The Ordeals of Scorpio

[I have renamed this blog Integral Yoga Studies and in late 2016 and early 2017 I will be moving many past articles from my Integral Yoga Studies website here and letting that site go. Patrizia's articles will be moved to Aeon Center of Cosmology's website] 

The Ordeals of Scorpio

Lori Tompkins

4 May 2006 

By the emergence of the 1,700 year-old Gospel of Judas from an Egyptian cave in the 1970's and then by its liberation from obscurity in a safety deposit box in 2000, and by the work of all those who painstakingly restored this crumbled document to some 85 percent legibility, we can now see that the Passion Play was a set up. We can see that it was engineered for maximum impact or impression on the consciousness of the human race [1]. And finally, if we agree to call a spade a spade, we can see that the whole thing up as a replica of the living story of the zodiac.

To follow all this one must begin to see that the system and story of the zodiac is hardly what we have taken it to be all these years, but is rather a map of the journey of evolution - the evolution of an individual, a civilization or anything making its way in this world through the force of time.

We inherently know, due to our own experience, that we can expect certain weather patterns, certain life and growth cycles in each of the 12 months of our year, and each of the four seasons. The architects of the zodiac (who were at least of Vedic origin), inherently knew, due to their own experience, that the evolution of consciousness on Earth also had its months and seasons where certain challenges would arise and certain advancements would be made along the way. [2]

In the 12-staged story of the zodiac (which is our story) it is in the 8th Sign of Scorpio where things get difficult (to say the least). In modern astrology Scorpio is known to represent issues of death, sex, and secrets. In the Rig Veda, the 8th Surya [son] of Aditi [infinite light] is known as Martanda or 'the Dead Egg.'

'This Martanda or eighth Surya is the black or dark, the lost, the hidden Sun. The Titans have taken and concealed him in their cavern or darkness ... In less figurative language the mortal life is governed by an oppressed, a hidden, a disguised Truth ... enveloped and contained in the ignorance and error of the ordinary human existence.' [3]

In keeping with this story, the 8th book of Sri Aurobindo's 12-book epic Savitri, is called "The Book of Death". In this part of the lengthy journey, the protagonist Satyavan loses his vision, throws away his 'poignant axe' (his true work or meaning), and loses his soul's luster:                                                                              

Only the dull and physical mind was left
... he failed, losing his last sweetness...
A terror and an anguish filled the world
As if annihilation's mystery
Had taken a sensible form [4].

Jesus set up the passion play to precisely replicate this 'failure' or temporary annihilation of the Sun or light of being that happens in the 8th sign or stage of the zodiac (the 8th stage of a 12-part evolutionary journey). At this stage there is an apparent loss of the Sun (or son of God) - an apparent loss of absolute truth/knowledge or connection to source - which humanity must bare and suffer for a time. Jesus created a durable impression of this apparent disaster. In the Gospel of Judas, he is found in the presence of his12 disciples laughing at this 'disaster' or loss. Would he have been laughing if he did not know it was only a temporary loss or set back?

'The 12 disciples were called. He began to speak with them about the mysteries beyond the world and what would take place at the end ... 'Truly I say to you, no generation of the people that are among you will know me.'

Jesus pulls Judas, one of the 12 disciples, aside (representing one sign of the zodiac) and tells him of the journey ahead, and of the superior generation to come ... 'Truly I say to you, no one born or this aeon will see that generation.' Jesus is aware that the fate of humanity during Judas's age is the fate of the 'Dead-Egg' 8th son in the Rig Veda, and that after a time, there will be a dawning of the truth and a recovery of the lost Sun. But, in the mean time, an entire civilization would be constructed on an error, on a loss of contact with truth, a loss of contact with the soul, a lost plot of the divine cause or seed.

