The Keys to Prophecy VII: A New Heaven, a New Earth

721 words

© Anthony E. Larson, 2005

The Keys to Prophecy VII:

A New Heaven, a New Earth

Our culture knows nothing of the incredible changes wrought in the heavens anciently.  This is so because of our ‘scientific’ view that there have been no significant changes in the solar system’s arrangement during recorded history.

But the scriptures and the prophets are insistent, in spite of our ‘scientific’ beliefs:  The heavens have repeatedly changed throughout ancient history.  This is a primary message the ancients and the prophets sought to convey to us across the millennia.

The result: Our modern ignorance of the true past blinds us to the unanimous declarations of our distant ancestors.

The concept of sweeping changes in the sky and the earth are found everywhere in the scriptures.  For example, in the Doctrine & Covenants we read: “And the end shall come, and the heaven and the earth shall be consumed and pass away, and there shall be a new heaven and a new earth.

“For all old things shall pass away, and all things shall become new, even the heaven and the earth, and all the fullness thereof, both men and beasts, the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea.” (D&C 29:23, 24.)

Also, “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. (Revelation 21:1.)

Perhaps the apostle Peter said it best when he spoke of the Deluge, explaining that it was the defining event that changed the ‘old heavens’ into the sky we see today.  “For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water.  Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:  But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.”  (2 Peter 3:5-7.)

Then, he went on to further explain that a similar change was in store for us in the last days.  “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.”  (Ibid. 3:10.)

We read the same sort of language in the texts of all ancient cultures, where we find the pervasive, ever-present fear that something terrible that happened in the past would repeat itself in the future.  Indeed, all ancient cultures relate that there have been dramatic changes in the heavens, calling the epochs in between “ages” or “suns.”  The Greek philosopher Hesiod associates these ages with various metals, as does Daniel in his Old Testament vision of the statue with a head of gold, a torso of silver, belly and thighs of brass and legs of iron.

These fearsome changes were universally attributed to stars or planets in the form of gods, goddesses, beasts or serpents.  Surely, then, Joseph Smith was correct to call these images of the ancients “stars” and “planets,” as we have seen.

Even our language retains this key.  The words for world-changing cataclysms are catastrophe (cat-astro-phe) and disaster (dis-aster).  Both bear the same ‘astr’ root as the goddess-stars of antiquity: Aster, Astarte, Ashtoreth or Hathor.  In fact, one interpretation of the word “disaster” is literally “from the star.”

This the ancients feared above all: destruction from the stars that changed everything.

No wonder they were fiercely dedicated sky watchers, including prophets like Abraham, preoccupied with the motions of planets and stars.  No wonder they endlessly adorned their texts, temples and tombs with symbols and metaphors of star gods, goddesses and beasts derived from the appearance of those planets.

But because our culture and science turn a blind eye to these declarations, Latter-day Saints frequently fail to appreciate the many statements by Joseph Smith that echo the beliefs of the ancients: Planets and stars are the origins of almost all scriptural and prophetic imagery.

 Stars and planets on the Salt Lake Temple reflect an ancient, customary obsession with the heavens.  On the west wall buttresses, near the bottom of the photo are Sun Stones.  In the middle are the stars of the constellation Ursa Major, the Big Dipper.  Immediately above those is a repeated pattern of circles within a ring, called Saturn Stones by Brigham Young.

That’s why those images dominate the exterior of LDS temples, just as they did their ancient counterparts.  Our temples reflect both realities, the past and the present heavens.

The prophets, both ancient and modern, understood this key.  So should we.

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The Keys to Prophecy VI: A Great Star

790 words

© Anthony E. Larson, 2006

The Keys to Prophecy VI:

A Great Star

If we look closely at the images venerated by the ancients from the point of view that they may have been inspired by planets standing in close proximity to the Earth, we see them with new eyes.  And because we adopt this view, we can read the explanations of symbols on Egyptian papyri by the prophet Joseph Smith with a fresh perspective that also gives an entirely new dynamic to the imagery of prophecy.

This key is crucial because ancient sky gazers the world over drew remarkably similar pictures and offered stunningly similar descriptions of things that do not exist in our sky, though this vital truth has not been generally recognized.

