Priests are an interesting breed of human being. They fill the position of mediator of whatever truth they espouse between the people and the deity. In our culture, there are Christian Priests, mostly associated with Catholicism and Pagan Priests, mostly associated with everything evil and satanic. Ministers, pastors, elders and evangelists are Priests who just won't take the title but want all the perks. Modern ministers and pastors are Sun/Son Priests in ways they can't possibly imagine due their limited education and view in Christian origins and what has come to be called Astro-theology, which is the study of the birth, life and death of the Sun as it relates to our story of birth, life and death of the Son, in our case, Jesus. In the past, it would have been a similiar story about Mithras or Osiris depending on the "Age" in which people lived.
Priests tend to dress a bit more on the austere side and stand out in a crowd often due to the style of dress they select. For both Christian and pagan priests, black is the preferred color. However, black is the devil's color if you are a pagan priest, while it is somehow God's true color if you are a minister, pastor or Christian priest. Don't ask me why. As a child, I always felt uneasy when the minister came over dressed in black from head to toe. Boy, would I have felt a lot better if he had come in sky blue or hunter green! Even the car was black, but at times was white, depending. That's it-black or white. It was a lot like the attitude that went with the beliefs. The first time I saw a Buddhist Monk dressed in orange robes, I thought they might be more interesting people to be around. I was right, but that's another story.
When a female is accepted into the ministry of the more enlightened denominations, she might be called a minister or pastor, but you can be assured she will NOT be called a Priestess! Even though that is what her sex demands, she will still be referred to as a Priest. The term Priestess implies way too much that the male patriarchal priesthood cannot and never has been able to handle. It is the Goddess/Priestess concept that the Old Testament is designed to replace by a male Priesthood that is blood based, and not agriculturally based in it's religious concept. The story of the acceptable meat sacrifice of Abel, and the rejected agricultural offering of Cain is about just such a change from the Goddess to the Priesthood. I doubt you'll ever hear a wife tell her husband that she is going to call the Priestess to have a good talk with him if he doesn't straighten up!
But times are changing. Slowly, as the procession of equinoxes plays out it's drama over our head. This current priesthood made up of ministers, pastors and teachers who promote the Biblical story of redemption are passing away as the sun progresses into the new Age of Aquarius, and Age whose symbol will be water and not blood.
This is not to say that, for a time, the piously convicted but marginally informed will not yell louder and louder at all us sinners and demand we understand we are near the end of an age, as they see it, but their end is near as a better way of thinking and understanding comes to the forefront. For a time, and a dangerous one at that, fundamentalism and literalism will continue to rant and rave at humanity to change it's way and come under the blood of the Lamb as the only way to be on the right side. Every event on the planet will be filtered through the scriptures and declared a sign of the end. Every news event will be proof of the end times and these priests will thrive for a time on the pure fear and ignorance that has manipulated people in such ways far too often on the planet. I don't blame them, for the most part. They just don't know the whole story and are teaching the only way they know how, literally.
By and by, their predictions will not come true. Things will not go as they see it or as they think the Bible predicts it. I am sure that however things go, they will find a way to show that it still is shown to be the way it was said it would go by using the Bible. The Bible is like that. No matter how it really goes, the Bible can be used to show that it was first spoken of in the Bible and the priests of the Book are always right no matter how many combinations of wrong they have proven to be in the past.
Yet the times are changing and we really are coming to the end of the "age". Jesus is said to have stated that "lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age" and that might be more true than we can possibly imagine. However, the age meant is not the end of the world, or the time where all the bastards on the planet get their reward and the good guys win and go to heaven. It may be as simple as the demise of a priesthood, and associated theological concepts, based on the sacrifice of the Lamb and the shedding of blood for human redemption, and the rise of a priesthood based on water. Every time the procession of the Equinox introduced a new constellation in the Spring, human theology changed over time. It may be as simple as the astronomical procession of the equinoxes from Pices the Fish into Aquarius the Water Bearer.
