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  • The Secret History of Astrology

    The Secret History of Astrology

    From New Dawn 141 (Nov-Dec 2013)

    The history of astrology is in many ways the history of a polemic. The question of whether astrology works, as crucial as it is, is soon buried under other issues, such as what this might have to say about human free will and whether the stars and planets that govern our fates are benign, malevolent, or neither. These issues have been debated for thousands of years.

    Before we get into them, however, we should probably begin with why astrology is the way it is. To do this, we have to imagine what ancient people saw and how they explained it. In the first place, they would have found that there are seven bodies in the sky that move (or, as we would say today, appear to move) around the earth. These are the sun and the moon as well as five planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The rest of the planets are invisible (except for Uranus, under some circumstances) to the naked eye.

    The number seven is significant: probably there is no other number that has so much lore and mystery about it. But the explanations for its importance are never very clear. Of all the reasons given for the prominence of seven, there is only one that makes a great deal of sense. In his magisterial History of Magic and Experimental Science, Lynn Thorndike writes, “The number seven was undoubtedly of frequent occurrence, of a sacred and mystic character, and virtue and perfection were ascribed to it. And no one has succeeded in giving any satisfactory explanation for this other than the rule of the seven planets over our world.”

    So we have a system of seven planets, imagined as moving in concentric spheres around the earth. Of these, the most important is the sun; the second is the moon. Ancient humans observed that the sun appeared to move in a tight band of the sky, known as the ecliptic. By the time it made a full circuit, returning to the same point in the sky, somewhat more than twelve cycles of the moon had passed. (The solar year is 365.242 days long; the lunar year is 354.37 days.) Thus there were slightly more than twelve moons in a solar year, making the solar and lunar years extremely hard to reconcile. But twelve was the closest whole number to the truth, so it seemed reasonable to make a year with twelve months. It also made sense to divide the ecliptic into twelve parts. These were marked out by constellations, which were given specific names, mostly of animals. They are now the twelve signs of the zodiac.

    The Evolution of Astrology in History

    When did people start to make these calculations? When was this system set up? It appears that we owe to the Egyptians the schema of a twelve-month solar year (they added some intercalary days to the twelve lunar months to make up the full 365). But the most common and consistent traditions say that astrology itself came from Mesopotamia. The time is somewhat harder to fix, but one consideration might tell us something. Over the years the sun moves slightly in relation to the constellations of the zodiac, and every 2,150 years the sign in which the vernal (Spring) equinox appears will change. The full cycle, the time the sun takes to return to the same point in the zodiac (known as a Platonic year, because Plato was the first to mention it, in his dialogue the Timaeus) is approximately 25,800 years.

    The starting point of the zodiac is placed at the vernal equinox – 0 degrees of Aries. But at the vernal equinox (from the perspective of the northern hemisphere, where astrology developed), the sun does not rise with 0 degrees of Aries behind it, and it has not done so for a long time – not, in fact, since around 2000 BCE. (Today it rises with either Pisces or Aquarius in the background, depending upon whom you ask). Since this is the natural starting-point of the zodiac, we can assume that whoever set up this system must have begun here. We can speculate that astrology as we know it arose in Mesopotamia around 2000 BCE.

    And, in fact, the earliest evidence we have for astrology does indeed come from that part of the world. Although the Roman author Pliny the Elder cites a claim that the Babylonians were following and recording the stars for 490,000 years, the earliest astrological evidence we have is from the second millennium BCE. It consists of omen lists, which correlate various natural events, particularly the positions of the planets, with events on earth. Here is one example: “When the Moon occults Jupiter…, that year a king will die (or) an eclipse of the sun and moon will take place. A great king will die. When Jupiter enters the midst of the Moon there will be want in Abarrú” – and so on.

    Notice two things about this prediction. In the first place, it focuses on great events, like a famine or the death of a king. There was not yet any personal astrology as we know it. In the second place, the reasoning was inductive: when one thing happened, another thing was going to happen. While this was not, strictly speaking, scientific reasoning, it was like scientific reasoning in that it attempted to correlate one thing – the relations of planets – with another thing – events on earth. There was probably very little theorising about causes, that is, about why one thing should affect the other. But then, as Western philosophy has found again and again, the concept of causation is an extremely problematic one to this day. (For more on this, see my book The Dice Game of Shiva, chapter 4.)

