The Seven-Headed Dragon

[I put a revised edition of this blog entry into my website "Living Without Money"]

Wail, you inhabitants of the market district!
For all the merchant people are cut down;
All those who handle money are cut off.
(Zepheniah 1:11) 

And there is no merchant any more
in the Temple of Yahweh of Hosts in that Day!
(Zechariah 14:21)

Today is probably my last day house-sitting, so I'll use the time to write here.

I had a nice thanksgiving dinner at my friends', Damian & Dorina. She made an incredibly delicious vegetarian nut loaf.

After dinner, we discussed different philosophies and such. Then a friend brought to my attention, and not at all in a nice way, that I tend to interrupt and dominate the conversation. I have always thought of myself as a listener who doesn't talk much. And I like to think of myself as "aware." But I had to concede that he was right, though. Sometimes I get excited about stuff I'm learning and tend to forget about others. Just when I think I'm getting it together, I find I'm not. Knowledge isn't enlightenment. In fact, as I keep saying, it veils us from enlightenment. Anyway, I've been licking my ego wounds a lot since. And just that fact of still feeling wounded shows a great attachment to this ego that I thought I had pretty much overcome.

That's also a problem with blogging like this. You can only see words, not my person. And it's easy to present ourselves as flawless to the world when we write.

Comment Reply Becomes Blog Entry
I started writing a reply to a comment by "Angeldust" after "My Summary of Why I Live Moneyless". Then I decided to just go ahead and make it a blog entry.

It's time to see the Bible in a whole new light. It's time to shake up tired, sleeping JudeoChristian religion out of its materialistic stupor. This might just blow you away.

Angeldust brought up the Beast in the book of Revelation, the Beast who has 7-heads, the AntiChrist that end-of-timers like to talk about. So I started tracing this 7-headed dragon back to the very serpent in the Garden of Eden. Here's a taste of the mysteries:

Serpent Coiled Around the Tree, Serpent Coiled Around Pole In Genesis 3:13 Eve says, "The serpent [nahash*] deceived [nasha*] me." The Hebrew Bible is filled with plays on words totally missed in translation. The word nasha* means both 'deceive' and 'lend on interest,' or 'be creditor'. (In Strong's Lexicon, 'deceive' is Srong's # 5377 & 'lend on interest' is 5378, which are identical)*. This nasha is found in 1Sam 22:2, Neh 5:7, Psa 89:22, Isa 24:2, all of which, like the Koran, strongly denounce lending at interest).

Now look at the Hebrew word for snakebite, nashak [Strong's 5391]* , which also happens to mean both 'lend' and 'receive on interest' (Num 21:6-9, Deut. 23:19, Prov. 23:32, Jer. 8:17, Amos 5:19, etc). 'The serpent bit me,' Eve says. 'The serpent charged me interest,' Eve says.

Now the word for serpent, nahash is also a wordplay with nasha. Nahash also means 'divination,' and also 'copper' or 'bronze,' the basic currency [Strong's 5174 & 5], just like our English word 'cobra' is related to 'copper'. You can see this play on words taken into the story of Moses lifting up the Bronze Serpent in the wilderness.
_____________________________________

So Moses made a bronze [nahashet] serpent [nahash], and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent [nahash] had bitten [nashak] anyone, when he looked at the bronze [nahashet] serpent [nahash], he lived. (Numbers 21:9)

If a serpent had bitten anyone can literally be translated, if a serpent had become creditor to anyone...!

Now it gets even more intriguing. a varient spelling of nasha [# 5375], pronounced the same, means 'to lift up, bear up, carry, be exalted, bear sins, atone for sins.' And the related word for 'debt' is nashi [5386]. Now you can see clearly what Jesus is referring to when he says, As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. (John 3:14)

This word nasha is used first by Cain in Genesis 4:13, "This punishment is more than I can bear [nasha].' And the word 'Cain' itself is a pun on the word canah, which means 'purchase'! Again, the play on words:

And she conceived and bore Cain, and said, I have purchased [canah] a man from Yahweh." (Gen. 4:1)

Now we can see why there is a Jewish interpretation that Cain is actually the son of the Serpent! He is the son of purchase, of credit & debt, while Abel is the son of Grace.

