MESOPOTAMIA
Each Sumerian city rose up around the shrine of a local god. As a reflection of a city's wealth, its temple became an elaborate structure. On the temple grounds were quarters for priests, officials, accountants, musicians, and singers; treasure chambers; storehouses for grain, tools, and weapons; and workshops for bakers, pottery makers, brewers, leatherworkers, spinners and weavers, and jewelers. There were also pens for keeping the sheep and goats that were destined for sacrifice to the temple god.
Mud, clay, and reeds were the only materials the Sumerians had in abundance. Trade was therefore necessary to supply the city workers with materials. Merchants went out in overland caravans or in ships to exchange the products of Sumerian industry for wood, stone, and metals. There are indications that Sumerian sailing vessels even reached the valley of the Indus River in India. The chief route, however, was around the Fertile Crescent, between the Arabian Desert and the northern mountains. This route led up the valley of the two rivers, westward to Syria, and down the Mediterranean coast.
The runic script develops here a transformation into the cuneiform writhing shortly after this 3000 BC Equestrian migration flourishing into the first known government and laws. In the course of time cuneiform was used for every purpose, just as writing is today--for letters, narratives, prayers and incantations, dictionaries, even mathematical and astronomical treatises. The Babylonians and Assyrians adapted cuneiform for their own Semitic languages and spread its use to neighboring Syria, Anatolia, Armenia, and Iran.
As the people in a city-state became familiar with the gods of other cities, they worked out relationships between them, just as the Greeks and Romans did in their myths centuries later. Sometimes two or more gods came to be viewed as one. Eventually a ranking order developed among the gods. Anu, a sky god who originally had been the city god of Uruk, came to be regarded as the greatest of them all--the god of the heavens. His closest rival was the storm god of the air, Enlil of Nippur. The great gods were worshiped in the temples. Each family had little clay figures of its own household gods and small houses or wall niches for them.
Mud, clay, and reeds were the only materials the Sumerians had in abundance. Trade was therefore necessary to supply the city workers with materials. Merchants went out in overland caravans or in ships to exchange the products of Sumerian industry for wood, stone, and metals. There are indications that Sumerian sailing vessels even reached the valley of the Indus River in India. The chief route, however, was around the Fertile Crescent, between the Arabian Desert and the northern mountains. This route led up the valley of the two rivers, westward to Syria, and down the Mediterranean coast.
The runic script develops here a transformation into the cuneiform writhing shortly after this 3000 BC Equestrian migration flourishing into the first known government and laws. In the course of time cuneiform was used for every purpose, just as writing is today--for letters, narratives, prayers and incantations, dictionaries, even mathematical and astronomical treatises. The Babylonians and Assyrians adapted cuneiform for their own Semitic languages and spread its use to neighboring Syria, Anatolia, Armenia, and Iran.
As the people in a city-state became familiar with the gods of other cities, they worked out relationships between them, just as the Greeks and Romans did in their myths centuries later. Sometimes two or more gods came to be viewed as one. Eventually a ranking order developed among the gods. Anu, a sky god who originally had been the city god of Uruk, came to be regarded as the greatest of them all--the god of the heavens. His closest rival was the storm god of the air, Enlil of Nippur. The great gods were worshiped in the temples. Each family had little clay figures of its own household gods and small houses or wall niches for them.
Foundation tablet from the Temple of Inanna, dating to the reign of Ur-Nammu.ca. 2047-2030 B.C.
5400 BC Ubaid Period - 2000 yrs earlier than Sumeria
Uruk
SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: biblical Erech, modern Warka; Uruk period
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: One of the greatest city-states of Sumer, northwest of Ur, which flourished at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. It is 250 km south of Bagdad, Iraq. Pottery dating from around 5000 BC has been found there, but the civilization is traditionally dated to c 3800-3100 BC. Uruk's rulers tried to lead Sumer until Ur became more powerful, but Uruk still remained important as a holy city. It was one of the great Sumerian city-states, developing from the 'Ubaid period. It was the site of numerous innovations, the most important being the invention of writing. It lost importance with the rise of Ur, c 2100 BC, but remained occupied till the Parthian period. Archaeologists have found very important structures and deposits of the 4th millennium BC and the site has given its name to the period that succeeded the Ubaid and preceded the Jemdet Nasr period. Uruk was Mesopotamia's -- and the world's -- first true city. There are two large temple complexes -- the Anu sanctuary and the Eanna sanctuary -- both with several successive temple-structures during the Uruk period, including the White Temple in the Anu sanctuary and the Limestone and Pillar Temples in the Eanna sanctuary. A characteristic form of decoration is clay cones with painted tops pressed into the mud plaster -- known as clay cone mosaic. A ziggurat laid out by Ur-Nammu in the Ur III period (late 3rd millennium BC) is by the Eanna sanctuary. The earliest clay tablets appear in late Uruk levels; they are simple labels and lists with pictographic symbols. Tablets from slightly later levels, of the Jemdet Nasr phase, show further developments towards the cuneiformscript of the Early Dynastic period. There was also mass-produced wheelmade pottery, cylinder seals, and sophisticated art. Uruk was the home of the epic hero Gilgamesh, now thought to be a real king of the city's first dynasty.
SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: biblical Erech, modern Warka; Uruk period
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: One of the greatest city-states of Sumer, northwest of Ur, which flourished at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. It is 250 km south of Bagdad, Iraq. Pottery dating from around 5000 BC has been found there, but the civilization is traditionally dated to c 3800-3100 BC. Uruk's rulers tried to lead Sumer until Ur became more powerful, but Uruk still remained important as a holy city. It was one of the great Sumerian city-states, developing from the 'Ubaid period. It was the site of numerous innovations, the most important being the invention of writing. It lost importance with the rise of Ur, c 2100 BC, but remained occupied till the Parthian period. Archaeologists have found very important structures and deposits of the 4th millennium BC and the site has given its name to the period that succeeded the Ubaid and preceded the Jemdet Nasr period. Uruk was Mesopotamia's -- and the world's -- first true city. There are two large temple complexes -- the Anu sanctuary and the Eanna sanctuary -- both with several successive temple-structures during the Uruk period, including the White Temple in the Anu sanctuary and the Limestone and Pillar Temples in the Eanna sanctuary. A characteristic form of decoration is clay cones with painted tops pressed into the mud plaster -- known as clay cone mosaic. A ziggurat laid out by Ur-Nammu in the Ur III period (late 3rd millennium BC) is by the Eanna sanctuary. The earliest clay tablets appear in late Uruk levels; they are simple labels and lists with pictographic symbols. Tablets from slightly later levels, of the Jemdet Nasr phase, show further developments towards the cuneiformscript of the Early Dynastic period. There was also mass-produced wheelmade pottery, cylinder seals, and sophisticated art. Uruk was the home of the epic hero Gilgamesh, now thought to be a real king of the city's first dynasty.
http://www.angelfire...ires/step8.html
The second Gaelic word for ’vampire’ is Sumaire, which is pronounced shimarie, with the accent on the middle syllable - shim AR ri. Sumaire is translated as ’vortex’, meaning a whirlpool or spiral, a labyrinth: a sucker, a reptile (serpent or Dragon).
There is a clear link here with Sumeria and Anu’s mother Tiamat, the Dragoness of the deeps, and with Anu’s children Samael and Lilith, the forebears of the fairies. Various pictures of the latter two depict them as entwined around a tree, often the tree is Lilith herself, with Samael as the serpent or dragon resting in her branches as in Hebraic Iconography where Lilith is the Tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden.
The Sumerians appeared first in Mesopotamia in 3500 BC. Prior to their emergence they were preceded by the Ubaid migrants from what is now southern Romania, from Carpathia and Scythia, who had fled south to escape the Black Sea flood of 4000 BC. Dated to about 5000 BC, archaeologists working in Tartaria in the Ubaid territory of Transylvania, discovered a ’tepes’ or Rath under which they found a fire-pit.
Buried amongst the ashes were the human remains of a cannibalistic sacrificial victim and two clay tablets. On these were inscribed the name of Enki (Samael), the number of Anu - 60 - and the image of a goat, Enki again, and a Tree - Lilith. In Hinduism Siva is the Goatherd of the Mountains.
The pictographic nature of the inscriptions convinced the archaeologists that the language was the forerunner of Sumerian and so they called it proto-Sumerian. Making it fairly obvious that the Sumerians were originally Ubaid Overlords from Central Eurasia.
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An examination of the prehistory of religious ideas begins with the
conception of surrounding space. When humans began to walk erect
they transcended the typical condition of primates. It is
because of our vertical posture that we organize space into four horizontal
directions radiating from an"up/down" central axis. We automatically
organize the space around our bodies as extending forward, backward, to
right, left, upward and downward.
Thus we orient ourselves to the apparently limitless, unknown and threatening
extension.
We need a method of orientation because it is impossible to survive long in the vertigo brought on by disorientation. Our experience of space is primarily oriented around a "center" and explains the importance of paradigmatic divisions of our experiential field. This model of experiential space is projected into mythical, celestial space as the cosmogony. The very theory of celestial models continues and develops the universally disseminated archaic conception that man's acts are only the repetition (imitation) of acts revealed by divine beings.
The divine modality is defined by the powers and "transcendence" of space. Precosmogonic chaos can be conceptually ordered, and this is an archetypally divine act. The numinous character of divinity increases by becoming brighter. Light is considered the particular attribute of divinity, Initial Perfection. In Paleolithic times, familiarity with different modalities of matter gave rise to imaginative activity.
The first signs of ancient religious sense came from burial rites. Early inventions, such as primitive tools and domestic skills gave rise to imaginative analogies. Through activites such as sewing, shaping statuettes, and making hunting tools objects came to be laden with symbolism. The imaginary world was created and enriched by intimacy with matter. This imaginary realm was inadequately grasped in figurative and geometric creations of various prehistoric cultures. This imaginative experience is still accessible to us. There is a continuity to this plane of imaginative activity which permeates throughout human history and spiritual notions.
The imaginal activity of the ancients had a mythological dimension. Many of the supernatural figures and mythological events which appear in later religious traditions, were probably discoveries of the Stone Age. For millennia Mother Earth gave birth by herself, through parthenogenesis. Born from the Earth, man returned there when he died. The development of agrarian cultures ushered in notions of circular time and cosmic cycles.
The confrontation between two cosmogonic principles, time and space, meant a new orientation to both inner and outer life. A settled existence organizes the "world" differently from a nomadic life. The seed "dies" and is then reborn in order to multiply. Thus death ensures a new birth. Agriculture demands a different relationship to the seasons and weather--to earth and sky, and this had a deep impact on religious values. The theme is one of periodic renewal.
"For religious creativity was stimulated, not by the empirical phenomenon of agriculture, but by the mystery of birth, death, and rebirth identified in the rhythm of vegetation. In order to be understood, accepted, and mastered, the crises that threaten the harvest (floods, draughts, etc.) will be translated into mythological dramas. These mythologies and the ritual scenarios that depend on them will dominate the religions of the Near East for millennia. The mythical theme of gods who die and return to life is among the most important." ". . .The agrarian cultures develop what may be called a cosmic religion, since religious activity is concentrated around the central mystery: the periodical renewal of the world. Like human existence, the cosmic rhythms are expressed in terms drawn from vegetable life. The mystery of cosmic sacrality is symbolized in the World Tree. The universe is conceived as an organism that must be renewed periodically--in other words, each year. 'Absolute reality,' rejuvenation, immortality are accessible to certain privileged persons through the power residing in a certain fruit or in a spring near a tree. The Cosmic Tree is held to be at the center of the world, and it unites the three cosmic regions, for it sends its roots down into the underworld, and its top touches the sky." "...The Cosmic Tree is the most widespread expression of the axis mundi; but the symbolism of the cosmic axis probably precedes--or is independent of--the agricultural civilizations, since it is found in certain arctic cultures." (Eliade, 1978).
The cosmic axis defines and reiterates the divine energy flow between Sky (Kether) and Earth (Malkuth). It reiterates our ancestral vertical posture on the cosmic level, drawing a polarized line between the celestial and terrestrial. When we are in sacred space, we become that cosmic axis, incarnate. It is a cross-cultural, universal model. In the Hebrew adaptation of this cosmic Tree model, there are differences and similarities to the older cults of western Asia. Archaic ideas about the creation of the world were taken up and reiterated.
Mesopotamian legends formed much of the raw material. However, the main distinction from the agricultural fertility cults was that the Hebrews did not worship the Earth or forces of nature. This represented a break from conventional religious forms and was the new basis for the clan's spiritual life and ethos. But, they were unavoidably pre-conditioned by the dominant Mesopotamian culture. Living on the outskirts of this society they incorporated notions, such as a Law or code.
The very idea of a code is Mesopotamian, and cannot be found in ancient Egypt.The primary difference in orientation is shown by the fact that the Hebrew Tree of Life reverses the neolithic notion of an earth-rooted sacred Tree. The qabalistic Tree is rooted in Heaven, with its branches extending downward toward earthly manifestation. The emanation is from the formless limitless light into corporeality by means of geometric unfoldment, from pure energy converted into matter. But, the Mesopotamian influence is seen here as well. Sumeria revered a triad of great gods, analogous to the Supernal Triad (1-2-3) of the Tree of Life; followed by a triad of planetary gods (4-5-6), followed by lesser gods. This cosmic rhythm is sustained in the qabalistic Tree.
Like the fertility cults, the cosmic axis is conceived of as a relationship between a primordial couple (Elohim; God and Shekinah, or Malkuth, the Bride; the Right (masc.) and Left (fem.) Pillars of the Tree). Their union is a hieros gamos, or sacred marriage which results in the manifestation of all things. Qabala also incorporates the themes of circular and cosmic time, by valorizing the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth (initiation). This is the archaic idea of the periodic renewal of the world which resurfaces as ritual, magical exercises and disciplines.
It is primarily for the agriculturalist that the "true world" or space in which he lives is the "center of the world." It is consecrated by rituals and prayers, and in that sacred space communication with divinity is effected. Habitation of a sacred place led to the cosmological symbolism of sacred architecture. The Sumerians were the first to erect monumental temples, and to record myths of the quest for immortality. They invented notions about a 12-fold Zodiac, planetary astrology, magic and divination, spirits and demons, and later (from Babylon) angels. Akkadian religious thought also contributed the importance accorded to the personal element in religious experience. These were incorporated into Qabala in such ideas as the path of return, planetary spheres, spiritual hierarchy and demonology. All this percolated down from the earliest neolithic cultures with their primal root-metaphors:
We can see that these spiritual ideas about orientation in space/time have evolved through the centuries. We have every reason to believe that our view will continue to evolve to a new understanding of the meaning of the Universe or cosmic existence (where we are), our existence (who we are), and post-mortum continuation (where we are going). Throughout most of the history of Kabbalah, the Tree of Life wasn't standardized or very geometrical. The emanations were contemplated in a variety of forms. The geometrically regular triplet array came much later. Path positions and attributions differed markedly, and there are several arrays of the emanations devised for various purposes.
Even prior to formalization of the Tree of Life, the visionary experience of the Throne Chariot was pursued as "the Work of the Chariot." This work, or Merkavah mysticism is the meditative branch of Qabala. But when it came to this central image, or template of divinity, there was much discussion in the evolving esoteric tradition over the pattern of the Chariot of Light. Unlike the Sephiroth which are not spatial, but qualities of Nothingness, the Chariot is a template or spiritual projection--a form and state which arises during mystical meditation.
Both its rewards and the extreme dangers of this practice by the impure are covered in the Bahir, The Book of Illumination, published in 1175. This is one of the oldest Kabbalistic texts, and contains the earliest discussion of the Sefirot and reincarnation. This work emphasizes meditative techniques to allow seers to develop profound astral visions of "God's Throne" by themselves becoming "chariots" or vehicles to the divine. They used the Hebrew equivalent of mantras and mandalas to facilitate their practice. Since the Jews were in the Babylonian exile and their earthly Temple had been destroyed, perhaps it was an attempt to internalize sacred space--to worship in an inner Temple.
