Part Four

The Third of the 3 Groups of the Zodiacal Signs: the 5 Fruit/Child Signs

As it has been explained already in the very first part of this introduction to Hebrew Astrology, the ’number 5′ in the Ancient Wisdom represents the principle of the ‚child‘, of the ‚fruit‘ coming out of the confrontation, out of the ‚getting to know each other‘ of the principles of ‚male‘ and ‚female‘, 3 and 4. So it is no surprise that there are exactly five ‚fruit signs‘ in the Zodiac according to the Hebrew perspective on it. They are the remaining five: Capricorn, Sagittarius, Gemini, Cancer and Leo. In this order they are typically discussed in the ancient literature, so they appear (contrary to the male, as well as contrary to the female signs) NOT in a continuing row of the visible circle of the 12 signs on the sky: the 10^th and 9^th sign serve as the first two, then the 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th of the 12 serve as the rest of them, as the 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th of the 5. Thus we can say: they are ’split apart‘ by the male signs on the one side and by the female signs on the other. This can be interpreted as an expression of the fact that ‚the child is integrating both parents within itself‘; and by this look on it, the WHOLE circle of the 12 signs represents the ‚fruit‘, the ‚Child of God‘.

Sometimes indeed the 12 signs are grouped in the shape of a human being to symbolize that ‚primordial man‘ (called the ‚Adam Qadmon‘ in Hebrew), Mankind as it is created in the image and resemblance of God, filling out the whole cosmos with its appearance.

An interesting question for every horoscope is: Which sign-group (male, female, fruit) is predominant? That means: Which way of experiencing the Eternal is more, and which is less typical for the human being under this constellation?

The ‚female‘ is experienced as that which is there around yourself, as the ‚outward destiny‘, but including also very individual factors like your body, your genes, etc.

The ‚male‘ is experienced as that which is to be found furthermost INSIDE yourself, it is your ‚inward destiny‘, coming from out of your own soul into your experience of life (of course of ‚outward life‘, too) and cannot be explained in any way purely by your physical situation and your surrounding world – it is the more ‚acausal‘.

Now, the ‚fruit‘ then is experienced specifically as that which is ’not there yet‘ (in your natural state of being), neither around you, nor inside you, but what you long for (consciously or unconsciously or subconsciously) as the solution for all the contradictions of your inward and your outward perception of life, the solution to the personal conflicts between your experiences and your wishes.

The first of the fruit signs, Capricorn, depicts a certain kind of ‚male goat‘. Its Hebrew name is ‚gedi‘ (= ‚male goat‘, too). There are only three animals of the Zodiac, which can serve as ’sacrifice‘, ‚qurban‘ in the biblical rite: those with horns on their heads; namely Taurus, Aries and Capricorn. As the third of those three animals with horns in the circle of the 12, Capricorn has a very ‚dual‘ character, as it is typical for any ‚third in a row‘, according to the Ancient view on things.

Its ‚two sides‘ are especially illustrated in the ‚two goats for Yom Kippur‘ (see Leviticus 16,5-34), the biblical feast called ‚Day of Atonement‘. In the rite of this feast there is one goat to bring for the Eternal One as a ‚qurban‘ (we already know, this means: ‚for the approach towards the Eternal‘, ‚to come close to God‘), and one other goat there is which is destined ‚for Azazel‘. We will see, who or what this so-called ‚Azazel‘ is. And an important fact in the rite of this Day of Atonement is: the decision, which one of the two goats is going to be used for what purpose, is made by ‚the lot‘, by fortune, by ‚coincidence‘, not by any ‚rational choice‘.

Actually every single one of the 12 zodiacal signs has a basic structure of ‚two sides opposing each other‘, and these two sides of each sign somehow ‚want to get to know each other‘ inside the human being.

But in some of the signs, this opposition of two sides is especially prominent (for example in Scorpio and as we will see soon, in Gemini, too; but also for example in Pisces and in Libra; as mentioned before, actually always then, when the sign is in some kind of ‚third position‘ of a row). In Capricorn this oppositional character is very prominent.

In the aforementioned biblical feast of ‚Yom Kippur‘ and its rituals this double-character is described in the mythical pictures of the Ancients. This feast is a ‚day of atonement‘, a day of expiation – so a day of a crucial decision, where something ‚old‘ ends, and something ’new‘ is born. It is happening expressively ‚on the tenth day of the year‘.

To understand this in its significance, we have to take a broader perspective on this fact. The biblical year has two beginnings: One is the beginning of the (counting of the) months, which is around spring time, and which remembers the ‚Exodus‘, the liberation of the People of God out of the enslavement by ‚Egypt‘, by ‚this world of duality‘. The other beginning of the year is in autumn, and it is what is traditionally called the ‚day of creation of Mankind‘. This date in the calendar is actually 2 days, because of the new-moon-sighting marking the beginning of the new month, which is not predictable exactly, so it is celebrated on the two days which both could be the sighting dates. And it is said regarding this double dating of ‚New Year‘: Mankind has two origins, too: one in the visible, one in the invisible; like the new moon is twice to be dated, once in the still invisible, only ‚abstractly‘, and then again in the ‚concrete‘, when it is actually visible for the human eye in the evening sky. This date of ‚Creation of Mankind‘ is placed in the 7^th month (counted from the remembrance month of the exodus out of Egypt), like it is the beginning of the 7^th DAY, when (fallen) Mankind is appearing in this world of time and space, ‚outside the Garden of Eden‘ now.

So on this 10^th day of the 7^th month the ‚Day of Atonement‘ is celebrated, which is paradoxically nevertheless counted as the ’10^th day of the year‘, because biblically there are these two beginnings of the year, like there are the two beginnings of Mankind – and maybe also because there are for every human being two ‚beginnings of life‘: the first, ’natural‘ birth, corresponding to the ‚Creation of Mankind‘; and the second, spiritual birth, that ‚being born again‘ which Jesus talks about as necessary for Salvation, for ‚entering the Heavenly Kingdom‘ (see for example John 3,3ff), and this rebirth being equated with the ’spiritual liberation out of Egypt‘ in every individual life.

In the end of this Day of Atonement, the death of the individual is symbolized by certain rituals (especially in Judaism; the biblical recommendation is not so specific in this regard, only advises to ‚humiliate one’s soul‘ for the whole day, which is traditionally interpreted as a strict fasting without any food or drink for 25 hours). And the ’new life‘, with now ‚all the sins having been taken away‘, having been ‚expiated‘, through the atonement on this day, begins afterwards with the sound of the ’shophar‘, the ram’s horn, which is used as a blowing instrument.

In the Ancient Wisdom ‚the 10 always is an ending AND a new beginning‘: The 10^th sign of the Zodiac is the beginning of the five fruit signs, while it is the last of the three ‚horned animals‘ of the Zodiac. As already said: those ‚horned animals‘ are the animals which can be brought as ‚qurban‘, as sacrifice in the biblical rite (beside birds; but birds play an outstanding role in the biblical qurban-system anyways, since they are the only qurbans which are not ‚cut into pieces‘, but stay WHOLE while serving as qurban).

And to make one thing clear once again at this point: ‚qurban‘ is NOT a mass-slaughtering of animals, it is something happening ONLY in the ‚mythical realm‘, in the ‚Temple of God‘ (and ONLY there CAN it happen, this is indeed an explicit command in the Bible! See Leviticus 17,2-5; Deuteronomy 12,11+13+14). And the ‚Temple‘ is present only in (mythical) ‚Jerusalem‘ (by the way, a word which can be translated as ‚city of peace‘ or as ‚His project of peace‘), which is in that part of the ’split kingdom‘ (‚Judah‘; see last part of this introduction), which represents the ‚only‘ imaginative side of reality, the ‚dream- and myth-side‘ of human experience, the so-called ‚unreal‘.

