Mikdshen.htm
The
Real Revelation of the Temple for Today*
*
This article was written originally for the Israeli Magazine Hayim Aherim,
but was re-written for that publication by Rabbi Ohad Ezrah as “The Whole City is a Temple”,
which is also reproduced here. This article goes more deeply into the technical
and metrical aspects, and might be best read after the article listed above.
The end of the millenium brings a heightened global interest in visions of redemption and the end of days. The more these visions are focalized in their 'natural place', that is the Holy Land (to be more exact Jerusalem), its 'main actor' or at least the place of its central unfolding, is the temple in Jerusalem. However, the temple and her future are still clouded in mystery and confusion- as is written, 'The Lord said to dwell (his sanctuary) in deep mist' (I Kings 8:12). Most people surmise that the temple of Israel and Judah was situated on the site of the Dome of the Rock and that to rebuild it, the dome would have to be removed. The Muslims have sanctified the Temple Mount and any intention, Jewish or Christian that encourages the building of the temple is looked upon as a threat. The outcome is that most people connect the rebuilding of the temple to visions of apocalypse, and try to distance the subject from their awareness. In his article 'Holy Apocalypse Now' ('Hayim Aherim' # 25, October 98) Eli Shai enumerates some of the fears surrounding the temple. To my mind, the hands of the clock that are inevitably approaching the magical date '2000' press us to relate to it in a positive and creative way.
So today I bring you good tidings. The temple- the 'third house' of the prophetic vision- has already come revealed in Jerusalem. And with a little effort and modest expense (far less than the price of one F16 fighter jet) it is possible to operate it by the year 2000.
From my own perspective, the sparks of this discovery were implied in a revelation I experienced twenty-five years ago while reading John Michell's book 'The View Over Atlantis'. The book begins with the discovery of an ancient temple in Avebury, England (that remained unrecognized despite its presence for thousands of years, its grand scale defying the limited perception of men), and culminates in the vision of the New Jerusalem from Heaven as related in the 'Revelation of John', the definitive scenario of Christian 'End of Days' prophecies, that seals the New Testament.
According to Michell, the numbers and measures of the temple-city that appear in John's Revelation (that also intrigued Sir Isaac Newton no less than the research that brought him fame) contain the essence of all the ancient systems of measurement. The appearance of the Heavenly Jerusalem was to be the realization of all that was alluded to in the ancient temples, such as Avebury, Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid of Egypt.
Eventually I became acquainted with John Michell and we became true friends. And so it happened that he accepted my invitations to visit Jerusalem. Already on his second visit he had come to various discoveries, although it was his third visit this past February that led to an actual breakthrough.
Here I give the stage to John Michell who, on his last sojourn here, had the peak experience of realizing his life's work of thirty years, in which he wrote over twenty books on the most extraordinary topics - from the flying saucers vision, to the secrets of prehistoric temples, to the exposure of the aristocratic network that wrote of all Shakespeare's plays. By way of his research, John had become a world authority on sacred geometry, the ancient units of measurement and the symbolic implications of what was measured by them. John brought the only real evidence for the existence of an ancient, worldwide civilization (generally known as 'Atlantis' by those interested in such matters). He found that the various measuring units that facilitated the building of the temples of old all over the world are coherent, related by clear and simple numerical relationships, much like the numerical relationships between musical notes studied by the disciples of Pythagoras and Plato. The English foot is the last remnant of this ancient universal system, whereas the meter has no intrinsic bearing on it.
The outcome of this, for example, is that a contemporary scientist, trained upon the metric system as part of his basic premise, is almost completely blind to the physical evidence that lies at his feet, whereas the fringe person is able to discern it.
