Archive for the sacred texts Category

Ezekiel Saw a Wheel

Posted in belief, Ezekiel the Prophet, Hebrew scripture, Jewish trinity, religion, sacred texts, scriptures on May 1, 2017 by chouck017894

“…way up in the middle of the air…”

In the “good book”, famous for its peculiar tales of God’s prejudices and choosing favorite ones from all the variety and diversity in his creation, the character of Ezekiel is one of the most bizarre.   He is also regarded as one of the greater Hebrew “prophets.”  Ezekiel began his “prophetic” career during the later years of another prophet, Jeremiah (born c. 650 BCE).  Ezekiel was the son of Buzi, a priest, so Ezekiel’s youth was conditioned in a priestly environment, his father being a priest in the timeframe of Jehoiakin, 18th king of Judah (598-597 BCE).  Ezekiel therefore tended to be more fanatic than Jeremiah in regard to ritual practices of holiness than was Jeremiah who stressed moral behavior rather than strict ritual.

It was in this timeframe that Ezekiel was carried captive to Babylonia.  This was around eleven years before Jerusalem would be destroyed by Zedekiah and the bulk of Jews deported to Babylonia.  After years of exposure to Babylonian culture in which human and mixed animal composites were common motifs (bull with wings, for example), his visions were undoubtedly colored by such images.

While captive in Babylonia, Ezekiel became intimately familiar with the methodical study of astronomy.  This introduced him to how the story of Creation had once been explained with use of the revolving images that were imagined to be traced upon the various constellations during their yearly procession.  Thus the opening “vision” related by this prophet happened to rely upon Babylonian star knowledge (astronomy) to galvanize “the whole house of Israel.”  Consequently in the first chapter of Ezekiel, the prophet declares that a whirlwind out of the north (did he refer to his captivity?)  brought him an awareness (vision) of things to come.  By verse ten he descries the winged creatures he had seen.  Ezekiel declares, “As for the likeness of their faces, the four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion on the right side; and the four had the face of an ox on the left side; the four also had the face of and eagle.”

Wow! What an attention-grabbing array of “visions.”  And to further raise awe of the exiles the prophet declared after long elaboration of the “faces” that they also had wings.  “The four wings of the four living creatures” described by Ezekiel are actually coded references taken from the prehistory lessons of Creation which used four quarterly divisions of the heavens as study illustrations.  We still reference those quarterly divisions of the heavens today with zodiac symbols of Aquarius (man pouring water);  ox (bull), Taurus;  lion (Leo); and scorpion (eagle was the Hebrew symbol for Scorpio).  As Ezekiel says, “…and they went every one strait forward: whither the spirit was to go, they went; and they turned not when they went” (1-12).  (The stars retain their course.)  By verse 15 he saw a wheel “…upon the earth by the living creatures, with his four faces.”  And their “work” (the established positions of constellations) was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel.” (1-16)

Among Ezekiel’s prophecies it is this “wheel within a wheel” vision which is probably most widely known, and this first of his visions is what is concentrated on here.  This is because it was this extreme composite of figures and symbols which openly reveal the connection with ancient astronomy teachings upon which the Jewish trinity concept came to be established.  From this the “incommunicable name” of the Supreme Being was theorized which contains three elements.  That theorized name thus contained 1) Yod, which is the letter of the phallus; 2) He, representing the passive or bearing forth principle (considered feminine) within that Being; 3) Yau, representing the will to create; and 4) the passive He principle was repeated again to signify the creative power as the initiator.  Thus the name of the Supreme Being was theorized to be Ya-he-vau-he, or Yahweh.  The Jewish trinity concept expanded upon Ezekiel’s “vision” with the  Hebrew letters transliterated as YHWH or JHVH (Yahweh or Jehovah).

In Ezekiel’s Trinity the “first person”, “Yod”, or primal power, was the All-Father–the”Let there be light” Creator.  The second “person” (the “He” part) was regarded to be the enthroned passive principle by which and through which all diverse and varied manifestations become active as Creation.  This second “person” was regarded as either androgynous (asexual) or the fertilized virginal Source through which all become made manifest.  The third “person”, or “Yah“, is the Life Principle (the will to bring forth), which in Genesis 1:2 is referred to as “the spirit upon the face of the waters.”   The “He” or passive bearing forth of this creative power was then repeated again, for it must attend and fulfill the will to create.  Interestingly, the Christian version of Trinity has never allowed this much “feminine” identity with Creator power.

