Articles
Biblical Mysteries
22/11/2021
Throughout my novels, one recurring theme has been that of the Bible and its many mysteries. In this section are a series of articles that aim to build on those included in the 'facts behind' of many of my earlier works. I will be adding to this section in future.
Garden Of Eden
Whether the Garden of Eden, as depicted in the Book of Genesis, ever existed, remains one of the great mysteries. Along with the existence of Plato’s Atlantis, it is something that has been sought after by explorers throughout history.
That the original land could have been located somewhere in the Atlantic to some degree depends on the changing of the world’s landscape, not least that of rising sea levels. If Eden and Atlantis did exist, it’s theoretically possible the two were one and the same; however, this is speculation on my part.
Irrespective of Eden’s actual location, the importance of the lost Garden, the Creation of Man and the subsequent Fall of Man following Eve’s nibbling of the Forbidden Fruit was clearly of crucial importance to the author of the manifestos. The promise that there existed a lost language was understandably one of considerable significance to the religious and gifted minds of the day, not least as it was commonly believed its discovery would bring about the dawning of a new age.
Before the release of the Fama, as mentioned in The Rosicrucian Prophecy, the possibility of locating the lost language had become something of an obsession to Dee. On being introduced to the Kabbalah, of the many facets that piqued his interest was the Sephiroth, or ten names most common to God. If the Adam theory was correct, it was these ten names that together made up his great name.
In the beginning was the word, and the word was God.
Even outside the Bible, stories of the creation theory have formed part of many traditions. Tales of the word also inspired the Egyptian god Ptah – the first of all the gods, who thought the world into existence. For the Rosicrucians, a society whose existence was believed to concern knowledge that went back into the mists of time, it’s perhaps no surprise the philosophy was so sought after.
For all the significant advancement in science, exactly what happened before the Big Bang remains unclear.
The Location Of The Mountain Of God
According to the Book of Exodus, when Moses led the Israelites out of captivity, he parted the waters of the Red Sea and later climbed a high mountain, at which point he received the Ten Commandments from the God of Israel.
Should Exodus be used in isolation, the location of the mountain was Sinai, the term used in the Torah. However, in the Book of Deuteronomy, the mountain is referred to as Horeb.
The question is, firstly, are Sinai and Horeb the same place, and secondly, where is that place?
Tradition places the biblical Mount Sinai in the real-life Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. Most Jews, Christians, Moslems and scholars accept this view though the theory is not without flaws. The present name predates the historian Titus Flavius Josephus and may have derived solely from tradition. Other possibilities have included Saudi Arabia and the Valley of Edom.
Edom, in particular, is a site worthy of investigation. According to the Song of Deborah, God is said to have dwelt at Mount Seir - located in the mountains of Edom.
Further argument has been put forward that the biblical Sinai is Jebel al-Madhbah at Petra. To take the biblical account of a loud trumpet sound being heard at Sinai as fact, this could indeed match the well-known natural phenomenon that occurs here, locally dubbed the trumpet of God. Equally fascinating, the famous sightings of red cloud at al-Madhbah seems an exact fit for the “Glory of the Lord”.
Better still is the local tradition. The narrow valley where Petra is sited is known locally as Wadi Musa, literally translating to Valley of Moses. Furthermore, above the entrance to the siq (the opening of Petra) is Ain Musa, the Spring of Moses.
In my opinion, Edom could well be the famous site and would also equate well with other aspects of the Old Testament. Another problem has been locating the point of the Red Sea that Moses parted. This might well be because of a mistranslation of the Hebrew Bible. Was it the Red Sea Moses parted or the Sea of Reed?
Enoch
In 1460, a series of manuscripts turned up in the Italian city of Florence. In time, all of would contribute to the Renaissance. Their title was the Hermetica.
In honour of their alleged author. Thrice-Greatest Hermes.
Mentioned in The Rosicrucian Prophecy, an overview of Hermeticism is well beyond the scope of this section - not to say my capabilities! In truth, Hermeticism, like Rosicrucianism, could be argued as an ad hoc title to a variety of philosophies that date from the time of late antiquity. In some quarters, it has been considered pre-science; in others, pure occultism.
On researching the topic and exploring the legacy of Hermes Trismegistus on the manifestos, notably his role as something of a patron saint of alchemy and astrology, it fast became clear leaving him out was not an option. The Cult of the Greek god Hermes can confidently be dated to before Alexander the Great’s conquering of Egypt in 331 BC, and a century later Hermes was being worshipped in Alexandria. With the emergence of Christianity, it’s perhaps unsurprising the pagan element gradually disappeared in Egypt. It was probably this transition that led to the development of the far more human Hermes Trismegistus. In addition to Hermeticism’s effect on the Renaissance, its influence on Gnosticism is also apparent.
