| Astrology and
the Bible
The Bible on the Heavens!
by Kelly Lee Phipps
“How can you believe in astrology?”
my devout Christian friends have asked me. I tell
them, “Astrology is not a belief system,
but an archetypal, poetic language. I don’t
ask you if you ‘believe’ in Japanese.
I ask if you speak it. I don’t ask you if
you ‘believe’ in music, I ask if you
play it. I happen to speak the heavenly tongue
of astrology along with thousands of other highly
intelligent, inspiring, spiritual, and even scientific
astrologers.”
Their skepticism persists due to what they’ve
been taught about the Bible and so I decide to
go into their home field and initiate the conversation
about Biblical insights into astrology, one of
my favorite topics.
“The Bible totally supports the practice
of astrology,” I boldly claim staring into
horrified eyes.
“That’s crazy,” they say.
“Astrology is the work of the Devil. You
don’t need the stars to direct your life,
you just need Jesus.”
“But, even Jesus respected the wisdom
of the heavens,” I say. “Let me see
your Bible. I’ll show you proof that astrology
is a divinely bestowed gift to humanity.”
I open to the Psalms and begin reading verse 19:1-3,
“The heavens declare the glory of God. The
skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after
day they pour forth speech. Night after night
they display knowledge. There is no speech or
language where their voice is not heard.”
“That sounds to me like the heavens are
supposed to speak, to declare insights, reveal
knowledge, and that no language even exists that
does not contain the voice of the heavens.”
“Okay, so one Psalm by King David says
the heavens speak. God can speak through anything:
people, places, events. It doesn’t mean
we have to govern our lives by the stars.”
“But, it does indicate that we can have
a conversation with eternal being through the
motions of the heavens. The Bible speaks clearly
about the purpose of the sun, moon, and stars.”
I open to Genesis 1:14-18. “And God said,
let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven
to divide the day from the night; and let them
be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and
years: And let them be for lights in the firmament
of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and
it was so. And God made two great lights; the
greater light to rule the day, and the lesser
light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
And God set them in the firmament of the heaven
to give light upon the earth, and to rule over
the day and over the night, and to divide the
light from the darkness: and God saw that it was
good.”
“There you have it. Even in the King James
Version. When I interpret charts I illuminate
for clients their potential, both shadow and light,
to help them accept their whole being and to help
them live the full expression of their gifts.
We also probe and improve on their weaknesses.
When I look at the transits and progressions,
I explain the qualities and potential of the seasons,
days and years, giving guidance based on the motions
and cycles of heavenly bodies reflecting psychological
states and the flow of events. My aim is not to
predict the future, but to help people live more
fully in the present, navigating the currents
of life with skill. We all have heard that to
everything under the sun there is a season (Ecclesiastes
3:1-10). In Psalms 104:19 it says, ‘The
moon marks off the seasons, and the sun knows
when to set.’ When I read a chart, whether
it’s for a person, city, nation, or event,
I am using the heavens as the Bible says, to read
the signs.”
“Wow,” the person says, still dismayed
by my intense faith in astrology. “That’s
interesting.”
“That’s just the beginning,”
I continue. “Let’s see how deep the
rabbit hole goes. My study of astrology has given
vital proof of divine intelligence behind the
universe.”
In Job, God asked his humble servant a series
of questions involving the wondrous miracles performed.
In Job 38:31-33, God asks, “Can you bind
the sweet influences of the Pleiades or loose
the bonds of Orion? Can you bring forth the Mazzaroth
in their seasons? Or can you guide Arcturus with
his sons? Do you know the principles of the heavens?
Can you set their dominion over the earth?”
Thus, God is proclaiming that there are principles
in the heavens and that they govern life on earth.
Furthermore, God is responsible for bringing forth
the Mazzaroth in their seasons. Most Bibles avoid
translating this sacred word, ‘Mazzaroth’,
because it literally means, ‘the twelve
signs of the zodiac’, in Hebrew. So, God
created the zodiac and brings them forth in their
seasons. He explains that heavenly constellations
like the Pleiades and Orion have ‘influences’
that can be unleashed.
We don’t have to be afraid of signs from
the heavens. God speaks through them. In Judges
5:20 it describes the ‘stars’ in battle,
“They fought from the heaven. The stars
in their courses fought against Ciceria.”
