Vision Amplification in the Chapter Seven Apocalypse

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Archetypal Studies: A Jungian Commentary on the Book of Daniel
Presentation 3 of 7

Vision Amplification in the Chapter Seven Apocalypse
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, January 21, 1988
Given at the Philosophical Research Society, Los Angeles, California

Transcript:

What we need to do is to clarify for ourselves two terms which are quite distinct in the Greek but which are confused in the English; and the terms are Soul and Spirit. In the Greek, Soul is quite distinctly Psyche, and Spirit is quite distinctly Numa. And to someone who thought in the Greek language, or in fact in any of the classical cognates of Greek intelligence, would understand the distinction. We have lost that distinction but perhaps there will be an illustration which may be of service to all of this.

Years ago Mr. Hall, here, wrote a wonderful pamphlet about the mysteries of ancient Egypt and he centered his essay around an illustration from one of the Egyptian Pyramid Texts. And it showed a scale, like a scale of justice; and it showed Thoth and Inumus and all of the Egyptian Pantheon gathered around the scale including the individual human being. And what was happening here was the weighing of the Soul and the term for that was psychostasia – the weighing of the Soul. And in the Egyptian theological representation the Soul was weighed to find out if it was pure enough to enter into the land of the Beyond – the Netherworld. And a plume, an ostrich plume, was placed on the other side of the scale. And hence the idea was, if your Soul is light as a feather you are pure enough to enter heaven.

Implicit in that is an understanding that the Soul is a completed thing, or is capable of completion; is an entity which has a definition, which has a fullness, which has indeed a completed form. And so the ancient understanding was that the Soul was nothing nebulous at all; was capable of being perfected in the sense of being completed. And thus the completed entity could be "weighed in the scales of justice"; could be subject to judgment. And this is extremely important. What's important to us aside from understanding the distinction and giving us two viable terms, Soul and Spirit, Psyche and Numa; it also gives us an insight into our consciousness. For in our consciousness we have come to understand that essentially there is no real difference between the Spirit and the Soul. And this marks us off, this marks modern man off quite distinctly from all of the human beings who lived several thousand years ago. They indeed belonged to another time; not just to a past time but to another time. We have been living in another time, another history.

And implicit in that, in the psychological evidence, in our own living testimony, there must come some recognition that at some time in our past, a previous time reckoning came to an end and some new time reckoning, of which we are a part commenced. And this of course is the subject of the entire literature which spans the distance between the Old Testament and the New Testament. The New Testament is of a whole new temporal order. The Old Testament became the Old Testament in contradistinction from the New. The Old Testament, when it was the only Testament was not the Old Testament at all. In fact there was no idea clearly that it was a Testament. What was conspicuous in the previous time, about what we now call the Old Testament was that it was the Law, it was the Torah. That was what was important about it. And to live in terms of the Torah was all important. It's only with the New Testament, it's only with the New Covenant, it's only with the change of time that the Torah becomes an Old Testament leading to something new.

This is an extraordinarily difficult area to think about and the bridge between these two times, between these two Testaments is the most confused and chaotic of all times. There is no place in past history which is more ambiguous. Indeed, part of the ambiguity lies in our failure to resolve in consciousness the structure of that transition period. It has remained a mystery right up until our own times, till our own generation.

The literature spanning the Old Testament and the New Testament is referred to as Apocryphal literature, Apocalyptic Literature. It is a literature which somehow does not fit in either Testament and yet cannot be thrown away. It is important, but it's importance is clearly as transitional material. The beginnings of this Apocalyptic Literature are shrouded in mystery.

The earliest example that we have are the Books of Enoch which apparently were written somewhere around 180 BC; 200 to about 170 BC; roughly around 180 BC. There is very good evidence now that the second Book of Enoch was written in Alexandria. I'm not sure where the first Book of Enoch was written. It's quite possible that it was the product of someone who was traveling to and fro, back and forth from Palestine to Egypt to Syria to who knows where. Somebody who was able to tap an enormous range of imagery.

But the Enochian Literature is a problem because we do not have any kind of trustworthy key to decipher the Enochian Literature. In fact in the Renaissance, in our civilization, in our time epoch, the Renaissance Magus' were all concerned with Enochian magic. John Dee in particular was the great individual who tried to probe into this in terms of finding a Cabala of the Enochian magic. And the great development of mathematics in Elizabethan England in that time period came as a spin off of these kinds of concerns.

