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[1]
Hope, Murry,
Practical Egyptian Magic
(New York: St. Martin's Press), 1984 p. 107. Quoted by Fritz
Springmeier, The Watchtower & the
Masons, 1990, 1992 pp. 113, 114.
-- Churchwald, Albert, The Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man,... (London: George Allen & Co., Ltd.) 1913 p. 344. From a photo copy in Springmeier, p. 114. -- Swinburne, Clymer, The Rosicrucians Their Teachings (Quakertown, PA.: The Philosophical Pub. Co.), 1923 p. 112. Quoted by Springmeier, p. 115.
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As is Above, So is Below |
Most mystery cults through history have a belief that "immortality" was achieved through the initiatory teachings of a "dying-resurrecting Son of God" and the symbolic re-enactment of his 'death' and 'rebirth'. The Phoenician Adonis, the Phrygian Attis, the Egyptian Osiris and the syncretic Greek/Egyptian Sarapis and Dionysis and Orpheus all indoctrinate their initiates through ritual with , with this cyclic principle of life. As such for the Romans, skilled for many centuries in ruling far flung cultures and countries by taming the locals gods mystery cult of Mithras would embody the sacred science carried by the high priest class while also giving meaning and purpose to life on earth.
Hermeticism has always represented, as it does to this day, the enduring embodiment of man's primordial religious impulse with its quest for power over nature and self through mystic rites, secret knowledge, and magic.
The official religion of the Roman hierarchy Mithrac mysteries is now accepted to have given the
zodiacal precession of the equinoxes or the astronomical Great Year doctrine a central place among their revelations. The standard Mithraic Tauroctony or bull slaying scene is coded to show knowledge of the end of the age of Taurus as indicated by the changing night sky. This knowledge, as obvious as it may seem to us, has not yet been adopted by the academic orthodoxy and may relate to the fact that it has only been in recent years that the Catholic church has been admitting its errors in the repression of science.Fortunately there is a new group of academic warriors who cannot avoid the importance reserved for the rhythms of the planets by the builders of the great archeological wonders. Archaeoastronomy has only risen to prominence since the 1990s although its earliest writers are as old as archeology itself. Much of its work has been about applying academic rigor to findings and predictions done by others outside the academic framework and working out the boundaries of a interdisciplinary
 |
|
The Egyptian Winged Disk was a combined
emblem of the Sun, a double-headed cobra and eagle or vulture wings.
The winged sun disk is one of the oldest religious symbols on earth "as
above so below" The god Thoth used his magic to turn Horus into a
sun-disk with splendid outstretched wings. In Egypt, the winged disc was
certainly regarded as a symbol of the sun in the first millennium BCE A Masonic reference work describes it this way:
A Rosicrucian reference work says this:
Could the emblem represent the Sun
passing through the centre of the Winged Disk, the Sacred Gateway, into
the next Age of the Zodiac? |
| Mithraism and the Cult of Cybele | |||||
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by Franz Cumont |
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"From the moment of the discovery of traces of the Persian cult
in Italy, we find it intimately associated with that of the
Magna Mater (or Great Mother) of Pessinus, which had been
solemnly adopted by the Roman people three centuries before.
Further, the sanguinary ceremony of the taurobolium, or baptism in the blood of a bull, which had, under the influence of the old Mazdean belief, been adopted into the liturgy of the Phrygian goddess, was encouraged, probably from the period of Marcus Aurelius (161-180 A.D.), by grants of civil immunities. 1 True, we are still in doubt whether this association of the two deities was officially confirmed by the senate or the prince. Had this been done, the foreign god would at once have acquired the rights of Italian citizenship and would have been accorded the same privileges with Cybele or the Bellona of Comana. But even lacking all formal declaration on the part of the public powers, there is every reason to believe that Mithra, like Attis, whom he had been made to resemble, was linked in worship with the Great Mother and participated to the full in the official protection which the latter enjoyed. Yet the clergy appear never to have received a regular donation from the treasury, although the imperial fiscus and the municipal coffers were in exceptional cases opened for their benefit. "To-ward the end of the second century, the more or less circumspect complaisance with which the Cæsars had looked upon the Iranian Mysteries was suddenly transformed into effective support. Commodus (180-192 A.D.) was admitted among their adepts and participated in their secret ceremonies" |
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Franz Cumont p. 87 THE MYSTERIES OF MITHRA 1903 |
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| Aristarchus of Samos & Sol Invictus | ||||
|
the First Heliocentric Debate: |
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Today Aristarchus (Greek: Ἀρίσταρχος; 310
BC - ca. 230 BC) is acclaimed as the scientist with the
vision to be the first to propose a huge universe.
