Midrashic Tales of Chapter Five and Six
Presented on: Thursday, January 14, 1988
Presented by: Roger Weir
Archetypal Studies: A Jungian Commentary on the Book of Daniel
Presentation 2 of 7
Midrashic Tales of Chapter Five and Six
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, January 14, 1988
Given at the Philosophical Research Society, Los Angeles, California
Transcript:
The second lecture in this series, and you might wish to be reminded that the overall title of this series is Archetypal Studies. Were not really focusing on anything other than Archetypal Studies. And its divided into two, its divided into an Old Testament representative and its divided in the second part choosing a New Testament representative. And that the two are linked together.
How are the two linked together? The two are linked together in this way: The Book of Daniel is written down in its form that we have now around the time that the Teacher of Righteousness began the Qumran Community. So that The Book of Daniel is the clearest visionary record we have of the state of the archetype of the unfolding of God before man.
And the example from the New Testament, The Epistle to the Hebrews, written in the earlier parts of the 50s AD - probably close to 55 AD, about the time that the Gospel of Mathew was first being committed to writing - is the first book in the New Testament and comes as a record of the Theraputai community outside of Alexandria.
So that Daniel and the Epistle to the Hebrews shows the beginnings of the Qumran community and the end of the Theraputai community. And in that 200 years was a change in the archetype of the symbolic self in whatever area of mankind could be reached by that message. It stretched at least from India to Ireland and from Ethiopia to the Sithians.
So what were looking at is a parenthetical expression of tremendous importance and dynamism. And were looking at the two ends of it; were looking at the way that vision seemed when it began and the way that vision seemed when it was manifest. So were looking at the most powerful shift in consciousness of which we have a record in the Western world.
Why are we doing this? Because we live in a time when we are in a similar shift. The archetype of the Self of contemporary human beings is undergoing transformation - has been for some time, several generations already. And so its of interest to us because we cannot really see objectively, this size of psychological occurrence in our own time. But we can, with some attention, some effort, view the last time that this happened. And see what the pattern was and notice the shift, notice the changes. And pay attention to the way in which the fulcrum, the symbolic integration was a prelude to a life being lived. So that what were dealing with in Daniel is the way in which the symbol was first understood. And in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the recording in consciousness of a life which has been lived, not displacing the symbol but expressing the symbolic in a life sense, so that it had gone from a psychological integration into a personal existence, which then conveyed all of the symbolic integration through the life energies.
Now this is very difficult to understand or its very simple to understand. Its one of those things that goes either way. So what were addressing ourselves to here is not just looking at a book, but were trying to pace ourselves over a three month period of looking at a tremendous numinous experience. And that the numinous experience happened not just to a few people or to many people but it happened to all people within its range. The limits of the range, incidentally, were the limits of mythological contact. Its like what a symbol integrates is the magnetic connections in the mythological sphere. And whatever was touched by the mythological sphere was pulled into the integration.
At the center of this experience were just a very small handful of people, not all of them Jews. But the people who kept the closest contact with the ongoing experience were the Jewish people. That is to say, throughout their history have always had tremendous spiritual courage and simply refused to let go of the suffering. And where most individuals were electrocuted or repulsed by the suffering, the Jews refused to let it go. Because they were convinced that it came from God, and if God wants us to have this, shall we reject his wisdom? And theres a Jobian kind of an ethos in this.
But the most significant of all the documents is The Book of Daniel in the Old Testament. And well see for instance, that the pattern of Daniel is the first time that the pattern of the symbol is made manifest. True it was made manifest in mystical consciousness which only a very few people at that time had any access to. But as the years went on, that symbolic pattern took hold deeper and deeper into time, into history, into people until it became eventually, the world view that triumphed out of the classical age.
We have for ourselves a little indication of some of this importance. Ill give you a couple of sentences from this little Pelican Book. This is the standard English translation of The Dead Sea Scrolls. Its in a Penguin Pelican paperback. This is the second edition, 1975, by a Hungarian, Giza Vermish. I guess you know that I feature Hungarians. And Vermish in here on page 53 in the chapter of The Dead Sea Scrolls leading up to the collection, the translation; this sections called Persons and Events and this is how he begins it: Following the pattern set by The Book of Daniel composed shortly before 160 BC, writers living in the inter-testamental period and convinced that they were seeing the last days, never alluded directly to persons and events. As in Daniel 11, where the various Talmaic and Solucid rulers of the Hellenistic kingdoms are simply called the king of the North, the king of the South, etc. And the Romans are named the Katim. So in the scrolls the term katim is applied to the final foe in the identity of personalities connected with the history of the sect is concealed under such pseudonyms as Teacher of Righteousness, wicked priest and chief of the kings of Greece.
Whats important here is to see that The Book of Daniel sets the pattern and the tone of what happens in the inter-testamental period. How does it do that? Because it makes the integration. The integration is a symbol and a symbol is not vague at all. A symbol is the most powerful fulcrum in consciousness, outside of the Person. The only thing more powerful than a symbol is a Person. But the symbol is like the prelude to the Person. However that symbol integrates is like an indication of how that Person is going to be formed. The kind of life that Person will be able to lead. The symbolic integration in Daniel clearly sets a very high tone. In fact it reaches up on tiptoes and draws the shape of a personality which could only be fulfilled by what the Qumran community eventually called the Messiah.