In short, our theology is not played out so much in books and literal earthly dramas, but rather in the heavens as the Sun makes it's passage through the signs of the Zodiac. As above, so below. Even the Bible says that what it says is based on the pattern seen in the heavens, meaning the constellations of the Zodiac. While the Biblical priesthood may have written laws against the common folks looking to the stars and constellations for information, the Bible itself contains much what we would call astrological symbolism. Perhaps a case of the Priesthood withholding information through intimidation of the masses.
We currently live in the Age of Pices, the Fish. Simply put, that means that for the last 2000 years give or take a bit, the sun sets with the constellation Pices as it's backdrop in the heavens. Prior to that, from around 2000 BC until the time of Jesus, the Sun was in Aires, the Lamb. Prior to that, from about 4000BC to 2000 it was in Taurus the Bull at the Spring Equinox which occurs when the celestial equator is intersected by the path of the Sun each spring.
In effect, each Spring and every 2190 years or so, a new sign of the Zodiac gets "Crossified" at this celestial intersection. We call it "Easter" because the SUN, not the SON rises directly East at the balance of equal spring day and night hours growing on toward the longest day of the year in June. Two millenia ago the sun was increasing into Aries the Lamb, while Aquarius, also a symbol for John the Baptist, the Water Bearer of sorts, was decreasing, or going below the horizon. "He must increase, but I must decrease," John is reported to have said. It happened in the heavens.
During the Age of Taurus, many human religions were based on Bull worship as Taurus was the Great Bull in the skies. During that time, humans were symbolically and sometimes literally washed in the blood of the bull as a religious right of passage and for the remission of their sins. One of the lines Priests of that time waited for from the croweds witnessing the slaying of bulls was "it's blood be upon us and upon our children." Pretty familiar huh?
After this age had passed and the Bull was slain, the Age of Aries came to be in the heavens. Around the time of Abraham to be exact and when he offered the lamb in place of his son, the age began in literary terms. It is not coincidence that the new Age of Aires the Lamb ends just as did the Age of Taurus the Bull, but not with the slaying of the Bull. Rather, it was the slaying of the Lamb that ended the Age of Aries the Lamb. The Age of Pices began around the time of the early Christian Church. This is because the SUN is now in the constellation of Pices and has been for 2000 years which is now abut to end and become the Age of Aquarius the Water Bearer.
So what you might ask? Well during each preceeding age, astronomically, the religious symbols tended to be the symbols of that age. Bull worship and sacrifice during the Age of Taurus, Lamb worship and sacrifice during the Age of Aries and an entire following religion based on that sacrifice of the Lamb in which the adherents were to be "fishers of men" and whose 12 zodiacal disciples were mostly fishermen, the Age of Pices the Fish. The great symbol of the Christian faith is the fish. You see it often on the bumpers of our cars.
But now the age of Pices is ending as the Sun moves into Aquarius, the Water Bearer. It won't happen overnight, but I suspect "we" will see a change once again in the kind of truth and the symbols of that truth that lead us into a new age. It will be an age, not of blood, nor a religion of blood sacrifice and atonement, but of water. Water won't be turned into blood near as much as blood will be turned into a religion of water and a spirituality that springs from the concept of water. The priesthood will change as will our religious paradigm. This process will take place over the next 2000 years, so don't worry about your particular belief system, unless you wish to be ahead of your time! Somehow, it will end with the sacrifice of Water, not bulls or lambs and the procession will go on. Our truths will play out in the sky over heads as they have since man first looked up and observed how the characters seemed to come and go through the seasons.
Isn't it interesting that our most endangered species at the end of the age of Pices are the fish on the planet and the water in which they used to thrive? Whether by overfishing or pollution, our "Pices" are dying and their age is ending, along with our own food supply if we aren't careful. The literalist Christian Church, symbolized by the Fish is also in trouble and suffering it's own pollution problems. Better historical and theological information is challenging many minister and priests to rethink their teaching and perspectives on the origins of the Bible and it's purpose. The "Between Nets," the Inter-net is helping people see that much of what they have been taught is not literally true as we change from Fishermen to Watermen. Ok, that's just my anaology!
