Genesis

Henotheology!

Welcome to 2017! In previous posts, especially this one, I’ve noted that the Old Testament and even the New Testament are rife filled with references to other gods, or a plurality of gods (which are actually angels or archons, according to the Christian and Gnostic traditions). This is especially evident in the Apocrypha like the Books of Enoch, Jubilees, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Nag Hammadi Library. According to the dogma of the Nicene Creed of Orthodoxy and Catholicism, Moses taught monotheism on Mount Sinai from Yahweh. But careful research will lead to the opposite. He didn’t. They tell us that the Judeo-Christian tradition has always believed in only one God since the beginning. It didn’t. In fact, monotheism wasn’t even part of church doctrine until well into the Middle Ages. It didn’t even exist in the minds of the ancient Hebrews or Egyptians until the late 600’s BCE, long after Moses and the early Prophets. As we saw, the Bible is one of many places that the tradition of “many gods” can be found.

In the Dead Sea Scrolls for instance, the War Scroll 1:10 tells us:

On the day when the Kittim fall, there shall be battle and terrible carnage before the God of Israel, for that shall be the day appointed from ancient times for the battle of destruction of the sons of darkness. At that time, the assembly of gods and the hosts of men shall battle, causing great carnage; on the day of calamity, the sons of light shall battle with the company of darkness amid the shouts of a mighty multitude and the clamour of gods and men to (make manifest) the might of God. And it shall be a time of [great] tribulation for the people which God shall redeem; of all its afflictions none shall be as this, from its sudden beginning until its end in eternal redemption.

In the Nag Hammadi Codices, a rather curious and long, late Valentinian text, called the Tripartite Tractate, the author goes on a long-winded diatribe about how some Jews were not monotheists:

By interpreting them, they established many heresies which exist to the present among the Jews. Some say that God is one, who made a proclamation in the ancient scriptures. Others say that he is many. Some say that God is simple and was a single mind in nature. Others say that his activity is linked with the establishment of good and evil. Still others say that he is the creator of that which has come into being. Still others say that it was by the angels that he created.

Back in the Dead Sea Scrolls, specifically in the War Scroll (IQM, 1Q33, 4Q491-7, 4Q471), it mentions a church of gods, and that Michael reigns over a kingdom of gods. They also specify that these are living gods, indicating their real existence outside the imagination.

Be strong and fear not; [for they tend] towards chaos and confusion, and they lean on that which is not and [shall not be. To the God] of Israel belongs all that is and shall be; [He knows] all the happenings of eternity. This is the day appointed by Him for the defeat and overthrow of the Prince of the kingdom of wickedness, and He will send eternal succour to the company of His redeemed by the might of the princely Angel of the kingdom of Michael. With everlasting light He will enlighten with joy [the children] of Israel; peace and blessing shall be with the company of God. He will raise up the kingdom of Michael in the midst of the gods, and the realm of Israel in the midst of all flesh. Righteousness shall rejoice on high, and all the children of His truth shall jubilate in eternal knowledge. And you, the sons of His Covenant, be strong in the ordeal of God! His mysteries shall uphold you until He moves His hand for His trials to come to an end.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were written by the Essenes, who, as many other authors have stated, were in many ways similar to Jesus, and were the only major denomination of Judaism that Jesus did not criticize. One must ask: if Jesus were so adamantly opposed to the Pharisees and the Sadducees, who believed in only one God, yet was tolerant toward the Essenes, who believed in many gods, then does it not stand to reason that Jesus Christ himself may have also believed in many gods? In fact, Jesus Christ did believe in many gods. This is implicitly stated within his commentary on Psalm 82 in the Gospel of John! The Jews were criticizing him for calling himself the Son of God, because they thought it was blasphemy. In response, Jesus pointed out that Psalm 82 in the Bible says that there are many gods, and so therefore it is not blasphemy for Jesus to assert that he is one of these gods, as he put it (John 10:33-38):

The Jews answered Him, “We are not stoning you for any good work,” they replied, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are “gods’”? If he called them ‘gods,’ to whom the word of God came–and Scripture cannot be set aside–what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’? Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.”

By saying this, Jesus affirmed the real existence of more than one God and affirmed his own divinity at the same time. Michael S. Heiser writes in The Unique Son of the Most High: The place of Jesus in the divine council, Part 1 of 4 John 10:22-42 (Jesus quotes Psalm 82:6):

6 I (the speaker is God) have said, “You are gods (Myhl); )eloh|4m); and all of you are children of the most High (!Ayæl.[, ynEßb.; be ne, (elyo4n). 7 But you shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.

To whom is he speaking? The Jews at Sinai? No – the other elohim of the council in verse 1 of Psalm 82 are the audience. When Jesus quotes Psalm 82:6, he is mouthing the words of Yahweh (the original speaker in 82:6) and quotes the passage as it originally reads – God speaks to the other elohim. Jesus is not using the verse to say that Psalm 82 had God speaking to the Jews at Sinai.

Verse 7, the next verse, confirms this interpretation, since it says that these gods to whom God was speaking would “die like men” – if they were already men, this makes no sense. Who are the princes? See Daniel 10 – divine beings (the same Hebrew word for Michael and Gabriel beings “princes” is used here in Psalm 82:7 – r#o – sar).

POINT: Jesus does not view the plural elohim of Psalm 82:1 as mere humans, and there’s a reason this is so. The reason he quotes this verse is NOT to claim he’s just a man who can call himself a god like other men – it’s to claim deity as a son of the Most High, and to DISTINGUISH himself from the other sons. The former is the direct impact of John 10; the latter requires taking John 10 in the context of Jesus and John’s prior descriptions of Jesus in this same gospel as the “monogenes” – the UNIQUE son.

There are many other references to “many gods” in the Nag Hammadi as well. In the text On the Origin of the World, 2:97, it tells us:

Seeing that everybody, gods of the world and mankind, says that nothing existed prior to chaos, I, in distinction to them, shall demonstrate that they are all mistaken, because they are not acquainted with the origin of chaos, nor with its root.

And it is these gods that are actually subservient to what the text calls “Yaldabaoth,” the child of chaos or the Satanic demiurge and material principle.

And when Pistis Sophia desired to cause the thing that had no spirit to be formed into a likeness and to rule over matter and over all her forces, there appeared for the first time a ruler, out of the waters, lion-like in appearance, androgynous, having great authority within him, and ignorant of whence he had come into being. Now when Pistis Sophia saw him moving about in the depth of the waters, she said to him, “Child, pass through to here,” whose equivalent is ‘yalda baoth‘.

Since that day, there appeared the principle of verbal expression, which reached the gods and the angels and mankind. And what came into being as a result of verbal expression, the gods and the angels and mankind finished.

In the Books of Jeu, the Untitled Text, of the Bruce Codex, it tells us about a Heavenly, Pleromic City in which all manner of divinities dwell:

And in the place of the indivisible one there are twelve springs, and upon them twelve fatherhoods, surrounding the indivisible one in the manner of the deeps or these veils. And there is a crown upon the indivisible one in which is every species of life : and every triple-powered species; and every incomprehensible species : and every endless species ; and every unutterable species; and every silent species ; and every unmoved species ; and every first-visible species ; and every self-begotten species ; and every true species ; all being within it.

And in this is every species and every gnosis. And every power receives light from it.And every mind is revealed in it. This is the crown which the Father of the All gave to the indivisible one, in which there are 365 species, and they shine and fill the All with imperishable and inextinguishable light.

In the Gospel of Thomas, Logion 30, Jesus seems to indicate the reality of the divine mystery of the Trinity. But as in due course, we will see this mystery is anything but.

Jesus said, “Where there are three gods, they are gods. Where there are two or one, I am with him.”

In the Gnostic text Melchizedek, it differentiates between the gods, the archons and the archangels:

Death will tremble and be angry, not only he himself, but also his fellow world-ruling archons, and the principalities and the authorities, the female gods and the male gods, together with the archangels.

In the Hermetic-Stoic text Asclepius 21-29, it says that certain Gnostic human beings or Hermetic sages have expanded their spirits enough to be indeed enlightened dual beings–being of both spirit and matter and actually contain in themselves the ability to create gods through their theurgical rituals which tap into the realms of the imaginal, in which I will discuss later.

