MAD PROPHECY, BAD ASTROLOGY AND THE TRUMP WIN

A DEVASTATING ASTROLOGICAL FAILURE….MEANING?

I don’t doubt that in especially many American evangelical minds, their prejudice against astrology will seem amply justified by recent events of the presidential election. At one level the prejudice could seem well justified – even devastatingly so.

It’s a fact most American astrologers predicted Clinton would win at the election easily. The LA Times of October 18^th reported that a conference at Costa Mesa of hundreds of astrologers (of The International Society For Astrological Research no less!) was unanimous Hillary would win. This was of course only what a blind media (and the polls) almost automatically assumed too in a clear case of people believing what they want to believe. (At a stretch, and in mitigation, one might say Clinton won the popular vote and certainly those astrologers were right who, noting the moon to Neptune factor on the day, forecast confusion over the result. But even so).

By contrast, and like some prophet of old, Pastor Saeed Abedini, the long term Christian prisoner in Iran so little helped by the Obama regime, told Huffington Post days before the November election, that while in jail Jesus had informed him Trump would be next president. Ironically the same Huffington Post had even given space to astrologer Larry Schwimmer to detail all the celestial aspects that supposedly showed why Clinton must win against Trump.

For American evangelicals, such devastating failure by astrologers simply justifies Isaiah’s condemnation of stargazing (Is 47: 13)  and suggests that astrology, when not pure nonsense, is a form of the biblically forbidden divination (albeit the Essenes and Talmudists didn’t read their Torah that way and practiced astrology as did the Magi who visited the Christ child). Didn’t Isaiah ironically declare, “Let those who study the heavens stand up and save you, those who gaze at the stars and at each new moon tell what shall befall you”?. So astrology has to be wrong, religiously and empirically, right?…..

CHRISTIAN PROPHETS WRONG TOO

….Despite everything, actually the answer is no. It is wrong  for reasons I will show presently….after immediately mentioning how inaccurate some Christian prophets have also been over the election. In Nigeria a famous preacher and self-declared prophet, TB Joshua, forecast a Hillary win but tried too late to delete it from his website causing public scandal. In America prophet Brian Carn forecast a Hillary win. Prophetically inclined preacher, Perry Stone, though hoping for a Trump victory, expected a Hillary win because a prophecy from the thirties from the controversial but often accurate William Branham, foresaw the destruction of America under the rule of a woman.

Still more extravagantly there is prophetess Glenda Jackson, who portrays herself as consistently right (having visited heaven and hell and chatted with St Paul how could she be wrong?!), and due in these her latter days to be made by God like the prophet Samuel himself. She declared on TV last April  to the hopelessly credulous Steve Roth of It’s Supernatural , that there would be no election. There would be crisis in America and Obama would suspend the election and reinstate himself to become America’s last president.

Obama as last and apocalyptic president is itself a claim quite a few would-be prophets have endorsed, some of them following visions in the night reported on YouTube. Some of these nostrums are supposedly released under the direct influence and authority of Jesus and/or the Holy Spirit. Frankly it’s an embarrassment to Christianity and recalls another prophet, Jeremiah, on another subject, namely noisy, over-active false prophets (Jer 14:14, 23:16) whom God never called.

But it’s no good the kettle calling the pot black. If you abominate astrologers you had better start abominating and weeding out your own false charismatic prophets. So I repeat the question: is astrology so wrong? I don’t ask here whether it’s theologically wrong (a case for it can always be biblically made no matter what evangelicals claim), but is it just inaccurate nonsense no one in or out of Christianity should consider? What about all the false prediction for Clinton? How ever could that situation even come about?……

ASTROLOGY RIGHT, ASTROLOGERS WRONG?

……Three points in answer can suffice here:

1) It is always best if an astrologer is an all-rounder and not just a specialist. This means they need to know a bit of history in order to apply their sometimes complex data aright. The Republican party, as a conservative party has some automatic links  to Saturn whose sign of rulership is Capricorn. Yet most American astrologers seem blithely unaware of the remarkable historical/astrological fact that since the foundation of the GOP in 1854, every time Saturn has been in Capricorn, a Republican has been president. Saturn, though now in Sagittarius, will be in Capricorn during any first term of the next president, so Hillary was not favoured. I only recently learned this through America myself, but it is something especially American astrologers with a grasp of history could and should have known. It’s an instance of astrology being relevant and accurate but astrologers ignorant, rather like the bible being true but high jacked by translators and interpreters.

