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Three - The Ages and their Significance
Vesica Pisces - A "Water" Sign Joshua Ben Joseph ("Jesus", the son of Joseph) was named after the first Old Testament Joshua, the general of Moses who took the Promised Land after Moses had died, and who thus fulfilled the First Covenant of God. Jesus was destined to be the second Joshua, heralding in the Second Covenant, a relaxed form of Judaism, at the next great turn of the ages – The age of Aries was changing to the Age of Pisces, animal sacrifice was outmoded, along with some of the harsher "laws of Moses" and it was time to become the "Fisher of Men" by demystifying the "names" of God/YHVH and placing spirituality into correct perspective – that of a personal relationship between man and his god-self through the inward path of self-awareness, "I AM" – The power that resides in each and every one of us. But still he had to use the language of "parables" (Refer opening quotation) and the image of God in order to reach the masses who were dogmatic, superstitious and had limited understanding. It is recalled that when Moses came down off Mount Sinai with the first, more elaborate and precious set of laws, he found his fickle people worshipping a golden calf, thinking him perhaps lost to them after 40 days and 40 nights (another code, often repeated). In other words they had renounced YHVH, the new storm god of Aries, and had returned to a still familiar Egyptian god of the former Age – Taurus, the Bull (Apis). Clearly, it was not the right time (age) to introduce more sophisticated knowledge of God to a still unruly and backward people. Moses destroyed the work, along with the culprits, and replaced it with a more basic, rougher set of stone tablets, a set of enduring harsh laws better suited to the task of disciplining a near barbaric nation.
Two thousand years later, at the next turn of the ages, Jesus would attempt to bring about similar enlightenment (Moses is said to have glowed when he descended with his precious gift from God). But this time the danger, ignorance and fanaticism would come from the ‘educated’ classes comprising the Pharisees, Saducees and the priesthood, propped up by the feared Sanhedrin, a form of temple military police.
However they are often explained away today as the
fulfillment of Old Testament prophesy in spite of the fact that the writers knew
their subject backwards and would have had little difficulty in creating
such fulfillment with the benefit of hindsight – to appear as divine fulfillment
of Old Testament prophecy. They may have done too good a job as far as the
uninitiated are concerned. Early initiates who were well-versed in these methods of concealment were known as "Gnostics" (Greek "Gnosis = knowledge) They were later mercilessly persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church when the more popular (more pagan) and therefore politically expedient surface version of the New Testament emerged ‘victorious’ – a means to control the hearts, minds and purse-strings of the masses. For example, Christmas Day, 25th December, was adopted as the birthday of Christ to appease sun worshippers who revered that day as the one upon which the sun could be seen to be returning to its position "most high" in the summer solstice. For similar reasons, the Sabbath was altered to Sunday, the day of the Sun. Roman Catholicism thus found it expedient to blend the most popular pagan beliefs with the new emerging form of religion. It worked well enough but ‘even better’ when heresy laws were later introduced and ruthlessly policed. Gnostics, of course were labeled as heretics. Truth, small wonder, was driven deeply underground and is only now beginning to re-emerge after a further 2000 years of relentless persecution and deliberate obstruction. Libraries and people have been burned in the name of God. Despite all these draconian measures to hold onto power, by holding onto the most powerful name or word of God, the Christian fathers have unwittingly carried the true story of our spiritual origins and purpose, including the concept of reincarnation, in the very gospels, the scriptures, they expound – especially in the Book of Revelation, a true revelation of the historical facts indeed. (Refer the work of Dr. Barbara Thiering, "Jesus of the Apocalypse", for full elucidation).
Shin, ( C ) as the letter form itself suggests, is fire. It is used in the sense Alchemists, now simply chemists, understand its nature as a change agent in transmuting matter – water into steam, metals into liquids that combine to form alloys which are stronger than their separate original components. What a name … what a god! Yet Jesus the rabbi never referred to himself as God but rather ‘The Son of Man" – and "Man", we understand, is made in the image of God, having free will, i.e. the ability to choose between good and evil, and the personal power to create. With full disclosure looming in this the "Age of Information" (Aquarius the water bearer – the Age of Enlightenment), many Christian fundamentalists, divided as they are among each other, would not concede that this inevitability too is referred to in the New Testament: "Behold, when ye are entered into the city, there shall a man meet you, bearing a pitcher of water; follow him into the house where he entereth in" – Luke 22:10 (In biblical times, women would carry water, never men).
Concealment:
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ence the importance of the scribes in
biblical accounts, also around the time of Jesus. He too had access to these
secrets and methods and wished to reveal them to a wider audience, including
Gentiles, for the greater good. The privileged positions of the "chosen
few" had led to abuses, hence the animosity towards Jesus by the
priesthood, particularly the Pharisees, who did not hold the he was the
legitimate heir to the throne of Israel, the David Crown Prince, and who
disagreed with his "radical" views There were others who accepted him
and his carefully recorded lineage through genealogy, and, depending on who was
in highest priestly office, Jesus led a precarious "political"
existence. (Religion and politics were then inseparable). Most of his
controversial life was spent as a "Nazarite" (a religious sect)
teacher or rabbi among the self-exiled monastics, the Essenes of Qumran, the
duplicate ‘heavenly city of Jerusalem(s) – spelled in the plural in the Dead
Sea Scrolls to denote this duplicity. (Being a "Nazarite" gave rise to
the later, idealistic and enduring misinterpretation, "Jesus of
Nazareth". The Nazarite symbol of two intersecting circles, representing a
cross-over point of the physical and spiritual realms – or the Sepheroth, "Tipperth"
in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life – forms a geometric sign for the Age of Pisces,
the "Vesica Pisces", and was subsequently adopted as the Christian "Sign of the Fish").
