New and Revealing Facts about Jesus
(Click on the image for a larger view)
The Testament of the Magi is a book that can claim to be genuinely unique. Readers will decide that either it presents the true birth data of Jesus and events of the Easter week resolving many questions and mysteries around Jesus and his life, or it doesn't.
Enlarging upon paths opened up by reputable scholarly and astronomical theory on the birth of Christ, the mass of evidence presented (which reaches far beyond my earlier Signs for a Messiah and is much more popularly accessible) is so persuasive, even to seeming as exact as a fingerprint for Jesus, that easy dismissal won't be an option. A shorter Part Two, less astrology linked, looks at three disciples of especially modern relevance, the Magdalene, John the Beloved Disciple and the traitor, Judas.
Included below are the opening paragraphs of the book and Appendix Two, which includes information about the Virgin Birth occurring before Christmas. A few more excerpts of the book are available on the fReado site (enter author's name or book title). The Testament of the Magi is now available on Amazon.
Opening Paragraphs —
Contents —
Introduction —
Appendix Two
Despite the scholarly underpinnings of the book a revolution of consciousness might be required of readers to absorb all the implications for Jesus, religion, life and fate in what's conveyed through the book's 378 pages and 22 diagrams and which takes the reader further than might be expected into Jesus' self-understanding. It's hard enough today to absorb the implications for fate and psychology in the natus of a contemporary figure like Prince William which shows asteroids Diana and Camilla conjunct on the same degree and asteroid Kate in his relationship house. But it's still more surprising to take in how Jesus' messianic ancestry itself is shown in his house of origins and his names and titles compose a super-conjunction in the heavens.
These are only a few of the wonders of the still little used micro-astrology of name, place, and concept asteroids and the definitions possible via the so-called Arabic Parts like the Parts of the Father and Mother (Testament employs 430 asteroids and around 70 Parts in its micro-astrology). Moreover the data of Jesus' chart live. They have continued to trace Jesus-relevant issues and events across history. One of the more astonishing if speculative claims of the book is to be able to trace the disciples' last question to Jesus and its apparently very clear answer in the foundation day of modern Israel, itself represented, by its own asteroid, Israel.
Testament of the Magi as a Reading Experience
Testament provides a very special often meditative reading experience assisted in part by the — for many people — unfamiliar, but in this instance by no means inaccessible, language of astrology, especially the micro-astrology, of numerous asteroids. Theirs is almost always a direct, unmissable speech though occasionally they produce what I call "astro-speak", as in the case of the Betlem asteroid which by place, context and sign simply has to represent Bethlehem in absence of a specific Bethlehem asteroid to compliment the presence on the lists of a Jerusalem one.
Testament is and isn't a fifth Gospel — most essentially it's a portrait of Jesus done not in bold strokes but gradually built up through a mass of telling, often unexpected details which allow us to know how Jesus saw himself and other saw him. Sometimes the perspectives are new but there is quite enough of the known to certify no other than Jesus could possibly be the person who animates and is described by the data. But the study is by no means limited to the function of a portrait. This is a quest, which includes events and so called Event Charts. Some chapters are wholly devoted to just events, the remarkable and troubling patterns for the time of crucifixion (the book aims definitively to settle all questions about the dating of the Easter Week) and the inter-play of people and happenings of Easter morning.
Another chapter is devoted to some real detective work directed upon the story of Jesus' departure and the disciplesâ reported last question. The author examines is there anything that astrology could say or discover in this area given that the art of horary astrology (the astrology of questions) does exist and key words of the disciples last question can now be found in the asteroid lists? Some very real surprises emerge and the inquiry leads naturally to issues regarding the modern and prophetic relevance of the Jesus data and towards Part Two. This is about how certain disciples saw and related to Jesus and why these disciples, the Magdalene, John and Judas, fill our spiritual and imaginative horizons more today than perhaps previously. As I have tried to indicate, if this is a book for the Christmas season it is still more one for all seasons not least the end of the Piscean era which the arrival of the Magi may be said to have inaugurated.
The following is the book's Contents and following I add a few paragraphs from the beginning.
The Long Quest For Evidence
| Chapter no. | Chapter title
|
|---|
|
Introduction:
| The Scandal of Ignored Evidence
| | Chapter One:
| After Two Millennia of Mystery
| | Chapter Two:
| Revelations of the Asteroid Signatures
| | Chapter Three:
| Religious Symbolism of the Planets
| | Chapter Four:
| Testing Chart Data and Dating Jesus Ministry
| | Chapter Five:
| Locating the Easter Week
| | Chapter Six:
| A Good Thursday Crucifixion
| | Chapter Seven:
| Burial and the Remarkable Events of Sunday
| | Chapter Eight:
| Patterns of Departure and Return
| | Chapter Nine:
| Reading the Chart of Christ for Today And Tomorrow
|
Contents Part Two:
Two Apostles Whose Time Has Come and
a Traitor Whose Spirit Resurfaces
| Chapter no. | Chapter title
|
|---|
| Chapter Ten:
| Mary Magdalene
| | Chapter Eleven:
| John the Beloved
| | Chapter Twelve:
| A Question of Rivals and Some Mysteries of Mark
| | Chapter Thirteen:
| Jesus between Lover and Traitor
| | Appendix:
| Planets, Parts and Asteroids
|
Modern Israel regularly turns up precious archaeological finds, but even their most sensational or just obvious implications may get overlooked. When in August 2005 archaeologists announced they had unearthed the earliest Christian church in Israel at Megiddo (Armageddon) it was revealed they had discovered a floor mosaic with two fishes. It was stated the significance was that the fish was an early Christian symbol of Jesus. Undeniably the ICYTHUS fish sign was a secret code among Christians — but this mosaic showed two fish swimming in opposite directions. It was the zodiacal sign of Pisces.
