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July 19 - October 29, 2017
In the Jewish tradition, the holy thing ...
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Thomas Mann has developed beautifully in his novel Joseph and His Brothers
All the parallels in that Egyptian story of Osiris and Set are found in that account of Jacob and Esau.
Joseph enters through the well into Egypt.
they identify the individual who is going to be the heroic leader and guide who undertakes a spiritual adventure of his own.
The Myth of the Birth of the Hero.
Romulus and Remus picked up by wolves, for example—or
All of the stories of infant exile show that the family that picked up the child was inferior to the true family of the child’s, except one. That is the story of Moses.
The true family is the one that he thinks is the adopting family. So the true family for Moses was the Egyptian family and Moses was an Egyptian.
1450 b.c.,
Moses means “the son of,” “the boy.”
Going down into the land of Egypt and coming out of the land
The true sense of the myth is that the Jews are a holy people in the world.
Historical themes in the Bible become actually historical, rooted in real events, with Chronicles and Kings.
In Judges, the legends are transparently clear. Joshua’s stopping the sun is a legend, not history.
The central myth in the Bible is that of exile. Christianity is the continuation of the Old Testament.
When you think of God as a metaphor for that which is the dynamism of life, and attach yourself to that, you are God.
A Jewish philosopher of the seventeenth century said, “We come to know God not through contemplating the universe, but through contemplating the history of the human race.”
This Jewish history is so powerful because it offers a realization of a divine principle working in a holy people. Thus it is a God-given religion of participation, not of identification.
Hinduism is just the opposite, for in it the important realization is transcendent...
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Whether Jewish or Christian, our religions have stressed too strongly the strictly historical aspect, so that we are, so to say, in worship of the historical event, instead of being able to read through that event to the spiritual message for ourselves. People turn to Oriental religion because therein they find the real message which has been closed by excessive literalism and historicism in their own religion and which is now open to them again.
The best thing one can do with the Bible is to read it spiritually rather than historically.
may be a species of impudence to think that the way you understand God is the way God is.
The earliest recording of the myth of the Buddha is in the Pali canon, about 80 b.c., set down in Ceylon five centuries after and five hundred miles away from the place of the events.
Saturn is the star of Israel, after whom Saturday is named, and Jupiter is the star of kingship, and the conjunction of these in the sign of the fish—Pisces was extremely vivid on May 29, 7 b.c.—identifies this star as that which the story of the Magi refers.
Such religions as Hinduism, Judaism, or Shintō are religions not of creed but of birth.
There is, however, a certain basic savior mythos that is in the atmosphere of human history making.
There are twenty-four world savers, (Titankas) or passage makers (Tirthankaras) of the Yondershore.
The Greek deities propagate sons on nymphs; the begettings, since the parents are deities, are really Virgin Births.
In the Celtic tradition many stories tell of the warrior or hero who goes off to battle but, before leaving, begets a son. The hero dies and so the son is born with no father and this is regarded as a Virgin Birth.
Typical among the American Indians are stories of young women who conceiv...
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This search for the unknown father, this father quest, is a theme closely associated with the Virgin Birth motif.
Ulysses.
Stephen Dedalus is in quest of his spiritual father. He knows who his earthly father is, but he must find who his spiritual father is.
There is then a whole tradition of mythologies involving the spiritual begetter and the son who must go in quest of this father.
The Buddha is born from his mother’s side so, again, it is not a physical birth but a spiritual birth that is represented.
This birth is achieved by youngsters in the puberty rites through which they die as little boys and are born again as young men.
Vyasa,
In India, it is a sin not to have intercourse with one’s wife when she is regarded as ready to be impregnated.
He said, “Well, I’m a yogi, and I can restore your virginity. That is easy.”
Vyasa.
The boy become this wonderful saint. As soon as he was born, he said, “When you need me, just think of me, Mother, and I shall appear.” And he, the infant, walked off into the forest.
It is the myth of the birth of a great spiritual leader and it has nothing whatsoever to do with biology.
winter solstice,
That is the date of the birth of the god Mithra, who is lord of light.
Mithra was the principal competitor with Christianity, in the period of the first three centuries.
Lord of Light, Mithra.
The cave has always been the scene of the initiation, where the birth of the light takes place.
They are Magi—that is to say, they are priests of the Lord Mithra.
The ass, at that time, was the symbolic animal of Set, and the ox was the symbolic animal of Osiris.
