Mythology

Go Forth and Multiply

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The spring is an excellent time of year to be considering all things reproductive. Whilst male hares are playing fisticuffs in the fields over a prospective female, blog writers are being thankful for rainbows.

The Old Testament character, Noah is an important symbol or rebirth and regeneration. The story is so fundamental that Noah appears in most ancient cultures in various disguises;

Sumer – Ziusudra

Hindu – Manu

Mesopotamia – Atrahass

Babylon – Upnapishtim

Zoroastraism – Zend Avesta

Ancient Greece – Dionysus the Younger

Ancient Egypt – Osiris

Like many bible stories, the flood is both allegorical and historical. The ending of the ice age around 11,000 BCE, unquestionably released a huge quantity of water in just a few years. The Almighty was enacting revenge on the evil doing of the earth’s inhabitants at that time – and He should know. Noah and his family were chosen, possibly, for their hygienic practices around the house and regular donations to animal charities. Whatever the reason, the best of the human race was always intended to survive the flood; along with the plants and animals.

Noah built a boat out of reeds or gopher wood depending on your source. With a layer of bitumen the vessel was able to float and survive storms. On board was a seed bank relating to plants and possibly animals. In some versions of the story the animals do not become a floating zoo but merely a place to store ‘seeds’ – a practice that overcomes the practical problems of feeding and fodder storage.

Whatever the case, it is curious to wonder whether the ‘two by two’ is a description of the counter directional spirals of DNA protein and / or the Nadi of which we will hear more later.

Pause and move forward in time to young Dionysus, swanning around in Ancient Greece. He had his own religion based on drunken debauchery, something God should have known about, but we have to suppose that being omnipresent can distract One’s attention. Anyway, Dionysian followers are depicted as carrying a staff called a Thyrsus. This is a stem of the perennial herb fennel topped with a pine cone and twined with ivy along it’s length. Some commentators have suggested this represents an erect phallus, as a symbol of fertility and rebirth – both important in their religion.

Keen symbologist’s will have noted that fennel is a vigorous perennial herb growing abundantly in Mediterranean areas where the grape is cultivated. There are clear intentions to depict the abundance of life, wine growing and the cycle of the seasons.

As Melchizedek, Noah taught Adam the secret of eternal life which was symbolised by bread (seed) and wine ( blood / water ). This may remind you of another Biblical character who popped up later and adopted this symbolism as a way for his followers to remember his body and blood. We know that for him wine and water were fairly interchangeable; one having a Divine, consciousness altering ingredient (wine). (Hang onto the idea of altering consciousness as this returns at the end.)

Another part of the story of Dionysus is that he spent some of his life floating in a box and was stopped by a tree. This is clearly the same story as Noah and the link intended. A tree represents organic life as a organisation of fractals, in the same way as a snowflake. When Dionysus becomes one with the tree, the intention is to depict the movement of consciousness into a human body which consists principally of a spine from which ribs are hung. This makes more sense of Adam being created from a rib. He is grown as you might grow a cutting from a plant to create a perfectly new whole plant without seed.

If you remember Noah was greeted by a bird with part of a tree in it’s beak at the end of the inundation – after Noah too had spent time in a box, albeit a big box of Biblical proportions.

So we have two demi-gods floating along in a sort of spring time re-enactment of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race. A scene that would probably not appear on the BBC sporting coverage is a curious story in the Genesis 9:20 – 22.

And Noah became a husbandmand and he planted a vineyard, and he drank of this wine, and was drunken and was uncovered in his tent. And Ham saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brethren without.

Firstly note the immediate link with Dionysus, wine growing and drunkenness. But what the story is depicting is a step change into human form. Until that time, homo sapien sapien did not have genitals and was not perfect. The God’s, demi-gods, animal and plant kingdoms were intertwined in the way that produced incomplete hybrids.

The reawakening of a new branch of mankind included the possibility to reproduce by the production of semen. This knowledge was passed onto the male off-spring of Noah and pretty soon we can expect the female off-spring began to know about it. This explains the edict ‘go forth and multiply’ because before this had not been possible – they had to be told. The human race had become perfect in form a message not missed by the Ancient Greeks who’s artists were inspired by the perfection of the human figure.

Lastly, there is another aspect to the Noah story that should be looked upon in a new light.

