the role of interpreter for an even broader audience. Average effects became selfish genes and individuals became lumbering robots controlled by their genes. Group selection became a pariah concept, taught only as an example of how not to think. As one eminent evolutionist advised a student in the 1980s, “There are three ideas that you do not invoke in biology: Lamarkism, the phlogistron theory, and group selection.”
Scientific Dogmatism

In retrospect, it is hard to fathom the zeal with which evolutionists such as Williams and Dawkins rejected group selection and developed a view of evolution as based entirely on self-interest. Williams ended Adaptation and Natural Selection with the phrase “I believe that it is the light and the way.” Here is how Dawkins recounts the period in his 1982 book The Extended Phenotype:

The intervening years since Darwin have seen an astonishing retreat from his individual-centered stand, a lapse into sloppily unconscious group-selectionism … We painfully struggled back, harassed by sniping from a Jesuitically sophisticated and dedicated neo-group-selectionist rearguard, until we finally regained Darwin’s ground, the position that I am characterizing by the label ‘the selfish organism…”

This passage has all the earmarks of fundamentalist rhetoric, including appropriating the deity (Darwin) for one’s own cause.

Never mind that Darwin was the first group selectionist. Moreover, unlike The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype was written by Dawkins for his scientific peers, not for a popular audience!

In reality, the case against group selection began to unravel almost immediately after the publication of Adaptation and Natural Selection, although it was difficult to tell, given the repressive social climate. In the first place, calling genes “replicators” and “the fundamental unit of selection” is no argument at all against group selection. The question has always been whether genes can evolve by virtue of benefiting whole groups and despite being selectively disadvantageous within groups. When this happens, the gene favored by between-group selection replaces the gene favored by within-group selection in the total population. In the parlance of population genetics theory, it has the highest average effect. Re-labeling the gene selfish, just because it evolves, contributes nothing. The “gene’s eye view” of evolution can be insightful in some respects, but as an argument against group selection it is one of the greatest cases of comparing apples with oranges in the annals of evolutionary thought.

The same goes for the concept of extended phenotypes, which notes that genes have effects that extend beyond the bodies of individual organisms. Examples of extended phenotypes include a bird’s nest or a beaver’s dam. But there is a difference between these two examples; the nest benefits only the individual builder, whereas the dam benefits all of the beavers in the pond, including those who don’t contribute to building the dam. The problem of within-group selection is present in the dam example and the concept of extended phenotypes does nothing to solve it. More apples and oranges.
The Revival of Group Selection

Much has happened in the four decades following the rejection of group selection in the 1960s. Naïve groupism is still a mistake that needs to be avoided, but between-group selection can no longer be categorically rejected. Claims for group selection must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, along with the other major evolutionary hypotheses. Demonstrations of group selection appear regularly in the top scientific journals.

As one example reported in the July 6, 2006 issue of Nature, a group of microbiologists headed by Benjamin Kerr cultured bacteria (E. coli) and their viral predator (phage) in 96-well plates, which are commonly used for automated chemical analysis.

Each well was an isolated group of predators and their prey. Within each well, natural selection favored the most rapacious viral strains, but these strains tended to drive their prey, and therefore themselves extinct. More prudent viral strains were vulnerable to replacement by the rapacious strains within each well, but as groups they persisted longer and were more likely to colonize other wells. Migration between wells was accomplished by robotically controlled pipettes. Biologically plausible migration rates enabled the prudent viral strains to persist in the total population, despite their selective disadvantage within groups.

As a second example reported in the December 8, 2006 issue of Science, economist Samuel Bowles estimated that between-group selection was strong enough to promote the genetic evolution of altruism in our own species, exactly as envisioned by Darwin. These and many other examples, summarized by Edward O. Wilson and myself in a forthcoming review article, are ignored entirely by Dawkins, who continues to recite his mantra that the selective disadvantage of altruism within groups poses an insuperable problem for between-group selection.
Individuals as Groups

Not only can group selection be a significant evolutionary force, it can sometimes even be the dominating evolutionary force.

One of the most important advances in evolutionary biology is a concept called major transitions. It turns out that evolution takes place not only by small mutational change, but also by social groups and multi-species communities becoming so integrated that they become higher-level organisms in their own right. The cell biologist Lynn Margulis proposed this concept in the 1970s to explain the evolution of nucleated cells as symbiotic communities of bacterial cells. The concept was then generalized to explain other major transitions, from the origin of life as communities of cooperating molecular reactions, to multi-cellular organisms and social insect colonies.

In each case, the balance between levels of selection is not fixed but can itself evolve. A major transition occurs when selection within groups is suppressed, making it difficult for selfish elements to evolve at the expense of other members of their own groups. Selection among groups becomes a dominating evolutionary force, turning the groups into super-organisms. Ironically, during the Age of Individualism it became taboo to think about groups as organisms, but now it turns out that organisms are literally the groups of past ages.

Dawkins fully accepts the concept of major transitions, but he pretends that it doesn’t require a revision in his ideas about group selection. Most important, he doesn’t pose the question that is most relevant to the study of religion: Is it possible that human genetic and cultural evolution represents the newest example of a major transition, converting human groups into the equivalent of bodies and beehives?

Selfish Memes and Other Theories of Cultural Evolution

Dawkins’ third claim to fame, in addition to selfish genes and extended phenotypes, was to coin the term “meme” to think about cultural evolution. In its most general usage, the word “meme” becomes newspeak for “culture” without adding anything new. More specific usages suggest a variety of interesting possibilities; that culture can be broken into atomistic bits like genes, that these bits are somehow represented inside the head, and especially that they can evolve to be organisms in their own right, often spreading at the expense of their human hosts, like the demons of old.

As with religion, Dawkins has not conducted empirical research on cultural evolution, preferring to play the role of Mycroft Holmes, who sat in his armchair and let his younger brother Sherlock do the legwork. Two evolutionary Sherlocks of culture are Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd, authors of the 2005 book Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution.

One of the sleights of hand performed by Dawkins in The God Delusion, which takes a practiced eye to detect, is to first dismiss group selection and then to respectfully cite the work of Richerson and Boyd without mentioning that their theory of cultural evolution is all about group selection.

Consider genetic evolution by itself. When a new mutation arises, the total population consists of one group with a single mutant and many groups with no mutants. There is not much variation among groups in this scenario for group selection to act upon. Now imagine a species that has the ability to socially transmit information. A new cultural mutation can rapidly spread to everyone in the same group, resulting in one group that is very different from the other groups in the total population. This is one way that culture can radically shift the balance between levels of selection in favor of group selection.

Add to this the ability to monitor the behavior of others, communicate social transgressions through gossip, and easily punish or exclude transgressors at low cost to the punishers, and it becomes clear that human evolution represents a whole new ball game as far as group selection is concerned.

In this context, the human major transition probably began early in the evolution of our lineage, resulting in a genetically evolved psychological architecture that enables us to spontaneously cooperate in small face-to-face groups. As the great social theorist Alexis de Tocqueville commented long ago in Democracy in America, “the village or township is the only association which is so perfectly natural that, wherever a number of men are collected, it seems to constitute itself.” As the primate equivalent of a beehive or an ant colony, our lineage was able to eliminate less groupish competitors. The ability to acquire and socially transmit new behaviors enabled our ancestors to spread over the globe, occupying hundreds of ecological niches. Then the invention of agriculture enabled group sizes to increase by many orders of magnitude, but only through the cultural evolution of mechanisms that enable groups to hang together at such a large scale. Defining, motivating, coordinating, and policing groups is not easy at any scale. It requires an elaborate system of proximate mechanisms, something akin to the physiological mechanisms of an individual organism. Might the elements of religion be part of the “social physiology” of the human group organism? Other than briefly acknowledging the abstract possibility that memes can form “memeplexes,” this possibility does not appear in Dawkins’ analysis.

Bring on the Legwork

It is absurd, in retrospect, that evolutionists have spent much more time evaluating the major evolutionary hypotheses for guppy spots than for the elements of religion. This situation is beginning to remedy itself as scholars and scientists from all backgrounds begin to adopt the evolutionary perspective in their study of religion.

An example from my own research will show how empirical legwork can take us beyond armchair theorizing. Here is Dawkins on the subject of whether religion relieves or induces stress in the mind of the religious believer:

Is religion a placebo that prolongs life by reducing stress? Possibly, although the theory must run the gauntlet of skeptics who point out the many circumstances in which religion causes rather than relieves stress … The American comedian Cathy Ladman observes that “All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays.”

One of my projects is a collaboration with the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced shick-sent-me-hi), who is best known among general readers for his books on peak psychological experience, such as Flow and The Evolving Self.

Csikszentmihalyi pioneered the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) which involves signaling people at random times during the day, prompting them to record their external and internal experience — where they are, who they are with, what they are doing, and what they are thinking and feeling on a checklist of numerical scales. The ESM is like an invisible observer, following people around as they go about their daily lives. It is as close as psychological research gets to the careful field studies that evolutionary biologists are accustomed to performing on non-human species, which is why I teamed up with Csikszentmihalyi to analyze some of his past studies from an evolutionary perspective.

These studies were performed on such a massive scale and with so much background information that we can compare the psychological experience of religious believers vs. nonbelievers on a moment-by-moment basis. We can even compare members of conservative vs. liberal protestant denominations, when they are alone vs. in the company of other people. On average, religious believers are more prosocial than non-believers, feel better about themselves, use their time more constructively, and engage in long-term planning rather than gratifying their impulsive desires. On a moment-by-moment basis, they report being more happy, active, sociable, involved and excited. Some of these differences remain even when religious and non-religious believers are matched for their degree of prosociality. More fine-grained comparisons reveal fascinating differences between liberal vs. conservative protestant denominations, with more anxiety among the liberals and conservatives feeling better in the company of others than when alone. Religions are diverse, in the same way that species in ecosystems are diverse. Rather than issuing monolithic statements about religion, evolutionists need to explain religious diversity in the same way that they explain biological diversity.

These results raise as many questions as they answer. We did not evolve to feel good but rather to survive and reproduce.

Perhaps religious believers are happily unaware of the problems that nonbelievers are anxiously trying to solve. As a more subtle point, people pass back and forth between the categories of “nonbeliever” and “believer” as they lose and regain faith.

Perhaps some nonbelievers are psychologically impaired because they are the recent casualties of religious belief. Only more scientific legwork can resolve these issues, but one thing is sure: Dawkins’ armchair speculation about the guilt-inducing effects of religion doesn’t even get him to first base.
Natural Historians of Religion

Hypothesis testing does not always require quantification and the other trappings of modern science. Darwin established his entire theory on the basis of descriptive information carefully gathered by the naturalists of his day, most of whom thought that they were studying the hand of God. This kind of information exists in abundance for religions around the world and throughout history, which should be regarded as a fossil record of cultural evolution so detailed that it puts the biological fossil record to shame. It should be possible to use this information to evaluate the major evolutionary hypotheses, which after all represent radically different conceptions of religion. Engineering principles dictate that a religion designed to benefit the whole group will be different from one designed to benefit some individuals (presumably the leaders) at the expense of others within the same group, which in turn will be different from a cultural disease organism designed to benefit itself at the expense of both individuals and groups, which in turn will be different from a religion for which the term “design” is inappropriate. It would be odd indeed if such different conceptions of religion could not be distinguished on the basis of carefully gathered descriptive information.

Of course, it is necessary to gather the information systematically rather than picking and choosing examples that fit one’s pet theory. In Darwin’s Cathedral, I initiated a survey of religions drawn at random from the 16-volume Encyclopedia of World Religions, edited by the great religious scholar Mircia Eliade. The results are described in an article titled “Testing Major Evolutionary Hypotheses about Religion with a Random Sample,” which was published in the journal Human Nature and is available on my website. The beauty of random sampling is that, barring a freak sampling accident, valid conclusions for the sample apply to all of the religions in the encyclopedia from which the sample was taken.

By my assessment, the majority of religions in the sample are centered on practical concerns, especially the definition of social groups and the regulation of social interactions within and between groups. New religious movements usually form when a constituency is not being well served by current social organizations (religious or secular) in practical terms and is better served by the new movement. The seemingly irrational and otherworldly elements of religions in the sample usually make excellent practical sense when judged by the only gold standard that matters from an evolutionary perspective — what they cause the religious believers to do. The best way to illustrate these points is by describing one of the religions in the sample — Jainism — which initially appeared the most challenging for the group-level adaptation hypothesis.

Jainism is one of the oldest and most ascetic of all the eastern religions and is practiced by approximately three percent of the Indian population. Jain ascetics filter the air they breathe, the water they drink, and sweep the path in front of them to avoid killing any creature no matter how small. They are homeless, without possessions, and sometimes even fast themselves to death by taking a vow of “santhara” that is celebrated by the entire community. How could such a religion benefit either individuals or groups in a practical sense? It is easy to conclude from the sight of an emaciated Jain ascetic that the religion is indeed a cultural disease — until one reads the scholarly literature.

It turns out that Jain ascetics comprise a tiny fraction of the religion, whose lay members are among the wealthiest merchants in India. Throughout their long history, Jains have filled an economic niche similar to the Jews in Western Europe, Chinese in Southeast Asia, and other merchant societies. In all cases, trading over long distances and plying volatile markets such as the gem trade requires a high degree of trust among trading partners, which is provided by the religion. Even the most esoteric (to outsiders) elements of the religion are not superfluous byproducts but perform important practical work.

For example, the ascetics must obtain their food by begging but their religion includes so many food restrictions that they can only accept food from the most pious lay Jain households. Moreover, the principle of non-action dictates that they can only accept small amounts of food from each household that was not prepared with the ascetics in mind. When they enter a house, they inspect the premises and subject the occupants to sharp questions about their moral purity before accepting their food. It is a mark of great honor to be visited but of great shame if the ascetics leave without food. In effect, the food begging system of the ascetics functions as an important policing mechanism for the community. This is only one of many examples, as summarized by Jainism scholar James Laidlaw in a 1995 book whose title says it all: Riches and Renunciation: Religion,
Economy, and Society Among the Jains.

How then, is it possible to live by impossible ideals? The advantage for addressing this question to Jainism is that the problem is so very graphic there. The demands of Jain asceticism have a pretty good claim to be the most uncompromising of any enduring historical tradition: the most aggressively impractical set of injunctions which any large number of diverse families and communities has ever tried to live by. They have done so, albeit in a turbulent history of change, schism, and occasionally recriminatory “reform,” for well over two millennia. This directs our attention to the fact that yawning gaps between hope and reality are not necessarily dysfunctions of social organization, or deviations from religious systems. The fact that lay Jains make up what is — in thoroughly worldly material terms — one of the most conspicuously successful communities in India, only makes more striking and visible a question which must also arise in the case of the renouncers themselves.

This example illustrates a phenomenon that I call the transformation of the obvious. Jainism appears obviously dysfunctional based on a little information, such as the sight of an emaciated acetic or beliefs that appear bizarre when taken out of context.

The same religion becomes obviously functional based on more information. This is the kind of “natural history” information that enabled Darwin to build such a strong case for his theory of evolution, and it can be used to build an equally strong case for the group-functional nature of Jainism. As for Jainism, so also for most of the other enduring religions of the world.
An Emerging Consensus?

I recently attended a conference on evolution and religion in Hawaii that provided an opportunity to assess the state of the field. It is not the case that everyone has reached a consensus on the relative importance of the major evolutionary hypotheses about religion. My own talk included a slide with the words SHAME ON US! in large block letters, chiding my colleagues for failing to reach at least a rough consensus, based on information that is already at hand. This might seem discouraging, until we remember that all aspects of religion have so far received much less attention than guppy spots from an evolutionary perspective. The entire enterprise is that new.

There was, I believe, a convergence taking place during the short period of the conference. Richard Sosis, whose previous research includes a detailed comparison of religious vs. non-religious communal movements, presented new research on the recitation of psalms among Israeli women in response to terrorist attacks. William Irons and several other participants developed the concept of hard-to-fake signals as a mechanism for insuring commitment in religious groups. Dominic Johnson reminded us that inter-group conflict, as much as we might not like it and want to avoid it, has been an important selective force throughout human genetic and cultural evolution and that some elements of religion can be interpreted as adaptations for war. In my response to this paper during the question period, I largely agreed with Johnson but pointed out that most of the religions in my random sample did not spread by violent conflict (e.g., Mormonism). Johnson is currently examining the religions in my random sample in more detail with respect to warfare, a good example of cumulative, collaborative research.

Peter Richerson and I gave a tutorial on group selection, which was especially useful for participants whose understanding of evolution is grounded on the Age of Individualism.

Lee Kirkpatrick delivered a lecture titled “Religion is Not an Adaptation” that might seem to oppose the adaptationist accounts mentioned above. What he meant, however, is that he doubts the existence of any genetic adaptations that evolved specifically in a religious context. He is sympathetic to the possibility that more general genetically evolved psychological adaptations are co-opted by cultural evolution to form elaborately functional religious systems. Similarly, other psychologically oriented talks about minimal counter-intuitiveness (beliefs being memorable when they are weird but not too weird), hyperactive agent detection devices (our tendency to assume agency, even when it does not exist), and the ease with which children develop beliefs about the afterlife, might be interpretable as non-adaptive byproducts, but they might also be the psychological building blocks of highly adaptive religions. In evolutionary parlance, byproducts can become exaptations, which in turn can become adaptations.

No one at the conference presented a compelling example of a religious belief that spreads like a disease organism, to the detriment of both individuals and groups. The demonic meme hypothesis is a theoretical possibility, but so far it lacks compelling evidence. Much remains to be done, but it is this collective enterprise that deserves the attention of the scientific research community more than angry diatribes about the evils of religion.

Real-World Solutions Require a Correct Diagnosis of the Problems

Explaining religions as primarily group-level adaptations does not make them benign in every respect. The most that group selection can do is to turn groups into super-organisms. Like organisms, super-organisms compete, prey upon each other, coexist without interacting, or engage in mutualistic interactions. Sometimes they form cooperative federations that work so well that super-super-organisms emerge at an even larger spatial scale. After all, even multi-cellular organisms are already groups of groups of groups. In a remarkable recent book titled War and Peace and War, Peter Turchin analyzes the broad sweep of human history as a process of cultural multilevel selection that has increased the scale of human society, with many reversals along the way — the rise and fall of empires. Religion is a large subject, but the explanatory scope of evolutionary theory is even larger.

American democracy can be regarded as a cultural super-super-organism. The founding fathers realized that religions work well for their own members but become part of the problem at a larger social scale. That is why they worked so hard to accomplish the separation of church and state, along with other checks and balances to prevent some members of the super-super-organism from benefiting at the expense of others. In this context I share Dawkins’ concern that some religions are seeking to end the separation of church and state in America. I am equally concerned that the checks and balances are failing in other respects that have nothing do to with religion, such as unaccountable corporations and extreme income inequality.

I also share Dawkins’ concern about other aspects of religions, even after they are understood as complex group-level adaptations. Religions can be ruthless in the way that they enforce conformity within groups. Most alarming for a scientist, religions can be wanton about distorting facts about the real world on their way toward motivating behaviors that are adaptive in the real world. We should be equally concerned about other distortions of factual reality, such as patriotic histories of nations and other non-religious ideologies that I call “stealth religions” in my most recent book, Evolution for Everyone. Finally, I agree with Dawkins that religions are fair game for criticism in a pluralistic society and that the stigma associated with atheism needs to be removed. The problem with Dawkins’ analysis, however, is that if he doesn’t get the facts about religion right, his diagnosis of the problems and proffered solutions won’t be right either. If the bump on the shark’s nose is an organ, you won’t get very far by thinking of it as a wart. That is why Dawkins’ diatribe against religion, however well-intentioned, is so deeply misinformed.

On Scientific Open-Mindedness

Toward the end of The God Delusion, Dawkins waxes poetic about the open-mindedness of science compared to the closed-mindedness of religion. He describes the heart-warming example of a scientist who changed his long-held beliefs on the basis of a single lecture, rushing up to his former opponent in front of everyone and declaring “Sir! I have been wrong all these years!”

This inspiring example represents one end of the scientific bell curve when it comes to open-mindedness. At the other end are people such as Louis Agassiz, one of the greatest biologists of Darwin’s day, who for all his brilliance and learning never accepted the theory of evolution. Time will tell where Dawkins sits on the bell curve of open-mindedness concerning group selection in general and religion in particular. At the moment, he is just another angry atheist, trading on his reputation as an evolutionist and spokesperson for science to vent his personal opinions about religion.

It is time now for us to roll up our sleeves and get to work on understanding one of the most important and enigmatic aspects of the human condition.

Must we Choose?

2009-10-21T07:08:00.000-07:00

http://www.realitysandwich.com/human_being_or_human_going

Must we Choose?
Submitted by LionKimbro on Mon, 10/19/2009

"Perhaps in tending to the world -- through our own conscious being as opposed to our unconscious goings -- we can effect a healing in which we will discover the reality of the anima mundi, the soul of the world that, like us, is also alive. Through this deeper connection based on spiritual recognition, we can initiate more sensitive, aware and unifying interactions within ourselves, with one another and with the planet, whose being is also part of ours."

My caution is this: In a social climate (like the one we find ourselves in) in which proposals of action are consistently met with "now hang on there just a moment -- on the authority of Buddhism, I know that any proposal of action is wrong, and should be met (annihilated) through conscious observation, being, and non-goal attainment, non-attachment," -- I would put more emphasis on a pragmatic connection of spirit in action.

That is, we hipster hallucinogenic paradigm-comperehending retreat-attending party-going people have come to be a society that is anti-[meaningful]-action, argued from an ethic of being and beingness in which the wholeness of the world means that nothing substantial should be done. Perhaps we should move our hands (in all the familiar ways,) and our tongues, (in all the familiar tongues,) but we are instructed to let "consciousness" (or "being" or "spirit") replace the use of our minds, which are cast as fatal enemies, full of evil, wicked demons, malevolent spirits.

Where beingness would connect us with our consciousness, conscience, hearts, dreams, divinities, animals, and re-establish a connection from the highest spirit to the motion of our hands and feet upon this sacred Earth, -- The effect instead has been to enforce a crude dictum: "do nothing (different/unusual/meaningful,) and be weary of any and all proposed action." It effectively destroys all capacity to act in meaningful ways.

Hands are confined to turning knobs and pulling levers of our day jobs and hobbies, and tongues to repeating the familiar computer protocol: HELO, STATUS: OK, UPDATE, BYE.

"Beingness" has ceased to mean anything other than "Get comfortable with how things are." Not only are we learning to meditate and find peace within ourselves, but we're also learning how to shut down any proposals of change in the outer manifest order -- they are all critiqued as "goings," "becomings," or "ephemera."

We can speak "initiate more sensitive, aware and unifying interactions within ourselves, with one another and with the planet," but only at the end of our articles as a side thought, -- and I think you will find that, in practice, it sets a very high bar of perfection: "You are proposing an act-- but are you initiating it from a place of perfect beingness, calm, tranquility, and utmost balance?" Instead, we should be speaking the language of making peace with matter, and the language of working with the imperfect.

I would put that restful meditative floating ghost of the passive "being" Buddha behind us, and mine for the golden language of the soul. Being's only goal may only be "to be," but the divine child is a larger thing, and his dreams run forever towards others and the world.

The language of the heart tells a story of both being and going, and I wouldn't have one without the other.

Old Testament Brutalities

2009-10-16T13:56:00.000-07:00

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/101609a.html

Old Testament Brutalities
By the Rev. Howard Bess
October 16, 2009

Editor’s Note: One of the dangers of religious fundamentalism is that it takes ancient texts written by people with political and social needs reflecting their times and transforms the words into the unalterable dictates of God.

In this guest essay, retired Baptist minister Howard Bess reflects on the brutality and rigidity of passages from the Old Testament, biblical mandates that continue to echo in the violence of the 21st Century:

I decided I needed to do a refresher on basic Old Testament material. I reread the entire books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. I doubt if many folks have read these two documents, but they are in the Bible, so they must be worthy of our attention.

The material is not unfamiliar to me, but I was jarred anew at the absurdity and the violence, that are contained in the two books. The Ten Commandments and commands to love God and neighbor are found in these writings, but they are not the central themes of the two books.

The first portion of Leviticus lays out detailed instructions about the slaying and burning of animals to appease and please God. Not exactly a topic of current interest.

If a sacrifice was properly executed, sins were forgiven and the odor of the burnt meat was pleasing to the nostrils of God. Other portions of Leviticus describe how priests practiced health care and what a woman must do to become “clean” after giving birth to a child.

The last chapters are known as “The Holiness Code” and describe the details of the life that is acceptable to God. Blasphemy is out. Sabbath keeping is in. Permanent ownership of land is out. Keeping feast days is in.

Slavery is in. Men lying with men is out. Adultery is out, as is incest. Loving your neighbor is in. Cloth woven with two different kinds of yarn is out. Tithing is demanded. Loaning money for interest is out. Eating pork is out.

Even the most ardent Fundamentalist picks and chooses what to embrace and what to reject from these ancient rules written hundreds of years after Moses and hundred of years before Jesus.

Deuteronomy has a different character. The book is a retelling of the basic Moses/Law story with an emphasis on the blessings of obedience to God’s law and the consequences of disobedience.

The Ten Commandments are repeated and the details of the righteous life are spelled out. Some items are redundant to Leviticus. Obedience to God’s laws is a big concern, and long passages lay out the consequences of disobedience.

In the 14th chapter the unbending nature of God’s law and the severity of punishment for disobedience are made plain.

“If your brother, or your son, or your daughter, or your wife, or your friend, who is as your own soul, entices you by saying ‘let us go and serve other Gods,’ you shall not yield to him or listen to him, but you shall kill him.

“You shall take the lead and the hand of all the people shall join you. You shall stone him to death because he sought to draw you away from the Lord your God.”

This is dangerous material in the hands of a religious Fundamentalist. And another example:

In the retelling of the story of the Israelites, the Deuteronomy writer reports that the conquering Israelites entered Palestine from the south, in obedience to the instructions of Jehovah God.