The origin of this meditative practice goes back to Ezekiel, and according to Kabbalah, his vision of the Chariot was in the Universe of Yetzirah, the astral realm of Formation. This is the level where it is said God "fills all worlds." We look down into our own soul to see the divine.
Once again, the opposition to fertility cults is emphasized: "Specifically characteristic of agriculturalists, cosmic religiosity continued the most elementary dialectic of the sacred, especially the belief that the divine is incarnated, or manifest itself, in cosmic objects and rhythms. Now such a belief was denounced by the adherents of Yahweh as the worst possible idolatry, and this ever since the the Israelites' entrance into Palestine. But never was cosmic religiosity so savagely attacked. The prophets finally succeeded in emptying nature of any divine presence. Whole sectors of the natural world--the "high places," stones, springs, trees, certain crops, certain flowers--will be denounced as unclean because they were polluted by the cult of the Canaanite divinities of fertility. The preeminently clean and holy region is the desert alone, for it is there that Israel remained faithful to its God. The sacred dimension of vegetation and, in general, of the exuberant epiphanies of nature will be rediscovered only late, in medieval Judaism." (Eliade, 1978).
This total and violent rejection of cosmic religiosity and nature symbolism was apparently sublimated in the work of the Chariot, because as we now know, its geometry actually reflects the deepest secrets of nature and the cosmos in terms of the formation of all possible things, from the macrocosmic to microcosmic. Religiosity graduated from the physical to the metaphysical realm, and became a "way of knowing."
Metaphysical knowledge presumably gave man control of himself, instincts and actions, and permitted living a fully worthy life. Events no longer reflect the eternal rhythm of the cosmic cycle or depend on the stars, they develop in accordance with God's plan. The advent of syncretism in the Hellenistic world brought exposure to Greek ideas. The Greeks tried to impose their way of life on the Jews. Both Arab and Jewish philosophers engaged in scholastic metaphysics which proposed that the universe must have had a beginning in time, hence a Creator God, which implies the unity of creation, and shows that the soul is of God.
Truth is one. The acquiring of truth is a religious duty. Reason and revelation are complementary. Still, philosophy alone is not a religious enterprise. The goal of philosophy is right action. A theology which equates God's law with order and stability in nature, is still mistaking the creation for the dynamic transcendent Creator, worshipping creation rather than Creator. Philosophy suggested that immortality was an achievement of the soul which has activated its full potential for knowing. This is perhaps the subtle mistake or stumbling of the Daath-level, over-intellectualizing, rather than obediently following the Lord's Will as the Bible dictates.
True knowledge of things divine comes through love of God. Only love admits one to God's supernal mysteries. One of the most original religious creations of the Hellenistic period is the personification of wisdom as the Shekinah. In Greek form, Sophia as a divine and personified entity appears comparatively late in the Hermetic writings. This feminine counterpart of God plays a major role in the metaphors of polar dynamics in the Tree of Life. In Proverbs, Shekinah declares that Yahweh created her before the oldest of his works, that she was firmly set from the beginning, before earth came into being. This echoes the notion of a virtual state prior to and underlying physical manifestation, a virtual matrix of formation.
Wisdom emerged from the Lord's mouth. Among the realm of Jewish-inspired "intermediate beings" between man and God, Shekinah was elevated to supreme authority, the mediatrix. She is divine immanence. Intuitive perception of the subtleties of metaphysical reality has evolved as philosophies have shifted. The more we know about the empirical nature of phenomenal reality, the more our intuitive concepts come into harmonization with the nature of Reality.
At the risk of error, "stumbling" and admonishment, we can conceive of a postmodern view of the Tree and the Throne-Chariot, with analogies to current physics theories. But this theory may be more than analogy or metaphor--it is the way things are, and therefore phenomenological. It unites psyche and matter in the alchemical Unus Mundus, or One World.
An evolving esoteric tradition allows us to course-correct symbolic, intuitive notions about the nature of reality. In this pursuit, we are not trying to improve or defile Qabala, but employ our spiritual sensitivity to engage in true speculation, or seeing in the sense of the seer. A medieval Kabbalist said, "the philosophers can only surmise what exists in the metaphysical realm, while the Kabbalists can actually see it."
Three events influenced the evolution of Kabbalah in the Middle Ages: the printing press; discovery of the New World; and the Spanish Inquisition. As Kabbalah began to be written down, there was a need for outlining its organizing principles, systematizing it in a philosophical structure. We can only deduce what is correct from the considerable variations of Qabala by the logical derivation of formulas and true vision, not allegory, or even metaphor. Truth is one. Our modern model meets religious, psychological, and physical criteria for depicting this ancient core image with even more clarity, making it crystal clear. Theological flexibility is a qabalistic tradition. Theosophical speculation is primarily based on insight rather than systematics. Through it we weave reason and revelation into a seamless unity.
http://zero-point.tripod.com/synqbl/synarachy.html
We need a method of orientation because it is impossible to survive long in the vertigo brought on by disorientation. Our experience of space is primarily oriented around a "center" and explains the importance of paradigmatic divisions of our experiential field. This model of experiential space is projected into mythical, celestial space as the cosmogony. The very theory of celestial models continues and develops the universally disseminated archaic conception that man's acts are only the repetition (imitation) of acts revealed by divine beings.
The divine modality is defined by the powers and "transcendence" of space. Precosmogonic chaos can be conceptually ordered, and this is an archetypally divine act. The numinous character of divinity increases by becoming brighter. Light is considered the particular attribute of divinity, Initial Perfection. In Paleolithic times, familiarity with different modalities of matter gave rise to imaginative activity.
The first signs of ancient religious sense came from burial rites. Early inventions, such as primitive tools and domestic skills gave rise to imaginative analogies. Through activites such as sewing, shaping statuettes, and making hunting tools objects came to be laden with symbolism. The imaginary world was created and enriched by intimacy with matter. This imaginary realm was inadequately grasped in figurative and geometric creations of various prehistoric cultures. This imaginative experience is still accessible to us. There is a continuity to this plane of imaginative activity which permeates throughout human history and spiritual notions.
The imaginal activity of the ancients had a mythological dimension. Many of the supernatural figures and mythological events which appear in later religious traditions, were probably discoveries of the Stone Age. For millennia Mother Earth gave birth by herself, through parthenogenesis. Born from the Earth, man returned there when he died. The development of agrarian cultures ushered in notions of circular time and cosmic cycles.
The confrontation between two cosmogonic principles, time and space, meant a new orientation to both inner and outer life. A settled existence organizes the "world" differently from a nomadic life. The seed "dies" and is then reborn in order to multiply. Thus death ensures a new birth. Agriculture demands a different relationship to the seasons and weather--to earth and sky, and this had a deep impact on religious values. The theme is one of periodic renewal.
"For religious creativity was stimulated, not by the empirical phenomenon of agriculture, but by the mystery of birth, death, and rebirth identified in the rhythm of vegetation. In order to be understood, accepted, and mastered, the crises that threaten the harvest (floods, draughts, etc.) will be translated into mythological dramas. These mythologies and the ritual scenarios that depend on them will dominate the religions of the Near East for millennia. The mythical theme of gods who die and return to life is among the most important." ". . .The agrarian cultures develop what may be called a cosmic religion, since religious activity is concentrated around the central mystery: the periodical renewal of the world. Like human existence, the cosmic rhythms are expressed in terms drawn from vegetable life. The mystery of cosmic sacrality is symbolized in the World Tree. The universe is conceived as an organism that must be renewed periodically--in other words, each year. 'Absolute reality,' rejuvenation, immortality are accessible to certain privileged persons through the power residing in a certain fruit or in a spring near a tree. The Cosmic Tree is held to be at the center of the world, and it unites the three cosmic regions, for it sends its roots down into the underworld, and its top touches the sky." "...The Cosmic Tree is the most widespread expression of the axis mundi; but the symbolism of the cosmic axis probably precedes--or is independent of--the agricultural civilizations, since it is found in certain arctic cultures." (Eliade, 1978).
The cosmic axis defines and reiterates the divine energy flow between Sky (Kether) and Earth (Malkuth). It reiterates our ancestral vertical posture on the cosmic level, drawing a polarized line between the celestial and terrestrial. When we are in sacred space, we become that cosmic axis, incarnate. It is a cross-cultural, universal model. In the Hebrew adaptation of this cosmic Tree model, there are differences and similarities to the older cults of western Asia. Archaic ideas about the creation of the world were taken up and reiterated.
Mesopotamian legends formed much of the raw material. However, the main distinction from the agricultural fertility cults was that the Hebrews did not worship the Earth or forces of nature. This represented a break from conventional religious forms and was the new basis for the clan's spiritual life and ethos. But, they were unavoidably pre-conditioned by the dominant Mesopotamian culture. Living on the outskirts of this society they incorporated notions, such as a Law or code.
The very idea of a code is Mesopotamian, and cannot be found in ancient Egypt.The primary difference in orientation is shown by the fact that the Hebrew Tree of Life reverses the neolithic notion of an earth-rooted sacred Tree. The qabalistic Tree is rooted in Heaven, with its branches extending downward toward earthly manifestation. The emanation is from the formless limitless light into corporeality by means of geometric unfoldment, from pure energy converted into matter. But, the Mesopotamian influence is seen here as well. Sumeria revered a triad of great gods, analogous to the Supernal Triad (1-2-3) of the Tree of Life; followed by a triad of planetary gods (4-5-6), followed by lesser gods. This cosmic rhythm is sustained in the qabalistic Tree.
Like the fertility cults, the cosmic axis is conceived of as a relationship between a primordial couple (Elohim; God and Shekinah, or Malkuth, the Bride; the Right (masc.) and Left (fem.) Pillars of the Tree). Their union is a hieros gamos, or sacred marriage which results in the manifestation of all things. Qabala also incorporates the themes of circular and cosmic time, by valorizing the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth (initiation). This is the archaic idea of the periodic renewal of the world which resurfaces as ritual, magical exercises and disciplines.
It is primarily for the agriculturalist that the "true world" or space in which he lives is the "center of the world." It is consecrated by rituals and prayers, and in that sacred space communication with divinity is effected. Habitation of a sacred place led to the cosmological symbolism of sacred architecture. The Sumerians were the first to erect monumental temples, and to record myths of the quest for immortality. They invented notions about a 12-fold Zodiac, planetary astrology, magic and divination, spirits and demons, and later (from Babylon) angels. Akkadian religious thought also contributed the importance accorded to the personal element in religious experience. These were incorporated into Qabala in such ideas as the path of return, planetary spheres, spiritual hierarchy and demonology. All this percolated down from the earliest neolithic cultures with their primal root-metaphors:
- Cults of the dead and of fertility, indicated by statuettes of goddesses, and of the storm god.
- Beliefs and rituals connected with the "mystery" of vegetation.
- Assimilation of the identity of woman/cultivated soil/plant, implying the homology birth/rebirth (initiation).
- Very probably the hope of a postexistence.
- A cosmology including the symbolism of a "center of the world" and inhabited space as an imago mundi.
We can see that these spiritual ideas about orientation in space/time have evolved through the centuries. We have every reason to believe that our view will continue to evolve to a new understanding of the meaning of the Universe or cosmic existence (where we are), our existence (who we are), and post-mortum continuation (where we are going). Throughout most of the history of Kabbalah, the Tree of Life wasn't standardized or very geometrical. The emanations were contemplated in a variety of forms. The geometrically regular triplet array came much later. Path positions and attributions differed markedly, and there are several arrays of the emanations devised for various purposes.
Even prior to formalization of the Tree of Life, the visionary experience of the Throne Chariot was pursued as "the Work of the Chariot." This work, or Merkavah mysticism is the meditative branch of Qabala. But when it came to this central image, or template of divinity, there was much discussion in the evolving esoteric tradition over the pattern of the Chariot of Light. Unlike the Sephiroth which are not spatial, but qualities of Nothingness, the Chariot is a template or spiritual projection--a form and state which arises during mystical meditation.
Both its rewards and the extreme dangers of this practice by the impure are covered in the Bahir, The Book of Illumination, published in 1175. This is one of the oldest Kabbalistic texts, and contains the earliest discussion of the Sefirot and reincarnation. This work emphasizes meditative techniques to allow seers to develop profound astral visions of "God's Throne" by themselves becoming "chariots" or vehicles to the divine. They used the Hebrew equivalent of mantras and mandalas to facilitate their practice. Since the Jews were in the Babylonian exile and their earthly Temple had been destroyed, perhaps it was an attempt to internalize sacred space--to worship in an inner Temple.
The origin of this meditative practice goes back to Ezekiel, and according to Kabbalah, his vision of the Chariot was in the Universe of Yetzirah, the astral realm of Formation. This is the level where it is said God "fills all worlds." We look down into our own soul to see the divine.
Once again, the opposition to fertility cults is emphasized: "Specifically characteristic of agriculturalists, cosmic religiosity continued the most elementary dialectic of the sacred, especially the belief that the divine is incarnated, or manifest itself, in cosmic objects and rhythms. Now such a belief was denounced by the adherents of Yahweh as the worst possible idolatry, and this ever since the the Israelites' entrance into Palestine. But never was cosmic religiosity so savagely attacked. The prophets finally succeeded in emptying nature of any divine presence. Whole sectors of the natural world--the "high places," stones, springs, trees, certain crops, certain flowers--will be denounced as unclean because they were polluted by the cult of the Canaanite divinities of fertility. The preeminently clean and holy region is the desert alone, for it is there that Israel remained faithful to its God. The sacred dimension of vegetation and, in general, of the exuberant epiphanies of nature will be rediscovered only late, in medieval Judaism." (Eliade, 1978).
This total and violent rejection of cosmic religiosity and nature symbolism was apparently sublimated in the work of the Chariot, because as we now know, its geometry actually reflects the deepest secrets of nature and the cosmos in terms of the formation of all possible things, from the macrocosmic to microcosmic. Religiosity graduated from the physical to the metaphysical realm, and became a "way of knowing."
Metaphysical knowledge presumably gave man control of himself, instincts and actions, and permitted living a fully worthy life. Events no longer reflect the eternal rhythm of the cosmic cycle or depend on the stars, they develop in accordance with God's plan. The advent of syncretism in the Hellenistic world brought exposure to Greek ideas. The Greeks tried to impose their way of life on the Jews. Both Arab and Jewish philosophers engaged in scholastic metaphysics which proposed that the universe must have had a beginning in time, hence a Creator God, which implies the unity of creation, and shows that the soul is of God.
Truth is one. The acquiring of truth is a religious duty. Reason and revelation are complementary. Still, philosophy alone is not a religious enterprise. The goal of philosophy is right action. A theology which equates God's law with order and stability in nature, is still mistaking the creation for the dynamic transcendent Creator, worshipping creation rather than Creator. Philosophy suggested that immortality was an achievement of the soul which has activated its full potential for knowing. This is perhaps the subtle mistake or stumbling of the Daath-level, over-intellectualizing, rather than obediently following the Lord's Will as the Bible dictates.
True knowledge of things divine comes through love of God. Only love admits one to God's supernal mysteries. One of the most original religious creations of the Hellenistic period is the personification of wisdom as the Shekinah. In Greek form, Sophia as a divine and personified entity appears comparatively late in the Hermetic writings. This feminine counterpart of God plays a major role in the metaphors of polar dynamics in the Tree of Life. In Proverbs, Shekinah declares that Yahweh created her before the oldest of his works, that she was firmly set from the beginning, before earth came into being. This echoes the notion of a virtual state prior to and underlying physical manifestation, a virtual matrix of formation.
