Category Archives: Astrology

The Magi and Their Dream

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The magi have a dream in which an angel warns them to avoid revealing the location of the Christ-child to King Herod. So they go home via another route; as a result, King Herod slays all the boys in the region of Bethlehem who are 2 years old or younger.

In the gospel according to St. Matthew, we read that the Magi–the 3 kings–were on the road for 2 years, following the star that announced the birth of Christ to Judea but had to consult King Herod about where in Judea the new-born king might be located. Herod consulted religious authorities and scholars who told him that Bethlehem was the most likely location. He sent the Magi there but asked them to come and tell him where in Bethlehem they found Christ. They did locate Christ, worshipping him with gold, frankincense, and myrrh. (One story says that the gold was later stolen by the two thieves who were later crucified alongside Jesus. Another tradition suggests that Joseph and Mary used the gold to finance their travels when they fled to Egypt from Bethlehem.) But an angel warned the Magi all in a dream not to reveal the location of the Christ-child to King Herod and so they returned home via a different route, avoiding Herod. When Herod realized the Magi were not coming back to him, he ordered all the baby boys in the Bethlehem region to be killed, hoping to eradicate the baby who was the threat to his rule. But an angel had warned Joseph in a dream to take his family to Egypt and so they escaped, just in the nick of time; they returned to Judea only after Herod was dead.

The star the magi had followed was most likely a conjunction of Saturn (indicating the Last Days) and Jupiter (indicating a great king) in Pisces (associated with Judea and the people of Israel). Dreams were taken seriously as visitations of God, the angels, or other spirits. Dreams and astrology were acceptable tools of divination to discover or understand the will of God and were not considered “magic” by most people until fairly recently. But people who had such dreams might become proud or arrogant, telling others how special they were for having received such a visitation from God in a dream; many spiritual teachers had to warn their disciples against taking such dreams too seriously or becoming arrogant because of them. Rules were established for how to interpret such dreams and how much attention they should be given. But dreams can still inspire us or lead to new inventions, as this recent New Yorker article attests.

A shrine of the Three Kings at Cologne Cathedral, according to tradition, contains the bones of the Magi. Reputedly they were first discovered by Saint Helena on her famous pilgrimage to Palestine and the Holy Lands. She took the remains to the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople; they were later moved to Milan before being sent to their current resting place by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I in 1164.

Read more about the Magi in previous posts here and here.

The Manger in the Cave

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Eastern Orthodox icon of the birth of Christ by St. Andrei Rublev, 15th century. Note that the shepherd speaking with St. Joseph in the lower left is shown in profile, a pose reserved only for this shepherd, the Devil, and for Judas Iscariot and which indicates their interior wickedness and efforts to hide themselves from God. Also, the cave in which Christ is born is painted with the same absolute black pigment -- unmixed with any other dark colors, which is more usual -- as is the tomb of Christ or the abyss of Hell, into which the Divine Presence has entered.

Eastern Orthodox icon of the birth of Christ by St. Andrei Rublev, 15th century. Note that the shepherd speaking with St. Joseph in the lower left is shown in profile, a pose reserved only for this shepherd, the Devil, and for Judas Iscariot and which indicates their interior wickedness and efforts to hide themselves from God. Also, the cave in which Christ is born is painted with the same absolute black pigment — unmixed with any other dark colors, which is more usual — as is the tomb of Christ or the abyss of Hell, into which the Divine Presence has entered.

We talk about Christ being born in a manger, in a stable and most crèche scenes have the manger inside a straw-roofed hut. But traditional depictions based on ancient models, like the icon above, show the manger inside a cave instead of a straw-roofed hut. The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem also marks the traditional place of the manger inside a cave beneath the church. Why?

In the Middle East, animals were often stabled in the small caves that dotted the countryside. The inn at Bethlehem that offered a place to Joseph and Mary doubtless had a stable-cave attached. But in western Europe during the 1200s, when it began to be common to erect crèche scenes, the stables there that people were used to seeing were huts. Not caves. So Europeans and Americans expect to see a manger in a hut, not a cave. But the cave was the more likely, original, and actual location of the manger.

A lot of traditional poetry for both Christmas and Good Friday point out that Christ was born and buried in a cave that belonged to someone else, each time protected by a man named Joseph. His swaddling bands, the strips of cloth a baby was wrapped in to keep him/her warm and cozy, look like a the strips of cloth a corpse might be wrapped in. The manger itself looks like a coffin. The celebration of the incarnation and birth of Christ already points to the celebration of his death and resurrection.

In Orthodox icons (such as the one above), the Star of Bethlehem is often depicted not as a bright light but as a dark aureola, a semicircle at the top of the icon, indicating the “divine darkness” or Uncreated Light of Divine grace, with a ray pointing to “the place where the young child lay” (Matt 2:9). Sometimes the faint image of an angel is drawn inside the dark semi-circle, pointing the way for the Magi.

“There’s gold in them thar fleece!”

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Jason returns with the Golden Fleece, shown on an Apulian red-figure calyx krater, ca. 340–330 BC

The California gold rush began on January 24, 1848 with the accidental discovery of gold in the water during the construction of Sutter’s sawmill. When President Polk announced the discovery later that year, it caused a national and international sensation and the “Forty-Niners” swooped down to begin sifting and panning for gold in the streams and rivers of California.

Gold has been associated with wealth and opulence throughout history. It is especially associated with gods and divinity and royalty. Gold coins protect people from hunger and poverty. Gold coins in the Tarot (Pentacles) deal with earthly, daily experiences related to work and endeavors that support our emotional and physical well-being.

Gold is mentioned in Greek mythology for examples as varied as King Midas, the Golden Fleece stolen by Jason which possessed the power of resurrection, and the Golden Apples of Hesperides. The Golden Apples bestowed immortality on whoever ate them. Gold has always been associated with the eternal, the unending, incorruptible and embracing powers of the divine. The color and shining quality of gold continues to be associated with the sun and the sacred masculine.

There is a fascinating connection between the Golden Fleece and the California gold rush. A widespread interpretation relates the myth of the Golden Fleece to a method of washing gold from streams, which was well attested from c. 5th century BC in the region of Georgia to the east of the Black Sea. (The myths of the Golden Fleece say that the Fleece was kept in Colchis, i.e. the modern Georgia in Eastern Europe.) Sheep fleeces, sometimes stretched over a wood frame, would be submerged in the stream and gold flecks borne down from upstream would collect in them. The fleeces would be hung in trees to dry before the gold was shaken or combed out. Collecting gold flecks from the rivers was what the Forty-Niners would do in California, often using pie pans to swirl the water in and then pour through filters–the same idea as the sheep fleeces.

Gold represents the best in us but also brings out the worst in people. Legends of Aztec and Inca gold drove the Conquistadores to seize the Native American empires. Jealousy and Greed, simmering beneath the surface of our emotions, are brought out into the open when we see someone else has something–such as gold–that we want for ourselves.

Click here to read more about folklore associated with gold.

The Fool, one of the Major Arcana of the Tarot, shows a golden sky that the pilgrim is stepping off into. He trusts that the universe will protect and shield him from exterior evil as well as from his own worst instincts.