The Irish Origins of Civilization

Irish Origins Appendices

Introduction

I know that I hung on the windy tree, For nine whole nights, Wounded with the spear, dedicated to Odin, Myself to myself - (Song of Odin)

Tree imagery is found in myths and legends throughout the world. Most religious scriptures also employ floral motifs in one context or another. To this day we refer to the pages of a book as "leaves," and when we glance at the pages of history we find everything from fig leaves covering the genitalia of Adam and Eve to laurel-sprig coronets on the heads of Roman Caesars. According to the Bible, even Jesus was given myrrh at this birth and a "crown of thorns" before his execution.

The word bible comes from the ancient pagan city of Byblos, where some of the world's first paper was made and transported. (The word paper comes from "papyrus," a Greek word referring to the sedge plant that grew along the banks of sacred rivers such as the Nile and Euphrates.) Byblos was a Phoenician capital, and the Phoenicians (or Arcadians), because of their expertise with wood and architecture, were commissioned to erect the Temple of Solomon.

Numerous city streets have been named "Oak," "Pine," Redwood," and Cedar," and a plethora of state buildings feature columns representing the trunks of sacred trees. Ironically, while Earth is denuded of its exquisite forests and woods, we find acorns, berries, and oak leaves as decorations on bank notes, flags, medals, corporate logos, and government edifices the world over.

We might ask why? And where does it all come from? Is it all just for decorative purposes, or are there other reasons for its prevalence?

The sun, moon, and star (Sirius) denote the Cults of the ancient world and their knowledge that begins in the heavens and descends to earth through the minds of initiated and purified men. The black and white squares represent ignorance and knowledge, as well as night and day. The black squares in the center of the image are laid out like the Kabalistic Tree of Life. The two small blocks in the background are known as "Lewis," a term that comes from the Irish letter "L" (Luis) denoting the rowan tree. In Masonic enclaves, "Lewis" is a term used to describe the son of any Freemason. Apparently, the nomenclature denotes Druidic influence. The three columns or pylons turn up in the movie Solomon and Sheba. (See below.)

The Old and New Testaments

To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God – (Revelation 2:7)

The tropes and iconography of Judaism and Christianity are largely based on earlier pagan traditions. The scriptures provide us with ample evidence of this fact. The Old and New Testaments are chock full of pagan references. Specifically, there are many passages that refer to sabean phenomena. In other words, there are many references, both cryptic and obvious, to the stars and luminaries. As we revealed in our book Astro-Theology and Sidereal Mythology, solar symbolism frequently appears in the majority of Biblical chapters.

The Romans ridiculed the Gods of Egypt whom they themselves adored but under different names. They burnt Serapis, Anubis, and Isis; they revered Pluto, Mercury and Ceres. So the Roman Catholics while pretending to abjure the Gods of heathenism have actually adopted many of them - W. Winwood Reade (The Veil of Isis)

The scriptures are also replete with floral symbolism. For example, in the Book of Genesis we hear of three trees. There is the Tree of Life, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the oak under which the prophet Jacob buried the pagan idols previously worshiped by the Jews.

And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and all their earrings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem – (Genesis 35:4)

Unbiased researchers who have done their homework know from which cultures and traditions the scribes borrowed the floral and vegetal motifs that appear in their writings. Specifically, the plagiarized symbolism had long been employed in an unadulterated and reverent manner by Egyptian and Irish (Gaelic and Celtic) adepts to signify god and the knowledge transmitted to man by the Creator. In light of this, Christians and Jews should spend time reviewing the tenets of their religions. They should ask probing questions of their priests, pastors, and rabbis, and press them to explain the existence of pagan symbolism in the architecture and holy books. Better still, they should go to the experts who spent their lives uncovering the truth about the origins of religious imagery:

The two trees in the Garden of Eden can be accounted for upon Egyptian ground, but on no other; one being the tree of the pole in the stellar mythos, the other the tree of life or of dawn in the garden eastward. The two typical trees are recognizable as Egyptian in the Book of the Dead. In one chapter (97th) they are called the two divine sycamores of heaven and earth. The sycamore of heaven is identified as the tree of Nut. It stands in the "lake of equipoise," which is at the celestial pole. The tree of earth is the tree of Hathor and of dawn. Atum-Ra, the solar god, is also described as coming forth from betwixt the two trees...The tree of earth, or Hathor, and the tree of heaven, or Nut, were brought on together and united in the tree of burial for the mummy. Wherever it was possible the Egyptian coffin was made from wood of the sycamore tree, the khat-en-ankhu, or tree of life, so that the dead might be taken in the embrace of the mother of life, who was represented by the tree – Gerald Massey (Ancient Egypt: Light of the World)

Tree symbolism can be found in the Book of Exodus. In chapter three we read about the famous burning bush where God addressed Moses:

And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground - (Exodus 3:2-5)

Let's find out where this image of the burning bush comes from, and what it truly alludes to.

The Mushroom Cults

The ancient Israelite religion of Jehovah worship was based largely on the mushroom cult - John Marco Allegro

There are a few intriguing interpretations of the term "burning bush." Some researchers believe the mysterious term refers to mushrooms, or some other hallucinogenic plant once cultivated by priests and holy men. Drinking potions made from the juices, resins, and saps of potent plants allowed human consciousness to expand. Higher senses and centers of awareness opened and the imbiber entered into mental contact with preternatural intelligences often taken for gods. Scholars such as John Marco Allegro explored the manner in which various early Judaic and Christian priesthoods made use of psychotropic, vision-inducing, substances. Allegro's two controversial books on psychotropic rituals in early Judeo-Christianity were ridiculed and suppressed. Apparently, his revelations set off many alarm bells. During an interview, Allegro said:

Thousands of years before Christianity, secret cults arose which worshipped the sacred mushroom — the Amanita Muscaria — which, for various reasons (including its shape and power as a drug) came to be regarded as a symbol of God on earth. When the secrets of the cult had to be written down, it was done in the form of codes hidden in folktales. This is the basic origin of the stories in the New Testament. They are a literary device to spread the rites and rules of mushroom worship to the faithful

Ancient priesthoods were particularly interested in the genus Amanita. As we can see from the following photographs, there are uncanny similarities between the costumes and regalia of the Catholic clergy and the appearance of the Amanita Muscaria mushroom. Allegro's radical theories are not, it seems, without credence after all.

The following unrealistic painting depicts the coronation of Emperor Constantine. Notice the "umbrella-like" object above Constantine's head.

The Burning Bush

Right: Pre-Columbian magic mushroom-priest. (From Guatemala.)

Allegro discovered that the symbol of the cross or crucifix was a simulacra for the sacred mushroom. He wrote of the connection between the mushroom and the cross:

The cross piece was the mushroom cap and the upright support was the stem of the fungus. Every aspect of the phallic mushroom was replete with sexual allusions, and the sign of the cross was primarily a sexual fertility symbol. It is with this significance that the cross became the sign of the phallic god Hermes, erected throughout the ancient world at cross-roads, and thought to bring good luck to travelers, as the Crucifix is commonly displayed by the roadside in Catholic countries today

Allegro emphasized the implicit phallicism of Judeo-Christian symbolism. It was another motif carried over from pagan iconography of earlier times. His points are well taken, as we will see when we analyze the names Jehovah and Yahweh.

The burning bush turns up as a burning tree on the insignia of the Scottish Church. Perhaps the clergy know something about the scriptures and the history of their religion that we do not know.

Land of the Tree and Serpent

In the religious history of the Aryan race in Europe the worship of trees has played an important part. Nothing could be more natural...From an examination of the Teutonic words for "temple" Grimm has made it probable that amongst the Germans the oldest sanctuaries were natural woods...tree worship is well attested for all the great European families of the Aryan stock – Sir James George Frazer (The Golden Bough, 1922)

Another intriguing interpretation that might explain the reference to a burning or blazing tree, comes from a study of Kabalism. Kabalistic magical systems (which are Irish and Egyptian, not Jewish), are based around a tree-like schemata which involves twenty two branches or pathways, and ten (sometimes eleven) spheres known as the Sephira. The divine intelligence located at the highest zone of the Kabalistic "Tree of Life" communicates its wisdom downward through the nine lower zones. The human world is positioned at zone number ten. The following diagram illustrates the manner in which the ancient adepts viewed the decent of divine intelligence:

Interestingly, the descent of spiritual power and knowledge, from zone one at the top of the tree, to zone ten at the bottom, was likened to a bolt of lightening. The Kabalists imagined spiritual wisdom descending from heaven in the form of a blazing lightening flash. In other words, what we read about in the Book of Exodus can be deciphered by a study of Kabalistic precepts. In short, the burning bush is the luminous Tree of Life.

Importantly, the Kabalistic System and Tree of the Sephira do not originate with the Jews. These motifs were known and revered by mystery school adepts thousands of years before the advent of Judeo-Christianity. They were sacred icons long before the rise of Greece and Rome.

That the Druids...revered the form of the cross can hardly be doubted. Schedius de Mor...informs us that it was their custom to seek studiously for an oak tree large and handsome, growing up with two principal arms in the form of a cross beside the main stem. If the two horizontal arms were not sufficiently adapted to the figure, they fastened a cross beams to it. Then they consecrated it by cutting upon the right branch in fair characters the word Hesus, upon the middle stem, the word Taranis, upon the left branch Belenus, and over them the word Thaw. The tree so inscribed, they would make their Kabala like the Jewish Jerusalem, the Turk's Mecca, and the Christian's altar to which they would direct their faces when they prayed - W. Winwood Reade (The Veil of Isis)

In fact, Egypt was once given the pseudonym "Land of the Tree and Serpent." This is because Egypt, or Khem, was the "Black Land" of magical arts. On the banks of the Nile the great healers, hierophants, architects, and astrologers set up their temples and schools.

The hieroglyphic sign for "year" (renpet) was a branch from a date palm with all the leaves stripped off...The presentation of a symbolic palm branch to the king was an important part of his jubilee festival...Heh, the god of eternity was depicted wearing a notched palm branch on his head or holding one in each hand - (Myths and their Settings)

The Egyptian word for "records" or "annals" was genut, from genu, meaning "branch" - ibid

The willow (tcheret), often identified as tamarisk, was sacred to Osiris...The jackal-god Wepwawet was said in the Pyramid Texts to have 'emerged from a tamarisk bush,' while Horus was believed to have come forth from an acacia - ibid

The Scandinavian world-tree, Yggdrasil, supports on its branches nine spheres or worlds - which the Egyptians symbolized by the nine stamens of the persea or avocado. All of these are enclosed within the mysterious tenth sphere or cosmic egg - the definitionless Cipher of the Mysteries. The Qabbalistic tree of the Jews also consists of nine branches, or worlds, emanating from the First Cause or Crown, which surrounds its emanations as the shell surrounds the egg - Manly Palmer Hall

Jewish and Christian mythmongers simply adopted the customs, rites, and traditions of their betters. They set to work to incorporate pagan leitmotifs into their own incoherent iconography. The point is directly addressed by Mrs. Valentia Straiton, who, quoting from S. A. Mackey's Mythological Astronomy, wrote:

Jewish history covers nothing that is new, but the early Jews had great ingenuity in "turning singular into plurals, and plurals into singulars, and what was feminine with their masters, they made masculine...in some places things inanimate have been turned into men by adding the sign of the masculine gender, this was frequently done by the Greeks"

Today, we take this mishmash as theology when it is in fact nothing more than priestly propaganda. As Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky perceptively wrote:

Judaism earlier, and later Gnosticism, Christianity, and even Christian Masonry, have all been erected upon identical cosmical myths, symbols, and allegories, whose full comprehension is possible only to those who have inherited the key from their inventors

The Bible of the Christian Church is the latest receptacle of their scheme of disfigured allegories which have been erected into an edifice of superstition, such as never entered into the conceptions of those from whom the Church obtained her knowledge

In her fine book on Christian atrocities, author Helen Ellerbe writes about the Church's vile acts of appropriation and obliteration:

Older temples and sacred sites, once dedicated to pre-Christian goddesses, were re-dedicated or replaced with churches for Mary. In Rome on the Esquitine hill the Santa Maria Maggiore replaced Cybele's temple. Near the Pantheon a church dedicated to Mary adjoined Isis' sanctuary, while another was built on the site which had been dedicated to Minerva. On the Capitoline in Aracoeli the Santa Maria supplanted a temple of the Phoenician goddess Tanit. In Cyprus, shrines that were Aphrodite's hallowed ground easily became those of Mary, who to this day is still called Panaghia Aphroditessa – (The Dark Side of Christian History)

Sacred plants and trees have been incorporated into the designs of religious institutions all over the world. This pagan imagery is particularly conspicuous in Rome, the seat of Catholicism.

Yahweh and the Yew Tree

Those chapters...in the Book of Genesis which describe the Garden of Eden; its being watered without rain; the sacred tree; the cherub with drawn sword guarding the entrance; the serpent, at first upright and talking to Eve, then creeping on its belly, and the after war against it, and which attempts to explain the origin of sin and death, would seem to belong to the Egyptian mind rather than to the Jewish – Samuel Sharpe (Egyptian Mythology and Egyptian Christianity)

Mr. Sharpe is certainly correct. What he fails to mention, however, is where the Egyptians received the symbolism and leitmotifs appropriated by Jews and Christians of later ages. Nevertheless, he is right to draw our attention to the imagery of the Bible, which, when read aright, betrays Western as well as Egyptian origins:

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them – (Matthew 7:15-20)

The Druids who gave this powerful and beautiful symbolism to the world were eventually eradicated. We have told the story of the annihilation of the Druidic colleges, and the cannibalization of their traditions, in Volume One of our book. We drew attention to passages that subtly bespeak of the genocide perpetrated by the enemies of truth, the sorcerers whose descendents - the Atonists - dominate the world today:

The Lord called you a thriving olive tree with fruit beautiful in form…But with the roar from a mighty storm he will set it on fire, and its branches will be broken – (Jeremiah 11:14)

I the Lord have brought down the high tree (the Druids and Amenists), have exalted the low tree (the Atonists), have dried up the green tree (Druidic colleges), and have made the dry tree (Christianity) to flourish. I the Lord (Aton) have spoken and have done it – (Ezekiel 17)

Jehovah is certainly Aton. He is known to Jews as Adon or Adonai. A little homework, and we find out that Adon was a Phoenician-Canaanite god of great importance. He was certainly also worshiped by the Phoenicians. Their cities Byblos and Sidon, bore great statues of Adon. This god can be found in Ireland as Autun, in Italy as Auton or Adonis, in Etruscia as Atunis, and in Egypt as Aton. These deities originate from the Scandinavian Donar (Thor) and Odin, the god who sacrificed himself on the Yggdrasil, the "World Ash Tree" that stretched between heaven and earth. How many nations have legends of the holy man or hero and the tree of knowledge? Many do so, and the motif originated in North-Western lands.

