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you are here: > Self > 12. The Messiah Syndrome
| 12.6 |
Signs of messiahs
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| The coming of a messiah (good or bad) has traditionally been foretold by certain signs. These signs represent kinds of cultural “verification” markers of the authenticity of a particular messiah, guru, or shaman. | ||
| The main source of prophecy in the Christian tradition are the writings of prophecy that occurred during the height of the implosion of the Roman Western Civilization sixteen hundred years ago. | ||
| The main source of prophecy in the Islamic tradition are the translated writers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The main source of prophetic writing in the Jewish tradition is an amalgam of the thirteenth and fourteenth century Kabbalistic traditions the fundamentalist of the 19th Century. | ||
| Signs have traditionally fallen into five key categories | ||
| Prophecies Celestial events Climactic events Omens Visions | ||
| 12.6.1 | Prophecies | |
| The first category of signs of messiahs are prophecies. Prophecies are written words and reflections taken by a particular religion to have special symbolic significance on the nature of the coming if a messiah. | ||
| The oldest and most famous archetype of human culture is the hero, that comes out of the wilderness to save a people seemingly doomed. | ||
| It is no wonder that all human religions consider enhanced stories and prophecies of such people in the context of their specific religion. | ||
| In Judaism, the belief of a messiah foretold in writings thousands of years old is still believed today. In Christianity, it is the belief of the return of Jesus the messiah in some form at the end of time. In Buddhism it is the Maitreya Buddha, the Buddha of compassion that will free the human mind and soul. | ||
| Many contemporary messiahs use these writings as justification for their existence, when the writings (as nice as they are) are just ideas and speculation. | ||
| 12.6.2 | Celestial events | |
| Celestial events have always been used as a sign of the coming (or leaving) of both good and bad messiahs. | ||
| Astrologers have for thousand s of years used the significant arrangements of the heavens as a sign that a messiah is due. | ||
| 12.6.3 | Climactic events | |
| Climactic events have also traditionally been used as a sign for messiahs. Earthquakes, famine, flood, plague are all powerful events that have both destroyed and transformed civilizations. | ||
| There is ample evidence that religion has always seized on tragedy as a time to promise their own brands of belief. | ||
| 12.6.4 | Omens | |
| Omens are frequently placed in the same category as prophecy, yet traditionally they should be considered as a separate stream of “signs”. | ||
| Omens are objects and events of significance– the sighting of a crow on a particular day, the existence of a strange phenomena have all been used by different people as evidence of their claims. | ||
| 12.6.5 | Visions | |
| Dreams and visions have played a significant part in the claims and mythology surrounding messiahs. | ||
| While personal dreams should be regarded as highly subjective, many people believe others who claimed to have visions in dreams. | ||
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