mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== A FIRE NOT BLOWN.. Investigations of Sacral Electrical Roots in Ancient Languages of the Mediterranean Region by Hugh Crosthwaite with an Introduction by Alfred de Grazia Published by METRON PUBLICATIONS Box 122, Princeton, NJ-08542, USA Copyright 1997 by Metron Publications. All rights reserved. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Preface 2 PREFACE In this work I have tried to develop some of the ideas that I put forward in my previous book Ka. The chief aim has been to apply my first work's electrical interpretation of ancient myths and cosmology to a particular area of the ancient Mediterranean world, then to quote further examples of religious practice and the relevant vocabulary from a wider area.There has inevitably been repetitions of examples and interpretations from my earlier work. In my first book I gave about twenty cases of reversals of direction of writing, suggesting that something more than coincidence was involved. The present work contains more than eighty examples for consideration, and there are more possibilities which may justify mention at a later stage. I am most grateful to a number of people for their help. I had useful discussions with the late Stephen Yates on Celtic and Gallic vocabulary, and with Amanda Farrar on drama and the dance. My daughter Susan gave me help in computing matters. Professor Alfred de Grazia once more has contributed the necessary Introduction and has continued to give me encouragement and assistance. My thanks go also to the staff of Metron Publications at Princeton. H. Crosthwaite 3 CONTENTS Preface by the Author Introduction by Alfred de Grazia: Linguistics as a Research Tool in Quantavolution I. The Story II. Crete III. Katreus IV. Zeus V. Dionysus VI. Ariadne VII. Labyrinth and Ax VIII. The Bull IX. Naxos X. Chronology XI. Changing Interpretations XII. Catastrophe, Myth and Sky XIII. Fire XIV. The Goddess Gaia XV. Hawara and Knosos XVI. Dance XVII. Rocks XVIII. Rituals XIX. Life XX. Quairo: Raising the ka XXI. Kings XXII. Sacred Birds XXIII. Bolts XXIV. The North XXV. Resurrection Techniques XXVI. Reversals XXVII. Glossary Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Introduction 4 INTRODUCTION Some time ago, at a lecture, I made various remarks connecting catastrophes, electricity, and the sudden hologenesis of speech, which were heard by Hugh Crosthwaite, a Birmingham schoolmaster in classics and a musician. Perhaps I was expressing my opinion that originally an ecumenical language served primeval humans, based entirely at first upon connections perceived to exist in the sky and to transfer therefrom the objects experienced on earth. All language was in origin sacral and then became pragmatic in the sense of coping with the mundane artifacts of existence. A prime cause of humanization itself was catastrophe on a global scale, to be called quantavolution, and electrical forces dominated the quantavolutions as they enveloped and influenced humans. The same electromagnetic forces diminished with the passage of time between quantavolutions. Mr. Crosthwaite proceeded incessantly to collect related words in several languages, and brought the whole into print upon my urging. The name of the book was KA. So large was the body of material that a second volume seemed to be in order -- a book that we have here, A Fire Not Blown. From these his latest studies his readers and I will have derived a plethora of new meanings to old words and a way of looking at the origins of words. I cannot repeat here the hundreds of sharp little surprises in the work, but I shall try at the least to nominate in a few paragraphs at least one major point that is established by the Author in each chapter. Practically all myth, and the Old Testament as well, referred continuously to sky events. That the Minotaur's name was Asterios, and that Theseus seized the monster by its hair, comet-like, is an instance, one of scores that are carried in this work skywards. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Introduction 5 Altogether the presence and activity of electromagnetism and charges in the earth (often represented by the great goddess Gaia), and in the sky and the interactions between the two, with mankind as mediator, victim, would-be controller, educe a lively electrical mythology of the earth, where beings such as snakes find themselves especially entrancing to men, who see them alive in the sky and in the earth and reacting simultaneously in both places on quantavolutionary occasions. The vocabulary invested with the phenomenon of fire is demonstrably capable of distinguishing electrical from other fires, within individual languages and with trans-linguistic similarities. The object of priestly study was theological electricity. Lightning, magnetism and piezoelectric effects were related in the ancient mind as divine fire. Although Crete was a land of many peoples and dialects, it followed a consistent pattern of ritual settings, and these were akin to the Egyptians. Significantly, high places were known to attract electrical discharges, but on lowlands and on hills wells could be dug and filled with stones that may have come from more electrified sacral ground and been expected to enhance local electrical effects. Lanuguage correlations include proper names, and here it is shown, inter alia, that two kings of Crete are named Minos, one of the Old Bronze Age and one of the Iron Age, and likewise there is an ingenious Daedalus in Minoan times and the same much later as pioneer sculptor of realistic marble statues in Greece. Katreus was the important successor to the king-god Minos of Crete, and his name is made up of the two components, the aura of divinity and watching for something, here the essential electromagnetism. Nomen est omen is to be borne in mind at all times in etymology. A linguistic root may never just that, but is always something behavioral, real, connected with the direst and most blessed activities of homo schizo. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Introduction 6 Once more, astronomy, electricity, gods, and bulls find a score of linguistic links, and several identities and their associated myths become clearer. Linguistic evidence implicates Planet Venus, it would appear, in the bolts of Zeus (we know that Athene was the only God allowed to handle Jovian instruments) and in the highly controversial tablets that registered it as irregular over a period of time when quantavolutionary activity was occurring on Earth. With respect to Ariadne, and to many another character in myth, a multiplicity of possible identities is encountered. And with this comes a plurality of linguistic attachments in and out of the individual culture. Then, notably, the main identity cluster is not the only one with electrical implications; others possess the same. The Island of Naxos in the Cyclades was originally called Dia (possibly a reference to the dioi or divine Pelasgians who preceded the early Karians and Hellenes), then refounded (I might suggest a catastrophe as the occasion) by a King Naxos or as well Nakaso, close to the Greek for a big shot, hero or warrior king, anax, so to the tribe of giants of the Old Testament, Anakim. Rulership -- kings and high elite -- is loaded with electrical trappings and obsessive practices. The ruler is expected to appease the gods by tending to fire and keep the home and altar fires burning. Labyrinths and all manner of ways, including especially the Column of Fire that connects Earth with the gods and heavens, share word roots, for the humans who want ultimately to reach up and join the gods in the sky. And then to the ax, which has so rich a mythology; in the age of metals, the sparking of the ax reminded humans that copper and iron had fallen (or better Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Introduction 7 descended as a gift) from the skies on occasion, reversing the labyrinthine path that men could hope to follow. In the comparison of Hawara and Knosos is to be found a typical anomaly of dates, the two archaeologies exhibiting similar physical and psychic features. In them, one has occasion to understand the pillar or column as a construction. It is a commemoration of the pillar of electrical fire that connected the two major components of the system of Solaria Binaria and thereby all of the planets and minor bodies and electromagnetic fields with their transported materials. Resurrection was strongly promoted by electrical inducements mediated by sympathetic magic. The human head was recognized as the seat of organic electrical phenomena. The multitude of verbal connections of the direction North with religion, gods, rites, electrical phenomena, and physical history. Futhermore, does salt in various languages, contain the belief that salt came from heaven, from el or al, or in Hebrew, melach, salt, from -- m -- plus heaven -- el). It is to be noted that, by extension, certain universal rites not directly electrical or quantavolutional in origin, were connected with the original sacral sky and electricity, but then dithered into what appeared to be disoriented and haphazard superstitions. The Hebrew word for life is almost identical with the Greek for blood, and so the Egyptian and the Latin. The connections are reasonable. By extension, when it came time to curse the memory of red Typhon, the comet or proto-planet that nearly destroyed the world, the Egyptians persecuted red-haired people as individuals and groups, threw a ruddy ass over a cliff, and sacrificed red bulls. One notes, thus, everywhere, the back-to- back connection of the reasonable and the fantastic. Language Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Introduction 8 plays this game irrationally, pragmatically, intricately, interminably, and everywhere. It may be reasonably put forth that rock platforms, especially white minerals of all kinds, as flooring, and white garments simulate the serene sky, and that the function of the rocks -- not all rocks, but especially adapted or amalgamated rocks -- was to stimulate electrical discharges between earth and atmosphere. Sites of altars and temples often centered upon nodes of lightning and piezolectricity. Split rocks, crevasses, metallized rock, and brazen thresholds are among the obvious electrified objects encountered or emplaced in the ancient environment. The attention given universally to the behavior of birds may alert us to consider that the environment of ancient times affected birds as well as humans in ways little suspected nowadays. That is, it may be that the ancients were not asking too much of birds; it may be that the birds were in a position to tell them much more than they can tell us today. Scores of words, hundreds, perhaps thousands, can be fitted into the Crosthwaite method of searching for the key concepts in their roots. The number and proportion will be finally known only after considerable research -- as with quairo (Latin), later quaero, I search, springing from more than one source, perhaps, but certainly reminding one of the endemic ka, and the Greek ku (ka) and airo, to raise), hence Araising the ka. When I published my study hypothesizing absolute correlation between myth and reality in The Disastrous Love Affair of Moon and Mars, I understood it as a case to be made against the traditional theories advanced by the founders of the science of mythology (Fraser et al.) and the second generation (Freud, Jung et al.) which I would show to be critically vulnerable -- vastly useful, of course -- for having denigrated the main issue, myth as reality-referential, capable of scaling from low to high historicity. Velikovsky, as an example of a Freudian theorist, turned from his master in part and became in a sense a Biblical Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Introduction 9 literalist, because he failed to offer a theory. (Verily he had none, which serves to explain his strong appeal to Judeo- Christian and Muslim religious fundamentalists.) Other mythological literalists, too, have scored against conventional scientists, but quantavolution has had to distinguish itself from them basically by pursuing nominalist, empirical, scientific method. Nonetheless, Velikovsky, a proud and stubborn character, opened and charted new pathways, some broad, many small, and, beyond this, he had the charisma and came at the proper moment, to excite a serious crowd following that kept his work and its critique on a high enough level of public discussion to revive, sometimes against his will, his many important and sometimes great predecessors. Crosthwaite's work has come many years after Velikovsky's work, and is much advanced over it and more specialized, reflecting the original electrical theory of Ralph Juergens and Earl Milton, among others, and extending the studies over many years performed by David Talbott, Ev Cochrane, and Dwardu Cardona, especially having to do with Saturnian mythology. Viewing what Crosthwaite has accomplished, one may hope for a continual increase in systematic empirical work in linguistic mythology. There are critical and highly special issues that can be addressed. As an example, take the story of Kronos swallowing one by one the infants born to his wife, until she succeeded with a ruse in hiding baby Zeus, destined to be his successor, from him. Did the story arise by itself in the normal gradual evolution from a myriad of fireside chats? If so, how were the pieces originated and interwoven? Or did the tale require an original set of spectacles, real or apparent, and had the events attending the spectacles to be catastrophic, or might they have been impressively amusing? In the end, I think, we shall discover electrical phenomena to be the sealing wax of the universe of theology, the means of consolidating the sacred and mundane spheres of life. They Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Introduction 10 were the means of finding the gods. Consciously and unconsciously, priest-rulers and their groups embedded the divine in language, so that language flowered inexorably with its seed of reference coated by electrified sacrality, ramifying root and branch. Via language, the a fire not blown came to be in charge of important and ordinary human affairs. Alfred de Grazia Island of Naxos, Greece, 27 July, 1997 Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 1: The Story 11 CHAPTER ONE THE STORY This study is an attempt to investigate a small area of early Greek history with special attention to the influence of electrical phenomena, which appear to have been of a magnitude greater than we are familiar with today, and which can be traced ultimately to extra-terrestrial activity, not by a god or monster in the superficial sense of the words, but by an intrusive body, or bodies, such as a comet, causing disturbances in the solar system. A full study of this would range over many early civilisations; the present short study has Minoan Crete as its starting point. The story of Theseus, Ariadne, the Minotaur and Dionysus is well known, but a brief summary may be useful. The accounts vary in details. Theseus was born in Troezen, the son of Aethra and of Aegeus, king of Athens. Aegeus left his sword and sandals under a large rock. Theseus, at the age of sixteen, lifted the rock and set out on a career of eliminating troublemakers and criminals, e.g. Skiron and Procrustes who robbed and killed travellers. Aegeus and Medea ordered him to catch the Marathonian bull. This fierce animal had been brought to Greece from Crete by Herakles. King Minos of Crete had a son, Androgeos. Androgeos was killed on Attic territory, so Minos exacted a three yearly tribute of seven Athenian youths and as many girls. The Athenian youths and girls were sacrificed to a monster, the Minotaur, the offspring of Pasiphae, wife of Minos, and a bull, in the labyrinth at Knosos. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 1: The Story 12 Theseus determined to kill the monster and end the payment of tribute. He set sail in a ship with a black sail. It was arranged that if he returned successful, the ship would have a white sail set instead of the black one, to give watchers early news of the result. On his way to Crete Theseus dived down into the sea to visit Amphitrite. This was supposed to prove that he was descended from Poseidon. He was presented with a crown. Minos had a daughter, Ariadne, who helped Theseus to find his way in the labyrinth where he was to kill the Minotaur. The usual version of the story is that Ariadne gave Theseus a thread to help him to find the way out. Another version is that he had a magic crown of light. After killing the Minotaur, Theseus sailed to Naxos with Ariadne. Here, he either abandoned her, or lost her to a rival, the god Dionysus. There was also a story that she was killed by Artemis. Theseus then went to Delos, where he taught the Delian girls the crane dance. He sailed homewards to Athens, but forgot to change the black sail for a white one. Aegeus, watching from the Acropolis at Athens, assumed that the mission had ended in failure, and threw himself over the Acropolis cliff to his death. While some parts of the story are like simple adventure stories such as are found in most literatures, there are things that cannot be taken at their face value, and it is these which are especially significant and they will be discussed later. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 2: Crete 13 CHAPTER TWO CRETE Crete was a melting pot in more than one sense. Ores were smelted, alloys such as bronze were produced, metal and stone were turned into beautiful objects and jewellery. Crete was a mixture, a melting pot, of peoples and of cultures. Its geographical position helped it to be a link between Africa, Asia and Europe. We will glance briefly at the evidence of a variety of physical types. At the start of the Early Bronze Age, most Cretans were of Mediterranean race, dolichocephalic, or long-headed. There was an Anatoliian element from Neolithic times, and early in the Bronze Age Armenoids, tall and brachycephalic, entered Crete. The skulls from the Cyclades are of varying types. In the Neolithic period and, in the Cyclades, in early Bronze age tombs, steatopygous statuettes are found. This may be due to influence from Asia Minor, where the Great Mother goddess was worshipped, but it may also indicate the influence of Africa. Hutchinson, in Prehistoric Crete, Penguin, 1963, gives fuller information on racial types. Evidence of attitudes, rituals and religious beliefs from other parts of the Mediterranean world suggests that it was not only in matters of race and physical type that Crete was a mixture. For example, Crete had many mountain top shrines, such as are found elsewhere. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 2: Crete 14 At Chamaizi, in a hill-top shrine, there is a well, or bothros, rubbish pit, such as was found by Woolley at Alalakh on the Syrian coast. Lightning, with its important place in religious ritual, explains the presence of such mountain-top shrines. The study of lightning led to further studies of electricity such as were conducted not only on "high places" in Asia Minor but also in Egypt and elsewhere. In Egypt, Anatolia, Palestine and farther east, electrical experiments were conducted by priests in the hope of capturing an electrical deity from the sky, or from the earth, and of achieving a degree of control of him or her. For example, what appear to be electrical storage cells have been found, the "Baghdad batteries". Kings, who had always performed some priestly duties, and who were expected to know the will of the gods and ensure divine protection for their tribe or country, hoped to acquire divine power and strength from contact with a divine force in shrines, caves, temples, and on mountain tops. Such, I suggest, was the case with Minos in Crete, whether Minos was the name of one king or that of a dynasty. The name Chamaizi suggests the Greek word chamai, on the ground. If the letters de are added to a Greek place name, as with Athens, giving Athenaze (Athenas-de), the idea of movement towards the place is added. The Greek chamaze means "to the ground", earthwards. This suggests that the place was a shrine attracting the electrical god in the form of lightning. Woolley, in his book A Forgotten Kingdom, Penguin 1953, writes that he found in a temple "....something yet more mysterious....", a shaft filled with boulders brought from hills some miles away, with a packing of smaller stones. An 8ft. high mass of brickwork surmounted the filled shaft. At Chamaizi, the "well" filled with stones, as at Alalakh, would be intended to invite and help the deity to appear. Vide Hutchinson, Prehistoric Crete, p.134 and 169. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 2: Crete 15 Homer, in Odyssey XIX:175ff., has Odysseus describing Crete. There are many languages spoken; there are many peoples, e.g. Achaeans, great-hearted Eteocretans (genuine Cretans), Cydonians, divine (dioi) Pelasgians. Minos was enneoros, and oaristes, an associate of Zeus. Enneoros may mean 'at the age of nine', 'associate of Zeus for nine years', or that he associated with Zeus every nine years. There may be a parallel with the Egyptian heb-sed ceremony, in the course of which the king underwent a second coronation. The purpose of this ceremony may have been to rejuvenate the king. As part of the ceremony the king had to run, probably through a field, carrying a flail. The flail may represent forked lightning. He was accompanied by the souls of Nekhem. Edwards, in The Pyramids of Egypt, Penguin 1947, observes that the souls of Nekhem were the prehistoric kings of Upper Egypt whose capital was at Nekhem (Hierakonpolis}. The Greek hierax is a hawk or falcon which, like most birds of prey in the ancient world, was seen as a lightning symbol. Probably the intention was that the lightning, heavenly fire, would give life to the crops. The Latin for to plough, aro, recalls the Latin ara, Etruscan ar, divine fire, which was attracted to the altar. Minos himself was the son of Zeus and Europa. He married Pasiphae. The Roman poet Horace describes him as: "Jovis arcanis Minos admissus", Minos, privy to the secrets of Jupiter. Minos and the nymph Paria had sons, who colonised the island of Paros. According to Herodotus, Minos lived three generations before the Trojan war, and Thucydides refers to his suppression of piracy and expulsion of the Karians. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 2: Crete 16 There is, however, a chronological doubling of Minos, as there is of Daedalus, and this will be discussed later in the context of the Greek "dark ages", which were extended, one might almost say invented, at the end of the nineteenth century in an attempt to fit the history of the Mediterranean area into what was thought at the time to be a secure chronology of Egypt. Minos was succeeded by Katreus, a monarch whose name means "ka watcher", and this brings us to the subject of Egyptian electrical theology, or science. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 3: Katreus 17 CHAPTER THREE KATREUS Egyptian priest-electricians used the term 'ka' for the aura round a person. It is translated as 'the double', and can also mean 'bull'. The word is comparable with the Hebrew qa of, for example, qadhosh, holy, and with the Greek kaio, burn, kara, head, and Latin caput, head [source of ka]. The electrical god could be captured in a box, chest, or ark, and the Greek word elektron, amber, can be explained as El [the god above], out of the thronos [seat]. We have suggested above that the Etruscan ar, fire, and the Latin ara, altar, are the fire from the sky and the place to which it is attracted and strikes in the form of lightning. Descriptions from all over the world of a snake-like object in the sky were probably inspired by the sight of the tail of a comet. The head of a comet with protuberances would be seen as the head of a bull, goat, stag or other horned creature. Piezoelectric effects in rocks as a result of earthquakes led to the study of the earth goddess Ga, Da, or Ge. The Egyptian neter, divine,represented by what may be an axe, has the same consonants as the Greek antron, cave. Antron probably means a cave formed by a split in the rock. The Lydian word pel, cave, is related to the Greek spelaion. Pelekus is the Greek for a sacrificial axe, and it was in the days of Peleg that the earth was divided [Genesis X:25]. Furthermore, the German spellen means to split. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 3: Katreus 18 The name of Katreus, the successor of Minos, may have ka as a significant component. The 'treus' is probably 'tereus', which happens to be the name of a Greek king who was turned into a hoopoe. The hoopoe is a bird with a prominent erectile crest on its head. Augurs watched mice, snakes, and other creatures, but especially birds, in order to detect behaviour that gave warning of an electrical storm, or of earthquakes, which were numerous and violent in certain periods of ancient history. The Latin name for a hoopoe is upupa. In Greek it is epops.The Greek epoptes is the term for somebody who beholds the mysteries at a Greek religious centre such as Eleusis. One of the forms used as a perfect tense of the Greek verb horan, to see, is opopa, meaning 'I have seen'. Tereo is a Greek verb meaning 'I observe, I watch for something'. Tereus may be a form like the Latin present participle ending in -ens. Regens, regent-, means 'ruling'. I suggest that Tereus is Terens, observing, and that King Katreus was the ka-watcher. The same phenomenon may be present in the Greek word basileus, king. The Etruscan vacl, or vacil, is a banquet, and kings were the banqueting ones, feasting on the torn remnants of the intruder in the sky, the goat, stag or bull. The Etruscan ber is probably the Latin veru, a spit, dart or javelin. Veru in the plural means a railing round an altar or tomb. Spits, made of iron, suggest the vacl, the sacred feasting on the slain monster. The uprights round an altar or tomb would be an encouragement to the electrical deity to descend and kill, or bring to life. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 3: Katreus 19 The mouse may appear in the Greek word musterion, which is apparently composed of mus, mouse, and tereo, observe. It seems that a mystery was originally mouse-watching as a means of detecting the presence and imminent activity of the divine power acting on the earth. In Greek rituals such as the Eleusinian mysteries, the ceremonies took place underground. The prophet Isaiah, LXVI:17, warns of the Lord's anger against those who eat the mouse. It may have been thought that by eating mice one would ingest the ability of the mouse to detect the divine presence. The interpretation of the name Katreus as ka-watcher accords with the visits of monarchs to mountain shrines, with Egyptian theory about the ka [a word which can also mean 'bull', and is therefore linked with the electrical god in the sky looking like a bull with its horns], and with Greek, Roman and Hebrew procedure at a shrine, where the priest went in fear of the deity, risked electrocution, and wore special clothing. The Hebrew yirah Yahweh means fear of Yahweh. The Greek hiereus has a similar sound, and means 'priest'. I suggest that the original meaning of hiereus was 'the fearing one'. There was a frieze of hoopoes at Knosos. Homer refers to the 'divine Pelasgians'. 'Divine' frequently has electrical significance. The Pelasgians should probably be traced back to an area, or areas, outside mainland Greece. Pel is Lydian for 'cave', Greek spelaion. In Greek, initial 'S' sometimes disappears, as does initial 'T'. 'Cave' in Hebrew is me'ara. We may here have the word ar, Etruscan for the electrical divine fire. 'Me' suggests an Egyptian word meaning 'fill'. The Latin sagus means wise, with knowledge of the future or of divine matters. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 3: Katreus 20 The Pelasgians were probably the people who were wise about caves and rocks, where a difference of electrical potential could be detected by sensitive creatures such as goats, and by Sibyls [unveilers], as at Delphi. Sibyl is the title Svulare, Unveiler, given to Apollo, the god of prophecy. A goat, Latin caper, is a ka-container; per is Egyptian for 'house'. Homer writes that in Crete there were Achaeans. It is worthy of note that in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Ahaiu are fighter gods [Budge's translation p.689, Arkana 1985]. In Vergil, Aeneid III:105, Anchises, father of Aeneas, refers to Crete as gentis cunabula nostrae, the cradle of our race, where Teucer had lived, before Ilium or Pergama existed. This passage may of significance if one tries to solve the problem of the origin and movements of the Etruscans. The name Teucer may mean 'he who makes fire'. The Greek verb teucho is to create, especially in wood or metal; to create an eidolon, image. Zeus creates rain and hail, ombros and chalaza. Teucho is related to tunchano, find, hit, light upon. When Aeneas and the Trojans reached Italy, there was war between the newcomers and Turnus, prince of the Rutuli. King Latinus, who had promised his daughter to Turnus, changed his mind, and favoured Aeneas. Ascanius, the son of Aeneas, became the first king of Alba Longa, the chief city of the Latin League. The name of the wife of Aeneas, Lavinia, if reversed, becomes Inibal, presence of Baal. Was she from the eastern Mediterranean area? In the context of the arrival of the Trojans in Hesperia, the 'land in the west', it is worth noting the name of the city of Alba Longa. In Latin, longus does not only mean long; it can mean distant. Was the city of Alba Longa named after a city far away, perhaps to the east? Alba could be a Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 3: Katreus 21 reversal of Ebla, but this is even more speculative than conventional attempts to unravel the history of the period. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 4: Zeus 22 CHAPTER FOUR ZEUS No less a person than the infant Zeus was sheltered in Crete. His father Kronos, hearing that his son would displace him, ate all his offspring as soon as they were born. His wife Rhea deceived him by giving him a stone, wrapped in swaddling clothes, which Kronos swallowed. Rhea had the real infant taken to Crete and hidden in a cave. The electrical significance of Zeus, the lord of the thunderbolt, is well known; that of caves is almost equally important, if less appreciated and less dramatic. We have in the cave stories an attempt to explain the fact that electrical phenomena appear to arise not only from the sky but also from the earth, or from under the earth. Lightning at night was believed by the Romans to be caused by Summanus, a god who may be Pluto, god of the underworld. The name Summanus suggests the Manes or Di Manes, the Good Ones, spirits of the departed. The name would be suitable not only for a form of Zeus, but also for Poseidon, Velchanos, or Dionysus, all of whom were associated with lightning, and with subterranean thunder. There will be more later about Dionysus and his close relationship with Zeus. There are various accounts of the birth and upbringing of Zeus. According to one version he was brought up on the island of Naxos, where he had the name of Zeus Melosios. Another is that he was actually born in Crete. According to Antoninus Liberalis, Rhea gave birth to Zeus in a Cretan cave, and every year the blood from his birth was seen as a fiery glow coming from the cave. Bees were present, and four men in bronze armour took some of the honey. When they Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 4: Zeus 23 saw Zeus's swaddling clothes, their armour cracked, and Zeus aimed a thunderbolt at them. Fate and Themis intervened and restrained Zeus. The four men became birds. The presence of the bees calls to mind the Egyptian habit of associating phenomena with those living creatures that seem to possess the relevant characteristics, in this case the hissing and buzzing caused by electricity, such as the sounds heard by mountaineers before an electrical storm high up on a peak, especially on a rock ridge. There may also be a connection between honey and the stories from the north and from Palestine and Persia of the descent of a sweet substance from the sky, manna or honey rain. The Cretans worshipped Zeus under the name of Velchanos. This name resembles the name of the Roman god of fire, Vulcan. But when one thinks of the importance of the cave in the stories of the infant Zeus, there is a temptation to see in the name Velchanos the root pel, rock or cave. Grimm's law helps one to see here the German Felsen, crag. It is probable also that the name Velchanos has the Egyptian ka as a component. The name Velchanos