“And it happened this way because of the will of God that men be better than the gods, since, indeed, the gods are immortal, but men alone are both immortal and mortal. Therefore, man has become akin to the gods, and they know the affairs of each other with certainty. The gods know the things of men, and men know the things of the gods. And I am speaking about men, Asclepius, who have attained learning and knowledge. But (about) those who are more vain than these, it is not fitting that we say anything base, since we are divine and are introducing holy matters.

“Since we have entered the matter of the communion between the gods and men, know, Asclepius, that in which man can be strong! For just as the Father, the Lord of the universe, creates gods, in this very way man too, this mortal, earthly, living creature, the one who is not like God, also himself creates gods. Not only does he strengthen, but he is also strengthened. Not only is he god, but he also creates gods. Are you astonished, Asclepius? Are you yourself another disbeliever like the many?”

The Gospel of Philip tells us something very similar:

That is the way it is in the world – men make gods and worship their creation. It would be fitting for the gods to worship men!

Returning to the Hermetic text, Asclepius, it also states that “the gods are derived from pure matter.” Here, the gods are not spiritual entities, but material entities, and therefore may be biological in nature like humans are. Yet the same passage also asserts that the gods are immortal. Perhaps certain biological entities that are much more intelligent than mankind have figured out a way to cheat death indefinitely, and thus become “pure matter.”

For the gods, since they came into being out of a pure matter, do not need learning and knowledge. For the immortality of the gods is learning and knowledge, since they came into being out of pure matter. It (immortality) assumed for them the position of knowledge and learning. By necessity, he (God) set a boundary for man; he placed him in learning and knowledge.

The depths of hell are also filled with distinctly different entities, including at least four different types, according to the Trimorphic Protennoia:

I am the life of my Epinoia that dwells within every Power and every eternal movement, and (in) invisible Lights and within the Archons and Angels and Demons, and every soul dwelling in Tartaros, and (in) every material soul. I dwell in those who came to be. I move in everyone and I delve into them all. I walk uprightly, and those who sleep, I awaken. And I am the sight of those who dwell in sleep.

In the Platonizing Sethian text, Allogenes, it ruminates on whether or not the “Summum Bonum”, or the Highest Good actually has angels at his beckoning call:

We do not know whether the Unknowable One has angels or gods, or whether the One who is at rest was containing anything within himself except the stillness, which is he, lest he be diminished.

In Genesis 3:5, the Serpent tempted Eve saying:

For God does know that in the day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

In other words, the fruit from the tree of knowledge would give Eve the perspective and “knowledge” of the Elohim. The Hebrew word elohim can mean either “God” singular or “gods” plural, depending on the verb. The Hypostasis of the Archons clarifies the matter, explicitly saying that Eve would become like the gods but the “chief ruler” or Yaldabaoth/Yahweh, out of jealousy, damned the primal couple, when they were expelled from the Garden of Eden.

And the snake, the instructor, said, “With death you shall not die; for it was out of jealousy that he said this to you. Rather your eyes shall open and you shall come to be like gods, recognizing evil and good.” And the female instructing principle was taken away from the snake, and she left it behind, merely a thing of the earth.

Moreover, the book of Jubilees (3:19) found among the Dead Sea Scrolls also confirms that “gods” plural is the original meaning.

And the serpent said unto the woman, ‘Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that on the day ye shall eat thereof, your eyes will be opened, and ye will be as gods, and ye will know good and evil.

Moreover, it seems like the God of Genesis doesn’t really know everything when he asks:

And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?

The Testimony of Truth has this to say about the Genesis account:

But what sort is this God? First he maliciously refused Adam from eating of the tree of knowledge, and, secondly, he said “Adam, where are you?” God does not have foreknowledge? Would he not know from the beginning? And afterwards, he said, “Let us cast him out of this place, lest he eat of the tree of life and live forever.” Surely, he has shown himself to be a malicious grudger! And what kind of God is this? For great is the blindness of those who read, and they did not know him. And he said, “I am the jealous God; I will bring the sins of the fathers upon the children until three (and) four generations.” And he said, “I will make their heart thick, and I will cause their mind to become blind, that they might not know nor comprehend the things that are said.” But these things he has said to those who believe in him and serve him!

The Genesis account presents us with one single all-powerful Creator God and yet has a few references to the Elohim in regard to both the Trees of Knowledge and Life. Does Jesus say anything in reference to Genesis? Actually, Jesus never does affirm that the earth was literally created in six days nor does he affirm the literal creationist timeline as creationists might have you believe. There is only one reference out of the entire New Testament that discusses the creation account in the 7 day period including the day of rest in Hebrews 4:3-7, a text, by the way, which had a hard time entering into the traditional canon, much like Revelation.

Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said,

“So I declared on oath in my anger,

    ‘They shall never enter my rest.’”

And yet his works have been finished since the creation of the world.For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words: “On the seventh day God rested from all his works.”And again in the passage above he says, “They shall never enter my rest.”

Therefore since it still remains for some to enter that rest, and since those who formerly had the good news proclaimed to them did not go in because of their disobedience, God again set a certain day, calling it “Today.”

Moreover, the opening verse of John’s gospel, “In the beginning was the Word,” presents a creation account that appears to be aimed at competing against Genesis 1. The Greek word Logos implies logic, order, and reason, which is the exact opposite of what Genesis 1 says about the earth being “without form and void.” This indicates that the Logos was sort of a demiurgical force that gave some sort of semblance of order from the chaotic abyss, from which Yaldaboath, the god of the void, also emerges from.

Henotheism, not monotheism, is the theology of Moses and the Prophets. It is the chief theology of Jesus Christ himself as well. This fact is generally accepted by scholars, as any number of authorities can attest. So, what exactly is Henotheism? Nothing better defines Henotheism than what St. Paul the Apostle told in 1 Corinthians 4-8:

So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that “An idol is nothing at all in the world” and that “There is no God but one.” 5 For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

Henotheism is the belief that many gods exist, but that only one God should be worshiped. Unlike monotheism, there are truly many gods and they really do exist. Yet unlike polytheism, not all the gods are worshiped. Only one of them is worshiped, and the rest are profane and are to be shunned. Henotheism explains why James the brother of Jesus and Saint John the Apostle, together with all the Prophets, were so thoroughly against idols and eating meat sacrificed to idols, even to the point where it was one of the few regulations of the Old Testament that they insisted non-Jewish Christians must keep in full as stated in Acts 15:29.

You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell.

This is because sacrifices to idols serve profane entities that truly do exist, according to 1 Corinthians 10:19-22:

19 What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20 No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.22 Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?

Henotheism explains why idolatry is the most frequently mentioned offense in the entire Bible–for if God is all-powerful, then an idol is nothing, and it would only be an inconsequential joke and hardly worth the mention. But if idolatry truly serves other gods that truly do exist, and if sacrifices to idols truly feeds those gods, then this explains why Yahweh and his Prophets are so vociferously against idolatry. For if there are other gods, then these gods are truly a threat to Yahweh and to his Messiah, and therefore it is particularly important that idolatry does not infiltrate the ranks of the faithful, for it truly gives enemies a foot in the door by which they can infiltrate the armies of Yahweh. The God of Henotheism is actually competing against other gods who are real. Worshiping other gods is serving other gods, and serving other gods undermines the power of your covenant God, and this is tantamount to adultery against your God and treason against your nation. In such terms, the Prophets speak of idolatry. This line of thinking only makes sense in light of Henotheism.

If God were Almighty, then the overarching importance of the prohibition against idols makes no sense at all, because in a monotheistic system, and idol has no power. Which is worse, praying to rocks and dead trees, or committing murder?  In a monotheistic system, the first is laughable but the second is quite heinous. But in a Henotheistic system, idolatry is even more heinous than murder, for murder can only kill the body, but idolatry kills both body and soul, for it puts the soul at the mercy of gods who care not for humanity. Only within the framework of Henotheistic thinking does it make sense that idolatry is a worse crime than murder, theft, sexual perversion, or any other infraction. Seeing that the Bible condemns idolatry more frequently than any other sin, this is a case for Henotheism. Idolatry is also considered the same as adultery by Jesus as well in Matthew 5:27-28.

