The Ancient Tradition

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Music

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You’re listening to the Ancient Tradition. A Wonk Media Production. Music provided by Joseph McDade. He is your host, Dr. Jack Logan.

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Welcome to The Ancient Tradition. I’m your host, Jack Logan. I wanna start by letting you know we launched our YouTube channel this week. It’s very exciting. You can find it on YouTube. Just search for The Ancient Tradition. And the videos you’ll find there are visual representations of this podcast. Feel free to share it with your family and friends. Today I’m gonna do something a little different. I’m gonna jump ahead, as much as I’m a bit hesitant.

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because I would have really liked to have given you a bit more background than you do at this point. Queen Elizabeth II was coronated on June 2nd, 1953, which was almost 70 years ago. So the coronation of Charles III and Camilla will be the first coronation of a British monarch that I’ll have witnessed during my lifetime, and I’m guessing that this is much the same for many of you. So I can’t pass up this tremendous teaching opportunity.

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The coronation is deeply enmeshed, even central to the ancient tradition. And understanding how the two are connected will help you much better understand and appreciate not only the ancient tradition, but all of the intricate details of the coronation ceremony itself. And I’d also like to be as bold as to extend an invitation to Charles and Camilla to listen in. I can pretty much guarantee that the two of them

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will learn something new about the coronation that not even they were aware of. And it will broaden their vision of kingship and queenship, and it will definitely give them a much deeper appreciation for the exceptionally sacred nature of the offices they hold in behalf of the United Kingdom. The coronation of Charles III and Camilla is gonna take place on Saturday, May 6th.

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And there’s no word yet as to the exact time of day that the coronation will take place, but it’s expected to be broadcast live and take place around mid morning. Although the exact origin of the British coronation ceremony is kind of unclear, scholars have traced much of it back to the coronation ceremony devised for King Edgar in 973 AD, so over a thousand years ago.

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King Edgar reigned as King of England from 959 to 975. And Edgar’s coronation ceremony was put together by Saint Dunstan, who was the Archbishop of Canterbury, the senior bishop or leader of the Church of England. And Saint Dunstan seems to have drawn up the ceremony based on coronation ceremonies that have been used by the Franks.

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Also, he used ordination ceremonies that had been used for bishops and the coronation of Davidic kings in the Bible. And although Dunstan’s approach kind of seems a little bit hodgepodgey, he must have done his homework because the British coronation ceremony preserves quite remarkably important elements of the ancient tradition, several of which we just wouldn’t expect to find preserved quite so well.

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To begin, I want to return to episode five, our previous episode, where we read in the book of the Holy Secrets of Enoch that Enoch on New Year’s Day is taken up to the highest heaven where he’s tutored by God face to face. There God reveals to Enoch that before he created the earth, he was troubled because he had no place to rest. The Lord’s use of the word rest here is significant because a place of rest

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is almost always used in Judeo-Christian scriptures to refer to the place where God dwells, his home, his sacred sanctuary, his holy temple. In the Book of the Holy Secrets of Enoch, the Lord confides to Enoch that when he looks at the pre-creative, unformed state of the universe, he says, quote, I found nowhere to rest. In other words, the Lord has troubled that there’s no temple, no place for him to dwell.

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In chapter 25, the Lord reveals to Enoch the secrets of how he created the earth. He starts like we see in the Genesis account by explaining how he separated the light from the darkness. And then the Lord makes this remarkable statement to Enoch. He says, I saw that it was good. I set up a throne for myself and took my seat on it. Here, the Lord tells Enoch that as soon as he’s

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divided the light from the darkness, he quote, set up or built or created a throne for himself. And this is remarkable because the Lord is telling Enoch a couple of things. First, that the very first thing he created as part of the earth was a holy temple, a place where he could quote rest. And I don’t have time to go into this here because I’ve jumped ahead a bit, but this formation of a temple,

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at the onset of the creation is one of the most salient and significant elements of the ancient Egyptian religion. And I can’t wait to tell you more about it, but we just can’t in this episode. So we’ll both have to be patient for a moment, but I promise we’ll cover it in future episodes and it’ll totally be worth it. It’s great stuff. Note here how the Enoch account completely parallels what we read in the Genesis account. Upon completing the creation,

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We read in Genesis chapter two, verse eight, the Lord God quote, planted a garden eastward in Eden. And we learned in episode number four, did God reveal the ancient tradition in the garden of Eden, that the Hebrew word for to plant not hay is used by Moses to refer to God’s holy sanctuary. In other words, the reference to God planting a garden is another way of saying God built a temple in the land. Eden.

