(This article will demonstrate, however improbable it sounds, that against all reasonable doubt we can esablish once and for all, the identity of Shakespeare’s Dark Lady of the Sonnets).
Recently I had Shakespeare much on the mind. I wasn’t sure for quite what reason even given it was the time of year marking the anniversary of the dramatist’s birth and the national broadcaster here in Australia has been showing Shakespeare: Rise of a Genius, a docu series of his life. I looked at a few books as though I was seeking inspiration for something (a poem?!) and I even looked for the first time in a long time at an article of mine from more than 30 years ago. In this I had ventured the claim that the Taurean bard had indeed been born as generally supposed in Stratford in 1564 on 23rd April (Julian) or 3rd May (Gregorian) but also that the time would have been around 11.20 am with theatrical Leo rising.
Decades ago there were things astrologers didn’t know and relevant softwares couldn’t tell them, but all the same some things were still clear or at least highly suggestive for the true pattern. So, before showing what by extension I can now interestingly know and prove to the very name I will briefly as possible outline what from the first were markers for someone special in the style of Shakespeare and the adjusted birth time crucial in my discoveries. (If you absolutely can’t stand or understand astrology you can skip the next three paragraphs).
A GENIUS PATTERN
The bard’s 12 degree Taurus sun which “rules” the chart because Leo,( not Cancer or Virgo, rises as per some often cited speculations) is strong being elevated in the 10th house of career, reputation or fame. The sun is in close helpful aspect to Venus (art) at 13 of writing, communicating Gemini. This Venus is widely conjunct visionary poetical Neptune in Gemini. Similarly graceful, the moon is in Venusian-inclined and ruled Libra which holds up mirrors and can absorb people and styles like a blotter. Expressing one’s ideas can be fast and furious and blot no lines given a Mercury like Shakespeare’s on the writing powerful 16th degree of Aries, itself here in the 9th sector of classic serious writing.
There is not as might be expected any planet in the 5th house of theatre but the hidden unconscious 12th sector carries a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. This is suitable for the character acting and of old people reported of the apprentice Shakespeare. And the rightness of his pursuing theatre against the odds is indicated by what is present in the 5th, namely the fated, aspirational lunar north nodes. But the real clincher for being exceptional or a real genius is involved with the tense close opposition of “eccentric” original Uranus in the 4th sector to visionary Neptune in the career 10th.
This Uranus with its sign Aquarius speaks not just for special vision but for much else in the life from the shot gun and generally odd marriage to the older Ann Hathaway (Aquarius on the cusp of the 7th of marriage and close unions) to the famously odd grave curse (Uranus in the fourth of endings and burial arrangements) .
ENTER THE ASTEROIDS
Nowadays any biographical profile can hope to be meaningfully enlarged by addition of name, place and ideas asteroids .But these are not automatically well distributed between the normal and the specialized, for example there is no Ann or Hamlet, Marlowe, or Stratford to apply to Shakespeare’s pattern. (His name and London happen to be in the 6th of work and workplace which arguably speaks to the bard’s would-be Lord of the Manor aambitions set against a widespread notion of his contempories that work in the arts and the capital was just “work” of a virtually artisanal kind).
But could anything shed light on the Dark Lady of the Sonnets? Many scholars today believe the Lady was a figment of the bard’s imagination. There has always been name speculation but today, of those scholars who still suspect a real person, that person is the Britsh born, Italian-Jewish Emilia Bassano (1569-1645) daughter a court musician and self declared as England’s first professional female poet. It’s known she wrote a collection Hail God King of the Jews
Emilia ia not a common name, so would the asteroids include it and then in a suitable position? For my first surprise I found against the odds they actually would supply it and at 22 Aquarius…..in other words conjunct the assumed time-dependent descendent angle for marriage and close relationships, and for the bard in an airy “mental” sign of Aquarius too. Thus,
“Let me not to the marriage of true minds/ Admit impediments ” (Sonnet 116)
But it could be a fluke, Had I really found the Lady? Was this too simple? Bassano is not a common name but it seemed worth trying. Did it exist and add something here?
It did and strongly so because it even fell on the same degree as Emilia!
Determined not to be deceived by a fluke, I recalled how someone once told me there is a poetry asteroid, Sonet, which under the rules for asteroids will be read translingually by sound sense not spelling.
Trying Sonet I found that it fell one minute inside 25 Aquarius, in other words in semi-sextile to the Emilia Bassano conjunction! . It was even eloquently in dreamy Pisces and the eighth house of the erotic and secrets which overshadow the sonnets.
HENRY THE HESITATING PATRON
This leads to one more Sonnets-linked question that the asteroids can maybe help with, namely re the bard and sex, or homosex. The early Sonnets are considerably taken up with an attractive young man who as in Sonnet 20 is the “master mistress of my passion”, and one having “a woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted ” as per the above portrait. Shakespeare’s patron to whom his early poetry was dedicated, was the young, handsome and marriage indifferent / delaying third Earl of Southampton, Henry Wriothesley. According to Wikipedia data he would have been born under Libra.
We may note that not only was the bard strongly Venusian, but that his moon was in Libra and in opportunity aspect to the genius and often gay inclined Uranus. Libra is the most bisexual of the signs, and a stressed or “afflicted” Neptune such as the bard had is the usual bisexual aspect – not necessarily in overtly sexual terms, but in general feeling because it sees beauty everywhere. The sign has difficulty deciding matters and often thinks and does what may please or impress others rather than commit to what it likes, assuming it even knows that.
Gaily is an asteroid that often crops up for gay issues or persons. For Shakespeare it is natally at 12 Leo in tension square his sun at 12 Taurus. Hesitating and only son Henry, represented for the bard by asteroid Henry, is somewhere amidships at 11 Cancer. It looks like Shakespeare really did mean he was not gay or desired no gay involvements when he declares in Sonnet 20 ’but since she [nature] prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure /Mine be thy love and their love’s use their treasure”. Homosexuality can be differently understood and named across time and cultures, but modern criricism would say Antonio in The Merchant of Venice seems to be the dramatist’s image of the homosexual type.
Sex was a fraught, easily guilt-ridden issue for Shakespeare who at least intended to be faithful to his wife and be the family man he wasn’t much of the time, Nevertheless the exact favourable aspect between natal sun and Susanna, the eldest child, suggests real attachment; and closeness to his twin children, Judith and Hamnet is indicated by the way asteroid Judith is near to conjunction with the sun. There is no Hamlet or Hamnet asteroid so Judith represents the twins. Hamlet was composed iin the wake of Hamnet’s death. Small wonder with Sun/Judith in the reputation house Hamlet would be the bard’s most personal and celebrated work
AMAZING BUT NOT SURPRISING
Finding the Dark Lady was a bit like years ago finding an asteroid Adam would conjunct Eva in the house of origins and forebears in my data for Christ which applied astrology to the theories of two eminent astronomers re the true Christmas. Broadly the scientists were spectacularly correct and I only regret that the late David Hughes who despite his scientific credentials, when I contacted him didn’t oppose my findings, did not get to know about the unique later certified super conjunction of Jesus’ names and titles at the birth 1).
Both the Christ and Shakespeare data are amazing, But they should not be so surprising either if the night skies convey knowledge (Ps 19:2) and God names the stars( Ps 147: 4) and has calculated every day of our lives. ( Ps 139: 16). The problem today is the substitute religion of scientism which allows no scope to the unseen which is part of the picture whether we concede that or not. And for many astrology, not to say God, is just an inconvenient truth best dismissed and ignored.
Sometimes we just have feelings. I now realize that my sudden rekindled obsession with the bard was itself astrology related. At my birth asteroid McCleary was at 16.46 Cancer. This means that it was in very close tension square to Shakespeare’’s 16.48 Aries of his all-important writer’s Mercury. Through almost all of April both Mercury and Venus were moving in Aries with Mercury stationing to turn apparent direct at 15 Aries, i.e. close to the bard’s Mercury which had also been within range of the major eclipse of the 8th which was at 19 Aries, I was sensing something about the writing and something about it needed to be known. Hopefully it can eventually be so,
Douglas Murray has always been exceptional. It was evident as a teenager when he was writing a groundbreaking biography of Bosie, Oscar Wilde’s lover, and won a scholarship to Eton. In short he was a Wunderkind whose ongoing sheer difference has recently culminated in his new almost rockstar status in Israel. There he has risked life, limb and reputation to convey facts media has ignored or just hidden. But a gay man as Israel’s new hero and mouthpiece? Where did this improbable love affair originate?
The skies really do speak on this one, and clearly enough so even without a birth time to aid normal reading. . On Murray’s birthday (16th July 1979 ) his Venus at 12 Cancer was conjunct asteroid Israel at 13 Cancer, Then philosophical Jupiter at 14 Leo made favourable aspect to this conjunct pair as did Mars at 14 of journalistic Gemini.
BRIT or CELT?
Recently someone wrote Murray could well be British PM, a thought in affinity with one of my own that regrets the likes of Murray is not leading the new Ireland with its worthless (and rather anti-semitic) political elite. I realize Murray wouldn’t want that role. On his own admission and as one not given to self-reflection, Murray is spontaneously an old Etonian, old Exonian Brit, not Scottish or Irish Celt identified, though in my opinion this son of an outer Hebridean Scots father and English mother is more Scot or Celt than anything else. And even of a special type, intellectually and spiritually. (Tune into enough of Ireland’s GRIPT media and you may get the idea,concise and hard hitting).
Back in the sixties, a half Jewish psychologist H J Eysenck copped a lot of flack for suggesting Scottish IQ looked to be stronger than the British and there was an achievement and success drive – 10 Scots had been PMs of Britain – from crofter’s cottage to halls of power and commerce. Now for something odd along these lines.
THE URANIAN FACTOR
Since German astrologers in the late nineteenth century it has often been observed that notable intelligence, and often gayness too is signified by a Uranian factor. However, it’s not easy to evaluate its status in Murray’s birth chart as it’s untimed. But confident that I knew something and could certify it, I ran a midday chart for the birthday that added the asteroid Murray. Sure enough, on Murray’s birthday Uranus was conjuncted by Murray 16 to 17 Scorpio.
The Uranus factor interests me on both cultural and religious grounds. Obviously Uranus has its levels of positive and negative expression; but it certainly also helps to definine who and what is gay. This is an inborn mindset, a degree of difference and originality, a socially useful will to change such as helped fuel the Renaissance. At its highest octave of application Uranus, as one of the three outer planets, will symbolize the Spirit of the Christian Trinity and as such is linked to the Creator/Destroyer (Pluto) and Christ/Messiah (Neptune). Biblically the Spirit is the Spirit of Truth (Joh 16:13), the one who bears witness (Rom 8:16) and it is significant that Murray in relation to Israel and other things admits to a hatred of lies,and a love of truth as his motive.
A BIT PROPHETIC
Reading or hearing Murray one may be struck by the force of the occasional bold ‘prophetic’ note that takes over via the painful truth or special insight which comes like a word from “outside”. This outside feeling issues from a separated place; and the gay person is someone separated – gay males often show Uranus at variance with moon (women, the mother). And here we may begin to grasp the paradox of the agnostic and gay Murray as latest voice for Israel.