2) Something that almost all qualified, practicing astrologers should be expected to know, is the well-established Grant Lewi theory about the cycles of Saturn. Basically it is that career and success are governed by the 28 year Saturn transit of the natal pattern through its four quadrants. Self and career is made or re-established through the first quadrant and it grows and finds outlet in especially the last quadrant between the 10^th and 12^th houses. Clinton’s birth time is admittedly disputed, but on the basis that in 2014 Saturn crossed her ascendant, according to the most widely assumed birth time and given that Saturn is thus now in only her first quadrant, she simply could never become president in her lifetime and it was astrological folly to try.

3) If astrologers were abreast of researches as of the Magi Society, they would also be aware that even if the aspect is a traditionally easy/positive/fortunate one such as a trine, when transiting Saturn makes aspects to natal Pluto, that marks failure regardless of all else. This is just what was the case around election time for Hillary. Plainly, many like Larry Schwimmer at Huffington did not know this. And almost no one listened to a friend of mine in astrology, Barbara Ybarra of San Francisco, who back in April did forecast a Trump victory on Sacramento’s local TV. She cannily noted a technicality (a progressed moon conjuncting the ruler of Trump’s career Midheaven), affecting the inauguration day as opposed to the election day most astrologers focussed on (1).

(A possible further point to note is that by transit conservative Saturn by election time had   – if one used the most widely used Sibley foundation chart for America – crossed over America’s ascendant into its first house hinting at a new swerve in the body of the people towards a  conservatism desiring to remake America by restoring many traditional values. The shock of this reversal was arguably promised by the way the eclipse preceding the election had closely squared America’s foundational Uranus, the shocks and upheaval factor).

TRUMP’S UNUSUAL CHIRONIC WIN

I was not myself aware of the just mentioned Saturn to Pluto principle and despite my success with Brexit, can’t boast I did better than the American astrologers on Hillary, though I do have more excuse. I’m not American, astrology isn’t my regular profession to concern myself with the question, and I don’t know Hillary Clinton’s birth time for sure – no one seems to which should render any stated predictions more cautious and provisional.

The reason I slipped over the Hillary forecast was this. Without applying any in-depth study to Trump’s (accurate) chart at all  – not even the asteroids I usually examine which significantly enough show America conjunct Trump’s ascendant –  it didn’t strike me as about to produce any very typical, obvious winning pattern at election time. Jupiter conjuncting Trump’s Chiron, the wounded healer planetoid, a factor to be emphasized again at the inauguration, is rather special and raises all sorts of interesting questions beyond present scope about Trump’s and America’s situation. I merely assumed that some tough but positive aspects for Hillary like the mentioned Saturn to Pluto, reflected a hard campaign (as was the case) in which the disliked but least opposed candidate (Hillary) was likely to emerge as victor however narrowly. I certainly assumed no easy run or landslide victory and can’t imagine how any astrologer ever would  have done so.

I could and perhaps should have applied the as good as certain Grant Lewi principle I was familiar with, but as said the birth time is disputed. If you don’t know that you won’t measure the quadrants properly. So I have my excuses and perhaps the American astrologers could be allowed some….if they hadn’t spoken with such excessive confidence.

As it is, failure of the astrological elite in this instance is rather spectacular. It’s without parallel since the 9/11 disaster which only one astrologer (in The Mountain Astrologer, America’s most intellectual astrological journal) got right according to basic, traditional rules that amazingly all the rest seem not to have known or just ignored. Essentially a major eclipse had hit a world point in the sign of America (Cancer) and eclipses are triggered for events when planets go over their degree. Aggressive, bellicose Mars hitting a dangerous eclipse point should produce mayhem the world would hear of. Was it against American positive thought to suggest disaster could occur?

Once again astrology was true enough but the astrologers like the prophets fail…….[ After issuing this blog I have belatedly discovered the case of astrologer GianPaolo DiCoco’s very striking insistence against the astrological establishment that Trump must win – various You Tubes but see  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEtsUkRIOOk ]

BACK TO THE MAGI…..REALLY

All this is troubling if like myself you believe religion is important and astrology carries messages that religion should know and use, not excommunicate as heresy. As the recent election contest has underlined, many Christians want and expect visions, prophecies, special words from the Spirit. Ironically they fail to realize, and could hardly imagine, that the Spirit (long recognized by astrologers as symbolically represented by the planet Uranus) is giving messages all the time through the skies and the same astrology that Uranus “rules”. The Psalms declare night after night gives knowledge (Ps 19:2). Which they do if only attention was paid. So why not “Hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Rev 2:7) in one of the forms in which the divine will is revealed – even daily revealed? You would need to know and understand about the astrology of diurnals to grasp something of what the Psalms claim about every day of our lives being already written in advance (Ps 139:16).

It is high time and beyond it that Christianity, which is increasingly dismissed as a purveyor of myths, should understand the long hidden mysteries of the Magi, better grasp the historical basis of its beliefs and know for once and for all when Jesus was born. Also when Jesus died and that he died on the cross (an increasingly challenged point) and along the way know whether he married the Magdalene and all such more personal details of biography and character people want to know today.