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In both cases in the Enoch account and in the Genesis account we get told the same story that the Lord God as part of the creation created a holy temple where he could dwell while on earth. If you aren’t familiar with what I’m referring to it’s really important to go back and to listen to episodes number four and number five so you start with this foundation as we examine the British coronation rites. And I might add here too that the Enoch account and the Genesis account

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parallel the accounts of the Aboriginal peoples of New South Wales and the Dayak peoples of southern Borneo, both of whom noted that their creator God by army or Mahatala lived among the first ancestors in the beginning in a sacred mountain dwelling. The Australian Aboriginals said this of the creator God by army quote, he made his home in the mountain.

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talking with the animals and the men and women whom he had created. There was communion of spirit between them. For the period of rest after the labors of creation were a refreshment to the great spirit. Round his earthly home, the flowers bloomed in profusion. Did you notice the use of the word rest among the Australian Aboriginals? This is crazy. The quote, period of rest after the labors of creation.

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were a refreshment to the Great Spirit. It’s the same story being told half a world away. And recall that we established in episode number four that the word mountain is essentially a synonym for temple in sacred writ. The native people’s reference to the creator God living in a mountain is the same as saying that the creator God dwelt in a holy temple while he was on earth.

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And it’s important to note that a holy temple or sanctuary doesn’t necessarily have to be a brick and mortar building per se. It’s holy because of who dwells there. So it could very well have been a mountain garden sanctuary as inferred in the Genesis account. And if you aren’t familiar with the Australian and Borneo accounts, be sure to go back into listen to episode number one, the ancient tradition, cause they’re pretty amazing accounts. Back to the second point.

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I wanted to make about the Enoch account. In the Enoch account, we learned that a very important feature of the temple God set up as part of the creation, the Lord God says to Enoch, quote, I set up a throne for myself and took my seat on it. This is fascinating because it tells us that God’s temple was also a royal palace. He sat on his throne as the reigning civil authority on earth.

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the creator of the earth, he had full rights to reign over his creation, and he did so from the Holy Temple he created as part of the creation of the earth. And this tells us a lot about God. Not only did God reign as the supreme civil authority over his creation, he also served as the supernal religious authority, the supreme high priest. In his temple in the land Eden,

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God, the creator, reigned as the supernal, sacral king. It’s important to start with this foundational understanding of who God is, supernal king and supernal high priest, and where he dwells, on his throne, in the center of his sacred temple. We have to understand these things to understand much of what happens, not only in the British coronation ceremony, but in kingship rites.

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all over the world. From the Genesis and Enoch accounts, as well as the inscription of the Sumerian king list that we talked about in the last episode, we learned that, quote, kingship descended from heaven. The kingship was in Eridu. In other words, these ancient records attest that the conception of kings and kingship was God revealed, not man-made. And this is a bit of a paradigm shift.

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especially when you think of the French Revolution and the vast social movement in the 1600s to overthrow European monarchies. The notion of kings and kingship as a form of civil government is so commonplace and so much a part of world history that we may have never even thought of where it came from. Maybe you, like me,

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may have thought it was just another social construct, another experiment among human beings on how to organize civil government, but the ancient accounts tell a very different story. The ancients attest that kingship as a form of civil government was revealed to human beings by God. Not only that, it was revealed to human beings as the supernal form.

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of civil government because it was patterned after the order of civil government in heaven. God as supernal king and supernal high priest served as the supernal prototype of a sacral king. Earthly sacral kings were to emulate God the supernal sacral king in all of their civic functions. Growing up in a representative democracy,

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I might be inclined to think a representative democracy is a superior form of civil government than kingship, especially considering the abuses of King George III and the need for the American Revolution. But this perspective fails to consider a very important characteristic of God-revealed kingship, the spiritual element. Kingship as revealed by God was combined with the high priesthood.

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king, he was also the supernal high priest, the supernal example of righteousness. To rule meant to rule in righteousness. This latter element is where the rule of King George III went wrong, along with many of his European counterparts. As French scholar René Gounion pointed out, the kingly and the priestly represent different functions, but they quote must necessarily co-exist.