However he was also well known to Copernicus for
pointing out that if according to mathematical
observation, the sun was much
larger than the earth then the likelihood was that the
smaller body (the earth) revolved around the larger (the
sun) rather than the reverse.
We do not know other names of ancient astronomers or scientists who supported his finding of a heliocentric solar system where the planets revolved around the sun. The orthodoxy of the day was represented by the great authority of Hipparchus and later Ptolemy whose textbooks complied with philosophic demands for a geocentric system and were long considered unassailable doctrine. Both Plutarch and Sextus Empiricus mention "the followers of Aristarchus", so it is likely many others were convinced of the truth of the revolutionary heliocentric view. The pioneering giant Aristarchus's ideas fell into oblivion because they led away from the main-stream that had already been laid down by the less cosmology oriented schools formed in the wake of the giants of philosophy, Plato and Aristotle. The only other astronomer from antiquity who is known by name and who is known to have supported Aristarchus' heliocentric model was Seleucus of Babylonia (190 BC, fl. 150s BC) , a Mesopotamian astronomer who lived a century after Aristarchus. In 150 BC, Seleucus attributed the ocean tides to the stirring of air caused by the rotation of the earth and its interaction with the revolution of the moon. According to Plutarch, Seleucus may have even proved the double motion of the earth, that is, rotation on its own axis and around the sun, in other words, to proved what was advanced by Aristarchus as a simple hypothesis." in his A History of Medicine goes on to say that the heliocentric theory was hardly mentioned for centuries until Seneca (ca. 54 BC- ca. 39 AD) posed the question as a possibility.
However, just as Copernicus heliocentric proofs remained a well-kept kept secret for decades after their publication, would not there also have been motivation for the followers of Aristarchus to maintain their knowledge. Perhaps the first meetings were held in caves and civilizing lessons learned from the threatened Egyptian priesthood on initiation also were incorporated into what might have been the earliest stages of Mithraism |
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The Great Year and the First High Precision Estimate of the Length of the Month
Aristarchus also proposed the largest ancient Greek time period, his well-known "Great Year" of 4868 solar years, equaling exactly 270 saroi, each of 18 Callippic years plus 10 and 2/3 degrees. (Syntaxis book 4 chapter 2.) Its empirical foundation was the famous, usefully stable 4267 month eclipse cycle, cited by Ptolemy as source of the extremely accurate Babylonian month, which was good to a fraction of a second (1 part in several million), and is found on cuneiform tablets from shortly before 200 B. C. Embedded in the Great Year was a length of the month agreeing with the Babylonian value to 1 part in tens of millions, decades before Babylon is known to have used it. Aristarchus's work represents an advance of science in several respects. Previous estimates of the length of the month were in error by 114 seconds (Meton, 432 B. C.) and 22 seconds (Callippus, 330 B. C.). The attribution of a reliable mean motion to so complex a motion as the moon's was a remarkable conceptual leap. |
|
Plato's
Geocentric view of the Universe |
| Plato is recognized as the first to collect and synthesize various ideas about the soul into one coherent doctrine. Plato apparently brought together the Orphic and Pythagorean concepts about the reincarnation of the individual soul with ideas from Anaximander about the Earth floating in equilibrium within a symmetrically empty space, and ideas from Parmenides about logic and the nature of eternal truth as embodied in the idea of a sphere. He integrated these ideas into a new spherical cosmology in which a spherical Earth lay at the center of seven concentric planetary spheres, surrounded by the outermost sphere of the fixed stars of the heavens. In this cosmology, for the first time, Heaven is placed even more remotely in space than a mountain top and the journey of the soul is specifically identified with a journey in space to a realm outside of the outermost sphere. Thus with Plato the journey of death and rebirth has taken on a new and more specific cartography in space, which is intimately related to a new cartography of pure mind. |
| Seneca the Stoic | |||
|
Tutor
of Nero: the first Roman Emperor |
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Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger) was born in Cordoba in 4 BCE, but soon brought to Rome by his mother’s step-sister, where he studied under the Stoic Attalus. Seneca was not a very healthy child, so much of his childhood was spent indoors and studying. He also spent time in Egypt, where he learned about life outside of Rome. He held many positions, including orator, quaestor, and lawyer, but the most influential in his life was as a tutor to the young Nero. In 31 CE he became involved in law and politics. Caligula and Claudius both strongly disliked him, mostly for his orations about them and not taking his comments back, and for his relations with their female relatives. Caligula attempted to have Seneca assassinated, but chose to exile him instead. Seneca returned to Rome after Caligula’s death. Claudius had him exiled to Corsica