The Origin
Of
Our Belief In God
by Erik Langkjer
Part I: El and Baal, the Shepherd and the Hunter
20. Eshmun and the snake-symbol
About Eshmun from Beirut it is told by Photios [1] that he was the eighth son of Sadykos and a very handsome young man. This kindled the love of the mother of the gods Astronoe. Eshmun was a hunter and once hunting in the wilderness he discovered that he was chased by A. Quickly he cut off his genitals to avoid the shameful encounter. When the mother of gods saw the dead and maimed young man she called him Paian and gave "back to him the warmth of life by her own life-generating warmth". The young man being chased by the great Syrian goddess is the man whose soul is seized by the ecstasy created by the dancing whirling servants of the goddess. Filled by the mebrum secandi impetus they cut off their manhood - often much against their normal human will. This is counted a death to normal civil life. The poor boy is not longer a human but a refait, a demon returned from death, a healing spirit. (Paian is the Greek god of healing). Therefore Lucian tells us that when the castrated priests die they are not buried, but only laid on the ground and covered with a heap of stone (de dea Syria). Coins from Beirut show Eshmun standing between two coiling snakes with wings - they are obviously able to fly through the air. The Greek god Asclepios is similar to this Phoenician god. He is often seen with a giant coiling snake with 7 coils. [2] He is a god who comes from the South Anatolian area.[3]Also the Greek god Zeus Meilichios is often pictured as a giant snake with seven coils (see the pictures from his sanctuary in Piraeus brought by Harrison in her book). Miss Harrison writes about his cult demanding the burning to the last bite of the whole animal:
"Zeus Meilichios will have all or nothing. His sacrifice is not a happy common feast, it is a dread renunciation to a dreadful power. It will later be seen that these un-eaten sacrifices are characteristic of angry ghosts...divinities who belong to a stratum of thought more primitive than Homer." [4] Harrison mentions a sanctuary for the Meilichians (plural) who received nightly sacrifices, which had to be eaten before sun rise, Pausanias I,38,8.
The grim, nocturnal service and the fire consuming the victim totally is the sure sign of a cult devoted to Molok-Malik, the sacrifice to the Oriental "King" of the underworld.
Ningizzida is "god of the drum", i.e. the god of ecstasy. On cylinder seals he is often seen with a double snake coiling around his body (see the enlarged picture above), and he is a god for healing [5]. To the right Eshmun as dwarf with the snake coiling up the world pillar. [6]
A magical arm ring shows acc to A.A.Barb [7] a "mystagogic progression": from the temple gate one proceeds to the Holy of Holies. But here the curtain is drawn to the side and one looks at the big bearded head of Serapis. But behind this rather conventional way of picturing the god one proceeds farther on, i.e. deeper into the mystery and is confronted with two snakes, a female with Ibis-head, and the male with a beard but without a head, both snakes standing on their tales. They are two very old guardian gods [8] in the Hellenistic period named Agathos Daimon & Agathe Tyche. They are the double snake of the old folk religion.
But our intruder into the mystery of Serapis can proceed even behind the double snake and is then at last confronted with the sphinx standing with the globe of the universe i.e. above the visible world. Characteristic of this important prehistoric symbol, the sphinx, is the special form of its wings here illustrated with examples from both prehistoric Egypt and Susa:
From a palette from Hierakonpolis [9], from a handle of a stone knife, Prehistoric Egypt (3600 BC) and from a Susa cylinder [10] This very characteristic pair of double wings are perhaps originally a symbol of a flight upward instead of horizontally. The two last examples are an ivory from Megiddo and an elephant tusk from Ugarit, 14th-13th c.B.C. With the position of the wings and even the beak the animal indicates its heaven-bound journey. Note the seven "whirls" on the wing. That the number and position of the whirls are not accidental is seen from the other picture, where the "root-chakra" is added on the very body of the griffin thereby making the number 7 complete.
