Chapter One: The
Renewal of the Age
Soldiers have
their sorrows,
The wretched have
their rage,
Pray for the aged,
It’s the dawn of
another age…
Phil
Ochs, “Another Age”
On
May 5, 2000, much attention was focused on the grand alignment the six inner
planets with the Sun and Moon. Remarkable though it was, this alignment was
but the portentous prelude for the Great Conjunction of
Jupiter and Saturn on May 28, 2000. Although Great Conjunctions occur
every twenty years, this one was special because it involved a “mutation”. A
“mutation” indicates a shift in the Zodiac “element”― Fire, Earth, Air,
or Water ― in which a series of Great Conjunctions occurs. For the past
200 years, the Great Conjunctions have occurred in the Earth signs (Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn). The Great Conjunction of May 28, 2000, in Taurus marked a
“mutation”, because it was the last in the current Earth‑sign series.
Beginning with the Jupiter‑Saturn conjunction of December 21, 2020 in
Aquarius, a new series of Air‑sign Great Conjunctions is inaugurated. The
subsequent Great Conjunction on October 31, 2040 will take place in Libra,
another Air sign.
While
the Great Conjunction of May 28, 2000, took place in the Zodiac sign of Taurus, it actually appeared in the sky within the constellation Aries, quite close to
the star Hamal, which marks the “head of the Ram”. Great Conjunctions follow a pattern know as a “trigon”, in which every third conjunction occurs in the
same vicinity. In this case, the conjunction of 2000 followed two others
― in 1881 and 1941 ― which transpired in the constellation Aries
near the star Hamal. Nostradamus clearly refers to these conjunctions in
Century I, Quatrain 51:
Jupiter and Saturn in the head of Aries,
Eternal God, what
mutations!
Then for a long
age his malignant time returns, …
This
particular Quatrain is to be found within a cluster of references to the
emergence of Antichrist and the attendant crisis in the Roman Catholic Church.
So it is not difficult to infer whose “malignant time” is meant to
coincide with the last of these Great Conjunctions in
the “head of Aries”. While the Provençal prophet generally shrouds his
predictions in ambiguities, here he seems to go out of his way to leave no
doubt by identifying the conjunction in question as a “mutation”. Quite
deliberately, Nostradamus leaves us room for only one interpretation: The
Great Conjunction/Mutation of 2000 augers the appearance of Antichrist on the
World scene. Logically, we might expect this to coincide with the other side
of this “mutation” ― i.e., the next Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction on December 21, 2020.
Prior
to the current series of Great Conjunctions in the Earth signs, there was a
series of such conjunctions in the Fire signs (Aries, Leo and Sagittarius). That series ended with a Great Conjunction in 1782 near the cusp of Sagittarius
and Capricorn. Similarly, the next series of Great Conjunctions in the Air
signs begins with the conjunction of 2020 right on the cusp of Capricorn and
Aquarius. Viewed in its broadest sense, therefore, the expired period of Great
Conjunctions in the Earth signs can be seen as spanning about 240 years (1782‑2020),
with a 20‑year overlap on either end with the preceding Fire‑sign
series (1782‑1802) and the succeeding Air‑sign series (2000‑2020).
For this reason, the ancient astrologers considered the period initiated by
each mutation as extending for 240 years.
The Great Year
Among
the astrologically‑oriented priesthood of the ancient Middle East, these
mutations in the Great Conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn were
used in devising a prophetic calendar for the Great Year. As we know from the
tradition embodied in the Six Days of Creation depicted in Genesis, this Great
Year comprises a period of six thousand years. Divided into twelve months, the
Great Year breaks down into “Great Months” of about 500 years. Since 500 years
roughly corresponds to the duration of two mutations, every other mutation
represents the transition between one Great Month and the next. The mutations
occur in the sequence of Zodiac sign elements Fire‑to‑Earth, Earth‑to‑Air,
Air‑to‑Water, and Water‑to‑Fire. Hence, the mutations
that divide the Great Months are those that occur between the Earth and Air
signs and between the Water and Fire signs.
Because
the Great Conjunction of May 28, 2000, marked a mutation between Earth and Air
signs, therefore, it also represented the end of a Great Month. This
observation, however, begs the question: “Which month?” Jewish tradition as,
set down in the Second Century Midrash Seder Olam Rabbah, assigns to the
Great Month a duration of 490 years. This is based on Daniel’s
prophecy of the “70 weeks” (9:24), which was interpreted to be 70 smittah
“weeks” of seven years apiece. The Seder Olam Rabbah considered the
“70-week”/ 490-year period to extend from the destruction of the First Temple to the destruction of the Second Temple. Nostradamus likely
drew upon this Midrash for his own prophetic chronology, which also specifies a
490-year interval between the destruction of the two Temples (Epistle ¶ 40).
