Gospel in the Stars VIII

1. Review the significance of Scorpio, Serpent, Serpent Holder

a) the "serpent" and the "scorpion" are two leading figures of Satan
b) names of stars in scorpion, Ophiuchus, serpent

2) Aesculapius myth (Pronunciation: as-klee'-pee-uhs)
3) mono myth idea (original source), hero myths
4) proofs from scripture that Mazzaroth and the constellations tell the gospel
5) handout of the entire story of the gospel (short form)
6) constellation (decan) of Hercules
7) constellation of Sagittarius

Star Names in Scorpio

The constellation itself is called Akrab in Hebrew, the name of a scorpion, but also means the conflict or war. The Coptic name is Isidis, which means the attack of the enemy, or oppression. The Arabic name is Al Akrab, which means wounding him that comes. The brightest star, in the heart, the ominous red star, bears an ancient Arabic name of Antares, meaning the wounding. The scorpion's sting is called Lesath in Hebrew and means the perverse.

The star in the serpent, alpha, in the neck, is named Unuk, which means encompassing. Another Hebrew name is Alyah, the accursed. From this is Al hay (Arabic), which means the reptile. The beta star, in the jaw, names Cheleb in Arabic, or Chelbalrai, the serpent enfolding. The Greek name Ophiuchus, is itself from the Hebrew and Arabic name Afeichus, which means the serpent held.

The brightest star in Ophiuchus, in the head, is called Ras al Hagus (Arabic), the head of him who holds.

Other Hebrew names of stars, not identified, are Triophas, treading under foot; Saiph (in the foot of Ophiuchus), means bruised; Carnebus, the wounding; Megeros, contending. In the Zodiac of Denderah we have an enthroned human figure called Api-bau, the chief who comes.

Hercules, in the Zodiac of Denderah, the man is called Bau, which means who comes. In Arabic he is called Al Giscale, the strong one. The brightest star, alpha, in the head, is named Ras al Gethi, and means the head of him who bruises. The beta star, in the right arm pit, is named Kornephorus, and means the branch, kneeling. The star in the right elbow is called Marsic, the wounding. The star in the upper part of the left arm is named ma'asyn, the sin offering. The star in the lower part of the right arm is Caiam, or Buiam, punishing, and in Arabic means treading under foot.

Aesculapius

Greek god, Asclepius, and his Roman counterpart Aesculapius

Aesculapius was the legendary Greek god of medicine, the son of Apollo. He was educated by the centaur Cheiron, who taught him the art of healing and hunting. His had skill in curing disease and restoring the dead to life.

He is commonly represented standing, dressed in a long cloak, with bare breast; his usual attribute is a club-like staff with a serpent (the symbol of renovation) coiled round it. He is often accompanied by Telesphorus, the boy genius of healing, and his daughter Hygieia, the goddess of health.

If you've ever been to a hospital or flipped through a phone book looking up a physician, you've seen the image: two serpents criss-crossed around a staff topped by a round knob and flanked by wings. This is known as the caduceus, and it has been the symbol of the American medical profession for nearly a hundred years -- a decidedly odd symbol for doctors, until you begin to investigate its underlying meanings.

The staff of Aesculapius is sometimes depicted as a single serpent coiled around a cypress branch.

"Hercules"

"And still more fully is the Messianic work of the bruising of the Serpent's head set forth in the third constellation belonging to this sign. Here is the figure of a mighty man, down on one knee, with his heel uplifted as if wounded, having a great club in one hand and a fierce three-headed monster held fast in the other, whilst his left foot is set directly on the head of the great Dragon. Take this figure according to the name given it in the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and you have a picture of Him who cometh to bruise the Serpent and "destroy the works of the Devil." In the head of this figure is a bright star, the brightest in this constellation, which bears the name of Ras al Gethi, which means the Head of him who bruises; whilst the name of the second star means The Branch knceling. The Phoenicians worshipped this man five generations before the times of the Greeks, and honored him as representing a saviour. Smith and Sayce trace the legend of him in Chaldea four thousand years ago. On the atlases he is called Hercules, So the Romans called him, but the Greeks called him Herakles, whom they worshipped and honored as the greatest of all their hero-gods, principally on account of his twelve great labors.