In Jeremiah 10:2 it says, “…do not
be dismayed by signs from heaven.” We need
to be open to the realization of messages in the
heavens. In Psalms 136:7-9, it says, “Who
made the great lights? His love endures forever;
the sun to govern the day, the moon and stars
to govern the night.” In Psalms 147:3-4
it says, “God heals the broken hearted and
binds up their wounds. He determines the number
of stars and calls them each by name.” The
Hebrew word ‘shem’ means ‘name,
a mark of character, individuality, honor and
authority.’ Stars have all that, according
to the Bible. Again, in Isaiah 40:26 we hear,
“Lift your eyes on high and behold who has
created these. He who brings forth the starry
hosts by numbers one by one and calls them forth
by character.”
In Daniel 1:20 it says, “Daniel was given
divine insight by God, even the ability to understand
visions and dreams. In every matter of Babylonian
wisdom and understanding, they (Daniel and his
friends) were ten times better than all the magicians
and enchanters in the whole kingdom.” Thus,
the followers of the Eternal One imprisoned in
a land of astrologers cultivated the wisdom of
the heavens that was ten times better than the
average astrologer of the day.
In Psalms 89:35-37 God says, “I will not
lie to David that his line will continue forever
and his throne endure before me like the sun.
It will be established forever like the moon,
the faithful witness in the sky.” God describes
the moon here as the faithful witness in the sky.
In astrology the moon governs daily emotional
tides and colors events and moods by its changing
position.
In Job (one of the oldest Biblical texts) 26:12
it says that by, “God’s wisdom he
cut Rahab to pieces.” Rahab is the ancient
planet between Jupiter and Mars, which is now
an asteroid field. The ancients recorded this
planet in their star charts and created many myths
about its mysterious destruction. The content
of these stories always concerned the loss of
the sacred feminine. In modern astrology we are
attempting to heal this gap in consciousness by
reintegrating the feminine archetypes into our
work. In the original Hebrew language both the
masculine and feminine archetypes are equally
respected and integrated into the symbols of their
language.
The Hebrew the word for light used when God
says, “The sun, moon, and stars were created
for giving light on the earth,” is ‘aur’.
The Hebrew writers were well versed in the sacred
language of archetypes. They were able to contemplate
truth through symbol as each letter of their alphabet
held an archetypal meaning. Aleph, the beginning
letter of aur symbolizes unthinkable vibration,
the sacred spirit of life, infinite potential,
and eternal possibility. Vav, the middle letter,
symbolizes the process of divine fertilization
emanating from the creative void. Raysh, the final
letter, symbolizes the hidden movement of cosmic
possibility as creation. Hidden in the letters
of Hebrew light we discover its deeper meaning,
the infinite potential of the sacred spirit fertilizing
creation.
The first line of the Bible says, “In
the beginning, God created the heavens and the
earth.” When you break it down into archetypal
Hebrew it means, the first fruits of the spirit
aspiring to express eternity through a fountain
of divine wisdom were the creation of the celestial
dimensions and the manifest world. Now that casts
a whole new light on Biblical translation. The
Hebrew word for astrologer is 'ashaph' which breaks
down to ‘the spirit communicates through
the sacred flames.’
The word ‘aur’, for light, means
illumination, but also radiance, happiness and
joy in the original Hebrew, just as night ‘layil’
also means adversity, challenge and resistance.
You hear the ancient root of light in words like
aura, aurora, our own Uranus, the planet of divine
intuition, and in Ur, the ancient city, of light,
home of the legendary Abraham, father of the Hebrews
in the land of Chaldea.
According to Berosus, a Chaldean historian and
priest, in the tenth generation after the Biblical
flood there was a man among the Chaldeans (astrologers)
called Abram (later changed to Abraham) who mastered
skill in the celestial language of the heavens.[1]
Close to the beginning of the Age of Aries, two
millennia before Christ, God called Abraham to
migrate west to start the Hebrew civilization.
The Old Testament, from which I’ve been
quoting, describes the Age of Aries from the perspective
of the Hebrews. Terah, who was the father of Abraham,
left Ur at that time. Ur was a flourishing port
city, a center for trade between India and Egypt.
To symbolize the Age, Abraham sacrificed God’s
provision, the ram. Across the world, bull sacrifices
from the Age of Taurus were giving way to ram
sacrifices as the equinoxes processed and the
quality of times changed. God became known as
Jehovah, the warrior God, as Aries exemplifies
the archetype of the warrior, pioneer, and leader.
It was a militant age of sacred ram veneration.
