February 9, 2008
Elaine Meinel Supkis
When talking about the people who really run things and who are running things towards--not away---the Apocalypse, one has to look hard at a lot of occult knowledge and beliefs. Occult means 'in the dark' and I call this 'Things from the Outer Darkness'. This is the odd place where History intersects with Dreams and Desires. The things we dream can happen in the real world if we work at it. Humanity has dreamed for eons and the collective stories of these dreams which are told to each other while awake are our religions. The knowledge of the universe collected over many centuries of observations and explanations by teachers wishing to pass on esoteric knowledge come together in this matrix which is the impulse to turn religious doctrine into harsh reality. This usually involves killing endless numbers of people. Now that we have nuclear bombs, this can be billions of people if not all humans.
"With Moses came the beginning of the Arian Age, when sheperds become common religious figures and the opposite sign Libra contributes the symbolism of the Judgment and scales of Justice." Shotfreeinmontana.com
The roots of the Apocalypse lie in the proto-magical past of the Middle East. Ancient tribal wars and beliefs fuel modern political, economical and geological wars. The possibility of unimaginable destruction is entwined with strange beliefs born in the Middle East dating back to the beginnings of civilization. There are older forces at work here: the joint belief systems of all human beings concerning the mysterious movements of the planets, the sun, the moon and all the celestial lights in the Mirror World which we call 'the Cosmos' or 'Heavens'. Humans strove to understand and explain the changes in the Mirror World just as they tried to explain the natural world of the planet earth, the one 'fixed point' in the human mind.
A 'fixed point' that underwent terrible disorders in the last million years, a disorder we are still in, one we call 'the Ice Ages.' During these Ice Ages, temporary land bridges connected Africa to Asia and Asia to North and South America as well as many of the islands in the Pacific Ocean all the way, perhaps to Australia. As humans spread out, they carried with them the core stories about the changes in the stars which rule the night skies. One of the most disturbing things for all humans who must locate themselves on the surface of the earth, is how the stars by which they must chart their courses, shift inexplicably, over time.
The North Star isn't always the North Star! It shifts from star to star over the eons. When the star is no longer the same as the elders tell the tribal youths, there is dissidence within the ranks and the 'old gods' are thrown out and new ones must be created. This is a violent process, of course. People like to believe in what they are taught. And if they must change their minds, often, the only tool for this is murder. Either the old ones kill anyone who dares to point out that the stars no longer match the stories and are no longer the guide to the north, or over time, even stupid people notice there is something wrong and others who kill off any dissent, convince everyone finally, the new star is the new 'god.'
The creation of the Zodiac came after the creation of certain star clusters that are not Zodiacal. For example, we know there is a carving from 28,000 years ago showing 'the Hunter' in the exact same posture as all depictions of the star cluster, Orion. This carving, found in a French cave, is not just a coincidence since the posture: one hand in the air with a club, a belt, the other hand down, feet akimbo, is most unnatural. Nearly all pictures of hunters from 35,000 years ago onwards, show them sideways, not frontally. Only when they refer to Orion, are they frontal. And all the frontal ones look like the oldest depiction.
Another very old constellation is Pegasus. Or rather, the Square. Both Orion and Pegasus lost their god status long, long ago and both have been relegated to rather bizarre and inconsequential stories. Another sign of their ancient lineage. The newer the gods, the more violent the passions and attachments to the celestial honors by the humans who create the newer gods. Every time the Zodiac shifts and as humans 'move' from house to house, from Taurus to Ares then on to Pisces and now, towards Aquarius, the battles of the gods that figure strongest in whatever 'age' that is dying do battle with the followers of the gods that are 'rising'. The retrograde battles can be very ugly indeed.
The core of the Jewish belief systems comes from the Arian age which was from about 2,000 BC to 1 AD. The Christian/Islam belief systems sprang out of the same area at the beginning of the Piscean age. The Two Fishes reach outwards towards and embrace the heart of the constellation of Pegasus. The battles over religious dogma of the Arian age shattered the ancient star system of Pegasus, cutting off an entire half of his formations so he became half a constellation just as Taurus was chopped in half in the same battles for believers.
These battles which happened 4,000+ years ago reverberate today. No religion really dies, they morph. This is due to human stubbornness. Not all older believers die. They survive to tell the older stories and these get all mixed into the new stories and through a process of melding things together, as new gods are born, they take on many characteristics of the older gods. This Eldrich/Natal process is why all religions are so spooky and haunt all imagery and all our dreams are intertwined with some very ancient dream-stories. The very words we use, the history of words going back to the beginnings of the human brain forging language, all these have religious meanings and symbiology [a word I am making up here]: the symbols of gods and celestial stories buried deep inside the meaning of the words themselves. I dream like this: words turn into visions and these are triggered by a deep understanding of the root meaning of ancient words. Perhaps I studied linguistics too much in my youth!
Occult magic is all about using these forces to peer into either the future or to make a desired future happen. All religions are attempts at controlling the planetary forces that are moving constantly, forces that endanger us. As we do this, we end up setting into motion, systems of beliefs and desires that are very destructive. Far from saving us, these beliefs and magic spells which we mistakenly call 'religion' are setting us all on a course that is heading us all into a mega-conflict we will call World War III if there are any survivors. When I try to walk around inside of this Occult Chamber of Horrors, it is hard to not get lost. First, there are many interesting side chambers that have underground connections with opposite ends of this maze. And one can spend many years, exploring all of these.
But to cut to the chase: in the news this decade are a lot of things that are like warning posts lining this road that leads us to the Apocalypse. There are literally many, many millions if not a billion or more, people who actively desire to see the Apocalypse. But even if there is only a dozen, they can, by exploiting present positions of the Great Powers, launch this deadly confrontation. The only way to truly comprehend all this is to look at some very old history and to think anew about how words, concepts, brain washing and the Dream World can all work to destroy us even as all this also saves us and elevates us. Plus, this is all about that Cave I keep referring to: the Cave of Death. The place where Wealth and Power are created but also the home to the Furies and the Fates who weave our destinies or punish us when we get too greedy or stupid.
