Christianity The Liver - "The Seat of the Soul" - and Christ

[mosaic01]

"For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." - Romans 8:6​

​

“I Miss My Liver.” Nonmedical Sources in the History of Hepatocentrism​

The term "liver" comes from the word "live". Until a few hundred years ago, everyone knew that the liver was the key to health. This is even recognized in the history of medicine. And then academia as a whole moved away from liver and put the heart at the center. At the same time, the four Humors and the importance of bile in health was also completely abolished, and today we learn that our ancestors were simply idiots who followed wrong ideas.

Until the 17th century, medicine was dominated by Hepatocentrism, and this goes back all the way to the beginnings of our known history, to Ancient Rome and Greece.

Hepatocentrism was a medical doctrine that considered the liver the center of the whole human being. It originated in ancient populations (Mesopotamic civilization) and persisted in Western countries until the seventeenth century. Hidden references to hepatocentrism may be found in artistic representations and literary works, from the myth of Prometheus in the Greco‐Roman world to the crucifixion iconography throughout the Middle Ages. In the mid‐1600s, fundamental discoveries irrefutably demonstrated the central role of the heart in human physiology, which laid the foundations for creating cardiocentrism, shifting the life's center from the liver to the heart.

Scholars appear to have neglected the analysis of the liver in the Middle Ages. During those centuries, the artistic representation of the Crucifixion, the most important symbol of Christianity that shows the redemption of the entire humanity through Jesus' sacrifice, recurrently contains a subtle reference to hepatocentrism, i.e., the wound in Christ's flank. According to the Gospel of John, the Romans planned to break Jesus' legs, a practice known as crurifragium, which was a method of hastening death during a crucifixion.(17) They actually realized that Jesus was already dead and there was no reason to break his legs. A soldier stabbed him in the side to make sure that he was dead: “one of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance, and immediately there came out blood and water” (John 19:34). The phenomenon of blood and water was perceived as a miracle. In the allegorical interpretation, blood symbolizes the humanity of Christ and water His divinity; Jesus was both true God and true Man. This concept is also underlined during the Catholic Mass when the priest pours a small amount of water into the wine before the consecration. This act symbolizes both Christ's humanity and divinity, recalling the production of both blood and water from Christ's side on the cross. The Gospel did not indicate the side where Christ was wounded, but tradition places the injury between the eighth and ninth ribs of the right side, which is also represented in different works of art across the centuries. The crucifixion iconography appears to be deeply influenced by contemporaneous hepatocentrism such that the liver, considered the origin of life in Greco‐Roman medicine, seems to be the target of the Roman soldier. In the “Crucifixion” (c. 1368‐1370) by the Florentine painter Jacopo da Cione (1325‐1399), the wound is depicted in the lower part of the right hemithorax where it may be inferred to affect the liver.

“Crucifix” (c. 1290‐1295) (detail) by Giotto, Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Italy.

In the history of art, the liver, considered the seat of soul in Medieval and Early Modern Age medicine, as influenced by the Greco‐Roman physicians, was represented as the target of the Roman soldier's lance in the representation of the crucified Christ. His side wound alludes to the myths of Prometheus and Tityus, whose livers were eternally destroyed during the day and regenerated each night; this symbolized immortality, which was in the power of the liver, seat of the soul. It should come as no surprise that Renaissance and Baroque artists were fascinated by the myths of Prometheus and Tytius, as shown by “Tytius in Chains” by Gregorio Martìnez (1547‐1598), by “Prometheus Bound” by Peter Paul Rubens (1577‐1640), and by “The Punishment of Tythus” by Titian (c. 1488‐1576). When medical knowledge on the liver and its functions changed and hepatocentrism theory declined, society started to modify its beliefs and convictions and artists changed the representation of the crucifixion episode. Therefore, the sunset of hepatocentrism coincided with the decrease in artists' interest in Christ's side wound, which completely disappeared in the crucifixion iconography. Instead, attention shifts to a focus on the wounds in his hands and feet, as well evidenced in “Crucifixion” (1880) by the American painter Thomas Eakins (1844‐1916).

