The Child Sacrifice of Jesus Christ to Moloch and the Black Pope Antichrist at The Temple
Giuseppe Porta detto Salviati
La Presentazione di Gesù al Tempio (The Presentation of Jesus at The Temple)
16th century
Fresco
Doge's Palace, Venice, Italy
MOLOCH AND THE BLACK POPE INVADE THE CRECHE
There was a painting by Giuseppe Porta detto Salviati which stood out for me at the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in the Doge's Palace in Venice, Italy, during my last visit in 2016. Frankly, it was shocking.
I've long understood the sacrificial nature of the Jesus story - that Jesus Christ was born essentially as a sacrifice for the masses - perhaps to satiate the need for, and preclude further child sacrifices. I've also been aware of the mythology surrounding Moloch - who is effectively the god of child sacrifice -- a towering inferno bull-owl deity mentioned in the Bible, which was really only exposed to the masses in modern times by Alex Jones and Jon Ronson's infiltration of the Bohemian Grove during the Cremation of Care ritual in 2000.
Giuseppe Porta detto Salviati
La Presentazione di Gesù al Tempio (The Presentation of Jesus at The Temple) (detail 1)
Fresco
Doge's Palace, Venice, Italy
HOWL
Moloch is also the main character of Allen Ginsberg's Howl - the poem that announced and defined the sacrifice of the Baby Boomer generation by way of the artificially-induced hippie countercultural 'revolution' - which itself turned out to be an engineered destruction of culture. Here is Part II of Ginsberg's Howl:
What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?
Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!
Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smoke-stacks and antennae crown the cities!
Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!
Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!
Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky!
Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river!
Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!
Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years’ animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time!
Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!
Howl seems to me to be an announcement that the Baby Boomer generation - perhaps specifically the males of that American generation more than the females - were slated by the powers-that-were to be a colossal mass-sacrifice for the greater good - i.e., Order out of Chaos for the New Age.
GEHENNA OUTSIDE THE TEMPLE
Another fascinating - and deeply unnerving - experience I've had was passing by Gehenna when I was outside the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Gehenna is a valley where the Kings of Jerusalem (and others) sacrificed their children to Moloch. It was located just outside Solomon's Temple. Milton writes about it in Paradise Lost:
"First MOLOCH, horrid King besmear'd with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents tears,
Though, for the noyse of Drums and Timbrels loud,
Their children's cries unheard that passed through fire
To his grim Idol. Him the AMMONITE
Worshipt in RABBA and her watry Plain,
In ARGOB and in BASAN, to the stream
Of utmost ARNON. Nor content with such
Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart
Of SOLOMON he led by fraud to build
His Temple right against the Temple of God
On that opprobrious Hill, and made his Grove
The pleasant Vally of HINNOM, TOPHET thence
And black GEHENNA call'd, the Type of Hell."
It's fascinating to think that Solomon, according to Milton, allowed Moloch to establish his abode right next to The Temple of Solomon -- why would he do that? One of the things that fascinates me most about the Temple of Solomon is that just outside the Holy of Holies is set up a courtyard for sacrificing goats - at least that's what models (see below images) of the Temple I've seen in stores in Jerusalem show. Why is there such need for sacrifice? And how is sacrifice so intrinsic to Abrahamism that the holiest Abrahamic temple - Solomon's Temple - should require (or at least allow) a child sacrifice station right outside its gate? Perhaps it is an act of tessellation - meaning that while the greatest good is occurring in the Holy of Holies, the greatest evil is occurring adjacent to the sacred space?
SACRIFICE AS REMEDY FOR CANNIBALISM
Following are photos I took through the window of a religious shop in Jerusalem on the road to Jaffa gate. They show different cardboard models of The Golden Temple or The Third Temple -- Solomon's Temple. The first and second photos show a model of the entire Temple, the third of only the Wailing Wall, the fourth, fifth and sixth photos show what appears to be a sort of conveyor belt for lining up goats to be sacrificed, and the last photo shows a model of the sacrificial altar for burning the bodies of the goats or sheep. What is most curious about this for me is what it suggests about the nature of a deity who would require such sacrifice.
