by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Excerpted from
Ancient Science Future Science: Finis Gloria
Mundi: The Living Fourth Way
from
TheCassiopaeaExperiment
Website
An analysis of the genealogies in the Bible is very illuminating.
According to the book of Chronicles there is no genealogy for the
tribe of Dan. It has been observed by numerous scholars that many of
the names occurring in the genealogies themselves are either
blatantly geographical or connected with place-names; while others
are definitely personal names.[1] But the case of the Tribe of Dan
is special, and holds a clue for us in this matter of the Temple and
the Tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant. In II Chronicles 2:11-14
the D historian writes:
Then Hiram the king of Tyre answered in writing, which he sent to
Solomon, Because the Lord hath loved his people, he has made you
king over them. Hiram said moreover, Blessed be the Lord God of
Israel, that made heaven and earth, who has given to David the king
a wise son, endued with prudence and understanding, who should build
a house for the Lord, and a palace for his kingdom.
And now I have
sent a skilled man, endued with understanding, even Huram-abi, my
trusted counselor, the son of a woman of the daughters of DAN; his
father was a man of Tyre. He is a trained worker in gold, silver,
brass, iron, stone, and wood, in purple, blue, and crimson colors,
and in fine linen; also to engrave any manner of engraving, and to
carry out any design which shall be given to him, with your skilled
men, and with the skilled men of my lord David your father.
The above is supposed to be a letter from Hiram of Tyre to Solomon,
discussing the attributes of a particular man, the trusted counselor
of the great Hiram, who is being sent to help the son of David as a
great favor. This man is presented as a great designer and
architect. He is named, and his mother is designated as being of the
tribe of Dan. He is going to be the architect of the Temple of
Solomon. In other words, he is the model for the archetypal “great
architect” Hiram Abiff of Masonic lore.
So, what is the problem?
Look at this next excerpt from Exodus 31:1-7:
And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, See, I have called by name
Bezalel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah: And I
have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in
understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship,
To devise skilful works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in
bronze, and in cutting of stones for setting, and in carving of
wood, to work in all manner of craftsmanship.
And behold, I have
appointed with him Aholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of
DAN; and to all who are wise hearted I have given wisdom and ability
to make all that I have commanded you: The tent of meeting, and the
ark of the testimony, and the mercy seat that is on it, and all the
furniture of the tent…
The above description of the command to build the
Tent of Meeting
and the Ark sounds almost identical to the purported letter from
Hiram to Solomon, even including strong similarities in the names of
the principal worker: Huram-abi of the tribe of Dan has become
Hur
of the tribe of Judah:
And Bezalel the son Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, made
all that the LORD commanded Moses. And with him was Aholiab, son of
Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan an engraver, and a skillful
craftsman, and an embroiderer in blue, and in purple, and in
scarlet, and fine linen.
The next problem arises when we find in I Kings, chapter 7:13-21,
the following most confusing information about Hiram:
And King Solomon sent and fetched Hiram out of Tyre. He was a
widow’s son of the tribe of Naphtali, and his father was a man of
Tyre, a worker in brass: and he was filled with wisdom, and
understanding, and skill to work all works in brass.
And he came to king Solomon, and wrought all his work. For he cast
two pillars of brass, of eighteen cubits high apiece: and a line of
twelve cubits did compass either of them about. And he made two
chapiters of molten brass, to set upon the tops of the pillars: the
height of the one chapiter was five cubits, and the height of the
other chapiter was five cubits: And nets of checker work, and
wreaths of chain work, for the chapiters which were upon the top of
the pillars; seven for the one chapiter, and seven for the other
chapiter.
And he made the pillars, and two rows round about upon the
one network, to cover the chapiters that were upon the top, with
pomegranates: and so did he for the other chapiter. And the
chapiters that were upon the top of the pillars were of lily work in
the porch, four cubits. And the chapiters upon the two pillars had
pomegranates also above, over against the belly which was by the
network: and the pomegranates were two hundred in rows round about
upon the other chapiter. And he set up the pillars in the porch of
the temple: and he set up the right pillar, and called the name
thereof Jachin: and he set up the left pillar, and called the name
thereof Boaz.
We see without too much difficulty that these passages are taken
from the same source, though one refers to the building of a Temple
and the other refers to the construction of a tent and an ark. One
of the problems is, of course, that according to the Bible, the two
events are separated by a very long period of time. We also note the
curious name similarities between Huram-abi of the passage in II
Chronicles, and Hur, the father of Bezalel, connected to Aholiab of
the tribe of Dan.
Also curious is the name of Bezalel, which is so
similar to Jezebel, who we have tentatively identified as the
Phoenician princess, daughter of Ethbaal, king of Tyre. More curious
still is the claim of the Dan inscription that, in the destruction
of the City of Dan, the House of David was destroyed. What was the
connection of the Tribe of Dan to the House of the Beloved? Were
they, as it seems from these clues, one and the same?
In the Exodus passage, we find an interesting substitution taking
place: the tribe of Judah has been connected with the tribe of Dan,
even taking precedence. The architect sent by Hiram whose mother was
of the tribe of Dan, and whose father was a man of Tyre, is now
relegated to a subservient position to Bezalel, of the tribe of
Judah, who is now the “son of Hur.” Importantly, we see that a
member of the tribe of Dan was the builder of the Ark! We are
entitled to ask: is the tribe of Dan the true “house of the beloved”
or Davidic line? And if so, who are they?
When we search for the source of this tribe, we find many
interesting things as well as things that are conspicuous by their
absence. In Genesis 30:1-6, we discover that Dan was the child of
Rachel’s maid, Bilhah:
And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied
her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die.
And Jacob’s anger was kindled against Rachel: and he said, Am I in
God’s stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? And
she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear
upon my knees, that I may also have children by her. And she gave
him Bilhah her handmaid to wife: and Jacob went in unto her. And
Bilhah conceived, and bare Jacob a son. And Rachel said, God hath
judged me, and hath also heard my voice, and hath given me a son:
therefore called she his name Dan.
This story is remarkably similar to the story of
Sarai and Hagar in
Genesis 16:1-5
Now Sarai Abram’s wife bare him no children: and she had a handmaid,
an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold
now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing: I ask you, have
intercourse with my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by
her. And Abram listened to Sarai. And Sarai Abram’s wife took Hagar
her maid the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land
of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife. And he
had intercourse with Hagar and she conceived: and when she saw that
she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes. And Sarai
said unto Abram, My wrong be upon thee: I have given my maid into
thy bosom; and when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised
in her eyes: the Lord judge between me and thee.
The last lines of both passages, dealing with “judgment,” indicate
that they are, in fact, the same story.
Another interesting connection pops up when we consider the
identification of Hiram as a member of the tribe of Naphtali in the
passage describing the creation of the pillars Jachin and
Boaz. From
I Chronicles, chapter 7:13:
The sons of Naphtali; Jahziel, and Guni, and Jezer, and Shallum, the
sons of Bilhah.
Keep the name “Shallum” in mind because we will encounter it again
later in the chapter.
We next come to another clue. In Genesis 49, the patriarch Jacob has
called all his children to gather around his deathbed so that he can
pronounce their destiny upon them. When he gets to Dan, in verses16
-18, he says:
Dan shall judge his people, as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan
shall be a serpent by the way, a horned snake in the path, that
bites at the horse’s heels, so that his rider shall fall backward. I
wait for thy salvation, O Lord.”
This is said almost as though the activity of Dan that is negative
toward Israel, is the salvation. In Deuteronomy 33:22, Moses blesses
the tribe of Dan by saying, “And of Dan he said, Dan is a lion’s
whelp: he shall leap from Bashan.” But in the blessing of Jacob, in
Genesis 49:8-9 the attribute of the Lion is given to Judah:
Judah, you are the one whom your brothers shall praise. Your hand
shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow
down to you. Judah, a lion’s cub! With the prey, my son, you have
gone high up the mountain; he stooped down, he crouched as a lion,
and as a lioness; who dares provoke and rouse him?
Let’s compare that to two additional items: the destiny prescribed
by God when he appears to Hagar at the well when she ran away after
Sarai was cruel to her during her pregnancy, and the blessing given
by Isaac to his beloved son Esau after Jacob had defrauded his
father with the help of his mother, Rebekah. There are interesting
resonances to the remarks made about Judah. The first event is
recounted in Genesis 16:11-12, and the second in Genesis 27:39-40:
1) And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Behold, you are with
child and shall bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael, or God
hears, because the Lord has heard and paid attention to your
affliction. And [Ishmael] will be as a wild man; his hand will be
against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall
live to the east and on the borders of all his kinsmen.
2) And Isaac his father answered and said unto [Esau], Behold, Your
dwelling shall all come from the fruitfulness of the earth, and from
the dew of heaven from above; And by your sword shalt you live, and
serve your brother. But the time will come when you will have the
dominion, and you will break his yoke from off your neck.
One of the more interesting things we discover when we dig into this
subject is that Samson was of the tribe of Dan. Robert Graves
remarks:
Hercules first appears in legend as a pastoral sacred king and,
perhaps because shepherds welcome the birth of twin lambs, is a twin
himself. His characteristics and history can be deduced from a mass
of legends, folk-customs and megalithic monuments. He is the
rainmaker of his tribe and a sort of human thunderstorm. Legends
connect him with Libya and the Atlas Mountains; he may well have
originated thereabouts in Paleolithic times. The priests of Egyptian
Thebes, who called him “Shu,” dated his origin as “17,000 years
before the reign of King Amasis.”
