#27 JACOB: TRICKSTER AND DECEIVER

“Let’s begin with his name, Jacob – Yaakov. One meaning of it is the deceiver or the trickster. It’s such a good St Germain name!”

Conversation with the Gatekeeper

“Jacob was given a different birth name by his mother Rebecca, which is now lost. His nickname Ya’akov was given by her once his personality had emerged when she saw him as a deceiver and a thief. Later Jacob would be given a new name and a new character by God … when he would be called ‘Israel’. For the moment, however, he is Jacob, the deceiver because Jacob tricked his brother into selling him his birthright. It was at Abraham’s funeral feast and inheritance was on everyone’s mind. Jacob cooked Esau a meal and plied him with wine; and because his brother trusted him, he did not expect any trickery. Jacob said, ‘I am much better with the finances and the stock management than you are, give me your birthright and I’ll look after it for you.’ Jacob, the fixer, the boss, the manipulator, the trickster brother smiled benignly, ‘Trust me, I’ll look after you.’ Esau, who was not very bright, agreed. ‘I’ll disguise myself as you, imitate your voice and I’ll look after you.’ So Jacob imitated Esau’s growl – Esau was an amiable, laconic man and not given to speech and with their mother’s help tufts of fleece were glued across Jacob’s back. He went into his father’s tent and growled, ‘I am here for your blessing.’ Isaac, who was partially blind and deaf was fooled when he felt his son’s back. He placed on Jacob’s finger his ring. There was no written will and this ring was proof he was heir to his property.”

“And the sober Esau was not happy.”

“Esau realised he had been cornered by the trickster and he threatened Jacob with his life. Two days later Jacob left for Mesopotamia (Jeshua says it was northern Canaan) taking his animals, the best bloodline from his stock, two personal servants and six stockmen with him. He was going to visit his grand-uncle, an established chieftain, Laban, and Jacob wanted to impress him.”

“On his way Jacob had a vision which we call Jacob’s ladder. Can you tell me about his vision of ascending and descending angels going to heaven?”

“It was a vision in a dream. He actually saw the Hindu wheel of incarnation and reincarnation, which, if you had the same vision, you wouldn’t describe it in wheels or ladders. You would say, ‘I dreamt of the double helix in hologrammatic form last night but instead of lines of DNA on the curved ribbon I saw actual people.’ Jacob translated what he saw into a ladder or a stairway reaching from heaven to earth; while he was not unfamiliar with a wheel he had never seen a double helix. He saw those reincarnations not bound by parameter of time.”

“I have so many questions as a consequence of what you’ve said, but I’ll let all of them go except one. Did he see his future lives on the double helix? For today, my focus is Jacob. God also spoke to him and told Jacob He would care and protect him and give him numerous offspring and the land of what is today’s Israel, Jordan and Palestine. Jacob, in return promised Him he would give back a tenth of all God gave to him. It seems God was commissioning St Germain as a founder, a pioneer. Is that right?”

“In fact, God said nothing. Instead, He put into Jacob’s mind that he was the heir to Abraham and that meant he had an important part to play in the founding of a nation.”

“But was God commissioning St Germain’s energy as a pioneer or founder?”

“He was merely endorsing his latent characteristics.”

“Why was he shown the wheel of life? What relevance was this part of the vision to his commissioning?”

“How do you rehabilitate a villain? You rehabilitate him with a vision of something greater than himself and you show his own relevance to the vision. It was God’s first step in teaching Jacob his task within the context of the vision. Up until then Jacob’s most profound thought in life had been: ‘What’s in it for me?’ The wheel of life is about transformation. The dream was a wake-up call to Jacob. Jacob was to transform and be reborn as Israel. He was the chosen man to found the chosen people. The foundation in the Torah of Israel is justice and he was going to learn about justice and be ‘transformed’ in the process. God’s expectation was that Jacob was to become the person the Creator knew he was and had to be to fulfil his task.”

“Finally Jacob reaches Mesopotamia where he sees a beautiful woman with a flock of sheep at a well. When Rachel looked up from that well, what did she see?”

“A tall twenty-three year old man with dark curly hair, a thin beard and the kind of double-decker smile of beautiful teeth you would only see on an American. He had rugged features, a hawk nose, and was broad shouldered with a lean and strong body. Rachel saw an impressive commanding presence.”

“And what did Jacob see?”

