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The Magi are the visitors who follow a star to Bethlehem in Matthew, and also the priests of ancient Persia. Over the years I have met them on pages that do not agree on what they were. Some treat them as history, some as esoteric symbols, and one as an Atlantean rank.
What Matthew says
The Magi between history and later legend is the cleanest start. In that lecture the host argues that Matthew is the only New Testament writing that brings these visitors on stage. The chapter never calls them wise men or kings. Those titles were added afterward, and later infancy books assign three kings to Persia, India and Arabia. The host places the Magi among Persian advisers who read dreams and carried out sacrifices.
The priests of Persia
For the people behind the priesthood, The Persians: Kyomarz, Mahabad, Zoroaster and the Magi is where I start. Zoroaster: Prophet of Ahura Mazda Across the Site and Zoroastrianism: Ahura Mazda cover the Persian religion and its prophet. Persian stories of the missing years of Jesus turns the direction around and has Jesus travel east into Persia.
Gold, frankincense and myrrh
Rudolf Steiner on the Three Magi is an esoteric reading. For Steiner the Magi are initiates of earlier streams, and each gift is a symbol: gold for wisdom, frankincense for feeling that must be refined, myrrh for death and the life that comes through it. On Golden objects I note the gold given in Matthew 2:11 as a sign of kingship, which is the plainer reading.
Magi in Atlantis and later gospels
Lewis Spence uses the word for an Atlantean rank. In The Occult Sciences in Atlantis he lists the grades Initiates, Adepts and Magi, and says the Magi proper were almost always of royal blood. The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ gives them names. In Levi Dowling’s text, Jesus reaches Persepolis and meets the three:
In time he reached Persepolis, the city where the kings of Persia were entombed; the city of the learned magi, Hor, and Lun, and Mer, the three wise men.
Levi H. Dowling, The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ
I read that as a twentieth-century retelling, not as an ancient record.
Related pages
- The Magi between history and later legend
- The Persians: Kyomarz, Mahabad, Zoroaster and the Magi
- Zoroaster: Prophet of Ahura Mazda Across the Site
- Zoroastrianism: Ahura Mazda
- Persian stories of the missing years of Jesus
- Rudolf Steiner on the Three Magi
- Golden objects
- The Occult Sciences in Atlantis
- The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ
For every page I tagged with Magi, see the Magi tag archive.
