The Origin
Of
Our Belief In God
by Erik Langkjer
Part II: The Sun Hero
15. Palmyra
In the Palmyra area there have been discovered a number of altars, dedicated to the so-called "Anonymous God", also called "Zeus the Highest". They are half-columns with a very small bowl only for incense, while the altars dedicated to other gods have space enough for the sacrifice of different kinds of offerings[1]. These altars of stone are, acc. to Seyrig, erected to be an everlasting witness to the sacrifice, and he mentions the North African custom after sacrificing the first born of burying a vessel with the ashes under a stele, obelisk or column. By a temple outside Carthage was found a veritable "petrified wood" of such "memorials". It is also most likely that the "Anonymous God", also with the epithet "He whose name is blessed in eternity", has close connections to the North African Saturn, whose name could not be pronounced openly either, but whose nature as world-pillar was symbolised by the pillar of incense on the altar. The sweet-smelling column of incense was a mean to mystical-ritual union with the godhead, a modification of the ritual where the man who was sacrificed literally (or through a substitute)"went through the fire" to unity with the god. J.Scheftelowitz [2] draws attention to the fact that funeral fire was originally thought to carry the soul of the deceased up to heaven, cf. the angel ascending and descending through the column of fire, Judg 13,20.
The scene below could be understood as a burial procession (SYRIA 15, 1934, pl. XIX, Goodenough, IX, 183). Goodenough directs our attention to the four men with raised hands and an aura around their heads. They are those who have already reached apotheosis, greeting the deceased at his arrival in their world, and they are all having an instrument in the left hand, which could be the famous throwing-club, but is perhaps only a stick. There are also two groups of weeping women. But most interesting is the horse walking in front of the camel carrying the shrouded body. It has its reins hanging loose down from the bridle. It is a symbol of the horse of the sun. A woman is kneeling in front of the horse beside a soldier-like man, perhaps the sun hero.
The central position of the horse in the scenery makes Goodenough able to compare the scene with a memorial from Palmyra. In the freeze under the couch is seen a horse with an empty saddle ready to carry the deceased to the land beyond. The deceased is standing between two columns in a small "gate of the sun". (Two capitals are seen, one over each of his shoulders.) The man to his left is the hunter with scabbard and bow. The man two the right is the sun hero offering him his horse. Above, the deceased is seen resting in the land beyond, with a woman at his side: the highest existence is a union of male and female[3].
Apuleius Met. XI,8 describes a procession in honour of Isis. At the end of it was seen a monkey dressed as Ganymedes, with a Phrygian hat and a gold goblet in his hand, and a "certain weakened senile person" and a donkey with wings glued to his back. The monkey is a symbol of the orgiastic thiasos as a mean to reaching the apotheosis of Ganymedes. The donkey and the senile person were, acc to the explanation of Apuleius, Bellerophontes and Pegasus - in my opinion the winged horse of the sun hero ready to give the weakened man the ascension to heaven he longs for.
Harmonia had a golden piece of jewellery consisting of an snake coiled up in a circle, and in its double mouth an eagle with four wings. The snake was dotted full with stars on its back and adorned with 7 precious stones, among them a moon-stone, and "at the centre" a "shining" Indian agate (for the sun moving forth from India, considered the land of the sunrise) Nonnos Dion. V 144. The snake is the kundalini snake coiling around cosmos, being its dark periphery, but over the gap of the abyss the mystical bird is hovering. Something similar is seen on a relief from Palmyra: the holy eagle of Baalshamin, the bird of eternity hovering over the snake. Along the snake are seen 6 planets (The north side of the temple of Bel. Drawn by Carro, SYRIA 14, 1933, p.255).
The next picture shows the primordial twins: their branches are forced into unity by the eagle (Robert Wood, The Ruins of Palmyra, t.18). The same motif of the eagle trying to hold the twins together is seen in another picture (R.Dusseaud, Notes de myth. Syriennes.1903, p.11, fig.3).
The twins are the symbol of duality and creation, the snake and the mystical bird are the symbol of mystic vision and of unity. The characteristic curl down the neck of the bird, the symbol of coiling kundalini, can only just be seen on the drawing by Robert Wood. The symbol of duality attacking primordial matter must be the meaning af the next picture (SYRIA 15, 1934). The Typhon-like figure is attacked by a god armed with a bow and riding in a chariot, and from the other side a god riding a horse, helped by his dog.
First among the gods watching is Shadrapha with his symbol, the snake coiling up his spear. The material about this god is collected and interpreted by J.Starcky[4]. His name has to be translated as "Healing Demon", and Starcky compares with the rephaim of the Bible. He is mostly accompanied by a snake and a scorpion, or a snake at each shoulder. Two snakes coiling around each other can also be used as his symbol. A smalltesseres shows, on one side, a snake with two heads, and on the reverse a scorpion. On another the reverse is two snakes rising to look at the mystical rosette. On another a snake coiling three and a half times round itself [5]. He is "a chthonic and infernal god" [6].
[1] H.Seyrig, "L´offrande des cippe de pierre au dieu anonyme", SYRIA 14, 1933, pp.263-6
[2] Der Seelen- und Unsterblichkeitsglaube im A.T.", ARW 19, p.220.
[3] See also H. Ingholt, Berytos II, 1935, pp.63-7 & SYRIA XVIII, 1937, pl. IV, p.16.
[4] SYRIA 26, 1949, pp.67-81.
[5] SYRIA 26, pl. IV, no.12, no.5, no.2.
[6] Starcky. p.73.
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.