27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

In other words, if you are worshiping God but then praying to other pagan gods, then in reality, you are already committing adultery. In the Old Testament, we actually the first instance in which a foreign god actually humbles himself before Yahweh–that being is Dagon, the fish god in 1 Samuel 5:2-4:

Then they carried the ark into Dagon’s temple and set it beside Dagon.When the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the Lord! They took Dagon and put him back in his place. But the following morning when they rose, there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the Lord! His head and hands had been broken off and were lying on the threshold; only his body remained.

In the text Ruth 1:15-17, we have Naomi who was a Hebrew who believed in Yahweh, but here she sanctioned the worship of other gods besides Yahweh, but only for those outside the Hebrew nation.

15 “Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”

16 But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely,if even death separates you and me.”

In Jeremiah 48:7, the Moabite god Chemosh is said to be bound in chains like an actual person, thanks to Yahweh’s invasion.

Since you trust in your deeds and riches, you too will be taken captive, and Chemosh will go into exile, together with his priests and officials.

As stated in earlier posts, we saw that many of the western Semitic peoples, including Hebrews, Canaanites, and the more archaic city of Ugarit, believed in a Father-God called El, which corresponds to the Greek Ouranos. The name El and its variants are known throughout the Bible, El, Elyon, El-Shaddai, and Eloah. They believed El spawned a brood of sons called bn-Ilm (Ugaritic) or beni-ha-Elohim (Hebrew), which means “sons of El” or “sons of the God,” and that these sons of El participated in some kind of divine government called “the congress of the gods.” Mark S. Smith in the book The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Textstells us that the Psalms 82 reference of the “divine council” scene, doesn’t actually portray Yahweh as the head of the assemblage.

One biblical text that presents Yahweh in an explicit divine council scene does not cast him as its head (who is left decidedly mute or undescribed, probably the reason why it survived the later collapsing of the different tiers). This text is Psalms 82, which begins in verse 1:

“God (elohim) stands in the divine assembly of El, among the divinities (elohim) He spronounces judgment.”

Here the figure of God, understood as Yahweh, takes his stand in the assembly. The name El was understood in the tradition – and perhaps at the time of the original text’s composition as well – to be none other but Yahweh, and not a separate God called El.

This is the origin of the title “Standing One” of Simon Magus. It indicates that a divine power has decided to stand up and forge his own divine kingdom and even wage war against the other gods. The operations of this congress are implicit within such Biblical stories as the Tower of Babel, where Yahweh consults with the other gods – “Let us go down and confuse their language” Genesis 11:7 – and in Job, where “the sons of God came to present themselves before Yahweh.” Job 1:6, 2:1. El and his wife Asherah had a total of 70 sons in the Biblical and Ugaritic traditions, or 77 in the Hittite tradition. These were the “sons of God,” and to each of them El gave a nation as an inheritance. Yahweh was one of these sons of El, and his inheritance was Israel, as stated in an earlier article. Consequently, each nation was supposed to worship one of the sons of El as its appointed God. Canaan worshiped Baal, Moab worshiped Chemosh, Ammon worshiped Molech, and Israel worshiped Yahweh. They all paid homage to El as the Father-God. This can be seen in Jubilees, where Shem,

“blessed the God of gods, who had put the word of the Lord into his mouth, and the Lord for evermore.” Jubilees 8:20-21.

In this passage, it sounds as if Shem was blessing two distinct divine entities – El and Yahweh, Father and Son. We already saw that in Deuteronomy 32:8, Dead Sea Scrolls and Septuagint tells us:

“When Elyon divided the nations, when He separated the sons of Adam, he set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the sons of Elohim.”

What this passage means is this: The Father-God Elyon divided the nations according to the number of sons he had, and so each nation got its own god. Your Bible might say “sons of Israel” in place of “sons of Elohim,” but both the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint attest that the Bible originally said “sons of Elohim” not “sons of Israel,” as does Irenaeus also (Against Heresies 3.12.9). Many scholars believe that the Hebrew Bible was intentionally corrupted by the monotheists to read “sons of Israel” because later Judaism evolved to become monotheist.

Often, even in early times, the national god was combined with the Father-God El to form one entity, hence the term “Yahweh Elyon” (the LORD Most High) in Genesis 14, and “Yahweh Elohim” (the LORD God). Hence, the two deities were collapsed into one long before monotheism was invented. This also is the origin of Trinitarian thinking – that Jesus Christ, as an entity, can be collapsed into a single entity with the Father and the Spirit, thus making God three-in-one. Today, theologians often refer to the Trinity as a “mystery,” but there was no such “mystery” in the minds of ancient Christian Trinitarians. They took it for granted, because it was consistent with the same way they had thought for centuries. Only with the general acceptance of the monotheistic heresy did the Trinity become a seemingly self-contradictory “mystery.”

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This brings us to the violent activities of the God of Israel. Psalm 82:6-8 tells us:

“I said, ‘You are “gods”;

    you are all sons of the Most High.’

But you will die like mere mortals;

    you will fall like every other ruler.”

Rise up, O God, judge the earth,

    for all the nations are your inheritance.

In other words, the God of Israel’s rightful destiny is to ultimately conquer the other gods and appropriate their inheritances. In a world filled with warfare and hostile nations, the logical thing to do is to have your nation and the god that rules over it, top dog. That is exactly how the ancient Israelite’s viewed such things. Yahweh should be president in the congress of the gods and should have the power to make war with the other gods and take away their power.

This is especially evident when we study the Psalms and the life story of King David. David’s covenant or pact with Yahweh was simple: you keep me from being killed by my enemies, and I will conquer all Israel’s neighbors for you. The covenant was a contractual obligation between two parties for their mutual benefit. The benefit to David was a long life. The benefit to Yahweh was the conquest of Edom, Moab, Philistia, Syria, Ammon, and the national unity of Israel. Once this is understood, David’s Psalms make sense. His frequent mention of the underworld and his intense fear of death–coupled with his description of Yahweh as a god of war with nostrils filled with fire, riding on thunderclouds, sword in hand, hurling lightning bolts, and shooting arrows at his enemies, along with multiple songs of victory–these features are consistent with David’s incessant wars of conquest against all Israel’s neighbors.

In this god-eat-god cosmic system, David wanted to ensure Yahweh was the top dog or the king of the jungle–hence the image of the lion and the serpent associated with the Jewish god. This sort of alliance system between gods and humans is what Old Testament covenant theology is all about. When Israel went to war, they carried the throne of Yahweh into battle, the Ark of the Covenant, because Yahweh was their commander and ally. Before they attacked, they consulted with Yahweh, to make certain he approved of the military action. Every war was a holy war against some other competing nation and its god. Expanding the boundaries of your nation meant expanding the empire of your covenant god, and your god would reward you for it.

Jesus himself acts like a warring Son of God with words like:

“Do not think that I came to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword?” Luke 12:51, Matthew 10:34.

Jesus, is in essence, a holy warrior. Jesus says things like this because he knows he is in an all-encompassing cosmic battle with the chief principle of matter of this world–Satan–as well as his hordes of demons. Jesus Christ made friends with the poor and the wretched, the prostitutes, and social outcasts. He was not looking for ethical or self-righteous people. He was looking for loyal people, worthy to his cause. He was looking for people in the dregs of society or the worst of sinners who would fight for him–who would risk everything for him because they had nothing to lose anyway. Jesus is presented as not an all-powerful being but a god among gods, who must fight his way to become chief of the gods, or else he would become a slave to gods more powerful than himself–at least in this world anyway. He wants violent people, red hot for their faith and devotion to his cause rather than embrace a universalistic religious message as espoused by more pacifist saints. That is why Jesus says he will vomit out the lukewarm in Revelation 3:16.

Jesus continually talks about the wicked hearted hypocrites and calls them vipers and perverse. He also referred to gentiles as dogs. The Lord wasn’t some friendly hippie that the New Age makes him out to be. He’s too much of a truth teller so they killed him for it. Jesus continually told his disciples to count the cost of being loyal in his service. In Luke 14:25-33, he tells them to properly anticipate all the costs of being associated with the Son of God in terms of building towers and warfare strategies similar to those devised by Sun Tzu.