More specifically: Does the deity inhabiting the Holy of Holies, who demands blood sacrifice, differ qualitatively from Moloch? If so, how? Is the difference that the "good" god is sated by non-human blood, while Moloch requires human blood so is bad? So, in other words is the apparent schism (it may not actually be a real schism if the "good" god does, in fact, secretly require human blood sacrificed covertly away from the gaze of the profane) between the "good" god and Moloch a metaphor for the ending of human cannibalism? Are we still -- or were we recently -- that cannibalistic that we required such an abhorrently primitive ritual to separate ourselves from our animal nature? It wouldn't surprise me, but I hope that we are progressing and can do away with sacrifice entirely.
IS SACRIFICE THE CRUX OF ALCHEMY?
Strangest of all, perhaps, is the similarity between the sacrifice of goats at the Temple, children to Moloch, and alchemical human sacrifice using athanors (Moloch has been depicted as an athanor) - see my article, video and podcast about The Torrigiani Tower of Athanor and The Path of Enlightenment.
Moloch athanor
SYMBOLISM
The black-robed, bald priest in this Giuseppe Porta detto Salviati painting La Presentazione di Gesù al Tempio (The Presentation of Jesus at The Temple) certainly looks ominous, and I have to say that it seems probable to me this is a depiction of the fabled "Black Pope" - who seems to have his hands inside (or at least under the arms) of a hollow-headed puppet pope, who in turn is an obvious embodiment of Moloch - complete with a piscean mitre modified to fit the shape of Moloch's owl-eared head! The black-robed figure may very well be an Antichrist as well.
The Million Dollar Question here is: Why is Moloch and the Black Pope (or whichever dark priest that may be) shown as being present at the birth of Christ? Very curious indeed. It makes me wonder if Christianity is little more than a method for the separation of the Sacred from the profane - to sate the cannibalistic masses' thirst for blood sacrifice. While the Sacred activity goes on inside the Temple - the profane masses are offered mock sacrifices to placate them.
Other symbolism which stands out to me:
- Lightning bolts appear behind the Moloch / Pope figure.
- Dark figures surround the Christ Child.
- Mary supplicates for the return of her infant.
- A monk holds the Holy Host at the feet of Pope Moloch.
- An archangel holds a Crown of Thorns above Jesus.
- A woman - presumably Mary Magdalene - readies an upside-down cross for Jesus Christ.
- The image of a cherubim - or some other entity - is carved into the sacrificial altar.
- Someone holds one or two spears (for lancing the crucified Christ?) - or perhaps they are candles - behind the altar.
- The man in front-left holds his sword pointing down, resting on the ground.
Giuseppe Porta detto Salviati
La Presentazione di Gesù al Tempio (The Presentation of Jesus at The Temple) (detail 2)
Fresco
Doge's Palace, Venice, Italy
METEORS OVER ROME!
I was driving with my friend Keith Williamson to Rome, from Assisi in 2013 - at the exact time that Pope Benedict XVI was resigning - when one of the most incredible things I've ever seen took place - a meteor shower rained down over Rome right in front of our eyes! I'd also heard on the news that lightning had struck the Vatican (which admittedly may be a common occurrence) as Benedict was leaving office. I mention this because it correlates with the lightning shown in the painting being discussed: Lightning and meteor showers can occur at auspicious times of Divine intervention.
CONCLUSION
Whatever the canonical explanation for Giuseppe Porta detto Salviati's La Presentazione di Gesù al Tempio (The Presentation of Jesus at The Temple) may be, I would find it hard to accept that it is not depicting Moloch and some sort of ritual child sacrifice of the infant Jesus Christ.
Giuseppe Porta detto Salviati - La presentazione di Gesu al tempio