RETHINKING CHRISTMAS: AN ARCHEOLOGY OF MEANINGS
Erle Frayne Argonza
A Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone else!
That I started with a goodwill greeting associated with
the Christmas occasion doesn’t make me a church devotee of which I definitely
am not. I have departed a long time ago yet from Catholic Church, my childhood
church, though I am still sympathetic to some of its key doctrines of faith
notably Vatican II.
On the other hand, not being a church devotee doesn’t make
me any less a disciple of Jesus the Christed One. I am very much a disciple of
Jesus and his team-mates of Ascended Beings, and I’d categorically declare that
I am, in this respect, a Christian. It is for this reason that I do attune
myself to the rituals of the Christians who are largely fanatical devotees of
the Cult of Jesus which was officially dubbed as Christian Church in the
generic sense.
So many fallacies and lies were propagated by the Jesusian
cults (i.e. churches) over the past two (2) millennia, one of which is the
contention that Jesus was born on the night of 24th of December.
Nobody knows about the exact date when Jesus, the World Teacher, embodied and
was born as an infant a full Age ago (1 Age = 2,150 years approximately). There
are mystics today who claim that Jesus was born around the end of March, but as
to the exact day of his birth (using the Gregorian calendar) no mystic had made
a precise claim.
In the first place, the devotional practice of giving so
much importance to the exact day of birth of a founding Master in its literal
sense is purely this: blind fanaticism. Even if we presume that Jesus was born
on the 24th of December, there is a greater underlying meaning
behind his birth that the ordinary devotees and cult hierarchs have no
knowledge about. But if only the cult devotees would look to numerology for
some answers regarding the question of meaning, they would find fruitful
answers via this method.
But as everybody realizes, Jesusians are bent on declaring
that any contention that lies outside the church/cult dogmas is a work of the
Devil. You could just imagine how many freethinkers and esoteric seekers may
have been labeled with the ad hominem
Devil by the Jesusian cultists (church goers), and it is no surprise that this
writer had earned the ire of many such fanatical cultists such as his former
university students. Well, the bad luck for the fanatics is that this is no
Medieval Period, and so I could make the boldest claims to unmasking church
lies without being accosted or burned at stake by fanatics. Also, I reside
inside the University of the Philippines
(Diliman) which is the ultimate bastion of freedom in the whole of Southeast Asia. My big city, Manila, is also the citadel
of freedom in Asia, so no one would stone me to death or burn me alive anywhere
here for being an iconoclast.
Now, let me go straight to the question of meaning. This
interpretive task is a matter of deep exegesis, likened to interpreting a
dream. As one who had studied semiotics (science of signs) via the behavioral
sciences and esoteric philosophy, the task is easy just the same. Humans
normally resort to rituals or ceremonies, and often the cycles of seasons and
weather patterns evoke ideas that then translate into ritualizing engagements.
Social relations produce thought, as the sociology of knowledge (cognitive
sociology) had so succinctly declared as a social law. This is our starting
point for our recondite reflection.
In the ancient past, the production of rituals was the
chief task of the Shaman (babaylan in ancient Philippines). The shaman was the
priest (or priestess), medicine man (or woman) or healer, white
magician/alchemist (taps energies for beneficial purposes), mystic (bridge to
the Divine Beings), and philosopher, all rolled into a single functionary. It
is important to cite the shaman here, as we can best understand the
significance of the ‘December 24 event’ by putting ourselves in the position of
the Roman high priests (Rome’s own equivalent of shamans) and see what this
intersubjective process can reveal to us.
Remember that the Roman shamans were, in ancient parlance,
pagans. In today’s anthropological language, they were animists. As such, they
represented a people that was so close to nature, and knew well the cycles of
seasons. Like the shamans from other cultures, they had designed rituals for
every kind of human activity conceivable. A child, before being born, is prayed
for using mantrams and ceremonial rites, and then receives another ritual upon
birth, and another ritual upon reaching puberty, and so on till death. Likewise
did the seasons of both hemispheres receive equal treatment in terms of
ritualization. Ditto to the cycles of pre-cultivation, cultivation, and
post-harvest for food production (agriculture, horticulture). The Romans were
into such practices, to emphatically mark our point here, more so that they
were already city-builders and were of advanced caliber in knowledge and
technological pursuits of their time; their shamans, likewise of the highest
caliber.
Culled from above is the idea of ritualizing for the end
of the autumn season and the beginning of the winter season in the Northern
hemisphere. The significance of Christmas, of Jesus’ birth being assigned to
the 24th of December, has a great deal to do with the
autumn-to-winter interface (to use current terminology). Officially, the
equalization of the patterns of autumn and winter is cognized as the Winter
solstice, which falls on the 21st of December in the North (winter
solstice in the south falls on the 21st of June, which is summer
solstice in the North).
Even before Christianity was declared an official
religion, without doubt the Romans were already in the habit of ritualizing the
coming of Winter. No further research is needed to establish this. All of the
ethnic communities in the Mediterranean for
that matter held rituals signifying the start of Winter, and the
inter-permeation of cultural elements by dint of cultural diffusion is
responsible for the degree of homogenization of Winter ritual patterns in the
same area. Which means that the Latins (Romans), Etruscans, Greeks, Hamites,
Semites, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Iberians shared more or less similar
traits in their Winter rituals, the most focal being that they all celebrated
Winter solstice in certain ways.