Abraham was a wise spiritual seeker, but also
a brave warrior. Moses later became another fiery
leader of this Age. They both studied the ancient
sciences of the Egyptians and understood that
the twelve signs of the Mazzaroth were the immortal
thoughts of God that penetrate creation. The twelve
tribes of Israel (Abraham’s grandson) are
associated with the twelve signs of the zodiac.
According to Jewish astrologers, the Hebrews accepted
Deuteronomy 32:8 as proof of the fact that people
are divided into twelve distinct personality types.
It says, “When the Most High divided to
the nations their inheritance, when he separated
the sons of Adam, he set the boundaries of the
people according to the number of the tribes of
Israel. In astrology twelve archetypal forces
divide people.
The characteristics of the twelve tribes were
given both by Jacob in Genesis 49 when he blesses
his sons and again in Deuteronomy 33 when Moses
blesses the tribes. They correspond to the basic
meanings of the twelve signs used today. God ordered
Moses to have the twelve tribes camp around the
holy tabernacle in the exact order of the zodiac
with the entrance to the temple facing east. The
four gateways to the camp were Judea, Rueben,
Ephraim, and Dan. These four tribes correspond
to the exact description in Ezekiel and Revelations
of the four living creatures before the throne
of God, which were the lion, the bull, the man,
and the eagle. These four ancient symbols correspond
to our own astrological signs of Leo, Taurus,
Aquarius, and Scorpio which contain the four royal
stars of Persia, Regulus in Leo, Aldebaran in
Taurus, Formalhaut in Aquarius, Antares in Scorpio.[2]
God even directs Moses to have the tribes march
through the desert starting with Judea (Leo) and
going backwards towards the camps of Rueben (Taurus),
Ephraim (Aquarius) and Dan (Scorpio). This is
the exact motion of the equinoctial precession
that gives rise to the flow of the astrological
ages, a 26,000-year cycle.
Moses, like Joseph, was well versed in Egyptian
astrology. As the adopted son of pharaoh’s
daughter he was well educated in all the mystery
school wisdom of Egypt. The Hebrew word for Egypt
is ‘mitsuri’, the land of mystery.
In Acts 7:22 it says, “Moses was trained
in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful
in speech and action.” He was the perfect
warrior prophet for the Arian age.
Aaron’s breastplate was set with twelve
sacred stones each symbolizing a Hebrew tribe,
and thus, a zodiac sign. Joshua 4:6 says, “God
is remembered by twelve stones in a circle.”
The Hebrews created elaborate rituals based on
a lunar calendar. In astrology new moons symbolize
beginnings and the sacred feast of Israel instituted
by God’s commands to Moses through visions,
were based on the phases of the moon. The day
of the new moon was a day of feasting and blowing
trumpets (Numbers 10:10). Psalms 81:3 says, “Sound
the ram’s horn at the new moon, and when
the moon is full, on the day of our feast.”
The seventh new moon was the time of the holy
convocation feast and the full moon of this month
was the Feast of Tabernacles to celebrate harvest.
The seventh sign in astrology is Libra, symbolizing
balance and love, and the full moon symbolizes
illumination, vision and fulfillment, the time
when emotional response is highest. Passover was
observed from the full moon to the waning quarter,
a period symbolic of illumination and the dissemination
of truth.
The Age of Aries gradually gave way to the next
sign of the zodiac, Pisces, the archetype of universal
love and compassion through selfless service.
The three Chaldean Magi followed the star across
the Arabian Desert in search of the incoming spiritual
master of love. Three astrologers utilized the
language of the heavens to discover the long-prophesized
Hebrew Messiah. Modern research has revealed that
Jesus may have been born closer to 7 BCE around
the time of the Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus triple-conjunction
in Pisces. Every astrologer inspired to research
the illusive chart of Christ has a pet theory
as to the exact birth date. My own research lead
me to conclude that he was born on September 16,
7 BCE around midnight in Bethlehem. In any case,
the ultimate spiritual mystic arrived to teach
the Way as High Priest of the Order of the Melchizedek
(as the Bible refers to him in Hebrews 6:20).