A modern astrology, especially if it applies the micro-astrology of name, place and concept asteroids and the descriptive factor of the Parts can do these things; and they are now available for anyone to read in my Testament of the Magi. The material, a radical development of the Ferrari  D’Occhieppo and David Hughes theory considered by Pope Benedict as plausible, is as distinctive as a fingerprint for Jesus. It resolves numerous longstanding scholarly problems and popular questions and altogether represents so improbable a discovery – no one could possibly invent all the details – it is as good as unanswerable. Let any who wishes, try to demolish the evidence. I suggest they can’t and won’t…..All the more reason many will try to ignore and pretend the evidence doesn’t exist.  Testament of the Magi is available at  Amazon  https://goo.gl/x8KASy

That situation belongs with issues of our times. The Trump election has helped highlight just how much information is dominated by political and media elites who don’t necessarily reflect society but do seek to impose their own views. I submit this is one reason my crucial information has not reached the public forum as in justice it deserves. Publishers and media outlets who will give room and voice to the most whacko or negatively undermining treatments of Christianity and Jesus, have proverbially no room at the inn for this information – you are fortunate even to be given a reply to a proposal or inquiry. Sometimes there is a plain uncivil answer or, as recently with someone in religion in Australia’s broadcaster, the person is just too busy to attend to you because they have “more important things” to do…..more important that is than something in its way as potentially significant as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Basically you are liable today to be treated like a fool if the dogmatic and undemocratic elite doesn’t happen to be interested or in agreement with your views or you are not already a celebrity.

Truth however has a way of ultimately getting out. The material is now available for readers to assimilate, discuss and pass on. You can do your part in making the truth known…if it isn’t and always was so essentially secret it’s a kind of knowledge hidden from the world as St Paul would have it (1 Cor 2:7-8)….Or, as the correctly forecasting Pastor Saeed rather airily said to Huffington Post, “You’re not Christian so you wouldn’t understand”. I’ve certainly encountered misunderstanding enough.

1) Trump’s important progressed moon at inauguration time is interesting and strange like his Jupiter to Chiron aspect at election. Normally, symbolic progressions amplify but essentially agree with transits. The cited inauguration progression is of the winning variety as Barbara Ybarra saw, but at the same time Trump has Saturn transit his natal moon (anything to do with home and emotional tenor) and opposite sun (his will and status in the world). I joked to Barbara that, knowing Trump, if he did win, was inaugurated and entered the Whitehouse under Saturn he could well rubbish his new home declaring it uncomfortably inferior to Trump Tower. That’s surely a real possibility; but I do find the usually depressive, frustrating Saturn/moon transit odd at the point of assuming power. Like the Chiron factor at election, it looks as though hard times are ahead for Trump (and America) and he is taking on heavy Saturnian burdens. Barbara herself thinks the outlook for America in 2017, especially later in the year, is pretty grim and notes the long so-called Great American Eclipse across the US in August hits right on Trump’s ascendant conjunct America. Let’s not speculate…yet anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AN ASTRONOMY/ASTROLOGY OF APOCALYPSE: COULD THERE BE SUCH?

ENDINGS AND THE ONE CERTAIN FACT

Nowadays when some sectors of the church are taken up with the subject of end times and there is an abundance of often fanciful You Tube dreams of alleged apocalyptic relevance, it’s ironic how ignored or dismissed is one of the more solid grounds for declarations about our  times as one of endings.

If there was nothing more to derive from the heavens than one indisputable fact (but I will be considering whether there might be more), there is this. An astronomical/astrological era lasts approximately two millennia( more like 2100years). The world stands at the end of the same era of Pisces (the fishes) that was inaugurated around the time of Christ’s birth about which magi (astrologers) knew something – including doubtless that among other things Pisces is a sign of suffering and the martyr. Now, as though something was coming full circle, it’s especially Christian faith (whose original secret sign under persecution was once the fish) is either declining in its heartlands, persecuted in regions of its third world growth, and/or suffering persecution, sometimes even genocide, in Muslim majority societies. Some of these were, like Turkey, the earliest homes of Christianity too. (Only western secular indifference and PC attitudes affecting media and governments obscure quite how widespread and extreme this situation is).

Just before his ascension Jesus is reported as declaring he will be with his disciples till the end of the aion (age or era), (Matt 28:20) but it is not stated what era. Later it would be said the Christian era is “the age of grace” of unspecified length, but in the ancient world more specific meaning could apply to an aion and it is highly likely in this case Jesus was indicating the more time fixable celestial era.

