A

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IN

ZAZAZA ENTER ZAZAZA

ZAZAZAZAZAZAZAAZAZAZAZAZAZAZ

ZAZAZAZAZAZAZAZAZAAZAZAZAZAZAZAZAZAZ

THE

MAGIKALALPHABET

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA

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WORK DAYS OF GOD

Herbert W Morris D.D.circa 1883

Page 22

"As all the words in the English language are composed out of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet,.."

 

 

LIGHT AND LIFE

Lars Olof Bjorn 1976

Page 197

"By writing the 26 letters of the alphabet in a certain order one may put down almost any message (this book 'is written with the same letters' as the Encyclopaedia Britannica and Winnie the Pooh, only the order of the letters differs). In the same way Nature is able to convey with her language how a cell and a whole organism is to be constructed and how it is to function. Nature has succeeded better than we humans; for the genetic code there is only one universal language which is the same in a man, a bean plant and a bacterium."

"BY WRITING THE 26 LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET IN A CERTAIN ORDER

ONE MAY PUT DOWN ALMOST ANY MESSAGE"

 

 

A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=
=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=
J	K	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R
10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18
1+0	1+1	1+2	1+3	1+4	1+5	1+6	1+7	1+8
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=
=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=
S	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z	I
19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	9
1+9	2+0	2+1	2+2	2+3	2+4	2+5	2+6	ME
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=
=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=
I	ME	I	ME	I	ME	I	ME	I
9	18	9	18	9	18	9	18	9
=	1+8	=	1+8	=	1+8	=	1+8	=
=	9	=	9	=	9	=	9	=
I	ME	I	ME	I	ME	I	ME	1
9	9	9	9	9	9	9	9	9
I	ME	I	ME	I	ME	I	ME	1

 

 

"BY WRITING THE 26 LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET IN A CERTAIN ORDER

ONE MAY PUT DOWN ALMOST ANY MESSAGE"

 

 

A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=
=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=
J	K	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R
10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18
1+0	1+1	1+2	1+3	1+4	1+5	1+6	1+7	1+8
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=
=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=
S	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z	I
19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	9
1+9	2+0	2+1	2+2	2+3	2+4	2+5	2+6	ME
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=
=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=
I	ME	I	ME	I	ME	I	ME	I
9	18	9	18	9	18	9	18	9
=	1+8	=	1+8	=	1+8	=	1+8	=
=	9	=	9	=	9	=	9	=
I	ME	I	ME	I	ME	I	ME	1
9	9	9	9	9	9	9	9	9
I	ME	I	ME	I	ME	I	ME	1

 

 

THERE IS NO ATTEMPT MADE TO DESCRIBE THE CREATIVE PROCESS REALISTICALLY

THE ACCOUNT IS SYMBOLIC AND SHOWS GOD CREATING THE WORLD BY MEANS OF LANGUAGE

AS THOUGH WRITING A BOOK BUT LANGUAGE ENTIRELY TRANSFORMED

THE MESSAGE OF CREATION IS CLEAR EACH LETTER OF

THE

ALPHABET

IS

GIVEN

A

NUMERICAL

VALUE BY COMBINING THE LETTERS WITH THE SACRED NUMBERS

REARRANGING THEM IN ENDLESS CONFIGURATIONS

THE MYSTIC WEANED THE MIND AWAY FROM THE NORMAL CONNOTATIONS OF WORDS

 

 

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FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

A QUEST FOR THE BEGINNING AND THE END

Graham Hancock 1995

Chapter 32

Speaking to the Unborn

Page 285

"It is understandable that a huge range of myths from all over the ancient world should describe geological catastrophes in graphic detail. Mankind survived the horror of the last Ice Age, and the most plausible source for our enduring traditions of flooding and freezing, massive volcanism and devastating earthquakes is in the tumultuous upheavals unleashed during the great meltdown of 15,000 to 8000 BC. The final retreat of the ice sheets, and the consequent 300-400 foot rise in global sea levels, took place only a few thousand years before the beginning of the historical period. It is therefore not surprising that all our early civilizations should have retained vivid memories of the vast cataclysms that had terrified their forefathers.
Much harder to explain is the peculiar but distinctive way the myths of cataclysm seem to bear the intelligent imprint of a guiding hand.l Indeed the degree of convergence between such ancient stories is frequently remarkable enough to raise the suspicion that they must all have been 'written' by the same 'author'.
Could that author have had anything to do with the wondrous deity, or superhuman, spoken of in so many of the myths we have reviewed, who appears immediately after the world has been shattered by a horrifying geological catastrophe and brings comfort and the gifts of civilization to the shocked and demoralized survivors?
White and bearded, Osiris is the Egyptian manifestation of this / Page 286 / universal figure, and it may not be an accident that one of the first acts he is remembered for in myth is the abolition of cannibalism among the primitive inhabitants of the Nile Valley.2 Viracocha, in South America, was said to have begun his civilizing mission immediately after a great flood; Quetzalcoatl, the discoverer of maize, brought the benefits of crops, mathematics, astronomy and a refined culture to Mexico after the Fourth Sun had been overwhelmed by a destroying deluge.
Could these strange myths contain a record of encounters between scattered palaeolithic tribes which survived the last Ice Age and an as yet unidentified high civilization which passed through the same epoch?
And could the myths be attempts to communicate?

A message in the bottle of time"

'Of all the other stupendous inventions,' Galileo once remarked,

what sublimity of mind must have been his who conceived how to communicate his most secret thoughts to any other person, though very distant either in time or place, speaking with those who are in the Indies, speaking to those who are not yet born, nor shall be this thousand or ten thousand years? And with no greater difficulty than the various arrangements of two dozen little signs on paper? Let this be the seal of all the admirable inventions of men.3

If the 'precessional message' identified by scholars like Santillana, von Dechend and Jane Sellers is indeed a deliberate attempt at communication by some lost civilization of antiquity, how come it wasn't just written down and left for us to find? Wouldn't that have been easier than encoding it in myths? Perhaps.
Nevertheless, suppose that whatever the message was written on got destroyed or worn away after many thousands of years? Or suppose that the language in which it was inscribed was later forgotten utterly (like the enigmatic Indus Valley script, which has been studied closely for more than half a century but has so far resisted all attempts at decoding)? It must be obvious that in such circumstances a written / Page 287 / legacy to the future would be of no value at all, because nobody would be able to make sense of it.
What one would look for, therefore, would be a universal language, the kind of language that would be comprehensible to any technologically advanced society in any epoch, even a thousand or ten thousand years into the future. Such languages are few and far between, but mathematics is one of them - and the city of Teotihuacan may be the calling-card of a lost civilization written in the eternal language of mathematics.
Geodetic data, related to the exact positioning of fixed geographical points and to the shape and size of the earth, would also remain valid and recognizable for tens of thousands of years, and might be most conveniently expressed by means of cartography (or in the construction of giant geodetic monuments like the Great Pyramid of Egypt, as we shall see).
Another 'constant' in our solar system is the language of time: the great but regular intervals of time calibrated by the inch-worm creep of precessional motion. Now, or ten thousand years in the future, a message that prints out numbers like 72 or 2160 or 4320 or 25,920 should be instantly intelligible to any civilization that has evolved a modest talent for mathematics and the ability to detect and measure the almost imperceptible reverse wobble that the sun appears to make along the ecliptic against the background of the fixed stars..."