WWIII will be all about Jerusalem. Because the actual pin point for this confrontation will be at Jesus' Tomb and the Golden Dome and the Wailing Wall, the Triangle of Death, I should set the stage by talking first about Jerusalem, the city that is anything but peaceful.
The Founding of Jerusalem: A Palestinian Midrash?
The following story is probably familiar to most of my readers. I have heard it told on innumerable occasions from the pulpits of synagogues in Israel and the Diaspora.According to the tale, there long ago lived two brothers who shared a field whose crops they used to divide equally. One of the brothers was a bachelor, and the other a married man with many children. Once, during the harvest, each of them felt pity for the other. The bachelor was worried that his brother did not have enough to feed his household, while the bachelor had concern for his brother's solitude. In the dark of the night each of them would carry some sheaves of produce to the other's house, and in the morning each would be astonished to discover that their own supplies had not diminished. This went on for several days and nights until the two finally met tearfully during one of their nocturnal errands. At that point it was decreed from above that this was the place upon which it would be fitting to establish God's Holy Temple.
The rabbis who tell this moving story, often in connection with Jerusalem day, usually cite it as a Talmudic legend taken from the "midrash." Making allowances for the limitations of my own erudition, I was always troubled that I had not encountered the story of the two brothers in any of the standard compendia of rabbinic lore. As it turns out, the same problem had troubled a more capable scholar than myself, the late Prof. Alexander Scheiber of Budapest, who devoted a number of special studies to the history of the legend.
There is a very strong current of theft buried not very deeply in the Old Testament. Many tribal tales of their foundation as well as tales of the gods in many parts of the earth involve deception and theft. Indeed, this may be safely called a common thread to all humans: we are liars. As well as in love with deceptions. And the occult is all about lies, darkness and deceptions. Not to mention rape. All ancient 'holy grounds' are drenched in blood from battles, sacrifices and betrayals. It is interesting to me to see this tale about Jerusalem. For all the Jews know perfectly well, their seizure of Jerusalem was a bloody business that took them many generations to accomplish. And holding that place was tenuous at best. Not even the name came from the invading tribes that poured out of Egypt after the volcano in the Cretean empire exploded, Tera.
A pillar of smoke during the day and a pillar of fire at night. Day becomes night. The sea pulls back, fish, bottom crawling animals, shell creatures, exposed, helpless, the people on the shores, full of wonder, then a deafening roar, like a god gone mad, a howl of tremendous rage and the white pillar turns pitch black and a green wall crowned in white appears on the horizon and rapidly moves forwards even as the sun is blacked out by even faster moving clouds that rain hot pumice and lightning bolts shooting in all directions and the sea towers overhead as it roars onshore and everything is swept away and the forests of Lebanon burn fiercely, the trees bending to the ground in the hot wind.And the one of the most civilized, beautiful expressions of humanity, wiped out in an instant. They invented toilets and designed bathrooms unsurpassed for thousands of years. The elaborate dresses of the vivacious ladies were not exceeded until the rise of the Versaille fashion designers of France. Delicate, lifelike gold jewelry, sophisticated, only after archeologists found these lovely things, could we design duplicates, instects and dolphins, doves and laughing girls on swings, no sharp edges but an Art Nouveau organic curvature, indeed, the art of the fin de sie'cle was awash with art inspired by the Minoans.
The destruction of these delightful people troubled the minds of the survivors. Many Greek myths hark back to those times. The older stories of this Golden Age are filled with longing and dread. Perhaps some of the myths in the Bible refer to this event. Now that we can date it properly, many things can now be better understood.
The massive geological and meteorological effects of this great tragedy also changed the political and religious landscape for thousands of miles around. On top of this, the constellation that rises in the east on the Equinoxes shifted. The story above about how Jerusalem was founded was totally fake and began circulation during the beginning of the Zionist movement in Europe. Starting with the foundation of the Masonic Temples, the more occult beliefs of the Jewish community finally broke into the mainstream of Christian thought via the Enlightenment. The revolutionary changes which opened up the ghettos of Europe where Jews were cruelly penned for a thousand years also liberated many ideas as well as humans.
The stark lifestyles of the ghetto forced Jews to think harder than people under lighter restraints. This ability to think about things was also coupled to a great deal of hidden genius. A large number of geniuses in the peasant countryside were kept in the dark via the simple mechanism of never teaching any peasants anything but the whip and labor. But in the ghetto, labor was forbidden on nearly any level so the only outlet was learning and thus, the level of literacy in the ghetto was nearly 100% while outside the ghetto, barely 3%, in the enlightenment of the 17th century! In the Middle Ages, it was barely 0.1% outside the ghetto and 100% inside the ghetto!
So, since nearly all Jews could read their own religious stories about their own past, why would this strange fairy tale suddenly take off in 1780? Why did it spread? And who did this?
The Zionists knew that many different people lived in the 'Holy Land'. They also desired to persuade the European Crowns to sponsor an invasion of this place so the Jews could move there and live outside of the ghetto. The Zionist leaders in Europe feared the Enlightenment because they could see the ghetto emptying out and cross-marriages beginning. They feared the end of the Tribe. So the very first story of the Zionists planted within the ghetto community was this peculiar and on the surface, meaningless story.
I shall explain: The two brothers, the elder being the Jews and the younger, Palestine, lived side by side. And loved each other [remember: dreams are wishful thinking and magic]. The elder was married and with many children and the Palestinian was a bachelor [Dr. Freud should have written a book about that]. The childless one would sneak into the house of the one with many children. While the Jewish one would then return the favor. Seeing that the Jewish one with many children was kind and generous, the Palestinian brother embraced him and said, basically, 'Be my guest, take it all because I have no children!'