in 41 CE for his relationship with his niece, but Agrippina convinced Claudius to have Seneca brought back to Rome in 49 CE. After the death of Claudius and the ascension of Nero, Seneca served as one of the Emperor’s most trusted advisors, and began his playwriting career. In 62 CE Seneca became suspect in one of the attempts to murder Nero and Agrippina, and he was asked to retire from public life. Senecea obliged, as he had amassed a great fortune during his life and was content to just write for pleasure. It was during this time that he wrote some of his best works of philosophy and tragedy. Nero became suspicious of Seneca, and in 65 CE he ordered the playwright to commit suicide. Like the good stoic he was, Seneca complied. He slit his wrists, but the death was not fast enough, so he poisoned himself with hemlock. That too proved not a quick enough death (the hemlock was slowed due to blood loss), so Seneca put himself into a bath and suffocated himself in the steam. His wife, Paulina, attempted to take her own life as well, but Nero’s guards, on orders from Nero himself, prevented her from doing so. Seneca was cremated and laid to rest without any honors on orders from Nero. Seneca wrote mainly three types of works. He
wrote essays on Stoic philosophy and beliefs. He wrote letters
or epistles to give philosophical advice to his friends. And, he
wrote intense, violent plays which focused on Stoic belief that
disaster results from passion destroying reason. |
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| Plutarch the historian | |||
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Though Plutarch's information is
important, it must be borne in mind that the historian wrote his
life of Pompey at the end of first century A.D. and it is not
until then that we actually find in Rome the characteristic
representation of Mithras as bull-slayer. The poet Statius (A.D. 80) describes Mithras as one who 'twists the unruly horns beneath the rocks of a Persian cave'. One other point worthy of note is that no Mithraic monument can be dated earlier than the end of the first century A.D., and even the extensive investigations at Pompey, buried beneath the ashes of Vesuvius in A.D. 79, have not so far produced a single image of the god. There is therefore a complete gap in our knowledge between 67 B.C. and A.D. 79.
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| Stoics of Tarsus & Pirates of Cicilia | ||||
|
"According to David Ulansey Mithraism originated among the 20,000 strong pirates of Cicilia (Asia Minor = Turkey), the capital city of which was Tarsus. "David Ulansey holds (or rather speculates) that, in the late 2nd-century BCE, a group of Stoics in the city of Tarsus originated Mithraism. The impetus and foundation doctrine is held by Ulansey to be the recent discovery by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus of the precession of the equinoxes. The group of Stoics are further asserted by Ulansey to have carried out the painstaking effort for the precise reconstruction of the equinoxes at past epochs and the
bull-killing scene represents the end of the spring equinox falling in the "Age of Taurus" circa 4000-2000 BCE. The hypothetical group of Stoics at Tarsus appropriated the precession to the god Mithras. Mithras is the god they identified as responsible for precession through his power to shift the axis of the universe. The constellation of Perseus is identified with the god of precession (Mithras) by Ulansey. Not explained by Ulansey is how a little-known and little-understood astronomical discovery by Hipparchus was swiftly transmitted from the Greek island of Rhodes to a group of Stoics (who were not astronomers) in the city of Tarsus in Asia Minor and correctly understood by them. (Tarsus was the capital of Cicilia (Asia Minor = present-day Turkey.) Very few ancient astronomers knew of the discovery and were capable of understanding Hipparchus' discovery of precession. Also, several scholars who knew of it did not believe it and rejected the notion. Furthermore, nowhere in the ancient world did the Stoics, whose doctrines embraced cosmology and astronomy, show any awareness of precession at all. (Stoicism was a school of Hellenistic philosophy. It was founded by Zeno of Citium (a city on the island of Cyprus) in 322 BCE, and flourished until the closing of the Athenian schools in 429 CE.) The original conclusions made by Ulansey in his 1989 book has been kept by him and forms the basis for his continuing rejection of the theories of recognized Mithraic scholars. Copyright © 2006-2007 by Gary D. Thompson |
| Mithraism: Jung vs. Freud | ||||
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Art succeeds best when it can be interpreted in many different ways |
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The two giants of our understanding of the psyche differed greatly and historically on interpretation of the tauroctony |
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"One intriguing theory of the meaning of the
tauroctony is Ulansey's astronomical interpretation.... In
brief, the discovery of the precession of the equinoxes led
Stoics in
Tarsus to "hypothesize the existence of a new
divinity
responsible for this new cosmic phenomenon, a divinity
capable of moving the structure of the entire cosmos and
thus a divinity of great power." Mithras was this deity, and
he is seen killing the bull because the act symbolizes the
ending of the cosmic age in which Mithraism was born.