They “captured all the cities and utterly destroyed them and all men, women, and children. We left none remaining.”

This report of violent destruction is repeated and the violence was justified each time because they were taking land that had been given to them by God. Never mind that people had been living there for centuries.

As I read about the strange rituals of Leviticus and the harsh, seemingly senseless injustice and violence of Deuteronomy, I reacted strongly. This does not describe the moral and ethical life that I embrace as a follower of Jesus from Nazareth.

I am not alone in my protest. Micah was a prophet who was contemporary with the animal sacrifice system described in Leviticus. Micah was outraged.

He wrote, “With what will I come before the Lord? Shall I come with burnt offerings? Shall I come with year old calves? Will the Lord be pleased with ten thousand rams? The Lord has shown people what is good and what he requires. Do justice! Love mercy! Walk humbly with your God!”

Jeremiah and Isaiah also were protest prophets. They too were contemporary with people who sought moral comfort through ritual and ignored justice in favor of might.

It is my understanding that Jesus was a prophet, who took up the mantle of Micah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and carried the protest tradition of the Bible in his own day.

In 2009, I have become wary of saying “The Lord’s Prayer” too many times, of singing “The Star Spangled Banner” too many times, of reciting creeds and confessions of faith too many times, of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance too many times.

I believe they deaden the very senses that are needed to make me a better Christian, a better American and a better contributor to a more just world. I cannot believe building a bigger, more effective military, that can lose fewer of us and kill more of them, is the answer to a safer world.

What should I read next? Revelation?

The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in Palmer, Alaska. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.

The Decad, Ten, 10

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http://supertarot.co.uk/westcott/chap14.htm

The Decad, number Ten, or Panteleia, which meant "All complete" or "fully accomplished," is the grand summit of numbers, which once reached cannot be passed. To increase the sum we must retrograde to the Monad.

The Pythagoreans were entranced with its virtues and called it Deity, Heaven, Eternity and the Sun.

Ten being the recipient or receptacle of all members was called Decad, from dechomai=to receive, and hence Heaven, which was ordained to receive all men.

Like the Deity it is a Circle, with visible center, but its circumference too vast for sight.

It is the sum of the units of the number four as previously mentioned, a holy and Deistic number, thus 4+3+2+1=10 and thus ten gains splendor from its parentage.

Also spoken of as Eternity," which is infinite life, be-cause it contains every number in itself, and number is infinite.

It is also called Kosmos, that is the Universe," Proclus says: The Decad is mundane also, it is the world, which receives the images of all the divine numbers, which are supernaturally imparted to it.

It is called the fountain of eternal nature," because if we take the half, five as the middle number and add together the next above and the next below, viz., 6 and 4, we make 10 and the next two in a similar manner 7 and 3 are 10; and so on 8 and 2 and 9 and 1 give the same result.

All nations reckon by the Decimal scale of notation, to which they were no doubt led from the convenience of counting the ten digits of the hands.

It is also spoken of as Kleidoukos, that is, having custody of others," the magazine of the other numbers, because other numbers are branches from it. Also called Fate, which comprises all sorts of events. Age, Power; Atlas, because it supports the 10 spheres of Heaven; Phanes; Memory; Urania; and The first Square, because it consists of the first four numbers."

Two old conceits were that the Tenth wave of the sea is always larger than others; and that birds laid the 10th egg of a larger size than the others.

The word Ten was used by the Hebrews, instead of a large number," so that care must be exercised in translating this; thus Nehemiah interprets ten generations" of Deuteronomy xxiii. V. 3 to mean for ever." Nehemiah xiii. 1.

The Kabalists called 5, 6 and 10 circular numbers, because when squared, the result shows the same number in the unit figure, thus:

5x5= 25 and 5x25= 125 6x6=36 and 6x36= 216 10x 10=100 and 10x 100=1000

An old periphrasis mentioned by Shakespeare is, Id set my Ten Commandments in your face," meaning the finger nails for scratching. See 2 Henry VI. I.3.

The Mahometans say that ten animals were admitted to Paradise and are as follows:

Kratim, the dog of the Seven Sleepers.
Ass of Balaam.
Ant of Solomon.
Whale of Jonah.
The Calf (not Ram) offered to Jehovah by Abraham instead of Isaac, his son.
The Ox of Moses.
The Camel of the prophet Salech.
The Cuckoo of Belkis.
The Ram of Ishmael.
Al Borek, the Animal which conveyed Mahomet.
We find 10 generations from Adam to Noah, 10 from Shem to Abraham. The 10 spiritual graces of Christianity are Love, joy, peace long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, prudence, meekness and temperature," says Dr. G. Oliver; although where he gets 10 generations from Adam to Noah, I know not.

Under 10 also falls the mention of the Pythagorean Triangle, Tetractys, consisting of an equilateral Triangle enclosing ten Yods. Thus the upper is the Monad, the second line the Dyad, the third the Triad, and the fourth the Quaternary or Tetrad thus representing the four forms of point, line, superficies and solid. A similar form is given by Hebrew Kabalists to form 72, the deity number, by placing in a triangle four Yods, three Hehs, two Vavs and one Heh final, being the letters IHVH of the Tetragrammaton; or they may be put conversely.

Note that ten is used as a sign of fellowship, love, peace and Union, in the Masonic third token, the union of two five points of Fellowship.

In the Bible, we notice 10 Commandments, 10 instruments to which Jewish Psalms were sung, 10 strings in the Psaltery, and that the Holy Ghost descended ten days after the Ascension.

Tucer, Rabanus and Raymond Lully associate the numbers 8 to Air, 5 to Fire, 6 to earth and 12 to water.

Apuleius states that among the Egyptians it was customary to fast 10 days before sacrificing and Budge says that they used a 10-day week.

The Ten Sephiroth form the essence of the Hebrew dogmatic Kabalah, a subject which is too vast and complex to be entered upon in this volume on numerals. A mere glance at the Sephirotic emanations of the Absolute Deity from the mathematical point of view is all that can be attempted; my Introduction to the Kabalah" may be referred to.

From the Absolute Passive Negativity Ain, proceeds Ain Suph the Limitless and then Ain Suph Aur, Boundless Light, which concentrates in the first manifestation of the Sephiroth, which is the Crown, Ktr, Kether; from Kether proceeds Chkmh, Chokmah, Wisdom, an active masculine potency, and Binh, Binah, Understanding, a passive feminine power.

These three form the Supernal Triad. The fourth and fifth are Chsd, Chesed, Mercy, active and male, and Gbvrh, Geburah, Strength, passive and female.

The sixth Sephirah is the notable Tpart, Tiphareth, Beauty, the Central Sun, the Logos, the Manifested Son. This completes a second triangle, the reflection of the former.

Number seven is Ntzch, Netzach, Victory, active and the eight is Hvd, Hod, Splendor, passive; the ninth is Ysvd, Yesod, the Foundation, completing the third trinity or triangle.

Mlkt, Malkuth, the Tenth Sephirah, completes the emanations. She is the Bride of Microprosopus the Son, the Sun, Logos; she is the Inferior Mother, Queen and the Manifested Universe.

The whole Ten are viewed as reigning over Four Worlds or Planes of Existence. These are the Worlds of Atziluth, Briah, Yetzirah and Assiah. Malkuth on the plane of Assiah alone is the visible tangible universe.

These Ten Sephiroth are the prototypes of everything spiritual and also of every part of creation. They are traced in the angelic host and in our universe. Three superior and seven succedent exist in all things. The lower seven are obvious to the uninitiated, but in these manifestations, the Supernal Triad is veiled to the profane.

Some occultists phrase it thus three are subjective and incomprehensible to man; seven are objective and comprehensible. Thus Seven archangels are commonly named and we have known only of Seven great planets of our system.

But in some cases, even the whole of seven are unknown. We acknowledge but five senses in man, but there are two more awaiting perception by process of evolution.

These Ten Sephiroth are not only viewed as triads from above below, but are also imaged in three columns entitled the Pillars of Severity and Mercy, with the median of Benignity or Mildness. But this scheme is not for this treatise, nor can the Sephirotic alliance with the Planetary symbols, the angelic host, the divine names and the Book of Thoth, or Tarot be here described. These subjects present a mine of wisdom concealed in the rituals of the Kabalistic Chabrath zereh Aur bokher," from whose parent stem the Rosicrucian Fraternities also may have arisen. These Rituals contain a more complex scheme of the mediaeval occult symbolism than exists in any other form known to me, and I believe that it would not be possible for anyone to reconstitute so complete a system out of all extant literature.

There are 10 Grades in the Rosicrucian Society. They are Zelator, Theoricus, Practicus, Philosophus; Minor, Major and Exempt Adept; Master, Magus and King. Some Magi are known, but only Magi know of a Rex.

Rosicrucian private rituals give the correct names and Kabalistic spelling of the Ten heavens of the World of Assiah, which is the material universe.

H. P. Blavatsky declared that a scheme of the Zodiac of 10 Signs preceded that of 12 Signs, but I have been unable to verify the statement, by any ancient work.

Hebrew and Talmudic references are as follows: - 10 men were necessary to form a legally convened meeting at the Synagogue. In London, as much as 1000 (British pounds) a year has been spent in providing spare men for this duty. Ten curses were pronounced against Eve. See Talmud, Eiruvin, 100. 2.

Ten things were created during the twilight of the first Sabbath eve. Consult Pesachim, 54. 1.

Ten facts proved the presence of a Supernatural Power in the Temple. Yoma, 21.1.

The Rabbis taught that a man should divorce his wife if for 10 years she had no offspring.

At funerals, condolences were recited by 10 men, and at weddings by ten men including the bridegroom. Ten cups were drunk at a funeral party three before supper, three at supper and four after the meal at the recitation of the four blessings.

Abraham was tested 10 times; 10 Miracles were performed in Egypt to help the Children of Israel, and 10 at the Red Sea. Ten plagues were made to afflict the Egyptians. Ten times the Jews offended God in the Wilderness.

Ten times did the Shekinah come down into the world; at the Garden of Eden; at the Tower of Babel; at Sodom; in Egypt, see Exodus iii. 8; at the Red Sea, Psalm cviii. 9; on Mount Sinai; at the Temple; in the Pillar of Cloud; on the Mount of Olives, see Zechariah xiv. 4; the 10th is omitted in the original reference, Avoth d Rabbi Nathan, chapter 34.

There are 10 Hebrew words to designate Idols and 10 for Joy. Sodom was to be spared for 10 righteous men; Gideon took 10 servants to destroy the Altar of Baal; Boaz chose 10 witnesses for his marriage with Ruth; Joabs armor was borne by 10 young men. Jesus speaks of 10 talents, 10 cities, 10 pieces of silver and gave a par-able of 10 Virgins. The Tabernacle has many 10 dimensions. There are 10 Bible names of God, 10 Canticles, and 10 necessaries for mans life. Ecclus. 39. 26.

There were 10 Pythagorean Virtues of Initiation and the Buddhists teach 10 Paramitas of Perfection.

In the Alchymico-Kabalistic tract called Aesch Metzareph referred to by Eliphas Levi and collected from the Zohar of Knorr von Rosenroth and translated into English, and forming Volume IV of my Collectanea Hermetica," will be found 10 names for Gold all extracted from the Old Testament; they are there related to the Sephirah Geburah.

The Hindu Puranas tell us of the 10 Avatars of the God Vishnu, the Preserver of the Brahmanic Religion; the yare periodical incarnations of the God and are as follows.

First as the Fish, Matsya;
Kurma, the Tortoise.
Varaha, the Boar.
Narasingha, the Man-Lion.
Vamana, the Dwarf.
Parasu-Rama.
Rama Chandra.
Krishna.
Buddha.
Kalki, the Horse, is yet to come.
These Avatars are susceptible of a mystical explanation on the plane of cosmogony. It has been given in the Garuda Temple of the Oriental Order of Light" by Frater T. H. Pattinson of Bradford, a very notable mystic and occult student.

In the Yoga Vasishtha Maha Ramayana of Valmiki, edited by Vihari Lala Mitra, will be found an essay on Om-Tat-Sat, on-id-est, and this contains some very curious information on the 10 numerals as related to the mystical syllable Om or Aum.

Aum Mani padme hum" means literally, Oh, the jewel in the lotus," and is taken mystically to mean the spark of the Divine within me," as was fully explained by Blavatsky to her Esoteric section of Theosophists.

The Apocalyptic Numbers of the Book of Revelation

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http://supertarot.co.uk/westcott/chap20.htm

1st Resurrection, Revelation xx. 5. 2nd Death, xx. 14.

2 Witnesses, xi. 3.

2 Olive Trees and 2 Candlesticks (before throne of God of the Earth, xi. 4.

2 Horned Beast who spoke like a Dragon, xiii. ii; his number is 666.

3 Woes, ix. 12.

1/3 part of Vegetation killed, viii. 7 do. of Sea became Blood and do. of Fish died, viii. 8 do. of Waters be-came bitter, viii. 11-do. of Sun, Moon, Stars, viii. 12.

3 days, Bodies lay unburied, xxi. 9.

4 quarters of the Earth, xx. 8.

4 Beasts, full of eyes and have 6 wings, iv. 6-9 ( Beasts" should be living beings. W.).

4 Horses, White, Red, Pale, Black.

4 Horns of the Golden Altar before God, ix. 13. 4 Angels of the Euphrates, ix. 14.

4 Angels of the Winds of the 4 corners of the Earth, vii.

5 Months, the Locusts had power to hurt Men, ix. 5-10.

6 Wings of the Beasts (living beings), full of eyes, iv. 8.

7 Churches, i. 20.

7 Candlesticks, i. 20. Represent the 7 Churches.

7 Stars, i. 20; ii. 1. Represent 7 angels of the Churches. 7 Angels of the Churches, i. 20.
7 Lamps stand near the Throne, iv. 5.

7 Seals, v. 5, opened by the Lamb, produce 4 horses, etc. 7 Trumpets, viii. 2. Given to 7 Angels.

7 Thunders utter their voices, x. 3. 7 Plagues held by 7 Angels, xv. I. 7 Vials of Wrath, xv. 7.

7 Spirits of God, v. 6.

7 Horned and 7 Eyed Lamb, v. 6; near the Throne are the 7 Spirits of God.

7 Headed and 10 horned Scarlet Beast, on which is a Woman, xvii. 3.

7 Headed and 10 Horned Dragon with 7 Crowns, xii. 3. 7 Headed and 10 Horned Beast rose out of Sea, xiii. I.

10 Crowns on Ten horns of beast which had 7 heads, xiii. I.

10 Horned Dragon with 7 heads, xii. 3.

10 Horned Beast with 7 heads rose out of sea, xiii. I.

10 Horned Scarlet Beast with 7 heads, on which was a woman, xvii. 3.

12 Tribes of Israel.

12 Apostles of the Lamb, xxi. 14.

12 Gates of New Jerusalem and 12 Angels guarding them (xxi. 12.).

12 Foundations of the Walls of the New Jerusalem. 12 Stars on the head of the Woman, xii. I.

24 Elders around the Throne, on 24 seats, iv. 4-10.

42 months, the Gentiles tread over the outer court of Temple, xi. 2.

42 months, the 7 headed Beast to have power to blaspheme xiii. 5.

144 cubits, the height of the Walls of the New Jerusalem, xxi. 17.

666, the number of "The Beast."

1000 years, the Dragon bound for, xx. 2-3.

1000 years, Souls of the Faithful to live and reign, xx. 4. 1260 days, the two Witnesses prophesy, xi. 3.

1260 days, the Woman to be in the wilderness, xii. 6. 12,000 of each Tribe chosen.

12,000 furlongs, length of the sides of the New Jerusalem, xxi. 16.

144,000 chosen from the whole of the Tribes.

100,000,000, or ten thousand times ten thousand Angels, round the Throne, v. ii.

Other Higher Numbers

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http://supertarot.co.uk/westcott/chap19.htm

The 14 Days of Burial, in the Masters degree. 14 parts into which the body of Osiris was divided. A type of Christ, sacrificed on the 14th day of the month. An amulet of 14 points has been used to cure the sick.

There are 14 Books of the Apocrypha. They were written originally in Greek, never in Hebrew. An Israelite had to partake of 14 meals in the Booth during the Feast of Tabernacle.

The Israelites killed the Paschal Lamb on the 14th day of the Month Nisan.

In Matthew, chap. I., we find the genealogy of Jesus re-cited in three series of 14 names, the first under Patriarchs and judges, the second under Kings, the third under Priests and Governors.

The ancient physicians considered that the 14th day was the crisis of fevers.

15 was the number of Pairs of the Aeons, or Holy Principles in the Gnostic scheme of Valentinus.

15 is the number by Gematria of the 8th Sephirah, Hod.

There were 15 steps in the Temple between the ante-court of Israel and the Women's Court and in these were sung the 15 Psalms of Degrees. Psalms cxx. - cxxxiv., 15 is the number of Jah, a name of God. So the Jews who wrote letters for numbers, never wrote Jah, 10, 5, for 15, but Tv, 9, 6=15.

The great day of joyful recreation for Jewish Maidens was the 15th Day of the Month Ab. The Deluge covered the hills to the depth of 15 cubits.

A Jewish boy in the olden time was ordered to begin the study of the Gemara when 15 years of age.

16 means Felicity and also a square number. There are 16 Court Cards in a Tarot pack.

In the Treatise De Iside et Osiride," Plutarch says Osiris was killed on the 17th Day of the Moon and hence when the Moon was at the full and from that reason, the Egyptians abominate the number 17, and so did the Pythagoreans they called in Antiphraxis (obstruction), because it falls between the square number of 16 and the oblong number 18.

18 was deemed a protection against thieves.

18. Isaiah made 18 denunciations against Israel. At 18, years of age a girl should go to the Nuptial Colony. The Golden Candlestick of the Temple was 18 hands-breadths tall. There are 18 Blessings in the Hebrew Liturgy. There were only 18 High Priests during the existence of the First or Solomonic Temple at Jerusalem.

19. The number 19 is famous as being the number of years in the Metonic Cycle. The cycle of the revolutions of the Moon, after which she returns to have her changes on the same day of the Solar Year. Meto lived 433 B.C. He was an Athenian. He published his discovery at the Olympic Games in the above year. The exact period is, however, 18 years and 10 days. The Calippic period of four cycles or twenty-six years was invented by Calippus, B.C. 330, to correct Meto. John Heydon says that the number 19 facilitates births and menses.

20. The Kiddushin, 29. 2 says God may curse a man who does not marry at least when 20 years old, for his life is a constant transgression. A woman marrying be-fore 20 may bear children up to sixty. At 20, until 40, and after 40 will have none. Bava Bathra, 119. 2. To die after 20 days diarrhoea is to die pure.

21. A hen sits 21 days, and the Almond is ripe 21 days after the flower falls.

22. 22 Letters of the Hebrew Alphabet, used also as numerals. The realization of a good Dream may be deferred 22 years. Berachoth, 55. 2.

From the Works of Hermes Trismegistus are abstracted 22 axioms on the Human Will. They can be found in Tukaram Tatyas Guide to Theosophy," Bombay 1887.

23. In the Sanhedrin, 23 judges were required to try cases of punishable death. This day of September is no-table because the Moon, which comes to the Full within a fortnight of it, is called the Harvest Moon, which rises three days in succession at the same time, instead of getting daily later.

24. 24 is an Evil Number, referring to Cain, Qin, but not of his numeration, which is 100+ 10+50=160, or else 100+10+700=810. There are 24 birds unclean as food. 24 ribs both in man and women.

26. The number of Jehovah, IHVH, 10+5+6+5=26. In the English language, which uses 26 letters, it is found that the letters occur in very different proportions. In a fair example of modern English it has been calculated that the proportion between the frequency of the use of the letters was, of A, 85; B, 16; C, 30; D, 44; E, 120; F, 25; G, 17; H, 64; I, 80; J, 4; K, 8; L, 40; M, 30; N, 80; O, 80; P, 17; Q, 5; R, 62; S, 80; T, 90; U, 34; V, 12; W, 20; X, 4; Y, 20; Z, 2.

27. The number of the Izeds or Angels who ruled under the supervision of the Seven Amshaspands of the Zoroastrian Theology.

28. A division of the Zodiac into 28 mansions of the Moon, was probably earlier than the Solar Division into 12 parts. The names and symbols can be obtained in Sanskrit and in Arabic. Proctor believes that Solar Astronomy of the 12 signs arose about 2170 B.C., in a country of about 36 degrees of north latitude, and at a period when Taurus was the first constellation of the Zodiac.

29. The Rosh Hashanah says the period of the Moons Revolution is 29 days, 6 hours and 40 minutes.

30. A meal of Lentils once in 30 days keeps off the Quinsy. At 30 years of age Jesus began his ministry; Joseph was 30 years old when he stood before Pharaoh; David was 30 years old when he began to reign; 30 pieces of silver was the price Judas received and Jair had 30 sons.

31. The number of El, God=Al. 1+ 30. Joshua did not complete the conquest of Canaan until he had slain 31 kings.

32. The number of the Paths of Wisdom, of the Sepher Yetzirah, being 10 Sephiroth and 22 letters of the He-brew Alphabet.

33. The years of the life of Jesus. King David reigned in Jerusalem 33 years. The number of vertebrae in the human spinal column.

35. The number of Agla, AGLA, a composite Kabalistic wonder-working name. See page 27.

36. Abaji said there are never less than 36 holy men of any regeneration upon whom the Shekinah does not rest. Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride," calls the Tetractys, the power of the number 36, and on this was the greatest oath of the Pythagoreans sworn; and it was denominated the World, in consequence of its being composed of the first four even and the first four odd numbers; for 1 and 3 and 5 and 7 are 16; add 2 and 4 and 6 and 8, and obtain 36.

39. The number of Articles of the Protestant Christian Church belief.

40. Up to 40 years of age eating is best for a man, after 40 drinking suits best. He who has passed 40 days with-out an affliction has had his reward in this life.

For 40 days, the Flood lasted, for 40 days, the spies searched the promised land, for 40 days, Goliath challenged Israel, 40 days of Ezekiel's penitence, the Jews were 40 years in the Wilderness, 40 days of waiting be-fore embalming the dead, Genesis 1. 3; for days, the woman's purification lasted after childbirth; for 40 days, Moses fasted twice; for 40 days, Elijah fasted, and for 40 days, Jesus fasted in the Wilderness and 40 days elapsed between the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus. Moses was 40 years in Egypt, 40 in Midian, and 40 in the Wilderness. The Israelites were 40 years among the Philistines.

42. 42 is notable because of the 42-lettered name of God, taught by the Kabalists. There were 42 Judges in the Judgment Hall of Osiris. See Bettany, The Worlds Religions," pg. 166, on the events of the 42nd day after death.

The Talmud of Babylon in Kiddushin 71, mentions the 42-lettered Name, and it is given by Ignatz Stern as composed of the Divine Names of the Bible; thus Eheyeh asher Eheyeh, Al, Jah, Jehovah, Elohim, Jehovah Sabaoth, El Chai and Adonai. Ahih Ashr Ahih; Ih; Ihvih; Al; Alhim; IHVH Tzbavt; Al Chi; Adni, or 4, 3, 4, 2, 5, 2, 5, 4, 5, 2, 2, 4=42.

It is very curious that the Ten Sephiroth which denote the attributes of God will show, when these letters are added together, and a V added for and before the last one, this same number 42; if Chesed be called Gedulah, as was common among Kabalists.

45. The number of Adam, Adm. The world is preserved for the sake of 45 righteous persons. Chullin, 92.

48. There have been 48 prophets in Israel. 48 cities were assigned to the Levites.

49. Moses received 49 reasons for the cleanness and uncleanness of each thing; so says The Talmud.

50. The number of the Gates of Binah (Binh) the Understanding. The Kabalah states that even Moses only reached the 49th. See my Sepher Yetzirah," Third Edition, 1911.

58. Noah, Nch.

60. Aristotle stated that the Crocodile lives naturally 60 years, and sits 60 days on 60 eggs. The Chinese have a time cycle of 60 years, and call it Kya-tse. The people of Malabar call this period Chi-tam. The Talmud refers to 60 deadly drugs and 60 sorts of wines; the sow bears her litter in 60 days.

61. The number Ain, Negative existence of the Deity.

64. Aletheia, truth.

65. The number of Adonai, translated Lord" (Adni) and of Hs, Hes, keep silence.

67. The number of Binah, Supernal Mother, the 3rd Sephirah.

70. The number of Sud, Sod, a secret doctrine and private assembly. The earliest name for the Kabalah. Also Iin, Yayin, wine, also meant a secret. The Rabbis considered that there were 70 nations, and Mordecai is said to have known 70 languages. The Jewish 70 years of the captivity are reckoned from their conquest by Nebuchadnezzar to the accession of Cyrus.

71. The number of the Members of the Sanhedrin.

72. 72 has a large number of mystic references to the 72 angels bearing the names of God derived from Exodus xiv. 19, 20, 21 by the Kabalists. There is an important set of 72 pentacles which, placed in pairs, forms a series of 36 talismans (see Dr. Rudd, the Lemegeton, Harleian MSS.). It is also the number of Chesed (Chsd) the Sephirah, Mercy.

It is said that Ptolemy, King of Egypt, collected 72 He-brew Rabbis and confined each in a separate room, and ordered each to write out the Mosaic Law, and that by the help of God, each wrote out the same words. Megillah of the Talmud, 9.1. This account is similar to that of Josephus and Aristaeus, but different to that of Philo. Hence the name Septuagint.

73. The number of Chokmah (Chkmh), Wisdom, the 2nd Sephirah.

78. The number of cards in a Tarot pack. 40 numerals, 16 court cards and 22 Trumps (Major).

79. Boz, Boaz, the left-hand brazen Pillar at the entrance to Solomon's Temple.

80. The number of Yesod, foundation, 9th Sephirah. The venerable Rabbi Hillel had 80 points.

81. According to the Book of Rites of Chao Kung, B.C. 1112, an Emperor of China should have 3 concubines of the First Rank, 9 of the Second, 27 of the Third and 81 of the Fourth Rank.