The events of the Ezekiel’s accounts cover approximately twenty-one years.  In truth there was little definable or visionary mystery about Ezekiel’s means of communication with heaven.  As noted, each of these four symbolic divisions of the heavens as seen from Earth was defined in prehistory lessons which used constellations as illustrations for Creation/cosmology and life lessons.  To recount, the “Man” of Ezekiel’s earliest “vision” came from the opening of the ancient lessons on Creation which began with constellation Aquarius.  There a naked male figure (his back  toward the viewer) poured water from an urn held on his left shoulder.  The ox,  the second alleged “face” of Ezekiel’s vision, represents Taurus (the Bull); the lion-face refers to constellation Leo; and the Eagle was the Hebrew symbol for constellation Scorpius.  Each of these four major “face” constellation symbols had two companion constellations of progressive study.  With Aquarius, for example, was Pisces and Aries; lessons with Taurus were given with Gemini and Cancer; with Leo were Virgo and Libra; and with Scorpio were Sagittarius and Capricorn.

Ezekiel’s prophetic “calling” is said to have begun c. 593 BCE, and his prophecies revolved around the concept that the future of the “chosen people” (Judaic followers) was to be fulfilled by the Babylonian exiles.  His strongest influence upon Judaism was his “vision” of a sacred nation which would be raised above all others.  This, in turn, influenced the Messianic sermonizing which developed in later centuries.  Ezekiel’s prophecies marked the transformation of the prophetic period of Jewish people into the priestly period, which was then phased out with rabbis (my master) in the general timeframe of Herod (75 BCE – 4 BCE).

 

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Ambush of Spirit

Posted in Abraham, belief, Bible, Creation's democratic flexibility, ethics and morality, faith, random, religion, religious hatreds, sacred texts on April 1, 2017 by chouck017894

All scriptural “revealed” texts of man’s contrivance have a considerable amount of hatred ingrained throughout their scores of pages.  Early on even God is portrayed as bubbling with a degree of hatred at Adam and Eve for having been lured by the tempting trees which God had deliberately placed as the focus of his garden.  God chose to interpret the epitome of his creative handiwork as being disrespectful.  so he drove them away from the only home they had ever known after heaping a heavy load of guilt upon them.  The catch 22 to this original sin plot line is thus cunningly established early-on, which allowed the priest class a cautionary choke-hold on all subsequent generations of seekers.

All man-concocted faith systems have the tendency to pay tribute to themselves by routinely focusing on the differences and the dissimilar features and characteristics which give life its radiant and diverse range of Creation’s representation.  The creative, energetic, sustaining force in which life is expressed is too often imagined in “sacred” accounts to be mainly concerned with the dilemmas of only one narrow selection of human species in one small region on planet Earth, and which just happens to represent their particular man-invented faith system.  Such a narrow understanding of life’s intended diversity and spirit’s significance in relation to the rest of the universe has resulted in much carefully cultivated hatreds setting the stage for persistent and needless conflicts.

Reason and knowledge are seriously repressed when ego-serving faith systems labor to impose preconceptions of any kind to hover over people’s interactions with others.  In man-structured faith systems, for example, seekers are indoctrinated and continuously conditioned with claims that it is only through their particular dreamed up rites and rituals that seekers may ever attain the favoritism of that Source-power  which is personified as a human-like “God.”  But the universe and Nature do not happen to reflect that severely restrictive faith system’s disposition, for the Life Principle active within that Source-power continually formulates and makes manifest a broad diversity and variety of life.

Promoting the idea of godly hatred toward any manifested life expression by that creative Source is the greatest act of blasphemy that can be indulged in by any organized faith system.  An organized, highly structured hierarchical faith system inflicts orderliness, methodology, regulations, systematic posturing, inflexible rules, and narrow interpretations, most of which pretty much fly in the face of universal tolerance for variety and diversity within life experience.   But all these man-contrived faith systems take advantage of the fact that even their life-limiting posturing is tolerated in the democratic flexibility of Creation.

When the all-embracing creative Life Principle is imagined to be in man’s image, there is left scant room for any believer to ever attain their intended higher potential.  Since all man-concocted faith systems have long histories of indulging in each and every one of the alleged god-hated indulgences, the followers should remember that a spiritually wise man questions every extreme of passion.  After all, the creative Life Principle installed a brain in humankind with the expectation that humankind would learn and practice rationality for establishing his own relationship with that creative power.  It is alarming therefore that our personal connection to the Life Principle is so often negatively approached in the many man written “holy” books.  For example, as is in (OT) Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Ezra, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes hatred is barely disguised.  And hatred is expressed in (NT) Matthew, Luke, Ephesians, Romans, Titus, 1 John, Hebrews and Revelations.  And in the Quran there are well over one hundred verses of outright murderous hatred is encouraged.

