The Scythe of Zeus Part 2
The Gods of Ancient Greece
The origin of the Greeks is related to the arrival of the Proto-Greeks, an Indo-European people, in the southern Balkan peninsula around the end of the 3rd millennium BC. They subdued the native Cretans (who the C's confirmed had been mainly Egyptians) and other islanders and developed a civilisation that flourished in the northeast of the Mediterranean Sea. The earliest form of Greek language is attested as Mycenaean Greek in the Bronze Age. The Mycenaeans created an advanced culture during the late Bronze Age and established strong cultural and economic ties with the other major powers of the Eastern Mediterranean, which were Egypt and the Minoans of Crete. However, like the Minoans, their civilisation appeared to collapse quite quickly. If you check Wikipedia, it states that Mycenae was among the numerous Aegean sites destroyed as part of the
Bronze Age Collapse around 1200 BC. The causes of these destructions are unknown, but proposed explanations include enemy attack, internal strife, and natural disasters such as earthquakes. Unlike many other sites, Mycenae was partly rebuilt after this destruction, though it was no longer the centre of a centralised literate bureaucracy. Pottery finds suggest that ‘Postpalatial Mycenae’ eventually regained some of its wealth, before burning once again. After this period, the site remained sparsely populated until the Hellenistic era.
We now know that the Minoan civilisation never really recovered from the catastrophic eruption of the island volcano of Thera (today called Santorini) but this does not readily explain the collapse of the Mycenaean civilisation since they were less affected by the eruption of Thera than the Minoans who were devastated by the terrible tsunami unleashed by the massive explosion that ripped the heart out of the island of Thera. The same tsunami also devastated the coastal districts of Egypt and the Levant with the resulting ash cloud from Thera’s eruption affecting much of Egypt for months if not years afterwards (for more on this see my earlier posts on the biblical plagues of Egypt). [
MJF: I have recently watched a documentary that suggested Crete was in fact hit by ten successive tsunamis after Thera erupted, some of which were more than a hundred feet high (30 meters)]
The answer to Mycenae’s rapid decline would seem to lie with the last of the terrible biblical plagues that struck Egypt, which the Bible describes as the visitation of the Angel of Death. The Angel of Death appears to have been a virulent plague that first struck Egypt and then fanned out from there to affect most of the Eastern Mediterranean. It would seem the plague was transmitted to the powerful Hittites by captured Egyptian prisoners of war. In the case of Mycenae, it no doubt was spread by traders, merchants and diplomats who brought it back from a plague-ridden Egypt. Historians consider that Mycenae reached its peak in 1350 BC. This just happens to correspond with the reign of Akhenaten in Egypt who we now know was the pharaoh at the time of the biblical Exodus and the eruption of Thera. As I will explain later, close ties between the royal families of Mycenae (descended from the Perseids) and Egypt may have played their part in the escape of Princess Meritaten from Egypt.
The people who came to be known as the Greeks of the Classical or Hellenistic age were primarily new pastoral settlers who arrived in Greece during what is known as the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC. The description the “Greek Dark Ages” reveals that these people did not leave much in the way of written records for historians to contemplate today. This includes the identities of their gods. So, when did these people start to worship Zeus and the other Greek gods of the Olympus pantheon? The answer lies with a group of these early Ionian Greeks who ventured to Asia Minor and established trading colonies on what today is the coastal strip of western Turkey, which was then known to the Greeks as Anatolia (from the Greek Ἀνατολή (
Anatolḗ) meaning "the East"). This brought them into direct contact with the Hittites who by comparison to these early Greek settlers were a more advanced society and culture that had a written language and records dating back several centuries. It should be noted here that during the Late Bronze Age, the Hittite Empire disintegrated into several independent Syro-Hittite states and was no longer a centralised empire based on the capital city of Hattusa.
This contact with the Hittites exposed these Ionian Greeks to the Hittite gods and the myths surrounding them. These myths would be absorbed and eventually taken back to mainland Greece via the Aegean Greek populated islands such as Cyprus. In so doing, these Hittite gods would be renamed as Zeus, Apollo, Hera etc. Just like the Hellenistic Greeks, the Hittites viewed their gods as dwelling on mountain tops like Olympus. Like the Greek Zeus,
Tarhunt was the Hittite weather god and king of the gods. He was associated with storms, thunder, and lightning, and played a significant role in Hittite mythology. As a central figure, Tarhunt was highly revered and invoked for various rituals and ceremonies. Zeus was also a thunder god who was associated with hurling bolts of lightning at those who offended him. This depiction of Zeus also connects him with one of the most popular Hittite deities the Weather God
Teshub, (borrowed from the Hurrian pantheon).
