Sun, moon, stars, and death?

I'm not sure how I wound up thinking about this, But somehow it wound up looking post-worthy.

Oh, wait, I remember where it came from, now.

I was thinking about the book of Revelation, particularly the opening of the seals on the book (the book of life?). From a Christian point of view, there are some obvious messages there (how "the lamb" was the only one that could open the book that would reveal salvation and all that). I don't want to over-analyze this, since it wasn't why I came to post, but looking at the descriptions of the openings of the seals on the book made me wonder if all of that wasn't supposed to symbolize what happens to people as they "open the book of life", so to speak (and I'm not here to argue what is and isn't "truth" and righteousness, just setting the stage, so to speak).

So I'll try to skim through this and get to the point...

- Lamb takes the book,
- 4 "beasts" and 24 "elders" get worshippy over it.
- A bunch of angels sing, and then the Earth rejoyces...
- Then the 4 beasts say "amen", and the "elders" fall down in worship.
- Then the four horsemen, each harolded by one of the 4 beasts, each with the opening of a ceal. Note that things resembling horses are used in the first two woes later in Revelation. Note also the order: white horse, bow, and conquest; red horse, great sword, taking of peace; black horse, balances, and prices on food (but oil and wine are untouched, and those are used throughout the whole Bible as spiritual symbols), and then pale horse of death, followed by "Hades", with the power to kill the fourth part of the earth.
(On the black horse not hurting oil or wine: Wine is used for both "the wrath of God" and things like "the wine of her immorality", and Noah's getting drunk and lying around naked; oil is usually used as a show of God's grace ("anointed with oil", then there's the woman and her never-ending jar of oil, and the oil for the candles lasting seven extra days). I see something resembling duality...).
- Fifth seal, and we get the dead "saints" complaining that they don't get revenge, and they're basically told to be patient (and they get white robes). Note that this is the fifth seal...
- Apropriately, chapter 6 closes with the sixth seal, which is met with lots of ground-shaking special effects. Of note is that the sun darkens, the moon turns red, and the "stars" "fall to the earth" (never mind the size difference). Then lots of geological things are displaced, "heaven" departs "like a scroll", and all of the people freak out. Note that this is the sixth seal, in chapter six(Never mind the lack of chapters in the originals), and man is asking rocks to hide them from God. Remember the number of the beast?
- Still not at the seventh seal, but we get another use of 4, as 4 angels stand at the 4 corners of the round Earth, holding back the winds (this definitely means something more than I'm pointing out here, but I'm not sure what). Another angel from the east tells them to do no harm until the servants of God are sealed. Then the 144000 are mentioned and elaborated on. For some reason we're told the origins of all of the 144000... do some numerology there if you feel like it.
- Then we see uncounted numbers round about "the throne", and all of that... (I won't say what I see in this bit. . )
-Seventh seal, and there is silence in heaven for the space of half an hour. (That's oddly specific...). Then we get into the trumpets and such... but I think this covers my point here.

*** It'd be nice if my assigned writin was this long. More in ext post. ***

So, the whole "seven is a holy number" thing is probably familiar to most. Then we have 6--less than 7, number of the beast, all of that jaz... also the day in Genesis1 in which humanity was mentioned. We also have an over abundance of sevens in Revelation--the 7 candlesticks, 7 churches, 7 angels, 7 spirits of God (?), 7 seals, 7 plagues, 7 trumpets... all asociated with God in some way. And there are the 7 days of Genesis, the "keep the sabbath" thing... 7 is apparently supposed to be a really important number with regards to God, while 6 is the number of mankind somehow.
So, then we have the sun, moon and stars on the sixth seal. These symbols aren't too hard to guess, but I'll make references anyway:
- Joseph's dream about the sun and moon (parents?) and stars (brothers?) bowing to him... that seems pretty clear, I guess? Maybe?
But, then we look a little further in Revelation...
(Woah, I just saw something I didn't expect that strengthens my point...)
The trumpets: The first three are pure destruction with fiery objects falling from heaven and destroying greenery, the sea, and then freshwater... but the fourth trumpet sees the darkening of the sun, moon and stars! (specifically, the third part of them was darkened).
Then warnings of the woes, then the locusts and the army of Euphrates and destruction... isn't this fun? (/sarcasm)
Then we have a lot of stuff leading up to the seventh trumpet, which is met with another hail of painful special effects and worship from those "round about the throne".
Chapter 12, and we get a different use of the sun, moon and stars, starting with the "woman clothed in the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars". Somehow I always forget the crown of twelve stars... which happens to help my brutally apparent point immensely.
So the woman cries with labor, and then appears the dragon, later identified as Satan (who still has seven heads. Then ten horns, and seven crowns... compare with the beast that rises from the sea, whose crowns are on his horns. Not sure what it means, but it seems significant.).
And immediately, his tail throws down the third part of stars from heaven to the earth. ... which somehow wound up as chapter 12 verse 4 in the KJV. Interesting, since the woman wore twelve stars... there were twelve tribes of Israel, 24 elders (2*12, or 6*4...), the apostles and all of that "12 is the number of the chosen" stuff... and the third part of twelve is four. Also note that taking away a third of the elders leaves us with 16 (4*4). What, are we hinting at something?
(And in the very same verse, we see that the dragon is prepared to devour the woman's child... and then fails.).
Interestingly, the next mention of the sun seems to be the plague that resembles global warming on steroids... and the next mention of the moon is in talking about the "new Jerusalem", and how it needs no sun and moon because of the glory of God and the lamb. (And just a few verses up were the twelve gates and foundations of the tribes and apostles... three on each side).



