As every statistician knows, the Greek alphabet consists of symbols like "delta" and "pi" that also work as numbers. Starbird suggests that using Greek alphanumerics to encode relevant passages, early "heretical" Christians hid verboten material in otherwise inoffensive text. Irenaeus, a church father of the 4th century who ordered the destruction of Gnostic material (such as the books found at Nag Hammadi) knew of this practice and forbade it. However, the "heretics" did not listen to him, and they hid material about the Magdalene in the New Testament - in the synoptic gospels and the mysterious Book of Revelation. Starbird says modern computers have provided scholars the means to decode these arcane messages. (She provides a Greek key you can use to interpret passages in Greek included in the book).

Hidden numbers aside, Starbird poses a question asked by other scholars - why do specific numbers appear in the books of the Bible and do they matter. For example, why were 153 fishes caught in a net (John 21:11) or why were there x number of loaves and fishes? The Book of Revelations suggests the `beast' is 666. In gemetric code, 666 = the solar principle. Starbird suggests the solar principle without a lunar principle leads to a desert. Day without night or Sol alone = "raw abusive, power, the power of the tyrant" or the male element run amuck. When the male element is combined with the female (lunar or night =1080) they form 1746 the symbolic equivalent of "the grain of mustard seed" or "the kingdom of God within." The marriage of sol and luna or masculine and feminine (1746=union of opposites) is also the gematria for "Jerusalem the city of God."

This wonderful book continues Starbird's exploration of messages about the Magdalene hidden in plain sight for two millennium. And, don't miss the land of milk and honey (it has to do with sol and luna).

http://www.amazon.com/Magdalenes-Lost-Legacy-Symbolic-Christianity/product-reviews/1591430127

Novus Ordo Seclorum

The other motto on the reverse, 'Novus Ordo Seclorum', seems to have a solar connotation. Valued at 1742, it falls between Χρυσομαλλος - Chrysomallos - at 1741 and Γνωμων - Gnomon - at 1743. The first is the name of the ram that bore the golden fleece - this was a solar symbol and pointed to Aries, the first sign of the zodiac and the start of the sun's annual journey. The latter is the upright member of a sundial (or a builder's square). The pyramid and obelisk are both types of sundial and both may represent the upright member of the god Seb.

 

The Number of Fusion
1746 is an extremely important symbol of harmony for esoteric initiates, as it represents the fusion of the solar number 666 and the lunar number 1080 (5). On the Great Seal we find both components of this number united, because 'E Pluribus' has a value of 666 and 'Novus' 1080.

A Coincidence
'Ordo Seclorum' has a value of 1369. This is suspicious as it is also the value of the letters giving the date MDCCLXXVI (1776 when counted as Roman numerals). 1369 is an important number for it represents 37 squared - and 37 is the keystone of sacred geometry in the Bible (and elsewhere). The fact that we have a square number at the base of the pyramid seems very fitting - a solid foundation. The number 37 may also signify the Hebrew words 'AVL' and 'GDL'. 'AVL' means strength, or a powerful person. 'GDL' means power or majesty. Both of these words aptly describe the potent god Seb.

In Hebrew the number 1369 very importantly denotes the phrase VRVCh ALHIM MRChPhTh AaL PhNI HMIM - 'And the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters' (Gen. 1,2). This maintains the theme of divine creation.

1776 - Date
The overtly intended date of 1776 would certainly have been chosen for numerological reasons. It, too, is factored by 37, being the product of 37 and 48. It may be intended to represent 'Jesus of Nazerus' - who has this value in English gematria (and as 888 x 2 also signifies the doubling of his first name in Greek) and Jesus is an important figure to the Freemasons. In Greek we find that the phrase Ιησους εστι λογος - Jesus is the Logos - also has this value. We notice that in Ephesians 2,20 Jesus is described as the chief corner stone in the foundation of the temple of God. (6)

The Roman numerals of the date MDCCLXXVI also generate the solar number 666. This comes about through a pattern of three pairs: MDCCLXXVI - the first red pair giving 600, the second 60 and the last 6. The intentionality of this is further indicated by the fact that the remaining numbers - MCX - give us, in a regular pattern, 1110. This is a particularly important number in gematria and signifies harmony and completion. We can also see that 666 and 1110 lie in a 3:5 ratio and therefore can signify two sides of a 3-4-5 right-angled triangle. What is the length of the missing side? It is 888 - the number of the Gnostic Ιησοθς - the stone which the builders disallowed (i Peter 2, 7).