" The Mithraic tauroctony is explored
repeatedly in Jung's fateful chapter in Wandlungen [und
Symbole der Libido ], "The Sacrifice." This image
obviously held deep significance for him. His interpretation
was that Mithras was the "sacrificer and the sacrificed,"
but "it is only his animal nature that Mithras sacrifices,
his instinctuality."
Yet the text holds another layer of meaning.
In MDR, Jung reports that he waited two months before
writing this chapter because he knew that his new ideas on
the nature of the libido would cost him his relationship
with
Sigmund Freud. By 1912, Jung had been deeply immersed
in attempts to try to make sense of the tauroctony for at
least two full years, and the problem had fascinated Freud
for the same amount of time. The image was consistent from
Scotland to
Italy to
Anatolia; it clearly meant something. The
killing of the bull, the scorpion biting the bull's
testicles, and so on were symbols that were begging for
psychoanalytic interpretation.
As their correspondence shows, Freud and Jung
did not see eye to eye on the meaning of the Mithraic
mysteries. And their disagreement over the tauroctony is a
telling sign of dominance of Mithraism over psychoanalysis
in Jung's own personal symbolic system. In a letter sent in
June 1910, a month after Jung's first public lecture on the
psychological interpretation of mythological and Mithraic
material, Freud offered Jung his interpretation of the bull
slaying: It was "the killing of the animal ego by the human
ego, as the
mythological projection of repression, in which the
sublimated part of the human being (the conscious ego)
sacrifices (regretfully) its vigorous drives."
Jung disagreed. Instead, he told Freud,
"there must be something very typical in the fact that the
central symbol of fecundity, the useful and generally
accepted (not censored) alter ego of Mithras (the
bull) is slain by another sexual symbol. The self-sacrifice
is voluntary and involuntary at once (the same conflict as
in the death of Christ)."
Here we see the beginnings of Jung's firm but
polite rejection of Freud, dismissing the psychoanalytic
role of an unconscious censor that keeps the instincts out
of awareness and putting forth instead a more pagan
interpretation that views the Mithraic bull as an accepted
alter ego of Mithras.
There is yet another, more poignant meaning
of the tauroctony for Jung, and, indeed, it forms part of a
secret encased in the cista mystica of Jung's life
and work. Jung notes in this same letter of June 26 that,
"the Mithras myth has undergone an adaptation to the
calendar." This reveals that Jung has read Cumont and has
likewise noted the astronomical and astrological
basis of Mithraic symbolism. Jung may have initially taken
up the study of astrology to decipher Mithraic symbolism.
"My evenings are taken up largely with astrology," he wrote
to Freud on June 12, 1911, further reporting that, "I make
horoscopic calculations in order to find a clue to the core
of psychological truth." In 1911, Antonia Wolff had entered
Jung's life as his assistant, and she is believed to be the
one who taught him astrology.
He knew that the astrological sun sign of
Sigmund Freud, born on May 6, 1857, was Taurus, the
bull. The centrality of Mithraic tauroctony in "The
Sacrifice" now taken on new meaning: it symbolizes the
triumph of Jung's broader concept of libido over the
strictly instinctual (sexual or venereal) libido theory of
Freud. More important, it symbolized Jung's sacrifice of
Freud. His final break with Freud is therefore heralded with
every reference to the "killing of the bull."