Wisdom emerged from the Lord's mouth. Among the realm of Jewish-inspired "intermediate beings" between man and God, Shekinah was elevated to supreme authority, the mediatrix. She is divine immanence. Intuitive perception of the subtleties of metaphysical reality has evolved as philosophies have shifted. The more we know about the empirical nature of phenomenal reality, the more our intuitive concepts come into harmonization with the nature of Reality.
At the risk of error, "stumbling" and admonishment, we can conceive of a postmodern view of the Tree and the Throne-Chariot, with analogies to current physics theories. But this theory may be more than analogy or metaphor--it is the way things are, and therefore phenomenological. It unites psyche and matter in the alchemical Unus Mundus, or One World.
An evolving esoteric tradition allows us to course-correct symbolic, intuitive notions about the nature of reality. In this pursuit, we are not trying to improve or defile Qabala, but employ our spiritual sensitivity to engage in true speculation, or seeing in the sense of the seer. A medieval Kabbalist said, "the philosophers can only surmise what exists in the metaphysical realm, while the Kabbalists can actually see it."
Three events influenced the evolution of Kabbalah in the Middle Ages: the printing press; discovery of the New World; and the Spanish Inquisition. As Kabbalah began to be written down, there was a need for outlining its organizing principles, systematizing it in a philosophical structure. We can only deduce what is correct from the considerable variations of Qabala by the logical derivation of formulas and true vision, not allegory, or even metaphor. Truth is one. Our modern model meets religious, psychological, and physical criteria for depicting this ancient core image with even more clarity, making it crystal clear. Theological flexibility is a qabalistic tradition. Theosophical speculation is primarily based on insight rather than systematics. Through it we weave reason and revelation into a seamless unity.
http://zero-point.tripod.com/synqbl/synarachy.html
Anu - Great Father of the Sky

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anu
In Sumerian mythology and later for Assyrians and Babylonians, Anu (also An; (from Sumerian *An " = sky, heaven)) was a sky-god, the god of heaven, lord of constellations, king of gods, spirits and demons, and dwelt in the highest heavenly regions. It was believed that he had the power to judge those who had committed crimes, and that he had created the stars as soldiers to destroy the wicked. His attribute was the royal tiara, most times decorated with two pairs of bull horns.
He was one of the oldest gods in the Sumerian pantheon, and part of a triad including Enlil, god of the air and Enki, god of water. He was called Anu by the Akkadians. By virtue of being the first figure in a triad consisting of Anu, Enlil, and Enki (also known as Ea), Anu came to be regarded as the father and at first, king of the gods. Anu is so prominently associated with the E-anna temple in the city of Uruk (biblical Erech) in southern Babylonia that there are good reasons for believing this place to have been the original seat of the Anu cult. If this is correct, then the goddess Inanna (or Ishtar) of Uruk may at one time have been his consort.
Anu had several consorts, the foremost being Ki (earth), Nammu, and Uras. By Ki he was the father of, among others, the Annuna gods. By Nammu he was the father of, among others, Enki and Ningikuga. By Uras he was the father of Nin'insinna. According to legends, heaven and earth were once inseparable until An and Ki bore Enlil, god of the air, who cleaved heaven and earth in two. An and Ki were, in some texts, identified as brother and sister being the children of Anshar and Kishar. Ki later developed into the Akkadian goddess Antu.
Anu existed in Sumerian cosmogony as a dome that covered the flat earth; Outside of this dome was the primordial body of water known as Tiamat (not to be confused with the Subterranean "Apsû").
In Sumerian, the designation "An" was used interchangeably with "the heavens" so that in some cases it is doubtful whether, under the term, the god An or the heavens is being denoted. The Akkadians inherited An as the god of heavens from the Sumerian as Anu-, and in Akkadian cuneiform, the DINGIR character may refer either to Anum, or to the Akkadian word for god, ilu-, and consequently had two phonetic values, an and il. Hittite cuneiform as adapted from the Old Assyrian kept the an value but abandoned il.
The doctrine once established remained an inherent part of the Babylonian-Assyrian religion and led to the more or less complete disassociation of the three gods constituting the triad from their original local limitations. An intermediate step between Anu viewed as the local deity of Uruk, Enlil as the god of Nippur, and Ea as the god of Eridu is represented by the prominence which each one of the centres associated with the three deities in question must have acquired, and which led to each one absorbing the qualities of other gods so as to give them a controlling position in an organized pantheon. For Nippur we have the direct evidence that its chief deity, En-lil, was once regarded as the head of the Sumerian pantheon. The sanctity and, therefore, the importance of Eridu remained a fixed tradition in the minds of the people to the latest days, and analogy therefore justifies the conclusion that Anu was likewise worshipped in a centre which had acquired great prominence.
The summing-up of divine powers manifested in the universe in a threefold division represents an outcome of speculation in the schools attached to the temples of Babylonia, but the selection of Anu, Enlil (and later Marduk), and Ea for the three representatives of the three spheres recognized, is due to the importance which, for one reason or the other, the centres in which Anu, Enlil, and Ea were worshipped had acquired in the popular mind. Each of the three must have been regarded in his centre as the most important member in a larger or smaller group, so that their union in a triad marks also the combination of the three distinctive pantheons into a harmonious whole.
In the astral theology of Babylonia and Assyria, Anu, Enlil, and Ea became the three zones of the ecliptic, the northern, middle and southern zone respectively. The purely theoretical character of Anu is thus still further emphasized, and in the annals and votive inscriptions as well as in the incantations and hymns, he is rarely introduced as an active force to whom a personal appeal can be made. His name becomes little more than a synonym for the heavens in general and even his title as king or father of the gods has little of the personal element in it. A consort Antum (or as some scholars prefer to read, Anatum) is assigned to him, on the theory that every deity must have a female associate. But Anu spent so much time on the ground protecting the Sumerians he left her in Heaven and then met Innin, whom he renamed Innan, or, "Queen of Heaven". She was later known as Ishtar. Anu resided in her temple the most, and rarely went back up to Heaven. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anu
In Sumerian mythology and later for Assyrians and Babylonians, Anu (also An; (from Sumerian *An " = sky, heaven)) was a sky-god, the god of heaven, lord of constellations, king of gods, spirits and demons, and dwelt in the highest heavenly regions. It was believed that he had the power to judge those who had committed crimes, and that he had created the stars as soldiers to destroy the wicked. His attribute was the royal tiara, most times decorated with two pairs of bull horns.
He was one of the oldest gods in the Sumerian pantheon, and part of a triad including Enlil, god of the air and Enki, god of water. He was called Anu by the Akkadians. By virtue of being the first figure in a triad consisting of Anu, Enlil, and Enki (also known as Ea), Anu came to be regarded as the father and at first, king of the gods. Anu is so prominently associated with the E-anna temple in the city of Uruk (biblical Erech) in southern Babylonia that there are good reasons for believing this place to have been the original seat of the Anu cult. If this is correct, then the goddess Inanna (or Ishtar) of Uruk may at one time have been his consort.
Anu had several consorts, the foremost being Ki (earth), Nammu, and Uras. By Ki he was the father of, among others, the Annuna gods. By Nammu he was the father of, among others, Enki and Ningikuga. By Uras he was the father of Nin'insinna. According to legends, heaven and earth were once inseparable until An and Ki bore Enlil, god of the air, who cleaved heaven and earth in two. An and Ki were, in some texts, identified as brother and sister being the children of Anshar and Kishar. Ki later developed into the Akkadian goddess Antu.
Anu existed in Sumerian cosmogony as a dome that covered the flat earth; Outside of this dome was the primordial body of water known as Tiamat (not to be confused with the Subterranean "Apsû").
In Sumerian, the designation "An" was used interchangeably with "the heavens" so that in some cases it is doubtful whether, under the term, the god An or the heavens is being denoted. The Akkadians inherited An as the god of heavens from the Sumerian as Anu-, and in Akkadian cuneiform, the DINGIR character may refer either to Anum, or to the Akkadian word for god, ilu-, and consequently had two phonetic values, an and il. Hittite cuneiform as adapted from the Old Assyrian kept the an value but abandoned il.
The doctrine once established remained an inherent part of the Babylonian-Assyrian religion and led to the more or less complete disassociation of the three gods constituting the triad from their original local limitations. An intermediate step between Anu viewed as the local deity of Uruk, Enlil as the god of Nippur, and Ea as the god of Eridu is represented by the prominence which each one of the centres associated with the three deities in question must have acquired, and which led to each one absorbing the qualities of other gods so as to give them a controlling position in an organized pantheon. For Nippur we have the direct evidence that its chief deity, En-lil, was once regarded as the head of the Sumerian pantheon. The sanctity and, therefore, the importance of Eridu remained a fixed tradition in the minds of the people to the latest days, and analogy therefore justifies the conclusion that Anu was likewise worshipped in a centre which had acquired great prominence.
The summing-up of divine powers manifested in the universe in a threefold division represents an outcome of speculation in the schools attached to the temples of Babylonia, but the selection of Anu, Enlil (and later Marduk), and Ea for the three representatives of the three spheres recognized, is due to the importance which, for one reason or the other, the centres in which Anu, Enlil, and Ea were worshipped had acquired in the popular mind. Each of the three must have been regarded in his centre as the most important member in a larger or smaller group, so that their union in a triad marks also the combination of the three distinctive pantheons into a harmonious whole.
In the astral theology of Babylonia and Assyria, Anu, Enlil, and Ea became the three zones of the ecliptic, the northern, middle and southern zone respectively. The purely theoretical character of Anu is thus still further emphasized, and in the annals and votive inscriptions as well as in the incantations and hymns, he is rarely introduced as an active force to whom a personal appeal can be made. His name becomes little more than a synonym for the heavens in general and even his title as king or father of the gods has little of the personal element in it. A consort Antum (or as some scholars prefer to read, Anatum) is assigned to him, on the theory that every deity must have a female associate. But Anu spent so much time on the ground protecting the Sumerians he left her in Heaven and then met Innin, whom he renamed Innan, or, "Queen of Heaven". She was later known as Ishtar. Anu resided in her temple the most, and rarely went back up to Heaven. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_Ubaid_culture-en.svg
The Ubaidian culture is a prehistoric Mesopotamian culture first
identified by Jacques de Morgan around the turn of the 19th century. The
culture dates between 5500 and 4000 BC. The Ubaidians were pre-urban,
who lived in large village settlements with the first temples in
Mesopotamia, growing wheat, barley and lentils and raising sheep, goats,
and cattle. Ubaidian sites include Lagash, Eridu and Ur, all of which
became important centers for the the following Uruk civilization. The
type site, Tel al'Ubaid (Iraq) was investigated by Harry Reginald Hall
in the early decades of the twentieth century; other researchers
associated with Ubaid culture sites include Leonard Woolley, Seton
Lloyd, and Fuad Safar.
During the Ubaid Period [5000 B.C.– 4000 B.C.], the movement towards urbanization began. "Agriculture and animal husbandry [domestication] were widely practiced in sedentary communities." There were also tribes that practiced domesticating animals as far north as Turkey, and as far south as the Zagros Mountains. The Ubaid period as a whole, based upon the analysis of grave goods, was one of increasingly polarised social stratification and decreasing egalitarianism. Bogucki describes this as a phase of "Trans-egalitarian" competitive households, in which some fall behind as a result of downward social mobility.
Morton Fried and Elman Service have hypothesised that Ubaid culture saw the rise of an elite class of hereditary chieftains, perhaps heads of kin groups linked in some way to the administration of the temple shrines and their granaries, responsible for mediating intra-group conflict and maintaining social order. It would seem that various collective methods, perhaps instances of what Thorkild Jacobsen called primitive democracy, in which disputes were previously resolved through a council of one's peers, were no longer sufficient for the needs of the local community.
Ubaid culture originated in the south, but still has clear connections to earlier cultures in the region of middle Iraq. The appearance of the Ubaid folk has sometimes been linked to the so-called Sumerian problem, related to the origins of Sumeriancivilisation. Whatever the ethnic origins of this group, this culture saw for the first time a clear tripartite social division between intensive subsistence peasant farmers, with crops and animals coming from the north, tent-dwelling nomadic pastoralists dependent upon their herds, and hunter-fisher folk of the Arabian littoral, living in reed huts.
Stein and Özbal describe the Near East oikumene that resulted from Ubaid expansion, contrasting it to the colonial expansionism of the later Uruk period. "A contextual analysis comparing different regions shows that the Ubaid expansion took place largely through the peaceful spread of an ideology, leading to the formation of numerous new indigenous identities that appropriated and transformed superficial elements of Ubaid material culture into locally distinct expressions."
During the Ubaid Period [5000 B.C.– 4000 B.C.], the movement towards urbanization began. "Agriculture and animal husbandry [domestication] were widely practiced in sedentary communities." There were also tribes that practiced domesticating animals as far north as Turkey, and as far south as the Zagros Mountains. The Ubaid period as a whole, based upon the analysis of grave goods, was one of increasingly polarised social stratification and decreasing egalitarianism. Bogucki describes this as a phase of "Trans-egalitarian" competitive households, in which some fall behind as a result of downward social mobility.
Morton Fried and Elman Service have hypothesised that Ubaid culture saw the rise of an elite class of hereditary chieftains, perhaps heads of kin groups linked in some way to the administration of the temple shrines and their granaries, responsible for mediating intra-group conflict and maintaining social order. It would seem that various collective methods, perhaps instances of what Thorkild Jacobsen called primitive democracy, in which disputes were previously resolved through a council of one's peers, were no longer sufficient for the needs of the local community.
Ubaid culture originated in the south, but still has clear connections to earlier cultures in the region of middle Iraq. The appearance of the Ubaid folk has sometimes been linked to the so-called Sumerian problem, related to the origins of Sumeriancivilisation. Whatever the ethnic origins of this group, this culture saw for the first time a clear tripartite social division between intensive subsistence peasant farmers, with crops and animals coming from the north, tent-dwelling nomadic pastoralists dependent upon their herds, and hunter-fisher folk of the Arabian littoral, living in reed huts.
Stein and Özbal describe the Near East oikumene that resulted from Ubaid expansion, contrasting it to the colonial expansionism of the later Uruk period. "A contextual analysis comparing different regions shows that the Ubaid expansion took place largely through the peaceful spread of an ideology, leading to the formation of numerous new indigenous identities that appropriated and transformed superficial elements of Ubaid material culture into locally distinct expressions."
Holy Grail Ritual Cup from Lagash
The goddess of birth and fertility
Based on the work of Dr Ida Bobula, "A Magyar ösvallás istenasszonya"
Fred Hamori
In Hungarian mythology the goddess Boldog Asszony is the goddess associated with birth, fertility and harvests. She has been incorporated into Hungarian Catholicism, there are 7 goddesses known to be called by a generic title Boldog Asszony. One of these is called Nagy Boldogaszony, who is also the mother of the rest of them. They are associated with the following;
*the giver and protector of life and the family.
*healing and herbes
*bountifull harvest, fruitgrafting and harvest time
*fertility of man, animal and plants
*selection of brides and mates for man.
There are several hollidays associated with her which also strongly link her with agriculture, such as; "gyümölcsolto"=fruit grafting on May 25th, sarlos =sicle March 25th. Her other titles are linked with families is now unused called Szülö =birthing, which is at December 26th and is only for families. As the religious head of the country "Magyarország Nagyasszonya"= the great queen of Hungary was celebrated on October 17th, while Small/Young Boldogasszony day was September 8th. A few holydays are of Christian origin probably like "candle sanctifying" or " Mount Karmel" Boldogasszony days. It should be assumed that Christianity probably change the general message and form of her traditional worship from the old traditional one.
Her day in the week was Tuesday, it was also associated with taboos against washing (clothes) and dirtying water. Even during the time of St Steven in the 11th century St Gellért who converted Hungarians to western Christianity wrote that Bodog asszony was already being associated by the church with Mary the mother of Christ, and was also called the queen of Hungary, and the world. I believe that this association of Boldog Asszony, was not done at first in central Europe but was already practiced in eastern Christianity before the resetlement to Hungary. This based on the mentioning of "Budux" by the Syrian Christian documents.