His symbols are the acorn; the
rock dove, which nests in oaks as well as in clefts of rock; the
mistletoe, and the serpent. All of these are sexual emblems. The
dove was sacred to the Love-goddess of Greece and Syria the serpent
was the most ancient of phallic totem-beasts; the cupped acorn stood
for the glans penis in both Greek and Latin; the mistletoe was an
all-heal and its names viscus and ixias are connected with
vis and
ischus (strength) probably because of the spermal viscosity of its
berries, sperm being the vehicle of life.[…]
The manner of his death can be reconstructed from a variety of
legends, folk customs and other religious survivals. At mid-summer,
at the end of a half-year reign, Hercules is made drunk with mead
and led into the middle of a circle of twelve stones arranged around
an oak, in front of which stands an altar-stone; the oak has been
lopped until is it T-shaped.
He is bound to it with willow thongs in
the “five-fold bond” which joins wrists, neck, and ankles together,
beaten by his comrades till he faints, then flayed, blinded,
castrated, impaled with a mistletoe stake, and finally hacked into
joints on the altar stone.[2] His blood is caught in a basin and
used for sprinkling the whole tribe to make them vigorous and
fruitful. The joints are roasted at twin fires of oak-loppings,
kindled with sacred fire preserved from lightning blasted oak or
made by twirling an alder or cornel-wood fire drill in an oak log.
[…]
The twelve merry men rush in a wild figure-of-eight dance around the
fires, singing ecstatically and tearing at the flesh with their
teeth. The bloody remains are burnt in the fire, all except the
genitals and the head. These are put into an alder-wood boat and
floated down a river to an islet; though the head is sometimes cured
with smoke and preserved for oracular use. […]
To this type of
Hercules belong such diverse characters as,
-
Hercules
of Oeta
-
Orion the Hunter of Crete
-
Polyphemus the Cyclops
-
Samson
the Danite
-
Cuchulain of Muirthemne the Irish Sun-Hero
-
Ision the
Lapth - who is always depicted stretched in a “five-fold bond”
around a Sun-wheel
-
Agag the Amalekite
-
Romulus of Rome
-
Zeus
-
Janus
-
Anchises
-
the Dagda
-
Hermes. […]
In the classical myth which authorized his sovereignty he is a
miraculous child born in a shower of gold; strangles a serpent in
his cradle, which is also a boat, and is credited with causing the
spurt of milk that made the Milky Way; as a young man he is the
undefeated monster-slayer of his age; kills and dismembers a
monstrous boar; […] his other self … succeeds him for the second
half of the year; having acquired royal virtue by marriage with the
queen, the representative of the White Goddess, and by eating some
royal part of the dead man’s body - heart, shoulder or
thigh-flesh.[3]
We see in the above all the elements of the Jesus myth, realizing
that Jesus was said to have been of the Davidic line, the house of
Judah, the Tribe of Dan.
To finish off this little diversion, we find another curious remark
about the tribe of Dan in Judges 5:17:
Gilead abode beyond Jordan: and why did Dan remain in ships?
That’s a strange thing; an allusion to a sea-faring people? The
prophet Amos seems to have some conviction that this tribe of Dan is
a serious threat to
Yahweh.
He writes in 8:14-15:
They that swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, Thy god, Oh Dan,
liveth; and, the manner of Beersheba liveth; even they shall fall,
and never rise up again.
Amos seems to be suggesting that the “sin of Samaria,” is directly
connected to the tribe of Dan. And we have some idea already that
the “sin of Samaria” was also the sin of Ahab and Jezebel, the
House
of the Beloved.
Which brings us back to the question:
-
just what was
the tribe of Dan, and why was it changed to the tribe of Judah?
-
If
the tribe of Judah is really the tribe of Dan, then that means that
the House of David is the tribe of Dan.
And following the clues, we
discover that this lineage belonged to Ishmael and Esau, not to
Isaac and Jacob. We further discover that the lineage is that of the
“architect of the temple of Solomon,” the designer and builder of
the Ark of the Covenant, the right hand man of the legendary
King
Hiram of Tyre.
The Festival of Tabernacles
This matter of the Tabernacle leads us into some additional
interesting speculations. Many scholars believe that the psalms were
literary creations for the central festival of the Canaanites: The
Festival of Tabernacles, or “booths.” The Feast of Tabernacles is a
weeklong autumn harvest festival. It is also known as the Feast of
the Ingathering, Feast of the Booths, Sukkoth, Succoth, or Sukkot
(variations in spellings occur because these words are
transliterations of the Hebrew word pronounced “Sue-coat”). The two
days following the festival are separate holidays, Shemini Atzeret
and Simkhat Torah, but are commonly thought of as part of the Feast
of Tabernacles.
One of the more interesting references to what may have been an
early celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles occurs in Genesis 33.
We discover from our exegetes that verses 1 through 17 are from the
E source of the northern kingdom. The incident in question follows a
peculiar event in the previous chapter where Jacob sends his family
away and remains alone to wrestle with a “man” all night. This “man”
is later identified as an angel of God, and the angel “wounds” Jacob
in the thigh.
What does it mean to say that Jacob was wounded in the thigh?
According to some commentators, he apparently sustained an injury
common to wrestlers, the inward displacement of the hip that is
produced by forcing the legs too widely apart. The injured person
finds his leg flexed, abducted and externally rotated. He can only
walk with a lurching or swaggering gait, and on his toes. The
affected leg is lengthened and this tightens the tendons in the
thigh and the muscles go into spasm.
Since the story of Jacob comes to us from the age when women were
the transmitters of the right to rule, and since Jacob won his
sacred name and inheritance which could only be granted by a woman
on this same occasion, it seems that something is wrong with this
picture. The element that stands out is that of a transition from
the hieros gamos to the ritual combat, with residual sexual
overtones.
In the myth of combat between Set and Horus, Set tries to mate
sexually with Horus. This is usually interpreted as being an insult,
but there is something deeper here.
It was a formal principle of Greek myth and literature that love and
death were two aspects of the same power. In Homer, there are as
many ways to kill as to love, if not more. The language and images
are disturbingly interchangeable.
The verb damazo (as also its equivalent damnemi) spans a range of
meanings from subjugation to slaughter to rape to seduction, and the
"mingling" conveyed by meignymi may be that of lovers of that of
warriors.
Both kinds of couples grapple and cling and know a desperate,
intense intimacy with few if any parallels anywhere else in human
experience. Furthermore, both the love-act and the death-act are
accompanied by "small talk" and preceded by a form of play, a
not-yet-violent contest soon to be raised to a higher power and
decided or consummated on another plane.[4]
In his Poetics, Aristotle traced the origin of poetry to the
pleasure human beings derive in mimesis, or "imaging" that which is
delightful or disturbing. He tells us that, very early, poetry
divided into two currents: a poetry of praise and a poetry of
assault.
In the Greek war of wars and its subsequent Song of Songs,
the
Iliad, the violation of the city of Troy and the violation of its
women became, in the minds of the Bronze Age thinkers, one. The
metaphor is linguistically embedded in the word kredemna which means
both a city’s battlements and women’s veils. In the tale of the
Trojan war, the shining object of desire was not gold or horses or
jewels or even power: it was a woman, Helen.
Outside of the Greek tradition, in the cultural milieu of the
Eastern Mediterranean world of the Bronze Age, there was the same
convergence of eros and eris. The theme of violence or the threat of
violence provoked by rivalry over a beautiful women which was absent
from older literature of the ancient Near East, is evident in the
story of Abram, the husband of a remarkably beautiful woman. Fearing
that his wife’s beauty and desirability might put him at risk, he
passes himself off as her brother. In the end, the Pharaoh who takes
Abram’s wife to his bed is described as anxious to see her go since
she brought nothing but plague and disaster to him and his house.
When we peer deeper into this connection between eros and eris,
erotic love and deadly conflict, we find an even older layer
preserved in the poetic tradition and enacted in rituals such as
that of Jacob and the Angel. In ancient cities, it was the king in
his priestly or divine capacity who, with his temple consort,
reenacted the hieros gamos, the sacred mating of Heaven and Earth.
The story of Helen of Troy - her great beauty that provoked such
grief - is a key to the shift in the perception of women in the
ancient world. Hesiod explicated this shift in his story of the
first woman, Pandora.
Supposedly Hesiod composed his Theogony and Works and Days sometime
around the 8th or early 7th century BC. It is thought that the works
of Hesiod, like the works of Homer, represented the terminus of a
vast oral tradition of anonymous voices of uncertain origin and age.
The Theogony is an account of origins of those divine beings who
created and preside over the cosmos. It is a Divine history, tracing
a succession of regimes culminating in the reign of Olympian Zeus.
The narratives are undoubtedly rooted in an array of succession
myths that circulated throughout the ancient Near East, and which,
due to the cosmopolitan nature of the Omride kingdom, were familiar
to the nascent Jews. And this is where it becomes very interesting.
The likeliest principal influence on Hesiod’s account would seem to
be the Hittite versions of the Hurrian Kumarbi and Ullikummi myths
as well as the
Babylonian Enuma Elish. It is suggested that such
Oriental material reached Hesiod via Crete and
Delphi.