So The Book of Daniel is very much the first shot fired in this whole epical transformation that happened to consciousness about 2000 years ago. So the question that we would like to ask and we are asking in this series: what is The Book of Daniel about, whats it like? Weve all probably read The Book of Daniel but we didnt think it was packed this tight, we didnt open it up like a present. We just figured it was like Newsweek and anything else that we read and we read it. Or we might have stumbled over it here and there but we certainly didnt open it up. And the way to open it up is to let the structure of its symbolic integration unfold in terms of the book itself. Its not only esthetically sound and theologically preferable but it is psychology valid.
So last week we took the first three chapters and we saw that what was unfolding here was a kind of play on time, a play on history. Supposedly Daniel is about events in the Babylonian exile the Jewish people taken away from their homeland and taken off. The talented people especially taken off to staff and man the Neo-Babylonian Empire; Nebuchadnezzar and his cohorts. And because it was a huge empire and because it had many different types of people, many different types of countries, they needed to have intelligent people who were sort of multi-cultural - who could handle the show, make this bureaucracy run. And apparently Nebuchadnezzar, from the 590s down clear through the 580s BC hit upon the idea of using talented Jewish men as advisors because they had a lot of dealings with many different kinds of people, they were valuable.
One of these young Jewish men, Daniel, proved to be the royal diadem in the whole works. He proved to be capable, not only of handling many kinds of people, but different levels within the person. He was able to understand, first of all, dreams. And were given to understand that Daniel had this talent because there was some kind of a wild card gene (if I can say) that entered into the Jewish blood at the time of Joseph in Egypt, back in the days of the patriarchs, back in the time of the Book of Genesis. And Joseph interpreted dreams to the Pharaoh and was extraordinarily bright. And somehow this trait which only surfaces every so often, every so many hundred years, surfaced in Daniel.
But not only that, there was another trait that was in Daniel. He was a pure servant to God and in this he took after, not so much Joseph but after Samuel, the first of the Prophets. The first of the Prophets in the sense, not first as displacing Moses but the first of the Prophets in the sense of setting up a new kind of age, the age of kingship. Or perhaps we should put the full title in there, because we dont today understand kings so well, Sacral Kingship sacred kings.
Samuel was a kind of prophet who made kings on the basis of delegating Gods authority. And he not only made kings but unmade them. He made Saul king and then he unmade Saul. And then he made David king. And the whole notion is that Daniel in inheriting this has a gift of Gods sight, in particular to the ability to make kings. So that The Book of Daniel in its sequence of chapters, shows Daniel making a series of kings. Not by crowning them or giving them a coronation; something even more important - by making them as individuals - bringing the crowning achievement of their personality together.
In fact, when we read The Book of Daniel right, and with the Dead Sea Scrolls were now able to get the sequence right; probably for the first time since the Essene communities had the sense of it right. Daniel serves loyally, not only Nebuchadnezzar of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, he is able to serve each of the successors. And finally to, at the very end of his life as an old man, to serve Cyrus the Great, the Persian. But this only takes us through the first half of Daniel. The second half of Daniel as well see, Daniel also not only interprets their dreams and makes these kings, but he then turns to his own visions and in his own visions he sees that hes the one to set the first tone of making a king for Gods kingdom, not of earthly kingdoms.
And so Daniel is the first true herald of the Messiah. That is to say The Book of Daniel is, and probably the only way to really digest that is to understand or perhaps even put it in this kind of a statement, which is most certainly not true, but has a lot of truth in it. Think of The Book of Daniel as being written by The Teacher of Righteousness. That The Book of Daniel is the foundation of the Qumran community. Its the beginning of the whole Essene movement.
And what theyre keeping track of is something in the future. And this kind of prophecy is a very peculiar kind of prophecy. Its a kind of prophecy that only occurs in a mode which we know today as apocalyptic. And so the second half of The Book of Daniel is the beginning of a whole genre of literature, apocalypses. And the last great apocalypse is the Book of Revelation in the New Testament.
So that The Book of Daniel, in a way, heralds both the beginnings of the New Testament and the end of the New Testament. So that the whole pattern of the New Testament is packed symbolically into the structure of The Book of Daniel. Now this is a lot to see, a lot to look for. Is this possible, is this true? The Book of Daniel is the pattern of the whole inter-testamental period; it has the key to it.
In the Dead Sea Scroll material, The Book of Daniel itself is not alluded to but there are two documents in the Dead Sea Scroll material that clearly use the patterns in Daniel. One of them is the great scroll called The War Scroll. The War Scroll about Armageddon, about the final battle between good and evil. And the second document is a little fragment. If you have the Pelican edition, its on page 229. And the fragment is referred to as the Prayer of Nabonides. And well see that Nabonides is one of the kings that Daniel served. One of the kings that Daniel made, indeed. In fact Nabonides is the real name of the king in chapter 4 of Daniel which were going to start with tonight.
This is the Dead Sea Scroll fragment, the Prayer of Nabonides, in translation to English. The words of the prayer uttered by Nabunai, King of Babylon, the great king when he was afflicted with an evil ulcer in Tamon, the city by decree of the most high God. I was afflicted with an evil ulcer for seven years and an exorcist pardoned my sins. He was a Jew from among the children of the exile of Judah and he said recount this in writing to glorify and exalt the name of the most high God. And so I wrote this. I was afflicted with an evil ulcer in the city of Tamon by decree of the most high God for seven years, pray to the Gods of silver and gold, bronze and iron, wood and stone and clay, because I believe they were Gods.
