Star-Lore Part 3: Mark as a Guide to the Spiritual Life
Part 3:
Mark as a Guide to the Spiritual Life
Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. 'Do you understand what you are reading?' Philip asked. 'How can I,' he said, 'unless someone explains it to me?' (Acts 8:30-31)
This
constellation-based schema – clear, consistent, irrefutable – prompts a number
of questions about the nature of Mark’s Gospel, the most important one being,
‘What kind of document is this?’ It is certainly not a hastily compiled, rudimentary
biography of Jesus, which Matthew and Luke added to and improved upon, as many
believe; still less is it likely to be a series of random reminiscences made to
the author of the Gospel by the Apostle Peter and presented ‘in no particular order’[1] as Papias
claimed in the second century, and which some branches of orthodoxy still
teach.[2] Scholars
have found this particular statement by Papias quite puzzling because Mark
seems to have a reasonably coherent chronological order. But Papias is no doubt
denying a zodiacal order because such an order would undermine his claim
(a claim made by generations of scholars and preachers) that Mark’s story is
basically history.
But nobody writes history or
compiles reminiscences in this way. Nobody writes a biography, however sketchy,
which says nothing about the appearance or education of the subject, little
about their family, and which recounts the events of just one year of the
subject’s life.
On the
other hand, Mark’s Gospel is not ‘myth’. Of course, it can be considered a myth
in the way this term is (mis)used currently (i.e. to mean ‘an untruth’) but
then, so can most of the world’s literature. Although mythic elements are
incorporated into the text, the Gospel does not fully satisfy any of the more
scholarly and comprehensive definitions of myth.[3] To
ask ‘is the Gospel of Mark history or myth?’ is to present us with a very
unsatisfactory choice: it is neither, although it contains elements of both.
Mark’s Gospel
is a unique literary creation. It has no doubt undergone a number of revisions,
but the version we now possess preserves the structure of a much longer
document, which probably originated in an esoteric or Gnostic school whose
purpose was to provide spiritual guidance for the coming age of Pisces. The
astrological schema is neither ornamental nor merely functional. In each
zodiacal section, the astrological meaning of the sign informs and defines
the nature of the lesson(s) we need to learn from that section. All the
component parts of a section - miracles, oral teaching, actions - are linked by
their zodiacal context. The stories are not ‘remembered incidents’ randomly
strung together like beads on a chain, but deliberately constructed narratives (or narratives adapted from mythology or from the Jewish scriptures) designed to provide material for meditation and reflection to
spiritual aspirants in a wisdom school.
The zodiac – the apparent annual path of the Sun in the
sky – is a natural symbol of the path of life, and in each of the zodiacal
sections we are presented with an important issue which every human being has
to face. Just as Hercules has to complete twelve tasks on his way to find the
golden apples,[4] so the
aspirant must complete twelve spiritual tasks on his/her way to ‘resurrection’
or self-transformation. As we learn from Acts, Christianity was originally
called ‘the Way’ or ‘the Path’ (Acts 9:2). The Greek word for ‘path’ is hodos,[5] and
this word is a possible root of the word ‘zodiac’.[6]
The miracle stories are not assigned to a
section randomly. For example, the three healings of specified diseases[7] in the
Aries section belong together because each one illustrates in its own way the
necessity and the possibility of grasping the new life symbolised by the
spring. The leper (Mk 1:40-45) is one of the ‘living dead’; the paralysed man
(Mk 2:1-12) has been rendered powerless because he is crippled by his past (his
‘sins’), and the man with the withered hand (Mk 3:1-5) is operating on half his
potential power. In Matthew’s Gospel, these stories are scattered around and
so, lacking a unifying context, they can only be seen as yet more isolated
examples of Jesus’s amazing power. However, by placing them close together and
linking them thematically with other images of beginnings and newness, Mark
gives them a symbolic power which they lack when separated.
A Summary of
Mark’s Twelve Spiritual Tasks
The principal lesson of Aries, the
springtime sign, concerns our relationship with the past. We are not to let the
past with its sins, its guilt, and its failures paralyse our present. ‘Your
sins are forgiven,’ says Jesus to the paralysed man (you and me!) ‘so pick up
your bed and walk!’ This first section teaches that embarking on the spiritual
life requires courage and a willingness to break free from debilitating
personal habits of thought and behaviour, and from social and family
relationships which hinder our resolve to pursue the spiritual life.