Teshub was known for carrying a triple thunderbolt as a symbol of his power, and he was often depicted riding a bull. Curiously,
Zeus as a sky and thunder god is also associated with a bull because the animal was considered a symbol of strength, fertility, and sacrifice in Greek mythology. Indeed,
according to one Greek myth, Zeus famously transformed himself into a bull so as to abduct Europa, a Phoenician princess.
You will also recall that the C’s told Laura that the Levites were originally Hittite moon worshippers. The object of their worship would have been the Moon God
Kaskuh who was widely worshipped among the Hittites. As a celestial deity, Kaskuh played a crucial role in influencing the cycles of nature and the passage of time. Emphasizing his importance, the Hittites revered Kaskuh for his ability to control the phases of the moon.
As with the Hellenistic Greeks, temples were central to Hittite religious life, serving as the focal point for worship, offerings, and divine communication. Priests and priestesses maintained the temples and performed the necessary rituals to honour the gods. The Hittites consulted oracles to seek guidance and wisdom from the gods just as the Greeks would do at places like Delphi Festivals and celebrations played an important role in honouring the Hittite gods and their families, including the mother-goddess. This aspect of Hittite religious practice suggests the influence of an early matrilineal society in line with the mother goddess cultures of the Middle and Near East (think here of Isis, Inanna, Ishtar etc. who would eventually morph into the Greek goddess Aphrodite who was closely associated with the island of Cyprus). In the case of the Hittites, the weather and fertility god,
Tarhun, was often accompanied by his wife, a mother-goddess. This duo formed the backbone of Hittite religion and were crucial for their societal balance and harmony. Compare this here with the roles of Osiris and Isis in Egypt and also Zeus and Hera in the Greek pantheon.
There is no doubt that the Hittites drew on the mythologies of the neighbouring Mesopotamians and Assyrians where their gods were concerned but by the same token as Scythians they also drew on an older
Proto-Indo-European mythology, which is the body of myths and deities associated with the Proto-Indo-Europeans, recalling here that the C’s told Laura that the Indo-Europeans (including the Celts and Hittites) were originally an Aryan sub-race. Scholars believe that elements of this Proto-Indo-European mythology influenced later mythologies including Greek Mythology. If so, then it is highly likely that the Hittites were a key player in this process.
One common myth which can be found among all Indo-European mythologies is a battle ending with the slaying of a serpent, usually a dragon of some sort. Examples of this include:
As to the Hittites, there were analogous stories in other neighbouring (non-Indo-European) mythologies such as Anu or Marduk vs. Tiamat in Mesopotamian mythology, Ra vs. Apep in Egyptian mythology, Baal or El vs. Lotan or Yam-Nahar in Levantine mythology and Yahweh or the Archangel Gabriel vs. Leviathan or Rahab or tannin in Jewish mythology.
Echoes of this battle can be found even today in the Christian tradition of Michael the Archangel battling Satan (in the form of a seven-headed dragon), in the Blessed Virgin Mary crushing the head of a serpent in Roman Catholic iconography and in the legend of Saint George slaying the Dragon in Christian mythology.
The myth symbolised a clash between the forces of order and chaos (represented by the serpent) and the god or hero who would generally always win with some notable exceptions such as the Norse
Ragnarök myth. It is therefore probable that there existed some kind of dragon or serpent, possibly multi-headed (cf.
Śeṣa, the
hydra and
Typhon) and likely linked with the god of underworld and/or waters, as serpentine aspects can be found in many chthonic and/or aquatic Indo-European deities. In my own view, the dragon or serpent represent the forces of chaos and may be a disguised representation of a comet whose fiery trail through the sky was viewed by the ancients as that of a fire breathing cosmic serpent bringing destruction, pestilence and plague in its wake.
It seems highly likely that the Ionian Greeks were influenced in this regard by the story of the battle between Tarhunt and Illuyanka as found in Hittite mythology that would subsequently become a battle between Zeus and Typhon in Greek Hellenistic mythology
*.
