![[tmbchr]™](/journal/popocculture-blog-logo.jpg){kind=logo}
Astrology & Christianity
While eating the chicken and pasta I cooked tonight, I had the pleasure to catch a few minutes of the local Christian programming on television. That stuff really confuses me, I’ll tell you what. It’s not just that I don’t agree with it, or think that it’s a totally whacked-out bullshit version of Christianity, it’s that it doesn’t even hold together. It’s not even consistent with itself.
They were talking about a bunch of things. But the really weird one was astrology. They had clips from this former astrologer who was talking about how she used to do readings, and how she thought God was an “impersonal source of energy”. And how she became tempted to connect directly to that energy, and became a channeler. And they showed somebody fiddling arond with a ouija board. Then she said something crazy about how she was “becoming God”… because everybody knows that God sits in his kitchen and moves a ouija board around super fast in a way that’s obviously fake.
Then some fat shit with a beard brought up the passage in Deuteronomy that forbids divination. Aside from the whole thing argument about how Jesus was the Fulfillment of the Law and made it so Christians didn’t have to follow the intricacies of the Hebrew law, there’s a much better argument in favor of astrology right in the Bible. Anybody remember what it is?
All I can say is: three - fucking - wisemen. Check it out in Matthew 2
Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, ‘Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.’ After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him.
Wait, wait, these guys followed a star and the star lead them to Jesus? SO… THEY WERE ASTROLOGERS! And there’s nothing crazy about this, either. Astrology wasn’t some kind of evil bugaboo for most of history. Does anybody have any knowledge on when it fell out of favor? I’m guessing it was after astronomy branched off into a hard science, and around the time when alchemy turned into chemistry. That’s another damned thing this tv program got all fucking backward. They said that astrology evolved out of astronomy. Could that be any more wrong? Anyway, if you go back and look at historical images of Christianity through the Middle Ages and beyond, you’ll come across all kinds of images of Jesus or God sitting in the middle of the zodiac. The 12 Apostles obviously have a zodiac connection, though I’ve never looked into it too deeply. The Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John even have animal/symbols that they are related to which come straight out of the Zodiac. I forget which one’s which, but they are the Lion, the Bull, the Angel and the Eagle. The angel is supposed to be Aquarius I think, and the Eagle is what we know of as scorpio. In many parts of Europe, they didn’t have scorpions, and thus didn’t use that animal as a zodiac totem.
Anybody, history aside, what could the doctrinal argument by Fundamentalist Christianity against astrology consist of? Stars are made by God, right? God created the rules that govern the cosmos. What’s the problem? I’m guessing it has something to do with what that woman said about “becoming God”, but I don’t really see how studying patterns of nature turns you into God. I’m not trying to be (too) sarcastic here though. I actually do want to know the real reason why people get so up in arms over this.
Incidentally, I was just looking at a page about the Bible’s references to occultic activity, especially in the Old Testament. Not surprisingly, there are many instances of occult techniques used with no problem. But then in Deuteronomy 18 you have that big list that outlaws everything. Actually, have a look at the list. This one includes the original Hebrew words:
- yid’oni - Making contact with spirits (not of God).
- sho’el ‘ov - Making contact with the dead .
- qosem q’samim - Foretelling the future by using lots or a similar system.
- m’onen - Predicting the future by interpreting signs in nature.
- m’nachesh - Enchanting (perhaps related to nachash, a snake).
- chover chavar - Casting spells by magical knot tying.
- m’khaseph - evil sorcery; using spoken spells to harm other people.
- doresh ‘el hametim - “One who asks the dead”, probably via another method than sho’el ‘ov
Now that I look at it arranged like that, I realize what it is that they were really trying to outlaw here: shamanism. Has anybody seen a good resource on the conflict and continuation of ancient shamanic practices in the Bible? That seems like it would be a great area to study, especially in conjunction with the syncretic Christianized African traditional religions, who use a lot of these techniques in conjunction with the Bible.
UPDATE!
Oh, I forgot the best part of what I saw on tv. They were talking about psychic hotlines right after, and how evil they are. And they actually made the claim that psychic hotlines hire “unemployed drifters” to do psychic readings for. How awesome is that?