And so this is the archeological document we have in The Book of Daniel as it has come down to us. And the formation of The Book of Daniel is passed to us largely through what is called the Massoretic text - the Jewish Bible made around 200 AD or 200 of the common era, as they would prefer to have it.
So that the text of Daniel has a few emendations that were put in there by Rabbinic Judaism. One of them is because of the association of forgiveness of sins with Jesus, the power of Jesus, that the name Nabonides was changed to Nebuchadnezzar. In other words the king that they were writing about in the first couple of chapters of Daniel was just extended. And so his name is used in the 4th chapter. We would be advised to read it as Nabonides. Does it make a difference? Yes it does. It does make some difference. It brings us clearer to that level of veracity where we can finally see well enough to understand.
Ill read it as it occurs but you mentally transpose Nabonides for Nebuchadnezzar. This is how chapter four begins: Nebuchadnezzar, the king unto all people nations and languages that dwell in all the earth, peace be multiplied unto you. I thought it good to show the signs and wonders that the high God hath wrought toward me. How great are his signs and how mighty are his wonders. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and his dominion is from generation to generation. That is to say his kingdom, his dominion occurs through a generational flow, occurs in history, he is the lord of history.
Now I need to give you a little emendation here because this is not at all apparent. History is a transformational media and it is related to myth, so that answered flow, Myth and History occur together. So that myth and history occur together in a similar flow. What separates myth from history is the symbol. That is to say there is always a symbolic integration implicit in history which is not there in myth. This transformational media is crossed in the symbol by another transformational media. And this transformational media is generally known as nature. The way things are. Who feeds the whales in the sea, who makes the evening stars sing together? Nature. In however large or profound a way you wish or however mundane way. And that nature when it flows into the symbolic integration also changes. Just like myth changes into history, nature changes into magic. At least that what traditionally it was always called and we neednt fear words of accurate designation. That is to say, myth and magic are not the same thing at all. And nature and history certainly are not the same. And as you can see that nature and history have a correlate relationship, myth and magic also have a correlate relationship.
The language of The Book of Daniel is mythic in its single episodes. Each chapter is like a little myth. But the implicit linking together of them is magical language. That is to say it has a symbolic integration which it uses to arrange these myths into a structure so that the magical language of The Book of Daniel is much more powerful in its overall thrust than any of the individual mythic elements that are in there. This is why Daniel is referred to in The Book of Daniel as the master of the magicians. He is the master of the magicians. Now the term for magician - the Hebrew term for magician (I think I should put this on the board using English letters) H A R T U M M I M. This is from the Anchor Bible translation of The Book of Daniel; page 131, note 20, magicians: in Hebrew hartummim, a word of Egyptian derivation, that apart from this book (that is other than The Book of Daniel) occurs only in reference to the soothsayers of Egypt in the accounts of Joseph in Egypt in Genesis (and in Genesis its chapter 41 verses 8 & 24), and of Moses and Aaron at the Court of Pharaoh in Exodus (and its chapter 7 in Exodus verses 11 & 22.)
So that this term magician applies only to Joseph and to Moses and Aaron and to Daniel in the Old Testament. And that every time its applied, it implies an Egyptian context. What is the context? The symbolic integration. That is to say the symbolic integration in the Jewish tradition which included magic into their religious capacity, into their spiritual power, if you will, happened in Egypt.
Now magic as a transformational media is the beginnings of consciousness. Just like nature is the beginning of the world of things, magic is the beginning of consciousness. So that in the Jewish tradition, and this is esoterically true, but it is also just true as a religious faith. The Jewish consciousness was honed in Egypt. That is in fighting against the assimilative powers of Egypt, the Jews were forced to become conscious, forced to think this through, forced to come to terms with this. They were never forced to come to terms in that way with the ancient Sumerian, Assyrian, Semitic matrix. They came out of that civilization. The Euphrates river civilization was affine to them, they never had any problems. They might have had political problems but they never had any spiritual problems. They might have resented being taken into exile physically, but they never had the kind of problems that they had when they were in Egypt. Because every time they were in Egypt, they had spiritual problems. And the only way to overcome them was to raise their consciousness. And this was the pattern from Abraham all the way through Jesus. This is like one of the archetypal proofs of the pudding of Jesus spending a lot of time in Egypt. Because it was the archetypal symbolic traditional place to raise consciousness to a new level. It was always true.
Daniel is not in Egypt but hes referred to, using this term as the master of all these, because hes the prototype, the symbolic prototype of that person who will be the master of all magicians, who will simply take one third of the power away from all the realms of magical correlation that there are, which is big magic.
So well come back here, and well see, at the beginning of Chapter 4 theres an introduction which is full of significance. Now, Chapter 4 resonates with Chapter 2 in The Book of Daniel, just as Chapter 1 and Chapter 3 sort of go together, Chapter 2 and Chapter 4 go together. They make a nice little sequence. And then Chapter 3,4,5,6 and 7 make a culmination.
