Peter, James and John, Page 15

POINT #6: Judas Iscariot and Lazarus/John

What can be said about the “Name” “Iscariot”? It seems clearly to be a zodiacal identification, whatever other associations it might possibly have had. Without the benefit of anthroposophical sight, we can understand why it has not yet been recognized by traditional theology. However, in a sense it has. One Schwarz appears to have listed nine different possible interpretations, which are divided into four groups by 3 ABD 1091, “Judas Iscariot.” The first group so listed is a circle known as the “Sicarii: dagger-wielding assassins.” There is an obvious conceptual connection between this idea and that of the scorpion, and the essential root of both words seems both to reveal and to confirm the deeper meaning. We can see an obvious similarity between the “scar” in Iscariot and the “scor” in scorpion. And the death connection is probably carried over from ancient times in those words deriving from the Latin “caro” (flesh), such as carrion, carnage, carnal and carnivorous.

But in the spine-tingling category, we see a connection made by Paul that can give one a sense of inner certainty. In the fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians, so filled from start to finish with deep esoteric meaning, we find two very pertinent concepts joined in a way that brings the John beings into the picture. We have in vs 55, “O death, where is thy sting?” “Death” is represented by the First Adam (vss 21-22), the “sting” of the zodiacal Scorpion. But the zodiacal Scorpion has a higher counterpart, the zodiacal Eagle. The Christ is clearly shown in John’s Gospel to be the higher “I Am.” The Second Adam, as we saw in “The Nativity,” incarnated as a “conditional Ego” in the “Three Bodies” of the Nathan Jesus Child, which “bodies” would eventually house, i.e., compose the Temple of, the Christ Spirit at age “Thirty.” Thus, as will also be seen in “First and Second Adam,” we have “death/life” as the counterpart of the zodiacal “Scorpion/Eagle.” And we shall see in “Pillars on the Journey” below that “Adam, the son of God” (Lk 3,38) is the same Individuality present in John the Baptist. Thus not only is the higher “I Am” recognized by the Eagle Evangelist, Lazarus who thus had to become “John,” but the lower “I Am,” the “first Adam,” is also represented by a “John.”

Nor have we yet exhausted Paul’s clues in Chapter 15, even on this narrow point. To see another, we must note the connection of the “Trumpet” (see herein) vs 52 with the passage about the “sting” and “death,” and then note that in Rev 9,5,6,10 Lazarus/John says that at the sound of the fifth “Trumpet” those who do not have the appropriate seal upon their “Forehead” will suffer torture like the “sting” of a scorpion and “will seek death.” See the Commentary on Revelation (condensed in “Alpha and Omega > Creation and Apocalypse,” Vol. 2) to appreciate how precisely this accords with what is said here.

As against the Scorpion (Iscariot), the character of the Eagle (Lazarus/ John) is seen to represent exalting heights. Thus, in 2 Sam 1,23 (of Saul and Jonathan), “they were swifter than eagles”; Ps 103,5, “so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s”; Is 40,31, “they shall mount up with wings like eagles”; Jer 49,16, those who “nest as high as the eagles”; Prov 30,19a, “the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock” (here note, in “wisdom,” the polarity of their natures); Prov 23,5, “flying like an eagle toward heaven”; Obad 1,4, “Though you soar aloft like the eagle”; Rev 8,13, “and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice, as it flew in midheaven”; Rev 12,14, “But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle that she might fly from the serpent” (again note the polarity of their natures). For an excellent discussion of the “living images” of the zodiacal signs of the Scorpion and the Eagle, see pp. 32 and 38 of IZOD.