How touching. To this day, when I have debated with Zionists, they all insist that Palestine was always 'empty.' A ridiculous lie since few lands have been settled longer than Palestine. The second best lie is, the people there are not flourishing so they don't need the land and the Jews need this land because there are so many of them. This goes back to this dream story which all Jews who want Zionism, love to recite. The desire to make this dream real has caused terrible bloodshed. Jews have striven to drive out and kill the natives and thus, claim the land was unoccupied. This has led to the razing of villages, the elimination of place names, turning towns into garbage dumps and razing graveyards. Standing in the middle of this mess, the Jews can claim first rights.
Alas, the Bible itself makes it perfectly clear, this land was NEVER clear of everyone but Jews. Far from it. The god hatched by the Jews in Egypt, when they fled during the chaos of the post-Thera blast, found Palestine fully occupied. They decided to have their new god, the one that was born in Sinai with the slaughter of Jews who still worshipped the Golden Calf of Taurus, the new Arian followers new god told them to kill everyone in this new world. So they did.
The LORD Commands Joshua
1 After the death of Moses the servant of the LORD, the LORD said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses' aide: 2 "Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them—to the Israelites. 3 I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. 4 Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates—all the Hittite country—to the Great Sea [a] on the west. 5 No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you.6 "Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them. 7 Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. 8 Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. 9 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go."
Gods that order people to kill are, to my unbiased mind, evil. Devils. Gods that boast about their rap sheets are not to be admired but endured. Indeed, the dividing line between gods and demons is vanishingly small if not there at all. Just to give my own example: Pegasus is a very, very old lightning god. I met him in a lightning bolt that flung me across the room and nearly destroyed me. His record is not kindly but harsh. As all gods are. Look at Jesus: we are supposed to love him. If we fail in this, he tortures us for ever in artful and nasty ways. Not only that, he promises to come back here and murder everyone. Wow. I can't wait.
So it is with this god. Being part of a tribe's 'Id' or the underbelly of a group-think pattern, the ugly impulses that move tribes to slaughter, this god tells this tribe to invade and murder as well as steal stuff. The thefts are to be held by the god, not them, so this excuses it all. Indeed, one tribe, the 13th tribe, DID steal stuff and hide it from this larcenous god. So Joshua takes out this tribe and after they turn over all the gold and silver to the Cave where the new god kept his wealth, they were all, men, women and children, stoned to death or hung from trees and then buried in the cave, too.
Actually, this tale is really an astronomical story explaining the 12 houses of the Zodiac and why there aren't 13 even though the lunar scale demands one more month than the solar system of months. I suppose this is really a story about how to resolve both calendars since the Egyptians were very notoriously conservative and kept all their many celestial systems running simultaneously. But note the bloody tales here! They are believed by the writers and the people telling them to be the outright truth.
Back to Joshua:
5 Then the five kings of the Amorites—the kings of Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish and Eglon—joined forces. They moved up with all their troops and took up positions against Gibeon and attacked it.6 The Gibeonites then sent word to Joshua in the camp at Gilgal: "Do not abandon your servants. Come up to us quickly and save us! Help us, because all the Amorite kings from the hill country have joined forces against us."
7 So Joshua marched up from Gilgal with his entire army, including all the best fighting men. 8 The LORD said to Joshua, "Do not be afraid of them; I have given them into your hand. Not one of them will be able to withstand you."
12 On the day the LORD gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the LORD in the presence of Israel:
"O sun, stand still over Gibeon,
O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon."13 So the sun stood still,
and the moon stopped,
till the nation avenged itself on [b] its enemies,
as it is written in the Book of Jashar.
The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. 14 There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the LORD listened to a man. Surely the LORD was fighting for Israel!
The celestial clockwork stops and the Jews defeat the real people in Jerusalem. Of course, the Bible admits that this wasn't the case. Even after this great victory, the Ammonites continued to live in Jerusalem while the Jewish invaders herded their sheep around the surrounding hillsides where they plotted raids and other unpleasant things nomads tend to do. Meanwhile, the Ammonites strengthened their walls and did business with the disagreeable tribes surrounding their city.
And who lived in Jerusalem when the tribes from Egypt invaded?
According to the Hebrew Bible, the Jebusites (Hebrew: יְבוּסִי, Standard Yəvusi Tiberian Yəḇûsî) were a Canaanite tribe who inhabited the region around Jerusalem prior to its capture by King David; the Books of Kings state that Jerusalem was known as Jebus prior to this event. According to some Biblical chronologies, the event would have happened around 1004 BC, which is why the modern state of Israel issued a medal to commemorate it in 1996[1] (2999[2] years after 1004 BC).
*snip*
As Lipinski noted, however, it is entirely possible that more than one clan or tribe bore similar names, and thus that the Jebusites and Yabusi'um may have been separate people altogether[6]. In the Amarna letters, mention is made of the contemporaneous king of Jerusalem was named Abdi-Heba, which is a theophoric name invoking a Hurrian goddess named Hebat; unless a different ethnic group occupied Jerusalem in this period, this implies that the Jebusites were Hurrians themselves, were heavily influenced by Hurrian culture, or were dominated by a Hurrian maryannu class.
*snip*
Another Jebusite, Araunah (referred to as Ornan by the Book of Chronicles) is described by the Books of Kings as having sold his threshing floor to King David, which David then constructed an altar on, the implication being that the altar became the core of the Temple of Solomon. Araunah means the lord in Hittite, and so most scholars, since they consider the Jebusites to have been Hittite, have argued that Araunah may have been another king of Jerusalem[9]; some scholars additionally believe that Adonijah is actually a disguised reference to Araunah, the ר (r) having been corrupted to ד (d)[10]. The narrative itself is considered by scholars to be aetiological and of dubious historicity[11]; Melchizedek, as a priest as well as king, was likely to have been associated with a sanctuary, probably dedicated to Zedek, and scholars suspect that the Temple of Solomon was simply a natural evolution of this sanctuary[12][13].