I think in the future we will rediscover the true meaning of many (religious) symbols that encrypted secret knowledge. The Greco-Roman culture and also the Christian medieval culture that sprang from it was a deeply symbolic culture. Symbols can convey complex knowledge and meaning to those in the know. But when the knowledge disappears, the symbols are filled with false concepts.

Symbols dominated in myths and fables. Like the symbolic representations of the zodiac, our ancestors saw our world in a entirely different way than we do today, everything had a soul, and information was conveyed in symbolic images. Seeing the world in a dead and analytical and abstract way only came up during the last 200-300 years.

The problem with symbols is that the knowledge gets lost easily over time. Who will know about the meaning of the Apple logo on Apple devices in 300 years? To us, this symbol tells a story of an entire book, for those who know a lot about the history of the company Apple.

A symbol is just a very condensed form of knowledge. The problem is that our enemies still remember the meaning of symbols. That's why they chose a biten apple for one of the most influential tech companies. People willfully enslave themselves with technology, and bite into the poisoned apple. This symbolism of course goes back to the Bible, as many symbols do.

That's why it's very interesting that the liver played such a central role in society until recently and was depicted even in the crucification of Christ.

I think the early Christians tought the greatest truths, and that's why they were persecuted by evil power hungry people everywhere, which culminated in the book burnings of the Catholic Inquisition. It was no coincidence that the Bible was translated into and from languages no one in Europe understood. The entire struggle of man, the struggle between good (above) and evil (below) and man in between is represented in our own body. The Christians had known a way to use their own bodies as a tool to rise to the highest.

When I think about the relationship between humans and our creator, I think the responsibility and ability of humans to initiate change has been downplayed historically. In other words, what happens depends on how many humans are able to reconnect with God and bring truth and love into this world. Passively waiting for God is one of the changes organized churches brought into religion, which enslaves us.

Christianity has been manipulated by the forces of darkness for a long time, but there are still elements of the Bible that allude to our true purpose and history.

The physician Dr. George W. Carey wrote several books in an attempt to converge the meaning of religion, biology, alchemy and the use of mineral salts. He was...

known for a number of 1910s ‘chemistry of life’ publications, a subject which he referred to as biochemistry, particularly his 1919 The Chemistry of Human Life, all generally using a mixture of religion, astrology, physiology, anatomy, and chemistry, themed particularly with a mineral-based theory of human disease.

and in one book, he introduces the following idea, which think it speaks of the importance to think in terms of signs and symbols and could give you an idea about where I am going with this and why I think the quest to detoxify the liver and the body is a spiritual journey, and related to the reconnection with Christ and God:

Primitive Christians, the Essenes, fully realized and taught the great truth that Christ was a substance, an oil or ointment contained especially in the Spinal Cord, consequently in all parts of the body, as every nerve in the body is directly or indirectly connected with the wonderful "River that flows out of Eden (the upper brain) to water the garden."The early Christians knew that the Scriptures, whether written in ancient Hebrew or the Greek, were allegories, parables or fables based on the human body "fearfully and wonderfully made." These adepts knew that the secretion (gray matter—creative) that issues (secretes) from the cerebrum, was the source and cause of the physical expression called man; and they knew that the "River of Jordan" was symbolized in the spinal cord and that the "Dead Sea" was used to symbolize the Sacred Plexus at the base of the spinal column where the Jordan (spinal cord) ends, typifying the entrance of Jordan into the Dead Sea. (...)

