In my upcoming book The Sun Lady Unveiled, I discuss many connections that intertwine with Revelation 12 and the rest of the Apocalypse. There is some information that I wanted to explore but did not have the time to devote to it in the book–until now.
Warning: Controversial Research Up Ahead!
The King of Saturnalia
As the festivities and gift-giving for Saturnalia begin, the synchronicities add up to this holiday. For the Romans, Saturnalia was a time of remembrance of a former aeon or epoch of time that being the Golden Age when ruled over by Saturn. This was commemorated in the five-day period between December 25 and January 1. This was a time outside of time, and an occasion for freedom from the constraints of the world, signaled by the return of Sol Invictus. Saturnalia was celebrated with indulgence as a festival for total liberty and freedom where no authority, wars, and submission were recognized during this sacred period. This holiday also included role reversals of master and slave in banquets, gift-giving, gambling, and an appointment of a “king” of Saturnalia, as a “lord of misrule” where the appointed temporary emperor would give absurd commands to his subjects to create a state of chaos until he is ritually sacrificed in honor of the gods. These freed slaves wore a distinctive floppy cap at Saturnalia known as a pileus or cap of liberty, which is where Santa’s hat comes from. The custom of slaves and masters swapping places made the pileus the customary hat-wear during the Saturnalia festivities. The rejoicing of Saturnalia ended between December 23 and January 1. Over at Antiquitatem, the author tells us more about this festival:
In many cultures the birth of the New Year is associated with the birth of a divine child, with the birth of a sun god. Moreover, the Roman calendar fixed the dates of the numerous religious festivals of the inhabitants of Latium in honor of their gods. In December, they celebrated several parties which are reflected in the current calendar precisely in our Christmas party.
In fact, during the Roman Empire three parties were held in December and they were simultaneous in some of the seven days when they were celebrated: the Saturnalia, the Opalia and Sigillaria. The “sigillaria” are so called from sigilla, or oscilla, small ceramic figures. At this party, trading posts with ceramic figures to give children away as toys were mounted like a fashion market.
These small clay images are memories of ancient sacrificial rituals in which the victim was replaced by the clay figurine. In these Roman celebrations thus we find different elements of our current Christmas and Carnival.
In late December, they especially celebrated the “Saturnalia”, the feast of Saturn, god to whom they attributed the introduction of agriculture and civilized life. Saturn is one of the ancient gods of Latium and his worship and celebration seems to have fallen and reborn several times during the Latin history.
Saturnalia’s connection with Christianity is also covered in the same article.
In the early centuries of Christianity, the birth of Jesus and his baptism took place on the 6th of January, Epiphany Day (from the Greek επιφάνεια which means: “manifestation, apparition”) and it is still held on that date in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
In the West the sixth day of January we celebrate the curious feast of “The three Wise Men”, who according to Saint Matthew’s gospel came to offer their gifts to the baby Jesus, who had just been born in Judea. To remember and imitate it, toys and many other kinds of presents are given to children on the 6th of January in some countries like Spain.
The first written reference to Epiphany as a Christian feast appears in the year 361 in Ammianus Marcellinus, XXI, 2.5:
“And in order temporarily to conceal this (that he had renounced Christianity), on the day of the festival which the Christians celebrate in the month of January and call the Epiphany, he went to their church, and departed after offering a prayer to their deity in the usual manner.”
(Ammianus Marcellinus, Rerum Gestarum John C. Rolfe, Ph.D., Litt.D., Ed.)
In its Latin version:
“Et ut haec interim celarentur, feriarum die, quem celebrantes mense Ianuario Christiani Epiphania dictitant, progressus in eorum ecclesiam, sollemniter numine orato discessit.
And Epiphanius of Salamis also concretes in his Panarion, LI, 27, 4 that the birth of Christ was on January 6th:
(…) the Epiphany of the Lord, January 5th, at the dawn of January 6th, and the eleventh day of the Egyptian month Tybi.
Indeed, Jesus was a demigod born of a virgin who was worshiped as a divine child by Zoroastrian astrologers who offered him gold and incense. His birth is celebrated during the winter solstice on the very same date that Saturnalia and Solis Invicti was observed on the Roman calendar. Jesus was crucified, buried, and resurrected during the vernal equinox. He had 12 disciples in accordance with the 12 zodiac signs. He had 72 disciples representing the 72 classical nations. His ministry lasted 3 and a half years (7 divided by two).
For the Neo-Platonic philosopher Porphyry, Saturnalia represented the liberation of souls to be absorbed into the Good from the slavery of matter and Fate, as he reveals in On The Cave of Nymphs. Porphyry claimed that Mithras is actually the Demiurge and “lord of generation” much like Saturn is considered the same by the Peratic Gnostics as Hippolytus claims.
For the Romans celebrate their Saturnalia when the Sun is in Capricorn, and during this festivity, slaves wear the shoes of those that are free, and all things are distributed among them in common; the legislator obscurely signifying by this ceremony that through this gate of the heavens, those who are now born slaves will be liberated through the Saturnian festival, and the house attributed to Saturn, i.e., Capricorn, when they live again and return to the fountain of life. Since, however, the path from Capricorn is adapted to ascent, hence the Romans denominate that month in which the Sun, turning from Capricorn to the east, directs his course to the north, Januanus, or January, from janua, a gate. But with the Egyptians, the beginning of the year is not Aquarius, as with the Romans, but Cancer. For the star Sothis, which the Greeks call the Dog, is near to Cancer.