In looking for a similar goddess in the past researchers have progressed through several Near Eastern fertility goddesses like Astarte, then the Sumerian Inana, but ultimately went even further to find the old Sumerian goddess BA-Ú as the ideal equivalent of BO-DOG ASSZONY in both name and in function. She also seems to have links with the early preliterate MAA cults of early Anatolia, which was the source of the agricultural revolution which spread into both Europe and Central Asia, resulting in the various clay figurines of ancient fertility goddesses found in both Central Europe and Anatolia.
At this point a few definitions of the name's composition is important.
Hungarian BODOG > BOLDOG = happy, joyous, pregnant.
Hungarian BÖS, BÖ =bountifull, spacious, wide, swolen > pregnant.
Turkic BAYEK/BOL =bountifull, spacious, wide
Dravidian BAYEK, BEYEK=much
Sumerian BA =to give, provide, rations, divide
Hungarian ASSZONY =queen in old Hungarian, married woman today.
Elamite ASAN =goddess.
Sumerian GASAN =queen. ( ge+asan>gasan, ge=female)
Hun & Turk KATUN=queen.
Balkar GOSEN =lady
Hungarian BÁBA = midwife. In the Chango dialect it can also means god.
Hungarian Déli BÁB = the mirage of the noon sun.
Sumerian BABA =a title of BAU as the giver of life.
The Sumerian BAÚ saw her prominence around 2,500 BC and earlier. She was once the third in rank among the ancient Sumerian gods. She is also called GULA by Sumerians and is mentioned to be the goddess of bounty, a healer, provider of harvest and food, giver of birth and fertility etc. She was also BABA the life giver (midwife) who helps bring life into the world, GAL-AMA =the great mother, or NIN-AN-NA the queen/lady of heaven. Sumerian ANg=heaven,high is related to FinnUgor *SANkE, with the loss of the leading S which also occured in Hungarian as well as in several FinnUgor languages as AN, YAN, IN, however since Hungarian normally converts the Ng/Nk sound to G, it became ÉG instead of EN or AN. The Nk/Ng is a vellar-nazal sound which often changes to ny, gy, n, g etc.
In various FinnUgorlanguages she is called by different names like:
Ostjak Kaltes Ankw =birth giving goddess, goddess of fate, goddess of dawn, wife of the sky god.
Votjak Kildisin=birth giving goddess, great mother, creator.
Hungarian Kelt =to cause to bring into being, to incubate an egg, to arise
Sumerian Gúla [k>g] =birth goddess.
Her ancient symbol is a measuring cup written as BA-N, the term BA however means to give. The terminal Ú in her name however means grass, forrage, grazing land, all of which implies food-bounty to early man.
BA=to give, provide, apportion, divide, rations. The sumerian symbol for BAR is an X just as in Hungarian runic writing the B is written as an X which once represented the body of a nobleman/woman since BAR means ruler/king.
DAG'-al=wide broad, copious, breath. (see Hungarian DAG-AD =to swell in size)
DÙG, DU 10= sweet, good, beautifull, gladness, knee, joint, member. (Hungarian BODOG=gladdness)
DUG4, DU11 = to speak, order, command, engage in sexual intercourse.
GASAN=queen in Sumerian
ASAN =goddes in Elamite.
ASSZONY=queen in old Hungarian /Györfi György
ASENA =the goddess/totem of the Turks and Huns. (royal wolf bitch)
The often stated Osetic-Iranian origin of the word ASSZONY is unlikely, and the direction of word loaning is in reverse order from what historical reference show us. The much earlier Mesopotamian link is normally ignored.
There are also signs that in an earlier age when matriarchial systems were more common she may have been the chief goddess. Just as early Anatolian immages show a female mothergoddess as the chief god. This of course is not the case in Hungarian times. The early Anatolian mother goddess is also shown with similar animals as BAU like a wolf or dog and various birds and a horned goat?ibex.
The Sumerian BAÚ is generally mated with the Sumerian nin-Urta (NIMRUD) and this connection is maintained long after the Sumerians by such later Semitic nations as the Assyrians. They and others like the Babilonians and Iranians also give her new names such as ANUTA, which is recalled in Hungarian mythology as ENETH as the traditional name of Nimrod's wife. The ENÉH, ÜNÖ word in Hungarian seems to be related to cow or female deer and is also in Turkic ENEH. According to tradition from Nimrud and ANUTA are born the great hunting twins in Assyrian and Hungarian mythology who are lead by the female deer to the land of their brides. In Hungarian mythology they the twins are called Hunor and Magor and are supposed to be the ancestors of the nations of the Huns and Magyars. "Magur" in FinnUgor means "seed, semen, self, body". The seed of man and nation. The name is not unique to Hungarian!
To the Sumerians BA-Ú was the goddess of plenty, the great giver (life, fertility, food, harvest, etc).
After the raging of the storm god NinUrta, she smiles down upon them as the rainbow or as in Hungary in the mirage of the sun called the "déli BÁB" on the the moist lowlands of Hortobágy. She feeds them, brings new life and is the protector of birth, the mother, the baby and life in general. In all the folds of her skirt are hidden unborn children . Various Sumerian hymns praise her as the giant Gúla, who heals, she is the queen of heaven, and is the "light of the world". She is also called the quickener of the dead, which may refer to the idea that she may quicken the rebirth of the spirit of the dead and shorten their stay in the underworld. In the southern Hungarian city of Szeged it was recorded that the women celebrated her in a closed ceremony, where only mothers were allowed. The eldest most respected mother offers to Boldog Asszony a plate of pastries and wine to thank the successfull birth of the new mother. Not performing this ritual means that the girl or boy will not find a suitable mate in their adult life. Similarly in Sumerian cylinder seals show a row of women lined up to offer cake and drink to the goddess BAÚ sitting on an elevated throne.
In an old Hungarian folk dance, Boldog Asszony is recreated in the following manner; The human mother while standing in the center of a ring made up of her daughters, who are dancing around her, is talking to Boldog Asszony who is walking outside of the ring. The mother says. "Boldogasszony, why do you circle and turn in the vicinity of my house! Do not deny, do not deny it." Boldogasszony talks to her but in the symbolic dance takes away her doughters one by one for her own beutific service.
So what was this all about but the function of boldogasszony to mate and join together men and women, and take away the young maids from their mother for their future tasks as wives and mothers. Similarly in a Sumerian poem, the following hymn recounts a similar function. This also recalls the old Hungarian admonishment to those who do not thank Boldogasszony for their newborn children, to suffer not receiveing an adequate bride or husband when they become adults. The Sumerian poem says;
"the lord of my palace is perfect.
It's hand, which protects the country is perfect.
The rain which I give to the gratefull trees is perfect.
The wife, which I give to her husband is perfect."
Her main cult center was in the Sumerian city of Lagash. The Lagash written material today is kept in the French Louvre museum. The patron god of Lagash was nin-Urta who is associated by Langdon to be the Biblical Nimrod. Every year there were holidays in Lagash celebrating the local hero-god, Nin-Urta and the great queen of heaven Baú, who descended to take part in her celebration. During this time the local god-hero nin-Urta represents the requests of the king and the people to the great queen of heaven.
A possible explanation of the association of Nimrud with the "ancestor of various nations" in Hungarian mythology where he is claimed to be the ancestor of the Scythians, Iranians, Huns and Magyars is to be found in his name and its various interpretations. Sumerian at times changes the letter M to an N which may have caused the name NIN-URTA rather than NIM-URTA > NIMRUTA > NIMRUD>NIMROD variations, which was known in other places like Babilon and Assyria.
Uralic NIME =name, ( Indo European also has NAMA =name, )
Ugrian NUM =to be high. NUMI-TAREM=god of the highest heaven, creator.
Hungarian NEM-es=pure, noble, nobility + TEREMTÖ=creator.
Hungarian NEM- =type, form, gender .. [-m>v] NÉV =name
Hungarian NEM-Z =to procreate ... NEMZ-ET=nation (of common/related blood)
Sumerian NAM =type, form, prefix of generic terms,
Sumerian NIM =to multiply, to be high, above, prince (noble/pure)
Chaldee NAM-RI =nation (of common blood)
Mede NIM-AN =nation (of common blood)
The New Arab Encyclopedia has a section on the Armenian area known as Hunoracerta and the Sevordik people, who are aboriginals to the area and Sevordik is also the ancestor of the Subartu and is called the son of Nimrod. Also this book mentions that the Hungarians of Europe originate from this area of what is now Armenia In Armenia there was a Hungarian province up into the 15th century called "Madjar" Agadzor. The Hungarian prince Termatzu who visited the Byzanteen Emperor "Purporigenitos" =born in purple, also was asked about the history and origin of his people, and he replied that their older name was Subartu Asfaloi, which is none other than the region of northern Mesopotamia known as Subartu, which also has a river known as Asfalu, in Arabic. The lower Zab river. Variations of the Magyar name are found in the Caucaus Mountain areas for long periods of time before their appearance in the area north of the Black Sea in the company of the Onogurs.
The association of Nimrod with Northern Messopotamia is also reflected by a mountain called Nimrud Dag and the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud. Subartu or the Subarians, are better known as Supri in Assyrian, and are called by them the aboriginals of northern Messopotamia. This term Sapir is also known in Ob-Ugrian as a very advanced and admired people of antiquity who apparently also helped and visited them and thought them much. Which also explains why their language today has the most common links with Hungarian, even though they are racially unlike Hungarians. Many other Messopotamian languages used the term SUBAR in a geographical sense rather than an ethnic sense, to refer to Northern Messopotamia by it. The Egyptians hower at times used the term Magar for this region. (See An Hieroglyphic dictionary, by Wallace Budge, geographical section)
In Hungary, Bodog asszony is also the goddess of the harvest, who is celebrated as the goddess of the sicle. In early times women harvested with the sicle, NOT the men. There are also many healing herbs which include her name in them. Hungarian FÜ is Sumerian Ú means grass/herb. This supposedly comes from Ugrian POM however Dravidian as PUL =grass, herbe is also very similar sounding. According to Hungarian mythology she has 7 daughters and similarly in Assyrian mythology there are 7 daughters born to Nimrud and BAU, who are the seven days of the week and are all helping, healing, bountiful, fertilizing goddesses. In Hungarian her youngest daughter is called Beautifull and is mischievious and sometimes trouble making, resembling the beautifull goddess Inana of the Sumerians, who was at times a war goddess and troublemaker also. Yet the Sumerian Inana was the daughter of the moon god NANA, not the god of storm nin_Urta. Inana perhaps is best compared to the Hungarian queen of the spirits/nymphs the enchantingly beautiful Tündér Ilona. The Sumerian Dingir/Dimir Inana ="goddess Inana" also was known for her many charms, which she used to her advantage. She is often shown with wings and partially or wholy naked at times.
Among the most prominent animal symbols found associated with BAÚ are the dogwolf, and various birds like PA (swallow?), also the great eagle of Lagash known as the im-DUG-UD (?tog-rul). I cannot help feeling that BAU was the old mother goddess of the Sumerians, who like the old sky god AN became pushed into the background over time and replaced by younger/newer goddesses like Inana. As such her memory was remembered not just by the Sumerians but by the people distantly related to them in their previous homelands in the north, near the Caucasus Mountains and Black Sea. This homeland is being researched by the National Geographic explorers in the flooded basin of the Black Sea using submersibles, based on the clues supplied by the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh. The Black Sea Basin flooded after 7,000BC from elevated waters of the Meditteranean Sea, causing the Sumerian story of the great flood as well as the migration of the once neighboring nations to new lands.
Could she be related to the Hungarian BODOG ASSZONY or the Turkic ASENA, who is also associated with canines, in the form of a mythical wolf, the female totem animal of the Turks and Huns? Also could the great Im-DUG-UD eagle be the royal falcon of the Turks, Huns, Avars and Magyars as the TOGRUL or TUR-UL, who in Hungarian mythology resides on the tree of life brooding over the spirits of unborn children in the form of birds? Also her small bird PA could just as well be the FinnUgor PÄC'-KE =the swallow, (Hungarian fecs-ke) whose name is related to nest/womb in the Sumerian PE, FinnUgor PESÄ. A bird generally associated with the mother goddess in Hungary even today along with the stork called GOLYA (GAL-HU=big bird or GULA-HU =bird of GULA/BAU in Sumerian).
Sumerian pe = womb, small, to expand, precious, three;
Sumerian pe 7 = child, son
Sumerian pé, pi =pregnant, to conceive
Sumerian pisuse =glad heart [ Hungarian mos-oly, pis-oly =a smile], also in Hurrian and Ugrian.
Sumerian pú =tightness, pain, difficult circumstances (?swelling & pain of pregnancy)
FinnUogr pesä =nest, womb
Hungarian fész-ek=nest, womb
Hungarian poc-ak=swolen stomack< pregnant [Dravidian poccai=pot belly]
Hungarian fesz- =to be stretched out, swolen. [ Ugrian *pec^e, Dravidian *pad ]
Hungarian feszült-ség =stress, difficulties, being stretched/stressed out
Hungarian pici =tiny, babe [Dravidian poti, picca =small, little]
Hungarian fiú =son < F.U. *poika
This is an abbreviated version of Dr Bobula's article, with key points listed only. Much of it could be expanded and linguistically and mythologically further analyzed. I have added extra words and their definitions but most of thehistorical contents were from her work.
Based on the work of Dr Ida Bobula, "A Magyar ösvallás istenasszonya"
Fred Hamori
In Hungarian mythology the goddess Boldog Asszony is the goddess associated with birth, fertility and harvests. She has been incorporated into Hungarian Catholicism, there are 7 goddesses known to be called by a generic title Boldog Asszony. One of these is called Nagy Boldogaszony, who is also the mother of the rest of them. They are associated with the following;
*the giver and protector of life and the family.
*healing and herbes
*bountifull harvest, fruitgrafting and harvest time
*fertility of man, animal and plants
*selection of brides and mates for man.
There are several hollidays associated with her which also strongly link her with agriculture, such as; "gyümölcsolto"=fruit grafting on May 25th, sarlos =sicle March 25th. Her other titles are linked with families is now unused called Szülö =birthing, which is at December 26th and is only for families. As the religious head of the country "Magyarország Nagyasszonya"= the great queen of Hungary was celebrated on October 17th, while Small/Young Boldogasszony day was September 8th. A few holydays are of Christian origin probably like "candle sanctifying" or " Mount Karmel" Boldogasszony days. It should be assumed that Christianity probably change the general message and form of her traditional worship from the old traditional one.
Her day in the week was Tuesday, it was also associated with taboos against washing (clothes) and dirtying water. Even during the time of St Steven in the 11th century St Gellért who converted Hungarians to western Christianity wrote that Bodog asszony was already being associated by the church with Mary the mother of Christ, and was also called the queen of Hungary, and the world. I believe that this association of Boldog Asszony, was not done at first in central Europe but was already practiced in eastern Christianity before the resetlement to Hungary. This based on the mentioning of "Budux" by the Syrian Christian documents.
In looking for a similar goddess in the past researchers have progressed through several Near Eastern fertility goddesses like Astarte, then the Sumerian Inana, but ultimately went even further to find the old Sumerian goddess BA-Ú as the ideal equivalent of BO-DOG ASSZONY in both name and in function. She also seems to have links with the early preliterate MAA cults of early Anatolia, which was the source of the agricultural revolution which spread into both Europe and Central Asia, resulting in the various clay figurines of ancient fertility goddesses found in both Central Europe and Anatolia.
At this point a few definitions of the name's composition is important.
Hungarian BODOG > BOLDOG = happy, joyous, pregnant.
Hungarian BÖS, BÖ =bountifull, spacious, wide, swolen > pregnant.
