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Virga Aurea or The "Tree" of Gods

The Virga Aurea.is an ancient manuscript about the Virgin Mary, alphabets of the known world at the time of Pope Paul V, and the astronomy of the times with an effort to change the planet names into angel names. Father James Bonaventure Hepburn dedicated it to Pope Paul V (Pope from 1605-21)

To Our Most Blessed Father And Lord.
One type of the Blessed Rod is that of Moses Design, hence Virga Aurea.

Father James Bonaventure Hepburn from Scotland was the creator of the Virga Aurea.. Exerpts from the translations indicate that heretics were Gentiles1 and the Church was choosing to replace their beliefs with the Rod of Jesse . . . the Blessed Virgin.
To Our Most Blessed Father And Lord, Pope Paul The Fifth, In Eternal Happiness Led astray by the deceits and deceptions of the EVil Spirit, antiquity held its peace from assisting seekers of the Laurel Bough; the darkness of error haVing been dispelled from the Gentiles 2 by the rising of the Sun of Justice, may it now be allowed to seekers to prefer salvation, safety, and the Rod of Jesse, our golden branch, namely the Virgin Mary. . . . .

. . . . sketched by my pencil from the sacred page, in colours that were to hand, arranged in a garland of seventy-two praises.

The seventy-two alphabets are actually only 70 known polities in the world of Pope Paul V. Peru and Mexico had a glyphic text writing system so they are not counted here even though they are in the 72 "praises of God." As it stands, one can delete those that refer to angels, i.e., Mercury, Seraphim, SuperHeaven, Heaven, Angels,

Ancient rulers, i.e. Adam, Isaac, Noah, Moses, and Solomon can also be deleted. Then there are separate entities that include Virgil, Enoch, Mysticism.

Religious sects were not left out, i.e., Brahmans, Jacobians, the Rabbis, German Rabbis, Afro-Rabbis, Rabbi-Salonicum, Spanish-Rabbis, Italian-Rabbis, Syrian-Armenians, Hebrew-Arabic, Syrian-Hebrews, Latin-Greeks, Apollonians and Judeo-Samaritans in general, deleted since it refers to religous sects or frontier lands.

with these twenty-seven (27) polities deleted from the sixty-eight alphabets that are noted individually, that leaves only forty-three (43) known alphabets (including Latin and Hebrew of the manuscript itself in the XVII century world.

Those alphabets are noted as;
Cussae, Sabaens, Ionians, Irish, Masssagetian,
Etruscans, Ethiopians, Aeolians, Scottish, Turkey,
Saracens, Phoenicians, Attics, Africa, Galilee,
Assyrians Gallicians, Dorians, Arabia, Punic,
Armenians, Germans, Coptics, India, Samarian,
Illyirians, Greeks, Serbians, Idumea, Scythican,
Babylonian, Hieroglyphics, Egyptian, Gothic, Getic,
Chaldean, Palestinian, Canaan, Persian, Spain,
Arca[n]dians, Latin and Hebrew.

And whom may I not compel, armed with the Blessed Rod? That which God made as the Staff of Moses, famous and venerable in power, Moses was by this the greater and more heavenly, since he was ruler of a part, the severed bough, and may, by the Good Rod, be ruler of the whole world. . . . .

Apparently the author is a Marrano who still believes in the Hebrew religion and not at all in the Pope and his power over heaven.

By his blessed staff, the Pope makes the Rock (or Body of Christ) from bread, and His Precious Blood from Wine, crosses Hell, and bars or opens Heaven; he kills the old serpent, and recent heretical serpents.. . . .

He also is very sure that only Moses performed real miracles and he had made sure that everyone forced to comply with the new religion will know it to be untrue.

One type of the Blessed Rod is that of Moses, famous for signs and true miracles, the other, more expressive of the Most Blessed Maiden, is of the character of Jesse's Rod. . . . .

. . . . . . Deign therefore, 0 Most Blessed of Princes, to accept this tiny little gift of devotion to the Most Blessed Virgin, and to look kindly on my theory of the Holy Rod, and to embrace and cherish me in kindness, as you are accustomed to do with all the smallest sons of the Church. . . . . . 3

Adam McLean in 1980, identified Mars are the warrior to the right of the Virgin, but it is more likely that it is Saint Michael, the archangel. He goes on to say that there was a complex pun using the word Virga in this manuscript. He felt that the pun included the Virgin, the alphabets and the various rods of authority mentioned throughout, all related to Virga as the "rod" of them all.

A complex pun is enshrined in the word "Virga" of the title in Latin - Virga, 'a rod' being in one sense used for the alphabetic symbols . . .

. . . . . . The timing of the publication, 1616, right at the centre of the Rosicrucian/hermetic publishing period, suggests that Hepburn in his own way may have been responding to that impulse. Under the guise of the Virgin Mary heading the plate, Hepburn was able to3

show everyone that the Angel to her left, impregnated the Virgin, (gaining the approval of the Pope), identified the location of the Holy Grail on her right side, (that was the same type of ID as below) and marking the angel Gabriel himself with an arrow (the dragon;s tail, colored red here fo easier to locate) as he points, not to the Trinity, but to a higher being far above them.5

The sun that surrounds the Virgin has strange rays, On the right side, the rays appear to be serpent heads; on the left, their tails. The Virgin herself stands on a moon that is upside down. (Usually, the horns of the moon point upwards in the art depicting her.)

During World War II, the prison camps would print their signs with a single letter upside down so that those entering would know that the statement was not true.4 It is not unlikely that this was a prccedure from previous oppresions, illustrated above. [Smalll figures appear to be hidden within the shadows, the beards, the feathers, knees and other parts of the body. It would make a great research project.]

Apparently, the Pope was attempting to change all the known stars and planets into the names of Christian angels and saints.

Strangely enough,the main reason for the magical alphabets, was not so much its symbolism, but, instead, it was a major effort to hide the Holy Grail and other negative information by inserting the diversion of "magic." Even so Adam McLean ignores the obvious locator and saint of the Holy Grail, to the right of the Virgen, that had been created earlier by the mason who carved the statue of Melchizedek in the Chartres Cathedral in France. 5

So much for magic alphabets, they are great diversions, but have little value during the Middle Ages, when the Inquisition was a debilitating force in Europe.

1 (1888) Dictionnaire de L'Ancienne Langue Francaise et de Tous ses Dealectes du IXe au XVe Siécle Liechtenstein/New York/Paris: Scientific Periodicals Establishment Vaduz (Reprint by Kraus Reprint Corp. New York 1961) (Reprint) Gentiles are not Jews or Christians but Arabs.

2McLean, Adam (1980) The Virga Aurea: Seventy-two magical and other related alphabets. In The Hermetic Journal. and the complete mss is on the web via Google.

3Source: [Section below the figure of the Virgin translated by Patricia Tahil] http://www.levity.com/.

4Northover, Liesha (1996) Death Camp Horro Still Haunts Visitors, On the Web via Google

5Hancock, Graham, (1993) The Sign and the SealNew York: A Touchstone Book/Simon and Schuster, Inc. Fig. 12.