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Freethought
Association of West Michigan
Meeting Minutes for October 22, 2003; #150
Topic:
Ancient Cosmology and Early Christian Symbolism
Please remember to make your reservations for the upcoming Winter
Solstice Celebration. There are only two more actual meetings
before the this party date. As a reminder, it will be held at
the Siam Lady Restaurant, featuring Thai food. It is located in
Jenison, MI, on Baldwin Street. RSVP by mailing your name, number
attending, contact information, and check payable to the Freethought
Association for 20.00/ person. The cost includes all food, beverage,
tax and tip and it supports our organization as a fundraiser.
The mailing address is: PO Box 9873, Wyoming, MI 49509-0873.
Contact us at info@freethoughtassociation.org <mailto:info@freethoughtassociation.org>
or visit our website to be kept abreast of events pertinent to
our group and freethought in general: www.freethoughtassociation.org
<http://www.freethoughtassociation.org/> .
October 28 is the next scheduled Freethought Movie Night, hosted
by Jason Pittman. For location and details, contact him at 616-634-2471
or jpittman@backpacker.com <mailto:jpittman@backpacker.com>
. The F. Movie Nights for the remainder of the year are as follows:
November 16 and December 14. They start at 7PM.
Jason Pittman will also be representing non-theists and the Freethought
Association at this year’s Interfaith Thanksgiving Service,
to be held on November 24 at 7PM at the Trinity United Methodist
Church, 1100 Lake Drive, SE, GRMI.
Our Halloween Party will be at the Seaver’s in Allendale.
616- 892-9300. BYOB and a dish to pass. There will be a bon fire,
hay rides and good times to be had. Costumes are optional. It
is on November 1 at 7PM.
Our scheduled Board Meeting for November 12 has been postponed.
Due to the nature of the regular meeting that night, requiring
a great deal of set up and prep. time, the Board Meeting is not
feasible to conduct that evening. Our next one will be in the
New Year; January 14 at 5:30PM.
Our next regular meeting will be on November 12, at 7PM. “Freethought
& the Arts.” Performance and discussion of music, poetry,
paintings and other art forms by freethinkers. Moderated by Jeff
Seaver. If you would like to participate by performing or presenting
your particular art to the group, please e-mail Jeff at info@freethoughtassociation.org
<mailto:info@freethoughtassociation.org> .
“Charles Dickens in Person” will be the topic for
our last regular meeting of the year, on December 7, 7PM. It will
be presented by Roger Brewin, MHF Member and UU minister. It is
sponsored by All Souls Unitarian Church. The location/ time is
subject to change but we will keep you updated.
There are no regular meetings scheduled for November 26 or December
24 of this year. Please plan on attending our other events, and
gatherings for the balance of the year.
We wish to thank Josh and Amanda again for the good java from
Mainline Coffee.
Our topic for this meeting was “Ancient Cosmology &
Early Christian Symbolism” presented by David Fideler, PhD,
author of Jesus Christ, Sun of God. He is the Director of the
Concord Grove Education Center in Alto, MI. The website is www.cgecwm.org
<http://www.cgecwm.org/> . It supports communities of higher
learning and offers a home in the small country village for talks,
workshops, book signings, discussion groups, poetry readings,
concerts and similar events in the West MI area. In addition,
Dr. Fideler is a musical composer, astronomer, and editor and
publisher of philosophical works.
He began his presentation by stating that we would be examining
the “intersection between cosmology and symbolism.”
Cosmology, he noted, deals with the large- scale structure of
the universe in its modern use but it also means “worldview.”
Symbolism was very important in the ancient world. For them, delving
deeply into reality meant going beyond what was expressible in
words; words being viewed as adequate for surface reality only.
Symbols were what were used to express and understand the ultimate
reality foundation. This still parallels our approach today in
our modern quest for cosmological truths where science uses the
language of mathematical symbols to uncover the make up the universe
and explore its governing laws.
Dr. Fideler had been very interested in ancient religious and
philosophical thought and began examining the Gnostic gospels,
which were non-canonical Christian writings. Unlike many others
who explored these concepts, he was unburdened by judgmental,
theological baggage. His search was instead shaped by a keen historical
interest. He found that the writings omitted from the “official”
religious books are vast. His scholarly journey undertook to explore
number symbolism in the ancient writings and to see if there was
any reality behind the constructed symbols, or if they only referenced
mythic ideas.
