Freethought Nation

I do agree with everything you are saying here. After re-reading from the beginning, I think perhaps you thought I was not, when I was only trying to contribute. I, as well as you, think that things should only be explained as natural phenomena.

I think that where both I and the responders to the Bible Studies site are going wrong is a perception that at times you seem to voice a belief that there is "something" to the shift of the ages and a change in conditions here on earth. Are we interpreting that wrong? Such as here:

Have you heard of the reported response that Newton gave to Sir Edmund Halley (discoverer of Halley's comet) when Halley dismissed astrology? "Sir Halley, I have studied the matter; you have not!"

Introducing Hermetic philosophy into the discussion somewhat verifies the practice of astrology.

The way you explain it may well be true, but has it really been scientifically proven, or is it just another self-fulfilling prophecy? Have certain aspects once considered to be the magic of astrology now become scientific? Because you see, it sounds so much like astrology to the average person, no matter how much you protest it is not! Once upon a time, it was astrology pure and simple.

Now I am somewhat familiar with what you are propounding, that it is not magic, it is natural occurring phenomena. Yes, and not only that, there may be some other things in the future proven scientifically that we now think of as superstition or a pseudo-science, but things that seem to play out so often that we find we must pay attention to it on a gut level. Who knows?

For now, I think that maybe this is why others are having a hard time understanding where you are coming from; i. e. whether you think that the prophecies are correct and are now coming to fruition, its just that we did not realize that an astrological method is how they arrived at those prophecies.

_________________
I am the Wind that blows over the Sea;
I am the Wave of the Deep;
I am the Bull of the Seven Battles;
I am the Eagle upon the rock;
I am a Tear of the Sun;

Its difficult when you quote an evangelist without comment. Missler presents a very mixed up analysis. I think it is important to warn readers when a link you provide has serious flaws, otherwise they will wonder why you linked it.The explanation you quoted here shows the causal relation between microcosm and macrocosm. To say 'all is one' seems an obscure mystical vision, but it is actually a simple logical deduction based on the assumption of universal material causality. It is purely scientific, based on the assumptions that we have one universe with consistent physical laws. The problem with the 'as above so below' axiom is to assess at what point the microcosm cuts loose from its direct causal framework. Your decision to get up in the morning is not caused by the moon or sun. Efforts to find any statistical connection between astrological planetary cycles and human action have drawn a blank, even though some studies such as by Gauquelin may have something there. Human freedom of will can lead us down paths that are not in accord with this deep natural causality, with ideology providing an independent (and often false) framework for decisions.

We are free to make historic decisions that do not line up with the bigger reality of the cosmos. But when ideas are grounded in actual natural reality, free will can aim to be in tune with the cosmos. As above so below, considered in a religious framework, is more a moral ideal of an ecological cosmic attunement of human life - at one ment - than an assertion that our will is determined by fate. Astrology is a highly complicated topic. Newton and Kepler and Leonardo had a very strong interest in the Hermetic revival of the Renaissance. Most popular astrology is just entertainment, routinely exaggerating and inventing correlations as folk speculation. I think of astrology like trying to listen to a local radio station from the other side of the planet. There is a mathematically tiny real signal, but it is so swamped by noise that you can barely detect it. In astrology, we have a natural rhythm of the seasons that has been stable for four billion years of life on our planet, as the context for all genetic evolution. But in human life, the 'noise' of cultural and other terrestrial factors completely swamps any attunement to deep planetary rhythms. Astrology observes this signal just based on observation of planetary positions, and then say if there were no terrestrial factors this would be the situation. But the noise is so great that potential statistical correlations are destroyed. I have a few ideas for rigorous statistical testing of astrological ideas, but I don't have time to do anything about them without help.