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When they don’t, when monarchs stray from God’s supernal example of a sacral king, that’s when things go wrong, and that’s when the people they rule over suffer. Gagnon makes a very important point about the relationship between civil and spiritual authority. They are not equal. The civil authority must always be subordinate to the spiritual authority, and he writes, quote,

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all temporal power that fails to recognize its subordination via the spiritual authority is vain. Separated from its principle, it can only exert itself in a disorderly way and move inexorably to its own ruin. Let King Charles take note. Assuming the spiritual authority is not itself become corrupt, a true sacral king is always subordinate to the laws of

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Gugnone writes, quote, when the holders of temporal power revolt against this spiritual authority and declare themselves independent of all spiritual power, even trying to subordinate to themselves the spiritual authority that they had originally recognized as the source of their own power and seeking to turn the spiritual authority to the service of their own domination. Well, then ruin and tyranny isn’t far away.

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Guignol continues, the least portion of spirituality is still incomparably superior to anything of the temporal order. It follows from this that the spiritual authority can and must always control the temporal power and that it cannot itself be controlled by anything else. So the temporal power, kingship, must always be coupled with spiritual power, priestship, else there is little to keep the king’s power in check.

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Gugnian continues, the teachings of all traditional doctrines are as we have seen unanimous in affirming the supremacy of the spiritual over the temporal as normal and legitimate only the social organization in which this supremacy is recognized and expressed in the relations between the two powers. History clearly shows that misunderstanding of this hierarchical order always and everywhere brings about the same consequences.

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social imbalance, confusion of functions, domination by progressively more inferior elements, and also intellectual degeneration. As we saw in the previous episode via sacred primogeniture, sacral kingship among the ancient Hebrews was passed by Rite of Birth to the firstborn, righteous son. If the firstborn son was not righteous, as was the case time and again in the Old Testament,

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then that son lost the birthright and it was given to a righteous son. The fact that the birthright was contingent on righteousness once again, drives home the point that righteousness is a mandatory qualification for civil rule and not the other way around. With that established, let’s head back to the Garden of Eden. From the Genesis account, we read that in the center of the garden sanctuary stood a very special tree, the tree of life. Now,

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There very well may have been an actual tree in the garden. I don’t know, but this tree is highly, highly symbolic and we must understand it primarily in a symbolic light. This tree stood in the center of the garden, the same place where God’s throne was set up and the same place from which the living waters flowed to the four corners of the earth. And this was the most sacred, holiest place on earth. It marked the center of God’s temple.

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the Holy of Holies. It was here in the Holy of Holies that God gave dominion to Adam and Eve over all the earth. And it was here in the Holy of Holies that God clothed Adam and Eve in priestly robes of skin before he cast them out of the garden sanctuary. It was here in the Holy of Holies that God made Adam and Eve the world’s first vassal, sacral king and sacral queen. And this was done as we’ll see in the Old Testament and many of the sacred ancient texts.

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through a very consistent set of sacred rites, rites which were reproduced with remarkable consistency in the British coronation ceremony. We’ll dive into the details of those rites in the next episode. But in this episode, I wanna concentrate on this tree in the center of the garden sanctuary, the tree of life, and how it directly symbolizes a sacral king.

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Although the Tree of Life is chiefly associated today with the Judeo-Christian Garden of Eden account, the Tree of Life is actually one of the most widely diffused symbols in the world. And we find it everywhere. We find it among the Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians in India, Norway, Greece, Sub-Sahara Africa, in Bolivia, among the Maya, the Aztecs, and loads of Native American tribes.

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Let me give you a feel for a few, even though we’ll revisit this in more detail in a future episode. In ancient Mesopotamia, we read in a Sumerian-Acadian tablet, quote, in Eridu, there is a black kiskanu, or a cedar tree, growing in a pure place. Its appearance is lapis lazuli, erected on the apsu, enki.

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When walking there, filleth Eridu with abundance. In the foundation thereof is the place of the underworld. In the resting place is the chamber of Namu. In its holy temple there is a grove, casting its shadow. Therein no man goeth to enter. In the midst are the sun god and the sovereign. This passage tells us the sacred cedar tree is in Eridu. And a couple of minutes ago we talked about Eridu.

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Do you remember what the Sumerian King List said about Eridu? It said, quote, after the kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Eridu. So we’re in the place where kingship was established on earth and there in Eridu was a sacred cedar tree, a tree that looked like lapis lazuli. Now lapis lazuli is a beautiful sky blue gemstone and when it’s all polished up, it’s really stunning.

