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The Spirit of Christmas by Annamaria Hemmingway

From the moment of birth, the power of story shapes our lives and provides a sense of identity and belonging. Story tells us who we are, what our name is, who our ancestors were, and reveals our cultural identity and ethnicity. However, story also enhances and sheds light on our pilgrimage through earthly existence to discover spiritual meaning and the destiny of the psyche or soul, which transcends physical death and is eternal. As children, we are, perhaps, nearer this Divine source than we realize, for the child lives in the magical world of the imagination where symbolic images remain alive and the senses are still attuned to the stirrings of the voice of nature that penetrates the veil between the visible and invisible realms. Sadly, as we begin to mature and become fostered by our cultural heritage, these connections and memories that link us to an unseen presence begin to fade.

As the days shorten and we approach the time of the winter solstice, we are given the opportunity once more to see how the Christmas Story, which is full of archetypal and symbolic meaning, can bring fresh new insight and remind us of this forgotten realm of existence that lies beyond material consciousness. Originally, the solstice celebration was a pagan festival that celebrated the return and rebirth of the sun as it began its journey back across the sky and promised the herald of spring, new crops, and a time of bounty. For the ancients, the death and rebirth of the sun was also seen to symbolize the life of the human being that also followed the rhythms of nature where death was always followed by resurrection.

The metaphor of new birth still carries a mythic tracing, beneath the celebrations of a modern-day materialistic society, and offers the same possibility to rediscover the sacred eternal dimensions of life that existed in the consciousness of our early ancestors, and still lingers in the collective psyche of present day individuals. The spiritual meaning of Christmas can be found in the ritual enactments of ancient myth, which serve to bring the message of hope and rebirth back to life, as each passing year comes to a close. There seems to be an inherent desire within the human being to experience such a reminder and sense of connection to our Divine legacy. This may be why such a festival continues to be celebrated by many different cultures at a period in world history where the numinosity of life is often stripped away from all that is sacred.

Numinosity, or a sense of the sacred, is often portrayed through the archetypal image of light and can enable the magic and wonder of this celebration to still remain as a living symbol.

So, as we gather with our families and friends we have the opportunity to reflect and rekindle the magical childhood awareness within ourselves of the true spirit of Christmas. For as the old year comes to a close, and a new year heralds unbound possibilities for growth and celebration of life, we are reminded of “tidings of great joy” and the promise of the everlasting life of the soul.

Annamaria Hemingway MA (ABD) Contact

Writer, spiritual counselor, member of the International Association for Near-Death studies, and the author of Practicing Conscious Living and Dying,

For more information please visit: www.practicingconsciouslivinganddying.com

I try to feature as many of these masters in my work as I can, so that my readers become aware of their work and contribution. Most of these names my readers will not have heard of before. My DVD productions are the same. They too feature the work of many master investigators. Most are long dead, but a few are still around writing books. Of immense importance are Moustafa Gadalla, Ahmed Osman, and Ralph Ellis. These are three gentlemen that I insist people read. Their discoveries, for the most part, eradicate many falsehoods about the past, about the Egyptians, Jews, and origins of Christianity.

Sigmund Freud's final book entitled "Moses and Monotheism" is a must. Immanuel Velikovsky's "Oedipus and Akhenaton" is excellent (as are all his works), and of enormous significance is Gerald O'Farrell's fine book "The Tutankhamun Deception." "The Knights Templar Revealed," by Butler and Dafoe is one of the best on the subject, and Tony Bushby's two excellent books, "Secret in the Bible" and "The Bible Fraud," are also highly recommended.

Do you believe that a physical bodied "Jesus" ever existed or is it all malicious fabrication on the part of the Atonists?

[mtsar] No, I do not believe a man, as is described in the Testaments, existed. I do believe that enlightened men have walked the earth. I believe they still do. Of course it depends on what each person believes is meant by "enlightened." For me it is anyone that does not deal in illusions. A man is either moral or he is not. Religion is not going to make anyone a better person. We can see that it has not done so. A man is either truly and naturally good, or he is an actor trying to play a part. He contrives and performs. This is what has lead to the state of decay in the world. My mentors were Christians, for the most part. But they understood what I've just said. They also knew that everything in this world requires impartial study.

One can be religious or not. That is not my concern. What concerns me is whether the people I meet are wise or foolish, moral or immoral, dependent or independent. It is really very simple. It is the institutions of religion that have manufactured the Jesus of the Bible. He was based on Apollonius of Tyana, and even on several Caesars. He was based on pagan deities such as Orpheus, Mithras, and the Irish Iesa. He has existence as a mythological and even a sidereal character. This means that he represents the sun, or some other major luminary in the heavens above our heads. It can certainly be said he is an archetype representing man perfected - Adam Kadmon - of the Hermetic Tradition.

The Bible is a cover story for personages who did not want to be openly known, but who did want their "story" preserved. So it is like a play. Behind the characters, such as John the Baptist, Jesus, Moses, Aaron, David, Solomon, Melchizedek, and Mary, and so on, lie powerful archetypes of a mythological sort, but also physical personages who did live in the world long ago. My work addresses who these people were, and what they were up to. When we read about Moses meeting god at a burning bush, or a tree in a garden, or of a saint beheaded, we had better realize that the trope is not to be taken literally.

The masses take it all literally because this is how they and their fathers have been trained. But the senior chiefs at the Vatican, and within the chambers of the headquarters of the Knights of Malta, like those in senior positions of Freemasonry, know differently. They are not adverse to showing off their esoteric knowledge. They frequently do so via the media, and via their lieutenants in the entertainment business. They don't do a a lot of communicating with words, but they speak loud and clear in other ways. My work is dedicated to having the people of the world decode what is being told to them in subtextual ways every single day. Like it is during war time, we must break the enemy's codes.

Read the concluding part of this interview