di Andrew Casella
cover: βCreationβ, from a XNUMXth century French βBook of Hoursβ
The cycle of articles dedicated to sacred astronomy by Andrea Casella continues. In this appointment, which follows the one previously published [Astrological Considerations on the Gospel: A Solar-Based Soteriology], the author focuses on the soteriology of the Christian Gospels, identifying the referencesΒ βΒ most of the time now forgotten and therefore misunderstoodΒ βΒ to the ancient astroteological tradition. This second part focuses on the analysis of the symbolic complex of the passion and resurrection of Christ and on the astrological-esoteric implications of the advent of the Age of Pisces.
The passion, the crown of thorns and the resurrection
Finally, the crown of thorns is itself a symbol of the sun's rays. According to RenΓ© GuΓ©non (Symbols of sacred science, Postal Code. 20):
Β«It should be noted ... that many of the plants that play an important symbolic role are thorny [we can give examples of the rose, thistle, acacia, acanthus, etc.]; here too, the thorns, like the other points, evoke the idea of ββa vertex or an elevation, and can also, at least in certain cases, be taken to represent the rays of light [The Christian symbolism of the crown of thorns (which are said to be acacia thorns) thus reconnects, in a way that some may perhaps find unexpected, but no less real, so-called exact, to the crown of raysβ¦]. "
It must be said that the crown of thorns (made of acacia, which also remind us of the ritual of the killing of Huitzilopochtli among the Aztecs) would be linked, more specifically, to the sun "without its rays" (Vikarttana, in Sanskrit), as part of an initiation into the solar mysteries as defined by the famous, and highly controversial, Mme Blavatsky [1]. We feel we must take these last references with due caution, given the character in question; nevertheless, the suggestion of the "leafless sun", weakened by its own luminosity, cannot but find a small space in the astrological context that engages us.
Further confirmation that the Passion of Christ summarizes, in an astrological sense, the descending parable of the sun on the circle of the tropical year, is the episode of the crucifixion itself, which summarizes and contains, like a smaller Chinese box, all the previous . Thus, from the Gospels we can deduce that Jesus is crucified at the third hour (9 in the morning), the agony begins at the sixth hour (noon) and expires at the ninth hour (3 in the afternoon). [2]. Jesus, therefore, remains on the cross for six hours. The contrast is evident: these are the hours of the day when the sun is highest in the sky. At noon, however, when the sun should reach its zenith, it gets dark all over the earth, as if it were at the nadir, at midnight. But this is a symbolic night: it is not, in reality, the night that follows the day, but the seasonal night of winter.
It is evident that the descent of the sun into the underworld leaves the earth orphaned of itself, which remains prey to the season of darkness and cold. The six hours of the crucifixion, in fact, correspond to six ideal segments on the zodiacal circle, those, of course, of the autumn-winter signs and dominion, moreover, of Ahriman, full of death. At the same time as Christ's departure, the tombs are uncovered "Of the saints", who return from the underworld. Right now, as ElΓ©mire Zolla notes [3], Jesus is at the same time on earth and in Sheol, is at the same time visible to the eye and invisible, as is the sun which is preparing to travel the southern ecliptic. Gone is his mightiness, but not his presence. This data would be enough to disprove Frazer's empiricist pragmatism, according to which what dies and disappears can only be vegetation, since the sun is always visible, even if weakened.
An interesting fact is the invocation that Jesus addresses to Eloi (which in Gospel Matteo's results in the variant Eli). Who is this Eloì, and why are the people at the foot of the cross sure that they are calling upon the prophet Elijah? Now, Eloì should obviously be Elohim, or El, the God the Father manifested since the Old Testament. The apparent misunderstanding would be a veiled allusion to the Sun (the El-Gabal / Helios [4] of the Greeks, of oriental origin), on whose chariot the prophet Elijah was taken into heaven. It is almost as if the evangelist wanted to conceal an intentional reference.
Jesus is buried and, after remaining in the underworld during the day dedicated to Saturn (il Sabbath), rises again on the first day of the week, dedicated to the Sun. This day is traditionally placed on March 27, two days after the spring equinox in the Julian calendar, which in the Age of Aries fell, precisely, under the sign of Aries, or Equinoctial Lamb. As reported by Frazer [5], the date of Christ's resurrection fell exactly two days after that of the resurrection of Attis (March 25), husband of the Stone of Pessinunte, Cibele; and there were those who, like Lactantius, and probably the Church of Gaul, made the two dates coincide. The surprising overlap of the two festivities was a reason for clash between the different groups of faithful: on the one hand, the pagans asserted that the resurrection of Christ was an imitation of that of Attis; on the other hand, Christians claimed that the rival's was a counterfeit of the devil, who had skilfully reversed the natural order of things in the priority of the cult of Attis over that of Christ [cf. The religions of mystery: soteriology of the Mithraic cult and of Attis / Cybele].