The Theogony - like the Bible - is not metaphysics; it is, plainly
and simply, a political tool. In the Theogony, the regime of Zeus
and the reign of Olympian justice are celebrated as the achievement
of the aeons just as Yahweh is celebrated in the Torah. In the
Theogony, Hesiod recounts his new version of the beginnings of
Creation, making certain to regularly propagandize in favor of Zeus
who is as "just as he is terrible."
Many passages in the
Theogony can be compared to the hymns to Yahweh
supposedly composed by David,
or to the Enuma Elish which sings the praises of the warrior king,
Marduk. In each case, there is a fusion of military might with
absolute authority, glory and promised justice to the exiled and
enslaved. And clearly, in each instance there is the complete
subordination of the female to the male, presented as a
philosophical achievement, an evolution from the old, savage, order
to the new, glorious world of male theriomorphism.
In the Theogony, the first woman is the "kalon kakon."
Kalon means
"beautiful" and kakon means "evil." In other words, the first woman
is a living oxymoron. Now, of course, this term could mean either
"beautiful evil" or "evil beauty." That is to say, is woman
essentially beautiful and qualifiedly evil, or essentially evil
though qualifiedly beautiful, or both essentially evil and
beautiful?
Hesiod doesn’t leave us in suspense because he clarifies this point
for us by telling us that it is kakon that defines the substance, or
essence or woman. Woman is revealed as unambiguously evil.
"Thunderous Zeus made women to be a
kakon for mortal men […] he
fashioned this kakon for men to make them pay for the theft of
fire."
Prometheus was provoked by
Zeus’ withdrawal of fire from mankind in
retaliation for Prometheus’ earlier theft of the finest sacrificial
portions. Prometheus had proven himself more clever than Zeus,
outwitting the king of the gods. In the first instance, Prometheus
wrapped the meat and fatty portions of the sacrificial ox in the
victim’s inedible hide and stomach and then wrapped the bare bones
in glistening fat, knowing that Zeus would mistakenly insist on the
latter as his prerogative. In the second instance, Prometheus
concealed living embers in a hollow fennel stalk, enabling him to
elude Zeus’ embargo and to return fire to mankind.
The theme is "skill" or "craft" that is used to create a "ruse" or
dolon. The words techne, dolie, and dolon occur repeatedly in
Hesiod’s account of Prometheus’s offenses which lead up to
Zeus’s
retaliation in kind.
It is the word dolon that describes woman: once she is dressed,
veiled and crowned, she is called a dolon, a trick, a baited trap.
Woman, fashioned and dressed up by the gods is a fitting retort for
the glistening bag of bones foisted on Zeus by Prometheus.
According to Hesiod, the difference between woman’s beauty and her
evil is the difference between surface appearances and reality.
Decked out in flowers and gold, woman is a thauma, a "wonder to
behold", and men and gods alike are filled with awe at the sight of
her. However, it is only men who are defenseless against her charms.
Woman is a "lure" and men have no "resistance" and it was designed
that way by the gods. A man is unable to resist the irresistible
bride who, after they get her home and exhaust her superficial
charms, will find that they are stuck with a great misery, a
bottomless pit into which they will pour all their goods and efforts
and life force.
And so it is, the moment of woman’s creation is the moment of man’s
destruction. In other words, the sacrifice to the gods that went
wrong - a brief insubordination - ends in humanity’s endless misery
with a vengeance.
However, what is not initially seen is that the issue is actually
sovereignty. Prometheus has issued two stunning challenges to
Zeus’
wit and rule in the name of humankind. The fact is, the four sons of
Iapetus[5] and Clymene - Atlas, Menoetius, Prometheus, and
Epimetheus - were trouble to Zeus from the start because they
represent a rival line of descent from Ouranos and Gaia, which, if
allied with unruly mankind, could mean trouble for the gods! The
most troublesome of the four was Prometheus.
His name means
"forethought," and his knowledge of what was to come is what
inspired him to try to help mankind. He was an arch-rebel and
champion of mankind who was determined to elevate the status of
humanity by giving them creative imagination, defiant wit, and
divine fire - all that is needed to make them like gods.
The story suggests to us a "contest" between humankind and the gods
that was to be decided in the act of animal sacrifice.[6] The
humiliation of Zeus prompted him to take the extreme measure of
withholding fire from mankind, without which they would soon be
little more than animals. Humiliated the second time, Zeus
formulated the Final Solution: Woman.
In Hesiod’s Works and Days, Four ages of man have now come and gone,
each one worse than the one before. Strife defines every
relationship, virtue (as well as everything else) is rewarded with
misery, and Hesiod recounts with great longing how men once lived
without toil and without pain. Why so much pain and suffering?
Hesiod’s account of the Fall of man answers that question with one
word: Woman.
The "first woman" in Works and Days, Pandora, is again, bait set by
the gods to trap men. She is given the appearance of a goddess, the
character of a hyena, and the heart and mind of a jackal. Woman,
adorned by the gods, brings to man all that is hideous and
devouring. Woman, who takes all that is bright and beautiful from
man, gives back only that which is dark and filthy. Her name,
Pandora, means both "All Giver" and "All Gifted."
Hesiod tells us
that she is called Pandora because,
"all those who
dwell on Olympos
gave each one to her a gift, a grief for men who strive and toil."
She has only one reason for her existence: to produce human misery.
The gifts Pandora receives from the gods - the contents of Pandora’s
Jar - are intended to produce endless torment for man. It is only in
later centuries that a "box" was substituted for a "jar." This
change of imagery was attributed to the sixteenth century monk
Erasmus who mistranslated the original Greek word pithos with the
Latin pyxis. A pithos is a jar that is womb-like in shape and is a
symbol for the earth, the mother of all.
The implications of the pithos to the story of Pandora are obvious.
Pandora’s gifts are released from her own womb. Her fault lies not
in her curiosity, but in her being. She is constitutionally
deceptive and lethal because she draws men into her pithos, and
brings new men forth for a life of misery. She further perpetuates
the misery of man by bringing forth female babies.
The image of Woman as a pithos is extremely ancient. In many ancient
Helladic burials, the pithos was used as a coffin. The deceased was
placed inside in a fetal position, covered with honey, and buried in
the hope of new life and regeneration. Hesiod records for us ideas
that were, apparently, spreading like wildfire in his time: the
profound estrangement of one half of humanity from the other. We
should like to know why?
In Hesiod’s re-writing of the ancient myths, man has somehow come
into being without being born of woman and contrary to the most
ancient depictions, it is woman who is derivative. Certainly, the
emergence of the first human being presents a challenge to any
thinking person; the existence of women before men is a mystery, but
the existence of men before women is absurd.
Hesiod presents the view that woman is a disruption to nature.
Because of woman, man can no longer appear and disappear by his own
will. Because of woman, man must be born in suffering, and then man
must die in suffering. What Hesiod fails to notice is that, if men
were suffering in that time, women were suffering also - and
probably a lot more.
Hesiod’s account of woman is a conscious denial and a deliberate
misogynistic propaganda. We see Hesiod’s line of argument reflected
in the J Document account of creation. In Genesis, man is created
and lives in a deathless, god-like existence, and woman is the
"second" creation, the "afterthought." She soon brings death and
destruction on mankind by "eating of the fruit of the tree of good
and evil."
In these accounts, we perceive a common thread of woman as an
"interloper" into the original scheme of things, bringing sex,
strife, misery and death. Hesiod works with the ancient images of
the all-giving mother, twisting and disfiguring them until they
reflect only shame and degradation of the creatress of life. Woman,
created from clay according to Hesiod, is not only not semi-divine
as is man, she is something less than human.
Zeus, with timely advice from Ouranos and Gaia, appropriates his own
wife’s powers. He marries and swallows Metis and is thus able to
give birth to his daughter, Athena. In swallowing Metis, reverses
the succession and the primacy of female fecundity, and thus becomes
sovereignty itself. Hesiod’s insistence that Zeus does so with the
consent of both Ouranos and Gaia sounds like the ritual charade in
which consent is elicited from sacrificial animals just prior to
their deaths. This claim to the agreement of the older gods is
designed to give this most radical of reversions a certain
"legitimacy" and "continuity" with the past. With the
parthenogenetic birth of Athena from the head of Zeus, history has a
new beginning in which woman will play no role.
The entire theme of Theogony is - as Hesiod would have it - a
triumphal ascent from the female womb of Gaia to the male womb of
Zeus, from savage nature, to Olympian civilization. These were the
ideas making their way around the Eastern Mediterranean during the
time in which the Bible was being written. It’s difficult to even
suggest the source. Yahweh, like Marduk and Zeus sweeps the field of
rivals, making his power incontestable. This brings us back to the
Theophany of Jacob, wrestling with the Angel, during which incident
he apparently sustained an injury common to wrestlers, the inward
displacement of the hip that is produced by forcing the legs too
widely apart.
The dream of a purely paternal heredity never ceased to haunt the
Greek imagination. Greek poetry is resonant with the voices of men
who long for a world exorcised of women, a world in which men by
themselves are capable of producing their own sons. […]
Here, Mysogyny may be seen to conspire with the love of men for men;
for when men make love to men, their seed often finds its way to the
head and to the thighs, the would-be wombs of Zeus.[7]
The fact is that there was organized sodomy in many temples of the
late Bronze Age where male devotees sought to "become women." We
note that circumcision is a symbolic castration, and many male
devotees attempted to become a woman, to receive the seed of the god
directly.