In early 1912, Jung connected the Mithraic
tauroctony with the astrological sign Taurus and with
sexuality in a very suggestive footnote to the section on
which the tauroctony is discussed in detail: "Taurus is
astrologically the Domicilium Veneris." This was no doubt
another hint to Jung's readers that this chapter contained
veiled references to his knowing sacrifice of his
relationship with Freud and Freud's sexual theory of libido.
Did Jung's fascination with the Mithraic
image of the slaying of the bull feed into Freud's fears
that Jung had a death wish against him? Freud was a master
of the language of symbolism and would cast an analytic
glance on any obsessions, especially those of a trusted
disciple who may have harbored secret desires to slay the
father.
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From "The Aryan Christ: The secret life of Carl Jung" by Richard Noll (1997, Random House, New York. $23.35). Pages 134-136: |
| The End of Mithraism | ||
|
Decree of Theophilus in 391 |
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|
In 391, Emperor Theodosius I ordered the destruction of
all pagan temples, and Patriarch Theophilus of
Alexandria complied with this request[14].. Socrates Scholasticus provides the following account of the destruction of the temples in Alexandria in the fifth book of his Historia Ecclesiastica, written around 440:
|
| The celebration of the winter solstice, the nativity of the sun, which occurred on December 25, was central to Mithras’s worship. In many societies Mithras was reported to be born to a virgin, and was, in some traditions, a member of a holy trinity. Ritual baptism and a last supper legend permeate Mithraic worship. Mithras had a miraculous birth, died and was resurrected; there was heaven and hell, immortal souls and a last judgment. Sunday was held as their holy day, Sunday being dedicated to the sun god. It is not difficult to accept that the burgeoning Christian faith appropriated the practices and beliefs of Mithraism, allowing the new religion to subsume the old. |
"It was in Tarsus that the Mysteries of Mithras had originated,
so it would have been unthinkable that Paul would have
been unaware of the remarkable similarities we have already
explored between Christian doctrines and the teachings of
Mithraism. "
Tarsus was the capital of Cilicia,
where, according to Plutarch [46-125CE], the Mithraic Mysteries
were being practiced as early as 67 BCE" Authors Freke (a philosopher
and author of books on spirituality) and Gandy (who is studying
classical civilization) believe that first century Jewish
mystics adapted the potent symbolism of the Osiris-Dionysus
myths into a myth of their own. Jesus Mysteries[@amazon.co.uk]" by Freke & Gandy [more info], p199 |
|
In the west Easter still bears the name
of the pre-Christian festival of Eostre - a Celtic
goddess, All Saints Day (Hallowe'en) was also an
important pre-Christian festival, and St John The
Baptist's birthday was placed at Midsummer, balancing
the Winter Solstice for Jesus' birthday. This knowledge does not lead to atheism as some below would have you believe but rather a richer deeper understanding of the Christ within all of us and the ever unfolding mystery of the cosmos best understood through story and archetypes of the language of dreams. |
|
|
more a debunking book
than a scholarly work yet a brilliant and inspired piece
of research which will well serve those seeking to know
the past in order to find their path in the future.
Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ
Unveiled
An illuminating journey
all the way back to the origins of the three greatest
World Religions and the Triumvirate of its three
deities: Buddha, Krishna, and Christ. Acharya
demonstrates that the life stories and teachings of
these three Demigods are suspiciously similar. |
|
 Jehovah
Unmasked! by Nathaniel Merritt "Rev. Merritt illustrates a powerful personal journey that many people can relate to but may not yet have made themselves. Like our individualized personalities, our conclusions to cosmic conundrums may be different. Nevertheless, JEHOVAH UNMASKED represents another nail in the biblical coffin that contains a mummified and rotten god belonging to the violent barbarians and troglodytes of the Stone Age." --- Acharya S, Archaeologist, Historian, Mythologist, Linguist, Member of The American School of Classical Studies at Athens Greece, Fellow of The Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion" [The author of the Christ Conspiracy displaying a passion for her subject as well the passion that so often typifies atheists. We show our faith in the return to the merging of science and religion the Aquarian age by highlighting this 2nd reader review.]
