 |
|
 |
| |
| Departments |
Home
Columns, Special
Topics & Features:
The Columns:
Angels, Guides, &
Loving Spirits:
Angel Blessings:
with Dr. Doreen Virtue
Ask Valerie Morrison,
Internationally
Acclaimed Psychic
Astrologer's Notes:
Ask Carrin Martin,
Astrologer
Basil Fearrington,
Astrology
Diana Stone,
Astrologer &
Huna Shaman
Jeff Jawer
Astrologer
Martin Lass,
Astrologer
Alan Oken,
Astrology
Glenn Perry,
Astrologer
Ray Merriman,
Financial Astrology:
MMA Market Week
Erin Sullivan,
Astrologer
Noel Tyl,
Astrologer
Daily Aspect Calendar
by Care
Monthly Horoscope:
Stellar Scopes
by Daija De Mornay
Creating Bridges:
The Spiritual &
Philosophical
Awakening to the
Miracle of Ordinary Life by Dennis Lewis
Avant-Gardening:
Insights by Frank &
Vicky Giannangelo
Bodymind Integration: A Psychology of Potential
by Kevin Roberts
Breaking Free:
Anne Brewer
Choices: The Art of Conscious Creation:
by Teri Harris Saa
From The Heart:
Alan Cohen
Teachings from the Western Mystery Traditions: The Esoteric "Paths of Return"
by Jacquelyn Small, Eupsychia
Kabbalah:
"Letters from Heaven:" Spiritual Guidance from
the Hebrew Alphabet
by Avigayil Landsman
Memos From The
First Tabugian
Art Rosengarten, Ph.D.
The Path of Wisdom and Love
Dr. John Demartini,
Concourse of Wisdom School of Philosophy and Healing
Spirituality in Daily Life: by Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron
Understanding
Wicca: Ask Fyre
Pathways to the Self
Connie Rodriguez, Ph.D.
Mythology & Legends
Pearls of Wisdom:
with Care
The Practical
Practitioner
Feng Shui:
Wind & Water:
Carole J. Hyder
Parenting:
Living With Your
Intuitive Child:
Sherry Healy
Pet Care:
Dr. Carson's Holistic Animal Care
by Dr. Kathleen Carson, D.V.M.
Tarot:
Soulforest:
Tarot and Spirituality
Rachel Pollack,
Tarot Grand Master
Gateway to Tarot:
by Bonnie Cehovet,
Tarot Master
Unexplained Phenomena:
Paranormal Potpourri:
By Dr. Gerri Leigh, Ph.D
Humor:
Wake Up Laughing.Com:
Swami Beyondananda
Features:
Blessings & Messages
Crystals, Gemstones & Minerals by Mirabai of MoonCave
Event Calendar
Historical Notes & Data
The MetaPersonals
Predictions
Reviews:
Tarot, Cartomancy,
Oracle Decks,
Books, & Software.
by Bonnie Cehovet,
Tarot Master
Symbols, Seals,
Amulets & Talismans
The What in the
World Department
Trivia & Other
Novel Moments
Your Views
Interviews:
Erin Sullivan,
Astrologer
Healing & Alternative
Health:
"The Ancient Way of Chinese Medicine"
by Kevin O'Neil
Flower Essences
by Donna Cunningham
Empower Yourself
to Heal
by Gerri Shapiro
Herbology:
Ron Norwood
Homeopathic Medicine
by Deborah Olenev, CCH, RSHom (NA)
Integrated Healing Arts
Living in Harmony-Astrology, Yoga & Ayurveda:
by Venkat & Christine Machiraju
"Spirit and Practice
of the Wise Woman
Tradition"
By Susun Weed
Tai Chi & Qigong
by Bill Douglas
The Holistic Mystic,
by Lonny Brown
The Directory
The Gift Guide
Archives:
Past Issues
General Information:
Synopsis of Contents
Editorial Submission
Information:
Articles
Columns
Editorial Opinions
"Your Views"
General Content
Event Calendars
Graphics & Photos
Editorial Deadlines
Advertising
Information &
Opportunities
About
The Meta Arts
Magazine
Department
Contacts:
Publishers
Editorial
Advertising Sales
Graphic Design
Promotion Dept.
Employment
Contact Us
Legal Notices
|
|
|
|
|
|
Astrologer's Notes: |
|
|
Christmas Theology and the Horoscope of Jesus Christ
|
|
|
by Basil Fearrington |
|
|
|
|
|
Christmas can be such a romantic time. There is a spirit in the air that doesn't exist at any other time of the year as it does near Christmas. For me, much of these feelings are generated through music. As a musician who is always hearing music (literally or through mental composing), I tend to find my own private sense of joy in the chord progressions of many of the standard songs that are identified with Christmas.