Chapter 2 begins very simply: And in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar dreamed dreams wherewith his spirit was troubled and his sleep braked from him. So in Chapter 2, the dream is a dream that wakes him from his sleep and he cant get back to sleep. Theres a dream in Chapter 4 but the dream in Chapter 4 terrifies the man. Now because of this parallelism it was very easy to institute Nebuchadnezzar. That Nebuchadnezzar first had a dream that he couldnt sleep and then he had a dream that terrified him, and each time he calls in Daniel to interpret it. But the fact is that also characteristic of Daniel is that there is a movement in history God is the lord of history and this movement of history is the rotation around this symbol, that is to say a symbol when it integrates rotates temporality. So that events, instead of following a line of development, follow arcs of meaning and those arcs of meaning come together and form a pattern. So that the time element in a symbol is always in this kind of a circular flow. And just as there is a rotational energy to time in a symbol, there is also a radiant energy from symbols which is the spatiality; this kinesthetic, psychic dimension, which in its refinement is the spiritual realm.
So that a symbol, what it does is integrate; brings time and space together. It brings the rotational significance of time, takes linear time and makes it rotational, and integrates that with the radial structures of space. So that the world of things, things in space are rearranged, no longer in the way in which they are naturally, but the way in which they are magically. And he who controls the symbol, controls the magical arrangement. And thats the whole basis of any kind of magic. And it isnt just a manipulative magic or a sympathetic magic but one can understand that all of that kind of talk is sort of like kindergarten jabber trying to approximate what one should say as a mature person: is that this is the way in which consciousness is patterned. Its just simply the way that its patterned and can be understood. In fact The Book of Daniel shows that it was well understood in the time of the Teacher of Righteousness. They knew what would happen, and they knew what to do, and they also knew that it was going to take some time for this to work. It was going to take several generations for this to happen.
The Book of Daniel then goes into this statement. And you can read Nabodonetus, Nabodonetus for Nebuchadnezzar (my Babylonian is not too good). You might ask why Neo Babylonian. The original Babylonians were Hamarabi at the time of Abraham. And then the Assyrians came in for a long while and then some power group said well were descendents from the original Babylonians, the city belongs to us. And so they took over. And well see that Cyrus takes over from them. He says yes, the city is yours but you belong to me too, so Im taking over everything; he was very powerful.
Babylon was un-siege-able. It was designed by genius military engineers so that it was un-siege-able. It had a series of motes and walls so that you could not get in. And Cyrus reckoned that anything that tightly sealed had a garbage problem. And so he found out where the conduits were, the pipes that they used the Euphrates river, that ran through Babylon, to wash out the garbage, and he armed his men, they crawled through the garbage pipes and captured the city. And so you can see, sometimes there are ways to do it.
I Nebuchadnezzar was at rest in my house and flourishing in my palace. I saw a dream which made me afraid and the thoughts upon my bed and visions in my head deeply troubled me. Therefore I made a decree to bring in all the wise men of Babylon before me that they might make known unto me the interpretation of the dream. And if you remember in the 2nd Chapter of Daniel, he doesnt remember his dream. And he sets the impossible task, he says you have to tell me what my dream was and then interpret it. But in Chapter 4, were raising consciousness, he remembers his dream now, he wants the interpretation. Were not only raising consciousness but were moving forward in historical time. But as were moving forward in historical time and raising consciousness, The Book of Daniel is starting to wrap this around a symbolic vision. Hes going to bring both these things right around a pivot. And the pivot is the mind of Daniel.
Then came in the magicians, the astrologers, the Chaldeans and the soothsayers (always a quaternary, when you get the full cross section) and I told the dream before them but they did not make known unto me the interpretation thereof. But at the last Daniel came in before me whose name was Belteshezzar according to the name of my God. And we talked about that about an honorific court title of someone important would have the name of a God in his court name. The God Bel and for Daniel his name was Belteshezzar.
So Daniel comes in last. In whom is the spirit of the holy Gods. Now its interesting because The Book of Daniel is written down in two different languages. Its written in Hebrew and in Aramaic. In fact the additions to Daniel as well see towards the seventh week are written in Greek. But The Book of Daniel just in the very beginning, Book One and the first part of Chapter 1 and the first part of Chapter 2 are in Hebrew and then all of this is in Aramaic. And then in the last parts when you get to the visions its in Hebrew again. So in the Aramaic, the term thats used for Spirit of God is a very particular term. And its used in very high potent, high level prophetic visionary way: Ruach Elohim - the holy wind of the most high. There is a parallel to this expression, incidentally, conception if you like, experience rather. Theres a parallel to this in Navajo Indian understanding where the holy wind is the manifestation of Grandfather Spirit. And one feels that holy wind, not out here but in here. And its very close to what was used in the Aramaic of God.
Daniel has a holy wind that courses in his psyche and he comes in. And so the king, who is very powerful, addresses him and uses this title: Oh Belteshezzar, master of the magicians, because I know that the Ruach Elohim is in thee and no secret troubles thee, tell me the visions of my dreams.
Break
Ill give you just a little quotation from the Second Psalm so that you can get the flavor and the power of this. The Psalm at the beginning says that there are many pretenders but I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree. The lord hath said unto me, thou art my son. This day I have begotten thee. Ask of me and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance and the utter most parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a . . .
recording shifts
. . . Along with the text so that we can get through this so we can start next week on the apocalyptic vision in Chapter 7. So we need to go through 4, 5 and 6.
