INTRODUCTION:
THE OLDEST LANGUAGE ON THE PLANET
The Apotheosis Scroll is one individual’s search for answers to the mysteries of Godliness. It draws inspiration from cave art to grandfather clocks and from ancient Egyptian papyri and Hebrew scrolls to embellished medieval transcriptions of sacred literature. The Apotheosis Scroll follows the admonition of Christ in Matthew 13:52, “Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.” The artistic elements are arranged like monolithic stones cast next to each other and each is imbued with a voice, hailing the Prince of Peace as He ascends through the heavenly gate of Jerusalem on an ass.
These mysteries are universal and pertain to the life cycle of every immortal human soul. The specifics have varied as the forms are customized from covenant culture to covenant culture. The heterogenous nature of the mysteries suggests that all the children of Adam and Eve were once given different stewardships based on their gifts and strengths. To name a few, the Father, Babylon and Persia, had the keys to teach about heaven and the celestial kingdom. Egypt, the Mother, had the keys to teach about our fertile, watery, and life-giving planetary home as well as its depths: the underworld afterlife and resurrection. Vulnerably situated between them is Israel, which “bore the cross.” In other words, Israel is the intersection of heaven and hell and where the Lord would be crucified.
The covenant was not exclusive to Israel, nor was it only for the priests, prophets, and kings. Due to a continual process of scattering all the children of Adam and Eve have had the covenant seeded in their midst. “Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land; But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian” (Luke 4: 26-27). As each has cycled through golden ages, apostasies, and restorations tribal rivalries and political atrocities have further obscured that the covenant cultures seem to have a shared divine provenance.
For most of human history the story of the covenant people and their relationship to God was transmitted by teachers and pupils gazing together at the stars. In the northern hemisphere, facing east, the area immediately to the left of the band of the Milky Way was heaven. To the right of this fountain of frothing stars were the pastures of earth, and toward the south was the sea. On this otherworldly chalkboard the meaning of human life was diagrammed. While not a complete list, in the Holy Bible alone this region of the night sky is the setting of:
The Garden of Eden in Genesis,
The story of David and Goliath,
The Garden of Gethsemane in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
The Parable of the Wedding Feast,
The Healing of the Man Born Blind,
The Gospel of John, and
Revelation.
Whenever the covenant was established between God and a people, the characteristics of the covenant were guided by the zodiacal age those people occupied. Providing context to its position between past and future, astronomy pointed to the cultural wisdom, or mysteries, around which the narratives would be framed. The rise of Christian discipleship signified the close of the age of Aries, the ram, with the sacrifice of the Lamb of God. Before Christ was crucified on the cross of Calvary, all the symbolism looked back in remembrance to Aries. After his resurrection from the dead, however, the symbolism looked forward into the zodiacal age to come. From the many covenant mysteries that preceded it, Christianity has defined the age of Pisces, where disciples shared a new sacrament of broiled fish, bread, and wine, and followers were enjoined to become fishers of men.
It is reasonable to infer from the text that Paul received his initiation in these ancient wisdom traditions in the Roman military. Upon finishing his training, he said of the Christian disciples, “This is the way any person is to regard us: as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Corinthians 4:1). Christ’s gospel of salvation and exaltation was taught through the constellations and the planets on the same celestial backdrop shared by the mystery teachings in covenant temples of the past. The symbolic alphabet that Christ subsumed was already known on one level or another to everyone in the world and that may be what caused the Christian mystery’s stunningly rapid dissemination among the illiterate and the elite, from Jews in Palestine to every rank in the Roman army. The good news of the gospel was a rearrangement of this language for the architecture of a new world. It was a new temple built without hands, filling the reaches of outer space, and yet, entirely encapsulated in the human heart, for the human heart is Christ’s heart. The spine of the Hindu traditions was Christ’s spine. The head of the lion of Babylon was Christ’s head and Israel was the intersectional Merkabah of the system. The bowels of compassion snaking through the Nile River Valley were his abdominal organs. The navel of the world was Christ’s navel, and in his loins (the Orion Nebula) new worlds are born.