"What one would look for, therefore, would be a universal language, the kind of language that would be comprehensible to any technologically advanced society in any epoch, even a thousand or ten thousand years into the future. Such languages are few and far between, but mathematics is one of them"

"WRITTEN IN THE ETERNAL LANGUAGE OF MATHEMATICS"

 

 

 

 

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THE

FAR YONDER SCRIBE

AND OFT TIMES SHADOWED SUBSTANCES WATCHED IN SOME AMAZE

THE

ZED ALIZ ZED

IN

SWIFT REPEAT SCATTER STAR DUST AMONGST THE LETTERS OF THEIR PROGRESS

 

 

NUMBER

9

THE SEARCH FOR THE SIGMA CODE

Cecil Balmond 1998

Cycles and Patterns

Page 165

Patterns

"The essence of mathematics is to look for patterns.

Our minds seem to be organised to search for relationships and sequences. We look for hidden orders.

These intuitions seem to be more important than the facts themselves, for there is always the thrill at finding something, a pattern, it is a discovery - what was unknown is now revealed. Imagine looking up at the stars and finding the zodiac!

Searching out patterns is a pure delight.

Suddenly the counters fall into place and a connection is found, not necessarily a geometric one, but a relationship between numbers, pictures of the mind, that were not obvious before. There is that excitement of finding order in something that was otherwise hidden.

And there is the knowledge that a huge unseen world lurks behind the facades we see of the numbers themselves."

 

 

THE SACRED MUSHROOM AND THE CROSS

John M. Allegro 1970

VIII

WOMAN S PART IN THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Page 63 (number omitted)
Gestation of the foetus in the womb required three elements: the creative spirit, semen, and blood. The god provided the first, man the second, and woman the third. Of the human contributions, woman's ivas the most powerful and evoked most wonder among the ancients. They believed that it was menstrual blood that formed the embryo. Pliny describes the process thus: "(menses is) the material for human genera­tion, as semen from the male acting like rennet collects this substance within it, which thereupon is inspired with life and endowed with body.1"

Women who do not menstruate, records the same author, do not bear children, since the raw material of conception is not present in the womb. On the other hand, a woman who menstruates during pregnancy is likely to bring forth" a sickly or still-born offspring, or one full of bloody matter". The best time for conceiving was thought to be at the beginning or end of a menstrual period,2 which is why in the story of David and Bathsheba in the Old Testament it is said specifically that the lovers had their illicit intercourse just after Bathsheba had menstruated (II Sam I 1:4).

Galen, the second-century physician, has a rather more sophisticated theory of the generative process, but still sees semen and menstrual blood as its main factors. The semen, he thought, drew to itself just as much blood as it could deal with, using it as food with which to build the foetus.3
The Old Testament rules for the menstruant (Lev IS :19-25) emphasize the sacred nature of the blood. whilst in that condition, everything the woman touches is reckoned "unclean" and this "un­cleanness" can communicate itself to other people. A man having intercourse with her at this time renders himself liable to the same seven-day period of ritual disqualification as his wife. It has to be emphasized that / Page 64 / this ''tmcleanness'' has nothing to do with morals or hygiene. It is a religious state of taboo. A woman bearing a son is similarly" defiled" (having a daughter requires fourteen days separation), as is a man com­ing in contact with a dead body (Num 19:11). A priest is rendered "un­clean" by touching a reptile or insect, or involuntarily discharging semen (Lev 22 :4, 5)

Rachel used her real or pretended menstrual condition to prevent her sorely pressed father Laban from discovering his stolen property. When he finally caught up with his runaway daughter and son-in-law, Laban searched their tents seeking some household gods Rachel had taken. She put them under her camel saddle and begged to be excused from rising since the "manner of women was upon her" (Gen 31 :34f). Even to have touched the saddle would have rendered Laban "unclean"

Menses could affect almost everything, by remote influence as well as direct contact. "wild indeed", says Pliny, "are the stories told of the mysterious and awful power of the menstruous discharge. . ."4 He relates a few of them and leaves us in no doubt about the fear and wonder that attended this monthly phenomenon in the eyes of the ancients. of course, coming from the seat of creation, the womb, menstrual blood was credited with wonderful healing powers. It could cure gout, scrofula, parotid tumours, abscesses, erysipelas, boils, eye­fluxes, hydrophobia, and epilepsy, whilst quartan fever, according to one source, could be counteracted by sexual intercourse with a woman just beginning her period.

On the other hand, such a source of power was dangerous. Under the principle of like repelling like, which played an important part in ancient philosophy, menses was also considered to be an abortifacient. A smear of the blood could bring about a miscarriage, and even to step over a stain could bring about the same dire effect.5 Similarly, it could abort fruit trees, dry up seed, blight crops, turn wine sour, as well as send dogs mad, rust metals, and dull mirrors. This last effect, incidentally, could be reversed by having the woman stare at the back of the mirror until the shine on the front was restored.6

The distinguishing feature of menstrual blood was its dark colour, contrasting with the brighter, oxygenated blood of the rest of the body. Thus dark red, purple, violet, and similar hues came to have a special significance, being so closely associated with fertility. Kings and magistrates wore purple garments, and the Latin purpura came to mean / Page 65 / not only the robes themselves but the high dignity they conferred.7

Most prized of all was Tyrian purple, whose "highest glory", according to Pliny, "consists in the colour of congealed blood, blackish at first glance but gleaming when held up to the light; this is the origin of Homer's phrase, 'blood of purple hue' ". 8 Further dyeing of a scarlet fabric with Tyrian purple produced the rich colour called in Greek husginon, the Sumerian origin of which shows that it meant properly "blue blood",9 another popular mark of the aristocracy. The same origin can be found for the "Hyacinth", in Greek mythology the name of the youth accidentally slain by his friend Apollo, and from whose spilt blood there grew the flower of that name.l0 Pliny offers a further connection between purple and menstrual blood when he says that the latter adversely affects this colour, another example of like repelling like. 11

There is another reference to menstrual blood in the description Pliny gives of a fabulous dragon called the basilisk. It could apparently kill bushes with .its breath, scorch grass, burst rocks,12 and put other serpents to rout.13 It was its blood, however, that was most in demand. According to the Magi, it brought a successful outcome to petitions made to gods and kings, cured diseases, and disarmed sorcery. This last claim was also made for menses, if daubed like Passover blood (Exod 12 :7), on the subject's doorposts.14

MENSES

S

SEMEN

The name basilisk actually means, "womb-blood", 15 that is, menses. Pliny adds that some people call it "Saturn's blood", which looks like a reminiscence of the same verbal origin, since the name Saturn is partly composed of a Sumerian word ShA-TUR, "womb".16