According to the mythic accounts, Herakles or Hercules was the god-begotten man, to whose tasks there was scarce an end. From his cradle to his death he was employed accomplishing the most difficult and wonderful of feats laid upon him to perform, and all in the line of vanquishing great evil powers, such as the lion begotten from Typhon, the many-headed Hydra sprung from the same parentage, the brazen-footed and golden horned stag, the Erymanthean boar, the vast filth of the Augean stables, the swarms of life-destroying Stymphalian birds, the mad bull of Crete which no mortal dared look upon, the flesh-eating mares of Diomedes, the queen of the devastating Amazons, the triple-bodied Geryones and his dog, the Dragon which guarded the apples of the Hesperides, and the three-headed snaky monster which kept the gates of hell.

Some have argued that the story of Herakles is a purely Greek invention, but it certainly dates back in all its essential features, in Egypt, Phoenicia, and India, to a time long anterior to the Greeks. By their own confession the Greeks did not even understand who or what Herakles was, or what was meant by all his great labors. They took him for the sublimest of the hero-gods, as the accounts came to them, and here and there, as in so many other things, appropriated all to their own country and people; but Aratus, who sung the song of the ancient constellations, and from whose song the Apostle Paul makes a quotation, speaks of Herakles as "An image none knows certainly to name, Nor what he labors for," and, again, as "The inexplicable image."

Ptolemy and Manilius refer to him in corresponding terms. They could not make out their greatest hero, or any meaning to his works! Not with them, therefore, did the mythic story of the powerful laborer originate. Its true original is in the ancient constellations of the primeval astronomy, which, like the Scriptures, pointed to the coming Seed of the woman to bruise, vanquish, and destroy the Serpent, and everything of the Serpent born or belonging to the Serpent's kingdom."

"A Picture of Christ"

"Stripped of its foul heathenisms and admixtures, we can easily trace throughout the myth all the outlines of the astronomic picture, and that picture anticipating the sublime work of the Virgin's Son, as depicted by the prophets and recorded in the Gospel, even the battering and vanquishing of Satan and all the powers of darkness. Christ is the God-begotten man. He it is that comes against the roaring satanic "lion" who "goeth about seeking whom he may devour." He it is that came into the world to strike off the heads of the great Serpent, lurking in the bogs to ravage and destroy. He it is who comes forth to free the world of all its monsters and hellish pests, and purge it of its vast uncleanness. He it is who had it laid upon Him to fight and slay the Dragon, and thus recover access to the fruits of the Tree of Life, though having to bear the whole weight of a guilty world in making the grand achievement. And He it is who "descended into hell," before whom the spirits of the under-world cowered; to whose power the king of perdition yielded; and who grasped the struggling triple-headed dragon-dog in charge of the infernal gates, and bore him off, "leading captivity captive." Wounded He was in the dreadful encounter—wounded in His heel, wounded unto death, yet living still; suffering also from the poisoned garment of others' sins, mounting the funeral-pyre to die of His own accord amid fires undue to Him, and thence ascending amid the clouds to immortal honor in heaven, with his foot for ever on the head of the foe.

The heathen in their blindness could not understand the story, and knew not what to make of the foreshowing; but in the light of God's fuller revelation, and of the facts attested by the Gospel, we read the origin and meaning of it all, and see how God has been all these ages proclaiming from the starry sky the glories, labors, sufferings, and triumphs of His only-begotten Son, our Saviour.

