who is this mysterious Son of Man?
No lie can live forever.
-Alfred North Whitehead
The Son of Man in the Gospels can be traced to the constellation Orion which represents Jesus' Spirit. Background for this report can be found in Gospel Zodiac, Jesus' Ghost and Pillar of Cloud. They explain how Jesus allegorizes the sun, the nature of Jesus' Spirit and the role the Milky Way plays in apocalyptic prophecies. This report explains the astrological significance of Son of Man.
Introduction
One of the imperatives in Christian mythology is the belief that the world as we know it will end someday. God will overthrow the forces of evil and all who side with them, and only those who repent and follow Jesus' teachings will be allowed to enter the new Kingdom of God. Jesus and Paul mention it often and the Book of Revelation is devoted to it.
Many passages attest that Jesus expected the end of the world to come in his time, not thousands of years later. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus refers to some mysterious Son of man, a cosmic judge sent from heaven who would destroy whoever opposes God and reward those who are faithful.
Who this Son of man? The popular claim has it that Jesus was referring to himself in the third person. It's plausible because many passages fit the course of Jesus' ministry. What is suspicious about this rationale is that Jesus appears to be describing someone else.
38For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of man also be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."
1And he said to them, "Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power." (Mark 8:38-9:1)
I submit that Christian reasoning is entirely wrong. When Christians read the predictions of the end of the world, they are waiting for events to unfold on earth. Even after 2,000 years of false alarms, they have not lost patience, and I don't know if they will ever admit that maybe they are misreading the New Testament.
Such a calamity cannot happen as the Bible predicts. Something on that scale would take an event like a large meteor to hit earth. In such a case, a meteor would not care who is faithful to Jesus. If there was a nuclear war, bombs would be guided by human stupidity, not divine intelligence. If any other catastrophe happens on that scale, earth would not be a very pleasant place for the survivors. Whatever the cause of mass destruction, faith will not protect anybody. Even worse, if the entire world was destroyed, as devout Christians believe, there would be no survivors.
What confuses modern readers is the way the Bible's writers coded their belief in the power of the stars as if they affected life on earth. The matter before us is to decipher their writings for what they meant to ancients, not to what modern believers want to believe.
For this reason, we will examine the Bible from an astronomical point of view. It was a time when ancients perceived the stars in heaven as patterns to be interpreted as God's divine plan for life on earth. The sun was especially important to them because they understood that life on earth depended on it.
There are three clues which clarify what they were writing about. The first describes the Son of man as the constellation Orion. The second relates the yearly sun cycle to the end of the world. The third tracks Orion with the sun cycle. There can be no other conclusion except that the idea of a supernatural God was conceived as a ruse to mislead faithful Christians.
The Son of man
Three passages define the Son of man in physical form.
The first appears in the apocalyptic writings of the Book of Daniel, where Daniel describes the Son of man as riding on the clouds of heaven to the "Ancient of days" to give him everlasting dominion over the new kingdom of heaven.
13I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him.
14And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed. (Dan. 7:13-14)
Revelation's description of the Son of man fits the pattern of stars in the constellation Orion. The star on his right shoulder is bright red (upper left star). The three stars at his waste were later seen as the three wise men who announced the birth of Jesus.
12Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands,
13and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden girdle round his breast;
14his head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire,
15his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters;
16in his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth issued a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength. (Rev. 1:12-20)
The Son of man has a cluster of stars in the background that look like the clouds upon which the Son of man rides. Astronomical maps show the Milky Way behind the constellation Orion. From earth, they look like clouds.
14And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle.
(Rev. 14:14-20)
A photograph of Orion, personified as the Son of man riding on a cloud.
Orion as seen in human form. His right hand could be holding a sickle or a club. His left hand could be holding an animal skin, a shield or a bow. The Milky Way is behind him. The arc above him represents the sun's path. The line going through his waste is the celestial equator which runs parallel to earth's equator.