A stone carving depicting Tarhunt slaying Illuyanka
*For more on the influence of the Proto-Indo-European religion on later religions see: Proto-Indo-European religion | Religion Wiki | Fandom.
The Hittite chief god
Tarhunt can be closely compared to the neighbouring Hurrians’ chief sky and storm god
Teshub who was the head of the Hurrian pantheon in the same way that Zeus was the head of the Greek Olympian pantheon. Teshub could be portrayed both as destructive and protective. Like Zeus, individual weather phenomena, including winds, lightning, thunder and rain, could be described as his weapons. Depictions of Teshub are rare, though it is agreed he was typically portrayed as an armed, bearded figure, sometimes holding a bundle of lightning. In some cases, he was also depicted driving in a chariot drawn by two sacred bulls. Zeus too was often depicted as an armed, bearded figure holding lightning bolts and Zeus was also connected to sacred bulls since he sometimes took the form of a bull, for example, in the famous myth concerning the seduction of Europa. As to the battle between Tarhunt (or Teshub) and Illuyanka, there are in fact two surviving versions of the story:
In the first version, the two gods fight and Illuyanka wins. Teshub then goes to the Hattian goddess Inaras for advice. Having promised her love to a mortal named Hupasiyas in return for his help, she devises a trap for the dragon. She goes to him with large quantities of food and drink and entices him to drink his fill. Once drunk, the dragon is bound by Hupasiyas with a rope. Then the Sky God Teshub appears with the other gods and kills the dragon.
In the second version, after the two gods fight and Teshub loses, Illuyanka takes Teshub's eyes and heart. To avenge himself upon the dragon, the Sky God Teshub marries the goddess
Hebat, daughter of a mortal, named Arm. They have a son,
Sarruma, who grows up and marries the daughter of the dragon Illuyanka. The Sky God Teshub tells his son to ask for the return of Teshub's eyes and heart as a wedding gift, and he does so. His eyes and heart restored, Teshub goes to face the dragon Illuyanka once more. At the point of vanquishing the dragon, Sarruma finds out about the battle and realises that he had been used for this purpose. He demands that his father take his life along with Illuyanka's, and so Teshub kills them both with thundery rain and lightning. This version is illustrated on a relief which was discovered at Malatya (dating from 1050-850 BC) and is on display in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara, Turkey (see picture above).
Zeus’s Battle with Typhon
In 1930, W. Porzig first made the comparison of Teshub's battle with Illuyankas with the sky-God Zeus’s battle with serpent-like Typhon as told in Pseudo-Apollodorus,
Bibliotheke (I.6.3). The earliest mention of Typhon though, and his only occurrence in Homer, is a passing reference in the
Iliad to Zeus striking the ground around where Typhon lies defeated.
By tradition, Typhon was the final son of Gaia, fathered by Tartarus, and was the deadliest monster of Greek mythology. Typhon attempted to destroy Zeus at the will of Gaia, because Zeus had imprisoned the Titans who had fought with the gods of Olympus and been defeated. Typhon was described as one of the largest and most fearsome of all creatures. His human upper half reached as high as the stars. His hands reached east and west and had a hundred dragon heads on each. He was feared even by the mighty gods. His bottom half was gigantic viper coils that could reach the top of his head when stretched out and made a hissing noise. His whole body was covered in wings, and fire flashed from his eyes. Typhon would be defeated though by Zeus, who trapped him underneath Mount Etna in Italy. Interestingly, the historian Herodotus (5th century BC), equated Typhon with the Egyptian god
Set and he thus reported that Typhon was supposed to be buried instead under Lake Serbonis in Egypt, near the Egyptian Mount Kasios.
However, in the alternative account of the origin of Typhon (Typhoeus), the
Homeric Hymn to Apollo makes the monster Typhaon at Delphi a son of archaic Hera in her Minoan form, produced out of herself, like a monstrous version of
Hephaestus, and whelped in a cave in Cilicia and confined there in the enigmatic Arima, or land of the Arimoi,
en Arimois (
Iliad, ii. 781-783). It was in Cilicia that Zeus battled with the ancient monster and overcame him, in a more complicated story: It was not an easy battle, and
Typhon temporarily overcame Zeus, cut the "sinews" from him and left him in the "leather sack", the korukos that is the etymological origin of the
korukion andron, the Korykian or Corycian Cave in which Zeus suffers temporary eclipse as if in the Land of the Dead. As previously noted, the region of Cilicia in southeastern Anatolia had many opportunities for coastal Hellenic connection with the Hittites to the north and as noted above, the Hittite myth of Illuyankas has been viewed as a prototype of the battle of Zeus and Typhon.