With the Great Year, I have pointed out that there is a stable cycle of light and dark due to the earth's precessional orbital patterns that is simply visible in the glacial record, with advance and retreat of ice every 21,000 years as regular as night follows day. This precession cycle has repeated with complete stability about 200,000 times since the dawn of life. Just as life has annual cycles seen in hibernation and deciduous leaf growth and turning, it seems perfectly plausible to me that there may also be a longer life cycle, driven by precession. And it is possible that this cycle was intuitively understood by ancient religion, setting the actual downward path from light to dark since the dawn of the Holocene as the mythological framework of the descent from the golden age to the iron age, and the promise of a slow return to a new golden age over the next ten thousand years.A key issue here is that the astrological framework of the 7000 years of zodiac ages from Taurus to the first half of Aquarius provides a hidden cosmological framework that helps us to understand the myths of the Bible against a real natural backdrop. If the seers who inspired the New Testament really thought that way, as Tat put it above, the idea was that the Age of Pisces was a preparation for an envisaged kingdom of heaven predicted as the Age of Aquarius. The issue is to understand the scientific context of long term cycles, and then look at how this matches to the mythology behind Christian dogma. My observation is that the match is precise, helping us to use astrotheology to understand why Jesus Christ was such a compelling figure, as the symbolic avatar of the Age of Pisces. Study of this material also shows a psychological pathology in the mentality of the current age, especially with supernatural thinking providing a gross distortion that prevents people from seeing the natural basis for the myths. This pathology, seen in fundamentalist faith that spreads its tentacles very widely, suggests to me that we are heading for a crisis, a tipping point that will equate to a cusp between ages. This is what I think the ancients predicted as the apocalypse. The abuse directed towards any thought seen as New Age illustrates the depth of the irrational bigotry against putting cosmology at the center of theology.The whole idea that we should aim to be attuned to nature is widely viewed as a magical reenchantment of culture. The modern scientific enlightenment, with its ethic of disenchantment, is based on entrenching the old Christian alienation between spirit and nature. The New Age is about reconciling spirit and nature, and seeing how this reconciliation is prefigured in the hidden core of earlier mythology.
Yes, that is a very good point. An interesting irony here is that the traditional 7000 year theory of time propounded by the early Church Fathers, including those such as Irenaeus who led the charge against Gnostic thought, suggests that the seventh day, the millennium, basically matches to the shift of Ages from Pisces to Aquarius, just based on the view that the creation occurred in about 4000 BC. It is a far more simple and scientific interpretation of what the ancients actually thought than anything that draws on supernatural traditions.

My main aim here is to explain Christianity using science. The problem is that the cultural ideology of science has the critique of astrology at its birth, so has a deep prejudice against any scientific analysis that makes use of astrological themes. Even the idea of a cyclic vision of history is a red button, enough to prompt alarm bells about association with non-scientific views, preventing a rational examination and dialogue on these ideas.

KC, with all that I've gathered over years about the age of Aquarius and the bible, it boils down to the one simple observation marked out at the Giza necropolis. The Sphinx and Pyramids mark out the first and last time - the axial ages of Leo-Aquarius and Aquarius-Leo.

Whether this influence from Egypt was there immediately in early Christianity, or evolved into it later on as more and more Alexandrian influence entered the mix, is unclear and uncertain. But I do feel intuitively confident that the reason the NT writers (or copiests thereof) included the Aquarius symbolism, and worked into some of the second coming imagery, points squarely to a type of knowledge trail stemming from the far older astrotheology found at Giza and perhaps known in Alexandria. It all fits together too perfectly. I'm sure that the Egyptian priests did believe that there would be upheval when the stellar clock strikes the stellar maximum point of Orion on the meridian as per the vernal equinoxes. A visible shift can be observed above and there philosophy was
"as above so below." But in anycase, that type of esoteric stellar philosophy addressed to the ages of Leo and Aquarius must have drifted along into the common era re-emerging as Hermeticism and Gnostic Christianity.

After reading through "The Message of the Sphinx" and considering the fact that the astrological priesthoods and later secret societies have greatly influenced general society via world leadership and what-have-you, I began to speculate about the possibility of an upheval around the beginning of the next age just because history seems to show that society has been 'intentionally' manipulated in certain ways that reflect what esoteric philosophy suggests 'ought to happen.' What a coincidence that our historical "Dark Ages" just happen to fall right into the Kali Yuga, or Iron age, for instance.

It's little secret that our leadership today is still very intermixed with esoteric philosophy via secret society membership and the like. I don't see that changing between now and first vernal equinox sunrise into the house of Aquarius. The ancient sources call for radical social change, so, shabang!!! War breaks out, or something of that nature. I'd be shocked if there were no major conflict around that time. For various reasons governing folks can be seen as trying to provoke certain outcomes into a type of self fulfilled prophecy sort of way. Just look at what's been going on Israel, coincidently, as we near the same said time period. There are a lot of signs that would suggest esoteric related provokation in order to force fit many esoteric type of beliefs into appearing to come true.