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In this pure place Enki walked. Enki is the Sumerian god of wisdom and creation. And here like we saw with God in the Garden of Eden and Bayami and Mahatala, Enki walks in the pure place and fills it with abundance. Note what else this Mesopotamian text says about Eridu, the pure place. The tablet says, quote, in the resting place is the chamber of

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in its holy temple, there is a grove. There it is again, reference to rest and a resting place. And it’s directly linked in this text to a holy temple and a grove. In the midst or in the middle is the sun god and the sovereign, the king. So here we see the same motifs we saw in the Genesis Garden of Eden account, a sacred tree, a pure place, gemstones, abundance, a resting place, a holy temple.

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And in the midst, in the middle, is God, the Sovereign, the King. In ancient Egypt, the Tree of Life was known as the sacred Isha tree, which scholars believe is the Perseia tree, which is an evergreen tree that’s part of the laurel family and it produces this kind of almond-shaped edible fruit. And sometimes they even connect it with the Sycamore or Acacia trees.

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The sacred Isha tree was located in Heliopolis, which according to Heliopolis cosmogony or creation stories was the sacred location where the Egyptian god Atum created the world. An inscription on an alabaster Stella of King Sedi I in Karnak reads, quote, the Isha tree was in the temple of Benben of Heliopolis. So this Stella,

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indicates the sacred Ished tree was located inside a temple on the site where Atum created the world and it was considered the holiest site on earth in the Heliopelan cosmogony. And I don’t know about you but this storyline is starting to sound very familiar. A professor out of Matra University in Egypt writes this about the tree.

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quote, Nearly all the great temples of Egypt have a scene of the king nailing, sitting or standing beside or under a persia tree on the leaves of which a God is riding the royal cartouche. I’ll stop here for a second. When an Egyptian Pharaoh took the throne, he was given several new names. Like we usually see happen when a British monarch takes the throne. In Egypt, the king was given five names and they were known as the royal titular.

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the king’s throne name or prenomen, which was usually his birth name, was written in a cartouche, which was essentially an elongated chen ring, a circle with a line tangent to the base. And the encasement of the king’s royal name in a chen ring signified eternal protection. Let’s go back to her quote. The scene with the Ished tree was represented in relation to the coronation and the sed festival. Now,

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said festival was a celebration and a renewal of the king’s reign which they usually held it 30 years after he had taken the throne but sometimes they did it earlier. Moreover the ritual of presenting the leaves of the ished tree to the king is linked to the coronation ceremony which is attested in the festival calendars in Edfu and Dendera. The name of the king was written during

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another god. Now this is really super interesting because here we see a direct connection between the sacred tree and the coronation of a new king. To have one’s royal name written by the god Thoth on the leaves of the sacred Ished tree, the tree of life, not only associated the king directly with the tree, but it also symbolically conveyed that the new king, by having his name inscribed on the leaves of the tree,

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had himself inherited eternal life. And there’s a ton here and we can’t go into it right now, but hopefully you see here the connection between the tree, kingship and eternal life, all core elements of the ancient tradition. In Greek mythology, in the famous epic poem, Jason and the Argonauts, written in the third century BC by Apollonius of Rhodes,

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who was one of the chief librarians of the Library of Alexandria, we have Prince Jason, who is the son of King Aeson, who was sent on a dangerous quest by his uncle, King Peleus, who happened to have usurped the throne from his brother, King Aeson, Jason’s father. He’s sent to recover the fabled golden fleece, the skin of a ram, which not surprisingly,

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hung on a sacred oak tree in a sacred grove and was guarded by a terrifying dragon. If Prince Jason is able to succeed in his task and bring the Golden Fleece to King Pelias, King Pelias will accept Jason as the rightful king. And of course, King Pelias hopes the quest is doomed to failure so that he might retain the kingship for himself. But Jason is no ordinary prince. He, along with his band of heroes,

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sail the ship Argo through the Greek seas and successfully meet the grievous challenges and adventures that are set before them. Book one of the poem reads, quote, I shall recall the glorious deeds of men of long ago who propelled the well-benched Argo through the mouth of the Pontos and between the dark rocks to gain the golden fleece. As soon as Pellius saw Jason, he realized

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and devised for him the challenge of a voyage which would be full of suffering so that either on the sea or among a foreign people he might lose all chance of safe return. I want to pause for just a second and point out another important characteristic of Prince Jason. He was a firstborn son, the importance of which we discussed in the previous episode. And Jason’s mother says this of Jason in Book 1,

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who was admired among occasion women, who brought to me great renown and glory, you, the first and only child for whom I undid the girdle of motherhood. With the help of the beautiful maiden Medea, Jason and Medea disembark the Argo, and we read in book four, quote, “‘They followed a path in the direction of the sacred grove, looking for the huge oak.'”