Turkic BAYEK/BOL =bountifull, spacious, wide
Dravidian BAYEK, BEYEK=much
Sumerian BA =to give, provide, rations, divide
Hungarian ASSZONY =queen in old Hungarian, married woman today.
Elamite ASAN =goddess.
Sumerian GASAN =queen. ( ge+asan>gasan, ge=female)
Hun & Turk KATUN=queen.
Balkar GOSEN =lady
Hungarian BÁBA = midwife. In the Chango dialect it can also means god.
Hungarian Déli BÁB = the mirage of the noon sun.
Sumerian BABA =a title of BAU as the giver of life.
The Sumerian BAÚ saw her prominence around 2,500 BC and earlier. She was once the third in rank among the ancient Sumerian gods. She is also called GULA by Sumerians and is mentioned to be the goddess of bounty, a healer, provider of harvest and food, giver of birth and fertility etc. She was also BABA the life giver (midwife) who helps bring life into the world, GAL-AMA =the great mother, or NIN-AN-NA the queen/lady of heaven. Sumerian ANg=heaven,high is related to FinnUgor *SANkE, with the loss of the leading S which also occured in Hungarian as well as in several FinnUgor languages as AN, YAN, IN, however since Hungarian normally converts the Ng/Nk sound to G, it became ÉG instead of EN or AN. The Nk/Ng is a vellar-nazal sound which often changes to ny, gy, n, g etc.
In various FinnUgorlanguages she is called by different names like:
Ostjak Kaltes Ankw =birth giving goddess, goddess of fate, goddess of dawn, wife of the sky god.
Votjak Kildisin=birth giving goddess, great mother, creator.
Hungarian Kelt =to cause to bring into being, to incubate an egg, to arise
Sumerian Gúla [k>g] =birth goddess.
Her ancient symbol is a measuring cup written as BA-N, the term BA however means to give. The terminal Ú in her name however means grass, forrage, grazing land, all of which implies food-bounty to early man.
BA=to give, provide, apportion, divide, rations. The sumerian symbol for BAR is an X just as in Hungarian runic writing the B is written as an X which once represented the body of a nobleman/woman since BAR means ruler/king.
DAG'-al=wide broad, copious, breath. (see Hungarian DAG-AD =to swell in size)
DÙG, DU 10= sweet, good, beautifull, gladness, knee, joint, member. (Hungarian BODOG=gladdness)
DUG4, DU11 = to speak, order, command, engage in sexual intercourse.
GASAN=queen in Sumerian
ASAN =goddes in Elamite.
ASSZONY=queen in old Hungarian /Györfi György
ASENA =the goddess/totem of the Turks and Huns. (royal wolf bitch)
The often stated Osetic-Iranian origin of the word ASSZONY is unlikely, and the direction of word loaning is in reverse order from what historical reference show us. The much earlier Mesopotamian link is normally ignored.
There are also signs that in an earlier age when matriarchial systems were more common she may have been the chief goddess. Just as early Anatolian immages show a female mothergoddess as the chief god. This of course is not the case in Hungarian times. The early Anatolian mother goddess is also shown with similar animals as BAU like a wolf or dog and various birds and a horned goat?ibex.
The Sumerian BAÚ is generally mated with the Sumerian nin-Urta (NIMRUD) and this connection is maintained long after the Sumerians by such later Semitic nations as the Assyrians. They and others like the Babilonians and Iranians also give her new names such as ANUTA, which is recalled in Hungarian mythology as ENETH as the traditional name of Nimrod's wife. The ENÉH, ÜNÖ word in Hungarian seems to be related to cow or female deer and is also in Turkic ENEH. According to tradition from Nimrud and ANUTA are born the great hunting twins in Assyrian and Hungarian mythology who are lead by the female deer to the land of their brides. In Hungarian mythology they the twins are called Hunor and Magor and are supposed to be the ancestors of the nations of the Huns and Magyars. "Magur" in FinnUgor means "seed, semen, self, body". The seed of man and nation. The name is not unique to Hungarian!
To the Sumerians BA-Ú was the goddess of plenty, the great giver (life, fertility, food, harvest, etc).
After the raging of the storm god NinUrta, she smiles down upon them as the rainbow or as in Hungary in the mirage of the sun called the "déli BÁB" on the the moist lowlands of Hortobágy. She feeds them, brings new life and is the protector of birth, the mother, the baby and life in general. In all the folds of her skirt are hidden unborn children . Various Sumerian hymns praise her as the giant Gúla, who heals, she is the queen of heaven, and is the "light of the world". She is also called the quickener of the dead, which may refer to the idea that she may quicken the rebirth of the spirit of the dead and shorten their stay in the underworld. In the southern Hungarian city of Szeged it was recorded that the women celebrated her in a closed ceremony, where only mothers were allowed. The eldest most respected mother offers to Boldog Asszony a plate of pastries and wine to thank the successfull birth of the new mother. Not performing this ritual means that the girl or boy will not find a suitable mate in their adult life. Similarly in Sumerian cylinder seals show a row of women lined up to offer cake and drink to the goddess BAÚ sitting on an elevated throne.
In an old Hungarian folk dance, Boldog Asszony is recreated in the following manner; The human mother while standing in the center of a ring made up of her daughters, who are dancing around her, is talking to Boldog Asszony who is walking outside of the ring. The mother says. "Boldogasszony, why do you circle and turn in the vicinity of my house! Do not deny, do not deny it." Boldogasszony talks to her but in the symbolic dance takes away her doughters one by one for her own beutific service.
So what was this all about but the function of boldogasszony to mate and join together men and women, and take away the young maids from their mother for their future tasks as wives and mothers. Similarly in a Sumerian poem, the following hymn recounts a similar function. This also recalls the old Hungarian admonishment to those who do not thank Boldogasszony for their newborn children, to suffer not receiveing an adequate bride or husband when they become adults. The Sumerian poem says;
"the lord of my palace is perfect.
It's hand, which protects the country is perfect.
The rain which I give to the gratefull trees is perfect.
The wife, which I give to her husband is perfect."
Her main cult center was in the Sumerian city of Lagash. The Lagash written material today is kept in the French Louvre museum. The patron god of Lagash was nin-Urta who is associated by Langdon to be the Biblical Nimrod. Every year there were holidays in Lagash celebrating the local hero-god, Nin-Urta and the great queen of heaven Baú, who descended to take part in her celebration. During this time the local god-hero nin-Urta represents the requests of the king and the people to the great queen of heaven.
A possible explanation of the association of Nimrud with the "ancestor of various nations" in Hungarian mythology where he is claimed to be the ancestor of the Scythians, Iranians, Huns and Magyars is to be found in his name and its various interpretations. Sumerian at times changes the letter M to an N which may have caused the name NIN-URTA rather than NIM-URTA > NIMRUTA > NIMRUD>NIMROD variations, which was known in other places like Babilon and Assyria.
Uralic NIME =name, ( Indo European also has NAMA =name, )
Ugrian NUM =to be high. NUMI-TAREM=god of the highest heaven, creator.
Hungarian NEM-es=pure, noble, nobility + TEREMTÖ=creator.
Hungarian NEM- =type, form, gender .. [-m>v] NÉV =name
Hungarian NEM-Z =to procreate ... NEMZ-ET=nation (of common/related blood)
Sumerian NAM =type, form, prefix of generic terms,
Sumerian NIM =to multiply, to be high, above, prince (noble/pure)
Chaldee NAM-RI =nation (of common blood)
Mede NIM-AN =nation (of common blood)
The New Arab Encyclopedia has a section on the Armenian area known as Hunoracerta and the Sevordik people, who are aboriginals to the area and Sevordik is also the ancestor of the Subartu and is called the son of Nimrod. Also this book mentions that the Hungarians of Europe originate from this area of what is now Armenia In Armenia there was a Hungarian province up into the 15th century called "Madjar" Agadzor. The Hungarian prince Termatzu who visited the Byzanteen Emperor "Purporigenitos" =born in purple, also was asked about the history and origin of his people, and he replied that their older name was Subartu Asfaloi, which is none other than the region of northern Mesopotamia known as Subartu, which also has a river known as Asfalu, in Arabic. The lower Zab river. Variations of the Magyar name are found in the Caucaus Mountain areas for long periods of time before their appearance in the area north of the Black Sea in the company of the Onogurs.
The association of Nimrod with Northern Messopotamia is also reflected by a mountain called Nimrud Dag and the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud. Subartu or the Subarians, are better known as Supri in Assyrian, and are called by them the aboriginals of northern Messopotamia. This term Sapir is also known in Ob-Ugrian as a very advanced and admired people of antiquity who apparently also helped and visited them and thought them much. Which also explains why their language today has the most common links with Hungarian, even though they are racially unlike Hungarians. Many other Messopotamian languages used the term SUBAR in a geographical sense rather than an ethnic sense, to refer to Northern Messopotamia by it. The Egyptians hower at times used the term Magar for this region. (See An Hieroglyphic dictionary, by Wallace Budge, geographical section)
In Hungary, Bodog asszony is also the goddess of the harvest, who is celebrated as the goddess of the sicle. In early times women harvested with the sicle, NOT the men. There are also many healing herbs which include her name in them. Hungarian FÜ is Sumerian Ú means grass/herb. This supposedly comes from Ugrian POM however Dravidian as PUL =grass, herbe is also very similar sounding. According to Hungarian mythology she has 7 daughters and similarly in Assyrian mythology there are 7 daughters born to Nimrud and BAU, who are the seven days of the week and are all helping, healing, bountiful, fertilizing goddesses. In Hungarian her youngest daughter is called Beautifull and is mischievious and sometimes trouble making, resembling the beautifull goddess Inana of the Sumerians, who was at times a war goddess and troublemaker also. Yet the Sumerian Inana was the daughter of the moon god NANA, not the god of storm nin_Urta. Inana perhaps is best compared to the Hungarian queen of the spirits/nymphs the enchantingly beautiful Tündér Ilona. The Sumerian Dingir/Dimir Inana ="goddess Inana" also was known for her many charms, which she used to her advantage. She is often shown with wings and partially or wholy naked at times.
Among the most prominent animal symbols found associated with BAÚ are the dogwolf, and various birds like PA (swallow?), also the great eagle of Lagash known as the im-DUG-UD (?tog-rul). I cannot help feeling that BAU was the old mother goddess of the Sumerians, who like the old sky god AN became pushed into the background over time and replaced by younger/newer goddesses like Inana. As such her memory was remembered not just by the Sumerians but by the people distantly related to them in their previous homelands in the north, near the Caucasus Mountains and Black Sea. This homeland is being researched by the National Geographic explorers in the flooded basin of the Black Sea using submersibles, based on the clues supplied by the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh. The Black Sea Basin flooded after 7,000BC from elevated waters of the Meditteranean Sea, causing the Sumerian story of the great flood as well as the migration of the once neighboring nations to new lands.
Could she be related to the Hungarian BODOG ASSZONY or the Turkic ASENA, who is also associated with canines, in the form of a mythical wolf, the female totem animal of the Turks and Huns? Also could the great Im-DUG-UD eagle be the royal falcon of the Turks, Huns, Avars and Magyars as the TOGRUL or TUR-UL, who in Hungarian mythology resides on the tree of life brooding over the spirits of unborn children in the form of birds? Also her small bird PA could just as well be the FinnUgor PÄC'-KE =the swallow, (Hungarian fecs-ke) whose name is related to nest/womb in the Sumerian PE, FinnUgor PESÄ. A bird generally associated with the mother goddess in Hungary even today along with the stork called GOLYA (GAL-HU=big bird or GULA-HU =bird of GULA/BAU in Sumerian).
Sumerian pe = womb, small, to expand, precious, three;
Sumerian pe 7 = child, son
Sumerian pé, pi =pregnant, to conceive
Sumerian pisuse =glad heart [ Hungarian mos-oly, pis-oly =a smile], also in Hurrian and Ugrian.
Sumerian pú =tightness, pain, difficult circumstances (?swelling & pain of pregnancy)
FinnUogr pesä =nest, womb
Hungarian fész-ek=nest, womb
Hungarian poc-ak=swolen stomack< pregnant [Dravidian poccai=pot belly]
Hungarian fesz- =to be stretched out, swolen. [ Ugrian *pec^e, Dravidian *pad ]
Hungarian feszült-ség =stress, difficulties, being stretched/stressed out
Hungarian pici =tiny, babe [Dravidian poti, picca =small, little]
Hungarian fiú =son < F.U. *poika
This is an abbreviated version of Dr Bobula's article, with key points listed only. Much of it could be expanded and linguistically and mythologically further analyzed. I have added extra words and their definitions but most of thehistorical contents were from her work.
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The Flood

The Celestial Sea and the Ark of Heaven
By Tracy R. Twyman
Originally written for Dagobert’s Revenge Magazine,
Copyright 2000
(Does not necessarily represent author’s current viewpoint.)
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which [were] under the firmament from the waters which [were] above the firmament: and it was so. ( Genesis 1: 6-7) Sumerian god Enki in the Absu, or watery abyss
There can be no doubt that the ancients conceived of the sky above as a great cosmic ocean, or as it was called in the Bible, the “firmament of Heaven.” In the above quote, God is described as having to literally separate the seas of the firmament from those on the Earth. In the Hittite text, The Song of Ullikumi, the gods are said to have “cut apart the celestial realm and the Earth with a cutter.” For people who did not realize that they lived on a spherical rock floating in empty space, but instead saw a flat landscape, with a point on the horizon where the sky met the seas, this was an acceptable explanation. It seemed to them that they were surrounded by seas, beyond which was nothing but more water, stretching out to infinity, arching over their heads in what was called “the canopy of Heaven.” Surrounded by water, they could only imagine that this is where they and their gods had come from. In fact, in The Book of Genesis, the heavenly waters are described as giving birth to creation itself. “And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl [that] may fly above the Earth in the open firmament of Heaven.” God himself first made his appearance by manifesting within these waters. “And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
Another interesting thing about this heavenly ocean is that it was at one time depicted as literally being frozen, leading many fringe theologists to postulate that a layer of ice did at one point surround the Earth, having been melted by some natural disaster, perhaps causing the Deluge of Noah, when the “floodgates of Heaven were opened.” The crystalline structure of Heaven is confirmed in Exodus 24:10 when it says: “And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of Heaven in his clearness.” Then later on in Job 38:30, we read: “The waters are hid as [with] a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen.” Finally in Revelation 4:6, St. John the Divine declares: “And before the throne [there was] a sea of glass like unto crystal.” This throne is of course the throne of God. A similar description is made by the title character in The Book of Enoch, an apocryphal scripture supposedly written by the only human figure in the Bible (besides Jesus) who was actually transmuted alive into Heaven. As Enoch described it:
They elevated me aloft into heaven. I proceeded, until I arrived at a wall built with stones of crystal. A tongue of fire surrounded it, which began to strike me with terror. Into this vibrating flame I entered. And drew nigh to a spacious habitation built with stones of crystal. Its wall, too, as well as pavement, were formed with stones of crystal, and crystal likewise was on the ground. Its roof had the appearance of the running of the stars and flashes of lightening …
In The Book of Enoch the angels of Heaven, or “the Watchers,” as they are called, are described specifically as “stars.” They are called “Watchers”� because they look down on Earth from Heaven, and they travel around through the twelve “watchtowers�,” which are obviously the houses of the zodiac. One should assume that the planets were included among the “stars”� in the ancient world. These planets travel in orbits called “oaths�,” since it was conceived that the planets or “stars”� were intelligent beings — “gods” — who had taken an oath with the Most High God to travel these specific paths at specific intervals of time throughout eternity. Writes Enoch:
I marked their rich progress; their observance of a mutual fidelity by an oath to which they adhered; their proceeding forth before the sun, and their adherence to their oath, in obedience to the command of the Lord of spirits.