...the worship of the oak tree, or the oak-god, appears to have been shared by all the branches of the Aryan stock in Europe, that is by the peoples who descended from the Indo-Europeans – James G. Frazer (The Golden Bough)

In the religious history of the Aryan race in Europe the worship of trees has played an important part. Nothing could be more natural...From an examination of the Teutonic words for "temple" Grimm has made it probable that amongst the Germans the oldest sanctuaries were natural woods...tree worship is well attested for all the great European families of the Aryan stock – ibid

Trees of cultic adoration would have a multivalent symbolism: as World Tree, Tree of Life. Locally, each tribal group would have had its own sacred tree marking the "center" of its territory, and at which its kings would be inaugurated – Paul Lonigan (The Druids: Priests of the Ancient Celts)

There is a tradition among the Jews that the tree of knowledge was named Dar and that this was supposed to be the oak, whence Dar, in Irish, means "an oak;" it also implies "wisdom" – Dudley Wright (Druidism: The Ancient Faith of Britain, 1924)

Maximus of Tyre also speaks of the Celtic...image of Zeus as a lofty oak, and an old Irish glossary gives daur, "oak," as an early Irish name for "god" – J. A. MacCulloch (The Religion of the Ancient Celts)

The pass of Lyon, opening from the pleasant flat hill-girt Vale of Fortingall, is a natural gateway which for reserved grandeur is unsurpassed in Scotland. The Parish teems with memorials of bygone ages. It possesses the remnant of what is claimed to be the oldest tree in Europe, if not the world. Holy men and bards from Ireland have tarried within its bounds…The fact that the site selected of old for the church is within a few feet of the ancient yew is probably no accident. In Ireland certain very famous trees, usually yew trees, were closely connected with the tribes in whose territory they stood. They were held as sacred, and served as tribal meeting-places. This custom was pagan in origin, but the trees continued to be held in reverence in Christian times. When Christianity was introduced, pagan sacred sites were often converted into Christian sacred sites – Alexander Stewart (A Highland Parish or the History of Fortingall, 1928)

Another rendition of the name Jehovah is Yahweh. This word is a variation of Yehew or Yehu, which is a variation of yew (Gaelic Ihu.) It is not surprising that Moses met Jehovah at a burning bush or tree. It would lack consistency if he had not done so.

The first letter of the name Jehovah also denotes the yew tree. The letter "J" is interchangeable with "I" and "Y." In Hebrew, the first letter of god's name is known as Yod, Jod, or Iod, meaning "one" and also "phallus." These letters derive from the Irish Jodh, which can also be found in Greek as Iota.

The yew tree was one of the most sacred of all trees in Druidism. The taller thinner variety (similar to the cypress), known as fastigiata, grew abundantly throughout Western Ireland and was sacred to the ancient warrior queen and goddess of the Tuatha de Danann, Banbha, after whom Ireland was once named. Botanists believe all other yews in the world to be descended from two Irish trees. County "Mayo" takes its name from a word meaning "yew forest."

In Ireland certain very famous trees, usually yew trees, were closely connected with the tribes in whose territory they stood. They were held as sacred, and served as tribal meeting places. This custom was pagan in origin, but the trees continued to be held in reverence in Christian times. When Christianity was introduced, pagan sacred sites were often converted into Christian sacred sites – Alexander Stewart (A Highland Parish or the History of Fortingall, 1928)

Interestingly, the most sacred Egyptian groves, orchards, and temple precincts appear to have had these Irish yews in pride of place. According to Ralph Ellis, the yew was the Egyptian's original "Tree of Life," and it featured prominently in Egypt's most sacred mystery school traditions and initiatory rites. It was a symbol of death and underworld rites. The oldest implements in the world, dating to over fifty thousand years ago, were made of yew wood. The tree may have been considered sacred because it poisoned all animals that ate of its bark or leaves except the stag and deer. The deer and stag were supremely sacred to the Irish Druids. The yew can still be found in British churchyards. Given that the yews are older than Christian churches, it follows that Christian churches and cathedrals were deliberately positioned near to the tree for symbolic purposes. A study of the yew tree serves to confirm the West to East movement of the elements of religion. As we mentioned above, the last letter of the Irish Ogham alphabet - "I" - signified the yew tree. The letter, identical to the Hebrew Yod, is the first letter in the name of the Judeo-Christian god (Jehovah or Yahweh). It is also the initial letter of Juda, which comes from Yahuda or Yahud. So, we might ask, were the "Jews" originally "Men of the Yew," that is, the initiates of Druidic colleges?

The incarnate god was probably representative of a god or spirit of earth, growth, or vegetation, represented also by a tree. A symbolic branch of such a tree was borne by kings, and perhaps by Druids, who used oak branches in their rites. King and tree would be connected, the king's life being bound up with that of the tree, and perhaps at one time both perished together. But as kings were represented by a substitute, so the sacred tree, regarded as too sacred to be cut down, may also have had its succedaneum. The Irish bile or sacred tree, connected with the kings, must not be touched by any impious hand, and it was sacrilege to cut it down – J. A. MacCulloch (The Religion of the Ancient Celts)

"The groves were God's first temples," says Bryant. The groves, too, were among man's first gods...Not only the Druids of Britain, but the Greeks, and the Semitic races of Asia were worshipers of trees. The giant oaks and the symmetrical evergreens were gods..."The worship of trees," says Soury, "only disappeared in Syria at a very late date...The largest and tallest trees, and the evergreen ones, were adored as gods" – John E. Remsberg (The Christ)

In the works of Greek and Latin writers we hear repeatedly of sacred woods and groves, sanctuaries in forest clearings and on hilltops, beside springs and lakes and on islands, and of places set apart for the burial of the noble dead – H. R. Ellis Davidson (Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe: Early Scandinavian and Celtic Religions)

Elohim and the Elm

The sacred tree, or tree of life, so universally recognized in eastern systems of theology, is called to mind; and we are naturally led to refer the traditions connected with it to a common origin – Austen Henry Layard (Nineveh and its Remains, 1849)

Early Christians and Jews were divided into several competing groups, some hardline, some moderate, and others more liberal in their beliefs and attitudes. There were Adamites, Ebionites, Simonians, Marcionites, Paulists, Nasoreans or Mandeans, Carpocratians, Cainites, Essenes, Samaritans, Zealots, Zadokites, and many more competing and antagonistic groups. There were those who believed in one god, Jehovah, and those who believed in a plurality of gods known as the Elohim.

Of course, this word Elohim is often taken for the name of a particular god. But this is not the case. The word is plural. In fact, as we showed in our book Astro-Theology and Sidereal Mythology, the Elohim were based on the nine creator gods of the Amenists, headed by Ptah. Ptah is Ju-pitar or Jupiter of the Romans (Zeus of the Greeks), and Dis Pater of the Celts. He is found in the Bible as Saint Peter (Petra), the rock upon which Christ establishes his Church. Again, the symbolism of paganism turns up in the iconography of Christianity.

Trees are repeatedly mentioned in the Old and New Testaments, and in the scriptures of various pagan nations. The Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil mentioned in Genesis, the burning bush in which the angel appeared to Moses, the famous vine and fig tree of the New Testament, the grove of olives in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus went to pray, and the miraculous tree of Revelation, which bore twelve manners of fruit and whose leaves were for the healing of the nations, all bear witness to the esteem in which trees were held by the scribes of Holy Writ. Buddha received his illumination while under the bodhi tree, near Madras in India, and several of the Eastern gods are pictured sitting in meditation beneath the spreading branches of mighty trees. Many of the great sages and saviors carried wands, rods, or staves cut from the wood of sacred trees, as the rods of Moses and Aaron; Gungnir – the spear of Odin – cut from the Tree of Life; and the consecrated rod of Hermes, around which the fighting serpents entwined themselves – Manly Palmer Hall (Secret Teachings of All Ages, 1928)

The word Elohim was used in the Old Testament over two thousand five hundred times as a name for god. However, as we said, it meant more than one god. The word Elohim is simply a corruption of the Hebrew words Aleim or Alim, which are themselves variants of the ancient Irish word Ailim, signifying "A," the first letter of the Irish alphabet. These Irish and Hebrew words can be correctly rendered Elm. The elm, ash, and oak (as well as the rowan, yew, pine, myrrh, myrtle, acacia, olive, almond, fig, and palm) were sacred to the adepts and kings of the ancient world.

The myrtle performed the same office of symbolism in the Mysteries of Greece as the lotus did in Egypt, or the mistletoe among the Druids. The candidate, in these initiations, was crowned with myrtle, because, according to the popular theology, the myrtle was sacred to Proserpine, the goddess of the future life - Albert A. Mackey (The Symbolism of Freemasonry)

The syllable el is the origin of the word elm. The syllable also appears in words such as elite and elder, meaning "senior" "old," or "ancient." The elm was therefore the tree of the elders or gods - the Els or Als. The term connoted the sun and is the origin of the Greek term Heli or Helios, meaning "sun." The syllable appears in Allah, which is a version of Elah, Aleim, or Elohim.

For Jehovah is the synthesis of the Seven Elohim, the eternal center of all those attributes and forces, the Alei of the Aleim, and the Adonai of the Adonim – Madame Helena Blavatsky (The Secret Doctrine)

For Yahweh is the great God of Gods, Lord of the Elohim – (Deuteronomy 10:17)

The Levites and the Rowan

Aryans do not kill even a small plant unnecessarily, not to speak of cutting trees for sense gratification…Aryans do not distinguish between lower and higher grades of life. All life should be protected. All living beings have a right to live, even the trees and plants. This is the basic principle of an Aryan civilization – Srimad Bhagavatam (SB 6.16.43, Purport)

Just as the word "Jew" derives from the word for yew tree, so does the ancient name "Levi" (or "Levite") come from the Gaelic letter "L," known as Lewi or Luis, and which can also be rendered Lewis or Louis. The letter "L" (or Luis) referred to the Rowan tree that was the most sacred of all trees in Irish Druidism. The rowan in Danish is rönne, and in Swedish it is rönn. The name Ron (or Ronald) may derive from the name of this tree.

The worshippers or keepers of the Rowan were known as the Lewi. This is where the word Levite originates. The original Western Levites were astrologers, priests, and teachers. The Biblical "Levites" adopted the old Druidic title as their own, either because they had descended from Western Druids, or because they were initiates and adepts from Druidic colleges. The Isle of Lewis in Scotland was once a major Druidic center. Place names Lewisham and Lewes derive from the root. Additionally, the supreme sun god of the ancient Irish was known as Lugh. He appears globally as the English Llud, Sumerian Lughal, Welsh Llew, Gaulish Lugos, Italian Logos. He appears in the Christian scriptures as Saint Luke, patron saint of surgeons and healers. The word London comes from Lludunum (or Lugh's Hill). Lugh's temple is now the site of the Christian St. Paul's Cathedral. The Rowan may have been given its name Luis because it was sacred to Lugh. His title was Samildanach, or "Master of all Arts." In Masonic tradition, the term "Lewis" refers to the son of a Mason. It also refers to a particular tool employed by stone masons.

The truth about the origins of Judeo-Christianity can be found in the Bible's testaments by those unbiased and objective researchers. The truth has also be cryptically disclosed down through the ages in artwork, and today that truth is disclosed in certain popular movies. Let us take a moment and analyze the hidden information contained in the epics Ben Hur, Solomon and Sheba, and The Ten Commandments:

Another whistle-blowing epic is the United Artists spectacular Solomon and Sheba, with Yul Brenner and George Sanders. Let's take close look at a few scenes in this fascinating movie:

Many important revelations are made throughout the epic film The Ten Commandments. One of the most important scenes involves a startling revelation concerning the physiognomy of Egyptian royalty...

Another vital revelation in the movie concerns the royal identity of the so-called Israelites or Jews...

Another movie with equally important subtextual references to the true origins of Judeo-Christianity is the 1951 epic Quo Vadis. The title, meaning "where are you going," was derived from a passage in the Acts of Peter in the New Testament.

In chapter eighteen of the Book of Genesis, we read that Jehovah comes to visit the aged prophet Abraham and his wife Sarah. A few minutes after god is seated and fed in the "tent" of Abraham, three other visitors arrive. They are clearly extraordinary beings and Abraham promptly bows before them. They ask for water and sit near a tree. Reading the lines, we are alerted by the references to three travelers and to the tree beneath which they rest. We also note the similarity of these anecdotes to those in the Gospel of Matthew which tell of the three wise men or Magi who allegedly follow the "star in the east" to the stable where Jesus was born. In both cases, the imagery involved is both Druidic and sidereal:

And the Lord appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day; And he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him: and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground, And said, My Lord, if now I have found favour in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant: Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree: And I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts; after that ye shall pass on: for therefore are ye come to your servant. And they said, So do, as thou hast said. And Abraham hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said, Make ready quickly three measures of fine meal...And he took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree, and they did eat.

Lady of the Tree

She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honour. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and happy is every one that retaineth her – (Proverbs 3:15–18)

The goddess specifically associated with the Tree of Life was known as Nuith or Nut. The English word "nut" (signifying the fruit of a tree) comes from her name. Paintings on papyrus can still be seen featuring images of the goddess Nuith standing by or even in the sacred life giving tree. Many other pagan goddesses were associated with the tree of life. The mother of Adonis, for example, was known as Myrrha, a name that relates to the myrtle tree and fragrant myrrh plant. (Myrrha was turned into a tree by the gods, and her son Adonis was born from her trunk.) The name Myrrha appears in the Bible as Mary the Virgin and Mary Magdalene, the fallen women. The Egyptian version is Meri, meaning "beloved." Many Egyptian goddesses had "Meri" as a pseudonym. The word merry, meaning "joyous" is also a derivation. The name Adonis means "lord," or "high one." The Babylon version of Adonis was Tammuz. He too was connected to trees and vegetation. (The River Thames comes from this god's name, as does the Biblical Thomas.)