Except that most academics simply arenât familiar with and donât even wish to be familiar with astrology, the significance should have been plain enough. Unlike modern Christians who regard astrology as either a superstition to ignore or a forbidden and dangerous "divination" to avoid, early Christians believed in the same astrology they associated with the Redeemer's birth. They probably also believed that the Christian era would last about as long as the approximately two thousand year Piscean era because at least some early writers such as Barnabas and Lactantius did assume around two thousand years as being the church era.
It was therefore ironic, if not a special synchronicity or sign in itself, that this reminder of early Christian beliefs should be unearthed after two millennia in of all places the region of Armageddon, supposed site of the last battle of the era. It was arguably a sign of another kind that standard publishing and agencies have never really been interested even to look at the kind of related claims I have made regarding era symbolism and the astrology of Christâs birth. Though my own researches have radically enlarged upon ideas of others already published and to some acclaim, my subject was ănot of public interestä as the receptionist at a Sydney literary agency informed me, refusing even to let her boss see a blurb. (This part of my story might be said to have more affinity for the "no room at the inn" side to Jesus' birth narratives!).
At the Turning of the Ages
Wanted or not, the unexpected data I shall be dealing with here, a continuation of a field of research opened up by scholars and astronomers in especially the last decades of the last century, return to us in no uncertain terms the Magi and the mysteries they represent. Having heralded the onset of the Piscean age these shadowy stargazers flee Herod and disappear into the night leaving us with a message half understood or not understood at all, the key to their mysteries apparently lost. Indeed, lost to the point that many rationalist theologians, forgetting that oriental Magi were so familiar to the Roman world the Emperor Constantine banned them, have decided the Magi must represent a myth or literary flourish of the birth narratives only. But now, at the end of the same era whose consciousness the Magi helped inaugurate, they and what they witnessed to confront us anew, requiring us to come to terms with their knowledge, to recover and reassess it. Also perhaps enlarge upon it since we can now know rather more about the skies they observed.
So this book is an inquiry both into what the Magi knew and what, based on that, we can hope to know about Christ today along with perhaps just a little about our own times. Even starting out years ago with quite modest analytical aims for my inquiry I would soon find the results truly remarkable, almost a fifth gospel in itself or a species of more meaningful and accurate Bible Code with answers to many questions currently surrounding Jesus. Indeed, however unusual the evidence, it is a genuine novum in relation to the well tilled field of historical Jesus studies, particularly its ongoing third wave which has become more interdisciplinary in approach. But while quest perspectives keep changing, the data on which they are based remain familiar unless perhaps increasingly to include ideas from the basically a-historical Gnostic gospels. My own quest beyond the purely textual has in its way felt more like a labour of careful archaeology or sometimes, as when describing the day of crucifixion, it feels not unlike taking a camera to the event. "As above, so below", said the Ancients. The skies are truly a mirror.
THE IMMANUEL AND VIRGIN PROPHECY
Every Christmas if a traditional version of the Bible is being read, one will hear the Isaiah prophecy, "A virgin shall be with child". For many today the question is no longer whether Mary was actually a virgin than whether the Bible ever intended us to imagine she had to be so. Modern Bibles are apt to say, "a young woman shall be with child" and this is deemed correct according to the (9th century AD) Masoretic Hebrew version of the Bible commonly employed for translations today. But there is a real mystery here, one upon which against probability the skies offer their commentary of sorts that helps resolve the matter.
The reason we are bequeathed doubts about the Immanuel prophecy is because the oldest complete version of the Hebrew scriptures, the Christian "Old Testament" which includes the prophets, is not in Hebrew but in Greek. It is the so-called Septuagint text that was translated following Alexander the Great's conquest of Egypt and supposedly done by seventy scholars (hence Septuagint) at some time between 300 and 250 BC. The work was completed off Alexandria on the island of Pharos, and the result was held to be so perfect that Jews went annually to Pharos to give thanks for it. The Septuagint was what brought the faith of Israel into the larger world and helped it become a missionary religion. For the likes of the historian Josephus and the philosopher, Philo, it was the sublime, divine translation. Late in the second century all suddenly changed. The Septuagint began to fall out of usage in synagogues, rabbis began to lament the day it was ever produced, insisting the words of the Torah couldn't even translated and a work of gradual amendment began including significantly removal of the word, parthenos, meaning literal virgin, virgo intacta.