“A voluptuous eighteen year old; a stunning woman who was taller than average, blue-black hair, heavy brows and eyelashes, olive complexion, sumptuous lips, firm jaw and the most brilliant blue eyes. And what did Jacob think? He thought ‘WOW’! He rushed to meet her father, Laban. Now Laban was a wealthy man; he had five other daughters besides Rachel and Leah and eight surviving sons and vast herds of animals. Jacob bowed before him and although his servants, who went before him, had already explained Jacob’s purpose and pedigree, Jacob did it again and then asked to marry Rachel. Laban laughed. Rachel had a bride price … the price of her beauty … which Laban was saving for a prince. She was film star beautiful and Jacob had only a few flocks of sheep and goats. Laban drove a hard bargain and Jacob paid a high price for Rachel; seven rough years of managing herds of sheep and goats with no physical contact with Rachel, talking to her only through a chaperone. But each day flew past such was his anticipation.”

“Were Rachel’s views asked for on this transaction?”

“Rachel loved Jacob at first sight and her consent was spoken in her smiling eyes and otherwise in the alchemical way of people in love.”

“Once they were married, Leah was obviously fertile with Jacob, while Rachel was not. Why did it take Rachel so long to conceive?”

“Rachel had a sparse quality of eggs at ovulation and she needed time to prepare herself for the reception of Lord Sananda as Joseph. Although he was not coming in with his divine self, as he would do as Jeshua, Rachel needed to create the energetic stability to hold him. She was a beautiful, spoiled little brat who needed to experience some discomfort first. Her energy needed special adjustments and that took time. Jacob was thirty-five when Joseph was born and Benjamin would come about ten years later. Rachel was twenty-seven or twenty-eight at Joseph’s birth.

“How did Jacob assess the capabilities of Rachel’s first son?”

“At first he thought Joseph was absolutely useless because he didn’t like getting dirty or mucking out animal enclosures or castrating sheep. Joseph was not a farmer and Jacob thought he was a complete failure; he didn’t know how to assess his high intelligence, his language facility or his clerical ability. Joseph had taught himself to read and to write on clay tablets. Jacob couldn’t read, but he could count; tallying his flocks by notches on a stick. Joseph was the total opposite to Jacob, physically as well as intellectually … so very much a scribe yet Jacob loved him so much he ached when he looked at him.”

“And how did Jacob assess Benjamin?”

“Benjamin who is most like Jacob himself being of the same line of St Germain… Benjamin was the charm of his life, a very pretty young boy with blackberry bright eyes. Jacob adored him, while motherless Benjamin followed Joseph, a taller version of himself, like a shadow, adoring him.”

“Jacob appointed Joseph his heir and gave him a coat of many colours. Why didn’t he give him the ring he received from Isaac?”

“Why indeed? He gave him the robe as a promise of his inheritance to signify his position in the household. It was a cloak, an outer garment of wool sewn in coloured dyed strips totally impractical for shepherds and the kind of dress worn for festivals. It set him apart from his brothers and from the other workers. Although Joseph fulfilled the role of family scribe, Jacob should have given him the ring because his brothers saw the cloak as a sign that his inheritance wasn’t set in concrete, that a cloak was not necessarily a sign of unreserved approbation.”

“After Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers, he meet them again in Egypt.”

“Joseph’s supposed death was the first of a number of misfortunes. Jacob thanked God he hadn’t lost Benjamin as well, but a major drought wiped out his flocks and because they had only limited food storage for themselves, and no silage for the animals, more than ten years later he sent his sons to Egypt to look for work. Joseph, who after a meteoric rise was the Chief Counsel of Upper Egypt became the man who carried the Pharaoh’s Seal, and when he met his brothers they did not recognise him. Joseph insisted on one of his brothers returning to Egypt with proof from Jacob of his tribe and his patronage. Benjamin brought back to him all the proofs of his identity. His shamefaced brothers were afraid of Joseph thinking he would order them to be slaves. What they experienced instead was his forgiveness. Joseph triumphed over them all.”

“Was Lord Sananda’s life as Joseph a practice run for his life as Jeshua ben Joseph?”

“Lord Sananda was also Isaiah, Buddha, Elijah and Elisha long before he was Jeshua. He would never desert his people. Everyone must obey the principles God has prescribed for incarnations on this earth and this includes His son. While the master side of his divinity was perfect, he still had to perfect his humanity, by removing, through his experiences, any of the flaws. It is just the same as we must do.”

“Returning to Jacob, what characteristics of St Germain did he inherit?”

“Obviously Jacob has St Germain’s crafty trickster traits and above average intelligence. He inherited his propensity for animal breeding and ability to build loyal teams to work with him. He is very innovative and coming as he does at the beginning of Israel he had St Germain’s ability to start up and to establish a dynasty. He had his courage, his leadership abilities and his huge self-confidence. Jacob took command easily with his plausible, convincing tongue and his charming and ruthless opportunism. He had St Germain’s courage but if you invited him to dinner you’d enjoy his company immensely but you would want to count the silver before he and his wife left. He is simply a remarkable man and if he was any tougher he would rust!”