Historical records, on the other hand, indicate that this period actually
lasted about 150 to 200 years longer. Since the Midrashic dating became the
basis of the official Talmudic chronology, the Hebrew calendar has a
“shortfall” of the same duration. Hence, while the Great Conjunction of 2000
corresponded to the Hebrew year 5760, it actually transpired somewhere between
5910 and 5960 years after the Fall of Adam ― which is to say, quite close
to the end of the Sixth Millennium of human history.
Midrashic
tradition also taught that the Messiah was to be born at the beginning of the
8th Great Month ― which was calculated to fall late in the First Century
BC or early in the First Century AD. This explains why Messianic anticipation
was at such a feverish pitch when Jesus of Nazareth arrived on the scene.
Jesus was actually born in 7 BC during a conjunction of Jupiter and
Saturn that took place, appropriately enough, in Pisces, the sign of the Fish.
The Great Conjunction of 7 BC was a triple conjunction, extending over a period
of about six months. It was also a very tight conjunction, so that Jupiter and
Saturn on three occasions seemed to merge into a single, exceedingly bright
star, which we know as the “Star of Bethlehem”. The Great Conjunction of the
Nativity was the last of its series in the Water signs, with the next Great
Conjunction (14 AD) located in Sagittarius, a Fire sign. Thus, the Nativity
coincided with the Water‑to‑Fire mutation which launched the 8th
Great Month.
By
this reckoning, the 9th Great Month would have kicked off with the Earth‑to‑Air
mutation associated with the triple conjunction of 411‑412 AD.
Interestingly, the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction of November 411 was followed in
the same month by a conjunction of the two outermost planets, Neptune and
Pluto. By an amazing “coincidence”, Neptune-Pluto conjunctions occur at
490-year intervals ― precisely the length of the Midrashic Great Month
based on Daniel’s “70 weeks”! Since successive Great Months overlap one
another, the 9th Month would have extended from 411 to 829 AD, when a new
series of Great Conjunctions commenced in the Fire signs. The 10th month, in
turn, lasted from 809 until the next Air‑sign series began in 1246 AD,
overlapping for 20 years each with the 9th Month (809‑829) and the 11th
month (1226‑1246). Similarly, the 11th month spanned the years 1226 AD
to 1623 AD, overlapping with the 12th Month for the interval of the Water‑to‑Fire
mutation 1603‑1623.
The beginning of the 12th ― and final ― month of the
Great Year was accompanied by remarkable cosmic portents. The Great
Conjunction of December 1603 in Sagittarius was followed by a dramatic massing
of Mars with Jupiter and Saturn the next year. The Mars-Saturn conjunction of
September 26, 1604, was followed by a Mars-Jupiter conjunction on October 9,
1604, which coincided with the appearance of a brilliant Supernova. Blood-red
in color, Supernova SN 1604 ― as it was later named ― appeared very
close to the three conjoined planets. Astronomer Johannes Kepler observed it
in the “right foot” of the “Serpent-Handler” Ophiuchus,
a constellation symbolically linked with Antichrist. The Supernova was at the
apex of a triangle with Saturn and Mars/Jupiter at the base. Within a few
days, SN 1604 ― or “Kepler’s Star”, as it was also known ― outshone
the three planets and every other star in the sky. It would continue to
dominate the night sky for 17 months, after which it faded away.
“Kepler’s
Star” was the last supernova observed in our galaxy up to the present date.
This extraordinary celestial phenomenon stimulated a wave of intense
apocalyptic speculation which culminated in the emergence of an occult “secret
society” that called itself the “Order of the Rosy Cross”
― or “Rosicrucians”. Anonymous Rosicrucian “manifestos” began to
appear, proclaiming that the Supernova of 1604 was a heavenly sign signifying
the discovery of the tomb of one Christian Rosenkreutz ― whose name means
“Christ of the Rosy Cross”. Christian Rosenkreutz was reputed to have been
initiated into a something called the “Priory of Solomon”,
allegedly founded by the Knights Templar when they occupied the site of
Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem during the First Crusade.
The Great Translation
Thus
began the 12th Great Month, which extends from 1603 to 2020, when the next
series of Great Conjunctions moves into the Air signs. The transitional
period, during which the 12th Month overlaps the 13th, began on May 28, 2000,
with the Great Conjunction in Taurus (22degrees 43 minutes), and ends December
21, 2020, with the Great Conjunction in Aquarius (0 degrees 28 minutes). But
what are we to make of the “13th Month”? In most ancient calendars, including
the Hebrews’, a 13th “leap” month was periodically added to reconcile the solar
year with the lunar month. In Hebrew gematria, moreover, the number 13 equates
to the word echad, meaning “one”. So the “13th month” of the
past Great Year is simultaneously the “1st month” of the next Great
Year: It represents the “renewal of the Age”, so to speak. More ominously,
the number 13 recurs repeatedly in the Luciferian occultism of the Knights
Templar and their successors.