Now we shall do some strange digging. Here is yet another story by Jews about how they got the holiest of holies. There was a threshing floor which they 'bought'. Araunah and David, a man the Bible shows is a very devious and murderous man who is willing to lie to kill a Hittite ally and friend just so he could seduce the widow, paid good money for the holiest of sites in the Bible? I laugh at this. HAHAHA. Right.
Let's look closer at this strange story:
The narrative concerning Araunah appears at both 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21. The Samuel version is the final member of a non-chronologically ordered group of narratives, which together constitute the "appendix" of the Books of Samuel. In the Samuel narrative, God incites David to punish the Israelites by imposing a census upon them, an order which Joab reluctantly carries out. (In the version of the narrative presented by the Book of Chronicles, it is Satan, not God, that incites David to make the census). Yahweh regarded David's action as a sin, and so punished him, sending Gad the prophet to offer David the choice of punishment. Gad gave David three options:1. seven years of famine (the Book of Chronicles states that it was only three years of famine)
2. three months of fleeing from an invader
3. three days of plagueDavid, according to both versions, chose the three days of plague, and so an angel was sent to spread the plague through the land. However, when the angel reached Jerusalem, God changed his mind and ordered the angel to stop; at this point the angel was at Araunah's threshing floor, which David noticed. Gad instructed David to build an altar at Araunah's threshing floor, so David purchased the location from Araunah, even though Araunah offered it to him freely. According to the Books of Samuel, David paid 50 silver shekels for the location; Chronicles states that David paid 600 gold shekels. However, some explain this by saying that the book of Samuel only talks about the priceo f the floor and oxen; Chronicles adds in all of the materials for the sacrifice.
So, the epicenter of the Apocalypse in the future is this threshing floor. The Angel of Death will resume its actions from that spot. Again, we also see the wish-thinking, too. Just as the invasion of Palestine 4,000 years ago was justified based on Abraham buying a CAVE there, so this is all about legal purchase. Of course, the 'owner' of this spot in question wants to give it away but the generous leader of the invading tribes who tried to wipe out all others and who planned to kill an Hittite ally over sex ownership, wanted to pay gold for this spot. HAHAHA. Oh well. The need to hold a deed is highly important in all land disputes.
It seems to me, most religious points are selected for very strange reasons. Often, one wants to place some sort of drama there and stopping the Angel of Death is the drama but a threshing floor? How odd. In the Apocalypse, Jesus is supposed to thresh humanity and separate the wheat from the chaff. The name of this spot is most likely Hittite. And the Hittites invaded Egypt and supposedly oppressed the Jews only the Jews bear a huge number of resemblances to the Hittites and one might figure that they are very closely related indeed. The terrors of history and the many horrors to sweep the lands in this region of the earth has caused the people there to lose many things---except for their verbal and written mythologies. Which are a solid foundation for survival.
So this strange threshing floor is the center of modern Judaism. The Muslims worship at Abraham's tomb and this is where a massacre was done by a Jewish terrorist about 15 years ago. Now, the Jews have effectively trisected all of the Holy Land with many walls designed to cut up all the other populations and pen them in ghettos. All of which are increasing the chances of the Apocalypse.
Aerial photo of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem showing the Proposed Northern,
Central and Southern Sites for the First and Second Temples.
This is one of many 'navels of the world':
"As the navel is set in the centre of the human body,
so is the land of Israel the navel of the world...
situated in the centre of the world,
and Jerusalem in the centre of the land of Israel,
and the sanctuary in the centre of Jerusalem,
and the holy place in the centre of the sanctuary,
and the ark in the centre of the holy place,
and the foundation stone before the holy place,
because from it the world was founded."Midrash Tanchuma, Qedoshim.
This particular web page is part of the Apocalypse. There is this movement to take over not only all of Jerusalem and drive out or butcher those who live there [this has happened repeatedly in history, by the way] but also to destroy a temple built by the Muslims and replace it with new temples to the older god.
Under Jordanian rule of Jerusalem, Jews were forbidden from entering the Old City. Israel took control of the Dome of Rock during its victory in the Six-Day War in 1967. According to a posthumously-published interview with Haaretz, General Uzi Narkiss reported that on June 7, 1967, a few hours after East Jerusalem fell into Israeli hands, Rabbi Shlomo Goren had told him "Now is the time to put 100 kilograms of explosives into the Mosque of Omar so that we may rid ourselves of it once and for all." His request was denied; according to Goren's aide Menahem Hacohen, he had not suggested blowing up the mosque, but had merely stated that "if, during the course of the war a bomb had fallen on the mosque and it would have – you know – disappeared – that would have been a good thing." Later that year, in a speech to a military convention, he added: "Certainly we should have blown it up. It is a tragedy for generations that we did not do so. […] I myself would have gone up there and wiped it off the ground completely so that there was no trace that there was ever a Mosque of Omar there."[10] Shlomo Goren also entered the Dome of the Rock with a Torah book and the shofar.[11] A few hours after the Israeli flag was hoisted over the Dome of the Rock in 1967, at the conclusion of the Six-Day War, Israelis lowered it on the orders of General Moshe Dayan, and invested the Muslim Waqf (religious trust) with the authority to manage the Temple Mount-Haram al-Sharif in order to "keep the peace".[12] Groups such as the Temple Mount and Eretz Yisrael Faithful Movement wish to relocate the Dome to Mecca and replace it with a Third Temple. Since Muslims consider the ground under the Dome to be sacred this would be a highly contentious move, and would provoke violence. The majority of Israelis also do not share the movement's wishes. Most religious Jews feel that the Temple should only be rebuilt in the messianic era, and it is their belief that it would be presumptuous of people to force God's hand. However, many Evangelical Christians consider this a prerequisite to Armageddon and the Second Coming, and actively encourage the rebuilding of the Temple in place of the Dome of the Rock.
