Mary Magdalene The Illuminator (v5.0)

by William Henry

  The Pool of Siloam (same as Shiloah) was built near the ancient community that was built around the “serpent-stone”, called Zoheleth. I was excited to learn it is the site of the legendary Tower of Siloam, whose collapse is discussed by Jesus in the Gospel of John9:7 during a discourse on the problem of evil and how disaster can strike both the just and the unjust with equal ferocity. This is the only time this Tower (Pole or Pool) is mentioned. It must be significant even though the loss of life was not enormous. Eighteen people were killed. Therefore, it seems to me that another symbolic meaning to this Tower is inferred. Interestingly, the story of the collapse of this Tower rang in churches across America after the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9-11.

  Wells are feminine, and it is likely the feminine principle was the object of adoration at Siloam. It is highly significant that the Tower of Siloam was located at the serpent-stone. The Celts of Ireland and the Hopi of Arizona are two examples of cultures that associate the serpent with healing springs or holy wells. The Hopi refer to round towers as “snake houses”. Over 65 round towers, many rising over 100 feet high, spring from the countryside of Ireland. In Sacred Geometry, Nigel Pennick explains the symbolism of the circular form: “Like the Pagan temples, the round churches were microcosms of the world. In the late Middle Ages, they became the prerogative of an enigmatic and heretical sect, the Knights Templar. The round form of the church became especially connected with the order...”

  In Jesus, Last of the Pharaohs, Ralph Ellis avers that round towers were modeled after the Egyptian Benben tower located in the Phoenix Temple at Heliopolis. He also links the round tower with the Pillar of Osiris. We will explore the Benben tower and the Pillar of Osiris momentarily.

  I believe the symbolic core of this tower story is suggested by the definition of Siloam: “sent” or “sending.” Sent means ‘to cause to be conveyed by an intermediary to a destination’. It means ‘to move’. This is useful to us as mag is the Sumerian word for move. Was the Tower of Siloam a tower/magdala center, , for ‘sending’ or ‘moving’ or ‘conveying’?

  Synonyms for send include forward, route, and ship. It is also a broadcast term meaning to emit or transmit. Send forth means to discharge material, as vapor or fumes: emit, give, give forth. It also means to demand to appear, come, or assemble: call.

  The accumulation of these meanings sends me thinking. I wonder if this ambiguous Tower of Siloam and the Pool (Pole) was a place where 18 people were physically delivered elsewhere, as for instance, through some sort of porthole, . Of course, this sounds simply too good to be true.

  Alternatively, I wonder, could Siloam have been a place where a transmitting tower was located that emitted a vapor from underground that sent a scent that sent one elsewhere, spiritually speaking? Oracle centers, such as the goddess’ at Delphi, emitted a supernatural vapor after all. According to the principles of feng shui, the round pagoda towers of Buddhism traps negative ch’i, or dragon energy located in the earth. Those of India, called stupas (Sanskrit, = mound) are chiefly pyramidal (conical) structures of masonry, tapering to an apex and elaborately adorned with carving and sculpture. Christian steeples spiraling chi through its spire (pole) perform the same function as the stupa (–steeple).

  Might Silo-am have been a covered pit – an underground silo – or an above ground storage tower for storing sacred energy? Did Jesus know this? Is this why Jesus packed the man’s eyes with mud made from his spit and sent him to the Tower of Siloam?

  The interchange of Pole (Pool) and Tower brings up an important question. What, exactly, was pooled in the pool Jesus ordered the blind the man to bathe in? Could it have been a holy liquid like that harvested from the tower in the Babylonian depiction?

  The Hindu Vedas proclaim that “all healing power is in the waters” (= and ). The well of water at Siloam obviously made the blind man well. Well, what do you know? We found one poetic meaning of well.

  What is in the fish man’s pail?

  It is well worth noting that in Ireland there is a reference in the Well of Kilmore to mystical fishes. An old Druid writer sayd, “They do call the said fishes Easa Seant, that is to say, holie fishes.” Easa contains the name E.A., the holy fish god.

  For those who are willing, a magnificent pun wells up or arises from Easa Seant (holy fishes). It is phonetically the same as Issa Sent. Saint Issa is the Buddhist name for Jesus. Therefore Ea-sa Sent and Issa Sent are both names for the saintly mystical fish.

