So wouldn't you know it, after 23 days of exile, Blogger unlocked The Burning Taper the very day I was leaving on my yearly pilgrimage eastward to the Grand Strand to worship the Sun....
I'm back — tanned and well-rested in body and mind.
Whether it's the ocean, the mountains, a round of golf along rolling hills, or a simple picnic in the local park, nothing eases the stresses of everyday life like spending time experiencing Mother Nature.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plans to launch the mundanely-named "Solar Probe+" (pronounced "Solar Probe Plus") in 2015 on a seven-year mission to explore the Sun.
The solar-powered probe will come within 7 million km (4.35 million miles) of the Sun, and is being designed to withstand temperatures exceeding 1400 degrees Celsius (2550 degrees Fahrenheit). That's hot.
Scientists hope to answer two solar mysteries: Why the temperature in the Sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, is millions of times hotter than the surface of the Sun, and why the velocity of the Sun's "wind" increases the further it gets out into the solar system.
According to NASA, "Solar Probe+'s repeated plunges into the corona will be accomplished by means of Venus flybys. The spacecraft will swing by Venus seven times in six years to bend the probe's trajectory deeper and deeper into the sun's atmosphere."
Isn't that the technique both Captain Kirk and Superman used to travel back in time?
The very first song I remember being taught was at church.
Heavenly sunshine, heavenly sunshine Flooding my soul with glory dee-vi-ine. Heavenly sunshine, heavenly sunshine Hallelujah! Je-sus is mine.
If you've followed this blog for very long you know I'm fascinated with Solar imagery, especially how it is reflected (no pun intended) in religious, Masonic and corporate symbols.
For several months I've been especially cognizant of Solar symbols on churches — Protestant and Catholic. I've pretty much convinced myself that the Christianity we know and love is derived from ancient Solar Cults. The cross itself is an ancient solar symbol, far older than 33 A.D., and a steeple, with or without a cross on top, points toward the sky, home of the Sun. I've noticed that many, many church buildings include in their design circular windows with embedded solar crosses as well as windows that curve at the top, symbolizing the sunrise.
Adding to the mix is the fact that more and more, many churches these days actually utilize in their signs and logos both traditional and moderized sun drawings, the circle with rays emanating from the disk. And a quick google-search shows pages of "Rising Sun" churches of various denominations. And those Easter "sunrise services" on the first Sunday (Sun Day) after the first Paschal Full Moon date? Certainly there's more to that historically and symbolically than a mere local church tradition.
And after writing several months ago about the Disney/Hollywood re-enactments of ancient rituals done in the name of entertainment, I've become even more aware that "the owls are not what they seem." Something's going on. Whether its archetypal, conspiratorial, or synchronistic, or all three and more, I don't know.
I was pleasantly surprised this morning to find a blog called The Secret Sun, published by a man who is even more fascinated by all this than I am. Blogger Christopher Loring Knowles is also the author of the book Our Gods Wear Spandex: The Secret History of Comic Book Heroes.
I've just begun to explore his articles, but what I've seen is intriguing. He seems to have found myriads of "relationships of meaning" without going off the deep end into wild-eyed conspiracy theories as so many do who travel this path. His explorations are that of a Jungian, not a John Bircher or a believer in reptilian overlords.
I've written several times on, or made reference to, astrotheology, which is the study of, or belief, that the Sun, Moon, planets and stars and their movements are the basis for all mythological and religious stories.
I have come to believe this is not only the basis of the general story of Jesus and other savior-gods who came before and since Him, but is also the source of the Masonic legend of Hiram Abiff, and why the Sun and Moon are such important symbols in Freemasonry.
This doesn't discount the fact that Jesus may actually have existed; it simply calls into question whether the widespread astrotheological beliefs of the ancient Middle East and later Rome were superimposed upon a historical man who was the descendant of King David and rightful heir to the title King of the Jews, and that then superimposed onto religious, spiritual and moral philosophies and commandments.
Heretical? Yes. True? Could be. It vibrates as truth to me.