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on which the fleece had been thrown, like a cloud with blushes red in the flaming rays of the rising sun. Directly in front of them, the dragon stretched out its vast neck when its sharp eyes, which never sleep, spotted their approach, and its awful hissing resounded around the long reaches of the riverbank and the broad grove. The maiden Medea gives the dragon a narcotic herb, and the dragon falls to sleep, and the epic continues.

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Then Jason removed the golden fleece from the oak at the maiden’s instruction. As when a young girl catches in her fine dress the gleam of the full moon hanging high over her bedroom under the roof and her heart is delighted at the sight of the lovely radiance. Just so then did Jason rejoice as he lifted the great fleece in his hands and over his fair cheeks and forehead the sparkle of the wool threw a blush like flame.

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It was the size of the skin of a yearling heifer, golden all over and heavy with its thick covering of fine fleece. As he walked, the ground in front of his feet sparkled brilliantly. Sometimes he carried it draped over his left shoulder and it reached all the way from the top of his neck to his feet. Sometimes he rolled it up and stroked it in his hands, very fearful lest some man or god would cross his path and take it away.

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Here we have the same elements we’ve seen previously, a sacred oak tree in a sacred grove of the gods guarded by a fierce dragon. And recall in the Garden of Eden account how God placed cherubim and a flaming sword in the east of the garden to guard the tree of life. In this Greek account, however, we find a radiant, sparkling golden fleece hanging directly on the sacred tree, the object of

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Prince Jason’s entire quest. His sole objective and all of the challenges and labors he overcame were so that he could find the tree and retrieve the golden fleece. The image here of the blinding golden rays of the fleece on the tree should also conjure up a few thoughts in your mind of the burning bush Moses saw on the summit of Mount Sinai.

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There are obvious connections here to the tree, God, the supernal, sacral King and the glory of God’s radiance. In this story, the skin of the ram, the golden fleece is directly connected to Prince Jason’s right to kingship. In the story, if he acquires this sacred royal garment, he’ll have proven himself the rightful heir to the throne. He must acquire the royal garment.

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for without it he has no right to rule. There’s so, so much more here I would love to talk about, but for the purposes of this episode, it confirms yet again the strong connection between the tree of life and kingship. I do wanna point out one more very important aspect of the story, the importance of the royal garment hanging on the tree. We already established that the sacred tree represents God, the supernal, sacral king.

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and that his temple, the realm where he resides, is strictly guarded from those unqualified to enter his presence, as we see in this story by the dragon. The golden fleece hanging on the tree symbolically conveys a couple of really important aspects of kingship. First, the right to true kingship is a gift from God, granted only to those whom God deems qualified. And note in this story how

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Prince Jason had to pass several tests before he was qualified to retrieve the royal fleece from the tree or from God. Because God created the earth and everything in it, because it is his, he is its rightful heir. And as such, he’s the only one with legitimate authority to appoint or grant human beings the right to rule as vassal kings over his creation.

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Second note in this story that the royal garment hanging on the tree was made of animal skins The skins of a ram and this should also conjure up a few thoughts in your mind of God Clothing Adam and Eve in coats of skin before he cast them out of the garden And we established in episode number four that the Hebrew words used in the Genesis account to describe the coats of skins were the same Hebrew words used by Moses to describe the clothing of

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priests, the skins of a sacrificial animal.” In other words, God clothed Adam and Eve in priestly clothing, the skins of a sacrificial animal. We see the same thing here with Jason. Jason acquires from God a royal radiant golden fleece, a garment of skins. And note in this story that it was this royal garment given to Jason by God, or the tree, that marked

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as the legitimate heir to the throne. And I’ll develop this a little more when we get into the royal investiture of King Charles III, but it’s my contention, drawing from an amazing little book titled Kingship by A.M. Hocart, that the royal robes we see worn by kings today and in the past are actually elaborate copies of what were originally priestly robes.