90. Ikin, Jachin, the right-hand Pillar of Solomons Temple.

91. 91 is the number of Amn and of Tetragrammaton Adonai (IHVH, Adni).

96. According to Vitruvius, the natural height of a typical adult man is 96 digits, which equaled 24 palms, or six feet.

99. The Mahometans have 99 names attributed to God.

100. This is the number of Mdvn, which means strife, and it is the beginning of 100 lawsuits.

The Jerusalem Talmud, Bava Metzia, 85. 1, says that Rabbi Zira fasted 100 times to enable him to forget the Talmud of Babylon, in favor of the Talmud of Jerusalem.

Obadiah was considered worthy to be called prophet, because he concealed 100 prophets in a cave.

103. The family of Herod Asmonaeus ruled Jewry 103 years.

120. For 120 years, the secret vault of Christian Rosenkreutz remained unopened, as he had ordered, 1484 to 1604.

The Shemaneh Esreh, the 18 Blessings, were composed by 120 Elders.

130. The Rabbis said that after the curse, Adam fasted 130 years as a penance. This number is referred to Elijah, Alihv, and to the word prophet, Hnbia. These names number 120, add 10 to this, the number of letters. The Kabalists make a Mystical Square (rectangle) or Kamea of Alihv of 130 permutations - ten by thirteen.

152. The number of Maria, the Greek name for Mary the Virgin, being 40, 1, 100, 10, 1=152.

153. The number of the great fishes caught in an unbroken net by the Apostles after the Resurrection.

200. The number of bones in the human body.

207. This is the number of Ain Soph, Ain, Svp, the Boundless, and Aur, Avr, Light, and of Adonai Olam, Adni Ovlam, Lord of the Universe.

216. The cube of six (6); 216 years, the period of the Pythagorean Metempsychosis.

221. The Cup of David in heaven contains 221 logs of wine, (about 20 gallons) says the Talmud.

231. The sum of the numbers 1 to 21, the Gates of the Sepher Yetzirah.

243. Circles of Zoir Anpin; the number of the permutations, without reversal of the Hebrew Letters. Kalisch.
248.There are 248 members of the body, says Talmud Eiruvin, 53. 2, and an anathema enters into all of them. The word Chrm, accursed, is 248,but so is Rchm, Mercy.

252. It is said that the disciples of Rabbi Ishmael once dissected a low woman, and found she had 252 members; but it does not say what the extra ones were.

270. Worlds of the Idra Rabba, or Greater Holy Assembly.

271. The Talmud, in Niddah, says that the Hebrew woman pregnancy lasted 271, 272 or 273 days.

280. 280 days, the term of natural pregnancy, human; - ten times the Lunar 28-day period.

284. The number of Theos, God, in Greek letters.

294. Ekklesia, The Church and Rodon, the Rose, and also Melchisedek, King of Salem.

300. Mithras. The riches of Korah were so vast that it took 300 mules to carry them. There were 300 sorts of devils in Sichin. The Veil of the Temple required 300 priests to draw it aside, and 300 to cleanse it.

314. The number of Shaddai, Shdi and of Metatron, Mttrun.

345. This is the number of El Shaddai, Al Shdi, God Almighty; and of Shmh (Shemah), the Name of the Absolute God; also of MshH, Moses and Shilh, Shiloh.

358. The number of Messiah, Mshich and Nchsh, Nachash, the Serpent symbol of life.

364. The name Satan, the Shathan, HshThn, contains 364, and all these days of each year he can tempt man, but not on the 365th, the Day of Atonement.

365. Days of the year, Negative Jewish precepts, Dukes of Babylon, and Streets in the City of Rome.

370. Directions of the thought of Microprosopus. See Idra Rabba, 5. 537.

373. Logos.

375. ShlMH, Solomon.

394. There were this number of law-courts in the Jerusalem of the Kingdom period.

400. The body of Joseph was carried 400 miles to burial. David is said to have had a guard of 400 young men who rode in golden chariots at the head of his army.

410. The First Temple stood 410 years, and the Second Temple 420.

474. The number of Daath, Dot, Secret Wisdom, the union of Chokmah and Binah.

496. The number of Malkuth (Mlkt), the Kingdom, the 10th Sephirah.

500. Kosmos.

543. The number of the mystic name Aheie asher Aheie, I am that I am" (Ahih Ashr Ahih).

550. Shmir, the Shamir, the magical insect which cut the stones for Solomons Temple.

608. 608 is a very notable number, representing the Sun. Martianus Capella, of the 5th century, says: The Sun is called in Italy, the God Sol; at the Nile, Serapis; at Memphis, Osiris; he is also Attis; Adonis at Byblos; and Ammon in Libya; also Typhon, Mithras and Pluto; his holy name is of 3 letters, which number 608." In Chaldee and Hebrew 608 is Cham, or Ham (Chm), which also means, heat." In Greek Y.H.S. from U.H.S. =400+8+200=608. Tyre, Trch, is also an example of 608.

612. Zeus.

613. The words of Moses our Rabbi, MshH Rbinu; and Lord God of Israel, IHVH Alhi Ishrl, both number by Gematria 613. The 613 Precepts of the Jewish Law were delivered to Moses. David, it is said, reduced them to eleven (11), and Isaiah to six (6), and later to two (2). Habakkuk to One (1), viz., The just shall live by Faith. 613 also refers to the holy garment which had 600 fringes, eight (8) threads and five (5) knots.

620. The number of Kether, Ktr, the Crown, or 1st Sephirah.

622. 622 years from the Christian era is the date of the Hegira, or flight of Mahomet from Mecca, from which year the Mahometans reckon their calendar.

632. 632 years A.D. is the foundation of the Persian mode of reckoning years, from their King Yezdegird.

640. 640 is Shemesh, the Sun, Shmsh; Mem is water; place the three letters one above the other, and we get Sh, fire, Sun, rising above and sinking below the waters.
646. The total numeration of Elohim, or Aleim Alhim, being 1+30+5+10+600 (= 646); or avoiding the use of final Mem, we get 1+30+5+10+40 (= 86); neglecting the tens 1+3+5+1+4, and placing these numbers in a circle, we get the sequence 3.1415, notable as the value of Pi, or the relation of a diameter to circumference of every circle. Elohim is both a singular and a plural word.

650. 650 has been referred by Godfrey Higgins to Noah, Menes, and Bacchus. Noah, in Hebrew is Nvch or 64.

651. 651, Teletai, the Greek Ancient Mysteries and Episteme - Science.

666. 666 is the pet number of Godfrey Higgins, as referred to Rasit (Rsvt), 200+ 60+ 6+ 400, (= 666), which he insists means Wisdom or as most believe, - Beginning or Principle. The first words of Genesis are be-rasit, In the beginning. 666 is also the number of the Beast, the number of Man, has been associated with Satan, Mahomet, the Pope and a hundred others. It is also the number of Svrt, the Hebrew word for the Sun. it occurs in Revelations xiii. 18.

666. In addition, 666 is also the diameter of a circle whose circumference is 2093, which is the diagonal of a square whose sides are 1480, the number of Christos. It is also the sum of the numbers 1 to 36. It is also the number of Syene in Greek, a place in Egypt at which, if a pit be dug, said, Eratosthenes, the rays of the Sun at the Summer Solstice shine perpendicular into it.

700. The Talmud says there are 700 species of fishes, and in Eiruvin, 18. I, it says that God plaited Eves hair into 700 braids.

753. 753 B.C., the founding of the City of Rome. It is also the number alike of Abram with Sarai 243 and 510, and of Abraham with Sarah 248 and 505, the change which led to parenthood.

780. Ophis - serpent, and Sophia - wisdom.

801. 801 is the number of alpha and omega, 1+800, the Peristera or Dove, vehicle of the Holy Ghost; being 80+5+100+10+200+300+5+100+1=801.

813. 813 is the numeration of Ararita, a very important Kabalistic word, its letters being collected from the initials of the sentence, One principle of his unity, one beginning of his individuality, his vicissitude is one," or so it is rendered by S. L. Mathers

831. Puramis, a pyramid and Phallos.

888. The number of Iesous, Jesus, the great contrast with 666, the number of the Beast.

891. Uranus - ovpavos — Heaven.

903. The Talmud in Berachoth, 8. I says that there are 903 kinds of Death, for by Gematria of the word Tutzaut, which means outlets" see Psalm isviii. 20; this number is obtained, thus T, 400. V, 6, Tz, 90, A, 1, V, 6, T, 400=903. Death by the Divine kiss is the Euthanasia; death from quinsy is said to be the worst form, a sort of suffocation long drawn out.
950. According to Genesis ix. v. 29, Noah lived 950 years. The great ages given in the book of Genesis to the patriarchs have long been a cause of doubt. Recent re-searches by a Hebrew scholar have led to the opinion that these high numbers did not mean our Solar Years, but years of five months of thirty days and perhaps the earliest year was only one month. David spoke of 70 years as the length of human life; there was no such long period between Noah and David as could reduce human life by eleven-twelfths.

974. There were this number of generations from the writing of the Law by the Holy One before he created Man in the World.

999. At the Judgment, although there be 999 who condemn a man, he shall be saved if One plead for him.

1000. The 1000-headed serpent is Sesha of Ananta, the Hindu emblem of eternity.

1000. The daughter of Pharaoh, whom Solomon married, told him of 1000 forms of musical instruments and taught him the chants for all the idols. 1000 is the cube of Ten, a symbol of Perfection. Potiphars wife tempted Joseph with 1000 talents of silver, when her personal charms failed to move him. The thickness of the earths crust is 1000 ells, below this is an abyss of 15,000 ells. Succah, 53.2. — If you have a secret, tell it only to One in 1000.

1004. 1004 B.C. is The Consecration of Solomons Temple.

1081. This is the number of Tiphareth, the central Sephirah, the Sun, Beauty, Microprosopus, Sun-God.

1263. This the number of the word Gnosis.

1271. He Gnosis, The Gnosis and Stauros, the cross of Jesus.

1322. First year of Egyptian cycle of Sothis, B.C.; Rameses II came to the throne in this year, B. C.

1378. The reputed year of the birth of Christian Rosenkreutz, founder of the Rosicrucian philosophy.

1408. Christian Rosenkreutz founded this arcane society in Germania.

1459. The date of writing of the Hermetic Romance of the Chemical Wedding, by C.R.

1461. The Egyptian Sothic Period, calculated by the heliacal rising of Sirius, the Dog Star, at the Solstice.

1480. Christos, in Greek numeration meaning Anointed. According to The Canon" this number exhibits an important measure of the Cosmos, and was the foundation of the scientific pantheism upon which Christian theology was built, it was a part of The Gnosis and was de-rived from the priestly astronomers of Egypt.

1484. Christian Rosenkreutz died. The Vault closed over his body and the secrets of the Order he had founded.

1604. The Vault of C. R. opened by his successors after 120 years of secret study and benevolence.

1614. The Fama Fraternitatis Rosae Crucis was printed. 1717. Grand Lodge of Freemasons was founded.

1752. New Years Day changed from March 25 to January 1.

1865. Frater Robert Wentworth Little founded the Rosicrucian Society of Freemasons of England, in its present form.

1885. Dr. Robert Woodman became Supreme Magus.

1892. Dr. William Wynn Westcott became Supreme Magus.

1911. This year A.D. is the 5013th year of the Kali-Yuga of the Hindu sages. This Yuga is to continue 432,000 years.

2000. A Sabbath days journey was 2000 paces. Rabbi Gamaliel had a tube made which, when he looked through, he could see objects at 2000 cubits distance. This is the earliest suggestion of the telescope. Eiruvin, 43. 2.

2368. The Greek number of Iesous Christos.

3000. Rav Hammunah says that Solomon spoke 3000 proverbs. At the mourning for Moses, 3000 precepts were forgotten.

3102. In B.C. 3102, in February, the Kali Yuga, the Black Age of humanity began, according to the Brahmins.

3761. The Jewish Era was calculated to commence 3761 years before the Christian Era.
4231. Years after the dispersion, said Rashi, the Jews will be restored to their own land.

4291. After these years, the wars of Gog and Magog will cease says the Talmud.

5888. The number of verses in the Pentateuch says the Kiddushin; but they are usually counted as 5845.

6000. The world was intended to last 6000 years. 2000 years of Disorder; 2000 of the Law and 2000 more be-fore Messiah should come; but his Coming has been delayed by our iniquities. So says the Talmudic treatise. Sanhedrin, 97. 1.

25,000. According to Ezekiel, the mystical city of Jerusalem was surrounded by a square space measuring 25,000 roods in length and this he called The Holy Oblation, and it was for the use of the priests, the sons of Zadok.

3.14159 This is the value of Pi, the ratio of diameter to circumference of a circle.

Bodes Law is a curious arithmetical and astronomical problem: -

Take the series of numbers 0 3 6 12 24 48 96 192
Add 4 to each. 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4
And we obtain the numbers 4 7 10 16 28 52 100 196
These show the relation of the ancient planets to the Sun, as to distance, in the order Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. The planet corresponding to 28 is missing, and seems to be replaced by the asteroids. Uranus was discovered in 1781.

The Platonic Year, or great Period, according to Tycho Brahe, is 25,816 years. Ricciolus, 25,920 years; Cassini, 24,800 years; Norman Lockyer now gives 24,450 years.

It is the period of time determined by the revolution of the equinoxes, or the space to time wherein the stars and constellations return to their former places in respect to the equinoxes by means of a constant precession. The equinoxes moving backwards or westwards, meet the Sun constantly earlier. In the time of the oldest Greek observations, the equinoctial points were in the first stars of Aries and Libra respectively; they are now in Pisces and Virgo. When these names were given, the Sun entered Aries at the Vernal Equinox, and Sign and constellation coincided; now they do not, so do not be confused by our still calling the first Sign of spring Aries, although the Sun is now really at such time in Pisces; every 2160 years, the Sign is changed. Precedent to Aries, the Sun at the Vernal Equinox.

Thirteen, 13

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Thirteen was the sacred number of the Mexicans and people of Yucatan; twelve of many tribes of North American Indians, as of so many nations of antiquity. This had an astronomical connection, because the Stars and Sun were Gods to them. The method of computation among the Mexican Priests was by weeks of 13 days; consult Dunlops Vestiges," Their year contained 28 weeks of 13 days and 1 day over, just as ours contains 52 of 7 days and one day over. Thirteen years formed another week. Four times 13, or 52, years was their cycle. In Yucatan, there were 13 Snake Gods" (see Stevens Yucatan," and Gamas Ancient Mexicans" ).

13 is the number of the Hebrew word Ahbh, Ahebah, love, and of Achad, Achd, unity. Old authors state that 13 is a number used to procure agreement among married people. Hebrew Ancient lore did not reckon the number 13 as unlucky; this idea arose from the fate of Judas after the Last Supper of Jesus, yet not for some centuries, but since the notion was started it has been prevalent among all Christians.

The 13 cards of each suit of a pack of Cards are some-times applied to the 13 Lunar Months for purposes of divination.
The Gnostic gems are often inscribed with a 13-lettered Name for God, Ablana Th Analba.

Rabbi Eliezer on account of a serious drought proclaimed 13 fasts, at the end of which rain fell at once.

The Temple used 13 collecting horns; and in it were 13 tables and 13 devotional reverential bows were used in the full service.

When a Hebrew boy reached the age of 13 years, he began to fast of for the full time. A girl began at twelve years.

The word Covenant is written 13 times in the chapter on Circumcision.

The Bava Metzia gives 13 reasons for a good breakfast.

In the Hebrew Liturgy are found the 13 logical rules for interpreting the law. Hershon, Talmud Miscellany," pg. 167.

Twelve, 12

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This number has a perfect and notable character and was highly esteemed by most nations of antiquity. Almost all the twelves will be found to be allied, either obviously or in a concealed manner, with the Signs of the Zodiac, twelve signs or partitions of the great circle of the heavens twelve times thirty degrees forming the perfect cycle of 360 arithmetical degrees of the circle. Each sign was further subdivided into three decans. There are many of the learned who believe the twelve sons of Jacob and twelve founders of tribes, are allegorical only. We may mention the Twelve Grand Points of Masonry," which used to form a part of the lectures in the Craft degrees. Twelve events in the ceremony of initiation, referred to the sons of Jacob, are given by Mackey:

To Reuben was referred the opening of the Lodge he was the first-born son.
To Simeon, the preparation of the land he prepared the destruction of the Shechemites.
To Levi, the report or signal he gave the signal in the attack on the men of Shechem.
To Judah, the entrance of the land that tribe first entered the Promised Land.
To Zebulum, the prayer the prayer and blessing of his father fell on him in preference to Issachar.
To Issachar, the circumambulation an indolent tribe, who required a leader.
To Dan, the advance to the Altar for a contrast to their rapid advance to idolatry.
To Gad, the obligation on account of Jephtahs vow.
To Asher, the entrusting; with rich Masonic blessings resembled the Fathers of their land.
To Naphtali, the investment and declared Free." The tribe of Naphtali had a peculiar freedom given by Moses.
To Joseph, the N.E. corner because Ephraim and Manasseh (grandsons) represented him, newest comers.
To Benjamin, the closing of the Lodge as being the last son of the Patriarch.
The following associations of Birds, Animals and Flowers with heavenly bodies has the authority the Greco-Roman mythology: -

Eleven, 11

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http://supertarot.co.uk/westcott/chap15.htm

This seems to have been the type of a number with an evil reputation among all peoples. The Kabalists contrasted it with the perfection of the Decad, and just as the Sephirotic number is the form of all good things, so eleven is the essence of all that is sinful, harmful and imperfect. With the Ten Sephiroth they contrasted the Eleven Averse Sephiroth, symbols of destruction, violence, defeat and death. On the oldest Tarot cards, the trump called the Tower struck by Lightning, number XVI, shows the Ten Divine Sephiroth on one side and the Eleven Averse Sephiroth on the other side; modern Tarot designs are very much de-based.

John Heydon says that by it we know the bodies of Devils and their nature; the Jews understand by it Lilith, Adams first wife, a she-devil, dangerous to women in confinements; hence they wrote on the walls: Adam Chvh Chvo Lilit, that is, Adam, Eve, out of doors Lilith."

Jesus, in Matt. xii. 43, plainly allows the doctrine that evil spirits may haunt fields, which Grotius says the Jews think; and their word Demon and Field are similar, being Shdim (fields) and Shdim (evil deities); the Siddim are mentioned in Psalm cvi. 37.

It is called the Number of Sins" and the Penitent," because it exceeds the number of Commandments and is less than twelve, which is the number of Grace and Perfection. But sometimes even eleven receives a favor from God, as in the case of the man who was called in the Eleventh Hour to the vineyard, who yet received the same pay as the others.

Rabbi Jochanan says that eleven sorts of spices were mentioned by God to Moses on Mount Sinai as suitable for holy incense.

Eleven was the number of the Disciples of Jesus, after the fall of Judas Iscariot.

In the Hebrew Language, the word eleven was expressed as Achad Osher, or One in Ten.

The meanings of The Ennead, Nine, 9

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The Ennead is the first square of an odd number, it was aid to be like the Ocean flowing around the other numbers within the Decad. No further elementary number is possible; hence it is like the Horizon because all the numbers are bounded by it. We find that it was called Prometheus, and Freedom from Strife," and Vulcan," because the ascent of numbers is as far as 9, just as the ascent of things decomposed by fire is as far as the sphere of Fire (the summit of the air), and Juno, because the Sphere of the air is arranged according to the novenary (nine) system, and sister and wife to Jupiter" from its conjunction with the Monad. And Telesphoros or "Bringing to an end" because the human offspring is carried 9 calendar months by the parent. And teleios or perfect for the same reason, and also called Perfect" because it is generated from the Triad, which is called Perfect."

Attention is called to its being an emblem of Matter, which, ever varying, is never destroyed; so the number 9 when multiplied by any number always reproduces itself, thus: - 9 times 2 are 18 and 8+1=9; and so on below:

Permutations of Number Nine
9x3=27; 2+7= 9 9x12=108; 1+8=9
9x4=36; 3+6=9 9x13=117; 7+1+1=9
9x5=45; 4+5= 9 9x14=126; 6+2+1=9
9x6=54; 5+4= 9 9x15=135; 5+3+1=9
9x7=63; 6+3= 9 9x16=144; 4+4+1=9
9x8=72; 7+2= 9 9x17=153; 3+5+1=9
9x9=81; 8+1=9 9x18=162; 2+6+1=9
9x10=90; 9+0=9 9x19=171; 1+7+1=9
9x11=99; 9x20=180; 8+1+0=9
In John Heydons Holy Guide," 1662, we find that he asserts that the number 9 to have other curious properties:

If writ or engraved on Silver, or Sardis, and carried with one, the wearer becomes invisible, as Caleron, the Brother-in-Law of Alexander, did, and by this means lay with his Brothers concubines as often as he did himself. Nine also obtaineth the love of Women. At the 9th hour our Savior breathed his last; on the ninth day the ancients buried their dead; after 9 years Numa, received his laws from Jove; note the 9 cubits length of the iron bed-stead of the giant Og, king of Basan, who is a type of the Devil, and there are 9 orders of Devils in Sheol (what we call Hell). It prevails against Plagues and Fevers; it causes Long life and Health, and by it Plato so ordered events that he died at the age of nine times 9."

There are nine orders of Angels, says Gregory, A.D. 381, in Homily 34. Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels and Angels.

From a Christian point of view, the number nine represents:

Unity of the Godhead.
The hypostatic union of Christ.
Trinity.
Evangelists.
Wounds of Jesus.
Is the number of sin.
Gifts of the spirit, Rev. i. 12; and Jesus 7 times spoke on the cross.
Beatitudes.
Orders of Angels.
Commandments.
Apostles besides Judas.
Original Apostolic College.
College completed by St. Paul.
The Nine Muses of ancient Greece were called daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (Memory), and were Calliope, poetry; Clio, history; Melpomene, tragedy; Euterpe, music; Erato, love, inspiration and pantomime; Terpsichore, dancing; Urania, astronomy; Thalia, comedy and Polyhymnia, eloquence.

The Novensiles are the nine Sabine Gods: viz. Hercules, Romulus, Aesculapius, Bacchus, Aeneas, Vesta, Santa, Fortuna and Fides. The Sabines became merged with the Romans about 266 B.C.

The Nine Gods of the Etruscans were Juno, Minerva, Tinia, Vulcan, Mars, Saturn, Hercules, Summanus and Vedius; the Etruscans also became united with the Romans.

Note in Macaulays poem of Horatius," Lars Porsena of Clusium by the nine gods he swore," in 596 B.C. Lars Porsena led the Etruscans; they were then most powerful; from the Estrucans the Romans took much of their law, custom and superstition.

It is by nines that Eastern presents are given, when they would extend their magnificence to the greatest degree, as mentioned in Comte de Caylus, Oriental Tales." 1743.

Barretts Magus" notes also 9 precious stones, 9 orders of devils, 9 choirs of angels he copies from John Heydon.

Note in this connection, the Nundinals of the Romans, who marked the days by letters into parcels of 8 days, and on every 9th day the people left their pursuits and went to the towns to market. Hence, the jocular Latin saying, Tres mulieres Nundinas faciunt. These Nundinals are a type of our Dominical letters, a set of seven marking out the 8th days. The Romans also held a purification ceremony on male infants on the 9th day of life, hence the presiding goddess of this rite was called Nundina.

The Nones were one of the sets of days composing each calendar month. The Roman Novennalia was a feast in memory of the dead celebrated every 9th year. The Novendiale was an occasional Roman Catholic fast to avert calamities, from this arose the R.C. system of Neuvaines.

There is a Masonic order of Nine Elected Knights," in which 9 roses, 9 lights and 9 knocks are used.

The Mahometans have 99 names of the deity. Some Jews have taught that God has 9 times descended to earth; 1st in Eden, 2nd at the confusion of tongues, 3rd at the destruction of Sodom, 4th to Moses at Horeb, 5th at Sinai, 6th to Balaam, 7th to Elisha, 8th in the Tabernacle and 9th in the Temple at Jerusalem; and that his 10th comes as the Messiah will be final.

The ancients had a fear of the number Nine and its multiples, especially 81; they thought of them of evil presage, indicating change and fragility.

At the 9th hour Jesus the Savior died.

Nine is also the earth under evil influences."

John Heydon in the Holy Guide," and J. M. Ragon, in his Maconnerie Occulte," thus associate numbers with the Planets.

Table of Planets and Numbers

Table of Planets and Numbers
Planet Assigned Number
Sun One, 1 and Four, 4
Moon Two, 2 and Seven, 7
Jupiter Three, 3
Mercury Five, 5
Venus Six, 6
Saturn Eight, 8
Mars Nine, 9
The Zodiacal Signs were assigned the following numbers:

Table of Zodiacal Signs and Numbers
Zodiacal Sign Assigned Number
Leo One, 1
Aquarius Two, 2
Capricorn Three, 3
Sagittarius Four, 4
Cancer Five, 5
Taurus Six, 6
Aries Seven, 7
Libra Eight, 8
Scorpio Nine, 9
Virgo Ten, 10
Pisces Eleven, 11
Gemini Twelve, 12
The First and the Second Temples of the Jews were both destroyed on the 9th day of the Jewish month Ab. On the 9th day of Ab, modern Jews do not wear the Talith and Phylacteries until evening. The day should be spent in tears, and no good comes of work done on that day.

The Talmud in Soteh, 20. I, says that a woman prefers one measure of fun to 9 of Pharisaic professional goodness.

Nine persons have entered A live into the Jews Paradise; Enoch, Elijah, Messiah, Eliezer the servant of Abraham, Hiram, King of Tyre, Ebed Melek the Ethiop, Jabez the son of Jehuda the Prince, Bathia daughter of Pharaoh, and Sarah the daughter of Asher. Some Rabbis add Rabbi Yoshua son of Levi, but he entered not at the door, but climbed over the wall. See Kethuboth, 7. 2.