*** more to come... ***

Well, this can be interpreted a number of ways even inside what has me interested here. But it seems apparent that we see something of God and his followers (regardless of what constitutes those... -.-). The moon reflects the light of the sun, and the stars have their own light, but they are so far from the earth that they appear small... and they are usually only visible when the sun isn't. So it shouldn't be surprising that when the sixth seal was opened and the sun darkened, the stars made an impact... (I can't decide if that pun was intentional or not...). And note the state of the moon in relation to this...

Oh, and one more thing...
Let's look at when the sun, moon and stars appear in Genesis1... (note that there was already light before this back with "let there be light"... wherever it came from...)
So, they are set in heaven to give light upon the earth... greater for the day (which is defined as the time of light: the first day) and less for the night (defined as the time of darkness). The KJV says that they are to rule over the day and the night. And the stars are included--they feel tacked on in the King James, though the way Young's has it sounds like they're grouped with the moon.
Well, that was fun. ... And the evening and the morning were the fourth day!

Well, let's take a look at what we left out: the fourth trumpet and the fourth plague in Revelation... (Hey, weren't there four beasts in Daniel, and didn't the statue in the Babylonian King's dream have four main components?):

Oh, wait: we already saw the fourth trumpet... darkening of the sun, moon and stars... a reverse of the fourth day of Genesis... if that isn't intentional, coincidences are awesome.
Fourth plague: that was the sun plague! "8 And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire.". Interestingly, the fourth trumpet sounded on verse 12, chapter 8; the fourth vial was verse 8 of chapter 16... Every one being multiples of 4.

What about the fourth seal? That was the ride of the horseman called death, who had power over the fourth part of the Earth. This is opened in verse 7 (death rides in verse 8), and is in chapter 6. Hmm, contrast...
And the sixth seal--the seal where everything falls apart, starting with the sun, moon and stars, is verse 12 (still chapter 6).

Now, one piece of information outside of the Bible, and I'll finally get to my analysis...
The Japanese word for "death" is so similar to their pronunciation of the Chinese word for the number 4 that in parts of east Asia (Japan in particular), 4 is something like 13 in the west--so much so that it got a news article (forget where from) recently talking of how common tetraphobia (SP?) is.

So, what does all of this mean? ... How should I know? XD. My reading of Revelation has me wondering if maybe the events at the opening of the seals symbolize those that come into "the truth" in a process of sorts (though I could easily be wrong here). I think the colors and weapons of the horses and horsemen mean something (white represents purity... odd as it's the first seal and about conquest with a bow. I'm not sure about red, but the sword is used for many things throughout the scriptures... and note that the moon becomes red later on (was that the sixth seal?). Black is opposite of white, and pale... Hmm.).
I think it's interesting that the saints complaining about vengeance come between the fourth seal (death) and the sixth seal (the darkening of the sun moon and stars and the rearranging of Earth, with man in terror). There's a lot of interesting stuff here... I just don't know what any of it means. (For instance: the 4 "beasts" in the "throneroom" scenes tend to lead the 24 "elders" in worship... 4 horsemen, 4 corners of the Earth... all seemingly separate from the sun/moon/stars connection).

So... what is all of this?

Hmm. Here's an afterthought: Japan is refered to as "the land of the rising sun"--even the Japanese word for Japan is mde up of the kanji for "sun" and "source" (Ni (as in 'nichiyoubi'=Sunday) and hon). That on its own wouldn't really mean much to me here--I'm actually not suggesting that this centers around Japan or anything--but I did find it interesting that when the angel told te four angels with the winds not to hurt the Earth, he rose from the east.
(Somehow,I don't like this post. Food for thought?)

reply to post by cajones





you are not bringing in one important element for melding these
symbols & numbers together...

the mystical body of thought known as Kaballah,

what your doing is turning around & around using just the modern Christian thought and Theological thinking...

20-21st century minds have to transport to 600BC-100AD mindscapes of biblical meanings, interpetations....
the ancient Kaballah is intended to keep the deep knowledge of these subjects from the whims & wiles of the unenlightened,
and only through study and immersion into Kaballah will these connections your trying to express become clearer....


keep hanging in there,
the sun, moon, stars can be associated with an 'approved' form of astronomy/astrology
and the cryptic association of all those numbers with certain symbols are a form of 'approved' numberology...
both these practices by other than those learnered in Kaballah are considered heathen practice, but their body of practice is considered the 'True' mystical. enlightened way...
...
go figure




[edit on 7-2-2008 by St Udio]

keep hanging in there
the sun, moon, stars can be associated with an 'approved' form of astronomy/astrology

Yes indeed, when Jesus was talking about the future ( Luke 21:11) he said there would be great signs from heaven and when he was talking about his return (Luke 21:25) he said there would be signs in the sun, moon and stars.

But in most (If not all) religions things of this nature are taboo.