Jesus embodied the Piscean archetype, linking
the first sign Aries with the last sign Pisces,
the alpha with the omega, starting not just one
new age, but a whole cycle of twelve ages. People
began spiritually cleansing themselves through
the baptismal rites, as Pisces is a water element
sign. Suddenly, water was sacred (as opposed to
fire) and the fish became holy. Early Christians
would identify themselves by drawing the sign
of Pisces in the sand. Jesus spoke often of the
age of his birth as a preparation age for the
Age of Enlightenment to follow. He was referring
to the Age of Aquarius that is symbolized by the
cosmic man bearing the pitcher of the living waters
of life, pouring it throughout the universe. At
Jesus’ first Jupiter return (age 12) he
began instructing the Priests at the temple, saying
to his parents, “Let me be about my work.”
After his first Saturn return (age 30) he became
intensely devoted to teaching and demonstrating
the way of unconditional love. He selected twelve
disciples each with a character similar to one
of the twelve signs. At the Last Supper Jesus
washed the feet of the disciples. In astrology
each sign governs a part of the body. Pisces symbolizes
the feet.
The Bible is strangely silent on the so-called
‘lost years of Jesus’ between ages
12 and 30. Some sources like The Aquarian Gospel
of Jesus[3], channeled by a Christian minister
at the dawn of the 20th century, tells a marvelous
story about how Jesus journeyed throughout Persia,
India, Greece and Egypt walking all paths of life.
The Christian’s maintain that he stayed
home and humbly served as a carpenter all his
life until he got the call to begin his ministry.
The New Testament is full of clues and insights
that point to Jesus’ respect and reverence
for astrology. The most obvious quote is Luke
21:25 when he says, “At the end of this
Age there will be signs in the sun, moon and stars…the
heavenly bodies will be shaken (lit. the heavenly
forces will be agitated).” It’s in
the red print. Jesus said it. He tells his twelve
disciples that the age to come will be foreshadowed
by signs in the heavens. That is what God said
they were supposed to be used for. Signs give
directions and guidance to help us navigate life.
The Age of Aquarius is surely on the rise! Astronomically,
the Aries Ingress won’t reach the first
stars of Aquarius until around 2376 CE, but the
symbols of Aquarius are actually alive in the
imaginations of the people. Ever since the discovery
of Uranus in 1781 the world has been struggling
for freedom, independence and human rights in
addition to great inventions and advances in science.
In the year 2080 Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus will
align in the sign of Aquarius similarly to the
Piscean configuration of 7 BCE. On the solstice
of 2020 Jupiter and Saturn will conjunct in Aquarius.
The times are ripe for a new dispensation focused
on creative originality, cosmic vision and universal
awareness. The next time your religious friends
start bad-mouthing the celestial language of astrology
you’ll be armed with Biblical insight.
Astrology asks for a realization of our connection
to space, divine being, and the process of eternal
change. As an intuitive, symbolic language, and
art of celestial cycles, it not only helps you
navigate change, but also teaches you to tap your
creative potential. Most people think astrology
is about predicting the future, but really it
is about diving into the unknown and living the
mystery each day. Astrology opens the gateway
within so you can discover the sacred silence
and encounter the archetypes of creation. This
unified spectrum of twelve images symbolizes the
image of eternal being.
[1] The First Astrologer. Fielden, Fran. Better
Books. Charlotte, NC. 1988.
[2] Brady’s Book of Fixed Stars. Brady,
Bernadette. Samuel Weiser, Inc. 1998.
[3] The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ.
Dowling, Levy. DeVorss And Company. Marina del
Rey, CA. 1907.
Commentary on the Article
from
Website Visitors
I just read your article about astrology in
the bible. It was fascinating to one who is new
to astrology (the stars and planets are absolutes
and therefore must hold some truth), but then
always believed in the "Word of God".
I am now motivated more than ever to try and learn
the language of the stars. Thank you for that
article.
I thought that this was a brilliant article;
I’d like to see more of it. It validates
everything and is what I thought astrology is
about.
Thank you so much for this intelligent and well-written
article! You've done the expert research for me.
In my many years of prayer and actively seeking
God, I was guided to Astrology and Tarot, which
has enriched my life beyond description. Thank
you, thank you, thank you.
Hello Kelly, just read your article on Astrology
in the Bible. It’s certainly a good article
that can inspire so many people from various Christian
denominations and beyond. So congratulations,
and may God bless the work you do.
Father Joseph Sedjerari
Catholic Priest, Sydney-Australia
I read your marvelous article about astrology
in the Bible. Furthermore, I e-mailed the article
to almost everyone on my list. More of this information
needs to get out into the public to broaden their
insights. Wonderful research went into writing
the article. I began studying astrology in 1977
and am still active in my pursuit.
Sandra Wrobel
|