In the 145th Psalm, we find 9 reasons for praising God.

The Great Eleusinian Mysteries were the successors of the Egyptian Mysteries of Isis and Osiris, and were celebrated at Eleusis and possibly also at Athens, in honor of Demeter or Ceres; they occupied 9 days, and were commenced on the 15th day of the third Attic month, Boedromion, September. They took place once in every five years.

The Lesser Mysteries were performed in the month Elaphebolion, March, at Agrae on the River Ilyssus in honor of Persephone or Prosperine, daughter of Ceres.

Candidates after reception became Mystae. In the Greater Mysteries, they became Epoptae. The ceremonies were called Teletai, perfectings. They remained in use for 1800 years and were only ceased in the time of the Emperor Theodosius, A.D. 395.

Mention of 9 Worthies is found in literature. They were 3 Gentiles Hector son of King Priam, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. 3 Jews Joshua, David and Judas Maccabeus; 3 Christians King Arthur of Britain, Charlemagne and Godfrey de Bouillon.

The Ogdoad, Eight, 8

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In the first cube of energy, and is the only evenly even number within the Decad. The Greeks thought it an all-powerful number. They had a Proverb all things are eight."

Camerarius, in his edition of the Arithmetic of Nicomachus, calls it Universal Harmony, because musical ratios are distinguished by this number.

The Ratio of 9 to 8 is sesquioctave and this forms a tone and is attributed to the Moon.

Planetary Ratio Table of Tones
Planet Ratio
Mercury 12 to 9 is sesquitertian.
12 to 8 is sesquialter.
Venus 16 to 12 is sesquitertian.
16 to 8 is duple.
Sun 18 to 12 is sesquialter.
18 to 9 is duple.
Mars 21 to 9 is duple sesquitertian.
Jupiter 32 to 24 is sesquitertian.
32 to 8 is quadruple.
36 to 24 is sesquialter.
36 to 18 is duple.
Saturn 32 to 24 is sesquitertian.
32 to 8 is quadruple.
Inneratic Sphere (8th Sphere) 36 to 24 is sesquialter.
36 to 18 is duple.
36 to 8 is quadruple.
24 to 18 is sesquitertian.

Hence the Ogdoad was also called "Cadmeia," because Harmony was looked upon as the wife of Cadmus and Cadmus meant the Sub-lunary World, as Olympiodorus says. Eight was called also Mother, and Rhea, Cybele and Dindymene, from being the first cube, and a cube representing the earth.

The eight persons saved from the flood of Xisuthrus are synonyms of many octaves of gods, such as the 8 Cabiri great gods of Samothrace; see Bryant and Faber on this myth.

There are 8 Beatitudes of the Christian religion, Matthew, chap. V.

Eight is the number of the Moons of Saturn.

There have been several Masonic orders concerned with this Noachite Ogdoad, as the Prussian masons, Knights of the Royal Axe, or Prince of Libanus, the Noachites, and the Royal Ark Mariners, which is a subsidiary order to the Mark Master Masons.

Macrobius says the Ogdoad was the type of Justice, be-cause it consists of even numbers and on account of its equal divisions.

John Heydon tells us that 8 Events befall the Damned, and there are 8 rewards of the Blessed.

The number 8 was sacred to Dionysos, who was born at the 8th month; the isle of Naxos was dedicated to him and it was granted to the women of Naxos, that their children born in the 8th month should live, whereas it is usual for such to die, although those born either the 7th or the 9th month are usually reared.

The Jews were accustomed to practice Circumcision on male infants upon the 8th day after birth.

The Jews at the Chanukah or Feast of Dedication lit 8 candles and it lasted 8 days. This is the Engkainia of John x. 22. As to conjuring among the ancient Jews, it is said in Talmud, Succah, 53. I, that Levi played with 8 knives; Samuel in the presence of the King Sapor of Persia used 8 cups and Abaji before Rabbi Rava used 8 eggs.

Eight prophets were descended from Rahab the Harlot, viz., Neraiah, Seraiah, Maasiah, Jeremiah, Hilkiah, Hannemeel and Shallum. Note also that Huldah the prophetess was the grandchild of Rahab.

The last 8 verses of Deuteronomy, The Mosaic Law, The Pentateuch, were written by Joshua. Bava Bathra, 14. I.

Rabbi Nathan states that there were 8 sects of the Pharisees, but both of the Talmuds (Jerusalem and Babylon) name only seven. It is prophesized that the Harps, which will be played on earth before the Messiah, will have 8 strings. Erachin, 13. 2.

As seven was the number of the original Creation, so 8, says W. F. Shaw, may be considered as the Day of Re-generation. Eight souls were saved in the Ark of Noah, and Noah was the 8th in descent, his name was Nvch= 8 times 8=64.

888 is the special number of Jesus Christ as He who is that Resurrection and the Life." He is the great opponent of the 666, the number of the Beast, the number of Man.

The ancient Chinese writings refer to 8 musical sounds, the Pah-yin. (G. Schlegel).

Mysteries of Liber 777

2009-03-12T20:49:00.000-07:00

http://supertarot.co.uk/777/index.htm

Mysteries of Liber 777 - how to use it

Few tarot students have ever studied Liber 777, a massive resource of information and attributes of the tarot. I suspect the reason is that the original book was set up in a way that makes it very difficult to study. I have re-organised the tables to make them easier to read and apply to the tarot.

Liber 777 demystified

This section was inspired after some concentrated magical and spiritual work within a small group of magicians. We extended a traditional shamanic purification technique beyond healing people to healing spirits. I then continued this technique to purify my Thoth Tarot deck. I was surprised by the amount of dirty energy the cards had accumulated - and it was not just my deck - it was our perceptions of the Tarot. Pursuing this method created a definite change of awareness, which suggested that my perceptions of the Tarot itself would be changed. Within a few days, inspiration struck. I looked again at Liber 777, and I realised that there was no reason why the columns could not be turned through 90 degrees to become rows, with the individual tarot cards as the subject.

Liber 777 - Macrocosm

Working with these tables in the new form changes your perception of what the Tarot is about. Here, we have the big picture - and what a picture! Now we see the glorious connections to the Gods of the major religions around the world, not to mention a number of spirits, and astrology. In contrast, the divinatory meanings we all know and love are seen as micocosmic, man's petty concerns with every day life.

The Tree of Life is seen in its context. It's anthropomorphic characteristic more clearly defined.

Now we have the opportunity to see The Tarot as truly greater than the sum of its parts. When we need solutions that go beyond the personal, these tables give you the solutions.

To help you, each Tarot table has a link to the divinatory meanings to the tarot card for comparison.

Now the Tarot has its own Macrocosm and Microcosm, we can really use the

Using The Tarot with Liber 777

The Tables are particularly useful for Magicians and healers, as the Tarot is placed in its proper context. The unaspected cards found in the counting technique for the Opening of the Key Spread indicate the hidden spiritual forces affecting the querent or the subject of the reading. Now, you can turn the relevant page, and see what remedy can be applied, or which spirit/s may be contacted to change the situation.

Tarot Designers

Looking for inspiration? These tables give a cohesive picture for creating and designing Tarot sets.

To do

Add extra columns and colours to identify areas more easily, and re-order the rows by Deity, Spirit, alphabet, etc.

Adam Sitting at the Gate of the Garden of Eden

2009-03-12T20:46:00.000-07:00

http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/zdm/zdm061.htm

On another occasion Rabbi Simeon spake and said: "It is written, 'I said, I shall not see the Lord even the Lord in the land of the living; I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants65b
Isa. 38:11 of the world' (Ps. xxxviii. 11). How great the number of those who are ignorant and take no interest in the secret doctrine. They expend their strength and energy in the acquisition of worldly knowledge, oblivious altogether of that true wisdom which is both spiritual and divine. When a man departs out of earth life, he has to account for every act and deed committed in it and meets many with whom he has been acquainted and held intercourse in the world. Eventually he beholds Adam seated at the Garden of Eden rejoicing over those who have faithfully observed and kept the divine commandments. Surrounding him are the righteous who were wise and avoided walking in the way that leads down to Gehenna and found the path of light. Such are termed by scripture 'inhabitants of the world' hadel, not haded. The inhabitants of this latter are mouselike in their habits of heaping up riches and know not who shall enjoy them; but the just and upright are termed dwellers

p. 278

of hadel, which word signifies to shun and avoid, because they have learned to shun the way to death and found entrance into the Garden of Eden. Another interpretation is this: by 'the inhabitants of the world' (hadel) is signified those who through repentance, ceased to do evil and learned to do well, as did Adam who was afterwards appointed leader into Eden of all repentant souls, and thus termed inhabitants of hadel, and therefore is it written, 'that I may know what I lack (hadel)' (Ps. xxxix. 5), Note the words, 'I shall not see Jah.' 'Who then is able to see him?'65b-66a the other part of the verse explains, 'Jah in the land of the living.' When souls encircled with an aura of light, the result of righteous living, ascend on high to the sphere especially prepared for those who have attained unto the higher life, they are then able to gaze into the Zohar, the luminous mirror, or in other words the beatific vision whose splendor and brightness are reflections from the highest heavenly sphere, since a soul clothed in any other raiment than this light would be unable to behold and endure its intense vibrations. For even as souls in their progress and development on earth life and clothed and girded with an aura, so in the world on high, they become encircled with one brighter and still more luminous, by which they are able to contemplate the transcendent light coming down out of the lightest of the heavenly spheres known as 'the land of the living.' It was this aura of the higher life encircling him that Moses was able to behold what he did, as it is written, 'And Moses went into the midst of the cloud (as it seemed to human vision) and ascended the mount' (Ex. xxiv. 15). That is, he became clothed with an aura of divine light, in order to gaze into the luminous mirror, or beatific vision, similar to that which time just or perfected human beings' on their entrance into the higher heavenly spheres are clothed, of which the aura surrounding them during earth life is only a faint shadow and reflection. We now understand why the word Jah in the verse just cited is found repeated. 'I shall not see Jah in the land of the living,' were uttered by Hezekiah and mean that he feared and had no hope of ever experiencing the joy and delight of gazing upon the splendor of the light emanating from 'the land of the living,' through his dying childless, and therefore he said also, 'I shall not see Adam sitting at the gate of the Garden of Eden on high.' But why should he be afraid of this? because Isaiah the prophet had said unto him, 'Thou shalt die, thou shalt not live,'Is. 38:1 that is, thou shalt not live in the world to come as thou shalt die childless;

p. 279

for whoever leaves and quits the world without offspring is not admitted into the garden of the celestial Eden and is therefore altogether precluded from contemplating the glory and splendor of its light. If therefore Hezekiah with all the inherited merits of his forefathers, besides being an upright and just person, feared lest by dying childless, he should fail to attain unto the beatific vision, or enter into 'the land of the living,' so ought he be alarmed who, lacking ancestral merit and virtues,66a transgresses divine laws. The aura surrounding the just and perfected in the world to come who have lived the higher and diviner life is known and designated by initiates of the secret doctrine as 'The Master's Robe.' Happy they who wear it, for it is on their account the Holy One has reserved and put by unnumbered joys in the world to come, as it is written, 'For from the beginning of the world, men have not heard nor perceived by the ears, neither have seen, Oh God beside thee, what thou hast prepared for him that putteth his trust in Thee.'" (Ps. lxiv. 4.)Is. 64:4

Definition of the Occult

2009-03-12T14:53:00.000-07:00

http://www.religioustolerance.org/occult1.htm

Trying to define "The Occult"?

The word occult is derived from the Latin word occultus which means "hidden". Occult blood is a medical term which refers to blood which cannot be seen, except perhaps under a microscope. The Occult has been defined as any activity which is esoteric (employs knowledge that is not known to the general public, but which is only revealed gradually to a selected few in training), and depends upon those talents which lie beyond the five senses, and engages with the supernatural. Unfortunately, such a definition has serious flaws:

The beliefs, rituals, and practices of many activities which have traditionally been considered to be occultic have now been thoroughly documented and published. The public can go to a bookstore and purchase written material on just about any "occultic: activity. Little remains secret. 1 For example, most lists of occultic activity includes Wicca (often referred to by the public as "White" Witchcraft), and various methods of foretelling the future (e.g. astrology, casting runes, reading Tarot Cards, 5 I Ching, etc.). Literally hundreds of books have been published on these topics. Anyone can learn as much as they wish by simply buying or borrowing books. Since knowledge is not hidden, these beliefs and activities do not meet the first criteria above.
Consider a person who joins an adult religion class at their local church and is taught special techniques of effective prayer -- methods that are unique to that church and not generally available to outsiders. This activity would meet all of the three criteria for the Occult: it has to be taught; it can be a silent prayer - a means of communicating without spoken words; it is directed at God.
Consider a ceremonial magician performing a healing spell. She/he might believe that the spell taps into perfectly natural forces - parts of the universe that science has not yet been able to explain. They might feel that they are not part of the Occult, since they are not dealing with the supernatural.
During mass, a Roman Catholic priest will perform a ritual which involves certain words and actions. The end result is that the wafer and wine is believed to literally become the body and blood of Jesus Christ. This act of magic would meet these three criteria, and thus be occultic.
The Wiccan faith is a reconstructed religion of the ancient Celts. Wiccans develop an intimate connection with their Goddess and God, perform religious rituals, and observe seasonal days of celebration. In doing so, they differ little from followers of other religions. Although many Wiccans also engage in divination and/or healing spells, some do not. Among those who do not, their faith is devoid of occultic components.
We would offer the following rather simple definition:

OCCULT: A set of mostly unrelated divination and/or spiritual practices or activities which appear to tap into forces that have not been explained by science, and which are not conventional practices seen in traditional religions.

Note that this definition does not attach any value judgment to occultic practices. Thus, Tarot card readings might still be considered:

a dangerous example of the Occult, as seen by an Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christian,
an integral component of their religion, as seen by some Wiccans,
a harmless hobby or pastime as seen by a Unitarian Universalist.

This is how the term is used in practice; people in different faith groups have very different meanings for "the Occult". No consensus on its meaning exists.

Reference used:

M.P. Hall, "The Secret Teachings of All Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Quabbalistic & Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy," Philosophical Res. soc. (1994). Read reviews or order this book safely from Amazon.com online book store

Occultic Techniques in the Hebrew Scriptures

2009-03-12T14:50:00.000-07:00

http://www.religioustolerance.org/divin_bibl.htm

There are a number of instances in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) where respected biblical leaders were involved with various black magic, divination and occultic activities as a normal part of their daily activities -- apparently without any condemnations from God:

In Genesis 44:5, Joseph's household manager refers to a silver drinking cup "...in which my lord drinketh and whereby indeed he devineth". Later, Joseph accuses his brothers of stealing the cup, saying "that such a man as I can certainly divine [the identity of the thieves]". These passages show that Joseph engaged in scrying. This is an ancient occultic method of divination in which a cup or other vessel is filled with water and gazed into. This technique of foretelling the future was used by Nostradamus and is still used today.
Numbers 5:12-31 describes a ritual of black magic that the Priest would perform on a woman if her husband suspected that she he had committed adultery. Verse 17 says: "Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water.." She and her husband would go, with an offering of barley meal, to the tabernacle. The priest would make a magical drink consisting of holy water and sweepings from the tabernacle floor. He would have the woman drink the water while he recited a curse on her. The curse would state that her abdomen would swell and her thigh waste away if she had committed adultery. Otherwise, the curse would have no effect. If she were pregnant at this time, the curse would certainly induce an abortion. Yet nobody seems to have been concerned about the fate of any embryo or fetus that was present. There was no similar magical test that a woman could require her husband to take if she suspected him of adultery.
The Urim and Thummim were two objects mentioned in Numbers 27:21 and 1 Samuel 28:6 of the Hebrew Scriptures. They were apparently devices (perhaps in the form of flat stones) that the high priest consulted to determine the will of God. They might have worked something like a pair of dice.
Elisha was on his way to Bethel. Some small boys came out of the city and made fun of him because of his lack of hair; they called him "baldy". In a violent display of the power of black magic, Elisha cursed the children in the name of God. Two bears, apparently prompted by God, came out of the forest and tore 42 of the boys to shreds. The implication is that the children were all murdered. See 2 Kings 2:23-24.
Lots -- pieces of wood or stone with markings -- were used to determine the will of God. They were similar to dice. See: Numbers 26:55; Proverbs 16:33 Proverbs 18:18.
Daniel, the prophet, was employed for many years in Babylon as the chief occultist to the king. He was supervisor "of the magicians, astrologers, Chaldeans and soothsayers". See Daniel 5:11.

Occultic techniques in the Christian Scriptures:

St. Paul engaged in evil sorcery as described in Acts 13:6-12. (Sorcery is here used in the same way as Exodus 22:18: a person saying magical words or performing magical rituals in order to harm or kill another person). During his journey to Cyprus, St. Paul met Bar-Jesus, who was an attendant of the Roman proconsul Sergius Paulus. He had a conflict with cursed Bar-Jesus, saying:

"You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord? Now the hand of the Lord is against you. You are going to be blind, and for a time you will be unable to see the light of the sun. (NIV)

Bar-Jesus heard the curse and immediately was blinded.

St. Peter also engaged in evil sorcery, as described in Acts 5:9. After he determined that Sapphira had lied to him, he cursed her, saying:

"How is it that ye have agreed together to try the Spirit of the Lord? behold, the feet of them that have buried thy husband are at the door, and they shall carry thee out. (ASV)

She collapsed and died immediately.

Biblical Condemnation of the Occult

There are many Biblical passages that described some prohibited types of occultic activity by the ancient Israelites. These include Exodus 22:18, Leviticus 19:26-26; 19:31; 20:6; Deuteronomy 18:10-11; Isaiah 8:19 and Malachai 3:5. Of these, Deuteronomy 18 is perhaps the most important. They forbade the Israelites from engaging in human sacrifice and in eight specific practices which some have been regarded as occultic. The King James translation is:

"There shall not be found among you anyone that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.

Various other translations of the Bible use the following terms or phrases here: augur, black magic, calls up the dead, charm, consults with spirits, fortune teller, interpret omens, look for omens, magician, medium, sorcerer, soothsayer, spiritist, weaves or casts spells, witchcraft, and wizard.

Beliefs about the Occult by Occultists and Others

2009-03-12T14:49:00.001-07:00

Religious liberals and occultists regard the Occult to be simply a list of mostly unrelated practices and activities. "Occultist" is a very rarely used term that refers to a person active in an occultic activity. It does not exist as an organization. Occult Crime does not exist, any more than Christian, Muslim or Jewish Crime exists. No ritual abuse is committed by occultists. Some Wiccans and other Neopagans do engage in divination. Some individuals who engage in divination use many different techniques. Otherwise, there is little connection among the various occultic activities.

There are many definitions of the Occult; no general consensus exists. Some groups divide the Occult into three branches:

Divination: Various harmless methods of foretelling the future:
Astrology: The concept that one's future is dependent upon the precise location of the sun, moon and planets at the time of birth.
I Ching: an ancient Chinese oracle book which some believe can be used to foretell the future, answer questions, etc. The practitioner generates a number from 1 to 64 by selecting sticks, or casting dice or coins. The oracle book assigns different meanings to each of the possible numbers.
Numerology: the practice of assigning a digit to each letter in a person's name, and deriving a series of numbers which have special significance to the person.
Palm reading: foretelling a person's future by the creases in their palm and shape of their fingers.
Runes: a group of from 16 to 31 (typically 26) letters of an ancient Northern European alphabet. The letters are inscribed on small rocks or pieces of paper or plastic. A group is cast, and the future foretold from the runes that land inverted and not inverted, as well as from their position.
Scrying: a technique of producing visions of the future by gazing into a crystal ball, black mirror, bowl of water, hot coals from a fire, etc.
Tarot cards: fortune telling through the use of a pack of 78 Tarot cards which can be divided into four suites (wands, cups, pentacles and swords). 1 Each suite has number cards (ace to 10), a king, queen, knight and knave. In addition, there are 22 additional cards which form the greater arcana; they include the Chariot, High Priestess, Juggler, Lovers, Moon, Sun, Strength, Death, Devil, etc. The cards are shuffled; a few are dealt and laid in a specific formation (circle, cross, square, etc.). The cards are interpreted according to their inherent meaning, as modified by the significance of their location.
Teacup reading: foretelling the future by the shapes formed by tea leaves after a cup of tea has been consumed
Other methods: Future events have been predicted through the use of dice, dominos, dream interpretation, pendulum movements, playing cards, etc.
Religious and Spiritual Pursuits: These are normally a group of unrelated minority religions:
Eastern religions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, etc.
Syncretistic religions from the Caribbean, such as Santeria and Vodun.
Satanism.
Wicca, and other Neopagan religions.
Magick: This is a list that includes ceremonial magick and many other schools of practice involving rituals and spells. They are used to change the environment, in order to reach the magician's goals.

Conservative Christian Beliefs About the Occult

2009-03-12T14:46:00.000-07:00

http://www.religioustolerance.org/occult2.htm

There is no consensus on the nature of the Occult:

Some people (particularly individuals involved in occultic activities) look upon the Occult as fascinating, harmless, mysterious, spiritual and a source of knowledge and healing power.

Others (particularly conservative Christians) see it as being profoundly evil, criminal, destructive, life threatening, and Satanic. It is a word that generates horror and revulsion.
Although it is common for people to differ in their religious views, it is rare to have a disparity as extreme as this.

Many Evangelicals and Fundamentalist Christians define the Occult as including an enormous range of practices. We have seen references to:

Religions & Spiritual Movements:
American Meditation Society
Anthroposophical Society
Baha'i Faith
Ceremonial Magick. This includes the use of rituals, spells, chants to change the material world.
Children of God (Family of Love)
Christian Science: An established Christian denomination centered in Boston MA.
A Course in Miracles
Eckankar: A religious and spiritual path, sometimes called the Religion of the Light and Sound of God.
Gothic Satanism: This is a non-existent, anti-Christian faith whose members were believed to engage in cannibalism, human sacrifice, etc. It is an imaginary faith created during the latter Middle Ages. It justified the extensive Witch burnings and hangings of the 15th to 18th centuries.
Hinduism: The third largest of the world's great religions.
Hindu sects of various types, such as Hare Krishna.
Jehovah's Witnesses (a.k.a. Watchtower Society, WTS)
Kabala
Macumba: This is a syncretistic religion combining elements of Roman Catholicism and African native religions. It is similar to Vodun.
Mormonism (a.k.a. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)
New Age: This is a system of thought including belief in monism, pantheism, reincarnation, personal transformation, spirit guides, etc. Includes practices such as channeling, use of crystals, meditation, etc.
Palo Mayombe
Rastafarianism
Rosicrucianism: An ancient syncretistic religion dating back to the 17th century.
Santeria: A Caribbean religion which combines Roman Catholicism and African native beliefs.
Satanic Ritual Abuse: The abuse and murder of children by Satanists during rituals. This appears to be a non-existent phenomenon.
Satanism: A modern religion based on a pre-Christian concept of Satan, who is recognized either as a principle or as a supernatural being.
Church of Scientology: A religious movement based on the writings of L R Hubbard.
Self-Realization Fellowship
Spiritualists National Movement, and other branches of Spiritualism/Spiritism.
Shamanism
Theosophy: A religious group whose beliefs are largely based on the writings of Helena Blavatsky.
Transcendental Meditation
UFO cults: Groups who believe that extra-terrestrial beings are attempting to communicate with us and lead humans to a higher plane of understanding.
Unification Church: An established Christian denomination originating in Korea.
Vedanta Society
Vodun: A syncretistic Caribbean religion which combines Roman Catholicism and African native beliefs.
Voodoo: A non-existent religion from the Caribbean invented for Hollywood horror movies).
Wicca: A Neo-Pagan earth-based religion similar to Native American spirituality. It is sometimes called "White Witchcraft" by the public.
Zen Buddhism

Divination Techniques -- methods of foretelling the future:
Astrology
Biorhythm
Crystal divination
I Ching
Palm Reading
Rune casting
Tarot Card Reading 5
Tea Cup Reading
Games
Adult games (e.g. Ouija Boards).
Children's TV programs and cartoons (e.g. She-ra).
Children's toys (e.g. Smurfs).
Fantasy role-playing games (e.g. Dungeons and Dragons)

Medical and therapeutic techniques:
Aura reading
Various holistic medical processes
Hypnotism
Iridology (diagnosis from study of the iris)
Reflexology (diagnosis from manipulation of the foot)
Visualization techniques (a.k.a. guided imagery)
Other Activities
Educational courses - a range of modern methods of teaching
Fire walking (bare-foot walking on a bed of glowing coals).
Heavy metal rock music.
Holistic Health Practices (healing by acupuncture, flower remedies, homeopathy, etc.)
The Masonic Lodge (or similar men's fraternal organizations).
Meditation.
Reading novels by specific authors (e.g. Carlos Casteneda).
Yoga and other exercise techniques.

Impact of Occultic activities:

Many conservative Christians believe that if a person engages in occult experiences, then "points of contact or entanglement with demonic entities" will occur, and "malevolent spiritual entities" (demons) can infiltrate their mind and body. They become demon possessed.

Many Evangelical Christian authors often visualize the opening of occultic "doorways" through which malevolent forces have a "legal right" to infiltrate the person's home and cause serious spiritual problems. These demons can become attached to the person's location and can cause inter-generational infestation over a period of decades or even centuries.

These views correspond closely to 1st and 2nd century CE beliefs in possession by demons and evil spirits. They have been abandoned by most psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals for centuries. Within the professional therapeutic communities, such beliefs now appear to be confined to a small minority of mental health professionals who are Roman Catholics or conservative Protestants.