These are timeless tales. These chapters of Daniel individually are stories that you have all heard. In fact they are stories that everyone at this time in 160 BC had heard. In fact they were stories that people had heard for hundreds of years; they were folk tales. They were proverbial stories of encounters with the divine, especially that kings would have. That is to say in ordinary lives they were very significant and very frightening but when they happened to kings they were indications of a change in the age. If it happens to an individual, it has something to do with the change in their life, but when it happens to a king it means that the times are changing.
So that were given to understand by The Book of Daniel, as the writer reels off folk tale apocalyptic, after folk tale apocalyptic, saying that something really huge is coming because every single king in this line has had something happen to him. And whats common is that the solution each and every time was the deepening power of Daniel. In that at first its dreams of other people that he deals with and then its his own visions that he deals with. So the book is very, very powerful when one is conscious of what it is that were looking at. We realize that this is tremendously sophisticated. Whoever put this together was indeed capable on very high level.
We ended with this before the break: Daniel being addressed as Belteshezzar, master of the magicians who has the spirit of the holy Kahan in him the Ruach Elohim. And the king Nabonedes, rather than Nebuchadnezzar telling him hes had terrifying dream, he dreamed of a great tree, its like the world tree, huge and in its branches birds were able to live and every conceivable type of fruit and so forth. This great tree is flourishing and as he beholds it a messenger comes down from the realm of the Gods, from the realm of God; in The Book of Daniel referred to as a watcher, one of the angels who watches over men. This term the watcher first occurs around 200 or 180 BC in the Books of Enoch, the visions of Enoch. The watcher comes down and says that this tree must be cut down so that only the stump is left bound in brass and iron about grass high. And the image is this great tree cut down to the level of grass. And then paralleling that is something that Daniel will bring out and say. When he tells him this whole dream then Daniel, whose name was Belteshezzar was astonished for one hour and his thoughts troubled him. The space of one hour is a space where all the radiance is collected and nothing comes out. Why? Because hes letting the circulation of it go full circle. Hes letting the rotational significance of all the valuation go full circle. You find this in the Book of Revelation. Just before the opening of the Seventh Seal, theres a space of silence in heaven for an hour. Its that kind of a thing where theres no light escaping, theres no spatiality, theres only the collecting of the full energy of time into its timelessness. So that when the next radiation comes out, when the next spatiality occurs it has the full amperage of eternity behind it. Symbolized Hermetically as Atom in Egypt.
Then Daniel, whose name was Belteshezzar, was astonished for one hour and his thoughts troubled him. And the king spoke and said Belteshezzar, let not the dream nor the interpretation thereof trouble thee. Belteshezzar answered and said my lord the dream be to them that hate thee and the interpretation thereof to thine enemies. The tree is careful not to speak directly to the king because its very bad manners. So hes saying let me dedicate the dream and my interpretation to your enemies. Its a polite way of saying my liege you bid me speak I would not say this to you so lets direct it to them. Its courtly etiquette when your life is in the hands of somebody that you have to anger. You observe the etiquette.
Daniel says The tree that thou sawest which grew and was strong, whose height reached unto the heaven and the sight thereof to all the earth, whose leaves were fair, and he goes on with all this and he says that this king is you. This is the symbol of the royal you. This is the interpretation oh king, and this is the decree of the most high which has come upon my lord the king. That they shall drive thee from men and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field and they shall make thee to eat grass as an oxen and they shall wet thee with the dew of heaven and seven times shall pass over thee till thou know that the most high ruleth in the kingdom of men and giveth to whomsoever he will. In other words the import of this, what the Victorians used to call the per fort, the import of this is that God rules everywhere even in this kingdom under this king of kings. In other words, were not really in exile; we are geographically in exile, we are politically in exile but we are not spiritually in exile because our God also rules here. And the only person, outside of Daniel who knows that, in terms of Jewish lore was Ezekiel.
In fact there is a parallel between Daniel and Ezekiel as well see. The Book of Ezekiel, Chapter 31 in Ezekiel is a parallel to this and Ill just give you a little bit of this. In other words Chapter 4 in Daniel has a parallel in the myth that it tells in Ezekiel, 31. But in Ezekiel, 31 the great tree is seen in Ezekiels vision as belonging to the persona of the Pharaoh of Egypt. And I wont read it because of time, but if you go home and dig out your Bible and turn to Ezekiel, 31 you can read it and you can see that Ezekiel, 31 delivers the same myth of the great tree, the world tree as a symbol for the person of the king. The king is to his people what the great tree is.
Not only that, but the direct implication always in here is that such great trees were in Eden. That Eden was a place where all men were like great trees. Hence it was the royal divine garden. There are all kinds of correlations in here. You must know that Daniel has been poured over since the time of the Essenes and throughout Christian and Jewish and Islamic history. Yes Islamic also the tradition of bowing to Mecca comes from The Book of Daniel. Daniels way of worshiping the most high is to face Jerusalem and three times a day he makes his obeisance; well get to that when we get to Chapter 6 of Daniel and youll see the origins of this aspect of Islam is in here also. Daniel is central to all three religions they share this. They have the same symbolic integration; whether The Ayatollah wishes to recognize that or not. We are psychic brothers. It doesnt mean he has to buy a Honda. It does mean that things will work out.