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move to the ancient Maya now. The ancient Maya and even Maya today still venerate the sacred Siba tree which is a silk cotton tree. Sometimes it’s referred to as the world tree. In Mayan tradition this tree grew out of the center of the world, the source of creation, and its branches grew to the four corners of the earth. And even today you can go to several towns and villages in Central America.

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and you’ll see a carefully pruned and nurtured seabed tree growing in the center of their plazas. A book by Linda Scheele and David Friedelman who were Mesoamerican archaeologists titled A Forest of Kings, The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya, wrote this quote, On public monuments the oldest and most frequent manner in which the Maya king was displayed was in the guise of the world tree.

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This tree was the conduit of communication between the supernatural world and the human world. The king was the axis and pivot made flesh. He was the tree of life. The Mayan kings would symbolically identify themselves with or as the world tree by wearing emblems of the world tree as part of their vestments. On Estella in Guatemala, Estella 11,

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that’s dated to the first century AD, the king is portrayed with branches of the world tree growing out of his headdress. Also in Guatemala, King Chan Yot, who reigned from 724 to 785 AD, is depicted with a personified tree on his loin cloth. And he also wears seba tree flowers as earrings in his ears.

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The most famous depiction of the king in connection with the world tree is found on the sarcophagus lid of King Bacal, who died in 683 AD in Palenque, Guatemala. And here we have a magnificent carving of the world tree and it depicts King Bacal on his back and he’s rising up in a position of rebirth at the base of the world tree at the center of the cosmos.

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and the lid depicts the rebirth of King Pachal to eternal life. All of these ideas between the king and the tree of life are beautifully illustrated on a silver denari coin that struck with an image of King Charlemagne or Charles the Great, who reigned as the King of the Franks from 742 to 814 AD. And on this coin, King Charles is depicted in full royal regalia.

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a crown on his head, a scepter in his right hand, royal robes over his body, but he also wears an apron over his robes, which is decorated with a large tree. And clearly from this coin, King Charles the Great, as king, is to be understood as the personification of the tree of life. In ancient Israel, Yahweh was understood as the supernal king of Israel.

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and his agent on earth was understood as the Lord’s viceroy or vassal king. If you’d like to see a picture of this coin you can find it on page 1307 of a dictionary of Christian antiquities volume 2 or you can check it out on our website theancienttradition.com. This association between the tree of life which as a reminder represents God and the king will become even more apparent as we

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In this last section, much of what I’m gonna share with you comes from an article titled The King and the Tree of Life in Ancient Near Eastern Religion. And it was written by Geo Woodengrin, one of Sweden’s best known scholars of religious studies. So let’s begin with the king’s scepter. And before I tell you anything about the scepter, perhaps you can think through this for a minute and think of a way that the king’s scepter might be connected to the tree of life.

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While you’re thinking, I want to take you back to King Emma Duranki. Do you remember him? If you recall in our last episode, King Emma Duranki was listed as the seventh Antediluvian king in the Sumerian king list, which is the same place we find Enoch, the seventh Antediluvian patriarch from Adam in the Judeo-Christian tradition. And in this text, Emma Duranki is summoned by the gods to join them in a special chamber in the Temple Ibarra.

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And in this special chamber, which appears to be akin to the Holy of Holies, the gods enthrone Emma Duranki and he is made a king. The text reads, Emma Duranki, the king of Sippar, the beloved of Anu and Lil and Eya, who are gods. Shamash into Ibarra, the temple caused him to enter. Shamash and Adad to their assembly called him. Shamash and Adad

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on a great golden throne placed him. The tablets of the gods, the bag with the mystery of heaven and earth, the cedar staff, the darling of the great gods, they caused his hand to seize. We learn from this text that the scepter given to King Emaduranki by the gods was a staff of cedar. And Dr. Widengren says this, quote, the legendary King Emaduranki in a scene of enthronement was given a scepter of cedar wood.

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What concerns us here is the cedar staff which is seized by the enthroned king. In a combined passage, the priest of incontation says that he is holding in his hand a branch of the Qisqanu tree. It has already been pointed out that the Qisqanu tree, growing in Eridu, which recall was the place of kingship, is nothing but the tree of life, planted in the paradise of Eridu. It seems conclusive, then, that the king carries in his hand a

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wig from the tree of life. He continues, the evidence of the text in this case too is corroborated by ecliptic art and reliefs. We may start with some scenes of cylinder sills showing the enthroned god carrying in his hand a scepter in the form of a branch or plant.

