Dead Sea Scrolls: The War of Sons of Light Against Dark
Presented on: Tuesday, May 16, 1989
Presented by: Roger Weir
Dead Sea Scrolls
Presentation 7 of 15
War of Sons of Light Against Dark
Presented by Roger Weir
Tuesday, May 16, 1989
Transcript:
You all realize that next week will be a very special event. And I would like to remind you that many of the people who will come will know nothing at all about what we're investigating. Nor will they have any kind of circumspection about themselves in regard to this material. So, it's something that we can do for them, just as I do for you to the best of my ability. What we can do for them is to allow them to see our natural workings. And the vehicle for that is that when the call comes for a sacred poem, if you would all have something ready to share. That meditative technique which we've been alluding to for the last four or five months. And if you haven't practiced it so far it might be interesting to try and do so during the next week.
Now the technique of the sacred poem was refined in Alexandria in the time around the turn of the millennium. And the sacred poem was a spiritual refinement which literally changed the way in which consciousness works. Consciousness beforehand wove a pattern much like a loom would weave a fabric. But with the new technique instead of weaving a fabric on the loom, consciousness wove a web which was like a mandala. It had a center and all of the warp and whoops instead of just making a grid converged towards a center. So that the personality form of human beings changed. And there's all the difference in the world between a grid and the target, as a model of consciousness.
So, the technique of engendering the meditation, the prayer, the hymn, the sacred poem is a fundamental constituent of our consciousness in its completest deepest structure. And at the center is what we would colloquially call the self.
I want to read you The Thirteenth Ode of Solomon which is from the 1st century A.D., which is typical but an excellent case, nonetheless. Typical of the results of the technique. Behold the Lord is our mirror. Open your eyes and see them in him. And learn the manner of your face. Then declare praises to his spirit. And wipe the paint from your face. And love his holiness. And put it on. Then you will be unblemished at all times with him. **inaudible word** And so you can see in The Thirteenth Ode of Solomon, the kind of pithy sacred poem, meditative hymn, which is characteristic of this new form of consciousness.
And we'll go over the technique one more time and then I'll get to the lecture. You take a model. and the last one that I gave to you was The Poem on the Inaccessibility of Wisdom from The Book of Job. It's chapter 28 in The Book of Job. And if you're familiar with it, you realize that there's almost nothing in The Poem on the Inaccessibility of Wisdom that would characterize it as a Jewish production. Or even give it any particular date in time. The fact that I happen to think that it was written by the teacher of righteousness around the middle of the 2nd century B.C. is just an indication from all kinds of convergences, which I've been developing and working on over the last six or seven years now. Scholars who have poured over this dated anywhere from the 3rd century B.C. to the 7th or 8th century B.C. Any time in 500 years.
One thing that's been noted about The Book of Job is that it's very likely not even written by someone who is a Jew. Although it has a remarkable theme, which is identifiable in terms of the esoteric core of the Judaic experience in the B.C. centuries. There's almost nothing in The Book of Job other than the major theme that identifies it with any kind of ethnic structure. There are just as many critics today who think it's by a south Arabian genius as by a Jewish genius. And there are many who think that it could well be by an Egyptian African genius rather than a Jewish genius. It's just a tribute I think to the universal excellence of the Teacher of Righteousness as a. as a writer. As a spiritual writer. And as a practitioner of this particular technique.
So, you may use The Poem on the Inaccessibility of Wisdom, which is chapter 28 in The Book of Job as, as a model or any of the other examples that I've given to you. You take that model just before youre going to sleep, as you prepare for bed. And you read through it in a way slowly to allow the words to make pictures in your mind. You have all the images to constellate from the words of the poem. And then you set the book down. Whatever images happen to appeal to you think about them. And think about them in the sense of trying to order them, keep them in the order that they have come up. Or if it appeals to you reorder them. Why are the in this order? In other words, play with order. Play with an order of the selection of the images and the pictures in your mind that come up. And after you've done this for a while. Five minutes. Ten minutes. then let it go. And try to be aware in a kind of bare attention mode, try to be aware of what you were feeling. how you feel. How you feel about those images, those mental pictures. If you feel indifferent, be aware that you're feeling indifferent. Whatever feeling is there is the legitimate tone. It's like the tone of this bell. Only it's a background residual tone.
Now just as if you stare at a bright lighted color and then close your eyes there will be an image in the retina neurological apparatus of that bright lighted color. That volume. That shape. And it will linger for a little bit the same thing in terms of your imagination. But what you want to linger is not the images just but the feeling, the feeling of it. You want the feeling to linger. And then let yourself sleep.
When you wake up, when you first wake up, try to remember that feeling. And then try to write from that feeling. Whatever you feel like writing. Whatever comes to you. And literally it will come to you. Remembering that feeling in the morning after a sleep takes advantage of the symbolic consciousness rather than the imagination, which is in a more mythic structure of consciousness. Whatever words come out of that, that's the basis of your poem. That's the basis of your prayer. That's the basis of the meditation for hymn if you like.
Now there are wonderful movements happening in the world today. And Macmillan publishing is putting out a series of books. The Macmillan Book of Earliest Christian Hymns has come out. With selections from the Nag Hamadi material. Selection from Gnostic material. Selections from all kinds of unorthodox areas. they've also put out the book Macmillan Book of the Earliest Christian Meditations and The Earliest Christian Prayers. Three volumes so far. And they're all potpourri material.