John received the initial guidelines for his research in Jerusalem from professor Asher Kaufman who dedicated years investigating the historical site of the Temple. Kaufman's conclusion is that neither the Temple of Solomon nor Herod's Temple stood where the Dome of the Rock stands today, which is the accepted premise, but on the line that passes from Mt. Scopus, the place where the red heifer was sacrificed, through the (now closed) Golden Gate to the Foundation Stone which lies under the Dome of the Spirits (or the Dome of the Tablets as it is sometimes called) some one hundred meters north by northwest of the Dome of the Rock. This, to Kaufman's claim, is the original site of the Temple. (A direct result of Kauffman's theories is that to build an actual replica of the second temple one could circumvent the Dome of the Rock – information that can diminish tension between Jews and Muslims on the Temple Mount.)
John continued Kaufman's line (he calls it The Jerusalem Ley Line) and found that it runs exactly from east to west and continues on to the Rock of Golgotha - the site where Jesus was crucified, nowadays contained as a chapel within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. His eyes were then carried to the angle of streets that fork out from Adrian's Pillar at Damascus Gate in the Old City. Referring to maps of the old Roman City, built after the destruction of the second temple, he discovered a clear and recurrent angle - of 36 degrees - delineating a pentagram (an ancient esoteric symbol) in the underlying plan. The placement of the pentagram on the Ley line of the Temple brought him to some new insights in sacred geometry, and to the realization that the site of Rock of Golgotha is an integral part of a complete and harmonious system that includes the structures on the Temple Mount.
On this visit, John intended to continue investigating these relationships. I encouraged him with a distinct sense that the discoveries he had come to were but the scaffolding for a simpler and more precise structure (without knowing what it might be). I also proposed to him a serious consideration of the studies of the architect Tuviah Sagiv, who introduces still another alternative to the first and second Temple sites. Within a fortnight John was thankful to me for both these suggestions. However, before I tell of his discoveries, let me bring to the stage Tuviah Sagiv.
I was fortunate to meet Tuviah many years ago while working as his tutor on the Faculty of Architecture at the Israel Institute of Technology. Already in his student days his talent for architecture was evident, and he was outstanding for his sharp and critical mind that refused to take things at face value. Now I discovered, that Tuviah has been publishing regularly in the past decade well-argued and exact discoveries that could rock the foundation of the accepted archeological and religious premises. Amongst other things, Tuviah Sagiv (of national religious leanings) contends that the present Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron is really the remains of an Edomite temple from the pre-Hashmonean period (while the accepted archeological view of the cave is as a Herodian structure), and that the original cave is to be found on a site less prone to Jewish-Muslim conflict. Sagiv also contends that the Western Wall was not built by the Jews, but rather was part of a pagan temple built by Adrian on the ruins of the Jewish one. The Dome of the Rock, according to Sagiv's multiple and penetrating analysis, is a remnant of that temple dedicated to Jupiter, and the holy rock within had already been sanctified, even before the time of Solomon, to the Sidonian goddess Ashtoret (the Asherah of the Canaanites and the Venus of Rome). His prevailing argument, and perhaps his most important one, is that the original Temple was not built on the site of the Dome of the Rock, but was placed considerably lower, between the Dome and the mosque of Al-Aksa. In light of this argument it is most probable that many of the original temple walls are still intact under the Temple Mount, across from the Western Wall. (Incidentally, the Lubavitch Hassidim also hold this view, for reasons known only to their late master).
John continued his investigations of the temple Ley line. In Kaufman's diagrams the temple is viewed as a rectangle of 1:2.4. Intuitively, John had drawn this rectangle even before he knew of Kaufman's work, only six times larger. He was happy to learn that an enlargement exactly like this one appears in the temple revelation of Ezekiel. Differing from the measurements of Solomon's temple, described in the scripture by unit measures of cubit, or amah (1.728 feet), Ezekiel's is multiplied by six: "and in the man's hand a measuring stick (of) six amot for each amah" (Ezekiel 40,5). (Likewise, the archeologist Magen Broshi, director of the 'Shrine of the Book' at the Israel Museum, has shown that the visionary temple described in the Dead Sea scrolls is of the same giant proportions as that of Ezekiel's temple). Michell placed this giant rectangle on the Ley line of the known temple, enlarged and spreading westward, and found the Rock of Golgotha at a site that parallels the place of the Foundation Stone within the temple of Solomon.
