https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=yJZHDqTJvzw
In the Christmas tree, what we can see is that the pattern of the Christmas tree, like so many of the things that I’m trying to tell you about, is basically a representation, it’s a manifestation of the pattern of reality itself. There are plenty of different versions of Christmas tree. If you go online, all you have to do is write Christmas tree into Google, you’ll get thousands and thousands of images of Christmas trees, and they’re all different, but they all have something which makes us recognize that they are a Christmas tree. Not one thing, there are several things which come together into a pattern which help us recognize that it’s a Christmas tree and not something else. Now what are those elements? First of all, the fact that the tree itself has to be a pine tree or a fir or a spruce or something that is conical, that is a triangle. So what’s at the top of the Christmas tree? We put either a star or an angel. Now a star and an angel actually are pretty much the same thing. Even in the Old Testament, for example, the word for star, the word for angel, and the word for king, for example, all are either the same word or are in the same family of Because they are principalities. They are the chiefs, the heads, the summits of a hierarchy of manifestation. You have one at the top and then it goes all the way down to many. That’s a basic idea of a pyramid. And it could be a tree or it could be a mountain. I’ve told you it could be other things as well, but I showed you in my video on the how the mountain of paradise with the tree at the top could be seen as either just a tree or, for example, in the story of Moses, could just be seen as just a mountain. Going up the mountain and encountering the head of this whole thing, encountering the principle which holds it all together. And so that’s what the angel or the star are at the top of the tree. Now around the tree there are these ribbons that go around the tree. And what are these ribbons? They’re the same thing as they’re the periphery of the wheel, you could say. They’re the turning wheel that goes around the hierarchy. You could see it as the snake which goes up the tree. You could see it in other relationships as, for example, the ribbons that go around the maypole. It could just be circumambulation in general, religious circumambulation like a procession which goes around the city, a procession which goes around the town. And so this is this coil, this snake that goes up the tree all around it. Now in the tree itself we have lights, not just lights but also ornaments. And these ornaments are precious things. They’re meant to represent these precious balls or these precious objects, these golden objects, shiny things that are all into the tree. And so we’re a purified version of reality. We’re looking at all the mysteries of reality shown to us in this Christmas tree. Because as I’ve tried to explain to you before, for something to exist, for something to be able to appear on the phenomenological horizon, that is for you to be able to see that something is real, that something exists, it has to have that hidden spark. It has to have that hidden purpose, that hidden identity which brings it together into one. And so these lights in the tree are basically an image of how reality lays itself out and how hidden in the hierarchy are all these different little lights, these logi, these smaller principalities, smaller essences which are hidden in manifestation, hidden in the world. And so you see the hierarchy itself as being full of light. The light that comes from above is now filling up the entire tree and showing us the gems in the world. And so then at the bottom of the tree, what do we usually have? We put the gifts. Now what’s important with the gifts is to understand that the gifts are wrapped. The gifts are hidden. And that’s really the most important part because even in a little bit, not that long ago, just one generation ago, my father for example, at Christmas they could get either a gift or they could get just a chunk of coal. And so the idea is, depending on if you’re good or bad, the gift could either be something positive or negative. But now we’ve only kept the positive. But we can still understand this idea that you don’t know what’s there. It’s potentiality. It’s Schrodinger’s box. If the cat could be alive, it could be dead. We’re looking at the potentiality of reality. It’s not revealed yet. And then hidden in this potentiality are the gifts. And so the gifts are just like the lights in the tree, for example. They are these hidden precious things which are in potentiality. You also have to remember that Christmas is the solstice. What’s going to happen? Is it just going to keep going? Is we’re just going to be overwhelmed by darkness? But no. The world is never completely empty of meaning. This notion, for example, that we find of total depravity, that the world is completely lost and that human beings are completely fallen and there’s nothing left in them, is impossible. Because if that were true, they wouldn’t exist. In order for something to exist, there has to be hidden. Even if it’s completely solid, even if it’s completely hidden in darkness, there has to be a spark just for things to exist. It’s a spark of meaning. Now a lot of you will wonder, what does this have to do with Christmas? Because I haven’t gotten to Christmas yet. Well there are a few things. The first thing to remember about the Christmas story is that the Christmas story is exactly that dissent. You have to understand the aspect of the killing of the innocents is a very important part of Christmas. King Herod, in looking for Christ, trying to find this Messiah, started to kill the newborns in Bethlehem. Started to kill the newborns. In this time of death and this time of ravage where all the seeds, all the lights are going out, there is this one light that survives, this one child which survives and will then grow to become the new principality of a new hierarchy, of a new world that will lay itself out. A new sun that will rise up to its zenith and then rule the phenomenological world. Now in order to kind of cinch all of this for you, last week I put out a video to show you the symbolism of the Nativity icon. So let’s look at that icon again. Now look at the icon of the Nativity. What is its major form? What’s its major shape? It’s a mountain. And so this mountain is this pyramid, it’s this hierarchy. You can see it go up, small at the top, large at the base. What’s at the top of the mountain? A star and angels. Like I said, those two things are very close to each other in terms of their meaning. Now this ray of light goes down, it’s coming down from the principality, coming down from the top and moving down into what’s not the bottom of the tree or the bottom of the mountain but rather is this dark place of death inside the mountain. Notice that inside the cave it’s completely black. And so it is this place of total darkness. This place also of animals. This place of a, this low place of death. You know, and the manger is an animal food trough and it’s also represented as a sarcophagus. So it really is this place of death. But in this place of death, that’s where we find the seed. That’s where we find this spark. This divine spark which is hidden and will then grow to become, you know, the new principality.