The Bible, the Serpent, Pluto and Astrology

I was very interested to watch Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou in the Bible’s Buried Secrets, (BBC 2 29th March 2011, on the iplayer) since she brings up fascinating potentials that will surely upset a few people.

One of the best things to come out of it is that the snake gets a reprieve! Yay! The programme accepts that the snake cult saw the serpent as a powerful healing agent, but the serpent worship got discredited along with the failed king.

I’ve cut the following sections on the serpent out of my book, since they may add some astrological info to the story as well. When I wrote this in 2006, it was considered heresy and in bad taste. Now, I don’t think so. How we have changed in a few short years!

The Story of Adam and Eve in the Christian Bible.

There is a myth I want to explore here that is not so commonly associated with Pluto, but I feel it demonstrates another facet of this energy, which we need to understand in our dealings with him. Once again, it demonstrates how innocence can never be recovered, how things must move on and change into something else.

It is that of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis in the Bible.² We are told that God made Adam and Eve and a beautiful garden that housed, amongst other things, the Tree of Conscience. God forbade them to eat the fruit from this tree at the center of the garden, warning that it would open their eyes to right and wrong, good and bad, and the ability to distinguish between the two. They would then be doomed to die.

A serpent then shows up and tempts Eve into picking the fruit and sharing it with her mate. The supernatural, powerful and `dark` realms are often symbolized by the serpent.

All this resonates very clearly with the Pluto theme and it’s associated Zodiac sign of Scorpio in astrology. As with the Ceres myth, we see the intervention of Pluto energy in Eve’s life causing an action that has life or death consequences and makes irrevocable changes to innocence. Sexual activity, temptation, regeneration, magic, lust, jealousy, the occult and the serpent itself are all ruled by the astrology sign of Scorpio and this story contains all of these things.

But obviously, these natural laws must exist because the tree was there in the first place! If God really didn’t want to run the risk of having his perfect creations at risk of contamination by the changes that this tree could cause, why have the tree there? We are told he planted the tree there. This must have been unavoidable, since it would obviously have suited him to not have it there. This seems to indicate that the Scorpionic power and natural law, which says all must be part of a cycle of transformation and change, is unavoidable, even by the god of the Bible.

Back to the story! The couple are banished from the garden with various punishments. Adam shall toil hard with farming, then die and be buried in the earth, and Eve shall suffer the intense pain of childbirth. (Eve means `life giving` in Hebrew.) The serpent looses his wings and is made the enemy of womankind. Why just womankind?

Well, I feel it is because the serpent represents Pluto, and Pluto is all about the procreation of the species, and how this impulse is more powerful than individual life. It dominates supremely. Because woman takes the more active role in procreation by actually having the new life grow inside her, and then giving birth to it, it is more so the woman than the man who has to tussle with the danger of childbirth, and try to maintain personal power when her offspring and husband require her to meet their needs unconditionally for many years. The Bible says that God’s punishment also includes welcoming a husband’s affections and his mastership over her.

The riches that can be gained from this are evident when the woman then grows very strong as a result of her ability to `take the weight`. If the traditional roles of `woman at home`, and `man out at work` are followed, as the Bible seems to indicate here, then I believe the woman learns a tremendous amount about herself (and her own mother), as she hears herself repeating the things she swore she never would when she was a child!

Having children, and seeing ourselves being raised to the ground and rebuilt, which is what child rearing does, is probably the most important contribution to our own self-development. More than in any other important relationship, our children hold up a mirror for us to see ourselves. This is transforming.

It might be interesting to reflect for a moment on the different attitudes to sex found in the different texts upon which whole religious dynasties are based. Pluto/Scorpio is the energy in astrology that represents sex, as part of our procreation and the life and death struggle to keep our souls evolving. (Let’s face it, if sex stopped, the human race wouldn’t last for very long!)