Beyond the laughable anecdotal, the fact that emerges clear is that certain rituals had to be performed at a specific time of the year, otherwise they would not have made sense. The kairos, the "opportune time" in which an action must be exercised, reveals to us the most ancient human concern for astronomical phenomena, the only compass and norm of behavior in a world devoid of revealed truths. In the specific case, even though they are "late" rituals, already polluted with metaphysics and transcendent religiosity, they reveal their solar matrix (once Saturnian), so being in the right place at the moment of the return of the Sun is a fundamental part of salvation .
If once it was Kronos who had to fall asleep and then return together with a new Golden Age [cf. Apollo / Kronos in exile: Ogygia, the Dragon, the "fall"], now, with the oblivion of the astral religion, it is the Sun that takes its place, and already the latter is no longer him, at the beginning of the Age of Pisces, since the time appointed to close all times, where eternal light will welcome the righteous and eternal darkness the wicked. Just as Zoroastrianism, the inspirer of all metaphysics in the West, had already begun to support centuries earlier.
The advent of the Age of Pisces
Years, numbers, returns; in a word: time. When Pythagoras was asked what time was, he replied that it was the soul (psyche) of the universe. This teaching was treasured by Plato, in Timaeus.
When did the "feeling" of time begin to fade? The answer is not simple, but the clues all lead to the dawn of monotheism, which considered the Sun in itself, detached from his precessional prerogatives. Pharaoh Akhenaten, in the thirteenth century. BC, he was the first to attempt the feat, literally tearing the solar disk from the horns of the god Apis and worshiping it for what it simply was. The subsequent refinement of the spirits and the progressive oblivion of the meaning of the myths led the ancient Sun to transform itself into a mere symbol and finally to rarefy itself into a Principle of a metaphysical order, without however ever losing completely the characteristics of light and ardor that distinguished.
At that time, the science of precession had not yet been completely lost, and above all, the link between this science and the "divine" events which must mirror it on "earth" had not yet been lost. And so, while the ancient solar cults declined in the forgetful putrescence of their primordial prerogatives (so much so that Adonis, Attis, Osiris and Dionysus were mistaken for simple vegetation deities), at the stroke of the Age of Pisces a final reorganization of they under the aegis of a new Sun, with peculiar soteriological and messianic claims: the Sun-Christ. Yet the ancient characters of the sun were not entirely lost. Christ is born on December 25th, the date on which the ancient Virgin of Sais also gave birth to Horus.
The midnight of December 25 marked, at that moment, the ascent on the horizon of the celestial Virgin: at the zenith was Cancer (with its stars called Asini) and in the west the Taurus. The Virgin had however already "miraculously" returned to a corner of the sky from the time of the Golden Age, going to occupy the autumn equinox. That's why Virgil (defined "prophet of Christianity") says (Bucolic, IV, vv. 6 -7): "Iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia reigns, iam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto (The Virgin returns by now, the kingdom of Saturn returns and a new progeny already descends from heaven)"[Cfr. The astronomical significance of the Golden Age: Astrea and the "fall" of Phaeton].
The ancient Virgin, who had lived in splendid peace with men in the Golden Age, was now returning to give life to the new sun, which would be the eternal sun. Yet it had to suffer suffering and death, going into the underworld, that is, descending into the southern hemisphere in the period that winter begins here (a fact also recalled in the death of Osiris, which was placed on the 17th day of the month of Athyr, when the sun crossed the Scorpio). But if her death, like that of Osiris, Adonis, Attis and Dionysus, was to be only temporary, her resurrection at the vernal equinox, unlike that of her predecessors, should have been final.
We began to detach ourselves from the sphere of time. The Golden Age was returning: the Age of Pisces which was announced, and which began around the year 0, presented again in the four corners of the "earth" (although in a different arrangement) the same constellations that once occupied them in the Golden Age (about 7000 BC): Pisces now rose eliacally at the spring equinox, Gemini at the summer solstice, Virgo at the autumn equinox, Sagittarius at the winter solstice. "Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo (A grandiose order of centuries is born)"(Bucolic, IV, v. 5).