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Dr. Widengren then proceeds to show numerous examples in glyptic art and reliefs of kings all over the ancient Near East among the Sumerians, Venetians, Semites, and Egyptians enthroned, grasping a branch or a plant of life in their hands. Dr. Widengren concludes by stating, quote, we have seen that the king holds in his hand as his scepter the plant of life or a branch from the tree of life.

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By means of this planter twig, he is able to impart life to his subjects. And why can the king do this? Well, the only reason the king has power to impart life is because he got his civil and spiritual power and authority directly from the tree, from God. The scepter as a branch of the tree of life symbolizes the king has been given the right to rule by the supernal, sacral king, God himself.

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God bestows upon him all the power and authority that he needs to reign. All of this is symbolized in the king’s scepter. He holds in his hand a branch of the life-giving tree, and he holds in his hand the power and authority of God. And these points are driven home in the Judeo-Christian tradition when God appears to Moses in the burning bush. In Genesis chapter three, verse two, it reads, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him,

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Moses in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush and he looked and behold the bush burned with fire And the bush was not consumed

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Here, Moses sees God as the tree of life and it’s ablaze in radiant glory. God promises that he will smite the Egyptians and release the Israelites from bondage. But in this moment, Moses seems to have a crisis of authority and in Genesis chapter four, verse one, Moses says to God, “‘But behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice, for they will say, the Lord have not appeared to thee.'”

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Moses is concerned here that the people won’t accept what he has to say or follow him. He’s concerned that he will not be seen as the legitimate civil and spiritual leader of the people of Israel. So what does God do? Well, in the very next verse we read, quote, And the Lord said unto him, Moses, What is that in thine hand? And he, Moses, said, a rod.

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So in that moment, God gave Moses a staff as the answer to Moses’ crisis of authority. And remember in this moment, Moses is speaking with God in the burning bush. Now, the Exodus account doesn’t say that God broke off a branch of the burning bush and gave it to Moses, but I’m gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that the rod God gave Moses came straight from the burning bush.

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The Judeo-Christian scriptures are highly symbolic. So I don’t know if God gave Moses a literal branch of a sacred tree, but the symbolism is clear. With the branch of the sacred tree of life in his hand, Moses could convey to the Israelites that he had been chosen by God to be their civil and spiritual leader. And along with that responsibility, God had given him not only authority,

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to execute his office. And in verse 31 it says, and the people believed. That the staff or rod symbolized not only the authority of God, but the power of God is made abundantly clear in verse 17, when God says to Moses, quote, “‘And thou shalt take this rod in thy hand, wherewith thou shalt do signs.'”

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which Moses proceeds to do. He strikes the rod on a rock and it produces water, the source of life. And Moses also uses the rod to part the Red Sea, which releases the Israelites from the bondage of the Egyptians, just as God promised he would do when he spoke to Moses in the burning bush. A link between the rod and the tree of life is made even more explicit in Numbers chapter 17, verse eight.

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when Aaron, Moses’ brother’s rod, begins to bud. Quote, behold the rod of Aaron brought forth buds and bloomed blossoms and yielded almonds. When the rod starts to sprout like a tree, the connection between the rod and the tree of life couldn’t be more explicit. Scepters are a ubiquitous characteristic of kingship the world over. Kings from Egypt to China and from Africa to Russia.

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hold a scepter in their hand. And now you know why. And as a side note, this is probably the same reason why magicians and witches and warlocks like Harry Potter use wands. If you go to Universal Studios, you can pick out a wand from a vast array of choices. The genuine ones are always made from the wood of a tree. The transference of wands to magicians and witches is probably a degeneration.

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of the original doctrine in the ancient tradition. I’m way over my time for today, but hopefully now you have a much better understanding of the origins of kingship and the beginnings of an understanding of the British coronation ceremony and how deeply enmeshed it is with the ancient tradition. We’ll pick up where we left off this discussion in our next episode. For now, I’ll leave you with the words of William Shakespeare, knowledge.

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is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven. I’m Jack Logan.

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You’ve been listening to the Ancient Tradition. A Wonk Media Production.