God

  • The Rigveda’s 6th Sukta (part 2)

    Let’s continue our conversation about the Rigveda’s Sixth Sukta by reviewing the verse we ended on last time. That verse is Rv 1.6.5, rather than Rv 1.6.6, as per Max Muller, the 19th-century Oxford orientalist credited with restoring the Rigveda to its original metric form. In so doing, he divided Rv. 1.6.4 into two lines,…

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  • The Rigveda’s 6th Sukta (part 1)

    About a year ago, my husband and I were shopping at our favorite Indian market — something we used to do once a month or so to restock the larder. While we were perusing the frozen-food cases on the final aisle, an elderly Indian gentleman stopped his cart behind us. “Do you like Indian food?”…

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  • The Rigveda’s 5th Sukta

    The Rigveda’s 5th Sukta

    At last, we reach the Fifth Sukta of the Rigveda, the most ancient and sacred of the Hindu scriptures. This one also concerns King Indra, but it’s neither a hymn nor a metered poem. Like the first four Riks, the fifth is a spiritual teaching aimed at “Brahmins.” Contrary to popular egoic belief, Brahmin is…

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  • Chasing the Numbers

    Chasing the Numbers

    Working out the true meaning of the three Greek letters generally mistranslated as “666” made me curious about all the other strange numbers sprinkled through the Book of Revelation. Are they also ciphers? We find, for example, the spelled-out numbers 42 and 1,260 in the following verse, wherein neither number has any useful meaning. The…

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  • The Second and Third Woes

    The Second and Third Woes

    Today, we’re back to the seven trumpets and the three woes from the Book of Revelation, following a brief-but-productive detour into cherubim-hunting. For those not keeping track, we’ve reached Revelation 11, which describes the second “woe” foretold to occur in the final ays before the dream-world disappears. To recap: The first “woe” was the “plague…

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  • The Army of Nisrok

    The Army of Nisrok

    In my last post, we explored what actually transpires after the seventh seal is opened by the Lamb of God in the Book of Revelation. We also learned that the seventh seal is Netzach, the seventh Sefirot on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. We further learned that Netz-ach means “falcon-brother” in Hebrew, rather than “eternity”…

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  • The Rigveda’s 4th Sukta to Indra

    We now come to the Rig Veda’s fourth Sukta, the first of many presumably addressed to Indra, the king of the Hindu devas. As explained earlier, Indra personifies the Red Ray of the Father’s Will to make earth like Heaven. As such, Indra represents the most powerful force in the universe — the reason he…

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  • Our Epiousios Bread?

    Our Epiousios Bread?

    Today, let’s talk about the Lord’s Prayer — the “example” Jesus gave his disciples as the “proper” way to pray. If you’re unfamiliar with this old standard, it reads thusly in the KJV Bible: Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom, come; Thy Will be done; on earth as it…

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  • The Rigveda’s 3rd Sukta

    The Rigveda’s 3rd Sukta

    I first drafted this post back in February 2024, after taking a few weeks off from blogging. Why the break? Mainly because I felt no compulsion to carry on. In hindsight, I can see that my lack of motivation was tied to my reluctance to continue translating the Rigveda. Who am I, after all, to…

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  • The Ten Shining Handmaids

    The Ten Shining Handmaids

    Instead of rushing ahead to the Rigveda’s third Sukta, I want to spend more time on the ten risha (female rishis) referenced in the second Rik. In my last post, I equated those “shining handmaids” with the Mahedivyas or “great wisdom” goddesses of Hinduism, the Sefirot of Jewish mysticism, the lampstands in the Temple of…

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