Immediately after this wrestling match, the “angel” then changed
Jacob’s name from Jacob, meaning “supplanter,
schemer, trickster and swindler,” to Israel. This certainly mirrors
Hesiod’s depiction of
woman as schemers and tricksters. In fact, Jacob was noted as being
"feminine" and completely unlike his brother, the rough and ready
Esau, so much so that his father disdained him.
The name changing incident after a meeting with a “divine being”
reminds us of the name-changing incident of Abraham which followed
an appearance of Yahweh and the making of the famous "covenant"
which was immediately followed by the circumcision of both Abraham
and Ishmael [8], which leads to another odd “doublet” in terms of
essential events: Moses. Immediately after the “burning bush”
incident in which God talked to Moses telling him to go back to
Egypt and free his people, the following happens:
-
4:24 And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the LORD met
him, and sought to kill him.
-
4:25 Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of
her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband
art thou to me.
-
4:26 So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husband thou art,
because of the circumcision.
This incident is like a “connecting link” between the story of
Abraham and the covenant of circumcision, the story of
Jacob wrestling with the Angel, and the story of Moses. We begin to
suspect that, at the root of all the Bible stories is a single story
that was mythicized in different tribal groups, and then later the
different stories were reassembled and “historicized.” Names were
changed within each tribe by assimilating their own ancestors to the
primary story, so it was only necessary to insert genealogies to
make the different variations on the same story look “vertical” in
time, when in fact, they were horizontal in time.
Getting back to the story of Jacob, while he was still in the womb,
Jacob supplanted his twin, Esau, by catching hold of his heel,
draining him of royal virtue. The Greek word pternizein, used by the
Septuagint in this context, means to “trip up someone’s heel.” This
brings us around again to the issue of Dan. To review, we recall
that Dan was the child of Rachel’s maid, Bilhah:
Bilhah conceived, and bare Jacob a son. And Rachel said, God hath
judged me, and hath also heard my voice, and hath given me a son:
therefore called she his name Dan.
…which is similar to the story of
Sarai and Hagar in Genesis 16:1-5
And he had intercourse with Hagar and she conceived: and when she
saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes.
And Sarai said unto Abram, My wrong be upon thee: I have given my
maid into thy bosom; and when she saw that she had conceived, I was
despised in her eyes: the Lord judge between me and thee.
…compared to Genesis 49, where the patriarch
Jacob has called all
his children to gather around his deathbed so that he can pronounce
their destiny upon them. When he gets to Dan, in verses16 -18, he
says:
Dan shall judge his people, as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan
shall be a serpent by the way, a horned snake in the path, that
bites at the horse’s heels, so that his rider shall fall backward. I
wait for thy salvation, O Lord.”
…compared to Deuteronomy 33:22, where
Moses blesses the tribe of Dan
by saying, “And of Dan he said, Dan is a lion’s whelp: … But in the
blessing of Jacob, in Genesis 49:8-9 the attribute of the Lion is
given to Judah:
Judah, you are the one whom your brothers shall praise. Your hand
shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow
down to you. Judah, a lion’s cub!
…compared to the destiny prescribed by
God when he appears to Hagar
at the well when she ran away after Sarai was cruel to her during
her pregnancy, and finally, the blessing given by Isaac to his
beloved son Esau after Jacob had defrauded his father with the help
of his mother, Rebekah.
There are interesting resonances to the remarks made about Judah.
The first event is recounted in Genesis 16:11-12, and the second in
Genesis 27:39-40:
1) And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Behold, you are with
child and shall bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael, or God
hears, because the Lord has heard and paid attention to your
affliction. And [Ishmael] will be as a wild man; his hand will be
against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall
live to the east and on the borders of all his kinsmen.
2) And Isaac his father answered and said unto [Esau], Behold, Your
dwelling shall all come from the fruitfulness of the earth, and from
the dew of heaven from above; And by your sword shalt you live, and
serve your brother. But the time will come when you will have the
dominion, and you will break his yoke from off your neck.
To look at this a bit more deeply, let’s see the story of Jacob’s
birth from Genesis:
-
25:21 And Isaac intreated the LORD for his wife, because she was
barren: and the LORD was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife
conceived.
-
25:22 And the children struggled together within her; and she said,
If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to enquire of the LORD.
-
25:23 And the LORD said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and
two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one
people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall
serve the younger.
-
25:24 And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold,
there were twins in her womb.
-
25:25 And the first came out red, all over like an hairy garment;
and they called his name Esau.
-
25:26 And after that came his brother out, and his hand took hold on
Esau’s heel; and his name was called Jacob: and Isaac was threescore
years old when she bare them.
Again we have a barren wife, only in this case, instead of having a
maid to give birth to the "other brother," Rebekah has twins, and
one of them is "red." The story that connects this back to
Judah and Dan is the story of Tamar.
-
38:6 And Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, whose name was
Tamar.
-
38:7 And Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the LORD;
and the LORD slew him.
-
38:8 And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother’s wife, and
marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother.
-
38:9 And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to
pass, when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on
the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother.
-
38:10 And the thing which he did displeased the LORD: wherefore he
slew him also.
-
38:11 Then said Judah to Tamar his daughter in law, Remain a widow
at thy father’s house, till Shelah my son be grown: for he said,
Lest peradventure he die also, as his brethren did. And Tamar went
and dwelt in her father’s house.
-
38:12 And in process of time the daughter of Shuah Judah’s wife
died; and Judah was comforted, and went up unto his sheepshearers to
Timnath, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite.
-
38:13 And it was told Tamar, saying, Behold thy father in law goeth
up to Timnath to shear his sheep.
-
38:14 And she put her widow’s garments off from her, and covered her
with a vail, and wrapped herself, and sat in an open place, which is
by the way to Timnath; for she saw that Shelah was grown, and she
was not given unto him to wife.
-
38:15 When Judah saw her, he thought her to be an harlot; because
she had covered her face.
-
38:16 And he turned unto her by the way, and said, Go to, I pray
thee, let me come in unto thee; (for he knew not that she was his
daughter in law.) And she said, What wilt thou give me, that thou
mayest come in unto me?
-
38:17 And he said, I will send thee a kid from the flock. And she
said, Wilt thou give me a pledge, till thou send it?
-
38:18 And he said, What pledge shall I give thee? And she said, Thy
signet, and thy bracelets, and thy staff that is in thine hand. And
he gave it her, and came in unto her, and she conceived by him.
-
38:19 And she arose, and went away, and laid by her vail from her,
and put on the garments of her widowhood.
-
38:20 And Judah sent the kid by the hand of his friend the
Adullamite, to receive his pledge from the woman’s hand: but he
found her not.
-
38:21 Then he asked the men of that place, saying, Where is the
harlot, that was openly by the way side? And they said, There was no
harlot in this place.
-
38:22 And he returned to Judah, and said, I cannot find her; and
also the men of the place said, that there was no harlot in this
place.
-
38:23 And Judah said, Let her take it to her, lest we be shamed:
behold, I sent this kid, and thou hast not found her.
-
38:24 And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told
Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and
also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring
her forth, and let her be burnt.
-
38:25 When she was brought forth, she sent to her father in law,
saying, By the man, whose these are, am I with child: and she said,
Discern, I pray thee, whose are these, the signet, and bracelets,
and staff.
-
38:26 And Judah acknowledged them, and said, She hath been more
righteous than I; because that I gave her not to Shelah my son. And
he knew her again no more.
-
38:27 And it came to pass in the time of her travail, that, behold,
twins were in her womb.
-
38:28 And it came to pass, when she travailed, that the one put out
his hand: and the midwife took and bound upon his hand a scarlet
thread, saying, This came out first.
-
38:29 And it came to pass, as he drew back his hand, that, behold,
his brother came out: and she said, How hast thou broken forth? this
breach be upon thee: therefore his name was called Pharez.
-
38:30 And afterward came out his brother, that had the scarlet
thread upon his hand: and his name was called Zarah.
Notice that the story of the birth is told in identical terms except
that instead of a "red man," we have a "scarlet thread." The
important thing about Pharez is that he was the purported ancestor
of King David. Pharez had another son, Hezron about whom it was
said:
-
2:18 And Caleb the son of Hezron begat […] took unto him Ephrath,
which bare him Hur.
-
2:20 And Hur begat Uri, and Uri begat Bezaleel.
Remember Hur and
Uri and Bezaleel who were supposed to have lived at
the time of Moses? We found a descriptive hint of them in the story
about the architect sent by Hiram of Tyre. In II Kings we find this:
-
4:7 And Solomon had twelve officers over all Israel, which provided
victuals for the king and his household: each man his month in a
year made provision.
-
4:8 And these are their names: The son of Hur, in mount Ephraim: …
This Hur is a most mysterious individual. He appears at
Moses’ side:
-
17:10 So Joshua did as Moses had said to him, and fought with
Amalek: and Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill.
-
17:11 And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel
prevailed: and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed.
-
17:12 But Moses hands were heavy; and they took a stone, and put it
under him, and he sat thereon; and Aaron and Hur stayed up his
hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and
his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.
It all becomes even more mysterious when we consider the names of
Terah’s other sons: Nahor, and Haran which remind us homophonically
of Hur and Aaron…
Getting back to Jacob, after his wrestling match, he becomes the
sacred king in a new way: instead of marrying the representative of
the goddess, he has usurped that role and has succeeded to his
office by becoming like a woman. In I Kings, 18:26, where the
priests of Baal dance at the altar and cry out “Baal, hear us!” they
leaped up and down, according to the Authorized Version. The
original Hebrew word is formed from the root psch, which means “to
dance with a limp,” and from which Pesach, the name of the
Passover
Feast, is derived.
