A number of ancient cultures believed in a Cycle of World Ages in which we gradually descend from a state of spiritual perfection and material abundance to one of ignorance and scarcity. In ancient India, this was called the Yuga Cycle. The Yuga Cycle doctrine tells us that we are now living in the Kali Yuga; the age of darkness, when moral virtue and mental capabilities reach their lowest point in the cycle.  The Mahabharata describes the Kali Yuga as the period when the “World Soul” is Black in hue; only one quarter of virtue remains, which slowly dwindles to zero at the end of the Kali Yuga. Men turn to wickedness; disease, lethargy, anger, natural calamities, anguish and fear of scarcity dominate. Penance, sacrifices and religious observances fall into disuse. All creatures degenerate. Change passes over all things, without exception. The Kali Yuga (Iron Age) was preceded by three other Yugas: Satya or Krita Yuga (Golden Age), Treta Yuga (Silver Age) and the Dwapara Yuga (Bronze Age). In the Mahabharata, Hanuman gives the following description of the Yuga Cycle to the Pandava prince Bhima: The Krita Yuga was so named because there was but one religion, and all men were saintly: therefore they were not required to perform religious ceremonies… Men neither bought nor sold; there were no poor and no rich; there was no need to labour, because all that men required was obtained by the power of will… The Krita Yuga was without disease; there was no lessening with the years; there was no hatred, or vanity, or evil thought whatsoever; no sorrow, no fear. All mankind could attain to supreme blessedness. The universal soul was White… the identification of self with the universal soul was the whole religion of the Perfect Age. In the Treta Yuga sacrifices began, and the World Soul became Red; virtue lessened a quarter. Mankind sought truth and performed religious ceremonies; they obtained what they desired by giving and by doing. In the Dwapara Yuga the aspect of the World Soul was Yellow: religion lessened one-half. The Veda was divided into four parts, and although some had knowledge of the four Vedas, others knew but three or one. Mind lessened, Truth declined, and there came desire and diseases and calamities; because of these men had to undergo penances. It was a decadent Age by reason of the prevalence of sin.1 Now we are living in the dark times of the Kali Yuga, when goodness and virtue has all but disappeared from the world. When did the Kali Yuga begin, and when does it end?  In spite of the elaborate theological framework of the Yuga Cycle, the start and end dates of the Kali Yuga remain shrouded in mystery. The popularly accepted date for the beginning of the Kali Yuga is 3102 BCE, thirty-five years after the conclusion of the battle of the Mahabharata. This date is believed to be based on a statement made by the noted astronomer Aryabhatta in the Sanskrit text Aryabhatiya, where he writes that: When sixty times sixty years (i.e. 3,600 years) and three quarter Yugas had elapsed, twenty-three years had then passed since my birth.2 This means that Aryabhatta had composed the text when he was 23 years old and 3,600 years of the current Yuga had elapsed. The problem here is that we do not know when Aryabhatta was born, or when he composed the Aryabhatiya. He does not even mention the Kali Yuga by name, and simply states that 3,600 years of the Yuga had elapsed. Scholars generally assume that the Kali Yuga had started in 3102 BCE, and then use this statement to justify that the Aryabhatiya was composed in 499 CE. However, we cannot use the reverse logic, i.e. we cannot say that the Kali Yuga must have started in 3102 BCE since the Aryabhatiya was composed in 499 CE, for we do not know when Aryabhatta lived or completed his work. Another important source is the Aihole inscription of Pulakesin II of Badami, which was incised on the expiry of 3,735 years after the Bharata war and 556 years of the Saka kings.3 If we take the beginning of the Saka Era as 78 CE, then the Bharata War took place in 3102 BCE, then the Kali Yuga, which started 35 years after the Bharata War, began on 3067 BCE. But we must remember there is an Old Saka Era as well, whose beginning date is disputed, and for which various dates have been proposed by scholars ranging from 83 BCE – 383 BCE.4 If the Aihole inscription refers to the Old Saka Era, then the Kali Era starts a few hundred years before 3102 BCE. The truth is that there is no text or inscription which gives us an unambiguous date for the beginning of the Kali Yuga. Although the popularly accepted date is 3102 BCE, there is no astronomical basis for it. There is a claim that the computation was based on the conjunction of the five ‘geocentric planets’ (i.e. the planets visible to the naked eye) – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – at 0° Aries at the beginning of the Kali Yuga as mentioned in the Surya Siddhanta. But the Surya Siddhanta explicitly states that this conjunction of planets at 0° Aries takes place at the end of the Golden Age.5 Besides, modern simulations indicate that on 17/18 February 3102 BCE, the five geocentric planets occupied an arc of roughly 42° in the sky, which cannot be considered as a conjunction by any means. Therefore, neither is there any astronomical basis for the start date, nor do we have any evidence that Aryabhatta or any other astronomer had calculated the date. Before the 6th century CE, the date does not occur in any Sanskrit text or inscription. It could have been invented by later day astronomers or adopted from some other calendar. The vagueness surrounding the origin of this very important chronological marker makes its validity highly suspect. The task of figuring out the start date of the Kali Yuga from the ancient Sanskrit texts, however, is fraught with difficulties, since a number of inaccuracies have crept into the Yuga Cycle information contained within them. In many Sanskrit texts the 12,000-year duration of the Yuga Cycle was artificially inflated to an abnormally high value of 4,320,000 years by introducing a multiplication factor of 360, which was represented as the number of ‘human years’ which constitutes a ‘divine year’. In the book, The Arctic Home in the Vedas (1903), B.G. Tilak wrote that:  The writers of the Puranas, many of which appear to have been written during the first few centuries of the Christian, era, were naturally unwilling to believe that the Kali Yuga had passed away… An attempt was, therefore, made to extend the duration of the Kali Yuga by converting 1,000 (or 1,200) ordinary human years thereof into as many divine years, a single divine year, or a year of the gods, being equal to 360 human years… this solution of the difficulty was universally adopted, and a Kali of 1,200 ordinary years was at once changed, by this ingenious artifice, into a magnificent cycle of as many divine, or 360 × 1200 = 432,000 ordinary years.6 Yuga Cycle of 24,000 Years However, certain important Sanskrit texts such as the Mahabharata7 and the Laws of Manu,8 which scholars believe were composed earlier than the Puranas, still retain the original value of the Yuga Cycle as 12,000 years. The Mahabharata explicitly mentions that the Yuga Cycle duration is based on the days and nights of human beings. The Zoroastrians also believed in a Cycle of the Ages of 12,000 years’ duration. The Great Year or Perfect Year of the Greeks was variously represented as being of 12,954 years (Cicero) or 10,800 years (Heraclitus) duration. Surely, the Yuga Cycle cannot be of different durations for different cultures. In the book The Holy Science (1894)Sri Yukteswar clarified that a complete Yuga Cycle takes 24,000 years, and is comprised of an ascending cycle of 12,000 years when virtue gradually increases and a descending cycle of another 12,000 years, in which virtue gradually decreases. Hence, after we complete a 12,000-year descending cycle from Satya Yuga -> Kali Yuga, the sequence reverses itself, and an ascending cycle of 12,000 years begins which goes from Kali Yuga -> Satya Yuga. Yukteswar states that, “Each of these periods of 12,000 years brings a complete change, both externally in the material world, and internally in the intellectual or electric world, and is called one of the Daiva Yugas or Electric Couple.”9  The 24,000-year duration of the complete Yuga Cycle closely approximates the Precessional Year of 25,765 years, which is the time taken by the sun to ‘precess’, i.e. move backwards, through the 12 Zodiac constellations. Interestingly, the Surya Siddhanta specifies a value of 54 arc seconds per year for precession, as against the current value of 50.29 arc seconds per year. This translates into a Precessional Year of exactly 24,000 years! This means that the current observed value of precession may simply be a temporary deviation from the mean. The concept of an ascending and descending cycle of Yugas is still prevalent among the Buddhists and Jains. The Jains believe that a complete Time Cycle (Kalachakra) has a progressive and a regressive half. During the progressive half of the cycle (Utsarpini), there is a gradual increase in knowledge, happiness, health, ethics, and spirituality, while during the regressive half of the cycle (Avasarpini) there is a gradual reduction in these qualities. These two half cycles follow each other in an unbroken succession for eternity, just like the cycles of day and night or the waxing and waning of the moon.  The ancient Greeks also appear to have believed in an ascending and descending Cycle of Ages. The Greek poet Hesiod (c. 750 BCE – 650 BCE) had given an account of the World Ages in Works and Days, in which he inserted a fifth age called the ‘Age of Heroes’, between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. In Hesiod’s Cosmos, Jenny Strauss Clay writes: Drawing on the myth in Plato’s Statesman, Vernant also claimed that the temporal framework of Hesiodic myth, that is, the succession of races, is not linear but cyclical; at the end of the age of iron, which he divides into two, the cycle of races starts again with a new golden age or, more likely, a new age of heroes, as the sequence reverses itself…Vernant himself offers a solution when he remarks that “there is not in reality one age of iron but two types of human existence.”10 This is very interesting. Jean-Pierre Vernant, who is a highly-acclaimed specialist in ancient Greek culture, believes that the Cycle of the Ages reverses itself as per Hesiod’s account. Not only that, he states the Iron Age has two parts, which corresponds to Yukteswar’s interpretation in which the descending Kali Yuga is followed by the ascending Kali Yuga. We can surmise, in this context, that the ‘Age of Heroes’, which immediately followed the Bronze Age in Hesiod’s account, must be the name ascribed by Hesiod to the descending Kali Yuga. The evidence from different sources supports the notion of a complete Yuga Cycle of 24,000 years, comprised of an ascending and descending cycle of 12,000 years each. This brings us to the question of the relative durations of the different Yugas in the Yuga Cycle, and the transitional periods, which occur at the beginning and end of each Yuga, and are known as Sandhya (dawn) and Sandhyansa (twilight) respectively. The values in the following table are provided in the Sanskrit texts for the duration of the Yugas and their respective dawns and twilights: Yugas of Equal Duration? Since so many inaccuracies crept into the Yuga Cycle doctrine, as pointed out by Yukteswar and Tilak, we also need to question the accuracy of the relative durations of the Yugas mentioned in the Sanskrit texts. Although the Yuga Cycle is mentioned in the mythic accounts of around thirty ancient cultures, as described by Giorgio de Santillana, professor of the history of science at MIT, in the book Hamlet’s Mill (1969), we find very little information regarding the relative durations of the different ages within this cycle.  In the few accounts where the durations of the Yugas are specified, we find that each age in the Yuga Cycle is of the same duration. For instance, the Zoroastrians believe that the world lasts for 12,000 years, which is divided into four equal ages of 3,000 years each. A Mexican source known as the Codex Rios (also referred to as Codex 3738 and Codex Vaticanus A) states that each age lasts for 4,008, 4,010, 4,801 and 5,042 years respectively for a total of 17,861 years. We can see that in this case also the duration of each age is nearly the same.  