When the oil (ointment) is crucified—(to crucify means to increase in power a thousand fold not to kill) it remains two days and a half, (the moon's period in a sign) in the tomb (cerebellum) and on the third day ascends to the Pineal Gland that connects the cerebellum with the Optic Thalmus, the Central Eye in the Throne of God that is the chamber overtopped by the hollow (hallowed) caused by the curve of the cerebrum (the "Most High" of the body) which is the "Temple of the Living God" the living, vital substance which is a precipitation of the "Breath of Life" breathed into man—therefore the "Holy (whole) Ghost" or breath. (...)

"There is no name under Heaven whereby ye may be saved except Jesus Christed and then crucified" (correct rendering of the Greek text).

The book contains more interesting details. In essence, the author claims that the historical Council of Nicea led to the symbols for body functions being turned into actual persons, like Jesus.

To end this, here is another symbol from Careys book "The Tree of Life":

No page of the wonders of the human body - the temple of the living God - is more divinely scientific than the parable that follows: "The foolish man built his house on the sand and the rain washed it away. The wise man built his house on a rock And it stood the storms, for it was builded upon a rock."

The Bible is a compilation of astronomical, physiological and anatomical symbols, allegories and parables. In the technical terms of modern chemistry and physiology, the above text is explained as follows: Sand and cement form rock or stone. Sand alone,without some medium cement is unstable, simply "shifting sand." The Pineal gland, the dynamo that runs the organism of man, is composed of sand plus a cement, anointment, a smear, found, as has been explained, in large quantity in the spinal cord, also, to some extent, in all parts of the body. When this cement is wasted, as the Prodigal Son wasted his substance in riotous living, there being a deficiency of this precious oil, the pineal gland becomes brittle, and does not vibrate at a rate that vitalizes the blood and tissue at the health and strength rate, and the house, beth or body, falls. In the common slang of the hour, we say: "He lacks the sand" or "grit." The mineral salts of blood were called sand or salt by Hebrews. The cell-salts that are found in the pineal gland are chiefly potassium phosphate, the base of the gray matter of the brain; but all of the inorganic salts are represented. In Revelations, the pineal gland is called "The white stone/' In Biochemistry, the phosphate of potassium is given as the birth-salts of Aries people.Those who build their house upon a rock are they who conserve the substance that unites with the sand cell-salts and thus forms the rock upon which a body may be built that will be free from sin and sickness. The mission of Jesus, the Christ, was to triumph over death and the grave, over matter, and trans-mute his body, and be able, also, to materialize at will. He not only succeeded in doing this, but stated most emphatically that all the things that he did, we may do also. And the Christ Substance shall create the cement that completes the rock surface of the bridge that crosses the three-span gulf between the shores of conception and birth. Thus "Shall Mortal put on immortality" and the last enemy, death, shall be overcome.

Potassium, Carey says, is the most important mineral for the regeneration process involving the "Christening".

The death Of Christ on the cross could mean, symbolically, that by destroying the health of the liver, the "crucification" process of the ointment (Christ) was no longer possible, and "Christ", the life energy flowing through our bodies and regenerating us, "died" "for (due to) our sins (false understanding)".

"The word sin comes from Schin, the 21st letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and means to fall short of completeness or understanding.", writes Carey.

When our ancestors spoke about reactions that happen in the body, or consequences of certain actions, or heritage, they were talking about the "fruit of a tree". It's like when we today speak about male and female connectors. It's a symbolic way to think. There was no literal tree and no literal fruit. Fruits of a tree is what comes forth from the origin.

Our ancestors did not have a textbook with medical names for all kinds of chemicals. They had to use symbols and parabels to describe what they saw. Most importantly, when they wanted to understand something, they probably turned something into a person or a living being.

Due to this symbolic kind of thinking, it was easy for our enemies to change the meaning of the Bible in a series of translations, to keep humanity confused and unable to "follow Christ", as the Bible originally was a practical alchemical, spiritual, nutritional guide on how to live a righteous life in harmony with creation.