Orion's legacy
After the Big Dipper, Orion is perhaps the next most celebrated constellation in the winter sky. Mythologies about Orion probably originated from the Egyptians thousands of years ago and extended to the Greeks at the turn of the first century. It is a very important constellation to astral religions and easy to recognize.
To the ancient Egyptians, Orion was Osiris the God of Light. Set was Orisis' brother and the God of Darkness. According to legend, Orisis was murdered by his evil brother Set, who tore his body into pieces and scattered the fragments. Isis, Osiris' wife, managed to put him back together except for his phallus, which had been swallowed by a fish. She made an artificial phallus and breathed into his body to restore his soul. Thereafter, he rose to the sky.
In one period, Orion represented the Egyptian god of the dead and the first king of Egypt. After death, the pharaoh was thought to mystically inseminate the stars to ensure that, through Osiris, Horus the sun god would be reborn as his successor.
In one Greek myth, Orion was the son of Neptune and the nymph Euryale. He was of gigantic size, strength and beauty. He was so tall that he could walk through deep water without wetting his head. His hubris invoked Gaia, the Goddess of the Earth to send a scorpion to kill him. His fall to earth can be seen when the stars of Orion sink defeated below the western horizon and the stars of Scorpion are just rising in the east.
The next night he rises again, saved by Ophiuchus, the Doctor of Antiquity who gave him an antidote for the scorpions poison. This can be seen when the Scorpion sets in the southwest with Ophiuchus standing over him as a symbol of the antidote. Later, when Ophiuchus sets in the west, Orion comes up from the east, fully recovered.
In these myths alone we see fragments of Christian mythology. Gods die and are restored to life. They are given a soul by being breathed into and they fall to earth as Adam did. The scorpion brings death as Judas did to Jesus. There is the eternal conflict between light and dark. (See Light verses Dark)
The timing of Orion's cycle fits with the birth of Jesus on December 25. It makes its first appearance in the east in mid December each year. And as the season progresses, Orion rises with the sun and sets in the west three days before it rises in the east again.
With the sun personified as Jesus, it is accurate to think of Orion as a constellation in synch with the sun's cycle. In a sense they are like conjoined twins who suffer the same fate. This is why the confusion about whether Jesus is referring to himself as the Son of Man in the third person or whether the Son of Man is some cosmic judge.
The sun cycle
In allegorical language, the sun goes through four seasonal cycles. It is born on December 25 when daylight hours start to increase. At about this same time Orion rises in the east with its three belt stars as the three wise men. As Orion rises, the star Sirius ascends above the horizon as the star of Bethlehem. Sirius is the brightest star in the sky.
The powers of darkness are still in power, but as the daylight hours increase, it is seen as overcoming the forces that try to stop it. In the Gospels, this is when Jesus is born and when his parents take him away to keep Herod from killing him.
At the spring equinox it has entered the gates of heaven when daylight hours start to emerge more powerful than the dark evil forces. Jesus' mission starts in the spring when he collects his disciples and builds a following.
At the summer solstice, when the sun is the highest in the sky, the sun is on its throne. In the following summer months, as the sun descends, it is still strong, but it is weakening as the dark forces start to make war against it. To show his strength, Jesus performs miracles and exorcises demons. At this time Orion is at the height of its ascent.
When the sun passes through the fall equinox, it enters the gates to hell. Night time hours start to lengthen and the dark forces are said to be fighting their way back to power. The sun continues to weaken until it dies for three days following December 21. This is when Jesus is betrayed by Judas and is taken to trial and executed. Allegorically, this is the end of the world.
On December 25, the sun is resurrected and the cycle repeats.
This cycle is not unique to Christianity; it plays out through the mythologies of resurrected gods. It was the age of fable when the constellations were assigned the names of gods. There was Hercules who died on his twelfth labor like Jesus. There is Jason and the Argonauts with their ship Argo, reminiscent of Noah's ark. The constellation Perseus holding the head of Medusa looks like David holding the head of Goliath. There are creation myths, supreme gods who mate with virgins, giants, serpents and a host of other characters like those in the Bible.