Godly hatreds are cataloged as in Proverbs 6:16; “…six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination to him.”  The things that are subsequently listed by the priest-author certainly cannot be assessed as moral or ethical conduct, and so the list of God’s imagined hatreds are actually extreme negative social interaction practices.  Thus it is asserted by the authors that the Creator turns livid over: 1) a proud look; 2) a lying tongue; 3) hands that shed innocent blood; 4) a heart that deviseth wicked imaginations; 5) a false witness that speaketh lies; and 7) he that soweth discord among brethren.”  (*It was from this list that Pope Gregory 1, “the great”: [590-604] elaborated upon the “seven deadly sins,” which a lower priest had commented upon years before Gregory but who received no credit.)    All this carries a so-what attitude in Ecclesiastes 3 where divine insight is pretended by musing that everything has its appointed time, and thus lists “a time time to kill (3), and a time to hate “(8).

In the New Testament, Luke 14:26, even Jesus supposedly encourages hatred saying, “If anyone come to me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own soul, he cannot be my disciple.”  That is rather disturbing validation that what was recorded in those avowed “revealed” tales is not divine disclosure which was relayed as coming from an omniscient being to a few privileged priest-scribes.  The words that were put into Jesus’ mouth by those power obsessed interpreters who had not witnessed the alleged incident is, however, the very principle which is routinely utilized in every cult style exploitation to keep seekers in   subjugation.

And in the Quran there are, as noted, well over 100 verses which irresponsiblly summon Muslims to indulge in violent hatred and outright murder of any diverse way of honoring the Life Principle.  Mohammad’s frequent “message” is the contention that everyone is an enemy of his spiritual tribe.  For example, in the Quran 8:65 it is averred, “O Prophet, exhort the believers to fight.”  No Muslim dares ask why, if Allah knows all, sees all and created all, he should have to relay his maintenance directives through a caravan merchant when he, Allah, could directly instill in every brain whatever he desired.  The overused excuse is that Allah uses a prophet or messenger as a means to test seekers.  This is the same empty “test” that God allegedly imposed upon Abraham by God’s alleged instruction to Abraham to sacrifice his own son Isaac as a test of devotion.  But an omniscient god (all knowing) would have absolutely no reason to “test” anyone.

For the most part the three dominant faith systems of western cultures fail to understand that genuine enlightenment value is attained only from the tolerance for diversity and variety which the Creator intentionally instilled in all life’s expressions. That failing rests within all man-concocted faith systems which function under the corrupt premise of submit and obey all the faith system’s manipulative, self-serving stipulations.  Their self-serving regulations are little more than disguised threats of brute force (by the Creator of diversity), not by true spiritual enlightenment, and it is brute force that is promoted and encouraged above the principles of harmony.

To the credit of humankind, however, that which is assessed as “spirit” within man is nonetheless sluggishly evolving among the broader masses.  The allegations that the Life Principle, personified as a human-like God or Allah, would hold hatred toward any of the diverse and varied manifestations of life which “he” intentionally created are slowly evaporating under the pursuit of true enlightenment.  Unfortunately it is Bronze Age tribal-style hatreds and cultured distrust of the Creator’s intended diversity which still flavor so much of all man-written “holy” texts and continue to negatively pollute “spirit” like malignant cancer cells.

 

 

 

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Making Holy Myths

Posted in belief, Bible, Christianity, faith, Mother Nature, Pagan gods, religion, sacred texts, scriptures on February 27, 2017 by chouck017894

Of all the Creation myths of ancient peoples, the opening of the book of Genesis stands in a class by itself.  Unlike all cultures Before (our) Common Era the priests of Yahweh in the 9th/8th century BCE Jerusalem  were busily indulging themselves in setting up the self-serving premise of divine discrimination.   The Creator they presented in Genesis who walked in his garden and talked to himself is thus depicted as either not omniscient (all-knowing) or as an unfeeling schemer.  For example, where is the wisdom of placing two tempting fruit trees as the focal point of this garden landscape and then forbidding two uncomprehending newly created creatures the freedom to eat of them?  It is weak story-plotting.  But it didn’t much matter to the priest authors, for the underlying purpose of the story was to channel the Hebrew people away from belief in numerous gods and goddesses to gradually (and with much difficulty) indoctrinate them with the premise of one human-like being (male of course) who created limited identities without the necessity of energy intercourse.