  Jesus carries a lamb and a cauldron or pail.

  A pool is usually associated with standing water (rain water) or other liquid. Here, we are talking about a mystical story. In this context suppose the holy water of the Tower at Salaom was a cosmic healing energy or vibration – standing waves – that ‘pooled’, congealed or focused around the tower. Now, suppose this tower broadcast this healing frequency, which triggered the release of a milky fluid (the cerebral spinal fluid) from within the brain that filled the network of hollow spaces (empty pools), called ventricles, inside the brain.

  A hypothesis: Visitors to this Tower of Siloam ‘saw the light’. The removal of the impenetrable veil, which shrouded the mysteries, was removed at this well. They were, well, cured of ‘blindness’. They were illumined.

  I’ll bet that when the blind bathed in the Pool or Tower of Siloam it made the hair stand up on their arms. Their pineal glands were also activated, the third eye opened. Both the retina and the pineal gland are equipped with photoreceptor cells and may be considered photosensitive organs. This energy may have entered the pathways to the brain through the retina (which I have proposed is Jacob’s Ladder) and it charged or ‘lit’ the wick of the pineal gland resulting in activation of latent psychic and spiritual processes. Mind can do every thing including so-called miracles. Stimulated properly the pineal gland can revitalize body, it can heal diseases and it can manipulate laws of physics.

  Ultimately, Jesus’ salve or salivation brought about salvation, a-tone-ment, at-one-ment or atonement. As the word ment is derived from the Latin mentis meaning mind, right here we have the complete explanation of purpose of this substance. It manifests one mind, the Christ Mind and In Sight. The Christ Mind creates a state of mind, oneness, with all creation. We become mystical fish bathing in the pool of living waters. Well, that’s my take anyway.

  3.

  THE BIRD OF LIGHT AND THE ROUND TOWER

  With our understanding that the cosmic or living waters are subtle vibrations from cosmic rays, it is instructive to note that the Egyptians portrayed the phoenix as the heron, the bird of light.

  According to Egyptian legend, at the dawn of each new age the heron would alight from the “Isle of Fire” and land on top of a tall pillar, at Heliopolis. From its outstretched arms it would radiate light. It would then deliver a teaching, symbolized by the key of life, , that would transform humans into herons. This did not mean they transformed into birds. Rather, it meant they became phoenix, the people of the light. In Egyptian baptismal scenes the key of life was portrayed falling like ‘water’. Later, it became the symbol for Venus.

  The hieroglyph of the heron, , called shen, is easily seen as the inspiration for the Christian fish symbol of sal-va-shen (salvation). This answers to the strange mystic Jewish ‘slave nation’s’ association of the living waters (or cosmic rays) with the fish. (Interestingly, the English word pool comes from the French poule, hen. Jesus is the father hen who gathers his chicks.)

  Is the heron atop the Magdala Tower Note the 3 rays the pole is emitting on the right.

  Intriguingly, the Egyptian hieroglyph for the shepherd shows a figure holding a pole with the heron glyph attached . The Bear people were called Shepherds. To me, this figure also resembles a ‘fisher man’ with a fishing rod or pole on its shoulder. Figuratively speaking, this figure has fished the mystical key of life out of the cosmic ocean. As the Good Shepherd Jesus embodied these characteristics and then taught others how to become mystical fish too.

  In The Healing Sun Code,
I concluded that the phoenix/heron legend probably originated with the appearance of a light from the heronry, the center of our galaxy, the Core the Mayans called ‘the place of herons’. The Druids called this center Tula, a Sanskrit word that means ‘balance’. Tula, Toowa, Tua, Tala, Tara, Towa, Torah, Tor, and Tower are resonant terms. While modern science considers the galactic center a star nursery, ancient tradition reveals it is a soul nursery. This mother of cosmic energy is the likely intermediary of the life-giving “Living Waters” spring of Ursa Major. It appears the Egyptians discovered the key to utilize the Light of the Mother to cure the human condition. So did Jesus. They considered it the prima material, the original mother matter of the universe. This Love-Light apparently provided nourishment, a speculation deduced by the fact that the key of life symbol that represented this nourishment was often accompanied by a conical shaped hieroglyph meaning ‘bread’, ‘manna’.