25 Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said:26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. 27 And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

28 “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?29 For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, 30 saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’

31 “Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32 If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. 33 In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.

However, very few make it past the veil and are indeed victorious over the world.

13 Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

If I’m right, and all these deities have competing interests and are recruiting followers on earth for unseen cloak-and-dagger conspiracies on the other side, Jesus could be some opposing force that steals their recruits and diminishes their ranks, which would explain why they hate him so dearly. Jesus, in essence, would be like the “get out of jail free” card of the spirit world. This also explains why the other gods also hate Yahweh, because he is in constant war and competition with them. So, were the Gnostics right in saying we are in a prison house or insane asylum ruled by multiple cosmocraters and demonic archons? And that Jesus chooses to baptize those who he wants to be his disciples? The Excerpts of Theodotus say something to this effect.

Now, regeneration is by water and spirit, as was all creation: “For the Spirit of God moved on the abyss.” And for this reason the Saviour was baptized, though not Himself needing to be so, in order that He might consecrate the whole water for those who were being regenerated. Thus it is not the body only, but the soul, that we cleanse. It is accordingly a sign of the sanctifying of our invisible part, and of the straining off from the new and spiritual creation of the unclean spirits that have got mixed up with the soul.

Some of the archons would undoubtedly be less evil than others. Some might not even be evil and may be, in fact, good, but their ultimate intentions may not be so pure. They could, perhaps, all desire power, worship, and honor, even the good ones, so even if you serve the good archons, you’re still a slave. Jesus is some formerly unknown alien infiltrator who showed up out of nowhere and began zapping people out of the sphere of the archons. Yahweh would be one of the archons, not the true father of Jesus Christ. Maybe he’s a good archon, but he still wants power, glory, and submission. This is the Gnostic belief. Sabaoth, the “Lord of Forces” would essentially be Yahweh as we think of him today. The malicious aspects of the OT deity could be Yaldabaoth or Satan. They would all be part of the Elohim or the original pantheon of divinities worshiped in ancient Mesopotamia.

The Marcionites believed that the ones who would be saved were those who were cursed by the demiurge and were unfairly treated in this world, i.e., sinners and outcasts, kind of like Cain, Korah, Balaam, and other so-called bad guys of the Old Testament. Because these sorts of people were so unfairly mistreated in the world, the Marcionites thought, they would be the only ones who would be opening to receiving the radical gospel about the alien God of Jesus Christ. They were the perfect soldiers for Jesus’ controversial and exclusive message of his divine sonship, the redemption of the believer and the coming judgment and destruction of the cosmos through the fiery conflagration.

This is perhaps where some mythicists go wrong. They are right in saying that Jesus shares many similarities with other pre-Christian gods and their dramatic stories. Jesus also shares similarities with other enigmatic and magical figures in the Bible like Simon Magus, etc. But to say that Jesus was simply invented in the twisted, archonic minds of the Roman rulers or invented by some unknown cabal is exactly what the controllers want you to believe. This is exactly what Gnostic texts like On the Origin of the World is refuting!

“Now the Word that is superior to all beings was sent for this purpose alone: that he might proclaim the unknown. He said, “There is nothing hidden that is not apparent, and what has not been recognized will be recognized.” And these were sent to make known what is hidden, and the seven authorities of chaos and their impiety. And thus they were condemned to death.

So when all the perfect appeared in the forms modelled by the rulers, and when they revealed the incomparable truth, they put to shame all the wisdom of the gods. And their fate was found to be a condemnation. And their force dried up. Their lordship was dissolved. Their forethought became emptiness, along with their glory.”

I definitely don’t think it’s mythology. I know it’s not mythology. These entities are real. Once you conjure to manifestation, you know of their reality forever. And of course, they know that you know of their reality forever. You get marked, essentially. Whether by Jesus Christ or some other demonic being. And we have to decide which team to side with since they are all fighting for our souls.

And as Christopher Knowles over at the Secret Sun once said in his series explaining why he is not a mythicist:

But believing Jesus or Paul were real people doesn’t mean you need to buy into the tenets of orthodox Christianity, or of any other kind of Christianity, for that matter.

And finally, the Neoplatonists taught the idea of a world-soul, or the Anima Mundi, in which they acquired from Plato. This is the divine, noetic realm from which emerged the gods and daimons. It is also the equivalent of Dr. Carl Jung’s collective unconscious and Dr. Henry Corbin’s Imaginal Realm. All gods, daimons, angels, heroes, fairies, devils, monsters, and myths originate from there as well. This is the very subject of focus in Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld by Patrick Harper and John Keel’s The Eighth TowerIn fact, that is what the On the Origin of the World is telling us, explicitly:

Now the eternal realm (aeon) of truth has no shadow outside it, for the limitless light is everywhere within it. But its exterior is shadow, which has been called by the name ‘darkness’. From it, there appeared a force, presiding over the darkness. And the forces that came into being subsequent to them called the shadow ‘the limitless chaos’. From it, every kind of divinity sprouted up […] together with the entire place, so that also, shadow is posterior to the first product. It was <in> the abyss that it (shadow) appeared, deriving from the aforementioned Pistis.

The Soul of the World, collective unconscious, or Imaginal Realm, is the very source of which all the gods emerge from, like droplets from a wave. In other words the gods, daimons, and myths of the Imaginal Realm are not in the Imaginal Realm etc.–they are the Imaginal Real. It is this dynamis or power from which many Gnostics drew their strength from to create the gods through occult means similar to that of creating egregores as hinted at in the Hermetic text, Ascelpius. In fact, it is a dynamic, tempestuous place that constantly branches into “our” world–its tendrils leaping into the physical plane, the mental plane (our thoughts/imagination) and our psychological complexes and dreams.

The Anima Mundi, the daimonic reality in which our spirits also originate from, also exists within each of us–it is a plan of being that is as much “out there” as it is “within us,” as as opposed to how the “unconscious” part of the collective unconscious suggests as area of being that can be reduced to psychological factors. It is also connected to the idea of the “vault of heaven” as per Genesis or the demiurgical “womb” of the Cainites per the church father Epiphanius. And it is the means by which we can create physical reality and impress our will upon (e.g) the law of attraction–a subject and direction that will be explored further in depth, this year in 2017.

Ouranos: Lord of the Dome

In a previous post, I discussed about the “Secrets of Saturn” and how Saturn reflects many different aspects of many different religions, esoterica and the Holy Grail mythos. According to the ancient Greek writers such as Hesiod, Ouranos was born from Gaia, the “mother of all living,” much like Eve in Genesis. Others claim Ouranos came from the primeval god Aer or Aethyr. Ouranos is first equated with our terrestrial blue sky and is later equated with “heaven” and even later, associated with constellations. Uranus is first called “the brazen (bronze) expanse of sky.” Ouranos is also the grandfather of Cronos or Saturn and ruled over the primordial chaos and had no parentage or father. This god has many other correlations that are far too long to list hereTheo.com tells us this exactly:

OURANOS (or Uranus) was the primeval god (protogenos) of the “sky”. The Greeks imagined the sky as a solid dome of brass, decorated with stars, whose edges descended to rest upon the outermost limits of the flat earth. Ouranos was the literal sky, just as his consort Gaia was the earth.

Uranus, is “the brazen sky” is simultaneously known as a the “brazen laver” in the Jewish Temple, as we see in Exodus 30:17:

And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 18  Thou shalt also make a laver of brass, and HIS foot also of brass, to wash withal: and thou shalt put it between the tabernacle of the congregation and the altar, and thou shalt put water therein. 19 For Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet thereat: 20 When they go into the tabernacle of the congregation, they shall wash with water, that they die not; or when they come near to the altar to minister, to burn offering made by fire unto the LORD:

Note the laver is personified as a “he”. And also note “he” only has one foot, not two. What was in the brass laver which is the “Sky Upside Down” representing the “waters from above”? In 2 Chronicles 4:6, 4:10 and 4:15, we read:

2Ch 4:6  He made also ten lavers, and put five on the right hand, and five on the left, to wash in them: such things as they offered for the burnt offering they washed in them; but the YAM (Sea) was for the priests to wash in.
2Ch 4:10  And he set the YAM (sea) on the right side of the east end, over against the south.
2Ch 4:15  One YAM (Sea), and twelve oxen under it.

