Turning Of The Age
In the past few years, the diagram on the left, above, has become a popular internet meme which tries to portray the spectrum of ideologies which have been part of Western Civilization's history. We can take people - for example, politicians like Margaret Thatcher or Bill Clinton, monarchs like Henry VIII, intellectuals like Karl Marx, celebrities like Tina Turner, Frank Sinatra or John Lennon, writers like Doris Lessing or newspapers like The Guardian, Times and Daily Mail, TV stations like the BBC in the UK or Fox News in the US, and pin them like a donkey's tail on this coloured compass according to where we think they fit on the political spectrum. The chart was invented by a company known as Pace News Limited. Wikipedia article
In comparison, on the right, above, is the Kabbalistic Tree Of Life, which was invented about 5000 years ago by a tribe of soon-to-be Israelites, somewhere between the Garden Of Eden and the Promised Land, according to myth. In it, if we look closely, we can see the Jewish Star Of David, a Menorah, the Christian cross, a Masonic glyph, lots of geometry, the Roman numerals, the Newton-discovered color spectrum, our solar system's orbiting planets*, some sort of Illuminati secret club pass, astrological symbols, and oh yes, the whole thing kind of looks like a symbolic man or woman. And this is without the modern (circa 1900) addition of the Major Arcana of Tarot, which makes the whole thing an extremely detailed map of consciousness, and changes the name of the philosophy to Qabalah with a q, rather than with a k.
*The planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto had of course, not been discovered exoterically at the time, but their inner spiritual and psychological correspondence was represented by the higher sephiroth on the Tree, and paths between these spheres of consciousness.
The two maps have several characteristics in common: they employ colors and they both use directions such as left and right, up and down. The colors used by the Pace compass in the upper segments are in fact in alignment with the two main political parties in the US and UK - the leftist Labour and rightist Conservatives in England, and the Democrats and Republicans in America - although the colors are swapped in each country. These colors on the Tree Of Life correspond to the spheres (sephiroth) Severity and Mercy, so we can ponder which party, in either country is more just or more compassionate.
Then in the lower Pace compass chart we have the colors green and purple, and these, by coincidence, are the colors of two of the Tree Of Life's "personality" spheres, Victory, or the emotional mind, and Foundation, the subconscious mind (the other orange sphere on the tree is the intellect). So we might ask ourselves where the UK Green party, with its environmental aims, fits on either map. And where do the Lib-Dems, UKIP, the Independents, Libertarians etc all fit in?
So much for similarities, what about differences. While both maps were invented by people, the Pace map is much more modern and is based on some sort of outer, observable phenomena, like how rich or poor a society is deemed to be "economic left, economic right" and how people are seen to behave, - are they authoritarian bullies or peace and love hippies? In comparison, the Tree Of Life is based on the so-called Inner Holy Planets, corresponding to the Indian Chakra system; it is an inner, subjective, spiritual and psychological path to Oneness or Nirvana, while at the same time being a mirrored hologram of the Divine. The most important difference between these maps therefore is that the Tree Of Life gives recognition to a Higher Power. The Tree Of Life is in fact not only a map of Man's consciousness, but of the Universe, and in kabbalistic theory, one is a reflection of the other. As above so below.
Why is this difference important? Because today's Western society is rather wary of philosophies which are subjective, which includes religions and belief systems. We are wary, not because we want to deny the profound wisdom and beauty of these systems, nor because we doubt our faith, but because these systems, by their nature, have been found to have a very controlling and manipulative effect on societies throughout history. You can't argue with someone's belief, especially if that someone is a king or a sultan with an army of armed believers behind him. We are so wary of this historical bullying tendency that some former fundamentalist religious people have sort of put God aside - not quite complete atheists - but nevertheless digging deeper than dogma to find a possible place where science and mysticism can abide. That's where the New Age movement steps in, because a combination of astro- and quantum physics, biology, psychology, sociology, the Bible and astrology all fitting together would be the logical next step for humanity.
But how do we get there? That's what I asked myself after I graduated from university. I had had a fantastic education in science and psychology, I'd traveled and studied a bit of Eastern philosophy, but how did the knowledge that we are all made up of particles which only had a probability of being in one place at one time have anything to do with Adam and Eve Moses and Jesus? I started my music career and then one day a few years later, a fellow musician gave me a book about tarot and kabbalah. I'm not going to try to preach or give a lesson on kabbalah here, because there is a well worked out way of teaching it, but suffice to say that the bottom line is that you have to test it out in the process of initiation - and that doesn't mean secret hand shakes and rituals. The word initiation just means to start. It's a subjective process and no one else can do it for you.