We have to go back to the bread and wine. Bread is made from seed. It is merely flour in the hands of the cosmic baker until a magical ingredient is added – yeast. We know that yeast comes from the fungus kingdom created millions of years ago. It is significantly neither plant nor animal but a hybrid with the ability to reproduce exponentially.

Then take a look at wine. This is grape juice that has been allowed to ferment – introducing yeasts occurring naturally on the vine.

In both cases the story takes us from the normal, casual, harmless state of material existence into a state of magical, altered consciousness.

This symbolises moving from a spirit in a body to becoming a soul in a body powered by spirit. In other words not just electricity (spirit) and atoms (body) – but a container for Divine consciousness (soul). And the rainbow, that started this story, depicts the full octave of human experience depicted in the chakras of Hindu understanding and of course as a Thrysus.

The seven spiralling energy centres are joined by two counter helical lines of energy called the Nadis, also referred to earlier. Again we see a reference to DNA, energy, matter and information coiled around a spine – or a stem of fennel.

There is much to consider about the chakras but suffice to say that each colour represents a state of human consciousness, ranging from the animal to the Divine.

So we should not be surprised that a rainbow over Noah and is depicted again in the Old Testament in the story of Joseph and the coat of many colours. This is a coat we all wear and brings us potentially, into a pure state of consciousness and a teller of truths.

I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of my covenant between me and the earth                   Genesis 13

The Evolution of the Body and Soul

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You might be excused for being confused. Why is there so much diversity in nature? How have humans evolved? Who invented pussy cats?

These are questions that have fascinated me for decades, simply because science offers no clear answers. Charles Darwin springs immediately to mind as being one of the first to study nature and how species adopt new characteristics and shed old ones, over time. He also noticed how ‘unnatural selection’ – that is breeding artificially – can evolve a species.

After you have finished studying barnacles in the finest detail over long periods of time (as Darwin did) you have to pause and take several hundred steps back. There is an overview and to me, the speculation it offers is fascinating.

I start with the mystery of pussy cats. I use this term to distinguish our door mat variety of lion from lions. The puzzling piece in the jig saw picture of all domesticated animals is, who created them? Domesticated cats appear in the hieroglyphs of Ancient Egypt, so indisputably they were around in pre-history.

The usual story around how wolves became dogs, for instance, is that wolves hung around early species of the genus Homo smelling meat dripping over camp fires. A piece of meat was flung to a salivating wolf and a bond was created. The wolf became half tame and a symbiotic relationship maintained that bond through generations of wolves. What morphed a wolf into a Dachshund has always bothered me. Was early man involved in choosing small wolves from the pack and breeding them to make miniature wolves, that became more like…well, dogs?

And if the wolf / dog domestication is hard to picture, consider how the mighty Aurochs (bos primigenius) ceased to be large wild cattle and became mild mannered, spotty cows. Who was in control of that transition, arguably over hundreds of generations?

When we list the present domesticated animals, there is a longer list of wild animals that were never domesticated. Why are there no miniature giraffe’s for instance, keeping the bushes in our gardens trim?

Most scary of all is the question that no one dare ask. Are we some thing’s pets? That is, the story of human evolution is partial at best. There have been several genus of ape-like creatures before Homo and it’s variations. Were the Neanderthals sweet natured creatures that laid flowers on graves and Sapiens Sapiens the bad guys who wiped them out? In which case why would you want to prefer a violent species?

There is a suggestion that modern men were created by a race of being from another star system. They needed slaves to work the gold and precious metals from the earth. Manipulating DNA to create a new species was something they did in their spare time. We are probably all aware that our genome is just a few genes different from our ape cousins. There is no ‘missing link’ because there is no missing link. Homo Sapiens Sapiens were created in a laboratory. In other words we are the product of unatural selection.

That is an interesting theory but it is the only one based on the present evidence and the Bible stories of interbreeding between angels and men. When we have indisputable evidence of ‘angels’ or beings from other stellar systems, our origin may become clear.

Until then, we are left with the conundrum of Us. For we have an enormous distinction from other life forms. We have a soul. This soul is common to every human and is described in multiple ways in our myths, legends, religions and mystical traditions. Mystics have declared a personal unity with the Almighty, for which some have been ritually murdered. Beings sent to convince man to be loving and compassionate such as Jesus the Christ, Buddha, Krishna were only partially successful. How many generations will it take for us to evolve into compassionate beings?