And the rising of Sothis is the new moon with them, this being the principle of generation to the world. On this account, the gates of the Homeric cavern are not dedicated to the east and west, nor to the equinoctial signs, Aries and Libra, but to the north and south, and to those celestial signs which towards the south are most southerly, and, towards the north are most northerly; because this cave was sacred to souis and aquatic nymphs. But these places are adapted to souls descending into generation, and afterwards separating themselves from it. Hence, a place near to the equinoctial circle was assigned to Mithra as an appropriate seat. And on this account he bears the sword of Aries, which is a martial sign. He is likewise carried in the Bull, which is the sign of Venus. For Mithra. as well as the Bull, is the Demiurgus and lord of generation (note 13).
In the Christian historian and Theologian Sextus Julius Africanus’ Narrative of Events Happening in Persia on the Birth of Christ, it relates vaguely to the journey of the Zoroastrian Magi from the East. Starting in a temple to Juno in Persia built by King Cyrus, it includes an account of arguing statues, a prophecy about a king of the Jews, the pagan god Dionysus, and a trip to Jerusalem to visit the infant Jesus and Mary. The descriptions of Mary and her son Jesus (as the queen of heaven and Jupiter), however, are far more interesting, however, since they appear to be more pagan than Christian.
As we look at the Talmudic writings of the Avodah Zarah 8a, it tells us that Saturnalia was actually Jewish in its origin (depending on your viewpoint). It also has a very negative view of Christianity and Christians, much like the rest of the Babylonian Talmud. It tells us that Adam thought that since the days were becoming shorter, his sin in the Garden is what caused creation to return back to a state of chaos and darkness.
With regard to the dates of these festivals, the Sages taught: When Adam the first man saw that the day was progressively diminishing, as the days become shorter from the autumnal equinox until the winter solstice, he did not yet know that this is a normal phenomenon, and therefore he said: Woe is me; perhaps because I sinned the world is becoming dark around me and will ultimately return to the primordial state of chaos and disorder. And this is the death that was sentenced upon me from Heaven, as it is written: “And to dust shall you return” (Genesis 3:19). He arose and spent eight days in fasting and in prayer.
Once he saw that the season of Tevet, i.e., the winter solstice, had arrived, and saw that the day was progressively lengthening after the solstice, he said: Clearly, the days become shorter and then longer, and this is the order of the world. He went and observed a festival for eight days. Upon the next year, he observed both these eight days on which he had fasted on the previous year, and these eight days of his celebration, as days of festivities. He, Adam, established these festivals for the sake of Heaven, but they, the gentiles of later generations, established them for the sake of idol worship.
In Timothy Chilman’s The Christmas Conspiracy, he tells us more about this festival and its connections between Mithraism and Christianity.
The Saturnalia came between the other agricultural festivals of the Consualia and the Opalia. The Consualia coincided with the opening of granaries and honored Consus, god of the granary. The Opalia honored Ops, Saturn’s wife, who was linked to the fruits of the earth and is what we now call “Mother Nature.” Other festivals around this time were Dies Juvenalis— the Coming of Age for Young Men—and Janus Day. Juventas was the god of male youth and the two-faced Janus was that of beginnings and gates. The last god commemorated was Mithras, whose religion started in Persia in the 15th century BCE. “Mitra” meant “sun” or “friend,” and Mithras was a sun god who merged with the Roman sun god Sol Invictus, himself a Syrian creation. Mithras was worshiped by the military and upper classes of Rome. The Roman Emperor claimed to be an incarnation of this god, and Mithraism eventually became the official, main religion of the confusingly polytheist Roman Empire. Mithras was born of a virgin on December 25th, the date that became Dies Natalis Solis Invicti—the Nativity of the Invincible Sun. Mithras had twelve followers, promised immortality, refrained from sexual intercourse, performed miracles, and rose again three days after dying to redeem mankind. Followers of Mithras marked his passing with a sacred meal of bread and wine: The bread represented the flesh of Mithras and the wine, his blood.
Chilman tells us more about the Lord of Misrule as well:
The general public also had a Lord of Misrule. The winter solstice marked the death and rebirth of the sun king Sol Invictus. Instead of killing a real monarch, a Lord of Misrule was appointed for Saturnalia, usually a criminal or slave. He was given royal robes and feathers or ass ears. He was honored as a true king until the end of the festival, whereupon he was killed on the altar of Saturn. The mocking (“mock-king”) of Jesus by Roman soldiers in the run-up to his crucifixion would seem to have been inspired by this.
Emancipated slaves wore a felt cap called a “pilleus,” but during the Saturnalia, everyone wore them. The ideal party had an attendance of “more than the graces” (three) but “less than the Muses” (nine).
The feet of the statue of Saturn in the Roman Forum were normally bound but were untied over Saturnalia. Punishments were suspended and wars had to wait until later. This behavior carried down to the level of individuals, who put grudges aside and did not chastise their slaves for the duration.
In the book Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion, Volume 2: Transition and Reversal in Myth and Ritual by Henk Versnel, he writes that the saying “Io Saturnalia” was a greeting that a slave would say to his master, in their roles reversed, among other situations. The same author tells us more about Saturn:
A majority of scholars agree that Saturn must at some time have been a chthonic deity, somehow connected with agriculture, and more specifically with the corn harvest. According to some of them his chthonic nature involved more gloomy aspects as well: connections with death and the underworld.
Henk Versnel also correctly associates Saturn with the sower and the end of such sowing with the sickle being used for the harvest in the fall/winter months. This is very much connected to the Mithraic Sator Square in ritual magic and the Chi-Rho symbol of Orthodox Christianity–both of which connect to Saturn/Chronos (see the videos below). Saturn’s consort, Ops Consiva, also ruled over the corn harvest which typically happened in August. The Orphic version of Chronos, being the embodiment of time in pre-Socratic literature, was also depicted as a serpent with three heads–those of a man, a lion, and a bull–reminding us of the Gnostic depictions of the Demiurge along with the Biblical depictions of the tetramorphs. He and his consort Ananke (Inevitability), circled the world primal egg in their coils and split it apart to form the ordered universe of earth, sea, and sky, much like the Gnostic Ouroboros.