Both gays and Israel, apart from often being just bright, different and successful against the odds, can see themselves as fated, set apart, even “chosen”. At least some elements of homophobia and anti-semitism are linked to the various resentments and suspicions of the claims and images of these in their own way “Uranian” people groups. I realize that many traditional Jews and Christians would never care to acknowledge any “Uranian” affinities at all, but the Bible is an unusual book and the connections exist to be found and interpreted(1),
DOUBLE STANDARDS
Jews especially get criticized to levels not usually applied to other people at work or war, and traditionally Christian nations may speak of Jewish existence in Israel as involved with nothing more than “occupation” as opposed to any stronger more historical claims. But no matter quite what one believes about Israel, amid recent turmoil it has been unhelpful that the UN is so morally blinkered in contempory western fashion it has never outright condemned the unacceptable actions that triggered the present conflict. Israel is not perfect and does not claim to be, but it has a right to take offence at the persistent hyocritical bias and Murray is good at doing this for her.
But as it happens, and as a further Murray paradox, namely his mostly regretted religious agnosticism, this itself helps save face for Israel at this time. There is something about the trigger to war that raises questions iabout its great difference from the shorter and more miracle haunted Yom Kippur war fifty years previously. It is a matter that has not, so far as I know, been addressed by Murray, nor almost anyone.
The war effectively began on the last day of a Jewish festival (Tabernacles) with an attack upon a youth rave trance-dance party in which, apparently, there was dancing around not the golden calf but an image of the god, Shiva, the creator/destroyer. As the old saying goes “speak of the devil and he appears”. Symbols and gestures matter and Uranian people need to be who they are under God otherwise they stand to lose rather than lead in conveying meaning and a kind of power within the circle of divine protection.
It borders on a curse and works like a heresy that Christians have not understood or used something associated from the first with their faith, namely astrology. They are still back with church fathers like Origen who said the Magi were devil worshippers converted to Christ or St John Chrysostom who said astrology was so evil it would have been better if the Magi had never visited Christ.
Here today are the losses from such attitudes:
1) faulty, misleading pastoral care.
Sufferinig people can be told lack of faith (or possibly sin) is the reason they have not had their miracle or answer to prayer when others plainly did, the likely answer being it wasn’t the sufferer’s time. Good things happen to individuals under Jupiter etc transits to their natus, bad ones under Saturn etc transits. Under Saturn one waits even given faith. Notice the parable of the importunate widow (Luk 18:1-8) leaves the woman asking and asking for what some gospel statements might lead one to suppose could be quickly claimed and received.
2) Confused approaches to God
Especially American evangelicals expect their born agains to have a lively conversational relation to God; and many are then pained and embarrassed or forced to exaggerate and pretend when they can’t report it. The fact is some people are solar direct and others lunar indirect for purposes of spiritual relating. To the lunars (more aspects to moon than sun) God is usually heard or conveyed more indirectly through music, meditation, even the words of other people. And in any case different signs support different attitudes and approaches to God and faith as per my book The Astrology of Beliefs. An Aries in relation to God is not the same as a Cancerian and so on.
3) Misunderstanding of free will
Astrology is often dismissed not only as the biblically verboten divination it isn’t (it’s more like a study of cycles) but as the unacceptable denial of Christian freewill we must reject. The reality is people anyway have little freewill and it mostly applies to levels of response to affairs already mapped out. Relevant here is Ps 139:16 witjh its “and in your book they were all written/the days fashioned for me/when as yet there was none of them.”. Any proof for this large claim? Try the little used diurnals. Wherever you are living at the time, a chart can be cast for your birth place at your birth time. The pattern will broadly indicate where your current life story places you, and if the day is basically good, bad or indifferent for pursuing some issue. But a kind of fated pattern determines the main parts of every life as it did for even Jesus who died under a worst imaginable Pluto opposite Saturn, God versus devil transit. (Note the Christian Trinity has some links to themes and symbolism of the spiritual outer planets, Pluto, Uranus, Neptune)
4) Misunderstanding of an aspect of sex
Churches and families have been unnecessarily torn apart in recent times over homosexuality and “conversion” treatment for it. Genuine same sex attraction (as opposed to just drift and experiment) is clearly marked from birth (through especially Uranian aspects and is part of a fate that cannot and should not be changed and which as a condition is less unbiblical than imagined. See parts of https://rollanmccleary.wordpress.com/2019/02/14/apocalypse-as-a-gay-issue/ esp re Daniel.)
5) Missing various biblical codes and symbolic messages. It is too easy to do this starting with the magi whose three gifts symbolize the core elements of an ancient horoscope with Gold (sun) opposite conjuncted Jupiter (Frankincense) and Saturn (Myrrh). Also believers badly need to know the Christian “dispensation of grace” equates with the Age of Pisces with all that implies for the apocalyptic outlook too few have.
6) Knowing less than you should about Jesus and God. In times when many will question if Jesus even existed and there is little God consciousness. it should matter and be news to believers that we can now know how at Jesus’ birth there was a unique prophetic super-conjunction of his names and titles via remote date asteroids not then seen or named. It matters that even Jesus’ ancestors improbably appear in his accurate still working horoscope’s house of origins and forebears. https://rollanmccleary.wordpress.com/2022/12/07/new-proofs-around-bethlehem-star-theory/ It matters that popular preacher/prophets like Jonathan Cahn while dismissing astrology as untouchable, peddle the belief Jesus was born at Passover like a Passover lamb all lambs always being born in spring – which they aren’t.
[ In rural retirement I am not seeking debates and publicity. Only sheer soul sickness in the face of some ongoing lies and nonsense about Jesus’ birth prompts me to write these lines that belong to a battle that after half a lifetime I must leave to others. ]
A pope who declares hell is empty and sells hard pressed Chinese Catholics down the river to atheist organization of their churches is this Protestant’s idea of an anti – pope heretic. All the more reason to be disappointed that it should be this same Pontiff should be reasonably innovating in the vexed area of gay relations he is happy to see blessed.
Pope Francis’ willingness to bless gay unions has taken many by surprise, my non Catholic self included. Over two decades ago I obtained a world first doctorate in gay spirituality subsequently published in UK as A Special Illumination. Till last year I also ran a blog of broadly gay theological and cultural interest. The aim was semi – pastoral for those confused about identity, reported cures etc. If I have not been more heard that has something to do with not going the rainbow way and absenting myself from a widespread drift of academic gay Christians towards materialistic neo-Marxist queer theory about which one early critic dubbed me “alarmist”, though today I might be seen as farsighted.
Now, after so much debate and the Pope’s proposal still retaining many (Catholic) opponents – 90 theologians by one report – things seem back decades to square one. Much again is forgotten and ignored with talk of just sex “acts” , homosexuality as “just” sodomy and fornication and thus any blesssing on those who might seek it as satanistic, But there have been a few changes to note and I can see some omissions in fact or emphasis, that I can now deal with here.
To simplify and shorten complex issues I will make a conversation between C (Conservative) and R (Revisionist)
C You can’t change what bible and tradition say. For St Paul, homosexuals are excluded from the kingdom and those who exchange natural sex for unnatural are specially guilty.
R A precise equivalent of“the modern “homosexual” word did not exist in Roman times. The arsenokoites word used in Corinthians can translate rapists, extortioners and murderers depending .What we can more securely know is that early Christians as represented by the Didache catechism forebade corruption of youth and the apocryphal Epistle ofBarnabas opposed paidophtoreseis (pederasty) . This is what the apostle may specially have had in mind. However, ideas like Paul in Romans 1 that those we today call homosexuals exchange natural for unnatural is outside average “born that way” convictions among gays and it can be confusing and damaging to insist on it today. Paul may anyway have been thinking of recreational bisexuality under the Roman decadence and/or the goddess worshipping cinaedi, a sort of castrate drag queen-like prostitute. The apostle was born and raised in Tarsus, the home of Stoicism whose notion of the natural was sex for procreation only. Whatever the truth here, allow the words of Jesus could carry more weight than those of Paul!
C No! Allow and compare nothing! Believers are supposed to be examples of the good to live above suspicion, a light amid darkness. To bless the traditionally rejected and obviously unnatural involves priest and people pushing a false and therefore sinful rite.
R Since St Augustne against the Donatists, even communion is not automatically invalid if the priest is unrighteous. The name of Jesus still has some degree of power in its own right to transmit good, and Jesus won’t refuse those who sincerely use his name ( Mk (9: 38,39 ). Many Japanese have sought Christian weddings because they believe they make for greater stability in their unions. Should you not at least be pleased in a secular world (that Pope Francis heretically maintains needn‘t be evangelized) people are seeking and deferring to God in organization of their lives?
C But there is no credible biblical or Christian precedent.
R This can be questioned. For example,David and Jonathan had a “berith” which means covenant or marriage, at any rate a very special connection. Jeremiah forbidden by God to marry, lives with his faithful secretary Baruch. Gay Michelangelo portrayed himself as Jeremiah. I’ll not list why this fits, but it does. For centuries the Eastern churches blessed “unions of brethren “ quite likely some of them gay.
C Even if homosexual couples could exist in some sort of imagined self-defined “union”, that’s not a licence to the unholy degredation of sodomy.
R The degredation idea looks back to ancient treatment of prisoners of war and the behaviour of some of the men of Sodom who wanted to rape angels in the biblical record. But who said that sodomy is crucial and the essence of homosexuality? It’s a predominently same sex attraction and most essentially a psychology, philosophy and aesthetic as the history of culture shows. Authentic gays are nature and society’s necessary variation on the theme, often a conduit of the new. (It’s a subject in itself, but people are born gay if and when their birth pattern is notably Uranian ).
C If homosexuality is that vital, why did Jesus not refer to it as such?
R Before Jesus let’s start with God. Read with understanding Dan 1:9 in which God gives (according to the for once more correct KJV version) tender love (rak) for Daniel to the prince of eunuchs. We could derive from this that God recognizes and works with same sex attraction. Jesus almost certainly assumes homosexuality and its function, especially when referring to eunuchs from their mothers’ wombs – which is something hard to be literally. By Jesus’ time the eunuch word was a broader term than just castrate. It is even possible Jesus regarded himself in such an outsider fashion. Jewish Christians like Bishop Hugh Montefiore and Canon Paul Oestreicher have speculated Jesus would seem, in modern terms, gay.
C. Surely that’s unlikely. If Jesus was in some outsider fashion eunuch-like, that would be against at least the spirit of Jewish law and suggest imperfection.
R Since from the outset God declared people should “be fruitful and multiply”, it’s true one would not expect Jesus to encourage any disciples to be eunuch – like. That he does so at all surely belongs to the new messianic era, the age of grace equivalent to the now outgoing age of Pisces. But actually, if valid, the “eunuch” identity could hold a very justifying spiritual secret. If, as once taught by the first nineteenth century gay libbers, the Uranian gay male is a female soul in a male body and the lesbian vice-versa, the incarnate Jesus is more representatively human because he is male and female together in a way the heterosexual is not,
C Aren’t gospel sayings on eunuchs about celibacy for straights?
