Part Three

The Second of the 3 Groups of the Zodiacal Signs: the 3 Male Signs

The three ‚male‘ signs of the Zodiac, in the Hebrew approach to it, are Virgo, Libra and Scorpio. The number 3 is, as already established, perceived as the number of the ‚male (= inwardly, hidden, spiritual) principle‘. And this triad is especially associated with the so-called ‚6^th, 7^th and 8^th day of creation week‘, as presented in the very first part of this introduction.

So these male signs are very strongly bound to each other, as a unity of the three, which is obviously contrary to the harsh split in the row of the four signs of the female character, where there is that sharp shift particularly between the reality of Taurus and Aries as the first half (consisting of the 2^nd and the 1^st sign of the circle) and the reality of Pisces and Aquarius as the second half (consisting of the 12^th and the 11^th sign of the circle).

The strict unity of the three male signs is explained by the biblical recommendation (‚law‘) of the so-called ’sabbathical year‘, or more correctly ’shmittah year‘ (see Exodus 23, 10-11; Leviticus 25, 1-7; on the superficial interpretation this law is especially concerning the ‚agricultural life‘ of the Israelites after reaching the Promised Land), which recommends to ‚let the land rest in the seventh year‘, that is, to not sow nor reap in every seventh year.

This goes with the promise, that the harvest from the sixth year will be so rich, that it will last until there is new harvest again. That means, it will last for the sixth year itself, for the seventh year, in which nothing shall be harvested nor sowed, AND for the eigth year, when it will be sowed again, but not yet harvested, because there was nothing sowed in the past year.

We already established the basic characteristics of the 6^th, the 7^th and the coming 8^th ‚day of creation‘ in the first part of this introduction. Exactly these three ‚days‘ now are associated with the 6^th, 7^th and 8^th sign of the natural circle of the Zodiac, Virgo, Libra and Scorpio, the three ‚male signs‘ in the Hebrew understanding of the Zodiac. We also looked very shortly on the whole complex of the ’seven days‘, of the complete ‚week of creation‘ in the very beginning of the Bible (Genesis 1,1-2,3), and at the fact that it has a certain schematic structure of ‚2 times 3‘ days plus the 1 day of ‚rest‘, which represents ‚our world of time and space‘.

Now we will try to deepen this understanding of the ‚creation week‘ and its relevance for our human perception of reality. For this purpose we look at the system of the so called ‚Sephiroth‘, a word, which is translateable roughly as ‚cyphers, numerals‘ or as ’spheres‘, and which refers to the several levels of our reality, which all work together to form in their totality what we call our ‚7^th day‘, the ‚world‘ in our human perception.

These Sephiroth (we will focus on the 7 out of them, which correspond to the 7 days of creation week and to the seven planets) are nothing which could be described on a completely rational, logical way, but the understanding of them is something which has to be built up rather by means of stories, comparisons and allegories. So it is nothing graspable solely by the intellect, but only by a combination of intellect and a more ‚associative‘ understanding, like the kind of understanding needed to approach the symbols and happenings of a dream, a myth or a tale.

When we have established a solid foundation of these ‚Sephiroth‘, and by this a deeper insight into the importance of our ‚7^th day‘, it will be much easier to handle the three ‚male‘ signs of the Zodiac, which are essentially representing the possibility of individually overcoming the ‚world of the seven days‘ in human life, and by this reaching the coming ‚world of the 8^th day‘ (which is equated with the ‚experience of the Messiah‘, the bringer of ’salvation‘). And this foundation will be a great help later, too, when we are looking at the seven visible planets in the fifth part of this introduction.

To get a basic overview, we start with a list of the 7 Sephiroth of the creation week’s days and of their respective corresponding concepts (that is: the Hebrew names of the concepts, and one or two possible english translations). There are different possible counting modes of the Sephiroth: They can be counted as 10 (which is the most common number given), as 11 (with a ‚hidden‘ Sephiroth of ‚mystical knowledge‘ included) or as only 7, which we will now focus on. In this last mode of counting, the upper 3 or 4 Sephiroth (which are called ‚kether‘, ‚chokhmah‘, ‚binah‘ and the mystical ‚da’ath‘) are excluded as ‚transcendent‘, as ‚before visible creation‘. But still especially the very first of these upper ones, ‚kether‘ (meaning ‚crown‘), is appearing in the scheme of the lower 7, too, because the 7^th Sefirah, the lowest of all, reconnects in the very end with the most high again, as fulfilling the purpose of creation, as ‚reaching the 8^th day‘, the ‚unity of the origin‘, but now after the whole experience of being divided into the manifoldness throughout the world of the seven days.

The scheme of the seven Sephiroth is composed of two triangles, one above the other, both with the tip downwards, and then the seventh Sefirah alone under the lower triangle’s tip:

2–1

–3–

5–4

–6–

–7–

Now, the names of the Sephiroth are:

In the first row, on the right side, ‚day 1‘: chesed (kindness, love)

First row, on the left side, ‚day 2‘: geburah (justice; strength)

In the second row, in the middle under the first two Sephiroth, ‚day 3‘: tiphereth (beauty; shine)

In the third row, on the right side, ‚day 4‘: netzach (victory)

Third row, on the left side, ‚day 5‘: hod (shape; praise)

Fourth row, in the middle under the 4^th and 5^th Sephiroth, ‚day 6‘: jesod (foundation)

And at the lowest point of the scheme, under the 6. Sephirah, ‚day 7‘: malkhuth (kingdom)

… and, as already mentioned, this last Sephirah of ‚malkhuth‘ is potentially called ‚kether malkhuth‘, too; then it is the 8^th day, the reconnection to the ‚crown‘ of the transcendent, ‚upper Sephiroth‘.

Now it is said: All 7 Sephiroth are present together in the 7^th Sefirah of our world of time and space, but in this 7^th sphere everything is unconscious. Our consciousness as human beings is located in the 6^th Sefirah, where we are ‚created‘ as human beings (on the 6^th day of creation week), and where we eat of the ‚tree of knowledge of good and evil‘, by which our ‚eyes are opened‘ (see Genesis 3,7).

All these 7 spheres, or ‚levels of existence‘, run parallel in the human being. During the ’normal‘ perception of everyday life, we cannot separate the respective experiences of the different spheres from each other. But by taking some distance to look at them, we can get a basic insight.

For this purpose, to approach the characteristics of each of these spheres, it will take a wide spectrum of perspectives on each of these Sephiroth. For the beginning now, we will look at one little story of the Ancients, which is illustrating the circular character of our reality and the importance of every step of the cycle for the experience as a whole; and then we will take one slightly deeper look at the seven biblical figures representing the 7 sephiroth and their respective qualities.

That old story goes like this:

My father bought me a little lamb for the price of two Sus.

Then the cat came and bit the lamb dead.

The dog saw it, and bit the cat.

The stick saw it, and beat the dog.

The fire saw it, and burned the stick.

The water saw it, and extinguished the fire.