The vital question is why the translators had used parthenos in the first place and why rabbis then wanted it removed. The word can (but not usually) mean "young woman" without meaning specifically virgin while in Hebrew as the rabbis would assure Christians ever since, if the prophet had literally meant virgin he should have used Hebrew betulah rather than Hebrew almah. This might assume the sense of virgin but no more than that. What is going on at a covert level here is a long standing Jewish-Christian disagreement. It appears that once Christianity had been successfully preached to Gentiles via the Septuagint, a Jewish reaction set in that wanted to withdraw the Septuagint and arguments from it for a virgin birth in fulfillment of Isaiah's forecast - if Isaiah actually made it.
That not even St Paul among the first Christians knew to mention a virgin birth is often cited as confirming the error of the doctrine. But arguably the apostle was aware. In Gal 4:4 he writes "But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman". As anyone would need to be born of a woman, why mention it unless this is, as it's almost guaranteed to be, Paul's reference to the Genesis prophecy of the Messiah (Gen 3:15). This states the serpent will be at enmity with the woman's "seed" (Heb: zera); and the traditional translation, "seed", is more appropriate here than the modern "offspring" which arguably hides what is quite likely to be the prophetic point - a very special one for the patriarchal society of its recording. The child comes from the woman, it is her so-called "seed", not the man's, which will be crucial for the child's birth.
Tradition was paramount In the ancient world, so it's not unreasonable to suppose it could have been simply on the basis of a tradition that almah got transated as parthenos. Thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls, however, we now have access to several copies of Isaiah and can observe that perfect agreement between them is non-existent. There are a few minor textual differences, enough to permit us to imagine translators of the Septuagint could have disposed of a text which included betulah rather than almah. Even so, it's not really necessary to imagine such was the case; a special traditional understanding is more likely and it's not too hard to imagine what that understanding could have been.
The fact is that Isaiah's prophecy to Ahaz will seem oddly unimpressive if it can't be read as indicative of something miraculous. Young women give birth all the time! It is scarcely a sign to anyone of anything except that life is fruitful and continues. Isaiah has told King Ahaz he is permitted to ask a sign from God of an extreme kind, "let it be as deep as Sheol or as high as heaven" (Is 7:11). Ahaz, not keen on responsibility, primly refuses "to test the Lord" this way — he knows the prophet is being deliberately shocking because having anything to do with Sheol might mean (after the manner of the witch of Endor), calling up forbidden spirits who dwell there. Isaiah thus appears to envisage a sign potentially against Law, against custom, against Nature itself in some fashion. Isaiah, who regards Ahaz's refusal as insulting to God in view of the special favour offered, then makes declaration anyway, and not just to Ahaz but potentially all generations by addressing "the House of David" concerning what will be a truly contra naturam event in its due time. Other issues such as regards Syria of which the prophet has forecast will have taken place before the Immanuel child will be born and grow into knowledge. The event is thus loosely future, but the sign at any date is intended to be extreme, miraculous and significant for the whole royal line.
It's hardly my most important point here, but in passing I would mention that Jungians and astrologers might see a synchronicity of place with a hint regarding the event's timing in era terms from where Isaiah is instructed to meet the king to make his declarations. It's at the end of a water conduit, or aqueduct, of Jerusalem's upper pool that is near the Fuller's field (or laundry washing field) which last is almost a messianic cleansing theme in itself - Malachi prophecies the purifying of the sons of Levi with fuller's soap. In short, a watery theme is being put alongside the virginal one. We recall that Jesus is born on the cusp of the Pisces-Virgo age, i.e. the water sign age whose ideal derives from the opposite earth sign which incarnates it. However, if this is relevant it is decidedly less significant today than what the actual birth would show in relation to the universal significator for the mother, the moon. On one side is the Jungfrun asteroid which I have already mentioned in commentary, on the other is Betulia about which I was unaware when writing this book.
BETULIA 6.40
MOON 8:40 (GEMINI)
ASCENDANT (the body) 8.50
JUNGFRUN 9:03
Betulia is the name of an Israeli village assumed to be eliding the words Betulah and Yah and thus referring to "God's Virgin", a name for the apocryphal figure of Judith who slew Holofernes.
If the birth had been at any other time of day than the pattern I have used (and also shown works for Christ's life and beyond it to this day), the degree of the moon would not be such as to make meaningful conjunction with these two asteroids, Jungfrun (virgin) which rather obviously equates with virgin as almah, and Betulia which equates with virgin as betulah. The combination for that day and that time amid an array of working data for Christ is of the one-in-a-million-against-chance kind. "The heavens declare...." including that a virgin birth is what the prophet surely meant by his forecast and that we are intended to believe. Let the sign be "as deep as Sheol or high as heaven"....... The sign would seem to be as high as heaven.
Back to Top
|
