The Origin
Of
Our Belief In God
by Erik Langkjer
Part I: El and Baal, the Shepherd and the Hunter
26. Summary
Folk religion preserves elements from a very old religion disseminated together with rituals connected with agriculture. B.Hrozny has proved the existence of a common vocabulary for the ingredients of beer brewing in the languages of ancient Egypt, Sumeria and Accad. It is also possible to prove the existence of a common iconography centered round the "big hunter". (In prehistoric Susa, Egypt, Assyria, Shumer and Mohenjo Daro in the Indus valley.) The big hunter is pictured as a strong man grabbing two lions by their throats, dressed in a kilt or naked with a broad belt.
In the oldest city of inner Anatolia dug out by James Mellaart at Catal Hüyük (6-5 000 B.C.) the walls of the temples show the ritual hunt for the divine bull. The bull is hunted and killed by men with leopard's skins fastened to their belts. In fact, they are men who, in the ecstasy of hunting and killing, are being changed into leopards. This ideology – man into leopard or wolfes – is important and is also seen in later Dionysos-cult where the maenad is the hunting panther, in Akk. nimru, conf. the name of the great hunter in the Bible, Nimrod[1].
Some of the hunters are without a head and in two colours: white and red. In our opinion they are the deceased souls also participating in the "wild hunt".
Geo Widengren has dealt with old Indo-European warrior religion, where the young men during battle are changed into wolves, are naked with only a leather belt and are often led by a Harlequin-figure with his characteristic patch-work coat or suit and with the high pointed clown's hat[2]. Their wild ecstatic madness is called asma[3]. In India Indra's pack of helping spirits are ismin.
This patchwork suit is in my opinion not so much an Indo-European invention, as it is also found in Etruscan religion as the suit of the hunter. He is the killer, the god of death. His coat symbolizes the fusing together of different colours into the mystic one (cf that the dead spirits in Catal Hüyük are of two colours, white and red). Duality changed into one is ecstatic ideology. ("White" here stands for woman, "red" for man.)
The army of dead demons rushing through the air in the night is a phenomenon also known in Sanscrit texts: Rudra with the Maruts. Rudra being the hunter.
The "wild hunt" has changed from ritual hunt for the wild bull (man into leopard) to warrior ideology (man into wolf) to the nightly army of ghosts. The ritual hunt for the ibex with throwing-sticks is still preserved in South Arabia.
When Baal in Ugarit during the hunt is turned into the victim in the end, this is also a characteristic development of the "great hunter motif". We also find it with Dionysos, who is the leader of a pack of demons, the keres, the satyrs (the horse-tails of the satyrs show they are part of the demon-horse symbolism) from the underworld, but is himself torn up by the Titans. Also Adonis is both hunter and victim. The name of Dionysos Zagreus is composed of Za(s) & Agreus = "hunter". Mithras hunts the divine bull followed by his servants changed into demonic animals: black raven, snake and lion. He has the characteristic hat also worn by the death god of the Etruscans (a people coming from Western Anatolia), a variant of the pointed mitre worn by Baal~Resheph in Byblos. The gods of folk religion are killed during a hunt: Adonis, Attis in Anatolia (acc.to Herodot), Osiris found by Seth during a hunt and chopped up.
The hunter is the death-god leading the army of spirits, cf. the old German notion of "Wutanes her" (the army of Woden/Odin). Woden is the leader of the wild hunt, and this function goes together with his name "Wut" = madness[4].
J.de Moor has stressed Baal's role as the raiser of the dead spirits and the element of spiritualism in Ugarit religion in his recent translation of the main texts. The poem CTA 12 describing Baal hunting in the desert and the "devourers" (´aklm) burning him, killing him in the shape of a steer, is the description of the old ritual hunt & the demons killing the divine bull to free the living waters.
Acc to Geo Widengren, the Indo European men's societies are the beginning of organized Indo European society[5]. The beginning of society in Anatolia is the early, highly organized cult of the temples of Catal Hüyuk, an ecstatic cult, obviously closely connected with the mystical life fluid contained in a sacramental drink. The Halaf-culture following the Catal Hüyük culture has produced very beautiful bowls of clay marked at the bottom with the mystical rosette or cross. Also in Halaf we find the bull as a symbol, often reduced to the horns on a high pole. The late descendant of this religiosity is the mysteries of Mithras, a men's society surrounding the sacred killing of the bull and the drinking of wine in secret caves situated under the earth.
Odin is the god of the ecstasy of war and killing, followed "von dem Wütischen Heer"[6]. Wodan id est furor (Adam of Bremen). This ecstasy is clearly seen as demonic, and "wuetunde her" can also be used about the mob killing Jesus[7]. In Byblos it is an ecstasy changing man into a drinking and killing animal. Tacitus writes about the Harii, a Teutonic tribe, that they attack, armed with black shields, and with painted bodies, choosing the night for fight to look like a ghost-army, feralis exercitus. In his article "Feralis Exercitus"[8], L.Weniger takes us from the harii back to Zagreus which he rightly translates "the great hunter", and up to a German cavalry troop from the 17th century called "invincible", riding on black horses in black clothes with black "Totenkopf" on the helmet. Frederic the Great of Prussia had a regiment of "Totenkopfhusaren". From this there is a rather direct line to the black SS uniforms with "Totenkopf".
There is a strong likeness, almost identity, between the iconography of prehistoric Susa, Crete, Egypt and the Mohenjo Daro culture along the Indus-river.
We have found a god who is more demon than god. He is the big hunter, a killer-type, often with a lion's head or being the lord of lions, a man with whom one unites when the snake power is raised. See the picture of a coiled snake with a lion's head, and on its chest the mystical rosette.
But also the bull-man is known from many prehistoric and early historic cultures. We know him as Pan from Greek iconography, and both Indian and Mesopotamian pictures show him as androgynous. He has very long hair & female breasts. We meet him in the Gilgamesh-epos as Enkidu: when he meets the harlot, his male thinking is aroused, and he loses androgynous strength. Now androgyny is a very important symbol in Indian tantra. We have tried to prove that it is just as important to Near Eastern ecstatic ideology.
We have brought our patient reader back to a Near Eastern cult of great antiquity, full of much darkness, and very conscious in its choice of its demonic features. It is the kind of mystical religion widely dispersed in the Far East under the name of Tantra, and its god is a god/goddess of pestilence, fire, hunting dogs and hosts of demons. In its Near Eastern form (Nergal, Resheph, Seth) he is the forerunner of the devil (especially in his darkest aspect as Molok).He is seldom seen as the Highest God. He is identical with the lion seen on so many Phoenician coins killing the bull or stag, symbol of the Highgod, the god of vegetation and life giving water, the god of great, created nature. As the guardian of animals the Highgod is often seen as a shepherd. The great theme of nature is played out between these two: the guardian of animals, the good shepherd and the killer of animals, the great hunter.
[1] Gen 11
[2] Die Religionen Irans, pp.23-26. "Harlekintracht und Mönchskutte, Clownhut und Derwischmütze", Orientalia Suecana, II 1953, pp.41-111
[3] S.Wikander, Der arische Männerbund, 1938, pp.58-60
[4] O.Höfler, "Der germanische Totenkult und die Sagen vom Wilden Heer", Oberdeutsche Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, 10, 1936, pp.33-49.
[5] Die Relg. Irans, p.26
[6] Geiler von Kaisersberg, see L.Weniger in ARW 9, 1906, p.22
[7] J.Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie 2, 766
[8] ARW 9
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.