One important characteristic of "Saturn's Blood" was that it was of the colour and consistency of pitch.17 The ancients saw a close relation­ship between this substance and menstrual blood, apparently believing that it was the earth's equivalent of human menses. Particularly noted in this connection were the lumps of bitumen that periodically rose to the surface of the Dead Sea, "in shape and size", according to Josephus, "like decapitated bulls". He goes on, "the labourers on the lake row up to these and, catching hold of the lumps, haul them into their boats. But when they have filled them it is no easy task to detach their cargo, which, owing to its tenacious and glutinous character, clings to the boat until it is loosened by the menstrual discharge of women."18 This tradition is mentioned also by Tacitus,19 referring to other ancient / Page 66 / authorities among whom, we know, was one Poseidonius of second­first-century BC. So the relationship between pitch and menses was already well-established and can now be further supported linguistically. 20

The connection of pitch with the womb would lead us to expect that it should be thought to have healing properties. As Josephus says, "it is useful not only for caulking ships, but also for the healing of the body, forming an. ingredient in many medicines". 21 Dioscorides lists at some length the remedial characteristics of asphaltos, including that it is effective for "strangulations of the womb", and that, taken along with wine and castor oil, "it drives out menses".22 The Judean bitumen is the best, according to the same authority, and he notes that "it shines like purple" .

The inhabitants of Judea must have been well aware that the extraordinary rift valley of the Dead Sea was far lower than the surrounding country. In fact, as we know, the ground there is the lowest place on earth, some thirteen hundred feet below sea-level. It was small wonder, then, that the menstrual discharge of the womb of mother earth should be borne the comparatively short distance to the surface of the Dead Sea, and that it should have required the application of the menses of other wombs to loosen its sticky grip.

Perhaps the Dead Sea's proximity to the centre of the earth, and thus the seat of knowledge, played some part in the establishment along its western shores of the Essene settlement at Qumran, the home of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Certainly the blistering heat of the summer months, combined with the belief that there one stood closer than anywhere else to the eternal fires of Hades, had a large part in the formulation of the Sodom and Gomorrah myths, and their overthrow with fire and brimstone (Gen 19:24).

Further evidence of how close the ground here is to the fermenting heat of the earth's centre was recognized in the presence of hot springs on the east side of the Dead Sea, at a place called Callirrhoe. It was thence that the dying Herod was carried to try to fmd some relief from the pains that wracked his dropsical, gangrenous body.23 As late as the last century, popular local belief held that the hot water was released from the lower regions by evil spirits, merely to stop it being available to assuage the pains of the damned in hell. Another legend said that King Solomon sent a servant to open the springs when he discovered / Page 67 / how thin was the crust af the earth at this paint. However, lest the threats af the subterranean devils deter his messenger, the wise manarch saw to' it that he was stone deaf 24

Near by stood Herod's great palace fortress Machaerus, and in its grounds, says Josephus, "grew a plant of Rue, af an amazing size; indeed in height and thickness no fig-tree surpassed it".25 Rue was regarded as the prime abortifacient, as its variaus names now make clear.26 Pliny said that it would open the womb, promote menstruation, bringing away the after-birth and dead foetus, good for "womb­strangling", for the genitals and anus, and at all casts to' be avoided by pregnant wamen.27

Josephus' digressian to' speak af a particular Rue plant in a topa­graphical account af the Machaerus fartress as it bore on a vital Roman campaign in Transjordan, is strange, to' say the least. But we have already seen, when describing the high priest's head-gear, that the introduction by this author of plant physiology and folk-lore into an otherwise non-botanical discussian usually implies some hidden reference to a matter which he is reluctant to' bring fully into the open.

Immediately following the description of the giant-sized Rue and its camparison with a fig, Josephus says that in a ravine to the north af the fortress town, was to be found a magic plant called by the name af the ravine, Baaras. What he says about the plant tallies in some respects with traditional accounts af the Mandrake, which we have identified with the Holy Plant, the sacred fungus. One method af drawing it from the ground safely was to tie a dog to it, then call the animal to follow. The animal sprang to obey, pulling out the Mandrake, and promptly died, "a vicarious victim, as it were, for him who intended to remove the plant, since after this none need fear to' handle it". The canine sacrifice was well worth the prize, since "it possesses one virtue for which it is valued; for the so-called demons - in other words, the spirits af wicked men which enter the living and kill them unless aid is forthcoming - are promptly expelled by this root, if merely applied to the patients".28

Of more immediate interest is the alternative method offered for capturing the root. "It eludes the grasp af persons who approach with the intentian af plucking it, as it shrinks up and can only be made to stand still by pouring upon it a woman's urine and menses". 29 Thus the releasing agents far the Mandrake were the same as for the Dead Sea's / Page 68 / bitumen. Furthermore, the Rue which shared some of the medicinal and abortive characteristics of pitch, was highly regarded in antiquity as an antidote to poisons, particularly of serpents and fungi. 30 We may therefore suspect that in Josephus' mention of the hot spring of Machaerus, the giant Rue and the Mandrake in the same passage, he is quietly expressing a currently held belief that this particular location by the Dead Sea held a special relevance for the Holy Plant and its antidote. One or two other references support this idea, as we shall see.

The ancients recognized a homogeneity between mineral pitch and the resin of trees, particularly the pine, to which the name" pitch" more properly belongs. Thus Greek has the term pissasphaltos, that is, as Pliny remarks, "pitch combined with bitumen",31 and this author states that bitumen is commonly adulterated with vegetable pitch.32 Acacia was another tree whose resinous sap was compared with human menses. Pliny says that its" purple gum" had the best tonic and cooling properties and "checked excessive menstruation".33 The Arabs are said to make amulets from the gum of the Acacia with the idea that it is the tree's menstrual blood, and that they may thereby avail themselves of its power.34 The Acacia shared honours with the Cedar for providing wood for the furniture of the Jewish sanctuary, and was even used to construct the ark itself (Deut 10:3; Exod 25:5; etc).

Another property shared by both bitumen and resin is their inflammability. Both are sources of fire, a necessary ingredient of generation. As we said earlier, the Sumerian ideogragram for "love" consisted of a burning torch in a womb.35 The dull-red tip of the penis was thought of as a fiery brand igniting the furnace of the uterus, as the sun each evening set alight the bituminous heart of the earth. As Job says, "As for the earth, out of it comes bread; but underneath it is turned up as by fire"
(Job 28 :5). So a pine-torch was carried in wedding processions, as the virgins of the New Testament parable of the Kingdom bore their lamps to meet the bridegroom (Matt 25). In the same way, torch-carrying formed part of the fertility rites of Bacchus.36

The same symbolism lies behind the seven-branched candlestick before the Holy of Holies in the Jewish temple (Exod 25:3 1ff). The phallic nature of the lamps is illustrated by the terminology of its biblical description, beginning with the base as the "loins" out of which the" stalk" rises with its seven arms. On the top of each was" a cup shaped like an almond", consisting of a "rounded knob", or "capital", / Page 69 / and a "flower", or "bud". It is as difficult to envisage this ornamentation in literal terms as it is Josephus' description of the High Priest's phallic head-gear. However, the reference to the "almond" is a clue to the intended symbolism of the whole, since the name of the tree derives from a Sumerian original meaning "stretched penis",37 an allusion to the tree's being the first to show its blossom.38 The erection of the male organ was its "awakening" and in Sumerian the idea was used to express sunnse .39