Women sit by the gate weeping for Tammuz, or they offer incense to Baal on roof-tops and plant pleasant plants. These are the very features of the Adonis cult: a cult confined to women which is celebrated on flat roof-tops on which sherds sown with quickly germinating green salading are placed, Adonis gardens... the climax is loud lamentation for the dead god - Walter Burkert (Greek Religion)

Women in Athens would plant "gardens of Adonis" quick-growing herbs that sprang up from seed and died. The Festival of Adonis was celebrated by women at midsummer by sowing fennel and lettuce, and grains of wheat and barley. The plants sprang up soon, and withered quickly, and women mourned for the untimely death of the vegetation god - (Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia, on Adonis)

In what appears to be the most widespread version of his death, Adonis is killed by a boar, symbol of aggressive masculinity...The goddess Aphrodite mourns him excessively, and so did the women of Athens during the festival....the women moved to the roofs of their houses...and spent the night in the open amid flowerpots especially set up and filled with plants for the occasion - the so-called Gardens of Adonis...The fragrant plants probably had erotic associations, the myrrh was at the same time a reminder of Adonis' mother - Eva C. Keuls (Reign of the Phallus)

...This Holy Spirit, the Great Mother, is symbolized by a great Tree whose branches spread over the entire world and reach above the heavens. A more beautiful symbol can hardly be conceived. This Tree "has three roots, widely remote from each other. The first is amongst the gods; the second among the Giants (the blessed spirits); the third embraces hell" – E. Valentia Straiton (The Celestial Ship of the North)

The primal Stellar Cult paradise was the place of one tree. The paradise or garden in Amenta...is the place of two trees...These two trees appear in the Ritual as the tree of Hathor and the tree of Nut; the tree of the Earth and the tree of Heaven; the tree of the North and the tree of the East. The tree of Hathor was the tree of life – Albert Churchward (The Origins and Evolution of Religion)

The only goddess to play a part in Judaism was Asherah. She is clearly a version of the Canaanite Ishtar and the Babylonian goddess Astarte or Ashtoreth. This goddess's name contains the syllable as or ash, referring to the tree of that name. As Mrs. Philpot explains in her excellent work Trees in Religion and Myth:

Amongst the Canaanites every altar to the god had its sacred tree beside it, and when the Israelites established local sanctuaries under their influence, they set up their altar under a green tree, and planted aside it as its indispensable accompaniment an "ashera," which was either a living tree or a tree-like post, and not a "grove," as rendered in the Authorized Version. This ashera was undoubtedly worshipped as a sacred symbol of the deity. Originally it appears to have been associated with Ashtoreth or Astarte, the Syrian Istar...But the ashera was also erected by the altars of other gods, and in pre-prophetic days even beside that of Jehovah Himself, whence it may be concluded that "in early times tree-worship had such a vogue in Canaan, that the sacred tree or the pole, its surrogate, had come to be viewed as a general symbol of deity

...Baal and Astarte generally being represented by a pillar, known as the Asherah in the Bible, a Hebrew word, also common noun, meaning a sacred tree or pole used in the goddess cult - David Livingstone (The Dying God)

The very term ashera, derives from ash, meaning "holy" or "god" and era, meaning "earth" or "place." Era was also the name of the primordial goddess of the Irish or Arish. Indeed, the very names Irish and Arya derive from her name, as to words and names such as terra, Tara, Taara, Tyre, Taurt, and so on. The origin of the name Osiris or, more correctly, Asar or Asura, comes from the ancient Irish god Aesar (or Iesa), no different than the Celtic Esus. The name Asar means "sacred tree." Similar terms such as asa, aesir, or asha, mean "gods."

Of course the female counterpart of god was eventually displaced and forgotten. However, as we showed in our book Astro-Theology and Sidereal Mythology, the female was not only depicted in proximity to the sacred tree - she was the sacred tree. And where the goddess and tree was found, the serpent of wisdom was also apparent.

One striking and important specimen of early type in the British Museum collection has two figures sitting one on each side of a tree, holding out their hands to the fruit, while at the back one (the woman) is etched a serpent...thus it is evident that a form of the "Fall," similar to that in Genesis, was known in early times in Babylonia – John G. Jackson (Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth)

In the Bible, the Christian mythmongers inverted the story of the female and her connection to the life-giving tree of life. The proto-Christians were Atonists, or members of the Solar Cult. They were paternalistic and so was their god. Even though Jehovah's name meant "yew tree," his servants were determined to downplay the pagan elements of their theology, presenting their solar heroes (Solomon, David, Joseph, Samson, Moses, Aaron, Jesus, and others) as stand alone entities. In the New Testament, the main women around Jesus are portrayed as being of low character, and Paul makes several scathing remonstrations against women in his writings. Apparently, this extremist attitude was a phenomenon that crept in after the second century AD. In early Judaism, for instance, women were revered, and there are hints throughout the scriptures indicating that women played a significant role in Christianity before the time of its codification at Nicea. Nevertheless, the Old Testament mythmongers made a complete travesty of story concerning the goddess and her relationship to the sacred tree and serpent of wisdom. Despite the fact that the mythmongers radically skewed and adulterated the story of the primal parents in the garden, and despite the textual contradictions and improbable elements of their concoction, millions of Christians stubbornly believe that what they read in the Book of Genesis actually happened. They believe that Eve was responsible for man's sorry predicament, by tempting him to disobey Yahweh and eat of the forbidden fruit.

From the Old Testament onward, we read many diatribes against womankind. We also have remonstrations against the veneration of nature and other gods and goddesses:

And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat...Behold! the man has become one of us, to know good and evil; and now lest he put forth his hand and take also of the Tree of Life and eat and live evermore – Genesis (3:13 & 22)

Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger – (Jeremiah 7:17–18)

Sociologist Erich Fromm wrote the following statement about the conspicuous bigotry of the Old Testament's authors:

The document that most powerfully exemplifies an extremely male, patriarchal attitude is the Old Testament…It is not surprising that the subject of productiveness, the Creation itself, also finds an extreme male solution in its pages…The reason why the Old Testament exhibits such a one sided, male character is that as the primary text of Jewish monotheism it represents a male victory over female deities, over the matriarchal remnants in the social structures. The Old Testament is the triumphal hymn of the victorious male religion, a song of victory commemorating the destruction of all traces of the matriarchy in religion and society – (Love, Sexuality and Matriarchy)

What the Christian mythmongers chose not to reveal is that the female was the forbidden fruit. In fact, in the earliest times, god was the tree. Before the Book of Genesis was written, god and the tree were one. In short, in the unadulterated version, woman initiates man into his godhead. She brings him the fruit, or leads him to the tree of knowledge. In the corrupted version, she is the temptress who leads him away from truth and causes his fall.

In pre-monotheistic ages the sophic female was the guide and instructor. She is the portal to the mysteries. As Arcanum II of the Tarot shows, she sits at the portal of the temple, in front of the sacred tree. She is the first ambassador of god, not the male hero or saint. She is also the first sacrificed or crucified one, meaning that she gives up her "life," as the earth does, so that all humankind can live and grow. Men begin as seeds in her  "garden" or womb, and at his death a man returns to her arms - his breath returns to the sky and his flesh to the earth.

As we have stated elsewhere, Biblical concoctions such as the Genesis story are terribly mutilated renditions of Irish and Amenist (or Aryan) creation sagas and initiation rites. When re-rendered in a pristine form, without the propagandist elements introduced by the Christian or Atonist priesthood, the mythographs take on a very different complexion.

Caesar and other Roman writers, as well as the Greeks, knew nothing of the esoteric wisdom of Ancient Egypt, and therefore of the Druids. They perverted all that had been told them – Albert Churchward (The Origins and Evolution of Religion)

Biblicists cannot provide us with a good reason as to why god was angry at Eve for eating of the Tree of Life. Apparently, once consumed, the fruit of the tree could have made Adam and Eve into gods. It could have opened their eyes and shown them the nature of good and evil. It was a unique and curious fruit to be sure. But if it was so important to god that man did not partake of the forbidden fruit, why did he draw Adam's attention to the fruit's existence? Why did he plant the tree if its fruit was so dangerous? Surely he could not have been testing Adam? Well, not surprisingly, answers to our questions are scarce. They are answered, however, by unbiased investigators in no doubt about the Vatican's insidious lie-machinery:

In the Persian myth of the creation, the first human pair that emerged from the mythical world-tree and were born upon this earth were named respectively Meshia and Meshiane. These are two unmistakable Irish named characters...That the Persians got their chief gods from the ancient Irish is indubitable – Conor MacDari

The Pope, though he permits our typifying Jesus as a fish, as the sun, as bread, as the vine, as a shepherd, as a rock, as a conquering hero, even as a winged serpent, yet, threatens us with hell fire if we ever dare to celebrate him in terms of the venerable gods whom he has superseded and from whose ritual every one of these symbols has been derived - Robert Graves

Above we see a Grecian depiction of the tree, ostensibly representing god, beside which stand the primal couple Dionysus and Minerva (re-rendered by the mythmongers as Adam and Eve.) The tree has a serpent coiling round its trunk. This symbol, of the tree and serpent, was the hierogram for the goddess Ishtar or Astarte. Some legends hold that the god of the tree (Jehovah or Elohim) created woman not as a companion for man but as consort for himself. He wished to mate with her, and from their union came man. Ergo, woman is not man's equal or wife but his superior.

The reproduction of the species is feminine: it runs steadily and quietly through all species, animal or human, through all short-lived cultures. It is primary, unchanging, everlasting, maternal, plantlike, and cultureless. If we look back we find that it is synonymous with life itself – Oswald Spengler

Woman exists everlasting, self-subsistent, immutable; man, evolving, is subject to continual decay. In the realm of the physical, therefore, the masculine principle is of second rank, subordinate, to the feminine - J. J. Bacofen (Das Mutterrecht, Vol. II)

The prime datum is the earth, the basic maternal substance. Visible creation proceeds from her womb, and it is only then that the sexes become divided into two, only then does the masculine come into being. Thus the male and female do not appear simultaneously; they are not of the same order...The female is primary,  the male is only what comes out of her - ibid

The elites within the Christian priesthood drastically altered the role and significance of the sophic female. She was no longer the consort and equal of god, but a disobedient miscreant who led man (god's first creation) into sin and perdition.

In no land or literature has the mythical mode of representation been perverted and reduced to driveling foolishness more fatally than in some of the Hebrew legends – Gerald Massey

We still have the motif of the divine woman and the tree, but in mutilated form. Nevertheless, it is there, in the New Testament's account of Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene standing near to the cross (tree) on Golgotha. As we said, the very name Mary denotes the myrrh tree. (Jesus was allegedly offered wine and myrrh during his ordeal on Mount Calvary.) Sadly, in the adulterated Christian version, the women are demure and woeful, and the tree is reduced in aspect to an loathsome instrument of torture. It is neither a god nor a lover. It is not a goddess symbol. It is still a sacrificial object, but that is its only resemblance to the pagan antetype.

In the unadulterated version of the mythos, to be in the presence of the sacred tree and/or serpent meant to be near god. Originally, the woman shown in close proximity to either one, is in the company of god, her creator, consort, and lover.

The crown of thorns on the brow of Jesus is another pagan floral motif. The original crown of thorns, so to speak, was the antlers (horns) of the stag-god Herne. Herne, also known as Nikor and Cernunnos, was lord of the forests and the earth. He was known by many names throughout the world. In India he was Pashupati, lord of the animals and prototype of Shiva. (Note the similarity between the words "horned" and "honored," as in "horned one" or "honored one.")

Crowns, with their thorn-like spikes were representations of the sun's rays and also the horns of the male stag, one of the original symbols of kingship. Expert on ancient Vedic traditions, Albert Pike, explained the phenomenon as follows:

The genuine acacia, also, is the thorny tamarisk, the same tree which grew around the body of Osiris. It was a sacred tree among the Arabs, who made of it the idol Al-Uzza, which Mohammed destroyed. It is abundant as a bush in the desert of Thur; and of it the ‘crown of thorns' was composed, which was set on the forehead of Jesus of Nazareth. It is a fit type of immortality on account of its tenacity of life; for it has been known, when planted as a door-post, to take root again and shoot out budding boughs above the threshold – (Morals and Dogma)

Mrs J. H. Philpot agrees, and also explained the relationship between Osiris and the sacred tree. As we read her words, we would do well to remember that Jesus of the New Testament was a character largely based on Osiris:

...there is evidence that the great Osiris was originally a tree-god. According to Egyptian mythology, after he had been murdered his coffin was discovered enclosed in a tree-trunk, and he is spoken of in the inscriptions as " the one in the tree," "the solitary one in the acacia." The rites, too, by which his death and burial were annually celebrated appear to couple him closely with Tammuz, Adonis, Attis, Dionysus, and other gods whose worship was associated with a similar ritual - ()The Trees in Religion and Myth

On the night before his arrest and crucifixion, Jesus prayed in a garden on the so-called Mount of Olives. This is the second instance in which Jesus ascends a hill or mound. The other instance is when he delivered the so-called "Sermon on the Mount." In both cases, the image of the teacher on the mount or mound has its origin in Druidism. The mound (or sidhe) is a seminal goddess symbol.

Perhaps it is mere coincidence that Jesus and his father Joseph were, as the Gospels tell is, "carpenters," that is, workers in wood.

The Babylonian seal below was discovered in the nineteenth century by antiquarian and scholar George Smith. It shows the pre-Christian primal parents, the serpent, and central tree ostensibly representing god. The tree is divided according to the 3-4 ratio and is conspicuously phallic. Indeed, as we have previously shown, the first letters of the names of Jehovah and Yahweh - Yod/Iod/Jod - were alphabetical sigils of the phallus and tree trunk. The serpent sits beside the female because it was a feminine initiation symbol. Symbolically speaking, the tree is the world ash, the sacred cedar, sycamore, and/or yew, the antetype of the Mosaic burning bush.

The Real Burning Bush

...This Holy Spirit, the Great Mother, is symbolized by a great Tree whose branches spread over the entire world and reach above the heavens. A more beautiful symbol can hardly be conceived. This Tree "has three roots, widely remote from each other. The first is amongst the gods; the second among the Giants (the blessed spirits); the third embraces hell" – E. Valentia Straiton (The Celestial Ship of the North)

Below is a detail from Sandro Botticelli's Primavera. In the center of the canvas the artist depicts the goddess Venus. He is red-haired to distinguish her as the fiery, burning (or burnished) one. Behind her we see many leaves and a few trees. The negative space on either side of the goddess has an interesting shape suggesting the fallopian system. Botticelli is obviously indicating that she is the actual tree of life.

Now let us once again examine the emblem for the Church of Scotland. We note the "vesica pisces" that contains the living tree of life, and realize that these are both classic symbols of the goddess. We also see how the tree resembles a mushroom, another symbol of the goddess who is without doubt the true blazing or burning tree. (Here for more on the vesica pisces.)

Therefore, given these facts, and given that we are in a figurative state of mind, we might muse on the matter and declare the so-called "burning bush" to be a simulacra for a sacerdotal priestess, possibly one with red hair. And why not? As the Tarot shows, the High Priestess sits in front of the sacred tree as its guardian and caretaker. In many ancient legends, such as that pertaining to Ishtar, the tree was a symbol for god, her lover. In other versions, Ishtar was, like Isis and Nuith, herself the living tree.