The Titan Chronos is depicted as an Angipide with a bull and lion head, much like the later depictions of Behemoth, tetramorphs, and the Gnostic demon Ialdabaoth.
Phanes/Eros.
This is, of course, reminiscent of the Orphic myths of the Hermaphroditic Phanes. In the Orphic cosmology, the unaging Chronos produced Aether and Chaos and made a silvery egg in the Divine Aether. It produced the Hermaphroditic god Phanes, who gave birth to the first generation of gods and is the ultimate creator of the cosmos. Pherecydes of Syros in his now lost Heptamychos (the seven recesses), around the 6th century, claimed that there were three eternal principles: Chronos, Zas (Zeus), and Cthonie (the Chthonic). The semen of Chronos was placed in recesses of matter and produced the first generation of the gods.
Chronos was also depicted in Greco-Roman mosaics as a man turning the Zodiac Wheel, much like Aion, the god of Eternal Time. Chronos, however, is usually depicted as an old man with a gray or white beard. Some of the current English words have their etymological roots in kronos/chronos such as chronology, chronometer, chronic, anachronism, and chronicle. The word synchronicity is also connected as well–hence the title. The link between Chronos and chronology will be made evident soon in another post.
Neil Hague, the artist of many covers of David Icke’s books, also has this to say on the Lord of Misrule, in his article Merry Saturnalia.
The Lord of Misrule was generally a peasant or sub-deacon appointed to be in charge of Christmas revelries, which often included drunkenness and ‘wild partying’, in the pagan tradition of Saturnalia. Sounds like every town in the UK to me? The Roman emperor Nero played the role of Saturnalia in his youth. Whereas the first emperor Augustus celebrated the ‘Golden Age of Saturn’ it was eventually lost.
Saturnalia and misrule makes a ‘mockery of a world’ in which law was determined by one man and the traditional social and political networks are reduced to the power of the emperor over his subjects. In general terms, Saturnalia was the celebration of the longing for Saturn to reign again, as in ancient times. The donkey or Ass was another symbol of misrule and ‘mockery of law and order’, ‘title and kingship’. In Ancient Egypt Seth, the enemy of Osiris (his brother) had the image of a donkey. That’s why Apuleius in his Golden Ass describes a great metamorphosis, the transformation of Lucius to a donkey and his way back – spiritual evolution towards the human being. Jesus also was said to ride into Jerusalem on a donkey.
The Lord of Misrule is placed on an Ass (or depicted as one) as a symbol of the King of Saturnalia. He rides the donkey facing backwards as a symbol of ‘inversion’ at this time of year.
In this case donkey represents sexuality, instincts, sensuality, ignorance. A red donkey was said to be one of the dangerous creatures that the soul met in its journey after death – possibly an archon of sorts? The Ass and the Lord of Misrule go together at both Saturnalia (Christmas) and Ostara (Easter).
According to the anthropologist James Frazer in his book The New Golden Bough, he says there was a darker side [and the rest] to the Saturnalia festival. In Durostorum on the Danube (modern Silistra), Roman soldiers would choose a man from among them to be the Lord of Misrule for thirty days. At the end of those thirty days, his throat was cut on the altar of Saturn. Similar origins of the British Lord of Misrule, as a ‘sacrificial king’ (a temporary king, as Frazer puts it) who was later put to death for the benefit of all, have also been recorded. See the movie The Wicker Man starring the late Lord of Misrule himself – Christopher Lee. I once stood next to Lee at a Eurostar waiting area over a decade ago and he seemed a very ‘strange’ man to me.
The sordid and sinister rituals that are hinted at in the Kubrick movie Eye’s Wide Shut also happen at Christmas. Note the Sun (Saturn) Star featuring in the Illuminati-style Elite parties early on in the film. Sex is a big part of Saturnalia and of course it plays a big part in Kubrick’s film too.
Over at the Wikipedia entry of the Lord of Misrule, it discusses the Christian Church’s response to this dark pagan tradition:
On 1 January, AD 400, the bishop Asterius of Amasea in Pontus (modern Amasya, Turkey) preached a sermon against the Feast of Calends (“this foolish and harmful delight”) that describes the role of the mock king in Late Antiquity. The New Year’s feast included children arriving at each doorstep, exchanging their gifts for reward:
This festival teaches even the little children, artless and simple, to be greedy, and accustoms them to go from house to house and to offer novel gifts, fruits covered with silver tinsel. For these they receive, in return, gifts double their value, and thus the tender minds of the young begin to be impressed with that which is commercial and sordid.
— Asterius, in “Oratio 4: Adversus Kalendarum Festum”
It contrasted with the Christian celebration held, not by chance, on the adjoining day:
We celebrate the birth of Christ, since at this time God manifested himself in the flesh. We celebrate the Feast of Lights (Epiphany), since by the forgiveness of our sins we are led forth from the dark prison of our former life into a life of light and uprightness.
