The Symbols of Christmas
by Aeptha

EXTRACT FROM SUNDAY SERVICE November 30, 2003

During the Christmas season we decorate our homes in certain traditional ways that are quite meaningful. We use evergreens that are symbols for everlasting life, so that throughout the change of seasons when the trees have shed their outer signs of life, there is the promise and commitment to life that is held in the evergreen. We use the holly, also an evergreen, and it is accentuated by the red berries. The holly is known for being a place where the fairies love to reside. It is found in many of the sacred stone circles and it is seen as a sign of protection. There is the recognition of its sacred nature, for it holds the power of everlasting life and its red berries are a symbol of the royal blood of vitality, of manifestation and of alchemy.

We use the color gold which is symbolic of royalty, but gold is also one of the gifts of the three Magi. Gold has value in the material world, and in alchemy we think of the transmutation of lead into gold. It is the gift that the Magi brought to lay at the feet of the Christ child, and in so doing they implied that they offered the world of material things in service and dedication to the Christ. Many of us will burn frankincense and myrrh. Frankincense is associated with the purification and clearing of the emotional nature. The gift of frankincense from the Magi was to say, "I will lay at the feet of the Christ, and dedicate to the Christ within and the Christ without, my hopes, my dreams, my aspirations, and my desires." The third gift, myrrh, is associated with the mind and with thoughts. It is associated with suffering, for what is it that causes suffering? Is it not our thoughts and misuse of thoughts? And that too, we offer to the Christ within and to the Christ without, and we say, "The suffering I will lift up, and my thoughts will be one-pointed, one-intentioned."

What about the shepherds that adorn our Nativity scenes? In the biblical account it was the shepherds that heard the call of the angels who said, "Unto thee a child is born, wrapped in swaddling clothes." For you see the Magi, the Initiates, recognized the sign that was demonstrated in the stars and so they went in search, based upon that sign, but the shepherds represented the mass of people who were not yet trained in those magical signs, but they were not left out. For the word was spread and for those who had the ears to hear, they too were told, "Come, come to the place of the birth of the Christos, to the birth of the Christ within, to the dawning of the new light."

Many people get very concerned and perhaps even polarized as to whether or not Yeshua was an historical figure, and even more there is the argument as to whether Yeshua was the Divine Son of God or whether He was human. As many of you know the book on the New York Times best seller list, The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, is creating quite a stir. One of the questions is whether Yeshua did indeed father children with Mary Magdalene. This has a whole level of implication as to whether or not this Being is divine. He is proclaimed by some to be Divine, to be of the Father, who came to the earth and then returned to the Father, and he is said by others to be a human being, who in the course of his life, and perhaps many lives, succeeded in fully birthing the Christ energies, and who therefore came under the authority of the title of the Christos, the Anointed One. He would then be both human and divine. Perhaps in our contemplations we need to consider that, for if we know that we as human beings can also be Divine, then why would we choose anything less?

We are not unlike the Magi and the shepherds that have been called, and we come, for the light within has been birthed. It is said that in the Age of Pisces, which is now drawing to a close, the role of the Christ was to spread the light, and so it must spread first within us, to every place and every aspect of our being, for light is consciousness. In the Age of Aquarius, which is now beginning, we are being called to raise the light of the Christ to be the risen Christ, and we who are consciously straddling those two aspects, must be both the light and the raised light.

This is a time of great change along the known timelines. We are all aware that linear time is a creation and an agreement based upon the illusion we have all participated in, but in truth time is not linear, it is circular. In fact the wreaths we hang upon our doors are in recognition of the regeneration that the evergreen symbolizes, as well as an acknowledgement of the continuity of life and of time. That is why, for instance, in Egyptian hieroglyphs, the cartouches of the Pharaohs' names are encircled, as they were acknowledged as being the Priest-Kings, the Priest-Queens, upon the Earth. You don't see this in any other cartouches, which are all open. This is because it was recognized that the past, the present, and the future are all occurring simultaneously.

Bethlehem means house of bread. At the time that Yeshua was birthed, Sirius was the star in the East, and Orion was in close proximity. Orion is known as the Three Kings, and the three primary stars in Orion's belt have historically been associated with the Three Magi. Virgo is holding Spica, the brightest star, which is the corn, and this is the sign of fertility. Those of you who have been in class with us will remember that we have been learning about how the heavens are reflected upon the earth and the earth is reflected in the heavens.

We know that In the Eucharist the Priest/Priestess will dip the bread into the wine and the body and the blood come together, and then you take that into the alchemical chamber of your body. We know from our studies and from our own exploration that we can consider blood, life, love, in relationship to what we have come to call the Sea Mysteries, and light is illumined consciousness, the Sun Mysteries. But somewhere along the way, life and light became separated; illumined consciousness and love were separated. And so the Christos, the embodiment of the solar energies, was called in to help bridge this rift, to choose over and over again to move into the consciousness and the love of the Divine.

Part of the Gnostic, the Mystical and many of the Pagan traditions, is to know that you are human and that you can become Divine. This meant that the power for deification and the potential of the Christ is within all of us. This created a quandary for the church, and what was decided upon in the Nicene Council (325 A.D.) was that Yeshua would have to be born Divine and could not become Divine at the Baptism, where He accepted the full authority of the Christ. This meant that you could seek to emulate Him, but you could never become as He was. This is a reflection of the essential rift, the chasm, and we have all participated in that; as an archetypal consciousness we have all agreed upon it, and we manifest it in our own lives and consciousness and we see the manifestation of this all around us.

I would ask that we would send out prayers to all of those who are in grief, pain, and despair, and to all who are experiencing separation, we send prayers for healing, compassion.