Now these hymns, these meditations, these poems, these prayers, that come out in this form will have a distinctive deep self-tone from you. but because you will have cued in your deep self with an archetypal image base. The Poem on the Accessibility of Wisdom from Job is very powerful whether or not you are conscious of it. The structure of your consciousness, all of you, will be affected by it in some way. And some real deep legitimate language will come out of you.
Now it may not happen the first morning. It may not happen the second morning. But somewhere along the line words are going to spring forth from you. These are what the Alexandrian critics called winged words. They use them up Homer. But they used them on Homer from their own experience. The original hearers of Homer did not have so much a sense of the winging words. But the later Greek mind seeing into their own experience of what Homers words produce in them. Then the words became winged.
So, this is a powerful technique it's a traditional technique. It is the tap root of all monastic meditative disciplines, east and west. It is the tap root. The origins of this in the Western tradition go back in an organized form to Pythagoras. And in the Asian traditions they go back to the buddha. Pythagoras and the Buddha are nearly contemporaneous. Pythagoras about a generation before. But the refinement after 500 years was phenomenal in Alexandria.
And so, what we are trying to do in the hermetic wisdom liturgy next week is to show and tell, in a very grand way, to provide for those who are going to come and observe. They won't be able to fully participate. But to be there to taste and feel and think about. We want to give them as much legitimate experience as we can. I would think that somewhere between six and fifteen lines would be plenty. Something short. Something from you from the deepest level. And without your contribution the ceremony simply will not work. We will not have a heart. It will not have a soul. So, if you would be good enough to share. Whenever I have been able to give for you if you will give that to others next week that would be well.
I've been buying expensive books again as you know. The latest volume was $50. Wisdom and the Q-Tradition the Aphoristic Teachings of Jesus published by Cambridge University 1989. And more and more beginning to see scholarly studies that are beginning to move in very interesting pattern, which by now our characteristic pattern is being resonated in the scholarly world. Now in 1983 when I gave the first lecture on Christ in Alexandria at the Philosophic Research Society on a Sunday, no one in the world was talking or writing about these kinds of things in this way. and slowly over the last six years an enormous body of literature, correlative supportive literature, is being engendered. It's almost like the petals of a flower. So, that I think when this book comes out next year well it will have a place to be. A place is being prepared in the appreciation.
But one of the most difficult areas is how to understand the transition from the Teacher of Righteousness to Jesus. And it's so important because almost all of the Christian mythology is a regressive rehashing of the later Qumran community. Not the original Qumran community. Not the community centered around the teacher of righteousness. But some five or six or seven or eight generations down the line there was a skew that developed. And the skew developed because the technique was not practiced.
Now you can, you can teach someone quite accurately and have a technique passed on. But the danger comes when the technique begins to develop it's metaphorical qualities and students begin to have a taste for the metaphor, the allegorical qualities rather than the technique itself and suddenly they're teaching others changes. And they teach others to appreciate and look for the metaphorical qualities. And of course, if you do not have a strong mind, if you do not have a very wholesome kind of a personality and character, this is the angle by which regressive qualities enter and come in. what is that angle? Ambiguity. Ambiguity. And this happened with the Essenes. It happened and one can, can literally see it in The Dead Sea Scroll literature.
Some of the early Dead Sea Scroll literature is extraordinary. And some of the later is so bombastic that we can hardly keep ourselves from writing exclamation marks in the margins of the books.
We have tonight one of the layer Dead Sea Scrolls, The War Rule. The scroll of The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness. Now one would think with such a clear Zoroastrianism influence theme that one would have a spectacular work. And in fact, what we have is a very regressive work that instead of being spectacular becomes bombastic. Now I believe that The War Scroll is in two parts. The Dead Sea Scrolls in English by Geza Vermes does not make clear the two parts. But the DuPont Summer volume on The Essene Writings from Quran very accurately designates that the 15th page begins a second war rule document. He calls it an annex to The War Rule. And so, when you come to Vermes, if you're reading along with him when you get to page 121 at the top, you might note that this starts a separate document.
Now I'll try to reconstruct for you in terms of my intuition what I think happened. I think that The War Rule itself which is designated 1qm. In other words, it was one of the first Scrolls found. I think that The War Rule was written around 60 A.D. And I think that when the Roman Jewish war broke out in 66 A.D., I think that the rest The Other War Scroll, The Annex from page 121 through 127 in Vermes was written and added to it. Because there are quotations from the first in The Second War Rule. And there is a growing kind of a concern. For instance, it begins,
For this shall be a time of distress for Israel. And of the summons to war against all nations. There shall be eternal deliverance for the company of God. But the destruction for all the nations of wickedness. All those who are ready for battle shall march out and hall pitch their camp before the king of the Kateem. And before all the hosts of Satan gathered about him for the day of revenge by the sword of God.
And so, on and so forth.
So, I think that what we have here with The War Rule that it was written in the decade of the 60s A.D. That is in the first part of the 60s A.D. when Nero would have been the Roman Emperor. And the instability of the archetype of the mysterious person had worked its way into a kind of a wobble which made the Emperor's position incommensurate with sanity. You could put it in that way.