Amazingly, when we heed Joseph Smith’s hints that the gods, goddesses, beasts and other images of antiquity all found their inspiration in Earth’s ancient heavens, some of the most mysterious icons suddenly appear to be virtual snapshots of what the ancients saw in Earth’s skies.

The star-in-crescent symbol, for example, so dominant in ancient symbology, appears to be a combination or blending of two astral elements: One is the sunlit limb of a planet; the other is an aurora-like discharge from another planet.

These images of “stars” look nothing like things seen in our present heavens.  Yet, Joseph Smith implied that these are the planets and stars of antiquity.

Hence, the confusion of a star/planet symbol with the moon and stars is natural.  The only heavenly object we see today with a bright crescent is the moon.  But if other planets hovered near the Earth anciently, they would have also manifested this same crescent feature.

Certainly, the lighted crescent on the limb of neighboring planets became the basis for a multitude of symbols: the horns of a bovine, the crescent-shaped ship of heaven or the outspread wings of a bird, three of the most common symbols in ancient iconography-all seen in the Joseph Smith papyri as well as in apocalyptic and prophetic imagery.

If the planetary god’s crescent looked like outspread wings, then it could properly be described as a great heavenly bird and subsequently illustrated as a hawk or eagle.

Of course, its planetary disk is displayed over its head as well so there is no mistaking where the image originated.  This is precisely what we see in the ancient symbols.

If the planetary god’s or goddess’ crescent was seen as horns, he or she could be depicted as the bull or cow of heaven, a commonplace description in ancient texts of gods and goddesses.  For emphasis, again the planetary disk is set between the horns.

If the planet’s crescent appeared to be a ship carrying the planet around heaven, then the god-with a disk over his head, naturally-would be depicted sitting on the ship of heaven.  This, too, was a nearly universal depiction in Egyptian iconography.

Significantly, these same images, and many more like them, can be seen in the Joseph Smith Facsimile No.2, where they are most often called stars or planets.

Moreover, there must have been much more involved anciently than the simple, pacific presence of large orbs in the sky.  They must have been active, changing, interacting and dynamic powers to evoke the expressions they inspired.

For example, Sumerian texts celebrate the “terrifying glory” of Inanna (Ishtar, Astarte, Venus), invoking the goddess as “the Light of the World,” “the Amazement of the Lands,” “the Radiant Star,” “Great Light,” and “Queen of Heaven.”  The texts depict the goddess “clothed in radiance.”  And it was said that the world stood in “fear and trembling at [her] tempestuous radiance.”

Thus, we get the picture from the texts and the illustrations of a discharging planet, emitting aurora-like rays that form the basis for all ‘star’ imagery of antiquity.

The Sumerian “Exaltation of Inanna” says, “I want to address my greeting to her who fills the sky with her pure blaze, to the luminous one, to Inanna, as bright as the sun, to the great queen of heaven.

“You make the heavens tremble and the earth quake.  Great Priestess, who can soothe your troubled heart?  You flash like lightning over the highlands; you throw your firebrands across the earth.  Your deafening command…splits apart great mountains.”

An illustration taken from an Akkadian cylinder seal shows Ishtar (star) and her symbol, a planet with aurora-like discharge.

The wheel symbol of the Babylonian god Shamash (Sun) looks nothing like the Sun and further illustrates the discharge streamer or star idea.

Both the texts and the images of the ancients tell the same story, each complimenting the other.

In fact, this more fully explains why stars and planets were interchangeable in the ancient mind: In antiquity, a great, nearby planet metamorphosed into a brilliant, awe-inspiring object that earthlings chose to call “star.”  This alone explains the graphic language and the myriad star symbols used by the ancients for their star goddesses.

This also explains why all the ‘star’ icons, familiar to cultures worldwide, look nothing like the mere pinpoints of light in the night sky that we designate as stars.

No wonder Joseph explained that all these archaic images were either stars or planets.  They were!

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The Keys to Prophecy V: Stars and Planets

758 words

© Anthony E. Larson, 2005

 The Keys to Prophecy V:

Stars and Planets

Up to this point in our examination of the many clues to the extravagant images of prophecy, we have learned that we need not look to mystical texts or veiled mysteries for our answers.  Nor have we found that the answers lie in interpreting prophetic imagery with modern eyes.

