Who were the Magi

Approximately 20,000 years ago the ice sheets began to melt, changing the climate, opening up new land, and raising the sea level substantially. Human beings, still hunter gatherers with few tools, tended to stay along seashores or in savannahs where they could follow game. These areas were limited during the ice age. A large concentration of people were in Sundaland, now sunk beneath the South China Sea, which was a large forested alluvial plain. The languages and cultures of the Oikoumene, all have their origin in Sundaland. There was a single language spoken there and a single religion. Sea rises were not steady because these large inland lakes were holding the water and would occasionally dump huge amounts into the seas. One such event, the draining of the Great Lakes (then a single massive lake) through the St. Laurence channel, caused a localized ice age in Europe (the Younger Dryas) because it stopped the gulf stream. This happened about 12000 years ago and resulted in the sudden sinking of Sundaland and other coastal communities and islands.

From this Eden, came the Edens of the Bible, the Sumerian Eden near Dilmun now under the Persian Gulf , and Lake Van, the Eden of the Jews. Before either of these Edens, however, there was the Black Sea Eden, which developed a thriving civilization while it was a freshwater glacier lake, but around 12000 years ago the rivers began flowing north to the Baltic Sea and it began to dry while the oceans were rising.

One of the interesting things about current genetic studies in ancient populations is that people have not moved much since they dispersed across the planet following the melting of the glaciers. Most "invasions" it turns out have been cultural. A new ruling class moves in, changes the language and the religion, but the people remain the same. This is why the discovery of the incredible purity of the Jews, how they haven't intermixed with surrounding cultures, is particularly remarkable. Jews believe they are descendants of Abraham, as do many other ancient tribes along the Levantine mountains down the east coast of the Red Sea. I was taught that Abraham was from Ur that is near the Persian Gulf, but many cities were called Ur back then.

Tradition of the local people is that Abraham was from Edessa, now called Sanliurfa. The people in Sanliurfa are Kurds. The closest genetic relatives to the Jews are the Kurds. In fact, Kurds and Ashkenazi Jews are very similar while Kurdish Jews and Sephardic Jews are similar. The Kurds are the descendants of the ancient people who lived in Ararat (see the Ur there too) around Lake Van, as are the Armenians and the Azerbaijanis. The Khaldi and the Kardi were neighboring people from the Asia Minor Black Sea coast. They were the first ironworkers in the mountains. Chaldea is identified biblically with the Perisan Gulf. The Chaldeans and the Kurds were the people who lived in the Taurus and Zagros mountain ranges to the North of Mesopotamia. To ancient authors Chaldea refers to the lands north of the Taurus whereas in the Bible it often refers to Babylon under the Chaldean dynasty (Nebuchadnezzer's Babylon). The term "Ur of the Chaldees" refers to the more ancient usage.

Anatolia converted to Christianity en masse. Edessa, Armenia, Georgia all became Christian nations before anyone else. As if they were waiting for this event, which they were, as evidenced by the Magi. I believe Abraham was a missionary, moving to take back an ancient homeland of these people who first domesticated wheat, the dog, sheep and goats. This was the beginning of civilization (see Jericho 10000 years ago). Other people domesticated the cow and the pig.

The Kurds are interesting because it turns out they have a secret religion, passed down orally. This has some parallels with the Druze, as well, who pass their religion on through a select group. The Kurds have a policy of dissimulating about sacred matters. They believe that all religions derive from their own, so they have no problem adopting the religion of the ruling class and observing it as required. After they were forced to become Moslems, they developed their own form of Islam, Sufiism, which is really a kind of crypto-Christianity. Read Rumi, the Sufi poet, to see what I mean.

I believe the origin of the Torah is in the revelation to Isaiah. He saw what had happened to Israel (the Assyrians practiced brutal cultural genocide) and with the Babylonians at the gate, a decision was made to reveal the secret religion in a book and to have that book define the culture in such a way so that the people would never be lost as a people and thus the book would never be lost. The extreme emphasis on ritual and sexual purity accomplished this task. The people and the book are with us still. (The Torah, meant for a Semitic people, retold Semitic myths that originally had many gods doing different things by having one god do everything. In the Sumerian version of the flood, one god orders the flood while another warns the Noah type character).

Judaism was never a doctrinal monolith in biblical times. It had various oral traditions. Among these traditions were those of the Mandaeans, who still honor John the Baptist above Jesus. Jesus, from the hill country of Nazareth, represented a vibrant tradition in Judaism. Christianity, in a sense, was already on the scene when he arrived (not represented by the pharisees, however), but it moved from anticipation to fulfillment with His birth. I believe the star was Spica in the constellation Virgo, which rose directly east at sundown on the vernal equinox in the years around 1 BC.

The Magi were not Jews, they were not of "this fold", but Jesus has more than one fold. In the end, there will be one fold and one shepherd. In the end, words and ritual are symbols that, energized by faith, are part of a process to enlighten and re-create human beings by bringing them a direct experience of a higher reality. I am being deliberately vague to avoid using religious words.

The specific symbols of Christianity and its accompanying doctrines of the Holy Trinity and the Two Natures are words that point to a reality that can only be directly experienced. For the rest of us, it is the Way to gain that experience, to be enlightened and deified. The other sheep hear the Lord's voice through other symbols, but its still His voice and no other. I find the same teachings and process, with a different set of symbols not only in Sufism where one would expect to find them, but also in Kaballah (which is so Christian in its thinking that scholars believe it borrowed from Christianity--I prefer a theory of common origin) and alchemy (both derived from ancient Egyptian religion--Judaism was infused throughout with Egyptian thought). The same teachings are in all the cultures derived from Sundaland, the Abrahamic religions, the Dharmic religions, Tengri, and American Indian religion. In opposition to the religion of Ur was the religion of darkness, which saw the divine as laws that could be manipulated for selfish human ends. True religion seeks to live in harmony with the creation. The desire to control and dominate leads to magic, human sacrifice, and technology. These major climactic changes appear to be tied to a ~6000 year cycle, a subcycle of the 24000 year precession of the equinoxes. The last cycle began ~4500 BC. The next one will begin on December 21, 2012. Looks like we're right on schedule with global warming.