If you recall Tiberius Caesar ended his life in the most superstitious astrological kind of psychic cage. And his successor Caligula have lasted about four years and was just literally exploded from the inside out by archetypal energy. Struck by divine lighting. Claudius, who followed him, was able to survive because he was so good at not being himself and assuming a mask so that he could survive as the stuttering cripple, do nothing of the family. And yet he's the one that expelled all of the Jews from Rome. It was a capital offense for a Jew to enter the city of Rome under Claudius. And then came Nero, which all of you have a pretty good idea of. And the Roman Empire went downhill from there. in 68 A.D. four different men in one year were emperor of Rome. Each one butchered and snatched from office within months of assuming it. And in that kind of a melee a man who styled himself as the Messiah, Vespasian, who thought he was the one that all of the prophetic literature was talking about. He was the Messiah assumed the Roman Emperorship. It was Vespasian and his two sons Titus and Domitian who effectively waged the war which destroys Jerusalem and destroys the temple. And it's interesting that Vespasian in Alexandria should consider himself the Messiah. He was healing people with the spit of his mouth and a little bit of dust from the street. Putting it on eyes of blind people and they were say, it happened. And yet he was the one that destroyed the temple. He was the one that destroyed Qumran finally. He was under him his son Titus is the one that sacked all of the goods from Jerusalem and carried them all back to Rome. Talk about an antique show.
There was an enormous triumph. They called it a triumph, a Roman triumph, where the Legion would take all of the booty and hold it up. Miles and miles of booty. And to commemorate that they built the arch of Titus in Rome and it still stands today. And you can see in the freezes on the arch of Titus, all of the booty that they carried. Including the huge enormous menorah from the altar of the temple in Jerusalem that was devastated.
So, we have The War Rule as a Dead Sea Scroll from this tumultuous decade the 60s A.D. especially from the first half of the 60s A.D.
Vermes writes that he sees that this work was influenced very heavily by allusions to The Book of Daniel. and the illusions The Book of Daniel are from chapter 11 verse 40 to chapter 12 verse 3. And I'll just give you these from the anchor Bible. This is from The Book of Daniel.
In the time of the final phase the King of the South will come to grips with him. But the king of the North will sweep over him like a whirlwind with chariots and cavalry and many ships. Invading lands and passing through them like a flood. And he comes into the lovely land, myriads will be tested. But Edom, Moab and the remnant of the ammonites will be saved from his power. As he extends his power over the countries not even the land of Egypt will escape. He will gain control of the treasures of gold and silver and all other precious things in Egypt. And the Libyans and Crusades will follow in his train. But as news from the East and the North alarm him. he was set out with great fury to completely exterminate many. Yet when he has pitched his palatial tent between the sea and the lovely holy mountain, he will come to his end with none to help him. At that time Michael, the Great Prince, the protector of your people will arise. It will be a time of distress such as has never occurred since nations came into being. Until that time. But at that time your people will be rescued. Every one of them who was found written in the book. Many of those who sleep in the dirt of the earth will awake. Some will live forever. While others will become an everlasting objects of contempt and abhorrence. But those who act wisely will shine brightly like the brilliance of the firmament. And those who lead the multitude to righteousness will shine like the Stars forever and ever .
So, you can see the wonderful passion in the imagery from the final symbolic vision in The Book of Daniel. Almost certainly written by the Teacher of Righteousness about 160 B.C. this begins The War Rule. And the overriding idea is that a day of God's vengeance will come. At the very darkest a holy army will arise that's been in preparation by God. And in a predetermined highly disciplined, enormously ornate war will decimate and eradicate the hosts of darkness. The sons of darkness. The army of Milio. The army of Satan.
Now there is in Dupont Summer also an allusion to one of the origins of The War Rule. And other than The Book of Daniel there is also a section in The Book of Ezekiel. I won't read you the whole section in Ezekiel you can read it for yourself. Chapters 38 and 39 in The Book of Ezekiel are about this holy war, God's triumph over the world. Armageddon. For instance, in this King Grich Bible Commentary one of the quotations about this.
Ezekiel takes up the idea of a powerful force of men from the distant North descending upon Israel. But instead of allowing them to punish his people further God destroys the aggressors. So, fulfilling the earlier prophecies and affirming the restoration of divine protection to the people and land.
And then he goes on to say, Subsequent writers particularly the author of The New Testament Book of Revelation have, seen prefigured in these chapters the final battle between the forces of good and evil of God and Satan. So, that the original prototype of the Armageddon is in chapters 38 and 39 of Ezekiel.
The visionary core of Ezekiel's prototype as a symbolic Center was seen by the Teacher of Righteousness and put in The Book of Daniel. Ezekiel wrote his vision about 580-590 B.C. so that 430 years later the Teacher of Righteousness saw in a vision the symbolic core that. And then some 220 years later in The War Scroll of The Dead Sea Scrolls comes the baroque final rehashing of this in a mythic fantasmarabia. like a, like an ill produced Von Marian opera.
Now none of it in The Dead Sea Scrolls, in The War Rule, none of it obtained. none of it happened. Nothing like that ever occurred. It was a complete fantasy production. The vision in The Book of Daniel actually did occur but occurred in the personality of the Teacher of Righteousness. But he put it in a setting of Daniel back during the exile. In the context of which he put it, in the Exile, there was a great prophet an actual man Ezekiel who was the leader of the community in the exo and a great visionary. One of the world's great visionaries.