All
of the foregoing symbolism informs what is perhaps the most consequential of
all of the prophecies of Nostradamus. As in Century I, Quatrain 51, where he
refers to the Great Conjunction of May 28, 2000, marking the beginning of the
transition between the 12th and 13th Great Months, so in
Century I, Quatrain 16, he clearly points to the Great Conjunction of December
21, 2020, which signifies the end of that transition.
The Scythe joined
with the Tin in the Pond toward Sagittarius
At its pinnacle
of its exaltation,
Plague, famine,
death by military hand,
The Age
approaches its renovation.
Since
the Scythe and the Tin are the astrological sigils of the planets Saturn and
Jupiter, respectively, and the Pond corresponds to the Zodiac sign of Aquarius,
the “Water Pourer”, the stanza’s first line describes a conjunction of Saturn
and Jupiter in Aquarius. The Great Conjunction of December 21, 2020, occurs in
Aquarius (0 degrees, 28 minutes) at the cusp of Capricorn, the Goat. Because
it traditionally rules both signs, Saturn is “at the pinnacle of its
exaltation” there, as specified in the Quatrain’s second line. In the night
sky, this conjunction appears between the constellations Capricornus and
Sagittarius, again in accordance with the first line of the stanza. In fact,
it recreates the “Star of Bethlehem” beneath the Head of the Goat, within eyeshot
of the Goat’s malevolent “left eye” – the star Dabih, which is Arabic
for the “Butcher”.
In
occult symbolism, the Head of the Goat is linked to the satanic Goat of Mendes,
also known as Baphomet, the pagan idol worshipped by the Knights Templar. The
hidden “Great Work” of occultism throughout the centuries has been to replace
the Jewish-Christian-Moslem God – the God of Abraham – with a revived pagan
idolatry. And under the reign of Antichrist, they are destined to achieve that
goal… for a time.
In
the infamous rendering of Baphomet by the 19th Century
black-magician Eliphas Levi, we see the idol gesturing toward two crescents
depicting lunar and solar eclipses, which always occur in pairs. Forebodingly,
the Great Conjunction of December 21, 2020, will transpire in the wake of two
such eclipses, with the “Black Sun” of a total solar eclipse appearing one week
before the Conjunction, on December 14, 2020. Occult doctrine associates the
“Black Sun” with the star Sirius, which is represented by the Pentagram
on the forehead of Levi’s Goat icon above. This star was known as Sothis in
ancient Egyptian lore and was often symbolized by the “Eye of Horus”, the
“All-Seeing Eye” of Masonic imagery, which dominates the Great Seal of the
United States of America.
Horus
was the hawk-nosed Egyptian god of the Winter Solstice, which marks the day of
the Great Conjunction of December 21, 2020. According to the notorious
Luciferian Aleister Crowley, himself an acolyte of Eliphas Levi, mankind is on
the threshold of the Aeon of Horus, in which Abrahamic monotheism is eclipsed.
Crowley, who liked to style himself the “Beast”, looked forward to a “New Age”,
ruled by an Egyptian-style High-Priest/King under the aegis of Horus. Notably,
in Century V, Quatrain 45, Nostradamus seems to envision the same scenario – at
least temporarily – in connection with the Renewal of the Age.
The
great Empire will soon be desolated…
And
Bronzebeard the Hawk-nose shall reign
In
the context of our times, the “great Empire” is clearly the USA, with its
military tentacles in some 80 nations worldwide. Its desolation will perhaps
come in the guise of the plague and famine promised by Nostradamus’ prophecy
concerning the Renewal of the Age – added to which may be a bloody military
coup. Into the vacuum left by the collapse of the American Empire will step an
incarnation of the Beast who Crowley aspired to be. His name, “Bronzebeard” is
a translation of the Latin Aenobarbus, the family name of the Roman
Emperor Nero, whose number 666 identifies the Antichrist of Revelation.