|
|
Belief systems know no bounds and
this is particularly the case in science. The esteemed Professor
Ulansey, in spite of being the most prominent authority showing
the central spiritual tenet of Mithraism was precession of
the equinoxes, fails to acknowledge their role in the wisdom
traditions Mithraism was built upon. The evidence of the star
patterns informing the great art and spiritual practices of
antiquity and the great preponderance of evidence revealed in
the last few decades by archeo astronomers particularly
demonstrate the prominence of the "precession of the equinoxes
predating the conventional agreed upon prior "discovery" date of
128 B.C. by Hipparchus. While the omission, likely a bow to academic orthodoxy appears to be waning slightly in 2007 as the "Precession_of_the_equinoxes" entry in en.wikipedia.org now reads:
This particular piece of academic orthodoxy might be considered a key piece of maintaining the separation between science and religion since the Renaissance when tune with stops short of denies the historic compatibility of science and religion by the great civilizations of prehistory. Just as Carnaval or celebrating the rebirth of life in spring was likely the first public worship. Knowledge of the precession or how the night sky changed at the equinoxes was likely the first high level scientific communication between generations. The role of the Vedic earliest spiritual writings and the Spinx marking the Age of Leo in 10,000 BC at the polar opposite to our new age of Aquarius precession mystery of the Spinx which is a marker supporting the academic in their claim that . The internet abounds with conclusive proof to the contrary although we have been dismayed by the apparent acceptance of en.wikipedia.org for this convention which Carnaval's claim as the first public celebration rests on not just being a the human's spirit urge to celebrate the rebirth of life at spring but also the five days outside of normal time and space added by Indians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Romans and Mayans to complete the annual calendar. This was the original great public Carnaval festival. |
| Orbits were first considered perfect circles for philosophical reason that all things in the Heavens are "perfect" |
 |
| Orion is standing next to the river Eridanus with his two hunting dogs Canis Major and Canis Minor fighting Taurus the bull. |
| The Savior |
| The purpose of the ‘saviour’ who is reborn at the ‘end-beginning point’ (alpha-omega) of every Astrological Age is to deliver a message of enlightenment as allegorized in the Crucifixion, and to stand as an example to those who have maintained that link and to ‘awaken’ and remind everyone of us of our own potential to achieve the same. |
| Celestial Year = 25,920 years. |
| 72 years (and 7 + 2 = 9), 2160 years (and 2 +1 +6 +0 = 9), and 25,920 years (and 2 + 5 + 9 + 2 + 0 = 18, and 1 +8 = 9). And 25,920 divided by the divine Sumerian number 60 is 432 (and 4 + 3 + 2 = 9). |
| Were Women always Excluded? |
| "in
light of heretofore discounted textual clues from such ancient
authors as Porphyry, Jerome, and Tertullian, it will be argued
that the theory of universal female exclusion from Mithraism is
untenable.....Instead of starting from a
preconceived notion of exclusion and attempting to explain away
the various exceptions to this rule, this article will tally
these "exceptions" to conclude simply that women were involved
with Mithraic groups in at least some locations of the empire." THE EXCLUSION OF WOMEN IN THE MITHRAIC MYSTERIES: ANCIENT OR MODERN? @.springerlink.com/ |
| Mithraism as response to the Red Star |
| "Let us assume that the Dark Star Theory is right, and that a brown dwarf star appeared in the sky near Sirius during the time of Christ. Would it not appear as a piercing red star?...Here we have a cult, which originated in Persia, suddenly taking hold in the Roman Empire around the same time as the emergence of the early Christian church. Its focus was a fiery sun-god who was a divine child, born on 25th December, not dissimilar to the Egyptian messianic symbolism. It seems likely that Mithras became the Roman cult of Nibiru, based upon appearance of the fiery star noted by Seneca.[more] |
| Stoicism |
| The Stoics held a cyclical view of history, in which the world was once fire and would become fire again. The cycle of conflagration will then be repeated. Since this is the best of all possible worlds, each world cycle is exactly the same. |
| The goal of life for the Stoics was happiness, which is found only through the pursuit of virtue. Virtue alone can give happiness because it cannot be taken away by any external circumstances. "Virtue" means living in accordance with nature, and the rational principle (logos) pervades nature. Thus to live virtuously means to live reasonably. "Sin" thus derives from ignorance, not evil or ill will. The Stoics taught that once one has the power to live in accordance with reason, this power of is never lost. Thus everyone is either wise or foolish, not in between. For obvious reasons, the Stoic "wise man" soon became seen as an ideal to which none actually attain. |
