WE THREE KINGS OF ORIENT ARE

Alison Maciver

At this time of year close to our Summer Solstice (Southern Hemisphere) we celebrate Christ Mass.  Many people are fully aware that Christ was unlikely to have been born in December and that this was much more likely to have taken place in March or April and certainly not in Northern Hemisphere's mid-winter.  It is only in traditional stories that we have the ox and ass in the stable along with the sheep.  The ox was the astrological ruler of the previous Age of Taurus.  The ass and the ram were rulers of the Age of Aries, the ass being the alter ego of that age with the cult of Set or Typhon, which was a secret ass cult of the time.  It was as part of this symbolism that Jesus was later to ride into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey as conqueror of outworn belief systems pertinent to ages past and showing himself as embodying the highest aspirations of the Age of Pisces and being the Fisher of Men.

The political machinations behind transferring this birthday party to fit in with the Saturnalia celebrations go back many hundreds of years and explain why in each country these festivities are so tied in with ceremonies which have absolutely nothing to do with the birth of Christ.  How many of us will take down our trees after twelve days in the belief that this was when the Three Wise Men visited the Christ Child.  If the timings in the ancient writings in the New Testament are followed, these learned men did not arrive to give their warning until nearly three months after the birth.  The child was circumcized after eight days, and then Mary went to the temple after her period of 'purification', which amounted to about six weeks after the birth according to the laws Moses gave in Leviticus.  It was after this that they were warned to leave the area.

Who are these men and what was the 'star' they followed?  The New English Bible states that they were astrologers.  The Greek texts say they were Magoi, which we now call Magi, from which we get our word magic, meaning the work of the Magi.  They were the priests of the ancient Medes and Persians, the interpreters of dreams and givers of omens.  They are said to have told Herod, 'We have seen his star in the east and we are come to worship him.'

Just look at today's poor use of astrological terminology by the general public which uses the term 'star' for anything from a constellation or a planet to a full calculation of one's astrological chart, which the ancients called 'seals'.  Isn't the east the horizon, and weren't seasons determined when certain stars rose around dawn?  Were these scholars aware of a certain time, which had already been predicted for a special birth to occur when certain planets would be set at angles to one another as well as taking into account the so-called 'fixed stars' in the night sky?

And then again there are theories concerning those three constructions in the desert, sometimes referred to as the Three Wise Men.  Did the Magi derive special information from studying the Great Pyramid and its companions?  That's another angle to the story. Whichever way we arrive at an answer, chances are that the star was our Sun.  And at which degree and sign of the zodiac, or ring of animals, does the sun appear, but exactly opposite the fixed stars, which rise in the east as the sun sets in the west.  With the coming of spring and the new Age of Pisces, that is the constellation that I believe that the Sun appeared to be in.

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