The Passover seems to have been a Canaanite Spring festival which
the creators of the Bible adapted to their own use as commemoration
of the Exodus from Egypt. At Carmel, the dance with a limp may have
been a form of sympathetic magic to encourage the appearance of the
God with a bull’s foot who was armed, like Dionysus, with a torch.
The writer of the Bible refrains from mentioning his real name, but
since those particular priests of Baal, (and Baal merely means
“lord”) were Israelites, it is likely to have been “Jah Aceb” of
“Jacob,” the Heel God. Jah Aceb seems to have been also worshipped
at Beth-Hoglah, the Shrine of the Hobbler, between
Jericho and the
Jordan south of Gilgal. This has been identified as the threshing
floor of Atad where Joseph mourned for Jacob.
After his "wounding in the thigh" incident, Jacob travels on to meet
his estranged brother, Esau, whom he swindled many years before, and
being afraid of Esau’s wrath, he put his children and wives in the
front of the cavalcade in hopes that they would soften his brother’s
heart so Esau wouldn’t kill him.[9]
But Esau was long past any rancor, and he embraced Jacob and
accepted his gifts of livestock and possibly even slaves. The story
then takes a truly bizarre twist. Apparently Esau thought that
Jacob/Israel was going to travel with him to Seir. But
Jacob hemmed
and hawed and finally told Esau to go on ahead. Then, after
Esau had
left, Jacob went in a completely different direction where it is
said he “built himself a house, and made booths or places of shelter
for his livestock; so the name of the place is called Succoth.” (v.
17)
When we investigate this word, we discover that the archaic meaning
of it was that of a small cubicle set up by a “temple prostitute”
along the side of the road as in the story of Judah and
Tamar in
Genesis 38:14, from the J document!
This brings up back to the question of what was the Canaanite
Festival of Tabernacles?
The ancient Greek civilization dedicated one of their harvest
festivals to the goddess of the earth and all grain, Demeter. The
festival, known as the Thesmosphoria, was celebrated for three days
and featured the building of shelters by married women, fasting and
offerings to Demeter. The connection between married women and the
festival may point to a belief that childbearing and healthy crops
were interconnected. The word Mete is, of course, related to
mother,
and De is the delta, or triangle, a female genital sign.
This letter
in the ancient alphabets originally represented the Door of birth,
death, or sexual paradise. Thus, the “booth” or Tabernacle, was
little more than a structure set up to manifest a “doorway.”
Doorways in general were considered sacred to the Goddesses, and in
Sumeria they were painted red to represent the female “blood of
life.” In Egypt, doorways were smeared with real blood for the
religious rites of the goddess. Where have we heard of that before?
The cult of Demeter which celebrated the Eleusinian rites was well
established in Mycenae in the 13th century BC, and it is more than
likely that the Feast of Tabernacles in Canaan was an offshoot of
this activity. Our sources of information regarding the Eleusinian
Mysteries include the ruins of the sanctuary there, numerous
statues, bas reliefs, and pottery. We also have reports from ancient
writers such as Aeschylos, Sophocles, Herodotus,
Aristophanes,
Plutarch, and Pausanias - all of whom were initiates - as well as
the accounts of Christian commentators like Clement of Alexandria,
Hippolytus, Tertullian, and Astorias, who were critics and not
initiates.
Yet for all this evidence, the true nature of the
Mysteries remains shrouded in uncertainty because the participants
were remarkably steadfast in honoring their pledge not to reveal
what took place in the Telesterion, or inner sanctum of the
Temple
of Demeter. To violate that oath of secrecy was a capital
offense.[10] For these reasons, scholars today must make use of
circumstantial evidence and inferences, with the result that there
is still no consensus as to what did or did not take place.
Foucart and his followers concluded that the Mysteries at Eleusis
originally must have come from Egypt. The fact is, the sanctuary
ruins in Eleusis evidently go back centuries earlier than the
Egyptian Hymn to Demeter recited by Homer that is often cited as the
proof that the origin was Egyptian. What is more, the excavations
have unearthed no Egyptian artifacts there from that period.
Many scholars today favor the view that the cult of Demeter probably
derived from Thessaly or Thrace. They base this conclusion partly on
references in Homer and other ancient authors to some evidently
pre-Dorian temples to Demeter in the Thessalian towns of
Thermopylae, Pyrasos, and Pherai; partly on certain etymological
links connecting key words in the rites of Demeter to pre-Hellenic
dialects from the north. Other scholars point out that Demeter may
be the same as a goddess “Dameter,” who is mentioned briefly in
Linear B tablets from Pylos dating from approximately 1200 BC. This
evidence suggests that the cult of Demeter may after all have
originated in the southern Peleponnesus.
In any case, whether the specific cult of Demeter at Eleusis
originated in northern or southern Greece, the undeniable parallels
with worship of grain goddesses in other parts of the eastern
Mediterranean region point to frequent contacts and the
cross-fertilization of religious ideas. And while we certainly think
that the Canaanite Feast of Tabernacles was a corrupted version of
some more ancient form, we also think that there is something very
mysterious going on behind this deliberate establishing of the
Tabernacle as the place where the laws of Yahweh were kept, so as to
convert it from some other, prior function.
As it happens, the term “Thesmophoria” is derived from thesmoi,
meaning, “laws,” and phoria, “carrying,” in reference to the goddess
as “law-bearer.” But the symbolism of the ark of the covenant with
Yahweh as the “law bearer” in the “tent of meeting,” or the
“Mother-Delta,” the “doorway to the higher realms,” replaced the
original meaning and the role of women in the process.
Entire books are written that are full of speculations about the
Eleusinian rites. I may write one some day myself, but, let me cut
to the chase here: The closest we can come to understanding the goal
of these rites is to suggest that they had to do with “ascent” or
“descent” to other realms in order to perform the archetypal act of
creation of the New Year.
We already have some idea what these rites and celebrations
represented since they show clear parallels to the Grail ensemble we
examined briefly in the earlier chapters of this book. The New Year
festivals of the ancients included rites that symbolized the
cyclical nature of time, the exhaustion of cosmic resources
resulting in chaos, followed by the hieros gamos, or
sacred
marriage. This was, effectively, the “planting of the seed” into the
new universe, or the “passage” through the waters of the flood, in
an ark, into the new world. It may also represent, in its most
original form, a utilization of the knowledge of Time Loops -
a Time
Machine.
In this sense, it seems only reasonable to suggest that the ascent
or descent may have been the function or goal of the hieros gamos
itself and that perhaps the sacred intercourse that symbolized union
with the Goddess, also indicated in act, if not in fact, the meeting
of man with the divinity, and the receiving of the “laws” or
“destinies” for the entire group during the coming year. Taking this
imagery even further into the past - the hypothesized ancient
science - it may be that the hieros gamos was only another symbol of
the “dissolving into time” of a Time Machine.
It was during the hieros gamos that the lights were extinguished,
the hierogamy took place under the direction of the hierophant, in a
tent erected for privacy, and when the lights were re-lit, it was a
symbol that the old year had died, and the seed had been planted for
the new year to be born. It is said that,
“the ultimate mystery was
revealed at Eleusis in the words ‘an ear of corn reaped in silence’
- a sacred fetish that the Jews called shibboleth.” [11]
This business of the “shibboleth” is an interesting clue here. The
word itself is derived from an unused Hebrew root, shebel, which
means, “to flow” as a lady’s train, or something that trails after a
woman or flows out of her. Thus, the “ear of corn” is seen as
something that grows “out of a woman,” or that grain “flows from
her,” as grain is the gift of the goddess. We have here an image of
just exactly what bio-electronic energy may have been required to transduce cosmic energy to bring down the cars full of baskets of
grain as described in the Rg Veda:
The adorable Maruts, armed with bright lances and cuirassed with
golden breastplates, enjoy vigorous existence; may the cars of the
quick-moving Maruts arrive for our good. …Bringers of rain and
fertility, shedding water, augmenting food. …Givers of abundant
food. …Your milchkine are never dry. …We invoke the food-laden
chariots of the Maruts.”[12]
The word “shibboleth” occurs only one place in the Bible, in a truly
tragic story in the book of Judges, chapters 11 and 12. It seems
that there was a man named Jephthah who was the son of a harlot. He
was kicked out of the family home by the legitimate sons of his
father, Gilead, and went off and became a sort of leader of other
dispossessed persons. Sounds rather like Robin Hood so far. Also
sounds like David during his outlaw days.
As it happened, his brothers who had kicked him out, the “elders of
Gilead,” were being attacked by the “children of Ammon.” They
desperately needed help, and they knew that Jephthah had a
reputation as a fierce warrior with a well-trained band of “merry
men.” So, they went to ask Jephthah for help.
Jephthah pointed out that they had a lot of nerve asking him to help
them fight their battles, but they persuaded him by saying “if you
help us now, we will make you head of the family.” That was more
than Jephthah could resist, so he agreed. Not only that, but he
swore a public oath to Yahweh that if
Yahweh made him successful in
this enterprise, he would give as a burnt offering “whatsoever
cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return.”
I’m sure the reader sees what is coming now. Jephthah was, indeed,
successful in his battle.
And Jephthah came to
Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his
daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she
was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter.
And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and
said, Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art
one of them that trouble me: for I have opened my mouth unto the
LORD, and I cannot go back.