The Egyptians believed that their sun-god Ra, traveling in his daily orbit, was actually the pilot of the “Boat of Heaven” which navigated the Celestial Sea. “Adoration of Ra on the day he saileth in the boat. Homage to thee within his boat, rising, twice, shining with rays�,” we read in The Egyptian Book of the Dead. With it he sailed to the underworld, and then back up to Heaven again. The Egyptians believed that they too would make this journey upon the Boat of Ra after their death, to be judged by Osiris in the underworld. In fact the priests of Egypt actually built a life-sized replica of this boat, which they would drag around the walls of the city in a daily ritual meant to imitate the revolutions of the Sun. This boat was actually discovered by archeologists in 1954, buried next to the Great Pyramid at Giza.
Many other cultures had similar myths about the Sun. The Greeks had the story of Hercules sailing to the Underworld in the cup of Helios every night. Because of this, many believe, we have the ancient myth of the Black Sun. As the Sun descended into the underworld at night, it died, and turned black. It then traveled via a subterranean passageway to the Western side of the Earth, and re-emerged alive again from the sea the next morning. This has itself evolved into a modern-day belief that the Earth is hollow, and that inside, the “underworld is lit by a subterranean black sun. This world can be entered at the Earth’s poles, and the black sun rests stationary in the center, along the Earth’s central Axis. Since the Black Sun is linked to the poles and the axis, many have confused it with Arktos, the Pole Star.
But as I have previously written in earlier articles, the “Black Sun” is also a stage in the alchemical process, and there it is associated with the planet Saturn, which in traditional occult systems has always been linked with the color black. Furthermore, the mythology of Saturn, or Kronos, says that he was the leader of the gods known as “Titans,” whom Zeus overthrew and cast into the underworld, where Saturn became their Dark Lord, paralleling very closely the story of the Black Sun. Yet the “Elixir of Life�,” or the Grail Stone which is the end result of the alchemical process, is most certainly associated with the solar Sun above. How is it, then, that the planet Saturn could come to be associated with the Sun?
Puzzled by this inconsistency, I was at a loss as to how to finish this article, until coming across, through a weird twist of fate, an article written by David Talbott for Aeon Magazine called “The Ship of Heaven.” I was shocked to discover that yet another author had linked Saturn, not only with the Black Sun, but with the Boat of Ra as well. According to Talbott, the sky once looked much different than it does now. He proposes a pre-diluvian cosmology in which the dominant figure in the night sky was the planet Saturn. As this and other planets moved closer to Earth, a reflection from the light of Saturn created the appearance of a crescent of light revolving around him. (1) This, according to Talbott, became interpreted by the ancients as “the Ship of Heaven,” and this, he says, was the real Boat of Ra. He points out that the Egyptian descriptions of the Boat of Ra have it sailing through the sky at night, and journeying through the underworld during the day, as well as setting in the East instead of the West, exactly the opposite behavior of our current Sun. (2) Writes Talbott:
According to the model, the apparition began to grow bright as the crescent descended to the left of Saturn; reached its point of greatest splendor when the crescent was directly below Saturn; began to diminish when the crescent rose to the right; and was its weakest when the crescent was directly over Saturn.
The Cross and Crescent as the Boat of Heaven
One will recall that in Judeo-Christianity, Satan’s transgression against God was that he wanted to be the brightest light in the heavens. According to this theory, as Saturn, he certainly was. In fact Saturn was, originally, a solar deity, and at the time, the most celebrated figure in the night sky. Talbott writes that:
Long before the age of Latin Poets and historians, however, the Sumerians and Babylonians celebrated the ship of the planet god Saturn. The priests of Lagash knew Saturn as Ningirsu, owner of the ‘the beloved ship,’ a celestial vehicle that ‘rises out of the dam of the deep.’
This figure, if it actually existed, could have been the source for a number of mythological archetypes. For one thing, it could be the source for the symbol of the crescent itself, which has always been associated with the Moon. Talbott believes that this is a misunderstanding that has caused many Saturnian gods and symbols to be mistranslated as lunar gods and symbols:
The specific character of the ship as a crescent and the relationship of the crescent to the sun god is well illustrated by the Sumerian and Babylonian God Sin, probably the most familiar crescent-divinity in the ancient world. While Sin is titled “Udsar, the crescent,” he is also proclaimed to be “the shining bark of the Heavens” … In view of the acknowledged identity of Saturn as the sun god, it is significant that in numerous Mesopotamian illustrations of the Sin-Crescent, the sun is shown resting in the center of its embrace … Of course the usual identification of the crescent-ship with the Moon is due to one fact alone: the new Moon is the only crescent familiar to the modern age.
Talbott further claims that this symbol of Saturn inside the crescent also evolved into the solar symbol of the dot inside a circle, as well as the “Eye of Horus” that we see each day on the back of our dollar bill. Since Saturn’s throne is in the midst of this boat, this must be the source of the ancient “Eye of the Throne” symbol for world monarchy. I would add that this is possibly an origin for the familiar Catholic icon of the Holy Grail with the stone inside, or the communion cup receiving the sun-host. As well, the double masts of the boat became, according to Talbot, the two horns of the Bull of Heaven. Thus, the horns which the deities of so many cultures have been said to possess, and which became synonymous with divinity and royalty, are not a lunar symbol, but a solar symbol, much more fitting to be adorning the crown of a king, as they did throughout the ancient world. And since Saturn is Satan, this is why Satan is said to have horns, as well as many other gods of the ancient world. Says Talbott:
The Sumerian Nannar, Babylonian Sin, esteemed as a celestial bull with glistening horns, is also, ‘the shining bark of the heavens.’ An identical role of the celestial bull occurs in Egypt, where the Pyramid Texts declare: ‘May you ferry over by means of the Great Bull… The Bull of the Sky has bent down his horn that he may pass over thereby.’ Thus a Coffin Text celebrates the ‘long-horn which supports the bark of Anubis.’ And if these are not explicit enough, we have from the Coffin Texts: ‘O Horn, ferry across Him who is in is shrine.’
These two horns also became, in mythology, the two peaks of the world mountain, while the circuit in which the boat traveled around Saturn became the wheel of the world axis. Talbott points out that the world mountain of the Hindus, Mount Meru, was “designated as… ‘the mast’ of the Argha, the ship the gods.”
Interestingly, in Egypt, the ship was likened to a serpent, as was the celestial “stream”� in which it traveled. Egyptian depictions show the two masts of the ship as two serpent heads, and others depict the circuit in which the boat travels as a serpent biting its tail – the universal symbol of the Ouroboros. The body of the serpent is depicted as a wavy line, emphasizing its association with water. Both the ship and the watery pathway were also identified with the womb of the mother goddess. Writes Talbott:
Virtually every mythical form of the sun-god’s dwelling…was declared to be a ‘ship’ sailing on the cosmic waters. The ancient mother goddess, conceived as a luminous ‘womb’ in the sky, was also invoked as the ‘ship.’ Thus, ‘ship’ is the name of the womb of the Sumerian Inanna. Correspondingly, ‘the ship of the brilliant offspring’ was an epithet of the Babylonian goddess Bau. The Egyptians conceived the band of the enclosed sun as the womb of the goddess Nut, also called a ‘ship.’ The Pyramid Texts say, ‘Row me, O mother of mine; row me O abode of mine. O Boat of the sky… O Boat of Nut.’
This celestial stream or waterway which was the pathway of the Heavenly Boat was also symbolized as “a lake of hair.” Furthermore, a lock of hair was affixed to the mast so that the ship could be towed across the sky. Who did the towing? Why, none other than our old friend, the planet Venus! This is important because Venus and Saturn, or Kronos, had a very special relationship.
According to many versions of the tale, Venus was actually Saturn’s daughter. He had been feuding with his father, Ouranus, and was castrated. His penis fell to Earth, plunged into the sea, and inseminated Rhea, the Earth goddess. A cloud of foam rising from the sea gave birth to Venus. This is where we get our picture of Venus rising from the half-shell out of the ocean. Those who have read the other articles in this issue will see the parallels to the “Dolorous Stroke” which castrated the Fisher King, as well as Osiris being murdered, dismembered, and dumped in the Nile river by his father, where his penis was eaten by a fish. There is also an obvious parallel with the story of the “Quinotaur” or the sea monster that spawned the Merovingian kings. One of my sources claimed that Venus was sometimes depicted as the fish-goddess “Atargatis,” and another source claimed that Dagon “sometimes incarnated as a female, ‘Atargatis.’” (Note that the word is very similar to “Astarte” and “Agartha.”) Furthermore, Dagon is connected to the figure of Oannes, who is connected to Janus, the double-headed one. One source also pointed out that the “vesica pisces” is an emblem the female vagina, as well as the Christian “ichthys.” As I have said many times previously in my Grail writings, we seem to be running up against something with Hermaphroditic qualities. Incidentally, just as Kronos is symbolized by a six-pointed star, Venus is symbolized by a five-pointed star, and both symbols have shown up repeatedly in the story of Rennes-le-Chateau and the Priory of Sion
The birth of Venus is believed to have taken place at a specific spot in the ocean, “Petra tou Romiou,” or “the Rock of the Romans.” This brings to my mind the similarity between the story of Kronos’ penis being pitched to Earth and the story of the stone that fell from Heaven, which as I have established in a previous article, symbolizes both the secret doctrine of knowledge that the gods taught to mankind, and also the divine seed which they passed down to their human/hybrid descendants. The fact that the disembodied penis produced progeny implies that this myth is a statement on Kronos’ title “the Forgotten Father.” And it was Kronos who was the father of the Titans, the race of gods who were cast into the underworld by Zeus after being overthrown by him. H.P. Blavatsky wrote in The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy:
… it is suspected that the name of ‘Titan’ is derived from Tit-Ain — ‘The fountains of the chaotic abyss’ (Tit-Theus, or Tityus is ‘the divine deluge’); and thus the Titans … are shown to be connected with the Flood …
Indeed, the Titans would have been connected with the Flood, for they were the kings of Atlantis according to author Ignatius Donnelly, and therefore masters of navigation. Even David Talbott confirms this:
It is generally agreed that Ovid is correct in saying that this ship of Saturn is that which appears on the reverse of coins stamped with the double face of Janus. The latter god, Saturn’s acknowledged alter ego, was remembered as the ‘inventor’ of ships.
This statement is interesting not only because it implies that Janus and Saturn are the same, and therefore, so are Dagon, Oannes and Poseidon. It also says that the Titans, as literal historical figures, had actual boats, on Earth, upon which they sailed the seven seas. This is how they built their global empire, discussed in other articles in this issue. This is not mere symbolism. This actually happened. It makes sense then, that these gods who were masters of navigation would have been the ones to assist Noah, or whatever he was called depending on the culture, in the survival of the Flood, by teaching him navigation. It is clear that man knew nothing of this prior to the Flood. This was one of the most vital transmissions of sacred, forbidden knowledge from god to man that ever happened. And navigation is done by means of the stars!
This is perhaps the point at which all of these symbols converge. Wisdom has always been associated with the stars. Wise men are said to be able to “read” the stars. There are even alphabets in which the characters are based on constellations, or the movement of stars. The night sky, therefore, can be likened to a book, or perhaps, better yet, a tablet. Is this what Enoch meant when he wrote that the gods showed him “the Tablet of Heaven,” from which he copied and inscribed his own Emerald Tablet of forbidden knowledge? The Book of Enoch itself attests that this knowledge consisted largely of the specific mathematics of the revolutions of the heavenly bodies. And this Emerald Tablet which Enoch wrote was then given to Noah, who took it on board the Ark. As noted in another article, this same tablet may have also ended up in the Ark of the Covenant, making one wonder if the word itself does not imply a vessel containing this tablet.
It is worth noting other similarities between the “Ark of Heaven,” the Ark of Noah, and the Ark of the Covenant. Just as the celestial boat was sometimes called the “Chariot of the Sun,” the Ark of the Covenant was called the “Chariot of God.” Also, God’s throne in Heaven is described in the Bible as a chariot, and the Ark of the Covenant is referred to as God’s throne, while the Ship of Saturn was believed to contain his throne as well. Both the Ark of the Covenant and the Ark of Noah were built according to specific instructions supplied by God, and therefore involve the principles of sacred architecture. This, along with navigation, was another piece of divine knowledge passed down during the Flood, and notably, both are now associated with the use of a compass, although the word signifies a different device depending on the context in which we are speaking. Furthermore, this knowledge was passed down from the “Arch of Heaven�,” but only to the elite descendants of the gods, and is therefore “arcane.” We seem to be witnessing a convergence of symbols that were once thought to be completely separate.
H. P. Blavatsky wrote in The Secret Doctrine that: “… like all other legends, that of ‘the Deluge’ has more than one meaning … some accounts refer to the sidereal and cosmic Flood before the so-called creation, the others treat, one of the Great Flood of Matter on Earth, and the other of a real watery deluge.” I would certainly agree that there is more than one meaning. For at some point in the mythic consciousness of our ancestors, the real, literal, and historically existent god-kings of Atlantis, who were masters of navigation, and therefore sea-gods, got merged with the occurrences in the celestial sea, with the pilot of the Boat of Heaven. This is undoubtedly because the real, historical gods purposely associated themselves with the stars.
As I mentioned previously, The Book of Enoch describes the gods, angels, or “Watchers” in heaven as literally being stars. According to the text, at some point these stars descended from Heaven to mate with the human females below:
I looked in my vision and surveyed heaven; when behold I saw many stars which descended … they all protruded their parts of shame like horses, and began to ascend the young cows, all of whom became pregnant, and brought forth elephants, camels, and asses.
The cows represent the human females, and the other animals are the “giants” or “monsters” which were said to have come from this union of god and man. Such breeding was, of course against the rules in Heaven. And so the Lord had the Earth flooded, to rid it of this pestilence, while the rebellious angels were imprisoned in Hell, situated in the center of the Earth.
Likewise, Kronos is said to have fallen from Heaven, and been imprisoned in the underworld as the “Lord of the Earth,” a title also given to Satan. Even David Talbott’s model of the ship of Saturn had to at one point changed into the night sky that we see today. This is described in The Book of Enoch when it says, “The face of Heaven will change.” Some change of orbit must have occurred, and a heavenly body must have fallen out of the sky, plunging to Earth. This could certainly have caused a flood, in all of the manners in which it is described by the ancients. If the “firmament of Heaven” had still been in existence at that point, it would have been melted, or busted open. Thus, the “Floodgates of Heaven were opened.” The impact would have caused the seas to overflow, and if the Earth is full of water as some have claimed, it would have cracked the crust of the Earth open and brought those waters forth as well, just as the flood accounts describe, when the Earth opens up and “the Fountains of the Deep” are loosed. It may have even caused a changed in polarity of the Earth. All of these things are described very explicitly in The Book of Enoch:
In those days Noah saw that the earth became inclined, and that destruction approached.
In almost every culture, a myth like this exists. Rebellious gods breed with humans, and give forbidden knowledge to mankind. This causes anger with the other gods, who flooded the Earth in retaliation. The rebellious gods decide to save one family, or one person, by teaching him how to build a boat. A long period of time passes. He washes up on a mountain top. He sends out a bird, and when it returns with mud on its feet, or a branch in its beak, or doesn’t return at all, he deems it safe to disembark.
Especially interesting is the recurrence of the word “Ark” in reference to the boat, which gets confused mythologically with the divine boat of Heaven. “Argha” was the celestial boat of the Hindus, while the Boat of Ra was called the “Bark.” Hercules, who sailed the night in the Cup of Helios, the Sun, was sometimes referred to as “Arkaleus.”“Argo”� was the name of another mythological ship in which the Greek gods sailed (most notably, Jason and the Argonauts), which itself was said to be made from the “guiding timber” of the “Ark” of Deucalion, the Greek Noah character. Deucalion was also said to have repopulated the Earth by throwing stones behind his back, which then magically transformed into a race of humans. Once again, the stone that fell from Heaven implies the transference of divine seed into humans, who then repopulate the post-diluvian world. And quite notably, in other instances, “Arks” are referred to as containers of divine seed. In the Masonic ritual of the “Prince of the Tabernacle” an “Ark” is proceeded around the room which is said to contain “the organs of generation of Osiris.” Likewise, in the Grecian “Mysteries of Samothrace,” a similar myth was re-enacted. As Albert Pike describes in Morals and Dogma, “The Diosairi, tutelary Deities of Navigation [emphasis added], with Venus, were invoked.” The ceremony involved the mimicked the death of someone “slain by his brothers, who fled into Etruria, carrying with him the chest or Ark that contained his genitals: and there the phallus and the sacred Ark were adored.”