    It was the Greeks who made astrology into what we know today. In his History of Western Astrology, Jim Tester contends that the twelve equal signs as we know them from Aries to Pisces was standardised in the fifth century BCE, at the time of Greece’s Golden Age. And it was definitely the Greeks who (at least in the West) first came up with the concept of natal (birth) astrology (or, to use the scholarly name, genethlialogy).

    While looking at all this, it’s important to remember that the sciences were not distinguished as they are today. Astrology and astronomy were the same discipline, and two of the greatest Greek astronomers, Hipparchus of Nicaea and Claudius Ptolemy, were also astrologers. (Astronomers also tended to be astrologers up to the seventeenth century.) Meteorology was part of the same package, and the planets were used to predict the weather. Aristotle in his Politics tells of the Greek philosopher Thales, who “knew by his skill in the stars while it was yet winter that there would be a great harvest of olives in the coming year; so, having a little money, he gave deposits for the use of all the olive-presses in Chios and Miletus, which he hired at a low price because no one bid against him. When the harvest-time came, and many were wanted all at once and of a sudden, he let them out at any rate which he pleased, and made a quantity of money. Thus he showed the world that philosophers can easily be rich if they like, but that their ambition is of another sort.”

    Medicine, too, had a link to astrology. The ancient and widespread idea that the human being, the microcosm, corresponds to the universe, the macrocosm, led the Greeks to assign the signs of the zodiac to different parts of the body. Aries, the first sign, was assigned the head; to Pisces, the last, were ascribed the feet. This enabled physicians to diagnose illnesses and prescribe treatments based on the patient’s horoscope and the positions of the planets. The connection between astrology and medicine lasted a long time, up until the eighteenth century. Before then, even sceptics admitted that it was useful to consult the stars for medical purposes. And astrologers who were attacked for the inaccuracy of their predictions retorted that the doctors did no better.

    It was natal horoscopes that gained the most ground, and they became popular in the last centuries BCE and in the early centuries of the Common Era. This period, which saw the rise of Hellenistic civilisation in the Mediterranean world, was, like ours, a time of tremendous technical and intellectual progress. It was also a time of political consolidation: small, previously independent states were united, first under Alexander the Great and his heirs, and later under the Roman Empire. As in our age, the world became more integrated – and the individual occupied a smaller piece of it.

    These facts may explain the tremendous rise in those centuries in devotion to the goddess Tyche or Fortuna – Fortune – whose caprices seemed to reflect a world where the individual was under the dominion of powers far away. It was also the time when personal astrology – particularly the natal horoscope – established its place in Western culture. People began to see their fates in more deterministic ways than they had done in previous centuries.

    ‘Gods’ & Planetary Spheres

    In those days, as we’ve seen, the planets were believed to surround the earth in concentric spheres. The soul taking incarnation in a birth was thought to descend through each of these planetary spheres in turn, assuming characteristics of that sphere as it passed. The relations of the planets to one another, and their place in the zodiac, thus dictated individual fate and character.

    Few modern astrologers would say this is why their art works, but on the other hand, there are also few other explanations that are much clearer or more sensible. We can take this idea of the soul’s descent as a metaphor for how one’s character may be fixed by the planets in the zodiac. Like most metaphors, it casts some light on what it portrays – and at the same time, it is only a metaphor.

    The history of astrology, as I’ve suggested, is the history of polemic, and just from looking at what I’ve just said above, we can see one of the bases for this polemic. The soul descends through the realms of the planets, and in those days the planets were gods. Plato in his Timaeus said that it was the gods of the planets that formed human beings, not the true, high God above (who, according to Plato, is himself perfect and could not have formed imperfect things like humans). Plato’s pupil Aristotle also held that the planets were subordinate gods.

    If this is true, then exactly who are these gods and how are they disposed toward us? Already in Plato the planetary gods are ambiguous figures, responsible for both the good and the evil in our natures. Later thinkers were to paint them in even more negative terms. The Hermetic texts – writings of late antiquity said to preserve the wisdom of the Egyptians – portrayed the keepers of these heavenly gates as the sources of vice in the human character. One Hermetic text describes the liberation of the soul at death as an ascent through the planetary spheres (as opposed to birth, when the soul descends): “Then the human being rushes up through the cosmic framework, at the first zone surrendering the energy of increase and decrease; at the second, evil machination, a device now inactive,” and so on through the seven spheres. Each sphere has a vice that is connected with its respective planet – “energy of increase and decrease” being connected with the moon, which waxes and wanes throughout the month, and “evil machination” with Mercury, the god of cleverness. The Gnostics, too, saw these intermediary planetary powers as inimical “archons” that imprisoned humankind spiritually.

