So wonderfully interwoven and interblended are the influences of the starry cycles that the most secret principles concealed within the Sun myths of the Taurian Age apply with equal force to the life and development of the coming Aquarian Age with its inner Leo Temple Teaching, Leo being ruled by the Sun, and typified in the Lion of Judah. Under the Leo-Aquarius influence, the intellectual and altruistic principles will be brought into equilibrium, for it will be plainly demonstrated that selfishness is stupidity, and that Love is intelligence, and that from the first proceed nothing but war and sorrow, but from the second follows security, peace and happiness. Thus will be demonstrated upon the Earth the many miracles performed by the Grecian Sun-hero, Hercules, and by the Hebrew Sun-hero, Samson, whose exploits represent the noble deeds of the superman, the Initiate of the New Age.

   The gender of the signs of the Zodiac is not always given in the same way. This does not necessarily mean error or contradiction. The polarities are not the same on all planes; hence the genders of the signs vary according to the aspect or relation treated. In Greece at one time Aries was considered a feminine sign and Mars was represented by Fallas Athene, the warrior goddess. Sagittarius, too, was represented by a feminine figure, the goddess Diana.

   According to Enoch, opposite signs were of opposite polarity in the beginning of time, Cancer and Leo excepted. These two exceptions are represented by the two columns common to every Temple of Initiation. Leo is the masculine column of Fire; Cancer, the feminine column of Water, Together they form the portals of the Mysteries.

   As previously stated, Samson and Hercules are both solar heroes. Every event of their lives is somehow associated with the phenomena of the solar year. Yet, fascinating as these solar allegories are as we have them, they are still but fragments of ancient teachings once given to man in the Mystery Schools of antiquity.

   In early times, before the awakening of the intellectual faculty, man was centered primarily in his feelings and emotions; the ego was not isolated in the midst of nature as it is now. Therefore the inner work dealt largely with the strengthening of the mental powers and in the cultivation of the objective temperament. Spiritual discipline at that period-even so late as the Golden Age of Greece — referred to what we now call material sciences, arts and crafts. Today the contrary is true, and science is to be spiritualized, as religion and mysticism become rationalized and recognized in the schools for what they are: the Science of Life.

   It is for this reason that the allegorical interpretation of Scripture is being reintroduced among the religiously-minded in preparation for the New Age; not the interpretation of Scripture as nature allegories, but as allegories of the ego's development from clod to God on the Highway of Initiation.

   Chapters XVII to XXI of Judges have been called by exoteric commentators the appendix of the Book. However, to the esotericist, the astrological implications of the matter contained in these chapters is of the deepest interest. As noted in the story of Samson, there is an essential connection between the workings of the sign Leo and Scorpio in the regeneration of the body and the life of the neophyte. The linking of the love nature (Leo) with the sense life (Scorpio) caused the "fall" of man; the purification of the animal nature and the linking of the love principle with Spirit constitutes the true redemption. The two processes are under the zodiacal rulership of Leo and Scorpio. The mystical book of Judges gives as much of this as can be revealed openly.

Judges 18:2,6-8,11,12,29
And the children of Dan sent of their family five men from their coasts, men of valor, from Zorah, and from Eshtaol, to spy out the land, and to search it; and they said unto them, Go, search the land; who when they came to mount Ephraim, to the house of Micah, they lodged there.
And the priest said unto them, Go in peace: before the Lord is your way wherein ye go. Then the five men departed, and came to Laish, and saw the people that were therein, how they dwelt careless, after the manner of the Zidonians, quiet and secure; and there was no magistrate in the land, that might put them to shame in anything; and they were far from the Zidonians, and had no business with any man.
And they came unto their brethren to Zorah and Eshtaol; and their brethren said unto them, What say ye!
And there went from thence of the family of the Danites, out of Zorah and out of Eshtaol, six hundred men appointed with weapons of war.
And they went up, and pitched in Kirjath-jearim, in Judah: wherefore they called that place Mahaneh-dan unto this day; behold it is behind Kirjath-jearim.
And they called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan their father, who was born into Israel: howbeit the name of the city was Laish at the first.

   The circumstances here described are all related to preparation for the inner life and work. The name Laish means a lion. The five men represent the five senses of the unregenerate. These men come from Zorah (hornet, Scorpio) and Eshtaol (a city of the tribe of Judah, Leo).

   Six is the number of the union of the human with the divine. This finds geometrical representation in the interlaced triangles of the Seal of Solomon. Every neophyte on the journey toward the consummation of this union must be equipped with weapons of war, and finds himself stationed before the city of the two camps indicative of the choice between the high way and the low. The children of Dan (Scorpio) are always the principal combatants and must stand before the gate of entry. This city (new consciousness) becomes the city of Dan (regeneration) only after it is born unto Israel, howbeit the name of the city was Laish (Leo) at the first (the place of the uncontrolled spirit of fire).

   The priest's words of benediction and blessing (the priest is the Higher Self and also the invisible Great One) are ever sounding upon the interior ear, inspiring the neophyte with spiritual courage and a sense of protection: "Go in peace: before the Lord is your way wherein ye go."

   The nineteenth chapter of judges gives a veiled description of a further development upon the way of Initiation.

Judges 19:1
And it came to pass in those days, when there was no king in Israel, that there was a certain Levite sojourning on the side of Mount Ephraim, who took to him a concubine out of Bethlehem-Judah.

   Bethlehem (house of bread), Judah (praise, lover, Leo): the temple of the body has become a holy place, the Temple of Love. Woman, as noted, always represents the feminine principle imman. The five nights, in which the Levite tarried in the father's house and partook of bread, refers to five steps or degrees by means of which the five physical senses are "spiritualized" and the door leading into the spiritual mysteries of Initiation unbarred. After this experience he is worthy to enter into the city of Jerusalem, the city of a great peace, the consciousness wherein none of the things of the external world can move him.

