A soul eater is able to consume an individual's spirit. The trait can be inherited from one's parents, or can be acquired from an existing practitioner. The soul eater can be human or can take the form of a dog or other animal in pursuit of his or her practice. This belief connects with the beliefs in werewolves, were-cats, selkies, and other were-creatures and human/animal beings found in World Folklore.
In the Book of Genesis, we find the first powerful predator, the Serpent, devouring the soul of the first woman, Eve, making her his slave in the flesh, and through her, all the human race, since she was made from Adam's flesh. Through the flesh, corruption enter Man's spiritual body, making all the human race subjects to the Devil. He, as a predator, gain control of our system of beliefs, our ideas of good and evil, setting up our hopes and expectations only through the flesh. Covetousness, greed, and cowardice, were the main ingredients that the predator implanted in us, making us feel complacent, routinary, and egomaniacal. As his prisoners, he declared himself, our lord and master.
In the Book of Numbers, Korah, the eldest son of Izhar, a descendant of Levi, of the Kohath division of Levitical Priests, is portrayed as a paradigm of rebellion (predators) against Moses and the Aaronic priesthood, during the spiritual journey in the wilderness. They appeared before Moses and Aaron to affirm that the entire congregation, not just the Aaronic Priest, is Holy. The Korahites were Gatekeepers of the Tent of Meeting. They were also a leading guild of Temple Singers. Thus, their objection is not only against the Division between Levitical groups and Aaronic Priesthood, but also against any Division with regard to "Holiness" between the Congregation and the Priesthood. It represented the First Spiritual Conflict between two groups, one being overpowered by the forces of the Flesh (soul eaters), and the other being established by Divine Power in order to maintain Righteousness at its fullest in which the Glory of God was able to manifest fully and exercise legal Dominion over the Souls of his followers. God responded to the rebellion by causing the ground to open up and swallow Korah, Dathan, and Abiram and their families, and then sending Fire to consume the remaining 250 associates.
In the aftermath God commands that the burned bronze censers of the rebellion, that represented their spiritual divine holiness as members of the priest class, be fashioned into a covering for the spiritual altar as a warning to all future challenges to the Aaronic hegemony.
The Prophet Amos, described as a spiritual herdsman and a tender of sycamore fig trees, engaged self-consciously in the activity of prophesying by divine compulsion, but did not adopt the vocation of being a professional prophet. His message portrayed contemporary religious institutions as corrupt, and able to succumb to the spiritual powers of Egypt and Assyria (soul eaters). The capital city of Samaria have yielded physical evidence of urban population growth and the development of an economic elite possessing large houses furnished with imported luxury items. The accelerated redistribution of Land, economic resources, and fleshy social authority from a kinship-and land-based society to the centralized bureaucracy of an expanding state created in an accelerated way much of the social upheaval that provided the spiritual setting for Amos' message.
Amos 1:1 dated his prophecy to "2 years before the earthquake." His message employs the physical impact of an earthquake imagery to describe God's impending Judgment to the soul eaters that were corrupting the Truth about God's Plan of Salvation. The meaning of an earthquake was severe enough, as it was in the case of Korah, to make the earth swallow their predators that gain an entrance to the Priestly class.
Amos also uses the image of a Solar Eclipse to describe Divine Judgment, and two of them can be dated within Amos' lifetime. The message owes its preservation to the perception that a connection between cosmic disturbances of heaven (predators' chaos) and earth (soul eaters) and the social turmoil of the spiritual Children of Israel, all of them are interrelated.
The angry roar of an enraged God from His Universal Throne in Jerusalem signals distress and destruction encompassing the entire created order, and demonstrate the Cosmic Dimension of the Moral and Social defenses of Spiritual Israel.
Israel's crimes in the flesh are spelled out in a list of 7 offenses that are violations of its Covenant. Israel's Salvation history does not exempt them from judgment, but instead intensifies their punishment because of their unique relationship and responsibility to God.
Amos' denunciation of fleshy Israel is based upon the irony of increasing social and economic exploitation, on the one hand, and a heightened degree of religious activity, on the other. Israel's prosperity is described in references to "Winter Houses," "Summer Houses," "Houses of Ivory," "Great Houses,"and "Houses of Hewn Stones," where the wealthy live in leisure and indulgence at the expense of the disenfranchised poor. Their myriad religious practices are declared to be abhorrent to God because they serve to insulate the wealthy from the plight of the poor and to mitigate the demands of conscience. Their religious observances actually increased their transgression. Their love to bring sacrifices, tithes, and freewill offerings, did not demonstrate that they had returned spiritually to God.
The final section of the Book softens the oracles of doom in the preceding sections by limiting the extent of Israel's fleshy destruction. It states that God will not utterly destroy "the House of Jacob."
Amos uses the metaphor of a sieve, by which the soul eaters of Israel are sifted out through Judgment while a remnant remains. It promises a Time of Restoration and Salvation for the people that truly belongs to spiritual Israel at some undetermined future date.
No comments:
Post a Comment