    This ambiguous, or inimical, nature of the planetary gods led some to criticise astrology. Plotinus, the Neoplatonic philosopher of the third century CE, argued that if the planets are gods, it is absurd to conclude they can do evil (as some planets, particularly Mars and Saturn, are said to do). As a matter of fact Plotinus did not reject astrology entirely, allowing that it was useful for divination, because the planets are part of the cosmos and serve to reflect its harmony as a whole. But then his critique was not directed at astrology as such; the section of his Enneads discussing this matter is entitled “Are the Stars Causes?”, indicating it was the causative aspect of the planets that he had problems with. (Again we see how problematic the idea of causation can be.)

    Free Will Vs Fate

    By contrast, Plotinus’s disciple Porphyry embraced astrology (he even wrote a three-volume work on the subject, now lost). Dealing with the issue of free will versus fate, Porphyry used some of Plato’s texts to argue for a kind of mix between the two: the soul chooses its fate before incarnation, but this fate, immutable once one is born on earth, is reflected in the horoscope.

    Origen, a third-century church father, also focuses on free will. Like most Christian theologians, he is at pains to uphold the doctrine of free will and opposes anything that might challenge it. Yet he too stops short of rejecting astrology altogether, because if he did, he would have to reject natural philosophy as a whole (into which astrology was intricately interwoven at the time).

    Origen also contends that astrologers, in order to make perfectly accurate predictions, would have to be able to calculate horoscopes very precisely – within four minutes or so. The technology of the time did not allow them to do this; time was kept by sundials and water-clocks, which were not precise enough. Nor were astronomical observations. Hence, Origen said, astrology could not work.

    If we back away and look at this issue from a distance, we can actually see that, given what we know now, astrology should not have worked much of the time, given the limitations of the observations of the stars (there were no telescopes), and given the fact that the outer planets were unknown. To this we can add likely mathematical errors made by astrologers themselves, which must have been extremely common in all periods. In the sixteenth century, the celebrated prophet Nostradamus was derided by his astrological peers for his sloppiness in calculating charts.

    In any event, Christianity has always had an ambivalent, and frequently critical, posture towards astrology. Astrology and its practitioners were condemned when they came too close to sorcery and when they seemed to be criticising the doctrines of free will and divine sovereignty. But the science of the stars remained an important part of the medieval curriculum, partly because it was an integral part of the system of the seven “liberal arts” that the Catholic Church inherited from classical antiquity. (There is a persistent rumour that the pope’s bathtub in the Vatican is adorned with the signs of the zodiac, but I have not been able to verify this.)

    Although I could go into more detail about the history of astrology from late antiquity to the present, in fundamental ways the debate has not changed much. Some issues certainly have faded away. No one regards the planets as gods anymore, so we do not wonder about whether they are personally good or evil. And computers make it possible to calculate charts with extreme accuracy, either with one of the many dedicated software packages on the market or through many free sites on the Internet (astrodienst.com being one of the best-known). Finally, while the issue of free will versus determinism continues to haunt us, it does not have quite the theological weight that it once did. We no longer feel quite so obliged to justify the ways of God to man as people did a couple of centuries ago.

    Scientific Efforts to Validate Astrology

    Nonetheless, we are still forced to ask, does astrology work? Has there been any genuine scientific effort to test the validity of astrology? There haven’t been terribly many. Some studies have attempted to correlate astrological charts with the results of personality tests, without positive results (but of course that presupposes the personality tests themselves have anything more than a vague degree of accuracy). One famous study, designed by Shawn Carlson at the University of California at Berkeley and whose results were published in 1985 in the journal Nature, concluded from such indications that there was no validity to astrology. But a statistical reevaluation of Carlson’s findings by Suitbert Ertel, professor of psychology at the University of Gőttingen, that was published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration in 2009, reversed Carlson’s conclusions and argued the study validated astrology instead.