When all is said and done, these legendary accounts make a great deal more sense than the Book of Genesis which tells us that God eternally condemned and punished Adam and Eve for disobediently eating of a tree's fruit. We are never told why the act was so forbidden and fatal or why a supposedly loving and good God would be so angry and vengeful. We have few answers until we realize that the Bible does not contain God's words, but man's words.

We are told that the prohibition to eat the fruit was issued to Adam before Eve was released from her imprisonment in Adam's rib...before she became a woman and a wife; and it is not even implied that it was intended to extend to her. Why, then, in the name of God, should such curses be heaped upon her devoted head for eating the fruit when she had not been forbidden to do so? – Joseph Wheless (Bible of Bibles)

And so, given what we now know about the relationship between the female goddess and sacred tree, we might return to the relevant Biblical passages and question whether the term "burning bush" refers obliquely to the female goddess rather than to the male god.

While we ask this question, we should note what various "informed" artists of the Renaissance and other periods have secretly revealed to us in their canvases. We should also remind ourselves that the name Jehovah is made up of two masculine letters and two feminine letters. Both it, and the term Elohim, are plural words. In fact, the word Jehovah (like Havvah, meaning "Eve") ends with a feminine vowel.

The figure of Eve is based upon much older mythology and may be traced back to the ancient Mother Goddess or World Mother and the serpent cults of the pre-Biblical period. Closer examination of the name ‘Eve' revealed her serpent origins, for the Hebrew for Eve is havvah, meaning ‘mother of all things,' but also ‘serpent.' Likewise, the Arabic words for ‘snake,' ‘life,' and ‘teaching,' are closely related to the word or name "Eve' – Philip Gardiner and Gary Osborn (The Serpent Grail)

...in the Near East the primordial serpent is described as feminine, and we may suspect that in this region the myth did indeed become a metaphor for the conquest of matriarchy. But its universality suggests that there is yet a deeper, psycho-spiritual meaning behind it - Ariel Guttman and Kenneth Johnson (Mythic Astrology)

The serpent energy is definitely one of the most primeval archetypes and in all ancient cultures was intimately connected with the mysteries of the divine female - Crompton

Then the Female Spiritual Principle came in the Snake Instructor, and it taught them saying..."with death you shall not die" - (The Hypostasis of the Archon)

As we said earlier, the Bible is full of sabean references, and full of vegetal leitmotifs plagiarized from paganism. One of the best examples of priestly plagiarization and adaption is found in the Gospel of Mark. It is the beautiful account of the anointing of Jesus with priceless spikenard. The anointing, however, was not done by a priest or a disciple, but by a woman, and a "fallen" one at that:

And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head. And there were some that had indignation within themselves, and said, Why was this waste of the ointment made? For it might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the poor. And they murmured against her. And Jesus said, Let her alone; why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on me - (Mark 14:3-6)

Mary (Myrtle or Myrrh) anoints Jesus with spikenard (or nard) and sanctifies him. In other words, he becomes the spikenard and becomes one with the natural order represented by the sacerdotal female and/or goddess - the same goddess who appears in Egyptian iconography as the tree.

Mary of Bethany ‘Christ-ened' Jesus with the Spikenard, an unguent that had very likely, been kept for that occasion, and was an ointment associated with burial rites. Jesus himself remarked of the anointing (Mark 14:8); ‘…she has come a forehand to anoint my body to the burying'. In his mind, at least, it was intended to be a ritual...the ceremony is hardly typical of Judaic practice - Picket and Prince (Templar Revelation)

Spikenard is a potent plant from which an extremely aromatic resin is extracted. In ancient times it was very rare and expensive and was used ritually. It was frequently employed by women during pregnancy, but had many other properties. The term "nard" (spikenard's original name) comes from an ancient city of that name in Syria and is a variation of narthex, the name for a church lobby where holy water and other sacred objects are often kept. The vegetal symbolism should not surprise us because simple observation shows us that the portals, doorways, spires, domes, and interiors of countless churches, cathedrals, mosques, and synagogues, bear floral motifs, not less the chapel of Rosslyn, Scotland. (Here for more on spikenard.)

Again, we see that the mythmongers simply plagiarized the pagan canon to borrow a well known image that relates not only to marriage, pregnancy, and birth, but spiritual awakening. This kind of appropriation is in evidence from the Book of Genesis to the Book of Revelation. The beautiful account in Mark lets the educated reader know that the Jesus story predates the advent of Christianity. Despite the Christian context, the story of Mary anointing Jesus with sacred oil, harkens back to the age when priest-kings were ritually consecrated by women. Mark's account brings the sacred female and sacred plant together in one setting. Whether it is accounts of Mary Magdalene with her costly spikenard or mourning beneath the cross on Calvary, or whether it is Mary the Madonna with lilies, roses, and fleur-de-lis - in each mythograph there is a subtextual reference to trees and plants. As we said, the myths make more sense when we understand that, symbolically speaking, the sacerdotal woman is the tree or plant. To the pagan mind she (Eve, Mary, Isis, or Taurt, etc) was literally the living tree or burning bush.

The Hebrew folkloric collection known as the Haggadah specifically identifies the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge as the fig. The woman's name became Anglicized as Eve, Hava in Latin, which means "the mother of all"...from the Hebrew Havvah, or "Life," the "Living One..." - Carl A. P. Ruck (Sacred Mushrooms of the Goddess)

The Christians, from the time of the Catacombs, placed two figures on the sides of their principal emblems — not only of the Cross, which is also called "a Tree of Life," but also of the Chrism, the labarum, the rouelle, the Crown, the bunch of Grapes, the Eucharistic Cup, and so forth - Goblet d'Alviella (The Migration of Symbols, 1894)

One of Mary Magdalene's titles is the "Great and Holy Myrrh-Bearer." What is more, the Madonna is associated with numerous plants and flowers.  (See relevant links at end of the page.) Jesus himself was not only presented with myrrh on his day or birth, he was also given myrrh wine to drink minutes before expiring on the cross. He was forced to wear a crown of thorns and, on the night before his arrest and crucifixion, he prayed in a garden on the "Mount of Olives."

In the form of prayer called Litaniæ Lauritanæ, there are more than forty addresses to the Virgin, invoking her as the star of the sea, as the mystical rose, and by a variety of other heathen epithets - W. Winwood Reade (The Veil of Isis)

Officially, it is Jesus who was impaled on the cross. However, as we have emphasized above, this grotesque image is a priestly travesty. It is a mutilated version of a profound sidereal mythograph. Before the rise of Christianity it was the female goddess who personified the tree or cross which, in turn, represented the astronomical pole and circumpolar zone. The male figure was deliberately interpolated by paternalistic mythmongers. Through their egregious contrivance, the male hero assumed the place traditionally reserved for the sophic female. He sacrificed and bled as she did, and ascended to heaven as she had ascended to the stars millennia before the first stone of the first Christian church was set in place.

It was Rudolf Bultmann, the German Biblical scholar, who cited certain passages in the Gospels...as interpolations of Sophia herself, put into the mouth of Christ - Caitlin Matthews (Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom)

The incarnate god was probably representative of a god or spirit of earth, growth, or vegetation, represented also by a tree – J. A. MacCulloch (The Religion of the Ancient Celts)

The primal Stellar Cult paradise was the place of one tree. The paradise or garden in Amenta (Solar Cult) is the place of two trees...These two trees appear in the Ritual as the tree of Hathor and the tree of Nut; the tree of the Earth and the tree of Heaven; the tree of the North and the tree of the East. The tree of Hathor was the tree of life - Albert Churchward (The Origins and Evolution of Religion)

...certain cuneiform texts seem to prove that the Assyro-Chaldeans were acquainted with a "Tree of Life." Whether it was thus styled because it served as a simulacrum of the Goddess of Life, or whether it represented this divinity by reason of its own mythical function, the fact is none the less certain, according to Mr. Sayce, that the "divine Lady of Eden" or Edin, was termed in Northern Babylon, before receiving from the Semites the name Bab Ilu, the "Gate of God"…in the old language of the country, Tintirkel, or Dintir-ra, which most Assyriologists translate as "the place of the Tree (or Grove) of Life" – Count Goblet D'Alviella (The Migration of Symbols, 1894)

Ezekiel complained that Jewish women spent much of their time "making hangings for the groves" (Ezek 16:16) - Ernest Busenbark (Symbols, Sex and the Stars)

In short, the Biblical "Jesus" who was born of a woman named Miriam (Mary), given myrrh at this birth and death, anointed with spikenard by another female named Mary, and hung on a cross, is - as a multiplicity of informed artists have figuratively implied - a compromise between the male god and female goddess. After all, Jesus is depicted as distinctly androgynous by most Christian artists. This makes him the equivalent of many gods of antiquity, such as the Babylonian Bel and Canaanite Baal:

Baal was one of two separate deities, at times represented the dual gender of a single androgynous deity. As twins, Baal and Astarte were two aspects of one god, who personified the reproductive energies of nature. Baal, came to represent the sky god, the god of thunder, who fertilizes the goddess, mother earth, to bring forth life...Baal and Astarte generally being represented by a pillar, known as the Asherah in the Bible, a Hebrew word, also common noun, meaning a sacred tree or pole used in the goddess cult - David Livingstone (The Dying God)

An image below shows blood on the neck of an androgynous Jesus. Symbolically speaking, blood and acts of bloodletting were female iconographs. What is more, the crucifixion of Jesus took place on a hill sacred to the goddess Aphrodite (or Venus) who was often referred to as the fiery-haired goddess.

At the Last Supper, Jesus may have broken and distributed the bread and offered his disciples the red wine, but as we saw above, the wine and bread are symbols that represent the sacerdotal female who in turn represents nature. It is mother nature who brings the vines to fruition and distributes the bread made from and containing flour, seeds, yeast, salt, and water. Again, we see the duplicity and cunning of the Judeo-Christian mythmongers. They interpolated their male hero and skewed the mythic motifs to suit their propagandist schemes.

He that reads ecclesiastical history, reads nothing but roguery and folly of bishops and churchmen - Hugo Grotius (1583-1645. Philosopher)

Had the keys to the hieratic writings and the secret Egyptian and Hindu symbolism been known to the Christian Fathers, they would not have allowed a single monument of old to stand unmutilated -Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (Isis Unveiled)

It has already been stated in "Isis Unveiled" that so far back as in the days of Aristotle, the great Mysteries had already lost their primitive grandeur and solemnity. Their rites had fallen…and they had to a great degree degenerated into mere priestly speculation and had become religious shams - Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (Occultism)

The Vatican is the storehouse of an immense number of ancient manuscripts. During the long interval of nearly 1,500 years they have been accumulating, from trial after trial, books and manuscripts confiscated from their sentenced victims, to their own profit. The Catholics may plead that the books were generally committed to the flames; that the treatises of famous sorcerers and enchanters perished with their accursed authors. But the Vatican, if it could speak, could tell a different story. It knows too well of the existence of certain closets and rooms, access to which is had but by the very few. It knows that the entrances to these secret hiding-places are so cleverly concealed from sight in the carved frame-work and under the profuse ornamentation of the library-walls, that there have even been Popes who lived and died within the precincts of the palace without ever suspecting their existence. When one has such treasures at hand - original manuscripts, papyri, and books pillaged from the richest libraries; old treatises an magic and alchemy; and records of all the trials for witchcraft, and sentences for the same to rack, stake, and torture, it is mighty easy to write volumes of accusations against the Devil. We affirm on good grounds that there are hundreds of the most valuable works on the occult sciences, which are sentenced to eternal concealment from the public, but are attentively read and studied by the privileged who have access to the Vatican Library - Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (Magic in the Church)

The Chemycal Wedding

A great mind must be androgynous - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The unification of opposites is known in alchemical parlance Coniunctionis, Hieros Gamos or "Chemycal Wedding." It has been symbolized by the cross, the cross or square within a circle, the hexagram, the marriage of a king and queen or prince and princess, the vesica pisces or mandorla, the nucleation of four stars, colors, animals, people, or other units, and by the eclipse of the sun and moon. It has also been symbolized by a single open eye. The attainment of spiritual androgyny was once the sole goal of alchemy, magic, yoga, and religion. As we mentioned above, the very names Jehovah and Elohim connote androgyny and contain feminine suffixes. However, when it comes to gods and religion, androgyny is a very old story:

I am Atum, the creator of the Eldest Gods,
I am he who gave birth to Shu,
I am that great he-she.
I am he who did what seemed good to him,
I took my space in the place of my will.
Mine is the space of those who move along
like those two serpentine circles
(Pyramid Text)

Above we see a painting by the great Renaissance master Rafael (1483-1520 AD). On either side of the crucifix (astrological pole) we see that the sun and moon occupy the sky during the day. We also see the four mysterious letters above the head of Jesus - INRI. This cryptic term does not mean "King of the Jews." It is a reference to the four elements. In Hebrew, Fire, Water, Air, and Earth are named: Iammim, Nour, Ruach, and Ibeshah. The initial letters of which are I, N, R, I. (In Latin the initial letters of the names of the elements are also I, N, R, I.) 

The unification of the luminaries represents androgyny, that is, the harmonization of masculine and feminine energies. The actualization of this numinous state was once the supreme goal of yoga, magic, alchemy, and religion.

...if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light - (Matthew 6:22)

When you make the two one, and when you make the inside as the outside, and the outside as the inside, and the upper as the lower, and when you make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male is not male and the female not female, and when you make eyes in place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then shall you enter the kingdom – (Gospel of Thomas)

If two make peace with each other in this one house, they will say to the mountain, 'Move Away,' and it will move away – ibid

Make a circle of the Man and Woman, In the circle make a square, Within the square, Make a triangle, And you will have the Philosopher's Stone – Alchemical Adage

The Serpent Priests

Jesus said, "The Pharisees and the scribes have taken the keys of knowledge (gnosis) and hidden them. They themselves have not entered, nor have they allowed to enter those who wish to. You, however, be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves" - (Gospel of Thomas)

The Druids spread their traditions and knowledge throughout the world. We find relics of their presence in the Middle and Far East, in Egypt, India, and China. The hallmark of their theology was reverence for nature. To the Arya and Druids, the earth was alive, intelligent, and sacred. One meaning of the word Druid is "Keeper or Servant of Truth." Another is "Door of Gate Keeper." The Gaelic word Doire, refers to the Druids and is the origin of the modern word "door." Of course, we recall the many Megalithic sites and stone monuments, erected at the behest of the Druidic Order, that often resemble portals or doorways.

In Appendix One we showed how Druidic imagery turns up in artwork composed by ostensibly Christian artists. Like in the painting below, by Andres Mantegna, entitled The Adoration of the Shepherds, we see the triform tree, standing stone, sacred mound, tree of life, and portal. These are all leitmotifs associated with Ireland, and with the Celts, Gaels, and Druids.