Chapters 38 and 39 in The Book of Ezekiel are about this product typical Armageddon. And the chapters following it through the rest of Ezekiel. From 40 all the way through the end of 48, the last eight chapters of Ezekiel following this holy war our description of the temple, the new temple. So that there is connected together with the final war the second phase, the restoration of the temple. this time it will be the eternal temple. So that we have with The War Scroll to look in two weeks at The Dead Sea Scroll that should go with it which is The Temple Scroll. Now no one has put these two together so far. Except the unbelievable historical circumstance that the great Israeli general Yadin, archaeologist and general, was the one who did the editing of both The War Scroll and The Temple Scroll. and the reason why he did the editing is because his father, the great scholar E.L. Sukenkik, is the one who did the original edition published in England in the early 1950s of The War Scroll. So, there isn't. and he happened to be one of the great scholars who was around in Jerusalem when Dead Sea Scrolls were found. So, he was one the first two or three scholars who had access to the works.
So, you have an interesting kind of a situation here. But what you need to understand and know is that the scroll of The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness goes with The Temple Scroll. They form a duet as it were. And that the prefiguration of that duet is in The Book of Ezekiel in The Old Testament.
Now one way to confirm this in a symbolic visionary way is to look at The Book of Daniel and see is there a correlation. There's the key of the war in Daniel, chapter 11. Is there any kind of an indication that there's anything about the temple? And this is the end of The Book of Daniel following the symbolic provision of the core of Ezekiel's prototypical vision.
And as I Daniel looked on; I saw two others standing on this side of the stream. And the other one on the other side. one standing on this side and one on the other side. Two people flanking the stream. One of them said that the man clothed in linen who was upstream, how long will it be until the end of these awful things? Man clothed in linen who was upstream raised his right hand and his left hand to the heavens. And I heard him swear by him who lives forever that it would be for a year, two years and half a year. But that when the power of the desecrater of the holy people is brought to an end, all these things would be accomplished. Although I heard this, I did not understand it. So, I said, my lord what is the explanation of this. Go your way Daniel, the answer. For the words are secret and sealed until the time of the final phase.
And so, one comes after Daniel in, in The Book of Daniel one comes after Armageddon to the fact that the temple is a mystery and is sealed until it will be revealed at the proper time.
Now The Book of Revelation in The New Testament, the last book in the Bible is an attempt in powerful visionary symbolic terms to reconcile these two elements together. To bring Armageddon and the new temple together. To bring the war and the opening of the sealed mystery together and resolve it. And the fact is, is that The Book of Revelation in The New Testament does not do this effectively. It does not resolve the war nor the sealed mystery of the new temple adequately. And when we, when we get to it sometime later this year, you'll see that this has caused unending psychic confusion in Western history. Unending.
One of the greatest minds of all time, Sir Isaac Newton spent the last 30 years of his life trying to unravel that connection. He knew somehow that The Book of Daniel and The Book of Revelation, the apocalypse of Saint John, somehow those two were a secret coded key to the basic conscious center in Western man. And Newton wrote a whole book. I have it here. I have a copy a very rare book in our time. The whole book has an explication of this.
In the 19th century the greatest of all of the occult masters, I guess I will use that term. Eliphas Levi, Alphonse Constant, who wrote under Eliphas Levi. A very quiet Frenchman was a tremendous genius in these matters. Also saw that The Book of Daniel and the apocalypse somehow came together and were the core the mystery of Western consciousness. But that he saw that you had to bring Ezekiel, The Book of Ezekiel in with it. So Constant went one move beyond Sir Isaac Newton and he saw that it wasn't just the apocalypse in Daniel but if the apocalypse of Daniel and Ezekiel. But he was unable to resolve that. He just simply was outclassed by the problem.
Everyone in the 19th century was at outclassed by the problem. Almost everyone in the 20th century has been outclassed by the problem. Because the problem in integrating those three together is a problem in sophisticated conscious resolution. And it's only now that that's being done here in Los Angeles.
So here we go with The War Scroll and you can see from this prelude that it is a part of an ecology of images and illusions that go back to Ezekiel, involve the Teacher of Righteousness and the origins of the Qumran community and come out at the very end of the Qumran community.
So, that in a way The War Scroll is like one of the bookends. And the other book in would be The Thanksgiving Hymns of the Teacher of Righteousness that came at the very beginning of the community. One is the promise of the vision of the hard work. And the other is the unraveling of the whole vision and the attempt to somehow force a resolution. And in that forcing, all of the integration goes back in a regressive mode. It in fact goes back so far in the regressive mode that the image base becomes archaic. So that The War Scroll, I think we would use the term in psychiatry today, is an indication of a psychotic break. Not a neurotic condition but a psychotic break.
What happened after The War Scroll? The Jewish rabbis met together a generation later and outlawed forever any kind of speculation in material like this. And through all of this material out and never was discussed again until our time. With the exception of the late 790 discovery of some Dead Sea Scrolls. And that of course started the Kabbalistic movement. Was the pinpoint of that.
So, what we have here with The War Rule is a document which like Euripides Bacchae shows the breaking of a mental world picture. This is the last picture that will ever be held by this mind. this mind was shattered. There are no classical Greeks. There never have been since Euripides day. There are no Hellenistic Jews. There never have been since this time.
After this time increasingly there were Christians, there were rabbinic Jews. And they diverged more and more as time went on. In 300 years, you find writings like John, Saint John crisis stone calling the Jews miserable wretches. Psychological wretches. It kind of a classic and Anti-Semitism. But one which was an assessment from a psychological standpoint.