would be most appropriate for the electrical deity of caves in rock peaks. The Cretans were unusual in worshipping a Zeus who not only was born in Crete, as opposed to being reared in Crete, but who also died there, at Iuktas. That the chief of the gods, who, according to Homer, live for ever, should have died, calls for comment. The association with rocks and caves indicates that the Cretans were aware of the piezoelectric effects in split rocks and caves, and lightning strikes on rocky peaks, at times of violent storms and earthquakes, together with earthquake light. The latter, which is the subject of recent research by Japanese and American scientists, would be detected by a hoopoe, or by a quail, whose Greek name, ortux, means 'the one who finds the light'. Ortygia was a name of the island of Delos, the birthplace Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 4: Zeus 24 of a god closely associated with light, Apollo. Its name implies 'where the light happens' or 'quail land'. Piezoelectric effects would gradually fade away through electrical leakage as things settled down after periods of major disturbance such as affected the ancient world generally. The Zeus who lived in the sky continued to brandish the lightning bolt, either in the forked form that we see close to earth, or in the almond shape of the plasmoid for long range interplanetary exchanges [Greek amygdale, almond, is the 'sceptre of the god above']. The Zeus Velchanos, the Zeus of the caves and split rocks, gradually faded away. Perhaps the ritual uprooting of the sacred tree in a dance symbolises the failure of the poros, the column of holy fire from sky to earth. Several places in Crete claimed to be the home of the infant Zeus Velchanos. Hesiod suggests Goat's Mountain. This is probably Dikte, where there is a cave, Psychro. The Idaean cave on Psiloriti, the Kamares cave near Phaestos, and Arkalochori, near Lyktos, are among the candidates. The name Psychro suggests a flow of electrical life. The name Kamares may have ka and ar as components. Arkalochori has several possibilities. The Greek lochos is a hiding place; or is a Semitic word meaning light, or skin, and resembles ar, the electrical fire god. The cave at Arkalochori contained miniature double axes in gold and silver, and other weapons. In the Psychro cave a fragment of a jar was found, decorated with a leaping goat. Goats were thought to be more than usually sensitive to electrical fields, or rather to the presence of a deity. They were responsible, through their strange movements and sounds, for the discovery by the goatherd Koretas of the conditions at Delphi [Pytho] that were favourable for the 'inspiration' of a Sibyl or 'unveiler'. The Latin caper, goat, may Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 4: Zeus 25 be 'ka container'; compare the German Kaefer, beetle, and the Egyptian scarab. Ornamental shields have been found in the Idaean cave, with decoration pointing to Oriental influence. They reflect the presence of Curetes, youths who clashed their spears on their shields to drown the cries of the infant Zeus. Consideration of the cult of the Zeus worshipped in hill-top shrines, and of the Zeus Velchanos of the rocks and caves, leads one to the god Dionysus. He closely resembles Zeus, being associated with subterranean thunder, fire on peaks, earthquakes, caves and lightning, as readers of the Bacchae of Euripides will remember. This will also bring us back to Ariadne, who was, amongst other things, a Cretan goddess closely associated with the earth, the vine and animals. She will be considered in greater detail later. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 5: Dionysus 26 CHAPTER FIVE DIONYSUS Dionysus was a god of the life in ivy, trees and the vine, rather than the god of corn and crops from the earth. Ivy, trees and the vine all had electrical significance, ivy because it suggested an aura or glow round an object, especially round a throne.The near identity of the Latin hedera, ivy, and Greek hedra, throne, suggests that ivy symbolised the glow, Greek charis, beauty, that flowed over a person, or over such an object as a king's throne, or an ark when the electrical god had been caught by the priest. Trees were important, especially the pine or fir, partly because of the fiery qualities of resin, partly because of the world tree. The vine could be made into a drink which would produce sensations which Greeks associated with electricity. The Greek poet Archilochus tells us that he could write a dithyramb when lightning-struck with wine. He was a god of noisy revelry, of earthquake and of lightning. It is possible that the musical accompaniment at his rites, dominated by low-pitched [barubromon] drums, was meant to suggest earthquake, thunder and electrical stimulation. For a modern equivalent one might turn to the Royal Hunt and Storm, from Berlioz's opera The Trojans, where divine activity drives Dido and Aeneas to take refuge from the storm in a cave. Dionysus is said to have been born and raised in the island of Naxos. According to a mosaic from Delos, his nurse was Ambrosia. At the Lenaea, a festival held in Athens, ecstatic women worshipped a draped pillar with a mask on top representing Dionysus. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 5: Dionysus 27 The fact that he was a son of Zeus may account for the letters dio- in his name. Dio-frequently implies heaven or sky. The name of his mother Semele is the Slavonic zemlya, earth. The other letters forming his name may perhaps be explained by the Syracusan word nusos or nussos, lame. This is not very helpful, though Hephaestus, god of divine fire, was lame. On the other hand, the Greek nussein is to prick, to touch with a sharp point.This raises the possibility of an electrical explanation. It was believed that he was born in the city of Nysa, in marshy land such as encouraged lightning. Followers of Dionysus carried a thyrsus. This was the stalk of a plant, the narthex. It was the stalk in which Prometheus brought fire down to earth from Olympus. The Greek thu- is fire or sacrifice, air- is to raise. The thyrsus could be furnished with a sharp point, which could be used to give what would be thought to be an electric, i.e. divine, shock. Nussa was the word for the turning post in a circus. All these facts, together with the account given of him and his actions in the Bacchae of Euripides, show that Dionysus was a god of electricity. The name Bacchus suggests fa, light, or ba, Egyptian for soul, and cha. The Greek letter chi may be onomatopoeia for sparks and lightning, and may be related to the Egyptian ka. Dionysus exemplifies the effect of electrical stimuli and disturbances on the brain and nervous system. Dionysus is the divine bull. A typical rhyton, or drinking horn, would be carved to represent the head of an animal, often that of a bull. In the Bacchae, there is a confrontation between the stranger [Dionysus in disguise] with his revellers, and the young Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 5: Dionysus 28 Pentheus of the Theban royal family. When arrested for causing disturbances and promoting immoral behaviour, Dionysus frees himself from prison by creating an earthquake and electrical fire ["against which every effort is in vain", l.625]. Pentheus has an urge to spy on the women and watch their revels. Dionysus causes him to have hallucinations and, with the help of a pine tree and lightning, causes him to be torn to pieces [sparagmos] by frenzied bacchants led by Agave, the mother of Pentheus. The chorus declare that a bull leads to disaster. Pentheus, being descended from Kadmos of Thebes, has snake ancestry [Kadmos and Harmonia were turned into snakes]. At one level, the contest is between snake and bull. Such a contest may be seen as both electrical and astronomical. The bull with its horns symbolises the head of a comet, the snake represents the tail. The stories of a monster in the sky, such as Zeus defeated, and of lightning exchanges on a huge scale, probably with almond-shaped plasmoids, as shown in the hand of Zeus, were accounts of what looked like a battle between the head of a comet and its tail. Vide the Bacchae l.1153ff. According to Plutarch, the Greek seer Melampus learnt the name of Dionysus from the Egyptians. Plutarch equates Dionysus with the Egyptian god Osiris. In each case there was a sparagmos, a tearing to pieces, and a resurrection. The link with Egypt is strengthened by the worship of the Apis bull. Egyptian monarchs imitated bulls by wearing tails, worshipped them and cherished them, feasted on bulls, preserved them, and drowned them to release the divine element. The ambivalence is explained by the ambivalent nature of the divine force in the sky, symbolised by the bull's horns, a power that could cause life or death. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 5: Dionysus 29 Diodorus refers to the civilising mission of Osiris, a mission like that of Dionysus, who brought wine, music and dancing on his travels through Asia to Greece. In the period after Alexander the Great, the Egyptian deities Isis and Anubis were worshipped on the island of Delos, a great centre of worship of Dionysus. Ivy, vines, and trees were in the custody of Dionysus, and a survey of the language imparted to these in Greece and elsewhere would indicate their common electrical associations, quite aside from their other connections. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 6: Ariadne 30 CHAPTER SIX ARIADNE Ariadne appears in the story in two different guises. In so far as we can talk about historical characters, she is an historical character in the Athenian story of Theseus, whom the Athenians set up as a hero like Herakles, but she seems also to have the superhuman qualities of a goddess. It may be that such confusion, which occurs regularly with heroes, is caused by the desire of monarchs and ambitious people to establish close relationships, or to persuade people that they have them, with divinities of sky or earth, in their search for sources of authority and the ability to impress ordinary people and subjects. The technical methods for obtaining divine ancestry will be discussed later. Ariadne was a sister of Deucalion. She is also thought to have been a fertility goddess. Her names included Ariagne [very holy], Aridela [the very manifest one], and possibly Erigone. It seems possible, if one looks at a statuette showing a girl with flounced dress, décolletée, holding in either hand a snake, which also looks like a bow or even a horn, that she, like Dionysus, was connected with electricity and the electrical aspects of fertility. Her name, Ariadne, could be 'hand of fire', since ar is Etruscan for divine fire, yad is Semitic for a hand, and -na occurs frequently as a suffix in Etruscan. The Greek word bios means either a bow [as in bow and arrows], or life, depending on the intonation or accentuation of the word. In Sumerian, ti and til can mean either bow or life. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 6: Ariadne 31 Horn was used in the manufacture of the composite type of bow. A link with the bull appears. Life, psyche, is associated with the power of self-initiated movement. Thales is reported to have said that the magnet contained psyche. The bow imparts movement, i.e. life, to the arrow, which, like the spear, is a symbol of the electrical fire. In Hebrew, the spear is qayin, the ka eye. Zayin, the letter Z, the eye of Set, is a weapon, like the Egyptian sceptre, the tcham. The snake symbolises electricity, in the form of both a sky and an earth deity. One form of the Cretan goddess is shown on hill tops. Hill tops were revered as places where the electrical god or goddess descended to earth. One of the names of the goddess is Piptuna. The Greek pipto means fall. The association of Dionysus with crags and mountain tops is a link between him and Ariadne, and the same may be true of Artemis. The Cretan nature goddess has doves and double axe. In this she resembles Kybele, the eastern goddess whose name means axe. The doves remind one of Aphrodite. The electrical deity is associated with reproductive urges and with life, as well as with unpleasant shocks and death by electrocution. The Mistress of the Animals is associated with snakes and lions. The Lion Gate at Mycenae has a pillar with a lion [or lioness] at each side. That a lion's mane had electrical or divine significance is made more likely by the net pattern shown on some eastern representations of lions, a pattern which appears also in Crete. Babylon was a centre of the worship of the goddess Ishtar [Astarte]. She had a fierce and dangerous side to her nature, as had Aphrodite and Artemis. An avenue of lions led to the Ishtar Gate. The lion was symbolic of Ishtar. An avenue of lions can be seen today on the island of Delos. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 6: Ariadne 32 The prophet Isaiah refers to Jerusalem as Ariel. Ari is Hebrew for a lion; El, god, means the one above. In XXIX:1 he foretells the siege of Jerusalem. The snake can represent an electrical force in the sky - the tail of a comet, for example - and is also a symbol of the electrical deity, Gaia, in the earth. As in the case of Nechushtan, the brazen serpent set up by the Hebrews in the wilderness to cure those affected by snake bite, the snake is a symbol of both life and death. The bow or snake held by the goddess illustrates this point: the bow gives movement, therefore life, to the arrow, which, as a symbol of radiation, may bring either life or death. Homer has the word kelethmos, magic, in Odyssey XI:334. Plato has the verb keleo, to charm snakes, Republic 358 B. It is probable that ka is present in the Greek keleo. The Cretan goddess also resembles Dictynna, a hunting goddess. This name suggests the Greek for a net, which had electrical significance. She is probably the same as the goddess Britomartis, who is associated with hunting.They and Artemis seem to be variations on an electrical theme. Solinos sad that the name Britomartis meant Sweet Maiden. It is worth asking why she should be called sweet. The Hungarian bor is wine. Albanian vere is wine. Hungarian ver is blood. Finnish veri is blood. Egyptian irp is wine. Lydian 'Breseus' is a name of Dionysus. In the above examples the reversal of rp to vr or to br is noteworthy. The Greek damart- is a wife or maiden. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 6: Ariadne 33 It is likely that Britomartis is Veredamartis, wine-wife or wine- maiden, and that she is a female version of Dionysus. Ancient deities were often grouped in pairs, male and female, and brother-sister incest occurred, as with Zeus and Hera. Dionysus and Ariadne are represented together under a vine. A statuette of the Cretan goddess holding snakes or bows has her wearing a flounced dress. She looks almost like a telescopic column or caryatid. The effect is like that of the djed column or tree in Egyptian art, as seen at Dendera and elsewhere. The significance of the column is electrical. Temple columns led up to the sky, where deities were shown high up on the temple. The Parthenon frieze may be an example, especially if it is the scene of the arrival in Olympus of the soldiers who fell at Marathon. The column of light mentioned by Plato towards the end of the Republic is a road from earth to the stars, along which souls travel after death before reincarnation. In Norse myth the world tree has a snake at the bottom and an eagle at the top, each an electrical symbol. This is the most likely explanation of the poros, passage, mentioned by the Greek poet Alkman in a cosmological context. It could well be the "marvellous road to the Hyperboreans" mentioned by the poet Pindar, and photographs, take from space, of light phenomena over the earth's north pole, show what may be what is left of the poros or column. Such a theory is supported by links between the far north and Crete, or at any rate Greece. We have already seen evidence of shared vocabulary. Priestesses of the winds are mentioned in Cretan Linear B texts, and Oreithuia was carried off by Boreas, who is the Kassite god Buriash. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 6: Ariadne 34 Ash, or esh, is fire. Buriash, or Boreas, is likely to be 'fire of Bor', the fire being the electrical glow. The first fruits of the Hyperboreans, wrapped in straw, were taken by relay to Prasiae, then on to Delos, the birthplace of Apollo. Reversal of the consonants of Prasiae gives srp, which could be the Hebrew saraph, burn. There was a Cretan festival, the Hellotia, celebrated in Ariadne's honour. This festival constitutes a link between Ariadne and Athene. There was a tradition that Athene was born in Crete. Athene Hellotis was worshipped in Corinth, a city which had strong oriental links, and the -ot of Hellotis recalls the Semitic oth, sign, which appears in the Greek ototoi, signs. This word is uttered by Cassandra just before she prophesies at the gate of Mycenae, in the Agamemnon of Aeschylus, line 1072. Two daughters of the Athenian king Kekrops were given by Athene a chest, with orders to guard it but not to open it. They disobeyed and opened the chest. The stories, which vary slightly, agree on one thing: a snake was in the chest. When the girls saw it they went mad, jumped over the Acropolis wall and were killed. There is evidence from elsewhere, e.g. from Egypt, that arks or chests contained snakes. Such a statement probably means that there was a dangerous electrical god who was caught and stored in a container based on the principle of the Leyden jar. Chests were frequently decorated with a picture of a snake, probably to have an apotropaic effect. Snakes, as well as being shown in the hands of the Cretan goddess, were encouraged in Crete as guardians of the house. Snake tubes are found which encouraged snakes to emerge Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 6: Ariadne 35 from the earth. Putting out food for a snake would win the favour of a creature representing a powerful and dangerous force. Not only could they catch mice; the procedure might also be thought to encourage an epiphany of the earth goddess. The words Hellas and Hellene call for comment. Different groups of inhabitants of Greece and associated areas in Asia Minor went under various names at different times, such as Achaeans, Ionians, Pelasgians, Hellenes, Dorians. The general picture is of waves of immigrants from areas mostly north and east of mainland Greece. There are similarities between the languages of Greece, Etruria, the Danube area, Poland, Lithuania, Finland, Palestine and Egypt. The preoccupation with fire, light and radiation generally, suggests that there is a connection between Pelasgians, the cave experts, and the Hellenes. The German word hell means bright, and may even point to the Selli, priests who shared with the Agnihotris or fire priests of the Brahmins the practice of keeping their feet dirty - a practice which may be explained by the need to establish good earth contact. Were the Hellenes named after an expert in the study of light and radiation? Were they the 'bright'people? It may be useful to review some of the material involving Ariadne. There are references to the 'strong goddess'. Egyptian necht [man holding a rod], strength, is a reversal of the Greek techne, skill, art. Ariadne's skill with snakes recalls Moses and Aaron, Jannes and Jambres, Exodus VII:10f. The name Ariadne could mean 'hand of fire'. Names of the goddess were: Eleuthia, Kerasia, Piptuna, Ardoro, Pade. Greek doron is a gift; Ardoro may be 'she who gives fire' or 'gift of fire'. Pade may be 'light from the earth', but Slavonic padatj means 'to fall'. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 6: Ariadne 36 The Isopata ring shows four priestesses dancing, and a descending goddess. Ariadne, as wife of Dionysus, is Britomartis. The couple are portrayed under a vine. Her multiple personality is shown by the four goddess figurines in a temple at Kannia near Gortyn. All have snakes in their crowns; one also has a dove on her cheek and snakes on her arms. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 7: The Labyrinth and Axe 37 CHAPTER SEVEN THE LABYRINTH AND AXE The labyrinth at Knosos may have links with Egypt, Lydia and perhaps with the immigrants from the Danube area and from the east, including the Etruscans. The axe is a symbol of the electrical god. Its Lydian and Cretan name, tlabrys or labrys, appears in the word labyrinth [initial 't', like 's', is sometimes dropped]. Homer mentions Daedalus as the builder of a dancing floor for Ariadne. The word for a dancing floor, choros, is also the Greek for the dance itself. The maze at Knosos was probably a dancing floor. It is described as achanes, roofless. Spiral designs and meanders became popular in Cretan art at the time of the Egyptian monarch Amenemhet III. This pharaoh built a 'labyrinth' in the Fayum, contemporary with the first palace at Knosos. It was a temple whose design suggested a maze. Fresco fragments at Knosos show a building with columns, the roof decorated with horns, and with double axes on the capitals. Hutchinson, Prehistoric Crete p.179, writes that it was presumably painted in the Middle Minoan IIIA period. This may be the moment to discuss the axe in greater detail. The Greek sacrificial axe was the pelekus. The word resembles the name of Peleg, in the book of Genesis, "in whose days the earth was divided". Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 7: The Labyrinth and Axe 38 An Egyptian hieroglyph meaning god, divine, resembles an axe or hoe [a single, not a double, axe]. The word is neter. The word has the same consonants as the Greek antron, cave. When dealing with questions of vocabulary, it is necessary to bear in mind firstly, that Semitic languages were written without the help of letters for a full range of vowel sounds. The Greeks adapted the Phoenician alphabet, introducing written vowels. Secondly, Semitic languages are written from right to left. Etruscan and Greek, after some uncertainty, changed to left to right. Confusion would occur where Indo-European met Semite, as in Asia Minor. This offers an explanation better than coincidence of why so many important words can be read backwards and give the same meaning but in a different language. For instance, Phoenician namal, harbour, has the consonants nml; the Greek limen, which has lmn, also means 'harbour'. Raqs, dance, becomes sacer, sacred. The Latin dolabra, axe or hoe, is similar to tlabrys, axe, a word which occurs in the language of Lydia, a country in Asia Minor which has Etruscan connections. Initial t and initial s are sometimes dropped, so we have in tlabrys the Lydian version of labrys, double axe, Latin dolabra, which symbolises lightning, and gave its name to the labyrinth. Dolabra is ar falando, sky fire. Falando is an Etruscan word meaning iron, and the sky whence iron falls in the form of meteorites. At Mycenae, in the Peloponnese, the mould for a winged axe has been found. The Latin bipennis means axe; penna is Latin for a feather. The chief Roman magistrates, who had executive authority, imperium, were the consuls, praetors, dictator and master of the horse. They were each entitled to be accompanied by a bodyguard of lictors, who carried the fasces, a bundle of rods and the axe, securis. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 7: The Labyrinth and Axe 39 The Hebrew seghor mmeans spear, axe, gold. The Latin verb icio means to strike. The lictor is probably El, god above, and ictor, striker, a word that could come from icio. The Hebrew maghzerah is an axe. This word resembles the Latin magister and magistratus, e.g. consul, praetor etc.. These words are probably magh, great, set, and ar, the divine fire, Latin ara, altar. The altar was the place to which priests tried to attract the electrical fire from heaven so that it could strike and mark the victim. Set was the Egyptian god who was equated with Typhon. For Set as an interpretation of the letter Z, one may compare the Hebrew letter Z, zayin, which means a weapon. Ayin is an eye, so zayin is Set's eye, a source of dangerous radiation. The letter zayin is also similar in shape to the Egyptian tcham, a sceptre which looks like a scotch for a snake, with an eagle perched on top of the stick. The Latin acies, line of battle, the cutting edge of the Roman army, also means eye, or vision. There is a good account of the ancient theory of vision in Plato's Timaeus. The eye was an emitter of rays, not just a receiver. At Knosos, axes are found, resting on a base of horns. This may be an indication that the electrical deity was perceived as a single force behind the two symbols. Horns are also found on altars. In Greece, suppliants, and people taking solemn oaths, would touch an altar, probably a horn of the altar. The Cretan tlabrunth is assumed to mean "place of the double axe". The ending -unth calls for examination. The Greek hodos, path, way, is likely to be the same as the Etruscan uth, or uthi. The n of -unth would indicate that the vowel u has a nasal sound, a phenomenon found in Etruscan and in modern Polish which could explain certain Greek words ending in -eus, e.g. basileus, Tereus. One may compare the Etruscan falando, sky, the Latin palatium, and the Hebrew Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 7: The Labyrinth and Axe 40 palda, iron. The fall of meteorites led some thinkers of the ancient world to the belief that the sky was made of iron. Hodos, path or way, may mean the place where somebody is to be found, their dwelling or sphere of action. Psalm 77, verses 13 and 19, gives some support to this: "Thy way, O God, is in the sanctuary: who is so great a God as our God?" "Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known". The Latin cauda, tail, sounds like ka and uthi, where ka dwells. The Egyptian hieroglyph for Set shows the animal with an erect tail. In Plato's Timaeus, the divine fire in the muelos inside the skull is also found in the spine. Greek suppliants would touch a person's chin or knees, probably because the chin and knees were regarded as containers of the muelos, marrow. The lute is a musical instrument made of wood. The name comes from Arabic, al uth, wood [al is the definite article]. Is there a link with the world tree, Yggdrasil, and the poros, passage, of the Greek poet Alkman? The kion, column of coloured light [ka travelling], of Plato, Republic X, was the hodos, road, par excellence, by which souls travelled back and forth between earth and stars. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 8: The Bull 41 CHAPTER EIGHT THE BULL Bull leaping, as performed at Knosos, involved grasping the horns and performing a somersault onto the bull's back. It may have been a rite in which magical power was obtained from the horns of the bull which the leaper grasped. More than one meaning of the ceremony is possible. It may have been symbolic of apotheosis or resurrection. Dionysus, the god who could appear in the form of a bull, as implied in the Bacchae of Euripides, raised Ariadne to the sky. Europa rode on a bull. It is possible that the seizing of the bull's horns and riding on its back symbolised the obtaining of control of the animal to prevent it from doing damage [to individuals but also to the earth]. In the absence of more specific literary information than we have, it is hard to say with certainty that any one explanation is correct. All may have played a part. The name Daedalus suggests the Greek daid-, torch, and Al, or El, the Semitic word meaning the one above, god. He may have been named, or named himself, after a comet in the sky looking like a torch. His work at Knosos ranged from the construction of the dancing floor to creating bull disguises for actors to wear. Electrical and astronomical links between Egypt and Crete appear in our consideration of the bull. The attempt to produce an heir to the throne with divine ancestry, and therefore the right to be obeyed, may be the explanation of the story of Pasiphae and the Minotaur. Monarchs and priests could wear bull masks, horned helmets and tails in the attempt to obtain and pass on the divine force, the Egyptian sa-ankh. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 8: The Bull 42 Sankh and sa-ankh appear in the Latin sancio, sanctify, bring to life. The priest portrayed in the cave of Les trois Frères in Ariège, in France, wears a stag mask. The Cretan word bolynthos means 'wild bull'. The most likely derivation is from the Greek bous, ox, and lussa, frenzy. The letter n in bolynthos would be a nasalisation of the vowel u, such as occurs in Polish, and probably Etruscan, and is seen in the Greek basileus, king, and in the names Tereus [who was turned into a hoopoe], and Katreus [the ka watcher]. The fight between a king and a fierce animal is a common theme in ancient art, especially oriental. At Persepolis, in the 'hall of a hundred columns', the Persian king is shown defeating monsters. A Greek equivalent would be Herakles or Theseus. Winged bulls with human heads are found at Persepolis, where Xerxes erected a gateway. The message is ambiguous: the king is the human representative of the divine bull in the sky, wings being added to indicate that the creature concerned is a celestial one. The Apis bull was cherished and worshipped. The king or his servants could also kill the bull if it was seen as a threat. Columns at Persepolis not only have bulls on top, but also have human heads as capitals. The top of the column represents the home of the gods in the sky; the column itself copies the phenomenon referred to by Alkman as a poros or passage, and by Plato as a column of light [towards the end of the Republic]. There were statues of bulls in the temple that Solomon built in Jerusalem. They were part of the plunder seized by Nebuzar- adan, the captain of the guard, and carried off to Babylon. In chapter LII:20 of his book, the prophet Jeremiah writes: "The two pillars, one sea, and twelve brazen bulls that were under the Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 8: The Bull 43 bases, which king Solomon had made in the house of the Lord: the brass of all these vessels was without weight". The Egyptian Apis bulls are said to have been ceremonially drowned. Drowning was thought to release the divine element. It is possible that there is a link here with the tripod cauldron. The cauldron as a means of achieving divine status, apotheosis, is mentioned in an inscription of Roman times. Medea pretended to restore youth by cutting up the body of an old person and cooking it in a cauldron. The tripod cauldron was probably a representation of the seething pot in the sky, described by Jeremiah, I:13, two verses after he mentions the rod of an almond tree. The almond may represent the plasmoid, the weapon used by Zeus for long range warfare. Asaminthos is Mycenean Greek for a bathtub. The word has something in common with Apollo Smintheus, Mouse Apollo. Smintheus suggests sema, sign, in-, presence, or power, and theos, god. Possibly the bathtub, with steam rising fron it, was compared with the seething pot in the sky of Jeremiah. In the Odyssey, Odysseus emerges from the bath looking like a god. The chariot, the vehicle of a god in the sky, might be thought to bear some resemblance to a cauldron, and in Homer the word bomos is either a chariot stand or an altar. The Greek kerat- means horn. Kratos is force. The bull is associated with strength, and the Etruscan word trin, hero, is probably a compound of tur, bull, Latin taurus, and in-, Greek for strength or force, divine presence. The name of Turnus, prince of the Rutuli, whom Aeneas defeated and killed [Vergil, Aeneid XII], looks and sounds as if it had the same origin. Because of the proximity of Etruscans to people who spoke a Semitic language, for example in Lydia, and who wrote from right to left, accidents occurred with a number of words. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 8: The Bull 44 Additional evidence that the bull was a symbol of a deity in the sky is the fact that the Minotaur was called Asterios, or Asterion. Aster is a Greek word for 'star'. Furthermore, Theseus is said to have seized the Minotaur by the hair. The word hair is regularly used to describe the tail of a comet; the word comet is originally Greek for a hairy star. The Latin jubar, fiery mane, is a name of the planet Venus. Juba is a mane, ar is the electrical fire. As well as the Egyptians, the early Greeks saw the object in the sky as a bull, but their way of dealing with the situation was different. Traces of the early experiences and attitudes are found in Greek tragedy, and in the games. At the start of the Great Dionysia, the Athenian drama festival, a bull and a goat were sacrificed to Dionysus. The horns of a goat can be particularly suggestive of the protuberances of a comet, and stags too were sacrificed, especially in countries farther north. The dramatic technique of the Greeks, their action for dealing with the threat constituted by an errant heavenly body, was to resort to sympathetic magic, enacting an encounter so as to bring low into a safer orbit, or to destroy, the thing that was guilty of hubris. Hubris means going too high, or setting oneself up above others and claiming more than a sensible and humble mortal ought to claim. Hubris was the act of a heavenly body whose orbit was such as to bring it dangerously close to the earth, causing earthquakes, stone showers, floods and fire. Dionysus himself had an epiphany as a bull. The Bacchae of Euripides contains references both to his bull nature and to lightning. When Pentheus is detected in the top of the pine tree, spying on the revels of the Bacchants, the women are inspired to tear the tree down, striking at its roots as though with thunderbolts, sunkeranousae [line 1103]. Lightning, the electrical weapon of Zeus, Athene and Poseidon, was also a Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 8: The Bull 45 weapon of Dionysus, and the horn-like protuberances of a comet could be imaginatively viewed as the source of cosmic lightning strokes directed at the snake-like tail, Dionysus versus Pentheus. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 9: Naxos 46 CHAPTER NINE NAXOS As one approaches the island of Naxos by boat, one sees the sharp outline of Mount Za against the sky behind the harbour and town of Naxos. If Crete could boast of Dikte and Ida for Zeus to inhabit, Naxos has gone one better with Mount Za, named after the god himself. But the island was famed in ancient times for its Bacchic revels: "...Bacchatam Naxum...", Vergil, Aeneid III:125. Since Theseus in the story took Ariadne to Dia, as Naxos was earlier called, it is worth considering for a moment the island and its history. It was said that one Boutes, son of Boreas, brought a band of Thracian men to what is now the island of Naxos. For their wives, he brought a band of Maenads from Thessaly. Wherever there are references to Boreas, Hyperboreans, the ox or bull, it is worth asking whether the electrical god in some form or other is involved. In this instance, we may note that the name Boutes suggests, to a Greek, oxen [bous is an ox]. There are well known stories of links between the north, Delphi, Apollo, the Hyperboreans, and Delos. There is room for speculation that the Semitic word shemal, north, may indicate 'the god up there', or 'the sign of El', and that shemal, reversed, might be El ames, the sceptre of El. The story quoted by Ginsberg [Legends of the Jewish people] of the ox seen in the sky at the time of the Exodus is perhaps less well known. Later, King Naxos brought Karians to Dia. The island of Dia then became the island of Naxos. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 9: Naxos 47 The name Naxos, if written in the syllabic form familiar from Mycenean Greek, and influenced by the tendency of Semitic speakers to insert a 'shewa',[an obscure unaccented sound between two consonants, and therefore between the two halves of a double consonant such as the ks of the x sound in Naxos], gives Nakasos. The final s is the ending of the nominative singular, and, as in Latin, has no significance in such a context. We are left with Nakaso. The Greek anax is the usual word in Homer for a warrior leader, prince or chieftain. The Greek princes, men such as Agamemnon and Ajax, are generally described as being big men. In the Old Testament we read of a giant called Anaq. His descendants were Anaqim, the Hebrew plural form of his name. Perhaps King Naxos was a man of more than usual size. This may seem purely speculative, but there is still today on Naxos a huge stone statue of a kouros, a Greek youth, and the island of Delos, too, had gigantic statues of Apollo and Dionysus. The hair style of a kouros resembles the hood of a cobra. The evidence for the existence of giants is partly literary, partly archaeological. The best known literary evidence is found in the Old Testament. In Deuteronomy, chapter II, we read that there were Emims, great, many and tall, like the Anaqim. They were accounted giants, as were the Anaqim, but the Moabites called them Emims. Later in the chapter, v.19, there is a reference to the inhabitants of the land of Ammon: "That also was accounted a land of giants: giants dwelt therein in old time; and the Ammonites call them Zamzummims; A people great, and many, and tall, as the Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 9: Naxos 48 Anaqim; but the Lord destroyed them before them; and they succeeded them, and dwelt in their stead". Deuteronomy III:2f. tells of Og, king of Bashan, and of his iron bedstead. Joshua XII:4 states that Og and other giants lived at Ashtaroth and Edrei. Ashtoreth and Astarte are names of an eastern equivalent of the goddess Aphrodite. Joshua XI:21f. refers to the destruction of the Anaqim. Only in Gaza, Gath and Ashdod were any giants left. The hint of ka in the place names [Gaza and Gath], the link with Aphrodite [Astarte], and the position on the coast towards Egypt, all point to intense radiation in that area as one of the possible causes. Edrei, the chief town of Og's kingdom, Bashan, suggests the Hebrew eder, garment, mantle, splendour, and heder, which means splendour. The Greek hedra is a seat; the Latin hedera is ivy. Hedra is often the seat of a god, an altar, a temple, the place where a weapon fixes itself. In the plural it means the quarters of the sky where omens appear. Numbers XXI:33ff. mentions the defeat of Og at Edrei. I Samuel XVII tells the story of David and the Philistine champion Goliath of Gath. Goliath's brother was killed in a battle in Gob [II Samuel XXI:19], and in another battle, in Gath, one of the four giants killed there had twelve fingers and twelve toes. There was more than one Gath in Palestine. Perhaps the name Gath is ka and at, 'power of ka', or 'ka as source'. England has remains of giants. For example, near Aspatria, in Cumbria, there were found in a grave the bones of a giant over seven feet tall. The discovery at Amman of sarcophagi of great size gives some support to the statement in Deuteronomy III that Og, king of Bashan, was a giant. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 9: Naxos 49 The fact that the Philistines on the coast of Palestine spoke a language that may have been Illyrian, and that Goliath of Gath was a man of unusual size, raises the question of the origin of the Philistines. The Etruscan link that begins to emerge takes us farther afield. Two main explanations come to mind for the existence of giants. One is that Goliath and others in Palestine were the result of mutation caused by phenomena such as those described in the Bible in the books of Exodus and Joshua and elsewhere. The other is that they came from farther afield, in which case the electrical conditions associated with the north pole and the god Bor may have been responsible. Goliath and the other giants seem to have been exceptional; Philistines in general and northern immigrants were probably comparatively large rather than gigantic. Naxos exported marble and emery. The latter compound is carborundum plus either magnetite or haematite. Magnetite and hematite are both ferric ores. The presence of emery in Naxos was attributed to Ares, god of war. Ferric compounds would be reddish. Red was associated with Ares and with military uniforms. An axe of Naxian emery was found at Calne in Wiltshire, U.K. DELOS Patara, the marble gateway on Naxos, faces the island of Delos, the birthplace of Apollo. Delos first flourished in the Mycenean period, which by conventional dating is roughly 1580 to 1200 B.C.. Apollo did not have a monopoly of the worship on Delos. The island was a centre of the worship of Dionysus, and the remains of his shrine bear witness to the intense interest that there was in the electrical link between sky and sexual activity. Delos is dominated by a hill, Mount Cynthos. Near the top of the hill is a cave which appears to have been a shrine. The pit Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 9: Naxos 50 next to the altar may be compared to the 'well' or bothros at Alalakh, and the shrine at Chamaizi in Crete. The aim would be to attract the god to the shrine. Theseus left Naxos and sailed to Dia. He is said to have gone to the altar made of horn, and to have performed the Crane Dance. It may be that the Kordax, a Cretan dance in which the performers used a rope to link themselves, reflects the thread of Ariadne used by Theseus in the Cretan labyrinth. THE THREAD OF ARIADNE There is a Jewish tradition that when the sons of Aaron were killed by the ark, thin threads of flame went from the ark to their nostrils. The Greek lin- is flax, and thread. Could its derivation be El, and in-, presence of El? The Egyptian ankh could be held and pointed at a person's nose in order to give him life. There may be a link here between the Egyptians and the Hebrews. The ankh, as an electrical symbol, was a device that could kill as well as give life. What was the nature of the thread of Ariadne which was so useful to Theseus? One difficulty in the usual account is that the labyrinth was probably a dancing floor in the open air, and Theseus would have had no trouble in seeing where he was, and anyway there is the story of the crown of light. Can the story conceal an electrical attack on the Minotaur, the fabulous creature said to have been the offspring of Pasiphae and the bull? The Minotaur was surely a priest, perhaps even a member of the royal family, disguised by a mask, horns and tail. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 9: Naxos 51 The crane dance which Theseus took to Delos had harps for accompaniment. Harps have divine and astronomical significance; Hermes and Apollo were the divine harpists of the Greeks. It has been suggested that the Crane Dance, imitating the movements of birds, symbolises the "sinuosities of the labyrinth". In the dance at Knosos described by Homer, the young men each carry a gilt sacrificial knife, Greek machaira. The crane dance may have been associated with the 'Troy game', of which a maze was a feature.One could speculate that a maze or labyrinth might symbolise the winding course of a deity or monster in the sky, with an orbit coming closer to earth at each return. A labyrinth was the place of the double axe [the thunderbolt], and the climax of the wanderings would be a confrontation. In the sky, lightning strikes would be thought to result in the defeat, sparagmos [tearing to pieces], and absorption, 'eating', of the object resembling a bull, stag, or goat. The Etruscan vacl, banquet, is the most likely explanation of the Greek word basileus, king, the one who is banqueting. The ending -eus is the same as that of King Tereus, the hoopoe in the Birds of Aristophanes; he is the observing one. Greek tereo means I watch for something, I observe. There is food for thought in some of the place names in Crete and the Cyclades, for example Dia, the early name for Naxos [the Pelasgians were dioi in Homer, usually translated as 'divine'], Chamaizi [earthwards], Arkalochori, Kaloritsa, Psychro, Kamini, Kephala [the hill at Knosos], Sangria [in Naxos, where there was a temple of Demeter], Patara, and Skardana [on Delos]. The Latin sacer means holy. Ankh, sankh, are 'life', 'bring to life'; Latin sancio, I sanctify, means 'I bring to life'. Ariadne was said to have had a tomb on the island of Naxos. She was also said to have had a tomb on the island of Cyprus. The latter may reflect the close relationship of Ariadne and Aphrodite. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 10: Chronology 52 CHAPTER TEN CHRONOLOGY So far, we have had to rely on Greek and Roman stories about an early Athenian king, Theseus, with a certain amount of historical data in the way of texts, and to supplement this foundation we have touched on certain motifs in art and architecture. A study of the evidence from art and monuments has pointed to the electrical basis of ancient Mediterranean religion, myth and magic. Another subject emerges, one closely involved with art, namely chronology. Up to the final years of the nineteenth century [A.D.] it was taken for granted that the discoveries of Schliemann at Troy and Mycenae, which had caused such surprise, provided confirmation of the general picture of the Trojan affair and the Argive tyrants that emerges from a study of Homer and Thucydides. Only since the dating of Crete and Mycenae from Egypt has there been introduced such a long dark age between the end of Minoan and Mycenean civilisation and the start of Greek, as opposed to Mycenean, civilisation. The interpretation of the data on which the astronomical dating from Egypt was based is increasingly under attack, and there are grave doubts about the value of radio-carbon dating in the period concerned. The general archaeological evidence does not support the conventional chronology. One feature of the chaos resulting from the extension of the Greek 'Dark Ages' has been the doubling of historical characters and events. Minos is an example of such doubling. The "early Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 10: Chronology 53 Minos, pre-Hellenic and Middle Minoan", is the same as the Achaean Minos of Thucydides, with all that that implies for the date of the Trojan war or wars. Doubling also occurs in the case of Daedalus, one living in Minoan times, the other the father of the artists called the Daedalidae, living in the eighth century B.C.. The second Daedalus was held to be the first artist to have created statues standing in natural poses instead of having arms close to the sides and one foot forward. Dipoinis and Skylla were pupils and possibly sons of Daedalus. Hutchinson, in Prehistoric Crete, p.126, refers to 'torsion' as a decorative device on vases from the Danube area and from S.E.Anatolia. It is common in Cretan pottery. The Pelasgians, "divine" according to Homer, were among the inhabitants of Crete, and had linguistic connections with the Danube area. Judging by their name, they had specialist knowledge of rocks and caves. At this point, we may usefully review some of the archaeological and literary material concerning Crete and Minos. Readers who do not wish to spend time on details may safely skip to the chapter on interpretations. There was trade between Egypt, Syria and Palestine in the early Minoan period, conventionally dated to about 2500 B.C onwards. A vase found at Byblos has a handle in the form of a bull. The name Byblos may have a connection with one of the names of Dionysus, the Etruscan Fufluns, or Bubluns, meaning the same as Bromios, the noisy one. This would refer to the drums that accompanied his revels, which in turn imitated the thunder which was caused by the lightning, of which Dionysus was a god. Spiral decoration is typical of Minoan art. It is also typical of Neolithic cultures in the Danube area, in Thessaly in the Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 10: Chronology 54 Chalcolithic period, in Thrace, and in the Bronze Age Cyclades and Crete. The meander and spiral pattern were popular in Egypt and Crete in the period when Amenemhet III built his palace or temple, sometimes referred to as a labyrinth, in the Fayum, and a Cretan king built a labyrinth at Knosos. The Egyptian palace has been described as a funerary temple, and both had enough rooms for them to be called stores, possibly for food. Cretan hieroglyphic script A has some Egyptian signs, e.g. the ankh, sign of life. Thucydides, Book I:4, writes that Minos was the earliest to control a fleet: he drove out the Karians and put down piracy. Diodorus Siculus and Herodotus relate that when Daedalus escaped from Crete, Minos, having pursued him to Sicily, was murdered there by king Kokalos. The description by Diodorus of his tomb, with its two stories, one below ground level, the other above, suggests a design similar to that of a temple tomb at Knosos. The Greeks had their Bronze Age Daedalus, and a Daedalic school of sculptors, in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.. Rhodians and Cretans colonised Gela in Sicily in 688 B.C. There was a city called Minoa in Sicily, and others of the same name elsewhere. There are tombs in Sicily of the tholos type, but it is thought that the architectural influence may have been from Greece rather than from Crete. Europa, sister of Kadmos of Thebes and of Minos, was a Phoenician princess. Zeus, in the form of a bull, carried her to Crete. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 11: Changing Interpretations 55 CHAPTER ELEVEN CHANGING INTERPRETATIONS We may now usefully review some of the interpretations that have been made of those myths and legends which seem the least consonant with 'rational' knowledge and views of the nature of the material world in which human beings find themselves. It is probable that the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries would not have seen so many and varied attempts to explain myths, magic and ritual had it not been for a reluctance to admit or even consider the possibility of real events as the explanation of stories about extra-terrestrial interference with what people were happy to imagine was the smooth, machine-like running of the world and the heavens. Kirk, in his book The Nature of Greek Myths, Penguin 1974, gives an account of the various explanations of the stories and actions, myth and ritual, put forward during the last two centuries. Myths have been seen as explanations of ordinary natural phenomena, with gods and monsters as personifications of natural forces. Thus in the 19th century Andrew Lang proposed that myths were explanatory, and a form of early science. Malinowsky suggested that myths are practical devices for supporting social structures rather than attempts to discover theoretical truths. Eliade holds that myths are an attempt to re-experience a remote past time of divine action and creation. Such a return is not mere nostalgia. It gives power and inspiration in the present; the past becomes alive and is felt to be present. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 11: Changing Interpretations 56 Other writers, notably Jane Harrison, A.B.Cook, and Sir James Frazer [in The Golden Bough], proposed that myth is to be associated with ritual, primitive and savage fertility rituals being particularly significant. In contrast to attempts to explain myths as being associated with nature, writers such as Freud and Jung have tried to explain myths as psychic phenomena. Myth has been compared to subconscious images and to dreams. Jung especially stressed the human need for myth and dreams to keep the psyche on an even keel. Followers of Levi-Strauss see myth as important in a society because of its ability to set up bridges between contradictory views and needs. [Contradictions occur in Greek myths and legends between divine law and human law, as in the Antigone of Sophocles.] They also see a similarity between the contradictory workings of nature and the human mind. Readers are referred to Kirk's book mentioned above for fuller information and comments on the various views. When looking at the theories, two facts emerge. Firstly, no one theory is a complete explanation of all myths. Secondly, hardly any of them embraces the possibility that they should be taken, in the case of the cosmic myths with battles in the sky, as colourful accounts of something that actually happened. Greek religion, from the point of view of the average Greek, seems to have changed from sacrifices and the recitation of stories and the performance of games and plays, e.g. muthos and dromenon, to mystery religions such as the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries. It became a matter of understanding and coping with life's major challenges, especially birth, sickness and death. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 11: Changing Interpretations 57 Let us turn to a twentieth century A.D. opera. The interpretation made by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss of the story of Dionysus and Ariadne laid stress on the ambivalence of death. In their opera Ariadne auf Naxos, first performed in 1916, Ariadne decides that death is the only course left to her after Theseus has abandoned her. She welcomes the appearance of Hermes, the psychopomp, the escorter of souls to the underworld, as the one who will set her free. When the young god Bacchus enters, she welcomes him and experiences a transformation and feeling of enchantment. She thinks that she is giving herself up to death. In terror, she calls out "Theseus!". She then greets the stranger, the young god, as the beautiful, peaceful god. The music and words of a duet suggest her rebirth. Bacchus too is transformed, becoming a god through his love for Ariadne. To Ariadne, Bacchus is not only death, but life. He effects her transformation from a deserted maiden to a goddess. It is apparent from the above summary that the opera is an example of the restatement and interpretation of a myth as a psychological experience, in terms adapted to the intellectual climate of the time and place. Death, for example, is presented not as physical extinction but more as a 'rite of passage'. It is the death of the love of Theseus for Ariadne which makes Ariadne, faithful to the end, long for death, and it is the new love, that of Bacchus, which brings her peace from her suffering, the joy and peace which she feels to be death, and which is the power that Bacchus possesses to be resurrected [after his affair with Circe] and to bring others to life again, as he does to Ariadne. It is interesting to compare him with his Egyptian equivalent, Osiris. The apparent contradictions that von Hofmannsthal and Strauss portray in the behaviour of Ariadne result from the ambiguities in the character of the god Dionysus. He is thought by many today to be the god of life, of death, and of renewed life, not just psychologically, but in a physical and material sense, as living objects die and new life springs from them. But Dionysus is no mere vegetation god. It is not a matter of a plant, animal Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 11: Changing Interpretations 58 or human being dying, and new life being nourished by the decomposing remains. The fertility explanation is not adequate. Dionysus is an electrical god. He exists in every animal, in ivy, and in the vine, but he is greater than any one of them: he exists outside them as well, in the form of lightning. In a sense, he is divine life. He specialises in revealing the divine power to humans in their own experience as bacchants. The power of the electrical force is such that it can both kill and bring to life. Moses was aware of this dual function when the brazen serpent was set up to heal those suffering from snake bites, whatever the exact technique and efficacy may have been. Radiation from the gods in the sky or electricity from the earth helped Osiris to rise. The Egyptian ankh was life, but could be used as a weapon. The ark could be used as a war machine, and Zeus saved the world from destruction when his thunderbolts destroyed the monster in the sky. The electrical god could be seen rising into the sky, described by the Greek poet Alkman as a passage, poros, associated with creation, and described by Plato as a column of light which was the path for the souls of the deceased to return to the stars and await reincarnation. It was a god of inspiration, giving life, and, if one were struck by lightning, likely to give death as well. According to Plato [Timaeus], the heavenly fire is to be found in the head and spine as well as in the sky, and Hermes is an important character in Ariadne auf Naxos. Poros, the path between the electrical source in the sky, and earth, was the father of Eros, and Hermes was a messenger associated not only with sexual attraction and life, but with death, marshalling souls with his kerukeion, his ka-controller, the caduceus of Mercury. [The Latin ducens means 'leading'; compare the name of the hoopoe king Tereus, which probably means 'observing'.] In ancient Greek, an initial 'h', the rough breathing, is almost a 'k'. Hermes is basically hrm, or krm. Mercury is mrk; the two names, Hermes and Mercury, superficially different, are the Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 11: Changing Interpretations 59 same, as a result of confusion over the direction of writing, probably in Asia Minor, where the Etruscans met speakers of a Semitic language. This is just one of many instances of this phenomenon. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 12: Catastrophe, Myth and Sky 60 CHAPTER TWLEVE CATASTROPHE, MYTH AND SKY Floods, earthquakes, fires, volcanic eruptions as at Thera, the disasters that befell Knosos and most other sites, are difficult to fit into the conventional framework. It is worth reviewing the story and associated material from the standpoint of electrical theory and early study of electromagnetic phenomena. Elektron, amber, 'god from the throne' is the starting point, and fine distinctions can come later. When a king sat on a throne, he was imitating the presence of the electrical god above the ark, chest, or capacitor. Much of the mythical material calls for explanation on two levels. Firstly, many myths and rituals deal with electrical phenomena. Experiments were made with magnets in Samothrace, the island famous for its religious mysteries, like those of Eleusis. Furthermore, there are no grounds for supposing that Benjamin Franklin was the first to try to capture the god from the sky. Secondly, it is necessary to search for the cause of the more turbulent electrical conditions and the catastrophes that are reported. This brings us to an examination of the astronomical material and to the state of the solar system in not only prehistoric but also historical times. The final sections of this study are therefore devoted to a review of a few instances where changed electrical conditions and extra-terrestrial interference are the most likely explanation of the many stories and facts that do not fit the conventional picture. Some of the phenomena described in ancient records are easily recognised and comprehended, for example lightning and Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 12: Catastrophe, Myth and Sky 61 radiation. In recent years the after-effects of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl have included mutation, such as the birth of babies with fish tail instead of legs and primitive wings for arms. Radiation from the sky as a cause of changes on earth was basic theory in the ancient world. Other phenomena are less obvious. The similarity of some of the words found in ancient languages and shared between different languages may in some instances be due to coincidence, but at this stage it is better not to exclude the less obvious candidates for recognition. Progress in philology is helped by an understanding of the physical reality that a word refers to or denotes. The Old Testament contains references to phenomena which resemble some of those mentioned in other literatures such as Greek and Latin. Jacob's dream, related in Genesis XXVIII, concerns an apparent link between sky and earth, and the importance of stone. At a place called Luz, Jacob took stones for pillows and went to sleep for the night. He dreamed that a ladder was set up, reaching to heaven, and angels of God ascended and descended. God spoke to him and encouraged him with promises. Jacob set up the stone that he had used for a pillow and poured oil on it. He named the place Bethel [house of God]. We shall see later the electrical significance of the name Luz, and its presence, in disguise, in Greek. In chapter XXXII:24, Jacob wrestles all night with a man. The man touches the hollow of Jacob's thigh and puts it out of joint. He tells Jacob that he is to take the name of Israel. Jacob calls the place Peniel, "for I have seen God face to face". There are many Egyptian references [in the Book of the Dead] to the God of the Thigh. These probably concern the constellation of the Great Bear in the northern sky. The prophet Isaiah writes that "his rod was upon the sea", referring to Moses stretching out his hand to cause the Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 12: Catastrophe, Myth and Sky 62 Egyptians to be drowned [Exodus XIV:26]. Rods were associated with sky phenomena and snakes. Isaiah, XIV:12, speaks of Lucifer, son of the morning, having fallen from heaven. Lucifer is the one referred to in the words: "didst weaken the nations". Greek and Semitic literature both connect disasters on earth, such as seem to have struck Knosos and many other sites, with irregular occurrences in the sky. Greek tragedy is based on confrontation, where a character suffering from hubris, behaving arrogantly as if superior to all others, is brought low. In a passage attacking the idolatry of the Jews, Isaiah appears to refer to the practice of incubation, on a mountain top, or, as in Babylon, on a ziggurat [tower of Babel]. In LVII:7 he writes: "upon a lofty and high mountain hast thou set thy bed: even thither wentest thou up to offer sacrifice". It is probable that Minos paid similar visits to mountain top shrines. There is an Egyptian reference to "the god on the top of the staircase". Zeus, chief deity of the Greeks, god of order and justice, had the thunderbolt as his weapon against the monsters. The thunderbolt is shown by Greeks in the hand of Zeus, generally like the lines of force of a bar magnet, as revealed by iron filings on a piece of card held over the magnet. But it also appears as an almond-shaped object, suggesting a plasmoid, appropriate for exchanges at long distance and of great power. The Greek amygdale, almond, may be the Egyptian ames, sceptre, gad, a name of Baal, and El, or Al, the god above. The Egyptian hieroglyph ames is shown as shaped like an almond; vide Budge, Egyptian Language, p.78, Routledge and Kegan Paul. The Etruscan name of the god Tin recalls the Greek verb tinasso, brandish, and may even have been Stin, since initial s is sometimes dropped. If this were the case, Tin may be Setin. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 12: Catastrophe, Myth and Sky 63 The Greek is, in-, means force, divine presence, so the name would mean 'force of Set', or 'presence of Set'. Tin may mean thunderbolt, and Set is the Egyptian Typhon. In Crete, Zeus was worshipped under the name of Velchanos, a word which may mean something like 'god of the rock', or 'god of the cave'. Since the difference in electrical potential manifested by the piezoelectric effect at the time of a severe earthquake would have dwindled through leakage, it was reasonable for people to say that the god died. The death of the Cretan Zeus distinguished him from the Zeus of the sky who was worshipped elsewhere. The sacred marriage of Zeus and Hera, celebrated in Crete, may reflect an anxiety lest the atmosphere surrounding Zeus should leave him and cause an outbreak of violence. Hera's name suggests 'face', and 'upon', Egyptian hra. Egyptian herit means 'fear'. The sacred marriage occurs in the Sumerian myth of Dumuzi and Inanna, enacted by the king and a priestess. Herodotus mentions the procedure in his description of Babylon. The Egyptian reference to the "Lord of redness in the day of transformations" probably refers to an object in the sky, such as the one that a Roman general, at his triumph, imitated by painting his face red. The English word 'sanguine', means red in the face and cheerful. Its origin is the Latin sanguis, blood. The Roman poet Horace, in one of his odes, describes death as pallida, pale. Sanguis may in turn be related to Egyptian ankh and sankh, live, and make to live, and to Sumerian sanga, priest. Triumphus may be connected with the Thriae, Delphic goddesses. The thrioboloi at Delphi threw pebbles into the divining bowl. Stone showers and meteorites would be associated with Mars. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 12: Catastrophe, Myth and Sky 64 At Rome the triumphing general, imitating Mars with his red face, stained with wine lees as if he were an actor, rode in his chariot along the Sacred Way. The story goes that an attendant helped to stave off hubris, arrogance, and nemesis, the avenging wrath of the gods, by whispering in his ear "Remember that you are but mortal". The Latin robigo means redness or rust. Its key consonants, rbg, when read backwards, give gbr. Gibor is Hebrew for a hero, or leader. The archangel Gabriel may be associated with Mars. Gabriel may be gibor el, divine warrior. Zeus was the father of numerous deities and heroes. He was the son of Kronos, and behind Kronos lurks the figure of Ouranos, whom his son Kronos castrated. There seems to have been an object or phenomenon in the northern sky, named Bor, associated with light, and, in Jewish legend, with the ox. It may have been what inspired Roman augurs with ideas for the street plan and layout of a military camp or city. Electricity is the force behind other sky phenomena as well as that of the thunderbolt and its chief users, Zeus and Athene. The bull, stag, cauldron, snake, thigh, Venus, column, eye, radiation, axe, hand, arm, mutation and giants, tholos and dromos tombs, arks, libations and the five major planets, and writing, all figure in attempts by the ancient priest-electricians to describe, explain and exploit celestial phenomena. Monsters intrude, darken the sky, appear to cause the sun to stop or go back in its course, and so on. The dragon is a snake in the sky. In art it is given wings to show that it is the celestial monster which the earthly snake resembles. Examples of imitation are the hair style of Greek kouroi, and the uraeus, cobra, on the head of the pharaoh. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 12: Catastrophe, Myth and Sky 65 The bull symbolises the power of a heavenly body with horn- like protuberances. The killing of goats, stags, bulls and other creatures was sympathetic magic aimed at checking the career of an object in the sky threatening the earth. The wearing of horned helmets, masks and bulls' tails is an instance of mimesis. If all else fails, if you can't beat them, join them. Furthermore, resemblance to a divine phenomenon instilled obedience, reverence and fear in servants, subjects and enemies. In Jeremiah's book, chapter I, the prophet sees a seething pot in the sky. The tripod cauldron, Greek lebes, lebet-, is El's house, El beit. In Latin it is cortina, which suggests the Greek kerata, horns, and in-, force. The Topprakali cauldron has bulls' heads round the rim. The Minotaur was probably a man wearing a mask, horns and tail. The name of the Minotaur, Asterios, or the neuter form Asterion, and the fact that Theseus seized it by the hair, support the view that phenomena in the sky were involved and were models for imitation. The constellation of the Great Bear, circling round the Pole Star, was referred to in Egypt as the Lord of the Thigh. It could conceivably be linked with Dionysus and his birth from the thigh of Zeus. Dionysus was one of the gods who could command lightning. There is material from further east about the thigh. The stories about the hero Gilgamesh date back to Sumer, and were known throughout the ancient Middle East. One of the episodes describes the anger of Ishtar when Gilgamesh rejected her love, fearing that he might suffer the same fate as the rest of her lovers. Ishtar persuaded Anu to send the Bull of Heaven against Uruk, the home of Gilgamesh. With the help of Enkidu, who grasped the bull's horns, Gilgamesh cut its throat with his sword. He then tore off its right thigh and Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 12: Catastrophe, Myth and Sky 66 threw it to Ishtar. Enkidu was punished by the gods, who afflicted him with sickness. Dionysus had a shrine on the island of Delos. The Stoibadeion, sacred to Dionysus, with its phallic decoration of pillars, links fertility, sexual activity, and the sky. Dionysus was associated with animals and the force embodied in them, especially the bull, the leopard and the other great cats. Wine was thought to be the blood of those who had perished in battles in the sky. Radiation was attributed to the five planets visible to the naked eye, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The eye was thought to be a source of radiation. Axe, hoe, spear and arrow were symbols of lightning and radiation. Seven is an important number, being five plus the sun and moon. The Cretan goddess is concerned, like Artemis, with both animals and radiation. Thoth, the Egyptian god of electricity who was equated with the Greek Hermes and the Roman Mercury, was active in the sky. He restarted Ra's boat when it had stopped. This Egyptian story is in harmony with accounts from elsewhere, such as the record of phenomena at the battle of Beth Horon after the Exodus, during the invasion of Palestine by the Hebrews under Joshua [Joshua X:13]. The tholos tomb, a burial chamber approached by a passage, the dromos, may be an imitation of the column rising into the sky. The word dromos is related to the Greek verb trecho, I run, aorist tense edramon. It appears in English in the word hippodrome, originally a racecourse for horses. The transport of the body, ashes or bones into the tomb would then be sympathetic magic, mimesis of the soul's rapid ascent up the column to the stars, as described by Plato. Greek games included what may be imitation of cosmic confrontations and exchanges in the sky. The Troy game represented as a maze on the Tagliatella vase may have indicated the varying movements of an object or god in the sky, Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 12: Catastrophe, Myth and Sky 67 resulting in a meeting and battle. Chariot races frequently led to smashes, which may not have been accidental. In the case of the pentathlon, the number of events, five, may have planetary significance. Mayani, The Etruscans Begin to Speak, Souvenir Press 1962, puts forward some evidence that Etruscan nobles sacrificed their lives in rituals aimed at saving their city from divine anger and punishment. There is an Etruscan inscription on a stele found at Novilara. Its genuineness has been doubted. It may refer to a ritual suicide by a charioteer, krustenac, in which case it would resemble the self-sacrificing action of Marcus Curtius, who, to placate the angry gods, rode into a chasm that had opened in the Roman forum. Pessos, Greek for a 'man' at draughts, may come from pes, an Etruscan numeral. The name of Reshef, a Syrian deity, may be a reversal of pes and ar, the five electrical fires. It is disputed whether pes is five or four, but the objection is not necessarily fatal, since four-planet systems had a place in ancient thought. The root ar implies movement, perhaps the movement of light along the poros of Alkman. Hubris, going too high, as if one were superior to all other people and considerations, is the Hebrew zadhon, pride. This word may be 'Lord Set', since adhon means lord, so Set would be a celestial object that went on a dangerous course, too high. The Etruscan zichne, writing, engraving, is 'Set's tracks', ichne being the Greek for track or footprints. A hero was a man with powers so exceptional that they had to be attributed to divine parentage, perhaps through incubation. The Hebrew heron means conception. The ancient view was that mutations, including giants, monsters and heroes, were the result of divine interference, generally by a deity whose home Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 12: Catastrophe, Myth and Sky 68 was in the sky, though earth too produced some unpleasant creatures that make one wonder, in the words of Omar Khayam and Fitzgerald, whether the potter's hand slipped. Chernobyl and children with fish tails and wings are a recent reminder of what the ancients appear to have suspected long ago. It is conceivable that the story of Herakles dying from the poison in the shirt of Nessus the centaur may have an astronomical origin. Centaurs shot [radiated] arrows, and Herakles is associated with the planet Mars. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 13: Fire 69 CHAPTER THIRTEEN FIRE In the ancient world, a city or society had as an essential aim a knowledge of the divine will and intentions, and an understanding and some degree of control of the divine fire which, in the form of the thunderbolt, closely associated with earthquakes, was the chief weapon of the gods. The Greek aither is the upper air, home of the divine fire, pyr. The following words all mean fire of some kind, usually divine, i.e. electrical, originating from the sky in the form of lightning, or from the earth, e.g. piezoelectric effects from earthquakes, sometimes referred to by the general Semitic term ka. I put forward suggestions for the meanings and derivations of these words, based on the principle that in any philological inquiry the discovery of a link between a word and physical reality should be the starting point. Five of the most important words are: Pyr, or pur, [Greek], ar [Etruscan], ka [Egyptian], zichne [Etruscan], ignis [Latin]. A Greek u may be transliterated as u or as y. Flamma, flame, was used in Latin, like phlox in Greek, for ordinary chemical fire. The burning of wood on altars was a trigger to encourage the divine fire to descend. The prophet Job, XX:26, speaks of "a fire not blown", i.e. not phlox. Latin materia is wood for building; lignum [El ignis?] is wood for burning. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 13: Fire 70 Pyr The Latin princeps, prince, is a compound of pyr, in-, and capio. The prince can capture the force of the fire. Pyramid is from pyr, fire, and amis, amid-, vessel, chamber pot. Greek amao means 'I collect, I harvest. A pyramid was a fire collector. The Hebrew arah is to collect; aron is an ark. Arabic haram, plural ahram, is a pyramid. Russian hram is a temple. Hebrew har means 'mountain'. Plato, in his Laws, refers to the survivors of the Flood as "zopura of the human race". The word suggests to us the phrase 'spark of life'. Greek prasso, I achieve, act, is pyr aisso, I brandish fire. Greek pragma is a deed. The Akkadian Akitu, New Year festival, resembles the Latin ago, actum, set in motion, act. Etruscan praco is a step, and may be from the same root as the Greek pragma. Albanian prag is step. Greek prinos, holm oak, may be pyr + in-, presence of fire. It was widely believed that oak trees were more often struck by lightning than other trees. The Greek prytanis was the official who waved the brand, imitating the god who brandished the thunderbolt. Tanuo means 'I stretch out'. Tinasso means 'I brandish', literally 'I set Tin in motion'. Tin, the Etruscan god of the thunderbolt, occurs also in the form Tinia, and, since initial s is sometimes omitted, there is a possibility that he may have been Set + in-, presence, or force, of Set. Set, the Egyptian god of evil, is also known as Typhon; Plutarch called him Seth. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 13: Fire 71 Ar Latin ara is an altar, essentially a place to which the electrical god was persuaded to descend to mark the victim. Ordinary fire would be lit to encourage the electrical fire to appear. Water or blood would be poured over the victim to assist conductivity and earthing. The ancients knew that water conducts electrical current. This may be a clue to the references in the Book of the Dead to the "fire that is in the water". An altar had horns. This creates a link with the horned object in the sky which was compared to a horned creature such as a bull. The Latin religio, sacred procedure, may be ar elicio, I entice the fire. Mitra, headdress, tiara, may be a reversal of ar, and time, honour. The Greek mitos is a thread. An electrical explanation of mitra becomes more likely when one thinks of the Greek for a crown, stephanos, Set visible. Thread may have some electrical significance. Images of ancestors were linked by thread in the atrium of a Roman house. Etruscan ve, put, appears in the Latin servio, I serve, I put fire. Zhar is one of the Slavonic words for fire; ogonj [Latin ignis] is another. Etruscan thesan means to kindle. Probably the word is from the Indo-European word detj, to put, and refers to the task of stoking, putting fuel on the sacred fire. This is a possible interpretation of the Greek word theos, god. Theos has been traced either to tithemi, to put, set, or establish, as a basic function of a deity, or to the verb theo, to run. The latter would be more appropriate to celestial bodies such as the Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 13: Fire 72 planets, the wandering stars, if they really did appear to run fast. They wander, but slowly. Perhaps the various ideas present in the roots co-existed in the ancient mind. A Roman priest might be a flamen, one who blew the flame [Latin flare is to blow]. The Vestal Virgins, who tended the holy fire in the temple of Vesta in Rome, tended the life and soul of the city and of the body politic on the hearth of the temple of Vesta, the Greek Hestia. Erythrae is a Greek place name. There is an Erythrae near Cithaeron, in Boeotia, central Greece. The name is a reversal of ar and of thura, door. Egyptian, Greek and Roman pylons, gateways and arches symbolise an entry into the world of the electrical god. They can symbolise planets; in this they resemble the seven pillars near the place called the Horse's Grave, mentioned by Pausanias as being on his way from Sparta to Arcadia. The Etruscan thur means much the same as the Latin gens, family. Thura, Greek for door, may be a reversal of ar uth. Uth is Etruscan for the Greek hodos, road. The name of the god Janus was in general use in Rome to mean an archway. Shar kibrat arbaim is Akkadian for 'Lord of the four regions'. The Russian vorota is a plural word meaning 'gate'. Lord of the four gates? Arches, Latin arcus, symbolised an entrance to the world of the spirit, of divine fire, the way to the stars. The Etruscan ar is present in arcus, as it is in the Latin arca, chest. Aristotle, in his De Anima, On the Soul, writes that the soul enters the human body thurathen, from outside. Probably thurathen should be understood as meaning 'from the fire door' Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 13: Fire 73 i.e. from the stars, which, as Plato writes in the myth of Er at the end of his Republic, are the places from which souls come and to which they return. The Hebrew timara is a pillar. There may be a link with the kion, column, of Plato's Republic, by which souls returned to the stars. Hebrew pathar means to explain. It may be 'reveal the fire'. Latin patera is a flat dish used in libations for reflecting the radiation from a source in the sky onto the earth, perhaps to feed the dead, help them to the stars, or resurrect them for advice. The Latin patere means to be open, to be exposed. There may even be a connection between the Hebrew pathar, explain, and the Greek pathos, suffering. The Athenian dramatist Aeschylus associates mathos, finding out, with pathos, suffering. In a Greek tragedy, there is a recognition scene, when a truth, previously hidden from some or all of the characters, is revealed. It leads to a reversal of fortune frequently involving a principal character in difficulty and disaster. Hebrew qe'arah is a bowl or dish, and may conceal the Egyptian ka, which appears in Hebrew qadhosh, divine. The Latin lanx, lanc-, is a dish. It may be a compound of El, the god above, and ankh, life. The Hittite spanza, libation, suggests 'down from the five', the five being the five planets easily visible to the naked eye. The libation bowl was used to reflect and focus the divine radiation from sky to earth, as shown on a relief from Malatya. The Latin armum, weapon, especially a defensive weapon, may be connected with electrical fire. The aegis was used by Athene as a shield, and inspired fear. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 13: Fire 74 Setting up the apparatus at a shrine involved adjustment of telescopic rods, Hebrew chashuqim. Greek ararisko, fit, adjust, may be 'please the fire', ar and aresko. Aresko means 'I please', artao means 'I fasten'. It seems likely that the Latin ars, art-, skill or art, was originally the fitting together of apparatus. In this context the Hebrew chashuqim, junction rods, may be relevant. Greek arthron, joint, could be ar and thronos, seat. The Greek stratos, army, may be the fire of Set, a body of men that was meant to strike like a thunderbolt. El and ar may be present in the name of Lars Porsenna of Clusium. The Latin lustro, review, purify, may be 'release the fire of Set', i.e. burn. The censor conducted a review of the people. He may be ka ensis, the sword of ka. Ka suggests the Greek kaio, I burn. The Ossetic word zarand means gold. The letter z can be 'st' as well as 'ts' or 'ds'. Zarand could sound like 'Set's fire'. Marshy places attracted ar. Romulus met his mysterious death on the Goat's Fen, and Dionysus was known as Limnaios, Dionysus of the marshes. He was said to have been born in Nysa, in a well watered plain. Vide Ghirshman, Iran, p.236, Penguin 1954. The Latin ardea is a heron. It may have been a bird which, like the ibis, was thought to be expert at catching snakes. Hebrew dea means knowledge; the heron's name may mean 'having knowledge about fire'. [The snake is one of the commonest symbols of divine fire]. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 13: Fire 75 Ka Ar was often equated with ka. Whereas ar was thought of as the god descending from the sky, the ka was associated with the individual human being, as a kind of halo surrounding the head, and giving the impression of a double. However, it was recognised that the two were essentially manifestations of the same force; the terms ar and ka could be used indifferently. The name Ardoro was given to a Cretan priestess who may even have been the same as Ariadne. The name Ardoro means'gift of fire', doron being Greek for a gift. The Greek ananke, necessity, is spelt anagke. The word ka, pronounced well back in the throat, could have been spelt ga, Doric dialect for the Ionic and Attic word ge, the earth goddess. Ana means 'above'; ananke would thus be the ka above. Electrical forces in the sky were harder to control than those on earth. Ar and ka both appear in the Latin arca, chest. Ariadne is ar yad, hand of fire. She is represented in a statuette holding snakes or a bow in her hands. We have already mentioned that Greek bios, like Sumerian ti, til, means either bow or life. The arrow shot by a deity was electrical, as was the brazen serpent of Numbers XXI. When the priest had caught the divine fire in the ark, the deity was referred to as ka. The word appears in Greek kaio, burn, Latin incendo [in- ka- do, I give the presence of ka]. Osiris, the Egyptian god who resembled Dionysus, was the holy ka who rose from the chest or ark. The Greek verb airo, raise, may possibly contain the word ar. The application of ar was a method of resurrecting Osiris/Dionysus. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 13: Fire 76 In Hebrew qadhosh [divine, holy], the dhosh element means to sprout or produce, and an ark would be made to sprout ka, to radiate sound and light. The prophet Amos, IX:1, writes: "...I saw the Lord standing upon the altar..." The aura seen was often described, especially in Egypt, as a lotus. The Sanskrit padma is a lotus. Pa, fa, are Sanskrit for light; demas is Greek for body. Padma may be the body produced by the light. There is support for this from Greek: kreas, flesh, is a flow of ka, and the same thing occurs in the Latin verb creo, create. The old spelling of creo was cereo. In Genesis IV:22, Tubal Cain is described as the first smith. His name can be explained on electrical lines, but first we need to know two things: that there was a deity of springs and water called Lavis, and that confusion could occur over the different directions of writing,, Semitic right to left, others left to right. Many examples of this are given later in this work. The reverse of Tubal gives Lav ut. Ut suggests authority or source. Lavis we have already met. Cain looks like ka in, presence of ka. In the smith's craft two essential processes are heating the metal, then plunging it into water to temper it, a process known as annealing. The name of Tubal Cain, whether by accident or by design, is a shorthand description of the technique of the blacksmith. The smiths of Rhodes, the Telchines, had supernatural powers, and made statues of the gods. The god whom the priest aspires to capture or persuade to descend is the one above; Hebrew El means over. Elektron, amber, is Greek for the god who emerges out of the seat, ek thronou. The Greek thronos, seat, is the chest or capacitor, the Leyden jar, on which the earthly monarch may sit imitating the deity. Etruscan drouna, truna, means 'fear', especially fear of Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 13: Fire 77 the king sitting on his throne. "Before Jehovah's awful throne...." Readers are referred to God's Fire, by Alfred de Grazia, for a full account of the working of an ark. The fire, ar, could be felt internally by individual human beings. Artistic inspiration was attributed to the thunderbolt by the Greek poet Archilochus. The Roman poet Ovid, Fasti I:423, writes"..simul aetherios animo conceperat ignes.." Inspiration is described as catching the ethereal fire in one's soul. The reason for attributing a feeling in the bones, or, as the Romans said, in the marrow, medullis, to a sky god rather than to an earth deity, may have been the thunderstorm. A good example of the effect of a thunderstorm is found in the fourth book of the Aeneid, when Dido and Aeneas take refuge in a cave from the storm. The Greek lagneia, lust, may be the fire of el. Agni is the Sanskrit name of the god of fire. Zichne, ignis The Latin ignis, fire, is basically the same as the Etruscan zichne, engraving or writing. Zichne is Set ichne, tracks of Set. Marks made by lightning strokes on rock were taken to be writing by a deity. The German zeichnen is to mark or draw. Latin signum is a mark. Ka may just possibly be an element in the name Pergama, the fortress of Troy. It is a curious coincidence that, if reversed, Pergama resembles magrepha, the gong that was sounded in the temple at Jerusalem at dawn to mark the beginning of the day's burnt sacrifices. The Garamantes lived in the Fezzan, SW Libya. Silius Italicus has "Gar Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 13: Fire 78 amanticus vates", a prophet of the Garamantes. Greek mantis is a seer; Gara- may be ka and ar. Greek gaio means 'I rejoice'. Latin gaudio, rejoice, is of inward joy, as opposed to laetor, outward rejoicing. Ga = Ka. Greek gauros means proud, haughty. It may mean 'great ka'; Egyptian ur = great. Alternatively, it might be compounded of ka and oura, tail. Cassum lumine, empty of light, means dead, Aeneid II:85. It is possible that the light is that of the ka. Greek ken- means empty; reversed, it becomes nek-. The Greek nekuia were rites for raising the dead, those who are empty of ka, for consultation. Nekuia is the title of the eleventh book of the Odyssey. Greek chrusos is gold. Gold may have been regarded as symbolising a flow of ka. Rheo, rhoos, = flow. The name of the Etruscan city of Clusium may be ka + luo [Greek, I release], the place which was a centre for releasing the ka from its prison in the ark or chest. The other name of the city was Camers. The Etruscan mar, or mer, means 'take'. The city was a place where the priest, or the princeps, caught the god. Princeps is a Latin word. He was originally an Etruscan magistrate-priest, and his title looks like pur, in-, and capio, fire, force, capture. The Latin genius, a divine spirit accompanying and protecting a person, is probably related to the Egyptian ka. The Etruscan concept of deity was of something vague and omnipresent. In this it differed from the anthropomorphism of the Greeks, which may reflect Egyptian ideas and the identity of the ar and the ka as manifestations of electrical divinity. Heraclitus may have had this in mind when he wrote that the way up and the way down are the same. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 13: Fire 79 The Greek kamara and the Latin camera are generally thought to be derived from the Greek kampto, bend. Kamara can mean the roof of a vault, a covered waggon, and a boat with an arched cover. Since the Etruscan mar, mer, means to take, it seems more likely that we are dealing with places and vehicles for the capturing and transporting of ka, as with Egyptian ark boats. The Latin poet Catullus wrote a poem about his yacht. Phaselus is the word he uses for his yacht. It means 'bean'. Another word for bean is faba, Greek kuamos. A boat used for transporting an ark or similar electrical apparatus not only resembled a bean in appearance. Its name was composed of syllables suggestive of Greek and Egyptian electrical terms, namely fa, light, and ba, spirit. Beans had magical significance; Ovid, Fasti V:388, tells how beans are used in exorcism. The Hebrew qadhosh, holy, sprouting ka, is the same word as Arabic quds, which appears in the Arabic name for Jerusalem, El Quds, the holy city. The Etruscan caveth, liver, is probably the Hebrew kavedh, liver. The Albanian ka is an ox. The word may well go back to Etruscan. The Romans may have detected a link between the ka and the anima, soul. The poet Horace, Satires I:V:41, refers to friends of his [including Vergil], as "animae quales neque candidiores terra tulit", souls than whom earth has not produced any more shining. The Latin vacuus, empty, suggests that the light of khu comes from an empty box [fa, pa, =light; khu is Egyptian for spirit, or radiance]. The Hebrew hebhel means vanity, idol, breeze, nothingness. The word is a reversal of Latin levis, light [in weight]. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 13: Fire 80 Wana is Lydian for fanu, Etruscan for Latin fanum, shrine. Compare Latin vanus, empty, and cavus, hollow. Shetai was a hidden god of Egypt. Compare Hebrew Shaddai, Almighty. The Greek megal-, great, may mean full of the ka of El. Egyptian meh = full; ga = ka. El's ka would be the ka of the comet or body in the sky. The head and radiance of a planet or comet were compared with the head and ka of a human being. Ankh, ka and ku may appear in other Greek words for containers, e.g. aggeion, pail, the human body; aggos, pail, cinerary urn. Kupellon is a big-bellied metal cup for drinking, e.g. chruseia kupella, golden cups, Iliad III:248. Kulichne is a drinking cup, also a dish. The Greek word tekton, carpenter and builder, may contain ka, and it may be the Latin tego, cover, protect. A carpenter would be one who constructed a house, or ark, to protect something or somebody. But cf. Greek techne, craft, and Egyptian techen, obelisk. Vacuna was an old Sabine goddess. Vide Ovid, Fasti VI:269. Amen was a powerful and invisible Egyptian deity who was associated with the resurrection of the spirit. Meh, power inherent in nature or in human institutions [Roux, Ancient Iraq p.542], may be related to the Greek mechane, device, and Egyptian meh, fill. The Greek megal-, great, is probably related. The Sibyl seemed to grow larger as she raved, and senators were auctores, enlargers. The Greek kanoun, basket, was a thing containing ka, as happened in the Dionysiac procession. Dionysus shared with Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 13: Fire 81 Osiris the fate of being dismembered. Another Greek word for basket is kalathos. Lathein is to lie hidden. Imperium, state authority, may be in-, force, and per, [Egyptian for house or palace]. A house could be a shrine where a god spoke or the human monarch aspired to divine authority. In the case of Latin dominus, lord, we may have dom-, house, and is, divine presence. It is significant that the Albanian thom, say, is probably Etruscan in origin. Hebrew pasil is an idol, image, and resembles the Greek basileus, king. Offerings were put before idols of gods for them to eat and drink. The king was a banqueter, who at the banquet, Etruscan vacl, or sacred feast, devoured the fragments of the monster slain in the battle in the sky. It is likely that the bringing of offerings was originally sympathetic magic aimed at helping the god to live and to save the world from a monster that threatened it. The Etruscan fleres is an idol. The Greek pleroo means I fill. Perhaps the statue contained a god. But pa, fa, means light, and leer is a Germanic word meaning empty. Whatever the explanation, chests or containers that appeared to be empty were the chosen vessels for containing the god or goddess whose manifestation the priests studied to achieve. A summary of the vocabulary may be useful at this point. Agni, Sanskrit, ogonj, Russian, esh, Hebrew, all mean fire. Nephesh, Hebrew, = soul. Egyptian chet, hair; cf. Greek chaite, hair, mane. Etruscan zar, fire; Slavonic zhar. Etruscan sarve = put fire, Albanian zjarrve, Latin servo, servio. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 13: Fire 82 Egyptian tcha = fire stick; tehen = pillar; cf. Greek techne, skill, art. Greek grapho and Latin scribo, write, both indicate that writing was a sacred act. The Latin scrobis is a trench. The Egyptian tcham is a sceptre in the form of a scotch [for catching snakes], with an eagle perched on top. Greek kaio, Latin incendo, burn and Latin calere, to be hot, all contain the word ka. Hebrew har = mountain. Harel is an altar [El, god above, appears on mountain tops]. The Arabic haram is a pyramid; Greek amao means harvest, collect. The Greek pelekus, axe, may sometime have had an initial s in Lydia; cf. labrys, tlabrys, axe. We have the words spel, spelaion, cave, Latin spelunca. Lydian pel is a cave. Caves were often associated with split rocks and chasms caused by earthquakes or lightning, resulting in a difference of electrical potential, as at Delphi, where the presence of the god was first detected by goats and the goatherd Koretas. The 'Sibyl's Rock' has a split in it. The Calabri, mountain dwellers in southern Italy, an area where earthquakes were frequent, may have been 'axe people', like the Pelasgi, the people who were wise, sagi, about caves. Their name includes the syllable ka, and perhaps labrys, the double axe that represents the thunderbolt. Hebrew seghor, axe, corresponds to the Latin securis, axe. Another Hebrew word for an axe is maghzerah. The word ar may form part of it, giving some such meaning as 'great fire of Set', and it is the probable origin of the Etruscan and Latin magister. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 13: Fire 83 The Samnites of central Italy wore feathers on their helmets, like the Philistines. Philistines have been described as Minoans who fled to the Palestine coast in the twelfth century B.C. [conventional dating; a revised chronology prefers a later date.] What may be an Etruscan link emerges: "Minos...cristata casside pennis..", Minos with his feathered helmet. Hebrew chets is an arrow, spear point, lightning. Qayin, spear, is electricity as a weapon, the qa eye [Hebrew ayin is an eye]. Zayin, Greek zeta, is a weapon. Egyptian set is an arrow; cf. Welsh [i.e.Gallic] saethau, arrows. The Timaeus of Plato is a good source of information about fire. The stars and planets are manifestations of the divine fire. In humans and animals, the fire is found in the muelos, marrow, which is concentrated in the head, but is also found in the spine and tail. The Latin cauda, tail, is ka uthi, where ka dwells, or goes. The Latin caput, head, reveals a close link with Egypt and the east: it is composed of ka and put. The Latin puteus is a spring or well; it is the same word as Pytho, the old name of Delphi, which was a famous source of divine energy. Put- occurs in the context of sexual activity, and survives today in Italian and Greek. The snake was seen as a source of electrical fire. It resembled a monster in the sky; it resembled the curved shape of the spine; with the speed of its strike it resembled lightning. A cobra could cause sudden death. In this it resembled Apollo with his arrows, but it also saved, as in the case of Nechushtan, the brazen serpent in the wilderness. Furthermore, the reactions of victims on altars, like the frogs of Galvani, suggested that the god could give movement and therefore life. Hermes and Dionysus exemplified the physiological effects on the human being, and indeed on animals, and the snake was thus a feature Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 13: Fire 84 of Bacchic revels and the behaviour of Maenads. Snakes, and dogs, were kept in temples of Asklepios to lick diseased bodies. The Arabic sikina, and Hebrew sakin, knife, explain the Latin scintilla, spark. Reversed, they resemble the Hebrew nachush, bronze. Chabes [Egyptian] is a beard. Bes is a flame, so it may be a flame of ka. Aeschylus, in the Agamemnon, has the watchman see a pogon puros, a beard of flame, when describing the signal fires announcing the fall of Troy. Shuti [Egyptian], plumes, are the 'soul of Geb'. Geb resembles the Greek Ge, the earth goddess. Etruscan suth, suthina, and Hebrew tsuth, mean 'kindle'. Ar appears in the Latin jubar, radiance of a heavenly body. Juba is the hair or mane of an animal, the crest of a helmet, the crest of a serpent, and the tail of a comet. Jubar stella is Phosphorus, and also Hesperus, the morning star and evening star, i.e. the planet Venus. Click here to view the next section of this book