Water is becoming more precious and more understood as more than just that stuff we take for granted. Did you ever think someone would convince you to spend a buck on a bottle of water you could fill 1000 times at your sink but are not wanting to because they have convinced you their water is cleaner and better for you! Wanna buy a bridge? We are beginning to see water as a commodity and in times to come, he who controls the water, probably controls the world.
The new priesthood will not be based on blood sacrifices. They will not base their truth on the Bible or that which is symbolized by the Age of the Lamb or the Church of the Fish, that is Christianity as we know it today. The new Priesthood may be scientists who bring us the truth about water and how it has memory and is as mysterious and lifegiving as the blood of past ages seemed to mankind. "The life is in the blood" is the anthem of Christianity. "The life is in the water" may be the cry of a new paradigm just as real as the blood of the Lamb was during this past age.
Water mediates our life processes even more than blood depending on how one views it scientifically. Our body is 70% water and some have shown that when water is subjected to negative emotional enviroments, such as that created by anger or even heavy metal music, the crystals formed by freezing are incomplete and ugly. Water exposed to high vibrational emotions such as joy and love produce perfect crystals resembling the snowflakes we all are amazed at. Makes you think doesn't it, as they say. I'd be real careful about hanging around the low vibrations that mess up your 70% cellular water! Maybe this is part of why we are so darn anxious or depressed all the time in our culture. We need more "good, good, good vibrations" and they are harder and harder to come by. But whatever, it is water that may just well be the mediator of our new covenant with the "Sun" as we pass from Pices into Aquarius.
The study of Astro-theology, the dying of the Sun's journey through each sign of the Zodiac, each month is an amazing revelation to the average open minded Christian. It is also disturbing to the literalist.
As the signs change so do the religions that note their passing. We are now at the end of the Age of Pices which we know as the age of the Christian church and the story of the dying Lamb of God, the Sun of God. The Age of Aquarius is indeed dawning and will officially arrive in a few more years as the Sun enters the zodiacal sign of Aquarius, the Water Bearer. In some way, mankind is going to deal with the subject of Water and rather than treat it as a much taken for granted substance, learn rather to protect it and revere it for the mystery it is. Somehow water, I predict, will be the basis of a new theology.
From the Bull to the Lamb, From the Lamb to the Fish, From the Fish to the Water Bearer, a new theology will be born.
The literalist and fundamentalist view of the Bible has some good for the individual, but much harm to the masses. Monotheism is a divisive religion because there can be only one winner. With everyone divided into saints and sinners, believers and infidels, someone is going to get hurt.
It is water and not blood that will be the symbol of a new age that is soon to officially arrive. It will be interesting to see the Priesthood of believers that develops around the science and mystery of water that we are now just only coming to understand. Water unites us all as one. Our bodies are held together by water filled tissue and our nations are joined by water filled oceans. Maybe the new religion of the Water Bearer, Aquarius, will be one of unity and oneness where we do no longer allow ourselves to be divided into waring opinions and factions that shed only our blood.
Perhaps soon now we won't have to be washed in blood as in times past for our "sins" but rather bathed in pure water, united to the one that we are all a part of. The procession of the sun through the constellations of the Zodiac has been the template that humans have used for their theology for thousands of years.
During the last supper, the twelve disciples (12 Signs of the Zodiac) ask Jesus where they should prepare for the next Passover(Spring Equinox). This would be their first Passover without Jesus because Jesus (Aries the Lamb) was soon to be arrested and then crucified (On the intersection of the Celestial Equator and the Ecliptic). So, symbolically speaking, the disciples are asking where they should prepare for this Passover in the next age...the age after Jesus (Aquarius). Jesus, always speaking in parables, tells them (Luke 22:10) that when they enter the city, they will meet a man bearing a pitcher of water; they were to follow him into the house that he enters. That "man" was Aquarius, the Water Bearer and we are all about to enter into that house and the theology that will spring from it in years to come will be turning blood back into water.