    Another famous case involved the French researcher Michel Gauquelin, who attempted to correlate planetary positions in birth charts with success in certain professions. He calculated the charts of nearly 1,100 members of the French Academy of Medicine to see if any planetary aspects showed up beyond the range of statistical probability. And indeed Gauquelin found that physicians had Saturn in prominent positions in their charts far more than could be explained by chance. A study he conducted on athletes showed a similar “Mars effect” for them.

    Gauquelin’s findings were vigorously – and viciously – attacked by the clique of “sceptical inquirers.” Some of these actually attempted to replicate Gauquelin’s findings – and corroborated them. But then these supposedly objective scientists changed the parameters of their own study to alter the results and make Gauquelin look wrong, causing great scandal even in the community of sceptics.

    The heat and vitriol generated by these studies prove one thing and one thing only: that we are a long way from any true scientific evaluation of astrology. Astrologers – and a large section of the public – believe in it, while sceptics mock it at every chance. In order to have genuinely trustworthy results, those who actually want to find out the truth would have to outnumber those who are angling for their own pet conclusions – and I suspect that they do not.

    Speaking for myself, I am not a scientist and have not done any scientific studies on this or any other subject, but I have often been struck by the validity of astrology, both for my personal life and for a perspective on larger events. To take one example, in 2001 I decided to cast a chart for the presidency of George W. Bush, based on the time of his inauguration in Washington. I noticed that Mars was badly aspected. “My God!” I thought. “It looks like we’re going to have a war.” (Mars is the planet of war.) Then I told myself, “That’s ridiculous. Who are we going to go to war with?” Events to come provided the details.

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    How Astrology is Supposed to Work

    Another question remains. If astrology does work, how does it work? Tradition held that the planets send out certain vibratory influences that affect events on earth. Scoffers retort that the gravitational pull of the planets (apart from the sun and moon) is too small to have any influence whatsoever on us on earth. That may or may not be the case: the old occult theory did not talk about gravitational effects per se, and actually predated Newton’s theory of gravity. In any event, today it’s probably more common to explain astrology through C.G. Jung’s concept of synchronicity – which he defined as an “acausal connecting principle” between apparently unrelated events. In his essay “Synchronicity,” Jung discussed astrology. He conducted a study of several hundred married couples, and found that cases in which the husband’s sun or ascendant was conjunct the wife’s moon (classical markers for marriage) occurred three times more often than would be predicted by chance.

    Nevertheless, Jung’s theory leaves a great deal to be desired. Synchronicity, as he describes it, is not strictly acausal; rather it posits a hidden cause – the psychic forces Jung called the archetypes – that underlies apparently unrelated but significant events. And so we return to that bane of sceptics – occult causes. But then Newton’s gravity, when it first appeared, was also derided by the sceptics of the day as an occult cause.

    We are pushed toward one final, and highly disturbing, conclusion – one that I have already hinted at in this article. The notion of cause and effect is in itself extremely problematic. The classic critique came from the Scottish philosopher David Hume. He said that when looking at things that were said to be causes, he saw no property they had in common (as, say, red or round objects do). From this he concluded that causation was a relation, and this relation consisted of “constant conjunction.” One event follows another (sometimes after an interruption) on a regular basis, so we infer that the one caused the other. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who said he had been roused by Hume from his “dogmatic slumber,” went on to argue that causation does not exist in the world as it really is, but rather is an innate “category,” or feature, of the human mind that leads us to perceive reality this way.

    No one has ever really refuted Hume’s and Kant’s conclusions. Science, it is true, is somewhat humbler and more furtive about asserting causal relations than it used to be: it tends to speak in terms of association rather than causation – “smoking was associated with lung cancer in X cases” rather than “smoking caused cancer in X cases” – but this only points up the strength of the philosophers’ criticisms. Whether it’s a matter of determining the causes of cancer or of asking whether the planets can presage a war, we are left with “constant conjunction.” In that respect, we haven’t gone far beyond the Babylonians.