How did the most recent 'Intifada' start, anyway? 9/29/2000: Sharon deliberately provoked a riot by using his military power to storm into the shrine and we are still in this event. It was a very close election in the US. Bush was telling the Born Again Christians, he wanted the End of Times. But not exactly explicitly. He signaled this to them in various ways. To the Jews, he promised behind the scenes to back them if they began a life and death struggle with the Palestinian people. So when our election was deadlocked, the media spend nearly all their energy on poor Al Gore, screaming for him to give up counting the votes and to give the Presidency to Bush. Finally, the Supreme Court unilaterally did this very thing. From that day onwards, the grinding violence in the Holy Land has risen. The destructive forces have been virtually out of control. Even the simplest things are nearly impossible. Living there has become such a hell, many Jews hold dual citizenships so they can easily evacuate if they think WWIII is looming. And recently, the agitation certainly has been getting worse, hasn't it?
Let's go back to the foundation of all this, the stories told by the Jews to themselves in the Bible, the bloody conquest of Palestine long ago:
Certain modern archaeologists now believe that the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites under Joshua simply didn't happen, and that the Israelites actually originated as a subculture in Canaanite society[17]; some biblical scholars believe that the accounts in the Book of Joshua are cobbled together from folk memory of disconnected battles, with numerous different aggressors, which occurred over a time period of over 200 years[18][19][20]. Nevertheless, this is no reason to conclude that the battle itself didn't happen; these scholars simply argue that if it did, then it had different protagonists, and for different reasons;[21] though most of their peers in archaeology and biblical studies strongly reject those conclusions."[22]According to the Books of Samuel, the Jebusites still had control of Jerusalem at the time of King David, but David wished to take control of the city; understandably the Jebusites contested his attempt to do this, and since Jebus was the strongest fortress in Canaan they gloated that even the blind and lame could defeat David's army; an alternative, equally valid, translation of the Jebusite's statement is that they said David would have to defeat the blind and lame before anyone else[23].
*snip*
The Books of Kings state that once Jerusalem had become an Israelite city, the surviving Jebusites were forced by Solomon to become serfs[25]; though since some archaeologists believe that the Israelites were simply an emergent subculture in Canaanite society, it is possible that this is an aetiological explanation for serfs than a historically accurate one[26]. It is unknown what ultimately became of these Jebusites, but it seems logical that they were assimilated by the Israelites.
When I see odd references in mythology, it is amusing to explore these further. One of them is the business of the blind and lame gods or heros. There are many of these. And lo and behold, so there are in Jerusalem. The Jebusites who were the people who actually built and sanctified the threshing floor where the Dome is, have left us clues at to what they worshipped and some of their beliefs and names.
, West Semitic for "Justice", was probably the name of the chief god of the Jebusites, and possibly of other Canaanite people. He is mentioned in the Tanakh and in other Middle Eastern writings in conjunction with such Jebusite names as Melchizedek ("My king is Zedek") and Adonizedek (My Lord is Zedek). Zedek has been associated with the planet Jupiter at least since the Talmudic era. Jupiter is called by that name in Hebrew astronomy, while the malakh of the planet is often named Zedekiel.Zedek, as worshipped by the Jebusites, may have been identical with El (אל). In such a case Zedek would likely just be a prominent epithet.
So...the 'god' dwelling on this particularly bloody spot has a very long life. Let's review who this entity is: the Thresher. The Angel of Death. And the Judge. I would suggest, this is an ancient incarnation of the Guardian at the Gates of Death. Libra. Jupiter/zedek is deep inside the peculiar god of the Bible:
Jupiter and its movements gained more attention in ancient cultures than any of the other heavenly body including the sun and the moon. Some cultures worshipped Jupiter as their chief god. The ancient, one time grand capital city of Egypt was named the city of Jupiter in the language of the Egyptians and later named Thebes in the Greek language. The ancient Hebrew name for Jupiter is Zedek. It means righteousness. In the biblical book of Hebrews, which is the book regarding the transition from this heaven and earth into the next, three of the thirteen chapters are devoted to the subject of is the priest Melchizedek and the Melchizedek priesthood. Melchizedek is a compound word that contains this Hebrew word Zedek, the Hebrew name for our planet named Jupiter. Melchizedek means either righteousness is my king or king of righteousness. (Heb. 7:2) Here, one may recall that Abraham, the father of faith, paid tithes to Melchizedek.
This is a Zodiac web sites about the planet Jupiter passing through the feet of Ophiuchus on Passover this last fall. The concepts, names and words used by ancient religions are all connected somehow with the star systems we see in the night skies. This fundamental basis of everything is hard to escape. though few religions today like to talk about the astronomical importance of everything they worship. But the stars are the guides here.
The planets travel. This is why they are called 'planets.' And they pass in front of the various constellations in the Zodiac which is due to the way the earth spins on its axis as well as around the sun. All the other planets being on the same celestial plane in relation to the sun, our view of them is confined to the present path they trace which we call the Zodiac. Note how Libra, the scales of life and death, are next to Ophiuchus. And scorpio, the Goddess of Death. Ophiuchus is actually the Gates of Death. Serpens winds around the Gates of Death. Some anthropologists suggest that since the celestial plane has shifted greatly since the birth of religions, the ancient 'path' of the souls of the dead no longer can climb via the Milky Way so they had to find a new 'road' to Heaven. and the juncture of where the planet Jupiter passes in relation to these stars was the place many cultures chose as the new destination for the dead.
The Gates of Death are very secret. Occult. To hide them from view, it being impossible to hide Scorpio or Libra, they being part of the Zodiac, the Gates of Death were turned into the magic number 13. This is why the Tarot card for death is XIII, for example. The Gates are actually Two Towers. The Tower of the Past and the Tower of the Future. The Lightning God, Jupiter, periodically enters the place between these two and magic spells were performed when this happened. This was part of the priestly duties of all good religious people in ancient times: to track the wayward traveler stars and perform the right spells when they were in the correct positions in the night skies. To do this, the religious people had to teach their wards how to see these mysteries and to make them work, a magic 'navel' had to be discovered, a cave on a mountain.