In early Egypt we find the double-snake as a feminine magical power clinging to the sun-disc. The (copper)snake coiling around the stake is a magical symbol of healing in the Bible or in the hand of the healer-god Eshmun. The snake rising along the stake is also a symbol of the raising of ecstatic energies understood as a snake force raised through the spinal cord resulting in mystic vision, the opening of the mystical third eye in front of the brain. This must be the reason for a lot of pictures where people or sacred animals are hit at both the third eye (or at the top of the scull) and at the root of the spinal cord.
On Mesopotamian seals the bull man is seen hitting the lion at the top of the scull and squeeze it at the bottom of the spinal cord. The lion man is in the same way hitting calves [11]. On a small relief from early Ur [12] (Al Ubaid period) the divine bull is seen standing on the moon at the top of the world mountain, but this symbol of mystic vision is threatened by the bird with the leopard's head biting at the root of its spinal cord. A majestic lion, the symbol of light and fire (it has a whirl of hair as light-symbol) is bitten by a dog at the root of its spinal cord (early temple of Beth Shan).
[1] Bibliotheca.,ed. R.Henry vol.VI,p.55
[2] see the pictures by Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion.
[3] L.Kjellberg, "Asklepios", Språkvetenskapliga Sällskapets i Upsala förhandlingar. UUÅ 1897, Filosofi, Språkvetenskap. III p.42).
[4] Prolegomena. p.16.
[5] E.Douglas van Buren, "The God Ningizzida", IRAQ I,pl. X,d & e.
[6] W.W.Baudissin, Adonis und Esmun,1911
[7] "Magica Varia", SYRIA 49,1972,p.366
[8] E.Visser, Götter und Kulte im ptolomäischen Alexandria, 1938.
[9] Vandier, Manuel d´archéologie égyptienne 1,1952, fig.382.
[10] Flagge, Untersuchungen z Bedeutung des Greifen, 1975, Abb. 3, 1937. I. Flagge quotes from an Egyptian papyrus hailing the "shredder", the griffin, as the greatest creature of the earth.
[11] RA VI,1907,pp.106ff.,pl.II,8; Amiet,1103.
[12] L.Woolley, Ur Excavations I, t.35
Disclaimer:
Some material presented will contain links, quotes, ideologies, etc., the contents of which should be understood to first, in their whole, reflect the views or opinions of their editors, and second, are used in my personal research as "fair use" sources only, and not espousement one way or the other. Researching for 'truth' leads one all over the place...a piece here, a piece there. As a researcher, I hunt, gather and disassemble resources, trying to put all the pieces into a coherent and logical whole. I encourage you to do the same. And please remember, these pages are only my effort to collect all the pieces I can find and see if they properly fit into the 'reality aggregate'.
Personal Position:
I've come to realize that 'truth' boils down to what we 'believe' the facts we've gathered point to. We only 'know' what we've 'experienced' firsthand. Everything else - what we read, what we watch, what we hear - is what someone else's gathered facts point to and 'they' 'believe' is 'truth', so that 'truth' seems to change in direct proportion to newly gathered facts divided by applied plausibility. Though I believe there is 'truth', until someone representing the celestial realm visibly appears and presents the heavenly records of Facts And Lies In The Order They Happened, I can't know for sure exactly what "the whole truth' on any given subject is, and what applies to me applies to everyone. Until then I'll continue to ask, "what does The Urantia Book say on the subject?"
~Gail Bird Allen
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Urantia Book, 44:0.11 - The Celestial Artisans
Never in your long ascendancy will you lose the power to recognize your associates of former existences. Always, as you ascend inward in the scale of life, will you retain the ability to recognize and fraternize with the fellow beings of your previous and lower levels of experience. Each new translation or resurrection will add one more group of spirit beings to your vision range without in the least depriving you of the ability to recognize your friends and fellows of former estates.
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Princess Bride 1987 Wallace Shawn (Vizzini) and Mandy Patinkin (Inigo Montoya)
Vizzini: HE DIDN'T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE.
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. -
Urantia Book, 117:4.14 - The Finite God
And here is mystery: The more closely man approaches God through love, the greater the reality -- actuality -- of that man. The more man withdraws from God, the more nearly he approaches nonreality -- cessation of existence. When man consecrates his will to the doing of the Father's will, when man gives God all that he has, then does God make that man more than he is.