— Asterius, “Oratio 4”
The idea of a “lord of misrule” during Saturnalia also reminds us of the Donkey Priest that the Church Fathers mention, including Tertullian. This ass-faced scapegoat messiah connects to Baphomet of the Oriental Templars and the redeemed Gnostic archon, Sabaoth also called the “Lord of Forces” in Gnostic scripture like Hypostasis of the Archons and On The Origin of the World. This donkey god can also be connected to Yahweh/Jehovah as Epiphanius in the Panarion (26:12:1-4), reveals when Gnostics thought that whenever the Jewish high priest would enter the Holy of Holies of the Jerusalem temple to make sacrifice, they would wear little bells so that it would give Yahweh enough time to hide his true form as a donkey god. This same Donkey Priest may also be connected to Typhon-Set of the Egyptians and Greeks, as one website explains:
Three and a half centuries before Christ, Plato expressed his opinion of evil by saying that “there is in matter a blind, refractory force, which resists the will of the Great Artificer.” This blind force, under Christian influx, was made to see and become responsible; it was transformed into Satan!
His identity with Typhon can scarcely be doubted upon reading the account in Job of his appearance with the sons of God, before the Lord. He accuses Job of a readiness to curse the Lord to his face upon sufficient provocation. So Typhon, in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, figures as the accuser. The resemblance extends even to the names, for one of Typhon’s appellations was Seth, or Seph; as Satan, in Hebrew, means an adversary. In Arabic the word is Shatana — to be adverse, to persecute, and Manetho says he had treacherously murdered Osiris and allied himself with the Shemites (the Israelites). This may possibly have originated the fable told by Plutarch, that, from the fight between Horus and Typhon, Typhon, overcome with fright at the mischief he had caused, “fled seven days on an ass, and escaping, begat the boys Ierosolumos and Ioudaios (Jerusalem and Judea).”
Referring to an invocation of Typhon-Seth, Professor Reuvens says that the Egyptians worshipped Typhon under the form of an ass; and according to him Seth “appears gradually among the Semites as the background of their religious consciousness.” The name of the ass in Coptic, AO, is a phonetic of IAO, and hence the animal became a pun-symbol. Thus Satan is a later creation, sprung from the overheated fancy of the Fathers of the Church. By some reverse of fortune, to which the gods are subjected in common with mortals, Typhon-Seth tumbled down from the eminence of the deified son of Adam Kadmon, to the degrading position of a subaltern spirit, a mythical demon—ass.
Dancing With The Devil
For the Medieval Cathars, Rex Mundi (Latin for “King of the World”) was a chaotic god of matter and the irrational world soul, closely related to the Demiurge of Plato and the Gnostics along with Satan of the New Testament. According to the Catholic heresiologist Cosmas the Priest in Discourse against the Bogomils, some Cathars and Bogomils–inspired by the earlier Manichaeans–believed that there was one God who had two sons–one being Christ and the other Lucifer. Lucifer had fashioned the phenomenal world from the elements created by the Good God and placed fallen angelic souls in material bodies. Christ, God’s other son, had come to this earth in the appearance of a man in order to teach the angelic souls how to be reunited with the good God, their creator. This view is similar to the Interrogatio Iohannis, also known as The Secret Supper, and The Book of John the Evangelist, which depicts Satan as a Demiurgical figure like Yaldabaoth seen in various Gnostic texts, like the Apocryphon of John. It was Satan that tempted the angels Adam and Eve and fell from Paradise and into human bodies.
The Bogomils and Cathars were said to have rejected the Roman Catholic Church and its material sacraments, along with the Old Testament but favored the New Testament as authoritative (especially the Gospel of John). They adopted a strictly ascetic lifestyle, rejected sexual intercourse, and abstained from all meat and wine. They met frequently and prayed together by using the Lord’s Prayer repeatedly much like the Jesus prayer of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and confessed their sins to one another. The Cathars may be connected to another Manichaean group with a similar name, who were the followers of Novatus and were called the Novatians, according to St. Augustine in De Haeresibus xxxviii. They set up various churches around France and surrounding countries in competition with Roman Catholicism before they were completely massacred by Rex Mundi and his agents of darkness in the Catholic Church through the Inquisition and its blood-soaked and fiery hunt to stamp out all heresy.
In the article In Search of a Missing Link: The Bogomils and Zoroastrianism by Ewa Weiling Feldthusen, the author writes how the Bogomils considered the Old Testament, much like Marcion (from many centuries earlier), as a Satanic document, channeled directly from the Devil himself.
The following extracts from Euthymius Zigabenus’ Dogmatic Panoply, whose work itself is a compilation of other accounts added to his own interrogation of a Bogomil leader Basil, who was accused of heresy by Alexius Comnenus in the eleventh century, in Constantinople, are fully comparable to both the first account, The Discourse of the Priest Cosmas Against Bogomils (tenth century, Bulgaria) and to The Secret Book (probably tenth – eleventh centuries, probably Bulgaria). On their attitude towards canonical books, Zigabenus writes:
“They reject all the books of Moses and the God who is described in them […], as being written in accordance with the plan of Satan. […] They accept and honour only seven […]; that is, the Psalter, the sixteen Prophets, the Gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and the seventh book, the Acts of the Apostles together with the Epistles and the Apocalypse of John the Divine.” (Hamilton,1998:182).
The rejection of the Old Testament was a logical consequence of their assumption of Satanic origin of this scripture, although a letter from around 1045 written by Euthymius of the Periblepton monastery testified that the Bogomils read the entire Bible, and knew its passages by heart in order to act as a true Christians: “I cannot deceive a Christian otherwise than by pretending to be a monk; we call ourselves Christian and appear in every way to act as Christians do, and put forward the holy scriptures as our teaching”. (Hamilton, 1998: 146). Otherwise, the fact that the Bogomils knew the Scriptures perfectly well, and used this knowledge to convince others of the truth of their orthodoxy, which made it difficult to distinguish them from ordinary Orthodox Christians, is mentioned in several polemical scripts using often the well-known rhetorical figure – hiding the wolf under the fleece – about the deceitful Bogomils.