It is our ‚longing for the silent, ineffable origin of ourselves‘, which actually means ‚qurban‘, the ‚approaching towards God‘, as ‚the other side‘ of experience. That is the reason, why the ‚Temple‘, the ‚House of God‘, the ‚Dwelling of the Eternal‘ (which would be the more literal translation of the Hebrew word for ‚Temple‘ in the Bible), is not in THIS world to find, it is ‚the place‘, NOT present in our world of ’space‘. Indeed, the word for ‚place‘ (in Hebrew ‚ha maqum‘, literally ‚THE Place‘) is used as one specific ’name of God‘, because the true and whole essence of any ‚place‘ in this world of our perception is in reality far more than what we can perceive in this world of space. The place we see HERE is only the ’surface of the true PLACE‘, which is God Himself, always being present anywhere, if you will.

But with that longing for the ’silent origin‘, which we feel to be ‚in another realm‘ than this world of time and space – with that longing comes another urge inside us, namely the belief that there MUST be something more about THIS world here, too: the idea that maybe the secret we are looking for in the longing for our heavenly origin, indeed is concealed also in THIS world already. Because we can feel, we sense: THIS world, too, bears a certain inner secret; couldn’t it be that this inner secret of hers is the same, as the one we are searching for on that ‚other side‘?! Indeed, the ‚far distant‘, we are longing for, could be much closer than we think sometimes … it could be HERE already!

It is again like in the so-called ’sacrifice of Isaac‘, when Abraham is called to sacrifice his one beloved son, of whom he was told that HE it shall be, who is going to inherit the land which was ‚promised to Abraham and his seed‘. And now the same God that promised this, wants Abraham to sacrifice this son?! It is obviously a paradox. But this IS how this world in our human experience works, it IS paradox.

Wouldn’t it be nice if anything was easy, if we all would understand each other, nobody would ‚wear masks‘ anymore?

But that is not how it is; we do NOT understand each other perfectly all the time. Not at all. We all are strangers to each other, no matter how much we desire to know someone and BE known by someone. This paradox of our existence in this world will sustain. It HAS to sustain.

But let’s get back to the qurban of the goat on ‚Yom Kippur‘: as already mentioned, the goat is a symbol for ’something coming to an end‘. In the Bible an ‚end‘ is typically characterized by the word ‚good‘ (most famous: see Genesis 1,4+10+12+18+21+25: ‚and God saw that it was good‘). In Hebrew the word ‚good‘ is ‚tov‘ and has a numeric value of 17, just like ‚gedi‘, the ‚male goat‘ and the name of the sign of Capricorn.

Besides this, the ‚Great Flood‘ happens in the 17^th century after creation, Joseph is sold into slavery at the age of 17 (and, to deceive their father Jacob, Josephs brothers are imitating the blood on his garment with the blood of a slaughtered GOAT), and in the oral tradition there are several more ’seventeens‘ marking an end of one phase and the beginning of a new one.

So to summarize it: The 10^th is always announcing an end, which then is expressed as ‚the 17‘. And always it is a new beginning, too.

So now, ‚on the 10^th day of the year‘, in the ‚mythical realm‘ these two goats are brought to the ‚House of God‘, to the ‚dwelling of the Eternal‘. For the human being it is the searching and longing for an ‚end‘ (of ‚all the struggle‘), but on the other hand it is a consciousness of an ‚ending‘ of oneself to be experienced, a knowledge of the finiteness of yourself. It is the so-called ‚end of times‘ so often spoken of in the Bible. But this does not mean some ‚ending of a linear time‘ at some point in the (far or near) future, but it means the ending of EVERY moment, of every hour, of every day; it is the never ending, everlasting end of ALL we experience in time. As humans, we always ’stand at the boundary‘ between past and future.

The human being in the sign of Capricorn is very aware of this fact, that ‚the (single) moment is crucial‘. But again, crucial in a duality: on one hand the longing for the Eternal, for God; on the other the tendency towards the evil, the ‚devil‘: the other goat goes to ‚Azazel‘ – how it is described in the Bible for the ritual on this special ‚day‘ of the ’10^th of the Year‘, respectively the ’10^th of the 7^th‚ (see Leviticus 16,20-22).

So … Who is ‚Azazel‘?? We can look at a little tale, wherein this name appears: the tale of the rebellion of some of the angels at the time of the creation of Man. In this story ‚Azazel‘ (beside one other angel called ‚Semchasi‘) is one of the two leading angels of the rebellion.

It is the point during the process of creation, where God decides to create the original Mankind, ‚Primordial Man‘, also known as ‚the Son of Man‘, the actual Human in his perfect origin as the ‚Messiah‘ for the whole of creation, the ‚One‘ destined for the mission to ‚bring back home all the manifoldness of nature‘ to the ‚Father’s House‘ (see part one of this introduction). As such, as the literal ‚Son of God‘, this primordial Mankind is perfectly resembling their Heavenly Father.

It is like ‚the image of God painted by God himself into the cosmos‘ – maybe indeed in the shape of the Zodiac, but not yet as ‚the circle‘ as on our night sky today, but still ordered in the form of a human being, with head, body, arms and legs (the traditional image is built up of: Aries and Taurus as the head, Gemini making the arms, Cancer the chest with Leo as the heart inside it, Virgo as the upper belly, Libra in the middle of the whole body around the navel, Scorpio as the loins area with the genital organs, Sagittarius as the two upper legs, Capricorn the knees, Aquarius the lower legs and Pisces the feet; so the circular form of the 12 signs of nowadays is a symptom of this ‚Adam Qadmon‘ being shattered into pieces and scattered amongst the whole firmament as a consequence of his ‚falling down from the spiritual realm into this world of matter‘ …).

So, this original Man has such a high status, as the ‚crown of creation‘, without having done anything himself yet for being granted this honour. This becomes the reason, why some ‚angels‘ (that is: ‚messengers of God‘) get jealous, they do not believe, the Man will appreciate this great gift of being made out of the divine love in the perfect resemblance of the Creator Himself, so that Mankind will be ungrateful. In other words: these angels believe, it would be ‚a bad decision of God‘, to create this Mankind at all.

Those angels also somehow represent a movement ‚inside the soul of God Himself‘, given that they are themselves created beings of Him, so not actually ‚independent‘. In this sense, it is God Himself, who ‚has His doubts‘ when creating Mankind. But nevertheless He does it, and the effect is that these angels ‚rebel‘ against this decision of the Almighty, and by this, they become a ‚hindering force‘, the universal ‚adversary power‘ in all creation, the so-called ’satanic‘, or in the more mythical wording: they become the ‚Fallen Ones‘, angels which ‚fell down from Heaven to Earth for having lost their right to stay up there‘.

Now the method of these fallen angels to sabotage the creation of Mankind is just to ‚teach‘ the human beings certain things … indeed the Fallen Ones are doing nothing else, than to ‚explain everything‘. We can obviously compare this to the ’snake-story‘ of the Paradise, where the temptation of the ‚female‘ (= the bodily) side of Mankind, to ‚eat the forbidden fruit‘, is achieved by promising ‚to open their eyes‘.

‚Satan‘ himself is known in the tradition as ‚the angel which has been thinking too much‘. In the Hebrew the word for ‚thinking‘ is the exact same word as ‚calculating‘. And the problem of too much thinking and calculating and planning is: it makes it impossible to actually EXPERIENCE, what is being thought about! And exactly this law it is, which the fallen angels are well aware of, and they use it against us, until nowadays, holding us captive in an imaginary world of abstract thinking (or at least they are trying to do so).

By the way, it is also said: the fight of these angels against the decision of God, to create Mankind nevertheless, in spite of the possibility that Mankind will be ungrateful and not understanding the great love of their Creator – this ‚angelic rebellion‘ has its correspondence in the labour pain of a birthing mother.

These fallen angels then ‚mix with the daughters of Mankind‘ (see Genesis 6) and by this they are ‚among us‘ down here, INSIDE ourselves, constantly influencing our thoughts and feelings (or at least trying to do so), tempting us whereever possible to ‚ask unnecessary questions‘, to follow the will of our lower urges seeking their short-term-oriented pseudo-pleasure in the details of the manifold world of appearance around us, instead of turning to our Creator and fulfilling our purpose of ‚bringing back home‘ that whole manifoldness of creation, by experiencing it in the context of overall unity with the Source it flows from.