Christian enthusiasts, ignorant of cabalistic numerology, invariably interpret the number 666 to signify the devil. This is a mistaken assumption in many respects and shows a disregard of St John's injunction that the 'number of the beast' was counted only 'for him that hath understanding'. The cabalist with understanding knows that 666 refers as much to the 'Beast' as it does to Jesus Christ. The reason for this is that the words John used were, Και ο αριθμος αυτου Χξς΄ - 'And the number of his name is 666'. These critical words have a value of 2368: this number is unambiguous to the cabalist as the value of Ιησοθς Χριστος - Jesus Christ. Was St John predicting that the great Beast might usurp the name of Jesus Christ?

It is also true that 666, as an emblem of the creative solar power in the cosmos, only becomes destructive when it is not balanced by its feminine counterpart - in this case it leads to authoritarianism and tyranny.

The Lightbringer
The combined value of 'Annuit Coeptis' and 'Novus Ordo Seclorum' is 707 + 1742 = 2449. This is the precise value of the phrase Ιησοθς Χριστος Νικα - Jesus Christ Conquers. In addition, it is almost certainly intended to signify Ο Φωσφορος (2448) - The Lightbringer / The Morning Star. Pictorially, this is represented by the blazing triangle holding the eye in the pyramid. In scriptural terms it is highly unlikely that 'Lucifer' can be entirely evil for the Bible ends with these words of Jesus (Rev. 21,16):

I am the root and offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.

Here too, we come across an original piece of Biblical gematria, because the Greek words for former part of the phrase, Η ριζα και το γενος του Δαβιδ are exactly equated (at a value of 1646) with an alternative name for the bright and morning star Φαεσφορος. (7)

 

E Pluribus Unum

When the expression is broken into its two components of 666 and 470, some very interesting symbolism emerges. For a start, the two numbers lie in the ratio of the square root of two - 666 divided by 470 is 1.417. More importantly, they signify the interplay of light and darkness.

666 is the number of the sun and points, for example, to to the Hebrew expressions ShMSh IHVH - Sun of God, or SVRTh - The spirit of the sun. 470 has the opposite symbolism because it denotes KMRIR - an eclipse. However, it also signifies light coming out of darkness because it is the value of the creative words of God, IHI AVR VIHI AVR - 'Let there be light, and there was light' (Gen 1,3). Therefore the complete phrase adds dramatic significance to the image it accompanies, because, according to the official guide, it shows 'a glory breaking through a cloud over the head of the eagle'. This means a burst of sunlight piercing the dark cloud. In Masonic terms we have the familiar motto 'Lux ex Tenebris'.

The fact that the eagle holds an olive branch in one claw and the arrows of war in the other further reinforces the idea of opposites reconciled. Out of the opposites of light and darkness, spirit and matter, male and female, comes life. Therefore it is appropriate that 470 and 666 generate 815, the number of Ζωη - Life, when set at right-angles to produce a hypotenuse with this length. The perimeter of the ensuing triangle is 470 + 666 + 815 = 1951. This number unites the Cabalistic man with the Cabalistic bride: ADM QDMVN (Adam Kadmon) and MLKVTh (Malkuth) - 1455 + 496 = 1951.

 

The Grand Total

The addition of all three mottos on the Seal gives us 3585. This measures a pentacle of side 717, enclosed in a 2368 circumference circle. 717 gives, 'BN IH' - 'Son of God'. 2368 gives Ιησοθς Χριστος - Jesus Christ. The Great Seal thus pays homage to the Gnostic and numerological Jesus Christ, secretly worshipped in Freemasonry.

 

All This And Shakespeare Too?