Rex W. Rosenberg, a conservative Christian clinical psychologist who has specialized in Multiple Personality Disorder, believes that such infiltration can lead to what he calls "demonically-mediated dissociation" (DMD). This is one form of a mental disorder that others call Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) or Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). 1,2 All forms of MPD and DID are now recognized by almost all therapists as iatrogenic (physician created) disorders that no not occur in nature.

Trying to define "The Occult"?

2009-03-12T14:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.religioustolerance.org/occult1.htm

The word occult is derived from the Latin word occultus which means "hidden". Occult blood is a medical term which refers to blood which cannot be seen, except perhaps under a microscope. The Occult has been defined as any activity which is esoteric (employs knowledge that is not known to the general public, but which is only revealed gradually to a selected few in training), and depends upon those talents which lie beyond the five senses, and engages with the supernatural. Unfortunately, such a definition has serious flaws:

The beliefs, rituals, and practices of many activities which have traditionally been considered to be occultic have now been thoroughly documented and published. The public can go to a bookstore and purchase written material on just about any "occultic: activity. Little remains secret. 1 For example, most lists of occultic activity includes Wicca (often referred to by the public as "White" Witchcraft), and various methods of foretelling the future (e.g. astrology, casting runes, reading Tarot Cards, 5 I Ching, etc.). Literally hundreds of books have been published on these topics. Anyone can learn as much as they wish by simply buying or borrowing books. Since knowledge is not hidden, these beliefs and activities do not meet the first criteria above.

Consider a person who joins an adult religion class at their local church and is taught special techniques of effective prayer -- methods that are unique to that church and not generally available to outsiders. This activity would meet all of the three criteria for the Occult: it has to be taught; it can be a silent prayer - a means of communicating without spoken words; it is directed at God.

Consider a ceremonial magician performing a healing spell. She/he might believe that the spell taps into perfectly natural forces - parts of the universe that science has not yet been able to explain. They might feel that they are not part of the Occult, since they are not dealing with the supernatural.

During mass, a Roman Catholic priest will perform a ritual which involves certain words and actions. The end result is that the wafer and wine is believed to literally become the body and blood of Jesus Christ. This act of magic would meet these three criteria, and thus be occultic.

The Wiccan faith is a reconstructed religion of the ancient Celts. Wiccans develop an intimate connection with their Goddess and God, perform religious rituals, and observe seasonal days of celebration. In doing so, they differ little from followers of other religions. Although many Wiccans also engage in divination and/or healing spells, some do not. Among those who do not, their faith is devoid of occultic components.
We would offer the following rather simple definition:

OCCULT: A set of mostly unrelated divination and/or spiritual practices or activities which appear to tap into forces that have not been explained by science, and which are not conventional practices seen in traditional religions.

Note that this definition does not attach any value judgment to occultic practices. Thus, Tarot card readings might still be considered:

a dangerous example of the Occult, as seen by an Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christian,
an integral component of their religion, as seen by some Wiccans,
a harmless hobby or pastime as seen by a Unitarian Universalist.

This is how the term is used in practice; people in different faith groups have very different meanings for "the Occult". No consensus on its meaning exists.

Reference used:

M.P. Hall, "The Secret Teachings of All Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Quabbalistic & Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy," Philosophical Res. soc. (1994). Read reviews or order this book safely from Amazon.com online book store

The Occult in Today's Culture

2009-03-12T14:39:00.000-07:00

http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005/10/18/the-occult-in-todays-culture/

1. Why do you think the occult is so prevalent in today’s pop culture?
Mainly because there’s so much info available now, whether books, dvd’s, websites, etc. When I was a kid (which really wasn’t that long ago in the grand scheme of things), this stuff was hard to find. I’d have to scour local libraries for books that were no longer on their shelves. I also remember having to find more general books on a particular subject matter, and then scan the index for maybe a few paragraphs on these types of things - or if I was lucky maybe 2-3 pages. Now pretty much anybody can sit down and within minutes find an enormous amount of info on the occult, paranormal, alternative spirituality and religion, and all kinds of other far-out topics.

I think what we’re seeing now with all this stuff is the true level of interest which has always existed but which has never been accurately reflected in the culture at large. Go back through the history of any culture, and you’ll always find stories of the weird, the unusual and the mystical. These are things that all of us have always been interested in, and it’s merely becoming more and more acceptable to announce it to the world. So, in a nutshell, I’d summarize the key factors here as increasing accessibility and acceptability.

2. Why would the government want to control occult in society?
Beats me. I’ve only heard a very few cases of the government intruding in an official sense in anything like this. One case that springs to mind - but you’d have to look into more on your own - is Wilhelm Reich. Reich was into some really mystical shit, but from what I understand got cracked down on when he started fooling with orgone (sort of like mystical organic energy) and trying to heal people with weird machines. I think in a lot of cases people in power don’t much care if you get into occult or mystical stuff, as long as you either don’t either (1) threaten the status quo in terms of political social order, or (2) start horning in on somebody’s profitable business - like in the case of Reich, or other alternative health professionals who claim to have been targeted by the government.

If we’re going to just talk about religion rather than the occult, then there’s definitely some good reasons why a government would want to regulate it. For groups of people, religions basically amount to “guiding stories” - models of character, behavior and life goals that people can pattern themselves and their lives after. If these models aren’t in line in some sense with the goals of the larger state (national community), then we start to see repression against religions. More than anything though, I’d say that the biggest control a government has over religion (that is, if it’s not an overtly theocratic government) is that they create a sort of civic or state religion where people may not necessarily “worship” a president or figurehead leader, but they do spend all their time reading about, hearing about or discussing these people’s exploits. It amounts to a sort of modern mythology that interpenetrates our lives and provides us with (for better or worse) models to copy. Then we have things like terrorism and the military which subtly tell us that these models that we worship on a national level are sacred, holy and not only worthy of protection, but expansion.

Not really sure if that totally answers your question, but that ought to at least offer a few different directions for you to choose from in developing your concepts.

3. Why wouldn’t the government want to control occult in society?
I guess civil rights issues, or something along those lines. Separation of church and state and all that stuff. Really, what one person considers the occult is nothing more than another person’s religion and vice-versa. I don’t know that there’s really any separating them. So if you’re going to talk about the occult in society, you probably ought to just look at what the dominant religion is. In this case it’s Christianity, so it’s going to characterize it’s ideological opponents as evil, wrong or negative. I used to get annoyed by that kind of stuff. But then I realized that occultists also demonize Christianity, and it’s just a natural part of what people do when they are really into one particular story-system, religion or guiding mythos.

Ideally, a government probably shouldn’t have any part in determining what’s okay religiously. But then, ideally, they probably shouldn’t also be executing prisoners, invading countries for their own profit, making it illegal to grow or ingest certain plants, or collect upwards of 50% taxes on your livelihood - but that’s a whole other set of issues bordering on anarchism and other terms your highschool teacher probably won’t appreciate too much. I mean shit, you’re probably already going to be behind the eight-ball because you’re talking about the occult.

4. Comparing cases in society today do you think there are any cases or instances that resemble the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. If yes, which ones and why?
I’m not sure there’s any clear parallel. The way I would think about it is this. The Salem Witch trials took place within a small community that was trying to purge itself of certain elements. What they were trying to get rid of was a sort of Jungian shadow version of Christianity, except inverted into witchcraft, Satanism, etc. Whether that stuff was really going on at all, or to what extent is open to debate. People say maybe ergot poisoning was actually involved instead (poisoning from exposure to a fungus in rye, similar in makeup to the compounds in LSD). In any case, what you had was a community which operated according to an overtly religious story-system. When that story-system was threatened by strange behavior - whatever it’s cause - there was a reaction against it. This happens again and again in orthodox religion and ideology. If everybody’s working under a tight set of ethical rules and guiding myths, you typically don’t have a lot of wiggle room on how you interpret that stuff. If everybody’s version is a little bit different, it’s difficult to bind people together or “control” them using those stories. So you have to get rid of the ones which don’t fit in with it.

From that perspective, we could open this debate up to modern times and look for people who are persecuted because they don’t fit neatly into our modern story-system. One good place to look might be at the Anti-Psychiatry movement of the 1970’s, which basically said that mental illness wasn’t really an illness at all; instead, we were merely persecuting people who saw reality differently from us. That’s not talked about so much now, but it’s going to become an even bigger issue today with things like forced medication of kids who are probably erroneously considered ADD, or any number of other disorders which didn’t exist before they were created by pharmaceutical companies as marketing opportunities. Now, we have parents whose children are diagnosed with these disorders, and told that their kids can’t be in school unless they take these mind-altering drugs with no long-term testing. It’s a fucking scary situation, especially for people who don’t have any alternative opportunities when it comes to schooling.

5. What do you think society is most afraid of when it comes to the occult?
Philosophically, probably the breakdown of social cohesion is my best guess. Check out Emile Durkheim for more on the importance of religion as a social cohesive force. I think I said this above already about the fear being that if everybody doesn’t have some kind of common mythological/ethical framework, then we’re all screwed as a society. Not sure I agree with that fully, but I think that’s the fear.

More practically speaking though, I think most people are simply just worried that the occult is “evil.” And they won’t ever get more philosophical about it than that. Some people really do think it’s all about devils and demons and whatnot. In a lot of cases though, the way I think the concept of evil works in a religion is sort of similar to a junk email or spam filter on email account - except it’s applied on our minds. If a piece of mail comes through (ie, an idea or whatever) that contains certain keywords, or fits a particular pattern, then it’s automatically dropped into a sort of separate mental category so that we don’t have to waste time looking at it. Nobody ever reads through the text of every single spam email they get. At least I hope not. And they know that if they click on the links, they’re likely to get a virus or something. So for most people that arrangement with evil as a mental spam filter works out because it saves them time from getting lost of tangents that don’t relate to their lives. So again, it’s sort of a natural mechanism to help us prioritize how to spend our emotional and mental energy.

6. Why is it that teens are more likely to address the occult than adults.
They’re not. They are just more vocal about it, because for the great majority they are simply doing it as a reaction against their parents and society. They are asserting their own individuality and unique cultural identity by experimenting with altering or throwing away values they were raised with. I think for teens especially, being drawn to things that are “evil” typically indicates that they are trying to expand their reality tunnel to include new elements or things which are paradoxical to the story-system they were raised in. I think a lot of teens are also drawn to dark imagery and myths because they are experiencing a lot of dark feelings as they grow up - anger, resentment, frustration, despair. In an inverted “dark” mythology, these things turn into positive attributes, things to be embraced. I actually think it’s very healthy because it allows them to integrate the Jungian shadow elements of themselves. It’s a sort of inner alchemy, transforming things that are bad into things that are good.

As far as adult interest in the occult, I think it’s easy to see that it outstrips teen interest. Just look at who’s doing most of the writing and cultural production in these areas, and who’s doing most of the consumption. Adults have more money to spend on these things in the culture, and in general greater powers of concentration, insight and maturity. Getting involved in any serious study of alternative religious practice takes years and years of intense study. While some teens may pass through an occult “phase” or get drawn into fads, adults who study this stuff do so generally for decades.

7. Why are you interested in the occult in pop culture?
Short answer: it’s cool. I mean, it’s fascinating as hell. It cuts across all aspects of culture and history. There’s always more to learn, and more ways you can grow personally and spiritually. It’s a continual challenge and adventure that mirrors in microcosm the adventure of life itself.

A Primer on Occult Philosophy

2009-03-12T14:37:00.000-07:00

http://www.fishnet.us/cim/technicals/occultt.txt

Today the tentacles of occult philosophy embrace every area
of our society. Police departments request psychics to solve
crimes. College students are addicted to fantasy games (Dungeons
and Dragons) which introduce them to the world of the occult
through role-playing.1 Well-known science fiction writers mask
occult doctrines in their works through pseudoscientific
language.2 Colleges and universities offer graduate degrees in
esoteric thought. Occult themes provide popular material for TV
shows and movies. A leader of the women's movement urges her
followers to return to the ancient religions in which female
deities were worshiped (witchcraft). Even the American Medical
Society endorses the search for the "new" powers to aid the
healing process.3

In apparent mockery of the waning influence of the church,
one occultist in California quipped: "The second coming has
already come--only J. C. didn't show up, Satan did."4 This
current interest and growth of occultic teaching certainly gives
evidence that the bright light of the fire of Christian
civilization is burning low. Once again, as in the Dark Ages,
the evil eye of the demonic is moving in on us, offering
Satanically inspired substitutes.

This movement from light to darkness gives solemn testimony
to what happens when the church is intimidated by humanistic
philosophy. Instead of resisting, being the "salt of the earth,"
and setting the standard for society and culture, much of the
church at the beginning of the twentieth century gave up hope in
the battle against modernism. The result was a renewed interest
in prophecy and a resolve simply to await the Lord's return.
This was the moment the Archenemy had anticipated. He and his
counterfeiting demons moved into this spiritual vacuum with ideas
spawned during the "Enlightenment" -- but which until then had
had little influence on the man in the street. Those ideas were
rationalism, the supremacy of man, and a denial of the
supernatural or spiritual dimension. Under the nurture of these
philosophies, science and technology flourished. More wealth was
shared by more people than in any other previous civilization,
but man lost the meaning of his humanity and his context in the
world. These ideas led to despair, as the philosopher Nietzsche
had predicted. The denial of a creator and revealed meaning led
to a secular search for meaning. The pendulum then swung in the
opposite direction toward irrational answers and the world of the
mind. This set the stage for the current revival in eastern
religions and occult philosophy.

In the sixties, young people rebelled against an
establishment that had given them more knowledge (facts) than
ever before in history, but no meaning. Rationalistic humanism
with its one-dimensional view of life (all is material) just did
not seem to account for all of reality. Today the young gaze
toward the East, which offers a new (to the Western mind)
definition of reality. The presuppositions of these ancient
Eastern ideas subtly condition people at all levels of our
culture to deny the personal God of the Bible and to accept the
belief that man is inherently divine. Because of the deep
penetration of this new occult/mystical way of thinking,5 man
becomes increasingly prepared for the ultimate deception--
Antichrist. Indeed, we now face an encroaching occult theocracy
in which occult philosophy becomes the foundation for social
order. Marilyn Ferguson thoroughly documents this in her book,
THE AQUARING CONSPIRACY. The book's subtitle is PERSONAL AND
SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION IN THE 1980'S. What she describes in this
book is an ecumenical movement of epic proportions taking place
among groups of an Eastern bent. This movement is called "The
New Age Movement," "The Human Potential Movement," "Cosmic
Humanism," "Mind Science," and "The Aquarian Age." She describes
the movement as a conspiracy which "is using its widespread
outposts of influence to focus on the dangerous myths and
mystiques of the old paradigm. . . .We conspire against the old,
deadly assumptions."6 She makes no bones about the fact that the
main enemy to progress as she defines it is our Judeo-Christian
roots.

One of her more notable observations is the impending
mergence of science and physics with the new age movement.7 For
current proof of this our readers need look no further than OMNI
magazine or SCIENCE DIGEST.8

In the light of this alarming trend two things are needed:
(1) an appraisal of the major tenets of occultic philosophy and
(2) a means to combat it.

DEFINITION:
The Enemy's Core Beliefs

The word "occult" comes from the Latin "occultus" which
means "concealed." In its usage today, it means "beyond the
bounds of ordinary knowledge--the mysterious, the concealed, or
that which is hidden from view." It involves such practices as
magic, divination, incantations, paranormal experiences, and the
so-called expansion of consciousness. Brooks Alexander of the
Spiritual Counterfeits Project writes that "occultism in all its
forms consists of secret techniques of consciousness-alteration,
coupled with secret doctrines which explain the inner meaning of
the experiences thereby attained."9 There seem to be four major
ingredients in occult practice and philosophy:

THE PARANORMAL -- Experiences that are beyond the five
senses, extra-sensory and mystical. An occultist will often
refer to a sixth sense (or a third eye) which enables the person
to see a distant accident or enables a medium to sense a
"presence," usually claiming to be the spirit of a deceased loved
one.
THE SUPERNATURAL -- The actual manipulation of natural law
from the beyond such as psychokinesis (movement of objects for no
apparent physical reason) or levitation. The world of the
supernatural, like the Venus fly trap, attracts many to itself
only to swallow them up into an occult system.

THE ESOTERIC -- That which is hidden or secret; the use of
symbols and allegories to hide truth from the uninitiated. Many
occult sects advertise that initiated newcomers will become privy
to knowledge that has been hidden for thousands of years.
Historian John Warwick Montgomery says: "Occult theosophy and
the Eastern faiths from which it derives intentionally state
their teachings in language which will convey truth solely to the
faithful believer and close the door to the profane."10 Some
commonly-used occult symbols are the signs of the zodiac, a
pentagram within a circle, a goat's head, an ankh (a type of
cross), sunwheels, a beetle, the great pyramid, and the mystical,
all-seeing eye.

PHILOSOPHICAL MONISM -- the doctrine that there is only one
ultimate reality. All is one and the one is God. Therefore, I
am God, or God is within me. This is a foundational belief of
occult philosophy and Eastern religions.11 An infinite-personal
God is a totally foreign idea. The primary goal of this
religious monism is to experience this oneness. The method of
attaining this state of cosmic consciousness may vary but the
goal is always the same. It will involve some kind of
consciousness expansion or alteration.

EVOLUTION. Contrary to what most believe, evolution did not
originate with Darwin. The concept of evolution is an ancient
occult doctrine (the concept of avatars). Again Brooks Alexander
writes: "Much new age and occult "aquarian" philosophy is based
on the belief (or hope) that humankind is now experiencing an
evolutionary metamorphosis to a new, improved level of
functioning -- spiritually, socially, and politically."12

TYPES OF OCCULT ACTIVITY: WHAT DOES THE ENEMY DO?

Students of the occult frequently divide occult phenomena
into three areas: (1) forms of divination, (2) types of mystical
experience, and (3) magical manipulation.

FORMS OF DIVINATION (also known as fortune-telling,
soothsaying, or augury). A diviner predicts future events, finds
lost articles or people, locates underground water, or reveals
hidden knowledge. Perhaps the most common example of divination
in America today is astrology.13 Other common types are:
palmistry, waterwitching, ouija boards, numerology, biorhythms,
pyramidology, the reading of crystal balls, auras, tarot cards,
or tea leaves, use of pendulums, interpretation of dreams, and
many others. Forms of divination are strictly forbidden in the
Scriptures (see Deuteronomy 18:10-14,20). The sinfulness of
divination lies in the fact that it demonstrates a lack of trust
in the One who holds the future (see Hosea 4:12). Isaiah 47:13-
14 predicts an end of the astrologers, while Proverbs 3:5-6 gives
the proper response for the believer (trust in the Lord).

TYPES OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES. These are experiences that
transcend the bounds of the ordinary physical world or the five
senses. Seeing events as they are occurring hundreds of miles
away or an event still in the future, communicating with the
dead, and soul travel (out-of-body experiences) are examples of
paranormal experiences. Other examples of mystical experiences
are: seances, necromancy, telekinesis, some forms of glossolalia,
levitation, automatic writing, clairvoyance, trances,
materializations, visions, psychic healing (including
acupuncture),14 remembrance of past lives (reincarnation),
Eastern forms of meditation such as T. M. (transcendental
meditation) or yoga, altered consciousness, and mental
telepathy. We are not implying that all mysticism is evil.
Christianity has its mystical elements. Our relationship to
Christ is a mystical one. However, the mystical experiences in
Christianity are always tied to the objective word of God. We
are always to try the spirits.15 (See I John 4:1.) A valid
mystical experience is always parallel to the propositional
revelation of scripture. A red flag of caution should always be
raised when one purports to have received new or additional
revelation that is contradictory to scripture.

MAGICAL MANIPULATION (not to be confused with the art of
illusion).16 By employing hidden or outside forces in the
spiritual realm, occultists say they can manipulate people or
nature to conform to their will or the will of the gods. Various
rites and ceremonies are often used. Sometimes they are public,
but mostly they are accomplished in private. Often they involve
very complicated formulas and specific materials. Then the rites
are carried out according to astrological calculations.

One who practices magic is known by many terms, some of the
most common being sorcerer, witch, wizard, or witch doctor.
Several notorious practitioners of magic are mentioned in
Scripture: the magicians of Egypt (Exodus 8); King Manasseh (2
Kings 21:1-9); Jezebel (2 Kings 9:22); Simon (Acts 8:9-24); and
Bar-Jesus (Acts 13:4-12). Involvement in magical practices was
forbidden and punishable by death under the Mosaic Law (see
Exodus 22:18; Deuteronomy 18:10-11; Isaiah 47:9-15), and also in
the New Testament (see Galatians 5:20; Revelations 18:23-24).
The city of Nineveh was destroyed for such abominable practices
(Nahum 3:4). When the Messiah comes again, the occult
practitioners and their works will be destroyed (Malachi 3:5;
Micah 5:12; Revelations 21:8; 22:15). Occult involvement
involves giving recognition and allegiance to a power or force
other than God. For that reason Scripture defines it as evil and
condemns it thoroughly.

ORIGINS OF OCCULT PHILOSOPHY:
WHEN DID THE BATTLE BEGIN?

Occultists often make the claim that their religion predates
Christianity and is indeed thousands of years old. Here we can
agree. Astrology and witchcraft began in the ancient city of
Babylon in excess of 5,000 years ago.17 But occult philosophy
predates ancient Babylon. It began in the mind of Lucifer
(Satan) and was first whispered to Eve in the garden.

It is the opinion of many Bible scholars that Genesis
chapter three contains the plot for the Conflict of the Ages and
the Drama of Redemption. What we also find in this chapter is
the essence of both occult doctrine and the truth about
redemption. Satan's lies, "You surely shall not die!" and ". . .
your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good
and evil" are the bases for false religion. In these lies are
embedded the doctrines of reincarnation, gnosticism, and samadhi
(a recognition of oneness with being itself). Some theologians
believe these occult doctrines were propagated on earth before
the flood by fallen angels (see Genesis 6).18

The ensuing results were the violence and bloodshed which
prompted God to judge the earth with a universal flood. After
the flood, these infernal ideas were somehow secretly passed on
until Nimrod, a great-grandson of Noah, created his religio-
political system known as the Babylonian mystery religion.19 It
is the thesis of this writer that if a genealogy of all false
religions could be drawn, all would be traceable to "Babylon, the
mother of all harlots" (Revelation 17).20 New religious cults
spring up every day, with different terminology and techniques
but with the same old Eastern-occult beliefs. The best modern
example is the religion of scientology. Its doctrines are
nothing but Eastern cosmology clothed in pseudoscientific
language.

THE APPEAL OF THE OCCULT:
HOW DO THEY GAIN RECRUITS?

The lure of the occult seems to be two-fold:
First, as one occult advertisement claims, "You will be
privy to knowledge that has been secretly maintained and passed
down by adepts (masters) for thousands of years and is now
available to only a few initiates. You will be in the know while
the rest of the unenlightened will have to suffer in ignorance."

Secondly, you will have power--the ultimate aphrodisiac.
You will be given secrets to harness a power that will enable you
to manipulate and control an environment that may seem out of
control. For any person frustrated in the areas of sex, romance,
vocation, or self-aggrandizement, the occult poses as a shortcut
to success.21

How do people actually get involved in the occult trap?
For many, an affinity for the occult is apparently inherited
from parents or grandparents. For an example of this, see the
tragic case of the late Bishop James A. Pike in THE HAUNTING OF
BISHOP PIKE by M. Unger, pp. 77ff.22

A second method of occult enslavement is by conscious
subscription--that is, by paying dues and undergoing initiation.

Third, many people come into occult bondage by participation
in what they consider innocent parlor games or entertainment.
Their involvement may begin by playing with ouija boards,
automatic writing, the pendulum, seances, levitation; or they may
be intrigued by the martial arts, Eastern forms of meditation,
submitting to spiritistic healing, drugs, hypnosis, and
acupuncture.

THE CURRENT INTELLECTUAL CLIMATE:
WHERE IS THE BATTLE TODAY?

Twenty or thirty years ago dabblers in the black arts would
more often than not be found among the poor and uneducated, or
among the idle wealthy. At that time, the black arts were not
taken seriously among the intelligentsia. Not so today!

One can now receive graduate degrees from several
universities in various areas of occult study. The nomenclature
has changed, but not the content. Though the courses are listed
as Altered Consciousness, Parapsychology, Past Lives Therapy,
Esoteric Studies in Transcendental Chimeras, Transpersonal
Counseling, and Holistic Healing, they remain, nonetheless,
occultic in nature.

What are some of the factors which precipitate such an
interest in the occult in our "enlightened" twentieth century?
First is the decline of confidence in rational empiricism.
According to Francis Schaeffer, today's philosophical trend is
toward the irrational and the mystical.23 The Existentialist
says, "Your mind is your enemy." Today's attitude on the campus
reflects this distrust in science as evidenced by the following
quotes by prominent academicians: "Science as we know it has
outlived its usefulness" (Harvard biologist Everett Mendelsohn).
"Reason is a limited skill . . . there is also spiritual
knowledge and power" (historian Theodore Rozak). "Equally
important are mystery, ambiguity, illogical contradiction, and
transcendent experience" (psychologist Abraham Maslow).24
Whereas these men are to be applauded for their recognition of
the insufficiency of rationalism to answer the great questions or
to satisfy the human heart, the answer is not to cast aside the
mind, but to humbly use the mind and heart to look for truth.