The lamps before the Holy of Holies in the Temple find expression today in the lighted candles before the Virgin Mary in the Catholic Church. The fertility significance of the practice is particularly dear in the fire ritual of Holy Saturday, as the Church prepares for the rising of the Christ on Easter Day. "New fire" is struck from a flint as a prelude to the ceremonies, and coals lit from it outside the church. The fire is blessed and brought into the church, eventually to light one candle in
which five grains of incense have been placed. Towards the climax of the ritual, the biblical Creation story having been read, the part played by the creative waters are rehearsed before the baptismal font. Prayer is offered that God, "by a secret mixture of his divine power, may render fruitful this water for the regeneration of men: to the end that those who are sanctified in the immaculate womb of this divine font, and born again new creatures, may come forth as heavenly offspring. . .
Therefore, may all unclean spirits by thy command, 0 Lord, depart from hence: may all the malice of diabolical wiles be entirely banished. . ."

Later the priest breathes three times upon the water in the form of a cross, saying: "Do thou with thy mouth bless these pure waters. . ." and dips the candle three times into the water "of the immaculate womb", saying: "May the power of the Holy Ghost descend into all the water of this font. . ." After breathing again three times on the water, he goes on, "and make the whole substance of this water fruitful for regeneration"

The classical example of the ever-burning fire before a virgin goddess is the cult of Hestia-Vesta, the Greek and Roman representations of the hearth-deity. The names and cults of the goddesses differ in some respects but their origin is the same. The Greek Hestia's name is also the common word for "fireplace" and "home", as well as for the central fire of the universe. Euripides calls her "the Lady of Fire".40

Page 70

Her domain was originally in the king's palace, but in the historical period it had become transferred to the town hall, the council-chamber of the magistrates, called in Greek prutaneion.41
Her mythology tells us that she spurned the hands of both Poseidon and Apollo: "she was unwilling, nay stubbornly refused; and touching the head of her father Zeus . . . that fair goddess swore a great oath that has in truth been fulfilled, that she would be a virgin all her days". As recompense for this great sacrifice, "Zeus the Father gave her high honour instead of marriage, and she has her place in the midst of the house, and has the richest portion. In all the temples of the gods she has a share of the honour, and among all mortal men she is chief of the goddesses" .42

Not only was Hestia honoured in the council-chambers, but at every banquet wine was poured for her at the beginning and end of the mea1.43 For she was the first and the last of the children of Zeus, the beginning and end of the god's creation. Legend had it that the god swallowed each of his children at the moment of birth, but was ultimately forced to disgorge them. Hestia, being the first-born was the last to be re­gurgitated, and so merited this title.44

This fancy is simply an attempt to put into mythical terms a central feature of the old fertility philosophy. It was believed that the first-born of the womb was the strongest of all the progeny because it was formed from menstrual blood at its most powerful. Next in excellence to the first-born of the young woman, stood the child of an older woman conceiving for the first time, just prior to menopause. The idea seems to have been that for some reason irregular menstrual discharge was more powerful than that which occurred at normal monthly intervals. So an adolescent girl's first period, like that of the older woman who had retained her virginity, was "spontaneous", and thus all-powerful. It is strong enough, says Pliny, "to make mares miscarry even at the sight of it over long distances".45

Menstruation was, naturally enough, connected with the moon, the "queen of stars" whose periodic waxing and waning controlled the blood of humans and sap of plants. As Pliny puts it: "the moon is rightly believed to be the star of the spirit. . . that saturates the earth and fills bodies by its approach and empties them by its departure. . . the blood even of humans increases and diminishes with its light, and leaves and herbage. . . are sensitive to it, the same force penetrating / Page 71 / into all things".46 Should menstrual discharge occur when the moon was not visible the blood was reckoned to have uncontrollable power: "if this female force should issue when the moon or the sun is in eclipse, it will cause irremediable harm; no less so when there is no moon. At such seasons sexual intercourse brings death and disease upon the man."47

In biblical mythology this idea of the potency of the first and last menses is expressed in stories of heroes born to aged, previously barren or virgin mothers, like Isaac (Gen 17), Samuel (I Sam 1), and Jesus. The New Testament describes the god-hero, like Hestia, as "the first and the last, the beginning and the end" (Rev 22:13), and "the first-born of all creation" (Col 1 :15). Jesus is also "the first-born of many brethren" (Rom 8 :28), since participation in the mystery of ingesting the Jesus­fungus, was to avail oneself of the power of his primogeniture.

It will be appreciated that this sacred virginity, attributed somewhat incongruously to goddesses who spend most of their mythical lives leaping in and out of bed with gods and mortals, is not primarily or even essentially to do with having intact hymens. Their "virginity" lay in the power of their wombs to produce offspring whose excellence derived from menstrual blood perpetually at its most powerful.

The Roman version of the hearth-cult demonstrates certain features which are probably more primitive than the Greek. The central feature of the Vesta worship was the maintenance of an ever-burning sacred fire48 by virgins, called Vestals. Originally representing the royal house, these maids, at first two, then four and later six in number,49 were called "princesses" and given special privileges in accordance with their assumed rank. They dressed as brides, indicative of their virginity, and were between the ages of six and ten,50 serving for five years,51 that is, until the onset of puberty and marriageable age. In historical times this period of service was extended to thirty years, perhaps with the idea of bringing them into the second most powerful period of their reproductive lives. Marriage was permitted after their time of service but was unusual, being considered unlucky.52

The girls were released from parental control when they were admitted to the sacred office of Vestal, but thereafter came under the charge of the high-priest, the pontiftx maximus. It was he who received them into the Order, taking each candidate by the hand and pro nouncing a formula of admission over her. Her hair was then cut off and hung upon a certain tree.

Page 72

Discipline was severe. If a Vestal neglected to maintain the sacred fire before the virgin goddess she was beaten. If she lost her virginity she was walled up in an underground tomb to die - or be rescued by the direct intervention of the goddess whom she had betrayed. Her duties involved bringing water from a sacred spring to use in the sanctuary, and the preparation of special foodstuffi. She also had the care of certain objects in the shrine. Since no one but the Vestals was allowed to enter the inner sanctum, little is known of the rituals and the holy objects of the shrine. As with most information about the mystery cults, accounts that have come down stem largely from guesswork.

At the time of the Roman New Year, our Eastertide, a ceremony of extinguishing and relighting the sacred fire was enacted. The Church strikes "new fire" fronl a flint; the Vestals used a fire-drill boring into a block of wood, an invention attributed to Hermes,53 with whom the hearth-goddess was associated.