Not only did the Bogomils think that the Old Testament was Satanic, but they also believed that Satan had the powers of the Demiurge and created a second heaven and a second earth, and a second human race! This sounds a lot like the Expanding Earth theory. Perhaps this is why mysterious seismic activities have been detected as of late. As mentioned earlier, they also believed that Satan and Jesus Christ were brothers as Sons of God much like how the Zurvanists and many other world religions claimed that the Most High created twin, dual gods–one good and one evil.
The Bogomils were said to believe that Lucifer was the first emanation of God, while Christ was his “younger brother.” Epiphanius (Pan. 28.16:2) also reported that the Ebionites (Jewish Christians who follow Ebion) believed in the double sonship of Christ and Satan. “But as I said, they set side by side two who have been appointed by God, one being Christ, but one the devil.” This is a radically different break from Pauline and Johannite thought which conceives of the “Son” being the “image of the invisible God,” personified as Jesus Christ as being a creator god (a demiurgical Logos figure like in Philo of Alexandria’s writings) presiding over even the angelic realm in which Satan belongs under in a subservient fashion (Colossians 1:15-16).
As concerning the Bogomil explanation of the origin of Satan, Zigabenus reported that:
“They say that the demon whom the saviour called Satan himself is also a son of God the Father, called Satanael; He came before the Son, the Word [Jesus], and is stronger, as befits the first-born. […] Satan is the steward, second to the Father, having the same form and dress as He does, and he sits at His right hand on a throne. […] He was intoxicated by this, and being carried away […] he plotted a rebellion, and having done so, he seized the opportunity to test some of the ministering powers. He said that if they wanted to lessen the load of their service, they should follow him and join him in breaking away from the Father. […] Then to the aforesaid angels who were enticed by the lightening of their burdensome services and other excessive demands, he said:’ I will place my throne upon the clouds, and I will be like unto the Most High’.(Hamilton, 1989:183).
In the subsequent chapter, Zigabenus gives an account concerning the Bogomil cosmological myth, a myth which states that Satanael was cast down from above, and that he was unable to sit upon the waters because the earth did not as yet exist. “But since he had the form and dress of God and possessed the power of the Demiurge to summon the powers which had fallen along with him and to embolden them, he said, ‘Since God made the heaven and the earth, […] I too will make a second heaven, being the second God’”. (Hamilton, 1998: 184).
Afterwards, Satan created the earth in the way described in Genesis.
One must wonder why the Bogomils and Cathars (along with their Gnostic predecessors) considered the Old Testament as the work of demons. Perhaps Thom Stark’s research and Stewart Felker on Israel’s connection with polytheism and child sacrifice could shed some light on this. After all, Moses is depicted as a horned deity (much like Dionysus/Bacchus and of course, the Devil) in Exodus and threw curses and plagues and turned Aaron’s staff into a snake and parted the Red Sea. The Israelite kings and priests practiced divination with an occult device called the Urim and the Thummim while they burned incense and cannabis to Jah. They observed the phases of the moon and the equinoxes during holidays such as Passover. The Jewish prophets made offerings to angels while Solomon was a world-renown as the magician par excellence. They sacrificed animals and even children to Jah and erected idolatrous pillars in his honor. They also observed the Chaldean and Babylonian astrological days and worshiped on the Sabbath (Saturn’s Day). The occult is very much ingrained in Judaism, especially the Kabbalah.
In Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln’s The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. pp. 46-47, writes more about the Cathars and their beliefs.
The Cathars were also dualists. All Christian thought, of course, can ultimately be seen as dualistic, insisting on a conflict between two opposing principles good and evil, spirit and flesh, higher and lower. But the Cathars carried this dichotomy much further than orthodox Catholicism was prepared to. For the Cathars, men were the swords that spirits fought with, and no one saw the hands. For them, a perpetual war was being waged throughout the whole of creation between two irreconcilable principles -light and darkness, spirit and matter, good and evil. Catholicism posits one supreme God, whose adversary, the Devil, is ultimately inferior to Him.
The Cathars, however, proclaimed the existence not of one god, but of two, with more or less comparable status. One of these gods the ‘good’ one was entirely disincarnate, a being or principle of pure spirit, unsullied by the taint of matter. He was the god of love. But love was deemed wholly incompatible with power; and material creation was a manifestation of power. Therefore, for the Cathars, material creation the world itself was intrinsically evil. All matter was intrinsically evil. The universe, in short, was the handiwork of a ‘usurper god’, the god of evil or, as the Cathars called him, “Rex Mundi’, “King of the World’. Catholicism rests on what might be called an “ethical dualism’. Evil, though issuing ultimately perhaps from the Devil, manifests itself primarily through man and his actions. In contrast, the Cathars maintained a form of “cosmological dualism’, a dualism that pervaded the whole of reality. For the Cathars, this was a basic premise, but their response to it varied from sect to sect. According to some Cathars, the purpose of man’s life on earth was to transcend matter, to renounce perpetually anything connected with the principle of power and thereby to attain union with the principle of love. According to other Cathars, man’s purpose was to reclaim and redeem matter, to spiritualise and transform it.
1 John 5:19 tells us: “And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness.” This sounds a lot like the Cathar notion of Rex Mundi. The Gospels and St. Paul also have similar things to say about Rex Mundi.
2 Corinthians 4:4: “In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” Matthew 4:1-10 also tells us that Rex Mundi owns the world, just as he did before the regeneration of the world as mentioned in Ezekiel 28:14 and 18 and the eventual fall of Adam and Eve:
Then Jesus was led up of the spirit into the wilderness to the tempted os the devil.
[2] And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.
[3] And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.
[4] But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
[5] Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,
[6] And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
[7] Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
[8] Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;
[9] And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.
[10] Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
Job 2 also tells us that Satan has unlimited access to the Earth that directly connects to the underworld.