There is no character in mythology around which great and wondrous incidents crowd so thickly as around Herakles, and there is no character in the history of the world upon whom so much of interest and sublime achievement centres as upon Jesus Christ, the true Deliverer. With Him was the wielding of power unknown to any other man. To kill Him and to be rid of Him has ever been the intensest wish of all the Dragon brood, from the time Herod sought the young child's life even unto this present. With all sorts of ill and wrong was He smitten while He lived, and plotted against in all the ages by the jealous, obstinate, and quarrelsome goddess of false wisdom and serpentine intrigue against the will and word of Heaven."

"Thus, then, in this sign and its constellations, and in the myths founded on and associated with them, we have the precise picture presented in the text—the picture of the promised Seed of the woman treading on serpents, asps, dragons, and the whole brood of venomous powers—suffering and dying in the conflict, but in the end trampling all enemies in glorious triumph beneath His feet.

We wonder betimes what is to come of this unceasing conflict between right and wrong, good and bad, which we see raging around us in all things — this creeping in everywhere of scorpions and adders to sting and hurt—this twining and hissing of serpents and all horrid things—this everlasting toil, expenditure, and suffering for the better, which never seems to come. A glance at these constellations may serve to tell us, the same as promised in the Holy Book. There can be no deliverance without it, and long and oppressive must the struggle be. Many a serpent must first be strangled, many a hydra attacked, many a wild passion caught and slain, many a pang endured, many a sore reverse experienced. But the cause is secure. The victory must come at last. God and truth and right and good must triumph in the end. The Ophiuchus who holds fast will not lose his crown. The scorpion may sting the heel, but the foot will crush its head. The faithful wielder of the club of righteousness may be brought to his knee, but he shall yet lift up the instrument of his power in glorious success, strangle Cerberus, and bear off in triumph the apples of gold, whilst the great Dragon writhes through all his length with his head under the heel of the Conqueror. For from of old it stands written, "Thou shalt tread upon the serpent and adder; the young lion and the dragon shalt Thou trample under foot."

Hero Myths

Every nation of antiquity as well as of modern times had or has some traditions of heroes of superhuman strength and power, and most of them are corruptions of the story of the hero of the starry message, the seed of the virgin.

The accounts of the twelve labours of Heracles are found only in the later writers, for Homer and Hesiod do not mention them. Homer only knows that Heracles during his life on earth was exposed to infinite dangers and sufferings...Homer mentions only one, viz. that he was ordered to bring Cerberus from the lower world.

Hesiod mentions several of the feats of Heracles distinctly, but knows nothing of their number twelve. The selection of these twelve from the great number of feats ascribed to Heracles is probably the work of the Alexandrines. They are enumerated in Euripides (Here. Fur.), Apollodorus, Diodorus Siculus, and the Greek Anthology (ii. 651), though none of them can be considered to have arranged them in any thing like a chronological order.

http://www.mythindex.com/greek-mythology/H/Heracles.html

1. killing of the Nemean lion
2. destroying the Lernaean Hydra
3. capturing the Ceryneian Hind
4. capturing the Erymanthian Boar
5. cleaning the Augean Stables
6. killing the Stymphalian Birds
7. capturing the Cretan Bull
8. rounding up the Mares of Diomedes
9. stealing the Girdle of Hippolyte
10. herding the Cattle of Geryon
11. fetching the Apples of Hesperides
12. capturing Cerberus

Said Spurgeon:

"I tell you the Gospel of Christ is meant for the scum of the population! It is meant for the lowest of the low, for the worst of the worst. There is no den in London where the Savior cannot work! There is no loathsome haunt of sin too foul for Him to cleanse. The heathen dreamed of their Hercules that he cleansed the Augean stables by turning a river through them, and so washing away the filth of ages. If your heart is such a stable, Christ is greater than the mightiest Hercules—He can cause the river of His cleansing blood to flow right through your heart, and your iniquities, though they are a heap of abominations, shall be put away forever! Riches of love to sinners as such, and riches of pardon to sinners who repent are stored up in the Lord Jesus."

(Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit - Volume 13 - THE UNSEARCHABLE RICHES OF CHRIST, NO. 745)

Sagittarius

THE TRIUMPHANT WARRIOR

"And in Thy majesty ride prosperously, because of truth and meekness and righteousness; and Thy right hand shall teach Thee terrible things. Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the King's enemies." (Psa. 45; 4, 5)

This psalm (Seiss) "relates to the loveliest of heroes in the loveliest of His aspects, offices, and relations to His people. This hero is none other than the promised Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, in His royal majesty and glory subsequent to His resurrection, and as to be hereafter revealed. When on earth He was despised and rejected of men, but here He is celebrated as "beautiful, beautiful, above the sons of man," endowed with every grace and invested with all authority and power. When on earth He was meek and non-resistant, not breaking so much as a bruised reed; but here He is contemplated and addressed as a mounted warrior, riding as a king, armed with bow and arrows, shooting down His enemies. His character here is that of the Mighty One, girding himself with honor and majesty, and going forth to victory. John, in his visions of the future, beheld "a white horse; and He that sat on him had a bow; and He went forth conquering and to conquer." It is the same divine Hero, in the same character, offices, and work, in both instances. He has a crown, a throne, and a cause—the cause of righteousness over against injustice, usurpation, and tyranny; which cause He enforces with invincible majesty. His former sufferings are now turned to aromatic perfumes upon Him. Out of the ivory palaces He is gladdened with the sound of the harp. And in glory and triumph He rides forth unto victory, hailed by the daughters of kings and worshipped by the queen at his right hand arrayed in the gold of Ophir.

In this sign we have again the double-natured Seed of the virgin, the Son of God as the Son of man. The figure is that of a mighty warrior with bow and arrows, riding prosperously. In all tongues he is named, as in our charts, the Archer, the Bowman, He who sends forth the arrow. In form he is the Centaur, the Piercer—not now, however, in connection with the Cross, far down toward the hidden regions, offering himself as a victim and sacrifice to satisfy the demands of justice, but lifted up on high, stationed on the path of the Sun, himself the Sun of Righteousness rising in His majesty.

The Greeks called him Cheiron, the Executer, the chief centaur, whom they described as "the righteous-dealing centaur," precisely as this Psalm represents the Horseman and Hero of whom it speaks."

"...with Cheiron everything noble, just, refined, and good was connected, even superhuman intelligence, dignity, and power. The artists in picturing him labored to blend the greatest beneficence and goodness with the greatest strength and majesty. And such is the description of the divine Hero of this Psalm.

According to the myths, Cheiron was the great teacher of mankind in heavenly wisdom, medicine, music, and all noble and polite arts, and from whom the most exalted heroes and the most honored of men received their tuition. And so it is said of this sublime King that every grace was poured upon His lips, and that He is the One specially blessed of God, whose name every generation shall remember, and whom the people, shall praise for ever and ever. The barbed arrows of this Archer are aimed at the heart of the Scorpion. It was sung of Cheiron,

"Midst golden stars he stands refulgent now,
And thrusts the scorpion with his bended bow."

And thus the "arrows" of the divine Hero of the text "are sharp in the heart of the King's enemies." His war is with the whole Serpent-brood, and His going forth is for their destruction. Whether we understand it of the moral and renovating power of the Gospel, or of the judicial administrations of the Son of man at the end of the present Gospel dispensation, or more naturally of both, it is the office and purpose in all the doings of the glorified Christ to pierce and wound the Serpent, to destroy all his works and power, and to disable him for ever. And this is shown in the sign, just as it is declared in the Gospel.

Some of the names in the sign express the further idea of graciousness and delight in connection with the action signified; which again accords with that saying ascribed to Christ in both Testaments: "Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me. I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart. I have preached righteousness in the great congregation: lo, I have not refrained my lips."