R Yes and no. They are especially about being different for and dedicated to the kingdom; but when the disciples protest, then Jesus is explicit not everyone can assume the ideal. So marriage is normal for straights. In which case, what if anything might be the alternative concession for gays, what if anything could they feel able to celebrate and affirm as human beings?
C They don’t or shouldn’t need anything ; they should be like a castrate, celibate.
R If only pragmatically one should ask the question. Church father Origen literally castrated himself then said he had sinned doing so (biblically mutilation is forbidden). So meaningful alternatives and identities might matter. Indeed, in today’s over-sexualized society, a pure celibate idealism without alternatives and no self – identification as gay risks misunderstandings all round : unrealistic hopes of cure, straights getting romantic arund the wrong persons, the young misunderstanding about or exploited by teachers etc etc. Even cured alcoholics should call themselves alcoholic, One should assume even celibates have an eros of sorts.
C But these alternative people shouldn’t be expressing their difference, and I dread to think how and why you might imagine they should. You would presumably not recommend what Catholics declare to be against nature, disordered, a waste of seed and mortal sin?
R That kind of response tends to cancel the subject from needed discussion; but across our different moral positions I hope we could at least agree such as masturbation would always be better than rape; and as to wasted seed (which owes much to Augustine on the sin of Onan who to insult his wife and refuse tribal procreational duty spilled seed) it’s pre-scientific to speak of “wasted” when thousands of sperm are lost in just urination or wet dreams,
C So just what understandings or action are you getting at? It sounds as though you will end up denying any possible wrong to the traditionally contra naturam with no justification for confession or repentance towards it.
R No I wouldn’t go so far. For some matters in life, and not just sexual ones, I would reckon on something like an ambiguous grey area as in war. In a war someone can believe they were both right and wrong to kill an enemy and their repentance is thought accordingly.The bible also envisages some things being right or wrong depending on their timing.”There’s a time for….” as Proverbs famously declares. Even among committed gay partners there can be something good/bad in especially anal sex (which is what got the heterosexual D. H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover into its legal trouble ) because there is a savour of the archetypal underworld journey to it and also perhaps an aura of violence. However, especially now there’s more movement among gays towards mindful practices, full body orgasm (which I’d say attempts to realize the male/female gay self), dry orgasm, solo sex with or without another person etc, I envisage more “tantric” type acts and attitudes. In this the body and its stronger impulses are not automatically seen, western style, as the enemy but something to be mindfully accepted and worked with, sometimes the tiger to be ridden, Since anyway so many trans people turn out gay in the long run, one wonders if there had been sufficient savouring and integration of the male/female erotic self.
C This thinking is completely unbiblical and runs against all the apostle’s warnings against indulging the flesh and pursuing pleasure
R Undeniably there are warnings against fleshly indulgence (not all sexual in reference – drunkenness, greed, anger etc can be fleshly) but St Paul does also speak (generally rather than sexually) of loving our bodies (Eph 5: 29). However….bible perspectives apart, we may take something from the book of nature in this realm. It’s a fact that in a woman the clitoris has no known function but pleasure ( the violence of female genital mutilation thrives on refusal to accept such facts) while 98% of aninals have been found to masturbate in what seems like a relaxation function. This situation could be compared to the way in humans the end of an illness especially depressive, is often signalled by revival of libido. It looks like one could assume that God, though the enemy of addictive behavious is not automatically opposed to all pleasure and the auto erotic.
C It is not enough to cite animals because we are not animals but rational beings who can and should guard our thoughts and desires which we can both inflame or control. I shouldn’t need to cite Jesus on how looking on a woman to lust is adultery.
R That famous saying derives from The Sermon on the Mount which aims to question motives and internalize the Law and the subject in this case is adultery. This is something, (in effect a theft) done with a married woman, not just any woman and “to look on” here is more like to look to, to intend to do something whether you succeed or not. Granted that gloating or plotting seduction is implicitly disapproved, but if no man is ever to look at a woman with desire, how could a male know his feelings and society continue in existence? And what is the Song of Solomon doing in the bible or “with my body I thee worship” in the rite of marriage? We need to understand what Jesus was getting at.
C Despite what some say, The Song of Solomon is a mystical not an erotic poem. You shouln’t cite it, With anything erotic there is anyway usually a degree of idolatry. The bible often links the two or even makes no distinction between them. An addictive, porn fuelled, image-ridden masturbation belongs to the “disordered” irrational state that for Catholics is a reason it’s classified as mortal sin.
R Yes, recently that genial TV Franciscan Casey Cole, (now called “Satan’s son” by some for oddly suggesting there’s nothing in the whole bible that refers to homosexuality), holds masturbation is still rightly classed mortal sin because it is “disordered.” This is medieval philosophy; I don’t see how one can fall madly in love or have sex and not be a bit disordered! And at least some forms of sex guilt are involved with confused management of the different levels of consciousness eros crosses or even effects of “this body of death” (Rom 7: 24):which due to the fall cannot realize perfection in this life. But one can agree with Cole that average masturbation links peoople to a corrupt porn industry. Any connection between your eros and idolatry depends on the implicit question: who and/or what do you belong to in the material or spiritual worlds. At this level we might be a little closer to some agreement because I believe in the soul aura and effects on it,. The bible seems everywhere to assume a body electric without stating it although much, especially on sex, makes little sense without it. Two bodies surely don‘t become “one” short of auras blending during orgasmic excitement. St Paul even seems to think people are married to the prostitute they used. Artists like Osman Spare, poets like Alan Ginsburg and Satanists like Aleister Crowley have all pursued inspiration or magic through solo sex because higher states of awareness are involved. Some people and exorcists would tell you the result is unwanted possession states. I can accept that claim as I have an odd tale raising questions…… James Joyce is one of the literary masturbators. His weird eros never had the least appeal to me. But I did once buy a guide to Finnegan’s Wake to understand its riddles and have some late night reading. More than once I was much disconcerted to be faced on waking with unwanted images of Baphomet I hastened to banish. Had some Joycean intentions got stuck on the ethers?! Others don’t report the same, but possibly because they are less spiritually/psychically sensitive than I sometimes am.
C After that it’s amazing you don’t just avoid or condemn all irrational sex alternatives.
R I don’t exactly go around recommending them and, like here, I freely admit the problems. People should always do what seems and feels right. But I accept the ambiguities. It’s like wine. Should you drink or recommend drinking it? It can be good for some (even St Paul once recommended it for the stomach’s sake!) but for others wine can be the very devil. The matter is for between you and God… and just a little for the times too. At the end of an era and the start of another, new self-awareness and new thought trends intervene; so I do perceive “homosexuality” being understood and practiced in different ways and less and less defined by the sodomy beyond which some religionists can never see.
Back to the papal Blessing
This pair could keep on arguing, but in conclusion, what about that papal blessing? Is it, as some charge, no different from blessing a couple just living together? I say it isn’t quite the same because the live-in couple could do differently and change tomorrow whereas the authentically gay couple can’t be situationally and psychologically other than they are and that has implications for the nature of any rite. In the push for gay rights it used to be said gays were “just like you”. But they aren’t and singly, but especially as a couple, they need help to understand and positively work with their difference from the mainstream and often even from their own partner. This sort of thing could use a few prayers….. as could following…….
In opening I gave indication I saw Pope Francis as a heretic and his sensible adjustment on gay issues as welcome despite all the rest. But certainly the heresies add up. And among these some critics now see or emphasize only the gay change as the crucial symbol for all the errors so that once again gays finish good as symbol and the scapegoats for the downfall of society and faith that conservatives envisage. Just this has recently happened in the devastating video from bestselling Jewish Christian writer, Jonathan Cahn. His account of the recent supposedly open sign from heaven against the Pope is exciting and can hardly be ignored if true, as it appears to be. But surely the many papal heresies are more significant for any judgment warnings than anything to do with directing some blessings towards gays. It’s not exactly the edifying prophetic item its author imagines, but you should sttill hear it The Sign of the Statuehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1iCW5Lsd80&t=938s
My December poem The Burden of Ireland was critical of today’s irresponsible and selfish Irish leadership. Continuing in similar vein, this poem could be taken as a needed Irish apology for the elite’s virtual antisemitism where Israel is concerned…..
[ From earliest times there has not been agreement about some of the planetary and symbolic equivalencies mentioned. I have simply used what seemed logical and reasonable }.
Menorah signifies a lamp, fit image For a people of much light and change. The ordained symbol is a “tree” that Spirit 1) And devotion feed, a tree receiving oil For flames in hammered cups of almond shape,
Within a former temple’s walls The tree of beaten gold faced south, But those of most devoted minds, See all directions in its light.
The tree holds branches forming pairs, Though at the top one single cup Bespeaking God and light of Law Completes and dominates perfection’s seven.
Creation’s days, stars of the heavens So much in seven steps can be Recalled, included or foreseen, Not least Messiah’s feasts, the moedim
It’s Pesach in the spring comes first Beginning the religious year. This is Foundational for freedom and the Jew, The feast recalls escape from tyranny. And this through miracles of God.
Next, Saturn with Jupiter form first pair; Saturn’s for Unleavened Bread and Wrongs confessed, Messiah’s suffering and death. Jupiter contrastingly marks liberty and joy Especially of First Fruits Resurrection Day
Next pair, weeks on, is Mercury with Morning Star Mercury is Pentecost and voice enlarged The testaments of Sinai and Jerusalem. Venus belongs with New Year wakenings As trumpets sound. This season’s one Most favoured for Messiah joined with bride
Last are Atonement Day and Booths, Which is a pair of Mars and Moon. Seen pierced at solemn Yom Kippur, Though soon to reign, Messiah is mourned. 2)
At Booths, observed in tents and huts,
Past wanderings and the millennial home Are central to what’s thought and done For future lives and all the world.
From sun to moon the path of signs Belongs to peace and also hope like Noah ‘s dove. And may it not less warmly Shine within the temple soon to rise.
NOTES 1) Directions for the Menorah are in Ex 25: 31-40
This year’s rainbow month and time following have not been easy for the always fraught relations of gays and Christians. The Church of England looks now to be permanently split worldwide not least over blessing gay unions.
Ugandan Anglicans would be happy with the severest restrictions and punishments for gays. Elsewhere and while faced with the particularly “out” nature of some recent parades (simulated sex and kink in front of children) and the insistent advocacy of Trans, the situation has combined to convince especially Evangelicals that Sodom is reviving, evil is being called good and good evil (as per Is 5:20) and the end is near.
Clearly dialogue – to the extent there ever was one -, is on the decline and inevitably so. Queer theory with its neo-Marxist roots is materialist and godless, keen to prove Christians oppressive and hypocritical. And in that context, there is little left to say and much to withdraw from – even many “ordinary” gays have dissociated from recent extremes, and many Christians departed from an earlier accepting silence. But the situation is unsatisfactory since believers should know the basis of some gay (born that way) essentialism; and gays should be presented with more to live by than floating queer identities and a sexual minority status as the new proletariat in a class war with society. However,…
TOTAL INERRANCY ALWAYS?