Expanding upon the Apollodorus account, according to Apollodorus: "Zeus pelted Typhon at a distance with thunderbolts, and at close quarters struck him down with an adamantine sickle". Wounded, Typhon fled to the Syrian Mount Kasios, where Zeus "grappled" with him. But Typhon, twining his snaky coils around Zeus,
was able to wrest away the sickle and cut the sinews from Zeus' hands and feet. Typhon carried the disabled Zeus across the sea to the Corycian cave in Cilicia where he set the she-serpent
Delphyne to guard over Zeus and his severed sinews, which Typhon had hidden in a bear skin. But Hermes and Aegipan (possibly another name for Pan) stole the sinews and gave them back to Zeus. His strength restored, Zeus chased Typhon to mount Nysa, where the
Moirai tricked Typhon into eating "ephemeral fruits" which weakened him. Typhon then fled to Thrace, where he threw mountains at Zeus, which were turned back on him by Zeus' thunderbolts, and the mountain where Typhon stood, being drenched with Typhon's blood, became known as Mount Haemus (Bloody Mountain). Typhon then fled to Sicily, where Zeus threw Mount Etna on top of Typhon burying him, and so finally defeated him”.
What I would like to draw to your attention here is that Zeus is depicted as using a sickle in his battle with Typhon. This is certainly an interesting choice of weapon for a deity as it is normally viewed as an agricultural instrument. According to Wikipedia, a sickle, or bagging hook, reaping-hook or grasshook, is a single-handed agricultural tool designed with variously curved blades, which is typically used for harvesting, reaping grain crops or cutting forage. The development of the sickle in Mesopotamia can be traced back to times that pre-date the Neolithic Era. The sickle remained common in the Bronze Age, both in the Ancient Near East and in Europe. Numerous sickles have been found deposited in hoards in the context of the European
Urnfield culture (e.g. the Frankleben Hoard), suggesting a symbolic or religious significance attached to the artifact.
Indeed, the sickle played a prominent role in the
Druids' Ritual of oak and mistletoe as described from a single passage in Pliny the Elder’s
Natural History:
Due to this passage, despite the fact that Pliny does not indicate the source on which he based this account, some branches of modern Druidry (Neodruids) have adopted the sickle as a ritual tool.
A much larger form of the sickle is known in English as a “
scythe”. The word "scythe" derives from the Old English
siðe. In Middle English and later, it was usually spelt
sithe or
sythe. However, in the 15th century some writers began to use the
sc- spelling as they thought (wrongly) the word was related to the Latin
scindere (meaning "to cut").
A
scythe (
/saɪð/ SYDHE) is an agricultural hand tool for mowing grass or harvesting crops. It is historically used to cut down or reap edible grains before the process of threshing. You will note though its similarity to the word “Scythian”, which the C’s seemed to emphasise in the passage I quoted at the commencement of this article:
A: Scithe.
Q: Who was that?
A: Scythe.
Q: That was the Sword God? Saturn?
A: No.
Q: That was the meaning of the sword thrust into the ground; it was a scythe?
A: Empowerer, or so they thought.
Q: Which god did this sword in the ground represent?
A: Maybe Zeus.
Thus, we see above the C’s connecting Zeus to a scithe or scythe. We also know that the C’s said the Hittites were Indo-Europeans or Celts and that their near neighbours and allies, the Danaans, were Scythians who Laura noted above were connected to the Hyperboreans or Celts of Britain. However, we know that Zeus was not the chief god of the ancient Britons. That honour went to Bran who the English mythologist Robert Graves linked with Saturn and Chronos, the leader of the Titans and Zeus’s father. Zeus’s Celtic equivalent was in fact Taranis, a thunder god who can be compared to Thor in the Norse pantheon.