Long awaited,
he will never return
In Europe,
but will appear in Asia:
One of the
league issued from the great Hermes,
And
he will grow over all the Kings of the East. (Century X, Quatrain 75)
Hermes
is the pagan god of the Underworld and Black Magic, the deceiving trickster
embraced by the Knights Templar during their reign in the Crusader Kingdom of
Jerusalem. Not fortuitously, perhaps the most sinister modern Templar avatar,
founded by arch-Satanist Crowley himself, is the Ordo Templi Orientis,
or Order of the Temple of the East, abbreviated OTO. The “long awaited” one
refers to the legendary return of Emperor Nero, expected to reappear in Persia
(modern Iran) at the End of Time. In his Epistle ¶5, Nostradamus sees his
advent in the Seventh Millennium coming at a time
… when the
adversaries of Jesus Christ and his Church will begin to strongly congregate
and forcefully overrun it …
Nostradamus
refers to this reborn Nero, whose Scriptural number is 666, as the Antichrist –
the last of three he describes in his prophecies. In Epistle ¶23, the Prophet
envisions the “great Empire of the Antichrist” emerging from a conflict between
the Atlantic powers (NATO) and Persia (Iran), a struggle which will spread to
the Ukraine and Russia as well. After the abominable spirit of Nero “effects a
transmigration” to possess the Antichrist, he unleashes a war against the
Church of Jesus Christ and its lone defender among the nations of the world.
As he expands upon further in the Epistle, this apocalyptic War on Religion results
in a persecution of religion unprecedented in history, eclipsing even the
Jewish Holocaust of the 20th Century, destroying entire nations and
consuming two-thirds of the human race. And all of this horror has its origins
in a crossroads of events which Nostradamus calls the “Great Translation”.
In
the Old French of the Prophet’s time, the word “translation” had meanings that
we no longer commonly assign to it. One of those meanings is a “relocation” or
a “realignment”, which is applied in a religious rather than physical context.
Thus, three of the great religious translations of the Mediterranean region
have occurred with Moses and the Torah, Jesus and the Gospels, and Mohammed and
the Koran, engendering the three major Abrahamic faiths of Judaism,
Christianity and Islam. The Great Translation to which Epistle ¶24 refers is
one which will suppress the Abrahamic faiths and replace them – for a time –
with a strain of Gnostic occultism, with roots in ancient Egyptian rites and
the Grail heresies of the Middle Ages.
Saturn Reigns
Again
The
Great Conjunctions play out against the mythical background of a primordial
“Great Translation”, in which the newborn god Jupiter/Jove (Roman names for
Greek Zeus) overthrew and replaced his aged father Saturn (the Roman name for
Greek Kronos) as the supreme pagan god. Since the Hebrew name for Saturn is Sabbatai,
denoting the Jewish Sabbath on Saturday, the planet Saturn has long been
identified with the Jews and with their emblem, the Star of David. Although
the reign of Saturn in Greco-Roman myth was seen as a Golden Age of peace and
good will, Saturn also had a dark side, characterized by malevolence, avarice
and melancholy. During the Middle Ages, these ambivalent characteristics of
Saturn were attributed to the Jews in furtherance of anti-Semitic themes
relating to money-lending and the crucifixion of Christ. Saturn’s mythical
role as a child-eater was also maliciously ascribed to the Jews to buttress
“blood libel” accusations of their ritual murder of Christian children. Analogies
were drawn between the pagan religious shift from Saturn to Jupiter and the
monotheistic shift from Judaism to Christianity, with the displaced faith in
each case seen as harboring a Saturnine vengeful resentment against its
successor.
On
the Jewish side of this divide, there was a strong association between the
promised restoration of Saturn in a renewed Golden Age and the advent of a Messiah,
under whom a redeemed Israel would rule over the Gentile nations. Medieval
Jewish astrologers – upon whom Nostradamus drew for many of his prophecies – interpreted
the Great Conjunctions between Saturn and Jupiter as auguring the emergence of
new religions, as had been the case with the birth of Jesus. Since Saturn
ruled the Zodiac signs Capricorn and Aquarius, these two signs were also
identified with Jewish anticipation of a resurgent Israel dominating the
Messianic Age. Hence, because these two signs define the cusp where the Great
Conjunction of December 21, 2020 occurs, we should expect Israel to play a
major part in the religious revolution which this Great Conjunction portends.
Among
the unsavory mythical traits of Saturn are its connection with pandemic
disease, such as the historic Black Death. Perhaps this explains why
Nostradamus envisions the transition to the new Golden Age under Saturn’s rule
as ensuing after decades of plague, famine and war. As we discussed earlier in
reference to Century I, Quatrain 16, he views the Winter Solstice Great
Conjunction of 2020 against a desolate backdrop of “plague, famine, [and] death
by military hand”. And in both prose sections of his prophecies (Epistle ¶33
and Preface ¶25-26), Nostradamus sees two-thirds of humanity perishing during
an unprecedented pandemic in the run-up to the revived Golden Age.
Meanwhile, such a
plague will arise that more than two thirds of the world will be removed. So
that one will be unable to ascertain the true owners of fields and houses, and
weeds will grow in the streets of cities higher than the knees.
