During the early nineteenth century, Parley P. Pratt observed an unusual aerial sign that holds great significance to endowed Latter-day Saints. This future Apostle describes what he witnessed in his autobiographical writings:
I had been on a visit to a singular people called Shakers, at New Lebanon, about seven miles from my aunt Van Cott’s, and was returning that distance, on foot, on a beautiful evening of September [1830]. The sky was without a cloud; the stars shone out beautifully, and all nature seemed reposing in quiet, as I pursued my solitary way, wrapped in deep meditations on the predictions of the holy prophets; the signs of the times; the approaching advent of the Messiah to reign on the earth, and the important revelations of the Book of Mormon; my heart filled with gratitude to God that He had opened the eyes of my understanding to receive the truth, and with sorrow for the blindness of those who lightly rejected the same, when my attention was aroused by a sudden appearance of a brilliant light which shone around me, above the brightness of the sun.
I cast my eyes upward to inquire from whence the light came, when I perceived a long chain of light extended in the heavens, very bright, and of a deep fiery red. It at first stood stationary in a horizontal position; at length bending in the center, the two ends approached each other with a rapid movement, so as to form an exact square. In this position it again remained stationary for some time, perhaps a minute, and then again the ends approached each other with the same rapidity, and again ceased to move, remaining stationary, for perhaps a minute, in the form of a compass; it then commenced a third movement in the same manner, and closed like the closing of a compass, the whole forming a straight line like a chain doubled. It again remained stationary for a minute, and then faded away.
I fell upon my knees in the street, and thanked the Lord for so marvelous a sign of the coming of the Son of Man. Some persons may smile at this, and say that all these exact movements were by chance; but, for my part, I could as soon believe that the letters of the alphabet would be formed by chance, and be placed so as to spell my name, as to believe that these signs (known only to the wise) could be formed and shown forth by chance.https://www.ldsliving.com/the-heavenly- ... es/s/90965
Parley P. Pratt observed an unusual aerial sign that holds great significance to endowed Latter-day Saints.
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kirtland r.m.
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ParticleMan
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Re: Parley P. Pratt observed an unusual aerial sign that holds great significance to endowed Latter-day Saints.
A reader's comment about Hamlet's Mill:
"[Hamlet's Mill] shows how the 4-sided ‘flat earth’ cosmology is an ancient metaphorical image based around the 4 points of the solstices and equinoxes, which inscribe a Square within the Circle of the ecliptic, forming a ‘frame of time’ centered upon the axis mundi, conceptualized as the Sacred Tree of many traditions. This image-based understanding of the sacred calendar is the source of the cosmological ‘floods’ in which one world-age is ‘submerged’ and a ‘new world’ – a new Age – is born. Each Age is signaled by images in the scriptures that gain new significance when we read from a calendrical viewpoint – Christ the [Pisces] Fish, born of a [Virgo] Virgin to signal the revolution to a new Aeon; the zodiacal symbolism that finally makes John’s Revelation more comprehensible and much less scary, etc. It also functions to tie together practically every major world religion and bind them back to their source in their shared calendrical cosmology. I’ve found this book to be utterly invaluable – it solves *so* many problems by returning our focus to cosmology and astronomy, which, as Nibley often pointed out, was part of the original purpose of the Temple-as-Observatory."
"[Hamlet's Mill] shows how the 4-sided ‘flat earth’ cosmology is an ancient metaphorical image based around the 4 points of the solstices and equinoxes, which inscribe a Square within the Circle of the ecliptic, forming a ‘frame of time’ centered upon the axis mundi, conceptualized as the Sacred Tree of many traditions. This image-based understanding of the sacred calendar is the source of the cosmological ‘floods’ in which one world-age is ‘submerged’ and a ‘new world’ – a new Age – is born. Each Age is signaled by images in the scriptures that gain new significance when we read from a calendrical viewpoint – Christ the [Pisces] Fish, born of a [Virgo] Virgin to signal the revolution to a new Aeon; the zodiacal symbolism that finally makes John’s Revelation more comprehensible and much less scary, etc. It also functions to tie together practically every major world religion and bind them back to their source in their shared calendrical cosmology. I’ve found this book to be utterly invaluable – it solves *so* many problems by returning our focus to cosmology and astronomy, which, as Nibley often pointed out, was part of the original purpose of the Temple-as-Observatory."