And in the end: It is only ‚the lot‘ that brings decision, WHICH ‚goat‘ will be the one for the Eternal One, and which is going to be brought to ‚Azazel‘; so it is ‚coincidence‘, ‚destiny‘ that makes the decision, no logical thinking, no rationality, which side (inside us) is the one ‚towards the devil‘ and which is the one leading to the Eternal. The one for the Eternal is brought to the High Priest then. The other one is taken by an ‚ish ithi‘, meaning ‚man of time‘, and brought to a cliff and thrown down from there, ’splitting into uncountable many pieces‘.

Both sides are present in every human being, even IF the ‚Azazel‘-side may be very light, and the ‚God‘-side would be very heavy, still the ‚tendency towards the devil must be there at least a little bit. It is indeed even important. Because by this tendency we get the necessary confrontation, and by confrontation we get tested and purified, like gold and silver in the refining furnace. It is this questioning of Azazel inside ourself, wanting to know and understand everything in its manifoldness, instead of the mere and ineffable experience of the unity, the oneness. And the right behaviour towards that ‚Azazel inside us‘ is the asking: ‚why DO I want to ‚know it all‘ in the split-apart manifoldness?!‘

This Azazel-tendency doesnt appear so much in a human being as something ‚perverted‘, ‚deviant‘, ‚devilish‘, as we would imagine it from Hollywood movies and stuff like that … It comes rather in a decent costume, ‚reasonably‘ asking for the purpose of things, trying to explain and make things ‚easier‘ by understanding them, making them ‚better‘ through (supposedly) ‚own‘ creativity … It is a temptation to keep asking for the next answer, becoming slowly but steady more and more a heavy ‚addiction to understanding and explaining‘.

The solution in this sign is, to accept both sides of it. To choose the side of ‚unity‘, but while doing so, not to detest the other side, the side of the manifoldness. Because without the ladder (meaning also: without rationality, understanding and precise thinking) there would be only chaos in the longing for ‚unity‘, and we would never be truly reaching it. And on the other hand, the manifoldness is not to be appreciated as such alone, but only when bound together in the consciousness of unity, bringing the meaning to the manifold perspectives, to not let them diverge further and further endlessly, until no return is possible for the one losing himself into these infinite possibilities of ‚understanding‘ and ‚(re-)searching‘.

The second sign in the ‚fruit‘ group is Saggitarius; the ‚archer‘, the ‚guy with bow and arrow‘. In Hebrew this sign is called ‚qesheth‘, which just means ‚bow, arch‘. With this archetypical picture the Hebrew attempt does not so much symbolize the ‚hunter‘, but more the one ’searching and hoping for fruit‘: the arrows shot with that bow thus are seen like ’seed being cast out‘ (we may think of the greek and roman mythical figure of ‚Amor‘ or ‚Cupid‘, that ‚little baby angel‘ shooting his arrows blindly to the hearts of people, hoping for ‚fruit‘ in the sense, that the people hit by his arrows fall in love with each other and thus ‚bring fruit‘ in the very physical sense afterwards, as having children together …).

In this sign we human beings feel and are driven by a very strong ‚longing for fruit‘. Looking at all the contradictions of this world … we just HAVE to come to the conclusion: this cannot be the end of it! So we expect ‚fruit‘, somehow; we expect that, which will bring meaning to all the contradictions and disappointments of this world – whatever exactly that will be. Sagittarius just ‚won’t accept‘ a complete meaninglessness …

The ’shooting of the arrow(s)‘ in this sign corresponds to the asking for the secret of this paradox world; and it is a hoping, that this questioning will bring that fruit we long for. No coincidence, that Sagittarius is exactly the NINTH of the signs (both, in the ‚circular counting‘ of the babylonian system watching the visible night sky, as well as in the counting through the 4 female, 3 male and 5 fruit signs in the Hebrew approach – no other sign of the Zodiac has the same ordinary number in BOTH systems, so Sagittarius in this sense is ‚the connection between the Hebrew world of Being and the Babylonian world of Becoming‘): nine months it takes until the physical ‚human fruit‘, the baby is there. And ‚months‘ in the Hebrew are literally ‚renewings‘, since the moon is ‚renewing herself‘ once in this period of time.

In the more unconscious area such a ‚longing for fruit‘ is typically expressed as a strong desire for results of our own deeds and actions. The ‚left side‘ of this state of being would be a dodgy ‚perfectionism‘, when in the first place the (personal) ’success‘ is the aim of our actions and our engagements. The ‚right side‘ of it on the other hand is the desire and longing for fruit in a more spiritual sense, feeling directly challenged by the experience of all the already mentioned ‚contradictions of life‘, to find a form of ‚fruitful synthesis‘ of them.

But of course, there is the danger, too, that a human being in this sign does not even WANT the fruit, that he or she is indeed even fearing it, preferring instead the contradictions of life and just ’staying in them‘, and by this: staying fruitless, ’sterile‘ rather, even ‚having fun‘ with all the contradictions (maybe as a ‚cynic‘, maybe constantly self-loathing, maybe as a ‚promiscuitive‘ who is only striving for physical pleasure accompanied by an active avoiding of physical fruit, or maybe even as a convinced criminal in the most evil sense without any guilty conscience). It would be a choosing then of only the one side of life we know already, while the other side we prefer leaving out from the beginning on, we just won’t ‚receive‘ this other side, even when it would be given to us as a present.

This is the ‚fear of the fruit‘; the contradictions of life are pressuring so heavily that there seems to be no possibility of a fruit developing OUT OF these contradictions. And the main contradiction in this world of course is represented in the ‚male-female‘-antagony, though not only in the physical, but of course specifically in the physical dimension, too.

What is FRUIT? It is a synthesis of the contradictions, of two opposites, of ‚the parents‘ so to speak; a synthesis that is MORE than a mere counting together. Like the child is MORE than only father plus mother – true ‚fruit‘ is uniting aspects of both of them, but still being itself something completely new. This ‚Child‘, the ‚Fruit‘ of an encounter of two opposites, originates in the most intimate wish of the parents for knowing each other. By the way: in the Bible one of the commonly used euphemisms for ’sexual intercourse‘ is ‚to know each other‘.

From purely scientific examinations of the world (no matter how ‚correctly‘ they are done) there will never come true fruit, only another scientific examination (this would be symbolically called ‚female homosexuality‘, something not explicitly ‚forbidden‘ in the Bible) … The same is true for only combining mystical visions with more mystical visions: only another mystical experience will come from that, but not true fruit (this would symbolically be ‚male homosexuality‘, which is something explicitly ’not recommended‘ for the People of God, see Leviticus 18,22). Only when both sides of perception of life come together, it will result in something which can be truly called ‚fruit‘.

This noticeable difference of the biblical judgement concerning male and female homosexuality is to be understood from the spiritual sense: ‚male homosexuality‘ symbolically refers to the ‚unfruitful coming together of two entities‘ in the SPIRITUAL and brings forth (spiritual) ‚death‘ (see Leviticus 20,13), while ‚female homosexuality‘ refers to the ‚unfruitful coming together of two entities‘ in the ‚only‘ material world – which would be of course still something ‚fruitless‘ (because neither out of two men having sexual intercourse with each other, nor out of two women having sexual intercourse with each other there will ever come a baby), but it would be nothing ‚causing spiritual death‘, as long as it remains to be practiced only in this ’superficial‘, material world.

So in this understanding, biblically there is NO actual ‚prohibition‘ of physical (= ‚female‘) homosexuality for human beings (of whatever ’sex‘ in their appearing side of being) in this world; only the ’spiritual‘ (= ‚male‘) form of homosexuality we are seriously warned of, because it necessarily leads to (spiritual) ‚death‘ for the entities taking part in it.

Coming back to the characteristics of the sign of Sagittarius again: The human being in this sign ALREADY owns this fruit as a hidden potential inside him/herself; and it would be a pity if he/she won’t bring it forth in this life. It is like human beings, which in general have the potency of physical regenerativity, of having children. But they nonetheless have the possibility, too, to reject this potential, to have no children; be it, because they prefer ‚only having fun‘, only strive for their own lust, or be it out of any other reason. From the point of view of the Eternal this would be a pity of course.