The Bible cannot be understood by those who are so blinded with faith that they keep their heads buried in the ground trying to make historical sense out of it. Look up to the sky. The keys to unlocking the secrets of the Bible can be found with a map of the constellations and a good book on star mythology. My favorite is New Patterns in the Sky New Patterns in the Sky by Julius D. W. Staal,
The Zodiac wheel shows how the sun's yearly ascension and descension conforms to the Bible's motifs.
biblical Omens
In Mark chapter 13, there is an allegorical summary of the astronomical omens that lead to the end of the world. They start when the sun is at full power at its highest position on the horizon to when it descends to its death at the lowest position.
1. When the sun is at the summer solstice in Gemini, Jesus predicted that some day the temple will be destroyed. His disciples wanted to know what sign they should look for to know when this event will happen. In biblespeak, "sign" denotes astrological signs.
1And as he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!"
2And Jesus said to him, "Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down."
3And as he sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately,
4"Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign when these things are all to be accomplished?" (Mark 13:1-4)
2. After the sun passes the high point of the summer solstice it descends lower with each passing day. Allegorically, the sun is weakening because the dark forces of evil are said to waging war against it. The wars are just beginning.
The sun starts to descend in the house of Cancer. It is usually a time of hesitation, so Jesus warns what to expect and not to be alarmed.
7And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is not yet.
8For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places, there will be famines; this is but the beginning of the birth-pangs.
9"But take heed to yourselves; for they will deliver you up to councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues; and you will stand before governors and kings for my sake, to bear testimony before them. (Mark 13:7-8)
3. The wars between light and dark intensify as the days get shorter. The sun is still strong, but the forces of evil are gaining power.
The house of Leo brings strength from the new harvest. So Jesus says to be strong against adversity and you will be saved.
11And when they bring you to trial and deliver you up, do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say; but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.
12And brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death;
13and you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved.
14"But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains; (Mark 13:11-14)
4. Virgo is the last house before the sun descends into hell-Virgo is described as a nursing mother. There is no turning back.
15let him who is on the housetop not go down, nor enter his house, to take anything away;
16and let him who is in the field not turn back to take his mantle.
17And alas for those who are with child and for those who give suck [Virgo] in those days! (Mark 13:15-17)
5. The sun has passed the fall equinox into Scorpio. The days are getting progressively shorter than the nights. According to Jesus, if the days did not get shorter, no one could be saved, so God shortened the days. Pray that the sign doesn't happen in winter because it is the worst of times. If the days are still getting shorter and someone says the Christ has come, do not believe them. It is not the right time.
18Pray that it may not happen in winter.
19For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation which God created until now, and never will be.
20And if the Lord had not shortened the days, no human being would be saved; but for the sake of the elect, whom he chose, he shortened the days.
21And then if any one says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ!' or 'Look, there he is!' do not believe it.
22False Christs and false prophets will arise and show signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect.
23But take heed; I have told you all things beforehand. (Mark 13:18-23)
6. The sun is in Sagittarius as the sun descends to its lowest point on the horizon. On the darkest days of the winter when the moon does not give light, the Son of man will come in clouds. The Son of man in clouds can be seen in the picture above. Below, the next frame shows the son of men descending on December 21.
24"But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light,
25and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.
26And then they will see the Son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory.
27And then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. (Mark 13:24-27)
7. You will know he is near the gates to heaven (the spring equinox) when fig trees start to grow leaves.
28"From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near.
29So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. (Mark 13:28-29)
8. This generation will see these things take place. -He means his generation.
30Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away before all these things take place.
31Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. (Mark 13:30-31)
In the first century on December 21 at midnight, when the sun is darkened and the moon does not give up its light, the Son of man can be seen descending to earth. A month later it disappears from view.
Orion ascends in the east three days after its disappearance in the west.
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