So, we come here to The War Rule which is the breaking of the pencil. There are two spirits. And we've talked about this before. the spirit of good and the spirit of evil in perfect balance. Before the day of judgment. Before the day of wrath. Before a Yom Yahweh, God's day. Good and evil are exactly 50/50. There's absolutely no advantage one way or the other. The opposing forces says The War Rule are equally matched. And only by the intervention of the mighty hand of God is the balance between them to be disturbed when he deals an everlasting blow to Satan and all the hosts of his kingdom. So, when God's kingdom comes, the balance 50/50 between good and evil would be eradicated forever. part of Satan's Kingdom, part of Belial Kingdom, part of the liars Kingdom, is that his negativity has exactly equal force with good. This is part of the world of evil, is that good is no more than a perfect match for evil.
Do you see that that characterized the evil world? Good cannot win and if one house 49% good you're gonna have 49% of evil. If you make it to 50% good, you'll have 50% evil. You can't get to 51% good. You can fool yourself and say that you've got to 51% of good but 51% evil will be there also in the illusion. This itself is the evil world. This itself is the kingdom of the liar. There is no truth in such a world.
But when God's kingdom comes, then there will be truth. But they will no longer ever again be this perfect balance between good and evil. After that evil will be an absence of good. Wherever good is not be at all. Where good is not they'll, they'll be the semblance of evil.
END OF SIDE ONE
I've structured it for you in four pages. And I want to give it to you. Now we know that there were several redactions of The War Scroll. In other words, we have at least four or five different scrolls and they differ somewhat. It begins with instructions for the master. The rule of war on unleashing the attack of the sons of light against the company of the sons of darkness, the army of Satan. So that this apocalyptic theme is introduced right away. And the whole sense is that when the day comes it will be a day of vengeance. And the Saints of the desert communities are really warriors, perfect warriors. Extremely refined and ready. All between certain ages. all physically healthy. Keeping away women and children and the old and the infirm. It's only the masculine juice perfected with all kinds of fantastic equipment. Ready to be unleashed against the hosts of darkness. There's the apocalyptic theme.
Edom, Moab and the sons of Amon and the army of the sons of Egypt and the Philistine and bands of the Kateem of Syria and their allies and then godly of the Covenant. So, you can see that there for all of this spectacular nose is very provincial. The army of the hosts of Satan are going to come from Edom and from Moab. And the ammonites. And so, it can be some from Egypt. They're going to be some Kateem from Syria. Can you see that it has an apocalyptic universal quality and yet almost in a farcical way? It is focused in a very provincial area. Even at this time Roman and Alexandria and, and even urban consciousness almost anywhere in the Roman Empire would have would have laughed this off the stage. This is like saying we're gonna get the evil in this world by doing away with the people in Van Nuys and Beverly Hills and maybe even Santa Monica. And some of them in South Pasadena and that's going to take care of it. Its ridiculous.
But the apocalyptic and the provincial, the universal and the absurd are brought together. Why are they brought together? How can they be brought together? Because this is the last tension before a psychotic outburst. This is the way the string breaks. By forcing that kind of an odd juxtaposition. Megalomania with pettiness.
The scroll refers to the sons of Levi, Judah and Benjamin the exiles in the desert. Characteristic of the Qumran post Jesus time. The king and the Kateem shall enter into Egypt to wage war to cut off the Horn of Israel. And all this kind of language comes from the Daniel vision. The Horn of Israel. The Kateem are the Romans.
And that it shall be a time of salvation for the people of God. Notice that the salvation comes when apocalyptic bubbles begin to brew in the world. That's the only time that you can tell that salvation is going to come. Can you see that it ties in and makes a kind of a psychotic quality wherever it appears in history after that. All of this mythological typology was transferred to Christianity. All of it. And incidentally a good deal of it into Islam also.
The Sons of righteousness shall shine over all the ends of the earth. Notice the, notice the terms here. Sons of righteousness shall shine over all the ends of Earth. Whats this phrase? Ends of Earth. Like the four corners of the earth. When did people talk about the ends of the earth in that kind of a sense? Well they talked about that in Egypt some 2,000 years before. This is Middle Kingdom eschatological talk like from The Pyramid Texts.
The sons of righteousness shall shine over all the ends of Earth. They shall go on shining until all the seasons of darkness are consumed. Consuming seasons of darkness. Extending light. consuming the darkness. It's a typical of the Ray litanies of archaic Egypt. one of the qualities of archetypal psychosis is that it goes back to the last time this happened. It goes back to the last great cyclic change. And draws its metaphorical qualities from that time. It's not present in its own time. Nor is the person. One becomes a robot of the archaic past. It's a symptom that characterizes the 20th century also.
So that, The seasons of darkness are consumed at the season appointed by God. His exalted greatness shall shine eternally to the peace, blessing. glory, joy and long life of all the sons of light. So, there's this mythic regression back to the ancient paternal Egypt. Ancient Egypt has a paternal quality archetypally to the Jewish mind. Just as Babylonia or Syria, Sumeria has a maternal kind of equality. So, there's this archetypal image base this Ra quality, RA **inaudible word** quality from ancient Egypt that comes in here.
That shall be the day appointed from ancient times. Notice they determinism here. A kind of a ritual determinism which is characteristic of a closed mythic cycle. Not characteristic at all of a historical development.