Therefore, the durations of the four Yugas mentioned in the Sanskrit texts (i.e. 4,800, 3,600, 2,400, and 1,200 years) deviate from the norm. The duration of each Yuga, in this sequence, decreases by 1,200 years from the previous one. This is an arithmetic progression which is rarely, if ever, found in natural cycles. Could it be that the Yuga durations were deliberately altered at some point in the past in order to give the impression that the duration of each Yuga decreases in tandem with the decrease in virtue from one Yuga to the next? Here is the most startling fact: Two of the most famous astronomers of ancient India, Aryabhatta and Paulisa, believed that the Yuga Cycle is comprised of Yugas of equal duration! In the 11th century, the medieval scholar Al-Beruni had compiled a comprehensive commentary on Indian philosophy, sciences and culture titled Alberuni’s India, in which he mentions that the Yuga Cycle doctrine was based on the derivations of the Indian astronomer Brahmagupta, who in turn derived his knowledge from the Sanskrit Smriti texts. He makes an interesting statement in this regard: Further, Brahmagupta says that “Aryabhatta considers the four yugas as the four equal parts of the caturyuga (Yuga Cycle). Thus he differs from the doctrine of the book Smriti, just mentioned, and he who differs from us is an opponent.”11 The fact that Aryabhatta believed the four Yugas to be of equal duration is extremely pertinent! Al-Beruni reasserts this in no uncertain terms: “Therefore, according to Aryabhatta, the Kali Yuga has 3,000 divya years…. each two yugas has 6,000 divya years… each three years has 9,000 divya years.” Why would Aryabhatta subscribe to such a belief? Did he have access to sources of information that are lost to us now? Paulisa, another celebrated astronomer of ancient India, also subscribed to the idea of Yugas of equal duration. Alberuni says that, while presenting the calculations for the duration of a kalpa, “he (Pulisa) has not changed the caturyugas into exact yugas, but simply changed them into fourth parts, and multiplied these fourth parts by the number of years of a single fourth part.”12 Thus, two of the most respected astronomers of ancient India, Aryabhatta and Paulisa, believed in a Yuga Cycle that comprised of 4 Yugas of equal duration of 3,000 divine-years each. However, their opinion was overshadowed by the contradictory view held by Brahmagupta. He railed against Aryabhatta and the other astronomers who held differing opinions, and even abused them. Al-Beruni says about Brahmagupta:  He is rude enough to compare Aryabhatta to a worm which, eating the wood, by chance describes certain characters in it without understanding them and without intending to draw them. “He, however, who knows these things thoroughly, stands opposed to Aryabhatta, Srishena, and Vishnucandra like the lion against gazelles. They are not capable of letting him see their faces.” In such offensive terms he attacks Aryabhatta and maltreats him.13  We can now understand why Brahmagupta’s opinion finally prevailed over that of the other astronomers of his time, and it certainly did not have anything to do with the inherent soundness of his logic, or the authenticity of his sources. It is time for us to stop standing in opposition to Aryabhatta, Paulisa, Srishena, Vishnucandra and others like the “lion against gazelles,” and instead take cognizance of the very real possibility that the Yugas in the Yuga Cycle are of equal duration, and the 4:3:2:1 sequence of the Yugas may have been a mathematical manipulation that crept into the Yuga Cycle doctrine sometime prior to 500 CE. It is possible this manipulation was introduced because people were inclined to believe that the duration of a Yuga should decrease in tandem with the decrease in virtue and human longevity from one Yuga to the next. A neat formula was devised in which the total duration of the Yugas added up to 12,000 years. However, there was one problem. If the Kali Yuga is of 1,200 years duration, then it should have been completed many times over, since its proposed beginning in 3102 BCE. In order to circumvent this potentially embarrassing situation, another complexity was introduced. Each ‘year’ of the Yuga Cycle became a ‘divine year’ comprised of 360 human years. The Yuga Cycle became inflated to 4,320,000 years (12,000×360) and the Kali Yuga became equal to 432,000 years (1,200×360). Humanity became consigned to an interminable duration of darkness.  Get the issue this article appears in Original Yuga Cycle Encoded into Saptarshi Calendar  The original Yuga Cycle doctrine appears to have been very simple: A Yuga Cycle duration of 12,000 years, with each Yuga lasting for 3,000 years. This cycle is encoded in the Saptarshi Calendar which has been used in India for thousands of years. It was used extensively during the Maurya period in the 4th century BCE, and is still in use in some parts of India. The term Saptarshi refers to the ‘Seven Rishis’ or the ‘Seven Sages’ representing the seven stars of the Great Bear constellation (Ursa Major). They are regarded as the enlightened rishis who appear at the beginning of every Yuga to spread the laws of civilisation. The Saptarshi Calendar used in India had a cycle of 2,700 years; it is said that the Great Bear constellation stays for 100 years in each of the 27 Nakshatras (lunar asterisms) which adds up to a cycle of 2,700 years.14 The 2,700-year cycle was also referred to as a Saptarshi Era or a Saptarshi Yuga.  The Great Bear constellation (Ursa Major) is clearly visible in the northern sky throughout the year. The seven prominent stars represent the Seven Sages (Saptarshi), each one depicted in the painting. If the 2,700 year cycle of the Saptarshi Calendar represents the actual duration of a Yuga, then the remaining 300 years out of the total Yuga duration of 3,000 years automatically represents the ‘transitional period’, before the qualities of the subsequent Yuga are fully manifested. The total duration of the Yuga Cycle, excluding the transitional periods, is equal to (2,700×4), i.e. 10,800 years, the same as the duration of the ‘Great Year of Heraclitus’ in Hellenic tradition! This clearly indicates the underlying basis of the Cycle of the World Ages in both India and Greece was the 2,700 year Saptarshi Cycle. It is agreed by historians that the Saptarshi Calendar, in use during the Maurya period in the 4th century BCE, started in 6676 BCE. In the book Traditions of the Seven Rsis, Dr. J.E. Mitchiner confirms this:  We may conclude that the older and original version of the Era of the Seven Rsis commenced with the Seven Rsis in Krttika in 6676 BCE… This version was in use in northern India from at least the 4th century BCE, as witnessed by the statements of Greek and Roman writers; it was also the version used by Vrddha Garga, at around the start of the Christian era.15  In fact, the recorded chronology of Indian kings goes back further than 6676 BCE as documented by the Greek and Roman historians Pliny and Arrian. Pliny states that, “From Father Liber [Roman Bacchus or Greek Dionysus] to Alexander the Great (d. 323 BCE), Indians reckon 154 kings, and they reckon (the time as) 6,451 years and 3 months.”16 Arrian puts 153 kings and 6,462 years between Dionysus and Sandrokottos (Chandragupta Maurya), to whose court a Greek embassy was sent in 314 BCE.17 Both indications add up to a date of roughly c.6776 BCE, which is a 100 years prior to the beginning of the Saptarshi Calendar in 6676 BCE.  It is obvious from the accounts of Pliny and Arrian that they must have identified a specific king in the Indian kings list who corresponded to the Greek Dionysus or Roman Bacchus, and whose reign had ended at around c.6776 BCE. Who could that have been? According to the renowned scholar and Orientalist Sir William Jones, Dionysus or Bacchus was none other than the Indian monarch Rama. In his essay “On the Gods of Greece, Italy and India” (1784), Sir William Jones  deems Rama to be the same as the Grecian Dionysos, who is said to have conquered India with an army of satyrs, commanded by Pan; and Rama was also a mighty conqueror, and had an army of large monkeys or satyrs, commanded by Maruty (Hanuman), son of Pavan. Rama is also found, in other points, to resemble the Indian Bacchus.18  Sir William Jones also points out that,  Meros is said by the Greeks to have been a mountain of India, on which their Dionysus was born, and that Meru is also a mountain near the city of Naishada, or Nysa, called by the Grecian geographers Dionysopolis, and universally celebrated in the Sanskrit poems.19 The identification of Dionysus with Rama provides us with fresh perspectives. According to the Indian tradition, Rama lived towards the end of the Treta Yuga (Silver Age), and the Dwapara Yuga (Bronze Age) had started soon after his demise. This implies that the 6676 BCE date for the beginning of the Saptarshi Calendar, which is 100 years after Dionysus, i.e. Rama, indicates the beginning of the Dwapara Yuga in the descending cycle. A later Saptarshi Calendar, still in use in India, began from 3076 BCE. But, as Dr. Subhash Kak points out, “the new count that goes back to 3076 BCE was started later to make it as close to the start of the Kali era as possible.”20 In the book Traditions of the Seven Rsis, Dr. Mitchiner says that the Saptarshi Calendar for the Kali Yuga (the Kashmir Laukika Abda) started when the Saptarshis were in Rohini. Since the Saptarshis were in Rohini in 3676 BCE, it implies the Kali Yuga cycle must have commenced in 3676 BCE.  Tracking Down the True End Date of Current Kali Yuga Now this is where it gets interesting. A Saptarshi Era began in 6676 BCE, and another cycle started exactly 3,000 years later in 3676 BCE. But the Saptarshi Cycle is of 2,700 years’ duration. Why did the Saptarshi Era for the Kali Yuga start 3,000 years after the previous cycle? This means a 300-year ‘transitional period’ must have been added to the end of the previous cycle! It clearly proves the hypothesis that the 2,700 year Saptarshi Cycle, along with a 300-year transitional period, was the original calendrical basis of the Yuga Cycle.  If we use the 6676 BCE date as the beginning of the Dwapara Yuga in the descending cycle, and the 2,700 year Saptarshi Cycle along with a 300-year transitional period as the basis for the Yuga Cycle, then the entire timeline of the Yuga Cycle is unravelled. This Yuga Cycle timeline takes the beginning of the Golden Age to 12676 BCE, more than 14,500 years before present, when the Great Bear was in the Shravana nakshatra (the Great Bear will advance by 3 nakshatras in every Yuga because of the 300-year transitional period). This agrees very well with the Indian tradition, since the Mahabharata mentions that in the ancient tradition the Shravana nakshatra was given the first place in the nakshatra cycle.  Yuga Cycle timeline based on the Saptarshi Calendar. According to this interpretation, the Kali Yuga ends in 2025, to be followed by a 300 year transitional period leading up to the Ascending Dwapara Yuga. The timeline also indicates that the ascending Kali Yuga, which is the current epoch in which we are living, will end in 2025 CE. The full manifestation of the next Yuga – the ascending Dwapara – will take place in 2325 CE, after a transitional period of 300 years. The ascending Dwapara Yuga will then be followed by two more Yugas: the ascending Treta Yuga and the ascending Satya Yuga, which completes the 12,000 year ascending cycle.  The Sanskrit text Brahma-vaivarta Purana describes a dialogue between Lord Krishna and the Goddess Ganges. Here, Krishna says that after 5,000 years of Kali Yuga there will be a dawn of a new Golden Age that lasts for 10,000 years (Text 50, 59). This can be immediately understood in the context of the Yuga Cycle timeline described here. We are now ending the Kali Yuga, nearly 5,700 years since its beginning in 3676 BCE. And the end of the Kali Yuga will be followed by three more Yugas spanning 9,000 years, before the ascending cycle ends.  Archaeological & historical evidence According to the Yuga Cycle doctrine, the transitional periods between the Yugas are associated with a collapse of civilisations and environmental catastrophes (pralaya), which wipe out virtually every trace of any human civilisation. The new civilisation that emerges in the new Yuga is guided by a few survivors of the cataclysm, who carry with them the technical and spiritual knowledge of the previous epoch. Many ancient sources tell us of the enigmatic group of ‘Seven Sages’ (‘Saptarshi’) who are said to appear at the beginning of every Yuga and promulgate the arts of civilisation. We find them in myths across the world – in Sumeria, India, Polynesia, South America and North America. They possessed infinite wisdom and power, could travel over land and water, and took on various forms at will. The Saptarshi Calendar of ancient India appears to have been based on their periodic appearance at the beginning of every Yuga. As we shall see, the Yuga Cycle timeline proposed here correlates very strongly with the major cataclysmic events that periodically impact our planet, and with a number of important dates recorded in various ancient calendars and scriptures.  