the timboucher experience

I always really liked that part in the Gospel musical where Jesus comes into the Temple and gets super pissed and totally starts kicking the asses of the money changers. Cause it’s like - whoa, Jesus is usually all peaceful and shit and then he comes in and starts knocking tables over and screaming in rage. It’s like WTF?

I love the way they handle that scene in Jesus Christ Superstar. I also remember in highschool my best friend, Brad Rosenberg, played Jesus in Godspell and it was oddly thrilling to see him during that scene - I think it’s “Alas for You” where the same thing is played out. He did a fantastic job totally flipping his shit. Willem Dafoe also does an excellent job with this scene in Last Temptation of Christ:

There’s also a great song by Prince about this, although all I could find was some strange soap opera mashup fanvid using it. Oh well.

I also think this Aerosmith song could fit totally perfectly into this scene as well. If anybody knows any other good contemporary (especially 80’s and 90’s) songs with lyrical passages that would “work” in this scene, please drop them into the comments below. It’s a great scene and deserves to have great songs associated with it in the modern rendition of this story we are all collaboratively writing and performing.

Through repeated listening to the JC Superstar soundtrack (I’ve listened to it possibly 70 or more times in the past two months, I’d imagine), I have come to a new understanding of what this scene is really all about. And I’m not going to water my opinion down in the hopes of assuaging the feelings of those who disagree - because that is essentially the whole point of not only this whole scene in the musical, but of the Jesus story in general. It is a rallying point, a reference point, something to talk about, to live, to love and yes even to hate. Hating Jesus may be in fact the surest path to understanding his true purpose. He was crucified after all, but he was happy to do it if that’s what it took.

Okay so, formalities aside, the purpose of this scene is not to describe a historical event. Although, hey, who knows… The purpose is to describe an event within the development of the self of each individual as they approach reunion and reconciliation with their divine source.

I know that sounds all like hippy and New Agey or some shit, but stay with me here. Don’t dissociate just because you don’t like the words. They are just words after all. We are only using them to point to something much more powerful and important.

15 And they come to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves;

16 And would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple.

17 And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves.

18 And the scribes and chief priests heard it, and sought how they might destroy him: for they feared him, because all the people was astonished at his doctrine.

Let me drop some pictures on you before we move on:

I have two ways of explaining this, but they are really one thing. One will appeal to those among you with more straightforward minds. And the other will appeal to those of you operating on a more symbolic esoteric level. Hopefully showing them both will allow people of one style to bridge into a new mindspace.

Or something like that.

Simple “muggle” version first:

The Temple is the heart. The money changers represent a style of emotional existence wherein you keep track of debts, of wrongs, of slights which have been committed against you. You nurse hurts. You bear old grudges. You pick and pick at scabs and just won’t let things go. Paranoia and fear flood your life. The littlest things set you off. You struggle to gain control, but by doing so you only lose control more and more.

Jesus waltzes in (and whether or not you “believe” in Jesus is irrelevant because he is a character in a musical) and sees this and is like “Nuh-uh, sister!” And you’ll notice that he doesn’t politely ask the money changers to leave. He doesn’t reason with them, or try to use language to get the better of them theologically. I mean, he talks about it after the fact, but what he has to do to dislodge these fuckers is he has to trample their tables, knock over their carts, throw their coins into the air.

Because the thing is about these emotional demons, these money changers, is that their whole purpose is to keep track of accounts. Profits and losses. The only way to topple their control is to deliberately scramble their ability to keep track of those accounts. Mess up their orderly piles of coins. Burn their accounting books. Smash their tables. (The astute long-term reader may also note a thematic/symbolic similarity between this story and my brutal smashing of my cell phone some months ago with a giant rock. The point was basically the same as this, whether or not I called it that at the time)

Now let’s see if we can’t take this up a notch or two and have it resonate through past your AI mind a little better. The Heart Temple just so happens to also be the rightful home and throne of the lion god protector Aslan. See also Lion of Judah, King Richard the Lionheart, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Heart Chakra. This is the place where the Holy Spirit the Plasmate comes to live after you have cleansed the Temple of the money changers and made ready the way of the Lord.

In Hindu symbolism, the heart chakra is often depicted by the six-pointed star, the Star of David, Solomon’s Seal, the hexagram - popularized by writers such as Margaret Starbird and Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code as being symbolic of the union of male and female energies in the sacred marriage, the hieros gamos, the alchemical sunmoonunion.