In the brazen laver which is Uranus/Ourianos/the brazen sky was the “molten sea” who is also called “Yam” or the “Leviathan”. Yam is the ancient Semitic word “sea”, which is the Canaanite god of rivers and the sea, as well as the deity of the primordial chaos. He represents the power of the tempest sea, untamed and raging. Yam was given kingship over the other gods by the other gods by the chief god El. When Yam’s rulership turned tyrannical and he possessed El’s wife Asterah, Baal actually challenged and defeated Yam in a battle but Yam lost.

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The ancient Hebrews thought that the heavens was like the sea (the waters above and below). The brass laver in the Temple was between the altar and the high priest, in which they had to wash their hands in the “Leviathan” or “Yam” before one could go to the altar inside the Holy of Holies–hence the Levite Priest was also considered to be a “Leviathan” Priest. In Judaism, the first heaven is called the firmament, the vault or the “dome”. The Hebrews believed there were three heavens: 1. the terrestrial sky, 2. outer-space, and 3. the abode of the gods. The Hebrews actually believed that the sky/firmament was Uranus or Shamiym. Deuteronomy 28:23 tells us:

“And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron.”

What is going on with brass? Numbers 21:9, tells us:

“And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.”

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The Sea is labeled as Yam, who is the Leviathan, is in the Brass laver that represents Ouranos–however, the Ouranos isn’t the serpent but is the molten sea. The laver has his own foot, while the “sea” is held up by “12 oxen” which represents the the Zodiac or the constellation as well as the 12 tribes of Israel. The Leviathan also has many similarities with the Ouroboros, which represents the procession of the planetary cycles. The “aeons” were equated with the rule of the planets in their respective constellations or procession cycles. There are actually so many planets and before long, the procession recycles. For example, we are in the Age of Aquarius. What planet rules over Aquarius? Ouranos/Uranus does because we just went through a cycle of processions and its repeating with the first planet in procession. Thus, the “time eats itself” (Ouroboros). The Ouroboros is the procession of the gods or the “cosmocrators” through the twelve classical constellations, which are of course, the celestial archons of Gnosticism. In Revelation of St. John, the Leviathan rises up out of the Yam/Sea, and in Chapter 12, the Leviathan is depicted as having seven heads with crowns that seek to devour. In Sumerian myth, we have the Abzu, which is the primordial sea of the abyss, or the Sumerian equivalent to Khaos (Chaos), which is the very first deity in Greek myth.

“3 Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth.”

As we know Ouranos simply means “sky” in Greek. Hesiod in Theogony (“the genealogy or birth of the gods) (126-138) tells us that Ouranos and Gaia were lovers:

Gaia first bore equal to herself starry Ouranos so that he may cover her all over like a veil, to be always the unshakable seat for the blessed gods. She bore the large mountains, pleasant haunts of the goddess Nymphs who dwell up along the woody mountains, and he produced the unplowed (?) open waters raging with swell, Pontos, without philotês. But then bedded by Ouranos, she produced deep-eddying Okeanos and and Koios and Kreios and Hyperion and Iapetos and Thea and Rheia and Themis and Mnemosyne and golden-garlanded Phoebe and lovely Tethys. And after them born last Kronos of the crooked scheme, most fearful of children, and he hated his lusty father.

According to Aristophanes in the comedy Birds (690f), both Gaia and Ouranos originated from the chaotic abyss:

At the beginning there was only Chaos, Night, dark Erebus (Darkness), and deep tartarus. Earth (Gaia), Air (Aer) and Heaven (Ouranos) had no existence. Firstly, blackwinged Night laid a germless egg in the bosom of the infinite deeps of Erebus, and from this, after the revolution of long ages, sprang the graceful Eros with his glittering golden wings, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest. He mated in deep Tartarus with dark Chaos…

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Orphic theogeny has Uranus part of the “proto-Genesis” myth being born of the “night” or “Nyx.” In Genesis 1:1-8, we see very similar ideas expressed from Hesiod’s Theogony. Keep in mind Hesiod’s text predates the Bible, and especially the book of Genesis by a few hundred years.

One might point to the power of the mind and to what extent thought might actually be able to influence reality. This brings us to the Biblical firmament that holds up the sky. While these things may seem very much unrelated, perhaps they may not be. The Biblical firmament could very well be an amplifier for thoughts that can crystallize into reality. Needless to say, this is all very far-fetched and hypothetical. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, there’s the computer generated environment in the Holodeck. The Holodeck is controlled by the Arch. Perhaps this Arch is somehow symbolical of the firmament.

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Another name of the firmament is the vault of heaven. A vault is basically a kind of arch. Arches are a fairly commonly used symbol we see associated with the Royal Arch Freemasonry and other famous sites like Arc de Triomphe in Paris. I suggest that the meaning of the arch may be a very significant one: it creates physical reality. Let’s take a look at Genesis 1:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

In other words, Genesis 1:1: might as well read, “In the beginning, the Khaos created Ouranos/Shamiym and the Gaia/Earth.” At first, God creates and heaven and earth, there already is water in the world, and then he creates light and divides it from the darkness. Note that the sun and the moon are created later. Light exists before the sun. The creation of heaven and earth essentially means the idea of the division between the spiritual and the profane. Division of the light from darkness is the creation of Yin and Yang or the binary system of 0 and 1. Although water is a physical object, it is often portrayed as a conduit between the spiritual and the physical as we see in the baptisms of John the Baptist and Jesus in the Gospels, which is an immersion into divine wisdom, the remission of sins and the anointment of salvation. The firmament is essentially the first physical object to exist and the rest of creation comes into fruition, including the land, flora and fauna (plants and animals, etc.) Perhaps God him/her/itself made the firmament as a tool to create the physical world we live in. Psalms 19 says:

1 The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

According to the ancient Sumerian text Enuma Elish (The Babylonian Epic of Creation), Tablet I, it tells us that it was the Apsu who gave rise the demiurge, Tiamat:

1   When the heavens above did not exist,
2   And earth beneath had not come into being—
3   There was Apsû, the first in order, their begetter,
4   And demiurge Tia-mat, who gave birth to them all;
5   They had mingled their waters together
6   Before meadow-land had coalesced and reed-bed was to he found —
7   When not one of the gods had been formed
8   Or had come into being, when no destinies had been decreed,
9   The gods were created within them:
10   Lah(mu and Lah(amu were formed and came into being.
11   While they grew and increased in stature
12   Anšar and Kišar, who excelled them, were created.

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The myths and stories associated with Uranus and even Uranus himself are far older than even the “Golden Age” myths and stories associated with Kornos/Saturn, and has been fused with the later figure, much later in history. Uranus begins as the “first” god of the planets in the Greek myths. In the end, he is robbed, usurped, castrated and forgotten and all of his strong attributes are taken on by Saturn and Kronos and his sons. Hesiod in Theogony (176-190) tells us further:

Great Ouranos came, bringing the night, and spread out around Gaia, desiring philotês, and was extended. His son reached out from ambush with his left hand, and in his right he held the sickle, long and serrated and the genitals of his father he quickly reaped and threw them behind his back to be carried away. But they did not flee from his hand fruitlessly. As many drops of blood spurted forth, all of them Gaia received. In the revolving years, she bore the powerful Erinyes, and great Giants, gleaming in their armor, holding long spears in their hands, and the nymphs whom they call the Ash Tree Nymphs across endless Gaia. As soon as Kronos lopped off the genitals with the sickle, they fell from the mainland into the much-surging sea, so that the sea carried them for a long time.

Uranus is also equated with the “sky” only because of the proximity with Gaia in the myth as its said Uranus would “come upon Gaia at night” by force. Gaia is only Uranus’s wife “by proxy” because Uranus raped Gaia (as some sources point to her being his mother–hence incest), hence why she wants him castrated and gets Saturn to do it! In actual Euhemerist history, kings following the “divine right” of kings tradition could take any women of the land he desired by royal decree. That’s why El, the prototype Yahweh, in the Ugarit texts, is a drunk god, who quite literally falls in his own shit:

This tale from Ugaritic concerning the god El, a precursor to the Judaic God, is well-known amongst students of Ugaritic. The contemporary summary is that El holds a party with all the gods, at which the moon disguises itself as a dog and runs about under the tables begging for scraps. El gets very drunk, has to be helped to court, and is attacked by a strange creature in his drunken stupor. El defecates and falls in his own shit. The story then concludes with what has been widely regarded as a hangover cure.