For according to
the celestial signs , the reign of Saturn shall return…the world is approaching
a revolution that breaks wholly with the past… the world shall be so diminished
by plagues,by extended famines & wars & even more by floods… that no
one shall be found willing to work the fields, which shall remain fallow for as
long a time as they were subjected to the plow…
The
upshot of all this suffering, according to Nostradamus (Epistle ¶54-56), is a
desperate human race turning to a false messiah in a period of Tribulation
preceding the Millennial Jubilee.
the Holy of
Holies will turn to be destroyed by Paganism, and the old and new Testaments
discarded and burned, and after that Antichrist will be the infernal prince again
for the last time, all the Kingdoms of Christianity will tremble, and also
those of the infidels, for the space of twenty-five years, and there will be
wars and battles, and towns, cities, castles and all other edifices will be
burned, desolated and destroyed, with great effusion of blood of violated
vestals, married woman and widows, and sucking children dashed and broken
against the walls of towns, and so may evils will be committed by means of
Satan, Prince Infernal, that nearly all the world will find itself undone and
desolated: and before these events some rare birds will cry in the air: Hui,
hui [Today, today], and sometime later will vanish.
And after such
times have long endured, there will be almost renewed another reign of Saturn,
and golden age: Hearing the affliction of his people, God the Creator will
command that Satan be bound and cast into the depths of the bottomless pit: and
then a universal peace will commence between God and man, and Satan will remain
bound for around a thousand years,…
The Golden Age to Come
At
the time Nostradamus wrote his prophecies, the Wars of Religion between the
Catholics and the Huguenots were ranging in France and the Inquisition was in
full swing. Since the astrology and clairvoyance from which he drew his
predictions were often equated with heresy, Nostradamus was obliged to leave
“clues” as to his visions of the future, rather than revealing them
explicitly. Accordingly, we have assembled a set of such clues regarding the
new Golden Age inaugurated by the Great Mutation of December 21, 2020. In
interpreting these clues, we must consider the mythical background against
which they play out.
Before
we start to talk about myths, we need to understand what they really are. Our
modern “education” typically presents us with a very patronizing perspective on
mythology – one which tends to dismiss it as a set of fantasies concocted by
backward societies to explain phenomena beyond their scant knowledge. Now that
our vaunted “science” has dispelled the fog of superstition, we relegate
myth-making to the modern commercial “dream factories” of Disney and
Spielberg. But myths actually represent a level of Reality above that
encompassed by our narrow materialistic consciousness.
Myths
are actually an expanded type of “memory”. I say “expanded”, because our
diminished powers of memory pertain only to the Past, whereas the realm of Mythos
lies outside our one-dimensional “time-line” of Past-Present-Future. Because
our consciousness has been reduced to that of our individual egos, we seldom,
if ever, experience the visionary Time of Mythos in our waking lives.
This radically blinkered view of Reality would drive us mad were it not for the
blessed balm of sleep, which plunges us back into a mythical Time, in which
everything is in sync, and things happen “all at once”, in no particular order,
with multiple versions of Reality interwoven like a tapestry. In Dreamtime, we
transcend our little solipsistic ego-personas, bust through our quotidian
prisons, and become truly complete, universal Beings. I can be you, you can be
me, we can all be anyone or everyone – somehow it doesn’t matter. It’s like
we’re driving a car on a highway with an infinite number of lanes, each one
traversing its own special World within the highway Multiverse. As long as
we’re dreaming, we can change lanes/Worlds as often as we like, but when we
wake up, we forget how to do that. The first thing the awakening ego does is re-impose
one-dimensional time – squeezing the expansive mosaic of the Dream into the
strait-jacket of a bizarre linear narrative.
Until
about 6000 years ago, Dreamtime dominated human consciousness, as it continued
to do in some isolated aboriginal cultures well into the 20th
Century. Then, around 4500 BC a period of rapid climate change brought arid
conditions to the Middle East, disrupting the agrarian societies there and
initiating a thousand year transition to urban civilizations based on
mercantile economies and metallurgic technologies. In fact, the ensuing
periods came to be known by the predominant metals in use: the Copper, Bronze
and Iron Ages. The use of metals in weaponry, combined with unstable social
conditions, gave rise to an era of warfare and the rise of military empires.
The use of metals as coins introduced money and bred a social hierarchy based
on wealth, usury and ultimately slavery.