The planet was subjected to sudden and destructive, deep-water, oceanic comet impacts during the 300-year transitional period at the end of the last Golden Age, circa 9600 BCE. The first transitional period in the 12,000-year descending Yuga Cycle is the 300-year period at the end of the Golden Age from 9976 BCE – 9676 BCE. This is the time when the last Ice Age came to a sudden end; the climate became very warm quite abruptly, and there was a catastrophic global flooding. Many ancient legends refer to this time period. In the Timaeus, Plato tells us of the mythical island of Atlantis which was swallowed up by the sea in a “single day and night of misfortune” in c.9600 BCE. The Zoroastrians believe the world was created by Ahura Mazda at around 9600 BCE, (i.e. 9,000 years before the birth of their prophet Zoroaster in c.600 BCE). This event has also been recorded in the flood myths of many ancient cultures, which almost uniformly talk of enormous walls of water that submerged the entire land to the highest mountain tops, along with heavy rain, fireballs from the sky, intense cold and long periods of darkness. Archaeologist Bruce Masse of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico examined a sample of 175 flood myths from different cultures around the world and concluded that the environmental aspects described in these events, which is also consistent with the archaeological and geophysical data, could have only been precipitated by a destructive, deep-water, oceanic comet impact.21  In recent years, a team of international scientists found compelling evidence that the Earth was bombarded by multiple fragments of a giant comet nearly 12,800 years ago, triggering the start of a rapid and intense cooling period called Younger Dryas, which lasted for nearly 1,200 years till c.9700 BCE. The force of the comet impact, combined with the vicious cold snap that followed, brought about the extinction of a large number of North American megafauna including woolly mammoths and giant ground sloths, and ended a prehistoric civilisation called the Clovis culture – the first human inhabitants of the New World.22 This temperature graph shows the sudden cooling at the beginning of the Younger Dryas and an equally sudden warming at the end of the Younger Dryas. The Younger Dryas ended as abruptly as it started, for reasons not fully understood. Geologists from the Niels Bohr Institute (NBI) in Copenhagen studied the Greenland ice core data and concluded that the Ice Age ended exactly in 9703 BCE. Researcher Jorgen Peder Steffensen said that, “in the transition from the ice age to our current warm, interglacial period the climate shift is so sudden that it is as if a button was pressed.”23 The 9703 BCE date for the sudden climate shift falls within the 300-year transitional period at the end of the Golden Age from 9976 BCE – 9676 BCE, and as such it provides the first important validation of the Yuga Cycle timeline identified here. Black Sea Catastrophe & Global Floods The 300-year transitional period between the Treta Yuga (Silver Age) and the Dwapara Yuga (Bronze Age) from 6976 BCE – 6676 BCE also coincides with a significant environmental event – the Black Sea Catastrophe – recently dated to 6700 BCE. The Black Sea once used to be a freshwater lake. That is, until the Mediterranean Sea, swollen with melted glacial waters, breached a natural dam, and cut through the narrow Bosphorous Strait, catastrophically flooding the Black Sea. This raised the water levels of the Black Sea by several hundred feet, flooded more than 60,000 square miles of land, and significantly expanded the Black Sea shoreline (by around 30%).24 This event fundamentally changed the course of civilisation in Southeastern Europe and western Anatolia. Geologists Bill Ryan and Walter Pitman of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York, who first proposed the Black Sea Catastrophe hypothesis, have gone to the extent of comparing it to Noah’s Flood.  The Black Sea catastrophe, before and after. The water from the Aegean Sea cut through a narrow Gorge (Bosphorous Strait) and plunged into the Black Sea creating a gigantic waterfall.  Similar major flooding events took place in many parts of the world, as massive glacial lakes, swelled by the waters of the melting ice, breached their ice barriers, and rushed into the surrounding areas. Sometime between 6900 BCE – 6200 BCE the Laurentide ice-sheet disintegrated in the Hudson Bay and an enormous quantity of glacial waters from the inland Lake Agassiz/Ojibway discharged into the Labrador Sea. This was possibly the “single largest flood of the Quaternary Period,” which may have single-handedly raised the global sea level by half a meter.25 The period between 7000 BCE – 6000 BCE was also characterised by the occurrences of gigantic earthquakes in Europe. In northern Sweden, some of these earthquakes caused ‘waves on the ground’, 10 metres high, referred to as ‘rock tsunamis’. It is possible that the global chain of cataclysmic events during this transitional period may have been triggered by a single underlying cause, which we are yet to find out. The transitional period between the Dwapara Yuga and Kali Yuga, from 3976 BCE – 3676 BCE, was again marked by a series of environmental cataclysms, whose exact nature remains a mystery. It is referred to in geology as the 5.9 kiloyear event, and is considered one of the most intense aridification events during the Holocene period. It occurred around 3900 BCE, ending the Neolithic Sub-pluvial and initiated the most recent desiccation of the Sahara Desert. At the same time, between 4000 BCE – 3500 BCE, the coastal plains of Sumer experienced severe flooding, which “was the local effect of a worldwide episode of rapid, relatively short-term flooding known as the Flandrian Transgression – which had a significant impact not only along the shores of the Gulf but in many other parts of Asia as well.”26 This catastrophic flooding event led to the end of the Ubaid period in Mesopotamia, and triggered a worldwide migration to river valleys. Soon afterwards, we find the emergence of the first river valley settlements in Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley in c. 3500 BCE. This transitional period between the Yugas is also recorded in ancient calendars. For a very long time there was a prevalent belief in the Western world that the world was created in 4004 BCE. This date comes to us from the genealogies of the Old Testament. The date is just 28 years prior to the end of the Dwapara and the beginning of the transitional period. The year of world creation in the Jewish religious calendar is 3761 BCE, which is in the middle of the transitional period. Greek Dark Ages & Great Upheavals As per the ancient traditions, the descending Kali Yuga, which was referred to by Hesiod as the ‘Age of Heroes’, came to an end with the battle fought on the plains of Troy. The Yuga Cycle timeline indicates that the 300-year intervening period between the descending and ascending Kali Yuga extended from 976 BCE – 676 BCE; and very interestingly, this overlaps with the 300-year period from 1100 BCE to 800 BCE which is referred to by historians as the Greek Dark Ages!  Historians regard the Greek Dark Ages as a period of transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age. Robert Drews writes that:  Within a period of forty to fifty years at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the twelfth century (c.1200 – 1100 BCE) almost every significant city in the eastern Mediterranean world was destroyed, many of them never to be occupied again.27 Map of the Late Bronze Age collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean along with movements of people.  This sudden and violent disruption plunged the entire Near East, North Africa, Caucasus, Aegean, and Balkan regions into a Dark Age that lasted for three hundred years, and was characterised by great upheavals, famine, depopulation, and mass movements of people. Almost every city between Pylos and Gaza was violently destroyed, and many abandoned. The palace economies of Mycenae and Anatolia collapsed, and people lived in isolated, small settlements.  In Egypt, the period from 1070 BCE – 664 BCE is known as the ‘Third Intermediate Period’ during which time Egypt was overrun by foreign rulers. There was political and social disintegration and chaos, accompanied by a series of crippling droughts. In India, the Indus Valley civilisation finally ended around 1000 BCE, and after a gap of nearly 400 years we see the emergence of the 16 Great Kingdoms (Mahajanapadas) in the Gangetic Plains at around 600 BCE. Catastrophe also struck the Olmec civilisation of Mesoamerica at this time. A wholesale destruction of many San Lorenzo monuments occurred in c.950 BCE and the site was abandoned in c.900 BCE. Scholars believe drastic environmental changes may have been responsible for this shift in Olmec centres, with certain important rivers changing course. When the ascending Kali Yuga began in 676 BCE, much of the knowledge, traditions, and skills from the descending Kali Yuga were forgotten. Possibly in response to this grave social crisis, a number of philosophers and prophets appeared at this time, trying to re-discover the lost wisdom, and spread it amongst the ignorant masses. Among them were Buddha (623 BCE), Thales (624 BCE), Pythagoras (570 BCE), Confucius (551 BCE), Zoroaster (600 BCE), and Mahavir Jain (599 BCE). But much sacred knowledge was irretrievably lost. For instance, the original Vedas were comprised of 1,180 sakhas (i.e. branches), of which only 7 or 8 sakhas (less than 1%) are remembered now. Various errors, omissions, and interpolations also crept into the ancient texts as they were being revised and written down. The mistakes in the Yuga Cycle doctrine were some of them.  The Yuga Cycle timelines proposed here accurately mirrors the worldwide environmental catastrophes that accompany transitional periods between Yugas. Every 2,700 years our planet is impacted by a series of cataclysmic events for a period of a few hundred years, which brings about a total or near total collapse of civilisations across the world. In every case, however, civilisation restarts immediately after the period of destruction. The four key transitional periods, since the end of the Golden Age, are summarised in the above table. It is evident that the Yuga Cycle used to be tracked using the Saptarshi Calendar. It was of 12,000 years duration, comprised of four Yugas of equal duration of 2,700 years each, separated by transitional periods of 300 years. The complete Yuga Cycle of 24,000 years was comprised of an ascending and descending Yuga cycle, which followed each other for eternity like the cycles of day and night. For the past 2,700 years we have been passing through the ascending Kali Yuga, and this Yuga is coming to an end in 2025.  The Transitional Periods between Yugas In accordance with convention, the 300-year transitional period following 2025 can be broken into two periods of 150 years each. The first 150-year period – the ‘Twilight of Kali’ – is when the Kali Yuga structures may collapse due to a combination of wars, environmental catastrophes, and cosmic changes, while the second 150-year period – the ‘Dawn of Dwapara’ – is the time when the spiritually evolved systems and philosophies of the Dwapara Yuga may begin to emerge. It is likely, though, that the twin processes of collapse and emergence will progress simultaneously throughout the entire 300-year transitional period, albeit at different intensities.  The current upswing in tectonic activities and extreme weather phenomena on one hand, and the initial signs of the awakening of a higher consciousness amongst humanity on the other, may be indicative of the fact that the effects of the transitional period are already underway. We need to be aware of these greater cycles of time that govern human civilisation, and the changes that are looming in the horizon. https://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/ancient-mysteries/the-end-of-the-kali-yuga-in-2025-unravelling-the-mysteries-of-the-yuga-cycle

One of the most intriguing prophesies I've come across that I can associate with the terra formed images I've discussed at length in the book and in this forum, is the Islamic concept called the Dabbah, translated as the Beast of the Earth. Here is what the Global Islamic Academy has to say about it (italic emphasis my own). "The Emergence of the Beast Allah Most High states, “We shall bring forth for them out of the earth a beast that shall speak unto them.” [27: 82] The Prophet (Allah bless him and grant him peace) said, “The first of the signs [the Hour] to appear will be the rising of the sun from the west and the appearance of the Best before the people in the forenoon.” [Muslim] There scholars differed greatly regarding the details related to the Beast, which, though not important to know, can be mentioned briefly as follows: (a) Appearance: Some scholars, such as Imam Qurtubi, held that the beast is the she-camel of the Prophet Salih (Allah bless him). Others stated that it was an animal that is a hybrid of many different animals. Another opinion states that it is an actual human being, which is a very weak opinion. [Qurtubi, Tadkhira] (b) Place of Emergence: Some stated that the Beast will emerge from Makka, basing it on a narration of Hudhayfa (Allah be well-pleased with him). Others stated that it will emerge from a desert, then disappear, then emerge from a village, then disappear, then finally from the Masjid al-Haram in Makka. There is another opinion that states it will emerge from Ta’if. [Qurtubi, Tadkhira; Alusi, Ruh al-Ma`ani] (c) It’s Speech: The Beast will address the people with the words of Allah, “Mankind did not believe in our signs.” [27: 82] Others stated, quoting ibn `Abbas, that “speaking” refers to the action of the Beast in differentiating the believers and disbelievers. (d) It’s Role: The Beast will be tasked to differentiate the believers from the disbelievers. Abu Hurayra (Allah be well-pleased with him) narrates that the Prophet (Allah bless him and grant him peace) said, “The Beast of the earth will emerge and have with it the staff of Moses and the ring of Solomon.” [Abu Dawud, Ibn Majah, Musnad Ahmad] It will use these to mark off the believers from the disbelievers. [Qurtubi, Jami` al-Ahkam al-Qur’an]" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In addition, Dr. Ali A. Olomi, an Islamic scholar of history and the esoteric,, brings forth the idea of the Angel of Death (Azrael) and the Angel of Resurrection (Israfil), as it relates to these prophesies. His Patreon podcast goes into detail on the Beast "Like Judaism and Christianity, we find archangels in Islam. While only a few angels are explicitly named in the Qur’an, some appear in other sources and in the later writings of Muslims One such angels is Israfil the Angel of Resurrection Israfil is not named in the Qur’an but is one of three angels in a supplication attributed to Muhammad and is found in the hadith. The angel is believed to be the Trumpeter of heaven, holding the soor or horn that will herald the Day of Resurrection. It is said the horn will be blown twice, one to mark the end the world and a second