Uranus is left with a name that in English literally means, a flaming asshole! Uranus is “Ur” which means “flame” in Hebrew and “anus” which speaks for itself. Ouranos also ties with Anu, and you can see the linguistic connection The cuneiform character for “An” is also the same as “ilu,” the word for “god.” According to the Wikipedia of Anu, it reads:

Anu existed in Sumerian cosmogony as a dome that covered the flat earth; Outside of this dome was the primordial body of water known as Nammu (not to be confused with the subterranean Abzu).

In Sumerian, the designation “An” was used interchangeably with “the heavens” so that in some cases it is doubtful whether, under the term, the god An or the heavens is being denoted. The Akkadians inherited An as the god of heavens from the Sumerian as Anu-, and in Akkadian cuneiform, the DINGIR character may refer either to Anum or to the Akkadian word for god, ilu-, and consequently had two phonetic values an and il.

Even more fascinating is that there are in fact, two main competing deities in the Old Testament. Margaret Barker in the book The Great Angel: A Study of Israel’s Second Son, points out that the term “sons of God” were sometimes used for angels and sometimes used for kings or the people of Israel. There are actually two different words for God in Hebrew–El Elyon and Yahweh. The Elohim are the heavenly beings, or the angels, which are the sons of God, while the sons of Yahweh, are always humans. This indicates that Yahweh isn’t the Most High God, but rather, one of the sons of El Elyon! This seems to support the Gnostic account of creation and Eden, where the archons or fallen angels create Eden, and pull Adam and Eve from a higher spiritual dimension, into the lowest depths of matter. In the New Testament, Jesus is called the son of the Most High, that is the son of El Elyon. Luke 1:32 tells us:

He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.

Please note that Jesus is not called the “son of Yahweh,” anywhere in the New Testament. In fact, Jesus is called “Lord” himself, which is a term used for Yahweh in the Old Testament. Yahweh is presented as being the most prominent son of El Elyon. He is essentially the “chief” of the angels, who, like Lucifer in Isaiah, stole the throne for himself and becomes a jealous god of wrath. He is simply one of the sons of Elyon, who fathered children with human women as we see in Genesis 6:2-4, and 1 Enoch 6:7 and 59:2. As Barker points out, in the Qumran version of Deuteronomy 32:8-9, El Elyon divides the world up into different nations, one for each of his sons. Yahweh gets Israel, while other gods/angels get other nations. Yahweh, however, gets incredibly haughty and jealous of the other angels and becomes the most power hungry. In Daniel 10:13-14, these angels are called “princes,” where they fight against Yahweh and the archangel Michael.

13 But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days; and behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left alone there with the kings of Persia. 14 Now I have come to make you understand what will happen to your people in the latter days, for the vision refers to many days yet to come.

These rival gods challenge Yahweh in Job 1:6:

Now there was a day when the sons of El Elyon set themselves against Yahweh and Satan came also among them.

Here, we learn that Satan is one of the other sons of El Elyon, making him Yahweh’s brother and fellow god! Yahweh asks Job in 38:7:

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? […] when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of El shouted for joy?”

The creation of the other sons of El (angels) are mentioned in Jubilees 2:2.

For on the first day He created the heavens which are above and the earth and the waters and all the spirits which serve before him -the angels of the presence, and the angels of sanctification, and the angels [of the spirit of fire and the angels] of the spirit of the winds, and the angels of the spirit of the clouds, and of darkness, and of snow and of hail and of hoar frost, and the angels of the voices and of the thunder and of the lightning, and the angels of the spirits of cold and of heat, and of winter and of spring and of autumn and of summer and of all the spirits of his creatures which are in the heavens and on the earth, (He created) the abysses and the darkness, eventide <and night>, and the light, dawn and day, which He hath prepared in the knowledge of his heart.

In other words, El Elyon is the Jewish equivalent of Ouranos, El is Kronos/Enlil/ and Yahweh is the Jewish equivalent of Zeus/Marduk. The Sumerian god Enki is more like the serpent of Genesis and Lucifer. Jesus is really the son of Ouranos, or the deity that is above and controls the dome. El Elyon also corresponds to the Sumerian Anu, as well. El Elyon is basically the “Ancient of Days.” The description of Yahweh that Ezekiel provides is that this god is bronze from the waist up and made of fire from the waist down with a rainbow surrounding him (Ezekiel 1:27-28). This matches with Ouranos’s description of being “bronze” or “brazen.” However, when you look up in the sky, it is not brazen. Interesting, no?

Astronomically speaking, Uranus is also the strangest planet in the solar system as its sitting on a 98-degree angle on its side! Scientists believe Uranus was “knocked over” via an impact that happened before Uranus settled in its now stationary orbit. In all mythologies, Saturn usurps the position of the Sun (Helios) in eminence which is associated with the highest divinity, and he also does with the first planet in the mythos, Uranus, who just so happens to be the seventh planet from the sun. So in Greek mythology, the “first god” being Uranus is left “dead” in mythos, castrated, impotent, forgotten as being “up there.”

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Jesus in Matthew 14:22-33, performs a miracle of walking on water and calming the storms, which is similar to the idea of the Leviathan/Yam who traverses the brazen laver or Ouranos. Jesus essentially brings order to the chaotic waters of the sea–indicting his structural powers as the Platonic Logos as discussed in the Gospel of John’s prologue. Such an idea reminds us of Philip K Dick’s comment about this subject in his seminal essay, How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later.

In Plato’s Timaeus, God does not create the universe, as does the Christian God; He simply finds it one day. It is in a state of total chaos. God sets to work to transform the chaos into order. That idea appeals to me, and I have adapted it to fit my own intellectual needs: What if our universe started out as not quite real, a sort of illusion, as the Hindu religion teaches, and God, out of love and kindness for us, is slowly transmuting it, slowly and secretly, into something real?

Now, flip the picture upside down and you can picture the Leviathan/Yam under the celestial sea/firmament. Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun, while Saturn is the sixth. Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun and Saturn is the sixth. In Judaism, the seventh planet is actually Saturn, because the celestial luminaries begin with the Sun as being the first body or “head” of the Solar System. The Jewish Menorah represents the Sun and the six classical planets, from Mercury to Saturn. The Middle stick represents the Sun or “Shamash.” The seventh letter in Hebrew also has phallic connotations, as it represents the erect penis or sword. More on this later…

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Perhaps “the heavens” are analogous to a computer CPU or hardware, and the firmament is like a 3D printer or a projection screen. God inputs a program into the computer, pushes start and the firmament prints out or projects the physical additions to the world. In 1 Enoch 18:1, it has the following to say about the firmament:

I saw the treasuries of all the winds: I saw how He had furnished with them the whole creation and the firm foundations of the earth. 2. And I saw the corner-stone of the earth: I saw the four winds which bear [ the earth and ] the firmament of the heaven. 3. And I saw how the winds stretch out the vaults of heaven, and have their station between heaven and earth: these are the pillars of the heaven . 4. I saw the winds of heaven which turn and bring the circumference of the sun and all the stars to their setting. 5. I saw the winds on the earth carrying the clouds: I saw the paths of the angels. I saw at the end of the earth the firmament of the heaven above. And I proceeded and saw a place which burns day and night, where there are seven mountains of magnificent stones, three towards the east, and three towards the south. 7. And as for those towards the east, 〈 one 〉 was of coloured stone, and one of pearl, and one of jacinth, and those towards the south of red stone. 8. But the middle one reached to heaven like the throne of God, of alabaster, and the summit of the throne was of sapphire. 9. And I saw a flaming fire. And beyond these mountains 10. is a region the end of the great earth: there the heavens were completed. 11. And I saw a deep abyss, with columns of heavenly fire, and among them I saw columns of fire fall, which were beyond measure alike towards the height and towards the depth. 12. And beyond that abyss I saw a place which had no firmament of the heaven above, and no firmly founded earth beneath it: there was no water upon it, and no birds, but it was a waste and horrible place.

