The astrological case for Christ

If there’s one thing I would like to achieve with this project here on this site, it is to take astrology back from the hippies.

Anyone who remembers the counterculture movement of the latter 20th century, and I do, remembers how much of it was saturated with New Age imagery. I was more of a Britpop and polyester shirts kind of kid in the late 90s, but I remember the older hippies with their tie-dye shirts, prematurely aged skin, and unyielding determination to never demonstrate any form of critical discernment whatsoever.

The hippies were generally content to live and let live because they were sure that the future was headed in their direction. It was the New Age man, and relying on modern planetary rulers as they did, they believed the Age of Aquarius was ruled by Uranus, the signifier of revolution, individualism, social disruption, liberation, and the overthrow of established structures.

Confident they could look forward to a future of increasing individualism and libertine tranquility, they got stoned.

The hippies got their ideas of a ‘New Age’ from 19th century occultism, particularly Theosophy. It’s too much of a side quest to go into that here, but essentially column writers in San Francisco seeded an association between the hippie movement and the New Age that then went mainstream with the musical Hair (1967) and the eponymous song by The 5th Dimension in 1969.

Those hippies may have been good at bass lines but their astrology was shoddy at best. The traditional ruler of Aquarius is Saturn and there’s nothing dreamy, liberating, or idealistic about that.

Occultists have owned astrology for centuries because the church condemned it during the Late Antique period. Of course, astrology continued throughout the medieval period among elements of the church, who put astrological symbolism into church buildings and privately circulated texts. Famous cathedrals such as Notre Dame and Chartres have obvious zodiac references in their windows. But by and large, the study of astrology was conducted by occultists, Gnostics, Kabbalists, and other spiritual enemies of the Kingdom of God.

This was a result of the abandonment of the ancient cosmological worldview that I outlined in Introduction to Biblical Cosmology. It marked an abandonment of astrology by believers in the One True God during Late Antiquity.

The scholarship on beliefs about astrology among early Christians is clear that the later condemnation of astrology within the church was not the attitude of believers in the first few centuries after Jesus. Clement of Alexandria (c.200 AD) and his contemporary Theodotus the Valentinian related the twelve apostles to the twelve constellations. Ignatius of Antioch and Bardaisan of Edessa, both in the second century AD, acknowledged the influence of the stars but believed Jesus had overcome them with his victory at the Cross. Tertullian a little later shared this view. Priscillian in the fourth century AD incorporated zodiacal symbolism into Christian symbolism. Not all of these men were considered orthodox by later church commentators, but they held positions of authority within the church when they wrote.

Gnostics and pagan spiritualists routinely make the case that Jesus inaugurated the Age of Pisces, then use the overwhelming evidence of that to misdirect people toward nonsensical pseudo-Hindu Theosophisms about Jesus being an ‘Ascended Master’ like Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed, etc. It’s all made-up modern garbage, but it is convincing precisely because Christians don’t have a more comprehensive theory for why the Bible is so obviously astrological.

Jesus’ birth is inaugurated by astrologers arriving from the east interpreting a celestial phenomenon (Matt 2:1-12). Jesus establishes his community around fishermen, telling them they will become fishers of men (Matt 4:18-19; Mark 1:16-17). Fish are central to the feeding miracles of Jesus (Matt 14:13-21; 15:32-39). The Kingdom is compared by Jesus to a dragnet gathering fish of every type throughout the Age, with them separated at the end (Matt 13:47-50). The temple tax is provided by a fish (Matt 17:24-27). Miraculous catches of fish are used to teach the disciples what their task is (Luke 5:1-11; John 21:1-14). Jesus eats fish with the disciples after his resurrection (John 21). The man carrying a water jar in Luke 22:10 and Mark 14:13, considered by scholars to likely have been an Essene, is a reference to the Age that follows Pisces, Aquarius the Water-Bearer.

The writings of Matthew and John the Revelator are clearest on this imagery, and it’s interesting that they are the most ‘Hebrew’ of the gospels. All of these Great Year references are made even clearer when the Greek word ‘aeon’, ‘Age’, is translated correctly in the Greek New Testament. It has been translated as ‘world’ or ‘eternity’ for centuries, but modern scholarship has put the case to rest that the only appropriate translation is ‘Age’. I will be covering this in my upcoming course on the Ages of Great Year, which should be published next month on this site.

The fish has been a symbol for Christians since the time of the early church. The astrological meaning is clear: Jesus came for a rescue mission to save as many humans as possible before the final pouring out of judgement at the end of this Age. Water symbolises judgement in the ancient worldview, and Aquarius, the Water-Bearer pouring out judgement, follows Pisces.

It’s not going to be a music festival, hippies. It’s going to be Revelation.

The Great Year of Man is my theory, and I’m well aware that it’s controversial. It’s heresy to any churchman. It would have gotten me burned at the stake throughout most of church history.

But it’s true, and by abandoning the ancient cosmic worldview at the end of the ancient period, Christians have forgotten it. We made God abstract and distant, when in reality He’s working through His elohim to govern every aspect of our reality.

Fearing knowledge and calling it wickedness, churchmen have convinced believers to allow the enemies of Christ to appear to have secret wisdom and special knowledge. Those minions of chaos have used that appearance of secret knowledge, or gnosis, to lead the gullible and weak-minded away from God.

Gnostics and spiritualists have enormous followings on YouTube and elsewhere teaching others the hidden nature about the ‘real’ ministry of Jesus. They regurgitate the type of stuff you encounter in The Da Vinci Code, relying upon Kabbalistic Gnostic deceptions that ultimately trace back to Alexandrian Jews in the pre-Christian period. Again, a side quest on Gnosticism would be asking too much of you here, dear reader, so I’ll desist.

There are two aspects to the deception that is at work around astrology. The first aspect is the dogmatic opposition by churchmen. If they would just look at the scriptural evidence they would come around. Few will, of course. As Upton Sinclair said, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

The other aspect of the spiritual deception at work in our society is within the field of astrology itself. Astrologers, by and large, cannot explain why what they do works. Some will admit it. Most, however, instead shoehorn stale ideas from Hinduism about karma and past lives, or else pull in theurgy from Theosophy, or secret knowledge from Gnosticism. They casually, and without any reference to evidence or precedent, assert that we have x issue from our past lives and so that’s why y pattern appears in our nativity. All made-up, all incoherent, and all unsubstantiated.

For the ancient Hebrews, as evidenced by the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as the Biblical evidence I outline in my book, astrology is the operation of the beings that govern Creation under the sovereignty of God. The pseudo-religious and philosophical frameworks astrologers today impose upon their craft are modern inventions. For Christians, we can understand the accuracy of astrology as evidence for the operations of Jesus as Lord of the Ages. As we are told throughout the Old and New Testaments, God has assigned us our lot and we are to accept it, exercise the gifts he has provided us for the Kingdom, and glorify Him with what we do with this life He granted us and for which He will require an account.

Something I have noticed over the years investigating the operations of Satan is that the devil does not have infinite resources. He’s a created being, after all. He therefore must allocate his energies wisely, and if the devil has put his energy into establishing a deception, it’s for a reason. I believe the suppression of the sacred sciences, including astrology, among believers has been part of that agenda. The devil didn’t want us to know the ancient cosmological worldview.

If the devil doesn’t want us to know something, then I would encourage Christians to do what we can to look into it. There’s something there he’s scared of.