With true fruit in the spiritual sense, it is like in the New Testament with the ‚Son of God‘, the Messiah, who does not come out of a purely ‚biological‘ conception, where only ‚the horizontal multiplies with itself‘. He rather comes from ‚the vertical impact into this horizontal world‘ (‚the Virgin impregnated by the Spirit of Holyness‘), and so He can never be truly understood if only looked at from the ‚biological‘, physical and material, historical point of view. He is ‚Eternity incarnated into history‘, but by this, He is NEVER reduceable to this one human existence in history of so-called ‚Jesus of Nazareth‘. He is Eternal, He was before and He will be afterwards as ‚Son of Man‘, ‚Son of God‘, as ‚Messiah‘.

And such is the true ‚Salvation‘: although it is experienced in this world as something being ‚achieved‘ or ‚being granted‘ at a specific point in life, in time, it nevertheless is known then to have already been there before, only not recognized yet. And by this insight there is no more fear to ‚lose it‘ again, because even IF you would lose it (seemingly) in this life again, you would be sure that it still IS there, no matter if you keep experiencing it directly or not.

In the same way, ‚fruit‘ is something, once experienced, never disappearing again for good. Because what shows up in this world as a representative of the Eternal, is understood as actually being from another world, only being present HERE, too, now. And this is the great difference to the ‚male‘ signs: the fruit signs are fully accomplished INSIDE this world of the female, horizontal principle, making the hidden, male, abstract ‚Heavenly Father‘ and his Messages (and Messengers) visible as ‚the Son(s) and Daughter(s)‘, as the Children of God here down on Earth, or rather: down here, being born OUT OF Earth.

Mankind in the sign of Sagittarius is characterized by this desire and deep longing for this ‚coming together of horizontal and vertical reality‘ as something experienceable in THIS world, as ‚the fruit‘.

The third (and by this, the ‚central‘) of the five signs in the ‚fruit group‘ of the Zodiac is Gemini, the Twins; in Hebrew ‚theomim‘ (= ‚twins‘, too). Being the third in a row, as it is typical, in this sign again the strong duality is the essential of it. The third generation of the Patriarchs of the People of Israel, the generation after Abraham and his son Isaac, namely Isaacs two sons, are twins: Jacob and Esau; the ‚Appearing One‘ and the ‚Hidden One‘, how they are symbolically interpreted in the tradition.

It is emphatically recommended in the Ancient Wisdom: the ‚Appearing One‘, too, shall be accepted as he is. He is not to be detested for being supposedly ‚unspiritual‘ or something like that. And on the other side: ‚the Secret‘, the Hidden One, shall not be forced into appearance, because that would take the sense away from him, from ‚it‘.

The mythical ‚Jacob‘ is identical to everything in a human being, which is there inside, but cannot come into visibility, which cannot be pronounced, articulated (for whatever individual reason!). We know, we WOULD articulate it, if we would be able to do so – but we just can’t.

And every try to reveal the hidden secret, would be a desecrating, and thus it is recommended to never even try to; in any way this revealing of the innermost secret is to be avoided. When it SHALL be revealed, it will reveal itself, surprisingly. It needs to be waited in patience for that moment.

The mythical picture of the ‚battle‘ between ‚Appearing One‘ and ‚Hidden One‘ is biblically experienced in the story of Jacob and Esau. And we know from the story of the Bible (see Genesis 25,21ff), who is going to be the winner: Jacob. But it is a heavenly decision, nothing that would be ‚just‘, a matter of understandable ‚justice‘, from the human point of view. For Esau actually it is quite tragic, because he does not know why he is losing.

And we all know this situation: we all tend to have things in the world of the appearing, which we strive for – but then we never achieve them. We dream, we wish for it … but we see soon: it shall not be. Be it a love, a friendship, a certain career, or any form of success; much of it will always remain a mere dream. Life stays ‚cold‘ oncerning our hopes, it just ‚goes on‘, without granting us the ‚great miracle‘ we hoped for. And with time we get accustomed to that, we are satisfied more or less with the little we get. We know: others have an even worse fate to bear than we have. So why complaining …

With the experience of this mythical story of Jacob and Esau the question arises in ourselves: why, to what purpose is all the suffering? Why am I appearing here in this world – and death in the end is a sure thing for me?! … at least that is how it looks like.

And that’s why ‚Esau weeps‘ (see Genesis 27,38). He is the first figure in the Bible of whom it is told explicitly that he weeps. Because he sees: The blessing, seemingly destined for ME, is granted to the other one.

And we, too, think: In this life here, in this world, HERE it should be, here we have all the people we love, the people we like, here we will achieve everything that would be worth keeping for ever. But then everything seems to be quite different, ‚the other one‘ already was here, has taken ‚our part‘ of the blessing; we are ‚too late‘.

The weeping occurs exactly when Esau realizes, that his father Isaac has ‚blessed the wrong son‘, his brother Jacob, and Isaac explains: I thought I would have blessed you, I really thought that it is going to be YOU, the Appearing One, who will be blessed here in the appearing side of life! But someone else came here instead of you, deceiving me, taking that blessing. I don’t even know how that happened!

In the Bible one name for God is ‚the Terror, the Startling of Isaac‘, in Hebrew ‚Pachad Yitzchak‘; and in the tradition it is explained: it is actually THIS exact terror Isaac felt, when he realized, how his blessing has not reached the ‚right son‘ from his point of view, that it has not reached Esau, the one ‚whom he loved (more)‘ (see Genesis 25,28).

So the ‚Terror of Isaac‘ also is the insight, the sudden realization, that God’s ways are sometimes so shockingly different than any human would think of them (see Isaiah 55,8: ‚my thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways are not your ways, saith the Lord‘). There is this ‚other, secret side‘ of things, we do not see, but which is so heavily important that it can be really startling to us, terrorizing even, to become aware of this heavy importance; and never really be able to understand it (yes, we always want to ‚understand‘ everything, it’s the Azazel-side in us …).

The human being in the sign of the Twins, of Gemini, could have developed a high consciousness of this question for the reason and purpose of the suffering in this sense, this great conflict of the appearing and the hidden side of life, and of the startling felt, when we realize HOW great that conflict is and how painful for the appearing side of us it can get. (A similar conflict, only from a little different perspective, will be looked at in the next part, when describing the characteristics of the planet Mars. And by the way, like Mars is considered the direct opposite to Venus in the overall harmony of the 7 planets, the sign of Gemini is in direct opposition to the sign of Virgo in the visible circle of the Zodiac on the night sky above us; and Virgo in a similar way is associated to Venus, as Gemini is to Mars.)

But there always is the ‚Jacob‘-side, too. Jacob comes with Esau together into this world by ‚holding the heel‘ of Esau, so he ‚tricks himself in‘, so to speak (we already looked at the different possible translations of the name of Jacob in the last part).

So on this way the invisible comes into our life: by holding fast, attaching itself to the visible (and probably kind of ‚against the will‘ of the visible itself …). And this invisible is going ‚to win‘ in the end. But what does this victory of the invisible mean?

In the New Testament there is talked much about the ‚Kingdom coming‘ (referring to the ‚Kingdom of God, of Heaven‘), and always it is clear: this kingdom WILL be here, IN this world, too, in the end. But it does not come FROM this world, it originates ‚on the other side‘, comes as something invisible, and we are even warned to not ‚expect it as coming from this world‘ and not as ‚coming in a way like the way would be, on which anything from this world would be coming‘. It WILL reach this world, yes … but first there is the suffering, the betrayal, denial, torture, even the crucifixion. Afterwards is the resurrection.

But why do we have to go through all the evil before? Why can’t it be directly only the ‚Good‘ for us here in this world? The final answer is only given in the sign of Leo. But in Gemini this question in the best case begins to ‚bring fruit‘ already, by raising the right further questions to be asked.

