ज्योतिषे विश्वासटिप्पन्यः

Appendix 20

Such stories are no jokes, although they make this impression when they cross our way in Eurasian folklore. “Air” is a strictly astronomical and, therefore, also a “religious” term. Thus, we hear from Rabbi Eleazar b. Pedath (ca. A.D. 270): “Als def Pharaoh aus Agypten auszog, die Israeliten zu verfolgen, erhoben sie ihre Augen gen Himmel und sahen den Engelsfürsten Ägyptens in der Luft fliegen.”

“That signifies the fall of Egypt,” adds Bertholet, who mentions this case in his article on the “guardian angel of Persia” (Festschrift Pavry, p. 38), starting from Isa. XXIV.21 and its rabbinical interpretations. He also points to the utterance of Rabbi Chanina (ca. A.D. 225): “Nicht bestraft Gott fine Nation eher, als bis er zuvor ihren Engelfürsten im Himmel bestraft hat,” to which he compares Ps. XXIV.21: “On that day the Lord will punish the host of heaven, in heaven, and the kings of the earth, on the earth.”

These “guardian angels” will be identified sooner or later, insofar as this has not yet been accomplished in older literature which our con temporaries disdain as “obsolete”; one among them, the “angel-lord” of Esau/Edom, with whom, according to the Zohar, Jacob wrestled (Gen. xxxii.24-33), is the planet Mars. [1] How the whole system really works — e.g., these punishments first in “heaven,” subsequently “on earth” — will not be understood before Plato’s Timaeus is taken as earnestly as it was taken by the Pythagorean Timaios himself, whom Plato introduced as “astronomikōtaton hēmōn,” i.e., the most astronomically-minded among us, and before it is accepted as the foundation from which to proceed further. (See below, chapter XXII, for a superficial touching on this cosmic system.)

__________

See J. Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum 1 (1711), pp. 844-46; cf. The Zohar, 144a, 146a (trans. by H. Sperling and M. Simon, [1956], vol. 2, pp. 63, 70f.): “For Jacob conquered the serpent with prudence and craft, but chiefly by means of the he-goat; and although the serpent and Sammael are the same, yet he also conquered Sammael by another method, as described in the passage, saying: and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day (Gen. xxxii.25-26).” And: “Another blessing he (Jacob) received from that angel, the chieftain of Esau.” A. Jeremias (ATAO, p. 324) maintains that the wrestling took place at “Nibiru,” which he identifies, here, with the solstice, but see appendix #39. For angels as stars, see also M. Knapp, Antiskia (1927), pp. 33-36.