It was the messianic moment par excellence: the ancient Serpent-Ahriman the bearer of winter (this constellation rises on the horizon in autumn), which had penetrated into Eiren (or Eden), had to be thrown back forever into the underworld to never return. . Note that this snake is also part of the constellation of the Ofiuchus, or Serpentario, defined by some as the thirteenth constellation of the zodiac. The Virgin giving birth (Virgo Paritura), with the crown of Berenices around the head, as it is said in the Apocalypse (Ap. XII ff.), Faces the snake (whose head, Caput Serpentis, is located below it) for the final battle. It is the appointed time to close all times.
Conclusion
The oracles have stopped giving responses, says Plutarch around 50 AD. The cyclical time, the time of reincarnations, of the prophecies that build a bridge between past and present, no longer exists. The last oracle of Delphi is said to have been given to Emperor Julian in the XNUMXth century and is essentially a declaration of farewell from the world. Last remnants of the ancient astral religion, with images of the precession, survived until the Islamic era. In Sura XVIII of Koran, so dear to the Sufis, we speak of Gog and Magog, confined behind a wall of iron and copper by the "Bicorne", and then of Moses, who goes to Eridu (the "confluence of the rivers" Koran "The confluence of the two seas"), in the presence of Al-Khidr (Enki-Ea?) To leave, aboard a ship (the ship of Argos?), In search of immortality, in the footsteps of Gilgamesh.Β
The advent of Christianity, with its uncontested eschatology, has expelled humanity from the cycle of time, which has dissolved into a strange indefinite scan of neutral moments: today we float in a sort of eternal past that does not pass (enough look at the calendar), disconnected from any higher order cycle, outside the kosmos. Was this the promised "eternal life"? In truth, times have never closed: the time of precession continues its silent motion unperturbed, and Aquarius will soon rise eliacally at the spring equinox. We are the ones who stopped. Christianity, the sworn enemy of astrologers and scrutinizers of the celestial "signs", far from placing the kingdom of God and of the Lamb on earth for ever and ever (Ap. XXII, 5), has actually prepared the basis for that secularism which it itself, incoherent way, blames.
Note:
[1] Β See in this regard HP Blavatsky, The secret doctrine, Cambridge University Press, 2011, p.
[2] Β It was the third hour when they crucified him (Mark xv, 25) ... At the sixth hour, darkness fell over the whole earth until the ninth hour (Mark xv, 33) ... At the ninth hour, Jesus exclaimed in a loud voice: βEloΓ¬ EloΓ¬, lamΓ sabactanΓ¬β, which translates as: βMy God, my God, why have you forsaken meβ. Then some of those present, hearing him, said: "Behold, call on Elijah." A man ran to soak a sponge in vinegar, placed it on a reed and gave him a drink, saying: "Let go, let's see if Elijah comes to take him down." But Jesus, having uttered a great cry, gave up the spirit β(Mark XV, 34 - 37).
[3] Β E. Zolla, Descent into Hades and resurrection, Adelphi 2002, pp. 33 ff.
[4] Β We must never lose sight of the fact that the Sun was originally Saturn. The God the Father invoked by Jesus was in primordial times Kronos, with the name of El the Most High, sovereign Earth, the only one among the gods to have ever walked together with men, in Eden, as well as in Lazio, or in Greece (fr. orph. 139 Kern). Moreover, a solar deity of the late period like El-Gabal, in Emesa, foresaw, in her cult, the worship of a stone, typical of Saturn. And indeed, it seems that El Gabal has the very meaning of God-Stone (Louis Nardi, Homework, Pesaro, 1827, p. 75).
[5] Β J. Frazer, The golden branch, Boringhieri 1973, pp. 564 ff.
Bibliography:
- Charles-Francois Dupuis: The origin of all cults (compendium), Martini 1862
- George de Santillana: The origins of scientific thought: from Anaximander to Proclus, 600 BC - 500 ADSansoni 1966
- George de Santillana: Ancient fate and modern fate, Adelphi 1985
- Giorgio de Santillana - Hertha von Dechend: Hamlet's mill, Adelphi 2011
- James Frazer: The golden branchBoringhieri 1973
- Robert Graves: The Greek myths, Longanesi 1963
- RenΓ© GuΓ©non: Symbols of sacred science, Adelphi 1975
- RenΓ© GuΓ©non: The symbolism of the crossRusconi 1973
- Ananda K. Coomaraswamy: KhwΔja Khadir is the source of life, in the tradition of Persian and Mughal art, in What is Civilization and other essaysGolgonooza Press 1989
- Plato: Timaeus, BU 2014
- Gerard Russell, Forgotten kingdoms, Adelphi 2016
- Biagio Catalano, The great taleLulu 2017
- Adylson Valdez, The number 666 and the twelve tribes of Israel in Biblical magazine 68 / 3-4, Santos, Brazil, 2006
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