[1]Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the Lord.
[2] And the Lord said unto Satan, From whence comest thou? And Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.
The rest of Job 2 presents Satan as the tempter, but interestingly, he tempts with God’s foreknowledge, and, perhaps even, permission. Isaiah 14:12-15 tells us of course, got a bit too proud, and was kicked off the football team.
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
[13] For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:
[14] I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.
[15] Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
In Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Lucifer appears as a minor deity: the god of the Morning Star. Jesus Christ is later connected to the morning star as well in Revelation 2:28. Revelation 12, of course, tells us that Michael fought and casts down the great dragon Satan and his angels to earth, in an effort to protect the Sun Lady and the Male Child, much like the Egyptian myths of Isis and Horus, and Typhon-Set. John Milton’s Paradise Lost features Satan uttering this: “To reign is worth ambition though in hell: Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.”
What is interesting is that in Revelation, the implication is that Satan has been banished to Earth, while Isaiah talks about Lucifer being banished to hell, or the pit. The implication is that Earth is hell. This is further implicated in 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, The Ascension of Isaiah, and the Gospel of Nicodemus, as well, as I explain in my upcoming book, The Sun Lady Unveiled.
One author actually links Rex Mundi with the Grail or Fisher King of the Medieval romances like Parzival/Perceval, in the article Rex Mundi: A Metatronic View of the “King of the World”.
Rex Mundi, the King of the World, is also the Bearer of the Cup of Transfiguration, in which the human being moves through stages of his own duality until he reaches a platform in which he assumes in a specific and dedicated way, the “Wound of the World.” Through this embodiment, he becomes the “Wounded King / Healer” of Grail lore, whose wound is born for the world. Through his glorious act of crucifixion and transfiguration upon the cross of this gnosis which has become his Bodhisattva vow, he heals others who touch his wounds of Light. It is then that the Wounded Healer is transformed into Rex Mundi, for he has now overcome his own creation (the world) to be exalted in the Phoenix Flame of pure Illumination. What sets him free? His becoming (with complete presence) the gnosis that all wounds are only love longing to be illumined in the heart.
The cosmic / world dynamic of Rex Mundi is an important aspect of the “Solar Mysteries”. The Solar Mysteries trace the soul’s development and evolution through the rays of the “Great Solar Cosom”, which is the center of the creative font and from which all sun-stars gain their Presence of Living Light, or what we know in our World Myth as “angelic” beings and realms (which would also include related categories such as the Jinn).
The Light Language streamings which intersect the Adam Kadmon and from whence our humanity is formed, are issued from the constellation of Orion (regardless of from what Star Tribe that particular incarnating soul may originate). Thus, Rex Mundi is very much an “Orion figure” in that he (ie, this universal dynamic) strikes the balance of the Gate of Orion in the universe.
The Arcane Wiki also connects the title of “Rex Mundi” with Persian King Cyrus the Great.
Coincidentally, “King of the World” is also the title given to Cyrus the Great on the Cyrus Cylinder. The cylinder is a piece of Persian propaganda, dating back to 539 BC, which was placed sort of like a time capsule in the foundations of the temple of Marduk in Babylon. It was written in Akkadian cuneiform, not in Latin, so it doesn’t actually call him “Rex Mundi” per se, but academic tradition has none-the-less bestowed the nickname Rex Mundi upon Cyrus the Great. (Additional trivia about the cylinder: In the 1970s the Shah of Iran used the cylinder as a symbol to justify the continued monarchy in Iran, and claimed it was the world’s oldest Human Rights document. They cylinder currently rests at the British Museum in London.)
For ritual magic practitioners, Saturn is also connected with the archangel Cassiel, who is depicted as a bearded man, wearing a crown to represent that he is a prince of Heaven. He is often shown riding a dragon, and carrying the spear much like an inverted version of St. George since he is riding the beast instead of slaying it.
Many hideously looking goetic demons also appear wearing crowns and jewelry as royal dukes and kings of hell in Solomonic grimoires for the magician to conjure into manifestation for practical ends. Perhaps these so-called planetary “angels” are nothing more than the fallen angels and demons, led by Lucifer himself. Saturn also corresponds with the Qabalistic sephiroth of Binah on the feminine pillar of severity.
In Occult Theocracy by Edith Star Miller, she writes about the god of the witches and a group of ancient devil worshipers called the “Satanians” by Epiphanius. Whether they existed or not is another matter entirely.
Margaret Alice Murray, writing in “The Witch-cult in Western Europe” establishes both the phallic and religious character of the “craft,” in her remarkable book from which we extract part of the following valuable information:
The deity worshiped by the witches was in some cases Lucifer, as the good god in opposition to Adonay, the Christian God in His character of the benefactor of humanity, and in other instances Satan, the same spirit, as the principle of Evil.
This is evident from the various references to their deity adduced in the trials of persons accused of this heresy. In both cases however, the devotees, whether of lucifer or Satan, were obliged formally to renounce Christ, the Holy Ghost and the Christian God, before embracing the Devil faith which was the logical outgrowth of the Mazdean-Manichean Dualist doctrine of the double divinity. (“Epiphanius gives an account of a sect of Heresies called Satanians.’Satan, say they, is a very great and potent person, and author of much Mischief. Why, therefore, should we not chiefly fly to him, and adore him, honor, and praise him, that for our flattering worship he may do us no harm, but pardon us as being his own servants?’ Hence they call themselves Satanians.” Bishop Lavington, The Morawians Compared and Detected, p. 170; Occult Theocrasy, p. 112)
The German Luciferian/Thelemic organization Grand Lodge Communitas Saturni or the Fraternitas Saturni, also reveres Saturn as the Demiurge and chief patron deity identified as “the principle of knowledge and awareness in full karmic self-responsibility.” The inner, secret practice of this Saturnian order, much like Aleister Crowley’s Shaitan/Satan worshiping cult being the Ordo Templi Orientis, is, of course, homosexual sex magic. This is part of many different efforts to draw down and incarnate an egregore or planetary spirit into a homunculus and usher in a new Aeon of Horus–the Crowned and Conquering Child–which is just code for the coming rule of the AntiChrist and the Beast of Revelation.