He tells his 12 disciples that they and others who claim to be in service of the divine, or of the good, will simply be 'priests' or 'ministers of error', due to their lack of actual knowledge of That which truly orders and authors the Universe:

'You are those 12 men you have seen [committing a multitude of sins and deeds of lawlessness] ... The cattle you have seen brought for sacrifice are the many people you lead astray before that alter ... God has received your sacrifice from the hands of a priest - that is, a minister of error. But it is the Lord, the Lord of the universe, who commands, 'On the last day they will be put to shame.'

Jesus is telling them they have lost the plot, lost the Sun, lost the truth, and that they should not take any of it personally. It is a cosmological, evolutionary phenomenon that must run its course. He speaks to them of the precession of the equinoxes, the astrological ages, the 'error of the stars', and the destruction of the knowledge and the creatures [i.e. of the zodiac].

Jesus tells Judas that he will be removed from the circle of 12, replaced by another (a 13th), and will considered evil throughout many generations:

 'You will become the thirteenth, and you will be cursed by the other generations'

But he adds an important bit here:

'- and you will come to rule over them. In the last days they will curse your ascent to the holy generation.'

So Jesus is telling Judas that he knows (and telling us that he knew) the plot. Jesus knows that a darkened phase of humanity is the fate of the aeon (age) and that Judas and his apparent act of betrayal (replicating and representing nothing other than the lower instincts of the scorpion of the astrological sign Scorpio) will be redeemed in another age. Jesus knows that the blessed redemption of Judas would transpire in 'the last days' of the ignorance, when the divine light or knowledge had returned to Earth/mankind.

In the Rig Veda we find a similar scenario of an eventual ascent to a higher consciousness or reality after a period of obstruction of the truth:

The Seers by the power of truth in their thoughts discover this Sun lying in the darkness, they liberate this knowledge, this power of undivided and all-embracing vision ... they create the divine Dawn ... the artificial obstructions of the Titans are broken and the Sun soars up radiant into our heavens. Arisen he mounts to the supramental Truth. 'He goes where the gods have made a path for him cleaving like an eagle to his goal'; he ascends [to the] the higher existence. [5]' - Sri Aurobindo The Secret of the Veda, 'Hymns to the Lords of Light'

The passage continues to say that by the light of Surya, the Sun (knowledge) and by the dawning of that light in man ... men are led 'beyond evil and darkness and sin to the Truth and the Immortality'.

So we see that the Rig Veda and Jesus were both speaking of an inevitable ascent out of darkness towards a higher vision and a higher existence. In the story of the zodiac this is the crux of the Scorpio portion of the journey.

Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet has been the first in our age to point out the zodiacal content in the Rig Veda, and the first to point out the correspondence of the 8th son of Aditi with the 8th sign of the zodiac. She has broken new ground by interpreting St. John's Revelation of the apocalyptic last days of the ignorance and the victory or re-emergence of the 'hidden one', as a saga written entirely in zodiacal terms. [6] In a recent article entitled 'Explorations into the Leonardo Mania, A Tale of Two M's', she also sheds needed light on the 'Leonardo Mania' that has captivated the world's masses.

In the "Leonardo Mania' article PNB writes about the zodiac's sign Scorpio as being central to the theme of 'The Last Supper' [7]. In the same article she writes, 'When the zodiac is approached as a connected flow from beginning to end, then Scorpio becomes the real issue ... the system conveys two possibilities by giving a lower and a higher symbol to the 8th stage of the initiates 'journey', as it was known in the pre-Christian Vedic age of India. The higher symbol of the 8th sign in all esoteric traditions, the Indian included, is the Eagle. The lowly Scorpion is pinned to the ground; the majestic Eagle soars to the heavens.' [emphasis added]

What we are faced with in the Gospel of Judas is this same journey, the same epic feat which takes place over a course of time, an evolution in time, by which the lowly scorpion (or greedy-liar-back-stabbing-traitor Judas) is redeemed or transmuted into the majestic eagle (or exalted disciple, divine-servant-extra-ordinaire Judas). In the Rig Veda at this 8th stage, the 'cows' or 'rays' of light are trapped in the dark caves of the Panis (i.e the Ignorant ... i.e. the 'ministers of error') and must be released by the gods at all cost for the continuation of the journey towards the higher existence, represented by the last three signs - the last quadrant or frontier - of the zodiac.