Although the Bible was rewritten from ancient texts that originated elsewhere in the Middle East, it changes completely some earlier document’s instructions on this matter. In the Corpus Hermeticum Asclepius texts there is reference to childbirth and great it is, with the inference that celibacy will earn punishment by the daimones after death.

The God of the Bible, on the other hand, promotes celibacy and all that is chaste, pure and untouched and “good”. However, Scorpio/Pluto took over in the guise of the serpent, and when Adam and Eve ate the fruit they became “evil” and took part in sexual intercourse and pleasures of the flesh. This is interesting because they now needed to.

Before they ate from the tree, they were not human, they were immortal and were going to last forever. So they didn’t need sex or procreation or children, like the angels, they would not ever need to replace themselves. The fruit of the tree removed that immortality however, and their lives were then limited. So they then needed to procreate to keep the human race going.

The Serpent as a Symbol of Healing and Magic.

There are two symbols in common use by the medical profession. One is a serpent winding up a staff, and the other is……the caduceus, two serpents winding up a staff! Organisations such as the World Health Organisation and the Paramedics of the National Health Service proudly display these symbols.

“The serpent upon the staff was quiet universally the symbol among the ancients of the medical art. The serpent signified the principle of occult life, and the staff or rod was the symbol of magic power.”

Astrology has always understood Scorpio’s rulership over healing and the healing arts, and this won’t cause a problem to most people. But Scorpio also rules magic and the occult, and this is something that the medical profession certainly doesn’t want to be associated!

Certain medical associations in America are now trying to disassociate from the caduceus, the two serpent version, because it is associated with Hermes, the Greek God who is associated with the Hermetic texts and secret doctrine. (This, they say, is paganism, witchcraft and magic…..and astrology. My my, how awful.)

The Hermetic texts were copied from even earlier documents that may have been written in Egypt between 3,000-1,000B.C.E. and contained vastly superior medical and philosophical knowledge. This knowledge was destroyed as civilisation headed towards the arrival of the one-god religious dynasties after 01.A.D.

Hermes was watered down to become a winged messenger god who could pass between the Underworld and the Upperworld and often escorted souls. He can be seen in the illustration at the beginning of this chapter. Even in this watered down version, he still sends a clear message that wisdom and knowledge will help us mortals in our dealings with the Underworld.

In ancient Egypt magic and healing were taken as the same thing. They called on the supernatural by chanting invocations whilst they were treating the patient. This would have invoked the secret power of the un-conscious, which is what is also invoked during the healing ceremony of Reiki, this is often called the Placebo effect by medical science.

I took this quote from a book on the website of Professor Ralph Abraham (Princeton, Berkeley and California Universities):

“With these spells, evolved over centuries, one might….communicate with the gods, command subtle energies, acquire wealth, health……The most powerful allies were the gods and goddesses of the underworld: Erishkegal, Persephone Hekate and the like. We are left with the impression that magic is a human creation which exists on a level above religion. While religions come and go, magic is eternal.”²³

Whilst Scorpio is indeed associated with the mastery of healing, there are 2 sides to the coin, and I will just remind you about the myth involving Asclepius, who is the Greek god of medicine that the medical profession these days do want to be associated with. (His is the rod with the single serpent on it.)

Asclepius was curing so many people, and even bringing so many back from the dead, that Pluto feared that he would have no more souls left in the Underworld, so he asked Zeus to kill Asclepius. He was duly wiped out with a thunderbolt, and became a constellation in the sky.

The interesting point here is that Pluto must maintain the amount of souls on the journey. This process must continue above all efforts to preserve life here on earth. So the medical profession had better watch out…because if they keep too many alive they’ll all get the old thunderbolt treatment!

What Pluto gives, Pluto can also remove.”

copyright Alison Chester-Lambert

Those 2 sections have been copied from my book on the new dwarf planets and their meaning. `The Future in the Stars` is about the future for humankind in the 21st century. You can buy it on this site by clicking a link to the publishers.