The ox saw it, and drank away the water.

The man sees all that, and he slaughters the ox.

Now, THAT is seen by the Angel of Death, and he takes away the man out of this life.

God sees the Angel doing that – and takes away the Angel of Death.

So far the story. We see: There is the ‚Lamb of the foundation‘ we already spoke about in the last part of this introduction. It is bought for a price of ‚Two‘, because in the beginning there always has to be the ’split‘, the duality. And the lamb has to die, for the ‚journey‘ to begin. And in the end of the journey, ‚death‘ himself is taken away – but only AFTER ‚Man(kind) died‘. Between these two points of ‚the lamb being slaughtered before the beginning‘ and ‚death being taken away by God, through the dying of Man‘ the whole world of the seven days takes place, the ‚7 Sephiroth‘ are enfolding.

We now want to look at these seven spheres and days from a second, a closer perspective, aiming for an understanding of the respective ‚complex of experiences‘ in more detail, which is present in each of those seven stages:

1: chesed; Abraham (Genesis 11,27-25,10); the mythical planet Sun; ‚the cat which bites the lamb dead‘, the unavoidable and inexplicable ‚magical‘ start of All (corresponding to the ’serpent in the Garden, making Mankind fall‘, too).

This first ‚complex of experiences‘ is the unexpected breakthrough, a beginning out of nothing, or out of a ’supernatural loving kindness‘, out of grace and the pure will to give.

Abraham is said to find the connection to God without a teacher, without mediation or guidance or instruction; just out of himself. An old saying goes: The true Abraham you will only find when you are 50 years old. That means, that you won’t find ‚chesed‘, this loving kindness without a cause, in this world of the 7 alone, not even in the ‚fulfilled 7′ (which is the ’49‘, see first part of this introduction), but only, when you are breaking through to the ‚8^th‚, to the number (= the quality) AFTER the fulfilled 7, the 7×7+1, the ’50‘.

This sphere of Abraham not only contains ‚Abraham himself‘, but ALL the experience and all the contacts, Abraham has in his story. He especially is the one, who has the great promises: to inherit the promised land, to have a son from his (seemingly ‚too old‘) wife Sarah; but then he has to stay a foreigner in that promised land until his own death, and he has to bring his beloved son up the mountain where he is going to sacrifice him. He surely is desperate throughout much of his lifetime, believing in all the great promises, but so often being disappointed, not understanding, what God wants with all that. But since he never TRIES to understand everything, he nevertheless always stays a perfect example for true faith, testifying for his unshakeable trust in the God of Heaven and Earth. This trust, without any evidence, is what characterizes the Sephirah of Abraham, ‚chesed‘. But the dangers of this Sephirah are not to be overlooked; these dangers are found in the parts of Abrahams story, where he himself doubts, or where other people want to harm him, and so on. These ‚other people‘ of course are inside every one of us, too, just like ‚Abraham‘ is. For all the following Sephiroth this basic assumption equally has to be taken into account: inside yourself there are always present ‚the shadows‘, the enemies of the respective Sephirah’s ‚title figure‘, too …

2: geburah; Isaac (Genesis 21,1-35,29); the mythical planet Moon; ‚the dog punishing the obviously evil cat‘, the logical consequence, the rational side of nature and Mankind, the ‚law‘ governing measureable reality.

The beginning of chesed ‚out of pure, giving love‘ gets its sustainability by the second Sephirah, by ‚geburah‘, which is ‚justice; strenght‘, the strenght of a law that sustains order and justice. This sphere is examplified by the biblical account of Isaac, Abrahams beloved son, who comes, as the result of Abrahams graceful devotion based on nothing ‚rational‘, as the more rational factor that finally brings fulfillment, or rather confirmation of the hope.

In the tradition it is said: from the side of Isaac you meet the person, who will be a good teacher for you, who will accomplish to convince you, that ‚it is all good with THIS world, too, nonetheless‘.

One obvious danger of this sphere is, to become too passive in your doing, like Isaac is rather passive in all his experiences, in the end even leading to the blessing of the ‚wrong son‘ (from his human perspective).

3: tiphereth; Jacob/Esau (Genesis 25,21-50,13); the mythical planet Mars; ‚the wooden stick, trying to force the dog under its will‘, the tools of Mankind’s creativity used either as weapons for suppression, or as ordering principles taming the ‚wild animalistic‘, as well as the ‚heartless logical‘ inside ourselves.

The fruit of Isaac, the result of the ’strenght of justice‘, then is something ambivalent: Jacob AND Esau, the twins, who already in the mother’s womb start fighting each other (see Genesis 25,22). Esau is that part in every human being, which strives for a prey, for a booty all the time, the ‚hunter‘ on the search for the (4-legged) animals. He is never coming to rest, because this ‚4-ness‘ of our world cannot be caught for ever, there will always be ‚the next animal‘ to hunt. The brother of Esau is Jacob; he is the ‚mild one‘, rather ’staying in the tent‘ (see Genesis 25,27). He represents the more subtle force in every human being, the inwardly, hidden aspect. And he comes with Esau together into this world by holding Esaus heel (thus his name ‚Jacob‘, in Hebrew ‚Ya’akov‘, translateable as ‚hand on the heel‘), that is: he arrives ‚by a trick‘ only, he doesn’t really ‚belong here‘ from the perspective of this world, he does not really fit in, he is ‚odd‘ (another translation of Ya’akov’s name can be indeed ‚he is bent, he is odd‘). But exactly HE is the one, who gets the ‚blessing of the Father‘ (although ‚by a trick‘ again, from the worldly, ‚logical‘ view), and who will finally become the archfather of the People of Israel. We will look at the important dynamics of the twin brothers Jacob and Esau again in more detail in the next part of this introduction, when meditating on the central sign of the five ‚fruit signs‘: Gemini, the ‚twins‘.

4: netzach; Moses (Exodus 2,1-Deuteronomy 34,12); the mythical planet Mercury; ‚the fire that is burning and consuming the wooden stick‘, the attempt to ‚break the fruitless cycle‘ of cause and effect by means of a ’new breakthrough‘, but unlike the breakthrough ‚out of nothing‘ of the very beginning as something completely new, now this breakthrough comes as a ‚birth out of the present chaos‘, as something building up JUST out of the ‚available‘ existing.

Moses, who is determined to rescue the ‚Children of Israel‘ out of ‚Egypt’s Slavery‘, is tried to be killed by Pharao from the beginning on (see Exodus 1,16+22). But only BECAUSE of this try by Pharao, in the end Moses even is getting raised especially well (namely directly on the court of Pharao, as the step-son of Pharao’s daughter; see Exodus 2,5-10).

The reason, why this ‚Moses‘ is being hated everywhere he appears, is that he is the one saying: ‚here is something wrong‘, when you are thinking, just now everything is perfect … That’s why even his Israelite brothers are hating him again and again; sometimes not wanting to follow him any longer, sometimes even wanting to kill him. Moses brings a certain kind of ‚restlessness‘ into the experience of life, always pushing you to go further, to never be satisfied before having reached true freedom, to not make any foul compromises.