Through PNB's work we see that Leonardo DaVinci was fully aware of the significance of Judas's role in the passion play in zodiacal terms. Both Jesus's passion play and 'The Last Supper' are clear monuments to this 'problem' of the 8th stage in the evolutionary journey in which the Sun, son, or knowledge gets lost. Both the passion play and Leonardo's fresco about it were meant to endure and to carry a 'negative' of the knowledge through the 'dark ages' or dark times, until the 'code' was recovered and the true value and message of these communications could begin to be read. Both the passion play and the fresco have been awaiting the time when the right 'fixing agent' came along and the 'negative' or impression could be 'developed' into the full knowledge. [8]

The iconography of the Mithraic Tauroctany (circa 2000 - 4000 BC) is yet another enduing zodiacal/cosmological myth of the trials encountered in the 8th sign of the zodiac. The Sacred Bull (also known as Taurus, and also known as the 'Sacred One') is stabbed to death in a cave by Mithra [9]. Mithra performed this sacrifice of the 'Sacred One' upon the instructions of a crow, sent from Ahura Mazda (a.k.a. divine wisdom). Shall we chalk it up to coincidence that, in an earlier time, the Vedic seers praised the god Mitra - 'the god who effects right unity', whom PNB identifies as none other than the 8th planet Neptune [10].

Plato's 'Allegory of the Cave', written circa 390 BC, also demonstrates the Scorpio saga of an apparent loss of the Sun, and the inherent misinterpretation of reality based on that loss, and the inherent difficulties one faces upon being re-introduced to reality and the lost Sun. The characters of the tale have been imprisoned in a dark cave since birth and take the shadows on the wall for reality. They are positioned in such a way that they cannot see the great fire which causes all the shadows (much less the Sun above their cave). Plato wrote that if they one day could turn around to see the fire and to see the real shapes casting the shadows, the reality would look less-real to them than the shadows. He also wrote that if the prisoner ever got out of the cave, 'The last object [the prisoner] would be able to see [would be] the Sun, which, in time, he would learn to see as that object which provides the seasons and the courses of the year, presides over all things in the visible region, and is in some way the cause of all these things that he has seen.' [11]

The Sphinx of Thebes whom Oedipus encounters in his epic adventure is yet another account of the difficulties met in the Scorpio stage of the journey. At this stage man/Oedipus is faced with certain mortality due to ignorance. The Sphinx is known as a chimera of animals - which in reality is simply a conglomeration of two or more of the four fixed signs of the zodiac, often depicted as a lion man (or woman) [Leo and Aquarius] with the wings of an Eagle [Scorpio]. Sometimes the Sphinx chimera is portrayed with the body of a bull [Taurus]. [12] In the Oedipus story this 'monster' devours all people who cannot answer the riddle, 'What has One Voice, and is four-footed, two-footed and three-footed?' [12] Oedipus, having gained some knowledge in his previous trials, has the correct answer - 'Man'; and subsequently the 'monster' jumps off the cliff, and Oedipus is allowed to continue his epic journey home.

The Riddle of the Sphinx - like the Gospel of Judas, the 'lost cows' of the Rig Veda, St. John's Apocalypse, the Tauroctany of Mithraism, and Leonardo's 'The Last Supper' - the text or content is only truly readable or visible by those with Gnosis or direct knowledge of the zodiac and Gnosis or knowledge of time and its micro and macro cycles.