In more ancient time frames the civilizations such as Sumer, Babylonia, Assyria, etc.recognized and respected the interactions and inestimable universal energies and it was these unseen but interrelated and interacting primal creative forces which the ancient cultures personified as a pantiscracy of “gods”.  This was allegorized as a Utopian society in which all were equal and each had governing power.  It is an insight which is also the heartbeat of democracy.  The creative energies which interact throughout nature and all through the observable universe do often appear in opposition, hence the “gods” which personified those energy actions were often depicted in Pagan cultures as in competition or in a state of lust.  There was never any doubt among these Pagan cultures, however, that such  creative energies originated out of a  singular Source..

The Yahweh priest-authors in the 9th/8th century BCE slyly contrived the claim that the amoral all-embracing source-power of Creation had singled out only one group of people in the world  (them of course) as the sole recipients of his blessings.  To accomplish this pretext of divine discrimination and purported prejudice the wily priest editors referred  to those same primal and diverse energies which were responsible for all manifested life as having been their historical ancestors by dubbing those primal creative energies as Isaelites–the alleged descendants of Jacob/Israel.  The various gods and goddesses that were recognized by the surrounding cultures and which symbolized for them the same diverse creative primal energies, were then ridiculed as being too lacking and had not been chosen by the power that the priests named Yahweh.  But this assault on Pagan wisdom necessitated finding a means to explain the diverse energy attributes that had been represented and personified with Pagan gods and goddesses.

The priest-editors who mined and reworked ancient teachings given with constellation figures, old oral Hebrew myths and Cabal texts certainly knew that the Pagan gods represented forces of creative energy.  They knew as well that those energies, although unseen for the most part, interact throughout the universe and have an effect on all life. The clever scheme of the Yahweh priest authors of demoting the the numerous Pagan gods and goddesses was to simply give those primal forces a different designation. Consequently those diverse creative forces were reassigned from godly status by Yahweh’s priests and were hailed as angels in the service of Yahweh.  For all extent and purpose, the attributes and special duties of the spurned Pagan gods were simply transferred to angels and were envisioned as acting under the direction of a divinely indifferent power-source which they personified as Yahweh.

Other Pagan recognition of primal energies were similarly disguised.  In the earliest part of the priest-authored book of Genesis (3:20) the character of Eve is referred to as “Mother of all living,” which suggests the rank of a near-sacred being.  This title that Adam allegedly bestowed upon Eve happens to be identical to what the ancient Sumerians had bestowed upon their love goddess Aruru, for she was regarded in their culture as the creatrix of all life.  And strangely also, the authors of Genesis never mentioned an account of Eve’s death, and the reason for that is no death occurred–we know her today as Mother Nature.

Eve’s implied eminence in Genesis, even after the alleged fruit picking mistake, reflects the Pagan perception that creation of all life can take place only through a process of polar energy interactions.  This is why various neighboring cultures which the priests of Yahweh envied–such as Sumerian, Babylonian, Phenician, Hittie, Ugaritic, etc.–gave homage to goddesses as being equal in divine power as the gods.  But Eve, according to the Yahweh priest authors, was also demoted and allegedly designed by Yahweh to simply serve as Adam’s helpmeet (Gen 2:18-20).   This was a deliberate capsizing of Pagan’s correct understanding that creation of any manifestation occurred only from exchange of opposite but equal polar energies.  The premise presented by the priests of Yahweh, however, was that Yahweh-Jehovah simply muttered things into material existence, and that story feature had no parallel in any other Mediterranean or Near Eastern myths.   The advantage of this story flight of fancy  was that it placed man (especially the political minded priests) in the authoritarian position.  Unfortunately, by demoting the feminine (negative) polar aspect which is equally necessary for life production, the Genesis myth of Creation essentially rejects the scientific polarizing energy principle by which energy manifests as matter.  And western religious understanding has been plagued with confusion, controversy and misunderstanding ever since.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Uncertainties in Sacred Texts

Posted in Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls, Hebrew scripture, religion, sacred texts, thoughts on February 18, 2017 by chouck017894

For the majority of persons of the western cultures today who have been indoctrinated into the Christian faith systems, few are aware that there is yet to be found any original copies of any of the books which are honored as the New Testament.  There are age-old copies to be sure, but they are just that, copies.  Usually made from copies.  And the Hebrew Scriptures, so proudly declared to be meticulously accurate reproductions of god-dictated holy word, many uncertainties happen to linger there which necessitates footnotes (as in the New Revised Standard Version).  In fact various passages are integrated where translators were uncertain what the original text really was (as for example, in 1 and 2 Samuel).  This presents a tragic predicament for world cultures, because the many uncertainties which continue to hover and cloud all man-written “sacred” texts have been used as models upon which were fashioned each culture’s moral, ethics and spiritual trust.  Thus it is actually sacred uncertainties which have served as foundations for the three by-the-book faith systems which routinely reflect their holiness in constant murderous conflicts.