In era terms we stand at the equivalent of the final degree of the sign, i.e. 29 degrees of Pisces. That degree conjuncts a star long regarded as one of the worst in the heavens. And suitably it’s since a total solar eclipse on that degree in March 2015 (and amid a rare and peculiar sequence of blood moon lunar eclipses begun the previous year), that the world as we know it began seriously and more rapidly to unravel. It has been doing so in ways traditionally associated with the negativity of 29 Pisces – drownings, floods, suicides, murders, theft, deception, despair, the victim, the refugee – in short, just the scenario presented by the cruelty and deceit of ISIS, the chaos of mass migration, the genocide of minorities and the natural disasters that destroy whole communities.

As everything returns to the seas of origin and does so with much of the extremism associated with any last (anaretic) degree of a sign, hope among secularists is pinned on a new globalism and among the more spiritually inclined on some would-be all-inclusive religion. Even the current Pope (himself theoretically the last according to the medieval prophecy of St Malachy) seems to be edging in that direction even while Christians die in ways that recall the first Roman persecutions. Overall there’s little more reigns than last degree, last phase chaos, the confusion and blurring of everything. Amid this the West’s long standing objective ideals of democracy and free speech are threatened by a weak, confused, largely godless political correctness. And paradoxically, the latter often concedes and almost masochistically, to the most extreme of belief systems and customs that can only undermine its own values. (Negatively Pisces is about  masochism and any indiscriminate charity and permissive toleration!).

But serious though it is, does 29 Pisces really bespeak and anticipate the likes of the biblical Tribulation whose occurrence would be little short of the end of life as we know it? The non astrological answer can be in the affirmative if the times demonstrated a notable continuation of the problems already observed, especially if, like the pattern of natural disasters in recent years, they increased in frequency and/or intensity. That is what birth pangs do, and the apocalyptic end is said to be heralded by precisely “birth pangs” (Matt 24:8) at the same time as, harmonious with the mentioned situation of Christianity worldwide, a distinct decline in faith, a “falling away” also features  (Luk 18:8), (2 Thess 2:3). But beyond such general indicators, is there, could there be any astronomy/astrology of apocalypse?

The answer is a conditional yes and here’s why.

THE PATTERN OF THE AGES

Despite what some imagine, astrology is empirical. It looks to what has happened before under certain factors to see if these will be repeated. It’s a case as per Ecc 1:9 of “what has been will be”. Needless to say, earth, society or climate-related apocalypse has never happened in recorded history, though great wars and disasters have always occurred. So there’s no single factor can serve as example…. All the same, some real sea changes in human history and consciousness do occur with the change of eras following the precession of the equinox, or apparently so. It follows one can look at that within the narrow frame of known history as a first point. I’ll summarize about this very briefly before considering how the information might fit in and illuminate other issues of our times.

4000 BC to 2000 BC corresponded to the “feminine” age of Taurus the bull whose character as in the development of Egypt’s state cult with its immortality obsessed pyramids necessarily idealized the afterlife and sex mysteries in line with its opposite sign Scorpio. (The character and activities of an era is given by its sign, but its ideals are drawn from its opposite sign, all signs having a positive or negative potential expression-wise).

Taurus was overtaken around 2000 BC by the “masculine”, more patriarchal age of Mars-ruled Aries the Ram, an era of Lebensraum wars as in the Bible and concluding in extreme blood baths as of the Roman arena. Aries’ ideals lay in the opposite sign, Libra, sign of Laws and marriage. The Old Testament covenant and prophecy are very much about Law and marriage. The ideals of many societies of the period were enshrined in their laws.

Two thousand years ago the “feminine” sign of Pisces, a sign “ruled” by grace-bringing Jupiter and compassionate Neptune opened to more female values like forgiveness, generosity and service; but its ideals, when not focussed on Christ himself (whom there is good reason to believe was born under opposite sign of Virgo), inclined ever more to the scientific, analytic and material concerns of this earth sign as in Enlightenment philosophy under whose values at least in the West the era is now ending  and standing on the cusp of the next more individualistic and Utopian Aquarius/Leo age.

The fact that Jesus was born in Bethlehem (house of bread, bread being associated with the wheatsheaf and harvest sign, Virgo), fished with fisherman on Galilee, performed the miracle of loaves and fishes, spoke parables of the great harvest etc, distinctly links him and Christianity to the Pisces-Virgo era.

In effect, Jesus belongs to the previous age too. He claims to fulfil its Law and becomes the last sacrificed ram/lamb of Aries and the first “fish” or fisherman of Pisces, resurrected like Jonah who emerges from the whale. To the extent Jesus is self-identified in his body with the Temple (Joh 2:19), implicitly and indirectly he may even be said to relate to the remote, earlier Taurus age because the Temple cannot be founded without the ashes of the red heifer, a creature of Taurus.