This led Dr. Fideler to investigate the early Greek mystery religions
and influential thinkers. Among them were Pythagoras, Plato and
Orpheus; the last mentioned being a symbol as well, in this case,
for a school of thought. Pythagoras, who comes down to us primarily
for his theorem: the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle
is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides and
for his philosophy involving the transmigration of souls. Most
pertinent to this discussion, however, was his steadfast belief
that all things were shaped by numbers. He was also the first
to attach the concept of “cosmos,” meaning “beautiful
order” to the structure of natural things. Dr. Fideler presented
us with objects in nature illustrating this order and aesthetically
pleasing structure, exemplifying beauty in a way that can be understood
mathematically. Human proportion, too, follows a mathematical
pattern and this can be carried through to all levels small and
great. When we look at the universe without these underlying values
it becomes merely a vast collection of objects, he asserted.
His research that went into his aforementioned book and this talk
dealt with the Greek concept of Logos, which- he lamented- has
come down to us in mistranslated form as pertaining to the Word,
especially the Word of God emanating from the second person of
the Trinity. In its original sense, it referred to the pattern
and order of things, the principle of relationships, ratio or
proportion, and a principle of mediation and harmony between extremes.
It also took in the idea of an organized articulation or account
of things, which goes to the root meaning of ratio from whence
“oratio” derives, dealing with such matters in discourse.
When Logos was rendered in the phrase “In the beginning
was the Word (Logos)” it was referring to the order and
intelligence permeating the cosmos. The cosmos itself was seen
as a continuous geometric unfolding.
The creation of calculus, attributed to Newton, was formulated
long before him. The mathematical understandings had to be formed
to deal with the intrinsic structure of the cosmological, immense
natural unfolding they perceived. The branches of mathematics
that came about were arithmetic, about numbers themselves; geometry,
about numbers in space; harmony, pertaining to numbers in time,
and astronomy, involving numbers in space and time. Mathematics
in the ancient world, as now, was employed in the service of perceiving
the patterns in space and time.
Dr. Fideler turned to the 2nd Century Alexandrian astronomer,
Ptolemy, who demonstrated mathematical ideas and harmonies via
his formulation of “tuning theory,” using musical
instruments to explain deeper reality. Today, there are still
some resonating aspects of this when physicists talk of “string
theory” where unimaginably tiny subatomic “strings”
are curled up in extra dimensions along the lattice of Einstein’s
spacetime model to meld together Einstein’s vision of gravity
with other quantum mechanical forces. These strings are seen as
having different shapes, causing different vibrations, which in
turn create the various forms of matter that make up the universe.
Orpheus, mentioned earlier, was a figure of Greek mythology whose
music enchanted the beasts and made them peaceful. He was also
a self-sacrificing savior figure but whose lyre continued to make
music (harmony abiding) even after his bloody demise in his salvation
act. Jesus came to represent the new Orpheus, stripped of Hellenistic
accoutrements.
Plato saw the gods and men as all plotted along the same harmonizing
geometric unfolding pattern of the cosmos and used musical allegories
and mathematical representations to explore the whole order of
things, which united formerly disparate concepts. In ancient Greek
thought, numbers and letters were interchangeable symbols that
were instinctively related. This gave rise to the Hebrew idea
where letters in words had mathematical value, adding up to numbers
that pertained to different powers. Therefore the divinities were
given names or had their given names tweaked to fit certain number
value systems.
Our presenter gave us an example of solar deities where their
names’ number value added up to a solar year’s days
(365). Among them were Mithra (the worship of this god actually
almost beat out Christianity in Rome), Abraxas, and Janus, the
two-faced deity that we get January from (the one face seeing
the old year depart and the other countenancing the new year’s
arrival). The hands are depicted in a configuration to denote
365. Harpocrates, the child of Horus (one of the major gods of
the ancient Egyptians) is where we derive the Madonna and Child
iconography from. Horus was depicted in hieroglyphics as a winged
solar disc. And Harpcrates was the “Sun of Universe”
on gems. These gems had a formula on them that amounted to a number
(9999) that was associated with the Sun and cosmic divinities.