From Carey's book "God-Man: The Word made Flesh", p. 43:

"Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God." - Luke 8:11​

"Seed, word" and "God," are all synonyms of one and the same thing — the' wonderful creative substance, the universal esse, from which all things are brought forth, and in which all things are. The Scriptures, or allegories and parables of the Bible, are the only writings that give us information as to what the Word of God is.

The fluid, oil, or marrow which flows down the spinal cord, comes from the upper brain, the Creator or Father, the "Most High," and is known in physiology as ovum, or generative seed — that life essence which creates the human form of corruptible flesh. In the Greek, from which the New Testament was translated, this marrow is called Christ, which is the Greek word for oil.

When this oil is refined, transmuted, lifted up, raised, it becomes so highly vitalized that it regenerates the body and "overcomes'' the last enemy, death.

How can it be lifted up?

By lifting up the "Son of man," the seed, the word, the savior. The oil (Christ) in the spinal cord, is the salt which is mentioned in the Bible, and the savior is the seed, or Jesus.

The salt and the savior both come from the same source — the same place — the Father — the upper brain. In the Bible allegory the seed, Jesus, is made to say, "Without my Father I can do nothing." The material from the Father which forms the seed, has gone through a different process from that which forms the oil. The chemical formula of the oil is I.O.H.N., and Jesus was baptized or anointed of John, not by John, as it is incorrectly quoted.

If we lift up or raise the oil in the spinal cord, by the power of the seed, by saving it, it must be a physiological and chemical operation within the body of each of us.

"Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." - Colossians 1:26-27

There must be esoteric (meaning hidden) knowledge that was available to our ancestors that made it possible to use the right kind of lifestyle and diet and turn the right combination of minerals/matter in our bodies into finer substances, that is, move closer to God, away from the fallen state, that is the harsh material life. Which we brought ourselves into by following the desire for physicality.

From this it follows that the secret is in the human body, "the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations", that is "Christ within us, the hope of glory".

"This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil." How exactly came light into the world of darkness? How did "Christ" come into us, if it is a substance and an alchemical process to be followed to reconnect with the source of our being, our creator? Who gave us light, and this knowledge? According to our ancestors, everything that exists also exists as a spirit, as a being, an entity. Thus Christ can be a substance within us, but at the same time, can be the actual Son of God, basically the bridge between us and God.

Did humans separate themselve from creation, and then Christ, the "son" of God, came into us, in order to offer us a way back to the source of life we rejected (Fall of Man)? According to Gnostic Tradition, humans were created as empty vessels by the Demiurge, but then the highest God gave a part of his divine spark to us in order to free us from the material world. "Eating" from the the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" means that humans were able to discern good and evil, and thus were no longer blind to their enslavement. "Eating" from the "tree of immortality" is something humanity has not done yet, and would mean following certain steps that give us eternal life, which would finally free us from the artificially induced process of birth and death. I am just speculating of course, the meaning of religious symbols is pretty obscure.

Understanding the true functions of the organs, especially the liver, and ways to bring the body into harmony, avoiding "unclean" foods and things, is a first step for this spiritual reconnection. The biggest mystery of life is our own bodies.

 

[BibleBeliever]

I am a devout Christian. Covenantor/reformed doctrine and, acapella psalm singer. Mankind by nature are children of wrath and dead in sins. Estranged from God from the womb and spiritually blind. Romans 3 teaches there is none that seeks after God and does good. The only way one makes peace with God is through Jesus Christ.
The gospel as per 1 Cor 15 is that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried and on the third day He rose again from the dead.
All who believe upon Him exclusively have their sins forgiven; they confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe He rose again from the dead. That He is the only Mediator between God and man. As Jeremiah 23 teaches He is the Lord our righteousness.
The righteousness of Jesus Christ is imputed to all who believe on Him, and thus God no longer sees their sins but the righteousness of His Son.