August 30th, 2005 at 2:23 am
Oh man, great post. Reminds me of when Pat Roberston went off on UFO fanboys a couple of years ago. He said they were “worshipping the stars” and that back in Deoteronomy days they would have been stoned for this - see, the Babylonians worshipped teh stars and they wer eevil, since their leader Nimrod built the ower of babel (at least thats what Jack T CHick says)
And of course there’s all of the fundies who think that the “aliens” are the nephilim of yore. (Interesting that Jesus & Lucifer are both the “morning star.”)
Another position the fundamentalists hold is that ancestral spirits do not communicate with humans as there is no contact between the world of the dead and this one. Fundamentalist anti-occult authors like Rebecca Brown MD (Check out the DRUGS, DEMONS AND DELUSIONS - The “Amazing” Saga of Rebecca Brown M.D.) claim the spirits of the dead are “always demons” impersonating dead spirits.
Rebecca Brown MD also claims that occultists have opened their third eye to “see into the demonic spiritual world” - people like Shirley McClaine who think that their souls are traveling when they journey or meditate are actually watching a demonic illusion that is projected on the inside of their head!
See, there is NO good shamanism, no good occultism. The only person permitted to do these thngs is Jesus.
Jesus healed people, he was accused of working with demons, he cursed a plant, he lived in the wilderness with animals, he sacrificed pigeons in a temple, etc. But nobody else should try this stuff.
But what about Moses turning his staff into a serpent and calling down a plague on the Egyptians. He was a great shaman. King SOlomon had quite a rep as a magician too - he learned to control all the djinn. Or the witch of Endor summoming the ghost. Or - was it Daniel? - who had the dream vision of the 7 abundant years and the 7 lean ones. etc?
I think a lot of these stories would make a lot of sense in a shamanic culture or the descendants of one, under certain circumstances. Especially Moses and Solomon. The Bible condemns all that stuff but there is a ton of that in it. The distinction between miracle and magic seems to be purely semantic. Its all determind by what god is behind it, not what the miracle is.
People argue - but Moses did his magic through god! But any shamanic magician I think does their magic through god and spirits. The ancient Hebrews threw bones to decide which “scapegoat” to give to Azael (IIRC),etc. Moses sent a “darkness that could be felt”, god sent lying spirits, etc. There’s a lot of black magic in the Bible too.
August 30th, 2005 at 8:53 am
A quick read through something like Eusebius will show that early christians lived in a world full of magic.
Astronomy didn’t quite come from astrology, I’d say it’s more like astrology and astronomy were not differentiated back then.
I notice also that only divination of the future is prohibited. In all traditional esoteric systems (that I’ve come across) the measured time of Chronos is illusion, only the eternal Prescence is real.
In Tarot and I-Ching the divination is relevant to the present.
Another thought: when choosing Judas’ replacement, the remaining 11 apostles cast lots to choose his successor; this was a divinatory technique, not just flipping a coin.
All those points made, it is also often said that any esoteric practice which does not lead a soul back to its source can not help but to further reinforce the lower man, the worldy and deluded part of the soul.
August 30th, 2005 at 9:58 am
My suspicion is that the prohibitions against the above stuff, along with astrology, serve a few different purposes-1) to obscure a pre-Mosaic history (the tribes weren’t always together and they didn’t all worship the same god, there were many different ones among them until Moses and his crew more or less forged a unified group out of them–in this sense, Moses and Mohammed are nearly identical figures in my mind; shit, every time Moses went off to pass wind, these tribes were going back to worshipping their older gods–via golden calves and the like; many of the “banned” activities may have had something to do with the older worship of additional, if not other, gods); 2) to set them apart from others around them as a distinct group, particularly separate from the Egyptians (no tattoos–why? cuz the Egyptians were into tats and they were oppressors of the tribes; no graven images–again, b/c other people who done them wrong used these as a means of communion, etc.)–it’s a good way to create group social cohesion, which is real important, especially when you’re worried about survival. Funny though that they kept the circumcisions, as the ancient historians attribute the origin of the practice to the Egyptians (’course this is in Freud’s Moses & Monotheism and I’m sure that books way out of date…).