But what concerns us in this lecture series is The Book of Daniel. And The Book of Daniel has ever been the most conspicuous interpretable beginning of Apocalyptic Literature. Even though its date comes about a generation later. The Book of Daniel, as we have it, comes from about 165 BC. So there's about 15 years, maybe 20 years in between the Enochian Literature and The Book of Daniel. So The Book of Daniel comes early enough and frequently in contemporary theological literature, The Book of Daniel is put up as the prototype of all Apocalyptic Literature. Because indeed the pattern of Apocalyptic Literature follows Daniel and not Enoch. It's like the Enochian Literature is a dream whose interpretation never fully came through but that Daniel was a vision whose interpretation was assured.

And so this lecture series seeks to try to understand The Book of Daniel. But The Book of Daniel is not just a literary document. Aside from the tradition ascription that it is a part of scripture, it is a part of the word of God, it is a part of the Revelation in the Old Testament. We need also to pay attention to the fact that the Daniel is also a pattern in our own consciousness. That is to say we're exploring The Book of Daniel to try and illuminate its structure because that structure is operative in the consciousness which we have today. But its operative-ness is not in the form of a certainty, not in the form of some conclusive idea. The Book of Daniel rather is a prototype of the human self. And so we have in our consciousness, at its fulcrum, an operative unity for which The Book of Daniel was the first blue print. And we're seeking to try to understand what this structure was, what this shape was, for it has surely some bearing upon us. And our ability to come to terms with Daniel consciously also indicates our ability to consciously understand where we are in history. And if you think that Daniel is an old problem, remember it was not too many years ago that Hal Lindsey's "The Late Great Planet Earth" was a great development of saying that The Book of Daniel is about contemporary times.

In fact The Book of Daniel has occupied many people. One of them was Sir Isaac Newton. The last 20 or 30 years of his life, after he did all his epochal making work on physics and mathematics, he devoted himself to try to decipher The Book of Daniel and its relationship to The Book of Revelation. He was convinced, intellectual genius as he was, that the relationship between The Book of Daniel, the Apocalyptic pattern in Daniel and the Apocalyptic pattern in The Book of Revelation was somehow a parenthesis of the secret of the Universe. That it was just as important to understand that as to understand the discovered structure of the functions of calculus as a mathematical tool; or the three laws of universal gravitation. So there's been a great tradition to try to understand The Book of Daniel.

As we've seen in the first two lectures here, which incidentally are available on tape if you've missed them, in the first two lectures we established that the first six chapters in Daniel are a very arcane sequence of stories. And that the thread linking these stories is the ability, the apparently inherited ability of a traditional sage named Daniel, to penetrate through to the dream levels of the Psyche. We saw that he was able not only to penetrate into his own brains but to those of other people. And we saw the great example in Chapter 2 of Daniel where the king, Nebuchadnezzar, was unable to even recall his own dream. And he wanted someone not only to interpret the dream, but to tell him what the dream was. And all of the magicians, all of the soothsayers, all of the magi, the Chaldeans said this is impossible sire; we can interpret any dream but we cannot tell you what dream you had. But Daniel could. Daniel could go inside of himself and contact that level which was shared by all of human beings. That level where at the deepest dreaming one contacts not just the deepest level of oneself but the surface linking all of us together; the surface of a sphere whose center must be Divine.

And so The Book of Daniel, its first half, its first six chapters, develops increasingly by the growth of Daniel's capacity to interpret dreams. Until we're given to understand that he becomes – and the phrase used in The Book of Daniel – "the master of magicians". He is the master of magicians. He is able to become the quintessential magician in the sense that he understands the magic of consciousness in its completed pattern. And so the first half of Daniel builds us up to understand that this man has this capacity; he is extraordinary.

And the second half of Daniel then leaves off of him interpreting the dreams of others, no matter how difficult they are, and the second half of Daniel deals with the visions which the man himself has. And in a way The Book of Daniel is like a text book for the reader to follow. In following Daniels growth in his capacity to delve and interpret, to see beneath the mythic patterns into the ritual origins and finally into the nature of the Divine itself, we are given a prototype by which we can follow. We also can learn to do this.