God will redeem his chosen people. This Jewish apocalyptic theme. God will redeem. This whole thing of Redeemer is a late regressive, I hate to say Essene because these people were, were not the Essenes anymore. In fact, they are called in Josephus and in The New Testament most accurately zealots. The party of the Zealots. So, the Essenes have decayed into the zealots. But the zealots are still thinking that they are practicing the original Essene material. But they're the zealots.
The sons of light we'll be arranged in three Lots. Three groups. This is the military form of the Roman legion not of the Greek phalanx. It definitely dates this. The, the Ossies triplex. The use of three of lines. And Satan's host will also have three lines. So that there will be a seventh line, which will change everything. That seventh line will come from God. From the heavenly host. From the angelic warriors. You see man's host, the host of the sons of light, will perfectly balance evil. And it's like holding evil in that balance and then God's power from the seventh line will come and smash the whole world of equal balance. Ma, the gods mighty hand is they phrase that resounds here. Its the image of the mighty hand of God. And you'll see this all the way through Western esotericism. The hand coming out from the cloud. God's hand. And whatever that does that's, that's the final word.
So that at the head of the army of the sons of light there will be a hierarchy. There will be a high priest and his vicar. Then there will be twelve chief priests. There will be twenty-six leaders of the priestly divisions. There'll be twelve Chiefs of Levites and on and on so forth. And the army will be perfect. They will have observed the Sabbath's in the right way. They will observe the New Moon's in the right way. Notice they're using a lunar calendar, also a regression at this time. The Julian solar calendar well known at this time. But the zealots are going back to an ancient lunar calendar.
So, there is this this weird quality here. Everything is organized and yet everything is organized in such a tension that the whole grid is beginning to shake this mysterium tremendum the beginning to occur in the mind, of the archetypal mind of the people. The strict determinism predestination and hierarchy the two always go together. And they're braided so tightly in this that they fuse. Predestination and hierarchy.
It's a wonderful image enough poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko called Brats Station. A long mystical poem. Yes, Russians write **inaudible word or two**. And the contrasts the pyramid power which consumes human labor and just build dead stone with Brats Station, Bratskai, Brotherly Station, which is a hydroelectric station. And all the work that's gone into making the hydroelectric station will be rewarded because then that station will produce light for man. Well this is the predestination hierarchy is a communally autistic regressive mode. It's autism in communities as well as in people.
So that the day of judgment becomes characterized as a day of release, with a capital R. the day of release. Whats going to be released? That tension. The tension between good and evil. Who's experiencing this, this tension? The army of the saintly warriors. Because as they raise themselves to perfection, evil is also raised perfection. Can you see Armageddon as a, is a terrific event? Because as man perfects himself evil also perfects itself to that extent. And they come into a perfect balance.
Well now if you are believing this you're going to have as much evil power pushing against you as good power. One is hoping that when it breaks that you're going to wake up. But the fact is, is what do you wake up to? You wake up to the psychic problem, which you have created. That's what you wake up to. That's what happened.
This war will take 40 years. and the stage for the entire 40 years will be assembled to divine plan. To the design. That shall arm no man for entry into the army during the years of release. For they are Sabbath's of rest for Israel. So that there'll be seven years where no fighting will take place. Now notice the peculiarity here. Why will no fighting take place on a Sabbath year? What's going to happen to the armies of Satan? Are they, they're not constrained by the Sabbath? But notice unconsciously if the hosts of the children of light does not fight, the hosts of the children of Satan did not fight either. Can you see that they are, they're paired like railroad tracks? They're in a parallel which cannot be broken. If the children of light observe a Sabbath the children of Darkness are also observing that Sabbath. The whole term of light on the weapons always like the shields and the swords that they're burnished to like mirrors. They were totally unconscious. They did not understand the symbolism of this imagery. They were swept up with the feeling of the mythic power. And of course, they were swept all the way back to our archaic times in their psychic. And of course, the psyche undergoing a transformation simply couldn't, couldn't take the regression and broke.
Then comes a whole section on trumpets of summons. This apocalypse theme. The trumpets. Thirteen different trumpets are named. And they are said to be like Joshua's horn that felled the walls of Jericho. Joshua fit the Battle of Jericho and the walls came tumbling down. So, these the theme of trumpets which appears again in The Book of Revelation comes from this war scroll imagery. So that a part of The Book of Revelation, a part of it is contemporaneous with The War Scroll. A part of The Book of Revelation is written in the 60s A.D. It comes from the very same psychotic breakdown. The very same period.
Then after the trumpets one has the standards. the flags, the pennants, the standards of the whole congregation according to their levies. And on the great standard at the head of the people they shall write the people of God.
And there are several different sets of these standards. In the second set the standards change name three times. So, if the standards read one thing, that each one of eleven standards has a certain designation. But when they're marching into battle the designations are different from what they were before. And when they're really into the battle the designations are different again. And when they're returning from battle the designations are different again. Notice the fluidity of the designations in the battery. They follow a quaternary in terms of the process. The images are like puppets strings hooked up to the process as it changes. Nothing is what it really is it is only what is unfolded in a pre-plan predestined Armageddon.
In the third set there are eight standards that are given of various titles. And these appear around page a 108, 109. So, here are. Let me give you some of this.