The author Robert Temple also connected the Greek worship of Apollo at Delos with the Britons’ worship of the Celtic god Bran and believed that the Hyperboreans had extremely ancient contact with the Greeks, going back well before the Classical period – referring to their practice of sending regular special gifts to the Island of Delos, as noted by Laura when she quoted the Greek writer Diodorus, who linked the Hyperboreans with the worship of Apollo (Bran) at a circular temple in Britain – i.e., Stonehenge. Apollo may also be viewed as a sky god since he rode his chariot through the skies [MJF: Hmmm. Should that be a flying saucer?] As I said earlier, Robert Graves argued that Apollo was shoehorned into the Greek pantheon suggesting he was not originally an Hellenic Greek god.
However, Robert Graves in his book The White Goddess thought all the available evidence pointed to Stonehenge being the god Bel or Beli’s seat rather than Bran’s as it was laid out as a sun temple in cultured Apollonian style in contrast with the archaic roughness of the larger stone circle at Avebury 30 miles to the north of Stonehenge, which Graves thought was more likely to have been Bran’s national shrine in Britain. We also know from the C’s that Stonehenge is much older than Avebury dating as far back as 8,000 BC and was built by the Druids, giving them a much older pedigree than is normally associated with them (N.B. even pre-dating the Osirians).
Graves also made some interesting comments on the origins of Bel or Beli, which may link us back to the triple-Goddess theme and by extension to the Holy Grail. Here is what Graves said:
“The ultimate origin of the god Beli is uncertain, but if we identify the British Belin or Beli with Belus the father of Danaus (as Nennius does), then we can further identify him with Bel, the Babylonian Earth-God, one of a male trinity, who succeeded to the titles of a far more ancient Mesopotamian deity, the mother of Danae, as opposed to the father of Danaus. This was Belili, the Sumerian White Goddess, Ishtar’s predecessor, who was a goddess of trees as well as a Moon-goddess, Love-goddess and Underworld-goddess. She was sister and lover* to Du’uzu, or Tammuz, the Corn-God and Pomegranate-God. From her name derives the familiar Biblical expression ‘Sons of Belial’ – the Jews having characteristically altered the non-Semitic name Belili into the Semitic Beliy ya’al (‘from which one comes not up again’, i.e., the Underworld) meaning ‘Sons of Destruction’. The Slavonic word beli meaning ‘white’ and the Latin bellus meaning ‘beautiful’ are also ultimately connected with her name. Originally every tree was hers, and the Goidelic bile, ‘sacred tree’, the medieval Latin billa and billus, ‘branch, trunk of tree’, and the English billet are all recollections of her name. Above all she was a Willow-goddess and goddess of wells and springs.
[MJF: which therefore indirectly connects Belili with the Celtic goddess Brigid or Bride a member of the Tuatha de Danaan who we previously learned was linked with sacred wells and springs and was a member of a triple-goddess grouping. It is also curious that Belili’s name should be etymologically linked to the Latin words billa and billus, meaning ‘branch, trunk of tree’, particularly when we think of what the C’s had to say in the transcripts about Kore who seems to be linked to Hagar the Egyptian and by extension to Meritaten, Akhenaton’s surviving daughter, who I think may be the real-life personification of Brigid as an illuminated one.
*Think also of the goddess Isis in Egypt who like Belili was the sister and lover/husband of Osiris, who like Tammuz was killed and resurrected, if only briefly, to sire Horus.]
By his triumphant suppression of Queen Belili, Bel became the Supreme Lord of the Universe, a father of the Sun-God and the Moon-God and claimed to be the Creator: a claim later advanced by the upstart Babylonian god Marduk. Bel and Marduk were finally identified, and since Marduk had been a god of the Spring Sun and of thunder, Bel had similarly become a sort of Solar Zeus before his emigration to Europe from Phoenicia. It seems that Beli was originally a Willow-God, a divinatory son of Belili, but became the God of Light …”
The suppression of Queen Belili by the male god Bel mirrors the replacement of the female mother goddess that occurred all over the ancient world, including the Near East, at that particular period in time, Zeus being a typical example of the male supreme deity or father figure of the gods.
I would thus pose the question whether the Druids, as Celtic descendants of the Kentekkians (and the builders of Stonehenge according to the C’s), were in fact originally a continuation of the Sons of Belial religious/philosophical group and the later Jews were the successors of the Sons of the One? The Druids would certainly fulfil the description of necromancers and wizards as mentioned in the Damascus Document (see more below on this).