No matter how much alternative values and gay relevance may be meaningfully present in the scriptures as I and others have periodically demonstrated, this can never be fully realized unless and until a certain elephant in the room is taken account of. That subject is the renewed intervention of a megaphone loud “biblical authority” claim that the more notable religious homophobia falls back on. This assumption of an assumed authority is so absolute that if it was regularly applied it would mean that when Paul asks Timothy to bring him his cloak and books,(2 Tim 4:13), that would need to be God dictating the words!
As long as someone insists a totally inerrant “God’s word” scripture declares “homosexuality” is always evil, one can get almost nowhere, even when scholarly studies question if and how words like “homosexuality” as now understood are even referred to.
The matter at stake then comes down to especially the real scope and relevance of St Paul in the ever quoted Romans 1, a tirade against a decadent, idolatrous Rome – which it was – but nonetheless written before Paul had visited the city and controversial as regards “nature” and same sex issues . To puncture over-the- top truth claims one is forced to indicate a fallible blind spot in the apostle, but this can and should be done.
ST PAUL’s CATULLUS MISTAKE
Catullus was a notable poet of the late Roman republic who knew Cicero and Julius Caesar whom he dared to criticize. He died 54 BC and was so known and appreciated that centuries later St Jerome could declare half of Rome turned out for his funeral. In Corinthians (1 Cor 5:1) Paul speaks of sin of a kind unmentioned even among pagans, namely incest. A certain discretion was largely true for Greeks. But precisely this behaviour is mocked by Catullus writing of the upper class of Rome; and especially since under the empire many Romans lived in Corinth, it is in the highest degree unlikely incest would have been unmentioned or unknown.
No need to go further with the weakness of the apostle’s broad strokes rhetoric in Romans 1, but I am also aware having lived in Asian mission areas, that even the most sincere converts do not necessarily record having thought of nature and the creator in the way Paul assumes they would do.
I don’t mention this failure of inerrancy to challenge all belief in inspiration or to question the general reliability of Paul who admitted we see through a glass darkly.
The reality is is that though inspired, the bible is simply not inerrant to the last word, a belief that owes something to Reformers desiring an authority alternative to that of the papacy (though even Luther had doubts about the Epistle of James and for less good and practical reasons than Paul’s first chapter of Romans). There are a few passages (like Prov 31:6,7) which advises a poor man should drown sorrows in drink, that it would be dishonouring to God to claim inspiration for! Rather obviously there are types and levels of inspiration, and if there weren’t there would be little point Jesus promising the Spirit would lead us into all truth (Joh 13:16) and there would never be justification such as in the OT allowed the daughters of Zelophehad to question the Law on female inheritance (Num 27).
The weakness of St Paul’s rhetoric should be seen as a blessing of sorts in that it allows some room for needed, revised views on sensitive, difficult issues over time, one being of a kind ironically gays may have some part to play in resolving.
AIRING A URANIAN SUBJECT
Recently to my surprise, but not complete surprise as someone sensitive to astrological symbolism and trends, there has been an unusual emphasis on the largely taboo theme of masturbation – thinkers like Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson have had it in their sights , scientific studies have recently shown 98% of animals masturbate, the Cannes Film festival gave prolonged applause to Lily-Rose Depp for a prolonged cinematic self-pleasuring.
The list goes on and on and includes persons waiting for the rapture of the church, troubled that a certain habit will cause them to be left behind. And all these people are variously answered by religion sexperts who may include various disinformations in their answers like in one case being against the behaviour while maintaining there is nothing in the bible about this subject. Actually there is, sort of, via the story of Onan, whence onanism (Gen 30:3-10). (This shadowy remote figure, spills seed on the floor effectively insulting sacred tribal duty to produce offspring by his spouse. Helped on its way by St Augustine’s ignorance of ancient custom this would lead on to medieval notions of masturbation and sodomy as being virtual murder contra naturam of homunculi.
Beyond this, many maintain that Jesus’ words about looking on a woman to lust after her is adultery (Matt 5:28) amount to automatic disapproval of all pornography and masturbation. Without saying they would receive a stamp of approval, the claim is questionable to the extent the subject of the Sermon on the Mount is the commandments and intentionality; and adultery is what occurs with a married woman. Granted that any sincere believer should be against coveting who belongs to another, while engagement with pornography can be like supporting a shady industry or paying for house services you shouldn’t wish to be involved with. But even so…
WHAT ABOUT THERAPY?
Given that most animals masturbate, that embryos have been observed to do so in the womb, that there is no known function for the female clitoris beyond pleasure, it might seem that one was dealing with a fairly natural even therapeutic relief of tensions function, but the matter is not quite so simple.
With and without the bible influencing values, it’s noticeable gays have been almost a sexual shadow figure for straights, have been labelled ‘wankers’ (masturbators) apparently because they represent suggestions of addiction or marked pleasure in a certain area. Why the automatic marked disapproval, why the strong and colourful terms like self – abuse?,,,
It’s possible because erotic pleasure of this sort, even if the impulse to it arrives naturally or suddenly enough (say upon waking) can still challenge the whole instinctive and cultural western tradition of masculine will-to-control. Nature uncontrolled is traditionally unideal, an enemy, a capitulation to the feminine often represented by the wet over against the dry – sex can be messy. And some uncontrol there can be and with also disgust and/or depression following. Shakespeare was not one of the ascetical saints, but Sonnet 129 makes even heterosexual sex sound like little more than raw lust on a bad trip. It’s the sort of picture so negative that any individuals actually or supposedly escaping a widespread assumed bind might well finish resented.
Ideas and images of Eros change over time and the drift in some gay circles towards a more ‘tantric’ kind of solo sex and with ‘full body orgasm’ as an ideal, marks in its way a new acceptance of precisely the feminine, or even the values of those traditionally thought of as, dreamy “feminine” racial subgroups, like Celts or Indians – self-pleasuring was rather pushed by James Joyce while pioneer Beat author, Jack Kerouac, proposed the auto-erotic is better than regular sex. And it may be no accident that Holly Johnson of the notorious hit song “Stop, don’t do it” is of Irish and Indian descent. And going back, one may note that for the ascetical desert fathers anything or any person suggestive of Sodom is liable to be associated with the figure of a black man.
In fairness to those who would emphasize the problems attending an absent “male” control dimension, simple surrender has its own dangers and peculiarities. Beat gay poet Allen Ginzburg believed his auto-erotics called up the spirit of William Blake (whose version of Swedenborgianism seemed to have involved various sex practices), and artist Osman Spare used masturbation to call up spirits for magic and art. Satanist Aleister Crowley regularly used masturbation to further black magic ends. Plainly there can be some dangers attached to the trance-state liminality that can be involved in almost any sex.
BUT A WAKE WARNING?
Almost like some warning to that effect, I recall an odd incident I have never quite understood. A couple of years or so ago I decided I should understand Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake rather more, bought a key and started reading text and key sometimes before sleep. Joyce’s aesthetic has no appeal to me, certainly not erotically, but after a couple of nights I woke up with an image of the Baphomet before my eyes. Whatever for? Could it be that I am spiritually or psychically sensitive enough to pick up what considerably draws upon some author’s auto-erotic chaos magic one would wish to banish?
If this was any kind of warning, might it imply all solo sex was all and always wrong despite the indications from nature it could be more therapeutic and even perhaps necessary to health – it has been held the lubrication of regular stimulation can be a protection against prostrate cancer. Before suggesting any perspectives I would stress two spiritually relevant ‘occult’ assumptions with connection of sorts to this whole question.
OCCULT PERSPECTIVE
A lot of the difficulty around certain biblical attitudes to sex is easily resolved in light of what it makes most sense to take as simply assumed, namely the existence of a subtle body or soul that is capable of merging with the same in another person and leaving its mark not easily erased.”There is a natural body and a spiritual body” says Paul 1 Cor 15:44).
Jesus’ saying (Matt 5:27,28) about seeing, in the sense of seeing and aiming to do something irregular with someone otherwise attached) is not as some imagine automatically relevant to the case of self-pleasuring, (unless one maintained imaging and an image have their life to affect people by projection or to become an idolatry). Leering of course would never be acceptable, but to imply a male should never be aroused by passing sight of a woman clothed or otherwise would be problematic – procreation might cease! And can there anyway be no more purely aesthetic appreciation? Is it not possible to simply admire?
AESTHETIC VALUES
More than two decades ago I proposed, without success, a post-doctoral study in gay ethics because my suspicion was, and remains, that to a considerable extent gay ethics is explicitly or implicitly founded in aesthetic values. If gays seem freer around relating and possession issues, nudity, porn etc, it is because their regular mindset is less archetypally based on Mars and Venus with their conquest and possession themes, but linked rather to Uranus (and somewhat Neptune) without emphasis on which no person will be certifiably and life long gay. But this awareness holds implications in the Uranus ruled Aquarian age
RITUAL PURITY
Another occult biblical principle relates to bodily emissions (in either sex) denoting or conveying a sense of pollution from them which requires ritual treatment. For biblical Jews any male emission touching the body, would require washing oneself in water and being “unclean” till evening, ditto for affected clothes (Lev 15:16). Here the point as once explained to me by a rabbi, is that one is impurified by, in effect, the death principle – the seed will not give life to anything, an understanding I would regard as a kind of proto original sin belief, with everything including se left subject to the imperfections of the fallen state.
Given that at least for some people anything from a degree of spiritual oppression to depression could be involved in auto-erotic practice , one cannot be merely blasé about the subject. And just the doubts and ambiguities alone can feed guilt trips, the main religious problem being around habit and repetition. Can the individual honestly confess or seek pardon for what will easily happen again which amounts to being permissive to t he self in a way one wouldn’t allow to, say, theft. I have seen the argument that, however slowly, repeated admission of failure does bring about a modification of behaviour, but I have also seen a rabbi argue contra wise there is a hidden danger in repeated confession; it stirs a subtle self pity which only sends the person back to the habit (assumed to be based on too much self love).
Doing things you regret but know you’ll only do again brings persons to the realms of what is called the “ethics of ambiguity” and/or the state of ‘la conscience dans le mal’; and in a fallen world one may have to live with that. It’s not necessarily “dishonest” to do so – we may repeatedly offend people by words and bad manners, but still reckon to say sorry and be excused. But with sex the confessional aim remains more one of seeking pardon and/or cure for habit rather than a more tantric style management, transcendence or transmutation of a behaviour.
It is to be doubted there is any ‘one size fits all’ solution here; different persons have different spiritual and physical needs; but I should say that if the person’s outlook is religious and spiritual at all, a little personally suited ritual might be helpful. For example, I see real meaning in the mentioned biblical post emission water cleansing. If one of the risks and problems (due to the trance-like nature of erotic states), remains obsession by imagined or real spirits, the rituals can help make a dissociation from that, a (re)establishment of separate levels of experience.
BEYOND AELRED
Anglican and Catholic gays have made something of a cult of St Aelred of Rievaulx, a certifiably gay saint who opened the way to real friendship and hand holding among monks in a medieval world where any kind of attachment was frowned upon. Admirers are less keen to point out that in line with a well – established fear of nature in general, the saint gave himself deadly pneumonia bathing in the cold seas off Lindisfarne to kill off all feelings of eros!