That's why I call myself an Esoteric Sceptic - it was the best term I could come up with to describe this process of testing out ideas about how consciousness works. The religious stories of the Bible are still there, but they are allegorical and symbolic rather than historical. For example, Adam and Eve are our self conscious and sub conscious mind, Moses is Natural Law and Jesus is both the sun in the sky and our inner sun chakra, which is love, creativity and beauty. Another reason why I used the word sceptic is that I will always try to present ideas in as rational a way as possible - if the science is there, then I will give it, including the beyond Newtonian physics of the last century.
And the word sceptic, or skeptic in the US, works both ways; so much of the occult, esoteric world is bandied about as if it were fact, sometimes by members in a sort of esoteric bubble, where ideas are accepted as true just because they are old or unusual. I felt there was a need to address this sort of behavior with the tools of rationalism.
The most important stimulus for writing these articles, however, is the constant arguments I see in the media between science and religion. To me, these arguments are so shallow - they barely scrape the surface of either subject. Science is often accused of being "scientism" - a horrible word which only reveals the speakers ignorance of what the scientific method has really achieved for humanity's search for truth and freedom. And religion has been attacked or discarded to produce a frightening communist or Orwellian-like society run by political correctness and soulless administrators. This is not to mention gender politics, marriage and sex, which I am going to devote a whole section to. We are in Armageddon like times, but the battle between good and evil is not a supposed battle between religion and science. It is a battle, as always, between wisdom and folly, understanding and ignorance.
The tarot image known as The Star, on the left above, represents the Zodiac sign Aquarius - the Water Bearer. Although the picture shows a person with a jug of water, this sign is in fact an Air sign, along with the signs Gemini and Libra. The Zodiac signs as we use them in Western astrology are nearly a sign out of whack with the constellations, due to a phenomenon known as Precession Of The Equinoxes, and it is the constellation of Aquarius which is so important in determining the beginning of the much-touted Age Of Aquarius. Because of Precession, the constellations appear to move backwards in relation to the point in the sky that they are on the Vernal Equinox - March 21st in the Northern Hemisphere, so that in a few hundred years, the constellation of Pisces will no longer rise at dawn on this date, but its preceding sign Aquarius will. The whole circle of constellations takes about 26,000 years to complete an apparent cycle round our view from earth, making each astrological age or aeon about 2,300 years long (some constellations are wider than others). When Jesus of Nazareth was born just over 2000 years ago, the equinoxes were preceding from Aries to Pisces, or the age of Judaism to the age of Christianity and Islam. This is why Jesus is sometimes known as the Lamb (Aries) and at other times He is represented by the fishes (Pisces).
In the Gospels, in Luke 22.10, Jesus tells his disciples ... "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." The man is the central figure in this concept and the "house" is the sign of Aquarius. The water is wisdom, and the key represents the process of meditation. Jesus was foreseeing the future in parable, and because Jesus was a Jewish man who told his mother not to bother him when he was studying at his local temple, I believe that he was studying the esoteric side of his faith, which would include astrology. The whole story might just be a myth about the sun and its 12 Zodiac signs, how it dies at the Winter Solstice then three days later is reborn and the earth is revived. But supposing there was a Jewish man who preached and healed, I strongly suspect that Jesus knew all about the astrological ages, as did the Magi, or wise men who came to adore him at his birth. These astrologers were well aware of the birth of a great teacher for the new age of the time, because they were following a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 6BC.
In astrology, the sign Aquarius is said to be ruled by the planets Uranus and Saturn, while the sign Pisces is ruled by the planet Neptune. What does this mean in everyday English? Hopefully my subsequent blogs will explain that, but briefly, Pisces is concerned with more feminine archetypes of consciousness - and in psychological terms that means the subconscious mind. It is subjective, humble, receptive and requires belief in a Higher Power as in the act of prayer. This is compared to the Aquarian "meditation". where the individual is seen as part of that higher power.
Coming up: science, art, freedom, evolution, the discovery of the Outer Planets, the planetary conjunctions and history, America, the 1960s, The Beatles, the sexual revolution, drugs, and why astrology has little to do with the stars.
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