Rome is such a place and note how it has kept its religious powers for the last 6,000 years or more! The Temple area in Jerusalem is such a place. The cave, the area above where priests could watch and map the stars, etc. In Ur, they built pretend mountains, ziggurats. In Egypt, pyramids and temples. But the stone age ones like the one in Jerusalem are probably 35,000 years old or older. The caves in France with those amazing paintings are probably very early attempts at making a navel in the earth match the night skies. I look at the paintings there and it is very much like seeing the stars at night, if all of them represented star clusters, this would not amaze me.
Back to the astrologer above:
To some ancient cultures Ophiuchus was known as the 13th sign of the zodiac. Ancient Egypt included both Ophiuchus and Orion in their 14 sign zodiac in contrast to today’s 12 sign zodiac. Obscure ties with Sumerian or Babylonian zodiacs entwine Ophiuchus with Creation tales of the gods Tiamut, Enki and Marduk - all represented by Jupiter.Ophiuchus is known as the serpent holder. The ecliptic, or the circuit of the sun, moon and planets, passes through his feet. As he holds the serpent attempting to grasp the crown, “Cornea Borealis”, he stands with his left foot poised above the scorpion, Scorpio. One major star in the sign of Ophiuchus, Ras al, Awa, means head of the desired. Another, Triophas, in the Hebrew language, means treading under foot. The Greek poet Homer refers to Ophiuchus as the god-man. In Greek mythology he was know as the healer and the desired one. In the Egyptian zodiac of Denderah he was known as the the head of him who cometh and was depicted with a hawk’s head to signify that he was one of the gods who comes to the earth in the form of a man.
The Thresher and the Healer. As the Gates of Death open, we all wish to meet a Healer, not a Destroyer. And the occult magic surrounding this particular juncture in the sky is virtually invisible within the myths and stories of all religions. For these things were kept strictly occult. The power of the priests and priestesses rested on keeping this information close to their chests. The threshing floor was also where everyone paid their tithes. And note that the founders of the Jewish state all paid tithes to the ruling priests of the Jerusalem threshing floor until David 'bought' it.
The conjunction of Jupiter and Jove has been recognized by many poets in the past, by the way. The Jews have been anxious to keep the identity of their god very secret. Thus, the prohibition of ever identifying it. Saying the names. Locating the exact spot this god hangs out each night. The cloak of invisibility thrown over this god nearly made him vanish. Indeed, the first half of the Bible is all about fury of the Cohens over the lack of interest in worshipping this increasingly occult god. To keep its powers elevated, they either annihilated or had this Jupiterian god suck up every other god or goddess's powers. The supreme temple, for example, was actually dedicated probably to the lunar/Venus goddess and her child. The Virgin/Whore and her impish son who mocks the blind and the lame gods. Which are there, too, at this same religious site as we shall see.
Just as Jupiter has to go to the Lame god which is Mars, for his lightning [stolen from Pegasus who used to make the lightning elsewhere many eons earlier] both Mars and Venus used to live at the present site of the Temple of the Dome.
Here is yet another interesting old story about how the Jews got the high holy place where all the planetary gods were worshipped:
According to classical rabbinical literature, the Jebusites derived their name from the city of Jebus, the ancient Jerusalem, which they inhabited[27]. These rabbinical sources also argued that as part of the price of Abraham's purchase of the Cave of Machpelah, which lay in the territory of the Jebusites, the Jebusites made Abraham grant them a covenant that his descendants would not take control of Jebus against the will of the Jebusites, and then the Jebusites engraved the covenant into bronze[28]; the sources state that the presence of the bronze statues are why the Israelites were not able to conquer the city during Joshua's campaign[29].The classical era rabbis go on to state that King David was prevented from entering the city of Jebus for the same reason, and so he promised the reward of captaincy to anyone who destroyed the bronzes - Joab performing the task and so gaining the prize[30]. The covenant is dismissed by the rabbis as having been invalidated due to the (defensive) war the Jebusites fought against Joshua, but nevertheless David (according to the rabbis) paid the Jebusites the full value of the city, collecting the money from among all the Israelite tribes, so that the city became their common property[31]
This time around, the Jews cement their 'ownership' of Jerusalem by claiming King David bought the whole city. The burning need to create the appearance of legality and right of purchase is very high in Jewish minds. If they feel something was bought and paid for, they don't have to feel guilt about their crimes and can feel they own it forever since all the others 'stole' it via invasions. What is very curious about this need is the addendum that they DID sign a contract in bronze, no less! But wanted to VIOLATE IT. So David offers a bribe to anyone who can undo this Gordian knot. The justification for violating this contract is, the Jebusites broke it anyway by trying to stop the Jews from invading. So there! By defending themselves, they lost title! I can see the lawyers rubbing their hands with glee. Even with the justification for theft, they still pretend David was a good man. He had his second in command break the laws. This is what flunkies are for.
More fun:
In reference to a passage[32] in the Books of Samuel which refers to a saying about the blind and the lame, Rashi quotes a midrash which argues that the Jebusites had two statues in their city, with their mouths containing the words of the covenant between Abraham and the Jebusites; one figure, depicting a blind person, represented Isaac, and the other, depicting a lame person, representing Jacob[33].
And here are more celestial clues to the Apocalypse. The lame god is usually Mars. The blind one? Saturn, I would suggest. The Judge/harvest planet. So, the covenant of Jerusalem was held in the teeth of these two other gods, rivals of Jupiter. The revolution of Mohammed when he entered Mecca [Makkar] was to take all the celestial gods there and turn them into one just as the Jews did a few hundred years earlier. Indeed, his merger of these gods involved getting on this strange winged horse and flying to Jerusalem to seize the gods there and then hightailing it back to Mecca. This mania for merging the gods is the key to all the astronomical mayhem we see today.
Since 99% of the gods ruling most of the humans outside of India and Africa are these three very peculiar merged gods full of occult powers due to submerging all the celestial planetary/Zodiacal gods, we have this incredible beast that is very destructive. All three want to kill each other...PHYSICALLY! This is pure madness but on par for past attempts at doing this.