And by this fiery restlessness ‚Moses‘, as the Sephirah ’netzach‘, is ‚the victory‘; such a victory, which is so clear and definite, that there is not even the necessity to try hard, when you just KNOW that you are going to ‚win‘, to achieve this or that, because it is just ‚your thing‘.

5: hod; Aaron (Exodus 4,14-Numeri 20,29); the mythical planet Jupiter; ‚the water drowning the fire, which seems to be burning away the fruit‘, the material ‚barrier‘ of reality, which sets a boundary to the inspiration of human creativity, so that it won’t ‚consume itself‘ in a rush; like in the play of the waters, in its streams of hotness dividing the cold masses of an ocean, sometimes heating up until condensation, and raining down again; by this the heat of the invisible fire becomes visible for us, ‚materializes‘.

After Moses has the inspiration, his brother Aaron expresses it, as the ‚Priest‘. Like always the ‚right side‘ is the breaking through, the hidden and abstract (the ‚male‘), and the corresponding ‚left side‘ is the causal consequence of it, the concrete and appearing revelation of the hidden source (the ‚female‘).

A ‚person‘ ( or an aspect inside yourself) you meet in this sphere of ‚hod‘ is going to show you the connection between the horizontal and the vertical dimension, between the world of time and space and the acausal, surprising, miraculous impact from another realm into this world, and he is going to show you that both belongs together, forms a unity.

Aaron is therefore being responsible for the orderly application of the ‚qurban‘, the ‚approach to God‘, the sacrifice of the ‚animal‘, the bodily existence, the ‚form‘, to make it a ‚praise (of God)‘ in the spiritual realm, too.

6: jesod; Joseph/’Zaphenath-Paneach‘ (Genesis 30,22-50,26); the mythical planet Venus; ‚the ox drinking the water to be nourished by it‘, the ‚animalistic‘ foundation of humanity being nourished especially by the ‚female‘, time-and-space side of existence, by the appearing, being tempted by it to choose THIS side instead of the spiritual, eternal.

The Hebrew word ‚jesod‘ means ‚foundation‘, but is also translateable as the sentence ‚it is a secret‘. So the (true) foundation (of anything in this world and of this world herself) is always a secret, otherwise it could not be the true foundation, but only one out of many ‚causes‘ in an infinite row of ‚cause-and-effect‘-relations inside this world.

The biblical character Joseph is ‚the misunderstood one‘, ‚the hated one‘ among the 12 brothers, being sold into slavery; but exactly by this ‚being-sold-away‘ he is becoming the de-facto-king of Egypt, getting his new name ‚Zaphenath-Paneach‘ by Pharao, as the one who is saving the whole world in a time of ‚great hunger‘. And beside this it is an important detail of this Sephirah that Joseph is from the beginning on the most loved son of the Father, being this without any ‚visible‘ reason, only, because his father ‚decided so‘.

7: malkhuth; David (1 Samuel 16,11 – 1 Kings 2,11); the mythical planet Saturn; ‚the man slaughtering the ox, as the seemingly logical consequence to all the happenings around him‘, Mankind striving to ‚get rid of‘ but still ‚be nourished by‘ the own ‚animalistic‘, physical side of existence, as the seemingly ‚logical‘ consequence to the visible happenings in this material world we live in.

David is always in fight with someone. Even as the king of whole Israel there are still wars within or without his kingdom, never there is complete peace for him. The peace only comes after him, for his son Solomon (Sh’lomoh, meaning ‚peaceful; harmonic; fulfilled‘), the ‚Son of David‘, representing the ‚8^th day‘ finally.

Of course there is much, much more to these Sephiroth. Looking into the details of the biblical storylines of the corresponding characters can already bring forth many additional insights. And as soon as we look into the seven planets in part five, there will be clarified some more aspects of ‚the seven‘. But on this first foundation now given above, we can finally begin to look at the three zodiacal signs of the male character, in their unity envisioning the ‚vertical way‘ out of this horizontal ‚world of the 4‘, of time and space (which is, as seen in the last part, illustrated by means of the four female signs of the Zodiac).

The first male sign is Virgo. The name means ‚virgin‘, or ‚young woman‘; in Hebrew it is called ‚bethulah‘ (which equally means ‚young woman‘, especially in the sense, ‚woman, without having given birth to a child yet‘).

This sign taken as a ‚male‘ sign may seem irritating on the first glance, since it is an apparently female symbol for this male sign; but especially by this ‚contradiction‘ it correctly represents what could be called ‚the heavenly origin of the female‘; that is: the heavenly origin of the earth, or ‚the male side of the female‘, the inner side of all the appearing world; it is picturing ‚the secret origin of the revealing and of the revealed‘.

The christian symbol of the ‚Virgin giving birth to the Messiah‘ is to be understood in this sign: the Earth, the earthly realm, that is symbolically the ‚woman‘, ‚giving birth‘ to, or bringing forth the possibility of ’salvation‘, without being ‚impregnated‘ therefore by the forces of this world, but instead by being impregnated by the transcendent ‚male‘, by the ‚heavens‘, by the ’spirit‘. It is nothing rational, nothing which could be achieved by the means of this world, by actively ‚working for it‘. It is granted by the irrational, acausal side of reality – it just happens. And trying to explain the salvation in a definite way will always fail, or even will have the opposite effect: only drawing you deeper into the enslavement of the causal world, if you start feeling guilty for ’not understanding it‘, thinking, that your (supposed) ‚lack of insight‘ would be the reason for the absence of salvation in your life. But as long as we want to enforce this salvation by whatever ways, it always will be a ‚false Messiah‘ we are proclaiming, an ‚Antichrist‘ (= greek translation of ‚false Messiah‘), as it is called in the (greek written) New Testament.

This ‚birth out of heavenly impregnation‘, and the ‚heavenly woman‘ necessary for it, though does not appear for the first time in the New Testament of the Bible. Often in the Old Testament already there are stories with ‚two wives‘, of which only the one of them is the ‚right one‘. In these stories also ‚the other wife‘, the earthly one, may bring forth children, but not the ‚children of the promise‘. The most famous of such stories is the story of Abraham and his two wives, the ‚Egyptian‘ woman and the ‚Hebrew‘ woman, called Hagar and Sarah (see Genesis chapter 16). From the ‚immanent woman‘, from Hagar – sure, from HER Abraham can instantly imagine to get a son, he believes THAT easily to be possible, when his actual wife, Sarah, is suggesting it, because that way would be quite ’normal‘. But from Sarah herself, the ‚old one‘, the one ‚from the other side‘ (we remember: the word ‚Hebrew‘ means ‚from the other side‘, so: ‚heavenly‘), from ‚the transcendent‘, so to speak?! That would be waaay too ‚miraculous‘ for Abraham … But yet there comes the son from Sarah, too: Isaac, or in Hebrew actually ‚Yitzchak‘, meaning ‚ridiculous‘, ‚laughable‘, or ‚incredible‘. Because that’s just what it is, when you experience this ‚virgin birth‘ in yourself, this ‚being impregnated by the heavenly‘: it is incredible, you can only laugh without explanation for it, no words seem appropriate anymore!