So that when we come to Chapter 7 in Daniel, to the middle of the book, we are able to open the book and lay it flat. If we have read closely, if we have followed Daniel's career consciously, we too then should be able to follow his steps somewhat and have increased our own consciousness about the place of dreams and revelations in terms of history and in terms of the Soul. So that we are ready, if we have followed Daniel correctly, we are ready now to hear what is deep most in Daniel. And we're given, immediately in Chapter 7, right in the center of the book, a mystic mandala of Daniels Revelation.

the Revelation that comes to him, the Apocalypse that comes to him, comes in a four part sequence and the whole sequence is in Chapter 7 of The Book of Daniel; the entire sequence. But it's there packed. The Chapter itself has 28 verses and if one follows through the quaternary structure of the psyche, the characteristic quaternary structure of the psyche, one can see that verses 1-7 are a sequence, verses 8-14 are another and verses15-21 are a third verses 22-28 are the fourth. In other words Chapter 7 in Daniel is in the center of the book itself, a completed pattern, a completed visualization. Now this completed pattern is characteristic of only one aspect of consciousness, that of the complete self. It is not a speculation of the ego, it's not an imagination of the mind but one only has this completed quaternary pattern when the deepest true self is opened and divulges its information, which always comes completed. That is to say it doesn't come with footnotes but it always comes completed.

The image from the Self therefore is no longer an image, it's no longer a picture but it's the completed pattern of all the pictures that fit together in a given whole. And thus instead of referring to it as an image we refer to it as a symbol. And consequently, because of this ability, because of this distinctive ability - the mind does not do this; the ego does not do this; the dreaming aspect of the person rarely does this, will give images but not a great Self symbol like this. And so the Self is always referred to as the Symbolic Self. And that this Symbolic Self is the Soul of man. This is his completed Psyche; this is everything together.

So that Chapter 7 in The Book of Daniel is extremely important to understand; it is the Symbolic Self of Daniel. Meaning that it does not just express Daniel but expresses God in Daniel. And that the structure, following through – if we are able to read the 1st verse of the four sections of Chapter 7, we will have a clue as to the structure. So in the 1st verse what's conspicuous is that Daniel is introduced and so this first line, this has to do with Daniel. And we look at verse 8 and I will read this chapter to you so you have this. When you look at verse 8 what's conspicuous right away is not Daniel but the sense here that there is an Ancient of Days. And then we have, when we look at verse 15, we again find Daniel [there's a system here]. Verses 1 and 7 and verses 15 and 21 have to do with Daniel. It's like a flow, it's like a line of development.

But crossing that, perpendicular to that is this mention of the Ancient of Days. And when we come to verse 22, we find again right away the Ancient of Days is mentioned. By this kind of triangulation we can see that the structure, the Self Symbol in Chapter 7 of The Book of Daniel is that there is a meeting of God and man. Not man in the sense of all men but the sense of a person, someone, Daniel.

And this is extraordinary because this is characteristic of only one kind of individual. That individual who, in the initial phases of the Old Testament was able to make a covenant with God. And of course the first individual in the Old Testament, having this capacity, was Abraham. And that the covenant making capacity was passed on to only one son. It was not inherited in general but it was passed to only one son. So there was often a scramble of who would receive this; this covenant making capacity – very special. It belongs, in fact uniquely, only to one individual at a time. In every generation there is one individual who had that capacity.

Later on the exact lineage was not kept track of. There were ages - there were whole centuries where this was not kept track of and so, to great surprise, God picked individuals who became then not patriarchs, not in the patriarchal line, but became prophets. And so a whole new echelon of contact between God and a single individual was initiated. And there came to be a line of prophets which was not inherited by blood but which was inherited by spiritual presence. And so one has a whole distinct development going on here from a patriarchal line to a prophetic line. And Daniel himself was in the prophetic line. But Daniel, in The Book of Daniel, foresees that there will come a time when the prophetic line will be ended. Not ended out of discussed but ended out of fulfillment. And that at the end of this prophetic line comes another figure which we meet and we see in the symbolic Self vision in Chapter 7 of Daniel. He sees this individual of establishing a kingdom which will never end, an everlasting kingdom.

I think it might be a good place here just to read you, in order, the four sequences that form Chapter 7 of The Book of Daniel. It's one of the most powerful passages in the entire Bible. There are very few places in the Bible, in any of the books of the Bible, that you find everything condensed into one place. You find it in the Sermon on the Mount and you find it occasionally in places like the beginning of St. John's Gospel; you find it in the beginning of Peter's second letter – but almost nowhere else do you find the condensed power of the entire vision, a cross section of what all of reality looks like; and this is it: "In the first year of Belshezzar, King of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head upon his bed. Then he wrote the dream and told the sum of the matters. Daniel spake and said I saw in my vision by night" And notice here now that the emphasis is that this is a night vision - it's a dream but it's a peculiar kind of dream which we would call a night vision. So Chapter 7 is all about a night vision. When we get to Chapter 8, next week, we'll see that it's no longer called a night vision but it's called a vision. And when we get to Chapter 9 the following week, we'll see that it no longer has anything to do with dreaming or visioning but has everything to do with a process which we would call envisioning. Because in Chapter 9, Daniel will have developed this capacity. Yes it came from dreaming; it came from dreaming changing into night visions and then into visions and then in Chapter 9 he's reading the prophecy of Jeremiah, another prophet, and he sees the hidden pattern in Jeremiah. And we'll see that Daniel is increasing in consciousness all the time. His profundity is growing all the time.