Despite St Augustine’s influence upon medieval religion and Aelred himself, this kind of practice subverted the new mind on things Aelred otherwise pioneered. St Paul could never have approved it – in Ephesians he approvingly states that no one hates their own flesh but nourishes and preserves it (Eph 5 : 29). It ‘s another of the apostle’s broad stroke generalizations because such hatred of the body does sometimes occur, but certainly the statement supplies no Christian mandate for the more radical kinds of asceticism by way of cure for anything. Clearly any Uranian evolution to some transmutation or whatever of energies was far from envisaged by Aelred, but in the Uranian ruled Aquarian era there are likely finally to be a few developments, around Eros, for gays and others.
BEYOND OLD TERMS
Originally and for a long time, society only saw or acknowledged an act, sodomy, and those who performed it, “sodomites”, these signifying more especially males who favoured or were forced to assume the passive role. This role was usually deemed fit for only socially inferior persons : the young within any hierarchical societies, prostitutes, or prisoners of war singled out for shaming. Even into our own times and among many gays, sex might be a half angry parody of heterosexual sex, rather than a distinctly gay expression of native feeling, a face saver for the top who might hope to pass for a virile bisexual. Very exceptionally for the ancient world, Jesus assumed an innate difference in some men “eunuchs from their mother’s womb” (Matt 19:12), but there is a suggestion here of difference understood more as the disadvantage it then was – someone out of the family way – than the advantage it might one day be).
Notable change towards acceptance of something like a mindset in people or an identity involving rights, waited upon the eighteenth century following the French Revolution and the sighting (which is like a becoming conscious) of Uranus in 1781. This is empirically the planet of difference and of all things gay and androgynous and it is “ruler” of Aquarius, the new current age.
NEW TEACHERS?
The subject is beyond present scope, but it is significant that the original German Gay Lib’s occult style theory of a female soul in a male body, (and vice-versa for lesbians), has been somewhat appropriated (extraverted?) by Trans;. But in turn it has been noted that many young would-be trans persons, if they wait and don’t pursue full change, later come out as gay.
At the same time and as mentioned earlier, gay today itself shows some trend towards a more “tantric” self-loving, savouring and auto-erotic sex practice in which full bodily union with another and/or stimulation through imaging is less vital to identity, or bodily self-acceptance. What is involved looks to be the resolution of certain paradoxes within the nature of Aquarius/ Uranus that the relevant era will have to work out.
Historically the Aquarian has been labelled the helpful, people and groups person, the eccentric individualist. This is not usually seen as the compensation function it may well represent. Uranus (and in its way the co-ruler Saturn), make for difference as separation or isolation, a setting apart from social norms. A major mark of homosexuality is aspects to Uranus. (For example moon to Uranus can signal separation from and difference in attitudes to women generally). Deliberate sociability in Aquarius may substitute for what is an inner sense of isolation and almost priestly/monkish feelings towards life and nature (though not necessarily to all nature like some ascetic extremists historically).
Much of the change in western laws and attitudes towards gays, not least the fraught churches-dividing issue of gay marriages and blessings, is owing to the portrayal of gays as just like everyone else. This was never completely true as the history of culture and an awareness of the Uranian difference would surely indicate.
As society moves further into the Aquarian age there will likely be further change of custom and definition. The Uranian may well emerge as a figure closer to an erotic mystic, more disposed to aloneness and just meaningful friendly partnership than the marriage equality and family life most gays anyway never notably aspired to. At this point some old roles may finish modified or reversed with religious conservatives less able to define gays in their minds as “sodomites” or divided in argument over specific rights such as to marriage, than maybe even half joined with gays in new understandings of the nature of nature and the achievement of self-acceptance.
[This article was written before I was aware this year was a Jubilee year which can mean the festival elides with later Day of Atonement’s ceremony. Regardless of the details, the season is special. The last Jubilee in 1973 oversaw the Yom Kippur war. This year the season of Trumpets soon reported advances in Mid East peace negotiations, especially between Israel and Saudi who together have been reviving the Abramic Accords].
This year Israel’s Feast of Trumpets ( Yom Teruah – Day of Blowing) falls early and on 16th September… Or to be precise on the 15th since this 2 day feast, which concludes at sundown on the 17th, starts at sunset on the 15th
There is considerable reason to suppose this season will prove significant even if we cannot be certain for what reason, though there are clues to guide speculation. Some days in the Jewish calendar like the 9th of Av seem notably fated (it oversaw the destruction of the two Jewish temples, the expulsion of the Jews from England and Spain and it hasn’t been too fortunate for Gentiles either as witness the outbreak of two world wars).
Similarly but not so negatively, the 15th September is something of a power day in the world and politically so. It marks the independence of all of Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. And interestingly, in recent times Guatemala and Honduras have been among the few to recognize all of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
This support for Israel is interesting. It stands in contrast to how 15th Sept 1935 marked the elevation of the Nazi flag, and inauguration of overtly anti-Semitic Nuremberg laws, while promise of the breaking of the same Nazi power is commemorated annually as Battle of Britain day, again on September 15th
AND IN OUR OWN TIMES
There is little question that September with Virgo in the heavens is something to do with the fate and status of Israel and even Jerusalem (Isaiah’s “virgin daughter of Zion” Is 37:22) in the world. Both 2020 and 2022 have been instructive on that score. 15th September 2020 saw the ground breaking Abrahamic Accord (a Middle East peace accord ) and 15 September 2022 oversaw the arrival in Israel of the red heifers, an event bringing nearer the momentous, often apocalyptic associated building of the Third Temple in Jerusalem. This undertaking requires prior sacrifice of a ritually pure heifer, red to the last hair. The relevant ceremony, is now anticipated for Passover 2024 or 5, though given the pattern in the heavens for spring of ’24 it is very likely to occur then. If so, the last Feast of Trumpets before a special Passover carries some real symbolic weight for endings and beginnings and sufficiently for the whole season around Trumpets to fall under scrutiny.
SEVEN YEARS
Currently there is much speculation about the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals summit set for just after Trumpets on Sept 18 and 19. The UN’s move seeks to renew an earlier agenda and to realize it within seven years. Those familiar with the complexities of the book of the prophet Daniel will be aware how and why some would assume this is the seven year covenant/plan the false Messiah confirms or strengthens “with many” at the beginning of the Tribulation aka Daniel’s Seventieth Week (Dan 9:17), or The Time of Jacob’s Trouble that one leader comes to dominate Though the theory is more plausible than might be supposed, and it speaks to popular feeling in the face of many already tribulation-like disasters across nature, a possible objection to it is that extreme events in early September or at Trumpets might postpone any plans of world leaders. The skies of mid-September are nonetheless problematic and could even have America in attack mode or attacked and nature could be unfriendly.
BUT ALSO JESUS
But grounds for wide speculation about Trumpets ’23 don’t stop at this if we add to the developing picture that two millennia earlier Jesus was born on September 15th
Given some articles on this site [ 1 ] there is no need to justify that claim, awareness of which gives its stamp to any emerging picture for Trumpets. Sufficient to say the Christ data is accurate; as example and having mentioned Mexico I’ll note even asteroid Mexico (still unseen and unnamed at Jesus’ birth) was appropriately conjunct Jesus’ natal sun. Why? Because Mexico is the country whose independence is celebrated in the capital by cathedral bells that ring out within an hour of the time Jesus was born. Regardless, at the season of 2023 ‘s Trumpets,’ Uranus, the principle of shocks and surprises, makes potent trine in the heavens to the sun which thus makes any Jesus associations of Trumpets season more likely.
THE UNIQUE FEAST
Before saying more about Jesus and the season, it’s appropriate to be aware of the traditional associations of the Trumpets festival. It’s the mysterious, odd-man-out of the seven main festivals of Israel. Whereas these all occur at full moons (with Pentecost usually but not always), Trumpets occurs exclusively at new moon, but one whose first light should be observed and agreed on. Anciently this could be difficult, so the festival, which crosses two days to avoid problems, came to be popularly referred to as the celebration ” whose day and hour cannot be known”.
The festival has even been called “the hidden” day, and Trumpets is half hidden by its same day rival name and claim to attention, Rosh Hoshana (Head of the year), the now civil as opposed to a religious and civil New Year in spring. The original and enduring associations of Trumpets are more mystical and dramatic than civil.
First and foremost the trumpets are a summons to a complete Sabbath rest (a symbol of paradise) and a reminder towards the repentance stressed a week later at the Day of Atonement However, by tradition, Trumpets is the celebration of the creation of the world and/or of Adam, the day of Judgement, and/or of the resurrection of the Just, the day of the Messiah’s coronation and/or wedding.
The life and mission of Jesus can be and often has been seen as linked to the spring feasts, i.e. the first four Jewish festivals, with Jesus’ resurrection corresponding to the third festival which is First Fruits, and Pentecost the fourth feast to the birth of his church. This could imply that any future event(s) like the apocalyptic, belong with the last three autumn festivals starting with Trumpets.
IGNORED PROPHECY
On the whole, Christians tend to dismiss rather than discuss apocalyptic issues, and to dismiss them in line with Jesus’ words to the effect “no one knows the day nor the hour” of his coming (Mk 13:52). And with the rise of medieval anti-Semitism, Christian connections to Jewish traditions were down-played or forgotten and have often remained so, That situation is further helped by the fact that gospel references to end of days and apocalypse seem effectively divided between those envisaging an event or appearance of Christ in the heavens and related to taking the church/bride and before the tribulation, and a more open appearance to the whole world from Jerusalem at the end of the tribulation.
However, short of charging Jesus or the gospellers with error, the Jewish festival connection at the root of the whole end of days issue needs to be acknowledged and integrated to avoid contradiction. Thus the Jesus of Revelation tells the church of Sardis (symbol of a dead church) that if it does not watch [ for his arrival ], he will come upon it like a thief [ not like a desired bridegroom] and it will not know the time of his coming (Rev 3:4). …So the unknown time of return should be known after all?
THE EARLIEST TRADITION?
Earlier and in similar vein, when broaching the apocalyptic subject, St Paul had told Thessalonians fearful they might have missed the Day of the Lord, that they knew about times and seasons (the Jewish feasts?) and thus they need not be taken unawares as though by a thief at night,. (1 Thess. 5:1) Note that same thief image to which I’ll be returning.
This inclines one to suspect that, rather as there was a traditional Jewish custom that Pentecost would be accompanied by a reading of the book of Ruth with its seasonal agrarian themes, there was some early Christian tradition which, Jewish style, associated specifically the Feast of Trumpets with the messianic marriage and return. It may even have reckoned to dedicate the season to reflection on apocalyptic happenings that the Thessalonians were worried about. For Jews, Trumpets had always introduced the “days of awe” or time of self- examination towards the Day of Atonement. Jesus’ injunction to his disciples to always watch and pray to be accounted worthy to escape what will occur and stand before the Son of Man (Luk 21:36), is suggestive for some kind of seasonal preparation ritual.
If this is the original picture, ongoing, perennial Christian speculation about endings is reasonable enough.It could even be deemed a spiritual duty to support a repentant, advent-aware readiness . The general season could always be known as the time of Trumpets, even if the day and hour within the relevant festival would remain unknown to all save the Father – precisely the situation in the traditional Jewish wedding. Undeniably, Jesus’ advent, at least the first church bride part as opposed to its second world monarch part, seems related to symbols and customs of traditional Jewish marriage, not least in Jesus’ familiar “apocalyptic” parable of the ten virgins.