  The Egyptian key of life and bread symbol.

  The legend of the phoenix was connected with the ultra-mysterious benben stone, a conical-shaped stone containing cosmic rays the ancient Egyptians regarded as a cosmic emissary, the embodiment of the Divine Word. The benben, like the tower is a symbol of ascent or a-shen-shen. This was secreted away at Heliopolis before it disappeared around the time that the pyramids were built.

  The benben, like the tower is a symbol of ascent or a-shen-shen. Ascension. Transformation. Evolution. These are alchemical concepts.

  On the previous page we see a drawing of a tower that appears to illustrate the hieroglyph of Heliopolis. A ben ben, the conical stone or egg of the phoenix or heron tops this tower. This masterpiece tower was etched onto a gold plate made by Nubian goldsmiths and given to King Tutankhamun, who is the son or nephew of Akhenaton and Nefertiti.

  I am intrigued by the repetition of the syllable bon (good=god) or ben. A cone matching the ben ben also appears in the East on the top of a sacred tower called Meru featured on the next few pages. Meru is the name of the celestial mountain, fountain, pillar or cosmic axis where the gods and the highest celestial beings dwell. This sounds like the galactic center. Like the ben ben atop the tower of Heliopolis, a ‘ring’ atop a ‘cone’ , symbolized Meru. It is circular, and formed like a cone.

  As we will explore momentarily, the Tower of Babel, the Gate of Heaven, was built by Nimrod in ancient Su-Mer or Su-Meru to replace the broken cosmic axis Meru and by its access to ascend, like Jack up the ‘bean stalk’, to the abode of gods. Turning to Buddhist imagery we find a remarkable image of Meru. As we can see on the next page, the Meru pillar is strikingly similar to the human skeletal system, the bones.

  Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament, says we were created in God’s image. When the Meru drawing is compared to the human skeletal system it reveals our bones represent the ladder of stairway to heaven.

  Meditate on this. Meru from a second century Chinese manuscript. A rendering of this object in 3-D by digital artist Jack Andrews.

  The ben bens or cones atop the towers are a virtual match for one another.

  Followers of Bon-Po shamans of Tibet’s pre-Buddhist, shamanistic religion, revere Mount Meru as the center of their religion. Located in the center of Shambhalla it is a gateway between the lower worlds and the higher worlds. As I have written in several articles published in Atlantis Rising magazine and available at my website, williamhenry.net, the Meru diagram resembles a particle accelerator. Physicists envision constructing giant, space-based accelerators to open holes in space. As such, Meru can be thought of as a conduit through which ascended humans (‘mystical fish’) ascend to the heavens.

  One can see that the Meru drawing is an axis that resembles an antenna. It is a ‘Fish Tower’. So too is the temple bones of the human body. MM’s connection to the Fish Tower brings us to the possibility that she knew the secrets of this ladder or Stairway to Heaven. I will have much more to say about this possibility momentarily.

  MAR, MER, MARY, MERRY, MERY, MERI

  As noted, Mer is an Egyptian word for both “waters” and “mother-love”. The Greek name ‘Mary’ is from the Egyptian ‘Mery’ meaning ‘beloved’. Today, merry means cheerful. Synonyms are vivacious, lively and blithe, which is the word from which comes bliss. In between the Greek Mary and the Egyptian Mery was the Hebrew ‘Miriam’ (Meer-yahm), the name (title) of the prophetess and sister of Moses and Aaron in Exodus 15:21. It meant: “wished for child,” “bitter” or “rebellious”. Resonant Egyptian names include Meryamon (Beloved of Amon) and Merytaten (Beloved of Aten).

  In her book, Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Barbara Thiering reveals that the Magdalene was called Mary as a title, not a name. This tradition is upheld to this day in the Catholic faith by nuns who are called Sister Mary, such and such.

  The name ‘Miriam’ was applied to Essene women who were prophetesses. In Greek it became Maria, Mary. The title, notes Thiering, was used of all women in the order who were the brides of the David kings.

  This title connects Mary Magdalene to an ancient tradition of Mary goddesses who held or preserved sacred wisdom... especially that related to the Fish Tower. Before she was initiated by Jesus she had already mastered the school of Isis and Istar.