    [alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]This article was published in New Dawn 141.[/alert]

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    Sources

    Aristotle, The Basic Works of Aristotle, Edited by Richard McKeon, Random House, 1941

    Brian P. Copenhaver, ed. and trans., Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation with Notes and an Introduction, Cambridge University Press, 1992

    Ken McRitchie, “Reappraisal of 1985 Carlson Study Shows Support for Astrology,” Center of the Universe at the Edge of the World website; theworldedge.blogspot.com/2009/07/reappraisal-of-1985-carlson-study-finds.html

    Claudius Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, Translated by F.E. Robbins, Loeb Classical Library, 1940

    Jim Tester, A History of Western Astrology, Boydell, 1987

    Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, vol. 1, Columbia University Press, 1923

    © New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
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  • The Strange Case of The Secret Gospel: A Controversial New Look at the Secret Gospel According to Mark

    The Strange Case of The Secret Gospel: A Controversial New Look at the Secret Gospel According to Mark

    From New Dawn 82 (Jan-Feb 2004)

    Even with recourse to the best scholarship and offering the best proofs for events of Jesus’ life and linked issues across history, it is not enough to claim to have found Jesus’ horoscope as I do in my book Signs for a Messiah. The findings are only a beginning. There is much to discover and the findings must be interpreted and placed in a meaningful framework if they are to be any use in helping us understand more about Jesus. 

    Modern theology, much of it rationalistic and unmystical, is not necessarily the best tool with which to assess remarkable features of the emerging data. Nor can it help us deal with rarely treated questions like the sexuality of Jesus which Signs for a Messiah controversially examines with some surprising conclusions. The new perspectives and mysteries opened up by the astrological chart of Jesus need a more esoteric understanding of sex than theologians currently deal in. 

    Although the Jewish Kabbalah as presently known is of only medieval and later origin, it does have roots in trends within Jewish thought already current in Jesus’ time and associated with the Essenes whom many kabbalists regarded as their forebears. Jewish and Christian theologians have suspected links between St. Paul’s theology of Christ and proto-kabbalistic concepts, thus we certainly need to perceive Jesus and his self understanding in more specifically Jewish mystical terms. 

    And of course, all the trends one looks at are coloured in the broad sense by the astrology of the ages and eras affecting everything and everyone. As reflected in its symbols, the emergence of Christianity from Judaism is deeply involved with the transition from the Arien to Piscean era. All Christian theology and mysticism are in a sense an astro-theology and esoteric system which fails to recognise itself as such, though perhaps and hopefully the Magian wisdom can draw them back to their roots and into greater self awareness at this time of another era transition (between Pisces and Aquarius). 
    – Dr. Rollan McCleary

    Most scholars are now agreed that Morton Smith – an American historian and classicist with an almost morbid aversion to Christianity – has discovered a genuine letter of the Early Church Father, Bishop Clement of Alexandria, in a Greek monastery by the Dead Sea. In this letter, its author quotes from a gospel that scholars are less sure is, as Clement believed, from the hands of Mark.

    Clement alleges that Mark wrote a second, more spiritual gospel kept by the Alexandrian church for the exclusive use of advanced believers. But this precious Secret Gospel had been stolen and altered by a member of an extremist Gnostic sect, the Carpocratians, who taught the necessity of salvation through indulgence in every kind of experience.

    The story, which Clement quotes verbatim from The Secret Gospel is an account of resurrection, part of which may or may not duplicate an early form of the story of the raising of Lazarus given in John 11. When the young man emerges from the tomb it is said he looks upon Jesus and loves him and does not want to be separated from him. Jesus then spends some days with the man, instructing him in the teachings of the kingdom and also spends one night with him dressed only in a linen wrap. Clement acknowledges all this but says that what follows about “the naked man and the naked man” (which from delicacy he does not choose to quote) is pure fabrication.

    Smith’s thesis is that Jesus was primarily a magician of a type quite familiar to the ancient world. His speciality came to be mind dissociation techniques in especially a baptismal context; these helped people to make shaman-like, hallucinatory ascents to the heavens, while on earth he could bend them to his will. Smith does not sensationalise the sexual dimensions of The Secret Gospel and insist that Jesus was a homosexual magician, though the thesis tends to imply as much. But he does propose that along with the techniques Jesus employed, he is to be suspected of purveying a libertarian gospel which lay at the root of all subsequent law versus grace arguments in the churches. Smith feels that even if Jesus did not preach such a gospel his personal behaviour was such as to invite suspicions about his real beliefs. He evidently behaved secretly, met people secretly and, he assumes, initiated people secretly.