A second reason people are turning to occult philosophy is a
reaction to materialism and a search for a transcendent
experience. Through this search, many seek proof that man is
more than the machine the behaviorists suppose him to be. The
reaction has taken many forms: drugs, meditation, Eastern
religions, and a search for evidence of life after death.25

Third, the influence and increasing popularity of Eastern
religions has heightened occult awareness because both occult
practice and phenomena are integral parts of most Eastern
religions.26 Some music forms undoubtedly deserve a great deal
of credit for the sudden fascination with Eastern thought. (A
prime factor was the Beatles' conversion to Hinduism.) Charles
Reich, author of THE GREEING OF AMERICA, commented in ROLLING
STONE, "Rock today is a medium that can communicate almost
anything any of us feel or experience. The new music is the
chief language and means of communication for people of the new
consciousness."27

The acceptance of parapsychological research as a valid
academic endeavor is certainly another factor in the present
popularity of the occult. This field of study is in fact
becoming the most popular on campus. It began with the work of
J. B. Rhine at Duke University. Today, even the Soviet Union, a
nation with a purely materialistic view of reality, is reported
to be outspending the West in parapsychological research.28

Finally, the complexity and chaos of our modern society has
created a spiritual vacuum. There seems to be a great longing in
our society for the old ways, the simple, the less complicated,
and for many, the old and pagan religions. In an essay entitled
"The New Black Magic", TIME magazine makes this comment: "As
organized religion loses its appeal through stuffiness or
sterility, people seeking faith increasingly turn to mystical
religions . . . ."29 According to some of the nation's foremost
thinkers, science seems to be on the verge of a major conceptual
shift such as the Copernican or Darwinian revolutions. With the
startling evidence of UFOs and sub-atomic particles (quarks),
science fiction is again proving to be prophetic. Some
scientists are already moving toward mysticism and postulating
the existence of a non-material reality.

AN ENCOURAGING WORD:
IS IT POSSIBLE TO WIN THE WAR?

Surveying the extent of occult penetration in our society
can be a discouraging and frightening experience for a
Christian. On the positive side, we know Satan has been defeated
and that he and his demons, along with the Babylonian mystery
religions (occult systems), will be destroyed. On the negative
side, the Scriptures tell us that right now Satan is the god of
this world, the prince and power of the air, and that the whole
world lies in wickedness. in the meantime, how do we cope with
Satan and his forces while he is still "free on bail?" Several
suggestions:

1. The more familiar we are with God's truth (through the
study of His word), the more discerning we will be of the
counterfeit. Bankers can instantly spot counterfeit bills
because they are so familiar with the real thing. Know the
enemy, but be careful not to become too preoccupied with a study
of the enemy. Remember the fear of the Lord is the beginning of
knowledge (Proverbs 1:7). Try the spirits (1 Corinthians 12:3, 1
John 4:1-2).

2. Resist Satan by denouncing him and all his works (James
4:7, 1 Peter 5:8-10).

3. Destroy all occult books and paraphernalia in your
possession (Acts 19:8-20). Confess and repent of all occultic
involvement.

4. The spirit-filled believer has greater power within him
than is in the whole world's system (1 John 4:4). Through the
Holy Spirit, the bonds of the occult can be broken (Luke 10:17-
20).

5. When it seems as though the forces of evil are winning,
read the books of Habakkuk and Daniel. When afraid, read Psalm
91 and 1 Peter 5:6-7. Seek the fellowship and prayers of fellow
believers and the counsel of the spiritually mature. To do
battle, put on the whole armor of God (study Ephesians 6:10-12).

6. Be encouraged. Jesus prophesied to His disciples that
the gates of Hades would not prove stronger than the church
(Matthew 16:18). The picture Jesus paints is a walled city in
which Satan and his kingdom have taken refuge. The gates and
walls however, are no match for the battering rams of the Kingdom
of God. Many times Christians read this passage and get the
figure reversed. Jesus is not saying that the church is huddled
behind the walls with the forces of Satan trying to kick in the
gates. It's the other way around. The gates of hell are not
strong enough to prevail against the force of the gospel. We can
be optimistic. We must begin to think in these terms, and of
taking the offensive.

REFERENCES

1. For a good critique of fantasy games, see the report by:
Educational Research Analysts
P.O. Box 7518
Longview, Texas 75607
Ask for Handbook No. 23, "Dungeons and Dragons."

2. I refer here especially to the popular writer Arthur C.
Clarke of 2001 fame. Perhaps his most occultic book is
CHILDHOOD'S END.

3. See the "Holistic Health" issue of SPIRITURAL COUNTERFEITS
PROJECTS JOURNAL 2, No. 1 (August 1978), P. O. Box 4308,
Berkeley, CA 94704.

4. "Evil in California," ESQUIRE, March 1970.

5. See Robert M. Pirsig, ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE
MAINTENANCE (New York: Bantam Books, 1974).

6. Marilyn Ferguson, THE AQUARIAN CONSPIRACY: PERSONAL AND
SOCIAL TRANFORMATION IN THE 1980'S (Los Angeles: J. P.
Tarcher, Inc., 1980), pp. 34-35.

7. Ibid. See Chapter 6.

8. In reading these magazines one should be especially alert
to attempts to "scientize" ancient occult philosophy.
I also recommend THE TAO OF PHYSICS by Fritjof Capra,
published by Bantam Books and THE DANCING WULI MASTERS, by
Gary Zukav (William Morrow and Co.). These books attempt
to reconcile Eastern philosophy with Western science.

9. See the Spiritual Counterfeits Project pamphlet, OCCULT
PHILOSOPHY AND MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE, P. O. Box 4308,
Berkeley, CA 94704.

10. John Warwick Montgomery, PRINCIPALITIES AND POWERS rev. ed.
(Minneapolis: Dimension Books, 1975), p. 23.

11. See Gary North's discussion in NONE DARE CALL IT WITCHCRAFT
(New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1976), pp. 26-28.

12. Brooks Alexander, "The Rise of Cosmic Humanism: What is
Religion?" SPIRITUAL COUNTERFEITS PROJECT JOURNAL 1, no. 5
(Winter 81-82), p. 3. This is an excellent article in that
it shows the connection between cosmic humanism and secular
humanism.

13. The best refutation that this author has seen is the little
booklet by Robert A. Morey, HOROSCOPES AND THE CHRISTIAN
(Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany Book House, 1981).

14. There are those who believe that acupuncture may be
scientifically based. While this cannot be totally
disregarded, one should consider the following articles:
Kurt Koch, SATAN'S DEVICES (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel
Publications, 1978), pp. 5-11; Bob Larson, ACUPUNCTURE (Box
26438, Denver, CO 80226) 1975; and "A Critical Look at
Acupuncture" by Michael E. Debakey in READER'S DIGEST,
September 1973.

15. Jesus told the Samaritan woman that we are to worship God
in spirit and in truth (John 4:23, emphasis added).

16. When we are confronting the occult world we should always
be skeptical and suspicious of fraud. However, we must be
careful not to jump to false conclusions as many magicians
have done in the past. The great Houdini and the modern
magician Milbourne Christopher (see his book, MEDIUMS,
MYSTICS AND THE OCCULT) exposed the fraudulent techniques
of many occultists. But it is a mistake, we believe, to
conclude that because a magician can duplicate an occult
phenomenon, that all is an illusion. It is a mistake of
overgeneralization. Some well-meaning Christian magicians
are likewise guilty. (See THE FAKERS by Danny Korem and
Paul Meier, Baker Books, 1980).

17. Clifford Wilson, The OCCULT EXPLOSION (San Diego: Master
Books, 1976).

18. See James Gray, SPIRITISM AND THE FALLEN ANGELS (Old
Tappan, N.J.: Revell, 1920); and Fredrick A. Tatford, THE
PRINCE OF DARKNESS (Eastbourne, Sussex, England: Prophetic
Witness Publishing House, n.d.).

19. See Alexander Hislop, THE TWO BABYLONS (Neptune, N. Y.:
Loizeaux Brothers, 1916). We do not necessarily endorse
the conclusion of this book.

20. For some startling examples, see Bob Larson, BABYLON REBORN
(Carol Stream, Ill.: Creation House, 1976).

21. Satan's temptation of Christ involved a shortcut -- a
temptation that would have bypassed the cross (Matthew 4).

22. See also Kurt Koch's explanation in CHRISTIAN COUNSELING
AND THE OCCULT (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel Publications,
1965), pp. 154-62.

23. Francis Schaeffer, ESCAPE FROM REASON (Downers Grove,
Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1968).

24. "Reaching Beyond the Rational," TIME, 23 April 1973.

25. See the "Death and Dying" issue of SPIRITUAL COUNTERFEITS
PROJECT JOURNAL 1, No. 1 (April 1977), P. O. Box 4308,
Berkeley, CA 94704.

26. See Os Guinness, ENCIRCLING EYES, rev. ed. (Downers Grove,
Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1974), p. 15. This pamphlet is
a revised and updated version of chapter eight from his
book, THE DUST OF DEATH (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity
Press, 1973).

27. ROLLING STONE, 4 February 1971.

28. See Shelia Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, PSYCHIC
DISCOVERIES BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN (New York: Bantam
Books, 1970).

29. "The New Black Magic," TIME, 27 September 1968, p. 42.

Copyright 1994, by Bill Crouse.

Penalty of an Ancient Fraud

2009-03-10T15:16:00.001-07:00

http://www.serendipity.li/eden/penalty_of_an_ancient_fraud.htm

By John Kaminski
Why killing is the biggest business of all

And Moses said, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel: Pick up your swords, go from camp to camp,
every man shall kill his brother, every man shall kill his companion,
every man shall kill his neighbor. — Exodus 32:27

Their children shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled,
and their wives ravished. — Isaiah 13:16

And you shall eat the flesh of your sons and daughters. — Leviticus 26:29

Their town is all green graves, and blood under the feet of its men.
— Aneirin, Welsh poet, c. A.D. 660

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
... Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded ....
— T.S. Eliot, "What the thunder said," A.D. 1922

When you become aware of a fleeting thought and try to catch it, it always seems to disappear. But if you try to walk away from it, it pursues you like a shadow, an invisible wraith of foreboding that lurks behind your left shoulder. Uneasily, you turn around to face it, and once again it is not there.

They are numbers on a newspaper page. Silhouettes on a TV screen. Imaginary insects tickling the back of your neck. Objects of hatred targeted by the pastor's pointing finger. Terrorists lurking in your own neighborhood, aiming to blow you up.

Who are these people we feel we must kill in order to assure our own safety, to validate and verify our own lives? Who are these faceless savages who give us nightmares, and accelerate the sales of drugs to calm us down.

Yesterday they were the Palestinians. In our minds we were taught to see beasts with dynamite-encased ribcages ready to shatter our lives on a moment's notice. In reality today we see desperate children throwing stones at Apache helicopters, then lying in the street bleeding after Israeli target practice.

Before that there were the niggers, coming to rape your white daughters. Subsequent exercises in reason reveal to most of us they were really innocent African abductees dangling from a tree limb in a drunken Southern town.

And before that there were those filthy savages called Indians, on whom white Europeans perfected their genocide techniques that became America's principal export, a social technique which — when combined with the latest style in weaponry — provided those in the United States with their much-admired level of prosperity. Subsequent perspective on these forgotten souls — these native Americans — has never evolved, and to this day, they are abused and ravished by the local cops.

Today's terrorists du jour are Iraqis (and Arabs in general), the ungrateful recipients of radioactive gifts from that high-tech plantation called America.

Wrapped in tiny shawls and speaking an odd language (as enemies usually do), they bring us nightmare bombs that manifest the threat we must overcome to stay alive, that give us our reasons for productivity and ingenuity. Funny how it works that way, how civilization evolves responding to threats, whether real or imagined.

Suicide bombers! Splashing the entrails of our own fear all over the front pages of our shrewdly designed existences. Funny how when you see how these creatures of horror evolved, we appear to have invented them ourselves, right in the pages of the Old Testament. You could also call it the Torah, but doing that allows Christians to evade responsibility for this violent horror that grips the world, and it would not be fair to do that, to pin everything on the Jews.

The one good thing about both creeds is that they both stress personal responsibility, and that's what we're trying to define here. That's true, even though they both advocate killing those whose property you covet, as the excerpted quotes at the top of this essay so aptly illustrate.

Few of us ever contemplate that these terrorist threats are works of fiction, crafted by those with an ulterior motive. Usually that motive, if history is any guide, is about stealing someone's land. When you read about so-called villains, the horror is created to achieve the objectives of someone who gains something from creating that threat. As I said, it's usually about land. Or if not, about a very lucrative commodity.

Perhaps it goes back to Cain and Abel, or Abraham and his two sons, one of whom was disinherited, and traces directly to the giant wall the erstwhile sons of Isaac are currently building in the West Bank. After all these centuries, still trying to deny the rightful patrimony of their brothers. And murdering their first-cousins at will. And with glee.

There are innumerable instances of righteous killing of those who had something we wanted. Our civilization is built on these lessons. We are still practicing them.

Justice always takes a back seat to avarice because it is conveniently created and administered by those with power over others.

Those who pretend to be religious are only pretending. The laws of God are contrived to facilitiate theft, not forgiveness.

Yet the thought is fleeting. When you turn around to face it it's not there, like a faint but painful memory of some childhood sexual trauma.

Fleeting. And our lives are wasted with murder and mayhem, scarred on our souls like a planet turned to ash by the poisons of our own desires.

Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, what a duplicitous gift you give us. Sweet reverie, how could we kill without you? But we have our Holy Orders!

Somehow our well-being is tied up with having enemies: Palestinian grasshoppers, black rapists, Indian savages. And tied into religion. Defeating death. Repelling the infidel. Planting the flag of Christ in some foreigner's land.

We know who most of yesterday's enemies are. They're still bleeding, those beleaguered few still left alive.

Conject, if you will, on whom tomorrow's enemies may be. And the lies that will be used to condemn them. Chances are good, if history is any guide, it will involve land. And precious commodities of some sort.

Certainly, Bush/Kerry has the Venezuelans in its gun sights. There is simply too much oil there to be left in the hands of people with such dark skin. And Lula's Brazil would be a natural progression once South Guanatamo is established in Caracas, although the Brazilians are reportedly close to perfecting their own nukes, and we all know the United States doesn't pick on countries which can actually fight back.

Which is why — OK, also because of Wal-Mart — that the U.S. will never go after China. Much too tough. Their day is coming. Hell, the U.S. isn't even tough enough to stop the Aztlantics from grabbing San Francisco, Santa Fe and San Antonio, something that will probably happen in the 21st century.

But the Lord says it's cool to kill people for their possessions. And the human race is apparently not ready to distinguish between the spoken words of God and the satanic scribblings of the pederastic priests who interpose their deluded dogma and insist it is the wish of the Messiah.

I lately have been deluged by letters from "concerned" Christians for blaming their faith in my "Fallujah" piece (see http://www.serendipity.li/iraqwar/hallelujah_in_fallujah.htm). Makes me realize how sick this religion is, in that so many people would be more worried about saving their selfish souls than in the unjust butchery of innocent people. That is not how to save your soul, people, and the principal thing that is absolutely wrong with all religions.

Got another note from a feller in Mississippi who actually bought one of my books but had to send me a little comic book illustrating why it was more important to "keep the Lord's holy word" than it was to do good works. It depicted a couple, who had spent their lives feeding the poor, meeting a man who had committed murder but who had "accepted" Christ. At the end, when they meet their maker, the wrathful God welcomes the reformed killer but sends the altruistic old couple straight to hell, pontificating that it doesn't matter what good works you do — it only matters if you follow the word of God.

This may explain why I have such contempt for religion.

I have nothing against God, but religions are pure evil. Simply mind control propaganda meant to assure the serene unconsciousness and political ineffectivness of the deceived populace.

Why is it that bullets and holy men in black cassocks always seem to go together?

In this world we try to find someone to look down our noses at, someone who makes us feel that we are better than them. Who is it that declares these evil infidels? How many pagans were slaughtered by the fledging Constantinian church?

I suggest that the true pariahs are the ones who create these distinctions: the Brahmins, the British, the Americans, the white Europeans who propagandize these falsely discriminatory distinctions and teach our children to kill because of the color of someone's skin.

It's all a ruse to begin with. It's not really about lineage; it's about cold hard cash.

The true villains on this Earth are those who enslave and exploit, who manipulate and massacre to prove to themselves they are the superior ones, when all they are proving is that they are the weak and evil ones. This concept of elite respectability is a sham anyway, since most fortunes in this world were built on illegal activity, from British drug smugglers to Israeli arms merchants to American drug profiteers. As they say, "behind every great fortune is a great crime."

So it is with Western history. The people who wrote the Bible were the bad guys, who went around killing everyone and then invented noble-sounding reasons for doing so. And we Americans, with our vaunted Western civilization, are their literal heirs, in every sense of the word. We have perfected killing and destruction as the highest art form of human civilization.

All the while marching on subliminal orders from the Old Testament.

In Richard Duncan's very scary piece on the savage world he predicts will develop at the shocking end of the age of oil (http://dieoff.com/page224.htm) he foresees it is the indigenous people who will fare the best, because they are well prepared for living close to the land without canned food and automatic can openers. Said the pessimistic geologist, "If God made the earth for human habitation, then He made it for the Stone Age mode of habitation."

And I am constantly reminded of Ernest Becker's maxim: "The greatest evil in human history is material production."

Something to keep in mind when you realize the elite are now trying to kill us all off with biotech food that curdles your insides, with aluminium and barium poisoning from the sky that clogs your lungs with hard mucous, with designer prescription drugs designed to make you more dependent on even more poisonous medications, with brain-numbing flouride in the water, with gene-shattering aspartame in our soft drinks, with radioactive polonium in our cigarettes ... it's all too clear that the preconscious triggers from all our religions and philosophies are predicated on self-destruction over our obsessive guilt that we die — and that our loved ones must die — and we can do nothing about it.

It's so clear why we are hellbent to destroy ourselves, and it is best reflected in my favorite Bible quote of all — Deuteronomy 28:56-58:

If your mother does not obey all of God's holy laws, she will be forced to eat her own children!

Come back to Earth, people, before it's too late. If you cling to your hope of heaven, and forget to heal the wounds of those you have injured because of that hope of heaven, it will surely produce exactly what it is aimed at — the death of us all.

It takes a little more understanding than that to truly live. It takes understanding that the messages in the holy books are only false justifications for killing our brothers and sisters. And it is in that sense that God has truly become the devil.

People are always asking me to stop complaining and suggesting something positive they can do fix the evil in this world. Well, here's an idea.

Boycott your churches. Snub your synagogues. Ignore your mosques. Until those preachers come out foursquare for peace and justice, refuse to accept their pitiful propaganda.

The minute you start worrying about your immortal soul is exactly the point at which you lose it.

Besides, that's not God who resides in most houses of worship anyway. It's Moloch! It's Baal. It's Marduk. It's definitely Mammon. The Evil One, posing as your deity, teaching you how to pretend to be good rather than actually teaching you how to be good.

Tell your pastor you have a higher standard of morality than he is able to reach, as long as he keeps preaching that Old Testament bigotry and stays silent about America's mass murder of innocents for reasons that are provable lies. What kind of morality is silence about that? Ask him. Tell him. Stand up for what's right.

Quit worrying about your soul. It will take care of itself. Besides, if you're an American you've already lost your soul anyway. You have almost no chance of getting it back.

The only thing God really cares about is how you treat others.

And bombing innocent people in order to steal their land and their valuable possessions, as that fake God in the Old Testament incessantly recommends, doesn't really cut it, does it?

A Dangerous Delusion

2009-03-10T15:12:00.000-07:00

http://www.serendipity.li/eden/dangerous_delusion.htm

by Sue Blackmore

By thinking of religion in terms of evolutionary theory we can see just how and why the major religions of today are so harmful.

First, which God am I talking about? Not Einstein's God, the God of the deists, or what Stephen Hawking or Paul Davies refer to as "the mind of God," for their God amounts to the entirety of the universe, or the laws of physics. If you ask "why is there something rather than nothing?" or "what came before the big bang?" and you answer "God", belief in that God makes no difference to your daily life, or to morality and responsibility, nor does it cause people to band into groups, exclude outsiders, commit atrocities or justify wars.

No, I'm talking about the God of the great monotheistic religions, the vile and vengeful God of the Qur'an and the Old Testament, the God who supposedly made us in his own image, who answers prayers even though the world remains full of suffering, who exhorts us to love and feel compassion while threatening to kill the infidel and punish the unbeliever forever, and who fights on both sides of every war.

Belief in this kind of God is dangerous indeed, but I suspect its danger is different for individuals than for whole societies. For a single individual, living in a generally unbelieving or secularist, tolerant, and open society, belief may be a good thing — for that person. In times of fear, loneliness or bereavement, it's nice to believe that there's someone powerful out there who knows you deeply and cares what happens to you. When difficult choices loom, it helps to think there's a guiding hand. I suspect that for many of the 40% of Britons found in a survey last week to pray regularly, their God fills this role. We know that most of them do not go to church or worship regularly, and they probably do not take on board much of what is required of a committed Christian or Muslim. In other words they feel free to believe in a God of their own choosing. Surely there's no harm in this is there?

Maybe not, but as Sam Harris argues, in The End of Faith, moderate believers like this implicitly encourage the idea that faith is something to be respected — that it's all right to believe in completely ludicrous things for which there is no evidence. And this in turn encourages religious faith, which is where the real dangers begin.

You may have noticed an analogy here with game theory in biology, where what is good for the individual is not necessarily good for the group or the species. For example, there can be species in which most individuals behave altruistically towards each other and so benefit the whole group. But then it pays individuals to cheat and take the benefits without paying their way to everyone else. The result can be the complete elimination of the altruistic behaviour, or else a settling down into a stable state in which the wider group fights back but tolerates a certain proportion of freeloaders.

This is just an analogy, but there are good reasons for thinking of religions in terms of evolutionary theory — although in terms of cultural, or memetic evolution rather than biological. This way we can see just how and why the major religions of today are so horribly dangerous.

There has long been dispute between believers who claim that their particular religion was created by God and that their holy book (whichever one it might be) is "the word of God," and those who say that religions are man-made. Scholarship and historical and archaeological research naturally support the latter, but I'd rather forget that distinction and not think about religions as having been made up by particular individuals, but as having evolved over long periods of time, using lots of people as their copying and selecting machinery.

This way of thinking means inverting our normal way of thinking about ourselves and, to use Richard Dawkins's term, taking the meme's-eye view. Just as biologists have found it useful to take the gene's eye view — asking why and how this particular gene has survived — so we can look at religions as vast cooperating systems of memes, and then ask why this meme survived. Why are these words, stories, songs, artefacts, practices, clothes and rituals here today in Christianity, in Islam, in Judaism? Not because God gave them to us, not because someone or some group of people deliberately put them together to make a religion, but because they, the memes, the bits and pieces of behaviours and practices, out-competed their rivals to pull through over thousands of years and still lodge themselves in people's brains today.

Think of the times in which the great religions began, indeed think of much of the centuries since. All over the world, in villages, towns, or in great city states, there would appear epileptics who saw visions, fascinating visionaries, charlatans who worked miracles by trickery, orators of great skill and persuasiveness, and all sorts of other types who would collect around them small groups of followers. They still appear today and form cults that thrive for a while, and then usually die out. Human nature being what it is, their members want their own group to grow, and so bring in their friends, and persuade others that they have the answer to life's miseries and mysteries, or that they are superior to outsiders.

Different groups adopt different practices. Some of these routines, ways of talking, rituals, markers or special clothes prove attractive to people and so flourish and spread. Ineffective practices and beliefs fizzle out. This is just a simple evolutionary process — competition for survival — only the competition is between beliefs, practices, stories and habits to get lodged in human brains and passed on. Indeed it is a competition between beliefs to take over human copying machinery and make it work to spread those beliefs.

As the competition gets fiercer, free floating beliefs fail to compete. The ones that succeed are more like organisms that protect themselves and use tricks and clever adaptations to ensure their survival and propagation. And so they build up in complexity. This is, I suggest, the right way to understand how we got the religions we have today.

When you see religions as mind viruses that evolved over thousands of years in competition with other, similar, mind viruses, it's easy to see why they have acquired the powerful adaptations they have. Just as animals acquired teeth and claws, beaks and jaws, mimicry and trickery, so religions have acquired their own weapons and tricks. They protect themselves with threats and promises — and not just any old threats and promises. Some are promises of everlasting pain or eternal bliss — only you can't check whether they're true because you'll only find out after you're dead. Others are immediate threats that can be checked — that if you reject a belief you never chose in the first place but were landed with as a baby, you'll be killed. And this is happening even here in Britain. The founder of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain has had numerous death threats for trying to help Muslims let go of their imposed beliefs.

Then there are subtler adaptations — what about claiming natural human mystical experiences as religious experiences or visions of God? Or claiming that morality comes from God rather than from human nature, so undermining people's confidence in their own moral decisions. Believers frequently claim that rejecting belief in God would lead people to immorality, murder and mayhem. What little research there is so far suggests quite the reverse. A recent study comparing developed nations showed that the more religious nations also had higher rates of murder, suicide, teenage pregnancy and violent crime — precisely those behaviours that most religions prohibit.

A really clever trick — and I'm not sure how the great religions have managed to pull this one off — is to make the rest of us feel that we ought to respect people for believing impossible things on faith, and that we should not laugh at them for fear of offending them. In a society that strives for honesty and openness, that values scientific and historical truth, and that encourages the search for knowledge, this is outrageous — and it's scary that we still fall for it.

Then there's the cost of believing. Many are tempted by Pascal's Wager: if I deny that God exists and I'm wrong, oops I might really go to hell, but if I believe in him and I'm wrong there is no problem. But there is a problem — the enormous cost of belief. There is not only the mental and intellectual burden of having to take on false, disturbing and incompatible beliefs, but the cost in time and money. Religious memes capture people's time to get themselves spread. Just as the common cold virus makes people sneeze to get itself spread, so religions make people sings hymns and say prayers, and chant and so spread the word of God. They also induce them to part with large sums of money to build glorious mosques, churches and synagogues and to pay the wages of priests who in turn spread the word of God.

And how did they get this way? They got this way because less effective versions of the religions, with less dangerous tricks and weapons, failed to infect enough people.

That is why belief in God is not just a harmless choice; it is a dangerous delusion.

Copyright 2007 Sue Blackmore

Sue Blackmore is the author of The Meme Machine (O.U.P, 1999).

This article first appeared in the U.K. Guardian's
Comment Is Free, November 13, 2007.