In the Taurus
section, we learn that steadfastness, sticking to our resolve, is vital to our
spiritual growth; we must not be like the seed that grows well for a while but
which then is choked by thorns – the physical appetites, and the cares and
concerns of the world. Taurus also teaches us that light will come to us and
hidden things will be revealed to us, if only we persevere.
Gemini, the
Twins, highlights the fragmented nature of the psyche; that in each of us there
is a whole crowd of personalities jostling for attention, ‘I am large, I
contain multitudes’, wrote Walt Whitman of this very condition. 'My name is Legion,' says the demoniac. We have to come
to terms with it. This section also teaches us that in our ordinary state we
are asleep, reacting to circumstances rather than choosing our actions. Waking
up from this sleep – as Jairus’ daughter is awakened by Jesus – is a necessary
step on the way to wholeness. Here we learn about reincorporating the feminine
– the neglected, moribund polarity – into our religious life (Talitha cumi,
Little girl awake!).
Cancer
teaches us that we are closed off from others like the crab is enclosed in its
shell, but we must break through this carapace and be prepared to encounter
‘the other’. We need to ‘open up’ (Ephphatha). We are semi-blind; we can
see other people, but they seem like trees walking about. We need to learn to
see others as ends in themselves and not as means to our own ends.
In Leo,
which includes the scene of the Transfiguration, we are taught about the true
nature of the human being. We are all children of God, divine beings, eagles
who think we are chickens. Each of us is a glorious emanation from God with a
vital and unique part to play in the drama of the universe.
However, no sooner
are we apprised of our elevated status than we are taught the virtues of
humility and service, the great lessons of Virgo. ‘Don’t get above
yourself,’ says Jesus to his apostles. ‘Never mind arguing with each other
about who is the greatest. Serve one another and cultivate the mind of a child to
perceive the world afresh.’
The equinoctial
sign of Libra, which the Sun enters when day and night are equal,
carries the lessons of mutuality and reciprocity, of entering into caring and
supportive relationships with people. Here we learn about the ‘sacred marriage’,
the union of male and female, of yang and yin, within the individual psyche. We
are taught, too, that wealth can be a severe hindrance to our spiritual
progress, deflecting us from the life of the spirit by fostering
self-indulgence and distraction.
In the Scorpio section,
which comes as Jesus and the apostles approach Jericho, the lowest inhabited
place on earth, we are warned not to seek power over others and taught about
those hidden connections which bind us one to another, so that no individual
acts to and for himself alone; our actions, for good or ill have consequences
for ourselves and for others.
At the beginning
of the Sagittarius section, Jesus rides into Jerusalem on an unbroken
horse, symbolising the mastery of the bestial by the divine, mastery which each
of us is called to attain. Each of us is a ‘place where two roads meet’[8]
(ἄμφοδον). Here we learn
about the power of prayer and of faith to bring about remarkable changes in our
world.
In Capricorn
we learn about the attitude we should cultivate towards all religious authority
– bishops, priests, ministers, traditions, church councils, holy books and the
like. We must not cravenly follow the lead of others. We must take
responsibility for our own spiritual progress.
The Aquarius
section teaches the importance of standing out from the crowd, and of being
willing to offer our unique gifts to society. We also learn that coming to a
state of enlightened transformation will turn our interior universe upside
down.
Finally, in the
lengthy Pisces section, we see a dramatic presentation of the
crucifixion of the false self which has kept us enslaved in our own egotism and
craving but which has never been able to deliver the happiness it has
constantly promised. We also learn that two 'thieves' - the past and the future - steal our lives.