Basic beliefs, most of which originated in Bronze Age tribal cultures, were heavily colored by fears and superstitions.  In addition, the words which have been handed down through century after century have been altered–sometimes accidentally, more often deliberately–by countless interpreters and translators who put their own spin on the declared meaning in those words.  Predictably the declared meaning said to be god-relayed in those man-written texts was always interpreted from the events of the interpreter’s  particular time frame.  The fundamental philosophy which brought about all the age-old written “holy” works conveniently allowed for such self defensive flexibility and manipulative license.  And it is precisely this philosophical elasticity which stimulates the addictive fascination for what is revered as holy word.  It provides anxious seekers with ego gratification–which is commonly praised and promoted as spiritual fulfillment.  In extreme antiquity the stories were carefully penned to illustrate cosmological and/or life-purpose instruction. Regrettably these were often indirectly–or more often than not intentionally–colored by later scribe’s personal likes, dislikes, envy, jealousies and political aims which consequently provoked irrelevant posturing and theatrics rather than radiating any genuine spiritual enlightenment.

The faithful who cling unquestioningly to “sacred” texts (Hebrew scriptures, New Testament of Quran, as examples) like to believe that those compositions which have been accepted as revealed and sacred, contain no mistakes, no textural booboos, and no faulty assessments.  But every such textural “holy” work was produced by human hands, and even the most faithful humans fall far short in cosmic awareness to serve as infallible spokesmen for the perfection and broad diversity which is the creative and sustaining power which is the all-enfolding Source.

The discovery in 1947 of a number of parchment scrolls which contained Hebrew and Aramaic scriptural texts and liturgical writings of an asectic community which dated from c. 250 BCE to about 70 CE are known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.  The intensive research on these scrolls brought to light the startling fact that those texts, which are around a thousand years older than any previously known “old texts” contained a stockpile of significant differences from the Hebrew Scriptures which are today considered to have always been inviolable.  Time and circumstances since the era of the Scrolls’ authorship brought with them alterations that resulted in textural content which became more or less standardized only around 1000 CE.  Thus the western world today has become victim to what may be termed sacred shell games.

Genuine history is routinely forgotten in what has become accepted as holy word.  For example, the OT book  of Esther was rewritten from an older version which some scholars have said had been composed by some Roman source.  Rabbi Akiba ben Joseph (c.50-132 CE) was one of the most eminent teachers of his timeframe, and he headed the school at Jaffa: It was he who rewrote the text known as Esther.  And the Jewish code known as the Mishnah was developed by him partly on the basis of his own teachings.  In the original Roman account of the Esther tale there was a character named Haman (or Aman or Hamin) who vows to kill all Jews.  Some scholars say that Haman was modeled upon a Roman aristocrat named Arius Piso.  The Jewish holiday feast of Purim was established ostensibly to celebrate the deliverance of the Jews from the alleged massacre by Haman.  The rewritten book of Esther and the association  of Haman with Roman aristocracy therefore served as the covert reminder to all Jews of the alleged conspiracy of the Romans to destroy the Jews.

Once a faith system has compiled its self-serving literary collection and stamped it as “canon” (an ecclesiastical code or laws), that man-written anthology has been advertised and marketed as containing all knowledge which is ever necessary for a believer to attain godly protection, salvation or entrance into Paradise.  Thus have sacred theatrics and man-devised by-the-book directives been set in place as the edifying mechanism over mankind’s social and spiritual evolution (or lack thereof).

Today, contented that the faith systems which we have been taught as holding divine knowledge and which supposedly extends privileged access into a higher and exclusive domain, we are kept uninformed of how and from what that belief slowly and haphazardly evolved.  Every man-contrived faith system has been built upon the awe and wonder that our ancient ancestors had felt for the celestial panorama which was then unmarred by the light and air pollution we humans produce today.  In our self-enveloped bubble of technology we have been manipulated away from the ancient’s awareness and veneration the universal phenomena, and those observations and practices became intentionally modified and disguised.  Why?  Because the “Pagan” sources from which those holy words were “borrowed” had openly respected such things a solstice periods, time of the equinoxes, phases of the moon, constellation grouping of stars, and their associated cycles of Nature.  These and other such natural observable facts thus played calculated influences in every man-contrived faith system which dominate cultures and societies today, and those natural wonders are camouflaged and smothered under priest-invented “histories” and theatrical rites.

Man!  That is almost enough to drive an atheist to attempt a prayer!  Lord, rest your hand upon the heads of earnest seekers of enlightenment, and your other hand over the mouths of the braying self-possessed proselytizers.

 

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