neilgodfrey wrote:
Did these artists accidentally stumble upon the hidden meanings?
Stephan Huller has shared some wonderful Russian art work from the Middle Ages illustrating Jesus Christ standing upon an X. Stephan has suggested he and I co-author a journal article on Cosmic Symbolism of the Chi Rho Cross. This is based on my discovery, drawn out by Stephan, that the Chi Rho cross could have been seen by the ancients as the intersection of the ecliptic, the equator and the first fish of Pisces on 15 September 21 AD.
This is a core hidden meaning regarding the identity of Jesus Christ as imagined mediator between earth and heaven, with this symbol of a cosmic harmony at the decade assigned to the passion of Christ according to the Gospels and creeds.
The history of this original cosmic framework for Christology, how it was constructed, understood, popularised and lost, is a core theme for this thread. The reasons for loss are complex, and include deep problems of religious ideation, and cultural prejudice and conflict regarding Christian identity and its relation to the broader context of ancient religion. Heresiology is abundantly available regarding the presence of Gnostic cosmic teachings, and their rejection by the church.
So how did Medieval artists retain cosmic themes? The story here is that the cosmic themes are present in the Bible, most vividly in the Apocalypse. The Holy City, the woman crowned with twelve stars, the seven lamps, Christ Pantocrator, the King of Ages, Ichthys: these intense popular symbols are at the source of religious veneration of how Christ connects fallen humanity to the eternal truth of the cosmos.
So, there is a thread of continuity in popular symbol. This specific iconic theme of the Resurrection that Stephan has provided has a precise meaning regarding Christ at Easter. Easter occurs when the sun moves from south to north of the equator. So the astronomy is very simple, and does not require much stumbling to see. The sun makes a line in the sky, known as the ecliptic, and the equator is also drawn as a line in the sky. The sun, symbolised by Christ, crosses the equator at Easter, forming this X shape.
There is also a bigger astronomical meaning of Jesus Christ as Avatar of the Age of Pisces, which these icons reflect in their shape of Christ as the vertical line corresponding to the first fish of the constellation crossed in 21 AD. How widely that inner meaning was explicitly known is impossible to say.
neilgodfrey wrote:
If so, does that include Leonardo da Vinci?
Leonardo was the greatest genius of the Renaissance.
Leonardo's fresco The Last Supper is shown in this short video as encoding the movement of the sun through the zodiac. I have proven this as a simple and objective scientific observation, but the lack of recognition of this discovery is a great indicator of the pathological state of religious culture.
Written several decades before Copernicus, Leonardo’s Notebooks state “the sun does not move”, and “Hermes the Philosopher”, and discuss the earth on the model of the human body. These scientific ideas are incorporated in The Last Supper. Christ is modelled on the star group of Pisces, and the twelve disciples are modelled on the twelve star groups of the ecliptic in order. Leonardo’s keen modern focus on accurate natural observation included observation of the sky. The shift of the spring point into Pisces from the time of Christ is a relatively simple scientific observation from ancient times, despite the disputes about trepidation. Leonardo represents Christ as Pisces, here and in The Baptism of Christ where John the Baptist is modelled on the stars of Aquarius. This all accords with an accurate scientific Christology that was entirely available to someone in Leonardo’s position, although his caution about discussing it openly is also completely understandable.
neilgodfrey wrote: Did they realize that they were making use of the hidden meanings or did they do it unconsciously?
I think that is a mix. Church altars were routinely placed at the east so that the dawning sun would illuminate the process of transubstantiation of the elements. This sense of a magical link to nature is a big part of the imaginative fascination of religion. It has both a conscious explicit scientific explanation, and also an emotional resonance in symbol and ritual. It is entirely possible for the emotion to sustain itself in the absence of conscious understanding, especially when knowledge of the rational meaning has been obliterated by political corruption, as happened throughout Christendom. Anyone who wanted to talk about the real meaning here had to be very circumspect, given that the standard punishment for heresy was burning at the stake. So concealment and circumspection are to be expected.
neilgodfrey wrote:
If the latter, were they tapping into some sort of Jungian archetype?