    The question of Jesus’ integrity has already been touched on and while admitting he could be secretive about his intentions, it was affirmed there was nothing to suggest he was the sort of person prone to involvement in secret societies or clandestine affairs. In the circumstances, then, there is nothing remarkable in the fact he should meet a leading public figure like Nicodemus at night and in private as per John 3. It is the sole recorded instance of Jesus giving anyone teaching in this fashion. A meeting at night gave cover in the face of hostile authorities and would, besides, make for clear-headedness in a hot climate. Apart from this, since the Essenes baptised daily, it is not impossible that, as The Secret Gospel has it, Jesus should take someone aside to baptise them for some particular purpose rather than the more generalised one of John.

    The young man’s wrap in The Secret Gospel story appears consistent with Essene practice since the sect did not, like fifth century Christians, baptise completely nude but might even immerse candidates completely swathed. They did this in demonstrative reaction against the sort of foreign influence that in the days before their reforming Teacher appeared had brought Israel to engage in the Greek games, a compromise they could only regard as symbolic of deeper corruptions in their society.

    Mars and Neptune, especially Neptune, are the two planets chiefly associated with nudity and nudism. With these in the modest sixth of the Joshua [horoscope] chart, the house of health and healing, if the barriers of Essene custom were ever crossed by Jesus, they would most likely serve the interests not of libertarian doctrines but matters more like yoga and health. As even Smith’s study admits in promoting its magian theory, an ancient Libyan prescription for curing snake bites has the healer lying naked with the naked patient in order to apply friction of the skin to the wound. And, more generally, ancient world efforts at reviving the dead involved a specifically naked healer applying resuscitation techniques. So as usual, the Gnostic theories are culture-blind, failing to have sufficient regard to the person and their situation.

    This said, in harmony with the principle “no smoke without fire”, to be plausible and accepted, even the falsehoods told about a person must link to some power point within their chart. Such a power point is involved in this case. It was shown how the natal Neptune could further myths of the Magdalene; in similar fashion The Secret Gospel controversy (whose core is baptismal custom and hence immediately referable to Neptune) relates to the condition and placement of that planet in Joshua’s horoscope.

    On the physical plane there are two characteristics especially associated with Neptune. The first is the long flowing locks worn by so many Neptunian people, artists, musicians, and antipodean surfers, and which Christian iconography supplied Jesus from the first. In unconscious attunement to Neptune’s rulership in this area we speak of long hair as “flowing”, “waving”, even “cascading”. It is almost certain that Jesus did wear his hair long to express Nazarene style, dedication to his cause and/or more subtly to convey his affinity with the cosmic waters. But even if he did not do so, because the whole Piscean/Neptunian principle was so strong in him, his image would eventually have acquired the long locks of the sea god by sheer archetypal attunement on the part of artists portraying him.

    But there is another characteristic of Neptune and it is sea god’s nudity, expressive of his identity with primordial Nature which, as is known, evolved from the waters. Especially in axial eras and when Neptune enters Scorpio (the sign of sex and the genitals), nudity becomes artistically, and to some extent more socially, acceptable. Modern introduction of nudity to magazine and film (Neptune, as planet of dreams, by association rules photography and film) corresponded precisely to Neptune’s slow transit through Scorpio in the 1960s.

    Jesus was not only born with Neptune in Scorpio but was himself if anything the very essence of Neptune. It would seem he was therefore fated, regardless of existing custom, to appear before the public naked on at least one occasion, and there is no question that he did so – on the cross.

    It is more open to speculation whether readers are intended to understand that, after the manner of Michelangelo’s sculpture of the resurrected Christ, Jesus was also unclothed in the garden on Easter morning. The graves clothes are described as left behind in the tomb. Pious supernaturalism can easily supply a robe, but virtual if not actual nudity is arguably implied, not only by the omission of any reference to some striking and colourful attire, but by the fact that the distraught Magdalene initially mistakes Jesus for the gardener – perhaps for the good reason gardeners commonly worked in a state of “nakedness”. Indeed it is possible that along with the abandoned graves clothes, nudity functioned in the disciples’ memory as proof of an absolute and very recent resurrection. And one of those proofs would need to be that the flesh was free of the very heavy anointings the corpse had received.