| The universe is like a giant living body with its own leading part (the stars or the sun). All parts are interconnected, thus what happens in one place affects what happens elsewhere. In addition, everything in the universe was predetermined. This world is the best of all possible worlds, developed by the logos down to the smallest detail. These concepts justified the continued use of divination and oracles. |
| The Stoics did not have a clear conception of an afterlife. Some held that the soul survives until the next conflagration; others taught that the soul is part of the World Soul and would reappear in the new world. But a personal immortality was not part of the Stoic worldview. |
| 23.5 degrees |
| The angle at which the Ecliptic plane of the earth itself is tipped, gives rise to the seasons, and thus the dynamic diversity of life on Earth. From the time of the first angle menstruation in ancient Babylon twenty three has been with us in our collective human consciousness. |
|
As is Above, So is Below |
 Hermes
Trismegistus |
| Egyptian god of the moon and of reckoning, learning, and writing. He was the inventor of writing, the creator of languages, the representative of Re, and the scribe, interpreter, and adviser of the gods. In the myth of Osiris, Thoth protected the pregnant Isis and healed the eye of her son Horus. He judged the deceased and reported the results to Osiris. His sacred animals were the ibis and the baboon, millions of which were mummified in his honour. He was often represented in human form with the head of an ibis. The Greeks identified Thoth with Hermes; as Hermes Trismegistos he was regarded as the author of the Hermetic writings. |
 |
|
A study
of the Mithras myths through the rich iconography left to us.
The most common scenes show Mithras being born from a rock,
Mithras dragging the bull to a cave, plants springing from the
blood and semen of the sacrificed bull, Mithras and the sun god,
Sol, banqueting on the flesh of the bull while sitting on its
skin, Sol investing Mithras with the power of the sun, and
Mithras and Sol shaking hands over a burning altar, among
others.
[more @cais-soas.com ] |
 |
| The Council of Nicaea |
|
The Council of Nicaea, there in 325 in the
Church of the Holy Wisdom, Roman Emperor Constantine (306-337)
mandated the leaders of the church to decide on one doctrine and
they produced a 'first draft' so to speak of the Nicene creed,
which was later to be expanded to what we have today. He even
presided over the council himself. The bishops also condemned
the Arian Doctrine, which suggested that Jesus was not wholly
God and set the date for Easter which defies the date of
pre-Lenten Carnaval, Emperor Constantine also bore the title of Pontiflex Maximus as he served as high priest of Zeus/Apollo and the gods of the Greco Roman Parthenon as well as the chief priest of Mithraism. In fact even after to adoption of Christianity as the official Roman religion Constantine persisted to have coins minted bearing the inscription Sol Deus Invictus - the invincible sun god. The gospels we use today were also being selected at this time: others were dismissed and destroyed. Why these Gospels were selected is a matter of debate but the codification of the "Nicene Creed" as the official tenet of dogma meant significant suppression for the Gnostic Christians, the Cult of Isis and dualistic Manichaeism. |
| Nag Hammadi gospels |
| In the fall of 1945, a earthen jar was found by a 31 year old Egyptian camel driver named Mohammed Ali El-Samman while digging for sebakh, a sedimentary topsoil enriched by the annual flooding of the Nile. Inside was discovered some of the texts expunged so effectively by Constantine. The collection of texts, also referred to as The Nag Hammadi Library or the Coptic Gnostic Library, contained fifty-two separate tractates, six of which are duplicates, in twelve codices, and the eight leaves of a thirteenth. Previously unknown works, such as writings attributed to Seth (the third son of Adam and Eve), as well as gospels of apocrypha, such as The Gospel of Truth, The Gospel of Thomas, and The Gospel of Mary Magdalene formerly considered lost, were discovered. Also among the works was a copy of The Republic of Plato |
| Gospel of Thomas |
|
The Gospel begins with the words, "These are the secret sayings
which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymus Judas Thomas
wrote down. And he said, 'Whoever finds the interpretation of
these sayings will not experience death.'" The work comprises 114 sayings attributed to Jesus. Some of these sayings resemble those found in the four canonical Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). Others were unknown until its discovery, and a few of these run counter to sayings found in the four canonical gospels. For example: Jesus said 'Whoever knows the All but fails [to know] himself lacks everything." If people ask you. Where have you come from? Tell them, 'We have come from the Light, from the place where the Light is produced." "When you make the two one, and when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner and the above as below, and when you make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male will not be mal and the female {not} be female ...then shall you enter [the Kingdom of Heaven} |