The shrine itself was a domed building, representing a potter's or refiner's furnace. Fire, in fertility philosophy, not only engendered new life, it purified the old. It is the Semitic word for a refmer's crucible that underlies the New Testament conception of "temptation", properly, "testing, trial".54 So, for the theologians, the eternal fires of hell became the place of purging of the souls of the dead, and later Judaism and Christianity embodied this aspect of the fertility cult into their moral teaching.
The shape of the Vesta shrine had another significance for the mush­room cult, since it also represented the domed canopy of the expanded cap of the Amanita muscaria. Inside the shrine was preserved a thunder­bolt cast down by Zeus, it was said, at the founding of the city of Troy.55 To judge from the tradition that this votive object was a replica of the patron goddess Pallas Athena, whose name and epithet both mean "vulva", 56 and bearing in mind the traditional shape of the divine thunderbolt, a kind of dumb-bell or divided hemispheres, (symbol omitted) ,57 it seems reasonable to assume that the Palladium, as this venerated relic was called, was in fact a representation of the sacred mushroom.
Fire and fertility are similarly connected in the person of the Greek goddess of child-birth, Eileithyia. She is depicted standing with one arm raised holding a pine-torch, the other outstretched with open palm, a gesture of prayer for an easy delivery. 58 She was the daughter of Zeus / Page 73 / and Hera

 

 

10	MENSTRUATE	136	37	1
11	MENSTRUATES	155	38	2
12	MENSTRUATION	169	52	7
11	MENSTRUATED	140	41	5
12	MENSTRUATING	161	53	8

 

 

6	MENSES	-	-	-
-	S	19	10	1
-	SEMEN	56	20	2
-	MENSES	75	30	3

 

 

10	MENSTRUATE	-	-	-
-	MENS	51	15	6
-	T+R+U	59	14	5
-	A+T+E	26	8	8
10	MENSTRUATE	136	37	19
1+0	-	1+3+6	3+7	1+9
1	MENSTRUATE	10	10	10
-	-	1+0	1+0	1+0
1	MENSTRUATE	1	1	1

 

 

12	MENS TRUE HATE	-	-	-
-	TRUE	64	19	1
-	MEN	32	14	5
-	HATES	53	17	8
12	MENS TRUE HATE	149	50	14
1+2	-	1+4+9	5+0	1+4
3	MENS TRUE HATE	14	5	5
-	-	1+4	-	-
3	MENS TRUE HATE	5	5	5

 

 

12	MENS TRUE HATE	149	50	5
10	MENSTRUATE	136	37	1

 

 

-	MENOPAUSE	-	-	-
-	PAUSE	62	17	8
-	O	15	6	6
-	MEN	32	14	5
9	MENOPAUSE	109	37	19
-	-	1+0+9	3+7	1+9
9	MENOPAUSE	10	10	10
-	-	1+0	1+0	1+0
9	MENOPAUSE	1	1	1

 

 

6	MENSES	-	-	-
-	M	13	4	4
-	SENSE	62	17	8
6	MENSES	75	21	12
-	-	7+5	2+1	1+2
6	MENSES	12	3	3
-	-	1+2	-	-
6	MENSES	3	3	3

 

 

5	HYMEN	-	-	-
-	HYMN	60	24	6
-	E	5	5	5
5	HYMEN	65	29	11
-	-	6+5	2+9	1+1
5	HYMEN	11	11	2
-	-	1+1	1+1	-
5	HYMEN	2	2	2

 

 

6	UTERUS	-	-	-
-	U+T	41	5	5
-	S+U+R+E	63	18	9
6	UTERUS	104	23	14
-	-	1+0+4	2+3	1+4
6	UTERUS	5	5	5

 

 

-	WOMANHOOD	-	-	-
5	WOMAN	66	21	3
4	HOOD	42	24	6
9	WOMANHOOD	108	45	9
-	-	1+0+8	4+5	-
9	WOMANHOOD	9	9	9

 

 

-`	9	W	O	M	A	N	H	O	O	D	-	-	-		-	--		-	-	-
-	-	-	6	-	-	5	8	6	6	-	+	=	31	3+1	=	4	=	4	-	4
-	-	-	15	-	-	14	8	15	15	-	+	=	67	6+7	=	13	1+3	4	-	4
-`	9	W	O	M	A	N	H	O	O	D	-	-	-		-	--		-	-	-
-	-	5	-	4	1	-	-	-	-	4	+	=	14	1+4	=	5	=	5	-	5
-	-	23	-	13	1	-	-	-	-	4	+	=	41	4+1	=	5	=	5	-	5
-`	9	W	O	M	A	N	H	O	O	D	-	-	-		-	--		-	-	-
-	-	23	15	13	1	14	8	15	15	4	+	=	108	1+0+8	=	9	=	9	-	9
-	-	5	6	4	1	5	8	6	6	4	+	=	45	4+5	=	9	=	9	-	9
-	9	W	O	M	A	N	H	O	O	D	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-`	1	occurs	x	1	=	1	=	1
2	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	2	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
3	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	3	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	4	-	-	-	-	-	4	-	-	4	occurs	x	2	=	8	=	8
-	-	5	-	-	-	5	-	-	-	-	-	-	5	occurs	x	2	=	10	1+0	1
-	-	-	6	-	-	-	-	6	6	-	-	-	6	occurs	x	3	=	18	1+8	9
7	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	7	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	-	-	8	-	-	-	-	-	8	occurs	x	1	=	8	=	8
9	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	9	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
21	9	W	O	M	A	N	H	O	O	D	-	-	24	-	1	9	-	45	-	27
2+1	1+6	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	2+4	-	-	-	-	4+5	-	2+7
3	9	W	O	M	A	N	H	O	O	D	-	-	6	-	-	9	-	9	-	9

 

 

9	W	O	M	A	N	H	O	O	D	-	-	-		-	--		-	-	-
-	-	6	-	-	5	8	6	6	-	+	=	31	3+1	=	4	=	4	-	4
-	-	15	-	-	14	8	15	15	-	+	=	67	6+7	=	13	1+3	4	-	4
9	W	O	M	A	N	H	O	O	D	-	-	-		-	--		-	-	-
-	5	-	4	1	-	-	-	-	4	+	=	14	1+4	=	5	=	5	-	5
-	23	-	13	1	-	-	-	-	4	+	=	41	4+1	=	5	=	5	-	5
9	W	O	M	A	N	H	O	O	D	-	-	-		-	--		-	-	-
-	23	15	13	1	14	8	15	15	4	+	=	108	1+0+8	=	9	=	9	-	9
-	5	6	4	1	5	8	6	6	4	+	=	45	4+5	=	9	=	9	-	9
9	W	O	M	A	N	H	O	O	D	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-`	1	occurs	x	1	=	1	=	1
-	-	-	4	-	-	-	-	-	4	-	-	4	occurs	x	2	=	8	=	8
-	5	-	-	-	5	-	-	-	-	-	-	5	occurs	x	2	=	10	1+0	1
-	-	6	-	-	-	-	6	6	-	-	-	6	occurs	x	3	=	18	1+8	9
-	-	-	-	-	-	8	-	-	-	-	-	8	occurs	x	1	=	8	=	8
9	W	O	M	A	N	H	O	O	D	-	-	24	-	1	9	-	45	-	27
1+6	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	2+4	-	-	-	-	4+5	-	2+7
9	W	O	M	A	N	H	O	O	D	-	-	6	-	-	9	-	9	-	9