In the final few
verses of the Gospel of Mark we read about the Resurrection, the empty tomb,
which happens on the first day of the week – Sunday - just as the Sun has
risen. These references to the Sun are not accidental or peripheral. The yearly
journey of the Sun in the sky reflects the life journey of the spiritual
aspirant. Just as the Sun is ‘resurrected’ each year at the equinox, and each day at dawn; just as
winter is transformed into spring; just as the caterpillar is transformed into
the butterfly, so the spiritual journey outlined by Mark results in the birth
of a new creature, a resurrected creature, someone who has overcome the sleep
of the unlived life and who is now prepared to enter into life with new
attitudes, new visions, new hopes. Jesus’s disciples are to meet him in
Galilee, that is, back where it all started. Galilee comes from the Hebrew word
galal which means ‘to roll, to encircle’.[9]
Resurrection doesn’t take us away from the cycle of ordinary life, it sends us
back on to it once more, but this time, in the words of T.S. Elliot, ‘we’ll
know the place for the first time’.
All valid religion
is a call to resurrection. Not to life after death, but to a new kind of life achievable
now. As Balzac says, at the end of his novel Louis Lambert, ‘The
resurrection is brought about by the winds of heaven which sweep the worlds.
The angel borne upon the blast does not say, “Arise, you who are dead!” but “Arise,
you who are living!”[10]
This is the sublime
message of the Gospel of Mark.
The Cancer Section (6:30-8:26)
As an extended example of how the
various components of a zodiacal segment fit together, let us look more closely
at Cancer. Withdrawal, ancestry, traditions, clannishness, food, nurture; these are all
associated with the sign Cancer, and these are the principal themes of this section
of Mark’s Gospel as even a cursory glance will show.
Cancer, along with
its associated planet, the Moon, is said is to ‘rule’ the stomach and one of
the dominant themes of this whole section is food. It begins with the account
of the Feeding of the Five Thousand and
it goes on to discuss the Jewish obsession with dietary laws, the tradition of
ritual cleansing before food, and later it deals with the Feeding of the Four
Thousand and ‘the leaven’ or yeast of the Pharisees.
There are two
feeding stories. This has given headaches to traditional commentators for many
years, some scholars suggesting that Mark included two accounts of the same
event, showing him to be less than a competent historian – just as Jesus’s
strange journey[11]
shows him to be a poor geographer. Liberal scholars who view the Gospel as
‘exaggerated history’ will often explain these stories by saying that all the
people really had food hidden away, but they were too mean to advertise the
fact. After listening to Jesus, they were ashamed of their selfishness and
willingly shared what they had and everyone was satisfied. But this kind of
explanation – harmless enough in its way – is rather patronising to the
Gospel’s author, implying that he allowed evangelistic piety to cloud his judgement.
But the author of
this Gospel was no fool to be patronised, still less was he a poor historian or
a poor geographer. The author knew perfectly well what he was doing. He
deliberately has two feeding stories
because he wants to make a very important point relating to Jewish
clannishness. The stories are indeed the same except for a few details. But the
details are crucial to a proper understanding of their meaning: the feeding of
the Five Thousand takes place in Jewish territory, the feeding of the Four
thousand occurs in a predominantly Gentile area (the Decapolis). So, the two
stories show that God’s spiritual ‘manna’ is to be distributed to all people,
not just to the Jews, and, read together, they constitute an attack on the
narrow exclusivism and parochialism which characterised much Jewish thinking at
the time the Gospel was written, and which have characterised much religious
thought and practice before and since that time.
The traditions we inherit and pass on, the
prejudices we develop, our natural instincts, act like the crab’s shell to cut
us off from what we consider to be alien or strange. It is probably a survival
mechanism, built into our genes, but one objective of the spiritual life is to
identify and then try to overcome those instinctive factors which work to give
us short term survival advantages, but which have now outlived their usefulness
and which actually impede our development as a species
The visceral – ‘gut’ – reactions,
which all human beings exhibit in the presence of the unfamiliar, are a feature
of our emotional life. They come unbidden, up from the depths, and we have
little immediate or conscious control over them. We instinctively prefer those
people who look like us, talk like us, and who share our assumptions and our
outlook. This is why the story of Jesus walking on the water is so appropriate
in the Cancer section of the Gospel. It is astronomically appropriate because
one of the constellations surrounding Cancer is Argo, the mythical and magical
ship of the Argonauts which, according to the Roman writer Manilius, was the
ship ‘which conquered the waters’. But this story is also related to the idea
of overcoming our emotional reactions to things, because water has perennially
symbolised the turbulent emotional life of the individual and, by walking on
the water, Jesus is demonstrating his mastery over those instinctive responses
to life which will often override our intellectual convictions and which are
the cause of so much emotional turbulence. Walking on the water is not a
marvellous demonstration of the uniqueness of Jesus, a proof of his divinity;
nor is it a misapprehension on the part of eye-witnesses who saw Jesus walking
on some kind of rocky outcrop and mistook it for a miracle. It is, rather,
something we are all called upon to do: we, too, must strive to conquer the
internal emotional turmoil which militates against any genuine acceptance of
unfamiliar customs and people.