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Urantia Book, 167:7.4 - The Talk About Angels
"And do you not remember that I said to you once before that, if you had your spiritual eyes anointed, you would then see the heavens opened and behold the angels of God ascending and descending? It is by the ministry of the angels that one world may be kept in touch with other worlds, for have I not repeatedly told you that I have other sheep not of this fold?"
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Urantia Book, Foreword - 0:12.12 - The Trinities
But we know that there dwells within the human mind a fragment of God, and that there sojourns with the human soul the Spirit of Truth; and we further know that these spirit forces conspire to enable material man to grasp the reality of spiritual values and to comprehend the philosophy of universe meanings. But even more certainly we know that these spirits of the Divine Presence are able to assist man in the spiritual appropriation of all truth contributory to the enhancement of the ever-progressing reality of personal religious experience—God-consciousness.
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Urantia Book, 1:4.3 - The Mystery Of God
When you are through down here, when your course has been run in temporary form on earth, when your trial trip in the flesh is finished, when the dust that composes the mortal tabernacle "returns to the earth whence it came"; then, it is revealed, the indwelling "Spirit shall return to God who gave it." There sojourns within each moral being of this planet a fragment of God, a part and parcel of divinity. It is not yet yours by right of possession, but it is designedly intended to be one with you if you survive the mortal existence.
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Urantia Book, 1:4.1 - The Mystery Of God
And the greatest of all the unfathomable mysteries of God is the phenomenon of the divine indwelling of mortal minds. The manner in which the Universal Father sojourns with the creatures of time is the most profound of all universe mysteries; the divine presence in the mind of man is the mystery of mysteries.
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Urantia Book, 1:4.6 - The Mystery Of God
To every spirit being and to every mortal creature in every sphere and on every world of the universe of universes, the Universal Father reveals all of his gracious and divine self that can be discerned or comprehended by such spirit beings and by such mortal creatures. God is no respecter of persons, either spiritual or material. The divine presence which any child of the universe enjoys at any given moment is limited only by the capacity of such a creature to receive and to discern the spirit actualities of the supermaterial world.
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Urantia Book, 11:0.1 - The Eternal Isle Of Paradise
Paradise is the eternal center of the universe of universes and the abiding place of the Universal Father, the Eternal Son, the Infinite Spirit, and their divine co-ordinates and associates. This central Isle is the most gigantic organized body of cosmic reality in all the master universe. Paradise is a material sphere as well as a spiritual abode. All of the intelligent creation of the Universal Father is domiciled on material abodes; hence must the absolute controlling center also be material, literal. And again it should be reiterated that spirit things and spiritual beings are real.
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Urantia Book, 50:6.4 - Planetary Culture
Culture presupposes quality of mind; culture cannot be enhanced unless mind is elevated. Superior intellect will seek a noble culture and find some way to attain such a goal. Inferior minds will spurn the highest culture even when presented to them ready-made.
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Urantia Book, 54:1.6 - True And False Liberty
True liberty is the associate of genuine self-respect; false liberty is the consort of self-admiration. True liberty is the fruit of self-control; false liberty, the assumption of self-assertion. Self-control leads to altruistic service; self-admiration tends towards the exploitation of others for the selfish aggrandizement of such a mistaken individual as is willing to sacrifice righteous attainment for the sake of possessing unjust power over his fellow beings.
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Urantia Book, 54:1.9 - True And False Liberty
How dare the self-willed creature encroach upon the rights of his fellows in the name of personal liberty when the Supreme Rulers of the universe stand back in merciful respect for these prerogatives of will and potentials of personality! No being, in the exercise of his supposed personal liberty, has a right to deprive any other being of those privileges of existence conferred by the Creators and duly respected by all their loyal associates, subordinates, and subjects.
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Urantia Book, 54:1.8 - True And False Liberty
There is no error greater than that species of self-deception which leads intelligent beings to crave the exercise of power over other beings for the purpose of depriving these persons of their natural liberties. The golden rule of human fairness cries out against all such fraud, unfairness, selfishness, and unrighteousness.