But the zodiacal sign of Virgo does not only represent this possibility of a ‚heavenly fruit‘ inside the earthly realm by means of ‚a miracle‘. It also bears in itself the (often unconscious) remembrance of ‚the Garden Eden‘ (in Hebrew ‚gan eden‘; literally meaning ‚a guarded realm of delight and pleasure‘), of the Paradise of the beginning of Mankind. And with this comes a deep longing, to reach that Paradise, ‚that beautiful Virgin‘ again. We can search in all cultures of this world, always we will find in one or another form a story of ‚the lost paradise‘, a state of life, which we lost, but which still is remembered (psychologically this phenomenon would probably be explained nowadays as ‚every individual’s remembrance of the time in the mother’s womb‘ …). And even the believe, that this lost paradise will be reached again at some point in the future, seems to be quite universal in all human cultures of history.

And for the sign of Virgo all this remembrance and hope is very important: in the sixth sign, as in the 6^th day of creation week, Mankind is created; but Mankind ‚is falling‘ from their original state of delight, already on this 6^th day, too. And in the sign Virgo (that means: in this layer of human nature) you somehow ‚know‘ (or ‚feel‘) about this human state of being, there is that feeling that Mankind is not ‚finished‘ yet, that we will only be complete(d) on the ‚8^th day‘, in the coming world, which is not of this world we live in now, just like we do not have our origin in this world we live in now. From our 7^th day-existence we look into our 6^th day-creation and feel: we will arrive back there again, but it will be only ‚on the next day‘.

So this sixth zodiacal sign is strongly associated with ‚Mankind‘ in its original state, in its state ‚meant to be‘. And this Mankind can be seen as ‚the connection between Heaven and Earth‘, being the ’nail‘ connecting them both – Mankind indeed is like the word ‚and‘ in the formulation ‚Heaven AND Earth‘ (in Hebrew: ’sh’mayim WA aretz‘); the ‚and‘ in Hebrew is ‚wa‘, a word spelled only with the one letter ‚Waw‘. And this Hebrew letter Waw indeed resembles a nail in its original picture symbol, a ‚connecting device‘, and the word ‚waw‘ itself means ’nail‘, too. And Waw is the 6^th letter of the Hebrew Alphabeth; the ’six‘ as the number of the day on which Mankind is created, and the ’six‘ as the base for the ’number of the beast, being the number of Man‘, the infamous ’sixhundredsixtysix‘, as it is mentioned in the last book of the Bible (Revelation 13,18), referring to an unholy state of being, where everything is reduced to this ’six‘, to this number of the beastly, earthly, only-human, of Egypt’s slavery, of an everlasting remaining in the ’sixth day‘ with its fall from Paradise, never coming into the ‚peace of the Sabbath day‘ and beyond.

Now, all this experience of the sign of Virgo would be very beautiful and without suffering, if the sign has kept its connection to the other two male signs, Libra and Scorpio, respective the connection to the 7^th and 8^th day. But when this connection is corrupted or completely lost, the Virgo-layer inside us feels a little bit like

Adam is said to have been feeling in the very first night he had to experience in his life: after being created in the day half of the 6^th day (in Hebrew thinking the days begin with the night half), he is driven out of the Garden in the ‚late afternoon‘, shortly before the night would have approached. Thus, till then he never has known the darkness of the night. And now, when he experiences his first night, he is in indescribable fear of the darkness, because he of course cannot know yet, that this darkness will come to an end in the morning again.

Such is the terror felt by the human being, when we are not knowing that there will be a recovery of the Paradise in the end, when we are fearing the death of the flesh, which is obviously approaching (we see this death all around us in this world), and think of this fleshly death as the ultimate end of us. Then we only can hope for some ‚false Messiah‘, for some pseudo-salvation in the shape of material wealth, social status or technological assistance for longer and healthier life. It would be like having the remembrance of that great promise to reach the Garden Eden of the origin again – but then realizing to be perishing in this world of time and space, without ever having reached that paradise again, with no other choice than to assume that the great promise will just be broken and never fulfilled.

A being in the Virgo sign HAS indeed in itself the salvation, but if it is separated from the other two days/signs like this, then the salvation cannot be realized in him/her for now, and that’s of course tragic. He/She WILL still reach it in the end, no doubt; but until then it is a hard, an even cruel journey of life with much suffering. Suffering will be there anyways. Only, with the connection to the other two male signs, this suffering will be experienced as ‚the path‘, and by this as much less devastating.

The secret lies in the meaning of this suffering of ‚the lost sixth day‘: Like the olive HAS to be picked from the olive tree, to not decay on the tree. Then the olive HAS to be pressed to give its precious oil. And the ‚oil‘ then is, what is used for the ‚anointment‘, for the ‚anointed one‘ to become what he is; and the ‚Anointed One‘ in Hebrew is the ‚Mashiach‘, the ‚Messiah‘ (or in Greek the ‚Christ‘).

From this perspective on the oil and its importance for the Messiah as the bringer of salvation on the eighth day, it is not a surprise, that in the biblical list of ‚the seven fruits of the promised land‘ (see Deuteronomy 8,8) the sixth of those fruits is the olive … and that the Hebrew word for ‚oil‘ is ’shaman‘, which is spelled with exactly the same letters like the word for the number ‚8‘!

Life in this world is traditionally compared to a candle (or an oil lamp): The picture of a burning down candle means: something which is disappearing here, is thereby appearing, even fulfilling itself ‚on the other side‘; so, if the candle burnt down here in this world completely, then it is present in its totality on the other side. The human being in the sign of Virgo COULD indeed experience his downfall, his ‚burning down completely‘ in this world (when losing his connection to the 7^th and 8^th sign and day), but … the meaning of life is NOT here in time and space!

In the Hebrew tradition the ‚wheel‘ is the primary symbol for ‚reincarnation‘, even the word for this concept (‚gilgul‘) has to do with the word for wheel (‚gal‘): everything comes back again; not only that one little part of the wheel is ‚real‘, that touches the ground at one moment in time, but ALL of the wheel is ‚real‘ and even necessary for its purpose, and every little part of it will ‚come again‘, get in touch again with the ground, just ‚after another spin‘ …

It is only the UNITY of the numbers 6, 7 and 8 (and of the corresponding three male zodiacal signs) that bears in itself the ’secret of evil‘, the understanding of all the suffering; of the incomprehensible, which is there, so that there can be enlightenment, illumination in the dark, explanation for the enigmatic, answers to all the asking ‚why?!‘ … Evil will not become ‚Good‘ by understanding it. But it will become appreciated in a mysterious way nevertheless. In the Bible it is especially the book of ‚Job‘ (or ‚Iyob‘), which elaborates on this insight.