Jacobs mythical confrontation with Esau is happening for us in every moment of life anew. We always have this fight, this struggle inside us: the fight over the decision to which of the two sides we are tending in this or that situation. Are we more prefering the appearing side, like it would be ‚what the world expects us to do‘? Or do we dare to turn to the mysterious, to the hidden instead, not being understood by most of our surrounding world? And at some point there IS indeed the certainty, that the true blessing is in the invisible, in the mysterious, the ineffable, in the hidden – in that which is even deliberately hiding ITSELF.

We should look a little bit deeper into the concept of ‚blessing‘ in the Hebrew understanding, since the two unequal twin brothers are having their life-long battle especially for the ‚blessing‘ of their father. The Hebrew word for ‚blessing‘ is ‚barakh‘, written with the three letters B-R-Kh. So the word has a numeric structure of 2-200-20 and a numeric value of 222; thus it can be identified as something ‚affecting the world of duality on every level‘. On this background, in the tradition a true ‚blessing‘ is defined as something being ‚unlimitedly realized on the physical level of existence, too‘. So ‚being blessed‘ with anything, cannot mean to only ‚have‘ or ‚enjoy‘ something in the inward experience of life, but the blessing has to be present reaching deep into the ‚hard physical‘ existence, too, into ‚the world of the (number) 2‘.

Jacob is fleeing, because Esau wants to kill him now, for ’stealing his blessing‘. So this only ’surreptitiously obtained‘ blessing, in the first place for Jacob becomes something, which is forcing him out of the world of his brother, out of the world of the appearing. 22 years he is gone (again we have this ‚Two‘ on every level here), in this ‚time‘ (or stage) the Appearing One is getting strong, Esau is becoming wealthy and mighty. But Jacob himself, although in a far away country (the country of his mother’s origin), is also growing; in his possession AND in his experience. In the 22 years of service for his uncle ‚Laban‘ (a name meaning ‚whitening‘; ‚becoming light‘) Jacob gets tricked himself by Laban, so he has to experience his own trickiness as ‚the one on the other side‘ now. But with God’s Help he still gains wealth and marries his two wives (the daughters of his uncle) and his two concubines in these years of hard work.

Those mythical ’22 years‘ are thus for us today, too, a ‚getting strong of the secret, of the mystery‘ in the hidden background (in that ‚far away country‘), while in our appearing side of life (in ‚Esau’s country‘) we may seem to be only looking for the appearing, having forgotten about all the hidden things we were curious about when we still were innocent, ’naive‘ children. ‚Esau‘, the ‚outwardly oriented‘ in us is even hating his brother ‚Jacob‘, the ’secret‘, still wanting to kill him, kill ‚it‘.

And then, after the 22 years, ‚Jacob returns to his homeland‘, to finally dare the crucial confrontation with Esau.

Coming into the land of his brother, the messengers he sent forth to Esau to appease him with gifts, come back to Jacob announcing: ‚Your brother approaches you with 400 men‘ (and they are more or less implying by this: ‚and he wants to crush you!‘ …).

What now occurs, is the famous ’struggle of Jacob with an angel at the river Jabbok‘ (Genesis 32,24-32): after bringing his whole family and his stuff over the river, he goes back alone one last time – and suddenly ‚a man wrestles with him, until the breaking of the day‘. Jacob fights, but neither he nor ‚the man‘ can win; and at daybreak ‚the man‘ begs Jacob to let him go. Jacob is willing to do so only on the condition ‚to get blessed‘ by ‚the man‘. And so it happens.

This enigmatic tale of Jacob fighting a strange ‚man‘ at the Jabbok river is a relatively short text in the Bible, but it is extensively elaborated on in the oral tradition. A wide consens has been established that the episode is describing a fight in the ‚heavenly realm‘, which nevertheless has its direct effect here in the world of matter, too: Esau namely cannot do anything anymore, after his ‚lord‘ (as whom that ‚man‘, some kind of angelic being, is seen) has lost (resp. NOT won) the fight with Jacob at the Jabbok river.

This river can be seen as the ‚borderline between visible and invisible‘; and Jacob thus is coming ‚from the invisible realm‘, going for ‚the side of the visible‘, ‚Esau’s side‘, where he wants to ‚have his place, too‘ now – that is the actual meaning of the ‚blessing‘ Jacob is asking from the angel.

In the tradition there is a stress on a (supposed) ‚fact‘ which is said to be the reason for Jacob staying behind all the rest of his family alone at the river part: he forgot ‚a little broken cup‘ of his stuff on the other side of the river, where they had their last resting place. And although this broken little thing has no actual material ‚value‘, Jacob values it as a part of his belongings nevertheless, and thus goes back to take it. By this he shows to the Heavens that he looks ‚for the quality, and not (only) for quantity‘, that he bases his actions not solely on the question ‚what purpose, what benefit‘ they serve, but tries to do just what is right in his understanding. And only because of this manner of looking at the things, Jacob is there at the river part in the crucial moment and gets the chance for this fight, resulting in the blessing he always hoped for.

This story of someone, who is taking a risk (or ‚a great toil‘) on himself, only for a seemingly ‚minor, worthless thing‘ to save, is usually compared to another story of the oral tradition: The story of Moses and how he got to the famous ‚burning bush‘, where he has his first encounter with the Eternal One calling him to redeem His People out of Egypt (Exodus 3,1ff). In this tale Moses is still a shepherd with his sheep, and one day one little lamb is lost. It would have been not much loss in the material sense, enough sheep are going to birth new lambs soon, so that one lamb lost would be no ‚rational reason‘ to leave the whole flock alone to search after the one little lost one. But, as ‚the good shepherd‘, Moses goes to look for the lost lamb. And he is having a very difficult wandering ‚over stones, sticks and rocks‘, until he finally finds the poor little lamb; and in this moment he becomes aware of that burning bush, which he never would have passed on his ’normal‘ way with the whole flock, if he had not searched for that little lamb in this inhospitable area.

Like a ’natural law‘, at this point in our journey of life – when we begin to dare to take the personal risk of ‚wasting our energy‘ only to achieve something, of what we know it is the right thing, but which would be nothing ’necessary‘ from a ‚worldly‘ point of view, maybe even something ‚crazy‘ from this worldly look on it; but we nonetheless decide to go for it – then we are confronted with ‚the man‘, with that angel, which could be called the ‚Angel of the Appearing‘, being the ‚lord‘ of Esau, like a ‚guardian angel‘ of the ‚Appearing One‘. This Angel of the Appearing wants to hinder the ‚Jacob‘ in ourselves, the hidden, the secret, to enter ‚his‘ world of Appearance. But Jacob ‚wins‘, he gets the blessing, the right to have a place, have space in THIS world, too.

Jacob at this point of the story gets his ’new name‘, ‚Israel‘, representing a renewed essence, a new character. And the name ‚Israel‘ can be translated as ‚you have (already) fought with divine and human beings and you have stood your ground‘.

The secret, the individual mystery of every single human being, has its battle, its confrontation on another level of existence. And because it happens THERE, Jacob can stand his ground in front of Esau in THIS world, too, later. Esau’s ‚400 men‘ just ‚flow away‘. It is explained in the tradition, why Esau does not even TRY to fight Jacob when they finally meet: ‚like time flows away in this world of time, all his fighters have vanished one after another, until the point when Jacob finally stands in front of him (by the way, Jacob approaches Esau in 5 divisions, the number of the ‚fruit‘, being himself the ‚One before the four groups‘ of his children with their four mothers, remember the 1-4-principle …; see Genesis 33,1-3).

In the Gemini-layer this ‚victory of Jacob‘ is ‚built in‘ already, if you will. He fights his battles ‚on another side‘, that’s why ‚down here‘ he has it easy. Only, if he does NOT fight his battles on the other side, it is very difficult here for him. Jacob can only ’stand his ground‘ here, if he arrives here consciously ‚from thereof‘. And ‚from thereof‘ means for our individual approach to life: ‚always think of the QUALITY of the things!‘; don’t look only for the purpose to yourself, for your own benefit, when you do something! Then you are ‚going back over the Jabbok for the ‚one little broken cup‘, and you will have that fight with the ‚Angel of Appearance‘, granting you the blessing in the end.