As one walks through this temple, one sees the foundry and the forge, rivers, cattle, and mountains. I have pondered over verses of scripture and dreamt of Gods on this journey, waking to ideas I never considered. Having stepped out of the cave and into Creation, this is my personal vision of the theological landscape unveiled before my eyes.
The outer reaches of the mysteries of Godliness are at the scale of celestial bodies separated by thousands of light years. The inner boundary is confined to the scale of every individual’s openness to personal revelation. One may profitably spend one’s entire life and mind seeking after the fountainhead of the mystery. It is the oldest language on the planet and predates its formation, but because it is ever-present it has gotten harder to see. Learning the alphabet and language of the symbols gives one ears to hear and eyes to see the layers concealed beneath the exoteric teachings, for “many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them” (Matthew 13:17).
The irony is remarked on by G K Chesterton in Orthodoxy, “The sages, it is often said, can see no answer to the riddle of religion, but the trouble with our sages is not that they cannot see the answer, it is that they cannot even see the riddle.”
While we may hope it is rare, God knew that it is the tendency of church administrators to regulate the diverse gifts of the Spirit out of the church in favor of precepts that make their administration more efficient and stable, but if the Baby Jesus were being bustled through the crowded temple courtyard would there still be a Simeon and an Anna with eyes to see the Messiah in their midst? Because it is the tendency of the shepherds and the sheep to get comfortable in their roles, the mysteries of Godliness are reserved for tutorship by the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost lights an inner fire, first of obedience, then illumination, and then of righteous discontentment because these roles are meant to change.
When freedom of speech can no longer be tolerated, the pact between a liberal democracy and its people has ceased to exist. A similar contract is foundational to the Christian ethos. The moral equivalent of guaranteed freedom of speech is the recognition of the Holy Ghost as the highest of all teachers in the kingdom of God. Just as speech is not a right granted by government, but an innate human right, the gift of the Holy Ghost is the pure sign of an intimate covenant of the individual with a parental God, a God who wishes to share everything, if the searcher will ask, seek, and knock.
The Christian mystery is that the flock of sheep has been genetically altered to become the shepherds, and not just shepherds, but even the lions who have ascended the seven seals to dwell with the Father in the pure light of his Sabbath rest. Following in the footsteps of their God, begotten sons and daughters of Christ will leave this sublime rest, even as Christ left the Father’s rest to do the Father’s will on the earth. By this, generation after generation of holy beings are born. In the parable of the Wedding Feast in Matthew 22:1-14, the garment being offered is a body for the ascension journey, but not just any body, a celestial body, even the body of Orion. And it is being offered to everyone:
And Jesus answered and spake unto them again by parables, and said, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king (Leo), which made a marriage (Cancer) for his son (Orion), and sent forth his servants (Gemini) to call them that were bidden (Aries) to the wedding: and they would not come.
Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen (Taurus) and my fatlings (The Pascal Lamb-Aries) are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage. But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise: and the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them. But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.
Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy. Go ye therefore into the highways (The Milky Way), and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage. So those servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was furnished with guests. And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment (Hydra as Lucifer): and he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment (Orion )? And he was speechless. Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.
One story in the New Testament best illustrates the vision available to everyone, even the lowest, compared to the blindness to which those in positions of authority are prone. It was written with such subtlety that it has survived every credal council as just one of many miraculous healings at the hands of the Savior. The ninth chapter of John is a deeply concealed Gnostic riddle dedicated to the story of the healing of a man who was blind from birth. While the man ascends the seven seals of spiritual initiation to vision and celestial gnosis, the elders of the Jews, who are framed as antagonists to Christ because they represent the ossified religious establishment, simultaneously descend the same seven seals from exalted glory as sons of God through Abraham to the abyss of true and total blindness.
Prominent between the adjacent constellations of Orion and Canis Major, Sirius is the brightest star in our night sky. Called the Eye in the Sky, it is the focal point around which the story of the healing of the man born blind revolves. It illustrates how first century disciples of Christ, especially John, employed the common cosmology to announce the sinking of the old world with the arrival of the solar messiah to the age of Pisces.
The healing of the man born blind sets the stage for understanding the vision of Mary Magdalene at the tomb as containing the mysteries of godliness and all of their degrees of glory in a single verse: Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I have not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God” (John 20:17).
KAMRON COLEMAN ART 