There have been and are a variety of plausible speculations on the meaning of the “last” resurrection trump in relation to festivals and seasons, Passover and Pentecost being favourites. The greatest consistency looks to attach to Trumpets along with the idea of a late summer oran autumn harvest ingathering rather than a Song of Solomon style spring romance.
DON’T QUOTE ME BUT…
Due to my strong conviction of possessing the correct working data for Jesus’s birth, and also Christianity’s, I periodically wonder can or should I know something, not just about beginnings but endings. Correct data if one claims to have them for a person or institution, should show the seed of how their ending is envisaged and/or should occur – a case of “In my beginning is my end” (T S Eliot ). .
I don’t set dates, only assess degrees of truth and relevance in claims others make, something that can at least help some people avoid the more extreme deceptions and disappointment. But such assessment is possible because only certain patterns can ever be suggestive for marriage, death and transformation etc while some patterns can indicate marked trends, justified or otherwise, in the mind of the collective even if they won’t issue in full blown events.
This said, I can concede this year’s Trumpets is more marked and interesting than some other times that people imagine, and one should perhaps not even be surprised by the level of expectation placed upon it. Just by itself the general season is colourful, caught as it is between a potent trine of sun on the 16th to Uranus of any shocks, surprises and lightening, (something to which the appearance of the Son of Man is compared Matt 24:27) ) while on the 19th the sun is opposite the mystery and possible confusions of Neptune.
Faced with this year’s FOT, one way to look for significance would be to take the beginning, middle and end times of the feast, (perhaps especially the last trumpet of the feast) to see if any theme stands out, a task the asteroids could nowadays assist. Despite some interesting features like Saturn (endings) at the time conjunct Jesus’ natal Lamb (think the marriage feast of the Lamb) and the asteroids for Trumpet (Pol. Trompke) and Resurrection (Rs Anastasia) in dynamic favourable aspect, I still hesitate. The more special an event, the more signs there should be for it, and since coincidence exists, evidence should be cumulative . In this case the tally isn’t overwhelming and I won ‘t force things tipping the balance with one stunning case I could mention, Asteroids are anyway descriptive rather than active for events. So this returns me to what is active and more familiarly reliable – the planets and their pictures for possible events. Drawing on patterns and symbols of Christianity’s foundation. I will give three suggestive, almost necessary formulae for a special time with their potential activation within it.
Formula One:
Symbolic for a fiery dove descending at Christianity’s founding Pentecost, is Venus at 26 of fiery Aries. Aries is a “cardinal” sign denoting speed. Natally this Venus is in the house of the church’s destiny and vocation, but it “rules” the community’s opposite fourth sector of endings. Pentecost’s endings sign is Libra (any marriages) and it’s likewise “cardinal” denoting speed and possibly in the air, harmonious with Libra’s natal element. Shockingly, too, 26 Libra holds all of the natal Part of Fortune, the Hour of Marriage and also Divorce, a picture fit for the Parable of the Ten Virgins itself with its left behind warning!
Possible Activation.
One of the strongest indicators for major change within a natal pattern are the lunar nodes in their 19 yr cycle. Christianity’s natal Venus at 26 Aries and close to its destiny Midheaven is conjuncted by the nodes during Trumpets of ’23.
Formula Two A needed formula for potential extreme, rapid transformation not least for “our lowly bodies” (Phil 3:14), though a mystery barely understood unless by the most spiritual, can be covered this way: Pentecost’s action-generating and surgically associated, Mars is in earthy and cardinal Capricorn. This Mars is also in the sixth sector of any health and healings and conjunct Neptune (any ultimate mysteries), but in tension square (90 degrees) to the institution’s destiny and reputation’s Midheaven angle.
Possible Activation Pentecost’s natal Mars was at 28. 01 of Capricorn. Pluto is powerful and extreme (some would say God as Creator and Destroyer or Judge symbol ) and moves slowly round the zodiac approx every 250 years….The week of Trumpets it is truly home at 28.01 Capricorn.
Formula Three This involves an “apparent (i.e. as seen from earth) retrograde” planetary factor. Jesus was born with Gemini rising on the horizon. Gemini, the twins, like Jesus’ sign Virgo, is “ruled” by “dual” Mercury, symbol of mind and intellect but also division – recall Jesus has the human and divine “two natures” – while negatively Mercury is any tricks. When Mercury moves in apparent retrograde there is more confusion and surprise than usual. Jesus was born with 8 Gemini rising i.e. within the historically nuclear sensitive zone of 8 to 10 Gemini reflecting his relation to all levels of nature. From 8 Gemini Mercury positively trines Jesus’ natal 8 degree conjunction of Church and Draco which bespeaks the symbolism of Rev 13, the child snatched to heaven from the wrath of the dragon.
Possible activation
August and September ’23 are abnormally filled with apparently retro planets. Trumpets has 7 planets retro and only Venus and Mars direct (in royal Leo and marrying Libra respectively) plus Mercury turning direct in Virgo during the feast. Mercury going direct in Virgo and tension square to Jesus’ natally rising Mercury-ruled ascending sign, highlights Mercury. It could do so, perhaps earthshakingly. But especially as, negatively, Mercury can be a thief, the highlighted retro Mercury can support biblical imagery covering the shock of the unexpected night thief and someone or something returning.
All this has to amount to something.
NEITHER SLEEPING NOR DISAPOINTED
It’s possible but unlikely. that nothing of significance will occur during Trumpets. But it’s also just possible, that even nothing notable occurring could be like an event in itself , one gathering force for what happens shortly after the festival. Recall what was said about the UN summit and also what St Paul tells the Thessalonians: the surprise of messianic arrival and sudden woes occurs “when they shall speak peace and security but sudden destruction comes”. (1 Thess 5:2). Notice how the nightmarish parable of the ten virgins (Matt 24) proceeds, effectively in two waves. The central moment of quiet inaction is pivotal.
All ten young women arrive at their post, apparently dressed and stocked for the pending event. Inexplicably the bridegroom is delayed. In the face of which the maidens go to sleep, They are awakened at midnight to the sound of a distant voice declaring the bridegroom has started on his way. Only then do half the maidens realize they lack oil (traditional symbol of things spiritual and/or of Holy Spirit) to last through the soon event. The wise having declined to share a limited stock, the foolish rush out in panic to buy oil, but on their return the others have already entered the dining hall and the doors are shut against them. The bridegroom fails to recognize them. It isn’t said what happens to the foolish – presumably their fate is not perdition but the tribulation with its wars, disasters, imprisonments and executions that will test their sincerity.
RESURRECTION ATTITUDE
Christian belief in resurrection to a new spiritual body and the reasons to need one, sets it apart among world religions ( 2) in which, as in Tibetan Buddhism or Chinese Taoism, a few advanced adepts may at most extend the life of existing bodies. At the same time, Christian anticipation of the miracle engages feelings which, as in the Ten Virgins parable, encourages an alertness or mindfulness more akin to Eastern than Western religion.
Resurrection is a divisive belief and divisive is what any and this year’s FOT is likely to be. It is possible the season would see more natural disaster or even witness the nuclear (though if such is to eventuate this year, it could be reserved for later in November). Whatever precisely happens, anything from temple mount riots to surprise harpazo, it could all be thought of as presenting a fork in the road, an event or events decisive for how many established beliefs and attitudes will be subsequently regarded. Where much is anticipated but much is uncertain, the most appropriate response is one of alert awareness to all that is developing. and having a faith as much in the unseen as the seen for the interpretation.
Notes
1) The Magi at Era’s End : A Poem (followed by a feature indicating how the information is true and still works vividly today) see McCleary’s Alternatives, Dec 6th 2013
New Proofs around Bethlehem Star Theory McCleary’s Alternatives, December 7, 2022
Thoughts and Degrees behind the Magian Quest McCleary’s Alternatives Dec 24 2022
2) The faith of Job embraces the claim that beyond death “in my flesh I shall see God “ (Job19:26 ) while St Paul declares “ flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor 15:50 ). While everyone alive can pray to God, they cannot be in God’s presence or live with God like the redeemed since no one can see God and live (Ex.33:29) short of owning an immortal “perfect” spiritual body. Everyone, including even Jesus following his death, but before his resurrection proper, are like spirits in either paradise or hades – “this day you shall be with me in paradise” the dying Jesus tells the repentant thief (Luk 23:43 ). But we know Jesus will also have visited the spirits “in prison” i.e hades, (1 Pet 3:19). Jesus’ resurrection is counted a proof he is who he claimed to be, the divine son and firstborn from among the dead (1Col 1:18). For the rest, resurrection is the divine gift of true life bestowed on those who (given the chance, the times of ignorance being overlooked (Acts 17: 30-32 ) have chosen to believe in and follow Jesus. Ultimately, as at the Last Judgment, everyone will possess an immortal body of sorts, even if it is a body of damnation (hence the famous and notorious gnashing of teeth ( Matt 13:42) , since it is impossible to exist in the timeless or to exist before God without a body to contain the sou and support action. Resurrection belief assumes active afterlife, not the perpetual resting of much popular belief.
Ask the average Christian about the significance of the age of Aquarius and they are likely to respond it couldn’t or shouldn’t matter, it’s unscientific superstition or forbidden occultism. This is ironic because the fraught present and disputed future of the churches is much tied up with what Aquarius has to reveal. It highlights what can, will and sometimes must change, and it’s even biblical
Man and Lion in the Temple
In the latter days temple foreseen by Ezekiel, (Chaps 40-44), against expectation that this shrine would be traditionally aniconic, decorated by flowers or trees, it carries instead alternating figures of palm trees and cherubim with two heads faced to one another, a man’s head and a lion’s As regards the lion, in recent years some Christians of the more evangelical persuasion have begun spontaneously to declare Jesus will soon “come back like a lion” (i.e. not the Messiah as sacrificial lamb but the Davidic conqueror, the leonine figure Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries hoped for at the first coming),
Despite the apparent sensitivity of some believers to archetypes, any pairing of the man with the lion is passed over. The lion connection is reliant on especially mention in Revelation of Jesus as “the Lion of the tribe of Judah” (Rev 5:5). It is however the pairing with the man that renders the greater significance for soon and longer term developments.
PATTERN OF ERAS
Every age measured by the precession of the equinoxes against the background of the heavens lasts approximatly 2100 years and its ruling symbol has its complement or ideal. To the outgoing (or already outgone) age of Pisces, the fishes, stood the opposite sign of bread, Virgo. And although Pisces oversaw a new spirit of feeling and mercy, sometimes to romantic excess, its complementary ideal was the more thoughtful. analytical Virgo. This is the sign of perfection, the one under which I and others would maintain Jesus was born – in Bethlehem, itself house of bread – while Jesus would choose and accompany fishermen on the lake/sea of Galilee joining the water and earth symbolism of the era.
The era preceding Pisces/Virgo had been the OT age of the Ram/lamb Aries, a warlike, aggressive sign whose ideals are pointed towards the opposite sign of Libra, the scales, which is most realized in terms of peace, marriage and systems of Law like especially the Mosaic.