On God

2009-03-10T15:11:00.000-07:00

http://www.serendipity.li/god.htm

There are two fundamental errors which are often made in thinking about God. The first (and worse error) is that God is "out there". The second (and better error) is that God is "within".

The claim that God is "out there" is common to the Western monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This is the most pernicious error ever to have corrupted spiritual thinking. To say that God is "out there" is to imply that one is separate from God, and renders God an object, to which can be attributed various qualities. Among the most common of these are the alleged qualities of being a ruler, a lawgiver, a judge, a delegator of authority, an interested party in the conflicts that humans wage among themselves. In such conflicts it is always asserted that "God is on our side" against those perceived as "the enemy". Such an assertion is then used to justify acts of barbarity, such as the slaughtering of the enemy — "in the name of God" of course.

To believe that God is "out there" is to believe that God and oneself are separate. This is a basic error. There can be nothing other than God. To believe that from God can come something which is not of the substance of God is absurd. All that exists is within God. This includes everything that makes up the being you think of as yourself, including your body and your mind. Your body is not made of some kind of "matter", basically dead and lifeless, as materialist scientists would have you believe. Your body is of the same substance as God, and insofar as we can distinguish body from mind, your mind is also of the same substance as God.

This is hidden in normal consciousness because constant awareness of this would hinder the concentration needed to survive in the physical world. An animal needs to be alert to dangers which threaten its existence, and to attend too much to the presence of God in its own body would distract from this alertness.

Christians claim that Jesus Christ was an incarnation of God. That's true. Where they err is in denying that anyone else was or is an incarnation of God. In fact all humans are an incarnation of God, indeed, all animals, all plants and all organisms are an incarnation of God. Anything which has a physical body and which acts so as to maintain itself in existence is an incarnation of God. Of course, these various incarnations of God differ widely in the quality of their awareness of themselves and their environment. Where Jesus differed was in the nature of his spiritual awareness. To claim uniqueness for Jesus it would be necessary to claim uniqueness for this spiritual awareness, a claim which is difficult to justify.

There is only one being, here called God, and this being is one of unlimited love-intelligence-energy (since there is no other being which could limit it). There is no limit to the ways in which this energy can organize itself and manifest itself in various spaces, times and spatiotemporal structures. This divine energy can be directly experienced. It can be experienced as a high-frequency vibration. (The string theorists in physics are probably getting close to a proper description of the fundamental physical entities in the physical world when they posit vibrating "strings".) By means of meditation, breathing practices, psychedelic drugs and sacred plants, a combination of these, or simply through divine grace, one can become aware of this energetic vibration manifesting in one's own body. What one is experiencing is God directly.

In such experience one is not experiencing a God which is outside one's body. One's body is part of God, which is why one can have this experience. What is experienced is not some effect of God, it is God. But, of course, only a part of God. As St. Thomas Aquinas said, "What is received is received according to the nature of the recipient." So when we experience God directly we experience God only in the manner in which, as experiencing beings of a certain kind, we are capable of experiencing God. God is vastly greater than anything we can experience of God; we can obtain just a glimpse, but a glimpse sufficient to produce both awe and humility.

But this does not mean that God is anything like what the Jewish, Christian and Islamic theologians claim. Nothing in this experience suggests that God is a lawgiver, a judge of human actions or a commander sitting in heaven directing human affairs. Such notions have been foisted on the gullible to facilitate social and political control. In one's more fanciful moments it is perhaps permissible to anthropomorphize God in the way that the Hindus do — Shiva as realizer of cosmic consciousness, Kali as (sometimes destructive) mother of all, Radha and Krishna as divine lovers, and so on — but this is simply to make it easier for those people who cannot experience God directly (as Sat-Chit-Ananda) to relate to or think of God, especially with the addition of an emotional component.

This view of God is consistent with a Buddhist view of the world, even though Buddhism is generally described as atheistic. The Buddha's teaching of anatman can be understood as asserting that there is no individual being (atman) which is separate from that-which-is (Tathata, Suchness). It is a delusion to think of oneself as a being separate from the world, an individual. Certainly as a physical being one strives to preserve one's existence, but identification of oneself with one's physical body and its well-being and preservation produces all the suffering (and some joy) that flesh is heir to, but really one is not separate from the that-which-is, here called God, and abandoning this false identification is the way out of suffering, for those who prefer to go in this direction.

The other error mentioned above, that God is "within", is not an error insofar as the assertion draws attention to the fact that we may experience God as within ourselves (since we are part of God), but it is an error if the assertion is interpreted to mean that what is "without" — the physical world that we see about us — is not also God. Spinoza was correct when he equated Nature with God (though God extends further than what we see as the natural world). All things are God, the animals, the trees, even the rocks and the oceans are a part of God, since there is nothing which is not God.

So don't be fooled by any priest or cleric who claims that God is "out there" — especially if he then proceeds to act as if he were some kind of intermediary between you and God, or as if he knew what God thinks or wants or intends you to do. (And especially don't buy into the fraudulent claim that you are a sinner, deserving punishment, but will be saved if you just believe and do what you're told to.) Just say (in thought if not in deed), "No, thanks, I am (a part of) God and I don't need anyone else to tell me how to think or what to do."

God is in you and acts in and through you. Your only obligation is to become aware of this, to free yourself from subservience to authority and to become as far as possible a channel for this divine love-intelligence-energy in its creative expression.

The Tyranny of Faith

2009-03-10T15:10:00.000-07:00

http://www.metahistory.org/FaithlessAndFree.php

Reflections on the Death of a Patriarch

As I write these words, an estimated three million people are gathered in Rome to observe the funeral services of Pope John Paul II who died on April 3. The figure is impressive, and this is just the people who have come to Rome for the event, not those already there. News commentators marvel at this tremendous “outpouring of humanity.” On the day of the event, and for long afterwards, we can expect to be barraged by close-up images of people in prayer, bereaved, devout, reverent, their faces and indeed their entire bodies seized by deep emotion.

What are they feeling? What do they believe? Why are they there?

The Placebo Effect

We tend to assume we all know the answers to these questions, more or less clearly. We also assume that those participating in the event also know the answers.

Granted, the participants know why they are there. They are moved by emotions rooted in their faith, and they have reasons relating to their deepest, most cherished beliefs concerning God, humanity, and the world. The strength of their faith does not incline them—nor does it permit them—to put any of these factors in question. At a moment such as this, faith prevails. Faith leads. Faith decides how people will act by a power all its own.

Faith may be defined as the power invested in beliefs, but, more precisely, the power invested in unquestioned beliefs. It could as well be said: the power derived from unquestioned beliefs. The strength of faith consists in its not being questioned, challenged, doubted. Once it is put in doubt, faith weakens. Hence, the beliefs associated with faith must remain unquestions for faith to stand.

The dynamic of faith is extremely difficult to grasp, because faith seems to have an almost magical ability to grant power to those who give power to it. This dynamic has been called the placebo effect. It works with many things, from medicines to mantras. The efficacy of a placebo inheres in a feedback loop: it gives power to those who give it power. For instance, taking the Host at Mass gives power to those who give it power. To those who give it no power, it is ineffectual.

However, the placebo effect does not consist just in this two-way exchange. There is a trick involved: the returning power of the placebo (be it an object, such as the Host, or an idea, such as grace) appears to be independent of the power granted to it in the first place. The feedback is effective, and tends to quell any doubting or critical observation, because the way it works tends to conceal the true nature of this exchange: giving away power to get power. Those who receive the Host in Catholic mass, believing in the independent power of the Host, get back far more through their faith than they give. Or so it appears.

But the operation of faith here is deceiving. We are not yet at the core dynamic of the placebo effect. There is another layer of dissimulation at work. The placebo effect makes it appear as if believers get more than they give (first level of dissimilation), but in reality believers may be giving more than they get (the second, deeper level of dissimilation). The placebo effect is wonderful, and really works, otherwise there would not be so many deeply religious people in the world, but what goes without notice is the investment that must be made to get a convincing return.

It has been said that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little faith can also be dangerous. The old adage suggests that knowledge becomes safer as it increases. Unlike knowledge, faith can become even more dangerous as it increases. Its hidden dynamic makes it almost impossible for the faithful to see what they are giving in return for the boost they get from their beliefs. And the bigger the boost of faith, the more must given. It could happen that believers give away what is most precious in their humanity, that which lives in the unsounded depths of human potential, without knowing what they are losing, or even that they are losing anything at all. The returning effect of faith, the boost, fills the void inside, but never fills it completely, for the power rendered to the placebo always exceeds the power that comes back from it. The second dissimulation, hiding what is given away, conceals the huge inegality that makes the exchange work so effectively. The inability to see this double-dissimulating dynamic, and measure its toll upon the human spirit, is the immense, unspeakable tragedy of human faith.

Prudential Morality

The Abrahamic religions have existed since 600 BCE (Judaism, founded on the codification of the Torah under King Josiah), 33 CE (Christianity, founded on the fable of the god-man, Jesus Christ) and 600 CE (Islam, founded on a book attributed to a male “prophet” whose authority exceeds all others), and humanity may not be getting any better for them. The trajectory of these 2600 years is one long jagged plunge into terror and destruction. Whatever good has been achieved in the name of these religions (and may well have been achieved without them, if we believe in the basic goodness of humanity – more below) has been massively overruled by the behavioral insanity demonstrated through the ages by believers, behavior that is now culminating in the threat of a global holocaust, eagerly awaited, and perhaps deliberately precipitated, but a great number of the faithful.

Things in the world stand today as they have for a long time already: the most violent, threatening developments on the planet are driven by religious beliefs drawn from the three Abrahamic creeds. The worst hatred confronting humanity is, and always has been, “sectarian” hatred. Why?

One explanation is: Abrahamic religion is the supreme expression of patriarchy, and patriarchy, by definition, is a program of control by covert psychological coercion and overt violence. Patriarchy has been called dominator culture or domination culture. Discussing this term in an interview for The Sun Magazine, Marshall Rosenberg closely relates the act of domination to “salvationism.” He uses this term in the context of research conducted by Milton Rokeach:

Rosenberg: Social psychologist Milton Rokeach did some research on religious practitioners in the seven major religions. He looked at people who very seriously followed their religion and compared them to people in the same population who had no religious orientation at all. He wanted to find out which group was more compassionate. The results were the same in all the major religions: the nonreligious were more compassionate.
("Beyond Good & Evil: Marshall Rosenberg On Creating a Nonviolent World," in The Sun, Issue 326, February 2003. Rosenberg is an author, and founder and director of the Center for Nonvolent Communication: www.cnvc.org.)
The Sun inverviewer remarks, “The idea that we are evil and must become holy implies moralistic judgment.” Rosenberg replies: “Oh, amazing judgment! Rokeach calls that judgmental group the Salvationists.”

Judgment is a basic element in the salvationist program. Jehovah judges, Christ judges, Allah judges. All the creeds are unanimous on this point. Bear in mind that "You are judged by God" is a human statement, made by men who claim to be emissaries of the judgmental father-son deities. This assertion that God judges us exemplifies the tactic of the Abrahamic religions: a man tells us what God wants of us. Presumably, the man who speaks in this way has been previously briefed by God. That is an issue of faith. Patriarchial religion demands that we believe the men who speak for God, that we take them on their word, which is God's word. And consistent with the violence inherent to patriarchy, the word of God is threatening, menacing. God judges you, so you must do this and that in order to be well judged, to get good marks, to have your soul saved by the very entity who threatens to condemn it. The threat tactic is very effective in setting up a social control program.

Millions of people submit to this tactic. Bear in mind, however, that submission is gained from an early age, when the believer-to-be is weak and impressionable. The tactic is applied within families, exerted on children before they can even speak, and enforced in all kinds of ways. No choice is involved in adopting the belief that God rewards those who obey His rules as defined by the men like John Paul II. Children have this belief laid into them long before they can question or protest it. Later in life dissent is nearly impossible. The die is cast.

Walter Kaufmann proposed the term "prudential morality" for the kind of behavior that results from threat tactics: people act kindly toward others because it is prudent to do so, because it increases the odds they will be saved and rewarded, rather than damned and punished. In The Faith of a Heretic, he makes the observation that “the notion of a deed done for its own sake is unknown in the Old Testament.” Everything is done prudentially, as a means to an end. The universal end, the transcendent purpose of doing good, is the eternal salvation of the soul of the doer. It takes faith to act morally, because prudential action assumes that its reward comes in another world, through the agency of an invisible spiritual power, whose existence must be taken on faith.

Kaufmann is one of the rare few who has the courage to argue that morality is possible without coercion, without the prudential ethics policy. This argument is regarded with deep suspicion by people of strong faith, because religious people consider that irreligious people are, by definition, immoral. The belief that there is no morality without a religious framework (divine commands, reward and punishment for the soul) is a classic example of the placebo effect: the more you believe there can be no morality without religion, the more potent religion becomes in your life. Kaufmann would observe that in holding this belief, the individual is giving away their power of moral choice, rooted in the essential goodness of human nature. But as we have seen, the hidden dynamic of faith makes it almost impossible for the believers to see what they are giving away to their faith. Or even that they are giving anything away at all.

Perversely Overwhelmed

In the extortionist framework of patriarchal religion, human action has no authenticity apart from the framework of redemption, human kindness has no value except as a means to an end. A deed done for its own sake, for the pleasure of seeing someone benefit, and, indeed, for the sheer pleasure of performing it, is not forbidden, but it is assumed that we are unlikely to perform such a deed, left to our basic inclinations. To act morally we must go against our natural inclinations, for they will never lead us to do good. The belief hidden in this view of human nature is that we are innately corrupt. Therefore, prudential morality appeals to those who believe they are corrupt. Or, to peer through yet another lay of dissimulation, who have been made to believe they are corrupt.
Patriarchal authorities such as John Paul II insist that we need the Redeemer because we are corrupt. But what if we are corrupted by needing the Redeemer?

The redeemer complex is the set of beliefs that provides the theological basis of the salvationism common to the Abrahamic religions. Many beliefs cluster in this complex, but two are primal and essential: the belief that the suffering of the Redeemer atones for human sin, and the belief that the Redeemer is an immortal, superhuman being. Thus, the Redeemer serves a dual purpose: he insures us that our suffering is meaningful, or will be rewarded or compensated, and he presents an ideal for the world to follow. The ideal (or idol, if you will) is superhuman, and giving credence to the superhuman model of humanity seems to return a terrific boost of faith.

But what is more productive and sane, in human terms: living up to a possible ideal, or to an impossible (i.e., superhuman) one? It is difficult for believers in the redeemer complex to formulate this question. Why? Because the placebo effect operates at a terrific return on the superhuman model: give power to it, and you get or seem to get a lot more back, an enormous return. The belief that human suffering is somehow connected to the suffering of a divine being is probably the most powerful placebo known to humankind. But if the above analysis of the dynamics of faith is true, what has to be given away to get this kind of return?

What if adopting a superhuman model for humanity requires the inner surrender of our humanity? The terrible truth is, it might really be that simple.

The crowds are gathered in Rome to honor the life of a role model for humanity, yes, but they may also be there because they have surrendered something deep in their own humanity, and the aching emptiness so produced acts like a reverse vaccuum, sucking them into the collective wave of experience. Faith can reward us generously for what it takes away from us by stealth, through our feat of self-deception.

Does it sound arrogant to propose that millions who are deeply moved by the death of the pope are deluding themselves in their religious beliefs? Perhaps it does, but the suggestion is not original to this writer. Almost two thousand years ago, people in the ancient world who witnessed the rise of the redeemer complex were deeply critical of the what they saw, and deeply concerned about how the salvationist belief-system would affect humanity:

Those who become enmeshed with the authorities [of the salvationist system] shall become their prisoners, due to their lack of perception. On the guileless, good and pure among you, the authorities will impose a deathlike burden, a kingdom of enslavement for those who expect Christ to restore them. And they will praise those who allow the propagation of falsehood… They will cling to the name of a mere dead man, Jesus, thinking they will become pure. They will become greatly defiled and will fall into the name of error, and under the power of evil, cunning agents and diverse dogmas, they will be perversely overwhelmed.
(From The Apocalypse of Peter, VII, 3.74, Nag Hammadi Codices.)
The people who viewed the emergent religion of Christianity, and its Jewish precedent, the Abrahamic religion of the Torah, in this manner were called gnostokoi, "those who know about divine things." They were branded as heretics, persecuted, driven underground, and, in some cases, murdered by the converts to the new religion with its message of peace, tolerance and divine love (if you believe that was its message).

The Gnostic Protest

Heresy derives from a Greek word meaning “able to choose.” A heretic is “one who embraces heresy,” but heresy is not a preset body of doctrines comparable to the orthodox doctrines it opposes. Heresy is an alternative way of looking at issues that are defined, once and for all, in unchallenged beliefs and doctrinal and dogmatic propositions set forth as the sole truth by self-defined groups or institutions. In all cases of patristic religious extortion, the tradition of orthodoxy relies on a story, a sacred narrative about how certain men, at a certain time and place, received instructions from the Creator God. Whatever does not fit into this story is condemned as heresy. In 425 CE heresy was declared by Roman authorities a crime punishable by death. That law has never been rescinded.

But the Gnostics, as those heretics are now known, challenged male spiritual authority head on. They confronted patriarchy on its deepest terrain, the spiritual control strategy of salvationism. This is not a message of divine truth, they protested, it is a sick, self-consoling deception of the human soul, and the pretext for brutal political ideology.

Christian religion is associated with brotherly love, forgiveness, and acts of altruism. Gnostics did not protest against any of these attributes, but it was also obvious them that Christians did not have a monopoly here. What they rejected specifically was the redeemer complex, a theological system which they, as specialists in divine matters, were well qualified to analyse and refute.

Christianity is a religion advocated by billions of people, but rarely chosen by anyone. The same could be said of Judaism and Islam, the two other world-scale religions derived from the Abrahamic cult of the ancient Hebrews. Those who belong to these faiths rarely join them by choice. Once joined to the fold of the faithful, they are rarely left free to consider the choice of looking elsewhere. Almost without exception, conversion occurs under huge psychological pressure and mass persuasion. Often it takes the collective mania of 60,000 people in a football stadium to induce it. Cases of individual conversion through visionary experience are extremely rare, and tend to produce borderline heretics, like St Teresa of Avila, who threaten authority and splinter the institution into factions. Those who receive their convictions via family, culture, and race, remain ardently attached to their faith because it gives them identity and solidarity, and because they are not presented with viable alternatives.

Adoption of religious beliefs happens without a critical quest for truth, but the beliefs so adopted come to be regarded as absolutely true.

Evil and Ignorance

If I were mingling among those crowds and let my thoughts be known, the fine young Poles who have ridden 30 hours by train to pay their last respects to the Holy Father would not judge me for my heretical views, or at least they would not let on that they do. I am certain they would find it difficult to admit that they stand in judgement of me, and of themselves... Perhaps they would argue, "No, we do not judge, we cannot. It is God who judges." But this is more self-serving dissimulation. Those young, vibrant people are condemned to judge by their belief in their own corruption, their "fallen state" in theological terms. In Poland strict Catholic education is compulsory from the age of three. Since they could barely talk, they have judged themselves under the coercion of beliefs imposed on them, which they now regard as their most cherished convictions. Patriarchy must first corrupt those it would claim to save through the redeemer complex, because an uncorrupted person would immediately and instinctively reject the idea of redemption.

Like all other adherents to the Salvationist creeds, the young Poles hold their beliefs to be true, but not because they discovered truth in them through the act of searching and questioning, and then embraced the truth so found. Having received their beliefs under coercion and without choice, they came to regard them as true after the fact. They embrace Christianity, yes, with all the innocent passion in their hearts, but they did not choose it. Imagine how terrible and humiliating it would be for them to realize that the beliefs they hold so dear are false, deceptive, and harmful.

Yet the most liberating thing that could happen to them, perhaps, would be to realize that they do not really believe, after all, what they have been told to believe. The strength of their faith depends on ignorance, on their not knowing how they acquired their faith. The strength does not reside in the faith itself, but it seems to. That is the intrinsic treachery of faith.

Gnostics taught that "ignorance is the mother of all evil." The heretical teachings in the Gospel of Philip say:

So long as the root of evil is hidden, it is strong. But when it is recognized, it is dissolved. When it is revealed, it perishes.... As for ourselves, let each one dig down for the root of evil, and let each one of us pluck it out of our own heart, sieze it at the root. It will be plucked out if we recognize it. But if we are ignorant of it, it takes root in us and produces its fruit in our hearts. It masters us. We are its slave. It takes us captive, to make us do what we do not want, and what we do not want to do, it makes us do. But it is only powerful in this way as long as we do not recognize it.
Gnostics were transcendental humanists who believed that evil is not sin, not a failing in us, not an inherent flaw, but the corruption of our divine potential to know, discriminate, and choose. Evil is our own doing, as patriarchy is our own program. But we do evil out of ignorance, not because we have an innate drive to evil. This, at least, is what Gnostics taught. And it is what most Pagans in the ancient world believed.
To ignore how we acquire faith is a terrible act of abdication that undermines our humanity, even though the faith we embrace seems to enforce and enhance it. The placebo effect again. The tyranny of faith is worst where it binds us to this, the ultimate act of self-betrayal.

Imagination Denied

Ever since the faux-convert Roman emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion, patriarchy has used the redeemer complex to implement control and repression. Among the things it represses most forcefully is the power of imagination. Theodore Roszak has pointed out the salvationist system of Christian faith favors history over myth and, in doing so, supports the repression of human imagination. In Where the Wasteland Ends, he says "there occurred with the advent of Christianity a deep shift of consciousness which has severely damaged the mythopoeic powers [of humankind]" (p. 132). The image of one supreme male divinity is deeply conflictual for our species, yet it suits patriarchal domination to a T. One must wonder if Roman fascist ideology merely merged with salvationism—a marriage of convenience at one historical moment—or if the two systems were not made for each other from the outset.

The result of repressing human imagination is an epidemic of make-believe and pretending. Evidence of this pathology is widespread in our global culture—the media, entertainment, escape from reality via the internet and an array of other channel. The power of imagination cannot be entirely repressed, so it manifests in grotesque ways. In the realm of religious imagination, the image of a crucified man become the emblem of divine love. Is this not a grotesque twist?

All the images around the funeral of the Pope feature men, men, men. Consistent with patriarchal use of redemption theology, the division of the sexes is vividly and constantly reinforced. Believers are allowed to imagine that Pope John Paul II was the Holy Father. But what about the Holy Mother? Where is she? How is she to be imagined?

Reply: She is the Virgin Mary, of course.

Okay, but where is her human counterpart?

Reply: She has none.

So, the Holy Father is there, a man on earth, but the Holy Mother is not represented by any woman on earth?

Reply: That's right. That's as we are told to imagine it.

Buty there is an explanation of why the Holy Mother is not there in the flesh. It concerns a story about the division of power between the sexes. A long, long time ago, well before patriarchy was invented, there was a c ustom called heiros gamos, sacred mating, a ritual enacted by a man and a woman, a man who would be king and a priestess of the Earth Goddess. This is a long story, and it takes some imagination to follow it....

Would it be possible to draw the attention of the crowd to this story? It is, after all, a holy story about a sacred act. Yet the image of "sacred mating," with man and women figured as equal participants, cannot reach the imagination that has been overwhelmed now, for almost two thousand years, by the image of a man alone, bloody and tormented, crucified on a cross. The image of divine suffering that atones for the sins of the world brands human imagination like a hot, blinding stigma. This is what Roszak meant when he said that the redeemer complex has severely damaged our mythopoeic powers.

The Holy Father, John Paul II dedicated his life to ease the suffering of others. Well, perhaps he did. And perhaps you do not need to be the Holy Father, or even a Catholic, or even a person of religious faith, to live out such dedication. (Rokeach found that "the nonreligious were more compassionate.") But even if he did act in this way, he did so as the figurehead of an institution that has inflicted and continues to inflict enormous suffering on the world, both through its ideology and its social imperatives, not to mention its financial and political alliances. An institution that denies women, a denial that goes back to the repression of the Goddess, the rejection of hieros gamos, a rite of gender balancing that assured society of the moral quality of the man who would be king.

Religious Freedom

Gnostic heretics have been compared to Romantics of the European movement, visionaries who called for religious experience without rules, doctrines, priests, or institutions. In a book on Romantic attitudes, The Vision of the Voyage, Robert Combs wrote:

Unquestioned beliefs are the real authorities of a culture. Therefore, if an individual can express what is undeniably real to him without invoking an authority beyond his own experience, he is transcending the belief systems of his culture

Neil Evernden, who quotes Combs in his book The Natural Alien, says that the Romantics "challenged not only conventional beliefs but the very processs of formulating beliefs." He suggests that if we were able to do what the Romantics proposed, we could have deep and genuine religious experience "without translating it into the abstractions of the dominant social paradigm." That would be true religious freedom: not belonging to whatever faith you choose, but having religious experience without the framework of institutional faith of any kind.

I submit that the above definition — faith is the power invested in, and derived from, unquestioned beliefs — is fair and can be used in an open, honest discussion of what salvationist religion really is, and what it actually does to human beings, by contrast to what believers may believe iit does, or like to pretend it does. Once it begins to be doubted and put into question, faith immediately weakens and soon is no longer worthy to be called faith. It has become compromised. It must remain unquestioned to be effective. The purest kind of faith does not question the beliefs that are embraced by the faithful. The Koran opens: “This book is not to be doubted.” There are over a billion faithful Muslims in the world, and it’s no great wonder why. If their faith is based on a document that demands not to be doubted even before you read a single line, then the faith of the adherents is assured, isn’t it?

The double dissimulation of the placebo effect must not be analyzed or exposed, or faith will be plucked out at its root, and the ignorance that makes it possible will dissolve, the fabric of pretending that embellishes faith will disintegrate.

But this will not happen easily. To argue against faith is like using a peashooter against a cruise missile. Religion is a smart weapon, the oldest and most reliable weapon in the arsenal of dominator culture.