Identification of this enigmatic character with Enoch has been tentatively muted. This would make sense of both Hermes’s absence from the Old Testament and his contention that God had a son – thus making him a Christian prophet. Whether or not the two were the same is unclear, as not for the first time researching the Rosicrucians, uncovering a definitive answer is elusive. If just one thing is clear, it is that since the early days of Christianity, the topic with which he is associated more than anything is alchemy. Mercurius was the Latin form of the Greek Hermes, and mention of Hermes as Mercurius Trismegistus is known to have occurred.
Of the identity of Enoch, most references are restricted to the Bible. The only others are individual books that were omitted from it. Genesis states that Enoch lived for 365 years; as the father of Methuselah, he was Noah’s great-grandfather, and Adam’s great-great-great-great-grandson through Seth. That the man could have been a King of Atlantis was my own creation for the novel.
Among Hermes’s possessions, the Emerald Tablet is credited as having been authored by him, and it has been reputed in some quarters to be the only known literature to have survived Noah’s flood. Incidentally, it was from the Emerald Tablet that derives the saying ‘as above, so below’. It has been alleged that Hermes/Enoch may have written over 300 books, all in their own way possessing the wisdom of the sacred mysteries.
If he did, sadly, they are now lost.
In Freemasonry, the oldest Masonic texts, the Old Charges, from around 1400, credit the survival of Masonic sciences after the flood to Hermes.
Hiram I of Tyre
The King of Tyre was a historical man. The Book of Kings recorded that Solomon requested the help of Hiram to assist in the construction of the First Temple. According to Masonic lore, the man sent his best architect, Hiram Abiff. The history of Phoenicia, Tyre et cetera mentioned in this book is a combination of fact and fiction. The First Temple of Solomon was destroyed in 586/7 BC, and the second in AD 70. The Third Temple, as described in the Book of Ezekiel, is regarded by most as a metaphorical location: one that will only be realised in a physical sense at the time of the coming of the Jewish Messiah referred to in Christianity as the Second Coming of Christ.
That said, there are at least two societies who see the building of a Third Temple as being a more tangible objective. Understandably, construction of a new temple has been a source of much controversy. The development of the Third Temple, depending on the specific site, could not occur without the destruction of two Moslem sites: the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.
Talk of the Third Temple is a complex issue both in religion and the political state of Israel.
Garden Of Eden
Whether the Garden of Eden, as depicted in the Book of Genesis, ever existed, remains one of the great mysteries. Along with the existence of Plato’s Atlantis, it is something that has been sought after by explorers throughout history.
That the original land could have been located somewhere in the Atlantic to some degree depends on the changing of the world’s landscape, not least that of rising sea levels. If Eden and Atlantis did exist, it’s theoretically possible the two were one and the same; however, this is speculation on my part.
Irrespective of Eden’s actual location, the importance of the lost Garden, the Creation of Man and the subsequent Fall of Man following Eve’s nibbling of the Forbidden Fruit was clearly of crucial importance to the author of the manifestos. The promise that there existed a lost language was understandably one of considerable significance to the religious and gifted minds of the day, not least as it was commonly believed its discovery would bring about the dawning of a new age.
Before the release of the Fama, as mentioned in The Rosicrucian Prophecy, the possibility of locating the lost language had become something of an obsession to Dee. On being introduced to the Kabbalah, of the many facets that piqued his interest was the Sephiroth, or ten names most common to God. If the Adam theory was correct, it was these ten names that together made up his great name.
In the beginning was the word, and the word was God.
Even outside the Bible, stories of the creation theory have formed part of many traditions. Tales of the word also inspired the Egyptian god Ptah – the first of all the gods, who thought the world into existence. For the Rosicrucians, a society whose existence was believed to concern knowledge that went back into the mists of time, it’s perhaps no surprise the philosophy was so sought after.
For all the significant advancement in science, exactly what happened before the Big Bang remains unclear.
The Location Of The Mountain Of God
According to the Book of Exodus, when Moses led the Israelites out of captivity, he parted the waters of the Red Sea and later climbed a high mountain, at which point he received the Ten Commandments from the God of Israel.
Should Exodus be used in isolation, the location of the mountain was Sinai, the term used in the Torah. However, in the Book of Deuteronomy, the mountain is referred to as Horeb.
The question is, firstly, are Sinai and Horeb the same place, and secondly, where is that place?
Tradition places the biblical Mount Sinai in the real-life Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. Most Jews, Christians, Moslems and scholars accept this view though the theory is not without flaws. The present name predates the historian Titus Flavius Josephus and may have derived solely from tradition. Other possibilities have included Saudi Arabia and the Valley of Edom.