In the sign of Virgo thus, the individual HAS to experience being heavily underestimated, in essential questions being thoroughly misunderstood, and in general remaining unrecognized in his/her true virtue and value by the world. But then again just this underestimatedness will be realized as a pathway to salvation, if you are still knowing nevertheless, that there is more about you, than the world can see. Then you will accept, that liberation can only be given to someone being captive before, that ressurection can only happen to someone having died before.

The situation of someone in the sign of Virgo, especially of someone who has lost the connection to the other two male signs, can be compared to one aspect of the situation of King Solomon in one famous tale, when that great and wise king has lost his ‚ring of power‘, by which he used to have even the devil himself under his control: Suddenly he is not believed anymore to be the Son of David, the King of Jerusalem, and he has to go ‚into exile‘. But even at this lowest point in his life, HE himself still knows, although he cannot prove it to anyone: I AM the Son of David, the King of Jerusalem.

The danger of this sign of Virgo (beside the already mentioned separation from the other two male signs) is to be led astray by looking for your own power and strenght in the causal, in being ‚mighty in this world‘. You then will fall in a ‚too materialistic version of salvation‘ (which is NO true salvation) – IF you achieve anything at all. The way better advice for someone in this sign of Virgo is always to ‚draw yourself back‘, ’stay in the background‘, ‚just LET it happen‘ instead of ‚trying to MAKE it happen‘. You may want to compare this tendency to the female sign of Aries/Lamb, which would be on the horizontal level of the same characteristics in this regard.

The second male sign then is Libra, the ’scales‘. In its Hebrew name it is known as ‚meoznayim‘ (from the word for ‚balances‘; the word for ‚ears‘, ‚oznayim‘ is in it). It is the seventh sign in the visible circle of the Zodiac on the night sky.

It is said that the male sign of Libra is strongly connected to the female sign of Pisces; the main difference of the two lies in the opposition of ‚active and passive‘: Libra is the active counterpart of the passive Pisces, both though have intimately to do with ‚time‘, with ‚the water‘ in the mythical sense. While in Pisces the focus is on the ‚being fished out‘ of the water, in Libra that focus is on the ‚journey through‘ the same water; but more on the surface now, like on a boat manoeuvring through the waves, not as the fish swimming UNDER the water anymore.

And directly connected to the aforementioned, this seventh sign, and especially the ’seventh day‘ (of ‚creation week‘) associated with this sign, is understood as ‚the long way through the Wilderness‘, too, connecting the ‚Land of Egypt‘ (mitzrayim, numeric value of 380) with the promised ‚Land of Canaan‘ (khana’an, numeric value of 190), as the journey ‚from the 2 to the 1‘ (380 to 190 = 2 to 1), from duality back to unity, through ‚this world of time, space and matter‘, this world of the symbolical ‚water‘. And, not-so-coincidentally, in the Hebrew Alphabeth the 7^th letter is the Zayin, which is pictured originally as ‚a boat with a paddle‘, looked at from the side.

Libra thus is called ‚the sign of the way‘, ‚the sign of the path‘. And especially the LONG way is meant here …

There is a certain verse in the biblical account of the exodus of the people of Israel out of Egypt (Exodus 13, 17), which is usually translated as something like: ‚And it came to pass when Pharao had let the people go, that God guided them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near, for God said: lest the people repent when they see war, and turn again to Egypt.‘

But a far more literal translation would be: ‚[…] that God did not bestow on them the way of the land of the Philistines, because that (way) is near, and because God said: may the people not sigh by their vision of war, so that they (would) turn around back to Egypt.‘

So the ‚way being near‘ is equated with a ‚vision of war‘; and this understanding is taken by the ancient Hebrew tradition as an explanation, that ‚the way‘ in general HAS to be long for Mankind, because if everything is achieved in one single step, it would be ‚way too much to take‘.

For example: If we would see at once shortly before our birth into this world all the stuff we are going to eat during our whole life, it probably would make us … well, it could make us ‚give up before trying‘, since it would appear to be sooooo indescribeable much and thus impossible to accomplish. So we need ‚the long way‘, to get it done: one meal after another, never exactly knowing when the next meal will be, what exactly it will be; and in every single meal one spoon after another, chewing the food, swallowing it piece by piece, digesting it, and so on. And by this ‚long way‘ it is no problem for us anymore to master that large amount of food during our whole life span.

Like concerning the food we eat during our lifetime, we should look at our life of this world in general like this: to just go step by step, not all the time worrying, ‚how much food‘ it will be in total at the end, but to concentrate only on the little part of it visible just before us right now. And enjoy this little part right now as much as possible, being grateful for it, like we should be thanking for every meal we eat (see Deuteronomy 8,10).

It is said that ‚the way itself knows, where it leads: there once was a paradise, we will be there again‘, that’s it. So if we just trust the way we are walking on, everything will be alright. Thus the most important human capacity in this sign is: trusting patience.

The scales are envisioned as always ‚balancing out‘, but as never actually finding equilibrium with both sides being on the same level without any further movement. That equilibrium would be the end of the time world, there would be no journey anymore. So it goes always from one side to the other side, the left side representing the ‚evil‘, the doubt and desperateness, the right side representing the ‚good‘, the convincedness and the joy of having hope. And BOTH sides are essential to the joy in the long run:

It is like a true love story: first there is a falling in love, maybe even on the first sight. But then there is some drifting apart again sometimes, having some misunderstandings, very heavy ones even maybe. And disappointment. But then such misunderstandings are being solved again, and the joy is even bigger than it could have been without the temporary distancing in between. Up and down it goes in this sense, until finally there is a mutual commitment for each other, grown over time, as a decision both dare to make; after they know BOTH sides of the journey together, the sweet hours and days and weeks, but the tougher parts of this adventure, too. And then at some point a kind of engagement time begins, still learning about each other more and more, maybe during the first time of actual living together in one house, learning to accept the moments of needing some space for oneself, those moments of the other one and those moments of oneself, too, which may have been not expected as such in the beginning … But if both agree to all of this, ultimately ‚marriage‘ can ‚happen‘, there can be the ‚wedding‘ as a feast with all the family taking part, now with the general confidence that all is built on a true foundation indeed. Both, Man and Woman, already knowing ABOUT each other so much, are finally ready to actually KNOW each other now – that is the ‚wedding‘ in the more intimate sense, happening in every new moment again and again.

And THIS wedding is, what mystically is said to be only happening ‚on the eighth day‘ – our whole journey through this seventh day is to be perceived as the ‚phase of engagement‘. Where true wedding is happening, the 8^th day is here already for them.

