THE FATHER’S KINGDOM
Like a serpent, the soul is always in motion. It is either ascending or descending. The soul ascends toward the peak of heat in the foundry furnace, where it is melted, or the soul descends toward its second estate as metal poured from the mouth of the crucible. The ascent of the soul is represented in the male symbol of the upward arrow, or sword, which points in the direction of the Father’s kingdom. The descent of the soul is represented in the female symbol of the delta-shaped downward arrow, or cup. This is the Mother’s queendom.
The ascent into the first estate toward heaven begins in Capricorn, and the descent begins in Cancer, from whence came the perverse accusation that Eve was responsible for the Fall. Just as liquid metal is poured into a mold, the second estate is the cup of the covenant that receives the reborn soul. “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet I will not forget thee” (Isaiah 49:15). Isaiah further prophesied, “Surely [Christ] hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4). As the author of the covenant birth, Jesus often used maternal language, such as, “how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings” (Matthew 23:37), and “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you” (John 14:18). The foundry crucible represents the medium for transmuting the human soul from one estate to another. The crucible has transformed the soul from one that draws blood, the sword, into a shape that holds blood, the cup of the covenant. “And they shall turn their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into sickles” (Isaiah 2:4 DRB). This is why Peter, an archetype of the ascending and descending man, was commanded to bring a sword, and also to drink from the Savior’s cup, “for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28 ESV).
When a human soul is incarnated in this half of the Great Age that we occupy, all the way from the astronomical age of Cancer through the coming age of Aquarius, that soul has “come down from heaven.” When a human soul is born in the other half of the Great Age, from Capricorn through the astronomical age of Leo, that soul ascends from the underworld via the sea.
The Qur’an describes Adam’s exalted status in the kingdom of heaven before he led humankind’s descent from the Father’s presence into the second estate. Adam and Eve and their posterity had already accomplished their first estate, being first born from Capricorn’s amphibious clay:
Surely We created you, then shaped you, then said to the angels, “Prostrate before Adam,” so they all did- but not Iblis, who refused to prostrate with the others.
Allah asked, “What prevented you from prostrating when I commanded you?” He replied, “I am better than he is: You created me from fire and him from clay.”
Allah said, “Then get down from Paradise! It is not for you to be arrogant here. So get out! You are truly one of the disgraced” (Qur’an 7:11-13).
And yet, despite Adam’s exalted status as Adapa, Atum, Oannes, etc., the Fall chronicles Adam’s subsequent descent through the planetary spheres because of the divinely ordained volition of Eve, who sought to bring about the eternal life of her children through the agency of covenant birth. After this, none of the intervening ages were without their calamities, beginning with the Great Flood Epoch of the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary in Cancer. In Gemini, the third seal from the fulness of Leo’s celestial glory, there was an awakening to writing and recordkeeping as symbolized in Thoth. With his tile and stylus keeping the book of life, Thoth was witness to the debased and holy potential of humankind. The age of Taurus, the Apis Bull, was the age of agriculture and animal husbandry in full flower. Human sacrifice of virgins and firstborn sons plagued this age from region to region. Abraham and his son Isaac encapsulate the transition from Taurus to Aries, with the son Isaac, Abraham’s taurus, being spared from Abraham’s willing blade only by the proxy ram caught in the thicket. Aries, ruled by the war god Mars, saw the continual warfare, ethnic cleansings, and genocides of the age predating Christ.
Combining all of these and expanded to an industrial scale, the Christian age for the last two thousand years saw the unrelenting march to history’s darkest hours of plagues and world wars and the actual potential of planetary annihilation due to scientific advances. In none of these ages has life been free of horrors. The Fall is the thickening of the veil of forgetfulness of the exaltation of Adam and Eve and the divine nature of the human soul. When all the souls were gathered in the Edenic seal of Leo, the nature of God was before our face continually. In the tail end of this Great Age, knowledge of the life cycle of humankind and its divine parentage is lost even to stewards of religion.
The cycling of infinitely progressive ordinances advancing the human soul made Eternal Life possible. Each time the soul progresses through the cycle, the relationship of spirit to matter may become increasingly refined until that soul, like Christ, has become a son or daughter begotten of heavenly parents. “They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are out of course. I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes” (Psalm 82:5-7).
The seal of Aries represents a mortal soul exercising its own agency to voluntarily enter into the covenant. It is the seed transformed by water (Cancer) and sunlight (Leo), into the sprout of a grain stalk embodying the maternal covenant of the second estate. “The earth produces by itself (virgin birth), first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear” (Mark 4:28, ESV, emphasis and parentheses added). At the blade stage, the stalk of wheat is indistinguishable from the tares. The seed has been converted, but it can do no good. Its potential is the full grain in the ear, and until it becomes that, its conversion from a seed is of no use to the one who planted the field. The grain in the ear is the deliberate conversion of a single seed into a full head capable of feeding others. “But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold” (Matthew 13:8). Even so, until the grain is harvested it has not filled the measure of its creation. There is no saving of the individual seed forever and no exclusively personal redemption. The destiny of the seed is the granary where the mill pulverizes individual seed grains into one flour. Here the ground down seed of the disciple is indistinguishable from the pulverized seeds of his neighbors, his enemies, and the master. This combined flour becomes the main constituent of the bread of life.
To fix one’s imagination only on the heavenly kingdom is to confuse the flour with the loaf of bread, or the crucible with the new alloy to be poured. The human soul is specially engineered for increase only by its cycles of conversion from one estate to another estate. “If those who lead you say to you, ‘See, the kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the children of the living Father” (Gospel of Thomas, saying 3).
KAMRON COLEMAN ART 