Maybe you think in some moments of life: I always wanted the best, but I earn only bad, even evil reactions. Nevermind! You fought and won ON THE OTHER SIDE. That’s enough, you WILL be blessed here, in the end at least. Trust.

Then ‚the kingdom manifests itself in your life‘. The mystery then ‚has become flesh‘. That is the secret of ‚blessing‘, of truly ‚being blessed‘ in the actual biblical sense of this expression.

The fourth zodiacal sign of the ‚fruit group‘ (and also the fourth sign in the babylonian mode of counting the 12 along their circle on the night sky) is Cancer, or in Hebrew ’sartan‘, which both means ‚crab‘ or ‚crayfish‘. This sign is either ‚the 11^th of the 12 signs‘ in the Hebrew order of discussing them, or it is ‚the 9^th of the 10′, when we take the three male signs as the unity they actually are. And in this mode of counting, as ‚the ninth‘, Cancer is especially representing the ‚9^th day of creation‘, which we already touched on in the last part. As this ‚9^th day‘ it is associated with the ‚journey through the underworld‘, after which the final 10^th day gets born out of this ‚underworld‘, as the reaching of the Oneness of our origin, but now ‚on the next level‘.

This ‚ten‘ symbolizes the ‚collective salvation‘, like the ‚eight‘ symbolizes the ‚individual‘ one. After having ’sacrificed again‘ the ladder ‚individual salvation‘ of the ‚eight‘, and by this, having deliberately taken that ‚journey through the underworld‘ of the ’nine‘, the individual salvation ‚ressurrects‘ as the potential of ‚becoming a living symbol of salvation yourself for the benefit of your surrounding world‘ in the ‚ten‘.

This ‚journey through the underworld‘ can be experienced in this sign of Cancer – in both of its dimensions: as the suffering path through a hostile realm (like probably most people would understand the term ‚journey through the underworld‘ …); and also as the realization of this ‚underworld‘ being a ‚womb‘ indeed, out of which the Divine ‚Child‘ will be born into the ‚New (perception of the) World‘.

So, Cancer is the 4^th fruit sign and the 4^th sign in the visible circle of the Zodiac. We already established the importance of the number 4, especially in this ‚world of the 4‘ we live in as physical beings, this ‚female world‘ of ‚duality in its fulfillment‘ (see again the very first part of this introduction). For the sign of Cancer we will now meditate on a certain aspect of this ’number 4′ in the context of our world of the seven days, by looking at the fourth ‚word of God‘ in the creation week of Genesis chapter 1 (Genesis 1,11).

As always at ‚a third in a row‘ a ‚twin‘ appears, on the third day of creation week, too, there is not only one ‚word of God‘, but there are TWO words of God; the second word of God on that third day thus is the fourth word of God in total. This fourth word of God is concerning the creation of plant life on the dry area of the Earth, which is commonly translated as ‚grass, herbs and trees bearing fruit‘. And in the second account of the creation-story (second chapter of Genesis) it is also the fourth deed of God (after creating ‚mist‘, ‚man‘ and a ‚garden/guarded realm‘), which is concerning the plants: it is the growth of ‚every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food‘, and especially ‚the two trees‘ in the midst of the ‚Garden‘ (Genesis 2,9) …

These (in-)famous ‚two trees‘ then are the crucial factor determining the further progress of the story: the ‚Tree of Life‘ versus the other tree, the one of ‚knowledge of Good and Evil‘, of which it is said to Mankind: ‚you shall not eat of it, for in the day you eat thereof, you shall die the death‘ (Genesis 2,17). These two trees could also be named the ‚tree of being‘ (= Tree of Life) and the ‚tree of becoming‘ (= Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil).

Here we see the connection to the first account of the story, where the word was of a ‚tree that is fruit and makes fruit‘ (if we translate the verse of Genesis 1,11 more literally), but then only a ‚tree that makes fruit‘ is appearing (Genesis 1,12). The obvious contradiction for our world of duality, to let appear a ‚tree that already IS fruit, as well as it is still MAKING fruit, that means: bringing forth fruit‘ – this contradiction is ’solved‘ by the Earth by … just ‚ignoring it‘ … Earth is withstanding the will of God: the ‚unambiguous‘ comes instead, only the ‚Becoming‘ (of fruit on the tree) will be possible in this world of time and space, not the ‚already-Being (fruit in itself) AND at the same time a still-Becoming (developing towards fruit)‘.

On the fourth day, with the fifth deed of creation, it is the same on another level: two great lights shall appear, but only one big and one little appear. And the little one, the Moon, is even being kind of ’strange‘, rhythmically increasing and decreasing in size and changing in shape, sometimes being on the day visible, not only in the night, where she ‚belongs‘. The Sun in the contrary is that, what ’stays the same all the time‘.

So again we see in these ‚two lights on the sky‘ the ‚one of becoming‘ (Moon), and the ‚one of being‘ (Sun), but separated, one for the day, the other for the night. But ‚the one for the night‘, the ‚becoming one‘, is sometimes present in day-time, too, somehow. So in eternity, ‚in the Being‘, there IS time, there IS development, there IS becoming, too (we already touched this matter when mentioning the one possible translation of the Hebrew word for ‚Heaven‘, being ‚there is water‘).

It is said: in the layer of Cancer in every human being there is this experience of BOTH: ‚being‘ AND ‚becoming‘ in One.

But when we hear statements like this, we say: Well, then where is he, that old man over there, as still being a young man?! He is old now, as we clearly can see, but I know, he used to be much younger back then, he looked totally different … if indeed ‚both is in One, being and becoming‘, then: WHERE is that young man of the past time gone now?

We get an idea, that the true eternity must have all the stages of the life of this man ‚at one sight‘ somehow, and not even only the stages of his fleshly life in the body, but the states before his conception and after his death, too. A vision, not really graspable for our limited capacity of understanding as human beings in this ‚world of the 4‘.

But this secret of the possibility of a so-called ‚coincidentia oppositorum‘, that is: of a ‚falling together of the opposites‘, is also present in the ‚ineffable‘ name of God in the Bible, which is typically translated as ‚Lord‘, but actually more precisely as ‚Eternal One‘: that famous Hebrew word built up of the four letters Yod-Heh-Waw-Heh, ‚YHWH‘, sometimes pronounced ‚Jahweh‘ or ‚Jehowah‘ or ‚Jahwah‘. But actually it is just NOT pronouncable at all in ONE definite ‚correct‘ version, because its heavy and unmeasureable meaning lies especially in the variety of possible translations. But ‚grammatically‘ interpreted it is the Hebrew word for ‚being, existing; happening, occuring‘ in the masculine singular, but in an ambiguous form, meaning ‚he is existing‘, as well as ‚he will exist‘ and ‚he has been existing‘, at the same time.

Another famous name of God is found in the scripture with Moses and the ‚burning bush‘ (Exodus 3,1ff). Here (answering the question of Moses, what he should say to the Israelites who that God is that is promising to liberate them out of Egypt) the Eternal One defines Himself with the following words: ‚I am who I am‘; but it can be equally translated as ‚I will be who I will be‘. Or even as something like ‚I will be happening, as what (ever) I will be happening‘.

Seeing only the ‚becoming‘ means seeing death, and not only a physical, bodily death, but the disappearing of every single moment, of every experience in life. That is the form of ‚death‘ we constantly are experiencing in this world of becoming.

‚Being‘ is ETERNAL and infinite, so it contains also the ‚Becoming‘ in itself already. But we are focused on the ‚becoming-half of it‘ only, because we have ‚chosen to eat of the wrong tree in the Garden‘, of that one which ‚makes fruit‘ (but IS not already fruit) …

The Cancer-layer inside us has a very good feeling of the true essence of Being, has the chance to reach out for the ‚Tree of Life‘. This tree is still always present in yourself in this layer of your being. As it is said: ‚the Tree of Life is available for those who reach for it‘. But the other tree, the one of ‚knowledge of good and evil‘, is much more present IN THIS WORLD, it can be seen, calculated, sensed and … ‚is logical‘, ‚lawful‘. The Tree of Life is not. The Tree of Life is ‚crazy‘, so to speak, not of this world, ’not fitting in‘, for most people here.

