Essays filed under Numbers and Names

Agur and the Son of Man

The Son of Man, the Banner of Reuben, and the Royal Arch Agur: "Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended? who hath gathered the wind in his fists? who hath bound the waters in a garment? who hath established all the ends of the earth?" (Proverbs 30:4) Jesus: "And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven." (John 3:13) Agur: "What is his name, and what is his son's name, if thou canst tell?" (Proverbs 30:4) The exchange above never happened, of course. Agur son of Jakeh, an obscure sage whose sayings were appended to the book of Proverbs, asked his riddle centuries before the Fourth Gospel was written, and the evangelist gives no sign of having it in mind. Set side by side, though, the two texts form a question and an answer with one piece still missing, because Agur asks for two names, the name of the one who went up and came down and the name of his son, and the Gospe...

Ronnel D. Chua·October 01, 2023

What Is in a Name?

The Astro-Kabala, Cheiro, and the old practice of changing a name Our elders have long advised that a sickly child be given a new name, and few of us stop to ask why. The advice assumes that a name holds some power over the life it is attached to, enough that changing the name can change the child's fortune, and it raises a practical question too, since a name already entered in the civil registry cannot simply be erased. The custom is far from ours alone. Chinese families once gave small children deliberately humble or unflattering milk names so that envious spirits would pass them by, and Hindu households fix a child's name with care in the naming rite, the namakarana , after consulting the stars of the birth. Jewish tradition is the closest parallel of all. The Talmud lists four things that tear up the decree passed against a person, among them charity, prayer, a change of deeds and a change of name (b. Rosh Hashanah 16b), and to this day a seriously ill Jew may be given...

Ronnel D. Chua·October 01, 2023

The Triangle Book

Ubing, the old man at the spring, and a book that would not sink, 1946 The Book on the Water In 1946 Ubing, the boy later known as Ben Isay Ngipon, was a pupil at Surigao Central School in Surigao City, and his days had a small ritual at their center. Near the school ran the San Juan River, clear and loud with birds, and beside it a spring gave the cleanest drinking water in the neighborhood. Ubing bathed there, and afterward he filled his container at the spring before heading back. Ubing or Ben Isay Ngipon One bright morning, while he was in the water near the spring, he saw something that had no business floating: a book shaped like a triangle, riding the current as lightly as a leaf. Paper sinks, or at least it swells and sags, and this did neither, which puzzled him for a moment. Noon was close, though, and boys of twelve have a gift for setting wonders aside when they are hungry, so he went on with his bath. The book kept drifting back to him as he drew water, and once he l...

Ronnel D. Chua·June 23, 2023

Unlocking the Mysteries of Spiritual Science

From Pythagoras to the Divine Master, the long search for a science of the soul "Man is the measure of all things." Protagoras, as quoted by Plato in the Theaetetus How do science and the life of the spirit fit together? Can a person reach past the physical world to the riddles at the root of life, and can the rational and the intuitive sides of a human being be made to work as one? Anyone drawn to those questions is already standing at the door of what the old teachers called spiritual science. The idea is very old. Egypt, India, China and Greece each had their version of it, and all of them began from the conviction that reality runs past the reach of the five senses, that there is a spiritual side to the world beyond the physical universe we can measure, and that a person can reach it through meditation, prayer, intuition and the creative act. The name itself is newer, made familiar in the twentieth century by Rudolf Steiner, who called his own method Geisteswissensc...

Ronnel D. Chua·June 11, 2023

Our Guardian Angels

The choirs of heaven, the seventy-two names, and the angels said to watch over each of us Angels appear in the sacred texts and the folklore of nearly every age, usually as messengers of God endowed with great power and wisdom, and every culture that knows them gives them its own names and offices. They are held to have been created by God to guide, protect and help human beings. Art gives them wings and a purity that moves swiftly and silently through the heavens, and several religions teach that angels keep the record of what each person does, good and evil alike. Popular imagination shows them sometimes as men and women with wings and sometimes as figures of pure light crowned with halos. Whatever one makes of the question of their existence, their hold on the human spirit is undeniable. Many people take comfort in the thought that no one is ever truly alone, that kindly powers watch over every life, and that comfort has outlasted every argument against it. The Nine Choirs of Heaven...

Ronnel D. Chua·June 03, 2023