 

 

-	17	T	H	E	-	D	I	V	I	N	E	-	F	E	M	I	N	I	N	E	-	-	-	-	-	--	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	8	-	-	-	9	-	9	5	-	-	-	-	-	9	5	9	5	-	+	=	59	5+9	=	14	1+4	5	=	5
-	-	-	8	-	-	-	9	-	9	14	-	-	-	-	-	9	14	9	14	-	+	=	86	8+6	=	14	1+4	5	=	5
-	17	T	H	E	-	D	I	V	I	N	E	-	F	E	M	I	N	I	N	E	-	-	-	-	-	--	-	-	-	-
-	-	2	-	5	-	4	-	4	-	-	5	-	6	5	4	-	-	-	-	5	+	=	40	4+0	=	4	=	4	=	4
-	-	20	-	5	-	4	-	22	-	-	5	-	6	5	13	-	-	-	-	5	+	=	85	8+5	=	13	1+3	4	=	4
-	17	T	H	E	-	D	I	V	I	N	E	-	F	E	M	I	N	I	N	E	-	-	-	-	-	--	-	-	-	-
-	-	20	8	5	-	4	9	22	9	14	5	-	6	5	13	9	14	9	14	5	+	=	99	9+9	=	18	1+8	9	=	9
-	-	2	8	5	-	4	9	4	9	5	5	-	6	5	4	9	5	9	5	5	+	=	171	1+7+1	=	9	=	9	=	9
-	17	T	H	E	-	D	I	V	I	N	E	-	F	E	M	I	N	I	N	E	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	2	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	2	occurs	x	1	=	2	=	2
3	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	3	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	-	-	4	-	4	-	-	-	-	-	-	4	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	4	occurs	x	3	=	12	1+2	3
-	-	-	-	5	-	-	-	-	-	5	5	-	-	5	-	-	5	-	5	5	-	-	5	occurs	x	7	=	35	3+5	8
-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	6	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	6	occurs	x	1	=	6	=	6
7	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	7	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
-	-	-	8	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	8	occurs	x	1	=	8	=	8
-	-	-	-	-	-	-	9	-	9	-	-	-	-	-	-	9	-	9	-	-	-	-	9	occurs	x	4	=	36	3+6	9
11	17	T	H	E	-	D	I	V	I	N	E	-	F	E	M	I	N	I	N	E	-	-	34	-	-	17	-	99	-	36
1+7	1+7	-	-	-	-	-	9	-	9	-	-	-	-	-	-	9	-	9	-	-	-	-	3+4	-	-	1+7	-	9+9	-	3+6
2	8	T	H	E	-	D	I	V	I	N	E	-	F	E	M	I	N	I	N	E	-	-	7	-	-	8	-	18	-	9
-	-	2	8	5	-	4	9	4	9	5	5	-	6	5	4	9	5	9	5	5	-	-	-	-	-	1+8	-	-	-	-
2	8	T	H	E	-	D	I	V	I	N	E	-	F	E	M	I	N	I	N	E	-	-	7	-	-	9	-	9	-	9

 

 

THE END OF THE ROAD

John M. Allegro 1970

Chapter One

The One God

Page 21

RELIGION is the relationship between a man and his god. It is born out of his sense of weakness and frustration in the face of a largely hostile environment. The extent to which religion domin­ates a man's life depends therefore upon his self-confidence. Flushed with the success of his own efforts, man needs no master but himself. Dispirited by failure, or the blows of fortune, he looks to his god for comfort and hope of future restoration. Even when things went well, when his granaries were full, his cisterns flowing with water, his stockyards and rivers teeming with life, early man was beset with fears for the future, lest in the next year drought or plague strike his land. He plied his god with praise and bribes for the continuance of his good fortune, and tried to lure the deity into remaining with him for all time. He built fine houses for the god, and employed representatives to enact continual rites of appeasement and stimulation to promote his procreative activity.
For the god was life. The oldest god-names known from the Near East relate to his creative power. He was thought of as a mighty penis in the skies, ejaculating semen in the violence of the storm, and thereby fructifying the womb of mother Earth beneath. The Greek Zeus and the Hebrew Yahweh (Jehovah) derive from a common linguistic source, and both mean sperma­tozoa, 'seed of life'. Embedded within both names is an ancient Sumerian word, symbolized by the single letter 'U' meaning 'fertility', perhaps the most significant phoneme in the whole of / Page 22 / human speech 'U' was the name of the old Sumerian storm-god;
when he spoke, it was the shriek of the wind, the scream of ecstasy at the height of the divine orgasm. 'U' was the liquid that spurted from the lips of the swollen glans and bore divine life to earth. 'U' was the copulatory act itself, the bestriding of a woman by her mate, the mounting of beasts or, more remotely, the fecundation from above of the vaginal furrows of the earth by the god. 'U' meant 'to have mastery over', to be lord and hus­band. It signified the sensual, savage world of sexual domination and fructification. It lay at the heart of ancient religion.
The culture of ancient Sumer was not the first; man had been an intelligent being for hundreds of thousands of years before the people we call Sumerians first set foot in Mesopotamia. But for our Graeco-Semitic civilization their culture was the beginning; it is from their language, as now for the first time we can recognize, that our own ultimately derived. It is from their ideas about God that ours came, transmitted through the religious writings of the Jews and Greeks. Yahweh, Zeus and Allah are one: all mean 'the sperm of heaven' .
It was the Sumerian culture that, about 3500 BC, invented writing, and made communication of ideas and thus history possible. Before then, paintings daubed on walls, figurines crudely fashioned from clay, and the like offer modern enquirers our only ancient evidence for the religious questing of primitive man. With writing, first crudely incised picture diagrams on clay tablets, later stylized symbols and finally alphabets, man could transmit commands, accounts and then stories, songs and liturgies over distances of space and time. As early as 2000 BC Sumerian tablets were recording whole epics and cosmologies that had doubtless been transmitted by word of mouth for hundreds or thousands of years before that. The 'U' culture of Sumer was already old at the beginning of history.
If we want to to know how and where Christianity began, / Page 23 / where its roots lay and how its philosophies -were derived, we have to look not merely to the immediate hinterland of the Jewish Old Testameii't and the inter-testamentalliteratul'e of the Apocry­pha and the Dead Sea Scrolls, but raise our eyes to the very horizons of history. The 'Jesus' cult began long before that, but historically we first glimpse its essential features in the Sumerian 'V' culture, in the throbbing phallus of the Sumerian storm god. The name 'Jesus/Joshua' (the Greek and Hebrew forms) means 'the semen that heals' or 'fructifies', the god-juice that gives life. To be smeared with this powerful liquid, above all to absorb it into his body, was to bring. the worshipper of the 'Jesus' into living communion with God, indeed, to make him divine. Thus was religion perfected, God and man made one, and the power of all-knowledge transmitted from heaven to mortals. In the words of the New Testament writer, 'you have been anointed by the Holy One and know all things' (I John 220).
To the ancient, knowledge and fertility derived from the same source. The slimy juice that dribbled from a man's penis
at ejaculation was a kind of 'spittle' In the old vocabulary. The organ was 'speaking' at the moment of release. In the grosser and more violent imagery of ' the storm, the divine phallus spat its juice into the wind and men saw it beating down on to the open furrows of the ground and sinking away into the terrestial womb. They called it 'the Word of God'. To assimilate this Word into oneself was to have divine knowledge and thus power. The 'strong' man of a community, it was soon realized, was not the brawny fellow, much as he might boast of his prowess with an axe, a sword, a plough or his wife; it was the wise, the cunning man, full' of arts and crafts, the seducer of his fellow-men and women. It was he who became rich at the expense of the labourer; it was he who su~vived the long hot sum'mers of drought and watched lesser men gasp out their lives round dried up water­holes. He eked out his water ration from his cistern, hewn out of / Page 24 / the rock whilst the fool had watched the precious fluid stream away down the wadi beds. That kind of wisdom was as god-given as the rain itself; to achieve it was to become, like the eaters of Eden's fruit, 'like one of us', the gods. Above all, the wise man knew the divine secrets of the herbs and their powers. He was aware that some plants and trees contained more of the god's sperm in their sap than others. There were herbs that could kill, and others that could heal. There were a few very special herbs, like the Mandrake, which could do both. To use this 'Holy Plant' safely, it was not sufficient to know where to find it; one also had to know when it might be picked, the time of day, the state of the weather. One had to know its secret names and recite them at the moment of plucking and at its administering. One had to know its antidote and the precise amounts of each, given in accordance with the previously determined susceptibilities of the 'patient'.
The wisest men of the community, then, were the doctors and the priests, and their store of herbal knowledge was the most precious and closely guarded possession of the professions. Through it they wielded great power over their fellows. Even the king, the personal representative of the god in anyone city, depended on their information, guidance and good will for the continuance and effectiveness of his office.
The intimate relationship between the god and his priests found practical expression in the religious ritual of the temple, the god's house. There seems to have been a common pattern of architecture for the temple throughout the ancient Near East. The names applied to its various parts show that it was conceived of as a womb, in the innermost part of which, the 'uterus', the god dwelt and performed his acts of creation for the benefit of his people. It was the seat of the divine Word, and thus the source of oracular information imparted to the priest as mouthpiece of god.

