To: alt.magick
From: bheidrick@aol.com (B Heidrick)
Subject: Book of Revelations (9408.revltns.bh)
Date: 49940824
Quoting: |sahr@thuja.FSL.ORST.EDU (Kevin Sahr) 

|Please; if it is your inclination to tell me to simply toss the
|bible in the fire and forget about it, I would prefer that you
|enjoy your opinion in silence (or at least start a different thread
|so I can exercise my option to ignore it). I readily admit that I don't 
|understand the Book of Revelation, and that the exoteric Christian 
|explanations I'm familiar with seem to me to be pure hogwash. However,
|that does not imply that the book itself is hogwash (and neither do
|Duquette's comments above). It seems to me at least logical that in 
|order to have a full understanding of the nature of the Beast we must 
|understand his role in the Judeo-Christian mythos in which he figures
|so prominently. That is all that I am trying to do.

Natural reaction from that background.   To understand the point of this
sort of discussion, you must also understand that the Book of Revelations
is not really Christian.  It is a collection of stitched-together and
altered text from pre-Christian Merkabah visions --- See G.R.S.Mead,
_Fragments of a Faith Forgot_.  It is not, advertising and Canon to the
contrary, the Apocalypse of St. John.  All those visions and symbols are
from earlier concepts, meaning quite different things from the Christian
tradition regarding them.  666 (or 610 or 616, depending on how you
consider early Patristic studies of this book) does not mean Nero or
anything of that sort.  The terms "beast" and so-forth do not mean the
negative things that Christian dogma has attached to them.  To me, your
views are derived from the same ingrown and ancient propaganda that I took
for granted as a child growing up in Roman Catholicism.  To you, it may be
(still) anathema.  If that is the case, realize that you are not on
Christian exclusive ground in alt.magick.  There are Christians welcome &
active here, but there are others as well.  It is a specialized Agora of
ideas, not limited to one religion or tradition.  I get as bad a reaction
to some of the threads here as this one gives to you.  Sometimes I have to
plough through rashes of allergic reaction to reach a gem of affinitive
discourse.  It's the nature of this place.  Where but in a swamp can you
find a Lotus?  The Lotus is a pest to the critters of the swamp.  Which of
us is a swamp critter and which is a Lotus sniffer?  Who cares and why
should it matter --- this is just the illusion of personal perspective. 
To distinguish these sorts of things in posts here is to destroy both the
swamp and the Lotus.  --- Now floods of sewage discharge are another
matter entirely; that does require the occasional flame and fire
department intercession.
93 93/93
Bill