And she said unto him, My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto
the Lord, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy
mouth; forasmuch as the Lord hath taken vengeance for thee of thine
enemies, even of the children of Ammon.
And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me
alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and
bewail my virginity, I and my fellows. And he said, Go. And he sent
her away for two months: and she went with her companions, and
bewailed her virginity upon the mountains.
And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto
her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had
vowed: and she knew no man. And it was a custom in Israel, That the
daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah
the Gileadite four days in a year.
Well, aside from the fact that if we are to take the Bible
literally, we have here a definite indication that Yahweh was
originally a God who may have demanded human sacrifice, we most
definitely have an indication that Yahweh at least accepted human
sacrifice upon occasion! But, in another sense, this is merely
another version of the story where Abraham almost sacrificed his son
Isaac, which is almost identical to a Vedic story of Manu. These
acts were based on what was called sraddha which is related to the
words fides, credo, faith, believe and so on.[13]
The word sraddha was, according to Dumezil and Levi, too hastily
understood as “faith” in the Christian sense. Correctly understood,
it means something like the trust a workman has in his tools and
techniques as acts of magic! It is, therefore, part of a “covenant”
wherein the sacrificer knows how to perform a prescribed sacrifice
correctly, and who also knows that if he performs the sacrifice
correctly, it must produce its effect.
In short, it is an act that is designed to gain control over the
forces of life that reside in the god with whom one has made the
covenant. Such gods as make covenants are not “literary ornaments”
or abstractions. They are active partners with intelligence,
strength, passion, and a tendency to get out of control if the
sacrifices are not performed correctly. In this sense, the sacrifice
is simply magic.
In another sense, the ascetic or “self-sacrificer,” is a person who
is striving for release from the bondage and order of nature by the
act of attempting to mortify the self, the flesh; testing and
increasing the will for the purpose of winning tyrannical powers
while still in the world. He seeks mastery of himself, other men,
and even the gods themselves.
In the story of Manu from India, we find that he has a mania for
sacrifice just as the ascetics and saints have a mania for
self-sacrifice. The most famous of the stories depicts Manu,
enslaved to his sraddha, giving up everything of value in his life
to the demonic “Asura brahmans, Trsta and Varutri.” To get something
from Manu, all these demons need to do is say “Manu, you are a sacrificer, your god is sraddha.”
So, one thing after another is
demanded of him, and finally even his wife, Manavi. Indra, however,
intervenes at this point to save Manavi and appears to Manu and uses
the same words: “Manu, you are a sacrificer, your god is sraddha.”
To foil the plot of the demonic Brahmins who have produced in Manu
the state of sraddha, or the belief in the necessity of sacrifice,
Indra demands the sacrifice of the two demonic Brahmins themselves!
Manu, being a devotee of sraddha, hands them over without any
difficulty, and Indra beheads them with the water of the sacrifice.
Acts of sacrifice are, effectively, acts of trade - an execution of
a contract of exchange between man and divinity. “I give that you
may give.” In the story in the Bible where Cain’s sacrifice of grain
was rejected, we find a reflection of the idea that a god evaluates
the greater or lesser worth of a proposed offering.
Manu, deprived of his victim by the merciful intervention of
Indra,
did not like his “rights” to be infringed. “Finish my sacrifice!” he
said to Indra. Indra gives him a pledge:
“The desire you had in
taking your wife for your victim, let that desire be granted you;
but let that woman be!” [14]
In the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of his son, Isaac, and the
appearance of the ram in the thicket, we have a most interesting
variation on this theme. Agni is equated with Vasishtha, “lotus
born,” or “of the goddess.”
In the story of Jephthah’s daughter, we find that the editor of the
biblical texts felt that the story could not be removed, but had to
disguise the true nature of the sacrifice. The matter becomes
clearer with the following:
Llew Llaw Gyffes (the Lion with the Steady Hand), a type of Dionysus
or Celestial Hercules worshipped in ancient Britain, is generally
identified with Lugh, the Goidelic Sun-god… ‘Would that it were no
more than the Sun! It is the glowing face of Lugh the Long-handed -
which nobody could gaze upon without being dazzled.’
His death on the first Sunday in August - called
Lugh nasadh, later
altered to Lugh-mass or Lammas - was until recently observed in
Ireland with Good Friday-like mourning and kept as a feast of dead
kinsfolk, the mourning procession being always led by a young man
carrying a hooped wreath. Lammas was also observed as a mourning
feast in most parts of England in mediaeval times…
In some parts of Wales Lammas is still kept as a fair. Sir John Rhys
records that in the 1850’s the hills of Fan Fach and South Barrule
in Carmarthenshire were crowded with mourners for Llew Llaw on the
first Sunday in August, their excuse being that they were ‘going up
to bewail Jephthah’s daughter on the mountain.’ This, oddly enough,
was the very same excuse that the post-Exilic Jewish girls had used,
after the Deuteronomic reforms, to disguise their mourning for
Tammuz, Llew Llaw’s Palestianian counterpart.[15]
The sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter is, thus, another instance
where the new view of women as explicated by Hesiod and his
Bible
writing counterparts was being imposed on the Eastern Mediterranean
world. It’s interesting to think about Pandora’s "pithoi" from which
troubles flowed with the clue of the shibboleth that is included in
the story of Jephthah:
-
12:4 Then Jephthah gathered together all the men of Gilead, and
fought with Ephraim: and the men of Gilead smote Ephraim, because
they said, Ye Gileadites are fugitives of Ephraim among the
Ephraimites, and among the Manassites.
-
12:5 And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the
Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were
escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him,
Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay;
-
12:6 Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said
Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they
took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at
that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.
Another clue to the Eleusinian rites is that they were said to be
celebrated by women only throughout all Greece in the month of
Pyanepsion (late October), their characteristic feature being a pig
sacrifice, the usual sacrifice to chthonic[16] deities.
The Greeks attributed special powers to pigs on account of their
fertility, the potency and abundance of their blood, and perhaps
because of their uncanny ability to unearth underground tubers and
shoots. Experts suggest that it was believed that mingling pig flesh
with the seeds of grain would increase the abundance of next year’s
harvest. The scholars also tell us that the ceremonies comprised
fasting and purification, a ritualized descent into the underworld,
and the use of sympathetic magic to bring renewed life back out of
the jaws of death.
Thus we see that the participants in the Themosphoria revered swine,
and their rituals featured the washing and sacrificing of young pigs
sacred to Demeter (although this took place on the beaches at Pireas
near Athens rather than at Eleusis itself). And somehow we find this
to be a Canaanite practice that is now very strangely juxtaposed
against a religion that is known for its ban on pork.
Was that
because the sacred animal of the rival religion was the pig, or was
it because, in some deep inner core of the founding of the religion
of Judaism, the pig is actually protected from being eaten because
of reverence? And if so, why would that be the case? Was the pig
ever an embodiment of a god? Well, let’s look at this for a moment.
In Genesis 12:6-7 we find Abraham making a covenant with God.
And Abram passed through the land unto the place of
Sichem, unto the
plain of Moreh And the Canaanite was then in the land. And the LORD
appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land:
and there builded he an altar unto the LORD, who appeared unto him.
Next we find God telling Abraham in Genesis 22:2-3
And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou
lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there
for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell
thee of. And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his
ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and
clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto
the place of which God had told him.
And in II Chronicles 3:1 we find:
Then Solomon began to build the house of the LORD at Jerusalem in
mount Moriah, where the Lord appeared unto David his father, in the
place that David had prepared in the threshing floor of Ornan the
Jebusite.
Another name for Moriah is
Mount Zion. Isaiah tells us that Mount
Zion is the Throne of the Lord of Hosts who “scatters distributes
and treads underfoot.” The “Temple” was built on the “threshing
floor of Ornan (Araunah in another version), symbolic of the harvest
god Tammuz, who demanded the “first fruits” of the grain. However,
Jehovah wasn’t terribly interested in grain. He wanted blood:
Exodus 34:19 All that openeth the womb is mine; and every firstling
among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male. 34:20 But the
firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou
redeem him not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the firstborn of
thy sons thou shalt redeem. And none shall appear before me empty.
34:21 Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt
rest: in plowing time and in harvest thou shalt rest.
Jehovah’s claim to the Seventh day as sacred to himself identifies
him with Cronos or Saturn. The Phrygian Adonis is said to have been
metamorphosed into a fir by the Goddess Cybele who loved him, when
he lay dying from a wound dealt him by a boar sent by Zeus.
-
Set, the Egyptian Sun-god, disguised as a boar, killed
Osiris.
-
Apollo the Greek Sun-god, disguised as a boar, killed
Adonis, or
Tammuz, the Syrian, the lover of the Goddess Aphrodite.
-
Finn Mac
Cool, disguised as a boar, killed Diarmuid, the lover of the Irish
Goddess Grainne.
-
An unknown god disguised as a boar killed
Ancaeus
the Arcadian King, a devotee of Artemis, in his vineyard at Tegea,
-
and according to the Nestorian
Gannat Busame, Cretan Zeus was
similarly killed.
October was the boar-hunting season, as it was
also the revelry season of the ivy-wreathed Bassarids. The boar is
the beast of death and the “fall” of the year begins in the month of
the boar.
In Egypt, the year was counted as 360 days divided into three
120-day seasons each containing five periods of equal length, 24
days, with five days left over. The Egyptians said that the five
days were those which the God Thoth (Hermes) won at draughts from
the Moon goddess Isis, composed of the seventy-second parts of every
day in the year. The birthdays of Osiris, Horus, Set,
Isis and Nephthys were celebrated on them in that order. It seems that, based
on the myth, a change in religion necessitated a change in the
calendar.