Now John started to contemplate this pattern more penetratingly. The first discovery was that the axis of the temple according to Sagiv's argument also relates to this pattern - it forms the southern side of the rectangle, a line parallel to the main temple axis and situated 360 temple cubits south of it. Moreover: this line is not arbitrary, but is clearly marked on the ground, so that its continuation east at the valley of Kidron touches the most noticeable monument there, the one known as "Absalom's tomb", whereas its western edge butts the northern corner of the "Tower of David" citadel by the Jaffa Gate.
There was already a sense of an impending revelation. But it was when John started to bring in his own expertise of the ancient measuring units that the really astounding discoveries started to crowd in:
The distance between the sides and the central axis of the big rectangle was 360 temple cubits, each cubit of 1.728 English feet. This number has inherent significance: 1728 is 12 cubes (12x12x12). The width of the rectangle is therefore 720 temple cubits and its length (by a ratio of 1:2.4) is exactly 1728 temple cubits. The Western edge of the rectangle is situated between the Tower of David and a prominent point at the north part of the Western city wall, its Eastern edge congruent with the Eastern wall of the Temple mount and the Old City, and its central axis passes through the (closed) Gate of Mercy. The pattern of the rectangle started to look more and more meaningful when John came to examine the location of the Foundation Stone (according to Kaufman) and the Rock of Golgotha - and here is where the main discovery was made.
The two holy rocks, at Golgotha and at the Dome of the Spirits, are found to be situated exactly at the two parallel foci of the rectangle. Namely: if we divide the large rectangle of the ratio of 1:2.4 into two equal rectangles of the ratio 1:1.2, we find that the two rocks stand exactly at the two centers of these equal rectangles. The two stones are situated along the main East-West axis of the larger temple, exactly 864 temple cubits from each other.
In his book "The Dimensions of Paradise" John Michell starts the discussion of "Symbolic number" with a couple of pages about the number 864. This number is, for example, the surface area of a cube whose edges are all 12 units, or the volume of an altar of 12 cubits each side and its height (above ground) 6 cubits. John has shown how this number appears in the gematria of the Greek letters used to describe the temple in the New Testament. He summarizes: "In the language of symbolic number 864 clearly pertains to a center of radiant energy, the sun in the solar system, Jerusalem on earth, the inner sanctuary of the temple, the altar within it and the corner stone upon which the whole sacred edifice is founded. Its characteristic form is the cube of the New Jerusalem with 12 units to a side and volume of twice 864 cubic units. That is the foundation rock, placed at the point of union between heaven and earth, where the rays of the sun penetrate the realm of the earth spirit….".
And now suddenly this number appeared, not out of theoretical calculations and gematria combinations, but as the actual and most important measure in the outline of the hidden temple. The distance was measured with the greatest possible accuracy upon a 1:2,500 scale map of the Israel ordinance survey. Someone has already been there, perhaps already before King Solomon, and marked these two rocks as foundation points for two shrines, which together comprise a complex super-temple.
At this point the mysterious possibilities started to gyre and the vicissitudes of history to fall into order. What is happening here? The pattern laid by the Romans, ostensibly in order to wipe out the remnant of the Jewish temple, somehow came to create a harmony with it. The mother of Constantine, the Roman emperor who converted to Christianity, chose as the site for the cult of Jesus the very rock that had been dedicated to an ancient pagan rite, which was exactly opposite the place below the Dome of the Spirits. The Moslems came and built in opposition to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre their shrines of El-Aksa and the Dome of the Rock - exactly within the alignments of the Temple of Jupiter at Elia Capitolina. Four inimical civilizations have competed over the site of the temple of Jerusalem, and each one added to it a further aspect. The Jewish temple turned eastwards. The Roman temple turned its axis 90 degrees to the North. The Christians conquered Rome from the inside and brought a shift of the central axis in another 90 degrees Westward - towards their future temple in Rome. They built their shrine on the western extension of the ley line, on the ruins of an ancient pagan temple. Then when the hand of Islam prevailed - the ruined structures on the Temple Mount were rebuilt, and the axis was shifted another 90 degrees, southward, to the schematic (geographically inaccurate) direction of their chief shrine at Mecca. How the Great wheel turns!