So it isn't simply limited to speculation about spooky mystical or supernatural forces from the cosmos radiating down and effecting our lives here on earth, or perfectly scientific explanations for society below reflecting what is happening above. There's intentional social herding technique factors to consider as well when dealing with the hyped up coming of the new Age of Aquarius....

_________________
The Jesus Mythicist Creed:
The "Jesus Christ" of the New Testament is a fictional composite of characters, real and mythical. A composite of multiple "people" is no one.

The celestial Origins of Religious Belief
ZG Part 1
Jesus: Hebrew Human or Mythical Messiah?

Tat, thanks. A picture of the Sphinx Stela is at the opening post of this thread. It illustrates the riddle of the sphinx that you have concisely answered. The Sphinx is a key to ancient myth, with Aion, the lion- man with eagle wings wrapped in six coils of a snake symbolising the 12,000 years from the Age of Leo to the beginning of the Age of Aquarius. As I said in my recent essay on the Peratae, "Greco-Roman mysteries worshiped a God named Aion, also identified with Saturn, Kronos, and Time. A statue of Aion shows a man with a lion’s head and eagle’s wings, standing on top of a globe, with a snake coiling six times around the body from the man’s feet to the its head at the lion’s forehead. This image of Aion matches precisely to precession of the equinox, the vision of 12,000 years from when the spring equinox was in Leo the Lion to its current position at the start of Aquarius the Man. The six coils represent the six Ages of the Zodiac, Leo, Cancer, Gemini, Taurus, Aries and Pisces, leading to the beginning of the New Age of Aquarius. Again, I note that this description is purely empirical astronomy, and needs no astrological magic to be understood as a perfectly accurate terrestrial cosmology that was understood as such in the ancient world.
... The staff of Moses, used also in current medical symbolism, is clearly part of the same esoteric mystery tradition that is observable in the statue of Aion, with the four points of the cross marking the four corners of the zodiac, Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius, which gave rise to the symbols of the Four Evangelists as Luke the ox, John the Eagle, Mark the Lion, and Matthew the Man. The displacement of the scorpion or snake by the eagle is another interesting topic, seen in the change of the symbol of the Israelite tribe of Dan.
... we see Christ as symbol of Aion, and of the slow cycle of precession symbolised by the coils of the snake, ... Christ on the cross is a symbol of actual cosmic observation, seen in the snake of Moses and the statue of Aion.
"My view is that the Egyptian influence predated the Israeli identification of Christ with the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. Krst is the Egyptian word for anoint, as Acharya has demonstrated. The great mystery here is how the destruction of the ancient secret mystery cosmic tradition was so complete. You are correct that it fits perfectly. This is what science calls an elegant and parsimonious explanation. As such, these observations are central to articulation of the emerging Aquarian paradigm.

As well as the culmination of Orion's Belt at its most northerly point, the shift to the Age of Aquarius marks the transition of the solstices across the Milky Way, as a central theme of the Mayan 2012 idea. The galaxy is like a cosmic horizon, so when the March equinox is north of the galaxy we are in cosmic day (Golden Age) while when the March equinox is south of the galaxy we are in cosmic night (with lowest point the iron age). My view is that the center of the Kali Yuga matches to the point when the June solstice was furthest from the sun, at the orbital point known as aphelion, in 1296 AD. This matches to the cold point of successive glacial cycles, but we are now moving into an interglacial due to other orbital factors. There is no question the world is headed for upheaval, with seven billion people and politics hopelessly corrupted by money. But understanding the long term framework could help to minimise the extent of upheaval, as we are now moving into an ascending phase of the long term cosmic cycle. I tend to think of the rulers of the present darkness as hopelessly mired in ignorance. There are signs of enlightenment, such as the Masonic symbolism among the American Founding Fathers, but that tradition has largely been obliterated in terms of broad awareness.
Such spooky speculation is fantasy. Discussion of this material should be framed against empirical scientific method. But there is potential for this new science to be explained publicly as myth, in order to make it comprehensible as parable.