mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== 85 CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE GODDESS GAIA The priest-electricians were aware that the deity was to be found not only in the sky as lightning, but also in the earth. In Greek, chthon is the earth, Gaia is the goddess in the earth. The snake was seen in the sky as a dragon, and was associated with radiation and its effects, but it was also a creature living in holes in the ground, and snake tubes were incorporated in Cretan houses where the snake was like the Roman genius, guardian of the household. We have suggested that the Egyptian ka was an electrical aura or halo round a person, especially round the head, the electrical headquarters. It was associated with health and life, and appears in the Greek greeting chaire! chairete! Hail! Raise the ka! [airo = raise]. Chairete is very close to the Hebrew chaya, to live, to be well, to enjoy life. The plural chayim is life. Chai, alive, looks and sounds like a reversal of the Greek cry Iacche, which greeted Dionysus, a god of the electrical life in living things. When priests tried to capture lightning by charging Leyden jars in the form of arks or thrones, they recognised the importance of a good earth connection. Altars and arks were put on rock or a base of stone, if necessary deepened by a pit filled with stones, as at Alalakh in Syria and at Chamaizi in Crete. In Assyria, a spear stuck in an altar, or a representation of a winged disk in the sky, symbolised the god. Earthquakes, which were associated in the ancient mind with divine activity in the sky as well as underground, were a source Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 14: The Goddess Gaia 86 of piezoelectric effects. The goats detected the conditions at Delphi. The Psychro cave in Crete contained a fragment of a jar with a picture of a leaping goat. The Greek verb skirtao, frolic, dance, describes the movements of the goats that the goatherd Korytas noticed at Delphi, and its consonants suggest the Egyptian Seker, an earth deity. The title of Seker was given to Osiris when he was imprisoned in the chest before being restored to life and raised up by electrical force. The Latin securus means secure and enclosed. The Latin sacer has the same consonants; we shall see the connection with dancing in a few moments. It seems possible that ka represents the same phenomenon as the Greek Ga, Ge, or Gaia. We have seen that the Pelasgians may be the people who were wise about caves, and that the tholos tomb may symbolise a link between sky and earth. Inhumation brought the dead into contact with the divine force in the earth. One had, or hoped to have, the best of both worlds. The Egyptian neter, divine, a hieroglyph looking like an axe or hoe, has the same consonants as the Greek antron. Dancing was a sacred ritual. Egyptian monarchs, and king David, danced before the god. Etruscan mimes danced to elicit the earth deity and to imitate and resurrect the dead for consultation. Skr, Latin sacer, when reversed, becomes rks, a Semitic root meaning 'dance', Arabic raqs. The hymn of the Salii, the leaping priests of Rome, included the words limen sali, leap at the threshold. We may compare with this the words of the prophet Zephaniah, chapter I:9: "In the same day also will I punish all those that leap on the threshold, which fill their masters' houses with violence and deceit" The arch of Janus marked the start of the Via Sacra at Rome, for processions to the Capitol. As he passed under the arch, a triumphing general crossed the limen, threshold, and by so doing became, to the spectators, divine. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 14: The Goddess Gaia 87 Limen, threshold, is an interesting word. In Greek it is a harbour. Harbour, port and threshold are all, in a sense, gateways. When read from right to left, limen becomes the Phoenician word for a harbour, namal. Epilepsy was a sacred disease. The jerky movements of a sufferer in a fit probably suggested that an external power was in control of his or her body. Perhaps the lotus eaters of Homer's Odyssey lost their memory as a result of electric shock. El and oth are Hebrew for 'god', and 'sign'; a lotus is tse'el. Augurs relied on watching birds and animals, especially small animals which would creep out of holes in the ground when an earthquake was imminent. The hoopoe with its erectile crest was particularly useful when its attention was drawn to earthquake light and changes in electromagnetic states. Its cry was thought to resemble the Greek opopa, I have seen. Augurs must also have watched the quail, Greek ortux, light finder. Ankh, live, and sankh, make to live, are the origin of the Latin sancio, sanctify, a word whose original meaning was to make to live. Sanctus, holy, means literally 'having been brought to life'. The ankh was the most powerful of amulets and hieroglyphs in ancient Egypt. Its hieroglyph is described as a sandal tie with loop. Why this should mean 'life' has not been made clear. For a connection between a sandal and life, we might turn to the Selli, the Agnihotris, and the Flamen Dialis or priest of Jupiter at Rome. All these priests had one thing in common: they could maintain good earth contact. The Selli were not allowed to wash their feet, the Brahmin Agnihotris or fire priests had to sleep on the ground, the Flamen Dialis had to sleep in a bed whose feet were covered in mud. The common aim was to be in intimate contact with the earth goddess Gaia. The ankh may have a different explanation, representing the dual character, celestial and chthonic, of the electrical force. There may also be a link with the orb and sceptre, regalia with which a monarch is equipped at a coronation ceremony. The Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 14: The Goddess Gaia 88 orb, which is a sphere with a cross on the top, looks like an ankh if it is turned upside down. Herakles defeated the giant Antaeus, whose strength came to him from the earth, by lifting him up in the air so that he became weak. Alke is Greek for valour, especially of heroes. The inspiration and help probably came from above. I suggest ka and al. Arete, courage, virtue, manliness and excellence may be ar and da, electrical help from Gaia the earth goddess. The Egyptian god who created human beings was Khnemu. The consonants of his name are found in the Greek mechane, a device that was cunning and sometimes dangerous. This may be more than coincidence; a temple contained a device, or devices, for producing a life-giving spark which would animate lifeless matter or the dead. Khnemu's wife Heket injected life into the body that Khnemu had made. Psyche, the Greek for soul or principle of life, is probably an onomatopoeic word for electrical sparking, revealing the presence of the god. The danger attendant on the operation of an ark, which, as well as being charged from the god above, might be a source of radiation from shamir, a substance kept in a lead container, was such that the Jewish High Priest wore special clothing: the choshen or breastplate was of double thickness, like the protective clothing found at the temple of Apollo at Gryneion. That the High Priest's breastplate was more than usually important is clear from the fact that in Roman times it was in the keeping of the Roman garrison in Jerusalem and was issued to the High Priest on special occasions. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 15: Hawara and Knosos 89 CHAPTER FIFTEEN HAWARA AND KNOSOS In 1888 Sir Flinders Petrie excavated the mortuary temple of Amenemhet at Hawara in the Fayum. Amenemhet's dates are 1839 to 1791 B.C. It could have been the model for the rebuilding of the Knosos labyrinth in about 1700 B.C., but not for the first large palace building at Knosos, if the latter is to be dated to about 1900 B.C. Petrie assumed that it was the building described by Strabo early in the first century A.D., and by Herodotus, who visited it in about 440 B.C. Its builders were twelve kings, who were contemporaries and related by marriages. It had twelve covered courts and two stories. There were three thousand rooms, half of them underground, half above. Each court was of white stone, surrounded by a colonnade. Such a large number of rooms suggests a storage depot. Near the corner at one end was a pyramid, 240 feet high, with carved figures of animals on it. The pyramid was entered by an underground passage. [Herodotus II:148] The Fayum temple and the Knosos palace were both temples. The use of white shoes [phaikades] and gypsum may have something to do with cleanliness and purity. The presence of a bath-house and of a guest-house fits the Greek tradition of hospitality involving bath ritual and banquet such as are described in the Odyssey. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 15: Hawara and Knosos 90 There is evidence that child sacrifice and cannibalism took place, a combination that reminds one of Kronos and Zeus. Temple ornaments included snakes, bull, horns, axe and statuettes of goddesses. What sort of temple was it at Knosos, and at Hawara for that matter? I suggest that the labyrinths at Hawara and at Knosos, as well as being religious, administrative and storage centres, were representations of heaven and earth, the cosmos. The same may be true of the Hittite capital of Hattusas. Several features tend to this conclusion. The vocabulary used for the pillar or column supports the idea that columns and colonnades represented paths from earth to sky. A summary of the words connected with pillars may be useful, and will demonstrate the close relationship between the various languages. VOCABULARY The Greek kion may have a link with Egyptian. Kion, column, can also, with slightly different pronunciation [different position of the accent], mean 'going'. The letter k betrays the presence of ka. Greek pyrgos, tower, contains the word pyr, fire, and possibly ka as well. Akkadian durr, tower, resembles the Latin turris, and Latin columna needs no translation. Egyptian has an, light tower, and ucha, pillar. It is reported that in 665 B.C. the Assyrians took from Egyptian Thebes two bronze-coated obelisks. Techen, another Egyptian word for a pillar, resembles the Greek techne, skill or art. Techen, reversed, becomes necht, to be strong. Hebrew shath, column, may have some connection with the god Set. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 15: Hawara and Knosos 91 Egyptian utchu, memorial tablet, may represent the sound of a spark, such as occurs in tcham, the Egyptian sceptre or scotch that has an eagle perched on the top. Etruscan prezu, column, is the Greek prester, a word which suggests an electrical fire in the form of a tornado. Reversed,it resembles the Hebrew tsarebh, burning. It also resembles Latin stirps. This word is basically stirp-, the final s being only a case ending. Stirps is the trunk and roots of a tree, or the stem and roots of a plant, and would be a useful word to describe a twister. We have already looked at the story of Jacob and his dream of a ladder between earth and sky. He called the city Bethel, house of El. Its original name, Luz, if reversed, becomes zul. The Greek stul- is a pillar. There was probably a connection between the building of pillars and columns and the concept of the World Tree, Yggdrasil, of northern myth. The Greek hule means wood, material. Reversed, this word would sound like el uch. Egyptian ucha is a pillar, so the word could have meant 'divine pillar'. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 16: The Dance 92 CHAPTER SIXTEEN THE DANCE Dancing is often associated with magic, and we will consider several typical examples of dancing described by ancient authors. ARKS Not only king David, but also Egyptian monarchs danced. Vide II Samuel V:14: David danced before the Lord, girded with a linen ephod. Why dance before an ark? I hope that the answer to the question will emerge later, after a general review of what was done. RESURRECTION Dancing was part of resurrection technique aimed at fertility of fields and at raising the dead. In the first millenium B.C. the Etruscans were the acknowledged experts in the Mediterranean world and were consulted by the Romans. Histriones were the Etruscan mimes who performed their dance ritual when summoned in times of danger. Histrio may contain hia, the Etruscan and Albanian for a shadow, Greek skia. The aim would have been to resurrect the dead, who would appear as a ghostly image, and to ask the dead person's advice. The histrio may even have played the part of a shade that was the 'fire of Set' i.e. an 'electrical' spirit. There is support for this interpretation of histrio. The early form was hister, e.g. in Livy VII:2:6. Skia, shadow, is used by Circe for the spirits of the dead in Odyssey X:495, when she advises Odysseus on his journey to the Cimmerians and the land of the dead. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 16: The Dance 93 The chief actor and choreographer was Larth Matves. Larth, or Lars, means high, or chief. Matves may be mat, dead, and ves, knowing, as in netsvis. He would thus be the one who knew how to communicate with the dead and elicit their advice. The tanasar, or thanasar, raised the Di Manes, the Good Ones, the departed spirits. His title is probably related to the German tanzen, to dance, but a fuller explanation will be attempted in a later chapter. It may be that the special shoes worn by senators were originally dancing shoes, resembling the Greek phaikades, worn by gymnasiarchs and dancers, and the white shoes worn by Egyptian priests. The Etruscan lucairce, priest, is one who raises [Greek airo] the light [Latin luc-]. The Lydians were famous shoemakers. Cothurni, actors' boots, were of Lydian origin. The word may mean 'doorway of ka', ka + thura. The title tanasar of the Etruscan spirit raiser resembles the name of the Egyptian chthonic deity Thanasa-Thanasa. EGYPT The Arabic raqs means to dance. Reversed, it becomes sqr, the consonants of the Latin sacer, sacred, and resembles the Egyptian Seker. Osiris, hidden in a chest, had this title, the name of an ancient earth deity. Thanasa-Thanasa is a name of Amen, an Egyptian hidden god. Vide Budge, Egyptian Magic, p.172; Book of the Dead, p.542. The word Thanasa suggests not only the Etruscan tanasar but also the Greek thanatos, death. The Greek schematizo, create dance figures, may be related to the Egyptian sekhem, power. Board games were played in Ancient Egypt, Crete and Greece. The men on the draughts board were called dancers, or dogs, by the Egyptians. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 16: The Dance 94 The ark before which David danced had three main uses: it revealed the presence of the divine power, it was an oracle that made sounds and gave a visual display, and it could be used as a war machine. GOATS Hebrew chaghagh is to dance, or to stagger; chaghav is a ravine. A possible explanation of the similarity of the two words is to be found in the history of Delphi. Diodorus Siculus, 40 B.C., tells the story of the goats dancing and the conclusion that Delphi must be a home of an earth deity. Plutarch, 1st century A.D., gives the name of the goatherd, Koretas, and tells of the accident to the Pythia when the goat needed extra drenching to make it indicate, by shivering, that the deity was present and ready to inspire the Sibyl. Skirtao is a Greek word meaning to make movements like a goat. Hebrew natar is to tremble, or to leap. It shares the same consonants with Egyptian neter, divine, and Greek antron, cave. The god Pan is half goat. Grottos were sacred to him, and the horns symbolise the electrical god in the sky. The leaps of a goat reveal the divine presence in the earth as felt where there were split rocks and caves. A goat is in Latin caper. Per is Egyptian for a house. Was a goat thought of as a ka-container? The German Kaefer is a beetle, and in Egypt the scarab was sacred. Scarab is another of the words based on the letters scr or sqr. THE THRESHOLD The Salii, Roman priests, performed a threshold dance [salio means 'I leap']. Livy, I:20, writes: "Salios ancilia ferre ac per urbem ire canentes carmina, cum tripudiis sollemnique saltatu Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 16: The Dance 95 iussit". Numa ordered them to go through the city with the shields, with stamping and solemn leaps, singing songs. In Rome the Arval brothers, an ancient priestly college, danced the tripodatio, a solemn stamping of the earth to ensure the fertility of the fields, arva. In the hymn of the Salii, there occur the words "limen sali". This probably means 'leap over the threshold', as an invitation to the Manes to cross the threshold between the world of the departed and the world of the living, and to appear and give advice. The Hebrew shal means transgression. The Hebrew letters shin, sh, and sin, s, are almost identical, and shal could be the Latin salio. SHOES Latin calceus is a shoe. An early spelling is calcius, suggesting a connection with cio, 'set in motion', and ka may have been a component. Kupassis is a Lydian word for a shoe. There may be a link with ku, or ka, and the Greek phaos or phos, light. Hungarian cipö is a shoe; cipész is a shoemaker. A principal aim of dancing was to "raise the light of ka", like the Latin verb quaero, or quairo, to give it its original spelling. THE DANCING FLOOR The labyrinth at Knosos was achanes, roofless [Sophocles, Fragment 1030, and Kerenyi, The Gods of the Greeks, p.270]. This supports the theory that the labyrinth was a dancing floor where drama was enacted. At Delphi, the drama of Apollo and the snake was performed on a threshing floor next to the Sibyl's Rock, a rock which may have been chosen by the Sibyl Herophyle because it was split, and showed a difference of electrical potential, presumably as a result of an earthquake. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 16: The Dance 96 DANCING WITH KNIVES In the dance at Knosos described by Homer, the young men carry sacrificial knives, Greek machaira. The Cretan sikinnis was a dance in honour of Sabazios [Dionysus], danced by satyrs. The root skn means knife. EPILEPSY Epilepsy was a sacred disease. The jerky movements of a sufferer in a fit led to the belief that an external power was in control of the sufferer's body. Such a belief may have influenced the movements of Greek dancing; fits would certainly have been studied. GREEK DANCE VOCABULARY The adjective poluskarthmos, much-leaping, is applied to Myrine, an Amazonian queen [Iliad II:814]. Skairo = dance. In the Prometheus Vinctus of Aeschylus, l.599, Io's skirtemata, dancing movements, are irregular. At Samothrace there was a frieze of dancing girls at the entrance to the precinct. Plato, in his Euthydemus, tells of thronosis, corybantic dances round a seated figure. According to Nonnos, Dionysiaca, Kadmos saw a dance at Samothrace in which the diaulos was played and spears were clashed on bronze shields. A bronze shield and iron knives have been found there. The Karpaia was a Spartan dance in honour of Artemis. Karyatizein was to dance at a festival of Artemis at Karyae. Iliad XVIII:590: The dance at Knosos begins as a round dance like a dithyramb, then becomes confrontational like a tragic choros, with two acrobats loose in the company. Odyssey VIII:264: The dancers strike the holy floor [choron theion] with their feet. Odysseus marvels at the flashing movements [marmarugas] of their feet. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 16: The Dance 97 According to Hesychius, choros is the same as kuklos and stephanos, circle and crown. Choros is especially the round dance of the dithyramb, or the floor where it is performed. Choros kuklikos is a dithyramb. HEBREW Raqadh is to leap, jump, or dance, and is close to the Arabic rqs, dance. We have already mentioned the Greek halma, leap. It may conceivably be a reversal of the Hebrew melekh, king. Kings were leapers. But melekh may also mean 'he who has the honey', like the infant Zeus. ASTRONOMICAL The two acrobats loose in the dance company at Knosos may be representing some sky phenomenon. At the court of King Alkinous, the dancing floor is an agon, a place for a contest. In Odyssey VIII:260ff., it is cleared for dancing, and Demodocus sings of the love affair between Ares and Aphrodite. Agon can be the sky, and should be understood thus in the passage where Hephaestus is described in his workshop, putting the finishing touches to his tripods, which have wheels so that they may be able to travel and enter the agon. CONCLUSIONS The purpose of dancing was: to charge a war machine, the ark; to charge an ark for an impressive display; to summon the deity at an oracle; to achieve the resurrection of Osiris; to bring to life the Manes for consultation; to rouse fertility deities [e.g.the Arval dance]; to destroy monsters by sympathetic magic, as at Knosos and in Greek tragedy; Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 16: The Dance 98 to imitate epilepsy, thereby showing that the god is in one; to imitate animals, some of which were ka-containers. There was considerable sharing of vocabulary and technique. Reversals indicate the meeting of Indo-European and Semitic speakers. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 17: Rocks 99 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN ROCKS The gypsum slabs used at Knosos for floors and walls are significant because of their colour, white. The white floors and walls could be thought to represent the heavens and the brilliance of the upper air. White floors were chosen not only at Knosos but also elsewhere. The courtyard of the palace at Mari on the Euphrates was paved with gypsum slabs. The white dress of a priestess at Knosos was not only to indicate purity and ritual cleanliness. It shows that she represents a divine personage, the Cretan goddess in one of her manifestations. It is probable that priestesses appeared in openings, as they are said to have done at Ephesus, imitating a goddess so as to impress those present. Perhaps a goddess was lowered, as if in a Greek play, to indicate descent from heaven. The name Piptuna, one of the names of the goddess, suggests the Greek pipto, fall. Epiphanies are also reported by Hebrew prophets. Amos, IX:1, describes his vision of the Lord standing upon the altar. Zechariah, III:1, writes that the Lord and Satan appeared together. Ezekiel, VIII:2, mentions an appearance of fire, and amber colouring. Amber is in Greek elektron, god out of the seat. In Hebrew it is chashmal, a word which in modern Hebrew means electricity. One of the most colourful references is from Isaiah, VIII:19: "...wizards that peep and mutter..." Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 17: Rocks 100 When Homer describes the dance at the court of king Alkinous, Odysseus marvels at the twinkling of the feet of the dancers, marmaruge. It means the play of light; amaruge is the twinkling of stars. Marmaros is stone. Amaruge hippou occurs in Aristophanes, Birds, l.925, where it may mean the twinkling movements of hooves, and perhaps sparks, as in the Latin phrase ignipedes equi, fiery-footed horses. White clothing, the pharos, is worn by girls at the dance portrayed on the shield of Achilles. It is also worn by corpses prepared for funeral rites, as at the funeral of Patroclus, Iliad XVIII:353. The columns at Hawara were white, of marble. There was a theatre area in both Hawara and Knosos. It has been suggested that the maze design may have been a pattern on the ground for a dance. Perhaps there was a confrontation between two opponents, hero and Minotaur. The latter would be a man wearing a mask that resembled a bull's head, with horns. There were probably a dance and battle that symbolised the apparent movements of objects in the sky, and it is possible that we have here the origin of Greek drama. There is a clear link between threshing-floors, theatres, and the sacred and magical. It is easy enough to say that the link is fertility rites, aimed at ensuring good corn or grape harvests, but there is another factor, the nature of the site. The favoured base for not only threshing -floors but altars was rock. Stones could be brought to supplement the living rock of a 'high place', or as a substitute. The Old Testament contains many references to rock; the ark functioned best on rock. Genesis LV:11 mentions the threshing-floor of Atad, or Abel. When the people of Beth Shemesh looked into the ark, there was a disaster: over 50,000 people were killed by the Lord [I Samuel VI:18ff.]. The ark had been put on the "great stone of Abel". Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 17: Rocks 101 During war between the Israelites and the Midianites, Gideon, who was threshing wheat under an oak, was visited by an angel of the Lord. In Judges VI:20 the angel tells him to lay food "upon this rock, and pour out the broth". In verse 21 the angel touches the food with his staff; fire rises out of the rock and consumes the flesh and the cakes. Gideon's reaction was fear because he had seen an angel of the Lord face to face. "And the Lord said unto him, Peace be unto thee; fear not: thou shalt not die." Gideon built an altar there, and called it Jehovah-shalom. For an example of the sensitivity of an animal to a divine presence, see Numbers XXII:23. Balaam's ass refuses to go forward when the angel of the Lord stands in his way. JERUSALEM Isaiah, VIII:18, writes "...the Lord of hosts which dwelleth in Mount Zion..." There is mention of a threshing-floor on Mount Moriah. It was associated with Araunah, and with Ornan the Jebusite: "and the angel of the Lord was by the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite." This became the site of the altar of burnt offerings in the temple in Jerusalem. The temple built by Solomon was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C. When it was rebuilt by Zerubbabel, it was said that five things were missing: the ark, the holy fire, the Shekhinah, the spirit of prophecy, the Urim and the Thummim. The Samaritans sacrificed at the rock on the top of Mount Gerizim, the Holy of Holies of the Samaritan temple. The site of the temple of Solomon is now a mosque. In the Dome of the Rock, as it is now called, a piece of living rock projects through the floor. Its name in Arabic is Es Sakhra. [Es is a form of the definite article in Arabic] Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 17: Rocks 102 It was from this stone that Muhammad took off for heaven on his horse El Baruq. The Hebrew baraq means lightning. Muhammad is not the only person of whom it was said that he ascended to heaven in a miraculous way. The prophet Elijah was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind. Romulus was said to have disappeared during a storm, accompanied by thunder and lightning, when he was holding a meeting with the people on the Goat's Fen. It is possible that we have a clue to these occurrences in the Etruscan word prezu, Greek prester, tornado. A tornado is associated with turbulent electrical conditions in a severe storm. There may also be a link with stories about the world tree, Yggdrasil. The Latin stirps, root and trunk of a tree, uses the same consonants as the Greek astrape, lightning. Tree, in Arabic, is shazhara. The Slavonic root zhar means fire. The importance of thresholds, especially brazen ones, is to be attributed to electrical factors. Temples and, later, Christian churches, were often situated in places associated with anomalous electrical conditions, due either to splits in rock or to a special attraction for lightning [Zeus Enelysios, Zeus who has descended to be in a certain spot]. For example, in the Oedipus at Colonus of Sophocles, Oedipus, warned by the god that he is about to die, goes to a place where there are split rocks, the Brazen Threshold. Theseus and Peirithous had been temporarily paralysed here, prisoners in stone seats. His death was heralded by thunder and by sounds suggestive of a sine wave. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 18: Rituals 103 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN RITUALS Among religious practices in the ancient world were the following: Acquisition of divine strength by the king, through anointing by the priests with sa-ankh. Visits to shrines, e.g. to the sanctuary on Mount Iuktas, so as to be nearer to the lightning god, and, in the case of caves, to places where there were differences of electrical potential between split rocks, such as the 'Brazen Threshold' of the Oedipus at Colonus. Visits to mountain tops, where lightning was known to strike frequently, aided if necessary by a bothros as at Chamaizi. Fires on hill tops may in some instances have been mimesis, in an attempt to atttract lightning. The reports of Moses and his visit to Mount Sinai would have been influential. Worship of the bull: protection of the Apis bull. Slaughter of bulls and goats. Drowning the bull for the release of the divine element. Eating the bull; compare the Etruscan vacl, banquet. Drinking blood mixed with milk, honey and wine. In the worship of Mithras, the devout were drenched with bull's blood. Imitation of the bull, by wearing tail, mask and horns. Grasping the bull's horns, being tossed up and doing a somersault, perhaps, like Europa, riding on the bull to illustrate a degree of control over a dangerous and powerful object. Tracking down the bull in a maze and killing it. The maze could symbolise the sky through which the celestial bull pursued a dangerous winding course. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 18: Rituals 104 At a Roman sacrifice, the man who sacrificed the animal was the popa. It was his task to cut open the animal to inspect the liver, in order to find whether the future was favourable or not. The Greek opopa means 'I have seen'. An Etruscan mirror shows an official inspecting a liver. The inscription is "pavatarchies", which Mayani translates as "Tarchies has seen". [The Etruscans Begin to Speak, p.25] Hair [comet's tail?] was cut from a victim's head and thrown on the fire. This may symbolise Zeus or Jupiter destroying his enemy by lightning. Spiral decoration may have symbolised the maze, or the orbital circling of an intruder. Wine symbolised the blood spilt in battles in the sky. Columns and trees were worshipped. The Latin for an oak, quercus, shows that it was a ka-container. Khu is the Egyptian spirit soul. Symbolic activity at Knosos included the destruction of dangerous monsters, union with the deity, descent to the underworld, resurrection, and ascent to the sky. The task of the ruler was to acquire and exercise divine powers. Incubation was practised with the aim of uniting the royal family with the deity. Babylonian kings would spend the night in the saharu, a shrine on top of a ziggurat, in the company of a chosen priestess. The healing power of the snake was exploited in Greek and Roman temples. During an epidemic, snakes from the temple of Asklepios at Epidaurus were taken to Rome. As the ship was approaching the island in the Tiber, the snakes went overboard and landed on the island. A temple was built there; snakes were induced to lick diseased or injured parts of the body. Dogs also were used and were sacred. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 18: Rituals 105 In Christian churches in the Middle East dedicated to St.George, rings were fixed in stone pillars. Sufferers from mental disease were chained to a pillar for the night to be cured. In this context, it is of interest to note that Morton, in his book In the Steps of the Master, reports that the Oecumenical Patriarch of New Rome had a serpent-headed crozier. An early term for Christians after baptism was 'illuminated'. Apparently there was thought to be a link between water, divine visitation, and light. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 19: Life 106 CHAPTER NINETEEN LIFE Words for life cross the frontier between Semitic and Indo- European languages in the period of Greek and Roman civilisation. Greek bios resembles the Latin vigere, to be well and strong, in that it is a common word for life in the sense of day to day physical existence. Grimm's law helps us to see the relationship. Related to vigere are vis, stem vi, force or power, vita, life, and vivo, I live. The Greek is, in-, force or presence, originally began with a digamma, a letter like our f. It is the same as the Latin vis, and related to bios. Sanskrit giv is the Russian zhiv-, alive. Turning from the material or physical aspect of life, we find the key word in Greek, psyche. It is generally translated 'soul', and means the principle of life. The power of self-originated movement was taken by the Greeks to be a sign of the presence in the object or animal of psyche. The Greek philosopher Thales is believed to have said that a magnet contained psyche. Latin anima means air, then life in the sense of breath and physical life; animus is the spiritual and reasoning aspect of life. We have seen that Egyptian ankh is life,and sankh is to make to live, and I have suggested that here we have the explanation of Latin sancio, sanctify, meaning 'make to live'. Is the Greek angelos, messenger,composed of ankh and El? In Numbers XXII:23, the story of Balaam and his ass illustrates how electrical phenomena could be interpreted as messengers. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 19: Life 107 Hebrew chai means 'alive'; chaim [a plural form] means 'life'. Greek haima is blood. Egyptian sankh is almost identical with the Latin for blood, sanguis. It is possible that onomatopoeia played a part in the creation of vocabulary to communicate by sound the effects produced by the electrical god. Psyche is an obvious example of a word which can suggest the hissing or spitting sound of sparks and electrical discharges. Qa begins with a sound produced far back in the throat. In Egyptian, tcham, sceptre, suggests the sound at close quarters of a lightning strike, and ka probably sounded quite like the Hebrew qa of qadhosh, holy. Breathing, gasping and choking sounds may have provided models for the varieties of 'k' sound. The letter z could sound like st, and sometimes stands for Set. The sky, and sky phenomena, are the usual explanation, in the ancient world, for the origin of life. If the earth mother produces living organisms it is generally the result of action from above. Divine activity could come from underground, and there was a pair of deities, Cerus and Ceres, who were concerned with the fertility of the fields. But the Latin verb aro, plough, suggests the divine fire. Much human activity was mimesis, imitation of divine activity observed in the sky or coming out of the earth. Hebrew dam, blood, may have been reversed to give the Latin madeo, madere, to be wet. Blood was used to drench altars and increase conductivity. Sanga is Sumerian for a priest, who is concerned with bringing to life the god. It is clearly the same as sanguis and sankh. In Hades, ghosts had to drink blood before they were physically capable of talking to Odysseus and Aeneas. Mayani has suggested that the Etruscan levac means 'anointer', and quotes in support the Albanian ljej, to smear. Egyptian priests anointed kings with sa-ankh. This life force was electrical, transferred from a statue that had been charged. Statues could be hollow, like Leyden jars. The Etruscan levac Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 19: Life 108 resembles the name of the Levites, who had the dangerous task of looking after the ark. Vide Numbers III. We have seen that sancio is to bring to life. In Egypt, sanctification was the raising and bringing to life of the holy ka, Osiris, who was enclosed in a chest. Greek airo, raise, may be related to ar, the fire that gave movement and life, and enabled people and animals to stand, Latin sto. Greek zo means 'I live'. Etrucan zac [stac] = stand. One of the methods employed in Egypt was to set the coffin of Osiris in a hollow tree trunk, and raise the trunk to an upright position. The trunk could symbolise the spine of Osiris, or the world tree Yggdrasil. The Roman writer and philosopher Cicero refers to the popular belief that human beings came from rocks, or from oak trees. Both rocks and oaks attract lightning. Human beings were created by the Egyptian god Khnemu, a potter. His wife Heket provided the soul which was added to the clay. Khnem means: a jug; to write; to be joined to. It may be significant in this context that Etruscan zichne, to write, is Set ichne, the tracks of Set, i.e. the marks made on rock by lightning. LIBATIONS The Hittite spanza, and the Greek spendo, pour a libation, are best understood as meaning 'down from the five', i.e, the five planets visible to the unaided human eye. [Greek pente = five] The vocabulary used for the plates and vessels that could be employed deserves mention, and the process is illustrated in a relief from Malatya. Riqqu'a, Hebrew, plate, beaten metal. Qe'arah, Hebrew, bowl, dish. Cf. Latin patera, which may contain ar. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 19: Life 109 Hulsna, Etruscan, libation. The stem of the word is huls. German schlucken is to drink. A reversal. Cepen, Etruscan, priest. This may be spendo, since the letter c in Etruscan, as in English, is sometimes an s and sometimes a k. But cepen may be an instance of ka. Phiale, Greek for a libation bowl, is similar to the Latin patera, which resembles the Hebrew pathar, explain. Fa, pa, mean light. Phiale is also a shield, and, in Iliad XXIII:243, a cinerary urn. Spendo, with the letter 's' meaning 'down from', as in modern Russian, has something in common with Greek sophos, clever. Hebrew oph means 'birds'. The augur's knowledge came down from birds. The Hebrew mophet is a portent, meaning 'from the birds'. Greek aspis,aspid-, is a shield. It is a reversal of the Mycenean dipas, cup, or heaven. Hittite tipas is a cup, and also means 'heaven'. The Latin lanx, lanc-, dish, may be El, the one above, and ankh, life. FIVES Greek pimpremi, burn, may have a connection with the five planets that were held to radiate divine force. The Cumbrian and Welsh, i.e. Gallic, word pimp, used by shepherds counting sheep, means five. The draughts board was said to have been invented by Thoth. Alexander the Great also claimed to be the inventor. Greek pessos is a 'man' at draughts. Etruscan pes is five. The squares on the board may represent areas of the sky, and the Egyptians called the 'men' dancers. At Carthage there was an important body of five magistrates called the pentarchy. At Rome the term quinqueviratus meant a body of five officials. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 19: Life 110 CAULDRONS The phenomenon described by Jeremiah as a seething pot facing the north may have had some influence on the design of ancient pottery as well as being the origin of the popularity of the tripod cauldron. The cauldron, or the object in the sky resembling a cauldron, could be a source of rejuvenation, apotheosis, destruction and death [exploited by Medea]. There is an inscription from Syria of the time of the Roman emperor Trajan, dedicated to Leukothea. It contains the words 'apotheotheis en toi lebeti', made divine in the cauldron. The Greek lebet-, cauldron, is probably el beith, El's house. Vases sometimes resemble in shape the human heart, the organ that ancient American priests regularly tore out of the bodies of their sacrificial victims. Such a rite may have had a magical purpose similar to that of Greek tragedy, and to that of the Egyptian practice of insulting red-headed people, throwing an ass over a cliff, and sacrificing red cattle, because Typhon was red-headed and like an ass in colour. The original aim was to bring Typhon low. Vide Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, 362Eff.. The Hebrew parur, kettle or pot, may be a word inspired by the sight of the seething pot in the sky. Par is a Slavonic word for steam; ur is Egyptian for great. It is worth noting that the ancient views on what we might call a theory of evolution were more intelligent and accurate than the popular science of more recent times has recognised. It is one thing to explain how various species have either survived, or failed and become extinct, and to trace the factors responsible. It is quite another thing to explain why there should be different species in the first place from which nature can select. The recent study of radiation and extra-terrestrial catastrophes, leading to an increase in the understanding of the causes of change, would have the understanding and approval of the ancients, whose views amounted to a belief in punctuated equilibrium or quantavolution. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 20: Quairo:Raising the KA 111 CHAPTER TWENTY QUAIRO: RAISING THE KA A classical scholar glancing at the above heading may be surprised at the spelling. The Latin verb that means 'I inquire' is normally spelt quaero. Quairo, the older spelling, is the clue to the original meaning of the word, a meaning that emerges from a study of an oracular shrine and what happened there. The Arabic name for Jerusalem is El Quds. It is the same as Hebrew qadhosh, holy, 'producing qa'. The temple at Jerusalem was the site of an oracle, and this reminds us of an important point: an oracular site was holy ground. Greek chresterion is an oracle. The word indicates that it was a place where there was a flow of ka, or qa. Chre is used in ordinary Greek as 'it is necessary', but its original meaning was 'ka flows', implying that the oracular force is appearing or present. Latin delubrum is a shrine. It may be 'Ge lubet', the earth goddess pleases. Ge, or Gaia, was the earliest deity at Delphi, associated with the rock and the effects of earthquake and lightning. In the Breton language today the word loc means a holy place, presumably the same as Latin locus. The early form of locus is stlocus. This suggests a connection with Set, a deity who was electrically live, and whose name appears in Greek stephanos, crown. Greek pyr, fire, if reversed, resembles the Latin rupes, stem rup-, crag, rock. The Sibyl Herophyle at Delphi prophesied Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 20: Quairo:Raising the KA 112 while standing on the 'Sibyl's Rock'. The rock has a narrow crack, and could therefore be a holy place where the difference in electrical potential could be felt. The Albanian thom, 'say', may be the same as the Latin domus, house, via Etruscan. There is an undercurrent of sanctity about ancient words for 'house', leading one to think that a domus was basically a building to shelter the ground where the god's voice could be heard. The Hebrew qol, voice, is a reversal of log-, Greek for word, and of Latin loc-, place. In Russian, dom is a house. Domovina is old Russian for a coffin. Etruscan tombs are often in a form suggesting a house. Etruscan thun is a house. There were two main situations where the deity could be heard, or seen, by priests, or felt by a Sibyl. The force could be felt in the bare rock, or a capacitor could be assembled and charged from the atmosphere, a dangerous procedure at a time of electrical storm conditions. The essential devices for capturing the electrical god were something hollow, a box, chest, ark, in Hebrew aron, in Latin arca, and a rod. Hebrew arah means collect. The Etruscan goddess Vacuna may be the one in the empty box: Latin vacuus is 'empty', cavus is hollow. In each of these two words there are the Egyptian ka and khu. Camera, a container, is a ka catcher; mer is Etruscan for 'take'. As we have seen, a pit full of stones could be situated under the altar to increase the likelihood of a lightning strike, as at Chamaizi. At a shrine where there was a capacitor, the priest tried to obtain an epiphany of the god. Quairo, I ask, is composed of the Greek airo, raise, and qu. The priest tried to raise the khu, the spirit soul of Osiris, or the ka of Osiris. Etruscan lucairce is a priest; luc- is light. Greek episteme, scientific knowledge, is in Homer intellectual power and artistic skill. Epi = on, histemi = I make to stand. It Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 20: Quairo:Raising the KA 113 may refer to the skill, Latin ars, art-, of the priest in making the god stand up on the ark or chest. Hebrew qesem is an oracle. Cf. Greek sema, sign, and ka. A Roman priest would utter the words 'Favete linguis!', be favourable with your tongues! Favere is to cherish the light. Fa is light; the verb beare means to cherish. Beare is more familiar in the form beatus, blessed. Favete linguis is generally taken to mean 'hush!' Greek kluo, I listen, or 'I am talked about, I am heard', may be ka and luo, I release the ka. It is similar to Greek akouo, I hear, I am talked about. We have seen that padma is a lotus, composed of fa or pa, light, and demas, body. Greek anthos is a flower [blossom], and may be present in the Greek manthano, I find out, and