Enoch saw the abyss, “a waste a horrible place”, that didn’t have the firmament above, nor earth beneath it. Perhaps there was nothing there as there was no vault or 3D printer there to create anything. In other words, this was the primordial chaos that existed before creation was kick-started in the Big Bang, which is essentially a brutal Demiurgical act.

I realize I am probably being too liberal with my interpretations of these texts and myths but thought I’d put them out there regardless. Perhaps this “vault” may be influenced on some level through the collective consciousness or will of the human race but not on the level of the God or the gods, or whatever demiurgical force used the firmament or Ouranos to create reality. This is all reminiscent of the sci-fi film Dark City, in which the main character uses his tuning powers to influence the reality of the false noirish 1950’s styled city, built on a space ship disc that looks like a “flat earth” that keeps its human hosts in a state of constant night and unreality, where the “Strangers” being alien creatures inhabiting pale dead humans have been secretly influencing them and study their subjects due to their jealousy of them containing immaterial souls and spirits. On a side note, I suppose many will accuse me of being a flat earther now, as I am not. Many of those types are insanely dogmatic about it. But let’s just go with the flow with the information presented here. So how does all of this connect to Saturn?

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We already saw how Saturn hacked off Uranus’s genitals and goes missing. Before this incident, Uranus would, in essence, urinate on Gaia as the rainmaker, which gave rise to her fertility, manifesting in the form of flora and fauna. Since Uranus ruled and wore the crown, the urine was golden–hence the Golden Age! The Greek historian Plutarch in On Isis and Osiris, states that Set/Typhon steals and dismembered the corpse of his brother Osiris into fourteen pieces, only after Isis has retrieved it. Isis then finds and buries each piece of her husband’s body, with the exception of the penis, which she reconstructs with magic because the original was eaten by fish in the river. Plutarch states this is the reason the Egyptians had a taboo against eating fish.

From this idea, we can surmise that when Saturn hacks off Ouranos’s genitals, he in essence, strips his grandfather, or the “firmament” that hovers over Gaia (being the Earth) of his creative powers. Now, Saturn/Kronos has the ability to create and shape reality on his own accord, much like the Gnostic Demiurge Ialdabaoth does in the Gnostic literature. In other words, Saturn has the phallic prowess/crown/scepter or the adamantine scythe to wield with might against all of creation. And yet, he too is overthrown by his divine descendant–this time being Zeus–down into Tartarus. In Hesiod’s Theogony, we next read that Ouranos’s dismembered genitals actually gave rise to the majestic and beautiful goddess Aphrodite! This reminds us when in Genesis 2:22, God creates woman or Eve from Adam’s rib.

Around them a white foam from the immortal skin began to arise. In it, a maiden was nurtured. First, she drew near holy Kythera, and from there she arrived at Kypros surrounded by water. From within, a majestic and beautiful goddess stepped, and all around grass grew beneath her slender feet. Aphrodite [foam-born goddess and fair-wreathed Kythereia] gods and men call her because she was nurtured in foam. But they call her Kythereia because she happened upon Kythera, and Kyprogenes because she was born in much-surging Kypros, and Philommeides because she appeared out of genitals.

Genesis 19:13 tells us:

13 I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.

In Genesis 17:11, it tells us further:

And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you.

And finally in Exodus 13:16, it tells us:

16 And it shall be for a token upon thine hand, and for frontlets between thine eyes: for by strength of hand the Lord brought us forth out of Egypt.

The circumcision of the head of the penis symbolizes the covenant between Jehovah and his slave race–humanity. It, in essence, symbolizes the castration of Ouranos by Saturn/Kronos! The top of the penis is the head, and has only “one eye” and must be circumcised because of the Glory of Jehovah. Do it or you are toast! Genesis 17:14 reads:

And the uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant.

Why is this so? Because Jehovah recognizes the circumcision or self-sacrifice of the Israelites as a covenant in that they too are in a sense “castrated” much like Saturn’s grandfather. In fact, the very word “covenant” means “to cut” and “to eat/consume” in Hebrew! Circumcision was a covenant of “cutting” and “consuming”! Does that mean Jehovah was literally consuming the cut penis parts of the Israelites? A very bizarre concept indeed but it correlates to the idea that Saturn ate many of his children that could potentially become the next generation of gods. Perhaps this indicates that Saturn was trying to prevent a new reality, or the beginning of time that we exist in now, from taking place. Also, keep in mind that Satan in many medieval depictions of Hell is often illustrated with consuming the souls of the damned.

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Ritual sacrifices done to the god Saturn in Rome were done in this regard, according to the Wikipedia entry on Saturn.

Sacrifices to Saturn were performed according to “Greek rite” (ritus graecus), with the head uncovered, in contrast to those of other major Roman deities, which were performed capite velato, “with the head covered.” Saturn himself, however, was represented as veiled (involutus), as for example in a wall painting from Pompeii that shows him holding a sickle and covered with a white veil.

The Holy of Holies or the Ark of the Covenant guarded by the Seraphim in the Temple of Solomon or the First Jewish Temple are also veiled from the public as well as the High Priests of Levite (Leviathan) for most of the year. Adam and Eve’s genitals were also covered by skins to cover their shame in the Garden of Eden, after they consumed the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. We are speaking here about the phallus and the creative power of God or the gods, which is mirrored in all creation–especially in humanity. In the Heliopolitan Egyptian creation myth, Atum was considered to be the first god, which is the equivalent to the Sumerian Abzu or the Greek Khaos or even the Hindu Brahman. It is said that Atum created a pair of a god and goddess, by spitting from his mouth, and also used a metaphor of masturbation and ejaculating lower divine powers! This is why there are so many landmarks and monuments with overt phallic imagery like the Washington monument or the Eiffel tower. Yahweh also does his best to hide his glory from the Israelites in Exodus 33:22:

21Then the LORD said, “Behold, there is a place by Me, and you shall stand there on the rock; 22and it will come about, while My glory is passing by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with My hand until I have passed by. 23“Then I will take My hand away and you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.”…

Next, we will be heading into stranger territory. We read in 1 Samuel 18:27:

Wherefore David arose and went, he and his men, and slew of the Philistines two hundred men; and David brought their foreskins, and they gave them in full tale to the king, that he might be the king’s son in law. And Saul gave him Michal his daughter to wife.

Next up in 2 Samuel 3:14, King David does something unthinkable:

And David sent messengers to Ishbosheth Saul’s son, saying, Deliver me my wife Michal, which I espoused to me for an hundred foreskins of the Philistines.

Now, let’s see–kill them first then cut off their foreskins or purchase a wife for a hundred of these foreskins? What the fucking fuck? In Leviticus 19:23, God tells his people that (yet again), they cannot eat of the fruit of the trees while being uncircumcised:

And when ye shall come into the land, and shall have planted all manner of trees for food, then ye shall count the fruit thereof as uncircumcised : three years shall it be as uncircumcised unto you: it shall not be eaten of.

Now, after the great war between the Olympian gods and the Titans, Gaia takes revenge by making a pact with Tartarus (the Underworld) to create a devastating monster meant to destroy Zeus and take his place and call him “Typhoeus” or Typhon, which corresponds to Set/Seth of the Egyptians. In Hesiod’s Theogony, we read:

When Zeus drove the Titans from Olympus, monstrous Gaia bore her last child Typhoeus in philotês with Tartaros through golden Aphrodite. His hands were strong (?)–corrupt line– The feet of the powerful god were weariless. From his shoulders were a hundred head of a dreadful serpent dragon, licking with dark tongues. The eyes on the monster’s ineffable heads flashed fire beneath their brows [From all the heads, as he looked, burned fire.] Voices were in all his dreadful heads, emitting sounds of all sorts, unutterable by gods. Sometimes they spoke so gods could comprehend. Sometimes they emitted the cry of a bull, unchecked in might, proud of voice, sometimes the cry of a lion having a shameless spirit, sometimes sounds like puppies, a wonder to hear, sometimes he hissed, and the lofty mountains rumbled. A unmanageable deed would have been done that day, and Typhoeos would have become lord for mortals and immortals, had not the father of men and gods keenly attended. He thundered harsh and strong, and all around, Gaia resounded awfully, and the wide Ouranos above and the sea and streams of Okeanos and Gaia’s Tartaros.