August 30th, 2005 at 10:17 am
Yeah I totally dig all these historical reasons and want to get more into them. But I’m still struggling to understand why astrology today would be frowned upon? When did astrology become discredited in the public mind, and what doctrinal stance does the church have against it?
I really really want to find something about shamanism in the Bible.
August 30th, 2005 at 10:22 am
On that note, I’d also love to see a book or something about shamanic practices which have held over into our tradition. Somebody mentions above casting lots to choose Judas’ replacement. Does that mean that the coin toss before a football game is a shamanic act? Wikipedia’s entry on divination also said something about board games being a hold over from divination - what about gambling? Seems like we could probably go through and make a compelling case that shamanism never really went away at all!
August 30th, 2005 at 10:49 am
Casting lots in those days was a folk-magic technique to discern God’s will. Like everything with a “spiritual” dimension, eventually only the exoteric aspect of the custom is practiced, for gaming in this instance. It doesn’t seem that unlikely to me (just by analogy with other customs) that even the old version casting lots may be the degenerated echo of some more shamanistic or ritualistic practice.
August 30th, 2005 at 12:39 pm
I feel if you could get a good dig at some books or articles about early or pre-Mosaic Jewish history, you might be able to find out what sort of practices and beliefs were taking place. Just looking at different groups in the Middle East at that time and the stuff they believed might help out. You could then have a better base for picking out the shamanic stuff in the Bible that way, you know what the remnants are from earlier practices.
Also, didn’t Daniel get brought up in a vision to the seat of God? And what about Enoch being lifted up to Heaven? Monotheized versions of shamanic travels? And who was it in the Bible who literally wrestled with an Angel? That seems to resonate with shamanic visions somehow.
August 30th, 2005 at 2:09 pm
Was it Jacob, or Job, I forget…
August 30th, 2005 at 2:17 pm
http://eighthsermon.blogspot.com/2005/08/gospel-zodiac.html
I posted a connection between the gospels and the zodiac on my site.
August 30th, 2005 at 2:28 pm
Jacob (of the ladder) wrestled with the angel. Also, there are mystical interpretations of the Noah story (mainly in islam, but also Jane Lead), the Exodus, Revelations (duh), the Song of Songs, and Eli-Jah.
August 30th, 2005 at 2:52 pm
I think you are right, Tim, regarding gambling and divination. Any game of chance has its roots in trying to determine an outcome.
For more on shamanic practices that have endured into today’s culture, you might want to check out some groups that work in core shamanism. The first that I can think of is the Foundation for Shamanic Studies. It was founded by anthropologist Michael Harner in 1985 to “preserve, study, and transmit shamanic knowledge worldwide.” (His name might be familiar to you if you read The Way of the Shaman. There are two URLs for the Foundation: www.shamanism.org and www.shamanicstudies.org.
Then there is Shaman’s Drum Journal, which bills itself as “the leading magazine on experiential shamanism for nearly twenty years.”
A third source that I recommend checking out, if only for another view and some good reading, is The Flight of the Condor - Contemporary Shamanism. This is a collection of text articles that show “an insight in [the Kondor Author’s] personal approach to shamanism.”
August 30th, 2005 at 6:40 pm
the church as a form of social control isn`t going to provide the source code for individual divinity. we wouldn`t volunteer our paychecks otherwise. jesus as a mystic was exposing the methods of personal access to god. the revisionists have twisted his words to mean the exact opposite. fuckwits.
i call up the number on the t.v. and ask if there is anyone there who talks directly to god and when they say yes i ask them to tell god to feed all those kids with the flies in thier eyes……and give them a bath while he`s at it.
August 31st, 2005 at 12:11 am
A good book to read for a comprehensive rundown of magical practices throughout history (Jewish, Egyptian, African, Arab, etc.) is “Oriental Magic”
by Idries Shah.
August 31st, 2005 at 4:07 pm
I think shamanism has had it’s period and it’s over, we don’t have animore the blood (their capacities had to do a lot with eredity, blood-lines) and our constitution is another now and we need another, new way to go. I don’t know if you ever have heard about Franz Bardon. He was a great magic and published his knowledge. A very hard spirit and soul-school to follow.
August 31st, 2005 at 4:39 pm
Yes those are great recommendations