Swiftness is another idea included in these names; and hence of quick and resistless power, of which horses and horsemen are the biblical images, particularly in connection with the scenes of the great judgment which Christ is appointed to enact. And the coming again of Christ is everywhere described as being with great power and glory, quickly, suddenly, like the lightning's flash. His own word is, "Behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me;" "The great day of the Lord hasteth greatly;" "For when they shall say, Peace, peace; then sudden destruction cometh upon them."

Cheiron is sometimes represented as occupying Apollo's throne; and so the word to this royal Judge and invincible Warrior is, "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; the sceptre of Thy kingdom is a right sceptre." In the Indian sacred books there is a tenth avatar predicted, when Vishnu, the second in the divine Triad, is to come as a man on a white horse, overthrowing his enemies and rooting out all evil from the earth. And so, according to the last book of the New Testament, when the King of kings and Lord of lords comes forth to the battle of that great day to overwhelm the Beast and the false Prophet and all their armies, He comes in the form of a man sitting upon a white horse, in righteousness judging and making war, the same as in Sagittarius.

Thus everything in and illustrative of this sign serves to identify it as a pictorial prophecy of our blessed Lord, answering in all respects to the representations given in the Scriptures. Grotesque and unevangelic as it may seem, it is a showing upon the stars of the same things, under the same images, that we find written concerning the glorified Redeemer in whom all our hopes are centred. He is the sublime Lord and King of salvation, with the two natures in one person, once humbled to death on the cross, but now exalted to glory in heaven. He is the wise, the true, the good, the righteous, who standeth for the defence and administration of righteousness against the Devil and all the powers of the Adversary. He is the mighty Warrior who rideth prosperously, with the bow and arrows of truth and judgment, ever aiming and speeding them at the heart of the foe, and never more giving over until He has carried everything through to everlasting victory, when Death and Hades, and all the powers and children of evil, shall have sunk for ever to their deserved perdition. And the Decans in this sign confirm and further illustrate what we thus read from it."

Misc. Scripture on Christ as the Archer

"God brought him forth out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn: he shall eat up the nations his enemies, and shall break their bones, and pierce them through with his arrows." (Num. 24: 8)

"For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains. I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them...I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh; and that with the blood of the slain and of the captives, from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy." (Deut. 32: 22, 23, 42)

"For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit: the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me." (Job 6: 4)

"For thine arrows stick fast in me, and thy hand presseth me sore." (Psa. 38: 2)

"He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow. He hath caused the arrows of his quiver to enter into my reins." (Lam. 3: 12, 13)

"God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day. If he turn not, he will whet his sword; he hath bent his bow, and made it ready. He hath also prepared for him the instruments of death; he ordaineth his arrows against the persecutors." (Psa. 7: 11-13)

"Yea, he sent out his arrows, and scattered them; and he shot out lightnings, and discomfited them." (Psa. 18: 14)

"Therefore shalt thou make them turn their back, when thou shalt make ready thine arrows upon thy strings against the face of them." (Psa. 21: 12)

"Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the king's enemies; whereby the people fall under thee." (Psa. 45: 5)

"Let them melt away as waters which run continually: when he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces." (Psa. 58: 7)

"But God shall shoot at them with an arrow; suddenly shall they be wounded." (Psa. 64: 7)

"Bow thy heavens, O LORD, and come down: touch the mountains, and they shall smoke. Cast forth lightning, and scatter them: shoot out thine arrows, and destroy them." (Psa. 144: 5, 6)

"When I shall send upon them the evil arrows of famine, which shall be for their destruction, and which I will send to destroy you..." (Eze. 5: 16)

"Thy bow was made quite naked, according to the oaths of the tribes, even thy word. Selah. Thou didst cleave the earth with rivers. The mountains saw thee, and they trembled: the overflowing of the water passed by: the deep uttered his voice, and lifted up his hands on high. The sun and moon stood still in their habitation: at the light of thine arrows they went, and at the shining of thy glittering spear." (Hab. 3: 9-11)

"And the LORD shall be seen over them, and his arrow shall go forth as the lightning..." (Zech. 9: 14)