Mantegna shows Joseph sleeping. Above him is the tree. The image of the sleeping prophet reoccurs in an Old Testament prophesy concerning the birth of Jesus. The passage comes from the Book of Isaiah and is remarkably Druidic in its imagery:

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his root - (Isaiah 11:1)

In the Latin Vulgate, the Druidic imagery is more pronounced. Instead of "shoot" the Vulgate has "green twig." In Latin this is virga, a pun on the word "virgin." Again, we see that the mythmongers were completely aware of the relationship between the female goddess and the sacred tree. Moreover, Jesse is a rendition of Esse or Esus, the Irish-Druidic god of vegetation. (See Appendix One for more on Esus.) When artists depict the passage from the Book of Isaiah, they invariably include a magnificent tree or vine growing near, or even out of, the body of the sleeping Jesse.

The Druids referred to themselves as the Naddreds or Adders. These terms, like the Hindu Naga, mean "Serpents." The Druids were, therefore, a Serpent Priesthood. This does not mean anything sinister. It merely means that they were astrologers and members of the Stellar Cult. It also means that they were geomancers, familiar with the subtle energy pathways of the Earth. We saw above how the Caduceus of Hermes represented the healing arts. The term for serpent in Hebrew, nahash, also means "those who know." This symbol of the staff and serpent was erected in the Wilderness by Moses, after the exodus. This act not only confirms that Moses was of Pharaonic bloodline, but that he was familiar with Druidic ways. In other words, he and his Israelites, were Arya. The staff and snake appeared earlier in the Old Testament. We saw Aaron and Moses turn their royal staffs into serpents when they came in front of the Pharaoh to negotiate the release of their people:

And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, When Pharaoh shall speak unto you, saying, Shew a miracle for you: then thou shalt say unto Aaron, Take thy rod, and cast it before Pharaoh, and it shall become a serpent. And Moses and Aaron went in unto Pharaoh, and they did so as the Lord had commanded: and Aaron cast down his rod before Pharaoh, and before his servants, and it became a serpent – (Exodus 7:5-7)

The so-called "Brazen Serpent" was the standard of a sect known as Naassians. In ancient Hebrew, Nasi referred to a spiritual or religious leader. Moses was an Atonist who understood that the sun had passed from the house of Taurus into that of Aries. He wanted his people to honor that sidereal change. The stories of the erecting of the standard in the "Wilderness" and the conflict on Mount Sinai cryptically conceal astrological phenomena. (See Jesus: Last of the Pharaohs, by Ralph Ellis for more on this subject.)

Of course, it is interesting to find out how important the serpent symbol was to the Western Arya and Druids. This is particularly so, given that there are no snakes in Ireland. It is also significant because we see that the Egyptian priest-kings also showed inordinate reverence for the symbol. The Pharaohs donned the Uraeus serpent coronet as a sign of mastery and enlightenment. (The word Pharaoh comes from "pharos nous," meaning "enlightened or fiery mind.") It was, however, not physical snakes or reptiles that interested the adepts and caused them to adopt serpentine iconography. It was the stellar antetype that fascinated these astrologically-minded men. It was the giant constellation of Draco that caught their eyes and imagination. It was the protector of the heavens, of Eden, of paradise. It coiled around the pole and kept watch over the sacred apples or stars. It was the circumpolar dragon, the guardian of the imperishable Khus, or everlasting souls that traversed the many demanding trials of the afterlife to enter Amenta in a morally uncorrupted state.

...the Uraeus...is frequently represented as guarding the sacred cypress groves of the Amenti (Sheol) by breathing out fire to destroy any invading or unjustified soul. Hence the origin of the Grecian myth of the Hesperides garden and the fire-breathing dragons which guarded it - William Ricketts Cooper (The Serpent Myths of Ancient Egypt)

The great constellation of Draco was seen and revered by most of the civilized cultures and tribes of the Northern hemisphere. The Nordics shaped their great boats in the form of Draco the cosmic dragon. The Native American Indians named their tribes after it, and performed many dances to represent celestial movements. The Irish Druids made good use of the symbol on their monuments.

A symbol of sacred knowledge in antiquity was a tree, ever guarded by a serpent, the serpent or dragon of wisdom. The serpent of Hercules was said to guard the golden apples that hung from the pole, the Tree of Life, in the midst of the garden of Hesperides. The serpent that guarded the golden fruit...and the serpent of the Garden of Eden...are the same – E. Valentia Straiton (The Celestial Ship of the North)

...the nuptial tree, round which coils the serpent, is connected with time and with life as a necessary condition; and with knowledge – the knowledge of a scientific priesthood, inheriting records and traditions hoary, perhaps, with the snows of a glacial epoch – Kennersley Lewis

The term Messiah is not a Jewish term. It is an Egyptian pseudonym for the initiated man. Specifically, it signified an adept and astrologer. This is why the serpent becomes the symbol of the adept. It represents Draco in the sky. He is emblazoned with the emblem of his school, so to speak. He wears the symbol of his college and his level of matriculation. The word itself comes from messe or messeh, which referred to the fat of the crocodile. The modern word Mass (as in a Christian "Mass") comes from the same root. The initiate was anointed in the oil from the Nile crocodile. The crocodile god, Sobek or Sebek, represented the astrological or stellar serpent, Draco. And astrology was what Messiahship was originally all about.

The king was not anointed with oil, but with the fat of the crocodile. This is the original source of the word "Messiah." Messeh was the word for crocodile, in ancient Egypt. The image of the two crocodiles formed the title of his coronation - Moustafa Gadalla (Historical Deception)

...you have been anointed by the Holy One and have knowledge of all things...the anointing which you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you; as his chrism teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie, just as it has taught you, abide in him - (I John 2:20 and 27)

The most common Hebrew word for "priest" – kohen — familiar as well-known Jewish surname, comes from a Sumerian title meaning literally, "guardian of semen" - John Marco Allegro

The semen of the fertility god could be seen spurting as rain from heaving during an orgasmic thunderstorm; in concentrated form it appeared in certain powerful plants like the Mandrake, or Holy Plant, identified in many cultures with the sacred fungus, Amanita muscaria, or in the aromatic gums and resins that formed part of the traditional unctions of priests and kings. Such functionaries thus became `holy,' that is separated to the god's service, being smeared, or `anointed' with his divine substance. They were therefore called `the anointed ones,' that is, `messiahs,' or christs, more specifically in the Old Testament, `those anointed with Jehovah/Yahweh' - John Marco Allegro (The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth)

Another name for the polar region was "Meskhen," meaning "womb" or "birthplace." This celestial garden turns up in the Bible as the Garden of Eden. It is the origin of paradise (from para dios or "park of the gods"), and of Zion, which, like the English word zone, signifies a sacred enclosure. It is the antetype upon which Caer Sidi, Arcadia, Aaru, Avalon, Asgard, Emrys, Camelot, Swarga, Elysium, and the Garden of Hesperides were based. The sacred "apples" of Hesperides are the seven everlasting stars of the northern sky. The "apple tree" is the pole.

It is likely that the main cult of the prehistoric people was that of a Mother Goddess who was also the sky - R. T. Rundle Clark (Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt)

In predynastic times, the heavenly protector was not serpentine but feminine in form. She was Taurt, Tawaret, or Tarot.  In some medieval tapestries we see the sacred precinct and the animals that represent various circumpolar constellations. We also see the trees representing the polar axis, and the female who represents Taurt, Nuith, Isis, or Astarte, etc.

The pole had been the tree first planted in the astronomical mythology. It was the tree of Nut, or heaven, in the stellar phase, and being astronomical it was naturally the tree of knowledge – Gerald Massey

In Palestine, the Bible tells us, they venerated...the simulacra of Ashtaroth, representing this goddess of the fruitful and nourishing earth under the form of a tree - Goblet d'Alviella (The Migration of Symbols, 1894)

Once these facts are fully understood, we have a deeper understanding of the mechanism of deception set into motion by Christian mythmongers. The very idioms and traditions, customs and rites, churchmen instruct their flock to deride and suspiciously avoid, remain in use, but in a manner not observed by the masses under priestly control. Most importantly, the ancient insignias of truth, wisdom, and sanctity have been corrupted and mutilated by the worst breed of deceivers this world has ever had to endure. The present state of the world can be directly traced to this pestilence. Few there are today who know the truth and who take time to uncover and disclose the lies that keep man from understanding his own divinity.

In Eve's scene at the tree…nothing is said to indicate that the serpent who appeared and spoke to her was a deity in his own right, who had been revered in the Levant for at least seven thousand years before the composition of the Book of Genesis – Joseph Campbell (Occidental Mythology)

...Nut, the lady of heaven, who presents the fruit of the tree to the man in the garden of the earthly paradise (Papyrus of Ani)...has been converted into the woman that tempted Adam to eat of the tree as the cause of the fallacious fall. The biblical rendering of this representation is a blasphemy against the Ritual, against womankind, against nature, and against knowledge. The goddess Nut, who offers the fruit of the tree of knowledge to the kneeling man, is in shape a woman, and the meaning could be only too easily misread, as it has been in the legend of the first woman who tempted the first man to eat of the forbidden fruit and to cause the loss of paradise – Gerald Massey

We are told that the prohibition to eat the fruit was issued to Adam before Eve was released from her imprisonment in Adam's rib...before she became a woman and a wife; and it is not even implied that it was intended to extend to her. Why, then, in the name of God, should such curses be heaped upon her devoted head for eating the fruit when she had not been forbidden to do so? – Joseph Wheless (Bible of Bibles)

And so, we now know what the so-called "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" was. Given the preposterousness of the Genesis account, we can conclude that the forbidden fruit was certainly not fruit, and that the tree was not a tree. The tree was the celestial tree, the polar axis, or "World Tree" of the universal garden that stretched between heaven and hell. Its fruits (golden apples) were the stars of the circumpolar region. The guarding serpent was Draco. It was the mystery school of the heavens that was not meant to be approached. It was the telestrion of the stars that was off limits. It was astrology that had the power to intellectually and spiritually transform ordinary men and women.

Porphyry holds that the Egyptians know of no other gods "but the Planets and those Stars that fill up the Zodiack..." - Jan Assmann (Moses the Egyptian)

From these stories of the stars originated the angels of the Jews, the genii of the Arabs, the heroes of the Greeks, and the saints of the Romish Church - W. Winwood Reade (The Veil of Isis)

We can now read the following Biblical passage and know for certain what it refers to:

To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God – (Revelation 2:7)

The Circle and Serpent

No country in Europe is so associated with the Serpent as Ireland, and none has so many myths and legends connected with the same. As that creature has furnished so many religious stories in the East, and as the ancient faiths of Asia and Egypt abound in references to it, we may reasonably look for some remote similarity in the ideas of worship between Orientals and the sons of Erin – James Bonwick (Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions)

So, the Irish Druids referred to themselves as Naddreds or Adders. Their god Herne holds the serpent and ring, representing Draco and the circumpolar enclosure. Their great Druidic monuments (from the Hebrides to Scotland, from Wales to Cornwall) feature the serpent symbol over and over again. The Egyptians anointed priests of the highest level with the oil of the "serpent," and crowned their kings with the Uraeus or "good serpent," representing the celestial protector. Clearly, the unbiased investigator cannot doubt that serpentine symbols and rites link Western adepts to their Eastern counterparts. It links the Druids to the Amenists.

It is singular to find a white race spoken of in the ancient monuments. Dr. Brugsch, the learned German, notices the word Tam-hou or white men. As it occurs on tablets dated 2,500 years before Christ, it is puzzling to indicate the people. Brugsch traces them to Libya. Champollion recognized in the Tamh'ou a type of European ancestry. M. Deveria remarks upon hieroglyphics recording the fact that Horus, the god, leading and guiding a white race. As there are still many Celtic monuments in the north of Africa, over many hundreds of miles, he contends for the existence of an original Celtic people in Egypt, or, in modern language, that the Welsh and Irish were once in Egypt – James Bonwick (Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought, 1878)

Nobody knows just who these blue-eyed, fair-skinned people were, or even where they came from...Anthropologically, they were termed Caucasians…These people, Elliot Smith concluded, were more than intelligent enough to accomplish the amazing building feats that the modern world marvels at on the banks of the Nile – Gerald O'Farrell (The Tutankhamun Deception)

It is stated on a parchment found in a brick wall in the foundations of Denderah at the time of King Pepi: "The Great Pyramid was built by the followers of Horus;" the Stellar Cult people were the followers of Horus in the same sense as the Christians are the followers of Christ...The Architect who drew the plans was Nu-er-nub-ari, "the Keeper of the Secrets" – Albert Churchward (The Origins and Evolution of Religion)

Above we see the ancient Irish forest god Herne. Also known as Cernunnos and Nikor, he is the antetype of Hermes, Thoth, and Mercury. This means that the Caduceus of Hermes, Brazen Standard of Moses and the Nassians, and the Uraeus coronets of the Egyptian Pharaohs originate in the Western hemisphere. Herne's was the original "crown of thorns." In his hands he holds the sabean symbols for the constellation Draco and the circumpolar region. In the esoteric traditions and lore of the Druids and Amenists (of the Stellar Cult), this region, in which the star never rise or set, was known by many names, such as Eden, Garden of Hesperides, Paradise, Aaru, Avalon, Camelot, etc. In other words, these terms do not represent an earthy location, but a heavenly one on which earthy gardens, groves, and centers were deliberately based.

In many and far-severed countries, horns became the symbols of sovereign power. The corona or crown, that still encircles the brows of European monarchs, seems remotely to be derived from the emblem of might adopted by Kronos, or Saturn...The first regal crown appears to have been only a band, in which the horns were set. From the idea of power contained in the "horn," even subordinate rulers seem to have worn a circlet adorned with a single horn, in token of their derived authority - Alexander Hislop (The Two Babylons)

The circumpolar region is depicted in the center of the ancient zodiac of Dendera dedicated to Hathor and Isis. Sobek, the crocodile god, prototype for the "good dragon," protects the souls of the good in heaven. The good serpent, or agathodaemon, was the antetype of the so-called "Holy Spirit" now symbolized by a dove. In the predynastic period, however, Draco was identified not with a serpent but with a goddess known as Taurt or Tarot. In other words, the Egyptians saw no difference between the astrological serpent and the goddess. Undoubtedly, the Irish Druids also saw no difference between them, and also used the symbols interchangeably. Taurt is clearly identical with the Irish Tara or Eri. Another of Taurt's primordial symbols - the hippopotamus - can be seen in the very center of the Dendera zodiac. (Here for more information.)