time to resurrect the dead. Israfil waits with eyes upturned to God and when the signal is given, the angel will reputedly blow on the horn ending all life, flattening the mountains, and bringing the end. Then when Israfil blows again all will be resurrected and the Day of Judgement begins. At the dawn of creation, Israfil is said to have asked God for guardianship of the seven heavens and the earth. God also makes Israfil custodian of the mountains and winds. While Azra’il the Angel of Death is described as having thousands of eyes, Israfil is said to have having countless tongues and mouths which praise God in thousands upon thousands of languages. The praises of Israfil are spiritually significant for from their essence God fashions new angels who surround the Throne. It is also on account on the beautiful praises, the angel is believed to be the muezzin of heaven. Israfil is a being of deep mercy. The angel gazes down on Hell three times a day and weeps. The tears of Israfil threaten to flood the Earth, but God restrains their flow. Conversely Israfil is so vast that if all the waters of the Earth were poured over the angel’s head, it would never reach the ground. Israfil is said to be closest in proximity to God, standing next to the Throne. Using one wing to shield himself from the full unbearable majesty of God. He is said to have four wings. The main function of Israfil is to herald of Day of Judgement. It is said, even in the time of Muhammad the Horn is poised upon the angel’s lips to blow. This is also how Israfil is commonly depicted in art. In some interpretation, Israfil even visited Muhammad before he received the Qur’an, preparing him for his prophetic mission. In esoteric circles, Israfil is the angel of the West, the Sun, and sometimes Thursday. Other times the angel of Jupiter Sarfayail is assigned to Thursday. The astrological overlap may hint at a parallel with the Jewish angel Seraphiel or Raphael. Seraphiel is also described as the angel singing God’s praises, but is connected with Tuesday and Mars. In certain magical practices, protective talismans are crafted with the names of the four archangels including Israfil. Such talismans are used to bind the jinn kings The descriptions of Israfil emphasize the apocalyptic element within Islam—the Day of Judgement is a major component of faith and it is nigh. While this acts as a warning and certainly throughout the centuries Muslims have interpreted various cataclysmic events are heralding the end from the coming of the Mongols, Tamerlane, and various plagues. It is also a reminder the end cannot be predicted. Israfil has had the horn poised on his lips since the very beginning. Life goes on. And so Muslims often held a pragmatic approach to the end. It comes when it does. Be mindful of the end, but do not let it consume you."

In my book I talk about two trees which are credited to the Ari aka Isaac Luria and the Gro tree credited to the Vilna Gaon. I explain that the Ari Tree is reveals the Fall and the ultiimate shattering of the vessels which are considered here as the channels between the Sefirot. The Gra Tree is the Tree of Redemption in that there is redemption through and integration of the Sefirot through the appropriate channels between the Sefirot. It's a rewiring, if you will of how cosmic energy flows at both the macro and micro level. The most we can restablish these natural connections, the more it is reflected in collective of which we are a part. Here is a video that explicates the differences between the two trees https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr5ZQEtDkQA&ab_channel=RawnClark(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr5ZQEtDkQA&ab_channel=RawnClark) And here is some background on the Gra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilna_Gaon(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilna_Gaon) These two trees not only symbolize the Fall and Remption, they show the scism between Hasidic Kabbalah (Lurianic) and the Kabbalah of the Misnagdim(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_schisms#Hasidim_and_Misnagdim)

I wrote the following in a post on what I would change in a rewrite of Oracle of the Phooenix: "In the book I interpret the 7 churches of Asia to really mean the chakras of Assiyah. While it's tempting to riff on the this as I did, and there were sources I referred to that took the same tack, I would remove this assertion from a rewrite. I've been doing a deep dive on the Book of Revelation and find it to be difficult to take a similar exegesis approach that I've taken with the Hebrew Bible to an interpretation of Revelation. I've been drawn into attempts to do an interpretation because it features pictorial images that I've hanged my hat on concerning the prophesies I've discussed. Surprisingly though, I've seen academics such as Gregory Beale, show that much of these images were brought into the Book from the Prophets such as Ezekiel, Zachariah and Isaiah. Interestingly enough, Revelation relies heavily on Daniel which is included in the New Testament as a Prophet. However, in the Hebrew Bible, Daniel is inlcuded in Writings - not in Prophets. Rationale I've seen was that it doesn't follow the structure seen in other prophetic material. I've come to view the Book of Revelation as problematic which I will expand on in another post in the Religion Catergory." The following is a review from the Washington Post of Elaine Pagel's "Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation" (https://www.amazon.com/Revelations-Visions-Prophecy-Politics-Revelation/dp/0143121634/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=) "The remarkable thing about the End of Times is how timeless it is. Harold Camping,(http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/harold-camping-admits-he-may-have-made-a-mistake-promises-to-continue-searching/2011/11/01/gIQAagzMcM_blog.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_1) the subject of mockery last year with his ever-shifting predictions about the Apocalypse, was only the latest in a long line of hectoring prophets, but every age, every culture, possibly every person endures that existential panic, a vision of the final high-stakes conflict. Those visions didn’t start with the Book of Revelation, but for almost 2,000 years, the trippy images and fiery rhetoric that blaze away at the back of the New Testament have dominated how we pray, imagine, fear and even joke about the Last Days. The description of cosmic warfare attributed to John of Patmos has inspired some of Western culture’s greatest paintings, music and poetry. Politicians and preachers, evangelical sci-fi writers and gold-bug financial planners — they all know how to sow anxiety and reap profit with those cataclysmic pictures of imminent catastrophe. But where did this story come from, and how did it end up as the capstone to a collection of gospels and letters about Jesus that seem so strikingly different in tone and content? Over the past three decades, perhaps no one has done more to teach interested people about the historical dynamics and textual complexity of early Christianity than Elaine Pagels.(http://www.princeton.edu/religion/people/display_person.xml?netid=epagels) A professor of religion at Princeton University, Pagels captured an improbably large audience (and a National Book Award) in 1979 for “The Gnostic Gospels,(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679724532?ie=UTF8&tag=washpost-style-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=0679724532)” her engaging introduction to the documents found at Nag Hammadi in 1945. Under her tutelage, interested readers with no background in early Christianity nor any facility with ancient languages can experience the historical and — if they’re so disposed — the spiritual import of those writings hidden in Upper Egypt since at least the 4th century. Pagels's new book, "Revelations,(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670023345?ie=UTF8&tag=washpost-style-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=0670023345)" examines a far more familiar text, but it offers revelations of its own for lay readers. Suspiciously slim for such a complex and fraught subject, this five-chapter book whisks us through centuries of religious conflict, ecclesiastical maneuvering and textual scholarship. It's easy to imagine that Pagels's obscure academic competitors say mean things about her behind her back — How dare she be so accessible! — but she's one of those rare scholars who can speak fluently to other professors or to curious people who decide on a whim to learn something about the Bible. Forty-six pages — the longest section of her book — are given over to footnotes that direct students to more technical explorations of these issues. Lay readers, meanwhile, will take this book and eat it up. Her central point is that this most famous story about The End is a window on the beginnings of Christianity. Those origins were far more dynamic, circumstantial and political than most people realize, and the Book of Revelation played a peculiar role. Without openly contradicting anyone's faith in divine writ, Pagels emphasizes that the Book of Revelation was written at a particular time and place: a small island off the coast of Turkey, probably around 90 C.E. after the Romans had burned down the Great Temple and left Jerusalem in ruins. "We begin to understand what he wrote," she says, "only when we see that his book is wartime literature." In other words, much of the fiery destruction portrayed early in John's narrative is not so much prophetic as historical, a florid depiction of the incomprehensible horrors that had left Jews stunned, scattered and frightened. In the wake of Rome's brutal repression and the flourishing of its empire, John wrote cryptic "anti-Roman propaganda that drew its imagery from Israel's prophetic traditions." His "Revelation," then, was a way of acknowledging recent defeats while knitting them neatly into a narrative of future victory. More provocatively, Pagels claims that John "sees himself as a Jew who acknowledges Jesus as Israel's messiah — not someone who has converted to a new 'religion.' " That distinction is significant, because it allows her to argue that while John was portraying Rome as the beast, he was also warning Jewish followers of Jesus against associating with gentile followers of Jesus inspired by "that maverick called Paul of Tarsus [who] came out of nowhere and began to preach a 'gospel' quite different." In this interpretation, the Book of Revelation was part of an early power struggle among Jesus's believers, an internecine conflict defined by stark terms of good and evil, faithfulness and apostasy, salvation and damnation. Do you smell something burning? In the chapters that follow, Pagels goes on to demonstrate how — and how thoroughly — John lost the battle of interpretation over the story he left behind. As his “Revelation” became the culmination of Christian eschatology, his Jewish allusions were appropriated by a new sect that colonized the Hebrew Bible as the “Old” Testament, subordinated Israeli prophets to Christian bishops, and recast Jews as unbelievers set for hell. But “Revelation” was still destined for “a hundred visions and revisions.” The conversion of Emperor Constantine — one of many complex subjects that Pagels can’t explore fully in this brief book — required another radical reinterpretation of John’s prophecy. Having Christianized itself, Rome could hardly be seen as the Beast; new satanic villains must be identified. And that explains the persistence of what John wrote: His “multivalent” language is an apocalyptic inkblot that allows for whatever polemic meanings the times and rulers require. The final chapters offer a breezy recapitulation of some of the repressed "revelations" found at Nag Hammadi. The most interesting analysis here suggests why John's "Revelation" thrived while other visions were buried. In short, Pagels argues, the Gnostic writers were simply too lovely, too inclusive, too universal to be politically effective. John of Patmos, though, offered a stark battle between good and evil along with an irresistible list of degrading epithets for anyone to employ against his enemies: "cowards, the faithless, abominable, filthy . . . and all liars." How much more useful, Pagels says, to identify true believers with the universally flexible language of God's warriors than by the simple test of the Gospels: "I was a stranger and you welcomed me; I was naked, and you gave me clothing; I was sick and you took care of me; I was in prison and you visited me." Surely, nobody could incite supporters to violent action with mealy-mouthed talk like that. Pagels never takes on her contemporary political or religious opponents directly, but they’re unlikely to feel lukewarm about this analysis. “The Book of Revelation is the strangest book in the Bible,” she notes on the opening page, “and the most controversial.” She presents the sort of respectful academic discussion that strikes liberal Christians as perfectly reasonable, while leaving evangelicals and other conservatives feeling gored. What I miss, though, is a fuller reflection on the inspirational power of “Revelation.” Pagels nods toward this in her brief conclusion by highlighting the theme of hope. But after such a brisk tour of the crooked political and theological abuses that John’s vision has been subjected to, her little homily seems perfunctory, unconvincing. Just enough to send us back where she wants us to go: to the Bible, to think again." Charles is The Post’s fiction critic. You can follow him on Twitter: @RonCharles.