Mayan Ouroboros

The Seven-Headed Dragon

Next, in the story of Cain, you see allusion to the 7-headed Leviathan (Hydra, Beast) with the 7-fold vengeance of Cain in Genesis 4:15 & 24. Now it is clear that this credit-and-debt 7-head Serpent is poking his heads up in Deuteronomy 28! He is Leviathan.

'Leviathan' shares the same root as 'Levi,' meaning "to twist, bind, join [3878 &3867]. Again, notice the word-play in the passage that speaks of the birth of Levi, the father of law:
"'Now this time my husband will be bound [lavah] to me,...' therefore he was named Levi." (Gen. 29:34).

Levi was the father of the tribe of Levi, the Priestly Clan, the establishers of Levitical Law, starting with the Levites called Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. Law is Thought of Credit and Debt. Law is control of Credit and Debt. The Levitical Law, as all law, was given to manage people under Thought of Credit and Debt, a way of keeping disease in check until the cure comes - the cure of Grace. Just as Krishna speaks of transcending the cycles of Credit and Debt, transcending the perpetual reincarnation of Karma, the old Hindu Law, through crucifixion of the ego, so speaks the Buddha, so speaks the Christ.

Leviathan is the Hebrew word for the Canaanite Lotan, found in Ugaritic texts, where he is slain by Baal:

“When you smite Lotan, the fleeing serpent,
finish off the twisting serpent,
the close-coiling one with seven heads."
( KTU 1.5:I:1-3, D. Pardee in CS, 1.265)

Then the Bible quotes this Canaanite text, saying Yahweh slays Lotan/Leviathan:

IN that day Yahweh with His severe sword, great and strong,
Will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent,
Leviathan that twisted serpent;
And He will slay the dragon that is in the sea. (Isaiah 27:1)

You broke the heads of Leviathan in pieces,
And gave him as food to the people inhabiting the wilderness. (Ps 74:14)

Land of Canaan, Land of Commerce

Leviathan is the Serpent of Canaan. Canaan means trade, or commerce in Hebrew. Here again we see the play on the words for 'Cain' & 'purchase'. The land of Canaan, called Palestine and Israel today, was wedged between two great superpowers, Babylon and Egypt, and two great continents. This made it the land of Trade - the land of war, oppression, and deceit - the products of Trade. And it was out of this that the rage of the Bible is born.

Now you can see, more and more, studying both the Bible and history, that the Canaanites were not a literal race of people, but were the Spirit of Merchandise that possessed the people. And the very theme of the Torah is to wipe out every vestige of Canaanite from the land. The later Jewish prophets confirm that this is so:

Wail, you inhabitants of the market district!
For all the merchant people [canaanites] are cut down;
All those who handle money are cut off. (Zeph 1:11)

And there is no merchant [canaanite] any more in the temple of Yahweh of Hosts in that day! (Zechariah 14:21)

And Jesus' clearing the merchants from the temple is a direct act-out of this Zechariah scripture. Wiping out the Canaanites.

Yes, the mystery is that the Levitical law is to become fulfilled, to become obsolete at the End of Time, which is the Eternal Now, the Day of Yahweh. Money/trade serves its purpose and becomes obsolete. All written law becomes fulfilled, obsolete.

Money and law simply cannot exist in the Present, in Reality! This is not opinion. This is simple observation, if we but look inside.

It's interesting that, in the Christian Bible, the Greek word for money is nomisma and the word for law is nomos, sharing the same root meaning "to parcel out." There is no need for law when there is no money or barter, and there is no need for money when there is no law - for both are one and the same - control of credit and debt. When you start trusting Nature again "to parcel out", that vengeance, repayment, belongs to God, not human ego-mind, then Balance comes, as it already exists in the infinite Universe surrounding our little bubble of "civilization". And this is the very theme of Christian theology: freedom from written law and taking on the law of the heart, which is love. Crucifying the Ego, which is Thought of Credit and Debt.

It is about giving up the ego to the cross, lifting up Moses' serpent on a pole in the wilderness, the Lamb breaking through the Seven Seals.

*If you want to confirm these word studies, you can go to www.blueletterbible.org to look up the Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic words of scripture passages, or www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/Hebrew_Index.htm for Hebrew-English interlinear Tanach (Old Testament), and www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/Greek_Index.htm for Greek-English interlinear New Testament. The Blue Letter Bible uses Strong's Lexicon, so I've put in Strong's numbers to make it easier for you to look up.