The Aztec Calendar or Sun Stone, is another testament of the forgotten knowledge, and will only be readable upon the return of the light. The Sun Stone, 'coincidentally' is also known as the "Eagle's Bowl'. There are two sections approximately 36 degrees on either side of the apex of the wheel (a mirror image of each other), each showing five bound up scrolls. These scrolls, in terms of the precession of the equinoxes, correspond to the astrological ages of Taurus and Aquarius. This again points to a bound up truth ... sealed up for some time, only to be unbound and read at in another age (i.e. now, in the Age of Aquarius).

A loss of the Sun, or loss of direct contact with one's soul or divine nature, is naturally going to cause a 'disaster', or a chaos which includes the loss of knowledge and the function of the 12 'luminaries' or signs of the zodiac. By the apparent loss of the central and unifying light, so is lost the knowledge of the unified flow and perpetual harmony of the 12 luminaries and of the 360 'firmaments' [degrees] and the rest of the multitudinous forms created by the upholding light. By this loss, nothing is truly known, and as in the 8th book of Sri Aurobindo's epic Savitri, death stands at the door.

Jesus tells Judas 'I am not laughing at you but at the error of the stars, because these six stars wander around with these five combatants [i.e. oppositions] and they all will be destroyed along with their creatures.'

The degenerate 'generation' that Jesus speaks of (which was to continue throughout the entire Age of Pisces and apparently into our age for some time) is degenerate precisely because of the apparent loss of the Sun, by which reality is not truly known - the full reality of the Individual existence is unknown, the full reality of the Cosmic existence is unknown, and the full reality of the Transcendent or Absolute existence is unknown. Structures and forms and all approximations of the Truth built on this error, loss or void are doomed to collapse in on themselves after some time, doomed to a certain mortality.

Most of us in the modern era, like the prisoners in Plato's cave, typically think that immortality is a fantasy, and we hold onto our mortality as the greater reality. We continue to be 'devoured' by the monster 'Sphinx' [who is simply the fixed cross of the zodiac], and by the 'monster' Chronos [who is simply time] because we have lost the heart of the zodiac, and lost the heart of time. We have lost the Sun, lost the navel of the circle of life by which we might truly navigate our existence throughout the ages.

In case anyone is still wondering at this point how these matters apply to any of us now on planet Earth or why anyone should take note, here we will focus the discussion on where WE fit into the picture.

WE are those prisoners, WE are those degenerates, WE are those 'ministers of error', WE are those people - ignorant of the key to our own riddle - being devoured by time via the loss of our basic and eternal truth, and via the loss of the map and knowledge of the journey. The 'Apocalypse' points to the proverbial 'end or the road' for our degenerate, mis-guided, ignorant civilization - the 'end of the road' for our predestined collective mishap in which we have been missing the true story (and consequently living out a baffling mystery).

In the Gospel of Judas, Jesus says that in "end of days," Judas will be redeemed and will ascend to the 'holy generation'. And here we are in a new astrological age, and Judas has now been 'redeemed' as a saint rather than a sinner - now seen as an exalted eagle rather than a lowly scorpion.

And with the transpiring of this predestined transformational event, we can begin to see and acknowledge our current position. We can begin to see and acknowledge that we have been in an individual and a collective scorpionic trance for longer than we can remember and that now we each have two possibilities before us that will play out in our myriad adventures on the planet. Each of us has the choice to either continue along the well-trodden ways of the 'Scorpion' - holding onto shadows and fragments of reality, spending all one's resources hoarding, protecting and defending those shadows and fragments, or to aspire to become the 'Eagle' - open to a higher vista, a new age, a new knowledge, a return of the lost Sun or truth.

Upon making this all-defining choice towards the ascent of the light of the soul, all the energies of Mars (the ruler of Scorpio), and all the energies of one's past experience get utilized towards a gradual and profound increase of the true vision rather than being used up in the process of holding on to or building more doomed structures on the foundation of the occluded vision. We have been told the fate of each choice. The choice to remain in the lower possibility for mankind, represented by the scorpion, is to choose mortality and our current morass as the highest reality; and the choice to aspire to the higher possibility - represented by the eagle, is to choose immortality and a perpetual super-conscious order as the eternal reality.