So that at the end of the book, Chapters 10, 11 and 12 form the great Apocalyptic vision of the future time. It's not anything that's happening now or in the past but it's what will happen at the very end of time. Some new figure is coming who is culminating the entire prophetic and patriarchal line and will initiate something completely new, something totally new.

So Chapter 7, verse 2, Daniel spoke and said "I had in my vision by night and behold the four winds of heaven strolled upon the great sea." Four winds again, indicative of a fullness. And we see that there are the four winds over the sea, over the face of the deep. And we're harkened back in Daniel 7 to all the way back to the beginnings of Genesis – to the beginnings of creation, the spirit of God moving over the face of the deep. And here it's the four winds moving upon the great sea and Daniel's vision by night. "And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another." The four winds and they evoke four beasts who are related together. It's like the four winds which blow around and over the Earth; these are the four beasts which are within the Earth, which come out. "The first was like a lion and had eagles wings." And then characteristic of a spiritual seer, different from a psychic who we'll see, a psychic will only see what is given to them to see. But a spiritual seer, the more they look, the more they see; it's like that, seeing into it.

"I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked and it was lifted up from the Earth and made stand upon the feet as a man and a man's heart was given to it. And behold another beast," a second – notice the parenthetical numeration here to make sure that we are following the order and that the order is wrapped around so that it's seen as a whole. This is also characteristic of a symbolic vision – that the numericality of it is important. And it's almost like we're school children who are learning our lesson now. We're learning what it is that needs to be learned and we're learning it in a way which we can remember, because this is important to us. Thus "And behold another beast, a second like to a bear and it raised up itself on one side and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between the teeth of it. And they said thus unto it arise, devour much flesh. After this I beheld (still looking, see) and lo another like a leopard which had upon the back of it four wings of a foul (four birds wings). The beast had also four heads and dominion was given to it." And then the seventh verse, "And after this I saw in the night visions" - repeating again, wanting us not to forget this is in a night vision. Because as the book goes along, Chapter 8 will lift it to a vision; Chapter 9 to and envisioning and Chapter 10 to a Cosmic vision. We're being tutored; we've begun in the first six chapters to sensitize us to this capacity that human beings have – a very weird odd capacity, yes, but it has been nurtured for a long time; many long generations and now with Daniel it's going to be amplified until it becomes capable of seeing the true pattern of reality at the end of time.

So, verse 7: "After this I saw in the night visions and behold a fourth beast dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly and it had great iron teeth and it devoured and break in pieces and stamped the residue with the feet of it and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it and it had ten horns." Now in this sequence, in this quaternary – if we had time we could go into the imagery of it. The first and the third beast, a lion and a leopard, they're both big cats, you see. And the big cats in the Near East in ancient times were always symbols of royalty, always. So there's a sense here, there's an affinity between these two kinds of beasts. The bear holds three rodents between its teeth, the second image, the bear with the teeth. The fourth image the iron teeth of this monster; and so you have these kinds of consistencies. All I can do, because our time is limited, is point out to you that in this four fold structure the first and the third items are related, the second and the fourth items are related. Those two pairs then are related together in a kind of repetition, and that's what makes the whole. There's always that kind of a formulaic approach. And by saying formulaic I don't denigrate the material; it's formulaic for a purpose.

Alright, then we have the four beasts that have come up from the four winds moving over the face of the deep and that whole structure is ended. Then he's looking deeper. "I considered the horns" (he picked out the horns) "and behold there came up among them another little horn before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots and behold as this horn were eyes, like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things. I beheld till the thrones were cast down and the Ancient of Days did sit whose garment was white as snow and the hair of his head was like the pure wool and his throne was like the fiery flame and his wheels as burning fire."