In the Bible there are mentioned 7 specific ‚fruits of the Promised Land‘, which are interpreted in the tradition as ‚the 7 ways of growth‘. These 7 (+1) ‚fruits‘ of the Promised Land (see Deuteronomy 8, 8) are: Wheat, Barley, Grape, Fig, Pomegranate, Olive, Date (respectively the ‚honey‘ of dates) and, as the eight (but not mentioned in this specific scripture), Almond. If we see these seven fruits as corresponding to the seven days of creation (and to the 7 Sephiroth, etc.), we have the Date as the fruit of the 7^th day, of ‚our time-and-space-world‘. And the Hebrew word for this fruit (and for the tree on which it grows) is ‚thamar‘; a word meaning not only ‚date (palm tree)‘, but it can be translated as the sentence ’she is bitter‘, too. So our ’seventh day‘ down here, and our journey through it, is associated with ‚bitterness‘; the world, in her horizontal, female character of ‚time, space and matter‘, is regarded as being something ‚bitter‘. But still as the ‚date‘, as the ’sweetest fruit of all‘ …

Finally, it is said, ‚in the end of the journey‘, the scale is ‚down on the right‘ and has reached the end of our 7^th day. Then the transition to the coming world is experienced, to the world of the ‚eighth day‘, the promised world, which all the way along has been granting the meaning, the sense of our whole journey.

If you search for the lost Paradise in the historic past of this world of time, or hope for it as ‚coming back‘ in the future of this world of time, then you are ‚cutting off the seventh day from the two days before and after it‘, separating it out of its connection to the whole. And that necessarily leads to suffering and disappointment, just like the separation of the 6^th day from the two following. When someone only sees this ‚underestimatedness‘ of his/her person, only feels unrecognized, not knowing yet, that exactly this underestimatedness will be his/her way to salvation through this current seventh into the promised 8^th day. Expecting this 8^th day as such, already reachable in THIS world, would mean to not see the ‚waters‘ which have to split first, always when you come ‚from one day to the next‘; like at the exodus from the land of Egypt into the Wilderness you have to pass through the Red Sea (in Hebrew: ‚yam suph‘, meaning ‚Sea of the End‘ or ‚Sea of the Border‘), and then from the Wilderness into the Promised Land you have to pass through the Jordan river (in Hebrew ‚yarden‘, meaning ‚descendance; going/falling down‘).

The Libra-layer in every human being is very strongly looking and searching for a target, for sense and meaning, for a final aim of the journey. With this goes motivation and the already mentioned ‚trusting patience‘ on the one (the ‚right‘) side, but the disappointment, too, on the other (the ‚left‘) side, when we sometimes cannot see anything supporting our hopes for reaching the promised at the end, when we feel deceived, be it ‚by God‘, or be it ‚by our own illusions‘. But all this is part of this sign, and when we accomplish to reconnect to the 6^th and the 8^th sign, too, in this sign of Libra, then we will never be suffering a pain unbearable, but at most a pain experienced ‚for the sake of the adventure‘, so to speak …

Because on the long way through the Wilderness of this world, sometimes there IS doubt, sometimes we ARE rebellious like Israel in the desert, longing back to Egypt with all its ’security‘, with all its ‚tasty dishes‘. But we realize, too, at some point that: once freed from slavery, it is not anymore possible to actually go back: ‚Egypt would spit you out!‘ it is said … ‚even if you would offer yourself as a slave again‘. Once liberated, you can PERISH – but you cannot ever go back to enslavement again …

The ‚Wilderness‘, or ‚desert‘, in the Hebrew language is called ‚midbar‘. The interesting aspect of this Hebrew word is, that it can also mean ‚conversation‘ (from the root word ‚debar‘, meaning ‚word; speaking‘). So the whole journey of this seventh day, our experience in this world of the ’40 years of wandering through the wilderness‘, this world of time and space, is perceived as one great ‚conversation‘. And in this sign of Libra, the scales balancing itself out with alternate movements to the left and to the right, this ‚conversation‘ is sketched as having a specific character: the conversation namely always ‚takes its turns‘ with the conversing parties, it never should be in a complete equilibrium, ’standing still‘, but should be a constant moving ‚to and fro‘ (just like the scales is pictured, as always being on one side weightier than on the other).

The third male sign of the Zodiac is Scorpio, the ’scorpion‘, in Hebrew named ‚aqrav‘ (equally meaning ’scorpion‘, or in a certain context ‚a specific kind of whips with stings on it‘, see 1 Kings 12,11).

Like it is typical for every ‚third‘ in a row, the third ‚male sign‘ of the Zodiac, too, is of a ‚twin character‘, of dual nature (compare for instance to the third of the female signs we already discussed in the second part of this introduction, Pisces, which is the ‚two fish‘-symbol; and also to the third sign in the whole Zodiac circle, which is the sign of Gemini, ‚the twins‘, and which at the same time is the third of the five ‚fruit signs‘, too; beside this, in the accounts on the ‚creation week‘, we also find the dual nature of the third at least twice, in the happenings of the third and of the sixth day).

So beside the name ’scorpion‘ this sign is called ‚(white) eagle‘, too (in Hebrew ’nesher‘). The aqrav/nesher-dualism represents the Anti-Christ and the Christ; ‚Devil and God‘.

We already mentioned that the Hebrew word for the number eight is spelled with exactly the same letters as ’shaman‘, meaning the ‚anointing oil‘, which is the characteristic sign of the ‚Messiah‘ (since ‚messiah’/’mashiach‘ means ‚anointed one‘). And we already learned that the oil for this anointment stems from the ‚olives pressed on the 6^th day‘.

But what exactly is the ‚eigth day‘, when looking at it from our world of time and space with the ’seven-day-week‘, the ‚four-week-month‘ and the ‚twelve-month-year‘? Is it the so-called ’sunday‘, the day after the seventh day, so just the first day of the week again? No, not really. Because actually there is a ‚hidden‘ 8^th day, namely ‚the rest that remains‘ in a lunar month after the 4 weeks of 7 days, so after the 28 days of 4 ‚regular‘ weeks; the 1.5 days, which ‚do not fit in‘ into the scheme of a four-week-month. This ’non-fitting rest‘ can be compared to the 10 days of the solar year, which are exceeding the 355 days of the 12 lunar months, making a ’13^th zodiacal sign‘ partly visible in this difference of days between the lunar and solar cycle (indeed ‚modern‘ astronomy speaks of this 13^th zodiacal sign, too, calling it the ’snake bearer‘).

In these seemingly ‚irrational rests‘ we can observe that in our world of time and space there is always an incalculateable irrational factor, despite all the ‚laws‘ and all the ‚causality‘. Trying to ignore this always-present ‚rest‘ means ignoring reality, means trying to suppress reality under our own human will, thus essentially ‚reaching for the throne of God‘ as the legitimate ruler of this creation …

The ’scorpion‘ is in the tradition always associated with the ’serpent‘, the ’snake‘ from the beginning in the Garden, and furtherly equated with the mythical ‚dragon‘, which is no other than the ‚devil‘ itself, the one who ‚brings doubt‘, who ’splits everything apart‘; and another important name of this being is of course ’satan‘, meaning ‚adversary; hinderer, inhibitor‘ (see for example Revelation 20,2). He is the ‚Anti-God‘ of this world of time and space; when we are looking for the ultimate reason and source of the material world, at some point this mythical ‚dragon‘ shows up, dressed up as ‚god‘, to deceive the seeking one into worshipping him as the ‚understandable‘ source of everything – instead of finding the invisible and incomprehensible TRUE Creator by the actual experience of Him.

