Dare to be a Daniel,
Dare to stand alone;
Dare to have a purpose firm,
And dare to make it known.
OLD HYMN
Well, let us see what Daniel’s “derring-do” consisted of. Was it personal or mythical? factual or fictional? To the occultist it is but some more cosmology used to glorify a race.
Our “Bible students” classify Daniel as an apocalyptist rather than a prophet, but it matters little since his book is but priestly perversion of mythology, and like all Hebrew literature, not original. The story of Daniel was taken from a north Syrian poem written before 1500 B.C. The hero, Daniel by name, was a son of El or God—the source of the Hebrew El. He was a mighty judge and lawgiver, also a provider for his people. This poem about him became so widely known that many races used its hero as a model for their own. It is this Daniel that Ezekiel refers to; it is this Daniel the Hebrews remodeled and placed in Nebuchadnezzar’s time. It is also this Daniel that the story of Joseph in Egypt is based on; the latter married Asenath and the woman in the Syrian poem is Anath. As the Jews used the word Daniel, it means “God is my judge,” but the occult meaning is “the judgment of God,” the inexorable decrees of nature. This is the judgment of Daniel even in the Old Testament.
That Daniel is Joseph, Nebuchadnezzar is Pharaoh, and Babylon is Egypt is obvious from the parallel. Like Joseph, Daniel is an interpreter of dreams; like Joseph he interprets the king’s dream, for which, like Joseph, he is made ruler over the kingdom. And like Joseph, his power to interpret the king’s dream is due to the fact that he dreamed the same dream, namely the dream of life. Thus he and the king are one, the only distinction being, as with Joseph, that of the two principles, ideative consciousness and mindless matter. The latter is king on the lower planes, but its meaning and purpose must be interpreted by the former. And so we have Nebuchadnezzar, like Pharaoh, dreaming a dream of his own future but ignorant of its meaning. And just as Pharaoh changed Joseph’s name to Zaphnathpaaneah, so Nebuchadnezzar changed Daniel’s to Belteshazzar—and Belteshazzar was the name of Nebuchadnezzar’s God. Thus Daniel became a God unto Nebuchadnezzar as did Joseph and Moses to the Pharaohs. He also became chief of the magicians of Babylon, as did Moses among those of Egypt. And the miracles of these magicians are the miracles of life. These things understood, the apocalyptic book of Daniel becomes “an open book,” a book of cosmology, not history. Better it be considered such for otherwise it brands the author as wholly ignorant of Evolution and its construct, the human psyche. To him a revelatory dream was not from this but from, as he thought, the God of the universe. Elsewhere these authors speak of a God “who seeth in secret and rewards openly.” The only thing that “seeth in secret and rewards openly” is our own subjectivity, but this too is attributed to an external Infinite. So these authors are neither cosmologically nor psychologically knowledgeable.
In the first part of his dream, the “image” Nebuchadnezzar sees is that of Involution, later shifting to Evolution. Therefore we must think here of the whole earth entity.
31. Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible (Daniel, Chap. 2).
And we too said it was terrible, and so did Jacob, and John the Revelator.
32. This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass,
33. His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay (Chap. 2).
These are symbols of the Creator in Involution: the fine gold represents the pure, primordial spirit, the rest its coarsening sequence down to clay, the earth—the gold, silver, bronze and iron ages of mythology later applied to man.
37. Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory.
This bright “king of kings,” like Solomon before him, is the sun. As the sun is solar fire, even the name of this king is appropriate. The first syllable comes from Nebo, a god of fire. Mount Nebo is “the mount of fire,” and king Nebo is identical with it. In this we are not denying the Nebuchadnezzar of history but asserting only that here he is being used mythologically. And like all mythological kings he becomes afflicted, and so does the image, which means they are one.
34. Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces.
35. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.
36. This is the dream; and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king (Chap. 2).
We too said the involutionary six disappeared when the seventh appeared. As for the stone that displaced the original entity and finally became a mountain: this is that dense core we said every sun is laying down within itself, namely, a future earth or planet. This, like Solomon’s temple, is not made with hands, but by a chemical process which beginning small, increases until the entire solar source is transmuted into atomic matter.