The Masonic symbolism of the Great Seal finds an interesting parallel in the esoteric symbolism underpinning the verse structure of Shakespeare's Sonnets. There are grounds for identifying a direct connection and thinking that Shakespeare may have been involved in the founding of the United States of America.

 http://www.masoncode.com/The%20Great%20Seal.htm

666, Amorite Giants Numerology Codex of Gematria in the Ohio Valley Earthworks

• Posted by Fritz Zimmerman on August 29, 2011 at 9:58am in Pagan Articles
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Sacred Numbers in the New Testament: Part II

by Margaret L. Starbird

Graphic Provided by Abby Willowroot

[IMAGE]

Among the ancients, the feminine principle designed to off-set the solar/masculine was also expressed as a number, 1080, the "Yin" of the ancient world: the "shady side of the mountain." The gematria for the agia pneuma, the Holy Spirit in Greek, and its anagram, gaia pneuma, the Earth spirit, is 1080. This number represented feminine values, the "moist" or "lunar" principle of relatedness and intuition expressed in art, poetry, and dreams with their emotional rather than rational content. The Greek phrase phgh sophias, "fountain of wisdom" bears gematria of 1080. Peristera, "dove," a universal totem of the Goddess and of the Holy Spirit in Christian iconography, has gematria of 801, the anagram of 1080. These examples serve to illustrate the cross-referencing of the coded numbers and phrases by the authors of the New Testament.

When the sacred numbers representing the masculine and feminine, 666 and 1080, are added together, their sum is 1746, the number that Plato equates with "Fusion." This is the "sacred union" of the opposite energies, "wedded" or "fused" together in harmony, representing the "fertilized seed" or the "cosmic egg." And this same number occurs at the very heart of Christ's teaching. "The kingdom of God" said Jesus, "is like a grain of mustard seed, which when it is planted grows into a large bush and the birds come and nest in its branches." This parable occurs in the three synoptic Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke and also in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas found in Nag Hammadi based on an earlier copy written in Greek. There is consensus that Christ used these exact words for his teaching about the reign of God. Homilies on this Gospel passage tend to focus on the bush with the birds nesting in it and so invariably miss the point of the teaching. Hidden for two thousand years is the gematria of the "grain of mustard seed"--1746. What Jesus really said to those who had "ears to hear" was that God's reign is like the harmonious balance of masculine and feminine principles expressed in the Sacred Union of 666 and 1080--the hieros gamos of the ancients.

Armed with this doctrine of the "Sacred Marriage" found at the very heart of the Christian message, I searched for other traces of the lost "partnership model" and the feminine. What I found, carefully encoded in the Gospels themselves, is truly astonishing. The epithet of the Gospel Mary known as h Madalhnh, "the Magdalene," indicates that she was the acknowledged partner of Christ, the archetypal Bride as he is Bridegroom of the New Testament.

The holy name of Jesus, at which, according to Saint Paul, every knee must bend, has gematria of 888. While a close study of the Hebrew Scriptures shows the importance of 7 for their faith community, the most revered number among Christians was 8. On the seventh day, the Creator rested. Fields lie fallow during the seventh year, the jubilee or 50th year follows the seventh cycle of seven years. Seven seems to be intimately connected with end of a time cycle. But Christians, the number is 8 has utmost symbolic content. Christ was laid in his tomb on Friday and remained there through the Sabbath, the seventh day. But on the dawn of the eighth day, Mary Magdalene and the other women who went to the tomb to mourn him were amazed to find that the tomb was empty. In the symbolic system of the ancients, 8 was the number for regeneration, rebirth, and resurrection. Among earlier believers, Christ was called the Ogdoad, the "fullness of eights," and his name was spelled Ihsous in the Greek texts precisely because that spelling adds up to 888, while any other phonetic rendering of the Hebrew Yeshua does not! Jesus was deliberately identified with the number eight to reinforce the importance and unique significance of his incarnation. He was the embodiment of the "resurrection." the "dawn of the new era," and "bearer of the new age." The age dawning at the precise time these documents were being formed was the Age of the Fishes--Pisces. Jesus was its Lord.

The architects of Christianity deliberately styled Jesus as the bearer of the Age of the Fishes. They developed the well-known acronym for Jesus: ICHTHYS, based on the rather contrived Greek epithet "Jesus, Son of God, Savior." The Fish is ubiquitous as a symbol for Christ and for Christians who have since forgotten why the FISH was used as the symbol for the Christian faith in its infancy. But the people who coined the phrase knew and consciously contrived the acronym so that the letters matched the symbolic numbers of their sacred canon and their cosmology.