Page 25

An essential part of the god-man relationship in times of uncertainty and crisis was to share in the divine knowledge of what was to come. Man must soon have realized that what separated him from animals and gave him a certain measure of control of his environment was the ability to reason and look ahead. Prognostication was the mark of human wisdom and to those especially favoured by the god, this ability to peer into the future raised them in esteem into a superhuman category. Of such were the doctors, priests and prophets of the ancient world, recipients of the divine Word. In the Holy of Holies, or 'Oracle' of the Hebrew temple, the high priest met Yahweh once a year and became, on behalf of his people, mystically endued with the god's holiness. He prepared himself by dressing up as the god, that is as the phallus, his headgear representing the glans penis and his body smeared with the saps and resins of those sacred plants deemed especially endowed with the god's semen. He became thus a 'christ' or 'anointed one', dripping with seminal fluid like the male organ in the vagina. His entry into the temple through the labial 'porch', past the hymenal 'veil' into the vaginal 'hall' and thus, on this special occasion, into the uterine 'Oracle' or 'Holy of Holies', symbolized the copulatory act of divine and animal creation. It was the hieratic equivalent of the imitative and stimulative act of the farmer copulating with his wife in the field, after harvest, urging the god to fructify the ground afresh as the man impregnated the woman's womb. In the Christian Church today, the priestly processional from porch to altar, preceded by the cross, symbol of the conjoined penis and vulva, culminating in the raising aloft of the Host, is but a traditional reflection of this age-old fertility ritual.
The prophet's relationship with the god was even more direct and intimate. By long preparation of his body and mind, by the subjection of his carnal desires, by fasting and abuse of his flesh, and particularly by the careful use of drugs, he could / Page 26 / induce within himself a hallucinatory state which he explained as direct communion with God. Day-to-day objects and people about him seemed larger and colours more intense. He saw strange visions and heard voices deriving, we would say, from his own subconscious, but for him and the credulous onlookers, from the seventh heaven of divine perception. It was at such fleeting moments that man was permitted to glimpse the throne of God and even to carry back to the human planes of existence the so-called 'knowledge of God'. At that one glorious moment of revelation, the prophet became a participant in the divine mysteries; suddenly he knew by no normal means of rationalization or deduction the secrets of the universe and the purpose of life. And if the words he babbled at the time seemed to those about him the ravings of a madman, for those who believed that their hero had seen God, their very incomprehensibility seemed added proof of divine origin.
From such oracular babbling the prophet himself, restored to rationality, or more usually his intimates who had assisted him through the mystic veil, derived by imaginative ingenuity the answers to problems needing an insight into the future for their solution: Shall we go to war? Where are my lost asses? Will my son recover? and so on. However satisfied or disappointed the customers of such prophetic trafficking when the enemy stood at the gates, the asses remained lost, and the only son died, for the visionary himself the revelation remained unimpeachable. His fellow men, even his disciples, may have failed to understand, but for him who had seen God face to face, the vision remained. For that one moment he had become as God himself, knowing all things, having power over all things, seeing all things as they really are. No one could ever take away that experience, and the prophet's only desire was to repeat the pro­cess again and again; if possible, to remain in that sublime state of perception and never return to the shackles of the / Page 27 / flesh, the cage from which he had found such blessed release.
The vision of the prophet in such moments of ecstasy was one of unity: one god, one purpose, one creative act and one stream of life. For morta1s at the receiving end of creation, this conception of oneness was not immediately evident. Inanimate objects were different from living beings: stones from trees, a rotting carcase from a breathing animal quivering with life. Even among living creatures there were fundamental differences, like male and female, small and great, weak and strong. There were the great opposites of nature: heat and cold, light and darkness, sweet and bitter, and the fundamental composites of matter: earth, air, water and fire. But for the prophet in his moment of revelation there was an essential unity about the whole of creation, an harmonic beauty which defied adequate verbal expression. The greatest passages of Hebrew poetry attempt to express this organic unity and harmony of the heavenly world, helped to some extent by the peculiar genius of the language, but too often lost in translation.
In less elevated spheres of perception, the underlying unity of nature was not entirely lost upon the prophet's fellow men, how­ever disparate in form and function natural phenomena appeared on the surface. The farmer recognized the need for a balance in his husbandry if the earth were to bear her fruit and his animals their young year after year. He knew as well as the modern agriculturist the need for leaving fields fallow after a time and the technique of crop rotation. Be over greedy and mother earth will take offence and deny her blessings. Deny fodder to your cows and they will refuse you milk. Overwork your ox and he
will die under the yoke. Giving and taking are essential parts of the same creative process. To make demands without restoration is tyranny, whether of land, animals or subject peoples. The result is imbalance, barrenness of land and livestock, and political rebellion.