So, if anything like this astro-historical scheme is accepted, and undeniably the bible’s “dispensations” of Law and Grace more obviously connect to the succession of the eras than other faiths – Buddhism is over five centuries out and Islam over six centuries – we can ask another question.  The question is: does the symbolism for the current closing era and then for the succeeding Aquarian era (which biblically would correspond to the  Millennium), betray that these eras are meant to be identified with what is now happening and may soon occur? Does Christ once again straddle the ages and link to the coming Aquarian one? Here are some reasons to think that could be.

STAGES OF RETURN

Unless many students of prophecy have got it wrong, the Bible appears to divide its end times apocalypse and Second Advent into two parts whose symbolism could be considered striking in context of era symbolism.

Extremely, yet in its way not inconsistently with the extremism of any last degree, there is:

1. a hidden Return of Christ for the believing prepared (the time when “one shall be taken and the other left” Matt 24:40, often called the Rapture, the harpazo or snatching away). This effectively delivers persons from the very last trials of the age, namely a Tribulation period under an Antichrist figure.
2. There is also: an open return of the Messiah to the world that ends the seven year rule of the Antichrist figure and inaugurates the ideal Messianic kingdom.

The first of these endings is evoked and anticipated in Jesus’ apocalyptic parables. These speak in terms of harvest, of prepared virgins/ bridesmaids and the need not to be drunk with the servants etc and so are redolent of key symbols of Pisces and Virgo (both are servant signs and Pisces is often inebriate) and  the whole picture overshadowed by what seems like a sudden great disappearance. Significantly, any state of absence, invisibility and disappearance is associated with Pisces and its ruler Neptune. That would cover for the end of an era in an extreme of its nature.

The second of these scenarios is about almost the opposite, namely a very visible event, sudden and surprising (the other event was that also but under cover of invisibility). This event is compared to lightning going from one end of heaven to the other (Matt 24:27). The image is harmonious with the lightning glyph of Aquarius, a sign ruled by Uranus, planet of the sudden and surprising and the very opposite of hidden. So this bespeaks a sudden and absolute irruption of the new era.

The biblical Millennium is effectively a Utopia, a concept beloved of Aquarians (the word and concept was invented by an Aquarian, Thomas Moore).

What is almost the biblical clincher for the assumption that the age to follow any Piscean breakdown is the Aquarian age and that consequently apocalypse is not to be seen as  in some far distant future or never, is this…..

Whether Ezekiel’s prophecy of the end times, millennial temple is more a symbolic vision of various realities or the forecast of a literal temple, either way the fact is its walls are decorated with figures of cherubim who have two faces, one a man, one a lion (Ex 41:18-19).

This has to be the archetypal man of Aquarius with its opposite ideal-supplying sign, Leo, the sign of the lion and royalty. And as Christ is “the Lion of the tribe of Judah” and in specifically the apocalyptic book of Revelation (Rev 5:5) in which he comes to claim his kingdom, once again the messianic connection fits.

THE ALBERT SCHWEITZER MISTAKE

One other piece of symbolism from a parable of Jesus would support ideas that the present Pisces to Aquarius era cross-over could be indicated for apocalyptic events.

There is a theory, popularized by the notable Albert Schweitzer in his The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906), that Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet who wrongly foresaw the end time as happening soon and for his own generation “this generation will not pass away…..(Luk 21:32). One point used to support this hypothesis if anything denies it.

Given various biblical references, the fig tree of the parable is reasonably enough often believed to be Israel, its people and nation. It is when it sprouts forth new buds there will be a generation who sees the apocalypse. Israel at the time of Jesus was not a united people, not a nation, but a divided colony. Israel would not be reconstituted as a people and a nation until modern times.

A biblical generation can be 120 years, 70 years, 40 years or even the 50 years of a Jubilee. The fact remains however that Israel is currently 68 years old from its modern foundation in 1948 (following a UN vote for its existence in 1947). At that rate one could argue, and many now do, that an apocalyptic scenario should begin soon….which if so would obviously associate it with end of Piscean era events. [Events since 2017 like Trump declaring  Jerusalem eternal capital of Israel and moving the US embassy there, while a host of special events have been associated with the Temple Mount and increased calls for a rebuilding of the temple, all are seen as involved with the end of era generation]

THE ENIGMA OF THE ALLEGED GREAT SIGN OF 2017

The following is a peculiar, increasingly emphasized apocalyptic speculation. I have serious reservations about it, but it is appropriate to comment on it here given its unusually astronomical/astrological nature by the standards of those who normally exclude such an emphasis from their prophetic speculations…..