All this came upon the king. At the end of twelve months he walked in the Palace of the Kingdom of Babylon and as hes walking in the Palace Babylons this fabulous city. Its impregnable to attack and hes king of kings and so he voices it. This is how it is in Daniel: The king spoke and said is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power for the honor of my majesty? And while the word was in the kings mouth there fell a voice from heaven saying oh king, to thee it is spoken, the kingdom is departed from thee.
In Jungs psychology this is known as an Enantiodomia. This is known as a complete reversal of all valuation. When theres the extreme of this kind of inflation, the collapse is instantly there. When you go just so far and you fill out in one direction, it suddenly converts to its opposite. This is the principle of the Chinese I Ching, its the principle in Heraclitean polarities, its the principle in Jungian psychology. That if you go too far, beware, one more step gets you in just the opposite. Psychologically in terms of personality, this is like when the ego inflates itself so that it begins to include its own anima or animus, that aspect of the ego turns negative. Usually it first comes out as complaining, moaning and grows from that. And thats a sign that the inflation has begun to deflate. That is to say one gets so important that everything else is unimportant. And then pretty soon because youre so important to yourself alone, other people other things go by you and pretty soon youre not important at all. Its that kind of thing - Enantiodromia.
So as soon as the king says, as soon as the word is in his mouth, thats it. Hes touched by the angels, not just in his mind, but in his life. Notice that the transposition here is always that these happen as forewarnings in dreams but then they occur in life. They happen in myths and when theyre taken into the symbols then they happen in history. And The Book of Daniel is using this as a prototype and saying this is an eternal law when the myths of the new man are internalized into the symbolic integration enough, it will happen in history. So the whole purpose of places like Qumran or the Theraputai Community were to make this integration happen. How do we know the Messiah will come? Because were going to be the midwives. Because if we do what were doing right, he will be there. He will occur in history. He will step out of myth into time just as sure as the stars are up there. Is this magic? Yes, this is religious magic on level of Eucharist, etc.
But hes returned and The Book of Daniel then says at the end of this particular chapter, everything is added back to him. Hes given his kingdom back after 7 years of eating grass with the beasts. That was always interpreted as having gone crazy; right hes eating grass with the beasts because he went crazy. But we know from the Dead Sea Scroll fragment, the prayer of Nabonides, who was the king, that he had an ulcer, he couldnt eat regular food. And he had to eat, as Dr. Hoeller says, grass food in order to survive. And at the end of seven years he was cured of his ulcer. And we think well thats not quite so bad as going mad. Well, if you have an ulcer its not that simple, especially if you are a king used to having your way. And especially if you had the dream. And the master of the magicians told you this was coming. And you didnt know what an ulcer really turned out to be, it probably was God touching you. And where is he touching you, right here at the solar plexus, right here where you ache.
In Chapter 5, moving further, but wrapping around ever tighter: A new king, Belshezzar, very close to the name of Daniel who is Belteshezzar, this king is Belshezzar. Belshezzar is the new king. In fact he was not really the king; his father was king: Nabodanitas. But Nabonides had sort of angered the people of Babylon because he didnt participate in all of the ritual things that a king should do. For instance at every new year festival, the king has to consecrate the new ritual cycle. Thats one of the things that you have to do. Its like the high priest at the day of atonement, goes into the Holy of Holies and consecrates the end of that cycle and the beginning of another. He has to do that, that is his responsibility. This is also a kings responsibility.
So he moved his capital out of Babylon to another city, just as the Dead Sea Scroll fragment accurately relates that the name of the city was Tieman. His son Belshezzar was the prince regent in Babylon, so that somebody living in Babylon, Belshezzar was the power. So hes the king of the city of Babylon. So we can understand what Chapter 5 is about somewhat. Heres the prince regent. He doesnt have really the responsibility of a king; and yet he has the power in the city. What is he doing? Hes feasting with all of his wives, his concubines, his counselors, his children, his cronies, his friends. And while theyre feasting one day, they decide that theyre going to drink their wine out of the golden goblets that were taken out of the temple in Jerusalem. So they break out the best gold ware that were only for the use of Yahweh. And they start guzzling their wine with this and as The Book of Daniel says in the mythic story of Chapter 5, a hand comes out and writes on the wall. This is the original handwriting on the wall. And if you look at the Tarot cards or any kind of Rosicrucian symbolism, you always see the little hand coming out of the clouds.
This is the original. This is where it begins, this is where it is, this is whats happening, The Book of Daniel. And that finger writes three words. Now usually in the Massoretic text and in the King James version and most of the Protestant literature up until the 20th Century, there were four words in there. The first one repeated twice, and then the fourth word was a little different from the way in which it was interpreted and the reason for this is that the original phrase, the meaning of the original phrase was lost and the place where it was preserved accurately is in the Jewish historian Josephus, 1st Century AD.