Dr. Fideler next talked about Magic Squares where no matter how
one adds them up the same triple numbers emerge. One outcome was
“666” that has a certain famous association and also
worked into “tuning theory” mentioned earlier. 888
was a triple digit that represented a higher order than the cosmos
and Jesus came to be assigned this numerical symbol. The ancient
Hebrews believed that by evoking magic numbers from these squares
they could summon the intelligence and/or spirit of the Sun. It
was almost like ringing up someone using a telephone number: different
triple numbers (seen as divine and powerful) would call upon different
deities. The Magic Square becomes a fulfillment of truth when
the central value adds up to 365. We also discussed the Kabbalah,
the Jewish mystical theological system that tried to relate the
infinite with the finite and read scriptural passages in a symbolic
way, the interpretation of which was based on numbers.
We were shown a diagram where a square was shown as a three- dimensional
cube projection. In this representation the intersecting axes
in the middle come to symbolize the Sun and the outer right angles
are associated with planets, having radial arms connecting them
to the Sun. This and other increasingly complex diagrams were
presented as created by ancient symbolists to reflect their interpretation
of the cosmos.
Dr. Fideler discussed with us the Omphalos (navel) idea where
the center of the Earth was to be determined. In mythology, Zeus
was to have located this and capped it with a conical stone at
Delphi, where a temple was established. With the geocentric viewpoint
of the ancient world the center of the Earth then became the center
of the very universe…the center of Creation itself. This
Omphalos concept is nearly ubiquitous in religious traditions—it
is where the adherents face to pray, or seen as a keyblock to
hold back the primordial Flood, etc.
We turned then to the biblical Simon Peter. Peter equates with
petros and means rock or stone. He is referred to by Jesus as
the rock that a new assembly will be built upon; like a foundation
stone. Called Cephus, his name translates numerically into 729
which is 9 cubed and further relates to tuning theory and day/night
and annual cycles. The Concord Grove founder then showed us how
the fish symbol, related to Christianity, emerges from ancient
geometry starting with a circle and working out from it in equal
value compass point measures. The Gematria values worked out relate
spatial points that are assigned numbers with the divinities of
Apollo, Hermes and Zeus. Later additions to the New Testament
stories in John include the scene where Peter is fishing in his
boat and encounters Jesus without knowing who he is. He has no
luck fishing until he casts his net out on the right side of the
boat where he miraculously catches 153 fish. This addition probably
came from the 2nd Century. Another number to emerge in all four
gospels is in the feeding of 5,000. Using the numerical value
for Peter—1925= petros, and using a compass to get the other
disciples, then drawing an encompassing circle around this configuration,
one gets 1,224 which is equivalent to the fishes and net mathematically,
The casting to the right (side of the boat) takes the diagram
into a different symbolism that relates to Jesus and, further,
153 emerges which, when divided by the principles of the scene
becomes the number 1,224. Dr. Fideler diagrammed this out with
further information and asserted that this is more than coincidence
or an arbitrary pattern. Furthermore, when the diagram is inverted
to a horizontal orientation, one gets Zeus at one length, Apollo
at the other and the Omphalos in the middle. Other Pythagorean
formulations create the Apollo, Zeus, Hermes trilogy and when
the fish story emerges yet again from this, it even includes the
passages where the fish were all returned alive with none dying.
Dr. Fideler declared that the feeding of the 5,000 story is even
more mind boggling and how most scholarly treatments of the stories
do not take into account this ancient symbolism and mathematical
basis. Most treatments focus on the Jewish concepts alone without
exploring the Hellenistic influences.
There was a final drawing we were presented with while Dr. Fideler
spoke of the ancient idea of the cosmic organism that was endowed
with intelligence that referenced the Logos, itself relating to
the universe and morphogenically forming growth patterns. These
could be, as they were in his diagram, extrapolated into continued
geometrical ratios with proportions relating mathematically throughout
and being made manifest in all things from the tiniest organism
to the universe itself. This unfolding (or evolution; evolution
means unfolding) can be seen as the universe learning, taking
into account adaptive fitness patterns. Humans broke free of the
constraints of this unconscious learning, which imbues us with
a special gift warranting a special responsibility. We are the
embodiment of the self- reflective characteristics of the universe.
This probably, Dr. Fideler conceded, is what people think of as
“God.” He himself is not a theist and has no truck
with concepts of a hovering human-like presence over us, but he
does perceive a transcendental, timeless aspect to the order inherent
in the universe and a shaping influence that allows the orderly
patterns seen to emerge. And he left us with the thought that
there are many levels to the truth with some deeper than that
which can be found through pure reason. He equated the leaps in
knowing that the scientist experiences upon discovering connections
to the inspirational nature of the intrinsic connectedness of
everything to begin with.
Secretary: Charles LaRue
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