Suppose someone told you something that seemed of great spiritual significance, and, on inquiry, asserted that he had gained this knowledge in a vision. No doubt you would consider him a spiritual man and an instrument of divine revelation. Then suppose you learned later that this man did not have a vision at all, and that what he had told you was common knowledge among the wise. You might still rate the knowledge high, but your estimate of the man would fall pretty low; indeed if you were like most people, you would set him down as an old fraud. Well, such is Ezekiel, and such is his pretended vision, but let the old fraud expose himself. The italics are ours.
1. Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.
4. And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire.
5. Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man, 10. As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle.
15. Now as I beheld the living creatures, behold one wheel upon the earth by the living creatures, with his four faces.
16. The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the colour of a beryl: and they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel.
18. As for their rings, they were so high that they were dreadful; and their rings were full of eyes round about them four.
19. And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them: and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.
20. Whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their spirit to go; and the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels (Chap. 1).
Such is the vision Ezekiel claimed to have had—and it was no vision. These four creatures, man and ox, lion and eagle are but Aquarius, Taurus, Leo and Scorpio, the four cardinal points of the stellar zodiac, and hence of the creative process. All antiquity knew about them, and every race made use of them in its art and mythology. Why then should they be a revelation to Ezekiel? Among the Orphics they were designated Dragon, Bull, Lion, and Eagle. The Chaldeo-Babylonians called them Oustour, the Man; Kirub, the Bull; Nirgal, the Lion; and Nathga, the Eagle. In the Hindu pantheon they are the cosmic Maharajas, otherwise known as the Asuras, Kinnaras and Nagas; also the Avengers, the Winged Wheels, the Locapalas or supporters of the world. As the latter they were respectively Indra, the East; Yama, the South; Varuna, the West; and Kuvara, the North. There is a drawing by Levi of these four animals enclosed in a six-pointed star, with the Hebrew name Adoniowtv it. In India there is a similar picture with the word Adonari over it, hence the Adoni of the scriptures. Their word cherub comes from the Babylonian Kirub, the Bull, and means only a creative force. The ox, an emasculated bull, is one with the emasculated Uranus, and both are third-plane symbolism.
The complexity, a “wheel within a wheel” and many other wheels, is but the zodiac itself, with its cosmogonical, precessional, annual and diurnal cycles within it. The “whirlwind” is its ceaseless motion. The ancient symbol of this was the swastika, turning thustfi. The Ancients called it “The Wheel of Fire.” The “eyes” of the wheel are symbols of the creative intelligence within this complexity. The four beasts “had the likeness of a man”; in plain words, they are Man, Aquarius, the evolving Life Principle. This is the one and only factor in Creation, the God of religion being but a priestly necessity.
In this alleged vision of God there is nothing new or personal. Buddha was called “the Wheel king”; Shamash, the Babylonian god, is shown seated upon a throne with a wheel behind him, and the spokes of the wheel are made of stars instead of eyes. The Assyrians pictured their god Asshur within a wheel, and they said, “The life of God is within the wheel.” “It is highly probable therefore that when he described the four living creatures and the wheel, Ezekiel was simply making use of Assyrian symbology which he had seen again and again when the Jews were in captivity.” E. E. Goldsmith.1 And again, “The Hebrews merely used for their poetic imagery the characteristic beliefs of the people to whom they made direct reference.” And Madame Blavatsky asserts: “The religion of the Masters—the Babylonians and Assyrians—was transferred almost bodily into the revealed Scriptures of the Captives and from there into Christianity.” And now its four beasts are the four angels of the Catholic Church—Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel, and when humanized, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
What then of the statement “the heavens opened and I saw visions of God”? The only heavens that opened for Ezekiel were the Creation lore and symbolism of Babylon and Assyria. This, some priest, alias Ezekiel, dressed up in awe-inspiring words to give his diatribes on sin divine authority. And such is the nature of all “divine revelation”—ancient cosmology lost in the dusk of the Zodiacal Night, rediscovered and perverted by priestly plagiarists. In our Preface we said the Bible’s creators were plagiarists and that they got their knowledge from older races. The above quotations are but the first of many proofs thereof.
As for proofs of our own theory, there are still many more: the Cabala, the Tetragrammaton, the Gnostics, philosophers, and others, but save for one quotation we will leave these to the reader. The quote is from Dionysius the Areopagite. According to him, “The cause of all things is neither soul nor intellect; nor has it imagination, opinion or reason, or intelligence; nor is it reason or intelligence; nor is it spoken or thought. . . . Even intellectual contact does not belong to it. It is neither science nor truth. It is not even royalty or wisdom; not one, not unity; not divinity or goodness, nor even spirit as we know it.” This is truer theology than anything the Hebrews ever wrote. It is our creative principle, neither divine, moral nor even self-conscious.
1 Ancient Pagan Symbols, p. 94.