    While later appearances of Jesus must unquestionably invoke supernaturalism as regards attire – and noticeably, unlike those in the garden, the pair on the Emmaus road are not surprised by Jesus’ appearance – it is possible the Easter scene enacts a unique and rarely considered symbolism, one in which the garden of the tomb is briefly the new Eden of the second Adam. The Jesus of Easter morning is self-revealed in the radiance of his (Neptunian) essence as one totally identified with the nature of which he is the source. Whatever the truth of this matter, Luke 6:29 implies that the Jesus the disciples had known before the first Easter was never merely prudish regarding attire. Translations with “cloaks” and “shirts” are misleading.

    In the context of a two garment society the truer rendering of the verse would be, as in The Amplified Bible: “…from him who takes away your outer garment do not withhold your undergarment as well.” This, if not a form of pacifist protest, is presumably witty hyperbole to make a point; but, undeniably, subversive sages like the Cynics were sometimes prepared to go about naked to demonstrate total independence or affinity with nature. And to have said this, Jesus was speaking like a Cynic, aiming to shock because, by contrast, for Essenes to have accidentally exposed one’s nakedness merited thirty days’ penance, and six months if it was done deliberately.

    So at least as against the Essenes we may know Jesus held relaxed views that dissociate him from those criticisms of his gospel that make it the historical source of the crazed asceticisms that gave medieval society a surplus of dirt and skin diseases because it was deemed sin to expose the body in the interests of hygiene. Even so, the question raised by speculations around The Secret Gospel remains, namely whether there were ever occasions nudity featured in Jesus’ work in relation to healing, ritual or whatever.

    This seems unlikely as it was not in the interests of Jesus’ controversy-ridden mission to supply unnecessary grounds for scandal. But, however unlikely, it is conceivable The Secret Gospel is distorting something. Essene extremism apart, it is only modern, non-tribal society that automatically equates nudity with licence. Nudism can be a quite puritanical, health minded affair – Greek doctors recommended it for the health and notable Virgos, like Goethe, have practised it for that reason. A well-known religious authority, the Benedictine Fr. Dechanet, recommends that, ideally, yoga exercises be performed nude and he would surely be indignant if people like Morton Smith insinuated such opinions were a front for libertarian behaviour. To make a point, even St. Francis reportedly preached a sermon stark naked, and though his contemporaries thought he had gone mad, nobody judged him licentious.

    The proper question would seem to be whether nudity serves spirituality in any way. If it does, the reason is of an “occult” order – as mentioned, some ancient healing practices incorporated nudity and we can more or less know why. The supposed etheric current in the powerful lower chakras of the subtle body (in effect those of the Nephesh, or animal soul in Jewish Kabbalism), is said to be less impeded when a person is naked, thus allowing certain spiritual/psychic energies to flow more freely and be “recharged”. This was probably the original reason the witches’ coven was nude and why, apparently, even some members of the early Jewish prophetic schools might go about naked under trance, as appears to be case according to 1 Sam 19:24.

    Such esoteric perspectives might just be relevant if Jesus’ miracles were to be seen in terms of anything like yoga. It is doubtful they should be; in Jesus’ case the comparison is surely more with the so-called “divine healer” who is recharged through the act of healing rather than depleted of energies they need to recharge by techniques like most practitioners of psychism and yoga. Even so, there seems little question that, in yogic terms, Jesus’ powers would normally have manifested through the Manipura chakra associated bodily with the solar plexus region and esoterically with the processes of alchemy, the production of apports (such as in the reported multiplication of the loaves and fishes) and the main forms of healing. Moreover, the solar plexus is associated in medical astrology specifically with Virgo and the sixth house, both important to the natus of Jesus as we are aware. If, improbably, there were any secrets or nudity in Jesus’ mission along the lines of The Secret Gospel we can be confident they had to do with health and healing.

    We have still not sorted out the young man. A colleague of Smith’s, Cyril Richardson, proposed a theory satisfactory to even the ever sceptical Smith to account for the mysterious gospel. Among the writings of Clement is a tract, What Rich Man Can Be Saved?, composed to allay the concerns of wealthy Christians in Alexandria to whom the story of the rich young ruler was not the happiest in the gospels. It can be imagined The Secret Gospel touched on Clement’s further thoughts about riches and discipleship and so was read at the Easter Liturgy of baptism where it followed upon recitation of the synoptic gospels’ account of the young ruler. Whether or not the original inspiration of The Secret Gospel story had been Lazarus, the subject was now understood to be the young ruler who, though he had rejected Jesus, subsequently fell ill and died but was then raised and given a second chance at discipleship.