This is the destruction of that bright image the sun, following which it becomes that “abomination of desolation,” a lifeless clinker wandering in space. And now after “seventy weeks” another image appears, a newborn planet with its evolutionary symbolism. This is but this myth’s rebuilding of the temple. As it is but Creation symbolism, Daniel was a prophet after the fact, some billions of years after. And such is the nature of all Biblical prophecies—cosmology bedeviled by religion; therefore those who try to interpret them politically or religiously are only wasting their time.
That this is their nature is obvious from the symbolism in the seventh chapter. The beasts here have been interpreted as nations, tyrants, and the like, but verse 23 tells us “The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth.” This is the human kingdom and it doesn’t take a prophet to tell us what it will do. But now a better kingdom is promised, one that is to last forever. This is the fifth plane and this as Daniel says will break and bend to its will the other four. We too asserted this, and not from a gift of prophecy, but just a little knowledge of the creative process. Here, the symbols are in reverse, the clay, iron, brass, and other materials representing the ascending kingdoms and their conditions.
And now the earth, well pleased with its future, rewards its interpreter.
48. Then the king made Daniel a great man, and gave him many great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon, and chief of the governors over all the wise men of Babylon (Chap. 2).
(“And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, See, I have set thee over all the land of Egypt,” Gen. 41:41.)
Thus these two are one and both are cosmological symbols.
This is a scriptural formula, still in use: the Jew is always the cleverest, the wisest—Joseph, Moses, Daniel, Mordecai, etc. Indeed, Daniel was “ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm” (1:20). Thus did they pervert cosmology to glorify themselves and deceive the Gentiles. This realized, it’s rather difficult to believe the rest of Daniel: Nebuchadnezzar eating grass, the golden image he commanded all to worship, his putting Daniel in a lion’s den, three others in a fiery furnace, the handwriting on the wall, etc.
The libelous degradation of Nebuchadnezzar was but the mighty spirit of the sun brought low in matter. The golden image that the brave Daniel refused to worship is but the “golden calf” of Exodus and the first “beast” of Revelation. It too represents matter, and the Life Principle, now free, must not return to it. This is the brave Daniel’s courage, likewise that of his race. Daniel in the lion’s den is this Principle in Leo, the sun; it is also “the fiery furnace” or crucible in space referred to earlier. The three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, are the three prephysical elements of which the sun is made; the fourth whom Nebuchadnezzar saw walking in their midst is element number four and one with the stone that slowly appeared in the image, namely, physical matter. Chapter 3, verse 25, should therefore read thus: “Lo, I see four men (elements) loose (not yet condensed) walking in the midst of the (solar) fire, and they have no hurt (are not destroyed), and the form of the fourth is like the Son (Sun) of God.” This God saved three men in a fiery furnace but not three million in the gas chamber. And such is God’s special care of the Jews.
Nebuchadnezzar, the sun, or first “beast” (little wonder he ate grass), was, according to the scriptures, succeeded by Belshazzar. This is not according to history; Belshazzar was never king but only regent. He was not the son of Nebuchadnezzar (5:2); it was not Nebuchadnezzar who became ill but Nabonidas, the last of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty. To regain his health he lived for eight years at Tiema, in northern Arabia. It was during this period that Belshazzar served as regent only. The Hebrew mythologist applied the facts about Nabonidas to the character he was using for his occult cosmology.
In this, Belshazzar is the second “beast,” namely, the earth, and the handwriting he saw on the wall was that of the planetary law. The barren earth, weighed in the balance, Libra, was found biologically wanting, and was overthrown as was Pharaoh in the other myth. And now the handwriting is on the wall again, and this time it is we who are in Libra, the material sign, and hence “found wanting,” mentally, morally and spiritually. This occurs at the beginning of every zodiacal cycle, and all that is cheap and shallow, subversive and obstructive is overthrown. This time it is the Aquarian cycle, and it is sweeping out something neither cheap nor shallow but decidedly subversive and obstructive—the Hebrew scriptures. Yes, the handwriting for them is on the wall also. Grand symbolism and noble literature though they be, they were never intended for a permanent guide to humanity; they were for the benighted Piscean Age only. The Aquarian will have naught to do with their false security, false theology and eschatology. This is Siva the destroyer’s day, and his “moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on.”