There are three more miracle stories in this section, and
although they seem like unrelated incidents, they must be taken together to get
the full impact of the lesson the Gospel writer is trying to teach us.
The first one is the story of the woman who
asks Jesus to cast out a demon from her daughter. It is important to remember
that this woman is a Gentile – a non-Jew - and it is for this very reason that
Jesus initially refuses her request. ‘It’s not right to give the children’s
food to the dogs,’ he says. This, of course, is a terrible insult, and the fact
that it is uttered by Jesus himself has proved quite embarrassing to
conventional commentators, who try to soften it a little by saying that the
word used was rather an affectionate term for a dog,[12] and
anyway, Jesus was really only testing the woman’s faith. Does Jesus really come
out of it better if we assume that he is playing some sort of game with this
distressed woman? If she had been unable to respond cleverly to his insult
would he have refused to heal her daughter?[13]
Considered as
literal history, as an actual event in the life of Jesus, this incident is
quite despicable. However, considered as an enacted parable, in which
Jesus plays the part of humanity, it is a powerful demonstration of ‘the
heedlessness’ we all show in our dealings with strangers.[14]
To appreciate the significance of this story we must read it
in conjunction with the story of the deaf man, which follows. After putting his
fingers in the man’s ears and touching his tongue with spittle, Jesus says the
Aramaic word Ephphatha, and the man
finds himself able to hear properly and to speak coherently.
It is unusual to find Aramaic words or phrases in the Gospels.
Aramaic was the first language of the Palestinian Jews, and so would have been
the language of Jesus and the apostles, and commentators regularly point out
that it is present in the Gospels – which were all originally written in Greek
– because these would have been the actual words that Jesus said. But Aramaic
is almost certainly used for emphasis in the Gospel of Mark. The Gospel
writer is saying, ‘I’m writing this word in another language, so pay attention
to it. It’s important’.
The word Ephphatha
means ‘Open up!’ What Jesus is saying to this deaf man’s ears is the
Gospel’s message to you and me. Our ears are closed to the entreaties of those
who live in foreign countries, whose skin colour is different from our own,
whose way of life does not correspond with ours. We are deaf to the words even
of those who live in close proximity to us, but whose traditions are different
from ours. The Jewish exclusiveness displayed by Jesus in his encounter with
the Gentile woman dramatically illustrates our own clannishness, our
instinctive conviction that ‘blood is thicker than water’, that ‘charity begins
at home’. It’s a shocking reminder of our own refusal to listen attentively to
the unfamiliar voices. It is only when we are prepared to open up that our
prejudices can be eroded; and only then that the impediment in our speech will
be removed and our opinions will be worth listening to. We have to break the
shell of our own tribalism and develop what the French call l’ouverture
d’esprit.
This theme is
explored further in the final scene of this section, the Cure of the Blind Man.
As Jesus enters Bethsaida a blind man is brought to him and, in response to the
man’s entreaties, Jesus restores his sight. This seems to be just another
example of Jesus’ amazing power to heal. But the story is different from all
the other miracles recounted in the Gospels, because it is the only one in
which Jesus is shown failing at his first attempt. He takes the man to one
side, rubs spittle on his eyes, and asks him, ‘What do you see?’ ‘I see men but
they look like walking trees,’ the man replies. Jesus rubs the man’s eyes again,
and this time his sight is restored and he can see everything clearly.