What then is the polarity that the Aquarian age presents us with – and also confuses many with, because, given its affinity for its “ruling” planet, Uranus, it inclines to progress by shocks, surprises and revolutions. Uranus was even discovered the same decade that launched the French Revolution (and modernity more generally) while its true element is intellectual “air“, not emotional “water” like the outgoing age.
INTO AN ERA OF URANUS AND “AIR”
Much could be said about Aquarius and just “air”, and should be said first to understand the rest. At the practical level the air element is already making itself felt today in the development of renewables, the widespread use of drones, and hopes for a world in which small planes might overtake the use of cars, themselves become electrical. (The solar power side of renewables belongs with opposite sign Leo which is the sun ruled sign).
“Air” is about society and communication which, not least through internet, emails and AI has already undergone unprecedented change. Aquarius, despite the traditional “water bearer” title, is not a water sign or about water and its emotions,; the image evokes instead the friendship, popularity and relief associated with the water carrier among workers in hot climes. Leo the opposite sign is popular in other more political or cultural ways and Aquarius agrees or otherwise with it. [
Utopia, the name and concept, derives from an Aquarian, Thomas Moore, and the humanitarian feeling is exemplified by the likes of Tom Paine(The Rights of Man), Abraham Lincoln on freedom and rule by the people, while a father of the scientific method, Francis Bacon, imagined The New Atlantis, an ideal proto- America governed by Rosicrucians. Aquarians from Lewis Carroll to Jules Verne have been imagining other worlds and possibilities and like Gertrude Stein being patron of the avantgarde and almost the supremacy of difference.
Aquarius is less about love than friendship, inter-aid and the group and promotes, along with difference, a sort of “here comes everyone” feeling as per Aquarian James Joyce’s dream of reality.
Whereas under the previous age individualism could be hard won and lonely as for the mystics, artists and reformers and much based on “soul”, for Aquarius individualism is more spontaneous and shared. And it may have more to do with Spirit than Soul. The often heard talk of “inclusion and diversity” belongs with the times as does the shift to the more charismatic, Pentecostal Christianities, currently the main area of growth. This may seem very open and positive but how much, and what about the Lion?
NOT ALWAYS FRIENDLY
Decades ago when New Ageism was in its infancy, one of its more popular figures, the TV witch Sybil Leek, gave unexpected warning that the Aquarian age might not be everything hoped for as it was not necessarily about simple (hippie style) freedom. The sign, which is “fixed”, in its negative expression could also prove dogmatic, inflexible and controlling with it.
A type of the good hearted and generous Aquarian who could also be a monster in private life, would be Charles Dickens; dramatist Bertold Brecht could be the Marxist moralizer for the stage but otherwise be horrible with associates while Utopian Thomas Moore didn’t hesitate to whip servants or himself be sacrificed in defence off a corrupt papacy. At least some of the sign’s fabled individualism to the point of eccentricity seems involved with a desire to avoid a too complete absorption to the group and this is where the Lion belongs in the picture as corrective.
A WAR AROUND AQUARIUS?
Archetypally the Lion is a figure of authority and kingship, and on the human plane of strong individualism and creativity. Something in Aquarius craves the rulership, theatre and intenser loves of its opposite sign (think poets like Petrarch, Shelley and Tennyson) in what is like a marriage of the plebs with royalty and political left with political right. This can nonetheless involve a greater than usual struggle to attain resolution; and before Ezekiel’s temple is built it can be that the greater part of the book Revelation is most easily summarized as evoking a war of Christ with Antichrist for the dominion of the Aquarian era cum utopian Millennium.
Any such war will have numbers of pretexts, but already there are signs of a destabilization of society not just through the general uptick of violence but a questioning of the most basic cultural and ethical assumptions as per Trans issues, Woke critiques and Queer theory. June ’23‘s Pride month has left society divided and aghast including for the new near Orwellian thought police indoctrination potential as when a thirteen year old schoolgirl is told by her teacher she is “despicable” and threatened with expulsion for declaring there are only two genders.
THE CHURCHES AND AQUARIUS
Aquarius for better or for worse marks a revolution in general consciousness, not least in the realms of sex. Not only can the sign do hatchet jobs on sex and traditional values (Think Germaine Greer The Female Eunuch, William Burroughs, Naked Lunch,) but they may possess, or design for others, a more androgynous appearance (Princess Stephanie of Monaco, Mary Quant of Swinging London )
That Christianity will not outright die is promised by Jesus (Matt 16.18) as surely as he forecast that at his return the faith will be in decline. (Luk 18:8). But the kind of decline currently observable has a strong tinge of the Aquarian about it and has a lot to do with sex and related controversies. Some hostility in this area is inevitable and merited, but not all. I will suggest where many churches have gone wrong in recent times and how things might achieve resolution in more Aquarian suited ways.
The key religious problem is the gay issue which this year has split the Anglican church from especially its African conservatives who in Uganda would gladly have gays executed or imprisoned for life. The global conservative response is the sort of thing that renders it increasingly easy to portray God or the Bible as unjust, oppressive or irrelevant. A measure of scholarly ignorance is behind this situation and the argument is often one of semantics (since the bible anyway has no exact equivalent for the “homosexual” and “homosexuality” words. in the first place). Dogmatism is nonetheless enabled by those who insist “the Word of God” is “clear” on the subject, by which they mean the infallible Bible rather than, as originally, Christ himself as the Logos/Word of God. Regardless, their position ignores that the Bible itself allows some modification of its own rulings [ 1 ]
Whatever, gay is not about to go away; and no matter how dissolute individual party-going gays might be, the high profile accorded the gay issue today is not in itself a sign of an apocalypse whose occurrence will forever sweep from earth all sons and daughters of a belated Sodom. Gay is fundamental to the coming order and values. It is as fixed as is Uranus in the heavens as planet of Aquarius and its era.
FUTURE GAY AND SOME DEFINITIONS
The remote origins of modern Gay Liberation and the notion of gay as a fundamental identity can be traced to nineteenth century German astrologers who registered that the new planet seemed significant in natal patterns for a type that got called urnings or Uranians. These had a special same-sex attracted disposition (and for medical astrology could be auto-erotic associated – to this day there remains a popular gay/wanker association). At this point I shall set out a mini manifesto and some refutation relative to how Christian conservatives still characterize gay persons and issues .
Gay is neither an “agenda” nor a “lifestyle” (usually implying party lifestyle or parade involvement).
Neither performing nor abstaining from performing “homosexual acts” defines an individual as gay (though Uranus prominent at birth marks out the disposition).
Gay is a same sex preference, a romance around it, which, psychologically, integrates personality and eros through the double (as per Edward Sellner’s The Double (2013 ) rather than anima or animus. In short, it is close to fraternity and Aquarian friendship ideals and more nearly a marriage of minds than bodies about which some gays may be almost neurotic in quest of impossible perfection. (I won ‘t enlarge on it, but it is most likely that under Aquarius/Leo even among heterosexuals the “bromance” will become more common).
With or without direct sexual involvement the native eros can still be highly distinctive influencing all manner of things from philosophy and art to the distinctive disco beat.
Gay is as inborn, essential and unchangeable as the left handedness which can be modified and worked against, but never precisely cured. (The few claimed conversion cures are commonest among the formerly abused, addicted, bisexually inclined or supposed lesbians – women being more sexually flexible than men – and some cured persons suffer temptations fit for medieval saints and never arrive at peace. Their entire energy seems consumed by not being gay. A new understanding and management of eros may emerge under Aquarius (see below) and is much needed, along with some radical re-reading of the bible in this area.
“Gay Christian” and similar is not an oxymoron. It is even best for all concerned the label be known and used. It is better than the self-erasure of a silence around what is most strongly felt by persons and which can also create confusion as when there is romantic attraction from the opposite sex that can hope for nothing reciprocal.
“Gay pride” does not celebrate demonic pride (though regrettably some Satanists have joined parades in recent years). but is simply pride in self-recognition and having survived the gay obstacle race in society.
An understanding acceptance of same sex loves may be only the beginning of an enlarged understanding of sex and eros during the Aquarian era, especially if that age would be host to the Millennium itself. Despite the Aquarian and Uranian penchant for experiment which has long favoured free love, other factors may come into play imposing more order.
Recalling that Uranus is at one level the Spirit, there may be more emphasis upon those teachings, more oriental than western, which warn against the clouding of the aura through multiplication of partners whose imprint one is left carrying. (Christianity has given little thought to the impossibility of two becoming one flesh in marriage short of a more “occult” inner being merging).
MILLENNIUM TRENDS?
The coming era, which will incline to scientific progress and attitudes, will almost certainly seek and be able to re-read church and biblical attitudes to eros long unquestioned or even drowned in the sacrificial waters of Pisces. (The sign’s ancient world motto “serve or suffer” was akin to never explain, never complain where sex was concerned!).
How much from the legacy of silence still needs to change has been borne upon me in the course of reading religious sites discussing apocalypse in which many by implication or frank admission are troubled by masturbation and porn addictions. To the extent the latter can involve support of the sex industry there are real problems. There would also be a serious problem if some famous words of Jesus about not looking at a woman to lust after her are not understood, as they should be, in terms of the broader teaching on intentionality and adultery, – woman meaning married woman. But if no man should look desiringly on women, what implications might that have!? Apart from these basic considerations, should there be quite the levels of tension in evidence?
Very recently I also read news of a (suitably Aquarian!) report to the effect the majority of animals have been found to pleasure themselves. And before fundamentalists assure us that is because nature is fallen, it must be considered that in females the clitoris has no known function beyond pleasure. So perhaps such p[easure is divinely intended and /or has a therapeutic health function?
At very least we know that the end of illness or the lifting of depression is liable to be registered by a return of erotic feeling and interest. It is unhelpful if the only response in such cases were to imagine that this was the devil’s work because the body is always the enemy, or that any vernal feelings would only be appropriate for the married. As far as artists are concerned, is there not something spontaneously erotic in the caressing and half fainting treatment of piano and violin.? In the citedThe Double, the author mentions the curio of the Luke page of the Book of Kells which includes an image of an erect warrior figure. If the image isn’t itself a rare devil image, one wonders from such an often super puritanical and repressed society as Ireland’s periodically, is this an artist monk’s protest on behalf of the value of forces otherwise evoked by the book’s energetic swirlings.)
UNRULY IMPULSES OR CONTROLLED PLEASURE?
Association of the devil with sex, the body and any solo sex, although often enough Christian, is more essentially western and in terms of value and feeling pre-Christian too. Even among the worldly “rational” Greeks self-pleasuring was considered degrading, fit for slaves, women and one’s inferiors who, as in so much western sex, must be kept in thrall to the male. Anything “homosexual” was understood almost wholly in terms of top and bottom, there was no equality to it.
Single and male pleasuring is a feature more of Asian systems like the Taoist in which perhaps the main problem from especially any western and Christian perspective, would be the risk of possession states engaged amid the levels of consciousness traversed. (Consciousness changes through intercourse are a likely basis of much uncertainty and guilt round sex generally and cross culturally).