And so we have this Hierophantic symbol in a theophantic mode. We're reminded of the fiery chariot that sweeps Elijah up; we're reminded of the vision of Ezekiel and many other visions including in Daniel of the figure in the fiery furnace whose there with the three companions of Daniel. Hair like white wool, and then fiery nature and right away our associative symbolic consciousness also linked up the figure in the Revelation of St. John whose hair is like white wool, whose eyes are like fire. And we see that there is a consistent symbolism running all through this literature. All of it has a pole of the same living flow; the same energia of the completed Self.

And of course Daniel now being a spiritual seer keeps looking deeper and deeper and as he looks he sees more and more. So he sees the throne like a fiery flame and his wheels of burning fire. "A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him. Thousand thousands ministered unto him" (thousand thousands is a million) "and then thousand times ten thousand stood before him" (that's a hundred million) "the judgment was set and the books were open." So one has the image here, not only just of multitude but of culminating multitude; a thousand thousand; ten thousand, ten thousand. It's like the stacking up of accumulation has reached an end point. And indeed the end point is that humanity at this complexity, at this condensed ending, comes before a book – a single book. And we'll see that one of the aspects of The Book of Daniel was to sensitize spiritual seekers to try to find all the disparate chapters that should fit together to make the Book.

And of course, those of you who have come for the first two sessions realize that The Book of Daniel is contemporaneous with The Teacher of Righteousness, the founder of the Essenes, the founder of the Qumran community. And the whole purpose of a community of seekers like Qumran, the whole rational that the Teacher of Righteousness had in setting it up was that we must learn to distill out the pages, the verses, sections, the chapters which are part of the secret Great Book and bring them together. It's up to man to raise his consciousness to understand what is living in God's word and bring that together into a single new Book. This is the Book of Judgment. It's not that the Book of Judgment is pre-existent, it's that man's rising consciousness helps God to cull the remembered words and phrases and passages and bring them all together.

And thus for instance in the Dead Sea Scroll material we have collections like the great book which is unfortunately not ever brought out to the public as a great document. But one of the books from the Dead Sea Scrolls, from I believe it was Cave 4 and it's always referred to as the 4th Book of Qumran, 4Q, and then they use the Latin term for anthology which was foralegium. And that book was an excerpt of all the passages in the Old Testament that talked about the Messiah. And the Qumran Essenes, apparently for many generations, had sifted through every possible version, every remembered version of all of the books of the Old Testament, culling out the passages to deal with the Messiah. And they were all nicely collected together and put in one book. And one of the Dead Sea Scrolls had that book there, which we found. And they were all arranged in the pattern of disclosure, so that one could read not only the cull that they had all talked about the Messiah but that increasingly the way they talked about it was that he was eminent, he was coming.

And The Book of Daniel is the prototype of all of this kind of literature. And I read to you last week from the little Penguin translation of The Dead Sea Scrolls where the author says that The Book of Daniel is the prototype of all of this whole literary genre that the Dead Sea Scrolls participate in.

So we're dealing with extremely powerful material. We're dealing with a book, which for all intents and purposes could have been written by The Teacher of Righteousness. The Book of Daniel is not about Old Testament but it's about the first inklings of the complete picture which the New Testament will be the Testament of. So we have something very powerful here.

So he's beholding, he's not letting go, he's not blinking, he's not getting distracted by association, he's not turning it into remembered images, he's just looking as a spiritual seer; whatever God will show, I will see and I will see it complete – whatever he will show, that I will behold.

The Ancient of Days: "I beheld then because of the voice of the great words which the horns spake, I beheld even till the beast was slain and his body destroyed and given to the burning flame. As concerning the rest of the beast, they had their dominion taken away and yet their lives were prolonged for a season in time." And one is reminded here that the end of a whole cycle of ages, when it ends it doesn't appear on the worldly circus to have ended. It looks like business as usual, except that it's running down. It doesn't have any vitality anymore.

The classic statement in the 1st Century AD is in one of the books of Plutarch that we have still. Plutarch was a high priest of the Greek mysteries and he wrote a book of why the oracles don't work anymore. None of the classic oracles - the Delphian Oracle – none of them worked anymore in the 1st Century AD. Because their power had been taken away from them. Not because they were bad, but the energy was put into a new pattern. This belongs to the old world which no longer will work again in any reality, it will only work in a kind of mythological remembrance. It's only by carrying out the rituals that you have a semblance of life but not really life. If you want Life, go to the new integration, go to the new self; that's alive, that's the living water. And so there's that kind of a sense here.

"I saw in the night visions" (again reiterating, reminding us this is a night vision which he has in Chapter 7) "and behold, one like the son of man came with the clouds of Heaven and came to the Ancient of Days and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion and glory and a kingdom that all people, nations and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away and his kingdom, that which shall not be destroyed."