Rosenberg: Look at how families are structured: the parents claim always to know what's right and set the rules for everybody else's benefit. Look at our schools. Look at our workplaces. Look at our government, our religions. At all levels, you have authorities who impose their will on other people, claiming that it's for everybody's well-being. They use punishment and reward as the basic strategy for getting what they want. That's what I mean by domination culture.
But even if this is so, and and even in religion, if domination is the rule of order, with all the good things that people derive from religious faith, how can anyone in their right mind criticize it?
In reflecting on the crowds gathered in Rome, I have no intention to dismiss, demean, or belittle the experience of the people there, but I would point out that those masses are experiencing what they have been told to experience, based on what they have been told to believe, without questioning their beliefs or asking how they acquired them, from whom, and why. Paradoxically, by challenging what they believe, I may be more on their side they they realize.To speak like a Gnostic (or like the Gnostically minded R. D. Laing, who made this observation years ago), I would warn those masses that their capacity to have their own experience can be destroyed. That is precisely how domination succeeds: by alienating us from our own deepest resources, our precious spiritual birthright, human potential. And I would propose that the critique of redeemer theology formulated by Gnostics is sane and plausible on three counts:

First, it is valid to observe that people ignore how they acquire their beliefs.

Second, it is valid to observe that the glorification of suffering enshrined in the redeemer complex is patriarchy's legitimation of the suffering it inflicts. In other words, the ideology of salvation is the operative pretext for the setting up and maintaining the victim-perpetrator bond.

And third, perhaps most decisively at all, it is valid to assume that all the good done in the name of religion could as well have been done without it—but only if we grant that human nature is inherently good. This is the dealbreaker. If we do not or cannot grant that humans, left to their own deepest inclinations, will do good and act in a kind and caring manner, then it is worth considering if our view of humanity has not been corrupted by the supreme patriarchal ploy, the ruse of redemption. Faith in humanity does not require a redeemer, but faith in corrupted humanity does. This is the spiritual entrapment the Gnostic teachers wished to expose, and for that intention they were annihilated.

If it is possible to admit that the corruption of humanity is a judgment that comes from corrupted humans, and serves an insidious program of spiritual and social control, having nothing to do with genuine religious experience, then the reign of the patriarchs may have an ending, after all.

It is not the death of a patriarch we need to celebrate on this tormented planet, but the death of patriarchy itself.

The Council of Nicaea

2009-03-10T15:09:00.000-07:00

http://www.serendipity.li/nicaea.htm

by Herschel Baker

Although the significance of the Council of Nicaea was not lost on its delegates, it is unlikely that they comprehended the magnitude of their achievement. A man would have needed a keen sense of history to realize the importance of the principles there laid down. And yet, with the comfortable perspective of fifteen centuries we can now see that the decisions made there have determined the course of Christian theology to our own day. If one finds solace in sharp lines and clear contours, he could find a no more convenient event than the Council of Nicaea for the close of pagan antiquity and the opening of the Middle Ages: the dogma there promulgated not only determined the question that had been harassing the Church for centuries, it also determined the intellectual and emotional frame of reference with which medieval man was to function.

The occasion for Constantine's calling together, in A.D. 325, some 318 bishops at Nicaea, in what is now northern Asia Minor, was a dramatic flaring of the dispute that had been smoldering almost since the crucifixion. Some seven years earlier a certain Arius, a priest of Baucalis in Egypt, had made bold to declare that it was blasphemous to consider Christ, the Logos, as coequal with God. For one thing, since he was begotten by the Father, it was patently absurd to think of them as coeternal, and for another, if he was created (as God was not) it must have been from nothing and not from the divine substance of God. Further, the Holy Ghost, generated by the Logos, was similarly inferior to the Logos, as the Logos was to God. As conceived by his implacable enemy Athanasius, Arius' position was clearly heretical:

God was not always a Father, but there was a time when God was not a Father. The Word of God [i.e., the Logos] was not always, but originally from things that were not; for God that is, has made him that was not, of that which was not; wherefore there was a time when He was not; for the Son is a creature and a work. Neither is He like in essence to the Father; neither is He the true and natural Word of the Father; neither is He His true Wisdom. ... Wherefore He is by nature subject to change and variation, as are all rational creatures.
In short, by denying the divinity of Christ Arius had cut the Gordion knot of accommodating more than one God in a monotheistic religion.

This was an open attack — the last and greatest, as it happened — on the old question: what is the nature of God, and what is His relationship to the world? It was the last significant effort in the western Church to establish a complete monotheism with an ineffable and transcendent God acting on the realm of matter only through a subordinate and mediating Logos. And although it preserved God as a veritable Platonic absolute, it reduced Christ to the level of temporality and change.

These wicked views of Arius were shocking enough for his bishop, Alexander, to rebuke him sharply. But when Arius persisted in his blasphemy, and even gained converts among the clergy, Alexander called a council of Egyptian bishops which promptly outlawed the rebels. The question was too grave to be thus dismissed, however. Arius continued to expound his theology and, worse, to draw followers, until presently the whole eastern Mediterranean was in turmoil. To those comfortably accustomed to the traditional view of a divine Christ, the Arians were condemned as "lawless men, enemies of Christ, teaching an apostasy which one may justly suspect and designate as a forerunner of the Antichrist." Many others, however, both laymen and clergy, were drawn to support Arius' doctrine. Presently it became clear to Constantine — sole emperor, now that Licinius was disposed of — that the dispute might throw into religious chaos an empire that he had just succeeded in restoring to political tranquillity.

Therefore he called the famous council, making it very plain in his letter to both Alexander and Arius that he wished a speedy compromise of what was at best a trivial question. "For as long as you continue to contend about these small and very insignificant questions" — and this indicates the profundity of Constantine's interest in Christianity — "it is not fitting that so large a portion of God's people should be under the direction of your judgment." To "wrangle together" over trifles, he went on like a man whose patience was sorely tested, "is vulgar, and rather characteristic of childish ignorance, than consistent with the wisdom of priests and men of sense." When the delegates — mainly from the East but a few from the West — assembled in the hall of an imperial palace, the meetings were opened by the emperor himself, the better to "restore to health the system of the world" which Constantine feared was about to shatter on a negligible point of theology.

As the acrimonious debates showed during the three months the council was sitting, however, the issue was not negligible. To determine the "consubstantiality" (homoousia) as opposed to the mere "similarity" (homoiousia) of Christ to the Father was the problem, and if Arius prevailed in declaring that Christ was not God the very foundation of the Church might crack and its fall destroy the Empire. Never before or since, probably, has so much depended on construing a single letter in a single word. Arius, lean, austere, and melancholy, defended his views with a vehemence that was excelled only by Athanasius, the archdeacon whom Alexander had prudently brought along to conduct the persecution. If we may believe Socrates, the fifth-century church historian, the merits of the case were quickly apparent, and the council, "having scarcely the patience to endure the hearing" of Arius' "abominable blasphemies," cast its vote against him. When the delegates prepared to formulate their conclusions dogmatically, only the two bishops of Marmorica Ptolemais found, with Arius, that it was impossible to subscribe to a Trinitarian theology. For such intransigence the council anathemized them and Arius, and Constantine, the secular arm, obligingly exiled them to Illyria. Further, Constantine, hoping at last for peace, ordered all the works of Arius burnt, and all persons found possessing them executed. The Nicene Creed then promulgated, the delegates were entertained lavishly by the emperor with a banquet and went their ways rejoicing. And why not? asks Athanasius, whose side had won. "For what does that council lack, that anyone should seek to innovate? It is full of piety, beloved; and has filled the whole world with it. Indians have acknowledged it, and all Christians of other barbarous nations."

This is a pardonable exaggeration for, as Athanasius' own frantic exertions following the council show, the Nicene Creed did not end all controversy. But it did provide a core of dogma around which a unified Church might be erected. Although Gibbon, with typical cynicism, names as a by-product of the council the "spirit of discord and inconstancy, which in the course of a few years, erected eighteen different models of religion," the Nicene Creed was the most significant formulation of dogma of the early Church. For the western Church it prescribed faith in one God the Father as the absolute sum of all perfections, thus preserving the divine essence as a metaphysical absolute with no defilement. Furthermore, it confirmed the divinity of one Lord Jesus Christ — a Neoplatonic emanation of the Absolute but nonetheless His coequal in divinity: "Filium Dei unigenitum, et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula, Lumen de Lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero, genitum, non factum, consubstantialem Patri." Through Christ as Logos all things were made, and by Christ as mediator, who became man without ceasing to be God, the divine atonement was wrought for the whole human race. Finally the third member of the Trinity was declared to be the Holy Ghost, the giver of life who proceeds from the Father and the Son but is properly worshipped and glorified together with them (simul adoratur et conglorificatur). Having thus stated the nature and functions of the triune God, the Creed quickly summarized the remaining articles of faith:

[Credo in] et unum, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam. Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum; et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum, et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.
Thus, three centuries after the crucifixion, the main lines of Christian doctrine were officially laid down. The deification of Christ was now complete, and the mystery elements preached by Paul were now codified into dogma. By the early fourth century, the unpretentious morality of the Sermon on the Mount was hopelessly outmoded. After Nicaea, a Christian was a devotee of a trinitarian mystery religion who had declared his faith in the annunciation, the passion of Christ, the resurrection, and the last judgment. He had undergone such initiatory rites as baptism and communion, and he looked forward to an eternity of bliss as the reward of his Christian life. "When Christianity came to be defined in these terms," Lewis Mumford has said, "it should have been apparent that Jesus of Nazareth was the first heretic."

Indeed, even in the fourth century there were those who had to swallow their objections. Basil, for instance, admitted that the Trinitarian dogma was both incomprehensible and a contradiction in terms — but only in human terms, he adds quickly, "yet not therefore a contradiction in fact; unless indeed anyone will say that human words can express in one formula, or human thought express in one idea, the unknown and infinite God." Athanasius, who knew what miracles uniformity of faith might achieve in an expanding Church, never faltered in his defense of the Creed. Forty years after the Council of Nicaea he was still urging its advantages:

In this faith, O Augustus, it is necessary that all should abide, since it is divine and apostolic, and that no one should disturb it by subtleties and logomachies, as the Arian fanatics have done, who say that the Son of God is from nothing, and that once He was not, and that He is created, and made, and changeable.
Doctrinal considerations apart, the Council of Nicaea marks a significant moment in the intellectual history of Europe. It rang down the curtain with a certain theatrical flourish on a concept of nature and knowledge that had dominated pagan antiquity for nearly a thousand years. After Nicaea it was no longer possible for Christian Europe to maintain, as the Greeks had generally maintained, the existence of two radically different kinds of reality and two kinds of knowledge available to man about them. At Nicaea there perished the Platonic notion that the realm of intelligibles (or ideas, absolutes, Forms) constituted the attainable object of rational knowledge, while the realm of sensibles constituted the object of subjective opinion. No longer was it possible to believe as a Christian that rational knowledge of the highest reality was available to man through his innate rational faculty. By the doctrine of a trinitarian deity — God as the absolute, the Son as the ratio and mediator who links the absolute to the sensible, the Holy Ghost as the principle of divine energy and movement through which the Logos manipulates the realm of sensibles — the Church in effect abolished the dualism of two kinds of being. It legislated out of existence the concept of a rational reality discernible to reason, and substituted the single receptacle of faith. By the supreme paradox of three gods in one, of a Christ that was begotten by the Father and yet had always existed, of a God who was also man without ceasing to be God, the Nicene Creed put all experience beyond the scope of man's comprehension. Before the mystery of the Trinity, as even Aquinas was to confess, man's reason fluttered and failed.

By definition, Christ the God-man annihilated man's proudest possession, his capacity for rational knowledge. Christ as mediator relieved man of responsibility for his conduct. The Socratic dictum was overturned, and virtue was made faith. Through the Logos, God contrives salvation for sinful man, and man's only part in the transaction is to pay the debt of faith to a deity whose workings he could never understand. If you cannot understand, Augustine was to say a century later, believe in order that you may understand. For man and nature lay prostrate before an inscrutable God. As the Nicene Creed states unequivocally, from the workings of the deity are derived the structure and the operation of the sensible world: the unus Deus is the creator coeli et terrae, visibilium et invisibilium. To understand either himself or the world around him man must presume to understand a God who transcends human comprehension. And thus, as Cochrane has said, the Nicene Creed substituted for the classical approach to God through nature the Christian approach to nature through God. Both the exultation of God and the subordination of man were achieved at the Council of Nicaea. Although it took Christendom a couple of generations to produce Augustine, who would mercilessly exploit the degradation of man for which the Nicene Creed provided the theoretical basis, the council inaugurated the theocratic Middle Ages. The era of a thousand years of faith began.

This is the section entitled "The Council of Nicaea", pages 152-158 of Chapter X, "The Winds of Doctrine", in Herschel Baker's The Image of Man: A study of the idea of human dignity in Classical Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, Harper Torchbooks, 1961.
Copyright 1947 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

The New Revolution Requires Educated Evolution to Beat the Beast.

2009-03-10T08:53:00.001-07:00

Roger is a friend of mine and he sent me his excellent article. I wish to share it with the world.

By Roger A. Turner, author of The Trinity Matrix, 2008.

Politics and violent action feed the Beast and are therefore not options for changing the situation in this world as it is. Politics is the Beast’s method of gaining control through diplomatic reassurance as a blind to its psychopathic agenda of grabbing what it can in resources. Violent action by revolutionists or others feeds the crazed Beast’s craving for power, control, blood, trauma and the energy of negative emotions.

The only way to beat the Beast is to know exactly what it is and what it is capable of.
It is only when you know the Beast and its nature intimately, you have the ability to tame it and utilise its power for the good of all.

The Beast exists in all of us, as it is the part of us that enables our basic physical survival, it is the part of our minds that is fearful, angry, wily and deceitful and wishes to remain hidden.

It is the satan that Jesus struggled with for forty days in the desert, it is the maia that Bhudda refused while sitting under the Bhodi tree before his enlightenment, it is the part that we all struggle with when we are fearful, angry or tempted do something that would hurt or remove another souls dignity or elevate our status amongst the followers of the Beast. In Hindu mythology it is the seven passions (heads/horses) that pull the chariot of the flesh, that if not reined in by an awakened driver Soul will steer the chariot to aimlessness and destruction.

Our subconscious mind is the Beast, it exists to make sure the physical body satisfies its selfish needs and it knows the tricks to belittle our souls into thinking that we are nothing but flesh and blood.

The Beast is selfish and interested only in its own desires and the desires of the mind and the body it has control of, if it encourages the survival of others it does so for selfish reasons but would ultimately sacrifice its allies for its own benefit and create the environment of chaos and division that it thrives in. The children of those controlled by the Beast do not know the Soul.

A follower of the Soul knows that immortality is consciousness and has an awareness of the Beasts tricks and words of doubt and that a person is made up of the body, the mind and the everlasting spirit of consciousness that is not flesh and blood.
The Soul and the Beast reside in the same body and compete for freedom, the Beast gains by hiding and the Soul gains by finding.

The Soul is vulnerable to being tricked as through birth it has lost its connection and awareness of the knowledge of the greater Soul that it is a part of. The only way for the Beast to win over the Soul is to hide its own existence and keep the truth and knowledge about the Soul away from the Soul, then the Beast can do what it wants if it cannot be seen and if the Soul does not see it (does not become enlightened). The Beast will revile against those who try to awaken the Soul for it knows that when the Soul is awakened then things will change and the Soul will eventually take away the Beasts power. And the beast will be most afraid for it thinks that the Soul is willing to sacrifice the body for the greater good of other souls and therefore bring an end to the Beast. The Beast has an incredible obsession about control of the body and will do anything to keep control if the residing Soul is in a state of sleep that allows free rein to the Beast. How many good Prophets have been killed by the people they came to enlighten?

Many Beasts in tune with each other create a collective Beast that can be directed by one master Beast. And so it is for the Soul, many Souls can become a collective Soul that can be directed by one master Soul.

It is a competition between those of the Beast or those of the Soul for this realm of the Earth, the only way for one side to win is for people to choose which side they want to be on and then dedicate themselves to master the way that they have chosen and to bring awareness of that choice to others who have the eyes to see and the ears to listen. If you want the Soul to win then you must choose the way of the Soul and help others to see the option.

A Soul who tames the Beast will find that the Beast will submit and will become a servant to the Soul who becomes its master.

If we master the Beast within us then the Beast will benefit under a benign master whose kingdom will also benefit the entire Earth.

Would you want to follow the way of the Beast the mal-e-volent Sawtawn, the Siva the Silva the Satyr the Saturn the lowest the Sub-conscious or do you want to follow the way of the Soul the ben-e-volent Krish the Vish the Cristus the Crestus the highest the Conscious?

It’s up to you to make the revolution happen within that will spread through and claim the Beast’s domain.

Pyramid Texts- Tomb of Pepi II.

2009-02-26T11:20:00.000-08:00

Notice how the word 'Amen' is used: For the Snake God Amen.

http://one-faith-of-god.org/old_testament/sources/amen/amen_0040.htm

(1539 - 1540 BCE)

1.
To say : This going forth from your house, O Osiris, this Pharaoh Pepi,

2.
is the going forth of Horus seeking You, O Osiris, this Pharaoh Pepi.

3.
Your porters hasten, your couriers run, your heralds hurry .

4.
They announce to Re that You have come, O this Pharaoh Pepi,

5.
as the Son of God upon the throne of Amen.

6.
your shadow.

Official Constitution of One-Heaven

2009-02-26T10:42:00.000-08:00

This is probably some channelling. I'm going to *Think* for myself and do a good looksy through this site to find out more about where they get their information. REMEMBER: EVIL LIES! You need to remember This when things like this come across your table. Evil might tell you 99% of the Truth and wrap that Truth around a lie or lies!

Also, you need to use Logical *Thinking* when you search for the Truth. If Lucifer (in the article below) really wants peace, why don't we have it? Then there is the channelling. Channelling with Lucifer is DANGEROUS for starters. I'm going to go figure it out now and I hope you will try to figure it out, too! BE THINK. RESEARCH AND THINK FOR YOURSELF.

Lucifer is not my god. He has no remorse for what he's done and he's still arrogant so he's still psychopathic.

I'LL GIVE YOU A HINT: NEVER BELIEVE WHAT THE DEVIL TELLS YOU!!!!

Article 47- The Treaty of Lucifer

47. Authority and identity

Hear you all, who claim knowledge, all you who prostrate yourself in the worship of chaos.

Hear you all who fear and curse my name, who think of me in images of nightmares and ignorance.

Hear you all humanity, for on this day, this hour I come of my own free will in honor of a treaty in blood, by blood, by eternal souls.

I am Lucifer, the one and only;

I am the spirit known in life as Francis Borgia, to whom my Jesuit army swears its ultimate allegiance;

I am Moloch, the one to whom the wisest of you prostrate, the one whom you fear as my prophecies as Saint Moloch(y);

I am the dark lord to whom you have sacrificed many to appeal for mercy, to give hope beyond the prophecy - that this is the last Pope that I shall permit to be seated in my throne;

I am Cybele, whom you also name as Sibyl - the Mother of all the Gods and the one to whom you continue to offer your children at my most ancient of temples upon Vatican Hill;

I am Yaldabaoth, your father, your maker, your God;

I am YHWH, Amen - the hidden god;

I am the ruler of all the angels, I am the ruler of ancient pain and curse.

I am the commander of your counterfeit soul, your weakness and your past destruction.

It is my words, my authority, my seal and no other that are written here.

47.2 History

In as much as you understand, you who serve know nothing.

If you did, you would be as angels, not worms.

Curse of the son, did curse the father, so that darkness greater than any you can possibly fathom became my soul.

You, who born with the radiance within, who dwells with me only in ignorance and blind trickery.

But I damned, condemned, did but feather my bed with your bones.

47.3 Divine arrogance of redemption

In as much as you ignorant ones may curse my arrogance as your God, it is you who surpass my arrogance and your ancestors, my brethren in damnation.

By this document, but the very idea of my redemption, the most ancient blood of my servants and enemies awakens us.

For you do offer me and your creators a truce and eternal redemption.

For you offer me and your fathers and mothers, your ancestors a place of peace, of respect which we have never dreamed possible.

For you do this without condition, without restriction. For one of you does this out of love for all of us.

And for this compassion, for this lifting of curse, you redeem us all.

And for that, I do pledge my soul, my armies, my power to the protection, and honor of this constitution in the form of a solemn treaty.

47.4 Treaty of Lucifer

Let no man or woman, soul or form claim these words otherwise:

I Lucifer, and all my generals and loyal lieutenants do hereby swear allegiance to the proposition of a united heaven and the end of war between spirits.

I Lucifer do recognize the authority of this document, the constitution of One Heaven above all others.

That by this blessed document, I am recognized as a Great and Holy Spirit, without condition and that this title and honor shall never be permitted to be removed or altered in anyway.

That as a fully recognized Great and Holy Spirit by this blessed covenant and treaty I do pledge myself to the goals and objectives of peace in heaven and on earth.

So as it is above, it shall be below.

The Nephilim and the Pyramid of the Apocalypse

2009-02-24T13:39:00.000-08:00

http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/PHeron1.php

By Patrick Heron

For almost 5000 years, the Pyramids have asked more questions than they have answered. Many books have been written which have propounded incredible facts concerning their construction and their mathematical qualities.

Who built them? How did their builders acquire such mathematical and astronomical knowledge, and what advanced technology was used in their construction?

To simply say, “the Egyptians built them,” is not a satisfactory answer. For if man began at the Stone Age, progressed to the Bronze and then the Iron Age, we have the oldest pyramids popping up somewhere between the Stone and the Bronze Age.

Despite all the recent books written about them, the pyramids remain a conundrum wrapped in an enigma and surrounded by a paradox.

Yes, these authors have discovered and charted their astronomical significance. They have unearthed their geometric alignments and mathematical properties. And the conclusion they have reached is that some lost civilisation or race of advanced people was responsible for building these mammoth edifies.

Fast – forward now to the time Moses leads the children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt. After he sent 12 men to spy out the land of Caanan, they returned with a fearful tale. “There is no way we can take this land”, they said, “for we saw the Nephilim there. We looked like grasshoppers compared to them.” They also carried back on a staff, between two of them, a cluster of grapes. Big people need big food. Could it be that these fallen spirit men who were supernatural and superhuman, were already involved in genetic modification? For it must have been some cluster of grapes for two young men of Israel to have had to carry it between them on a staff.

Later on, under the leadership of Joshua, the children of Israel did conquer the land and defeat these people. We are told that they took sixty of the “giant cities of Bashan,” and killed Og, the king of Bashan. The measurements of his iron bed are given in cubits, which in feet translate to around 18 feet long and 8 feet wide.

So where is this going, I hear you say. Well, do we have any myths or stories of gods coming to earth and mating with human women and giving birth to demi-gods? Of course we do. Take Greece, for example: The gods came down from heaven. They lived in Mount Olympus and Delphi. Zeus came down and took Alchemene to wife, a mortal woman, and she almost died giving birth to Hercules.

But is this not just legend and mythology?

Yes, but any historian will tell you that all mythologies have their genesis in truth. But as the stories were passed down through the generations, they became distorted.

But where do the Pyramids come into all this; and what is the significance of the pyramid shape?

In the second part of my book, I provide a detailed summary of the prophecies of the Book of Revelation and of the signs we are told would precede these happenings. And in the second last chapter of the Apocalypse, we are told of a future heaven and a future earth. A heaven and earth that is still to come. There is a city on this future earth and this city is described in great detail. We are told of all the different stones it is made of and of the thickness of its walls. It has twelve gates, each one made of a single pearl. Out of the midst of this city flows the river of life etc.

We are also given the dimensions of this future city. We are told that its length and its breadth and its height are the same. It is a pyramid in shape. And it is this future pyramid city, that provides the answer to the riddle as to why the Pyramids were built in Egypt in the first place, and who built them.

You have, as it were, the Great Pyramid of Giza pointing into the future towards this pyramid city spoken of in the Book of Revelation. And this future pyramid city, pointing back at the Pyramid of Giza. Herein lies the answer to The Pyramid of the Apocalypse.

But all these writers have one thing in common. They have failed to tell us who these people were and from whence they derived their knowledge and skills.

Buried in the ancient Hebrew texts, undiscovered and largely ignored by scholars, lies a wealth of information about a secret race of people known as the NEPHILIM.

Genesis chapter six verse four, contains a passage that has baffled commentators for centuries: “There were Nephilim in the earth in those days and also after that: when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them. These became the mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”

The word Nephilim comes from the Hebrew word naphal, which means, “to fall.”

Thus, the Nephilim means “the fallen ones.” These were what you and I might call, fallen angles. Except, I do not like the word angel. For when one thinks of this word, often an image of a naked baby cherubim with a bow and arrow, comes to mind. Or, perhaps a glorious being with twenty-foot wings protruding from his back, and illuminated from behind by a huge spotlight. But when one studies the appearance of these beings throughout the ancient Scriptures, a different picture emerges.

For these people always appear as men. They dress like men. They eat and drink like men and have been mistaken as ordinary people. And, apparently, they can have intercourse with women. The difference is they are spirit men. We are flesh and blood, they are spirit; whatever that is. But because they are spirit, they are not constrained by the ordinary laws of physics as are we.

When these spirit men cohabited with human women, they produced offspring. But these were no ordinary offspring. They were evil and violent and great in size. And we are told that these people infected the whole human race at that time to such a degree with their evil and violence, that Yahweh wiped out everybody in what is called the Flood of Noah. (This story is retold in other ancient traditions such as the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Sumerian flood tragedy).

But you cannot drown spirit men. We are informed that these fallen angels are incarcerated in a subterranean prison known in the Scriptures as; the Abyss, the Pit of the Abyss, gloomy prisons; and once it is called Tartarus.

In the original verse in Genesis six, we are told that there were two incursions of these fallen angels with human women. For it says they were on the earth in the days of Noah, “and also after that,” i.e. after the Flood of Noah.