Jonah and the Whale

First of two talks by MBM

from Friday evening background series.

November 15, 1929

Jonah a Semite.  Wandering race.  The race came from somewhere in

central Asia  …. In Egypt….Babylonia.  Mesopotamia.  Old Chaldea and Babylonia.  Then Jerusalem.  Traditions contacted in Asia.  Boraceus, third century B.C. historian.

The Chaldean god, Ea is the god of wisdom.  Oannes, a descendant of Ea, according to Boraceus.  He (Oannes) lived in the sea.  Taught the people living around the Persian Gulf.  They lived without law or order.  He taught them how to construct houses, found temples, make laws; geometry; agriculture.  Nothing material has been added to his teachings since that time.

(Oannes represented) with head and shoulders human, the rest fish: the god of wisdom in Chaldea — above man, below fish.  Wisdom teaching that comes from the sea.  The priests of this god wore fish robes, the Piscine men.

Legends developed often into ceremonials.  Priests passed on the wisdom — inherited the wisdom, passed on the tradition.  The “fish teaching” is a wisdom teaching.  The wisdom which came out of the fish’s mouth symbolized by many rituals.

Fish god in India, Vishnu; sacred figure in the great Triad.

Fish skins, or animal skins (worn) in rituals.  Priests in any tradition wore the skins associated with the god they served.  Example: in Egypt (sometimes) the leopard; Bacchus, fawn;

Babylonian, goat; India, antelope.  Remnant still in the Pope’s garment, the pallium, of lamb’s wool, spun by nuns of St. Agnes.

The Philistine god, Dagon, a descendant of the Babylonian god, Oannes.  The ideograph for Nineveh, in old Babylon, is a house with a pit; and in the pit a fish.  Because in this house the wisdom gained had come from the great Fish god, who came out of the water.

Oannes is closely related to Johannes; and Johannes is, in the Christian tradition, shortened to John.  John had also to do with water, in the Christian tradition.  Called the Baptizer.  Used water as a symbol of another kind of wisdom.  (Johannes belonged to the same mystic order as Samson.)  John dipped those who were to be baptized in water. Or they went into the river.  The river is a variation on the motif of water, the sea.  It is the flowing sea.  The ocean is the great body.  Out of that great ocean from which Ea came continues to flow, river-wise, the strength, purification, teachings, which Oannes (John) used.  Water as baptism has been used far back of Christianity.

River:  Every great race has had its rivers.  The Ganges, the stream from above, which brings down the water and washes away disease, death, sorrow, pain, gives enlightenment, etc.  The Euphrates in Babylonia.  But in that period the sea was more illustrative of the good than the river.  To dip into this water successfully is to partake of its nature, – exoterically, baptism.

But a river is also a barrier, a division, line, marker.  The Styx.  The river Acheron, as used by Dante, also the barrier.  The river must be ferried, and somehow overcome the limitation of the barrier.  By daring to cross it you do get into another region and nature.

Fish.  There are the great fish and little fishes.  But, in any case, the fish is the life of the water — the essence, vitality, nuclei, which swim in the water.  In the sense of Oannes, the Great Fish, we have the summation, – coming out to teach man.  When we deal with lesser fish, it is the value which man makes, or can make, in his stream of life, and which he learns to draw on to nourish himself.

Moses, in the Kor’an, (18th Sura).  The being whom Moses sought was the Fish-god, and Moses craved his Teachings.  But Moses cannot stand the strength of it.

Jonah.  Who is Jonah?  No one knows.  Even the date of the writing of the book is uncertain.  Probably after the exile, the period in Chaldea or Babylon.  The content brought back from Babylon, which is saturated with fish lore.  From it have developed many ceremonials — of the priests themselves, of baptism, and certain rites performed.

Jonah is not unrelated to Johannes.  It is probably not the name of a person but of a type of being, just as the followers of any tradition are called by that name.  A type name.  Whoever wrote the book belonged among the Jewish prophets.  The story is based on the old fish lore of the country from whose sacred tradition the race, and especially the prophets, drank generously.  The wise men of Chaldea (were) open to the wise men of Israel.

(Here MBM made reference to a Syrian plaque representing a rite of initiation, with the candidate going to the death, to be re-born.)

The (British) Order of the Bath.  The knight was bathed the night before he got a new name.

In the Egyptian tradition the place of rebirth is Meskein — the hidden place, hard to find.  In the outer teaching, the Egyptian Hades.  In the old Mysteries — Eleusinian, Orphic, Dionysian — all teach of descent to a hidden place, – and a return.  The leaders of every great Mystery made the Pattern: Orpheus; Ishtar, in Babylonia, made the descent, and returned.  In the Eleusinian, it was Ceres.  In the Egyptian, Isis.  Hercules, in his Twelve Labors, descended to the lower regions.  The twelfth sigh, that of Pisces.

Three days in the lower regions; three periods in which certain labors were to be accomplished.  Joseph, in the Old Testament, was down three days and three nights in a well.