But the Greek name for Jesus was not the only important name encoded by symbolic number in the Gospels. Hidden for millennia in the gematria of her epithet, we find encoded the tremendous significance of Mary Magdalene in the community of the earliest Christians. The Greek h Magdalhnh has gematria of 153, the exact number of the "fishes in the net" found in Chapter 21 of John's Gospel. We know from centuries of Church doctrine that the apostles of Jesus were "fishermen" and that they were to be "fishers of men." The "fish" they caught became the members of the community, the Church itself. Early Christians were known as the "little fishes" and their baptismal fonts were called "little fish ponds." So the miraculous catch of the 153 fishes represented the "catch" of converts to Christianity--the ekklesia. From the dawn of Christianity, the earliest exegetes of Scripture equated Mary Magdalene with the ekklesia, the Church that Christ loved so much, he gave his life for her (Eph. 5:25).

In their respective works, both John Michell and David Fideler discuss this "geometry word-problem." Both mention the extreme importance of the number "153" in the sacred canon of the ancients. This number was universally called the "matrix" (mother) of all geometry and represented the Vesica Piscis, the "almond" shape formed when two circles intersect. Among the ancients, this shape bore the meaning of "the materialization of spirit" and was known as the "gateway" or "portal" of life--the "door." Because of its obvious feminine connotations, it was sometimes referred to as the "vulva" and even "the holy of holies," the inner sanctum. This Vesica Piscis was often called the "153," known as "the measure of the fish" since the time of Archimedes. It was used to reference the ratio 265/153, the fraction in Greek which is the mathematical equivalent to our square root of 3. It was the most important of all geometric numbers, the "mother" (matrix) of all geometric shapes. The number, the "153," was known and honored throughout the known world--the Vesica Piscis representing the vessel of the sacred feminine par excellence.

Was THIS perhaps the reason that the Church fathers of the second century tried to discredit the use of gematria for the interpretation of Scripture. Were they trying to blot out the memory of Mary h Magdalhnh as the "Goddess in the Gospels"? Were they trying to "lose" the feminine counterpart of Jesus when they repudiated the analysis of the numbers encoded in the Gospel texts? There are other surprises in these symbolic numbers, the 8 identified with Jesus and the 153 of the Magdalene. When 153 is multiplied by 8 the result is 1224, the gematria for the Greek word diktuon, "the net," and also for ichthues, "fishes." Are these number accidental? Or was the Gospel of John deliberately encoding the formula for the "sacred marriage" of Jesus and the Magdalene in these significant numbers. Was he the Lord, was she the Lady of the Age to Come--The FISHES? The symbolic numbers encoded by gematria provide direct and irrefutable evidence for the "Sacred Marriage" at the heart of Christianity, evidence carefully hidden for nearly two millennia in the Gospels themselves. In restoring Magdalene to the paradigm of sacred union indigenous to Christian doctrine, we are restoring the feminine principle to a place of honor at all levels of existence. Together the archetypal Bride and Bridegroom stand at the threshold of the new millennium--MM.

Margaret Starbird holds BA and MA degrees from the University of Maryland where she concentrated on German, comparative literature and medieval studies, interests she pursued on a Fulbright Student grant at the Christian Albrechts Universitat in Kiel, Germany. She attended classes at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, TN, and has taught numerous classes in Scripture and spirituality. She has lived and traveled extensively in Europe including recent pilgrimages to Black Madonna and Mary Magdalene shrines and Cathar citadels in Provençe. She and her husband now reside in the Puget Sound area of Washington State where she teaches and gives seminars and retreats honoring the sacred union at the heart of Christianity. They have five grown children.

Margaret Starbird is the Author of Three Books:

 

The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Was Jesus Married?

 

The Tarot Trumps and the Holy Grail: Great Secrets of the Middle Ages

 

The Goddess in the Gospels: A Quest for the Sacred Feminine in Christianity

 

 

 

[IMAGES OF THREE BOOKS]

http://gnosticcross.tripod.com/archive/2001_07_3sacrednum2.html