These
profound social shifts were mirrored by religious transformations – or
“translations”, as Nostradamus would have it – by which rites promoting the
Earth’s fertility and the fecundity of its creatures gave way to a cult of
war-like sky gods. In Greek religion, this translation was expressed by the
overthrow of the agrarian god Kronos/Saturn by his warrior son Zeus/Jupiter,
wielding the sky’s thunderbolt as his weapon. Tellingly, the mythical birth of
Zeus took place on the island of Crete, which was then emerging as the West’s
first great mercantile empire. Zeus presided over an age of carnage, greed and
exploitation, turning the Golden Age of peace and abundance into an Iron Age of
violence and privation, which continues to the present day. The Roman poet
Albius Tibullus expressed it this way:
How well man used to live with
Saturn as king,…
No house had doors to lock, no
stones, set it the fields,
Marked fixed limits to the
farms,…
No armies, no rage to kill, no war
existed;
Nor had the cruel smith with brutal
skill yet forged a sword,
But now in the
reign of Jove, slaughter and wounds are ever-present…
While
Zeus reigned high above mankind from the top of Mount Olympus, Saturn dwelt
among his people, in a state of perfect equality and fellowship. Trecento
Italian poet Fazio degli Uberti wrote:
This time was called the Golden
Age,
because man lived together in
harmony,
sober, chaste and free,
pure and without vice.
In
spite of his benevolent regime, Saturn himself presents us with a very complex
character, full of dichotomies and contradictions. While he is perhaps the
greatest benefactor of the human race in the pagan pantheon, tutoring mankind
in the fine arts, shipbuilding and agriculture, Saturn is also associated with
malevolence, cruelty, avarice, melancholy, old age, and sickness. In order to
ascend to supremacy among the Greco-Roman deities, Saturn castrated his father
Uranus. Faced with a prophecy that one of his own children would depose him,
he swallowed each of them in turn as soon as they emerged from the womb.
Although his Golden Age transcended destiny, Saturn is typically portrayed as
Father Time, the inexorable agent of decay and death, wielding his dreadful
sickle or scythe – the same he used to emasculate his father – to harvest human
lives. Yet even that ominous scythe equally displays the god’s benign
agricultural aspect.
As
paradoxical as these Saturnine dichotomies may seem when viewed from our
“cause-and-effect” reference frame, they confirm that the most fundamental
Reality resides outside that reference frame. Saturn the god breaks the chain
of cause-and-effect, neutralizing the former when he castrates his father, and
preempting the latter when he devours his offspring. Since, he is neither the
deist god of the First Cause, nor the pantheist god of the Final Effect, he
defines an ontology without boundaries, in which contraries are not separated,
but rather co-exist, side-by-side. In this respect, Mythos anticipates
quantum physics, which teaches us that, from instant-to-instant, the fabric of
what is truly Real branches out like a boundless tree – the Tree of Life – with
opposite outcomes dangling from adjoining limbs. In the purest state of Being,
there are no endpoints: intervals in time are empty abstractions, because, as
Zeno long ago demonstrated, not even the shortest interval can capture the
motion of Becoming, the essence of Being.
Only
what is Eternal is Real; all else is Vanity, as King Solomon observed in
Ecclesiastes. Eternity perdures because of its contradictions, not in
spite of them, because contraries are the engine that drives Becoming. Nobody
had a better grasp of this than the poet William Blake:
Negations are not
Contraries: Contraries mutually Exist:
But Negations Exist
Not: Exceptions & Objections & Unbeliefs
Exist not: nor shall
they ever be Organized for ever & ever:
If thou separate
from me, thou art a Negation: a meer
Reasoning &
Derogation from Me, an Objecting & cruel Spite
And Malice &
Envy: but my Emanation, Alas! will become
My Contrary: O thou
Negation, I will continually compell
Thee to be invisible
to any but whom I please, & when
And where & how
I please, and never! never! shalt thou be
Organized
But as a distorted
& reversed Reflexion in the Darkness
And in the Non
Entity: nor shall that which is above
Ever descend into
thee: but thou shalt be a Non Entity for ever.
– Jerusalem,
Plate 17, (E 161)
Eternity
encompasses both Heaven and Hell, Life and Death, Good and Evil. Truth is not
to be found by negating these polarities, because, like separated poles of a
magnet, they are rendered non-existent. This is the error of dualism, which
amounts to the worship of Vanities. Once divided, contraries clash and
engender the violence and warfare that dominate the Iron Age of Jupiter.
Things Eternal must be coherent, while the disjunction of opposites is decoherence.
Reality cannot be disassembled and reassembled from its parts, because the
partial cannot be Real. Reality is the child of conjunction, conceived in the
marriage of contrarieties.
So,
when we talk about a return of the Golden Age, we are venturing into an
ontological landscape that is entirely different from our own. Almost all of
what we regard as actual is in fact disjointed and therefore illusory. The
incessant turmoil of our lives testifies to that fact. We live in a partial
reality that increasingly decoheres toward a totally “virtual reality”,
completely without substance. During the Golden Age, Saturn ruled over both
the Living and the Dead, and there was no boundary between those two realms.
Under the bygone Olympian religion and even the later monotheistic faiths, the
supreme deity retreated into the sky, abandoning the World and the Underworld to
demonic non-entities. Yet our collective yearning for Emmanuel, for “God with
us” here on Earth, steadfastly abides and clings to a remnant of the Golden Age
which persists in our year-end celebrations deriving from the ancient Roman
festival of Saturnalia.