Pointing to a possible apocalyptic scenario or its general beginnings, is what some perceive as an unusual astronomical sign of the northern autumn of 2017. It falls just after Israel’s two day Feast of Trumpets (falling specifically on the autumn solstice 0 Libra which means a world point in astrology) and in relation to the constellation of Virgo. Some believe the rare pattern constituted corresponds to the “great sign” (portent) in the heavens of Revelation 12. Whether it does or not, biblically the sign has always invited serious examination. The bible talks about “signs” but not a “great sign” or “portent” in this way that seeks almost to draw attention to itself. And if the skies of 2017 do hold what Revelation might anciently have been referring to, then that pattern would undeniably be a rarity not seen in thousands of years.

Even if the right factors are being correctly observed and there is thus some apocalyptic significance, obviously it could still be a general one rather than the time indicator of one event.  And  it’s a crucial question, one embarrassing even to those convinced of a portent but who don’t wish to be mere date setters, whether the sign is timing a specific event like the Rapture and/or the onset of the Tribulation( whose timing it was long thought we weren’t meant to know anyway) or just pointing to imminence more generally.

Before proceeding to the sign astronomically, it is necessary to consider its symbolism and why the scenario of Revelation 12, often associated in especially Catholicism with the Church and Marian doctrine, is getting associated today with a more Protestant doctrine of end-times.. The modern take on the sign is logical enough.

THE WOMAN AND THE THREATENED CHILD

The given scenario is one in which a crowned woman (clothed with the sun and with the moon under her feet and twelve stars at her head) gives birth to a man child who will rule the world but who is snatched to heaven away from a seven headed, ten horned dragon. The frustrated dragon seeks to devour the woman who flees into the wilderness where she will be preserved for a period half that of the seven year, world-destroying Tribulation.

Tradition has to be wrong about this vision. It is not and cannot be about the lives of Jesus and the Virgin. Jesus is understood to have ascended to heaven triumphantly having conquered evil. He is not described as snatched to heaven to avoid the forces of evil. Mary moreover is widely believed to have ended her days in Ephesus; she did not have to flee anywhere actually or symbolically, certainly not to any desert.

The snatching away however is the same harpazo verb St Paul applies in his epistles to the Rapture/transformation of prepared believers at the Last Trump. The woman ought therefore to be Israel or the Virgin daughter, Jerusalem, who (within John the Revelator’s lifetime has just given birth to the new and persecuted messianic faith (the first Christians were Jews) even if not all Israel accepts it and will accordingly experience the end of the era differently from those of the faith. She will not herself be snatched away but she will be protected during the time of increasing troubles on earth the Tribulation..

Granted the woman’s “man child” who will subdue the nations sounds as though it could be Christ to the extent this looks to a stated future role of the Messiah (Ps 2: 4-7, Rev 2:27 etc). But since it was early Christian doctrine that believers must share in the rule of Christ over the future kingdom, the man child is better seen as a reflection of Christ, or even his “body”, finally unified with him in the Rapture/resurrection of the Last Trump. Elsewhere the church is the bride; but as with all symbolism there is a certain fluidity. It is not the church’s devotional relationship to Christ but its role more politically that seem to be hinted at. (Personally I believe the man child could be the symbolic equivalent of the Puer or boy/youth archetype functioning here as an alternative symbol to the Bride because the Puer archetype has considerable association with flight and Gaymede type myth of being seized to precisely heaven). It is because of this resurrection/transformation that any kind of contribution to organizing the next era in the wake of  Tribulation’s apocalyptic disasters is possible for anyone in addition to Christ.(Rev 20:4).

So…is the “great sign” in Virgo something to do with the cut-off event of a Rapture and an end of the age whose absolutely last brief phase is the period of historically unparalleled Tribulation? The main events of Jesus’ known earthly life and the church’s foundation corresponded to or ”fulfilled” the spring to summer festivals of the Jewish calendar. Any future events involving Jesus thus might engage the autumn festivals of which the Feast of Trumpets would be one, indeed the first in sequence.

While as said I don’t consider the 2017 sign, if relevant, need absolutely time or introduce the season of  Rapture/ Tribulation, if one cares to suppose that it does, then wouldn’t that anyway just be more of that tired and tiresome “date setting” that flies in the face of all gospel talk like that of Matt 25:15 about not knowing the day nor the hour etc?

AN ADVENT MYSTERY HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT?

,,,,,The surprising, at first sight heretical answer is “not necessarily”, because it seems something important might have got hidden in plain sight, is encoded and marks something we could usefully be aware of. More than not knowing the day nor the hour, what most of us didn’t know was the Jewish custom and expression that was second nature for Jesus when speaking of apocalypse.