The old year of 364 days with one day left over was
succeeded by a year of 360 days with five left over. Under later
Assyrian influence, the three seasons were divided into four periods
of thirty days each rather than five periods of 24 each. The 72 day
season occurs in the Egypto-Byblian myth that the Goddess Isis hid
her child Horus, or Harpocrates, from the rage of the ass-eared
Sun-god Set during the 72 hottest days of the year, that third of
the five seasons ruled by the Dog star Sirius and the two Asses.
The Greek legend that the God Dionysus placed the Asses in the Sign
of Cancer suggests that the Dionysus who visited Egypt and was
entertained by Proteus, King of Pharos, was Osiris, brother of the
Hyksos god Typhon, alias Set.
According to the Homeric legend of King Proteus, the earliest
settlers in the Delta used Pharos, the lighthouse island off what
later became Alexandria, as their sacred oracular island. Proteus,
king of Pharos, lived in a cave where Menelaus consulted him. He had
the power of changing his shape. Apuleius connects the sistrum of
Osiris, used to frighten away the god Set, with Pharos. This
suggests that Proteus and Osiris were regarded there as the same
person. Another Proteus, or Proetus, was an Arcadian.
The wide landing-quay at the entrance to the port of Pharos
consisted of rough blocks, some of them sixteen feet long, deeply
grooved with a checkerboard pattern of pentagons. Since pentagons
are inconvenient figures for such constructions, some researchers
think that the number five must have had some important religious
significance. Robert Graves asks: “Was Pharos the center of a
five-season calendar system?”
The island had been otherwise oddly connected to the numbers five
and seventy-two at the beginning of the Christian era. The Jews of
Alexandria used to visit the island for an annual festival, the
excuse for which was that the Five Books of Moses had been
miraculously translated there into Greek by seventy-two doctors of
the Law who had worked for seventy-two days each.
What is behind this story?
Festivals in ancient times generally commemorated some sort of
treaty or act of unification. What happened here?
Aeschylus calls the Nile Ogygian, and Eustathius the Byzantine
grammarian said that Ogygia was the earliest name for Egypt. When
the Byblians first brought their Syrian Tempest-god to Egypt, the
one who, disguised as a boar, yearly killed his brother Adonis, the
god always born under a fir-tree, they identified him with Set, the
ancient Egyptian god of the desert whose sacred beast was the wild
ass, and who yearly destroyed his brother Osiris, the god of the
Nile vegetation. Sanchthoniatho the Phoenician, quoted by Philo,
says, “the mysteries of Phoenicia were brought to Egypt.”
He said
that the two first inventors of the human race, Upsouranios and his
brother Ousous consecrated two pillars, one to fire and one to wind.
These are the earliest form of the Jachin and Boaz
pillars
representing Adonis, god of the waxing year and the newborn sun, and
Typhon, god of the waning year and of destructive winds. The
Hyksos
Kings under Byblian influence similarly converted their Tempest-god
into Set.
In pre-dynastic times, Set may have been the chief of all the gods
of Egypt, since the sign of royalty which all the dynastic gods
carried was Set’s ass-eared reed scepter. The Egyptians also
identified him with the long-eared constellation Orion, “Lord of the
Chambers of the South,” and the “breath of Set” was the South wind
from the deserts which, then as now, causes a wave of criminal
violence in Egypt, Libya and Southern Europe whenever it blows. The
ass appears in many of the anecdotes of Genesis and the early
historical books of the Bible.
Egyptian texts and pictorial records are notorious for their
suppression or distortion of fact. It seems that the aristocratic
priests of the “Establishment Church of Egypt” had begun to tamper
with the popular stories as early as 2800 BC. For example: in the
Book of the Dead, at the Twelfth Hour of Darkness, when
Osiris’
sun-boat approaches the last gateway of the Other world before his
reemergence into the light of day, he is pictured bent backwards in
the form of a hoop with his hands raised and his toes touching the
back of his head.
This is explained as “Osiris whose circuit is the
other world.” It is supposed to suggest that by adopting this absurd
acrobatic posture, Osiris is defining the other world as a circular
region thus making the Twelve Hours analogous with the Twelve Signs
of the Zodiac. It is clear that a priestly corruption has been
imposed on a more archaic understanding. This posture represents Osiris who has been captured by
Set, and has been tied, like Ixion
or Cuchulain, in the five-fold bond that joined wrists, neck and
ankles together. In other words, Osiris in this posture is an
economical way of describing the effects on him by the activity of
the god of the underworld, the serpent, Set who also appears as a
Boar and an Ass.
We now have many more clues about the early formation of the
religion of Yahweh, including the description of the construction of
the Pillars Jachin and Boaz, historicized myths of the Bible,
attributed to Solomon. We also see a connection to the Peribsen
rebellion followed by the emergence of the Cretan civilization which
was later linked to Judaism.
In the present day, the Jews celebrate their New Year in September
of the year around the time of the harvest. This is followed by the
Feast of Tabernacles, which is supposed to commemorate the fact that
the children of Israel built “temporary shelters” while wandering in
the desert, the domain of Set. It is said that it was “in the tent
that God first tabernacled with man” during the Exodus. The
Tabernacle was a place for the meeting of God with man. The
comparisons are so obvious I don’t even need to point them out.
Now, returning to our most peculiar story of Jacob wrestling with
the “man,” following which he went south and did the whole
“Tabernacles” thing, it is clear that the an ancient ritual drama
has been historicized.
Certain ancient myths tell us that a battle takes place either
between two brothers, or between father and son. The battle ends
when the elder king is “wounded in the thigh,” or ritually castrated
to symbolize his loss of potency. The kingdom, represented by the
queen, is then given over to the winning brother, or from father to
son because the queen symbolizes the land. It is interesting that
this was drama was enacted between Jacob, and an “angel of Yahweh,”
playing the role of Set. In this way, the people understood that the
kingship had been handed to Yahweh personally because he
"Tabernacled with Jacob" playing the role of the goddess.
Yahweh,
the Boar god.
We need to understand here that these ritual combats, dying kings,
cannibalistic and sacrificial activities are only the extreme
corruptions of an original, core idea that can be seen to represent
an ancient technology. Indeed, the technology aspect emerges from
time to time, but is often so disguised that it is difficult to sort
out the many twists and turns in the threads of transmission. Among
the most archaic representations of these ideas - even though we can
consider it to still be a corruption of the truly ancient knowledge
- are the rites of the Shamans of central Asia.
When we look to the function of the shaman, we discover: the shaman
either descends to the underworld to save man, or he ascends to the
heavens to intercede with the gods on behalf of his people. He is,
in effect, the divinely chosen “knight” who has the “right stuff” to
be able to make this journey. The symbolism of the stairs on which
the shaman ascends and descends are typically shamanic.
The “Tree of
Life,” the symbol of the birth goddess, is a symbol of the shamanic
ascent to the celestial spheres to receive the communication from
god concerning the fate of the tribe. In this sense, the cosmic axis
and the heavenly book have become joined in terms of symbolism. One
can clearly see these elements in the story of Jacob’s ladder and
his wrestling with the “angel.” Unfortunately, Jacob lost the match.
What is most fascinating in terms of shamanic studies is a
mysterious “female sickness” that male shamans often suffered. One
of the reported (and variable) symptoms of becoming a shaman is that
the individual begins to dress as a woman, to act as a woman, and to
generally begin a process of feminization. We see a hint of this
factor in Jacob’s journey south to “build booths”
which was a
strictly female activity!
This feminization of the shaman directs us to consider the fact that
the original shamanic/grail function was most likely fulfilled by
women only, and at some point, men attempted to dispense with the
function of the female and to acquire her attributes and natural
shamanic capabilities.
It seems that, at the same point in time, the
place of the woman in the rites, who was present to “embody” the
goddess in the sacred marriage, was replaced by other items,
including stairs, celestial trees, and even horses. The rhythmic
function of ritual intercourse, which was merely a corruption of the
act of “dissolving” into space/time, was replaced by drumming and
other trance inducing methods.
The clues to these transitions are held in the very words
themselves: knight and mare. Knight is derived from the same root as
yogi, or juga, which means “to join together,” and the word “mare”
for “mer” or Sea of the mother is obvious. In order to get us a bit
closer to some idea of how the transitions occur, Eliade remarks on
the shamanic role in funerary rites, which have been described and
observed. It is thought that these sorts of rites are very similar
to the “secret rites” or functions that are hidden by vows of
secrecy.
Herodotus has left us a good description of the funerary customs of
the Scythians. The funeral was followed by purifications. Hemp was
thrown on heated stones and all inhaled the smoke; “the Scythians
howl in joy for the vapour-bath.” […] The howls compose a specific
religious ensemble, the purpose of which could only be ecstasy. In
this connection Meuli cites the Altaic séance described by
Radlov,
in which the shaman guided to the underworld the soul of a woman who
had been dead forty days. The shaman-psychopomp is not found in
Herodotus’ description; he speaks only of the purifications
following a funeral. But among a number of Turko-Tatar peoples such
purifications coincide with the shaman’s escorting the deceased to
his new home, the nether regions.[…]
The use of hemp for ecstatic purposes is also attested among the
Iranians, and it is the Iranian word for hemp that is employed to
designate mystical intoxication in Central and North Asia.