   Here the neophyte meets the subtle temptations of the sons of Belial (deceit of the sense world). The old man in whose house he finds lodging is the personification of the Ancient Wisdom; the house, the etheric Temple of Initiation. In this place all his spiritual needs, typified in food and drink, are provided for, and "they did eat and drink" of the deeper things of the spirit. It is through the power of Love, dynamically active in the heart, that the disciple is made ready to go forth consciously from the body at night to work with the esoteric powers of good against the evil of the world. These soul flights and the work done at night when away from the physical body are one of the priceless privileges of the worthy neophyte.

Judges 19:26-30
Then came the woman in the dawning of the day, and fell down at the door of the man's house where her lord was, till it was light.
And her lord rose up on the morning, and opened the doors of the house. and went out to go his way; and, behold, the woman his concubine was fallen down at the door of the house, and her hands were upon the threshold.
And he said unto her, Up, and let us be going. But none answered. Then the man took her upon an ass, and the man rose up, and gat him unto his place. And when he was come into his house. he took a knife, and laid hold of his concubine, and divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her Into all the coasts of Israel.
And it was so, that all that saw it said, There was no such deed done nor seen from the day that the children of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt unto this day; consider it, take advice, and speak your minds.

   The disciple at the time of his first liberation is carefully guarded and protected by the Teacher. Many a neophyte is familiar with the experience concealed in these words: "She was fallen down at the door of the house and her hands were upon the door of the threshold, indicating one who is aspiring, serving, yet not quite ready to enter within the holy precincts, not yet able to enter that full communion where he hears those blessed words: "Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joys of thy Lord."

   These experiences occur in the land of Benjamin (Cancer, the door of Initiation). With this attainment one attracts to himself a unified and spiritual vibratory power from the twelve signs of the Zodiac, such as is unknown and unperceived by the average individual and which sensitizes every atom of both body and soul.

   The final chapters of Judges contain an outline of the way of attainment for the Benjaminites, the Cancer powers, that is, for those who make themselves worthy of it. The eleven tribes of Israel (11 the master number of polarity) attack the tribe of Benjamin and conquer them.

Judges 20:31
And the children of Benjamin went out against the people, and were drawn away from the city; and they began to smite the people, and kill, as at other times, in the highways, of which one goeth up to the house of God and the other to Gibeah in the field, about thirty men of Israel.

   The two paths lie before the neophyte, one leading out to the field of mundane things and the other going up to the house of God. As man chooses, so is he judged.

Judges 20:42-47
Therefore they turned their backs before the men of Israel unto the way of the wilderness; but the battle overtook them; and them which came out of the cities they destroyed in the midst of them.
Thus they enclosed the Benjaminites round about, and chased them, and trode them down with ease over against Gibeah toward the sunrising.
And there fell of Benjamin eighteen thousand men; all these were men of valour.
And they turned and fled toward the wilderness unto the rock of Rimmon: and they gleaned of them in the highways five thousand men;
and pursued hard after them into Gidom, and stew two thousand of them. So that all which fell that day of Benjamin were twenty and five thousand men that drew the sword; all there were men of valour.
But six hundred men turned and fted to the wilderness unto the rock Rimmon, and abode in the rock Rimmon four months.

   Every force of the sons of Belial is invariably exerted to turn the neophyte back into the ways of the wilderness, and the spiritual victory is always won toward the sunrising. The way leads eventually from the wilderness toward the rock. Rimmon means fruitful; the six hundred, those who had progressed further than the majority, were given in marriage the daughters of Jabesh-gilead (dry, hard, rough). Harder are the tests the farther upon the path one goes, and subtle are the temptations and ever steeper the ascent; but the greater are the powers developed in the final overcoming.

Judges 21:16,19
Then the elders of the congregation said, How shall we do for wives for them that remain, seeing that women are destroyed out of Benjamin?
Then they said, Behold, there is a feast of the Lord in Shiloh yearly, in a place which is on the north side of Bethel, on the east side of the highway that goeth up from Bethel to Shechem, and on the south of Lebonah.

   For Moses there was Joshua and Caleb; for the Christ, Peter and John. Always there are a few of the innermost circle who far outdistance the others in spirituality. These are given in mystic marriage to the daughters of Shiloh and the feast celebrating the occasion, which is so interestingly described here, occurs in the place of the white mountains.

Judges 21:20,21
Therefore they commanded the children of Benjamin, saying, Go and lie in wait in the vineyards; and see, and behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances, then come ye out of the vineyards, and catch you every man his wife of the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin.

   The work for this attainment is to be done in the vineyards (experience), in which are grown the fruits (abilities, powers) by which the spiritual status is measured. Shiloh, the place of rest, the peace which passeth all understanding, signifies the divine Wisdom, where the feminine love power is to be found. Permanent spiritual work is then taken up in Benjamin, the district of which Jerusalem is the capital city, leading into the infinitude of transcendental spheres.

Judges 21:25
In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

   Risen above all external law, since he desires nothing but the Will of God, Good, the victorious or "newly born" has attained unto spiritual Illumination, and henceforth needs only the voice of his own interior sense of Wisdom which is now no longer dormant but fully awake and functioning in harmony with the supreme spiritual forces of the holy universe. Such is the remarkable attainment described in these, the final words of the closing chapters of judges, words which constitute the mantramic keynote of the men and women around whose lives its mystic legends are written: "In those days there was no king in Israel, every man did that which was right in his own eyes."

 — Corinne Heline