It could be Jesus projected the whole apocalyptic theme upon the cosmos. The Feast of Trumpets was traditionally associated with marriage and the marriage of the Messiah (the Christian “Marriage of the Lamb”). Marriages lasted seven days (and note the “Marriage of the Lamb” occurs during the seven years of end-of-era Tribulation), and the Feast of Trumpets which was the New Year and beginnings festival in the northern autumn, was traditionally a favourite time for unions. The festival lasted across two days from a new moon agreed upon by rabbis who had actually witnessed it with their eyes. It was also customarily never certain when the bridegroom would leave his father’s house for the house of his bride’s parents. Only the father would know  as per Matt 24:36. 

The message may be that events like the Rapture and/or the onset of Tribulation could only be associated in any era or year with the new beginnings of the annual Feast of Trumpets (that’s assuming events affecting the church can and should register against Jewish feasts, which is debateable ). Since the Feast lasts more than a day and, as said, the Father alone knows when the Bridegroom departs for the bride, it’s true that no one could ever exactly know which day or time marriage would take place.

The arguments against the Feast of Trumpets, however suggestive, is this:

The hidden or  Rapture return of Christ is seen as a harvest and ingathering, a season which in Israel is associated with the barley and wheat harvests. This bespeaks early and late spring respectively – late March into June. The season of Trumpets is associated with the grapes harvest and its treading is associated with wrath, which the Rapture is not (“we are not reserved for wrath” says St Paul assures believers). The first and spring feasts were fulfilled by Jesus close to one another. Would not any resumption of the feasts connection with their messianic fulfillment therefore be once again realized in quick succession (Trumpets, Atonement, Tabernacles) at Christ’s second coming to judge the world?. This leaves the Rapture event free floating but located somewhere in spring, the season which by Jewish tradition is the time of any redemption which supremely any Rapture type event would be. The day and hour are not known but the season might still be.

A SIGN TROPICAL AND SIDEREAL

Any reading of the alleged phenomenon of 2017 involves how one regards a highlighting of the Virgo region of the heavens. There is a constellation of Virgo the Virgin.  Below and adjoining her are the constellations of Hydra and Drago – the latter two almost certainly have some bearing on Revelation 12 ‘s image of the seven headed dragon pursuing the pregnant woman, while above Virgo is the regal constellation of Leo.  With its nine stars, although it’s a separate constellation, Leo can if one likes be seen as a kind of crown to Virgo, or becoming such when very exceptionally three transiting planets (not stars) make the pattern up to twelve. But why should anyone assume this against customary understanding?

More traditionally the star cluster of 12 stars, Coma Berenices (Berenice’s lock), is itself seen as a sort of twelve starred crown to Virgo  not the stars of Leo plus some rare transits. Virgo with Coma  Berenices with its twelve stars is almost certainly what the Revelator was referring to. This is a serious problem one can have with the 2017 speculation.  Another is that every year in northern autumn the sun will be at the head and descend over the constellation Virgo radiating or clothing it and the moon will pass somewhere at her feet though only exactly every 19 years. In 2017 however, those who think that Leo’s stars should constitute Virgo’s crown, and planetary  transits make up the requisite 12 stars to “crown” the woman, will also stress that the likewise cyclical (but once every 11/12 year) movement of Jupiter,the king and messianic planet, have been in Virgo from November 2016 into September 2017 signalling pregnancy, emerging between the woman’s legs marking a suitable gestation period there.

But again this is to take liberties. There is not the precise nine months some non astronomers and non astrologers imagine, because the forward and apparent retrograde motions of Jupiter take it outside the confines of the womb area during the total transit period which is more like ten months.  (This is an objection visually demonstrated by religion writer, Joel Richardson, in his You Tube  at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8qn6rvvQNw  which all those pushing the 23rd September sign should have absorbed). Further confusion is occasioned by the fact that many of us would say Jupiter was anyway in Libra rather than Virgo in 2017 though this touches on a technicality of measurements.

There are two forms of astrological and astronomical measurement: the tropical which measures all signs from 0 Aries in any given year, and the sidereal astrology little used today outside India, which calculates from what is seen against the backdrop of the constellations. In tropical astrology the signs, called after the zodiacal constellations, are measured in 30 degree sectors from O Aries in the northern spring when the sun crosses the ecliptic. The vernal point is what moves very slowly backwards across time against the literal constellations. It is this movement marks the change of eras as described above. As it happens, if one disregards the visual zodiac entirely, there is enough of potential significance for the relevant period employing the tropical system but I’d say it has more to do with developments in and for America and Israel over coming times rather than as imagined specifically the extremes of such as  Rapture and Tribulation.