So what does the writing on the wall, what does it signify? Again nobody has any idea, but the Queen comes in. Now were not to understand this as the queen, the wife of the prince, but rather what we would call today the Queen Mother. She was probably the old wife of Nebuchadnezzar, still alive. She was probably a young woman when she was married to him anyway she is alive and she remembers that Daniel, who used to be called Belteshezzar; there are new Gods in Babylon now, Bel is out. The moon God Syn has replaced even Marduk in many of the ceremonies. And Bel now, hes had his day. But the Queen Mother remembers, oh yeah, theres this son of the children of Judah who has this holy wind in him. He knows about these weird things. And the phrase that they use in The Book of Daniel is that he knows how to unloosen knots. And we take that metaphorically and we dont understand that it has magical significance. That is to say they are not knots like you would tie a knot with string, but they are what is known in magic as sigils. And a magical sigil is the symbolic shape of the mythic word. And usually a sigil will be made by, at least in post Renaissance time, it was numerological in its basis.
The astrological symbols for the planets are sigils for those planets. The alchemical symbols for the elements are sigils. That is to say they are mystically true and if one knew how to read them, you would not only know in a referential way what they said, but you would know in an unfolding process form what the whole pattern of significance would be. A sigil unfolded, unfolds the context of the movement of the whole pattern of the meaning; very very powerful.
Daniel knows how to unloosen knots, he knows how to read sigils and these are not words that have been written on the wall, but theyre sigils. And when he speaks them, he speaks them as words because when you speak a sigil its spoken as a word. Thats why Jesus is the word, but God is the master sigil of the universe. But when he has spoken, thats the word which is Jesus, its like that.
So this Daniel comes in and he sees all the royal divine gold ware in the hands of these sops and he can see right away, when he looks at those sigils. What the sigils are, essentially on the first level, are denominations of money. The words are many tekel paresh. From tekel you get shekel. From many you get mina. A mina was a monetary sum equal to fifty shekels. And the last one paresh is a half mina. Money, monetary things. In other words this is the coin of the realm. This whole realm is just really available as a worldly happening, its paper thin and theres no substantiality at all. Its not a real king, these are not real people, this is a side show. And Daniel, when he sees that, in his interpretation, heres how it reads in The Book of Daniel: Daniel comes in and he recounts to these people the whole history of his involvement in this land since the exile. He recounts to them everything that has happened. The kings that he has served, the things that he has seen and hes building up, hes telling them all this has happened and now the handwritings on the wall. And he says the first one many this is the interpretation of the thing, the thing being the sigil. Many; God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it. Tekel; thou art weighed in the balance and art found wanting. Paresh; thy kingdom is divided and given over to the Meads and Persians.
Now this is a very mysterious thing, the next verse, 29, has a very odd thing. You tell a man this, the king this, and then the verse says They commended Belshezzar and then clothed Daniel with scarlet and put a chain of gold about his neck and made a proclamation concerning him that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom. Well its not that they did it but the successors did it because in that very night that Daniel delivered the prophecy, Belshezzar, the king of the Chaldeans was slain. That is to say, he came in, in the nighttime and read the handwriting on the wall and within an hour that Belshezzar was slain and Dorias the Mead took the kingdom being about three score, two years old and it probably reads that Dorias was in the room and probably had Belshezzar slain. The time was right, it was a corrupt vicious group. They were jet setting with too many aspects of the kingdom and they were finished.
The Anchor Bible, which is excellent, on page 185 has a couple of notes, because this particular section was written in Aramaic. Theres a particular quality, because they were sigils they have a symbolic significance. In the ancient Jewish mind the symbolic significance very often was not a visual correlation but an audio correlation. It wasnt that the referents were visually there; very often they were audioally there. This was conditioned because one would hear the law. The Torah was read every Sabbath on a three year lectionary cycle, so you got used to hearing significance. What you saw everyday was just the world of donkeys and goats and sheep and so forth, but what you heard was the word of God. So the hearing was attenuated.
So that these three words, these three sigils, not only are denominations of money, but theyre audio puns, and three very conspicuous words in Aramaic. And the Anchor Bible points this out that in Aramaic Mina is a play on the word Mena and Mina with that influence is a verb which means has numbered. So if you pronounce the same word with just a different inflection, its a monetary sum but it also means has numbered. In Aramaic, Tekrila is a play on the word Tekel meaning you have been weighed. And in Aramaic Parisat is a play on the word Paresh means has been divided up. So that what Daniel tells them is not the ordinary meanings of the word but he tells them the Aramaic audio puns. Because hes saying God has spoken to you and you havent been able to hear him. You cannot read the handwriting on the wall, but even if someone read it out loud to you, you still wouldnt hear it, youre that far away.
An so the 5th Book of Daniel, I think weve gone into it enough, you can get an idea, you can read this for yourself and sink into it.
The 6th Book of Daniel, is one of the most famous stories in the world, the story of Daniel and the Lions Den. There is one little esoteric here which you wont find in any books. When I did a history of the Hermetic Tradition for Mr. Hall, about five years ago, wrote that up. I found that in ancient times the sacred cycle was a 500 year cycle; it was called the life of the Phoenix. And the Phoenix was reborn every 500 years, went back to Egypt, reborn out of its own ashes. But in the AD centuries, the pattern was changed so that there was a 600 year cycle rather than 500 years. So that in the common era or the AD centuries, there are units of 600 years that make sense in Western History. For instance the period between Roger Bacon and Thomas Jefferson is 600 years. Its like that.