Outside of the musical elements that are so prevalent in the spirit of Christmas, I am always reminded of the story of the wise men in search of the baby Jesus. I think of the prophecy of the Persian astrologers that was made some 700 years before the birth of Jesus Christ, a prophecy in which the people of Israel were told that a king would be born in Bethlehem, and that the birth could be identified by a certain star that would appear. In my mind's eye, I imagine the wise men following that "star," traveling up the Euphrates across the desert to Palmyra and Damascus and on to Jerusalem to Bethlehem in anticipation of seeing the baby King, the Messiah.
This "star" that is spoken about so poetically in describing the birth of Jesus was the very, very important conjunction, a Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn that first took place on May 29, -6BCE. (When these two come together every twenty years in a conjunction, it sets a tone of very important developments in terms of law and order in the world, especially in the places where the conjunction takes place upon an Angle or upon the Sun of a nation's horoscope. In fact, every Jupiter-Saturn conjunction since President Lincoln's term in office has manifested in an attempt on the President's life or an inability to finish office. The last one was in 2000, when George W. Bush came into office). This is a wonderful, wonderful story that plants many beautiful images in one's mind, especially so for me because astrology played a central role in it.
Despite the beauty of this story and the importance of astrology in it, almost every astrologer eventually faces the wrath of a well-meaning devoted Christian who places astrologers and astrology under the umbrella of "devil and devil worshiper." It is an unfortunate mode of thinking that is born of misinformation that was set in motion many thousands of years ago. There is simply no way to know astrology and make a statement about it that associates it with something that contradicts or interferes with any religious belief. The fact of the matter is that there is a closer link between astrology and theology than the misinformed are aware of.
The Almighty Sun
It was Thomas Paine who said, "The Christian Religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man they call Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the Sun."
It was tens of thousands of years ago when the first inhabitants of the planet encountered the first great known fear - the fear of darkness. Darkness was mankind's first enemy. The Sun's light, which was called, "The Great Orb," brought mankind its first sense of awe, leading into the idea that there must be something awfully powerful and mighty to have constructed something like the Sun. After all, the Sun provided warmth. Plants grew in its light. Everything was out in the open and easy to see in the Sun's light. The Sun's light promoted security. But as it disappeared into darkness, things got very scary. It was cold, dark, mysterious, and insecure, pretty much like our first experiences out of the womb. This process of night followed by day was a terribly frightening process for the first inhabitants of this planet to endure.
The respect for the wonderment of the Sun gave way to the first form of worship on our planet, the worship of the Sun. It was assumed that the Sun was the visible representation of God. It became known as "The Savior" (It is no accident that the Egyptian Sun disks have become the halos of Catholic saints and that the day of worship is SUNday [literally, the Sun's day], the day the Pagans chose to worship the Sun). The worshipping of the Sun focused mankind's attention on heavily bodies to explain and make sense of life.
But it was not only the Sun that was associated with God. In the beginning, all planets were looked upon as gods because we observed that certain things seemed to occur when a certain heavenly body was at a certain position in the heavens, establishing an awareness of causal relationship. And since humans couldn't control these heavenly bodies and because they seemed to have this enormous power from their positions in the heavens, the planets were given names that associated them with gods. The names of the days of the week were based on the gods drawn from the Egyptian, Teutonic, and Nordic lore as you have already seen with Sunday. Monday is the Moon's day; Tuesday is named after Tiw, the German God of war (corresponds to Mars); Wednesday is named after Olin, the Norse counterpart to Mercury; Thursday, or Thor's Day, is related to the Roman Jupiter; Friday, or Freyja's Day (the god of beauty) is the day of Venus; Saturday is Saturn's day, the end of the week, named so because the ancients saw Saturn as the end of the line, the last visible planet. As you can see, the association of planets with gods permeated ancient society.
With the passage of time, the ancient peoples in Egypt learned that the Sun was at its highest point in the sky when no shadow was cast by the pyramids. They learned to track times and seasons by the Sun's daily, monthly, and yearly motion through the creation of the sundial. They eventually tracked the whole year on a round calendar dial. On this circular dial, they drew a vertical line across its center. One end represented the winter solstice and the other end represented the summer solstice. This divided the circle into upper and lower halves. They then drew a vertical line cutting the circle in half again. One end represented the spring equinox and the other end represented the autumn equinox. A circular line drawn from point to point inscribed the Sun's yearly journey. (This division of the circle forms the prime axes of a horoscope. They are called Angles, the strongest points in a horoscope). Today, this circle with the intersecting lines that make the four seasonal points is placed on a cross and is found on many Christian churches. Many Christians (and Catholics) who are very much against astrology wear this symbol on chains around their necks as a pendant!