Jesus made it clear that the men and women of the last age would not see the 'Immortal Realm' or the 'Immortal Generation'. They would remain in darkness.

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother of Pondicherry made it clear through their yoga, that a new world was being born in our age, growing up in the midst the old world. The Mother wrote that this new world was totally different than the old. Both made it clear that the 'descent' of knowledge presenting itself in our age was from the 'Immortal Realm' - they called it the Supramental Realm. Both made it clear that knowledge of the highest order was returning and that a new light was dawning. Since 1971 Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet has proceeded to discuss exactly how any one interested in such things might come to recognize this return or dawn.

In 1970 (an 8 year by theosophical addition) the Mother ordered the construction of a sacred Temple (the 'Matrimandir' or 'The Mother's Temple') in Auroville, India which was to have a 12 meter radius giving a diameter that corresponded to the 24 hour day and a vertical solar ray which corresponded to the 365 days of the year. The singular solar ray was to illuminate a translucent globe surrounded by absolute darkness and also by a circle of 12 pillars which would be illuminated according to the month of the year. The Mother called this inner chamber - this luminous One which was surrounded by 12 pillars - 'the symbol of the future realization'.

In true harmony with the 'Ordeals of Scorpio' (of which sign the Mother's closest disciple Satprem happened to be), the mass of her disciples did not see the significance of the dimensions she gave for the temple, and it was built (upon great protest by PNB) with many alterations to the original plans, including a shortened diameter. PNB discusses in length in 'The Chronicles of the Inner Chamber' (2004, see www.matacom.com) how the principle architect and builders of the Auroville temple succeeded only in building a 'negative' or a complete reversal of the Mother's vision and knowledge in terms of symbolism and impact. True to their fate of being 'ministers of error' once the divine presence was apparently absent, these men and their supporters unwittingly produced a 'negative' of 'the future realization' (which most of them to this day defend as being representative-in-full of the Truth-Consciousness of the Mother, mirroring Plato's cave allegory in which the prisoners were fully expected to cling to the shadows on the wall as the greater reality). Through the course of her yoga PNB has 'developed' the true image of the Matrimandir in both The New Way and in 'The Chronicles of the Inner Chamber' for all who might have eyes to see these struggles in their truer light.

Through the course of PNB's yoga, we are invited to see both the epic error we have inherited (identified with) from past age and its correction. Moreover, we are invited to see the redemption and true purpose of the error, as we are now invited to see the redemption and true purpose of Judas's role in the crucifixion of Jesus.

Many traditions hold that this is an inevitable (and joyous) turn of events - this inevitable redemption of all error and suffering, this inevitable recovery of Gnosis, this inevitable dawn of the truth rising out of the darkness of night.

Night holds hidden in her bosom her luminous sister [Day]; this life of ignorance taught by the gods in their veiled human working prepares the birth of the divine Dawn so that, sped forth, she may manifest the supreme creation of the luminous Creator. For the divine [Dawn] is the force and face of Aditi [Infinite Light]; she is the mother of the gods; she gives them birth into our humanity in their true forms no longer compressed into our litttleness and veiled to our vision. - Sri Aurobindo, Secrets of the Veda, 'The Guardians of the Light', p. 483 

Now it seems each or us is faced with an interesting choice. Do we hold onto our individual and fractured religions, academia, studies, sciences and interpretations of reality as sufficient for our purposes, or worse hold on to those fractures as the full truth; or do we consider that what we have attained over these past millennia is a partial, veiled and fragmented knowledge, which is literally BOUND to be fully enlightened and harmonized by the establishment of a greater knowledge - a knowledge that unifies all movements and forms throughout all time and space?