I, Pet Chronos II
In the online cartoon short-film, I, Pet Goat II, it depicts encoded subliminal messages that connect to Saturn/Chronos. In the few opening shots, there are various references to Baphomet and Satan. Vigilant Citizen has a decent breakdown of the video, as well as Point of View and There Is Nothing New Under the Sun (although none of its predictions came to pass of course). The later website reports that the pet goat in the Saturn-cube shape, dog house represents the following:
The Goat with a 666 Bar Code on his forehead “Mark of the Beast” is in a shipping box inside a fenced enclosure in Winter. The Goat symbolizes Saturn during Saturnalia in December; the Yule Goat. Saturnalia begins at the end of Ophiucus “Serpent Holder”, the 13th Zodiac sign (Nov 29-Dec 18). On the $ONE the Eagle (Symbol of Esau) carries the Serpent (Lucifer) symbolized by the Apple in the Garden of Eden.
In another scene, we see a figure called Drako (being shown on television) terrorize and siphon energy from a little boy named Ludovic with an empty, egg-shelled head. The egghead boy sees news of a dramatic stock market crash being reflected in his eyes right before a warplane bombing on a mosque. From there, missiles are launched at a city, presumingly representing America or western civilization. We also see Drako siphon off energy from a fetus growing in an egg with its serpentine form attached to a televised all-seeing eye surrounding it, much like the Orphic serpent and world/universal egg. Much later in the short film, Drako, slithers away from the egghead while the now liberated Ludovic. The Heliofant website tells us more about Drako’s role:
The Sorcerer, the unseen hand and spirit of madness seeking ever more control through trickery, lies, poisons, false-flag events, wars, and mountains of bureaucratic and legal framework to siphon off the energy of the inhabitants of the earth. He fears the light of day as he fears life itself, and operates in the shadows. His greatest power is his hold on the issuance of the currency.
The coiling serpent imagery along with the reptilian clawed hand at the beginning of the film also reminds me of the recent Satanic idol of an outstretched hand, erected in a Democratic Illinois, sponsored by the increasingly influential Temple of Satan which proliferates the rise of Satanism in popular culture and left-wing ideology. In Joseph Von Hammer-Purgstall’s Mysterium Baphometis Revelatum as Tracy Twyman reveals, we see similar figures resembling Drako and his victim.
Hammer Purgstall explains the significance of some of the above black-and-white images:
Regarding the dragon, it will not be irrelevant for us to say a few words. That quadruped, scaly and rough, with tail twisted back, seems in actual fact to be a crocodile rather than a dragon, and soon you will see that it makes no difference if it is called a crocodile. Since in the sculpture of the bowl (Tab. II, fig. 4) it threatens to devour the infant, and since, in the sculptures of the Templar churches the same dragon is represented as swallowing down the infant, we call it a dragon. For according to St. Epiphanius the Ophites taught that the one presiding over this world has the likeness of a dragon. By it, souls not having Gnosis are absorbed, and through its tail, [they are] poured back into this world. We will, however, find below, in the explanation by Schoengrad regarding the sculptures of the churches of the Templars, an image of such a dragon swallowing down and pouring back the infant. It is sufficient here to notice that that man who, in the relief of the second bowl, drags the infant out of the dragon’s jaw, represents a true Gnostic who, by pouring Gnosis into the infant, hinders him from being absorbed by the world.
The imagery also reminds us of Egyptian depictions of the afterlife where the initiate’s heart is weighed against a feather of Ma’at on Thoth’s Scale of Truth in the Duat. If the heart is heavier than a feather, then the initiate is devoured by the monstrous goddess, Ammit. If the heart is lighter, then the initiate is free to move on to the Egyptian paradise Auru.
“The Square and Compass of Freemasonry is an incomplete hexagram, supposedly signifying, according to Craig Heimbichner, that the Freemason is an incomplete Jew and ritually tied to obey rabbinic masters. As can be seen in the Masonic symbol above, the all-seeing eye is in the center of the square and compass, signifying The Grand Architect of the Universe, (T.G.A.O.U.T.U.). Typically, there’s only a ‘G’ in the center, however, which is said to represent, variously: the “Generative principle” (i.e., the male phallus), “Geometry”, “Gnosis” (i.e., knowledge), “God”, or the Tetragrammaton, or so called “Lost Word” or “Ineffable Name” of God, the Greek form of which is said to be IAO, the Hebrew form of which is said to be Jah, or ‘Jehovah’, which is a name that occurs seven times in the King James Bible…” http://itssinstupid.tripod.com/COMPASS6.HTM
The name of Jehovah along with the King James Version of the Bible are also important aspects of Freemasonry and its mysteries, much to the surprise of many Christians. In another scene, we see Juan “Pepito” sinking into a yellow mire of goo, an obvious reference to failed Communist states in Latin countries like Cuba and Venezuela since he is holding the hammer and sickle. Communism, Marxism, and Socialism, however, as John Paul Jones reveals, is actually the unholy spawn of Kabbalistic Freemasonry.