The observation of the Sun's motion made it painfully clear that the length of darkness reached its peak on December 21st. Imagine the sense of doom that these ancient peoples encountered as the longest night of the year approached. The ancients eventually observed that by December 25th, it was obvious that the Sun's light had begun to get longer, which meant that the length of darkness was decreasing. In acknowledgement to the God who created the Sun, December 25th became a day of celebration known as "Sol Invictus," which means, "The Sun Unconquered." It was the first ever celebration on December 25th.
Years later, after Christianity took over Paganism as the dominant religion in the world, emperor Constantine, a Pagan leader and head priest of the Sun-worshipping religion, had to make decisions about merging the new Christianity with the dying and defeated Paganism. One of the main things that he did was to incorporate Pagan symbolism within Christian traditions which, in effect, created a kind of hybrid religion (Christianity). The "Sun" was taken out of the equation of the December 25th celebration and was replaced with "God" in order to fit the Christian tradition, which borrowed the idea of celebrating God in December from the pre-Christian God, Mithras. Thus, December 25th became the day to celebrate the birth of Christ when, in fact, Christ was not born on December 25th. Bible scholars are well aware of this fact.
The merging of these religious concepts of Paganism and Christianity were collated and "manufactured" by Constantine in the infamous ecumenical meeting called, "The Council of Nicea." This meeting would eventually determine, among many other things, the overall content of the Bible. Translators were hired and basically told what to say and how to say it. Certain gospels were systematically eliminated (some to be found in the 1947 discovery of The Dead Sea Scrolls). The idea was to make the Vatican church the unalterable, irrefutable voice of authority in society. To do that, the Church made the study or even the discussion of anything like astrology a crime, and even worst, it was deemed a sin of the highest caliber. Anything of a self-help nature that did not involve the church was outlawed.
The Horoscope of Jesus Christ
The late Astrologer/Reverend, Don "Moby Dick" Jacobs, a Methodist Minister and Biblical scholar, spent a major portion of his life researching the life of Jesus Christ. Through his research, he was able to find the likely date of the birth of Jesus and rectify a horoscope for that date. His book, "Joshua Bar Joseph Ish Nazareth," is his novel that was written in the first person, as if Jesus had written it. According to Jacob's extremely extensive work, Jesus Christ was born on March 1, 7 BCE at 1:21 AM in Bethlehem, Judea. With seven planets in Pisces, this is a most fascinating horoscope.
You must understand that the astrologers of the times leading to Christ' birth saw this unbelievable configuration of planets forming ahead of time. It was something that was to occur only one time in 25,000 years! They knew that this fantastic configuration was to mark the beginning of a new Age and just imagine what must have gone through their heads seeing five of the seven known planets at that time all placed in Pisces!!! They knew that the person who would lead the new age was going to be born during this period in history. There is an astrological law called "subsumption." In the law of subsumption, a leader's horoscope is used as a substitute for the people he/she leads. In this case, the horoscope of Jesus Christ would become the symbol for the spiritual consciousness of the millennium to come. With all of the associations of Christ with fish, and the heavy emphasis of Pisces in the horoscope, the connections between his horoscope and the many Biblical references to fish are apparent. .
The Age of Aquarius
Many devout followers of Christianity have made consistent references, through Revelations, to the end of time. It has been expected and predicted many times in history. In fact, many predicted that there would be no January 2, 2000 because the world would come to an end on January 1, 2000. This, again, is a result of misinformation and misunderstanding.
When the Scriptures speak of the end of the world, "the end of the world" is not a literal statement as many take it to be. The original word that was used for this phrase, in Greek, is "AEON." Aeon means "Age." The reference to the end of time is actually the end of the age that began with the birth of Jesus; the end of the Piscean Age, which we are in or very close to entering now in 2003. Remember the singing group called, "The Fifth Dimension?" One of their big hits was called, "Age of Aquarius." The hook of the song repeated, "This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius." Yes, it IS the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. What this is saying, through song, is that the final days of the Piscean Age (symbolized by the birth of Jesus Christ) are coming to an end and that the development of a different state of God consciousness is to develop that will lead to the development of humanitarianism, brotherhood, and a greater social consciousness - Aquarian archetypes. It also means that the traditional approach to religious authority changes. Aquarius is a more individuated energy that questions traditional authority whereas Pisces simply goes on faith and belief.