©Lori Tompkins 2005

Notes and References:

[1] The impact the crucifixion included its effect of zeroing the world's calendar or time count. Many believe the zeroing of the calendar at that point is only a reflection of religious dogma and carries no true significance or meaning for the rest of the world. Yet when one considers that the tropical and sidereal zodiac were aligned at zero degrees Aries in 234 BC (see PNB's The Gnostic Circle), which happens once every 25,920 years, starting a new precessional cycle (which always begins with the Age of Pisces due to the backward movement of the precession), one can see the occulted and truer purpose of zeroing the calendar around that time, even if it was implemented by 'ministers of error'. The imprint made its mark in time.

[2] Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, 'The Guardians of the Light', p. 482

'...The Divine Dawn [return of the Sun/Truth] is the force or face of Aditi [Infinite Light] ... she gives [the gods] birth into our humanity in their true forms no longer compressed into our littleness and veiled to our vision.

'But this great work is to be done according to the ordered gradations of the Truth, in its fixed seasons, by the twelve months of the sacrifice, by the divine years of Surya Savitri. Therefore there is a constant rhythm and alternation of night and dawn, illuminations of the Light and periods of exile from it, openings up of our darkness and its settling upon us once more, till the celestial Birth is accomplished and again till it is fulfilled in its greatness, knowledge, love and power.'

[3] Sri Aurobindo The Secrets of the Veda, p.478, 'But if Surya is the creator, he who is as the Veda says, the self of all that moves and all that is stable, and if this Surya is also the divine, "the wide-burning Truth that is lodged in the law which upholds heaven", then all the worlds should manifest that law of the Truth and all of them should be so many heavens. Whence then comes this falsehood, sin, death, suffering of our mortal existence? We are told that there are eight sons of the cosmic Aditi who are born from her body; by seven she moves to the gods, but the eighth son is Martanda, of the mortal creation, whom she casts away from her; with the seven she moves to the supreme life, the original age of the gods, but Martanda is brought back out of the Inconscient into which had been cast to preside over mortal birth and death.

'This Martanda or eighth Surya is the black or dark, the lost the hidden Sun. The Titans have taken and concealed him in their cavern or darkness and thence he must be released into splendor and freedom by the gods and seers though the power of the sacrifice. In less figurative language the mortal life is governed by an oppressed, a hidden, a disguised Truth; just as Agni the divine seer-will works at first upon earth concealed or obscured by the smoke of human passion and self-will, so Surya the divine Knowledge lies concealed and unattainable in the night and darkness, is enveloped and contained in the ignorance and error of the ordinary human existence. The Seers by the power of truth in their thoughts discover this Sun lying in the darkness, they liberate this knowledge, this power of undivided and all-embracing vision, this eye of the gods concealed in our subconscient being; they release his radiances, the create the divine Dawn. Indra the divine Mind-power, Agni the Seer-Will, Brihaspati the Master of the inspired word, Soma the immortal Delight born in man aid them to shatter the strong places of the mountain, the artificial obstructions of the Titans are broken and the Sun soars up radiant into our heavens. Arisen he mounts to the supramental Truth. "He goes where the gods have made a path for him cleaving like an eagle to his goal"; he ascends with his seven shining horses to the luminous ocean of the higher existence; he is led over it by the seers as in a ship. Surya, the Sun is himself perhaps the golden ship in which Pushan the Increaser leads men beyond evil and darkness and sin to the Truth and the Immortality.'

[4] Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, excerpt from Book VIII: 'As [Satyavan] worked, his doom upon him came.

The Violent and hungry hounds of pain

Travelled through his body biting as they passed

... [he] resumed his confident toil

But with less seeing strokes. Now the great woodsman

Hewed at him and his labour ceased: lifting

His arm he flung away the poignant axe

Far from him like an instrument of pain ....

... An awful hush had fallen upon the place: 

There was no cry of birds, no voice of beasts.

