In the opening chapter of the Apocalypse, St. John describes the Alpha and Omega who stood in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. In his Restored New Testament, James Morgan Pryse traces the relationship of the various parts of the Alpha and Omega to the seven sacred planets of the ancients. To quote: The Logos-figure described is a composite picture of the seven sacred planets: he has the snowy-white hair of Kronos (Father Time), the blazing eyes of wide-seeing Zeus, the sword of Arcs, the shining face of Helios, and the chiton and girdle of Aphrodite; his feet are of mercury, the metal sacred to Hermes, and his voice is like the murmur of the oceans waves (the many waters), alluding to Selene, the Moon-Goddess of the four seasons and of the waters. The seven stars carried by this immense Being in his right hand are the Governors of the world; the flaming sword issuing from his mouth is the Creative Fiat, or Word of Power, by which the illusion of material permanence is slain. Here also is represented, in all his symbolic splendor, the hierophant of the Phrygian Mysteries, his various insignia emblematic of his divine attributes. Seven priests bearing lamps are his attendants and the stars carried in his hand are the seven schools of the Mysteries whose power he administers. As one born again out of spiritual darkness, into perfect wisdom, this archimagus is made to say: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive forever more, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death. In the second and third chapters St. John delivers to the seven churches which are in Asia the injunctions received by him from the Alpha and Omega. The churches are here analogous to the rungs of a Mithraic ladder, and John, being in the spirit, ascended through the orbits of the seven sacred planets until he reached the inner surface of the Empyrean. After the soul of the prophet, writes the anonymous author of Mankind: Their Origin and Destiny, in his ecstatic state has passed in its rapid flight through the seven spheres, from the sphere of the moon to that of Saturn, or from the planet which corresponds to Cancer, the gate of men, to that of Capricorn, which is the gate of the gods, a new gate opens to him in the highest heaven, and in the zodiac, beneath which the seven planets revolve; in a word, in the firmament, or that which the ancients called crystallinum primum, or the crystal heaven. When related to the Eastern system of metaphysics, these churches represent the chakras, or nerve ganglia, along the human spine, the door in heaven being the brahmarandra, or point in the crown of the skull (Golgotha), through which the spinal spirit fire passes to liberation. The church of Ephesus corresponds to the muladhara, or sacral ganglion, and the other churches to the higher ganglia according to the order given in Revelation. Dr. Steiner discovers a relationship between the seven churches and the divisions of the Aryan race. Thus, the church of Ephesus stands for the Arch-Indian branch; the church of Smyrna, the Arch-Persians; the church of Pergamos, the Chaldean-Egyptian-Semitic; the church of Thyatira, the Grecian-Latin-Roman; the church of Sardis, the Teuton-Anglo-Saxon; the church of Philadelphia, the Slavic; and the church of Laodicea, the Manichæan. The seven churches also signify the Greek vowels, of which Alpha and Omega are the first and the last. A difference of opinion exists as to the order in which the seven planers should be related to the churches. Some proceed from the hypothesis that Saturn represents the church of Ephesus; but from the fact that this city was sacred to the moon goddess and also that the sphere of the moon is the first above that of the earth, the planets obviously should ascend in their ancient order from the moon to Saturn. From Saturn the soul would naturally ascend through the door in the Empyrean. In the fourth and fifth chapters St. John describes the throne of God upon which sat the Holy One which was and is, and is to come. About the throne were twenty-four lesser seats upon which sat twenty-four elders arrayed in white garments and wearing crowns of gold. And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices: and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God. He who sat upon the throne held in His right hand a book sealed with seven seals which no man in heaven or earth had been found worthy to open. Then appeared a Lamb (Aries, the first and chief of the zodiacal signs) which had been slain, having seven horns (rays) and seven eyes (lights). The Lamb took the book from the right hand of Him that sat upon the throne and the four beasts and all the elders fell down and worshiped God and the Lamb. sacred-texts/eso/sta/sta46.htm
Posted on: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 23:10:42 +0000
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