The other side of this zodiacal sign is the (white) Eagle, ‚bringing his young ones on his wings with him‘ (these ‚young ones‘ are – as strange as it may sound – actually ‚the dove‘, which is the symbol for the ‚message out of heaven‘). The Eagle alone is only exactly as strong as the dragon is, just with a strenght and power coming from the opposite direction. So there would be no decision, no winner, no loser in a confrontation, since both are equal. But by the little additional power through ‚the dove‘, the Eagle is going to be victorious anyways!

A ‚fight‘ in the Hebrew mode of thinking always means a ‚knowing each other‘. That is, you shall get to know your enemy, as well as he shall get to know you through the confrontation. Otherwise it would be not a real fight, only a unilateral suppression, a violation. From this perspective it is not possible, to only ‚know the dragon (or serpent, or scorpion)‘, without letting him know YOU, too. If that one-sided-ness is tried nevertheless (that you learn about the satan, without letting him know about you, too), the dragon will probably break out in even more furious anger, because you denied him ‚his right‘, he would have ‚justice on his side‘ then.

In the Hebrew tradition it is said: In a teacher-student relation there shall never be an imbalance between the personal knowledge of the two sides of each other. So, the teacher cannot know about all of the personal situation of his student, while staying an ‚anonymous dark shadow‘ himself. Such an imbalance would be called ‚fornication‘.

In the end, the Eagle in this sign always is victorious over the Scorpion. But still: always there remains the possibility of the Devil to ‚get free again‘, because he only gets captured, incarcerated, but never destroyed completely (this aspect can be compared to the famous ‚Achill’s heel‘ of the greek mythology, too).

A typical ‚Scorpio-experience‘ is told as the famous tale of ‚King Solomon and his Powerful Ring‘, which we already referred to several times now during the course of this introduction. It goes like this:

When King Solomon is at the height of his power, reigning over the whole Nation of Israel in a peaceful time without any wars, having built the first Temple of God and keeping good friendly relations to all the mighty neighboring kingdoms, he even has the devil himself under his control: by means of a powerful ring on his finger, wherein the name of God is engraved, he has forced the devil into chains and keeps him in front of his throne.

Then one day the devil, appellating to Solomons mercy, convinces the King to give him the ring once for only a second, so that he may feel for a moment how it feels to have such power. ‚I am in chains anyways, so I cannot do anything!‘ he says … So Solomon agrees, out of compassion with ‚that poor devil‘ … The devil gets the ring into his hands – and directly throws it out of the window into the sea, where it sinks to the ground and cannot be found anymore.

By this happening, Solomon loses all his power, the devil takes his throne and is reigning as the king of Jerusalem now, because nobody actually looks at the person on the throne, but just respects the throne itself as the symbol of authority. So the whole People of Israel is serving the devil in these times, without anyone except for Solomon knowing it. Salomon himself tries to prove that HE is the real king, the actual Son of David, but the people won’t believe him, they even want to throw him in jail for claiming to be the king. Salomon thus flees the country, and it is said, in this situation he is writing the biblical book of ‚koheleth‘ (‚Ecclesiastes‘), wherein the author always refers to the ‚meaningless world‘ he experiences with the famous words ‚vanity of vanities, all is vanity‘ …

In his ‚exile‘, the unrecognized Solomon is working as a cook at the court of a certain foreign king. And in this notion of ‚being a cook‘, there is a Hebrew play on words: A cook is someone, who prepares the meals and puts them on the table of people. The Hebrew word for ‚meal‘ or ‚dish‘ is ’seuda‘, a word related to the word ’sod‘, meaning ’secret, mystery‘. And then ‚that meal‘ is put on the ‚table‘, which would be the Hebrew word ’shulchan‘, translateable also as ‚that which is sent‘. So the ‚cook preparing the meal on the table‘ is ‚the one (relatively unrecognized) figure in life, who is preparing the secret on what is sent for you‘, or more simplified: ‚the one who is creating the mystery of your destiny‘ …

The tale goes on then: Solomon marries a daughter of the king he is working for. Of course that king is not amused by the news of that wedding (‚What? A cook?! No way, don’t even think about it, or I will have him executed!‘) … so they both run away and marry against the will of her father. On Solomons next working place, again as a cook, he is preparing a fish. And when he opens the belly of that fish, he finds inside it … his Magic Ring! Instantly he sits on his throne in Jerusalem, and the devil is bound in his chains again, under complete control by the re-established King.

So, Solomons journey around the world as ‚the unrecognized‘ is indeed easily to identify as a typical ‚Scorpio-experience‘: The ‚Achill’s heel‘ of Solomon in this tale is his mercy, his compassion, even with the devil himself. Without this mercy, the chained devil would have never got free again. But then there would have been no ’story‘ either. And there would have been no book of ‚Ecclesiastes‘, nor the daughter of that one king would have married the Son of David, nor Solomon would have ever experienced ‚the other side‘ of life in this world (being raised as a king from the beginning, he never had to suffer the pain of ‚ordinary man‘, so to speak). Now he knows. And maybe … by this experience he is now even happier and stronger than before.

We can compare these dynamics to the events in the Garden of Eden, where the (necessary) fall of mankind is induced by the Snake (= Scorpion/Dragon), making Mankind to ‚go to another (lower/deeper) level‘, to be able to experience the joy of ‚coming home again‘ in the end. In this sense, the whole unity of the three male signs, of the 6^th, 7^th and 8^th day of creation, is illustrated in this tale of King Solomon losing his Ring of Power and getting it back in the end. And it is giving another clue: there is not reached the ultimate end yet, when having reached the 8^th day (as Solomon had reached that 8^th day, having built the Temple of God here on Earth, reigning over the whole united Israel in peaceful times) … the devil still has to break out once again (see the book of Revelation, too, concerning this ‚last outbreak‘, chapters 20,3+7-10).

A human being in this sign of Scorpio WANTS this confrontation with the ‚Evil‘, needs it, because he/she wants to know himself by knowing the whole world, including the very most evil, the ‚devil‘. The danger here is, to become ‚totalitarian‘ in character, wishing to control the whole surrounding world. But in the better case this ‚totalitarianism‘ only has the effect, that you are just seeing everything around yourself as relevant for your own life, and by this you are feeling very closely connected to all the surrounding world, as if she is a part of yourself.

It is all about having this great fight in YOURSELF, to stand in the end before God, perceiving the insight, as being whispered to you from out of the heavenly realms: ‚that is YOU‘. Although without thinking of yourself to BE ‚God‘, of course; but you are seeing yourself finally ‚in the resemblance of God‘, how God even is IN you, to share all your experience with you, your suffering as well as your joy, and by this you are realizing now how deep the responsibility is, which comes with that experience of being made in resemblance of the Eternal One.