Edom, in particular, is a site worthy of investigation. According to the Song of Deborah, God is said to have dwelt at Mount Seir - located in the mountains of Edom.
Further argument has been put forward that the biblical Sinai is Jebel al-Madhbah at Petra. To take the biblical account of a loud trumpet sound being heard at Sinai as fact, this could indeed match the well-known natural phenomenon that occurs here, locally dubbed the trumpet of God. Equally fascinating, the famous sightings of red cloud at al-Madhbah seems an exact fit for the “Glory of the Lord”.
Better still is the local tradition. The narrow valley where Petra is sited is known locally as Wadi Musa, literally translating to Valley of Moses. Furthermore, above the entrance to the siq (the opening of Petra) is Ain Musa, the Spring of Moses.
In my opinion, Edom could well be the famous site and would also equate well with other aspects of the Old Testament. Another problem has been locating the point of the Red Sea that Moses parted. This might well be because of a mistranslation of the Hebrew Bible. Was it the Red Sea Moses parted or the Sea of Reed?
Enoch
In 1460, a series of manuscripts turned up in the Italian city of Florence. In time, all of would contribute to the Renaissance. Their title was the Hermetica.
In honour of their alleged author. Thrice-Greatest Hermes.
Mentioned in The Rosicrucian Prophecy, an overview of Hermeticism is well beyond the scope of this section - not to say my capabilities! In truth, Hermeticism, like Rosicrucianism, could be argued as an ad hoc title to a variety of philosophies that date from the time of late antiquity. In some quarters, it has been considered pre-science; in others, pure occultism.
On researching the topic and exploring the legacy of Hermes Trismegistus on the manifestos, notably his role as something of a patron saint of alchemy and astrology, it fast became clear leaving him out was not an option. The Cult of the Greek god Hermes can confidently be dated to before Alexander the Great’s conquering of Egypt in 331 BC, and a century later Hermes was being worshipped in Alexandria. With the emergence of Christianity, it’s perhaps unsurprising the pagan element gradually disappeared in Egypt. It was probably this transition that led to the development of the far more human Hermes Trismegistus. In addition to Hermeticism’s effect on the Renaissance, its influence on Gnosticism is also apparent.
Identification of this enigmatic character with Enoch has been tentatively muted. This would make sense of both Hermes’s absence from the Old Testament and his contention that God had a son – thus making him a Christian prophet. Whether or not the two were the same is unclear, as not for the first time researching the Rosicrucians, uncovering a definitive answer is elusive. If just one thing is clear, it is that since the early days of Christianity, the topic with which he is associated more than anything is alchemy. Mercurius was the Latin form of the Greek Hermes, and mention of Hermes as Mercurius Trismegistus is known to have occurred.
Of the identity of Enoch, most references are restricted to the Bible. The only others are individual books that were omitted from it. Genesis states that Enoch lived for 365 years; as the father of Methuselah, he was Noah’s great-grandfather, and Adam’s great-great-great-great-grandson through Seth. That the man could have been a King of Atlantis was my own creation for the novel.
Among Hermes’s possessions, the Emerald Tablet is credited as having been authored by him, and it has been reputed in some quarters to be the only known literature to have survived Noah’s flood. Incidentally, it was from the Emerald Tablet that derives the saying ‘as above, so below’. It has been alleged that Hermes/Enoch may have written over 300 books, all in their own way possessing the wisdom of the sacred mysteries.
If he did, sadly, they are now lost.
In Freemasonry, the oldest Masonic texts, the Old Charges, from around 1400, credit the survival of Masonic sciences after the flood to Hermes.
Hiram I of Tyre
The King of Tyre was a historical man. The Book of Kings recorded that Solomon requested the help of Hiram to assist in the construction of the First Temple. According to Masonic lore, the man sent his best architect, Hiram Abiff. The history of Phoenicia, Tyre et cetera mentioned in this book is a combination of fact and fiction. The First Temple of Solomon was destroyed in 586/7 BC, and the second in AD 70. The Third Temple, as described in the Book of Ezekiel, is regarded by most as a metaphorical location: one that will only be realised in a physical sense at the time of the coming of the Jewish Messiah referred to in Christianity as the Second Coming of Christ.
That said, there are at least two societies who see the building of a Third Temple as being a more tangible objective. Understandably, construction of a new temple has been a source of much controversy. The development of the Third Temple, depending on the specific site, could not occur without the destruction of two Moslem sites: the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.
Talk of the Third Temple is a complex issue both in religion and the political state of Israel.