Purity is typically associated with a clear directed ( rational ) mind. In Judaism, despite the story of Onan which involved a sin against the tribal need to propagate, self-pleasuring is not forbidden sin per se, in what borders on original sin style thinking, bodily fluids not having contributed to making life are dead upon the body. And death itself being a form of impurity, those associations last for a day in which the body should be cleansed. Thankfully there is no longer the unscientific notion haunting the middle ages that whole homunculi have been killed when sperm is lost. This particular morbidity is absent from the Asian systems to the extent they tend to favour and work towards multiple dry orgasm.
I make this brief excursus on matters in which I’m not expert, in order to highlight something happening at this turn of the ages. It is interesting and maybe significant that in the last few years there has been increased gay interest in more “tantric”, controlled, dry orgasm and solo sex practices, (i.e purely solo or solo experience shared with another practitioner). This suggests a homosexuality leaving behind the overdone quest of some for congress with multiple partners in exchange for more fraternal and quasi- mystical practices. Such might carry their own risks (see my caveat at the end of an earlier article on pleasure [2] but it seems in harmony with less macho ideals of the new era and not disharmonious with traditional opposition to full congress.
In some respects the Uranian autoerotic might be an apotheosis of Uranian feeling, namely a marked sense of separated difference from the mainstream which at another level can imply an almost spiritual union with nature and other humans. Some of the romance and control of Leo could attend this – I now realize space forbids covering much that Leo suggests for future trends. Sufficient to say the new age could well finish with new models of relating, love and pleasure affecting many trends but touched with elements not just of people’s power and fraternity but of a sometimes divine Leonine glory..
NOTES
1 while obviously the bible cannot be lightly ignored, the idea that its authority can never be challenged in especially matters of custom is questioned by its own record. The early church soon broke free from rulings and traditions concerning non kosher food and even in the OT the daughters of Zelophehad appeal against a Mosaic ruling on female inheritance law and are conceded to.(Num 27: 1-11)
2 See article on this site for Feb 2020 “Gay Sex, Pleasure and a Paul Problem”
{This article was published on March 22nd at my gaythoughts blog}
AN UNEXPECTED CONTROVERSY
The recent decision of the Church of England and its archbishop to accept blessings on gay unions (not celebrate gay marriages as such) has sparked yet another major controversy. It is one that has prompted calls for a split from Canterbury by some third world congregations who feel scripture and tradition are being radically denied.
Amid all this a writer, political broadcaster and would-be priest (but refused orders for his views), Calvin Robinson, delivered an impassioned speech to the Oxford Union against any Christian acceptance of gay marriage ever. The effect has left many reeling for the implications. His statements have rendered him almost overnight a poster boy for conservative Christianity with its associated frank hostility to gay claims and identity. The first and special shock talk can be heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymbTb2HS5Rc&t=14s
TO BE FAIR
To be fair, Calvin R’s argument is well presented and even comes across as courageously sincere. Within its terms it’s reasonable enough. It is, or can seem, “prophetic” in that it reminds churches and gays that Christianity is a way of the cross and repentance, not compromise and indulgence. Besides which, it is insisted the whole weight of tradition, which should count for something, has always condemned “homosexuality”…. So if you want preachers, reformers, and prophets functioning in the modern secular arena, what more could you ask for than this bearer of the Word? Some have called the novel outburst “perfect”. But it isn’t really.
TO BE CRITICAL
For a start I would suggest what is needed is some real historical and contemporary understanding of what the gay issue actually has been and is. There have been too many suicides, breakdowns and generally spoiled and confused lives, bullying and discrimination for anyone to praise “tradition” at all costs. Historically, “tradition” has let saints like Bernadino of Siena have gays burned at the stake. while bullying African Christians have favoured the execution of gays.
If Christianity is about denial it is also about healing, the two principles need to be in balance and they haven’t been. If gays should repent, then so should the church, but that’s not part of Calvin R’s call. He might even think of me as woke here but I’m not.
For such as Calvin R, tradition gets defended at all costs because conservatives believe “God’s Word” – a term they apply more to the Bible than as, originally, to Jesus as himself God’s Logos – cannot be questioned. But within reason it can if things are not working out. Even under Moses, in Numbers 27 the daughters of Zelophehad petition for a more just ruling for women’s inheritance and have it conceded. The church has been reinterpreting scripture ever since the Council of Jerusalem in the first century was concerned with circumcision and kosher food. It is inappropriate of conservative Anglicans to cite the immutability of the Koranic tradition as some kind of model for bible reading Christians.
Same sex issues exist like a hidden stream in the bible as witness David and Jonathan having a berith (covenant, can read marriage) between them, while the prophet Jeremiah for a variety of reasons betrays a distinctly gay personality and eros (as indicated in a poem on this site).Christianity itself has its own traditions like the one that attaches significance to a close relation of Jesus with John and in medieval times some Eastern churches had little understood ceremonies for the union of brethren.
For conservatives “tradition” as regards “homosexuality” scarcely sees beyond some controversially extreme words of St Paul in especially Romans 1 – as often translated and read it could be thought he blames the same sex attracted for most of the evil in the world! Not only should it be borne in mind that even the apostle spoke of “seeing through a glass darkly” in some areas; but it’s possible believers may risk doing the same on the gay theme. At any rate, to judge from some earliest Christian writing, which would have known the apostle’s take on the Roman decadence, what is especially forbidden to believers and condemned is paedophilia, sex with boys.
It is a confusion and rather insulting to maintain with Calvin R that all the church is now blessing is “sacred sodomy”. It cannot be sufficiently stressed that gay in many cases describes a whole character and worldview that is present whether intercourse is practised or not (and the often cited abomination verse of Leviticus is first and foremost about temple prostitution such as King Josiah’s reforms banned from Jerusalem). This is why across history so many creative, original people have been gay. Their difference and special contributions stand to be suppressed (cancelled out) by the kind of religious systems that want no mention of a difference factor and that accordingly imagines to speak in terms of “gay Christian” is only to advertise failed faith and cure, a mark of shame!
TO BE MORE POSITIVE
Where I most agree with Calvin R’s position is his critical position relative to trendy woke and the related surrender of Christian customs and theology to Queer with its siren calls to “inclusion” and “equality”. These don’t correspond to Christian and spiritual ideas in those areas, not least marriage. It is largely the equality fetish that has demanded marriage as opposed to the simple legal union that even the current Pope has recommended. A union would better serve a species of gay vocation to difference while leaving procreation to the marriage union always religiously associated with it.
Queer is in effect hard left materialistic and atheistic in inspiration. It lacks acknowledgment of an essential self or soul that could express a certain character such as gay; one’s being is a rather community related experiment with many or any possible roles promiscuously realized.
Personally, as in my gaythoughts blog (which should perhaps have been called gaytheothoughts!), I have always avoided identity with Queer. And I have arguably paid for that ever since two decades ago a critic pf my book A Special Illumination suggested I was alarmist about Queer. I certainly rightly detected its growing power and potential to mislead. And it is a fact that despite obtaining the first doctorate in gay spiritualities from any religious studies dept and having the doctorate published and even praised by an associate of the then Archbishop of Canterbury as probably the best writing on gay theology, I have gone almost wholly unsupported by those persons in the LGBTQI community, not so much as graced with a reply, from leading voices in the religious push to gay/queer acceptance.
By way of excuse for the degree of neglect, one could speculate some of my writings and statements had been examined and dismissed as too spiritual and/or “occult” to be considered by academics. So here, in parenthesis, I shall cover a point that can well be stated and clarified, and which I believe to be crucial to resolving the gay and difference problem, at least in religion.
THE SECRET CALVIN ROBINSON DOESN’T KNOW AND CONSERVATIVES IGNORE
It has been the likes of Jewish Christians such as the late Bishop Hugh Montefiore and Canon Paul Oestreicher who have speculated that to moderns Jesus could well seem like a type of gay person. My contribution to that line of speculation is to suggest that a) as regards incarnation this makes more theological sense than might be imagined and b) that the matter is even provable.
If you maintain with St Paul that Jesus is representative humanity (God’s Logos and male) but also God’s Sophia (Wisdom who is female) ideally you need a formula like that of the earliest German Gay Liberationists, namely a female soul in a male body and vice-versa for lesbians. You also need this kind of understanding to cover other details in the gospels I needn’t outline here like Jesus’ curious (incorrectly translated) reference to the fool in the section of the Sermon on the Mount on anger harbouring violence (Matt 5 :22).
Sufficient to say when Jesus speaks of those who are eunuchs from their mother’s wombs, he does so at a time when no precise equivalent of the modern “homosexual” existed. The eunuch word could be more lightly and widely used than for just castrate or exalted manservant, it needn’t even automatically signify celibate, in comedy it might hint at gay, but it would somehow signify some degree of out of the family and common way, difference. We should assume Jesus knew and understood that any gay/different condition could be inborn and lasting, not temporary and curable (although of course there will always be people who will change or appear to, another subject beyond present scope).
The mentioned theological perspective has its own consistency and clarity that doesn’t have to be “proved”. However, in this strange case proof is available. It is simply a matter of how open minded a person is prepared to be about examining and acknowledging the evidence.
I have long maintained that in development of the thesis of notable astronomers Ferrari D’Occhieppo and David Hughes about the Bethlehem Star, it is possible to obtain a still working pattern for Christ’s birth and life. And applying the latest kind of astrology which can employ such as name, place and concept asteroids, one can make the heavens speak with unprecedented accuracy. Go to this article, (https://rollanmccleary.wordpress.com/2022/12/07/new-proofs-around-bethlehem-star-theory/ ) which says nothing at all about sexuality, and attempt to disprove its incredible, statistical probability-defying data which has caught and placed Jesus clearly as a photo.
EASY DISMISSALS AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS
If you can accept the truly astonishing findings, it is neither quite possible nor reasonable to discount all the other data one can add and which would point to Jesus being (on the human side) like some Renaissance genius figure such as Leonardo or Michelangelo who were in essence gay. For Jesus the asteroid Saris ( Heb. Eunuch) is even conjunct Mercury, the “ruler” of his chart pattern and his image. When Jesus declared some are born eunuchs from the womb he knew what he was talking about and arguably not least about himself. When Jesus spoke of contempt and anger against gays he also knew what he was talking about. The skies even supply us such details as a racah asteroid in stress aspect to the Part of Sexuality to help fill out a picture (something witnessed or suffered?) in a work as precious in its way as dealing with the Dead Sea Scrolls.
In over thirty years I have never gone out of my way to promote any gay Jesus theories. I have never profited from it, nor out of respect for the subject, do I go with any begging bowl to those who should be supportive. There is anyway little point in pressing the claims. I early learned either that the subject mostly engages disinterest or airy dismissal (neither the gay world nor publishing have been interested) and media is such a landmines-ridden field in treatment of complex subjects, by now I avoid it. Every now and then something or someone crops up as in the case of Calvin Robinson who unwittingly renders apparent how far from a satisfactory resolution for the gay issue the churches remain. And not least because they will not perceive the whole hidden stream that runs through their own bible and traditions.
Just such pointers have nonetheless been a focus of at least some of the articles across recent years on this site…..which I think can at this point be suitably retired from the gay fray. Let true seekers seek and find!
McCleary's Alternatives 