  Even at the time of Jesus and Mary Magdalene Mary was not a personal name. It was a title of distinction (like ‘Jesus Christ’, which is a title meaning ‘Anointed Savior’). This explains the confusion among the three Marys (Miryams or Maryams) who play such prominent roles in the Gospel story. In Egyptian form the title Mery Magdalen is Beloved Tower or Beloved of the Fish Tower. The Meru Pillar, I propose, is a prime example this Tower.

  The Mary, the Magdalene, was a priestess. That much is certain. But now, the question becomes where (or what) is her temple tower? We will endeavor to answer this question in the next chapter.

  4.

  MAGDALENE =153

  Shedding further light on the ‘Fish Tower’ of Magdala is the contemplative Magdalene scholar Margaret Starbird. In her volume The Goddess in the Gospels she makes a fascinating study of the numbers coded by the number coding of the Greek version of Mary Magdalene’s name. Using gematria or “numbers theology” of the Hellenistic world, numbers were coded in the New Testament that were based on the ancient canon (‘sacred rule’) of sacred geometry derived by the Pythagoreans centuries before. In Greek gematria the Greek epithet “h Magdalhnh” bears the number 153, a profoundly important number. This number indicates that Mary Magdalene was the “Fish Goddess” among early Christians.

  There is also a deep connection between the number of the fish, 153, and the tower or church. In Micah 4:8, for instance, the stronghold of the infant church is called the Tower of Flock. The Hebrew word for “Tower of the Flock” is “Migdal Eder”. From the phonetic similarity of the two titles it is claimed that Mary Magdalene was the Migdal Eder, or tower of the church. Some believe prophecy declares that one day she will have a special place of dominion within the restored Kingdom: “And you, O (tower of the flock) the stronghold of the daughter of Zion, to you shall it come, even the former dominion shall come, the kingdom of the daughter Jerusalem.” (Others believe Jesus is the Tower of the Flock.)

  153 is the end product of threes. 51 times 3 = 153. Three being the triangle number, the digital root number, the Trinity number.

  Archimedes (c. 287-212 B.C.) in his treatise On the Measurement of the Circle uses the number ratio 153:265 as a mathematical shorthand for the “measure of the fish” or the vesica piscis (more momentarily). It is presumed that any ancient reader skilled in mathematics would have immediately recognized the higher meaning encoded in any story featuring this number.

  Christian Sacred Geometry scholar David Fideler notes in Jesus Christ: Sun of God that 153 is associated with the symbolism of the sun god Apollo at Delphi, the most famous oracle of ancient Greece. Delphi was revered throughout the Greek world as the site of the omphalos stone, the navel or womb center (Meru means center) of the universe.

  According to
Greek legend, Apollo, the Sun god (Sol god or Soul god) who founded the great Temple at Delphi, usually took the form of a serpent. In the bible he is Apollyon, the “angel of the bottomless pit” in Revelation 9:11. However, it was in the guise of a dolphin, that Apollo led thither a crew of Cretan mariners. (In Ireland the sun god is called Fin.) Upon reaching the sands of Krisa (= the brain sand of the pineal and the Christ Mind?), Apollo leapt from the vessel (the skull?) like a star, whilst sparks of light (glow rays) streamed from him till their radiance reached the heavens. Hastening to his Sanctuary, he lit a fire and returned to the astonished mariners in his earlier form as a beautiful youth. He taught that if they chose the right words, the right thoughts and the right actions their name would be known throughout the world as the guardians of Apollo’s shrine. In the inner hestia or hearth of the Temple of Delphic Apollo an eternal flame burned.

  This “god” was likely embodied as an individual, or more likely, as a group of individuals who formed a school of scholars. One later master of this school was Pythagoras of Crotona. It is widely believed by students of esoteric Christianity that the Essenes were organized to retrieve and revive the works of Pythagoras (and Apollo). This body of knowledge included works from the Egyptian and Babylonian Mystery Schools, as well as the Eleusianian Mysteries and the Mysteries of Isis at Thebes.

  As this number system predates Christianity it is hypothesized that Mary’s epithet ‘Magdalene’ was chosen to resonate with concepts previously assigned to the number 153, including the vesica, the omphalos, the god of light, the eternal flame and the “womb-fish”. By following this path we recognize her as an initiate of Pythagoras.