Instead, we have found the answers in a more mundane source, in the scriptures and in ancient history-evidence that has been hiding in plain sight all along.

We discovered that the dragons, man-beasts, women, kings, angels, stars and other extravagant images encountered in the scriptures are but descriptive word pictures of the images that the ancients worshipped, the same icons seen in ancient temples, tombs and monuments.  We have seen that the imagery of prophecy and mythology spring from the same, ancient source, hence their similarities.

The next step is a bit larger leap of logic, but a crucial one: What do those images represent?

Looking at the Egyptian gods, we often see large circular icons on their heads, what scholars call “sun disks.”  The juxtaposition of the disks and the gods is extremely meaningful.

A common Egyptian theme, Ra (Re) is pictured seated in a bark or ship with a disk above his head.  This same scene can be seen on Facsimile No. 2, Figure 3, in the Book of Abraham.

Scholars explain that the ancients were sun worshippers, so those disks must represent the sun.  However, Joseph Smith contradicted that assumption when he gave us another key, and it has been before our very eyes for generations now.

Those disks and creatures, as Joseph repeatedly asserts in his explanations of the Pearl of Great Price facsimiles, represented planets and stars, not the sun.  The only exception is in Figure 5 in Facsimile No. 2, first called by Joseph a “governing planet.”  He then adds the comment that the Egyptians called it the Sun, which is true of the late, corrupted Egyptian traditions his papyrus represented.  But according to the earliest beliefs, her name designates this cow goddess as a star.

The cow depicted in Figure 5 was called Hathor, as we have seen.  Along with her equivalents in other cultures-Astarte, Aster and Ishtar-her name bore the root ‘s-t-r’ sound of our word ‘star’ (the ‘s’ and ‘t’ were pronounced with the ‘th’ sound in Hathor.) 

Keep in mind that the ancients’ designated all celestial objects as stars.  The word ‘planet’ (derived from the Greek ‘planeta,’ meaning ‘wanderer’) is a recent invention, thanks to the telescope that allows us to differentiate between stars and planets. 

Hence, Joseph Smith’s designation of a ‘s-t-r’ goddess as a planet is symbolically consistent and extremely meaningful.  He thus implies that the stars they worshipped were actually planets, the very thing the juxtaposed disks suggest.

Putting both the creature and the disk together-common practice in early Egyptian religious art-was symbolically accurate and a proper way to emphasize that they both represented the same thing, a planet or star.  In fact, this was a functional way to label the figures, since most people were illiterate.  Instead of text that read “star,” those pagan gods often carried or wore a symbol that bespoke their astral origin.

Some of the more elaborately rendered disk images, painted and rendered in relief, look to be nearly virtual snapshots of planets, a few complete with a sun-lit crescent.

Joseph Smith’s explanation of disk images such as these was that they represented planets, which is what all such Egyptian disk images resemble.

Let’s look closely at how emphatic Joseph Smith was in his explanations of these disks and creatures.

Kolob is said by Abraham to be “the greatest” of the stars (Kokaubeam), but it is represented in Facsimile No. 2, Figure 1 by a figure Egyptologists identify as Amon-Re or Khnum, the creator-god, thus implying that the god was an astral body.

The baboons on either side have what scholars call “moon disks,” presumably because of the crescent beneath the disk, placed over their heads in the traditional Egyptian manner.  But these disks do not represent the moon any more than others represent the sun.  Joseph insists that they are stars in his explanation of Figure 5.

What becomes clear is that the objects the early Egyptians called stars would be called planets in our time.  What we see in the disk illustrations are not stars, but planets.  Additionally, only planets have sun-lit crescents, as depicted in ancient art, not stars.

Joseph Smith understood.  He did not confuse the issue, as do modern scholars.  Indeed, one can suggest that what looks like confusion at first blush was no mix-up at all.  By freely substituting the two terms, Joseph honored the ancient tradition.  He acknowledged the ancients’ reality that some of today’s stars, now mere pinpoints of light, were actually great, nearby planets in antiquity, which dominated Earth’s heavens and were worshipped by their ancestors as gods.

Indeed, this hypothesis fits much better with Abraham’s vision of the ancient heavens and Joseph Smith’s explanations of the facsimile images than any current view.

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