As already hinted at, something important is realized in this last of the male signs: On the 8^th day ‚only‘ the individual salvation is realized! The 9^th and 10^th day follow, where the ‚Whole‘ gets finally saved for the coming world, too. The 9^th after it appears and is experienced as the (journey through the) ‚underworld‘, which is revealed then, as actually being a ‚womb‘, a ‚matrix‘, from which the ‚New Heaven and New Earth‘ are being born out of. And the 10^th day finally is the actual ‚future‘, the final stage of the development beginning with the ‚1‘, the unity of the origin, the ‚Oneness of Creator and Creation‘: the ’10‘ now being the ’new One‘, the One of the origin, now on a higher level: the ‚One in the Tens‘. But the details of these stages AFTER the 8^th day, and their respective challenges, are content of the so-called ‚fruit signs‘ of the Zodiac, which will be described in the next part of this introduction.

In the tradition we can find an elaboration on the fact that King Solomon at some point marries Pharao’s daughter (1 Kings 3,1). This marriage is counted as the particular decisive ’sin‘, which has as its result the rise of the mythical ‚Roman Empire‘ (‚When Solomon married Pharaoh’s daughter, [the archangel] Gabriel descended and stuck a reed in the sea, which gathered a sand-bank around it, on which was built the great city of Rome‘; stated in the Talmud at Sanhedrin 21b), as well as the destruction of the Temple of God, and even the split of the kingdom during the reign of Solomon’s son Rehoboam (see 1 Kings 11,9-13 and 12,15ff).

Especially the split of the Solomonian kingdom after his death is interesting now in this sign of Scorpio. The situation then is: two kingdoms, Judah and Israel; the 2 tribes of Judah and Benjamin forming the House of Judah in the southern kingdom, the 10 remaining tribes forming the northern kingdom called ‚Israel‘ or sometimes referred to as the ‚House of Joseph‘ or as ‚Ephraim‘ (named after the biggest tribe of the ten northern tribes, which originates from the descendants of the younger son of Joseph with the name Ephraim).

The one of the two kingdoms, Judah, is being ruled by one family dynasty (that of King David and his son Solomon), the other, Ephraim, being ruled by changing families; in Ephraim only rarely a son or grandson of the king becomes his successor, most of the times there are coups and rebellions leading to changes in the reign and by this, often completely new strongmen come to power in the kingdom of the North, that one of the ‚Ten Tribes‘, of ‚Josef‘, or ‚Ephraim‘.

And in the biblical accounts of the histories of the two kingdoms there is written about much more ‚evil‘, much more ‚rebelling against God’s commandments‘ in the northern kingdom, than there is reported about such in Judah. But still: God loves them both as his ’sons‘ and wants them to be finally reunited. This shows: the standards of judgement are not the same for God, as they would be for us, as the limited beings we are.

This ‚reunification of the two kingdoms‘ is the topic of the prophet Ezechiel’s visions of the ‚two sticks of wood‘ (actually ‚trees‘) with the names ‚Judah‘ and ‚Joseph‘ on them, becoming ONE Tree again, as a further explanation of Ezechiel’s earlier vision of ‚many human bones, collected together to skeletons, growing flesh and skin again, being raised up and then being inspired by the wind, by the spirit, to live again‘. It is the dead kingdom of Israel/Ephraim (the physical part, without the spiritual realm inside itself; historically present in virtually every nation of the Earth, because the ’10 lost tribes of Israel‘ are said to be ’scattered among all the nations‘, having forgotten their true origin) enlivened by the other kingdom, by Judah (the spiritual part, lost its body, wandering around in the whole wide world without a true homeland on earth, but having strongly kept its identity and self-consciousness, as ‚the wandering Jew‘).

Both these kingdoms are a reality INSIDE every human being, since inside ourself this very split – into the causal, material, so-called ‚real‘ world on the one side (‚Ephraim‘), and then the realm of ‚fantasy‘, ‚imagination‘ and the ‚only‘ mythical experience of believing and dreaming on the other side, ‚where the Temple of God used to be present in Jerusalem‘ (‚Judah‘) – has happened. The split in all of us has happened, only to cope with the ‚outer world‘ around us, which has in herself established this split, too, and which won’t accept any individual openly ’not accepting‘, or ‚putting back together‘ this split …

So the reunification of the two kingdoms is still a matter of ‚prophesy‘, of the future, at least concerning Mankind as a whole. Every single individual on the other hand of course HAS the chance in this life to experience this reunification of Judah and Israel. Because ‚in the Bible there is no before and no after‘, how it is said. It is all eternal, every single story in it is happening in every single moment in every single soul.

But when dealing with it from the perspective of the Zodiac, this ‚reunification of the two kingdoms‘ is accomplished only in the ‚fruit signs‘. As long as there is the opposition between ‚male‘ and ‚female‘ signs, we cannot have the RE-unified ‚Israel under the reign of the (ETERNAL) Messiah‘ – we then have only that first unified Israel of Solomon, which he already ‚inherited‘ from the ‚Beloved One‘ (‚Dawid‘ means ‚beloved one‘) as a unity, being himself only a ‚Son of David‘ (which is a traditional name of the expected Messiah – but only ONE name of him, another one is ‚Son of Joseph‘, that is: the ETERNAL Messiah is of the ’10 lost tribes‘, too …). So the RE-unification of the split kingdom is a matter of the 10^th day …

To come to an end of this part dealing with the three ‚male signs‘ of the Zodiac: It is essential that the 3 are understood in their belonging-together as a ‚One‘, so that the equation is: 4 female signs plus 1 united male sign = the ‚4-1-principle‘ as ‚the fruit‘, the 5 (as the number of the ‚fruit signs‘ of the Zodiac). That means, in this regard there are in total 10 signs, instead of 12, illustrating thus the journey through all the ‚ten days‘, too, instead of only the journey through the ’seven‘ of our world into the ‚eight‘ of the world to come. But more to this in the following part.

To summarize at this point the main difference between male and female signs: The male signs are representing challenges, which play out themselves mainly through the INNER life of a human being, not affecting the outside world with her concrete happenings in individual life (or the perception thereof) directly, as the female signs do it primarily. The male signs thus are dealt with as an individual much more ‚actively‘, compared to the more passive approach the individual has to take to the female signs‘ challenges. The ladder are in the contrary THEMSELVES actively coming onto the human being by means of the surrounding reality which is experienced and not so easily to be ignored or avoided. The former, the male signs, though contrarily have to be searched and found first in the OWN depths of inner experience, before they can have an (indirect) effect on the outside world, too.

It is the so-called ‚fruit signs‘, which will be topic of the following part of this introduction, where the male and female signs‘ opposite characteristics regarding this ‚active-or-passive-ness‘ ultimately are reaching a ’synthesis‘ in the individual experience of reality; then finally both, inside AND outside reality, are grasped as ONE whole.