And now we've gone through two parts and now we come to the middle of the Vision. So verses 14 and 15 – I read you 14 and I'll read it again and then read 15 right after it; you can see the dividing line right in the middle of the Vision. The Vision's in the middle of The Book of Daniel and this is in the middle of the Vision. And so Daniel 7, 14 and 15 is the watershed in symbolic consciousness of what is happening.

The Son of Man: "And there was given him dominion and glory and a kingdom that all people, nations and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away and his kingdom, that which shall not be destroyed. I Daniel was grieved in my spirit in the midst of my body and the visions of my head troubled me." Why is he troubled? Why is he grieved? Because he realizes that a whole epoch is passing away and that what he is seeing is the end of it, the beginning of something new but the end of everything that Daniel has known – everything.

And so verse 15 of Chapter 7 of Daniel has the first testament to the Son of Man – I Daniel. Now that was the understanding that Christianity before it was distorted by all the counsels had primitive, so called primitive, Christianity (it's better to call it primordial – there was nothing primitive about people like Saint John and Saint Peter). Primordial Christianity understood that Daniel was the first testament in the new covenant, the first person to testify to that. That was the understanding.
Let's take a break and we'll come back.

Let me finish up the structure here for you. Let me see how you're doing – I'll read the last half, the last 14 verses without any kind of interpretive quality. See how, whether the first part of this lecture sensitized you enough that your ear will pick it up. Not only will your ear pick it up but your inner sense should be able to hold a sense of presence continuously through these 14 verses. This is the way that the material is used in Qumran and in spiritual communities. This is exactly the way one learns the efficacy of prayer is that the continuity of spiritual presence; like a thread links the jewels of the verses together into a necklace. When one has the necklace, one then has Sophia, one then has wisdom, one has understood; not only heard but heard through to the comprehension.

So this is how it reads: "I Daniel was grieved in my spirit in the midst of my body and the visions of my head troubled me. I came near unto one of them that stood by and asked the truth of all this. So he told me and made me know the interpretation of the thing. These great beasts which are four, are four kings which shall arise out of the earth but the saints of the most high, the holy ones of the most high, shall take the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever. Then I would know the truth of the fourth beast which was diverse from all the others, exceedingly dreadful, whose teeth were of iron and his nails of brass, which devoured broken pieces and stamped the residue with his feet. And of the ten horns that were in his head and of the other which came up and before whom [ ], even of that horn that had eyes and a mouth that spoke very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows. I beheld and the same horn which made war with the holy ones and prevailed against them. Until the Ancient of Days came and judgment was given to the saints of the most high. And the time came that the holy ones possessed the kingdom. Thus he said the fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth which shall be diverse from all kingdoms and shall devour the whole earth and shall tread it down and break it in pieces. And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise and another shall arise after them and he shall be diverse from the first and he shall subdue three kings and he shall speak great words against the most high and shall wear out the holy ones of the most high and think to change times and law. And they shall be given unto his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time. But the judgment shall sit and they shall take away his dominion to consume and to destroy it unto the end. And the kingdom and dominion and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the holy ones of the most high whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and all dominions shall serve and obey him. Hitherto is the end of the matter. As for me, Daniel, my cogitations much troubled me and my countenance changed in me but I kept the matter in my heart."

And so we have a double effervescence that comes up. One aspect of this effervescence that's coming up are the bubbles. And those bubbles are what we would call mythic images. But along with the mythic images is a flow carrying the bubbles up. If we look at the bubbles we are worldly, if we struggle to try and interpret in terms of the bubbles, we're worldly. But if we go with and see into the flow that's carrying it; the pattern of the bubbles is carried by the flow, then we are spiritual, then we see.

What is that upward motion? The bubbles are mythic images but the upward motion is history. And the overwhelming distinctive quality that comes out in The Book of Daniel is that we suddenly realize, in the time of Daniel, the time of The Teacher of Righteousness, the middle of the 2nd Century BC, we understand that Yahweh is the lord of history. That is to say that history has a pattern which comes to fullness and culmination. There is a plan, a divine plan.

Now this is an extraordinarily protean idea and as you might suspect, it's been treated over 2,200 years in many ways. I'll just give you a few little excerpts – this is a study published in Sweden: History and the Gods by Bertel Albrechson, 'An Essay on the Idea of Historical Events as Divine Manifestations'. The term for Divine Manifestations traditionally was Herophany. Herophany is the divine in a manifestation but a theophany is the manifestation of God himself.