In the book I interpret the 7 churches of Asia to really mean the chakras of Assiyah. While it's tempting to riff on the this as I did, and there were sources I referred to that took the same tack, I would remove this assertion from a rewrite. I've been doing a deep dive on the Book of Revelation and find it to be difficult to take a similar exegesis approach that I've taken with the Hebrew Bible to an interpretation of Revelation. I've been drawn into attempts to do an interpretation because it features pictorial images that I've hanged my hat on concerning the prophesies I've discussed. Surprisingly though, I've seen academics such as Gregory Beale, show that much of these images were brought into the Book from the Prophets such as Ezekiel, Zachariah and Isaiah. Interestingly enough, Revelation relies heavily on Daniel which is included in the New Testament as a Prophet. However, in the Hebrew Bible, Daniel is inlcuded in Writings - not in Prophets. Rationale I've seen was that it doesn't follow the structure seen in other prophetic material. I've come to view the Book of Revelation as problematic which I will expand on in another post in the Religion Catergory.

I want to share the best source of text and commentary for the Aquarian Gospel that I reference extensively in Oracle of the Phoenix. This recently came out in 2021 and really brings in a lot perpsective from a multitude of relligious tranditions. Get it at Amzaon https://www.amazon.com/dp/1955046050?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details(https://www.amazon.com/dp/1955046050?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details) "In 1908 a book appeared on the shelves of American bookstores that was destined to garner interest throughout the world, so much so that today it has gone through more than seventy editions in America alone. This book was The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ by Levi H. Dowling. Immediately it evoked a response in those who intuited and sought for a deeper meaning of the person and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Many at that time, as well as today, could not honestly accept the limited interpretation of Jesus and his words that was offered by Churchianity, an acceptance that would have obligated them to reject him as but one of many misperceiving religionists of the past. For them the Aquarian Gospel was truly Light in Darkness, a fount of life-giving knowledge. With penetrating insight, Abbot George Burke illumines the practical value of the Aquarian Gospel for spiritual seekers, and the timelessness of this classic writing.. With a unique perspective of a lifetime of study and practice of both Eastern and Western spirituality, Abbot George mines the treasures of the Aquarian Gospel and presents them in an easily intelligible fashion for those wishing to put these priceless teachings into practice." From the Author What were (and are) the advantages of the Aquarian Gospel for seekers of deeper truth? Firstly, it made no claim to be "the word of God" or even perfect-much less infallible-in its expression. Nor was it some kind of "new revelation for a new age." It was a transcription of the psychic investigations made by Dowling into what is popularly known as "the akashic records." It was entirely subjective and made no demands to be accepted in whole or even in part. Dowling saw and spoke; the rest was up to the reader. No promised blessings or curses were set forth to those who accepted or rejected it. That was left up to the "true believers" of the "mainstream churches."  Secondly, it was not a translation of Jesus' original Aramaic speech, but Dowling's relaying of the concepts that underlay the outer words of Jesus, for that was what was conveyed in his investigations. For this reason we find anachronistic words like "harpsichord" and "photograph" used in the text to convey the idea, but not the literal wording. Whether he caught the inner meanings correctly was a matter for the reader to decide. Nor could it be used as an authoritarian club to beat unbelievers or doubters into submission, or a razor to dissect Jesus' words into hair-splitting dogmatics. Although its being put down in English was advantageous to those who knew that language, recourse to dictionaries could not be a basis for proving "the truth" about any passage. Thirdly, the message conveyed in its pages was not the inbred deformity of "orthodox" Christianity, but the universal message found at the heart of all valid religions-religions whose study was recommended to better understand the person and teachings of Jesus. (Some years back a priest of the Saint Thomas Christian [Malankara Orthodox] Church of India said to me: "You cannot understand the teachings of Jesus if you do not know the scriptures of Hindu religion." Thus students of the Aquarian Gospel are urged to study Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism on an equal footing. How greatly-and blessedly-this contrasts with the bitter and hostile exclusivity of "orthodox" Christianity which cannot survive outside the confines of pious arrogance, narrowness, and ignorance.

Here is a great presentation from James Tabor on 2nd Isaiah, which in the context of the Oracle of the Phoenix, adds the necessary context to truly understand the ramifications of the text as it relates to the terra-formed images of the Wolf, the Lamb then Lion, etc. in the area of the Phoenix Lights sighting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfjcxU1wJG8&ab_channel=JamesTabor

Follow-up Oracle of the Phoenix with the study of the Zohar (Splendor) as offered by scholar Daniel Matt who authors the Pritzker edition translation. Sign-up for classes and listen to the archives by checking out the facebook group Zohar Zoom at https://www.facebook.com/groups/382202722521430/

Question 1 - Hi- I finished reading your book. I don’t really get the message behind it, especially the pictures at the end. Do you mind walking me through? Hi there, I'm flattered you read the book. The story is my own journey from seeing the UFOs to trying to make sense of them and the unusual experiences surrounding the sighting. The "message" is that God exists (assuming the animal images in the landscape are "real", that our concept of Messiah is changing from the Pisces idea of the only son of God being sacrificed to absolve our sins to an Aguarian idea of all people being "children of God" who can tap into the inner higher self to heal themselves, find guidance and knowledge that is needed to live a good life for themselves and others. The sighting I use as a marker for this shift in Messianic concepts by bringing in the old prophesies for fulfillment by showing that they were written with many layers of meaning - including what I call a hyperliteral interpretation. Example - when Isaiah says in 11:7 that there will be peace when the lion lies with the lamb and the wolf, etc. the pictures of these same animals are embedded in the earth images that I perceive - knowing full well others may not see them because they are not wired like me (or cross-wired as the case me be). So therefore this narrative must ultimately be reduced to my own "personal myth" which may or may not be embraced by others to create a more widely shared "collective myth". I've brought in controversial material that seeks to reframe Christianity as no longer a religion of sacrifice (Pisces) by using channeled material to show he did not die on the cross and to correlate his water based "miracles" to be sourced from the age of Pisces which will now give way to Aquarian mythology related to the qualities of that sign such as space, sky, brotherhood, etc. that will create a new myth which may or may not have a religious framework. The messages for the fundamentalist religions is that our theologies/civilizations split off so we can come back together - keeping our traditions but losing the idea of one religion being the best or only true representation of God's will. To that end, I show that the Christian concept of Jesus has been distorted, that the Jewish Messiah to come has already shown up in the guise of Cyrus (God's only anointed messiah in the Tanakh) and that his image as a king on a throne (we can project ourselves into the role of king) is one of the key images shown in the landscape within God's "Temple". I emphasize Cyrus because if you look at the Jewish bible called the Tanakh - the last book is Chronicles II. The last verse is "Thus said Cyrus king of Persia: Hashem, God of Heaven, has given to me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has commanded me to build Him a Temple in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is there a among you of His entire people -- May Hashem His God be with him, and let him go up!" Most people would read this as Cyrus saying this while the Jews were captive in Babylonia and refer to Cyrus' freeing them so they could build the second temple in Jerusalem. I read this as him talking about a New Jerusalem which correlates with the "Tabernacle" that holds the images I show - which by the way are the same images present in describing the Cherubim that guards the Ark of the Testament - and is present in Ezekiel's visions which also involve UFO types of imaging. These animals also represent the astrological fixed cross - Taurus (the Ox/Bull, Scorpio (The higher form of the Eagle), Leo (the Lion) and Aquarius (the human child). All of these images are better viewed on the home page of my website www.oracleofthephoenix.com They are labeled in a very light blue so it is easier to see them on the map. My recent work has been around digging further into why these images? What do they represent and why are they used? One hypothesis is that they represent our own inner alignment - making peace within ourselves. One idea is that the fixed cross correlates with our 5 senses: Sight, Touch, Taste, Smell and Hear. We could assign Sight to the Eagle, Touch to the Human, Taste to the Lion (Leo is all about taste:-) and Smell to the Ox/Bull as they are known for their nasal qualities and Hear to our new age in that Sound is made of waves and the Aquarian symbol shows the Human pouring the waters or Aether (as a fifth element) out of a jar into the waves with the starlit background. There is also a relationship in that Taurus represents the 1st sign of Earth, Eagle, 2nd sign of Water or Emotion, Leo 2nd sign of Fire representing Spirit and Aquarius the 3rd sign of Air - the mind. All these elements need to be aligned for inner peace to occur. They also correlate with 4 Worlds of Kabbalah - Aziluth - Fire/Spirit, Emanation, Briah - Air/Mental, Creation, Yetzirah - Water/Emotions, Formation and Assiyah - Earth, Senses, Action. There are references in The Book of Revelation that speak to the stars falling to the earth as well as other images that can be interpreted as being related to the images in the landscape - even the idea of Jesus coming from the clouds (our own vision of the area from the satellite) to reflect the new concept of Jesus (or the Christ Consciousness) being within us. In addition the Fixed signs themselves point to something being "fixed" in consciousness while the Cardinal signs are "initiatory" and the Cadent signs are "dissolving" so we have an alchemical process happening here (within and without) where the fixed signs act as a force of coalescence. To wrap up, given all of these dramatic shifts in religious sensibilities, I've introduced the Kabbalah and its Tree of Life symbol as a way to navigate an Institution lessening of the hold on the masses so that a roadmap can be used to construct new common sense ethics for a community that is grounded in a new understanding of "God's Presence" in our reality. This Presence opens the door to exploring our foundation concepts in just about everything beginning with Evolutionary theory and how it just doesn't work the way scientists commonly look at it. It also opens us up to a multi-dimensional physics that changes our orientation from a Cartesian scientism to a more balanced - wholistic perception of our realities. I close with the Book of Job to show that we have all been tested and "used" by "God" so he could better incarnate into us. Jung's Answer to Job would be a good follow-up to my book. See the forum on my Website for more ideas and information. I hope this helps. Steve

Asher Crispe teaches how Science (especially quantum theory) correlates with a Kabbalistic framework. https://www.chabad.org/multimedia/media_cdo/aid/912082/jewish/Unified-Field-Theory.htm

I've been in discussions regarding the authenticity of the Torah which is questioned due to the late date of the conventional text today - the Masoretic text. Since Oracle of the Phoenix is concerned mainly with the Isaiah prophesies I think it prudent to include the translation of the Great Scroll of Isaiah found in the Qumran cave dated to 1 B.C. Here is a side-by-side English translation showing the Dead Sea Scroll version against the JPS version which many Bibles use for their translation. There are subtle differences in the text but one interesting thing is that the older version uses the term oracles instead of prophesies. There is also an interesting correspondence with Phoenix in the Egypt section (19:18) which wikipedia comments on here: " In that day five cities in the land of Egypt will speak the language of Canaan and swear by the Lord of hosts: one will be called the City of Destruction.[9] Some Hebrew manuscripts, the Arabic text, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Targum, and Vulgate refer to the Sun, while the Septuagint reads Asedek (literally Righteousness). The name "City of the Sun" is used in the Revised Standard Version and New International Version. John Wycliffe used the Greek name Heliopolis.[10] As many know - Phoenix is known as the Valley of the Sun. Coincidence? It may seem like I'm force-fitting biblical references to support my book narrative. This could very well be but I think it's worth pointing out but the main thing is to use the oldest text of Isaiah to analyse the prophesies or oracles that point to the visionary encounter the book speaks to.