The Jonah tradition is probably not pure.  But behind it we can begin to see the association with a great tradition, which makes of the whale something very different than in the strange stories we have heard about it.  It is a later form of an ancient mystery teaching, carried over into Syria, absurd, redacted, but containing, especially in its hidden sense, the content of what we have spoken of today.

 

 

Lecture II

MBM.  November 22, 1929

The Book of Jonah a mixture of legend, ceremonial, and, perhaps, history.  Jonah, from Galilee family (?) 7th or 8th century B.C.  We know he was the first prophet to the Gentiles.

Jonah was ordered to go to Nineveh, – Nineveh, deeply associated with the Fish tradition.  Nineveh had degenerated and become involved in lower forms of religious activity, and he was to preach repentance to them.  The people there were distrustful of him.  Because he was outside the fold, and they mistrusted the outcome.  Nineveh is to the east, but Jonah took a boat to the northwest.  The story of Jonah is referred to by Jesus himself, as a preliminary pattern of himself.  See Matthew and Luke.

There was a storm, and the sailors asked the cause of the storm.  Only in allegory are people intelligent enough to do that.

     Equate belly of hell with belly of fish.  The waters encompassed him, even to the soul.  Bottom of the mountains.  Belly, hell.  Equated with Sheol, in the Hebrew scriptures.  Also Hades and the grave.  Belly equated with the womb, the place of birth, – or place of re-birth.  One tradition says “the womb of Sheol…the Well of souls in Jerusalem,” going down and returning.  Jerusalem, on seven hills.  In the valley of one of these is to be found the well.  All of this is at the same time a gate of heaven; herein will the buried arise.

Sheol, a monster whose belly can never be filled; swallows multitudes.  The description of Jonah in Ch. III is mystical; the process by which he goes down to the foundation stone at the bottom of the mountains in Jerusalem; and beneath it, the well of souls.

Jonah is spewed forth on dry land, and Jehovah tells him to go to Nineveh.  This time he obeys, and goes east, and preaches to the Ninevites.  The Ninevites repented.  Therefore the warning which Jonah gave to the Ninevites is not fulfilled

Jonah waited in vain.  A gourd, or vine, sprang up and enveloped Jonah with shade from the sun.  But a worm gnawed at the roots and destroyed it.  The last part of the story is unessential to the mystical part; perhaps a lesson or two added.

We are especially interested in the fish, the belly of the fish, mountains, and being spewed forth.  Jonah the figure of someone who went into the cave of the souls for re-birth.  The rest of the story has little to do with that aspect.

Mountains:   Meskein built in a way that has seven heavens above and seven earths beneath it.  A little finer than the seven hills of Jerusalem.  In the belly he comes in contact with the life-giving waters.  The belly is not that of a fish but a condition of death wherein shall be found re-birth: “Bring up my life from corruption”, or pit.  Code word, should be related to similar passages in other scriptures.  The life which has been down in the pit is to be brought forth: a typical story of mystical rebirth .

Fish: Dr. Eisler’s book, “Orpheus, the Fisher.”

The inside tradition was that Jonah was the son of the widow, who was resuscitated from death by Elias.  One tradition has Jonah and the Leviathan.  He wanted to get the great fish.  The supreme octave.  That fish has to do with the wisdom tradition.  To capture it would be to storm the gates of Heaven.

Eating of fish.  In the early Christian church the fish banquet was called the Agape, or love feast.  Bread and fish were eaten.  Sometimes water and wine were added.  Gives the key to the fish and the bread miracles.

Jonah, a symbol of voluntary descent into hell, Sheol, by their communing with the fish and successfully making his way out of the fish.  Has eaten some of the Cosmic Fish, is reborn, and sits under a tree.  Resting under your own tree . . . Paradise.  If he (Jonah) is one who ventures death in the lower regions for the purpose of rebirth, and remains in it for three cycles, we see why Jesus refers to him as the preliminary type in the Old Testament of what he was himself to do.  It was part of his task to follow the Pattern as told in the story.

The literal story is merely an allegory, but, understood, it becomes illustrative of a process on another plane.  The work to be accomplished is first designed by Jonah; hence he was drawn upon by Jesus……a chapter of dramatization.  Therefore Jonah is the “sign” for which people are looking, and to it Jesus refers.

Thus you will know why the old priests of Chaldea were fish priests.  Tradition of Oannes.  Because it is mystically true.  Therefore, to eat of the fish when you are down in the belly of the lower worlds is to come out reborn.  That is what the Queen of Sheba sought.

The story of Jonah is an imperfect version of a ceremony of initiation.  Death to the old and rebirth.  With initiation, two things take place: one is investiture (in this case the fish skin); (2) the giving of a new name.  Name, in all philosophical and mystical literature, is to be more or less equated with nature.  After descent into the lower regions, and rebirth, there is a new nature recognized externally, and literalized in the taking of a new name.

The life-giving water of rebirth is often expressed, in the substance side, by fish.  Fish become the product of the water.  And therefore to eat of fish is to eat the very essence of the water, as substance.  That is why, in the agape, the eating of fish was so important.