Samael (also Sammael) is an important archangel in Talmudic and post-Talmudic lore, as well as Christian folklore and demonology, a figure who is accuser, seducer, and destroyer. He has been regarded as both good and evil. In rabbinic lore he is identified as the chief of Satans and the Angel of death. In the Secrets of Enoch (Enoch II) he is a prince of demons and a magician. He was a guardian angel of Esau and a patron of the sinful empire of Rome. Samael is usually considered to be the true angelic name of Satan. The etymology of his name is sometimes thought to be a combination of "sam," and in some combinations 'poison', and "el," meaning 'God'; thus he is the poison of God.
*snip*
In the Apocryphon of John, found in the Nag Hammadi library, Samael is the third name of the evil demiurge, whose other names are Yaldabaoth and Saklas. In this context, Samael means "the blind god", the theme of blindness running throughout gnostic works. He is born out of the error of Sophia, who desires to create offspring of her own without the Spirit. His appearance is that of a lion-faced serpent. In On the Origin of the World in the Nag Hammadi library texts, he is also referred to as Ariael.
HAHAHA. Saturn was submerged but the Jewish cabalists knew better. They could see him just as I can see him! But they couldn't let him be part of their peculiar and very bloody god! So they made Saturn a demon. Only the actions he uses are identical to Jupiter's abilities: he kills humans. This is because sometimes Jupiter is off having sex with other star clusters while SATURN is sitting at the Gates of Death! And sometimes it is Mars that is there as well as Venus gets her turn. Note that sometimes Saturn/Samael has the same serpent as Ophiuchus. And the ancient Egyptian lion's face that sits above the Gates of Death.
Also note that the servants of Samael/Saturn are 'magicians'. This amuses me. All priests love to think they are magical, of course. But rivals are magicians and they are priests.
Some things about Sophia, aka, 'Wisdom':
In the Nag Hammadi, Sophia is the lowest æon, or anthropic expression of the emanation of the light of God. She is the syzygy of Jesus Christ (i.e. she forms a unity with Christ, being cojoined with him), and Gnostics believed that she was the Holy Spirit of the Trinity. Sophia is depicted as the creator of the material universe in On the Origin of the World. Furthermore, the planet Earth and everything on it was indeed created by the Jewish God Yahweh, but he is depicted as fundamentally corrupt. Because Sophia created the material universe and its god (also known as Yaldabaoth, Samael, and Demiurge) either without her syzygy Jesus Christ or, in another tradition, because she tried to breach the barrier between herself and the unknowable Bythos.Furthermore, she is also depicted as the destroyer of both this material universe, and Yaldabaoth/Yahweh and all his Heavens.
So, in the bitter end, the Goddess will destroy the one god? That would be rather amusing. In Norse mythology, Erda is female and the Ice Giant's daughters are connected with the creation of wealth and the Norns spin human fates and futures as well as organize the past. And Wotan is definitely Jupiter and very mortal. Just as Jupiter in the Roman pantheon. Event the new 'one gods' created in the Middle East are limited in their own lifespans. This is why they are now in conflict: the stars are shifting! A new age is coming. Two of them must be destroyed so the consolidation of all the gods into one may proceed. And none of these guys are feminine.
The destruction of the feminine is a long story in all this. As women's rights struggle to bring justice to half of humanity, this grim male trio toil to undo all this. Indeed, in many lands, people exterminate their female fetuses in the hopes of eliminating all feminine influences. This is no good, of course, as well as suicidal. But it is a very powerful force. The lunar/female side is very important in all pantheons and in all ancient religions, the ones guarding the Gates of Death are FEMALE. That is, Libra and Scorpio! And they also guard the Gates of Life for there are Two Towers: Life and Death.
The Mazzaroth is believed to have been given from God to Adam to show His plan of redemption for man. It was supposedly corrupted by the Babylonians approximately around the building of the tower of Babel in Genesis.
The meaning of the word Mazzaroth has been in contention for some hundreds of years as the scarce but adequate literature confirms. Traditional sources generally interpret the word as meaning constellation, though usually understood in the plural, constellations; where others agree it specifically refers to the zodiac and possibly the planet Venus.It is believed by some historians and scholars that the purpose behind this astrological reference was a prophetic guide to the coming of the Jewish Messiah.
And note where Venus is in all this. In ancient mythology and magic, She, too, visits the same Gates of Death that Jupiter, Mars and Saturn visit. And She is love and life as well as deceit and betrayals. The earliest deed of Joshua was to send three spies to a prostitute who betrayed Jericho to him. In return, she got to protect her family [religious cult] and was safe from being annihilated by the One God. I'm certain Venus was pleased she was not eaten at that point.
And the plan for redemption: it unfortunately involves making us all go through the Gates of Death. Now for some gnostic magic:
Yom Kippur:
The letter yud, a small suspended point, reveals the spark of essential good hidden within the letter tet. Subsequent to the initial tzimtzum, the contraction of G-d's Infinite light in order to make "place" for Creation, there remained within the empty void a single, potential point or "impression." The secret of this point is the power of the Infinite to contain finite phenomena within Himself and express them to apparent external reality. Finite manifestation begins from a zero-dimensional point, thereafter developing into a one-dimensional line and two-dimensional surface. This is alluded to in the full spelling of the letter yud (yud-vav-dalet): "point" (yud), "line" (vav), "surface" (dalet). These three stages correspond in Kabbalah to: "point" (nekudah), "spectrum" (sefirah), "figure" (partzuf). The initial point, the essential power of the yud, is the "little that holds much." The "much" refers to the simple Infinity of G-d hidden within the initial point of revelation, which reflects itself as the Infinite potential of the point to develop and express itself in all the manifold finite phenomena of time and space.Before the tzimtzum, the power of limitation was hidden, latent within G-d's Infinite Essence. Following the tzimtzum, this power of limitation became revealed, and paradoxically the Infinite Essence of G-d that originally "hid" the power of limitation now Itself became hidden (not in truth, but only from our limited human perspective) within the point of contracted light.