And here we stand now, in the new State of Israel, charting the pattern of the temple on an East-West axis, and suddenly this axis extends even further. It extends to the site of the Knesset (Israel's parliament), whose designers were most likely unaware of their building within the pattern of the temple.
Moved to the depth of his being John wrote in his summary that he can see no explanation to this consistency but in the realm of the miraculous - that Providence must have guided the different planners, and that all their contradictory intentions were somehow guided by an unseen hand toward one unified aim, that the time for its revelation could not come before our time. It is at the present time that the new temple is being revealed, not as a willful human act but through hidden providence.
It would have been enough to give thanks to the revealer of mysteries and end here, but the process of revelation continued. I invited Tuvia Sagiv to make his acquaintance with John Michell and his discoveries. Within a minute of their meeting they were deep into it. No words of courtesy were yet exchanged - and they were into new discoveries: The perfect pentagram drawn from the corner of the Damascus Gate had reaffirmed what was testified by the imperfect pentagon of the underground rock whose visible edge is the rock at the Dome of the Rock. Pivotal points of the two different systems were found to coincide and explained by complementary deductions. Sagiv (who believes, as noted, that the temple was situated at another place) proposed the site that was posited by Kaufman as that of the Jewish Temple, as a site of a real temple built by King Solomon, but for another deity. And here, suggested Sagiv, is perhaps revealed the most amazing story - about the full extent of Solomon's Temple.
The Bible records - and we generally try to avoid it - that the temple Solomon built for the God of Israel was not his sole enterprise in that realm. After seven years of work on the temple, King Solomon continued another thirteen years building his house and then "the house of the forest of Lebanon" (I Kings 7:2), which was quite larger than the first temple. Was it just a palace for his personal glory? The scriptures admit what Jewish history has always found difficult to accept: that Solomon also built temples to Kemosh, Molekh and the gods of his foreign wives, in Jerusalem (I Kings 11:4-8). In the sequel, the Book of Kings tells that King Josiah had demolished the temples that Solomon built (II Kings 23:11-13) to Kemosh, Milkom and Ashtoret.
A new possibility arises. Solomon-Shlomoh, the wisest of all people, had already planned and set up the whole system of shrines that would come to serve the four civilizations ruling in Jerusalem during the next three thousand years, each building its own temple on one of the components that he had already set up. We now therefore arrive at an almost complete system. Almost the whole area of the Old City encompasses the overall temple, and the worship in the whole (Shalem) temple, The Temple of Solomon (Mikdash Shlomoh) can start peacefully (b'Shalom) already tomorrow. This revelation changes our relation to the temple. It is possible to regard the whole walled Old City of Jerusalem as "The Temple of Solomon" - the Temple of Wisdom, the Temple of Reconciliation (hashlamah) between the religions, between the sciences and the arts, and among all the tribes of humankind.
Epilogue: The enchanting conversation, which started at the Academy of Jerusalem Chambers which overlook the Dome of the Rock and is situated exactly on the southern ley line of the temple, has been continuing in a veritable process of ingathering of revelations (Kibbutz Giluyim). We have come to a far-reaching understanding regarding the Dome of the Rock and the possibility of introducing complementary functions, which might seem appropriate even for its Moslem custodians. An outline is forming of an enormous "Tabernacle of Peace", lightweight and inexpensive, that will mark the place of the whole giant temple we discussed, and shelter it. In parallel, we are elucidating appropriate rituals for the pilgrims who would seek the shrine of the Temple of wisdom of Solomon - such as the games of the knights who seek wisdom and peace-making (see my article on "The Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon" in Hayim Aherim 25) which could take place under that tabernacle/canopy and in the streets of Jerusalem for all the pilgrims of Jerusalem 2000. In practice, the whole Old city could function as The Temple of Peace-making - The Yeru-Shalem Universal Temple (YeShUT). We have drawn a practical plan for the virtual version of this YeShUT.