(Just for kicks, I might also be able to draw yet another a Guns N Roses November Rain parallel here if anybody is interested…)

From Starbird:

The mandala of the hexagram, also known as the “Star of David” is much older than Judaism, older even than history! As an archetypal symbol for the sacred union of the opposite energies, it is the “yin-yang” of western civilization. Formed by the intertwining of the “fire” and “water” triangles (the male “blade” and the female “chalice”) this symbiol represents the masculine and feminine principles in perfect union, the “sacred marriage” or “hieros gamous” of the ancient world. In India the symbol represents the “cosmic dance” of Shiva and Shakti, and the Jewish Kaballah suggests that the Ark of the Covenant contains, in addition to the tables of the Ten Commandments, “a regular hexagram representing a man and woman in intimate embrace,”

And now for some more pics:

There’s also a rather interesting connection between the hexagram and something called a Merkaba or merkabah depicted above:

Merkaba, also spelled Merkabah, is the divine light vehicle allegedly used by ascended masters to connect with and reach those in tune with the higher realms. “Mer” means Light. “Ka” means Spirit. “Ba” means Body. Mer-Ka-Ba means the spirit/body surrounded by counter-rotating fields of light, (wheels within wheels), spirals of energy as in DNA, which transports spirit/body from one dimension to another.

It is, in essence, the “flux capacitor” within the human heart, the throne seat of the soul which may be modulated so as to “travel through time and space” (I will admit to having done it very vividly at least once definitively… even if that makes me sound “nuts” to the skeptics. No point in kowtowing to them anymore!)

The other thing I’ve managed to “do” with the so-called “Seal of Solomon” within the “Heart Temple” is to “bind demons.” King Solomon of course was the original driving force behind the creation of the First or Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. We ordinarily think of the Temple(s) in Jerusalem as physical structures that you can go to, not a place in your heart (and certainly not a time travel device…), but from what I’ve come to understand they are reflections of one another. Distinctions such as inner and outer were simply irrelevant to ancient symbolically driven peoples (see alchemy’s connection to early chemistry or astrology to astronomy, where the “objectivists” came in and removed the squishy inner contents of these arts). So it’s safe to infer from descriptions of the “actual” temple what the purpose of the heart temple is. Wikipedia explains that the Temple was “the primary resting place of God’s presence (Heb. “shechina”) in the physical world.”

Good enough for me.

So right, anyway. Solomon is alleged to have built this Temple with the help of demons or of the Jinn (as well as the Masons, but that’s another story altogether).

That can be read in another way: the Wise King Solomon Aragorn Arthur Jesus casts out the “money changers” from the heart temple by scrambling their ability to keep accurate records on emotional transactions. But if you just cast them out, then they may crawl right back in. You will likely need to “cleanse the temple” on a regular basis. What King Solomon does in his Wisdom (Sophia/Shekinah, a gift from God, mind you, not his alone - God’s presence, God’s Wisdom, the Parousia) is thereafter to bind the demon money changers once they have been expelled from the heart temple.

The simplest way I’ve managed to visualize this is to focus on your heart chakra, have it radiate out as a lionsun first of all. Then try to activate the merkaba. Not necessarily easy and I don’t have a foolproof way of explaining it or doing it. But the most recent success I’ve had was with visualizing (it’s not really a visualization, it’s more of a thinware enthickment) the hexagram rotating first of all, and then adding in another dimension to it so its rotation became three dimensional like the merkaba and it starts spinning faster and faster - and this is when you can use it to catch demons. An emotional demon gets sort of sucked into it like a vortex, like magical fly-paper almost. And then you have to address the demon as King and convince it to swear an oath of fealty to you.

This might help you (and me) understand what I’m talking about:

Demons are obviously liars and tricky though. But the True King will be able to get them to stand by their oath, and then they will serve him in the Building of the Temple. In other words, the demons turn into helpful teddy bears.

With any luck, at this point you’re confused and annoyed that I started out with talk of a scene in the Bible and turned it into some kind of YouTube hodge-podge about time-travel and the binding of demons. That’s great if that’s the case! It serves both our purposes more fruitfully in a case like this if we’re not having 100% parity on our understandings of what’s being talked about. Because even I don’t understand it. It is, however, something that I have vividly experienced in both muggle and wizardly ways. So make of it what you will. Make of me what you will: a fool, a liar, a fraud, it’s all good.

Just don’t call me late for dinner!

Oh, and PS. Here’s what happens if you try to storm the gates of the Temple before you are ready. It may be in fact just what you need though! Nothing to fear, really, as demons are only the face God takes when your heart still holds fear of being with him and his awesome awful all-consuming fire of love.

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