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[Alexandr Korol]

“In Judaism
The Talmud states that the four creatures Ezekiel saw near the throne of God were originally a man, a lion, a bull, and an eagle, but that Ezekiel pleaded with God to replace the bull with a cherub so that God would not have to constantly see a calf before Him, reminding Him of how the Jews worshipped that animal.” You know, every time I read this, and now even more so, it comes to mind — while writing all this “Alternative History” and walking this path, I was learning about the four Spirits of God and coming to understand the three Gods: God of Heaven, God of Earth, and God of the Underworld, in mythology. And now I have this understanding that the four Gospels, the four seasons, the four elements, and these four animals correspond to morning, day, evening, night — that is, spring, summer, autumn, and winter. So, what corresponds to what here? We have the God of Heaven, the God of Earth, then the God of the Underworld, and also the God of death, or the Spirit of death, or simply the Spirit. It seems to me that Ezekiel didn’t want to mention the Bull, which was worshiped earlier, because the Bull probably symbolized the God of the Underworld — that is Baphomet, Shiva, or Hades. There are big cycles in which we live; in Hinduism, this is called Kali Yuga. During certain periods, people worshiped this god because in each cycle people worship one of the four gods. It’s all the same God, but the angle changes: sometimes He is the God of Heaven, sometimes the God of Earth, sometimes the God of the Underworld, sometimes the Spirit. Perhaps there was a time when people worshiped the Spirit of Justice, and Ezekiel chose not to mention him explicitly and replaced him with something else, calling it differently.

“There is a known Jewish manuscript from the second half of the 13th century depicting the Tree of Life guarded by four cherubim. This is explained by the fact that in the corresponding passage of the Book of Genesis (3:24), the plural form “םיבורכ” (keruvim) is used, which in Christian Bibles is traditionally translated as the singular word “cherub.”