From the Christian myth cycle we know that the Holy Spirit is a pseudonym of the Goddess. Heracleon and Ptolemy tell us that the dove symbolizes "Sophia, the Mother above." The dove was a widespread symbol of the goddess in the ancient world and was adopted by the Christians as symbol of Mary. Christians of the Ophite school teach that at his baptism "Christ and Sophia, the one enfolding the other, descended upon Jesus and he became Jesus Christ - Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy (Jesus and the Lost Goddess)

Had not the ancient creeds been speedily obliterated, it would have been found impossible to preach the Christian religion as a new Dispensation, or the direct Revelation from God the Father, through God the Sun, and under the influence of God the Holy Ghost - Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

The male Holy Spirit is a product of Latin grammar - spiritus is masculine - and of early Christian mistrust of female deities...Conception by a male principle is illogical and this is the only instance of its occurrence in all Latin literature - Robert Graves (The White Goddess)

Now, finally, we can re-examine the design of the Oval Office and the astrologically-shaped rug therein. Obviously, an oval shape connotes an egg or, analogously, the female and her physical and heavenly womb. The ancient Hindus, for example, symbolized all creation as a cosmic egg or anda.

We can also re-examine the famous seal found on the one dollar note and many state edifices. Above the eagle's head is the symbol for the circumpolar zone. Within the circle of clouds there are thirteen five-pointed stars. These in turn form a fourteenth star made of six sides. It is the so-called "Star of David" or, more correctly, of Aton and his commanders - the "Davids" or "Dividers." The eagle itself represents the constellation Aquila, near Scorpio. In the past, the winged totem of the Federal United States was a Phoenix, an animal that was half bird, half serpent.

As we can see, the symbols of the ancient Arya have been appropriated and adapted by some very cunning, although ultimately unworthy, religious and political despots. Sadly, the symbols, emblems, numbers, colors, and zoomorphic totems, that are sidereal in origin, are now to be found on products, corporate logos, and national decals. Their true sabean meanings and significance is deliberately kept from the masses of mankind who, due to ignorance and identification with their imperious masters, remain spiritually comatose and under complete mental control.

Men have been trained to prefer ignorance to learning, and have chosen to be driven mad and wild by faith, rather than to be instructed, enlightened and improved by reason and philosophy - Rev. Robert Taylor (The Devil's Pulpit)

Felling the Tree of Life

A careful attention to the history of the world for the last eighteen hundred years has shown me, that the priests of all religions have practiced fraud to forward their objects...I cannot forget that the priests of every age have protected, as ours do now protect, impostures, and that in every age numerous examples of pious fraud may be found...Magic is pretty nearly over, but fraud seldom throve better - Godfrey Higgins (Anacalypsis)

The word Nephilim is thought to mean "fallen ones," or "those who fell from heaven to earth." However, a secondary meaning of the strange term is "those who cause a fall." Yes, the so-called "fallen angels" are fellers. They were the mighty men of renown, the Anakim or Titans who lived long but corrupt lives. They caused moral declination and spiritual arrestation and those under their control lost their virtue. Some scholars believe the term Nephilim relates to demonic extraterrestrial "archons" while others believe it refers to earthly princes. In any case, we can take the word to denote a coterie of sorcerers with power to corrupt and pollute.

Rulers of this kind are sure to have a corrupting influence on large groups and even on entire nations. Their infection may contaminate a world, and perhaps they and their descendants are capable of controlling the thoughts and emotions of millions. Although it is not a pleasant possibility to consider, we have to face the fact that beings wielding power of this kind could certainly make a truth seem like a lie. Moreover, we must face the fact that the masters of subterfuge and inversion, the proverbial wolves in sheep's clothing, can expertly conceal their identities.

Look everywhere, look everywhere, and you will see the priests reeking with gore. They have converted popular and happy nations into deserts, and have made our beautiful world into a slaughter house drenched with blood and tears - W. Winwood Reade

With this in mind we pose some important questions. We ask, who rules our world today? Who subtly controls the hearts and minds of millions of men and women, and enjoyed centuries of earthly dominion? Who has robbed man of his sanity and reason and seduced him into murdering his own soul? Who has succeeded in turning man into a guilt-ridden, self-hating, world-denying, god and devil-fearing slave? Who has denigrated women and animals, darkness, silence, and inwardness? Who has filled the world with blustering extroverts, fanatics, ignoramuses, mass murderers, tyrants, and psychopaths? Who has rewarded the bringers of death and disorder and condemned every sane healer, inventor, and peace maker?

The Christian Church has left a legacy, a world view, that permeates every aspect of Western society, both secular and religious. It is a legacy that fosters sexism, racism, the intolerance of difference, and the desecration of the natural environment…Christianity has helped to create a society in which people are alienated not only from each other but also from the divine – Helen Ellerbe (The Dark Side of Christian History)

The story of the Roman Church is quite different and not a pleasant one to dwell upon. She made her advance through the medium of intrigue, war, fire and sword, persecution, torture, confiscations, and death, the exemplification of force and intolerance. By such means she gained control and increase in power and the Irish Church missionaries were gradually forced to withdraw from the continent. It was only by such forcible means that she could make gains against the Irish Church whose representatives surpassed hers in every field of peaceful endeavor...in learning, the sciences, philosophy and spiritual culture – Conor MacDari (The Bible: An Irish Book [Actual title is How The Bible Is An Irish Book Altered And Adapted By British-Roman Transcribers])

Bearing in mind the catalog of crimes committed by the Christian Church, and other ministers of the world's perverse religions, we pose another important question:

Well, in previous sections we saw that the sacerdotal female of ancient civilizations and goddess figure of mythology were intimately connected with certain sacred trees and plants. We saw that the sophic female is the veritable burnished or bright one, the burning tree through which the voice of "god" (or more correctly goddess) speaks. We learned that in many cases the tree of life works as a symbol for the poles of the earth and celestial sphere. In short, it can be said that the sacerdotal female, tree of life (or tree of the knowledge of good and evil), and symbol of the serpent, are to all intents and purposes indistinguishable. Sidereally and mythologically, they represent the same phenomena.

We have provided examples to demonstrate how the sidereal motifs of ancient cults were appropriated and adapted to suit the needs of a misogynist and profoundly phallocentric priesthood that has ruled the world for centuries. It goes without saying that the feminine garb worn by Christian priests and clergy, as well as the innumerable goddess symbols employed by the Church, were not incorporated to express adoration or venerate the female spirit and feminine mode of expression. On the contrary, their incorporation represents a wholesale desecration of the female sex and feminine principle. The male priest adorns himself in the garb of the priestess to symbolize conquest over her and her kind, not to represent spiritual androgyny. The priest has pillaged her holy garb and, symbolically speaking, has raped her body in order to assume the power he covets but despises.

We have come to accept the catalog of wreck and ruin perpetrated by early Christians on the pagan world's shrines, temples, statuary, and libraries. We are less inclined to contemplate the desecration that occurred to the iconography of pagan traditions. As the nineteenth century author W. Winwood Reade said: "The simplicity of men, and the cunning of their priests has destroyed or corrupted all the religions of the world."

Baron Avro Manhattan also addressed the matter of priestly intrigue and wrote:

Pagan temples were either closed, transformed into Christian shrines or demolished. Their properties were summarily added to the Church's patrimony. The wealth of sundry religions were mercilessly expropriated, their clergy dismissed or persecuted, when not civilly or even physically obliterated – (Vatican Billions)

Author Helen Ellerbe also commented on the violent and relentless campaign of eradication. In her fine book entitled The Dark Side of Christian History, she wrote:

After Christians had spent years destroying books and libraries, St. John Chrysostom, the pre-eminent Greek Father of the Church, proudly declared, "Every trace of the old philosophy and literature of the ancient world has vanished from the face of the earth"

Ironically, even the destroyers of the ancient elders admitted that their victims were high-minded and deeply knowledgeable about the mysteries of being. As the writings of Julius Caesar reveal, the Druids of Britain and Western Europe were men of the highest spiritual level:

As one of their leading dogmas, they include this: that souls are not annihilated, but pass after death from one body to another, and they hold that by this teaching, men are much encouraged to valor, through disregarding the fear of death. They also discuss and impart to their young many things concerning the heavenly bodies and their movements, the size of the world and our earth, natural sciences, and the influence and power of the immortal gods – (Gallic Wars)

Caesar's words were corroborated by those of historian Ammianus Marscellus who wrote:

The Druids are men of penetrating and subtle spirit, and acquired the highest renown by their speculations, which were at once subtle and profound. Both Caesar and Mela plainly intimate that they were conversant with most sublime speculations in geometry and in measuring the magnitude of the earth

Of the expertise and intelligence of the Druids, the nineteenth century historian W. Winwood Reade wrote:

It can easily be proved that the science of astronomy was not unknown to the Druids. One of their temples in the island of Lewis in the Hebrides, bears evident signs of their skill in the science. Every stone in the temple is placed astronomically. The circle consists of twelve equidistant obelisks denoting the twelve signs of the zodiac. The four cardinal points of the compass are marked by lines of obelisks running out from the circle, and at each point subdivided into four more. The range of obelisks from north, and exactly facing the south is double, being two parallel rows each consisting of nineteen stones - (The Veil of Isis)

The overt patritism that distinguishes the doctrines of Judaism and Christianity  can be discerned far back in history. It was particularly conspicuous during the eighteenth dynasty, during the advent of Akhenaton's brand of monotheism. However, there are patristic expressions in religion before Akhenaton's time. When we see images of Akhenaton and his father Tuthmosis III with distended stomachs to impersonate pregnancy, we are not seeing homage of female sexuality. On the contrary, we are seeing a rejection of it. The hermaphrodite negates the separate presence and role of the female. She has been figuratively and mythologically displaced as wife, mother, priestess, and queen. Akhenaton and Tuthmosis assume for themselves the sexual traits that position the female close to the level of the gods. They assume a form that dispossesses the female and symbolizes their ability to reproduce without her. Symbolically, the Pharaoh becomes a god and a goddess. Ultimately, to the average monotheist there is only the male god. The goddess is marginalized and the symbols of her overthrown suzerainty are flagrantly appropriated and skewed to fit the paternalistic mold and brand of theology.

The male hermaphrodite concocted by the mythmongers usurped the place of the sacerdotal female. She remains beside the sacred tree in the garden, yes, but as a temptress and servant of evil. A male Jesus was interpolated and placed on the cross, in the Mount of Olives and Garden of Gethsemane. He is entitled the "First and Last." However, the "Alpha and Omega" is not Jesus or for that matter Jehovah. It is the mother of heaven and earth, the matriarch who gives birth to men and women and stands as a symbol of nature's everlasting bounty, who is the true "Alpha and Omega," the beginning and end, first and last.

Clearly, therefore, we see that the entire corpus of the ancients was radically inverted by the mythmongers. The travesty began in earnest during the rise of monotheism and rose to its paternalistic peak in Athens of the fourth century BC and subsequently during and after the rise of Christianity in Rome.

The priests who were illegitimate preservers of the knowledge of the Druids and Arya, knew about the spiritual significance of the goddesses they emasculated and dethroned. They knew women give birth to men and that it is not the other way around. Therefore, sexually speaking, women are inarguably higher up the ontological ladder than men. In other words, woman creates as the gods create. Woman is, therefore, closer to the divine than man is. Over the centuries, men have become infected by subconscious envy towards women, and the priests are for the most part the worst afflicted specimens. They have disfigured the mythographs and denigrated nature and the feminine principle because they regard women as rivals. They have built a world full of ithyphallic towers to permanently imprison her suppressed and conquered spirit.

Then all the men which knew that their wives had burned incense unto other gods, and all the women that stood by, a great multitude, even all the people that dwelt in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying, As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken unto thee...But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine. And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings unto her, without our men? Then Jeremiah said unto all the people, to the men, and to the women, and to all the people which had given him that answer, saying, The incense that ye burned in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, ye, and your fathers, your kings, and your princes, and the people of the land, did not the Lord remember them, and came it not into his mind? So that the Lord could no longer bear, because of the evil of your doings, and because of the abominations which ye have committed; therefore is your land a desolation, and an astonishment, and a curse, without an inhabitant, as at this day. Because ye have burned incense, and because ye have sinned against the Lord, and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord, nor walked in his law, nor in his statutes, nor in his testimonies; therefore this evil is happened unto you, as at this day – (Jeremiah 44:17)

Ezekiel complained that Jewish women spent much of their time "making hangings for the groves" (Ezek 16:16) – Ernest Busenbark (Symbols, Sex and the Stars)

A worship of the powers of fertility which includes all plant and animal life is broad enough to be sound and healthy but as man's attention centers more and more on his own humanity, such a worship is an obvious source of danger and disease - Jane Ellen Harrison

The earliest societies gave special importance to the mother and thus to woman in general. The Hebraic tradition, in which woman's status was diminished and god became a solitary male warrior or shepherd, and in the Islamic religion which it inspired, were both conceived by nomads used to the dryness of the desert. And the female divinity undoubtedly sank to her lowest position during the period when Rome forced its empire to accept both its patriarchal regime and its amazingly sterile religious formalism, part of which survived in early Christianity – Jean Markale (The Celts)

According to the Talmud a service can take place in the Synagogue only if ten persons are present, which number ensures the presence of God in the assembly. Drach explains however that these persons must all be men. "If then there were nine men and a million women there could be no assembly, for the reason that women are nothing" – (From Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, by Nesta Webster)

Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life – St. Peter (Gospel of Thomas)

Woman! You are the gateway of the devil…because of you the Son of God had to die – Tertullian (Church Father, 160–220 AD)

The propagandists never admit that before their hegemony women enjoyed prominent social status and considerable spiritual prestige. Certain passages and tropes in the Bible's Song of Solomon, and a few oblique references to Mary Magdalene and the Madonna, allude to this lost power. However, to really know what was what, we must not trust the words of official historians and clergymen. We must dig deeper: 

...a Celtic woman had rights and power even Cleopatra might have envied – Philip Freeman (The Philosopher and the Druids)

Up to the last the Babylonian woman, in her own name, could enter into partnership with others, could buy and sell, lend and borrow, could appear as plaintiff and witness in a court of law, could even bequeath her property as she wished – A. H. Sayce (Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs)

The Egyptian women were entrusted with the civilization. The woman (princess), and not the male, was the legal heir to the throne, and the man she chose to marry, would become the ruling Pharaoh - Moustafa Gadalla (Historical Deception)

A man may not become a king without a queen, and a queen must be of the royal blood – A. M. Hocart (Kingship)

Because of their spiritual dementia, the priests have manifested a perverse religion to guide them and a preposterous god to rule them. It was only a matter of time before their god was elevated above all others and made lord of the world. It did not matter that Destruction is their god's middle name.

