By MICHAEL HOWARD (1948–2015) — Every visible thing in the world is put under the charge of an angel. – St Augustine In 2002 the British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph reported that the Vatican had banned the veneration of those angels who do not appear in the authorised texts of the Bible. This was an attempt to counter the influence of unnamed New Age groups who were allegedly recruiting new members within the Roman Catholic Church. In future, prayers were only to be directed to the … [Read more...]
Christianity: The Ultimate Secret
December 22, 2013 By
By RICHARD SMOLEY — Today there is an unprecedented thirst for the innermost secrets of Christianity. The quest for these lost teachings drives the plots of best-sellers like The Da Vinci Code and Holy Blood, Holy Grail; it is discussed in major newsmagazines; and it is the subject of intense speculation and debate among believers and nonbelievers alike. What are these secrets? What difference might they make to our lives today? Sometimes the hidden truths of Christianity are described in … [Read more...]
New (Reptilian) World Order
November 10, 2013 By
By URI DOWBENKO What if Planet Earth was ostensibly run by a race of shape-shifting reptilians? Believe it or not, this outre’ political-science-fiction scenario has become a focus of historical researchers as well as spiritual visionaries. In fact, the resonance of corroborating evidence from science and metaphysics has a synchronicity that is nothing but astonishing. Serpents and flying dragons have, of course, been a staple of ancient myth and legends of indigenous people around the … [Read more...]
Rescuing the Bible from Literalism
May 16, 2013 By
By RICHARD SMOLEY — “The world,” wrote the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, “is the totality of facts, not of things.” So it is, but facts take many forms. The hard-edged events of ordinary reality are only one form, and not always the most important. This insight can be hard to accept in the positivist world of mainstream Western thought. In these terms, either an event took place or it did not. Truth and falsehood are judged by this criterion alone. And yet such a stance has only a … [Read more...]
Who Was Moses?
March 22, 2013 By
By Robert Temple— When people are spoken of constantly, we feel we know them. Christians and Jews have been talking about Moses for thousands of years, so they assume they know who he was. But is this an illusion? Is it possible that no one really knows who Moses was? That the evidence about him is contradictory and enigmatic? Is it even possible that he never existed except in fable? Even religious fundamentalists have an immediate problem with Moses, and the accounts of him in the biblical … [Read more...]
Apocalypse: The End Times and the Restoration of All Things
December 21, 2012 By
By RICHARD SMOLEY— "The earth abideth for ever,” says the Bible (Ecclesiastes 1:4). Whether this is literally true or not, it corresponds to the deepest core of human experience. The Earth was around long before the existence of human beings, and it will probably continue to exist long after we are extinct. Why, then, does the belief in the end of the world – not as a remote possibility but as an imminent event – persist so stubbornly in the mass consciousness? For we continue to believe … [Read more...]
The Bible: Myth or History?
November 8, 2010 By
By RICHARD SMOLEY — Every civilisation needs a myth; but woe to the civilisation whose myth has been found wanting. That is the position of Christianity today. It came to ascendance at a time when the myths of Greece and Rome had lost their credibility. The pagans themselves laughed at the stories of their gods; Plato sought to censor them. Christianity triumphed because it offered its sacred scriptures not as myth but as fact. Mystical adepts had always known that the stories in the Bible … [Read more...]
In Search of the Historical Jesus
October 9, 1998 By
BY RICHARD HEINBERG — As you want people to treat you, do the same to them. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even tax collectors love those who love them, do they not? And if you embrace only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Doesn’t everybody do that? If you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even wrongdoers lend to their kind because they expect to be repaid. Instead, love your enemies, do good, and lend … [Read more...]
The Gods of Eden
October 9, 1997 By
By ALAN ALFORD (1961-2011) — The Biblical tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is based on actual events which happened nearly 200,000 years ago. A comparison of ancient texts with the latest breakthroughs in genetic science reveals amazingly consistent details, which enable us to finally solve the mystery of mankind’s origins. The shocking conclusion is that man was a genetic hybrid, created and manipulated not by God, but by flesh-and-blood, walking, talking ‘gods’. Man The Slave A … [Read more...]