    Long before Smith’s discovery, on the more maverick side of exegesis there was speculation that Lazarus was the young ruler; and though the theory is particularly untenable, the sexual origins of the idea are obvious enough. When Lazarus is taken ill, a messenger comes to Jesus reporting that “the one you love” is dying and then, when belatedly Jesus arrives, outside the tomb, in the words of the famous shortest verse in the Bible, we are told “Jesus wept”. The response of the crowd to this is: “see how he loved him”. It should be obvious that the messenger’s words are simply a courtesy, rather like someone saying, “Your beloved uncle is in danger of his life”.

    Jesus was a regular visitor at the house of Mary of Bethany, Lazarus’ sister, hence doubtless on very friendly terms with her brother. Had Mary and Lazarus been of the ruling elite of Israel like the rich young man this would surely have been indicated. As to Jesus’ emotion at the tomb – which is in a sense inexplicable if he believed he could shortly restore Lazarus – the crowd’s reaction to it is superficial and uncomprehending. It is very likely that the emotion is reserved for the human condition, the tragedy of death as it strikes people in every age and clime and which Mary and Martha in their distress are so vividly enacting.

    Even now we are not yet finished with this confusion of identity. The authors of Holy Blood Holy Grail, in pursuit of the thesis Jesus was married to the Magdalene, take a cue from Blessed James of Vorigaine (1230-1298) in his notorious hagiography The Golden Legend and combine Mary of Bethany with Mary of Magdala. This done, they are free to say that the “beloved disciple” was necessarily Lazarus as Jesus’ brother-in-law and not John the disciple. In The Golden Legend the Magdalene was going to marry John before Jesus’ call to discipleship intervened dooming the jilted woman to wild fits of promiscuity in her frustration. This piece of identification is quite novel and fits no scholarly or psychological probabilities.

    To rival such wonderful speculations but in keeping with logic within our frame of reference, for what it is worth I shall suggest why the rich young ruler attracted Jesus’ special attention. Consider what the account tells the reader of his character. He rushes up to Jesus full of an enthusiasm Jesus feels bound to check; he is a shameless self advertiser where his good qualities are concerned. He is the kind of person willing to make on the spot decisions in areas others might demand more time to reflect; he is emotional and openly so; his moods show on his face and he goes away mourning; and of course financial considerations rule his life. This amounts to something and what it amounts to is a sort of very public, “American” character and the sign of cardinal, decision-making Cancer, sign so often of advertising, materialism and the attitude of attachment.

    Since the Joshua chart is so strong in water from Pisces and Scorpio it will often favourably trine the planets of anyone in Cancer, the sign in which both the Part of Marriage and the Part of Love fall. The latter Part (at 23 of Cancer), besides, trines the era conjunction, thus perhaps merging itself with the conjunction’s universalising effects; but obviously there would still be lot of relationship potential towards the Cancerian individual. These Parts are nonetheless positioned in the second house of worldly goods and personal values, meaning that these subjects would tend to be at issue in contact with any Cancerian person. Indeed it is rather interesting to compare the very Cancerian chart of America with the Joshua chart, and perceive the many ties which help explain that country’s special relation to Christianity, the determination of so many Americans to media-sell Jesus. Nevertheless, it is to be doubted that who or what is being promoted is fully understood and would be altogether approved by the one preached about since there is a lot of faux amis to this relation as there surely was to the young man who faces Jesus.

    The story of the Rich Young Ruler is often cited by sceptics as proof positive that Jesus did not believe he was divine: “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone” (Mark 10:18). On the contrary, this should be taken as one of those subtle hints to people that Jesus did regard himself as divine. Noticeably he does not, by way of example, confess to any imperfections in his examination of this youth with his ready-made catalogue of virtues. Jesus’ question is a rhetorical one designed to check the effusive flow and make the person truly conscious of just who and what he has chosen to confront. That divinity and a more human level of attraction can both be at stake in the encounter only confirms what has been proposed here (and in many mystical traditions), that however great the distance between them, the sexuality and the spirituality are inextricably linked.

    The above is slightly abridged from Dr. Rollan McCleary’s book, Signs for a Messiah: The First and Last Evidence for Jesus.

    [alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]This article was published in New Dawn 82[/alert]

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