[Note: this is not the metaphysical meaning of the Virgin parable, just the likely general origin of the allegory it presents; the metaphysical teachings are much deeper and complex than this. I'm presenting the simplest explanation first, so people can begin to see the underlying thinking of these authors, which was NOT to confuse everyone, but provide metaphors for the hidden spiritual realm that they could understand, we're talking about primitive, uneducated people here.]


The Riddle of the Sphinx

This story is from Greek mythology. The Sphinx would accost all travelers, and ask this riddle, and the visitor would either be allowed to pass by or would be killed.


The riddle:
What goes on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening?

The answer:
Man – who crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two legs once grown, and walks with a cane or walking stick in old age. Oedipus answered this correctly, and the Sphinx destroyed itself.

OK, so this last part is a stretch – most elderly people I’ve known either still walked fine, or were in a wheelchair or walker, few used a cane. I sometimes use ‘hiking stick’ when hiking, especially in the mountains, where the “third leg” provides more stability, especially when going down steep slopes.

I must be stupid, I still don’t get the point of this parable – when you answer correctly, what have you learned, if anything; where is the spiritual teaching? This is almost like a child’s game riddle: what’s black and white, and ‘red’ all over? This is based on a misspelling, becoming a phonetic riddle only, you can’t write it down without giving away the answer: “read all over”, which they say is “a newspaper”, but why not a book, or even the Bible?

The Riddle of the Virgin

The riddle:
What brings forth life without sexual procreation?

The answer:
The earth. Without anything but the sun, the earth gives life to all the life we’ve discovered thus far in the entire universe: cellular organisms, plants, animals, mankind – all exist only because the sun shines on the earth. The earth does nothing but receive the life force, which is considered a feminine aspect, while the male aspect provides the life-giving seed that the feminine receives. Therefore, the model for the Virgin Mary story is “Mother Earth”, which, even as Gaia, the earth-based philosophy, is always feminine, never masculine.

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed the correlation between “sun” and “Son”, of God? The Son gives us “life everlasting”, and the sun gives constant life to the earth. Sun worship not only preceded most religions, but the Emperor Constantine, who is given credit for the compromises that allowed Christianity to succeed, was himself a sun god, or Sol Invictus, worshipper, he only confessed to Christianity on his death bed, just in case. His flag had Sol Invictus on it, and later the cross was added to the other side to appease the Christians in the Holy Roman Empire, who threatened to destroy the empire by having it split into religious factions.

Remember that in Biblical times people weren’t reading anything, there were no books available to the public, so all this was passed on orally, Socratic discourse (question and answer) taught people the meanings, and people were more savvy back then about parables, metaphors, hidden meanings. Nowdays, we’re so spiritually illiterate and rooted in the material world that we need everything spelled out for us, and we think that if it’s written down, it represents a real life event that actually happened in history. I doubt that the public at large can even define “metaphor” or “allegory”, much less understand all these in scripture. Can God have really intended that scripture be so confusing, so obscure in meaning, so baffling to the common man?

The earliest 'deity' we've discovered is Woman - about 50,000 yrs ago, cave paintings were made that show a woman, an arrow pointing to the moon, then a pregnant woman, then a woman and her baby. This was seen as "the creator of life", so women were worshipped first, and the cave painters obviously understood the cycles, controlled by the moon's phases. It's unclear if the painting is homage to a goddess, or simply an observation about nature being 'explained in pictures'. As the only female object of worship in the west, it seems likely that the Virgin Mary is a tribute to or holdover from this concept. Later, the bear emerged as a "god", likely from nomadic hunter-carnivores, who saw the bear as king of his realm, with no formidable opponent. Sun worship came after all of these, and was the religion of Egypt before the exodus. Now we worship the "Son of God", rather than the creator of the universe.

"I go unto the Father, for the Father is greater than I" - John 14:28