THE QUICKENING
“Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die” (1 Corinthians 15:36).
The agency of the seraph serpent may be what the ancient Egyptians called the “akh.” If the “ba soul” is telestial, then the “akh soul” is celestial. The akh soul is represented in Egyptian hieroglyph as the ibis bird. Ibises were known to feed on the fiery flying serpents that strayed from guarding the frankincense trees at the border of Arabia and Egypt. Having left their post, the serpents upon which the ibis preyed are fallen angels, or vipers strayed from the covenant path. “And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day” (Jude 1:6). The ibis had the constitution of a bird, or a spirit being, but was animated by its diet of the fiery flying serpents. It follows then that the ibis, bearing the antidote to the snake’s venom, served as a shield and protector from the vipers who become the sons of perdition.
In like manner, Moses’ staff is a representation of the nature of the ibis and the seraph serpent compounded into one. Set perpendicularly to the ground, Moses’ staff, which was fed by the wisdom he carried out of Egypt, represented stewardship stemming from the upright spine of our species crowned with a powerful capacity for spiritual vision and attunement with God. When venomous snakes plagued the children of Israel, Moses cast in brass a molten image of one of these winged and leaping copper-colored serpents and fixed it to the staff. In compounded symbolism, the seraph soaring vertically toward enlightenment was an analogy for the regeneration of the creator-God now come as the Christ: “But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings” (Malachi 4:2). This principle of the potency and guardianship of the akh soul had many symbolic affirmations.
Assuredly, the angel in the spirit world (Ba) will get its wings, so to speak, but the winged seraph serpent (Akh), who sheds the skin of this body for a new one, will be re-embodied as a ministering angel with greater potency both in its bite and the healing antidote derived from its glands. With an ibis headdress, such a one is Thoth, serving in the capacity of what later traditions would describe as the Holy Ghost, the seraph descended in the form of a dove, the symbolic equivalent in first century Jerusalem to the ibis in Egypt. “Then said Jesus to [the disciples] again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, receive ye the Holy Ghost” (John 20:21-22). As elaborated in Paul’s letter to the Romans on the mysteries of godliness, the quickening is reserved not only for the willing dead, but is an ordinance performed in certain circumstances for the living who have filled the measure of their second estate, advancing the soul to the next seal of the covenant path: “But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his spirit that dwelleth in you” (Romans 8:11). The Uraeus, or the rearing cobra on the brow of Egyptian royalty, was emblematic of the seraphic agency of the second or third estate, and one that the deceiver could now only try to imitate.
Recognizing the repeated descent of the seraphic spirit of Christ into the earthen body, our ancestral teachers carved the Word in stone from Asia to the Americas, embodying the heavenly in terrestrial permanence. Likewise, we reach back to redeem them with our report that the culminating atonement they foreshadowed was accomplished. The veil of his flesh was torn in twain on the cross of spirit and matter, and the great water serpent returned to the primordial sea from whence he first arose. “For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26).
THE SOWERS OF SEEDS
A new world, or a new earth, began with Aquarius in the verdant Garden where ba and akh souls commingled in anticipation of the great age to come. In the dawn of the great age, when Adam and Eve stepped out of Eden into the age of Capricorn, the children of Adam and Eve received the mortal bodies of their first estate. In time, all died. While the firstborn children of Adam and Eve were awaiting their second estate and being instructed in the privileges of their seraphic agency in the spirit world, the adversary tried to persuade them to have contempt for earthly mortality and make permanent their spiritual resurrection. In contrast, the Father, through the Son, offered them the akh soul and the potential to become a regenerating fiery flying serpent:
“Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones;
And God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers; for he stood among those that were spirits, and he saw that they were good; and he said unto Abraham, thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou wast born…
And the Lord said: Whom shall I send? And one answered like unto the Son of Man: Here am I, send me. And another answered and said: Here am I, send me. And the Lord said: I will send the first.
And the second was angry, and kept not his first estate; and, at that day, many followed after him” (Abraham 3:22-23, 27-28).
As harrowing as the prospect of reliving the earthly mortal experience might be, if the ba souls chose to avoid the further ordeal embodied in the Father’s plan the law of entropy would eventually make them vulnerable to the adversary’s rule. A seditious prelude to this crisis, the War in Heaven, is described in Isaiah, “For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God” (Isaiah 14:12-15). The gravity of the quandary is elaborated in the apocryphal book of Moses, “Wherefore, because that Satan rebelled against me, and sought to destroy the agency of man, which I, the Lord God, had given him, and also, that I should give unto him by mine own power; by the power of mine Only Begotten, I caused that he should be cast down” (Moses 4:3). For his rebellion, Lucifer was dismissed from the celestial kingdom to the terrestrial world, to eat the dust off the desert floor and crawl on his belly. “And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed” (Genesis 3:14-15). Corresponding to the geological record of sea level rise throughout the age of Cancer, this sign of the Queen of Heaven and her seed marked the opening of humankind’s second estate, or the soaking of the seeds by the flood, and the advent of the covenant age that would last to the present day.
The “enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed” comes full circle when the disciples asked Jesus to explain the meaning of the parable of the Sower in Matthew 13: 24-43:
“Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: But while the men slept [spirit world in Virgo], his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? From whence then hath it tares? He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest [end of Pisces and beginning of Aquarius]: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn… Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear” (brackets added).
KAMRON COLEMAN ART 