It is known that the Caucasian peoples, and especially the Osset,
have preserved a number of the mythological and religious traditions
of the Scythians.
Now, the conceptions of the afterlife held by certain Caucasian
peoples are close to those of the Iranians, particularly in regard
to the deceased crossing a bridge as narrow as a hair, the myth of a
Cosmic Tree whose top touches the sky and at whose root there is a
miraculous spring, and so on. Then, too, diviners, seers, and
necromancer-psychopomps play a certain role among the mountain
Georgian tribes. The most important of these sorcerers are the
messulethe; their ranks are filled for the most part from among the
women and girls. Their chief office is to escort the dead to the
other world, but they can also incarnate them. […] The messulethe
performs her task by falling into trance.[17]
At this point, allow me to interject the comment that we see a
curious parallel to the fact that the Themosphoria was celebrated
“only by women.” In other words, it was very likely an archaic
custom of what has been called “sacred prostitution” but the sacred
prostitution was clearly derived from archaic techniques of ecstasy
which we have surmised were actually disjecta membra of an
ancient
technology that effectively modified DNA.
Over millennia of
transmission, the terminology describing this DNA factor was
corrupted to refer to sexual elements. We shall also later see that
what was once a “spiritual idea” was given a literal, physical
meaning. The role and participation of women is indeed important,
but not at all the way many occultists have interpreted it.
What is clear is that the very ancient idea of women as priestesses,
or as so-called “temple prostitutes,” was merely derived from the
fact of the natural role of the woman as true shaman. When women
were extirpated from their role as natural psychopomp for their
tribes, a host of other items had to be invented to take their
place: trees, bridges (which is a word strikingly similar to “bride”
and “bridle” as is used for a horse!), ladders, stairs, drums,
rattles, chants, dances, and so on; and most especially ritual
combat instead of unification.
We have observed the striking resemblance between the other world
ideas of the Caucasians and of the Iranians. For one thing, the
Cinvat bridge plays an essential role in Iranian funerary mythology;
crossing it largely determines the destiny of the soul; and the
crossing is a difficult ordeal, equivalent in structure, to
initiatory ordeals. […]
The Cinvat bridge is at the “Center,” at the “middle of the world”
and “the height of a hundred men.” […] The bridge connects earth and
heaven at the “Center.” Under the Cinvat bridge is the pit of hell.
Here we find a “classic” cosmological schema of the three cosmic
regions connected by a central axis (pillar, tree, bridge, etc.) The
shamans travel freely among the three zones; the dead must cross a
bridge on their journey to the beyond. […] The important feature of
the Iranian tradition is (at least as it survived after Zarathustra’s reform) is that, at the crossing of the bridge, there
is a sort of struggle between the demons, who try to cast the soul
down to hell, and the tutelary spirits who resist them.
The Gathas [18] make three references to this crossing of the
Cinvat
bridge. In the first two passages Zarathustra, according to H.S.
Nyberg’s interpretation, refers to himself as a psychopomp. Those
who have been united to him in ecstasy will cross the bridge with
ease.[19] […]
The bridge, then, is not only the way for the dead; it is the road
of ecstatics. […] The Gathic term maga is proof that Zarathustra and
his disciples induced an ecstatic experience by ritual songs intoned
in chorus in a closed, consecrated space. In this sacred space
(maga) communication between heaven and earth became possible. […]
The sacred space became a “Center.”[…]
Shamanic ecstasy induced by hemp smoke was known in ancient
Iran.
[…] In the Videvdat hemp is demonized. This seems to us to prove
complete hostility to shamanic intoxication. […] The imagery of the
Central Asian shamans would seem to have undergone the influence of
Oriental, and principally Iranian, ideas. But this does not mean
that the shamanic descent to the underworld derives from an exotic
influence. The Oriental contribution only amplified and added color
to the dramatic scenarios of punishments; it was the narratives of
ecstatic journeys to the underworld that were enriched under
Oriental influences; the ecstasy long preceded them. [….]
We … have found the technique of ecstasy in archaic cultures where
it is impossible to suspect any influence from the ancient East. […]
The magico-religious value of intoxication for achieving ecstasy is
of Iranian origin. […]
Concerning the original shamanic experience … narcotics are only a
vulgar substitute for “pure” trance.
The use of intoxicants is a recent innovation and points to a
decadence in shamanic technique. Narcotic intoxication is called on
to provide an imitation of a state that the shaman is no longer
capable of attaining otherwise. Decadence or vulgarization of a
mystical technique - in ancient and modern India, and indeed all
through the East, we constantly find this strange mixture of
“difficult ways” and “easy ways” of realizing mystical ecstasy or
some other decisive experience.[20]
With this very small series of hints, we can deduce that Jacob’s
dream of the ladder and his ritual combat with the “man” who was an
“angel of Yahweh," are simply glosses of the true activities of Jacob
as a shaman. Whether or not there was ever a historical Jacob, we
can’t say. What does seem to be true is that somebody did something
at that point in time and was “assimilated” to the myth of the “Heel
God.” We think again of the encounters between Abraham and
God, and
Moses and God, resulting in circumcision. In any event, the three
events: wrestling with the angel, the name changing, the
circumcision of Abraham and the son of Moses, were very likely
originally a single event, separated in time and context by the
redactor of the Bible who we will soon encounter.
Nevertheless, Jacob lost the battle, failing to fulfill the function
of the shaman, and the following day, met his brother, knowing that
he had been “mortally wounded,” and transferred to him the
“blessing” or kingship. My own question is this: was this meeting
also a record of the transferring of some vital item to Esau as a
result of his shamanic failure?
Here, of course, is a stupendously key element that I must explain.
As it happens, there is one significant story in the Bible that is
claimed as “history” that DOES have external verification in the
records of Egypt in the form of the “rest of the story.” This story
is that of Abram and Sarai in Egypt. And in fact, this is one of the
very problematical “triplets.” The story goes:
-
12:10 And there was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into
Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine was grievous in the land.
-
12:11 And it came to pass, when he was come near to enter into
Egypt, that he said unto Sarai his wife, Behold now, I know that
thou art a fair woman to look upon:
-
12:12 Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see
thee, that they shall say, This is his wife: and they will kill me,
but they will save thee alive.
-
12:13 Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister: that it may be well with
me for thy sake; and my soul shall live because of thee.
-
12:14 And it came to pass, that, when Abram was come into Egypt, the
Egyptians beheld the woman that she was very fair.
-
12:15 The princes also of Pharaoh saw her, and commended her before
Pharaoh: and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house.
-
12:16 And he entreated Abram well for her sake: and he had sheep,
and oxen, and he asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she
asses, and camels.
-
12:17 And the LORD plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues
because of Sarai Abram’s wife.
-
12:18 And Pharaoh called Abram and said, What is this that thou hast
done unto me? why didst thou not tell me that she was thy wife?
-
12:19 Why saidst thou, She is my sister? so I might have taken her
to me to wife: now therefore behold thy wife, take her, and go thy
way.
-
12:20 And Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him: and they sent
him away, and his wife, and all that he had.
-
13:1 And Abram went up out of Egypt, he, and his wife, and all that
he had, and Lot with him, into the south.
-
13:2 And Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold.
Notes:
[1] De Geus, Cornelis, "Of Tribes and Towns: The Historical
Development of the Isaelite City." Eretz-Israel 24, 1993. [2] The five-fold bond was reported from China by the Arab merchant
Suleyman in 851 AD. He writes that “when the man condemned to death
has been trussed up in this fashion, and beaten with a fixed number
of blows, his body, still faintly breathing, is given over to those
who must devour it." [3] Graves, Robert, The White Goddess, (New York: The Noonday Press
1948) pp. 125-6,. [4] Meagher, Robert Emmet, Helen: Myth, Legend and the Culture of
Misogyny, 1995, Continuum, New York, chapter 3. [5] A Titan, son of Gaia and Uranus. Clymene, and Ocianid, bore him
the Titans Prometheus, Epimetheus, Atlas, and Menoetius. In the war
between gods and Titans, he was imprisoned by Zeus in Tartarus. [6] There are curious reflections in this story of the sacrifice
challenge of Prometheus to the story of the challenge made by Elisha
against the priests of Baal, following which fire came down from
heaven to consume Elisha’s sacrifice. [7] Meagher, Robert Emmet, Helen: Myth, Legend and the Culture of
Misogyny, 1995, Continuum, New York, chapter 3. [8] The Bible, Genesis 17:22-26. [9] In other words, he was hiding behind the womens’ skirts. [10] Aeschylos, for example, once had to fear for his life on
account of coming too close to revealing forbidden truths. [11] D’Alviella, Count Goblet, The Migration of Symbols, (New York:
University Books 1956). [12] Rg-Veda, Vol III. [13] Meillet, Antoine, Memoires de la Society de Linguistique de
Paris, XXII, 1992. [14] Sylvain Levi, quoted by Dumezil, Georges, Mitra-Varuna: An
Essay on Two Indo-European Representations of Sovereignty (Zone
Books; reprint edition 1988) p. 63. [15] Robert Graves, The White Goddess, (New York: Noonday Press
1948) pp. 302, 303. [16] “Dark, primitive and mysterious." [17] Eliade, Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, pp. 394-6. [18] Zarathustra’s hymns. [19] Here I will comment that that the influence of Zoroastrianism
on the creation of the Bible may have been profound. [20] Eliade, Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, pp. 396-401.
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