The hammer and sickle symbol of Communism was adopted from Grand Orient Freemasonry, according to John Daniel, author of Scarlet and the Beast. In 1877, when French Grand Orient Freemasonry declared “God is dead”, and “there is no God but humanity”, they replaced the ‘G’ that had traditionally been at the center of the Masonic Square and Compass symbol with a hammer and sickle. “Notice that the symbol forms the letter ‘G’ backwards, which is symbolic of the negation of God and is French Freemasonry’s declaration of atheism.” (John Daniel, Scarlet and the Beast, vol. II, page 45) Thus it, too, represents the inversion of Christian values, or the spirit of anti-Christ, and the number of the Beast, 666. This should not surprise us, since the communist philosophy was rehashed illuminism repackaged by a German Freemason, Qabbalist magician, and son of a Jewish Rabbi, Karl Marx.
As Pope Leo XIII pointed out in his most famous encyclical against Freemasonry, Freemasonry and communism were closely related. It’s no coincidence that Soviet communism adopted the hammer and sickle emblem; this was presumably a cryptic message to occult initiates that Kabbalistic Freemasonry spawned communism. The hammer represents the male principle (white triangle) and sickle represents the female principle (black triangle), thus making it, in the eyes of the adepts, yet another among many symbolical synonyms of Solomon’s Seal. As such it represents the process (solve et coagula, order ab chao) of the occult paradigm, as well as its alchemical purpose.
The sickle of Communism is also emblematic of Saturn. The Communist group, Antifa (who consider themselves so-called “anti-fascists”), also primarily dress in black–the color ruled over by Saturn. Their overall abusive, threatening, and often violent behaviors mirror the malefic side of Saturn as well. Heliofant, the name of the company that created I, Pet Goat II, is also an obvious reference to the god Helios, who is the same as El Gabal or Elagabalus. The Church Fathers like Irenaeus and Hippolytus explicitly connect the god Helios, Sol Invicti, and the Titans with the rise of AntiChrist, as I discuss in-depth in my upcoming book. Helios may also be connected, oddly enough to Yahweh! Sun worship is strongly linked with occultism/witchcraft through Medieval grimoires and human sacrifice, much like how Saturnalia is connected with the same ghastly tradition. In fact, there are many pagan and Christian historians that connect child sacrifice to Chronos/Saturn/Molech worship such as the Greek historian Plutarch reveals just as Yahweh’s punishment against the rebellious Israelites in Ezekiel 20:25-26, involves the mass sacrifices of the first-born flung into the fiery flames. Perhaps this is why the Cathars and Bogomils condemned the Old Testament and Rex Mundi despite Orthodoxy’s insistence on connecting the God of the OT and the NT as the same deity.
As indicated earlier, Saturnalia was also filled with allusions and references to human sacrifice of not only the “Lord of Misrule” but also through the sacrifice of fighting warriors in gladiator games. According to Marcobius’ Saturnalia, war with other countries, as well as other life-changing events like marriage and child-rearing were strictly forbidden during this time since it was thought that the jaws of Hades and Pluto were open during the Winter Solstice, all those who disobeyed were cursed.
…during the festival of Saturn, because his reign is believed to have been free from any tumult of war; and when the entrance to the underworld is open, this being a sacred occasion dedicated to Father Dis and Proserpine, and men deemed it better to go out to battle when the jaws of Pluto are shut. And that is why Varro writes:
“When the entrance to the underworld is open, it is as if the door of the grim, infernal deities were open. A religious ban therefore forbids us not only to engage in battle but to levy troops and march to war, to weigh anchor, and to marry a wife for the raising of children.”
Finally, in loan E Couliano’s Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, he reveals much fascinating information involving Saturn, along with the six other planetary spirits/angels in Renaissance magic and philosophy. Here is just one small snippet of the information he quotes from Marsilio Ficino’s De Amore (On Love).
Souls descend into the bodies of the Milky Way through the constellation of Cancer, enveloping themselves in a celestial and luminous veil which they put on to enter terrestrial bodies. For nature demands that the very pure soul be united with the very impure body only through the intermediary of a pure veil, which, being less pure than the soul and purer than the body, is considered by the Platonists to be a very convenient means of uniting the soul with the terrestrial body. It is due to that descent that the souls and bodies of the Planets confirm and reinforce, in our Souls and our bodies respectively, the seven original gifts bestowed upon us by God. The same function is performed by the [seven] categories of demons, intermediaries between the celestial gods and men.
The gift of contemplation is strengthened by Saturn by means of the Saturnian Demons. The power of the government and empire is strengthened by Jupiter through the ministry of the Jovian Demons; similarly, Mars through the Martians fosters the soul’s courage. The Sun, with the help of the Solar De-mons, fosters the clarity of the senses and opinions that makes divination possible; Venus, through the Venereans, incites Love. Mercury, through the Mercurials, awakens the capacity for interpretation and expression. Finally, the Moon, through the lunar demons, increases procreation. (Amore, VI, 4)
Couliano also reveals that Saturn rules over philosophy as well as the left-hand path/occultism.
Depending on the kind of activity to be stimulated, all the planets are equally important: Saturn has charge of higher philosophy and occultism; Jupiter of natural philosophy and politics; Mars of virile certamina; the Sun and Mercury of eloquence, music, and glory; Venus of festivities; and the Moon of nourishment (ibid., II). The influence of the planets over the parts of our body determines the kind of astrological remedies that should be applied depending on the case (ibid., VI). Pharmacology, moreover, is one of the most important branches of magic (ibid., XI, XIII, XV). To summarize all the above concisely: Res naturales atque etiam artificiosae habent virtutes a stellis occultas: per quas spiritum nostrum stellis eisdem exponunt (ibid., XII)—״Natural things as well as artificial things have occult qualities conferred upon them by the stars: through these things our spirit attracts the influence of the respective stars.”
The Aeon Eye 