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We see Typhon attack and wage war against the heavens, with trowing flaming rocks at it, while hissing and screaming and gushing with dragon like streams of fire from his mouth. The sight alone of Typhon was enough for the Olympian gods to flee with terror. But the mighty Zeus is unwavered by the hellish monster and decides to fight back, reminding us the moment Yahweh struggles against the primal sea monster, Leviathan as recorded in Job 41, Isaiah 27:1 and Psalm 74.

Beneath the god’s immortal feet as he moved ` was quivering great Olympus. Gaia was groaning. Heat from both of them gripped the violet-like sea, heat from the thunder and flash and fire from the monster and thunderbolts and winds and scorching lightning. All the earth boiled and Ouranos and the sea. Huge waves raged along the shores round and about, at the fury of the immortals, and an endless quaking arose. Hades, lording over the wasted dead men, and the Titans under Tartaros who around Kronos, trembled with the endless din and terrible battle-strife. When Zeus lifted up his might and seized his weapons, thunder, flash, and gleaming lightning, he leaped up from Olympus and smote them. All about he set fire to the dread monster’s divine heads. But when he had subdued him, flogging him with blows, Typhoeos collapsed, crippled, and monstrous Gaia was groaning. From the lightning-smote lord, a flame shot forth in the mountain glens dark and craggy as he was struck. And monstrous Gaia was burning all over with an ineffable blast and melted like tin heated beneath the skill of craftsmen in bellowed crucibles or iron, which is the strongest of all things, being subdued in the mountain glens by blazing fire, melts in the shining earth beneath Hephaestos’ hands. In this way, Gaia was melting from the flame of the blazing fire. And Zeus in terrible anger threw Typhoeus into wide Tartaros.

Greek Gods.com remarks further about this harrowing episode:

When Athena, the goddess of wisdom, accused Zeus for cowardness, he decided to confront Typhon. Armed with thunder and lightnings, he struck at the monster with a sickle and then chased him until Mount Casion, which rises over Syria.

Seeing Typhon severely wounded, Zeus engaged him in a hand-to-hand combat. But all at once,Typhon wrapped Zeus in his coils, held him firmly and wrested the sickle from him. Typhon soon left Zeus helpless by cutting the tendons from his hands and feet. Then he took Zeus to the Corycian Cave, on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, and appointed his sister Delphyne, a she-dragon that was half beast and half maiden, to guard Zeus.

However, Hermes, the son of Zeus and the goat-footed Aigipan managed to fit the tendons back into Zeus without being observed. Immediately after Zeus recovered his strength, he made a sudden descent from heaven on a chariot drawn by a winged horse. Hurling thunderbolts, he pursued Typhon strongly and when they reached the island of Sicily, Zeus threw the enormous Mount Aetna at the monster, pinning him underneath.

And so we have, Zeus who uses the sickle or scythe of Saturn against Typhon–the very weapon forged from Ouranos’s genitals! And another thing about Zeus is that his father Saturn is fooled into thinking he ate Zeus when a rock was thrown into Saturn’s mouth.

In the Gnostic text, Hypostasis of the Archons, we see the same thing happen with Sabaoth, with the help of Sophia and Zoe, supplanting and usurping Yaldabaoth’s rulership, while casting him into Tartarus, the same prison where the titans were condemned to stay in.

This ruler, by being androgynous, made himself a vast realm, an extent without limit. And he contemplated creating offspring for himself, and created for himself seven offspring, androgynous just like their parent. And he said to his offspring, “It is I who am god of the entirety.”

And Zoe (Life), the daughter of Pistis Sophia, cried out and said to him, “You are mistaken, Sakla!” – for which the alternative name is Yaltabaoth. She breathed into his face, and her breath became a fiery angel for her; and that angel bound Yaldabaoth and cast him down into Tartaros below the abyss.

Now when his offspring Sabaoth saw the force of that angel, he repented and condemned his father and his mother, matter. He loathed her, but he sang songs of praise up to Sophia and her daughter Zoe. And Sophia and Zoe caught him up and gave him charge of the seventh heaven, below the veil between above and below. And he is called ‘God of the forces, Sabaoth’, since he is up above the forces of chaos, for Sophia established him.

Revelation 13:3-4 tells us:

And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with him?

And Revelation 14:14 tells us that the Son of Man’s second coming will be displayed with a golden crown and a sharp sickle!

And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle.

Matthew 24:30 might as well read:

And then shall appear the sign of the Son of [Saturn] in heaven [The Crown/Bow/Phallus/Penis] and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of [Saturn] coming in the clouds of [Ouranos] with power and great glory.

I am not sure what to make of all this information. Perhaps what all these ancient myths are pointing to is that according to what the ancients thought, that there were several ancient gods and powers that held great authority and sway over the world, and are all vying for power over reality itself. The line of usurped succession being Ouranos, Kronos and finally, Zeus underscores this fact. I do think that these pagan deities overlap, though. They’re too similar to be coincidental. I think we may be dealing with the same group of deities manifested in different forms to various peoples and cultures throughout history. From the looks of it, Yahweh is simply another one of these beings, part of the same ancient pantheon of deities from which all these pagan deities ultimately derive. He may or may not be higher up in the chain of being, but I still don’t consider him anywhere near the absolute god. It is no secret that these same pagan gods are reduced to mere archons, fallen angels, principalities and powers in the post-Christian and proto-Gnostic worldview as we see in Ephesians 6:12:

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

Ephesians 2:1-3, Paul tells us also that the prince of the power of the air, which the same as the Greek primeval god/Titan Aer, which is a lower manifestation of the goddess Titan, Khaos:

And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, 2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.

Paul clearly also equates outward circumcision of the foreskin with being bereft of Christ in Galatians 5:2:

Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.

Was Paul and the later Gnostikoi reacting against the traditional Roman/Greek/Jew myths with their own revelations of a higher god beyond the dome? It is clear that Kronos/Jehovah is not exactly a benevolent deity and is always seeking to expand his dominance over the face of the world with his constant demands of sacrifice to him and in effect steal the creative power of Ouranos. Genesis tells us that this same God created the “heavens and the earth,” making him higher than Ouranos and Gaia. And yet, the Orthodox narrative has Yahweh sending his own Son (the Messiah) to be brutally tortured and executed as a convict as well as a blood atonement for the sins of the world. Kronos created the prison mankind find themselves in, and cut mankind off from everything outside, being the dome or Ouranos that covers over the world. Kronos cut off the phallus of Ouranos, and Yahweh demands his followers cut off the foreskin of their penises–symbolizing the covenant between the gods and mortals in that the Jews and the rest of the human race submit to their influence. They are essentially prison wardens, and the chief archons guarding as Paul puts it, the “aion of the kosmos,” which is essentially a reference to Saturn. They feed off of their followers like vampires or parasites–because without the help, belief, and sacrifices of humanity, the gods might as well not even exist and dissolve back into primordial chaos! Perhaps this is what the Gospel of Philip is telling us:

That is the way it is in the world – men make gods and worship their creation. It would be fitting for the gods to worship men!

I realize how insane, fantastic and delusional how all of this might sound to a secular humanist/atheist but I’m not here to pander to Dawkins/militant atheist types. In a general sense, the difference between pagan religions and Gnosis, though, is that the pagan religions were very naturalistic and animistic. They revered and worshiped nature, contrary to despising it. Gnosticism, in that sense, is kind of inverted paganism. It acknowledges the existence of these pagan deities, and their involvement in the creation of the world, but deems them evil/imperfect and to be avoided. That is not to say that many Gnostic sects like the Naasenes and Ophites often referred to many of the pagan mysteries in their exegesis and rituals, as church fathers like Hippolytus were hell-bent on emphasizing this fact. The famous Ophite Bowl also has many references to many pagan Orphic powers and deities, as well. The idea of creating and shaping one’s reality to your will is something that is worth exploring further in future posts. Anyway, I think I’ve gone long enough so here are just some thoughts I have on all this.