Saturnalia Restored
When
Jupiter ousted Saturn as the supreme deity, the translucent fluidity of Dreamtime
congealed into the unyielding opacity of clock time – the relentless, soulless
cadence of marching armies and manacled captives. The Medusa gaze of rational
certainty locked down experience in an adamantine prison of superficial facts
that conceal the vast interiority of Meaning. Ostensibly gone were the magic
moments of Metamorphosis, which poet Ezra Pound extolled:
The undeniable tradition of
metamorphosis teaches us that things do not remain always the same. They
become other things by swift and unanalyzable process.
Where
Saturn had been the god of endless transformation, Jupiter presided over a
static vista, a magic lantern show of still-frames mimicking motion – but
devoid of real action and intractable to Will. But, for that very reason,
Jupiter was incapable of officiating the annual transition from an old year to
a new one. Since the Romans were intensely logical in their religion, they saw
that casting Jupiter in such a role was inadmissible, so they had their chief
god step down at year’s end and allow his predecessor Saturn to rule once more
in that interval, which was the festival of Saturnalia. And so, the return of
the Golden Age was not something whimsical or visionary for the hard-nosed
Romans, rather it was an actual and recurring part of their lives.
That
being said, we can best understand what our promised Golden Age redux
might look like by contemplating the ancient Saturnalia rites. Those rites
become even more relevant when consider that the harbinger of the new Golden
Age – the Great Conjunction of December 21, 2020 – occurs on the pivotal date
of the Saturnalia. Not only that, but it represents the Great Mutation which
marks the end of the 6000 year cycle initiated by the rise of Jupiter and the
fall of Saturn, a Mutation that betokens the reversal of that primordial
revolution and the restoration of the former monarch. And the cosmic symbolism
could not be more appropriate than at this crossroads where the planets Jupiter
and Saturn will meet.
The
Roman Saturnalia was a week-long carnival that began on December 17th
and ended on December 23rd each year. In many ways, it was the
template for the later Christian-Jewish year-end celebrations of Christmas and
Hanukkah, especially in terms of the emphases on children, gift-giving,
candle-lighting, joy and overall goodwill. But there was also a radically
egalitarian and anarchic theme in the Roman festival which has been obscured by
the commercialization of the “Holidays” in modern times. Just as the
autocratic god Jupiter stepped down for this week in favor of his libertine
father Saturn, so the despot Caesar gave way to the King of Saturnalia elected
by the plebeians. With the laws suspended and the courts closed, there was
absolute license granted for any kind of outrageous conduct and indulgence of
appetites. Yet it was the most peaceful and crime-free time of the entire
year.
Among
the laws suspended during the Saturnalia was the lex alearia banning
gambling in Rome. For a time, the conventions of society were cast aside in
favor of the roll of the dice, and amidst the general carousing, the click-click
of fritillis dicing boxes could be heard everywhere. But the stakes
were not money or precious goods, but instead players gambled for ordinary
nuts, as was the practice under Saturn’s prehistoric reign. In his Saturnalia
dialogues, Lucian of Samosata, recites this exchange between Saturn and a Roman
priest:
Priest:
… But here is another question, please. Used mortals to play dice in your time?
Saturn:
Surely; but not for hundreds or thousands of sesterces like you; nuts were
their highest stake; a man might lose without a sigh or a tear, when losing
could not mean starvation.
Putting
this into context, the game of dice began as a method of divination, derived
from “knucklebones”, which were ankle-bones taken from sacrificial victims –
originally human and later animals. During the primeval Golden Age, farmers
after sowing their seeds would cast dice as a way of gambling with the powers
of the Underworld for a bountiful harvest. Since seeds are planted
underground, they were thought to fall under the province of chthonic deities,
who also ruled over the Dead. Greek historian Herodotus recounts legends of
dice games with the chthonic corn goddess Demeter, daughter of Saturn/Kronos.
Roman dice or astragali could be cubic or tetrahedral, which is revealing
because, among the Platonic solids, the cube was associated with Saturn and the
tetrahedron with Jupiter. In an amazing parallel, 17th Century
astronomer Johannes Kepler, while studying the Great Conjunctions of Jupiter
and Saturn, discovered that their respective planetary orbits can be calculated
based on a tetrahedron nested within a cube!
So
it seems that the contrary qualities of Saturn rub off on his festival as
well. Beneath the veneer of orgiastic merry-making lurk rites involving Death,
the Underworld … and even human sacrifice. On one hand, the obsessive
dice-playing of the Saturnalia was an expression of Liberty, as was the red pileus
cap worn by everyone during the carnival. Both patricians and plebeians,
masters and slaves donned the pileus – traditionally worn by freed
slaves – to demonstrate that class distinctions were erased, freeing both
masters and slaves from their false hierarchal identities. Much later in
history, the same red pileus cap would serve the same purpose for the sans-culottes
of the French Revolution.
