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‘White Dragon’ Review

 

By Tony Roe

 

The book is divided into three parts: a synopsis of the Gospel of Mark, an analytic narrative of the gospel in relation to the twelve signs of the zodiac, and a prefatory introduction. The author is a Unitarian minister. His sect believes in the unity of the godhead, as opposed to Trinitarian doctrines. There is only one divinity, God the Father, and congregations are autonomous. An appended bibliography only gives the briefest of entries. Recourse must be made to the intro for an elaboration of sources. The idea of a zodiacal categorisation of the propensities of the Deity can be traced in Jewish astrology and the doctrines of the Cabala; Francis Barrett’s ‘Magus’ classes the evangelists in the terms of the zodiac. Others have delineated the zodiacal content of the scriptures; even dubious grammars such as the 6^th and 7^th Books of Moses expatiate on the angelic powers under the aegis of the twelve Signs. This may appear fanciful to some, but the work under review presents a cogent treatment worthy of consideration by more than tyros in the esoteric arts. A Senior Minister of the Dublin Unitarian Church, our author relates his deliberations to the thoughts of the literary greats whom he quotes.

            Darlison shows that the Gospel of Mark, as the primary document of Christianity, is deliberately structured around the Signs of the Zodiac. He argues that the Gospel was originally an esoteric, rather than an historical, text. The stories it recounts: walking on the water, feeding the multitude with five loaves and fishes, the raising of Lazarus (sic), are not meant to be taken literally, rather they are dramatic representations of internal spiritual processes, revealing stages in spiritual development, and repositories of arcane wisdom. The first chapter gives an outline of the theory, showing how the consecutive sections of the Gospel reflect the zodiacal signs, and it deals especially with the question of the existence of Jesus as an historical character. Chapter two shows how astrology influenced the cultural milieu of the Graeco-Roman world in which the Gospels were written, and how the Jewish scriptures contain much that can be considered astrological. The main part of the book indeed consists of an analysis of the spiritual meaning of each of the zodiacal Signs in turn. The intro covers six pages and therefore follows special consideration of Aquarius, the ‘Man with the Jar of Water’, as the initial key to revelations about Gospel discrepancies.

            The book revises our understanding of the ‘good news’ of the Gospels and relates Christianity to other faiths. Prince Charles might appreciate this ecumenical character in light of his vision to become ‘Defender of Faith’. Darlison has spent fifteen years researching his radical reinterpretation. His bibliography has 134 items, sadly only single-line entries, including such as Jeff Mayo’s ‘Astrology’, Fraser’s ‘Golden Bough’, the Bhagavad Gita, Hesse’s ‘Siddarthata, and Tester’s ‘History of Western Astrology’. Strangely, Bryan’s tract ‘The Zodiac and the Bible’ (De Vorss, 1935), a seminal work in astro-occult exegesis, is not included. Over two dozen varied illustrations cover Michelangelo’s Moses, Cassiopeia, Isis and Horus, Titian’s Assumption of Mary, the Scales of Justice atop the Old Bailey, Goya’s ‘Saturn’, work by Giotto and the Wailing Wall of Jerusalem! The general index is only fourteen pages, though there is a special index (three pages) to Appendix 1, (The Gospel of Mark), which the author suggests is cognate with the epic of Homer. Literary vignettes head each chapter, taken from such assorted authors as Chaucer, Tagore, Walt Whitman, the Dalai Lama, the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, Tolstoy, St. Augustine and even Shakespeare.

            Darlison produces his own recension of Mark’s Gospel (regarded as the initiate’s text) in the appendix, though I am not sure whether our Unitarian minister has freshly read the original Greek or compounded other translations into English. There is a special section on sources (page 49) which leaves this question open. For those who would know more about the exoteric interpretation of the Christian mind-set, which, after all, whether we like it or not, inspired the basis of our society, indeed Western civilisation, and is certainly ravelled up in the Western esoteric tradition as a whole, this volume is a worthy purchase, especially if you have some Waterstones points left over from Yuletide prezzies.

 

White Dragon, Imbolc 2008