I think we have seen clear signs of the dawning of this new consciousness since the eighties as more and more people are taking alternate routes to find the Godforce in life aside from that which has been provided by organized religion. Can you imagine what would have happened to a group of people a thousand years ago who got together to discuss the kind of information that is shared on this web site? They would have been put to death without a trial because everything that you can read on this site gives you information about self-development in spiritually oriented ways that can eliminate the need to relate to God through traditional channels. In other words, one's relationship with God is not determined by the Church. Nowadays, with growth and advancement, we have had an expansion in consciousness and it has been growing steadily for the past few decades. In the Ecumenical Council meetings, it was determined that any self-help form of realization would become matters that are against the law and, even worst, against God. This edict worked against all forms of consciousness expansion for hundreds of years. But in the Aquarian Age, people are challenging what used to be unshakeable religious authority and I think it is a factor that must be because right now, there is an awful lot of hate and separatism in the world that begins with belief systems. One doesn't want to go to the other's church because their way of worshipping is incorrect and "my way is the right way". There are terrorists who willingly kill people because they believe that they will be rewarded by God and are doing God's work against evil people, as if God has human qualities and sets aside certain people as evil and others as chosen. As a young child, I can recall stories from the elders who witnessed burnings and lynchings of human beings that were killed as their killers clasped the Bible! They believed that they were doing God's work. These are extreme examples, yet they show the kind of consciousness that has to die in order for humanity to evolve. This is the dawning of The Age of Aquarius. It is not the end of the world. It is the end of an approach to how we treat each other through a different way of relating to the experience of God.
Getting back to the horoscope of Jesus Christ, the overwhelming emphasis of planets in Pisces within the 3rd House certainly emphasizes a mindset that is completely absorbed in compassion and idealism. One of the keys to the Piscean archetype is the tendency to the development of a martyr complex! In lesser evolved individuals, the martyrdom is a reaction to having been hurt. In the case of Jesus Christ, the martyrdom was in the name of helping others.
Pluto's opposition to the core of the Pisces planets suggests very strong dimensions of empowerment within communications, teaching, philosophy, etc. Persuasiveness is at its zenith here. One is easily able to sway a crowd with words, thoughts, ideas, etc. Most of these Pisces planets receive a smooth trine from Neptune, which corroborates the aforementioned Pisces dimensions. It shows the ease in the relationship that idealism has with his many need faculties. In fact, through midpoint pictures we see, Neptune=ASC/MC!!!! This is like having Neptune on the Ascendant and Midheaven. Planets at this midpoint suggest the characteristic way that one goes about doing whatever it is that one does. Here, we see a life that is characterized by the Neptunian archetypes. And all of this is expressed through an image of one who needs to be assertive about that which is just, right, and correct.
Lastly, Mercury is in Aquarius, which suggests the need to think and communicate in terms of humanitarianism, social consciousness, and in unique and innovative ways is unaspected, and therefore dominates the horoscope. There is just no question that this horoscope reflects the life of a man who was a powerful teacher and communicator within the realms of idealistic thinking. He cared about people. He cared about right and wrong. These are ideals that have been lost in today's world. Separatism is at an all-time high. I sometimes shake my head when I hear, for example, the back and forth hatred between conservatives and non-conservatives. I have heard each group refer to the other as something not much higher than a lower form of animal! Things are at a point where hatred has almost bottomed out and I suppose that it has to. There has to be darkness in order to know what light is.
Although Christ was not born in December, we celebrate His birth in December as a symbolic gesture of how the wise men presented baby Jesus with gifts to celebrate his birth. Why not use the holiday season to think about and celebrate the ideals that are associated with the life of Christ as we know it. In the Piscean Age, we learned these ideals from a book, from the Bible. But right, wrong, love and compassion are characteristics that come from your heart and your spirit. They obviously do not come from reading any book, not even the Bible, as history has shown us.
When we can all come together as one in recognition of that which we have in common, as opposed to staying apart in recognition of our differences, we will have evolved. Let Christmas be the time of the year when these ideals are emphasized and set in motion for the New Year to come.
Have a joyous holiday. Spread love around!
|
|
|
|
Basil Fearrington,
Astrologer
|
 |
Basil Fearrington is the author of "The New Way To Learn Astrology." He has been a professional astrologer for 22 years.
Basil's articles have appeared in the leading astrological publications around the world. He was the Inaugural Chairman for the MilleyDome project in Johannesburg, South Africa and taught astrology there for one year.
Basil has twice been a faculty member of UAC and spoke at Astro 2000. In addition to his work in astrology, Basil is a professional musician who has toured with and/or recorded for artists such as Stevie Wonder and George Benson.
He was on a team of composers who did the music for a network show called "New York Undercover." The same team won a Grammy award in 1980.
bfearr@aol.com
www.basilfearrington.com
|
 |
You'll find
it in
The Directory!
|
|
|
|
|