If, as Graves argues, Belili can subsequently be identified with Belus the father of Danaus and therefore with Bel, the Babylonian Earth-God, who can in turn be linked with the Phoenician (whose alphabet was adapted and then adopted by the Hellenic Greeks) and Canaanite god Baal, then this creates a further connection to the Danaans, who the C’s said were Scythians, for whom Danaus was their famous king and founder:
Q: (L) Well, we should have figured that. There's hardly been anybody else running things for the last 300 thousand years or so. Okay, going in another direction: what other names were the Danaans known by?
A: Scythians.
Q: (L) How did the Scythians get to Egypt?
A: VIA Akkad.
Q: (L) Was Sargon a Scythian?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) Were the Hittites a genetically altered group of Scythians?
A: Close.
Q: (L) Where do the Scythians come from?
A: China.
Q: (L) How did they get to China?
A: From the Caucasus.
Q: (L) So, they started off from the Caucasus, went to China, and were later driven back West by the Chinese? Is that it?
A: Yes.
You will note that the C’s did not say that the Hittites were a genetically altered group of Scythians but answered merely “close”. If Bel and Baal are one and the same deity though, then we should keep in mind what the C’s said here about Baal:
Q: (L) Who was or is Baal?
A: Lizard.
Q: (L) Beelzebub? [
MJF: the Jewish devil]
A: Same.
Q: (L) Were these actual names of individual Lizards?
A: No. Personifications.
Apparently, it seems the Lizards were running around all over the place in the ancient world playing the role of gods. Which makes me think of what the C’s said here about the figure of
Ambrius:
Q: Was Stonehenge once known as the Cloister of Ambrius?
A: Yes.
Q: Who was Ambrius?
A: Druid tradition/cloak.
Q: What was it a cloak for? Who was Ambrius?
A: Not who. What.
Q: What was Ambrius?
A: They would label as a god. You might say otherwise.
It seems that Ambrius might have been yet another example of the Lizards running around playing the role of a god but this time to the Druids. This potential involvement of the Lizards with their advanced 4D technology may make sense of the C’s statement concerning some of the damage caused to the stones at Stonehenge where they said:
“
Some were EM generated smashes, when terran forces clashed with outside "forces."
Was Ambrius therefore the Celtic deity Bran or Bel by just another name? However, as we saw above, Stonehenge is also linked with the Greek god Apollo.
Apollo as a Celtic God
Ward Rutherford, a writer on the ancient Celts, advances a view gaining traction that the cult of Apollo, which was once regarded as quintessentially Greek and, therefore, of Mediterranean provenance, may have been a northern one originally. Strangely, this view coincides with the Greek’s own belief that for three months of each year, the god lived among a northerly people whose land was “beyond the North Wind”. Rutherford points out that it is generally held that Apollo was an interloper on the Greek mountain of the gods Olympus; an importation no less for whom their myths had to be adapted to accord him a place. Apollo’s most famous shrine was at Delphi, where he was worshipped as the Pythian Apollo on account of his slaughter of the snakes there (MJF: shades of the equivalent Irish snake legend of St. Patrick here perhaps).
Rutherford also makes a reference in his book to the annual offering sent to the temple at Delos by the legendary “Hyperboreans”. His view is that the name “Hyperborean” was one applied to the peoples of any northerly territory in much the same way as pre-18th Century western Europeans referred to the “Moors” as anyone with a dark skin. However, he notes there is general agreement that in a passage from Hecateus (circa 500 BC), as quoted by Diodorus (who ascribed the foundation of the Celtic nation to the demi-god and son of Zeus, Hercules or Heracles), the land of the Hyperboreans can only be Britain. Rutherford points out that Hecateus was not given to reporting rumour but was a painstaking and judicious writer who travelled extensively and described his observations in a book now lost to us called Circuit of the Earth. Hecateus tells us that the island of the Hyperboreans was the birthplace of Leto, a daughter of the giant Titans [MJF: here again we see ancient Britain being linked with giants], and on this account her son, Apollo, was venerated there above all the gods. Hecateus also mentions that the island housed a vast temple in circular form, which can only be Stonehenge and he goes on to describe the observance of the Metonic Cycle there, where at the end of each cycle Apollo was said to visit the island and play his harp to accompany the dancing of his worshippers over a period of days. Interestingly, Apollo is credited with giving mankind the harp, which he had received from the hands of Hermes (the Roman Mercury) and this has become a uniquely Celtic instrument, found in both Wales and Ireland. The Graeco-Roman instrument in antiquity was, of course, the Lyre, which the harp may be a derivative of or vice versa.