When they set out for battle, they shall write on the first standard congregation of God. On the second standard, camps of God. On the third standard, tribes of God. On the fourth standard, clans of God. On the fifth standard, divisions of God. On the sixth standard, assembly of God. On the seventh standard, the called of God. On the eighth standard, hosts of God. And they shall write the list of their names with all their order.
Notice everything is written down. It isn't just meticulous bookkeeping but it's like a compulsive activity to get everything perfected. and then to have it manifest.
What in the pattern is the final trigger in the whole thing? The breaking of the tension between good and evil. That the tension between good and evil is the structure of the psyche. Can you see what a tragic set up the whole thing was? There was no chance out. There was no way to get out of that.
So that there is a note here from Dupont Summer. He writes here that part of the manuscript that is missing here,
The inscriptions to be written on the standards as determined in the second order seemed to me to derive with the help of a subtle and artificial etymology from the name of each military unit itself. As though this name or the letters forming it possessed some mysterious value when the, which the inscriptions seek to reveal.
That there's a numerological and the quality to these inscriptions. The clearest example is the inscription for the standard of ten, rejoicing of God upon the ten- string harp. or the ten stringed lyre. The ten stringed harp is clearly introduced here to correspond to the name of the tenth.
And then it mentions in The War Scroll the name Murari. Murari is the name of the third son of Levi. The tree sons. the first two sons Gershon and Quahog, who are the first two sons of Levi there are no sections corresponding to them The War Scroll but there's a Lakhani exactly where they would be. so that they probably were included.
In other words what we have here in the setting up of the Army. In the setting up of Armageddon. Is this kind of a compulsive predestined hierarchical structure trying to bring in illusions from everywhere but open the door to our cave **inaudible word**, archaic qualities that have not been sufficiently integrated into the psyche.
21:00
Sevens occur all over.
Formation of a thousand men in seven lines deep that the shields will be bronze polished to mirrors. And they they'll be ornamented with gold and silver and gems interlaced as decoration around the edges of them. The spears will be seven cubits long and the points will be white iron with years of gold corn reducing themselves towards the tip. The swords will be polished like mirrors and be highly ornate. The shield of the Prince of all the congregation. They shall write his name together with the names of Israel, Levi and Aaron. The names of the twelve tribes of Israel, according to their order of precedence. With the names of their twelve chiefs.
You've got to get everything on in just the right order.
Do you understand that this is an operatic fantasy? It never happened. But it did psychologically happen in the imagination. Notice what's missing here. What's missing is the saving grace of the balance of memory. It's not here.
So, seven times the army will circulate and return to their positions. The foot soldiers will hurl seven javelins. And on the points will be written in the first division, on each javelin will be written shining javelin of the power of God. And in the second division each javelin will have written on it, the bloody spikes to bring down the slain by the wrath of God. And the third division the words on the points of this javelins, flaming blade to devour the wicked struck down by the judgment of God.
The power, the wrath, the judgment. Notice that stable triad power, wrath, and judgment. But what is it stable of? There is no balance in that. the judgment is not a justice decision. The judgment is a condemnation. The power is not an energae of wholesomeness. But a power directed towards punishment. The wrath, like the wrath of Achilles in The Iliad, it just invites a compensation.
Thus, the God of Israel shall accomplish mighty deeds by the Saints of his people. So, the God of Israel like an regressive archaic divine king with mythic image base of the of the warlike victor operating. This is contemporaneous with the Thirteen Ode of Solomon.
Let's reintroduce that so that you can get the, the difference in tone.
Behold the Lord is our mirror. Open your eyes and see them in him. Learn the manner of your face then declare praises to his spirit. Then after that, then you can declare the praises to a spirit. And wipe the paint from your face and love his holiness and put it on. then you will be unblemished at all times with him. Only **inaudible word**.
You see the difference in tone. They're contemporaneous. They're written within ten years of each other. Can you notice that there has been an incredible integration in resolution some psyches and a psychotic outburst in others?
So that we read, Of seven troops of horsemen, of seven hundred horsemen on each flank. That the horsemen together with the cavalry, the army shall number 6,500 to each tribe. The rider should be thirty to forty-five years old. On their mounts they shall wear breastplates, helmets, greaves, which is shin armor. Buckler's, spears. And the spears this time will be eight cubits. there will be with the army those between 25 and 30 who will be the plunderers of booty. Can you imagine an army of God needing plunderers of booty? Despoilers of the slain.
When they set the camp up for the final battle one interesting object, the latrines must be 2,000 cubits away. So, that there's not any kind of a contact possible visually with these evil natural images. And this super hyped perfection images which the army of the sons of light must have in their battle. Notice here that everything that would be any kind of natural compensation is pushed, not only at arm's length away, but in this case a normal function the latrine are 2,000 cubits away. Another sign of a psychotic break. The inability to integrate a natural base into the psyche. What happens to such a psyche? Magic displaces nature in, in the ecology. Not, not a good magic, a very difficult magic.
Seven priests who are sons of Aaron shall advance from the middle gates to the place between the formations. They will be investments of white linen. All of the white linen will have this fancy embroidery of blue and scarlet and so forth. And they will wear mitered turbans. Now if you get a picture of that and looks just like papal dignitaries would look. Exactly like that. Exactly.