That is exactly what makes THIS world a form of the ‚underworld‘. And ‚underworld‘ is the word ‚She’ol‘ in Hebrew, a word literally meaning ‚the questioning‘ or ‚the demanding‘, and this can refer to a ‚torturing asking, without any answers ever given‘, as well as to the ‚demanding force of death, not letting a single soul go through this world of time and space without dying once‘.

But already INSIDE this ‚underworld‘ we live in, we have indeed the Eternal present, too; we only have to reach out for it, BELIEVING that it is here for us, as ‚being the fruit ALREADY‘, not only as ‚bringing fruit‘ afterwards.

Let’s put it this way, being a little bit provocative: You only are afraid of death, because you do not believe in the resurection as ‚an already happened fact‘ (although for yourself only paradoxically ‚happened in the future‘, when looking at it from our timely perspective …). Are you also afraid of going to bed in the night? Fearing to not wake up in the morning? Although you have already seen other people standing up again after sleeping … It is the SAME with physical death, only on another level.

And yes of course: the human being in Cancer HAS the other side, too, the tendency for the ‚causal‘, rational understanding and judging. He CAN feel lost in the ‚underworld‘, be it seeing this world here already as that underworld, or fearing to come there afterwards, as into the ‚valley of death‘, where the passed away souls go, the ‚Hades‘ of greek mythology.

But, compared to all the other signs of the Zodiac, this Cancer-layer in all of us is indeed especially shaped by the experience of the Tree of Life inside him- or herself. This experience is his or her ‚trump‘.

A human being in the sign of Cancer can easily ’show fruit‘ here, in this world, representing the other side already in here. By that, this ‚underworld‘ becomes a ‚womb‘, a matrix, in which ‚the fruit ripes‘, before it is born on the coming day, on the 10^th. The Hebrew letter with the numeric value 9, Teth, is consequently associated with the ‚womb‘, as well as with ‚potter’s clay‘, the raw material out of which the ‚creator‘ makes his new creations. Because here, in the ninth day (as which our ‚world of the four‘ will be experienced from a certain point on – at the latest when we have physically died), in this ‚underworld‘, in the ‚demanding and asking‘ sphere of death – here it is developing, what then becomes born into the ‚World to Come‘ of the ‚tenth day‘.

Leo (the 5^th in the circle of the 12 signs on the night sky), the ‚lion‘, is the fifth and last of the zodiacal signs in the ‚fruit group‘. Its Hebrew name is ‚aryeh‘, which equally means ‚lion‘; but the 4 consonant letters of this word, Aleph-Resh-Yod-Heh, are also readable as ‚or yah‘, which is translateable then as ‚Light of the Eternal One‘. This very last sign in the Hebrew order of discussion of the 12 signs is the one which is most thoroughly associated with ‚the Messiah‘, as the end and aim of All. After the ‚four‘ of the 4 first fruit signs, Leo is ‚the One‘ of the 1-4-principle, finally fulfilling the purpose of this ‚world of the four‘ by transcending it, without leaving or annihilating it, but by reigning over it, ruling in it, as the true and eternal ‚King of the Universe‘ (one of the many names of God, in Hebrew ‚Melekh ha Olam‘).

One reason, why exactly Leo is viewed as THE very Messianic sign, is that the Lion is traditionally seen as a symbol for the tribe of Judah, of which the Messiah originates in His incarnation as a human being, be it in the christian sense as the Christ Jesus, or be it in the jewish understanding of the Mashiach as the One still awaited to come as the ‚Ben Dawid‘. But whatever stance one takes on this question, in any case this belonging of the Messiah to the tribe of Judah is to be understood ‚mythically‘, too, not only in the ‚genetical sense‘ of being literally born into the ethnic group of ‚the Jews‘. For the name ‚Judah‘, actually more correctly transliterated and pronounced as ‚Yehudah‘, means literally ‚praise of God‘, ‚praise of the Eternal‘, and thus refers to the character of the incarnated Messiah as a human being appearing in perfect resemblance of our Creator, representing Him in any regard and by this, honoring Him to the fullest, and making all the people around Himself to become aware of Him and ‚praise the Eternal‘ for being granted to experience the presence of His Messiah in all His Glory.

In the Leo-layer of your being you can be knowing that YOU ARE KING already (just for the fact that you are a human being, created in the resemblance of the Eternal, to rule as a spiritual being over the matter inside this world). You are ‚born as a king‘, you do not have to ‚achieve it‘ first through any deeds, or by learning to be one.

And being a true king means: reigning over the WHOLE kingdom, not only over parts of it. This mythical picture contains the fact that in a real kingdom on Earth there always are healthy people in your land, as well as sick people, rich people. as well as poor people, good people, as well as evil ones. The true king reigns and rules over ALL of them, ‚from one end of the kingdom to the other end of it‘. And this mythical picture transported into a personal existence as a ‚Royal Servant of the Eternal One‘ inside this world of time and space also means: the Messiah Jesus has to perish physically, has to suffer and to be defeated first in this world, before he can resurrect and bring the Kingdom of the Heavens into THIS world, too. He achieves it, by having ‚penetrated all life‘, and for this world of duality we live in with our bodies, this ‚penetrating of all life‘ contains to even penetrate, experience DEATH during our journey down here.

The ‚Kingdom of God‘ here in this world always comes as a ’sudden breakthrough‘ from out of another realm. But it does not come by force, not by the power of anyone inside this world who is trying to bring it here. If you want to achieve it with strenght and power and force, you will perish like Samson perishes in the biblical story of the last of the ‚judges‘ of Israel, before they get their first king (see Judges chapters 13-16): Samson (actually more correctly pronounced as ‚Shimshon‘, from the word ’shemesh‘, meaning ’sun‘) is famous for his superhuman bodily strenght, and for using it to kill a lion with his bare hands, and for often fighting alone against many enemies at once. But he is IN-famous, too, for killing himself in the end in a sort of ’suicide attack‘, killing ‚more enemies in his death than he killed in his whole life‘.

Beside this, Samson is married to a woman called ‚Deleylah‘, symbolizing the ’night‘ (in Hebrew ‚leylah‘), which eventually seduces him to tell her his ’secret of power‘ (which turns out to be his long hair, which then is cut off by his enemies to defeat him). And so Samson gets into captivity and slavery, until his hair has grown back his old lenght, so that he can free himself with his recovered superhuman strenght again.

In the oral tradition concerning this scriptural account of Samson it is told: Samson perishes, because he tries to be a redeemer ‚out of his own power‘. Yes, he is ‚mighty as the Sun‘ with his great strenght, with his long hair resembling a lion’s mane or the shining rays of the sun – but what he lacks is the aspect of being a humble servant despite his great power. Like the sun on the sky is only following his pathway as it is determined by the Eternal, not abusing his power to follow ‚own ways‘. Not-so-coincidentally, in Hebrew the word for ’sun‘ means ’servant‘, too.

This kind of ‚Service‘ will be the actual duty of the true ‚King‘ inside you: Using the strenght and power granted to you by the grace of the Eternal One only for the spread of His glory, by performing the divine love for all your fellow human beings around you in this world.

Now, on the end of this fourth part, it shall be looked once again at the symbolism of the ’10 days‘ in some more detail. And this we will do by drawing the parallels between the signs of the Zodiac (in their ‚visible‘ order in their circular shape of the night sky) and the 7 days of creation week plus the additional ‚3 days‘ representing the ‚3 stages of salvation‘ fulfilling this world of the seven days, how the Ancient Wisdom describes them. We will thus see a correspondence of the signs and these ‚days‘.