If you wonder whether animals have a divine potential then the answer is, in my view, no. They are locked into the evolution of not only their physical bodies but their souls. And their souls do not have the same quality as humans to become Divine. They are further down the evolutionary ladder and being reborn as animals is their precursor to being born as human. As animals they live mainly in their instincts and emotions and intelligence. At the intuitive (or soul level) then they act as a collective. Birds swoop in a flock and change direction as if they were one. Fish do the same as do most animals with the herd instinct.

The animals have souls that are evolving, just as they evolve physically. The cat that adorns your fire side mat, or the dog that trots along in front of you on your walks, is in training mode for becoming human in a next life. As humans we evolve domestic animals physically, socially and spiritually. We remove them from their herd instinct and place them in safe shelter, where, through interaction with us, they become individual, with a name.

This individuality is the last step on the process of animal evolution. Perhaps the Ancient Egyptians knew this, which is why they mummified their domestic cats.

The evolution that Charles Darwin studied so closely in lower life species, is parallel with another evolutionary process on this planet. A soul moves through countless human and non-human life times, each time correcting weaknesses. When we are reborn we have a new set of lessons and corrections to make; a process which follows a natural and unatural evolution. Humans evolve through new knowledge and experience, which can only be obtained in the 4% of the universe which is physical matter. Eventually, the perfect lifestyle that the body adopts will create a perfect human body, as revered by the Ancient Greeks. The noble lifestyle that the soul longs to  adopt, will eventually create a perfect human soul. At this point in it’s evolution the soul leaves the ‘Wheel of Karma’ and  is restored to it’s natural place in Heaven.

The Universe and The Universe and The Universes

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Understanding the Universe has proved difficult for scientists. They have an idea that it started at a single point and expanded, but cannot explain what was there before. This is because their thinking is limited by their logic.

‘If a thing exists then there must have been a time it did not exist.’

This is logical but not true, because logic is limited and changed by the presence of an observer. Quantum physics proves this with such realities as an atom existing in two places at once.

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

To describe the universe we need better words, ideas, concepts than we use to describe a four dimensional world.

Mathematicians describes up to eleven dimensions. Universes that exist apart and in the same space / time, something that is ‘not logical Captain’.

To view other dimensions it is necessary to move the position of the observer. We know this because we understand the difference between two and three and four dimensions. Two dimensions is a world on a single plane. It becomes three when we see the dinner plate as a circular object rather than a straight line. When the dinner plate is dropped and breaks into pieces, the plate has an existence in time – that is the space time we have grown to understand.

There are still people who believe in a flat earth. Even though sailors and pilots and astronauts tell of a spherical earth, the Flat Earth Society members prefer to interpret the facts in their own way.

Would it not be interesting to move to the next level of thought about the universe, just as the jump in thought between the Flat Earther’s and the rest of us? The universe is without a boundary according to our astronomical observations. In fact the galaxies are expanding ever outward at this moment in time. It is more likely, in my view, that there will never be a universal boundary discovered. This is because I believe the universe bends around and comes back on itself, as does a sphere. But in my model of the universe I see it as a Toroid shape, like a Polo mint – the ‘mint with a hole in it.’

Matter and energy appear from the Torus shaped centre of the hole as waves of galaxies, stars, gases and dust. It comes from the collapsed version of itself and is in the state of either expanding or contracting depending on in what stage of its life you view it. Time spins around the surface of the Torus as a snake around a tree coming eventually to its own tail, which it swallows. This is the serpent in the garden of Eden. Time introduces the dimension of ‘self awareness’ or ‘knowledge’ which the Creator thought man would be happier without.

There is not one Toroid though, neither is a there a place outside the Universe where the inhabitants of Heavenly Space live out separate lives. This model is Medieval in origin and was created to fit with the concept of Heaven and Hell as places of destination after death.

To my mind there is no heaven or hell other than that which is created by man, respectively through Divine inspiration or not. And before you ask, Divinity is everywhere, not just in Heaven.

There are an infinite number of Toroids. Each larger Toroid is a product of a smaller one, as we may all watch when we watch a programme producing fractal patterns.

Scale, like time, is after all relative to the observer, nothing else. It does not matter what size a Toroid is. There could be a million million in one finger nail, and a million million curving over the horizon. As observers limited to a human scale our logic and our instruments can only conceive and view up to a certain point. After that, our intuitions have to operate as they do in dreams, stories and our inspirational knowledge contained in native traditions and ancient myths.