Thus, we see here Britain being connected by ancient commentators to the Titans, the Hyperboreans and Apollo and perhaps by extension to Zeus, whose Celtic equivalent is Taranis, a thunder god and to Bel and Marduk (see Robert Graves’s comments above). The idea of Apollo being originally a Hyperborean god who was adopted by the Greeks received strong support from the C’s as seen in the following exchange:
Session 23 March 2013:
Q: (L) Which reminds me... I was reading in this book about Greek religion by Walter Burkert that the term "paean" was used to describe to the type of songs that were sung in the worship of the god Apollo in the most ancient times. And Apollo was supposedly the Hyperborean god, and if my suppositions are correct, was also the god that was worshipped at Stonehenge. Any connection there?
A: Indeed.
The Sons of Belial
In Professor Barry Fell’s excellent book America BC, he makes a strong and compelling connection between the Celtic god Bel and the Canaanite god Baal based on an ancient stone Ogham inscription he discovered in North America, which clearly describes Bel as Baal, the principal god of the Canaanites, who occupied what would become Northern Israel. The Jewish prophets such as Ezekiel were constantly at war with the priests of Baal, as we encountered in earlier articles on this thread (N.B. recall here the biblical story of Jezebel).
It is well attested that the Jews had complete contempt for Baal and Belial, a term occurring in the Hebrew Bible which later became personified as the devil. “Belial” is a Hebrew word "used to characterize the wicked or worthless". The etymology of the word is often understood as "lacking worth". Some scholars translate it from Hebrew as "worthless" (Beli yo'il), while others translate it as "yokeless" (Beli ol), "may he have no rising" or "never to rise" (Beli ya'al). The word occurs twenty-seven times in the Masoretic Text. In the Hebrew text, the phrase the "Sons of Belial" simply means "sons of worthlessness". Phrases beginning with "sons of" are a common Semitic idiom, such as "sons of destruction" or "sons of lawlessness". Of these 27 occurrences, the idiom "sons of Belial" (בְּנֵֽי־בְלִיַּעַל beni beliyaal) appears 15 times to indicate worthless people, including idolaters. Do we see here perhaps a surviving and ongoing antagonistic attitude between Cayce’s the “Sons of the One” and the “Sons of Belial”?
Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the
Sons of Belial:
In
The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Belial is the leader of the Sons of Darkness:
“
You made Belial for the pit, angel of enmity; in darkness is his domain, his counsel is to bring about wickedness and guilt. All the spirits of his lot are angels of destruction, they walk in the laws of darkness; towards it goes their only desire.”
In the
Rules of the Community, God is depicted as saying, "
I shall not comfort the oppressed until their path is perfect. I shall not retain Belial within my heart." Belial controls scores of demons, which are specifically allotted to him by God for the purpose of performing evil. Belial, despite his malevolent disposition, is considered an angel.
Belial's presence is found throughout the ‘
War Scrolls’ and is established as the force occupying the opposite end of the spectrum of God. In Col. I, verse 1, the first line of the document, it is stated that "
the first attack of the Sons of Light shall be undertaken against the forces of the Sons of Darkness, the army of Belial." This dichotomy sheds light on the negative connotations that Belial held at the time.
The
War Scroll and
the Thanksgiving hymns both delve into the idea that Belial is accursed by God and his people and shows how the existence of Belial in this world can be attributed to the mysteries of God since we cannot know why he permits the dealings of Belial to persist.
In the
Dead Sea Scrolls, Belial is further contrasted with God. These are the
Angel of Light and
the Angel of Darkness.
The Manual of Discipline identifies the Angel of Light as God himself. The Angel of Darkness is identified in the same scroll as Belial [
MJF: ref. my recent article on the Dead Sea Scrolls.]