“What was his life purpose?”

“The establishment of Judaism and Israel as a settled people rather than a tribe of wandering Bedouins and he achieved his life purpose.”

“What about his spiritual challenge?”

“To establish the Judaic tradition of wrestling with God.”

“Did Jacob really wrestle with God or was it an angel or merely another man?”

“In this instance, it was in fact, God. God created a human form, a big white man, not unlike his brother, Esau, but not as hairy, and said to Jacob, ‘You want me to be tough like you then you wrestle with Me.’ He left Jacob permanently lame with a broken hip so that he would always walk in pain with a limp. Jacob became the archetype of the suffering, wounded, wise man. Pain gave him a constant reminder of his epiphany. This has happened to many wise men and women. They come to wisdom through a traumatic experience that leaves them with a physical disability, like heart failure, high blood pressure, diabetes or the loss of a limb. It gives them a constant legacy of pain to remind them of the pain of growth. So Jacob became a wounded shaman. He became the symbol of all who have wrestled with God to discover their faith. It was a rebirth for him and at God’s suggestion he changed his name to Isra El, meaning ‘struggled with God’. And so St Germain gave his name to the nation of Israel as he gave his name to many nations like Britain, America and China.”

“There are many other important turning points in the history of humankind and God just does not take human form to wrestle with any of our leaders. Why did He wrestle with Jacob?”

“There is a complexity of reasons and I will discuss only two with you. First, you don’t make a covenant, an agreement or a treaty with someone who is vastly inferior. God was granting Jacob the right to perceive the bud of divinity within himself. Every human being, to a greater or lesser extent, has the bud of divinity in them which allows them to return to the light of God while still remaining an individual. This is the opposite of the Dark, which swallows individuality causing soul death as it extinguishes the light … it eats up souls like white blood cells eat up bacteria.

Second, Jacob had to go through a major epiphany; his characteristics had to be turned inside out. He had to change from a tricky, double dealing deceiver into a commanding patriarchal leader.”

“What triggered this wrestle?”

“Jacob was performing what would become the age-old right of every Jew to argue with God just as Sarah argued with Abraham. Everyone resists change in themselves; it’s uncomfortable. We refuse to recognise the problem and point to someone else but the problem is always us. The Creator forced Jacob to look at his problem behaviour and how it prevented him from delivering his task. He was – as his Jacob name proclaims– a cheat, a liar and a conman and he had to stop that behaviour and open himself up to wisdom. He was in a prison of a habit; the habit of looking at every opportunity as an occasion to do somebody out of something …”

“From that point on what did God expect of Jacob?”

“He is now newly named Israel. He will be the living embodiment of wisdom and justice and will be recognised for these qualities and will teach his people to be so. Before he died Jacob determined there would be twelve tribes in Israel.”

“He has eleven sons, why not eleven tribes?”

“First, he lost Joseph to Egypt which gave him only ten and he would take two of Joseph’s sons to make up the twelve. He was influenced to select twelve by hearing a reading of the Kabala. The Kabala is the world’s oldest single continuous symbolic system. In it there are twelve branches of the Tree of Life. His twelve reinforced an energy continuum: twelve houses of the solar system, twelve tribes, twelve men needed to establish a temple, and later there were twelve apostles, twelve knights of the Round Table, twelve members of a jury and … ”

“And the twelve Master energies our spiritual DNA. How did Jacob die?”

“Jacob was ninety-two when he died of a cerebral haemorrhage – a stroke.”

“What was his greatest achievement?

“He established the tribal structure, gave his descendants a welded identity as his children, the children of Isra el and by doing so he founded Israel as a nation. But Jacob’s achievements didn’t stop there. Besides making great advances in selective breeding and husbandry, he was convinced by Joseph’s example not to trade all his surpluses but to establish granaries for his seed and silages for his hay for their leaner years. I have Jacob present with me and he agrees with this assessment.”

“Welcome Isra el. Could you ask him if he could say anything to his people today, what would he say?”

“This is the reply of Israel … ‘When my people go back in humility to learn from our history, they will learn the secret of peace in the region. When they stop trying to exclude the children of Ishmael and accept them and incorporate them into Israel, then God will bless their justice as now He has removed His blessing from them because of their pursuit of injustice’.”

“Thank you. Gatekeeper, why was Jacob present?”

“Curiosity… He wanted to listen for a while and say something to his people and to remind you … he is the founder of Israel. He is Israel. He loves God, he loves his people, he loves the children of Ishmael and he loves you for telling the missing pieces of their story.”