Old Document Review 'On the Seven Seals of the Apocalypse'

This ancient document was written by Joachim of Fiore (d.1202) and features his interpretations of what the seals in the Book of Revelations represent.  Joachim sees the seals as representing the story of the church between the first and the second coming of Jesus.

However his understanding goes much deeper, when Joachim looks at history he sees a link to the Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are matched to the Old Testament, the life of Jesus and the New Testament.  Whats more, is that each of these eras can be broken down into seven periods of time which will match with the corresponding period in the next era.  These seven periods are also represented by the seven seals which are laid out in the Book of Revelations.  As always periods of time divided into seven can also be linked to how the Mayans viewed time, each period of time is seen to have seven days and six nights.

For example the first period in the Old Testament is seen from Abraham to the promised land, which is matched to the New Testament period of time from John the Baptist to the early church.  This matching carries on as far as the sixth seal which Joachim seen as matching against his own era, and everything that was happening during his lifetime such as the crusades and so on.  Joachim foretells that soon the Catholic Church shall be overthrown or challenged by a new church (the rise of Protestants?) and he sees this as the time where Satan will be bound up into his prison.  Then in the seventh seal will be the second coming.

Old Document Review 'Prognostications'

This fantastic document was originally published in 1536 A.D and was written by Paracelsus (d.1541). It contains 32 images with very cryptic statements to go with them. Paracelcus was originally born as Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim and was a German-Swiss, in his life time he was a physician, a botanist, an alchemist, astrologer and occultist. He was famous for many things, he gave zinc its name and contibuted greatly to the development of medicine.

The 32 predictions are of mundane events, ecclesiastical affairs and political upheavals, yet they are so cryptic that has made them almost impossible to interpret. The Past, Present and future are described as three separate entities yet there are the same. Like a Trinity of time itself, and Paracelsus claims that it is through divine intervention that he has been shown things, as nothing is impossible through the Trinity of God. He speaks many times of Magic, yet by magic he means divine power. Magic and Occultism at his time ran the risk of being tried for heresy, yet in reading extracts of his various writings, the only thing that comes clear is that he was a devout believer in God, a spiritual person with a great understanding of the nature of God.

An example of the text from the book;'What a thing is internally is shown by its outward sign. As Nature signs her own so does Magic. You have been signed as a devourer of all who have to do with them'

As you can see the text is very cryptic and quite hard to understand yet some scholars claim that several of the prophecies have been fulfilled. They interpret seperate words from the texts just as one would do with interpreting dreams, for example the bear is Russia, the lion is England and so on.

There are a couple of interesting things I found in the document; the first is a reference in Figure 26 to Sibyl, meaning the Sibylline Oracles perhaps, or maybe he had access to other writings from the Sibyls that is now lost to time. Secondly; In the third figure, the image contains beams of sunlight 6 on the left, 7 on the right, is this possibly a reference to the same beliefs that the Mayans had of the sevens days of existence (seven days and six nights) making the number thirteen.