in the name Rhadamanthus, judge and deity of the underworld. The most important branch of learning was that concerned with the electrical deity. We may have here, in the Greek manthano, the Semitic min or m, meaning 'from', and anthos, so that knowledge is 'from the flower', i.e. from the lotus, which represents the aura or glow. The Greek mant- is a seer. Lotus may be composed from two Semitic words, el, and oth, sign of el. The plural of oth appears in the exclamation ototoi, said by Cassandra as she feels the presence of Apollo and begins to speak and prophesy at the gateway of the palace at Mycenae, in the Agamemnon of Aeschylus. Greek gignosco and Latin cognosco mean to get to know by observation. They are presumably from ka and the Greek noeo, I notice. Similarly the Greek noun gnosis means the acquisition of knowledge by observation. It is probable that the name of Knosos in Crete means that it was the place of observing and getting to know ka. The Greek oida, I know, is a perfect tense meaning 'I have seen', implying the presence in the mind of a picture, shape or form, Greek idea. The Greek eidos also means form, shape or Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 20: Quairo:Raising the KA 114 figure. Latin video, I see, is the same word with the digamma at the start. Creo, Latin, I create, has an earlier form cereo. A flow of ka? The Greek rheo has two meanings, to flow, and to say. Greek kreat- means flesh, Latin caro, carnis. Chrema is 'thing'. Chre means 'it is necessary', originally 'the god flows', or 'the god speaks'. Greek sophia, cleverness, originally meant having the knowledge and ability to detect the electrical god by observing birds, especially the hoopoe and the quail. The Latin lumen, light, may be from the Greek perfect passive participle lelumenos, having been released, from the verb luo, I set free. When the spark or glow appeared it was seen by the Egyptian priest as the release of Osiris from the chest in which his mutilated body had been lying. There is a resemblance to Greek louo, wash. The Egyptian wab was a priest charged with washing the statues, a procedure which would increase conductivity and encourage the flow of ka. Latin lavo, wash, may be the Egyptian word wab. [The letter w is similar to the hard l that occurs in Slavonic languages] If the priests were successful, the god would emerge and appear on the box, or throne, place of fear. Etruscan tru, dru, drouna, is fear. The Latin capax, stem capac-, means 'containing', or 'able'. It could be composed of ka, fa, and cio. It would thus have meant, originally, 'setting in motion the light of ka'. El ek thronou is the god out of the seat. The reversal of thronos is Nortia, an Etruscan deity, possibly an object in the northern sky. The Latin for science is artium studia, study of arts. Studium, zeal and care, may be Set audire, to hear Set, i.e. the sound of a spark, hiss or hum indicating that the ark, a capacitor, has acquired a charge. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 20: Quairo:Raising the KA 115 I have suggested earlier that ars means skill in pleasing the fire by fitting the apparatus together, and that Greek ararisko, I set up, is ar, and aresko, I please. Artao means I fasten. Hebrew pasil is an image or statue, and resembles the Greek basileus, king, the banqueter on the remains of a monster. Vacl is Etruscan for a holy feast. In Latin there is cena, dinner, which is the Slavonic tsena, price, value. It was the reward for killing the monster. Incense, Etruscan chim, was burnt in front of statues of ancestors, perhaps in an attempt to summon the life-giving force, or even to encourage breathing. Vapour can be seen; Etruscan thum is smoke, and Greek thumos can mean breath. Thuo, offer, burn, and thumos suggest the Russian dim, smoke. Egyptian sentra, incense, may be a reversal of ar Thanasa, fire of the underground deity. As we have seen, sanga, priest, with an obvious link with sanguis, blood, resembles sankh. Sanguis, and anguis [snake], have a rare form of the accusative case, sanguen and anguen. Sankh and in- suggest 'force of life' or 'presence of life'. Hiereus is Greek for a priest, and may be a link with the Hebrew yirah Yahweh, fear of the Lord. A priest's work at a shrine was dangerous. The hiereus was the fearing one; the form of the word resembles that of basileus and Tereus, the banqueting one and the observing one. Hebrew kohen is a priest. In Egyptian, neter hen means 'servant of the divine'. The Etruscan tanasar, mime, was a dancer who could bring to life. He is the one who holds out [tanas] the fire [ar]. A tanasar is shown doing this in the Tomb of the Augurs at Tarquinia. Latin sacerdos, priest, contains a reversal of the Latin for a king, rex. Rex, king, appears to be the same word as raqs, dance. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 20: Quairo:Raising the KA 116 When the display at the ark disappeared, it was said that the god had left. Gk.leipo = leave. Etruscan lupu = died. Greek pothos, regret for what is missing, may have been apo, from, and oth, a sign. Pothos may have meant the absence of the desired light and sound that indicated the presence of the god in the ark or capacitor. Priests lamented his absence and prayed for his return. Latin cadaver, corpse, is probably a compound of Semitic words, ka and the Hebrew dabhar, destroy, indicating that the electrical presence in the body has been destroyed. In Akkadian, Bit Mummi is the House of Knowledge. Knosos, or Gnosos, was the place of finding out, Greek gnosis. VOICE Hebrew qol is voice. Greek logos, word, is a reversal of qol. Oracles were divine mouthpieces. The sound that emerged from the capacitor was represented in Egyptian and in Hebrew by a sequence of vowels, as in Yahweh. The smooth rise and fall, like a sine wave, can be experienced by whispering [not singing] Yahweh, or the English vowel names EAIOU and back again. It seems possible that the Latin Iov-, stem of the name of the god Jupiter, has the same origin. One may speculate that the words 'sing', 'song', and German 'Gesang' are connected with ankh, sankh, and sanc-. Singing would thus be a part of resurrection technique. Imperium, authority, and dominus, lord, are two key words in Roman political language and thought. Egyptian per and Lydian pir, house, combine with in-, to give 'house, power,' as the meaning of imperium, and power of the house [domus] for dominus. Latin loquor, stem loq-, loc-, I speak, suggests Hebrew qol when reversed. Loc is a holy place. The Latin fanum, shrine, is cognate with fari, to speak. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 20: Quairo:Raising the KA 117 An animal or bird that made a similar sound to that which was heard at a shrine would be thought to be divine, or at any rate to be closely associated with the divinity. The owl might be an example of this. Apollo was associated with the wolf, as suggested by his title Lukeios. Greek lukos is wolf. The howl of a dog or wolf may be represented by iaaooei. The Russian for wolf is volk. Because the Russian letter L is hard in this word, volk sounds more like the Latin voc-, stem of the word vox, voice. The Russian bog means god, and may be the same root as vox. Hebrew has two interesting coincidences. Dabhar is to speak; debhir is the Holy of Holies; debher is destruction. Greek aeido, contracted to ado, is to make a sound, to sing. Latin aedes is a temple. Templum may be from Greek temno, I cut [of the augur's movements with his lituus], transferring the sky pattern to the ground for the foundations of a city]. Catena, Latin, chain, may be ka, and teneo, I hold. Experiments in magnetism were made on the island of Samothrace, as the poet Lucretius records in his poem on the nature of the universe, De Rerum Natura, VI:1004. Plato, in his Ion, 533D, compares the relationship of poet to performer and audience to a chain held by magnetic force. [Vide Crosthwaite, Ka, p.79] Latin verbum, a word, sounds like the first syllable of verbero, I strike. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 21: Kings 118 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE KINGS There were various words for 'king' in the ancient Mediterranean world. We will glance at some of them such as Hebrew melekh, Greek basileus, Latin rex, and at associated words such as Greek prytanis and archon, Etruscan zilch, Latin princeps and flamen, and Norse godi. Originally, all power centred on the king. The ideal aimed at by the ancient monarch was to combine the functions and powers of prophet, priest and military leader. Later, the various duties and powers were shared between political officers and priests. For example, augurs assumed responsibility for discovering the will and intentions of the gods and advising the monarch about the probable course of events. Monarchs, officials and tyrants [in the Greek sense of the word tyrant] frequently assumed names, titles and behaviour linking them with a particular deity, divine power or phenomenon. For example, a viceroy of the king of Persia was called a satrap, the rhapis, rod, of Set. Taranos imitated thunder as he drove about in his chariot. There is often a link with an electrical term, for example, the fire from the sky, ar, which survives in 'monarch', and in Greek arche, 'beginning' or 'rule'. Kings are known to have danced, especially before an object looking like a staircase, ziggurat or step pyramid, and David danced before the ark. Dancing was one of the king's duties. Etruscan and Latin speakers, hearing the Semitic word raqs, dance, adopted the word in the form regs, spelt rex, king. A place or thing was regarded by the Romans as sacer if it was associated with a divinity. Threshing floors and places such as Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 21: Kings 119 Es Sacra in Jerusalem, where the rock emerged from the ground, were holy, and some of them became places where kings danced and plays were performed. At first the king would dance to show that the deity was present, perhaps to impress by demonstrating that he was in touch with the god or goddess. As time passed without further catastrophes such as earthquakes and major electrical disturbances, the force ebbed away. The king's dance would then have another aim: to revive the failing god. One of the king's most important duties was to keep the god alive in his shrine. To build and maintain a temple such as that of Hestia in Athens, or of Vesta in Rome, containing fire, tended by Vestal Virgins or by a flamen, blower of the fire [flare is to blow], was a way of persuading a deity to make the temple its permanent home and to continue to protect the city or persons concerned. We have seen that Etruscan vacl, or vacil, means religious banquet. The v of vacl is interchangeable with b [Grimm's Law], and the Etruscan letter c may stand not only for k but also for something like the English s. A Greek basileus is a person who is basilens, feasting. Mayani, in his book The Etruscans Begin to Speak, quotes from an Albanian ballad by G. Fishta. Heroes defeat a monster, and feast on two fat stags in a celebratory banquet. Any animal that had horns ran the risk of being sacrificed as a symbol of an object in the sky with horns, regarded as a threat to the stability of the kosmos, celestial order. The general resort to sympathetic magic, for example by the Egyptians, who sacrificed red cattle because Typhon was red, since nothing else could be done, explains the willingness to spend huge sums on sacrifices, games and drama festivals. The Greek king, and the Etruscan or Roman noble, had to be prepared to sacrifice their own lives when necessary. King Kodros of Athens did so, as did Marcus Curtius when, to Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 21: Kings 120 appease divine anger, he rode into a chasm that had opened in the Roman forum. In Athens, and in other places in the ancient world, the king was replaced by officials. His duties were shared among officers such as the Athenian archons, of whom there were nine. The first was known as ho archon, the archon, the second as ho basileus, the king archon, in charge of public worship and criminal trials, the third as ho polemarchos, the war archon. The others were hoi thesmothetae, the lawmakers. A thesmos was an ordinance, enjoining the orderly and correct way of doing things, reflecting order in the cosmos. All archons had something of the divine authority of the basileus, and Homer refers to kings as diotrephees, of heavenly nurture, i.e. descent. They wore a crown, stephanos, as a badge of office, as did any official or individual who was performing a sacrifice. Greek arche means origin, beginning, and hence authority and rule. Ar appears in Etruscan, meaning divine fire, lightning. Arseverse, an inscription in Etruscan, is a prayer to Sethlans, a god who controlled lightning, to turn aside the fire. Latin severto means 'turn aside'. The Greek letter chi, which appears in arche, is probably related to the Hebrew qa, which appears in qadhosh, 'producing qa' and therefore holy. Greek stephanos is Set phanos, Set appearing, a manifestation of the god encircling the head, and applied to an object such as a bowl of wine. In his Timaeus, Plato associates the head with the divine fire. Among the most important officials in Athens was the prytanis. Tanuo means 'I stretch out'. His title is similar to that of the Etruscan tanasar. The poet Pindar refers to Zeus as prytanis of lightnings and thunderbolts. The title means 'he who holds out the fire', i.e. the hurler of lightning. The prytanis was one of fifty committee members of the boule, council. It is probable that his duties included tending the sacred fire of Hestia, the goddess of the hearth of the city. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 21: Kings 121 As a stoker, the prytanis was the earthly copy of the god in the sky who waved the brand to make it blaze, then hurled it. Such a deity was a theos. This word may mean 'he who puts the fire'. The Indo-European root detj, which appears in Russian, means to put. Another root found in Albanian is ve, to put.This is from an eastern, Caucasian, area, as are some other words which go back to Etruscan. When combined with the Slavonic root zhar, fire, we have the Latin serv-, servant. In this context, we may recall the slave boy, Servius Tullius, who became king. The king was the one who preserved the fire. Servo means save, servio means serve. The two verbs, superficially different, are basically the same. The king was the servant of the god, the preserver of the holy fire, who added fuel to it, and waved a brand to make it burst into flame. A flamen was a Roman priest, associated with the cult of an important person such as an emperor. Like the prytanis, he had to blow the flame. The genius of a Roman was a kind of guardian angel. Considering that the letter g is often a transliteration of a Semitic q, it seems possible that the genius has much in common with the Egyptian ka. The aim was that the genius, fire and life, of the head of state should not be extinguished. Emperor worship and the building of temples to Egyptian monarchs and the royal ka reveal the political importance of the priests. Another of our words is the Latin princeps, chief, chieftain, or prince, equivalent to the prytanis as referred to by the poet Pindar. The title is a combination of three words: pyr, in-, and capio. A prince captured the power of the fire. The Norse godi was a chieftain who had priestly powers, looked after a shrine and supervised the worship of its deity. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 21: Kings 122 ANOINTING A Greek king was distinguished from another kind of monarch or sole ruler, the turannos, tyrant, by the fact that he was the legitimate ruler. In Egypt kings were anointed by priests, and the Bible contains many references to the anointing of priests and of kings. The practice survives today in England. The king's right to the throne and sceptre [source and symbol of electrical divinity] had support that was both human and divine. An early reference to an anointing process is that of an Egyptian hieroglyphic text from Thebes, quoted by Budge in From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt, Arkana edition p.487ff. and 514. Horus embraced the dead Osiris, transferring to the body his own ka. When a king embraced a statue of a god, it is probable that the process was reversed, so that the king was hoping to receive divine life from the statue. In such a case, presumably the priest would have attempted beforehand to charge the statue, so that the sa-ankh could be transferred to the king. According to Mayani, Etruscan levacs is an anointer [Albanian ljej to smear], revealing a possible link with the Levites, who were entrusted with the management of the ark. The Sumerian King List mentions the exalted tiara and throne of kingship, which first came down to earth in Eridu. This celestial origin of the tiara is suggestive of the Greek stephanos, crown. For a king to be able to claim divine ancestry was of great help in the matter of securing loyalty and obedience. Furthermore, possible problems about the succession on a monarch's death could be forestalled. The legitimacy of the heir's claim to the throne would be supported by belief in divine parentage in the royal line. One technique employed for this end was incubation. According to Sumerian myth there was a sacred marriage between Dumuzi and Inanna. This may be connected with the story reported by Herodotus, that in Babylon, in the saharu, shrine, on top of the ziggurat, a chosen priestess would spend Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 21: Kings 123 the night with the king. Another example of a divine marriage is to be found in Athens, where, at the festival of the Anthesteria, there was a sacred marriage of Dionysus and the wife of the king archon. One factor in the phenomenon of the Minotaur in Crete may have been an attempt to achieve divine