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Perhaps only the religious mystic saw the unity of God sensually, but the ordinary man and the king knew its truth from practical experience. The social prophet translated this vision into no less tangible terms: if a man becomes rich at the expense of his neighbour and exercises his power over him at the expense of his human dignity, that underdog will turn on him. If a man denies another his natural rights, the god will restore the balance in this life or the next. If a man becomes prey to overweaning pride in his own efforts, the god will lay him low from his armoury of retribution against which man has no defence. The whole of what we call moral law was thus fundamentally an expression of the essential unity of the godhead and the associated balance of nature. In this sense, religion and ethics were inextricably related; sin was essentially an imbalance of the divine order. To commit sin was sacrilege.
F or example, since spermatozoa was divine, to spill it wastefully, that is, to ejaculate it in a way that denied its proper function of fructification, was a sin against God. The balance of nature had been upset. The cycle of events that began with the man's own conception, his growth to maturity, his sexual stimu­lation and orgasm, was interrupted if he committed sodomy or buggery, or if he withdrew his penis from the vagina before ejaculation and, in the words of the story of Onan in the Old Testament, 'spoiled the semen on the ground' (Gen. 389). As that miscreant was punished by a wrathful deity, so all who wasted the blessings of God, or in some way broke off the natural cycle by greed or laziness, laid themselves open to similar punishment.
It is this basic moral law which underlies the Catholic Church strictures on birth control. Hence so-called 'safe period' copula­tion is, properly speaking, as 'sinful' as placing a rubber sheathing between the glans and the uterine cervix. Both methods of contraception are strictly 'unnatural' and god-denying.
Christianity, like all other religious manifestations of the Near / Page 29 / East, was derived ultimately from a fertility cult first seen in the culture of ancient Sumer. To grasp the fundamental principles of this nature religion it is insufficient to study the rituals by which religious ideas were expressed, or even to analyse the liturgies and functions of the temple cults. One has to probe to the mean­ings of the divine and cultic titles, and to see how these ideas expressed there were reflected in every aspect of ancient life. If God were life, then it is reasonable to assume all man's mortal experience was god-centred. There was no such thing as a Sunday evening religion. Man's relationship with the deity per­meated everything he did: the food that he ate, the craft of his hands, the reasoning of his brain, his fears and hopes, his loves and hates. God was in everything, since he was the source of creation, and yet he remained apart and in control. He could give and he could withhold, bless and punish; his laws were immutable for man, but his actions could seem to mortal intelligence, at times quite arbitrary.
It was this uncertainty about God's will that kept man in perpetual subjection to his religious masters. Even when he obeyed all the rules he knew, preserved the balance of his taking and giving, made token reimbursements to the god of the first fruits of the harvest and the cattle-fold, yet disaster could in­explicably strike him or his household, and send him scurrying to the priest to know the nature of the sin he had unwittingly committed and the manner of its atonement.
If one could but have the knowledge of God, to eavesdrop on the councils of heaven, then man could better regulate his existence and avoid the pitfalls which beset him at every turn. If he knew there was to be a drought, he could store corn from the fruitful harvests. If he knew his land would be ravaged by an enemy, he might have moved away or harvested his crops and hid them before the onslaught. Above all, if he could learn the secrets of the herbs and taste the nectar of the god, the undiluted Word, / Page 30 / he would know all things and for a moment at least shed his mortality and free his naked soul for the flight to heaven. Then, at last, he would find certainty, and freedom from fear.
Thus the fertility religion led to the mystery drug cults of classical antiquity and to its Christian manifestation. The 'flesh' and 'blood' that the Bacchic and Christian participant of the mysteries chewed and drank, so innocuously represented today in the Church's communion meal, was the 'Dionysus' and the 'J esus Christ' by which he found salvation. The drug it contained offered spiritual release from the cloying sin that hindered the in­itiate's soul from complete absorption in the godhead. This was the ultimate mystery that the Church itself lost, consciously thrusting aside the essence of its potentially dangerous cult to achieve political accord with its temporal rulers.
Readers of The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross will know that the clues that led to the rediscovery of the particular drug source favoured by these mystery cults were primarily philological. The plant's identity was one of the most closely guarded secrets of the ancient world, so the pseudonyms by which it was comm­only designated proliferated while the mystic names were known only to the favoured few. The breakthrough came when we dis­covered that the names of gods and plants which came down into Greek and Latin, the languages used by the classical botanists and mythmakers, like those of the ancient Semitic records, could be traced to a common source in Sumerian, the first written language of the world. We had thus a bridge between the old Indo-European cultures and the Semitic world which gave us our Old Testament and the ethnic source of the New Testament and Christianity. By re-examining these god and plant names in the Greek and Latin writings and breaking them down into their original Sumerian verbal elements, we found it was possible to retrace our steps on the other side of the bridge, so to speak, and lay bare the meanings and derivation of Hebrew god-names, and / Page 31 / those of heroes like Moses and Joshua. So at last it has become possible to discover the real meanings behind the myths and legends of the Old Testament. Despite apparent differences in the language, background and details of the final forms of such myths, we can now begin to discern common themes in biblical and clas­sical legends. The false division erected by the academicians between the Indo-European and Semitic worlds has gone for ever. The classicist must now be also a Semiticist; the Semiticist must feel equally at home in the classics. We can look forward to a new era in the study of ancient history and perhaps find fresh impetus for rediscovering common ground between East and West.

 

"O Lord my God! When I in awesome wonder consider all the worlds thy hands have made, I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, thy pow’r throughout the universe displayed. Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee; How great thou art, how great thou art!"When through the woods and forest glades I wander and hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees; When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur and hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze; Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee; How great thou art, how great thou art!"And when I think that God, his Son not sparing, sent him to die, I scarce can take it in; That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing, he bled and died to take away my sin; Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee; How great thou art, how great thou art!"When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation and take me home, what joy shall fill my heart! Then I shall bow in humble adoration and there proclaim, my God, how great thou art!"Now everyone sing!"Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee; How great thou art, how great thou art! Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee; How great thou art, how great thou art!"

And all God’s people said, "Amen!"

 

 

IN

THE

BEGINNING

WAS THE WORD AND THE WORD WAS

WITH

GOD AND THE WORD WAS GOD

THE

SAME WAS IN THE BEGINNING WITH

GOD ALL THINGS WERE MADE BY GOD AND WITHOUT GOD

WAS

NOT

ANYTHING

MADE THAT WAS MADE

IN

GOD

WAS LIFE AND THE LIFE WAS

THE

LIGHT

OF

HUMANKIND

AND THE

LIGHT

SHINETH IN THE DARKNESS AND THE DARKNESS COMPREHENDED IT NOT

?

 

 

I

AM

ALPHA AND OMEGA

THE BEGINNING AND THE END THE FIRST AND THE LAST

I

AM

THE ROOT AND THE OFFSPRING

OF

DAVID

AND

THE BRIGHT AND MORNING STAR

AND

THE SPIRIT AND THE BRIDE SAY COME

AND

LET THEM THAT HEARETH SAY COME

AND

LET THEM THAT IS ATHIRST COME

AND

WHOSOEVER WILL LET THEM TAKE THE WATER OF LIFE FREELY