Alan F. Segal wrote a book titled "Paul The Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee" which solidly puts Paul into the context of a first century stream of Merkabah Mysticism. This was operational within the prophetic streams of Judaism - especially Ezekiel 1 which is likened to both Luke's and Paul's own description of Kavod or Glory coming from the light Paul encounters with all the images explored in the Oracle of the Phoenix, such as the Cherubim, throne, etc. Beyond the 2nd chapter of Segal's book, I'm also attaching a review of its entirety by Cary C. Newman of Baylor University Press.

This is a very good article(https://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/articles/christology-messianism-and-jewish-christian-relations/) that lays out the background on the split between Judaism and Christianity. The author is a leader in the Anglican Ministry and thus ends his essay with a Christian's choice of how to resolve the issues presented. I think those choices are not clear-cut in that the idea of Redemption (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redemption_(theology))or the Messianic concept seems to have different meanings for all religions. For one religion to impose its concept on another is, I believe, an exercise of triumphalism.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumphalism) "So how does Christian theology deal with Judaism? In very broad terms, Christians have responded in four different ways: 1. To assert, there is no salvation apart from personal faith in Christ, and every person must declare a personal faith allegiance in Jesus the Messiah, with no exception for Jews. 2. God has two covenants with humankind in parallel operation, one for Jews and another for the Gentiles. Such views can range from: the idea that Jesus was/ is the only Messiah, but Jews who don’t recognize the fact may still be redeemed by observance of the Abrahamic covenant, through to the view that there is one Messiah for the Jews, and another for Gentiles - Jesus . 3. There is only one covenant, but two expressions – Jewish and Christian, and ultimately Jesus will be seen by all to be the one Messiah of God. 4. Christianity has got its Christology wrong. Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah, and his later followers - especially Paul – wrongly bequeathed that title upon him posthumously." Christology, Messianism and Jewish-Christian Relations June 1, 2009 (https://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/articles/christology-messianism-and-jewish-christian-relations/)by Tim Dean (https://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/author/timdean/)Christology, Messianism and Jewish-Christian relations by Tim Dean 📷For Christians down the ages, the foundational Christological idea that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah has determined the Church’s attitudes to Judaism and Jews. Jewish expectation of the coming of the Messiah proceeds unabated since the birth of Christianity. In Jewish prayer books and recited regularly in Synagogue services is Maimonides’ affirmation: ‘I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah, and, though he tarry, I wait daily for his coming.’ This essay seeks to explore one key question: How can Christians understand the persistence of Judaism and acknowledge the faithfulness to God of many Jews over the last two millennia, who nevertheless cannot accept Jesus as Messiah? This is no abstract theoretical question, but a personal pilgrimage – a lived out quest for appropriate Christian-Jewish relations that respects the integrity of both faiths. Jewish Christology Is there such a thing as Jewish Christology? ‘Yes’, in that Judaism does engage in questioning the nature and role of Jesus, and ‘no’, because Judaism will never use the term Christ, as it would be seen as affirming Jesus as Messiah. So how do Jews understand ‘messiah’ and view Jesus? According to Louis Jacobs, ‘messiah’ in Hebrew Scriptures refers to anyone ‘actually anointed with sacred oil for the purpose of high office, such as the king or high priest. The term is also applied to any person for whom God has a special purpose: Cyrus, king of Persia, for instance.’ Biblical antecedents led to the development of the doctrine of the Messiah, as ‘the person believed to be sent by God to usher in a new era in which all mankind will worship the true God’[Jacobs 1995:342] With other Rabbinical scholars, he insists the doctrine of Messiah firmly denotes a this-worldly aspect of Jewish eschatology. Thus Jewish traditions are clear in their expectations of a personal Messiah: • He will bring an end to oppression, gather in the Jewish exiles, rebuild the Temple, end war, and introduce a golden age of universal peace. • He will be a wise leader from King David’s royal household, a leader of the redeemed people, not the Redeemer – who is God alone. • He will bring about the resurrection of the dead. Crucially for a Jewish evaluation of Jesus, the Messiah is not God. As Cohn-Sherbock puts it, Although the Messiah was now viewed as an ideal human person who would rescue the nation, there was no expectation that he would be divine.’ [Cohn-Sherbock 2004:20]. Indeed, Jews hold that it is impossible for God to become human. The Messiah cannot forgive sins, that is God’s prerogative. David Rosen adds ‘the condition of one’s personal soul has nothing to do with the identity of the Messiah, but is a matter between the individual and God.’ [Kendal & Rosen:46] In addition, Cohn-Sherbock notes that today, belief in the coming of a personal messiah has dwindled, with some non-Orthodox movements translating ‘belief in the Messiah into a belief in a Messianic period’. [Cohn-Sherbock 2004:20] Secular Zionism adopted elements in the Messianic tradition which were hospitable to their effort to restore the Jews to their ancient land. Later Religious Zionists, hold that while the establishment of the State of Israel cannot be identified with the Messianic hope, it is to be seen as the beginning of the redemption. (Jacobs:343) Rejection of Jesus as Messiah, has been interpreted by some Christians as being a perverse, deliberate and malignant denial of the obvious. But in the light of this brief survey of Jewish messianic reasoning, Christians should at least acknowledge the truth of Martin Buber’s comment, ‘We, Israel, are not able to believe this.’ Why? Because messianic redemption is about a total, irreversible redemption of this world, once and for all. This is expanded upon by Schalom Ben-Chorin, ‘The concept of the redeemed soul in the midst of an unredeemed world is alien to the Jew, profoundly alien ... This is the innermost reason for Israel’s rejection of Jesus, not a merely external, merely national conception of messianism. In Jewish eyes, redemption means redemption from all evil.’ [Moltmann 1994:120] So a ‘Jewish Christology’ finds no ‘Christ’ in Jesus. The Christian response is to argue that Jesus’ messiahship was in an unexpected form as far as contemporary Jewish understanding was concerned. The particular form it took was consistent with the Hebrew scriptures, albeit based on a different interpretation of the texts. Anti-Judaism The Jewish inability to accept Jesus as Messiah, led to theological formulations within Christianity which developed into a profound anti-Judaism: that the Christian church has ‘superseded’ Judaism, thereby rendering it redundant in offering any hope of ‘salvation’ to Jews outside faith in Christ. As Reuther observes: Anti-Judaism was the negative side of the Christian affirmation that Jesus was the Christ. ... But since the Jewish religious leaders rejected this claim, the church developed a polemic against the Jews and Judaism to explain how the church could claim to be the fulfillment of a Jewish religious tradition when the Jewish religious teachers themselves denied this.’ [Reuther 1981:31] It is important to make a distinction between anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, though a clear distinction is not always possible. Anti-Judaism includes the negative stereotyping of Jewish religious faith, expressed in the idea of supersessionism. It is based exclusively on theological grounds. However, that religious idea took on political dimensions with the rise of Christendom when the church’s power extended to civil regulation. Arguably, it is the latter phenomenon, which helped breed anti-Semitism – an ideology of hatred of the Jewish people as an ethnic group, whose very biological make-up is seen as evil. It can also carry a ‘Christian’ motif ‘thinking of Jews today as responsible for the death of Jesus, transforming the execution of Jesus into a metaphysical act of deicide for which Jews are culpable’. [UCC:75] Without any intention of mitigating the offence of anti-Judaism, it also needs to be marked that the antipathy of each of the two faiths has been mutual. Jewish ‘anti-Christianity’ also existed at the time of Paul and the early Church, and in later Jewish writings. But the crucial difference is in the relative power relationships between the two. When Paul was writing, the Church was in an inferior power-relation to the dominant Jewish faith; but at least from the fourth century through to the present day, the position has been reversed with Christianity dominant in relation to Judaism and exerting considerable political and social influence over Jews. Paul No consideration of the relationship between Christianity and Judaism can take place without considering the influence of Paul, especially his letter to the Romans. For insight into Paul’s understanding of the issues, I am focusing on Tom Wright’s commentary for these reasons: this is a substantial contemporary work on Romans fully cognizant of the Holocaust and Christian anti-Judaism;in common with many scholars since FC Baur in 1836, Wright puts chapters 9-11 at the center of Paul’s theological treatise; and because Wright does not accept the understanding of the issue offered at this essay’s conclusion - though, arguably, his framework of understanding should allow it. Wright is cautious about anyone claiming to have fully understood the complex thought of Romans. He is passionately trying to understand Paul’s thinking within his time and context, warning that Paul is not writing to our contemporary agendas about how all religions are basically the same, nor how the one God has made two equally valid covenants, one with Jews and the other with Christians. (Wright 2002:621) Paul’s fundamental insights here, which have earned him much criticism from his fellow Jews from that day to this, are [1] to uncouple the Mosaic law from the Abrahamic covenant and thus [2] to regard the Abrahamic covenant as fulfilled ‘apart from the law’ (3:21); [3] to see the Torah as applying to Jews only, and hence not being relevant to the eschatological period when the Gentiles were coming in to God’s people; [4] to see the Torah as intensifying the problems of Adam’s sin for those who were ‘under the Torah’, and thus as something from which its adherents needed to be freed; and [5] to claim, nevertheless, that the Torah had been given by God, had performed the paradoxical tasks assigned to it, and now strangely fulfilled in the creation of the new people of God in Christ and by the Spirit. [Wright 2002:402] Romans offers no other conclusion than Paul’s firm belief that Jesus was the Messiah for Jews, as well the Gentiles. Paul could not have conceived of there being two parallel covenants in operation, one for Jews, and one for the rest. ‘Any suggestion that Paul would have encountered a split, a twin-track salvation-history, in which Jews should remain Jews and Gentiles might become Christians is without the slightest foundation in his thought or writings.’ True, and Wright also observes ‘There is no easy answer to the large-scale question underneath this discussion. If there were, Paul would have given it.’ [Wright 2002: 451/2] However, it should be noted that Paul has genuine concern for his own people, and will have no thought that God has abandoned Jews, or his covenant with them. ‘All Israel will be saved.’ (Rom 11:26) In Paul’s day, there were unresolved issues within the Christian community, crucially the question of their identity as a Jewish, or non-Jewish, entity. All the early leaders and followers of this ‘Jesus movement’ were Jews who still attended synagogue. So were they a movement within Judaism or quite separate, and if the latter would there be a continuing Judaism quite separate from the growing Christian movement? Significantly, no-where in Romans does Paul call for the evangelisation of Jews. Indeed, much of his argument seems to be exhorting Gentile Christians in Rome not to abandon Jews, and to recognise them as the covenant people of God. ‘Has God rejected his people? By no means!’ (Rom 11:1) So why doesn’t Paul call for Jewish evangelisation? Wright offers four possible explanations. First, there is a danger that Gentile Christians in Rome will assume that God has rejected Jews for good. Secondly, Rome had a long tradition of anti-Jewish sentiment. Thirdly, after Claudius’s death in 54CE thousands of Jews returned to the capital, and so it would be easy for the small young church to feel threatened and regard them as the enemy. Finally, by the late 50s there was increasing tension in Judaea and Galilee, and Rome seemed to want to provoke a Jewish rebellion. So Gentile Christians in Rome, would be eager to distance themselves from any sense of complicity with the impending revolt. [Wright 2002:623] Given the common understanding that Christ’s second coming was not far off, it was impossible for Paul to conceive that Judaism would be flourishing two millennia later. I have no doubt that Paul thought it essential that Jews accept Jesus was their Messiah, and expected that Jews would eventually follow suit. It is also evident that Paul thought his argument in Romans 11 would be effective: that Jews would be jealous when they saw God’s blessings within the Gentile community, and as a consequence be won over.He could not possibly have conceived that Christians would persecute Jews at various times and places throughout subsequent millennia. Thus giving Jews every reason to find the notion of their proposed jealousy utterly ludicrous - and also giving them good reason to see in the unrighteous behavior of the Church an emptiness in the claim that Jesus is the Messiah. Judaism, Christianity and liberation Alongside the sometimes adverse nature of Christian-Jewish relations, there have been times and places down the ages characterised by good relations. Since the Holocaust, there have been fresh Jewish-Christian dialogues which have led to renewed interest in the ‘historical Jesus’, and a re-examination of ‘Christology from below’. However, within the Jewish community, opinions about Jesus range from those who deny his very existence through to those who accept some of the narrative history of Jesus’ life in the Gospels. And given the horrors of the Nazi era alone, it should not surprise anyone that among Jews, the fear exists that to acknowledge in any way ‘that Jesus has something of value to say to Jews, is to open the door to apostasy to a religion which Jews have given up their lives rather than embrace.’ [Jacobs:284] Two dimensions of the renewed interest in Christian-Jewish dialogue will be mentioned here: Liberation Theology, and the Jewish faith of Jesus. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, some Jewish scholars began to articulate liberation theologies, openly building on the work of the Christian liberation theologians. Five books encapsulated the debate. The Jewish proponents were Dan Cohn-Sherbock (1987), and Marc Ellis (1987 & 1989).Those writings were followed by a collection of essays from Jews and Christians, edited by Otto Maduro (1991), plus a review of all the volumes by Cohn-Sherbock (1992). The rich vein of common ground discovered by these Jewish authors was based on the liberationist’s emphasis on a ‘Christology from below’. These authors were able to acknowledge Jesus of Nazareth as one who stood fully in the prophetic tradition of the Hebrew scriptures: someone who acted out of the righteous tradition of the Law and the Prophets in advocating the rights of the poor, marginalised and oppressed; someone who saw this as inextricably bound up with the faithful worship of God over and against the empty behaviour, rituals and worship of some religious leaders. The attraction of Boff, Gutierrez and Sobrino, et al, is that ‘unlike theologians of the past, liberation theologians are not concerned to analyse Jesus’ dual nature as God and man; abstract speculation about the central issue of traditional theology have been set aside. Instead, liberation theology focuses on the historical Jesus ... What is of crucial significance for Jewish-Christian dialogue is the primary emphasis on understanding Jesus as a first century Jew.’ [Cohn-Sherbock 1992: 9] Cohn-Sherbock recognises at the heart of Christian liberation theology there is a vision of Jesus as a prophet of Israel, calling the people back to the true worship of God. He therefore argues that Jews should not see Jesus’ departure from Jewish law as co-terminus with a rejection of Judaism, but rather as:... a critique of religious corruption and moral stagnation. In his confrontation with the leaders of the nation, Jesus echoed the words of the prophets by denouncing hypocrisy and injustice. The love of wealth and the exploitation of the poor, he contended, made it impossible to establish a proper relationship with God. ... As a prophetic figure Jesus should be recognizable to all Jews; like the prophets, he emphasized that loving-kindness is at the heart of the Jewish faith. Jesus’ words thus recalled such figures as Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah; he stood firmly in the Jewish tradition. [Cohn-Sherbock 1992:38] In the Christology from above and below debate, orthodox Christian belief sees them as two sides of the same coin. Wolfhart Pannenburg argues that: Jesus cannot be properly understood in isolation from this relationship. Consequently, a Christology from below that concentrates solely on the historical Jesus is inadequate. However, a Christology from above that begins with the pre-existent Logos or divine Son, without demonstrating how a firm basis for acknowledging the divinity of the Son can be found in the mission and vocation of Jesus, is also inadequate. [Greene:311/2] Pannenburg also observes that there is a danger in a ‘from above’ approach to Christology in that it ‘tends to overlook the historical particularity of the man Jesus, his relationship to the God whose kingdom he proclaimed and his setting within the Judaism of his time.’ [Greene:18] The problem is one of emphasis. Where Christian engagement with Judaism is concerned, I believe relationships have been impaired precisely because the Church at times over-emphasized a Christology ‘from above’ in thought, worship and practice. In this light it’s significant that Jewish engagement with liberation theology has welcomed its emphasis on Christology from below. For it focuses on the ‘this-worldly’ activity of Jesus in the prophetic tradition, with his liberating emphasis on justice and freedom from oppression being at the heart of the Law. Albrecht Ritschl’s concept of Christology as ‘from below to above’ is a corrective to much Christian thought and practice. We must surely understand Jesus in the manner of God’s revelation to humankind in history – engaging first with Jesus’ Jewish humanity, and seeing in that historic person the expression of deity and God’s commitment to all humankind. A too exclusive focus on Christology from above has created an over-emphasis on the transcendental nature of Christianity - the supernatural at the expense of the natural - which becomes expressed in Christian sacramentalist rituals that disembody Jesus of Nazareth from ‘Christ’. Thus, it loses the dynamic ‘Jewishness’ of Jesus, his understanding of God revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures, and Jesus’ commitment to the Torah and Prophets. It further divides the Christian community from its Jewish heritage. As Colin Greene observes: A Christ who is emptied of Jesus of Nazareth and becomes a supernatural deityother becomes not only removed from the stuff of life with its urgent concerns for just and moral behaviour, but it also becomes removed from Jesus the Jew whose ‘Christ-ness’ is dislocated from the very religiouscultural world which informs and explains the notion of ‘Messiah’. [Greene:19] When such a ‘disembodied Christ’ comes to ascendancy in the Church, it has reinforced one of the long held Jewish objections to Christian life and practice. Rightly so. Cohn-Sherbock reiterates that Jewish objection:... the fervent Jewish expectation of a total transformation of the world was replaced by a spiritualized and individualized hope for immortal, celestial life. The reign of God ... appeared as a heavenly promise that offered salvation for the individual. Within this framework, the temporal world was understood as having only preparatory value. (...) This concept of an internalized and spiritualised Kingdom of God has worked throughout history as a deterrent for Christian action. [Cohn-Sherbock 1992:15/16] Looking afresh at the historical Jesus, can lead to a renewed understanding of the Jewish faith of Jesus, and his relations with Jewish religious authorities. One of the issues identified as needing revision by Cohn-Sherbock, Reuther, Rosen, et al, is Christian attitudes to Pharisees. This is important for two reasons: because Jesus’ denunciations of some Pharisees are used by some Christian in their claim that God sent Jesus as Messiah because of Jewish religious failure; and because the Pharisees are the predecessors of today’s Rabbinic Judaism. Part of the issue is the extent to which people want to argue that Jesus’ attacks on Pharisees were either: 1] specific charges brought against specific individuals, specific leaders collectively, at a particular place and point in time; or 2] a thorough denunciation of all Pharisees, their institutions and everything they ever stood for. Within Jewish-Christian relations, the question of the Pharisees can tend to polarize - with Christians who hold to the second viewpoint being met by an equally untenable view that the Gospel writers accounts of Pharisees cannot possibly be true. Support for the first interpretation comes from Matthew in what is seen to be the most virulent attack on Pharisees by Jesus – the ‘seven woes’ in chapter 23. As Luz points out, these are qualified by verse 2 where Jesus says ‘the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they preach.’ (NRSV) Matthew consistently lays stress on their (Pharisees) practices rather than their doctrines. ... their words fail to match their deeds. That the disciples must ‘do everything they tell you’ (23:2) is, of course, hyperbole that, rhetorically, reaffirms the main thrust of Matthew’s Gospel, the emphasis of practice over theory. [Luz 1995:122] Some Jewish scholars are quite prepared to recognize that the Pharisees Jesus addressed were either as corrupt or hypocritical as Jesus described, or were at least capable of being so. David Rosen sees a very important distinction between those Pharisees Jesus is recorded as addressing and Pharisees as they are to be truly understood (Kendall & Rosen 2006:3), and the Jewish scholars engaged in dialogue on Liberation Theology have no difficulty in acknowledging corruption in the Jewish leadership which Jesus confronted. It is also true to assert as Jacobs does that ‘Christianity itself owes much to the Pharisaic background of Jesus – the Christian doctrine of the Hereafter and the resurrection of the dead, for instance.’ [Jacobs:376] Reuther argues that Pharisees such as Hillel ‘were making some of the same interpretations of the law as Jesus did’. [Reuther 1981:37] More than that the Church must not lose sight of Jesus’ total commitment to the Jewish faith and its heritage. So when Jesus attacked money-changers in the Temple, it was not an attack on the Temple itself, or the Hebrew faith, rather an attack on corruption and an affirmation of the sanctity and significance of the Temple. Christianity must also affirm that it is Jewish. Not in the sense that any branch of Judaism wants to claim Christianity as its own. Rather, that Christianity is formed of Jewish faith and culture, gets its paramount theme, ‘messiah’ from it (without which, by definition, Christianity cannot be understood). Patronising generosity As David Goldberg has observed, ‘Monotheism, by definition is triumphalist. Judaism says we are the Chosen People. Christianity asserts that there is no salvation out side the Church. Islam says there is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is the last and greatest of all the prophets.’ [1] (https://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/articles/christology-messianism-and-jewish-christian-relations/#_ftn1)Within those triumphalist affirmations, which appear to assert each faith’s exclusive hold of the overall meta-narrative of human history, each faith continues to develop frameworks for understanding the other – some negative and others affirmative. Judaism has a long tradition of acknowledging that Gentiles can have a place in the life of God and the world to come. Essentially there are two ways of being righteous, for Jews it is summed up in the Abrahamic covenant and Mosaic laws, formulated as observing 613 commandments. For the Gentiles there is the Noahide Covenant which ‘reflects God’s commitment to care for all humanity and not destroy it (Gen. 9:9-11). In return He expects all humanity to lead a moral life (Gen. 9:4-6)’, which is set out in the seven Noahide laws consisting of ‘the prohibition of idolatry, blasphemy, murder, adultery and incest (counted as one), robbery, the need to establish a proper system of justice, and the prohibition of eating flesh torn from a living animal.’ [Jacobs: 366] In addition, despite Jews regarding Christians as having ‘usurped’ the concept of ‘messiah’ and wrongly ascribed it to Christ, many are able to echo Maimonides infamous remark ‘All these activities of Jesus the Christian ... are all for the purpose of paving the way for the true King Messiah, and preparing the entire world to worship God together.’ [Melamed] ‘Infamous’, because the remark only appears in uncensored manuscripts. [Goldberg 1989:279] So how does Christian theology deal with Judaism? In very broad terms, Christians have responded in four different ways: 1. To assert, there is no salvation apart from personal faith in Christ, and every person must declare a personal faith allegiance in Jesus the Messiah, with no exception for Jews. 2. God has two covenants with humankind in parallel operation, one for Jews and another for the Gentiles. Such views can range from: the idea that Jesus wasis the only Messiah, but Jews who don’t recognise the fact may still be redeemed by observance of the Abrahamic covenant, through to the view that there is one Messiah for the Jews, and another for Gentiles - Jesus. 3. There is only one covenant, but two expressions – Jewish and Christian, and ultimately Jesus will be seen by all to be the one Messiah of God. 4. Christianity has got its Christology wrong. Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah, and his later followers - especially Paul – wrongly bequeathed that title upon him posthumously. In rejecting 1, 2 and 4, my Christian framework is this: the Hebrew Scriptures distinguish between faithful and unfaithful people within the covenant community. The Christian conviction is that Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection, is the single agency for the salvation of all faithful people, and will present them as holy before God, and that this applies to all the departed of Israel before the advent of Jesus. Paul’s affirmation ‘All Israel will be saved’ applies to all faithful Jews in every age – those who in their lifetime believe that Jesus was their Messiah, as well as those who for the reasons outlined above, do not. This is not about two covenants in parallel operation, but rather one covenant with two expressions. To use Paul’s analogy, the Christian community is the branch grafted onto the tree of the Abrahamic covenant. It is no use Judaism and Christianity pretending to be what they are not for the sake of ‘good’ relations. It is more helpful when they state their disagreements honestly, yet show how their own faith desires to accommodate a positive understanding of the other. The two contrary Jewish and Christian frameworks, can be seen as ‘generous’ by those disposed to do so, because at least they acknowledge the genuine faith in the one true God. Such ‘generosity’ I believe allows for creative, productive and positive relations without fudging or denying the integrity of the other – as long as we recognise the inherent ‘patronising’ nature of such frameworks, as one side seeks to affirm the other in a framework the other can’t accept. Judaism and Christianity have two very important things in common. Both communities throughout their history, have not only brought much good and blessing to humankind, but also have had monumental failures, corruption and disobedience – which both should humbly acknowledge. Both await the coming of the Messiah – Jews for the first time, Christians for a second. Arguably, both have a shared vision of the nature and manner of human redemption when the Messiah comes. That said and done, while it is vitally necessary for faith communities to always have frameworks for understanding, the real question is: Who is doing the judging? We must avoid the danger of appropriating the sole prerogative of God: it is for Him to judge. Footnotes: 1 From a conversation on March 7th 2006 with David J. Goldberg OBE who is Rabbi Emeritus of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in St. John’s Wood, London. Bibliography: Bosch, D. J. (1991) Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission New York: Orbis Books Cantor, N. (1995) The Sacred Chain: A History of the Jews London: Fontana Press. Cohn-Sherbock, D. (1987) On Earth as it is in Heaven: Jews, Christians and Liberation Theology Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books. Cohn-Sherbock, D. (1992a) Exodus: An Agenda for Jewish-Christian Dialogue London: Bellew Publishing. Cohn-Sherbock, D. (1992b) Israel: The History of an Idea London: SPCK. Cohn-Sherbock, D. and L. (2004) An Encyclopedia of Judaism and Christianity London: Darton, Longman & Todd. Cousar, C. B. (1996) The Letters of Paul Nashville: Abingdon Deibert, R. I. (2002) ‘The Justification of Covenantal Nomism: Reflections on Justification and Variegated Nomism, its Editorial Conclusions, and Pauline Theology’ (Cambridge NT PhD Seminar, 24/06/02)Available at: http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/Tyndale/staff/Head/JVN Reflections for PDF.pdf Ellis, M. H. (1987) Towards a Jewish Theology of Liberation Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books. Ellis, M. H. (1989) Towards a Jewish Theology of Liberation: The Uprising and the Future Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books. Epstein, I. (Ed.), Freedman, H. & Schacter, J. (Trs.) Sanhedrin (Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Sanhedrin, Chapter XI, Folios 97-99), Available at: http://www.come-and-hear.com/sanhedrin France, R. T. (1980) ‘Messiah: In the New Testament’ in Douglas, J. D. et al, Eds. The Illustrated Bible Dictionary Part 2 Leicester: IVP; Wheaton: Tyndale House; Hodder & Stoughton: Sydney & Auckland. Gager, J. G. (2000) ‘Paul’s contradictions – Can they be resolved?’ Bible Review 14 p32-39, Biblical Archaeology Society. Available at: http://www.jcrelations.net/en/?item=747 Goldberg, D. J., & Rayner, J. D. (1989) The Jewish People: Their History and their Religion London: Penguin Books. Goldsmith, M. F. (1988) ‘Judaism and Christianity’ in Sinclair, B. F. and Wright, D. F. eds., New Dictionary of Theology Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press. Greene, C. J. D. (2003) Christology in Cultural Perspective: Marking out the horizons Carlisle: Paternoster Press. Jacobs, L. (1995) The Jewish Religion: A Companion Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kelly, J. G. (1995) ‘The Cross, the Church and the Jewish People’ in Goldingay, J. ed. Atonement TodayLondon: SPCK. Kendall, R. T. & Rosen, D. (2006) The Christian and the Pharisee: Two outspoken religious leaders debate the road to heaven London: Hodder & Stoughton. Kessler, E. (2002) ‘God Doesn’t Change His Choice’ Church Times 08/03/02, Available at: http://www.jcrelations.net/en/?item=940 de Lange, N. (1986) Judaism Oxford: Oxford University Press. Luz, U. (1995) The Theology of the Gospel of Matthew Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tim Dean is Director of the World Media Trust, and an Anglican priest working part-time in Godalming Parish. In a voluntary capacity Tim is Executive Secretary of First Step Forum (an international network of Members of Parliaments; former Prime Ministers, Foreign Affairs Ministers, and Ambassadors; and others engaged in private, independent diplomacy for religious freedom and human rights). He is also a senior associate of the Washington based Institute for Global Engagement– a ‘think-tank with legs’, created to develop sustainable environments for religious freedom worldwide. He was formerly a Commissioning Editor for the BBC World Service’s English network, and before that editor of Third Way.

Another on-going criticism of the Oracle of the Phoenix is that for religionists the book is viewed as being a part of the occult - forbidden by their particular doctrine. The word occult actually means "hidden" which something is, until it is revealed. If this logic applied to church doctrine for instance - all of St. John's Revelation would be representative of the occult until the seals are removed in the text. Esoteric means reserved for the few - not the many. This is the reaction from the media when I've proposed some media projects around the story - "I'm sorry, this material is too esoteric". Luckily, there is serious scholarship going on this area led by a professor I met in 2008 at a Jewish Mysticism conference in Israel. Dr. Wouter Hanegraaff has been a leading authority in this area. He writes " Esotericism can be understood as a general label for all those traditions in Western culture that had been rejected by rationalist and scientific thinkers since the eighteenth century, the period of the Enlightenment, as well as by dominant forms of Protestant Christianity since the sixteenth century, the age of the Reformation (Hanegraaff 2012). It has often been assumed that everything that had ended up in this reservoir of “rejected knowledge” belongs to a single great spiritual tradition, imagined as a kind of traditional Western counterculture parallel to a similar tradition of Oriental esotericism. These Eastern and Western esoteric traditions are then supposed to be grounded ultimately in one and the same ancient and universal wisdom. However, such assumptions have much more to do with the personal perspectives and background agendas of modern and contemporary observers and practitioners than with the reality of how various currents, ideas, or practices nowadays labeled as “esoteric” have actually function(ed) in their own specific time and context. In other words, there is often an enormous difference between the “esotericism” of the popular imagination and the “esotericism” of the social and historical realities that are being studied under that label." I'm attaching a chapter from one of his books " Esotericism Theorized: Major Trends and Approaches to the Study of Esotericism" as well as his concluding remarks posted here as a snippet: "We have been looking at the five most important theoretical perspectives that are operative in the modern study of esotericism: religionism, sociology, the study of secrecy and concealment, discursive approaches, and historicism. Of course, such neat categorizations are always a simplification: in actual practice, we find that scholars often combine several approaches in their work, and it must be said that there is quite some confusion about the exact nature of these theoretical perspectives, their implications, and their relations to one another. Nevertheless, by being clear about the differences between these five approaches to what “esotericism” is all about, we can learn to perceive the theoretical agendas and background assumptions that are operative in the scholarly literature, and this will help us understand why different scholars make different choices. Against the background just sketched, the modern study of Western esotericism can be described as having gone through three stages (Hanegraaff 2013c). The first, from the 1970s to 1992, might be called “Esotericism 1.0” and was dominated by a religionist paradigm. Starting with a pioneering introductory textbook published in 1992 by the dominant scholar of this period, Antoine Faivre, the field moved to a second stage that might be called “Esotericism 2.0.” This stage was marked by a move away from religionism in favor of empirical, historical, and discursive approaches. In this period the study of esotericism established itself as a new field of academic research, as shown by the emergence of academic programs, scholarly societies, peer-reviewed journals, an explosion of books and collective volumes, and so on. Roughly since 2012, the field seems to be moving toward a third stage of development, “Esotericism 3.0,” marked by increasing interdisciplinary debate across the boundaries of the humanities and the social sciences, particularly about how the boundaries of “esotericism” should be drawn. For instance, how should one think about the relation between esotericism and neighboring fields, notably “gnosticism” and “mysticism”? How should one understand “Western” esotericism in view of its spread to Oriental cultures and other parts of the world, or in view of structural parallels in other cultural contexts? What happens to our understandings of “esotericism” when one crosses the boundary from religious studies to other disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences, or even such disciplines as cognitive science or evolutionary biology? And if the focus is on esoteric discourses in religion generally, then is it necessary to keep setting the field apart at all, or shouldn’t we rather allow it to dissolve into the general study of religion? Scholars have different opinions about each of these questions, and of course I have my own opinion as well (see e.g. Hanegraaff 2013b; 2015). The field referred to as “esotericism” can be constructed and understood in different ways by different scholars, according to each person’s theoretical assumptions and background agendas. Regardless of the perspective one chooses, esotericism research is certainly among the most exciting new developments in the study of religion and culture today. In less than two decades the field has overcome its previous status as a somewhat marginal pursuit surrounded by academic prejudice and has become a burgeoning and widely respected area of research that is not limited to religion alone but reaches across the boundaries between all disciplines of the humanities (Hanegraaff 2013d). Solid scholars in this field no longer need to be afraid of being ostracized by their colleagues; on the contrary, they will be welcomed for having something new and important to offer. Precisely because the source materials of esotericism have been neglected for so long, there are few other domains where so many discoveries can still be made, often with implications that challenge traditional opinions about what Western culture is all about. In sum, the study of esotericism is not for the timid-minded but for those who wish to boldly go where no one has gone before."