Pagan temples were either closed, transformed into Christian shrines, or demolished. Their properties were summarily added to the Church's patrimony. The wealth of sundry religions was mercilessly expropriated, their clergy dismissed or persecuted, when not civilly or even physically obliterated – Avro Manhattan (Vatican Billions)

Mythologist Robert Graves understood the kind of travesty that had occurred in antiquity. He summed up the entire predicament in the following passage from his book The White Goddess:

The curse in Genesis on the woman, that she should be at enmity with the serpent, is obviously misplaced: it must refer to the ancient rivalry decreed between the sacred king Adam and the Serpent for the favors of the Goddess

In his masterly work entitled The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, author Leonard Shlain investigated the reasons for male animosity toward the female and the feminine. Remarking on how old the problem is, he discussed the abnormality of a religion based entirely on exaggerated masculinity:

…the Babylonians elevated to the supreme position a god who had conquered and then mutilated a goddess

Patriarchy is the dominant theme is Hammurabi's code. Sons are commanded to obey their fathers, not the mothers

...monotheism does not mirror human society. Humans are first and foremost social animals. A deity who was alone, not by choice but because there were no other companions for Him, was a concept without parallel in human society. The god of the Israelites did not have a wife, a son, a daughter, or a mother

His point is echoed by Jan Assmann in his book Moses the Egyptian. Reviewing the theories of the great Sigmund Freud (who pondered on the metaphysical abnormalities of monotheism), Assmann writes:

Freud wanted to discover the roots of anti-Semitism. Strikingly enough, his question was not on how the Gentiles, or the Christians, or the Germans came to hate the Jews, but "how the Jew had become what he is and why he has attracted this undying hatred." Freud traced this religion to the father. Not the Jew but monotheism had attracted this undying hatred...Akhenaton is shown to be a figure both of enlightenment and intolerant despotism, forcing his universal monotheism onto his people with violence and persecution...It is this hatred brought about by Akhenaton's revolution that informs the Judeophobic texts of antiquity

Psychologist Esther Harding linked the rise of pathological religion to the hegemony of the Solar Cults.

The rise of masculine power and of patriarchal society probably started when man began to accumulate personal, against communal, property and found that his personal strength and prowess could increase his personal possessions. This change in secular power coincided with the rise of sun worship under a male priesthood...Sun worship was usually introduced and established by an edict of a military dictator, as happened in Babylon and Egypt, and probably other countries as well - (Woman's Mysteries)

Harding's findings are corroborated by those of scholar and mythologist Joseph Campbell. He wrote:

Toward the close of the Age of Bronze and, more strongly, with the dawn of the Age of Iron...the old cosmology and mythologies of the goddess mother were radically transformed, reinterpreted, and in large measure even suppressed, by those suddenly intrusive patriarchal warrior tribesmen whose traditions have come down to us chiefly in the Old and New Testaments and in the myths of Greece - (Occidental Mythology)

Leonard Shlain agreed and described the problem as follows:

Around 1500 BC there were hundreds of goddess-based sects enveloping the Mediterranean basin. By the fifth century AD they had almost been completely eradicated, by which time women were also prohibited from conducting a single major Western sacrament

In the introduction of Shlain's book Love, Sex and Matriarchy, editor Rainer Funk writes:

Six thousand years ago patriarchy triumphed over women, and society became organized on the basis of male domination. Women became the property of men and were obliged to be grateful to them for every concession

Literary critic and art historian Camille Paglia addressed the vexatious relationship between the male and female and the so-called Apollonian and Dionysian modes of expression. In her definitive work entitled Sexual Peronae, she wrote:

Every fetus becomes female unless steered in male hormone, produced by a signal from the testes. Before birth, therefore, a male is already beyond the female. But to be beyond is to be exiled from the center of life. Men know they are sexual exiles. They wander the earth seeking satisfaction, craving and despising, never content

Apparently the male dementia that Paglia and Shlain allude to started a long time ago. It existed in Babylon, in Egypt during the eighteenth dynasty, in Athens during the Periclean Age, and in Rome after the rise of Christianity. Historian and author Eva C. Keuls explains:

Until the end of the Periclean age, 430 BC, a pronounced phallicism prevailed in classical Athens, which we will take to mean a combination of male supremacy and the cult of power and violence - (Reign of the Phallus)

According to Keuls, Athena (the patron of Athens) was markedly defeminized as a goddess figure:

Athena's birth was as sexless as her mature personality. She was the result of one of Zeus' great feats of male pregnancy and parturition, the other being Dionysus. Athena was born, highly symbolically, from her father's head - that is, out of patriarchal male fantasy. In the most common version of her birth, when Zeus' cerebral pregnancy had come to term, the divine craftsman Hephaestus split Zeus' head open with an ax and out sprang Athena, fully equipped with the armor of militarism

Speaking specifically about male envy, Keuls writes:

The governing principle of a phallocracy is that the human race is essentially male, the female being a mere adjunct, unfortunately required for the purpose of reproduction

The Greek mythological obsession with monstrous women and with gynecocracy (literally "women's rule," but more accurately "women getting out of hand") reflects man's irrational fear of the female and his feelings of guilt...The Jungian psychologist Erich Neumann wrote the most influential book on the worship of the female in the man's prehistoric past, The Great Mother...Neumann sees phallic worship as a reaction in man's development, an attempt to free himself from bondage to the female development, and attempt to free himself from bondage to the female principle and canonize the penis as the fundamental generator of life

According to Keuls, the writings of many Athenian philosophers and playwrights are saturated with animosity toward females. These scholarly works clearly demonstrate the hostile attitudes of men during the so-called Classical Age:

In Aristophanes' Lysistrata, a male fantasy about a women's uprising, the heroine of the play tells a magistrate to be quiet. He answers in indignation, "You accursed creature. Should I be quiet for you, who wears the veil around your head?" - (Reign of the Phallus)

The Greek literary texts constantly reiterate the commandment to women not to be seen or heard, thus reducing them to a state of nonbeing - ibid

Keuls' points are corroborated byBradley A. T. Paske. In Rape and Ritual, he discusses the problem of male envy:

Depreciation and loathing of woman, her body and by extension the feminine, has been expressed repeatedly by our intellectual and psychological forefathers

The Christian Church continued the policy of suppression and ruthlessly and speedily eradicated the significance of nature and the goddess who represented nature. In the Book of Genesis that was, along with rest of the Judaic Pentateuch, subsequently added to the New Testament, we see Adam's first wife, Lilith, portrayed as a demoness, and we find his second wife, Eve, cast as a disobedient temptress. In the Church's perverse works, male Adam gives birth to female Eve, as Jehovah had given it to him. In a supreme act of illogical inversion, woman is born of man. However, although the customs, rites, and traditions of the goddess were officially and publicly suppressed, the Church deliberately incorporated key elements of the goddess tradition into their own iconography and dogma. Of course, the process of misrepresentation and cannibalization started long before the Christian era. We need only look to the Old Testament to find evidence of it. In the following passages from the Book of Isaiah and Book of Exodus, we have clear examples of theocratic colonization:

The sun will not more be your light by day, nor with the brightness of the moon shine on you, for the Lord will be your everlasting Light, and your God will be your glory. Your Sun will never set again, and your moon will set no more; the Lord will be your everlasting Light, and your days of sorrow will end - (Isaiah 60:18-20)

And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me - (Exodus 20:1-3)

Historical evidence clearly demonstrates that the role and standing of women in society and in the home radically altered for the worst after the rise of monotheism or, more specifically, after the advent of Solar Cult theology and theocracy. This fact is emphasized by psychologist M. Esther Harding who wrote:

The rise of masculine power and of patriarchal society probably started when man began to accumulate personal, against communal, property and found that his personal strength and prowess could increase his personal possessions. This change in secular power coincided with the rise of sun worship under a male priesthood...Sun worship was usually introduced and established by an edict of a military dictator, as happened in Babylon and Egypt, and probably other countries as well - (Woman's Mysteries)

The matter of conquest by patristic tribes is discussed at length in the works of author Leonard Shlain. In The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, Shlain wrote:

Around 1500 BC there were hundreds of goddess-based sects enveloping the Mediterranean basin. By the fifth century AD they had almost been completely eradicated, by which time women were also prohibited from conducting a single major Western sacrament

Reviewing the discoveries of archeologist Marija Gimbutas, sociologist Theodore Roszak wrote:

In Marija Gimbutas's influential formulation, it was the Indo-European incursion of warlike Indo-European nomadic tribes, worshippers of masculine sky-gods, that replaced the matricentric cultures of Old Europe with an "androcratic warrior" society and that henceforth claimed all virtues of "civilization" for itself. But before that there had been a "civilization of the goddess" marked by peace and high art. Under the spell of this original version of Gaia, there was even a different kind of "city," one that honored the Earth and rested lightly upon it - (The Voice of the Earth)

Referring to the discoveries of author Phyllis Chesler, Eva Keuls comments:

Phyllis Chesler cites the myth of Demeter and Kore in the introduction of her well-known book Women and Madness. Considering it a celebration of the mother-daughter relationship, she laments that it ceased with the arrival of monotheism - (Reign of the Phallus)

In short, the god of Jews and Christians, like the gynephobic gods of Babylon, Athens, and Rome, is self-made and self-sustaining. Apparently, he does not require the female to exist or procreate:

It is not the mother who is the parent of the child, although she is so called; she is merely nursemaid to the newly planted fetus. He who mounts is the one who gives birth, she, a stranger to a stranger merely preserves the seed if god does not destroy it…there can be fatherhood without a mother – Aeschylus (Eumenides. Voice of Apollo)

Let a woman not develop her reason, for that would be a terrible thing - Democritus (Greek Philosopher, 460–370 BC)

He who teaches letters to his wife is ill-advised. He's giving additional poison to a horrible snake - (Lines from a play by Meander of Athens)

The culture of the Western world is based on just this kind of spiritual and intellectual perversion. Every element of the present state of decay is traceable to the demented precepts of Judeo-Christian religion. Truly, the tree of life has long been felled and, as William Blake wrote, in the place of the fragrant gardens and groves of truth, we have religion's blackened and bloodied thorns and briars, strangling the reason, passion, and imagination of man.

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this chapel were shut,
And "Thou shalt not" writ over the door;
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love, 
That so many, many sweet flowers bore;

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
Binding with briars my joys and desires.

Conclusion

...The wave of religious terrorism that swept Egypt for twenty years seemed to some Egyptians to herald the end of the world. "If we are alive," one wrote, "then life itself is dead"  - R. A. Gabriel (Jesus the Egyptian)

For two millennia Western man has quiescently and faithfully listened to the chants and hymns, chorals and "Alleluias," and in a perfectly sedated and delusional state has committed atrocities in the name of a religion that arose like a specter from the frenzied flames of war and murder. Bishops have blessed armies as they've trudged off to genocidal conquests and priests have blessed wars that have lasted as long as one hundred years. With their words and deeds, priesthoods of the Western world have confounded man's psyche and turned him into a obsessed, blood crazed savage. Their holy books have denigrated womankind and mutilated the rites and iconography pertaining to sophic mysteries. Their ideology has turned man from the zodiac, the telestrion of night that was his first church and college. From that heavenly altar, man's attention was trained on depraved images of the cruciform tree and nails of pain, the whips and chains and broken tablets, the serpentine devil, guilt and sin. If he sailed to the west he'd fall off the edge of the world. If he questioned the scriptures, his soul would be damned.

In 356 C. E. Constantinus II ordered the Egyptian temples of Isis-Osiris closed and forbade the use of Egyptian hieroglyphics as a religious language. In 380 C. E. Emperor Theodosius declared Christianity to be the official Roman state religion, and all pagan cults were thereafter forbidden. These edicts were devastating to Egyptian culture and religion, both of which had been preserved over millennia through the Egyptian language and the writing systems of Egyptian priests. In 391 C. E. the Patriarch of Alexandria, Theophilus, summoned the monks to arms and turned them against the city of Memphis and the great shrine of Serapis, the Serapeum, the main temple of the Osirian-Isis religion. The attack was akin to ordering the destruction of the Vatican. Egyptian priests were massacred in their shrines and in the streets. The ferocity of the violence consumed priests, followers, and the Egyptian intellectual elite of Alexandria, Memphis, and other cities of Egypt who were murdered and their temples and libraries destroyed. The institutional structure of Egyptian religion, then more than four millennia old, was demolished in less than two decades - R. A. Gabriel (Jesus the Egyptian)

Every science was regarded as an outcast, an enemy. Every fact held the creed of the church in scorn. Investigators were enemies in disguise. Thinkers were traitors, and the church exerted its vast power for centuries to prevent the intellectual progress of man. There was no liberty, no education, no philosophy, no science; nothing but credulity, ignorance, and superstition. The world was really under the control of Satan and his agents. The church, for the purpose of increasing her power, exhausted every means to convince the people of the existence of witches, devils, and fiends. In this way the church had every enemy within her power. She simply had to charge him with being a wizard, of holding communication with devils, and the ignorant mob were ready to tear him to pieces - Robert Green Ingersoll (The Great Infidels, 1881)

…the great library at Alexandria, on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, the repository of some of the ancient world's oldest records, was put to the torch not just once but three times – by Julius Caesar, by a Christian mob, and by an Islamic caliph. Most of the records are deemed to have been destroyed, although it seems that a few later found their way to Byzantium, and others may well have been stored safely elsewhere…the emperor Diocletian then had yet further esoteric works (again of the Egyptians) burned in AD 296, at both Alexandria and Byzantium – John Gordon (Egypt: Child of Atlantis)

...Christian Literalism, now the only legal religion in the Roman Empire, launched a brutal crusade to completely eradicate its old rivals, Christian Gnosticism and ancient Paganism. In an orgy of violence, armies of fanatical Christian Literalists tore down the architectural wonders of the Pagan world. They built infernal bonfires of books containing the spiritual wisdom and scientific knowledge of the ages. They subjected to grisly torture and a painful death philosophers, priestesses, and scientists - anyone who disagreed. They did not stop until they had cut the head off Western culture, leaving it to wander like an amnesiac in an ignorant stupor. They did not stop until they had cut the heart out of Western spirituality, bleeding it dry of its mystical vitality. The corpse of a religion which remained offered nothing but hope of a better afterlife in return for blind belief in its irrational opinions and unquestioning allegiance to power-crazed popes. This tyrannical empire of the soul extended the arm of the state right into the inner sanctum of every individual, denying the right to spiritual autonomy and compelling all to acquiesce or burn - Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy (Jesus and the Lost Goddess)

Due to the influx of spiritual poison, man's reason has atrophied to such an extent that he now finds it difficult to correctly discern right from wrong, good from bad, and truth from falsehood. A study of the human moral predicament tells us that man is not progressing but regressing. He is not modern, but primitive. He is not a lover of order but of chaos. He does not seek freedom, he's scared to death of it. And his "love," for want of a word, is narcissistic and necrotic. It is the "dark secret love" of the poets, and it has turned him from a intimate relationship with the sky and stars, mountains and trees, animals, birds, and winds.