Daniel and the Lions Den happened around 540 BC. And so if you look 600 years in the future around 60 AD, you find people being thrown to the lions again in a religious significance, in Neros Rome the Christians thrown to the lions. So you have this kind of correlation. It isnt guess work, it isnt speculative. All this happens because it was symbolically integrated together. Why did Nero throw the Christians to the lions den, because he was possessed by the archetype; he couldnt have helped himself if he had wanted to. These are very powerful. Jung says we dont have archetypes, they have us. It isnt a question of assimilating them, its a question of knowing consciously how to navigate in those powerful streams. And if you dont know how to navigate then you have to drift with the times. And these are very perilous times to drift with. Theres not an awful lot of daylight available for the drifters.
Chapter 6 in The Book of Daniel then is about the lions den. All the other soothsayer, the Chaldeans, the astrologers, the magicians and in this you shouldnt understand magicians so much now because weve made it distinct, but the Magi, the Mageans. They have not been brought into this cycle yet, they will in the new testament. They look for some way to discredit Daniel because hes grown very strong. And they cannot find anything to discredit Daniel. Im paraphrasing Chapter 6 of Daniel. So they decide that they will trap Daniel in a religious faux pas. So they go to the king, they go to Dorias; this is not the famous Dorias, the great Persian who invaded Greece, the son of Zirces, this is Dorias the Mead. They go to him and they say make a proclamation that no one shall worship another God for the next 30 days unless they make petition to the king. Because we would like to have a sacred day when we can get all of our rituals together, or some justification. So he promulgates this law, signs it. Then they tell him a couple of days later that Daniel has not made a petition to him to worship his own God and three times a day he bows through his open window which faces Jerusalem. Hes worshiping his God without consulting the king and this is a divine proclamation and cannot be abrogated.
Then the king when he heard these word was sore displeased with himself. And set his heart on Daniel to deliver him. And he labored till the going down of the sun to deliver him. Then these men assembled under the king and said under the king no oh king that the law of the Meads and Persians is that no decree nor statute that the king established may be changed. Boxed him in. Daniel must go to the lions den. Then the king commanded and they brought Daniel and cast him into the den of lions. Now the king spoke and said to Daniel: Thy God whom thou servest continually, he will deliver thee. And the emphasis here, we lose it somewhat because we dont much understand anymore. In India its still understood. The phrase here is thy God whom thou servest continually. It doesnt mean frequently but continually. This non-stop worship, in Sanskrit the term is Stithipani Darshan unending vision of God; its a yoga. Its the yoga of the Bhagavad Gita.
That is what Daniel practices before the most high. He is never not thinking of the most high, he is never not worshiping the most high. And the king says this flow of Gods presence which is unending in you will protect you from anything that could happen to you. He says I believe this. And yet Daniels in the lions den. So heres how it reads; and notice now the parallel with Lazarus and with Christ. And a stone was brought and laid upon the mouth of the den and the king sealed it with his own signet and with the signet of his lords that the purpose might not be changed concerning Daniel. Then the king went to his palace and passed the night fasting. Why is he fasting? Its really not a part of Babylonian religion but the fasting is a part of the Jewish tradition. This is the way that the most high is observed. And so he makes himself affine with Daniels God. So he passes the night fasting, Neither were instruments of music brought before him and his sleep went from him. Then the king rose very early in the morning (just like Easter morning). The king rises early in the morning and he goes there, went in haste to the den of lions. And when he came to the den he cried out with the lamentable voice. That is to say with a voice in a particular kind of lament. A lament was a language structure, it was like a religious prayer. What is it? Its a prayer of deliverance Oh Lord, help us now; just something like that. He cries out in a lamenting voice unto Daniel and the king spoke and said to Daniel, Oh Daniel servant of the living God, is thy God whom thou servest continually able to deliver thee from the lions. Then Daniel said unto the king, oh king live forever, my God hath sent his angel and has shut the lions mouths. And you see the masculine strength in this mythic level of Daniel is to close the mouths of the lions and the feminine strength is to open the mouths of the lions. The Tarot card Strength has that image in there, that comes from Daniel again.
These are not such boring books after all are they. My God hath sent his angel and hath shut the lions mouths and they have not hurt me for as much as before him innocence was found in me and also before thee oh king have I done no hurt. Then was the king exceedingly glad for him and commanded that they should take Daniel up out of the den and replace him with the soothsayers and the astrologers and the Chaldeans and all their wives and concubines and children. And just to rub it in the phrase is and the lions broke their bones in pieces before they even came to the bottom of the den. In other words the lions didnt eat Daniel because they werent hungry, that wasnt the issue. Then King Dorias wrote unto all people, nations and languages that dwelleth in all the earth, peace be multiplied unto you. I make a decree. And this is a royal decree; this is about 544 540 BC, make a decree, that in every dominion of my kingdom men tremble in fear before the God of Daniel for he is the living God and steadfast forever and his kingdom, that which shall not be destroyed and his dominion shall be even unto the end. He delivereth and rescueth and he worketh signs and wonders. Signs sigils and wonders revelations. In heaven and in earth. Who hath delivered Daniel from the power of the lions. So it is Daniel prospered in the reign of Dorias and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian.
And Cyrus only comes in because of this history of Daniels miracles, Cyrus returns the Jews back to the holy land and the exile is over.