I live in the country, where the lights of the city don't block out the stars at night. I sit outside in the evenings regularly, basking in their shimmering, subtle rays. I can't observe a sunrise or sunset, or watch the motion of the Moon, Venus and the constellations without the overwhelming feeling that humanity has been doing the same thing for eons, watching the sky with a curious amazement, creating stories to explain what they see.
Until now.
In today's world, we seldom look up. We take the Heavens for granted. To most of us, space is just a place we send satellites and shuttles, and a setting for sci-fi soap operas and shoot-em-ups.
I stood in awe a few months ago, watching a perfect lunar eclipse just after sunset, with hundreds of unaware people near me, first outside a scouting function I was attending at a local elementary school, and then in a Wal-Mart parking lot.... A few scouts came out to watch with me, but to my knowledge, no one there even knew the eclipse was happening until I mentioned it to a few people who then joined me outside. Later, at Wal-Mart, shoppers bustled through the parking lot, not noticing the magnificent light show in the sky, as I leaned against my car watching for another half hour.
Is not the Sun the Giver of Life? It shines upon us, warms us, and feeds us. It is the Light without which we would die. Humanity figured that out long ago, and deified it, calling it (or its human, often kingly "son") Jupiter, Zeus, Apollo, Ra, Osiris, Mithras, Deus Sol Invictus, and finally, Jesus, the Son of God. Some Hindu teachings have 12 names for the Sun, one for each month. Sun-chariots are pulled by 12 horses. Its disk shape is the All-Seeing Eye of God to Freemasons, and together with the (apparent) same-sized Moon disk, it is the Eye of Horus, the child of Osiris and Isis. The child is or becomes the parent, just as Jesus, the Son of God, is also considered God the Father.
It's not easy making this "leap of faith," that the Jesus story as we usually hear it is a myth. I'm as steeped in Christianity as any one of you reading this, perhaps moreso. Sunday School threats of eternal damnation for disbelief still rattle around in my brain, I guess.
But it's never made sense to me. Jesus, the scapegoat. God killing himself on a cross because He loves us, but damning us if we don't believe it. Paul, the former Christian-hater, writing all the rules of Christianity, right down to silly requirements about women wearing hats to church that most Christians ignore. Judas died either by hanging himself, or by falling off a cliff, depending on which book of the Bible you read. Walking on water. Raising the dead. Miracles....
These things are illogical and in most cases impossible, and if someone told you any of this happened in modern times, you'd laugh and call them a kook. Because people don't rise from the dead or fly or walk on water, except in movies and comic books. And myths.
And don't even get me started on the Old Testament Yahweh, the baby-killing, nation-smiting, jealously insecure God in a Box. That God certainly isn't "love."
I read recently there are 30,000 different sects or variations of Christianity on the planet. If any one of them is "right," the other 29,999 are wrong by definition.
But... if it's all metaphorical, allegorical, symbolic — then and only then does it resonate rationally within me.
There you go.... There's my "testimony" as it stands today. I don't expect I'll be invited to give it at the local Baptist church, but so it goes.
Have I been duped by the Devil, doomed to Hell for my non-belief in today's "standarized" version of an age-old world mythology? I don't think so. It doesn't seem that way to me. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his essay "On Self Reliance,"
On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, — "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the devil’s child, I will live then from the devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.
None of this means I don't necessarily believe in a God, or a Great Architect of the Universe, or a Higher Power, or the survival of the soul or survival of the personality after death, nor does it deny the desirability of being moral, upright, compassionate or spiritual. It's simply my attempt to shake off the shackles of a twisted theology based in fear, foisted upon me at an early age, and to replace it with something of value that makes sense.
This, for now, is my Truth. I don't ask that it be yours.
You might enjoy the video below. You can watch it here, or on YouTube.com.
Image: Sunrise over the Atlantic, taken on the shores of Daytona Beach, Florida, July 4, 2005. Released into the public domain.
So wouldn't you know it, after 23 days of exile, Blogger unlocked The Burning Taper the very day I was leaving on my yearly pilgrimage eastward to the Grand Strand to worship the Sun....