So, mystery and questions remain even if we dismiss the alleged Sept 23rd sign

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY BUT EVEN SO…

Even if you doubt that specifically 2017 and its sign heralds the extraordinary and question if we are quite at the end of an era (despite widespread feeling amid already high stress levels that we surely are), the fact remains that if life is unusually and violently disturbed that situation is not about to improve. From  2018 onwards the world will begin to feel renewed effects of the historically wars and disasters associated Saturn/Pluto cycle which oversaw WW 1 and 2. It could well oversee WW 111 or preparation towards it,  even if that doesn’t correspond to the wars of the Antichrist as such. But trouble there will be, so that forewarned is forearmed.

Anyone could be more and better forearmed given awareness of matters that inside and outside the churches aren’t known or taught because of a narrow intellectual and spiritual legacy. This is one that despite the Magi at Christ’s birth denies anything can be known via the heavens and astrology (the latter simply the symbolic interpretation of what astronomical data reveal).

If only to avoid embarrassing errors, it is high time the churches became more acquainted with astrology. They should do so not just because from the Magi it is a key to elements of the faith and is not the biblically forbidden “divination” some make it out to be – the Talmud and the Essenes would never had used it if such were the case – but to avoid the exaggerated claims that pass for Christian “prophecy” when celestial signs get treated without context or background.

A chronic example has been the fuss about the red moons. I believe they represent something, specially moves towards increasing calls for and moves towards building the thirdTemple, especially as modern Israel’s Temple asteroid has been affected, but only within a larger picture and they could never hope to be sufficiently appreciated without some knowledge of astrology. One can’t, like Biltz, Hagee etc, just draw attention to a red moon, declare it a sign and start forecasting. It must for a start be linked to the astrology of modern Israel and be understood as part of a process. This almost random visible sign treatment alone is not what the Magi did engaged in it’s not what the astrologer should be engaged in today. The astrologically illiterate Biltz, Hagee line is little short of the omen astrology (looking at the heavens and uttering forecasts as opposed to the study of connecting cycles, degree patterns and symbols) that biblical prophets condemned.

TOWARDS AN ASTRO-THEOLOGY

Some basic knowledge of astrology, indeed the language of astro-theology, would be enlightening and make it harder for certifiably failed prophets like Jonathan Cahn to make sensational forecasts of doom for dates which don’t show the kind of negative potential alleged. The irony however is that the likes of Cahn will still be published, still invited to Christian media channels despite repeated errors, something the bible allows to no self-declared prophet, while by long tradition the astrologer remains the persona non grata, the unbiblical heretic, even the black magician (the early church father, Origen, called the Magi devil worshippers and Bishop St John Chrysostom thought astrology was so evil it would have been better if they had never come to Christ’s birth. Clearly there’s a problem here!)

Escaping Herod, the Magi disappear into the night carrying their secrets with them. At the end of the age their mission heralded, can we finally know what they knew and more that we should know today? I strongly maintain so and because, as T.S.Eliot has it in Little Gidding :

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive at where we started
And know the place for the first time.

With the facts, data, interpretations and revelations of Testament of The Magi: Mysteries of the Birth and Life of Christ (none of it so far of any interest to secular media which is ever less Christian and ever more anti Christian), you can go back to Christ’s origins  and then from there through to the present in ways never before experienced. And perhaps, like the wise bridesmaids of the parable, you can more easily keep the lights burning, ready for anything.

A BOOK: TESTAMENT OF THE MAGI

With this book the mysteries of Magi, the Bethlehem Star and much more are certifiably solved. The data, still working for Jesus issues and events to this day, is fingerprint exact down to the last descriptive asteroid and Part.  The book radically develops a theory about Christ’s birth first proposed in the 70s by a notable Austrian astronomer Ferrari D’Occhieppo and enlarged upon in some aspects by the British astrophysicist, David Hughes. In his The Infancy Narratives (2012) Pope Benedict cited the D’Occhieppo thesis which he thought plausible but wondered what we should make of it. What indeed when the theory was still incomplete?

This book completes the edifice to a point it could not now be improved upon or seriously rivalled….. A big claim but that is almost the problem. Many may  prefer to ignore the evidence simply because it is so impossible to dismiss; and of course within religion let along the secular world, there is a huge prejudice against “astrology” to the point it is almost impossible to be heard. But here is a picture that defies statistical probability, one it that couldn’t be invented. No previous theories work or not sufficiently across the range of issues that must always be addressed in advancing any claim to have discovered the holy grail of all stargazing. Arguably this book belongs to the times discussed in the article above. Secrets of the beginning of the era can perhaps only be disclosed at that same era’s end.

The Magi at Era’s End: A Poem followed by a feature indicating how its information is true and works vividly to this day   https://wp.me/p2v96G-ip

Testament of the Magi is available at Amazon  https://goo.gl/x8KASy

 The Astrology of Beliefs      shorturl.at/iEIZ8