A terror and anguish filled the world,

As if annihilation's mystery

Had taken sensible form. A cosmic mind 

Looked out on all from formidable eyes 

Contemning all with its unbearable gaze 

And with immortal lids and a vast brow 

It saw in its immense destroying thought 

All things and beings as a pitiful dream, 

Rejecting with calm disdain Nature's delight, 

The wordless meaning of its deep regard 

Voicing the unreality of things 

And life that would be for ever but never was 

And its brief and vain recurrence without cease

As if from a Silence without form or name 

The Shadow of a remote and uncaring god 

Doomed to his Nought the illusory universe, 

Cancelling its show of idea and act in Time 

And its imitation of eternity. 

[Savitri] new that visible Death was standing there 

And Satyavan had passed from her embrace.

[5] i.e. The last three signs of the zodiac, the Supramental or Swar realm of being.

[6] Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet, The Hidden Manna, Aeon Books, 1978.

[7] From 'Explorations into the Leonardo Mania', PNB 2005: 'We have to include in the figure a significant element of the painting that has perhaps been its most contentious aspect: the knife appearing behind the 8th disciple, Judas.' This knife, PNB writes, actually reveals that the structure of the Scorpio 'M' symbol with an upturned tail, is central to Leonardo's fresco. She continues, 'In failing to accept the background or the foundation on which Leonardo 'constructed' his fresco, researchers have grasped only one thread of a complex design. There is no 'code' other than the resuscitated pre-Christian foundation of all knowledge, the tropical zodiac with it's traditional symbols and hieroglyphs. These are meant to preserve the knowledge through great vicissitudes, as well as to facilitate the internalization of its content through the direct experience which Leonardo extolled time and again in his notes.'

[8] Authors note: The god Mithra of the Persians, Babylonians and later the Romans, is likely a surviving knowledge of the Vedic God Mitra. 'Who of you is our deliverer? who our defender? Oh Earth and Heaven, free from division, deliver us; rescue us, O Mitra, Oh Varuna, from the mortality that is too strong for us!' - Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, p. 499. 'Mitra is the harmoniser, Mitra the builder, Mitra the constituent Light, Mitra the god who effects the right unity of which Varuna is the substance and the infinitely self-enlarging periphery.'- Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, p. 509.

[9] PNB notes the reversal or 'mirror-image fashion Leonardo consistently employed', which is consistent with this idea of a negative waiting for the right fixing agent to fully develop the true image.

[10] PNB, The New Way, Vol. 1 & 2, 1981, Aeon Books, p. 387.

Author's Note: At the time of writing this, the 8th planet Neptune is at 19 degrees Aquarius or 319 degrees through the 360 degree journey of the tropical zodiac. The 320th degree of the circle marks the number 8 of the Enneagram. [see the Gnostic Circle @ www.aeongroup.com/gc.htm]

[11] The Republic bk. VII, 516b-c; trans. Paul Shorey. Plato's Allegory of the Cave: Imagine prisoners who have been chained since childhood deep inside a cave. Not only are their limbs immobilized by the chains; their heads are chained as well so that their eyes are fixed on a wall.

Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along which shapes of various animals, plants, and other things are carried. The shapes cast shadows on the wall, which occupy the prisoners' attention. When one of the shape-carriers speaks, an echo against the wall causes the prisoners to believe that the words come from the shadows. The prisoners engage in what appears to us to be a game - naming the shapes as they come by. This, however, is the only reality that they know, even though they are seeing merely shadows of images. Suppose a prisoner is released and compelled to stand up and turn around. His eyes will be blinded by the firelight, and the shapes passing will appear less real than their shadows. Similarly, if he is dragged up out of the cave into the Sunlight, his eyes will be so blinded that he will not be able to see anything. At first, he will be able to see darker shapes such as shadows and, only later, brighter and brighter objects. The last object he would be able to see is the Sun, which, in time, he would learn to see as that object which provides the seasons and the courses of the year, presides over all things in the visible region, and is in some way the cause of all these things that he has seen (The Republic bk. VII, 516b-c; trans. Paul Shorey).