When I was hit by lightning the first time, a curious thing happened. Time stopped. I had joined with heaven and earth. I was both dead and alive at the same time. I was not in real space but in the Outer Darkness. All things were reduced to nothing while being everything. A tiny spot was more than the size of the Universe. A light feather weighed more than a planet. Hard was soft at the same time and big was little and in was out. All paradoxes were total while being utterly resolved all at the same time and the only way for me to escape this terrible place was to grab at the flaming mane of Pegasus as he flashed past me and he yanked me through a place where all possible points come together, the past, present and future.
And I was in the Waking World again, barely alive but alive. This is what it is all about: magic and the hard reality of nature when lightning hits and turns everything upside down. I am not the first or only person to experience this.
I would suggest, the roots of religion are from a human who woke from this same place grasping a burning branch set fire by such a bolt. Prometheus.
And now, we have nuclear bombs. The Überprometheus. The Ultimate Lightning Bolt of the Gods. The Jews prayed for such a weapon to melt the bronze tablets of the laws of the gods and to thus win power over all the earth just as the Muslims want to ride Pegasus and not die but gain total control over all humanity! And the Christians want Jesus to separate the human wheat from the human chaff. And all I want is peace and some co-operation. We need multiple gods and we need to understand the Fates and Furies and how they work together at the Gates of Death.
And we have to accept the fact that we die and what they choose to do with our souls afterwards is not influenced by any magic spells we might think of. For they are elemental and do what they are set up to do. Which is utterly mysterious to us humans. Though we can venture a guess. Maybe the Egyptians had this all right in the first place: the animal kingdom will judge us. Ask any cat. Or dog.
Well, I say...if God really wanted the Jews to re-enter and dwell in the "HOLY LAND", He would have sold them TITLE INSURANCE. Rimshot please!
However, He did not and the Jews lost their land through adverse possession. Now the world is weary from the Jewish cry babies and the havoic that may ensue. It never ends. The wheels in the sky keep turning and flinging mud in all directions, except toward Asia.
This is a perfect treatise on how religions divide humanity, never unite. Not even Christianity, with it's message of universal love and acceptance is blameless. Lord knows you have pointed this out repeatedly.
So pray yea to the goddess Sophia, where the tennets of empiricism and rationalism are the only true lanes on the road to the light.
This idiotic, subversive, destructive, irreconciable human obcession with the microcosm/macrocosm and God loves us best kick is taking our country away from us.
Religion must be removed from our politics.
Posted by: EL JOHNNY | February 09, 2008 at 11:10 PM
Silly me, I thought the toilet was invented by an Englishman named John Crapper and therefore it is not obscene language to declare, "I got to go to the john" or "I just took a crap".
The language becomes a tribute to the inventor.
Posted by: EL JOHNNY | February 09, 2008 at 11:20 PM
Unfortunately, my personal distress matrix made it almost impossible to read about the myriad, neverending torments narrated in holy books and history books. I would read here and there, but I never mustered the sense of detachment necessary to go into them deeply.
Early on, I decided that if there were gods of some sort, they sure wouldn't want to be anything like us humans. Congratulations for completing a great bloody voyage, Elaine! You inform me so very well. Thanks so much!
Posted by: blues | February 10, 2008 at 12:32 AM
Is it any coincidence that I'm an Aries named Joshua?
Posted by: Joshua | February 10, 2008 at 02:27 AM
Aries Joshua? This is very funny! Astrology as a tool to tell us about our love lives is pure silliness. But astrology as a tool to understand human belief systems is GREAT.
The first astronomers became the first priests. The greatest geniuses of previous human civilizations spent many night hours observing the stars. My parents loved doing this and I grew up in or around huge observatories. But back in the fifties, the astronomers didn't like talking about astrology.
Then one of them gave me 'Hamlet's Mill' which attempts to put astronomy back on its religious throne. I memorized that great book and it expanded my horizons. It is very hard to read but well worth it.
Posted by: Elaine Supkis | February 10, 2008 at 08:28 AM
Interesting article, Elaine - religio-magical thinking has very deep roots in the early history of human societies. I'm reading an interesting book on Neolithic religious symbolism in, for example, Catal Huyuk and the henge monuments of far-western Europe. Something interesting was going on around 10,000-12,000 years ago. I read another one a few years back that dealt with Stonehenge in terms of archaeo-astronomy: just what did the night sky look like when these places were built?
Something that annoys me to no end is light pollution. So few people ever get to see a dark-sky night any more. I was in Toronto on business during the Great Power Outage of 2003 - it was worth it to see that sky at night!
But I think it's time we set aside the things of the youth of humanity like religio-magical thinking. No we have more effective stories: math, chemistry, physics, and biology.
"... the only way for me to escape this terrible place was to grab at the flaming mane of Pegasus as he flashed past me ..."
How different do you think things would be for you if the image in your consciousness was Pisces intead of Pegasus?
Posted by: JSmith | February 10, 2008 at 02:10 PM
Being only 5 years old, I saw what was there.
Actually, I used to crawl around the Constellations mosaic on the floor of Yerkeys Observatory. I must have played on the Pegasus mosaic a lot. It was very vivid.
And this all illustrates the 'group mind' of our culture! I could have seen Chutulu if he was on that floor but mercifully, he wasn't.
Posted by: Elaine Supkis | February 10, 2008 at 04:03 PM
You might have grabbed Pisces' dorsal fin as he swam you off through the blue waters... but you preferred Pegasus at that early age. Our mind/brains do many interesting things under extreme duress.
Posted by: JSmith | February 10, 2008 at 05:18 PM
Pegasus was cuter, I admit. But I also like snakes and did play on Serpens, too.
Posted by: Elaine Supkis | February 11, 2008 at 03:55 PM