In these various myths, the person playing the character of Noah is almost always a literal blood descendant of the rebellious gods. The historian Berosus wrote that Noah himself was married to the goddess Titea, who some say was the mother of the Titans. G.S. Faber tried to identify Noah with the Phoenician god “Agruerus�,” and H.P. Blavatsky wrote of him:
Agruerus is Kronos, or Saturn, and the prototype of the Israelitish Jehovah. As connected with the Argha, the. .. Ark of Salvation, Noah is mythologically one with Saturn.
Yet from another source, we have the following account:
Xisuthrus (the Babylonian Noah) was warned about the flood beforehand by the deity Cronos, and told to build a ship and take with him his friends and relations and all the different animals with all necessary food and trust himself fearlessly to the deep.
Although the accounts are confused, it is clear that Kronos is associated with the Ark of Noah one way or another. Perhaps the most obvious answer is that Noah has been confused with Kronos because he was a blood relation to Kronos, perhaps even his son. We know that Noah had some sort of divine parentage. This is made clear in the Biblical account of his birth, and even more so in The Book of Enoch:
She [Noah's mother] became pregnant by him, and brought forth a child, the flesh of which was white as snow and red as a rose; the hair of whose head was white like wool, and long; and whose eyes were beautiful. When he opened them, he illuminated all the house, like the sun; the whole house abounded with light. And when he was taken from the hand of the midwife, opening also his mouth, he spoke to the Lord of righteousness. Then Lamech his father was afraid of him, and flying away came to his own father Mathusala, and said: I have begotten a son, a changed son. He is not human; but resembling the offspring of the angels of heaven, is of a different nature from ours, being altogether unlike us. His eyes are bright as the rays of the sun; his countenance glorious and he looks not as if he belonged to me, but to the angels.
Noah, clearly then, was of divine parentage, as are all the characters who play his role in the various myths throughout the globe. In the Noah myth, this divine father appears to be Kronos, or perhaps, as some sources say, Oannes, who himself appears to be either the same, or at least represents basically the same things as, Kronos. As the father of Noah, therefore, Kronos would have become the ancestor of all humanity, for it was Noah’s line alone that would survive the Flood. Now we understand his title of “the Forgotten Father.” Indeed, it appears that he was also involved in warning Noah of the Flood and helping him to build the Ark.
This is the point that I wish to get across. The Deluge was a most pivotal time period, in which the divine seed was passed down to mankind, and the forbidden knowledge of the gods was passed down to those offspring. In The Book of Enoch we read of the Flood:
In those days shall punishment go forth from the Lord of Spirits; and the receptables of water which are above the heavens shall be opened, and the fountains likewise, which are under the heavens and under the earth. All the waters which are in the heavens and above them, shall be mixed together. The water which is above heaven shall be the male; And the water which is under the earth shall be female; and all shall be destroyed who dwell upon the earth, and who dwell under the extremities of heaven.
Clearly the Flood itself is being likened to this insemination, when the waters from above meet the waters below. The sky was literally falling. Heaven and Earth were becoming one. The divine wisdom (symbolized by the celestial waters) poured down on their human offspring, and the divine seed poured into the human females. This is at once, symbolically, the cause of the Flood, and the Flood itself. And the Ark of Heaven, piloted by Saturn, became the Ark of Noah, piloted by his son, navigating the Earth, in search of the Mount of Salvation.
The Ark, therefore, is the symbolic vessel that carried both that divine seed and that divine knowledge. This is at one with the symbol of the Earth itself being inseminated, like in the birth of Venus. It is remarkable, then, that in the Egyptian versions of the story, it was Isis herself (the Egyptian equivalent of Venus) who was shut up in the Ark, and who piloted it to safety. Also note that in the Sumerian legends, the celestial Ark was piloted by Enki (whom the Greeks considered to be the same as Saturn), and it was called the “Magur-boat.” Magur is reminiscent of “Magdalen,” the Biblical character whom I have established in previous articles as being a personification of Venus. I am reminded of the story of the Ship of Solomon, piloted by an unseen force, which brought Mary Magdalen and her divine/royal offspring (the child of Jesus) to France. Note also that I have already drawn a connection between Solomon and Kronos, because of the etymology of Solomon’s name, and because they both use the same seal, the six-pointed star. Venus is symbolized by a five-pointed star, which is “Star of David,” the head of the royal house from which Magdalen’s child came. (5)
It was this the bloodline which, according to the Bible, ultimately came from Noah, and which ultimately resulted in Jesus Christ, the Merovingian Kings of France (including Dagobert II), and finally, most of the royal houses of Europe, as well as all of the Presidents of the United States. This is what I have referred to repeatedly in this magazine as “the bloodline of the Holy Grail.” And the Ark, as the sacred vessel, can be likened to the Grail cup which metaphorically received that blood. Like the Grail, the ark is a symbol of the vessel that received the divine transmission of both seed and sacred knowledge. And though the waters of the deluge have subsided, the holy ark of God sails on, ready to alight in fresh ports where the light of this divine knowledge has yet to be disseminated.
Endnotes:
(1) If the Earth really was covered with a “firmament” of ice this reflection of light would have become even more distorted and pronounced.
(2) This would explain while the Black Sun is sometimes called “the Midnight Sun.”
(3) The word Moon is very close to “Mon,” an incarnation of Ra who was called “the Hidden God.” This is almost exactly like the title “the Hidden One” which is applied to Saturn. Note also that in occultism Saturn is associated with the six-pointed star, sometimes called the “Seal of Solomon.” Solomon’s name, taken apart, could translate to “Sol-Mon” — “the Hidden Sun.”
(4) We are reminded of the Hindi story of the fish who towed the Ark to safety during the Deluge by means of his horn.
(5) Often, the six-pointed star is erroneously referred to as “the Star of David,” and has been branded as such in popular culture.
Originally written for Dagobert’s Revenge Magazine,
Copyright 2000
(Does not necessarily represent author’s current viewpoint.)
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which [were] under the firmament from the waters which [were] above the firmament: and it was so. ( Genesis 1: 6-7) Sumerian god Enki in the Absu, or watery abyss
There can be no doubt that the ancients conceived of the sky above as a great cosmic ocean, or as it was called in the Bible, the “firmament of Heaven.” In the above quote, God is described as having to literally separate the seas of the firmament from those on the Earth. In the Hittite text, The Song of Ullikumi, the gods are said to have “cut apart the celestial realm and the Earth with a cutter.” For people who did not realize that they lived on a spherical rock floating in empty space, but instead saw a flat landscape, with a point on the horizon where the sky met the seas, this was an acceptable explanation. It seemed to them that they were surrounded by seas, beyond which was nothing but more water, stretching out to infinity, arching over their heads in what was called “the canopy of Heaven.” Surrounded by water, they could only imagine that this is where they and their gods had come from. In fact, in The Book of Genesis, the heavenly waters are described as giving birth to creation itself. “And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl [that] may fly above the Earth in the open firmament of Heaven.” God himself first made his appearance by manifesting within these waters. “And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
Another interesting thing about this heavenly ocean is that it was at one time depicted as literally being frozen, leading many fringe theologists to postulate that a layer of ice did at one point surround the Earth, having been melted by some natural disaster, perhaps causing the Deluge of Noah, when the “floodgates of Heaven were opened.” The crystalline structure of Heaven is confirmed in Exodus 24:10 when it says: “And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of Heaven in his clearness.” Then later on in Job 38:30, we read: “The waters are hid as [with] a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen.” Finally in Revelation 4:6, St. John the Divine declares: “And before the throne [there was] a sea of glass like unto crystal.” This throne is of course the throne of God. A similar description is made by the title character in The Book of Enoch, an apocryphal scripture supposedly written by the only human figure in the Bible (besides Jesus) who was actually transmuted alive into Heaven. As Enoch described it:
They elevated me aloft into heaven. I proceeded, until I arrived at a wall built with stones of crystal. A tongue of fire surrounded it, which began to strike me with terror. Into this vibrating flame I entered. And drew nigh to a spacious habitation built with stones of crystal. Its wall, too, as well as pavement, were formed with stones of crystal, and crystal likewise was on the ground. Its roof had the appearance of the running of the stars and flashes of lightening …
In The Book of Enoch the angels of Heaven, or “the Watchers,” as they are called, are described specifically as “stars.” They are called “Watchers”� because they look down on Earth from Heaven, and they travel around through the twelve “watchtowers�,” which are obviously the houses of the zodiac. One should assume that the planets were included among the “stars”� in the ancient world. These planets travel in orbits called “oaths�,” since it was conceived that the planets or “stars”� were intelligent beings — “gods” — who had taken an oath with the Most High God to travel these specific paths at specific intervals of time throughout eternity. Writes Enoch:
I marked their rich progress; their observance of a mutual fidelity by an oath to which they adhered; their proceeding forth before the sun, and their adherence to their oath, in obedience to the command of the Lord of spirits.
The Egyptians believed that their sun-god Ra, traveling in his daily orbit, was actually the pilot of the “Boat of Heaven” which navigated the Celestial Sea. “Adoration of Ra on the day he saileth in the boat. Homage to thee within his boat, rising, twice, shining with rays�,” we read in The Egyptian Book of the Dead. With it he sailed to the underworld, and then back up to Heaven again. The Egyptians believed that they too would make this journey upon the Boat of Ra after their death, to be judged by Osiris in the underworld. In fact the priests of Egypt actually built a life-sized replica of this boat, which they would drag around the walls of the city in a daily ritual meant to imitate the revolutions of the Sun. This boat was actually discovered by archeologists in 1954, buried next to the Great Pyramid at Giza.
Many other cultures had similar myths about the Sun. The Greeks had the story of Hercules sailing to the Underworld in the cup of Helios every night. Because of this, many believe, we have the ancient myth of the Black Sun. As the Sun descended into the underworld at night, it died, and turned black. It then traveled via a subterranean passageway to the Western side of the Earth, and re-emerged alive again from the sea the next morning. This has itself evolved into a modern-day belief that the Earth is hollow, and that inside, the “underworld is lit by a subterranean black sun. This world can be entered at the Earth’s poles, and the black sun rests stationary in the center, along the Earth’s central Axis. Since the Black Sun is linked to the poles and the axis, many have confused it with Arktos, the Pole Star.
But as I have previously written in earlier articles, the “Black Sun” is also a stage in the alchemical process, and there it is associated with the planet Saturn, which in traditional occult systems has always been linked with the color black. Furthermore, the mythology of Saturn, or Kronos, says that he was the leader of the gods known as “Titans,” whom Zeus overthrew and cast into the underworld, where Saturn became their Dark Lord, paralleling very closely the story of the Black Sun. Yet the “Elixir of Life�,” or the Grail Stone which is the end result of the alchemical process, is most certainly associated with the solar Sun above. How is it, then, that the planet Saturn could come to be associated with the Sun?
Puzzled by this inconsistency, I was at a loss as to how to finish this article, until coming across, through a weird twist of fate, an article written by David Talbott for Aeon Magazine called “The Ship of Heaven.” I was shocked to discover that yet another author had linked Saturn, not only with the Black Sun, but with the Boat of Ra as well. According to Talbott, the sky once looked much different than it does now. He proposes a pre-diluvian cosmology in which the dominant figure in the night sky was the planet Saturn. As this and other planets moved closer to Earth, a reflection from the light of Saturn created the appearance of a crescent of light revolving around him. (1) This, according to Talbott, became interpreted by the ancients as “the Ship of Heaven,” and this, he says, was the real Boat of Ra. He points out that the Egyptian descriptions of the Boat of Ra have it sailing through the sky at night, and journeying through the underworld during the day, as well as setting in the East instead of the West, exactly the opposite behavior of our current Sun. (2) Writes Talbott:
According to the model, the apparition began to grow bright as the crescent descended to the left of Saturn; reached its point of greatest splendor when the crescent was directly below Saturn; began to diminish when the crescent rose to the right; and was its weakest when the crescent was directly over Saturn.
The Cross and Crescent as the Boat of Heaven
One will recall that in Judeo-Christianity, Satan’s transgression against God was that he wanted to be the brightest light in the heavens. According to this theory, as Saturn, he certainly was. In fact Saturn was, originally, a solar deity, and at the time, the most celebrated figure in the night sky. Talbott writes that:
Long before the age of Latin Poets and historians, however, the Sumerians and Babylonians celebrated the ship of the planet god Saturn. The priests of Lagash knew Saturn as Ningirsu, owner of the ‘the beloved ship,’ a celestial vehicle that ‘rises out of the dam of the deep.’
This figure, if it actually existed, could have been the source for a number of mythological archetypes. For one thing, it could be the source for the symbol of the crescent itself, which has always been associated with the Moon. Talbott believes that this is a misunderstanding that has caused many Saturnian gods and symbols to be mistranslated as lunar gods and symbols:
The specific character of the ship as a crescent and the relationship of the crescent to the sun god is well illustrated by the Sumerian and Babylonian God Sin, probably the most familiar crescent-divinity in the ancient world. While Sin is titled “Udsar, the crescent,” he is also proclaimed to be “the shining bark of the Heavens” … In view of the acknowledged identity of Saturn as the sun god, it is significant that in numerous Mesopotamian illustrations of the Sin-Crescent, the sun is shown resting in the center of its embrace … Of course the usual identification of the crescent-ship with the Moon is due to one fact alone: the new Moon is the only crescent familiar to the modern age.
Talbott further claims that this symbol of Saturn inside the crescent also evolved into the solar symbol of the dot inside a circle, as well as the “Eye of Horus” that we see each day on the back of our dollar bill. Since Saturn’s throne is in the midst of this boat, this must be the source of the ancient “Eye of the Throne” symbol for world monarchy. I would add that this is possibly an origin for the familiar Catholic icon of the Holy Grail with the stone inside, or the communion cup receiving the sun-host. As well, the double masts of the boat became, according to Talbot, the two horns of the Bull of Heaven. Thus, the horns which the deities of so many cultures have been said to possess, and which became synonymous with divinity and royalty, are not a lunar symbol, but a solar symbol, much more fitting to be adorning the crown of a king, as they did throughout the ancient world. And since Saturn is Satan, this is why Satan is said to have horns, as well as many other gods of the ancient world. Says Talbott:
The Sumerian Nannar, Babylonian Sin, esteemed as a celestial bull with glistening horns, is also, ‘the shining bark of the heavens.’ An identical role of the celestial bull occurs in Egypt, where the Pyramid Texts declare: ‘May you ferry over by means of the Great Bull… The Bull of the Sky has bent down his horn that he may pass over thereby.’ Thus a Coffin Text celebrates the ‘long-horn which supports the bark of Anubis.’ And if these are not explicit enough, we have from the Coffin Texts: ‘O Horn, ferry across Him who is in is shrine.’
These two horns also became, in mythology, the two peaks of the world mountain, while the circuit in which the boat traveled around Saturn became the wheel of the world axis. Talbott points out that the world mountain of the Hindus, Mount Meru, was “designated as… ‘the mast’ of the Argha, the ship the gods.”