Just because time appears to move in a straight line it does not mean it does. A car driven along the equator of the earth appears to move in a straight line when viewed from space. From another view it is describing the curvature of the earth and is travelling at over one thousand miles per hour through space as the earth spirals.

These relative ideas were described by Professor Albert Einstein in the twentieth century and it is telling that the ideas of Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computing have not begun to be explored by the popular imagination. Many people still live in the tick tock universe conceived by Sir Isaac Newton.

Perhaps intuition and stories will burst our thoughts out of the chains of logic into new worlds. Worlds which expand and contract, which are made of energy and matter, which move through infinite spaces and return every split second to the place they started.

Perhaps.

Christmas Bunnies

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Isn’t it odd that the winter solstice occurrs so near to Christmas? But perhaps not, since most agree, Christmas was postioned at this time to follow the pagan calendar. Then, three months later, along comes Easter; which happens to be the spring equinox. In Mesopotania there is a godess Ishtar and later the godess Astarte or Astoreth of the Ancient Greeks who both represent abundance and fertility – right for spring, yes?

Significant astrological days of the year determine the christian calendar closely. But it goes deeper than that. Many years ago I was in the British Museum and joined a guided tour in the Ancient Egyptian galleries. The guide was explaining how the god Horus was born of a virgin under a star in the east, performed miracles, was crucified and resurrected after three days. This was five thousand years ago, long before Jesus the Christ.

But it gets weirder. Mithras was born on the 25th December as well, and his life story contained everything Horus is known for – as was Dionysius. Krishna on the other hand was not born on 25th December but was the son of a carpenter and was resurrected and shared similar life stories to those above. If history repeats itself, then religion definitely does.

We can probably all accept that these ‘derivations’ of the christian calendar and story of ‘the Christ’, are a natural progression and echoing each other through time. It does though infer that the bible stories need poetic licence rather than to be taken literally. They are not, and were never meant to be, original.

If we go back to basics, most people would agree that winter is about the end of the cycle of nature which is death and spring is concerned with birth and a new cycle. The year is, after all just one giant wheel that turns and brings us the changing seasons. So here is my question. Why does Christmas – which is all about birth – happen at the time of death in the natural cycle? You have to consider the story of the crucifixion in more detail to see that it fits neatly into the Winter Solstice story. In the christian story the Son dies, and in the pagan story, the Sun dies. Where I used to live in England in a town called Lewes, they traditionally throw a flaming barrel of tar into the river to represent this end of a solar cycle. Then in the christian story, the Son goes into a cave for three days. So does the Sun because for, astronomically, it rises and sets from a fixed point for three days. You may see where this is going because in both stories what comes next is the miraculous resurrection. To my mind this clearly shows that christmas and the solstice celebrate the resurrection of the Son / Sun.

Nice theory, but how does Easter fit in? I said a few moments ago that spring is concerned with birth. The spring equinox is the time of year when nature kick starts, it is Aries the ram, kicking and bucking everything into life. From the Pagan religions, we still use the symbols of the egg and the rabbit, representing birth and fertility. Wouldn’t it be more understandable then if we celebrated the birth of Jesus the Christ in the spring – the time when lambs are born?  Lambs, shepherds…does that make you think of the story of the birth of Jesus the Christ? It gets better. I referred to Astarte at the begining as the godesses of fertility. She is represented by a star, more correctly the planet Venus. Shining above the path of the Wise Men from the east is of course, Venus the brightest star (Astarte) in the heavens which is especially good for navigation as it is seen in the evening and morning. Venus, the godess of love, befits the birth of the prophet of love. To hedge my bets, there was another planet hanging over Bethlehem, Jupiter. The year of the birth of Jesus the Christ was 6 BC, (due to later arithmetical errors) and in that year Jupiter was visible in the east over Bethlehem at the zenith of it’s cycle on 17th April, the most likely birth date of Jesus.

This possibility is corroborated by two things in the Bible. The first is that there is no birth date for Jesus in the Bible. The second is that Herod sent out word to kill all infants under the age of two – immediately after the supposed winter birth of Jesus. He knew that in December 6BC, Jesus was at least eight months old! He added another year to be sure he kept his throne.

I am not saying I am right and the rest of the world is wrong. It’s just that in my view, the facts don’t fit the stories. I am sure the ancient philosophers and astrologers knew this. The reason these myths are the reversed is related to why Mithras, Horus, Dionysius, and Jesus have to be born on 25th December. And that, as they say, is another story.