Seven Levites carrying seven ram's horn shall accompany them. And in the sequence, they will blow these seven ram's horns. The priest shall sound the two trumpets of summons for the gates of war to open. And then the priests queue in by sounding trumpets, This is a page 113 on in the Vermes Edition. So that the sounding of the trumpets is in the zealot Essene apocalypse The War Rule, the Armageddon scroll. It's the priest who sound these trumpets.
The high priest gives an exhortation and reminds everyone that Moses taught us, Thou art in the midst of us a mighty God and terrible causing all our enemies to flee before us. Now this is a quotation from Deuteronomy 20 verses 2 to 4. It's also quoted in The Book of Maccabees. It's exactly the verse that is quoted by Judas Maccabee to his army when the Jewish army in the Maccabean times, 2nd century B.C., Teacher of Righteousness times, when the Jewish army was fighting against the Hellenistic troops of Antiochus. This is in First Maccabees, chapter 3 verse 56 if you want to look it up.
The shield's will be brought into squares with the soldiers standing in great squares called battle towers. And all the shields on one side of the square will have the sacred name of Michael. And shields on another side will have all the sacred name of Gabriel. And on the third Sorel. And on the fourth Rafael.
Angelic names on the shields. Notice that the magic square becomes sealed with angelic names in the Armageddon. But who is using this kind of runaway mythic image, magical geometry? The sons of light not the sons of darkness.
Very, very interesting to see how this works. They use all kinds of historical illusions but not in terms of history in terms of mythic themes. As Goliath in the hands of David. As thou didst to Pharaoh in the Red Sea. Now do this against the Kateem, the sons of darkness for the sons of light. So instead of history you have mythic illusions. Little propaganda snippets as we would say today. Instead of any kind of a case.
For thou will fight with them from Heaven. Now notice here that heaven is brought into this. God is going to fight with them from heaven. For the multitude of the Holy Ones is with thee in heaven. So now you've got heaven involved in a war. Is there any sense? Can one understand heaven in some way where it could be involved in a war? You see one can blow up mans importance on the earth to such an inflated extent it must include heaven. But it's a far cry from the mystical certainty and experience of like Thirteenth Ode of Solomon. or like The Sermon on the Mount by Jesus. A far cry from that.
So that the phrases come out thick and fast then. They become mythic clichés. For thou art terrible in the glory of thy Kingdom. Valiant warriors of the angelic host. The hero of war. God is the hero of war. The King of glory with his Holy Ones. Rise up o hero. Lead off by captives o glorious one. Gather up thy spoils o author of mighty deeds. As if God needs spoils from man.
Then the high priest shall bless God and execrate Satan and all his company of spirits. Notice that God is not blessing here now but the high priest. Why? Because heaven has become mixed in. You notice the chaoticness of it now. The structures breaking down. Blessed be all those who serve Him in righteousness and who know him by faith. This regressive divine King archetype. We must serve the servants.
Thou didst make a covenant with our fathers and wilt establish it with their children. Theyve forgotten and haven't even understood, but Jeremiah 600 years before it understood the Old Covenant is over. The new covenant written on the hearts and minds is the one that's coming up.
The remnant of the survivors of thy covenant are here. In other words that the old covenant, the patriarchal covenant, is still in effect and here. We are we're expecting it to be continued. So, you can see the regression that's coming in. They haven't even heard the founder of the Qumran community, the Teacher of Righteousness who called for a search for a new covenant. That in his time to remember his stress was that the new covenant is now a search for a new way. That is the new covenant, to search within for the new way. Here is the psalm of the return of the heroes the from the slain on the battlefields. The Saints, the holy warriors, coming back. Like you can see what a kind of an evil projection turns out to correlate itself in the 20th century with the Nazi Panzer divisions. And the officers singing the, the kind of Vognarian, Siegfried type hymns. The Valhalla themes coming back from the battlefields.
Blessed be the God of Israel who keeps mercy towards his covenant and appointed times of salvation with the people he has delivered.
And then in the midst of the hymn comes an insertion almost like a blurt that doesn't belong. Almost like a last shred, a last shard, of the original Essene teaching, the original teacher the Teacher of Righteousness teaching. Phrase on page 120. Among the poor and spirit there is power over the hardness of heart. After all of this enormous description of baroque catastrophic, operatic imagery upon imagery the lines, Among the poor in spirit there's power of the hardness of heart. Dupont Summers translates it, And by the humbled spirit shall the hardened heart be punished, be punished.
But very soon the rest of the description goes on. I want to end just by giving you a little bit of description from it so that you can get the tone of The War Scroll. And I'll end by just giving this a little reading. I guess this section will be, be fine.
Thou art terrible Oh God and the glory of thy kingdom and the congregation of thy Holy Ones is among us for everlasting succor. We will despise Kings. We will mock and scorn the mighty. For our Lord is holy and the King of glory is with us together with the Holy Ones. Valiant warriors of the angelic host are among our numbered men. And the hero of wars with our congregation. The host of his spirits is with our foot soldiers and horsemen. They are as clouds as clouds of dew covering the earth. As a shower of rain shedding righteousness on all that grows on earth. Rise up o hero. Lead off my captives o glorious one. Gather up the spoils o author of mighty deeds. Lay thy hand on the neck of thine enemies and thy feet and the pile of the slain. Smite the nation's. Buying adversaries and devour the flesh of the sinner with thy sword. Fill thy land with glory and thine inheritance with blessing. Let there be multitude of cattle in thy fields and thy palaces silver and gold and precious stone.
END OF RECORDING