Taurus represents, as we have seen in the second part of this introduction, a ‚breakthrough from another reality‘. And by this it is corresponding to the first day of creation week, where All, the complex of ‚Heavens and Earth‘, just appears ‚out of nothing‘, like as already having been there before somehow (‚in the imagination of God‘). But there is still ‚raw force‘ predominating on the surface of creation (‚the Earth was without form and void, and darkness upon the face of the depth‘, see verse 2); like the ‚bull power‘ is such a raw force even today in every human beings ‚layer of Taurus‘. So the creation gets its first proportioning (the ‚light‘, and then the separation between light and darkness) just by the call of God.

In Aries we are confronted with a fact, which actually already originates in the very beginning (1^st verse of the Bible): the duality of ‚Heavens and Earth‘, which was created already kind of ‚before‘ the first day, before the first ‚word‘ of God, so ‚in silence‘, like the Lamb is famous for his silence. But only now on this 2^nd day this duality comes to the visible, as the ‚firmament‘, called ‚heaven‘, dividing the ‚waters above and below‘ (verses 6-8).

In the sign of Pisces we saw that there is a specific dual nature, which is depicted in the ‚two fish‘ symbol of this sign, too: on one side the fish as ‚feeling good inside the water‘, inside its element of life; and on another side the fish ‚longing for being fished out of the waters‘, out of this world of time and space. So on this third day of creation we see the development of the two sides of ‚earthly reality‘: the area of the ‚waters down here‘ (= of time and space world) and that of the ‚dry land‘ (the eternal realm of myth and dream inside us, we experience during our earthly life parallel to the time-space-realm around us); so by this the necessary fundament (water to swim, dry land to be fished out) for the later appearance of ‚the actual fish‘ is established on this day (because as an actual animal that fish is yet to come, on the fifth day, because, as representing the ’souls of mankind‘, the fish has to ‚come out of the vertical dimension of reality‘, out of ‚the male signs‘ of the 5^th day, while the first four days still represent only the horizontal dimension, the ‚female signs‘). Beside this, on this third day (as every third with that ‚twin-nature‘ …) in its second half there is the beginning of actual life in this physical world: the plants grow out of the dry land (so symbolically: the first fundament for any later and ‚higher‘ forms of life grows ‚out of the eternal sphere‘).

As characterizing Aquarius we established the idea of ‚handling, reigning over‘ the ‚times‘ (symbolized by the ‚waters‘ the bucket of the water carrier scoops, carries and pours out according to his will). And on this fourth day, too, the ‚times‘, especially night and day, are being ‚reigned‘ and ‚ruled‘ by means of the ‚great lights on the firmament of the material sky‘.

The fifth day of creation now is characterized by the first impact of the ‚vertical‘, and can be seen as represented by the unity of the three ‚male signs‘ Virgo+Libra+Scorpio. In the development of creation we here look at the beginning of the actual ‚movement‘ in a ‚vertical‘ dimension; the first ‚moving life‘ (after the only stationary plant life of day three) is coming into play: birds and fish going ‚towards the upper and lower waters‘, the birds flying towards the ‚firmament‘ (which seperates the ‚upper waters‘ from the earthly realm, as seen on day two), and the fish swimming in the ‚lower waters‘ down here. Maybe in these two animal forms we can see a materialized symbol of our own dual nature of the ‚two souls‘, spoken about in the first part of this introduction: the ‚fish‘ being the ‚animalistic soul‘ (nephesh), and the ‚birds‘ being the ‚divine soul‘ (neshamah) – one being bound to this world of waters, of time; the other being in much closer contact to the heavenly realms.

The sign of Capricorn (the first of the row of the ‚fruit signs‘) would then correspond to the sixth day (as ‚the second third‘ again a day of very ‚dual nature‘, with two major God-actions/words in it, see Genesis 1,24-31): first the creation of the ‚animal'(-istic) life on the dry land, and in the second half the creation of Mankind ‚in the resemblance of God‘, being ‚male and female‘ in one (see verse 27 in a literal translation). So it is established on this day the harmonic complementarity of ‚the manifoldness of animal life‘ versus ‚the oneness of Mankind‘, representing the ‚two goats‘, both necessary: one being a qurban for the Eternal One, the other being sent into the ’splitting apart‘ of all material creation.

In the sign of Sagittarius we then can see ‚our‘ seventh day, our world of time and space, as the ‚resting of God‘ after he has made everything and saw that ‚it was very good‘; so this 7^th day from God’s perspective is indeed to be grasped as a ‚waiting for the outcome‘ of the six days, as the ‚hoping for fruit‘, or rather a not even doubting ‚expecting of fruit‘ out of the done work.

With Gemini we finally experience ‚the fight of the twins‘, the central fruit sign, which is resulting in the realization of ‚the 8^th day‘ down here, as the ‚blessing of the Appearing One being granted to the invisible, mysterious side of life‘, or mythically speaking: ‚Jacob stealing the blessing of his brother Esau by deceiving their father with the help of their mother‘ (see Genesis 27,5-17).

But after (seemingly) achieving this blessing on this ‚tricky way‘, there nevertheless is the crucial ’split of the kingdom‘ again (see the third part of this introduction, the paragraph concerning the sign of Scorpio and especially therein the comments on the biblical account of the ’split of the Solomonian kingdom after Solomons death‘): Jacob has to flee his homeland for 22 years, working for his deceitful uncle Laban, where Jacob will have his ‚Cancer-experience‘ of being ‚in the underworld‘, but this underworld ‚being a womb‘, where his future ripes (= he marries and has his children, who will become the forefathers of the 12 tribes of Israel).

The ’ninth day‘ would then be corresponding to the sign of Cancer: We experience ‚the whole of Creation‘, or rather ‚the original wholeness of our inner and our outer perception of reality‘, as that ‚kingdom being split apart‘; and also our possibilities of ‚handling this world‘ seem to be split apart – mythically split apart into ‚the Two Trees of the Garden‘ (which actually have ONE common root, how it is explained in the tradition, and only have been ‚cut apart‘ by Mankind, making them to two distinct ‚things‘, that means: separating ‚Being‘ from ‚Becoming‘ in our perception of reality). Only by this ’split‘ the world around us becomes the so-called ‚underworld‘ threatening us with death (in Hebrew ‚She’ol‘), that means: the ‚ruthlessly demanding‘ and the ‚tortureous question-raising‘.

But finally … exactly the journey through this apparent ‚underworld‘ will result in the finding of the Tree of Life in this underworld: ultimately passing the so-called ‚Kherubim‘, those ‚watchmen‘-angels of the beginning, standing guard on the pathway towards the Tree of Life, bearing the ‚flame of the sword of (death-)revolvement‘ (see Genesis 3,24, though mostly distortedly translated as something like ‚the blade of a sword shaken‘).

As the last sign of the 12 in the Hebrew order of discussion we looked at Leo; thus Leo is representing the ’10^th day‘, when ultimate salvation can be experienced, not only ‚inside oneself‘, as the one individual experiencing it, but as the whole of Creation finally reaching the state of salvation. It is for the individual in this sign the final ‚achievement‘ of (or actually rather the final ‚insight into the everlasting presence of an already achieved‘) ‚kingship‘ in your own life, ‚kingship‘ of your own person. It is the coming of the Kingdom of Heavens INTO this world, as the greatest fruit a human being can bring under the best circumstances during his physical life: being a living testimony for the grace of the Eternal upon His servants, resembling His Messiah by ‚having this Messiah alive inside yourself‘, having Him AS (that also means: INSTEAD of) your (old) own being. HE is that ‚King‘ inside you, who always has been there – He only has to be recognized as who He is.

And just to make it sure: the word ‚kingship‘ here is not meant to be ‚anti-feminist‘ in any regard, but the ‚male‘ word for this final state of mastery is stressing the ‚inner‘, the spiritual character of the kingship. And the ‚Queen‘ this King is married to is: ‚the whole world‘, which is His Kingdom – and for HER that ‚King inside you‘ has to be ‚a good husband‘ in this sign of Leo!

But the whole topic of ‚the 9^th and the 10^th day‘, which are following after the 8^th day of the ‚individual‘ salvation, will need some more depth to be understood in their vital importance. When looking at the planets, and especially at the so-called ‚hidden planets‘ in the following two parts, this more depth will hopefully be achieved.