Interestingly, in Egypt, the ship was likened to a serpent, as was the celestial “stream”� in which it traveled. Egyptian depictions show the two masts of the ship as two serpent heads, and others depict the circuit in which the boat travels as a serpent biting its tail – the universal symbol of the Ouroboros. The body of the serpent is depicted as a wavy line, emphasizing its association with water. Both the ship and the watery pathway were also identified with the womb of the mother goddess. Writes Talbott:
Virtually every mythical form of the sun-god’s dwelling…was declared to be a ‘ship’ sailing on the cosmic waters. The ancient mother goddess, conceived as a luminous ‘womb’ in the sky, was also invoked as the ‘ship.’ Thus, ‘ship’ is the name of the womb of the Sumerian Inanna. Correspondingly, ‘the ship of the brilliant offspring’ was an epithet of the Babylonian goddess Bau. The Egyptians conceived the band of the enclosed sun as the womb of the goddess Nut, also called a ‘ship.’ The Pyramid Texts say, ‘Row me, O mother of mine; row me O abode of mine. O Boat of the sky… O Boat of Nut.’
This celestial stream or waterway which was the pathway of the Heavenly Boat was also symbolized as “a lake of hair.” Furthermore, a lock of hair was affixed to the mast so that the ship could be towed across the sky. Who did the towing? Why, none other than our old friend, the planet Venus! This is important because Venus and Saturn, or Kronos, had a very special relationship.
According to many versions of the tale, Venus was actually Saturn’s daughter. He had been feuding with his father, Ouranus, and was castrated. His penis fell to Earth, plunged into the sea, and inseminated Rhea, the Earth goddess. A cloud of foam rising from the sea gave birth to Venus. This is where we get our picture of Venus rising from the half-shell out of the ocean. Those who have read the other articles in this issue will see the parallels to the “Dolorous Stroke” which castrated the Fisher King, as well as Osiris being murdered, dismembered, and dumped in the Nile river by his father, where his penis was eaten by a fish. There is also an obvious parallel with the story of the “Quinotaur” or the sea monster that spawned the Merovingian kings. One of my sources claimed that Venus was sometimes depicted as the fish-goddess “Atargatis,” and another source claimed that Dagon “sometimes incarnated as a female, ‘Atargatis.’” (Note that the word is very similar to “Astarte” and “Agartha.”) Furthermore, Dagon is connected to the figure of Oannes, who is connected to Janus, the double-headed one. One source also pointed out that the “vesica pisces” is an emblem the female vagina, as well as the Christian “ichthys.” As I have said many times previously in my Grail writings, we seem to be running up against something with Hermaphroditic qualities. Incidentally, just as Kronos is symbolized by a six-pointed star, Venus is symbolized by a five-pointed star, and both symbols have shown up repeatedly in the story of Rennes-le-Chateau and the Priory of Sion
The birth of Venus is believed to have taken place at a specific spot in the ocean, “Petra tou Romiou,” or “the Rock of the Romans.” This brings to my mind the similarity between the story of Kronos’ penis being pitched to Earth and the story of the stone that fell from Heaven, which as I have established in a previous article, symbolizes both the secret doctrine of knowledge that the gods taught to mankind, and also the divine seed which they passed down to their human/hybrid descendants. The fact that the disembodied penis produced progeny implies that this myth is a statement on Kronos’ title “the Forgotten Father.” And it was Kronos who was the father of the Titans, the race of gods who were cast into the underworld by Zeus after being overthrown by him. H.P. Blavatsky wrote in The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy:
… it is suspected that the name of ‘Titan’ is derived from Tit-Ain — ‘The fountains of the chaotic abyss’ (Tit-Theus, or Tityus is ‘the divine deluge’); and thus the Titans … are shown to be connected with the Flood …
Indeed, the Titans would have been connected with the Flood, for they were the kings of Atlantis according to author Ignatius Donnelly, and therefore masters of navigation. Even David Talbott confirms this:
It is generally agreed that Ovid is correct in saying that this ship of Saturn is that which appears on the reverse of coins stamped with the double face of Janus. The latter god, Saturn’s acknowledged alter ego, was remembered as the ‘inventor’ of ships.
This statement is interesting not only because it implies that Janus and Saturn are the same, and therefore, so are Dagon, Oannes and Poseidon. It also says that the Titans, as literal historical figures, had actual boats, on Earth, upon which they sailed the seven seas. This is how they built their global empire, discussed in other articles in this issue. This is not mere symbolism. This actually happened. It makes sense then, that these gods who were masters of navigation would have been the ones to assist Noah, or whatever he was called depending on the culture, in the survival of the Flood, by teaching him navigation. It is clear that man knew nothing of this prior to the Flood. This was one of the most vital transmissions of sacred, forbidden knowledge from god to man that ever happened. And navigation is done by means of the stars!
This is perhaps the point at which all of these symbols converge. Wisdom has always been associated with the stars. Wise men are said to be able to “read” the stars. There are even alphabets in which the characters are based on constellations, or the movement of stars. The night sky, therefore, can be likened to a book, or perhaps, better yet, a tablet. Is this what Enoch meant when he wrote that the gods showed him “the Tablet of Heaven,” from which he copied and inscribed his own Emerald Tablet of forbidden knowledge? The Book of Enoch itself attests that this knowledge consisted largely of the specific mathematics of the revolutions of the heavenly bodies. And this Emerald Tablet which Enoch wrote was then given to Noah, who took it on board the Ark. As noted in another article, this same tablet may have also ended up in the Ark of the Covenant, making one wonder if the word itself does not imply a vessel containing this tablet.
It is worth noting other similarities between the “Ark of Heaven,” the Ark of Noah, and the Ark of the Covenant. Just as the celestial boat was sometimes called the “Chariot of the Sun,” the Ark of the Covenant was called the “Chariot of God.” Also, God’s throne in Heaven is described in the Bible as a chariot, and the Ark of the Covenant is referred to as God’s throne, while the Ship of Saturn was believed to contain his throne as well. Both the Ark of the Covenant and the Ark of Noah were built according to specific instructions supplied by God, and therefore involve the principles of sacred architecture. This, along with navigation, was another piece of divine knowledge passed down during the Flood, and notably, both are now associated with the use of a compass, although the word signifies a different device depending on the context in which we are speaking. Furthermore, this knowledge was passed down from the “Arch of Heaven�,” but only to the elite descendants of the gods, and is therefore “arcane.” We seem to be witnessing a convergence of symbols that were once thought to be completely separate.
H. P. Blavatsky wrote in The Secret Doctrine that: “… like all other legends, that of ‘the Deluge’ has more than one meaning … some accounts refer to the sidereal and cosmic Flood before the so-called creation, the others treat, one of the Great Flood of Matter on Earth, and the other of a real watery deluge.” I would certainly agree that there is more than one meaning. For at some point in the mythic consciousness of our ancestors, the real, literal, and historically existent god-kings of Atlantis, who were masters of navigation, and therefore sea-gods, got merged with the occurrences in the celestial sea, with the pilot of the Boat of Heaven. This is undoubtedly because the real, historical gods purposely associated themselves with the stars.
As I mentioned previously, The Book of Enoch describes the gods, angels, or “Watchers” in heaven as literally being stars. According to the text, at some point these stars descended from Heaven to mate with the human females below:
I looked in my vision and surveyed heaven; when behold I saw many stars which descended … they all protruded their parts of shame like horses, and began to ascend the young cows, all of whom became pregnant, and brought forth elephants, camels, and asses.
The cows represent the human females, and the other animals are the “giants” or “monsters” which were said to have come from this union of god and man. Such breeding was, of course against the rules in Heaven. And so the Lord had the Earth flooded, to rid it of this pestilence, while the rebellious angels were imprisoned in Hell, situated in the center of the Earth.
Likewise, Kronos is said to have fallen from Heaven, and been imprisoned in the underworld as the “Lord of the Earth,” a title also given to Satan. Even David Talbott’s model of the ship of Saturn had to at one point changed into the night sky that we see today. This is described in The Book of Enoch when it says, “The face of Heaven will change.” Some change of orbit must have occurred, and a heavenly body must have fallen out of the sky, plunging to Earth. This could certainly have caused a flood, in all of the manners in which it is described by the ancients. If the “firmament of Heaven” had still been in existence at that point, it would have been melted, or busted open. Thus, the “Floodgates of Heaven were opened.” The impact would have caused the seas to overflow, and if the Earth is full of water as some have claimed, it would have cracked the crust of the Earth open and brought those waters forth as well, just as the flood accounts describe, when the Earth opens up and “the Fountains of the Deep” are loosed. It may have even caused a changed in polarity of the Earth. All of these things are described very explicitly in The Book of Enoch:
In those days Noah saw that the earth became inclined, and that destruction approached.
In almost every culture, a myth like this exists. Rebellious gods breed with humans, and give forbidden knowledge to mankind. This causes anger with the other gods, who flooded the Earth in retaliation. The rebellious gods decide to save one family, or one person, by teaching him how to build a boat. A long period of time passes. He washes up on a mountain top. He sends out a bird, and when it returns with mud on its feet, or a branch in its beak, or doesn’t return at all, he deems it safe to disembark.
Especially interesting is the recurrence of the word “Ark” in reference to the boat, which gets confused mythologically with the divine boat of Heaven. “Argha” was the celestial boat of the Hindus, while the Boat of Ra was called the “Bark.” Hercules, who sailed the night in the Cup of Helios, the Sun, was sometimes referred to as “Arkaleus.”“Argo”� was the name of another mythological ship in which the Greek gods sailed (most notably, Jason and the Argonauts), which itself was said to be made from the “guiding timber” of the “Ark” of Deucalion, the Greek Noah character. Deucalion was also said to have repopulated the Earth by throwing stones behind his back, which then magically transformed into a race of humans. Once again, the stone that fell from Heaven implies the transference of divine seed into humans, who then repopulate the post-diluvian world. And quite notably, in other instances, “Arks” are referred to as containers of divine seed. In the Masonic ritual of the “Prince of the Tabernacle” an “Ark” is proceeded around the room which is said to contain “the organs of generation of Osiris.” Likewise, in the Grecian “Mysteries of Samothrace,” a similar myth was re-enacted. As Albert Pike describes in Morals and Dogma, “The Diosairi, tutelary Deities of Navigation [emphasis added], with Venus, were invoked.” The ceremony involved the mimicked the death of someone “slain by his brothers, who fled into Etruria, carrying with him the chest or Ark that contained his genitals: and there the phallus and the sacred Ark were adored.”
In these various myths, the person playing the character of Noah is almost always a literal blood descendant of the rebellious gods. The historian Berosus wrote that Noah himself was married to the goddess Titea, who some say was the mother of the Titans. G.S. Faber tried to identify Noah with the Phoenician god “Agruerus�,” and H.P. Blavatsky wrote of him:
Agruerus is Kronos, or Saturn, and the prototype of the Israelitish Jehovah. As connected with the Argha, the. .. Ark of Salvation, Noah is mythologically one with Saturn.
Yet from another source, we have the following account:
Xisuthrus (the Babylonian Noah) was warned about the flood beforehand by the deity Cronos, and told to build a ship and take with him his friends and relations and all the different animals with all necessary food and trust himself fearlessly to the deep.
Although the accounts are confused, it is clear that Kronos is associated with the Ark of Noah one way or another. Perhaps the most obvious answer is that Noah has been confused with Kronos because he was a blood relation to Kronos, perhaps even his son. We know that Noah had some sort of divine parentage. This is made clear in the Biblical account of his birth, and even more so in The Book of Enoch:
She [Noah's mother] became pregnant by him, and brought forth a child, the flesh of which was white as snow and red as a rose; the hair of whose head was white like wool, and long; and whose eyes were beautiful. When he opened them, he illuminated all the house, like the sun; the whole house abounded with light. And when he was taken from the hand of the midwife, opening also his mouth, he spoke to the Lord of righteousness. Then Lamech his father was afraid of him, and flying away came to his own father Mathusala, and said: I have begotten a son, a changed son. He is not human; but resembling the offspring of the angels of heaven, is of a different nature from ours, being altogether unlike us. His eyes are bright as the rays of the sun; his countenance glorious and he looks not as if he belonged to me, but to the angels.
Noah, clearly then, was of divine parentage, as are all the characters who play his role in the various myths throughout the globe. In the Noah myth, this divine father appears to be Kronos, or perhaps, as some sources say, Oannes, who himself appears to be either the same, or at least represents basically the same things as, Kronos. As the father of Noah, therefore, Kronos would have become the ancestor of all humanity, for it was Noah’s line alone that would survive the Flood. Now we understand his title of “the Forgotten Father.” Indeed, it appears that he was also involved in warning Noah of the Flood and helping him to build the Ark.
This is the point that I wish to get across. The Deluge was a most pivotal time period, in which the divine seed was passed down to mankind, and the forbidden knowledge of the gods was passed down to those offspring. In The Book of Enoch we read of the Flood:
In those days shall punishment go forth from the Lord of Spirits; and the receptables of water which are above the heavens shall be opened, and the fountains likewise, which are under the heavens and under the earth. All the waters which are in the heavens and above them, shall be mixed together. The water which is above heaven shall be the male; And the water which is under the earth shall be female; and all shall be destroyed who dwell upon the earth, and who dwell under the extremities of heaven.
Clearly the Flood itself is being likened to this insemination, when the waters from above meet the waters below. The sky was literally falling. Heaven and Earth were becoming one. The divine wisdom (symbolized by the celestial waters) poured down on their human offspring, and the divine seed poured into the human females. This is at once, symbolically, the cause of the Flood, and the Flood itself. And the Ark of Heaven, piloted by Saturn, became the Ark of Noah, piloted by his son, navigating the Earth, in search of the Mount of Salvation.
The Ark, therefore, is the symbolic vessel that carried both that divine seed and that divine knowledge. This is at one with the symbol of the Earth itself being inseminated, like in the birth of Venus. It is remarkable, then, that in the Egyptian versions of the story, it was Isis herself (the Egyptian equivalent of Venus) who was shut up in the Ark, and who piloted it to safety. Also note that in the Sumerian legends, the celestial Ark was piloted by Enki (whom the Greeks considered to be the same as Saturn), and it was called the “Magur-boat.” Magur is reminiscent of “Magdalen,” the Biblical character whom I have established in previous articles as being a personification of Venus. I am reminded of the story of the Ship of Solomon, piloted by an unseen force, which brought Mary Magdalen and her divine/royal offspring (the child of Jesus) to France. Note also that I have already drawn a connection between Solomon and Kronos, because of the etymology of Solomon’s name, and because they both use the same seal, the six-pointed star. Venus is symbolized by a five-pointed star, which is “Star of David,” the head of the royal house from which Magdalen’s child came. (5)
It was this the bloodline which, according to the Bible, ultimately came from Noah, and which ultimately resulted in Jesus Christ, the Merovingian Kings of France (including Dagobert II), and finally, most of the royal houses of Europe, as well as all of the Presidents of the United States. This is what I have referred to repeatedly in this magazine as “the bloodline of the Holy Grail.” And the Ark, as the sacred vessel, can be likened to the Grail cup which metaphorically received that blood. Like the Grail, the ark is a symbol of the vessel that received the divine transmission of both seed and sacred knowledge. And though the waters of the deluge have subsided, the holy ark of God sails on, ready to alight in fresh ports where the light of this divine knowledge has yet to be disseminated.
Endnotes:
(1) If the Earth really was covered with a “firmament” of ice this reflection of light would have become even more distorted and pronounced.
(2) This would explain while the Black Sun is sometimes called “the Midnight Sun.”
(3) The word Moon is very close to “Mon,” an incarnation of Ra who was called “the Hidden God.” This is almost exactly like the title “the Hidden One” which is applied to Saturn. Note also that in occultism Saturn is associated with the six-pointed star, sometimes called the “Seal of Solomon.” Solomon’s name, taken apart, could translate to “Sol-Mon” — “the Hidden Sun.”
(4) We are reminded of the Hindi story of the fish who towed the Ark to safety during the Deluge by means of his horn.
(5) Often, the six-pointed star is erroneously referred to as “the Star of David,” and has been branded as such in popular culture.