The
image above actually depicts the three Magi wearing the pileus as they
bear their gifts to the new-born Christ child – yet another reminder, along the
with red cap worn by Santa Claus, of the linkage between the Saturnalia and our
Christmas holiday.
If
dice-playing made the Saturnalia feel like one big game, it was to express the
idea that social, moral and religious mores at all times are a game, and
that the rules of the game can be changed. For all the nonsense one hears
about how “human nature” preordains exploitive societies, the Romans annually
demonstrated that humans can literally turn on a dime – or on the roll of the
dice – from a hierarchal structure in which wealth and rank mean everything, to
one in which they mean nothing. Cancelled is the Wheel of Fortune game, which
arbitrarily confers bounty and bliss on some and wretched poverty on others. Instead,
mankind can play the Reversal of Fortune game, in which all is shared in common,
as it was in mythical reign of Saturn. What we have has no meaning, no
efficacy until it is given. Wealth does not enrich Life unless it
circulates freely, as opposed to hoarded wealth which “breeds” like a virus, a
parasitic blight on Life. While the Saturnalia was in some ways chaotic, it
had its rules, and Rule #1 was that man’s fate is not immutable – an assertion
of the irrepressible freedom of the human Will. Life, like a die, can be cast
again and again, generating a Multiverse of possibilities from which we have
the power to choose.
But
what guides us in that choice is all-important. Individual ego autonomy leads
in one direction, collective solidarity in another – and humanity will find
itself increasingly pulled in both directions as we approach the restored
Saturnalia in the midst of world-wide plague, famine and war. It goes without
saying that the dichotomies of Saturn lend themselves to such a critical
watershed, which portends either the extinction of the human race or its
ascension to the Presence of God. In his darker aspect, Saturn was identified
with the bloodthirsty Punic idol Ba’al Hammon, who was worshipped as Melqart
(aka Melkarth or Moloch) in Tyre. King Hiram, friend of Israel’s King Solomon,
built a great temple of Melqart in Tyre, and then lent his architect Hiram
Abiff and his skilled artisans to Solomon to build the Jewish Temple in
Jerusalem. According to the Testament of Solomon, he was given a ring with a
pentagram seal by which he was able to control the demons – one of whom assumed
the form of Kronos/Saturn – and compel them to work for him in construct the
Temple. Solomon would later offer sacrifices to Melqart/Moloch to obtain the
sexual favors of the Shulamite maiden, for whom he wrote the scriptural Song of
Songs.
From
this we can infer that the religious upheaval of Nostradamus’ Great Translation
may culminate in a reconstruction of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. As we will
explore in subsequent chapters, such a project would involve a convergence of
long-standing Masonic and Zionist agendas. With its roots in the infernal
rites of Moloch, including human sacrifice, such a Third Temple has been
prophesied to serve as the throne of Antichrist during the perilous transition
to the Messianic/Golden Age. In that scenario, the coming Saturnalia could
descend into a new Holocaust, a celebration of Death. And what is the
alternative to that terrible prospect? Not the negation of Death, which would
negate Life as well, but rather a conjunction of Life and Death, a tearing down
of the wall between the two.
Such
an epiphany is, in fact, implicit in the Roman Saturnalia, when the Dead were
believed to return among the Living and share in their festivities. In the
wake of sowing season, the Dead were like the recently buried seeds, awaiting
rebirth. The Saturnalia was held during a void in clock time, between the
Sun’s “death” at the Solstice and its rebirth thereafter, and between the
“death” of the Old Year and the arrival of the New Year. At this critical
juncture, the Dead draw close to the Living, sharing in the explosion of vital
energy which the license of Saturn’s rites generate. While the participation
of the Dead was seen as necessary to restore mundane time at the end of each
year, at the end of the Great Year it takes on a heightened significance – that
is, the restoration of the Dreamtime that came before one-dimensional time.
Thus, the Resurrection of the Dead – the central theme of all three
Abrahamic religions – represents the end of delusional time and the refounding
of Time which is Real because it is Eternal.
And
so, the ultimate game of Saturnalia is the reversal of Saturn’s overthrow by
Jupiter – but this time not for just a week, but forever. The ending of the
Great Year of Jupiter’s reign – the dark Age of Iron and Blood – and the
beginning of a New Great Year reinstating Saturn’s Age of Gold and Bliss are
marked in the heavens by the meeting of their planets on the Winter Solstice
and renewed Saturnalia of the year 2020. In the next chapter, we will imagine
how that Saturnalia plays out in Dreamtime.