Jonathan Edwards wrote a masterpiece entitled the History Of The Work of Redemption which shows that from the very beginning all points to Jesus Christ and the plan of redemption. All the lambs, goats, bulls and the blood shed could never take away sin, but were pointing to the Lamb of God (Jesus Christ) who takes away the sin of the world.

Those who believed in Jesus Christ proclaimed that God is going to judge the world in righteousness and that He commands all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel.

I write that introduction, because all of what the Scriptures plainly teach are contrary to these strange hidden doctrines. It appears to be a mixture of gnosticism and alchemy and thus influenced by occultism and even free masonry? I have never heard such strange teaching; the Scriptures mean what they plainly state and interpreted in harmony with each other, historically too.

The Scriptures speak of health and blessing of course and there is certainly general blessing to obeying the commandments, but the primarily message is pointing to the redemption through Jesus Christ. Not in the strange hidden meanings as the quotes you state put, but to be believe on Jesus Christ for eternal life.

 

[mosaic01]

Thank you for that book recommendation.

Once practical knowledge fades, it is replaced by moralism, which is the primary problem with organized religion, shaming people into submission with fear. The roots of Christianity are true, I see in Christianity the most important movement of our history, but preserving life-changing knowledge over a long span of time is impossible in our corrupted world.

 

[Jabuger]

Interestingly the liver is the only organ in the body capable of regeneration.

Liver regeneration - Wikipedia

 

[bornamachine]

I heard something interesting recently, in Arabic they refer to a loved one as sweet liver instead of sweet heart.

"In Arabic, we might say حبيبي (“habibi”), حبيب قلبي – my heart’s love (“habib gelbi”), عمري or حياتي—meaning “my life.” Another phrase is “يا بعد شبدي”. The word “shabdi” comes from “kabdi” which means “my liver.” Here’s my best explanation: the liver is an important organ and you don’t want to live without it…so people will call their lover “shabdi” (my liver) or say “ya ba’ad shabdi” to mean something like “I can’t live without you/I hope to die before you because you are so essential in my life.”

 

[PopSocket]

Very interesting read. Thanks @mosaic01

 

[Zellig Pliskin]

I am a devout Christian. Covenantor/reformed doctrine and, acapella psalm singer. Mankind by nature are children of wrath and dead in sins. Estranged from God from the womb and spiritually blind. Romans 3 teaches there is none that seeks after God and does good. The only way one makes peace with God is through Jesus Christ.
The gospel as per 1 Cor 15 is that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried and on the third day He rose again from the dead.
All who believe upon Him exclusively have their sins forgiven; they confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe He rose again from the dead. That He is the only Mediator between God and man. As Jeremiah 23 teaches He is the Lord our righteousness.
The righteousness of Jesus Christ is imputed to all who believe on Him, and thus God no longer sees their sins but the righteousness of His Son.

Jonathan Edwards wrote a masterpiece entitled the History Of The Work of Redemption which shows that from the very beginning all points to Jesus Christ and the plan of redemption. All the lambs, goats, bulls and the blood shed could never take away sin, but were pointing to the Lamb of God (Jesus Christ) who takes away the sin of the world.

Those who believed in Jesus Christ proclaimed that God is going to judge the world in righteousness and that He commands all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel.

I write that introduction, because all of what the Scriptures plainly teach are contrary to these strange hidden doctrines. It appears to be a mixture of gnosticism and alchemy and thus influenced by occultism and even free masonry? I have never heard such strange teaching; the Scriptures mean what they plainly state and interpreted in harmony with each other, historically too.

The Scriptures speak of health and blessing of course and there is certainly general blessing to obeying the commandments, but the primarily message is pointing to the redemption through Jesus Christ. Not in the strange hidden meanings as the quotes you state put, but to be believe on Jesus Christ for eternal life.

You have good discernment dear brother, and you have a good understanding of scripture. I think your assessment is spot on and that there is something seriously amiss with the "Christianity" that is being peddled on this forum as of late.

1 John 4

1Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. 2Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: 3And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.