The question now is, what is the deeper significance of
December the 24th other than that it marks the 3rd day
after the Winter solstice? And why the 3rd day after the solstice
was declared as the ‘birth of Jesus’ by the new rising religion, the Cult of
Jesus (Christianity)? Why not simply assign the 21st of December as
the day of his birth, which will make the birthday identical to the 1st
day of winter (the 21st)?
As to the date, the 3rd day after the solstice,
a note: 3 is the number of Trinity (Father, Son, Spirit) in Christology. In
numerology (Indian and Pythagorean systems), 3 denotes creativity,
productivity, motion, action, activity. The two semiotic sets do converge.
Instead of copying the solstice day as D’ Day, the ancient shamans (who were
the new bishops and priests of the Jesusian cult) decided that it would be more
appropriate to indicate the Trinitarian power in the date, which makes the 24th
rather than the 21st as the top candidate. For a numerologist, the
day makes sense, in that declaring a creative-dynamic signification on a
winter’s season, which is a season of rest or motionlessness, generates a sense
of balance of the action-rest duality (yin-yang in the East).
Not only that. It would also make greater sense for the
devotees or blind fanatics (a redundancy really, because devotee and fanatic
are identical) if the date of birth would be on a day other than the 21st
which most Mediterraneans and Northerners already celebrate. The ‘uniqueness
criterion’ is an important element in decision-making, and by using this
criterion means that the 24th of December made the Jesusians or
Jesuits (church fanatics) a unique people who created rituals outside of the
common ritual templates. That is, the 24th of December rendered the
fanatics the illusion of uniqueness, which made them rest on solid
psychological grounds: they need not defend any longer that they were copy-cat
folks.
Now, that leads us to the next idea: converging the
‘uniqueness’ element with the ‘chosen people’ eschatological belief present in
all religions and cultures. Supposedly, Jesus was the harbinger of the new idea
that the ‘gentiles’ (literally the ‘outsiders’ of a chosen people who were the
Jews) were themselves a ‘chosen people’ and not outsiders or outcaste. The
Jesusian cult has now given the fanatics not only a sense of uniqueness, but
also declared that such a uniqueness reclined in their being the ‘chosen ones’.
The time for the old chosen ones has ended, and a new chosen one has begun in
mandate.
You could just imagine the ecstatic impact that such a
convergence of ideas could produce among the erstwhile herds of fanatics, who
for many centuries were loathsome outsiders in the civilizational game. They
were the barbarians & savages of the previous ages, the outsiders who were
recognized best for their destructive propensities. Now they are the
co-creators or co-producers of the Divine Spheres or God (co-creation signified
by number 3), the next harbingers of civilization. And true indeed, the former
barbarians, who were mainly Europeans, felt this mission so strongly in their
psyche that for many centuries thereafter they scoured the earth for ‘heathens’
who would be converts to their idea of civility, of being cultured,
progressive, rational, and humanist.
Of course, the psychological mood or theme evoked by the
entire ritualizing of birth in the 24th is Hope: that Jesus was the
embodiment of hope, that there was finally hope for the Europeans who for
centuries were heathen slaves. Of course, it was the greatest psychological
victory for the Latins (Romans & sister tribes) in as much as they were
then the center of civilization world-wide. The 24th also gave the
same Europeans the same sense of hope at a time of hopelessness and despair
that were evoked by the cyclical winter season.
Cultivating the seed of creativity, activity, uniqueness
and hope, all converging within a common seed-idea—the birthing of the Ascended
Master Jesus and bestowing him with the role of Begotten Son of the Father
God—and planting this in the psyche of Europeans is among the most profound
developments in the genetic seeding and improvement of the Europeans themselves.
True indeed, and humanity better accept this, no matter how destructive may
have been the methods employed by European powers in their conquests, the Torch
of Civility for the entire Piscean Age was vested in the European. Their time
had come 2000+ years ago, and no force on Earth could stop that.
2000+ years ago, the seed of that historic mission of the
Europeans was planted, concocted, congealed in thought, which then permeated
right deep into their Collective Unconscious, which eventually got implanted in
their genes. For the Collective Unconscious, which belongs to the
Electromagnetic Field or EMF, interfaces directly with the biophysical, and
that to induce changes in the EMF will likewise result to corresponding changes
in the bio-physical dimension. The changes, in other words, will be planted as
genetic traits that will govern the actions of the people concerned in the long
run.
That, dearest readers, is the significance of the (night
of) 24th of December. The mission of the Europeans has now been
optimized, after the full Age of Pisces. Likewise the mission of Jesus: to
carry on his shoulders for 2000+ years the collective karma of Earth’s
humanity. The European-Jesusian missions are now over, and the Torch is now
being passed on to the peoples of the East, particularly to the Pacific Asians.
But this new development, which will be the definitive development of the Age
of Aquarius, is another thing. Suffice me at this moment to say: I’ve shared my
thoughts about the deep significance of the 24th of December, by
resorting to an archeology of the psyche and soul.
A Merry Christmas again to you all! May my love for all
Jesusian cultists be re-declared here, please accept my goodwill for you all.
May you all evolve in spirit! Let’s all chant the mantram: Jesus is Love! Jesus
is Love! Jesus is Love!
[Writ 14 December 2007, Quezon
City, MetroManila]