The blind man is
you and I. We have received the first rub of the spittle, and we can see – that
is, we have the sense of sight - but we don’t quite see people, we see walking trees
– or, in contemporary language, ciphers, zombies, humanoids. We recognise their
general shape and their mobility, but we have yet to grant them fully human
status. What we need is a second metaphorical rub of the eyes to correct our
vision, to remove the residual film which prevents us seeing people as they
really are, as ends in themselves, and not as means to our own ends. Einstein expresses the same sentiment as Mark,
but less dramatically and more philosophically, as follows:
A human being is part of a whole called by us
‘universe’, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his
thoughts, and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical
delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting
us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of
compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its
beauty. (Goldstein, page 26)
The function of all
spiritual practice – from whatever tradition it comes – is to help us to narrow
the gap between self-awareness and other-awareness, to remove that residual
film from our eyes which is deluding our sight.
Each of the zodiacal
sections can (and should) be analysed in the same way. When we stop asking
irrelevant – and distracting – ‘historical’ questions of the text, we can begin
to see what its real purpose is, and we can begin to see something of the
genius behind it.[15]
[1] ‘Mark who was (or, who became) Peter's
interpreter wrote down accurately though not in order (or, without
orderliness) all that he remembered of what Christ had said or done. He did not
hear the Lord, nor was he a follower of his; but at a later date, as I have
said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teaching to meet the needs of his
hearers, but not as if he was giving a systematic compilation of the Lord's
oracles. Mark therefore made no mistake, but he wrote down some things as he
remembered them, for he had one purpose in mind, not to omit anything he had
heard, and not to falsify anything in it.’ (Barclay, 1966, page 120; emphasis
added.)
[2]
See, for example, Barnett, P., (1986) Is the New Testament History?
[3] E.g. ‘A usually traditional
story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world
view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon.’
(Merriam-Webster)
[4] See The Labours of
Hercules, by Alice Bailey
[6] The word ‘zodiac’ comes from the primitive root zoad, ‘a walk,
way, or going by steps’, and is related to the Greek word hodos, ‘road’, and the Sanskrit sodi, ‘path’. (Seiss, page 17)
[7] As opposed to generic
healings such as 1:34 ‘Jesus healed many who had various diseases’.
[8] i.e. the animalistic and the
angelic
[10] La résurrection
se fait par le vent du ciel qui balaie les mondes. L’ange porté par le vent ne
dit pas: – Morts, levez-vous! Il dit: – Que les vivants se lèvent !
[11] See above, page 12
[12] The
word is κυνάρια (kunaria) and it means ‘little dogs’, ‘whelps’
(Liddell and Scott). It is obviously a reference to pet dogs which lives in the
house alongside the children; but it is not an affectionate term, it’s a
technical one.
[13]
See the astronomical basis of the woman’s response on page 12
[14] A
similar story appears in the Sufi tradition:
Bahaudin el-Shah, great teacher of the
Naqshbandi dervishes, one day met a confrère in the great square of Bokhara.
The newcomer was a wandering Kalendar of the
Malamati, the ‘Blameworthy’. Bahaudin was surrounded by disciples.
‘From where do you come?’ he asked the
traveller, in the usual Sufi phrase.
‘I have no idea,’ said the other, grinning
foolishly.
Some of Bahaudin’s disciples murmured their
disapproval of this disrespect.
‘Where are you going?’ persisted Bahaudin.
‘I do not know,’ shouted the dervish.
‘What is Good?’ By now a large crowd had
gathered.
‘I do not know.’
‘What is Evil?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘What is Right?’
‘Whatever is good for me.’
‘What is Wrong?’
‘Whatever is bad for me.’
The crowd, irritated beyond its patience by
this dervish, drove him away. He went off, striding purposefully in a direction
which led nowhere, as far as anyone knew.
‘Fools!’ said Bahaudin Naqshaband, ‘this man is
acting the part of humanity. While you were despising him, he was deliberately
demonstrating heedlessness, as each of you does, all unaware, every day of your
lives’. (Shah, Wisdom of the Idiots,
page 21)
[15] See my book The Celestial
Journey of the Soul for an analysis of each of the sections.
Comments
Post a Comment