Also in
The Dead Sea Scrolls is a recounting of a dream of
Amram, the father of
Moses [
MJF: is Amram really Abraham or Abram?], who finds two 'watchers' contesting over him. One is Belial who is described as the King of Evil and
Prince of Darkness. Belial is also mentioned in the
Fragments of a Zadokite Work (which is also known as The
Damascus Document (CD)), which states that during the eschatological age, "
Belial shall be let loose against Israel, as God spoke through Isaiah the prophet." The
Fragments also speak of "
three nets of Belial" which are said to be fornication, wealth, and pollution of the sanctuary. In this work, Belial is sometimes presented as an agent of divine punishment and sometimes as a rebel, as
Mastema is. It was Belial who inspired the Egyptian sorcerers,
Jochaneh and his brother, to oppose Moses and Aaron. The
Fragments also say that anyone who is ruled by the spirits of Belial and speaks of rebellion should be condemned as a
necromancer and wizard.
In the
Ascension of Isaiah, Belial is the angel of lawlessness and "the ruler of this world", and identified as
Samael and
Satan:
“
And Manasseh turned aside his heart to serve Belial; for the angel of lawlessness, who is the ruler of this world, is Belial, whose name is Matanbuchus.”
—
(Ascension of Isaiah 2:4)
Bel and the Dragon
Bel was also the name of the god whose priests entered into a battle of wits with the Israelite prophet
Daniel (a Danaan or member of the tribe of Dan?) whilst he was a guest of the Persian King
Cyrus the Great in Babylon, which he had conquered thus liberating the captive Israelites. Daniel cleverly uncovered the ruse of the 70 priests of Bel (by scattering ashes over the floor of the temple in the presence of the king after the priests have left) showing that the "sacred" meal or offering to Bel, which the priests left each night in front of the statue or idol of Bel, was actually being consumed at night by the priests, their wives and children who entered through a secret door when the temple's doors had been sealed. The narrative of Bel (Daniel 14:1–22) can thus be viewed as a tale intended to ridicule the worship of idols.
However, there is also a brief but autonomous companion narrative (ref. Daniel 14:23–30), which involves a great dragon which the Babylonians revered." Some time after the Temple of Bel's condemnation, the Babylonians started to worship a dragon. The king argued that unlike Bel, the dragon was a clear example of a live animal. Daniel promised to slay the dragon without the aid of a sword, and did so by baking pitch, fat, and hair (
trichas) to make cakes (
mazas, barley cakes) that caused the dragon to burst open upon their consumption. In other variants of the tale, other ingredients served the purpose: in a form known to the
Midrash, straw was fed in which nails were hidden, or skins of camels were filled with hot coals. Curiously, a similar story occurs in the Persian poet
Ferdowsi's epic poem the
Shahnameh (written between 977 and 1010 AD), where Alexander the Great, or "Iskandar", kills a dragon by feeding it cow hides stuffed with poison and tar. Some scholars have even suggested a parallel between the Daniel dragon text and the contest between Marduk and Tiamat in Mesopotamian mythology, where the winds controlled by Marduk burst Tiamat open and barley-cake plays the same role as the wind. If this connection is valid (although modern scholars like David DeSilva cast doubt on it), this may then link us back to the tale of Tarhunt’s/Teshub's battle with Illuyankas and Zeus’s battle with Typhon, suggesting that this tale may be a very old one indeed.
In 1937, Edgar Cayce used the terms "Sons of Belial" and "Sons of the Law of One" for the first time in one of his deep trance readings given between 1923 and 1945. Cayce was often referred to as the "sleeping prophet" who gave over 2,500 readings to individuals while in a deep trance state. While his definition of the Sons of Belial was consistent with the Hebrew meaning of "worthless" individuals focused on self-gratification, Cayce went on to use the term frequently to compare opposing human forces at work in pre-historical times related to the early development of Atlantis.
Conclusion
Did the Dark Age Hellenic Greeks create their theogony and pantheon of gods from their strong trading and cultural connections with the Hittites of western Anatolia and their long-standing connections to the Hyperboreans or Celts of Britain? Did the Hittites include among their number Trojan survivors of the siege of Troy who had migrated to Anatolia from Britain. If so, did these Hittites include among their ranks a group of Druids, former Sons of Belial, who would subsequently become the monk-like Levites associated with Moses and accompany him into the Sinai Desert when he led the Israelites out of Egypt in the event described in the Bible as the Exodus?
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