Jonah not a man, but an illustration of a neophyte, – one who seeks rebirth, – who is to become a priest, and first of all a sun-priest.

Be careful to separate from it legend, story and mystical fact.

The descent to the womb must be done voluntarily, – as Jonah asked to be thrown overboard.  A second value: that Jesus took it as the prototype of his own descent.

In a lesser sense, all touching (?) of water is some kind of rebirth.  Baptism.  A few of the heroes who descended and won some degree of rebirth are: Orpheus, Zoroaster, Osiris, Horus, Dionysius, Hercules, Baldur, Quetzalcoatl.

 

 

Jonah and the Whale

illustration of a legend

MBM   February 14, 1946

A legend tells the story of some important fact in mystical lore.  Usually involves a hero or heroine, and circumstances and events, but it is garbled, subject to all the difficulties of travel through folklore, telling and re-telling, and may get very far from the source.  An illustration of that is “Jonah and the Whale.”

Jonah is sometimes considered one of the prophets.  One of the most controversial matters in the whole Bible.  It also illustrates how a story can be misused, and then get so far away from its source that you won’t know its source and you will misread it.  The clue to the understanding of the Jonah story is in the second chapter.

About 600 B.C., after the captivity in the Mesopotamian Valley, whoever wrote it was affected by the fish lore in Asia.

”Fish” Teachers, – mysteries of the fish Teachers from way back.  Oannes, who was said to dwell in the sea, and came to shore and taught the people everything they knew, from writing, and manufacturing, and the arts, – and went into the sea again every night.

Vishnu.  One avatar was a fish.

In Mesopotamia, where Oannes came from, they celebrated the New Year in March.  And just before the sign of March, or Aries, is the sign of Pisces.  Their new beginnings emerged out of the fish.

In the city to which Jonah was sent the fish lore was strong.  He was sent to the city of Nineveh.   Was recognized in the old sacred lore as the House of the Fish.  Old foundation stone below Jerusalem is called the Cave of Souls.  (not found yet.)  Something of the same sort in European tradition.  The old idea of the underworld is in some places below a temple.  (In Egypt: Isis sometimes seen as a fish goddess.)

Who is Jonah?  To get some of it you will have to discard much of the story, and read in Chapter II.  Our story double-crosses itself.  A great deal of fish lore is drenched with Mesopotamian teachings.  Symbolic.  In certain phases of the old lore the journey through life was seen as a passing through the sea of life.

At the time when the candidate is ready for the final tests there is a recapitulation in the Mysteries.  The story of Jonah is the story of a candidate for initiation who recapitulates the struggles, – his descent into the lower places; hence down into the underworld; hence at the bottom of the mountain.  Until, in the mystical code, he has found the fish, and is swallowed by the fish.

In those three days, corresponding to body, heart and mind, he recapitulates the journey through the ages.  He is again in hell — in the belly of the whale.  If he remembers, and recalls, and can make his way out, he calls unto his God and is released.  Belly and hell usually the same.  In the Jewish: the underworld of initiation, where the tests are applied, and where it is seen whether the candidate can emerge.

Symbol of the mystical teachings which were taught at Nineveh, the glyph of the fish.  Many of the wise men of the ages had access to the Mysteries of Mesopotamia.

(The legend) has nothing to do with a fish, a boat, or being vomited out on dry land.  A distorted story, containing a truth.  The few revere it and take (?) the letter of the law for the spirit.  And I must next come to find out what it really means.

The twelve stages of the night, Tuat in the Egyptian.  When you have made your tests you are freed, or spewed out by the whale.  Wisdom — and also a lot of rubbish.

A profound truth regarding the evolution of man, and the recapitulation at the end, to see if he knows what he has lived through.  A great mystical fact.  Then comes the appropriation of that, and it gets mixed up with a muddle of other things.  Has nothing to do with losing the body.

Symbolism of the fish  The fish, especially the great fish Leviathan, is a symbol of the immensity assembled, – of the value of the sea of life, as the fish is the life in the sea, and becomes food for man, etc.  So, mystically and occultly, the fish becomes the symbol of something else on other planes of being.  So the great Fish is the summation; therefore a symbol of the mystical, or occult, fish.  A state of being, not a physical fish.

     A fish is, in a way, the essence of the sea — the Great Fish, the essence of that in totality.  To go down into that is to go into the place of testing — earth.  Re-birth.  Assimilated it, you become a fish.  Later you may become a fish priest.

As soon as anyone makes a flat statement about any of these things you can know that they are wrong.

. . . . .

Question re leaving the body.  As in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, there are just as many different ways of leaving the physical as you can possibly imagine.  Which you will use will depend on your condition.  Most people are very simple.  In different stages different things occur.

Re legends:  Legends have to do with mystical, or occult, truths.  May have been (about) real people, but built up, so that more and more the idea comes out clear.  Sometimes it is garbled.  I wanted to illustrate a legend.

. . . . .

The World Tree, in the Norse, a blueprint of Creation