I find Jung’s writing on archetypes rather unsatisfactory, as he is vague and imprecise, using broad metaphysical ideas such as anima without linking it back to objective astronomy. I regard the concept of archetypes as immensely valuable, signifying the great objective unifying symbols of reality. In this case, the chi in the sky, anyone can see it on any clear night as the intersection of the galaxy and the zodiac. With a bit more astronomical knowledge, anyone can also see the chi formed by the zodiac and the equator. The archetype here is that the movement of the sun from south to north matches the annual rebirth of life on earth at spring. This annual process has been going on like clockwork for all terrestrial life for four billion years, so it is deeply embedded in our DNA.
I think to some extent Jung confused the meaning of archetypes with an overly mystical and magical vision. I prefer to strip such ideas back to a scientific core, especially regarding how religious psychology uses observation of the cosmos as a structure for its ethical symbols.
neilgodfrey wrote:
Do you think that Christianity could have also incorporated astral meanings in the same unconscious manner if that's what the artists were doing?
This is an abundantly evident process. When Christ is depicted as shining like the sun, we see an unconscious connection drawn between the sun as the real source of light and life and Christ as the imagined source of light and life. When the four evangelists are drawn with their symbols, as in
the mandorla vesica piscis of Christ in Majesty, we see the observation of the eternal heavens is used as the model of the ideal of humanity. The history of this meme of the four living creatures is a fascinating problem in cultural psychology.
neilgodfrey wrote:
You don't believe Jesus was historical but you seem to be saying he said something of relevance to today.
I consider Jesus Christ as a fictional character invented by the Gnostic community of Alexandria. He is able to speak as well as Superman or Luke Skywalker. Superman’s doctrine of ‘truth, justice and the American Way’, and Skywalker’s theory of The Force are relevant in popular religion, just as Christ’s theory of the separation of the wheat and weeds at the end of the age is relevant.
neilgodfrey wrote: Are you saying that we are in the "end of the age"? What does "the end of the age" mean to you? What did it mean to Jesus?
Eschatology, the idea of phase transition between different eras, is in my view central to an accurate scientific understanding of history. Homo Sapien is at a cusp, with the choice of life or death. We are on a broad and easy path towards world extinction resulting from war caused by global warming, and need a paradigm shift, a global change of consciousness, to move to a hard and narrow path of sustained prosperity and peace. I see such a change as entirely possible, but the inertia of destruction is immense, and it is almost impossible even to discuss possible sources of hope.
I see the Bible as containing an amazingly accurate scientific understanding of terrestrial time, as a model for the path of human salvation. The story is that Christ would come twice, first in imagination as Avatar of the Age of Pisces, and then in reality as Avatar of the Age of Aquarius. The Age of Pisces represents the depths of the fall from grace, and we are now on a ten thousand year ascending path towards universal peace and prosperity. But the inertia of the fall may be enough to kill us all, unless we enter serious discussion about a global paradigm shift.
This astronomical model of the fall is encapsulated in the movement of earth’s perihelion, our closest point to the sun in our annual orbit. This position now stands at 5 January. It was at the December solstice in 1246 AD, the coldest point of the cycle, and at the June solstice in ten thousand BC at the dawn of the Holocene. We need to put eschatology into this big accurate scientific astronomical climate framework in order to understand it properly. The ancient Gnostics had an intuitive grasp of this big framework of time, especially through the big idea in Psalm 90 that a thousand years is as a day for God, and we can now analyse and fill in their vision with objective scientific knowledge.
neilgodfrey wrote:If Jesus was not historical then whose voice is making this declaration? If Jesus is the Sun then is this the Sun prophesying? Look forward to clarification. Thanks Neil
My view is that the tyrannical conquest by Rome impelled seers of Egypt and Babylon to construct a vision of a way to protect deep knowledge against the time of darkness, with their natural religious wisdom encapsulated in the New Testament. So the voice of Christ is the voice of the Gnostic community, but somewhat concealed and distorted by the ignorant corruption of church redaction.
We are now emerging from that dark time of imperial ignorance, and can analyse the Gnostic work to reconstruct their vision. The result is that Jesus may be understood as an anthropomorphic myth of the role of the sun as source of stability, fecundity and durability, the great markers of successful genes. The sun is inanimate and cannot speak. But the sun obeys orderly physical laws that we can represent mathematically. So the voice of the sun, so to speak, can be imagined as the scientific prophecy of the future of the world. This prophetic vision is seen especially in the orbital dynamics of climate change. The link between objective knowledge in astronomy and how it was accurately imagined in the ancient world is in my view the essence of the paradigm shift required by the world.