Spiritual ignorance is the mother of all evil. Ignorance will eventuate in death, because those who come from ignorance neither were, nor are, nor shall be - (Gospel of Philip)

Modern man does not stand upright in kingly fashion in the world made for him by his priests. On the contrary, he hangs upside-down in the world and does not see the real. He sees the image and the chimera. He is not sober, he is drunk. He is not well, he is poisoned and infected by the same psychic pathogens that have corrupted his misleaders. He acts and speaks as they act and speak, and covets whatever they enjoy and covet. He and they are not sane, they are unsane, not rising but falling. Inwardly, man is not satiated, he is starving. Spiritually naked, he craves to make his empty existence better, brighter, faster, freer, healthier, and cleaner. And at that, at least, he has succeeded. His starless, treeless, loveless world sparkles with its own morbid beauty. It is exquisite in its intricacy and sterile efficiency; precious in its obscene complexity.

...the priestly account of Creation is but kindergarten cosmology, yet we have accepted it for two thousand years. This is because Western man is incapable of abstract thought...In his metaphysical incompetency Western man has put the stamp of his own ego on everything, including the Creator - Lloyd Graham (Myths and Deceptions of the Bible)

Man is haunted by the fact that he cannot emulate or rival the power nature has over his body and mind. He covets that power and wants it for himself, but it won't come into his hands. Therefore, he has become obsessed with technological advancement, thinking it will bring him nearer to the stars and the elusive sanctum he believes lies at the end of his fitful search. He is wrong, because nothing he contrives to do in the name of vanity will bring him nearer to the stars and luminaries. It will only drive him closer to the vile perfidious god enthroned at the center of his psychosis. It will only lead him and his world to the unhallowed portals of oblivion. 

Loud is the claim of the nineteenth century to preeminence in civilization over the ancients, and still more clamorous that of the churches and their sycophants that Christianity has redeemed the world from barbarism and idolatry. How little both are warranted…The light of Christianity has only served to show how much more hypocrisy and vice its teachings have begotten in the world since its advent, and how immensely superior were the ancients over us in every point of honor – Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

Man can't own the stars in heaven, so he makes them here on earth from plastic and stone. He feverishly decimates forests while he blithely marvels at the columns that hold up the Parthenon and Lincoln Memorial. The civilization in ruins around him was created by men who did not think of a leaf as something that merely hung from a branch. They did not think of stars as something outside and far away. They did not consider nature to be their private backyard or as something to be controlled, owned, probed, and pillaged. Their religion did not tell them that man came into the world from elsewhere. It told them that man was a part of nature, not apart from it. It told them that man's existence was similar in kind to that of trees, clouds, and river water, and that if a man peered deeply into nature, into the world around him, he would find his own reflection gazing back at him.

...All the glories of Nature - the imposing silence of the night; the aroma of the flowers; the pale rays of the moon through the green tufts of the trees; the stars, flowers of fire strewn over the sky; the glow-worms, flowers of fire strewn over the grass - all these have been created to render the Adept worthy of NATURE, at that moment when for the first time she exclaims to Man, "I am yours," - words formed of a divine perfume from the soul, which, breathed forth, ascends to heaven together with the perfume of the flowers - the one moment of his life when he is king, when he is God; the moment which he expiates and pays for with a whole life of bitter regrets. That moment - it is the price of all our miseries - Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

Man is the world and the world is man. Nature is the self and the self is nature. A natural religion is a human religion. Consciousness, of one sort or another, is shared by everything living here and now in the creation, from the neutron star to the subatomic particle. Nothing is dead. Nothing is inanimate. A thing lives, and has an everlasting relationship with everything else. Man is not alone in the creation and does not require remote invisible voices behind the clouds or in the dark places beneath the earth to instruct or waylay him. Man is his own student and teacher and his prestigious school is nature, the House of Life. Nothing is missing in the life of a man who has nature as his mentor.

The Druids and Shaman knew they were born from the womb of nature, not from somewhere beyond or outside it. They knew their lifeforce came from nature and that death simply meant a return to the sacred bosom of the universal mother. And they knew they must return to her eternal bower pure and unsodden, not corrupted and unsane. They, like Moses, realized that the day will come when the earthy sandals will be removed in the presence of the inextinguishable burning tree.

Moses heard Jehovah describe himself as the god of his "fathers." Yes, but what about the mother? What about the goddess? Why is she nowhere to be found in Judaism and Christianity? Are men born only from men? Are men afraid of the power that can never be theirs? And has that fear turned the world into a hellish vale of iron and tears?

It took an incredible decadence for man to accept materialistic theories such as those of Lamarch and Darwin! All traces of confidence in divine harmony and of legitimate pride must have vanished in our lack of reaction against a science that lowers us to the brute state of so-called prehistoric man or anthropoid. Those who steer humanity toward such stultification are madmen or criminals - R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz (Egyptian Miracle)

Man did not lose his connection with the divine. It was taken from him - stolen in the night by clever, ruthless, and demented men who desired power over man and nature. Both have been victimized, humiliated, and cheated. Nevertheless, nature is going nowhere, because although nature can be abused and altered, it cannot be destroyed. It is humankind that is endangered and in need of constant warning. Human beings are the ones who need to be strictly reminded of the need for moral and spiritual immunity and psychic sovereignty. Man needs to remember that he and nature are one and that a crime against nature is a crime against his own being, his own soul. The violation of a single plant or tree, flower or animal, is a sin against nature - and against the spirit of man - nature's privileged but dreadfully forgetful child.

Here - Gnostic Media Interview on the Trees of Life

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Part Two
Dragons of East and West

The priests of the Mysteries were symbolized as a serpent, sometimes called Hydra...The Serpent Kings reigned over the earth. It was these Serpent Kings who founded the Mystery Schools which later appeared as the Egyptian and Brahmin Mysteries...The serpent was their symbol...They were the true Sons of Light, and from them have descended a long line of adepts and initiates - Manly Palmer Hall (The Secret Teachings of All Ages)

Not much more than one per cent of Ireland's surface now contains broad-leaved trees - Bob Quinn (The Atlantean Irish)

Above we see the so-called "Libation Cup" of Sumerian King Gudea. It was found in the ruins of the ancient city of Lagash. The cup features twin guardian dragons and a caduceus representing the Serpent Priests and their knowledge.

...it was the Serpent of Wisdom that first offered the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge for the Enlightenment of Mankind; whether this be Egyptian, Akkadian, or Gnostic, it is the Good Serpent. And as Guardian of the Tree set in Heaven it was the Good Serpent, or intelligent Dragon, as keeper of the treasures of Astral knowledge. It was the later Theology, Persian and Hebrew, that gave the character of the Evil One to the Serpent of Wisdom, and perverted the original meaning, both of the temptation and the Tempter who protected the Tree; which has been supplemented by the theology of the Vitriol-throwers who have scarified and blasted the face of nature on earth, and defiled and degraded the starry Intelligencers in heaven – Gerald Massey (The Hebrew and Other Creations Fundamentally Explained)

Gudea can certainly be considered the great judge of his people. Additionally, the syllable dea, in his name, might refer to "holy" or even to "god." The name Gudea, then, could have meant "Holy Goth" or "God of the Goths" or "Goat Men."

The name of the ash tree can be discerned in the place name Assyria (Ash Arya). The Assyrian King Ashur may have been given this title because he was considered a "god," that is a highborn king and priest. Again, we emphasize that the trunks of trees were regarded by patristic cultures as phallic symbols, and worthy emblems of kingship and godhead. This is the reason why important modern state and educational buildings are frequently decorated with pillars and columns.

The ash tree was particularly venerated by the ancients of Nordic countries. Yggdrasil, or "Odin's Tree," was conceived of as an great everlasting ash. One of Ireland's earliest gods was known as Aesar or Iesa. The gods of Nordic lands were known as the Aesir, a word very close to Asir (or Wesir), the Egyptian rendering of Osiris, a god very much connected to the trees of life and death. The gods Anshur, Attis, Tammuz, and Adonis, are all connected to trees.

The chief and most holy seat of the gods," say the Eddas, "is by the ash Yggdrasil. There the gods meet in council every day. It is the greatest and best of all trees, its branches spread over all the world and reach above heaven. Three roots sustain the tree and stand wide apart - J. H. Philpot (Trees in Religion and Myth, 1897)

The haven of the Nordics was Asgard, meaning "garden" or "grove of the gods:"

Asgard, the mountain of the gods, was pierced by a mighty tree trunk, the branches of which overshadowed the world and supported the sky, the stars, and the clouds, whilst its roots stretcheddownwards into the primordial abyss. The apples stored in Valhal, by eating which the gods preserved their youth, closely correspond to the amrita or soma which, as we shall see, was a peculiar feature of the Eastern conception of the world-tree - J. H. Philpot (Trees in Religion and Myth, 1897)

In Norse myths, the tree Yggdrasil is intimately connected to the primal parents and sacerdotal female:

There stands a beautiful hall near the fountain beneath the ash. Out of it come three maids. These maids shape the lives of men and we call them the Norns. On the boughs of the ash sits an eagle, who knows many things - (The Prose or Younger Edda. Translated by G. W. Dasent)

...we read in the Eddas that when heaven and earth had been made, Odin and his brothers walking by the sea -shore came upon two trees. These they changed into human beings, male and female. The first brother gave them soul and life ; the second endowed them with wit and will to move ; the third added face, speech, sight, and hearing. They clothed them also and chose their names, Ask for the man's and Embla for the woman's. And then they sent them forth to be the parents of the human race - J. H. Philpot (Trees in Religion and Myth, 1897)

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Part Three
Trees of Mind and Hyperspace

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Important Research Material

Symbolism of the Halo
Johannes Bureas (Connections Between Nordic and Hebrew)
The Burning Bush
John Allegro
Allegro's Sacred Mushroom and the Cross
The Borborites
Gnostic Media
Ambrosia Society
The Sacred Mushroom (Terence McKenna)
Mary Magdalene in Art
Plant Symbolism in Christian Art
Plant Symbolism and the Virgin Mary
The Great and Holy Myrrh-Bearer
Spirit of the Trees
Magnificent Trees
The Ancient Yew
The Yew: A History
The Yew Tree
The Golden Bough (Frazer)
Bulfinch's Mythology
Crown of Thorns
Agony in the Garden
The Lost Word
Protoevangelium of James
Red Hair
Queen Boadicea (Red Haired Queen)
The Red-Haired Tocharians (Toc Aryans)
Teshub of the Hurrians
Illuyanka the Serpent
The Serpent Vritra
Pythia and Delphi
The Aesir
Horgalles
Masonic Street Geometry (Astana) [No longer available]
Masonic Street Geometry (New York)
Saharasia: The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence
Interview with James DeMeo

Important Books

The Alphabet Versus the Goddess - Leonard Shlain
Sex, Time and Power - Leonard Shlain
Saharasia - James DeMeo
Trees in Religion and Myth - J. H. Philpot
The Symbolism of Freemasonry - Albert A. Mackey
The Veil of Isis - W. Winwood Reade
Ancient Egypt: Light of the World - Gerald Massey
The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross - John Marco Allegro
The Mystery of the Dead Sea Scrolls Revealed - John Marco Allegro
The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth - John Marco Allegro
Astrotheology and Shamanism - Jan Irvin
The Holy Mushroom - Jan Irvin
Failed God: Fractured Myth in a Fragile World - J. A. Rush
Magic Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy - Clark Heinrich
The Golden Bough - James George Frazer
Symbols, Sex and the Stars - Ernest Busenbark
The Serpent in Myth and Legend - R. T. Mason
The Serpent Myths of Ancient Egypt - William Ricketts Cooper
Worship of the Serpent - J. B. Deane
Mythological Astronomy - S. A. Mackey
The Symbolism of Freemasonry - Albert A. Mackey
The Dark Side of Christian History - Helen Ellerbe
Thirty Thousand Gods Before Jehovah - Henry Brinkley Stein
Egyptian Mythology and Egyptian Christianity - Samuel Sharpe
The Druids: Priests of the Ancient Celts - Paul Lonigan
Druidism: The Ancient Faith of Britain - Dudley Wright
The Religion of the Ancient Celts - J. A. McCulloch
Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions - James Bonwick
Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought - James Bonwick
A Highland Parish or the History of Fortingall - Alexander Stewart
The Christ - John E. Remsberg
Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe: Early Scandinavian and Celtic Religions - H. R. Ellis Davidson
Nineveh and its Remains - Henry Austin Layard
Secret Teachings of All Ages - Manly Palmer Hall
The Secret Doctrine - Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
Symbolic Mythology - John Martin Woolsey
Greek Religion - Walter Burkert 
Reign of the Phallus - Eva C. Keuls
The Celestial Ship of the North - Valentia Straiton
The Origins and Evolution of Religion - Albert Churchward
Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth - John G. Jackson
Love, Sexuality and Matriarchy - Erich Fromm
Das Mutterrecht - J. J. Bacofen
Morals and Dogma - Albert Pike
The Serpent Grail - Gary Osborn and Philip Gardiner
Bible of Bibles - James Wheless
Mythic Astrology - Ariel Guttman and Kenneth Johnson
The Migration of Symbols - Goblet d'Alviella
Sacred Mushrooms of the Goddess - Carl A. P. Ruck
Masks of Christ - Pickett and Prince
Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom - Caitlin Matthews
Historical Deception - Moustafa Gadalla
The Tutankhamun Deception - Gerald O'Farrell
The Two Babylons - Alexander Hislop
Jesus and the Lost Goddess - Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy 
The White Goddess - Robert Graves
The Gods of the Egyptians - E. A. Wallis Budge
Gentile Nations - George Smith
The Devil's Pulpit - Rev. Robert Taylor
The Bible: An Irish Book - Conor MacDari
Vatican Billions - Baron Avro Manhattan
The Messiah Myth - Prof. Thomas L. Thompson
Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs - A. H. Sayce
The Philosopher and the Druids - Philip Freeman
Woman's Mysteries - Esther Harding
Occidental Mythology - Joseph Campbell
Rape and Ritual - Bradley A. T. Paske
Jesus the Egyptian - R. A. Gabriel
The Great Infidels - Robert Green Ingersoll
Egypt: Child of Atlantis - John Gordon
Myths and Deceptions of the Bible - Lloyd Graham
Egyptian Miracle - R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz
The Prose or Younger Edda -  Translated by G. W. Dasent

Additional Research Material

Irish Origins of Civilization DVD Series
Michael Tsarion Interviews on Astro-Theology and Irish Origins
More Interviews and Webstreams
Chapter Forty One (The Scarlet Thread)
Gnostic Media Interview on the Trees of Life

Irish Origins Appendices