[12] Sometimes the figure of the Sphinx is portrayed with the body of a bull and the legs of a lion, and also as a ram-headed lion. The Sphinx of Thebes is described without reference to the Bull [Taurus]: 'She had the face of a woman [Aquarius], the chest, feet and tail of a lion [Leo], and the wings of a bird [Scorpio]. She sat on Mount Phikion and asked the Thebans a riddle: 'What has one voice, and is four-footed, two-footed and three-footed?'

'Each time the Thebans gave a wrong answer, she ate one of them ... Creon then announced he'd give the kingship ... to whoever solved the riddle. Oedipus, on his way from Delphi, gave the answer: "Man". The Sphinx threw herself off the acropolis and committed suicide (odd form of suicide for a creature with wings?) ... The Theban story, probably took shape around 600 BC, thanks to the Oidipodia, a lost epic poem, from which the various elements found in Sophocles and later writers ultimately derive.' - Andrew Wilson, 'The Classics Pages'

[13] When we add up the number of 'legs' for that which has 'one voice' ... 4 + 2 + 3, we quickly see that the sum is 9. And by this we are being told by the author of this 'riddle' that the answer not only demands a resurrected knowledge of the zodiac [via the presence of the zodiac chimera - the Sphinx] but also of the enneagram - the circle divided by 9. We are invited in this riddle to remember the Vedic origin and unity consciousness ('the one voice') of the enneagram, from which our civilization has inherited the 9 numbers and the zero as a system of knowledge. The 9 numbers which form the body of the one Sun (i.e. the '9 legged' circle), correspond to the 9 planets of the solar system. The first 4 planets are the inner planets, the second 2 take us into the outer planets - Jupiter and Saturn. Saturn the 6th planet (or 4 + 2 in the riddle) is often associate with Chronos the devourer of his children. When one looks at the zodiac and the enneagram together (www.aeongroup.com/gc.htm) one sees that the 6th planet stands at the very end of the 8th sign of Scorpio. Without Gnosis of the higher realms, we have seen how this point is in many traditions to be considered the end of the road for man, for here we find Chronos, the Sphinx of Thebes, or the figure of 'Death' at the end of the 8th book of Savitri.

Knowledge of the last 3 'legs' of the Sun/solar system was lost to our civilization throughout most of the Age of Pisces, until the discovery of the 7th planet in the 1700's, the 8th planet in the 1800's and the 9th planet in the 1900's Uranus. In The New Way PNB notes that these last three planets were called by other names by the Vedic seers. She writes in the same book that the numbers in the Sphinx's riddle correspond to the cosmological phenomenon of the Vedic yugas (ages), in which 9 Kali yugas - broken down into groups of 4, 2 and 3 - form the body of one massive cycle of time, made up of 3 precessional cycles (see Map of the Manifestations).

More Notes on the Aztec Sun Stone, also called the Eagle's Bowl

If the Sun Stone and the Zodiac are both seen with 0 degrees Aries as the apex of the circles, then the two the white sections of bound up scrolls (found at approximately 36 degrees to either side of the apex) can be seen to correspond to the Age of Taurus and the Age of Aquarius in the Precession of the Equinoxes. 

The Eagle icon can be found in the animal circle of the 'Eagle's Bowl' at the gate of the last quadrant of the circle (the upper right quadrant), which corresponds to the last 3 signs of the zodiac - the highest realm of Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces or in Sri Aurobindo's terminology, the Supramental Realm.

The Eagle, for whom the 'bowl' is named, here has ascended to the 'top of the mountain' where the Sun casts no shadows, represented by the sign Capricorn. Opposite the Eagle icon, is a Snake and its neighbor, a 'Lizard' which seems to look more like a Scorpion. 

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Related Articles: 

'The Gospel of Judas', Surfaces after 1,700 Years - commentary
'The Gospel of Judas'  from the Perspective of Integral Yoga & the Supramental Cosmology
Judas, Scorpio and the Last Supper
Zodiacal & Cosmological References in the Gospel of Judas