ancestry for the royal family at Knosos, but the killing of the Minotaur is more likely to be a magical attempt to remove a cosmic threat. Kings in Greece were very close to being heroes, in the specialised sense of the Greek hero. Heroes were demi-gods, having a divine parent. They were a step below daimons, and were a link between human and divine. The word 'hero', from the Greek, resembles the Hebrew heron, conception. Infants might be hidden in caves, to escape the wrath of a divine father, such as Saturn or Zeus. Kreousa hid her child Ion in a cave to escape her father's anger. Hermes took the infant Ion to Delphi, where he grew up and was eventually recognised by his mother. When Athene revealed the truth, Ion returned to Athens, where he became the ancestor of the Ionians. There were two sources for obtaining divine parentage: the sky, and the earth. The deity could take the form of lightning, or that of the force perceived in caves and among split rocks. The Etruscan trin, hero, may be tur, bull, Latin taurus, and Greek in-. THE ETRUSCAN zilch I have suggested in a previous work that the Etruscan zilch, or zilc, thought to be some kind of magistrate, is the seat-occupier, sedilouchos. -ouchos, in Greek, means 'holding', or 'possessing'. Sedile is Latin for a seat. If the zilc is the seat-occupier, he resembles the king and the Roman senators. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 21: Kings 124 He is sometimes qualified by an additional title, such as marunuch. The marunuch was probably an official who held a marun, whatever that may be. Reversed, the consonants of marun become nrm. Etruscan o and u are in many words interchangeable, so it is possible that marun is norma, which means canon, rule, measuring rod. I suggest that the marunuch was an official who carried a staff like that of the Roman senator. Assaracus was a king of Phrygia, an area where Indo-European and Semitic speaking peoples met, and therefore where confusion could easily arise over the direction of reading and writing, resulting in reversals, of which we have already seen some likely examples. Assaracus was son of Tros, and grandfather of Aeneas. Latin currus is a chariot, a vehicle in which a god stood or sat as he travelled through the sky. Arabic korsi is a chair. It is just possible that the name Assaracus, with its key letters src, is a reversal of the Semitic root krs. Princes took names that suggested that they were of divine origin, hoping thereby to increase their authority. Assaracus may have wished to be compared to, or related to, a god riding on a chariot. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 22: Sacred Birds 125 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO SACRED BIRDS In the ancient world, birds were studied because they were thought to reveal, by their behaviour, the will, intentions and future activity of the gods. In modern terms, they gave warning of imminent electrical storms and earthquakes. They are still observed today for this purpose in some parts of the world. The specialist bird watcher, the augur, was an adviser of the monarch and executive magistrates. The Roman augur did not just stay at Rome and warn about likely future happenings elsewhere. Senior magistrates and commanders could take the auspices, and sacred chickens were taken on campaigns. There was an occasion when a Roman admiral was dissatisfied when told of the reluctance of the chickens to eat their proffered food, a sign that the moment was unfavourable for the planned attack on the enemy fleet. He said: If they will not eat, let them drink! and ordered them to be thrown overboard to drown. This rash and impious act was regarded as the cause of the disastrous defeat that followed. A broad distinction can be made between two kinds of bird behaviour studied by the augur: 1: The flight and direction of the eagle and similar birds of prey. The eagle's swoop onto a snake was particularly significant because it symbolised what was thought to have happened in the sky in the past and might happen again in the future. 2: The behaviour, generally on the ground, of such birds as the quail and the hoopoe. The hoopoe gave warning when it detected changes in the atmosphere that heralded an electrical Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 22: Sacred Birds 126 storm. It detected earthquake light and piezoelectric charges on split rocks, in the ten or twelve hours before an earthquake. As in other branches of electrical theology, certain key words of the augur's technical vocabulary cross the usual frontier between Semitic and Indo-European. Hebrew oph, a collective noun meaning 'birds', is found in mopeth, omen. Bearing in mind that the Hebrew preposition m or min is 'from', we may conclude that the Hebrew conception of an omen was closely linked with the observation of birds. Teiresias, the Greek prophet who lived in Thebes, and who figures so prominently in the Oedipus Rex of Sophocles, had a hide, or bird observatory, oionoskopeion, outside the city. Thebes was a city with oriental links through its founder Kadmos. The fact that he and his wife turned into snakes may be a pointer to the meaning of his name, which suggests ka and the Greek demas, body. The Latin name aquila for an eagle points to Ugro-Finnish origins. The Hungarian kvil is light; kivilagit is to illuminate. Greek aigle is a ray. Greek aetos, eagle, resembles Hebrew ayit, bird of prey. The Norse orn, eagle, lived on top of the world tree Yggdrasil. A squirrel, named Ratatosk, carried messages between the eagle and the snake at the foot of the tree. Orn resembles Greek ornis, bird, and there is even a resemblance to the Hebrew or, light. The Slavonic orel is an eagle. The Stymphalian birds, whose elimination was one of the labours of Hercules, may have had electrical significance. Marshes, in which they lived, attracted lightning; Dionysus was Limnaios, 'of the marshes'. Sculptured eagles were used as lightning conductors on buildings, as at Delphi. Hebrew azniya is a kind of eagle. Reversed, this becomes ayin za. Ayin is an eye. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 22: Sacred Birds 127 The falcon was the lightning symbol of the Egyptians, and was associated with Horus. The object appearing in Egyptian art and hieroglyphics and called the utchat, or udjat, was the eye of Horus or of Ra. The osprey, a bird of prey like the eagle, was in Latin sanqualis. As with the eagle, the Romans watched its flight.The name may incorporate sankh; the radiation of the god was thought to give life. The buteo, falcon, was watched for its flight. The ibis, which had great skill in killing snakes, was associated with the god Thoth, who was equated with the Greek Hermes and was the Egyptian electrical god par excellence. Latin ardea is a heron. It was noted for the long crest on its head. Of the two elements of the word, ar is clearly the fire. Dea is rather less obvious, but Hebrew dea, knowledge, is an attractive possibility. Ardea was the name of an Etruscan city near Rome, capital of the Rutuli. The peacock was sacred to Juno. Its Latin name was pavo. Perhaps the pattern on its tail, resembling eyes, associated it with radiation. Its name resembles the Latin pavor, fear. The name of Juno's Greek counterpart, the goddess Hera, suggests fear. In Egyptian, her, hra, mean 'face; upon'. Herit means 'fear'. It is possible that Hera was originally thought of as the atmosphere surrounding the planet that the Romans called Jupiter. It was known that the peacock sheds its feathers from time to time. This may explain the hoplitodromos at Athens, a race by hoplites, armed soldiers, wearing nothing but helmets. The great significance of the goose may be due to the appearance of a heavenly body such as a comet, with wing-like protuberances. Aphrodite is portrayed riding on a goose. The goose has a long neck, and hisses like a snake. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 22: Sacred Birds 128 The owl was sacred to Athene. Its staring eyes suggested a pair of heavenly bodies, and its cry could remind the hearer of the Egyptian and Hebrew sacred sound iaaooei. The dove was the bird of Aphrodite, and represents the goddess in gentle form, in contrast to the eagle. The wry neck was used in the making of spells. It can produce a hiss like a snake, and owes its name to the wide angle through which it can turn its head, as if it were the Janus of the bird world. The cornix, crow, is mentioned by Horace as the prophet which, by its cries, foretells rain, cornix augur aquae. Vergil also mentions it in the same context, Georgic I:388. In Norse it is kraka. The Greek korax is a crow or raven, and the word can mean something strange and unexpected. Odin had two ravens, Hugin and Muninn. Huga is to meditate, muninn is to remember. Princes and army officers wore feathers on their headgear to suggest that they would strike their enemies as if with lightning. Minos is described as cristata casside pennis, with a crest of feathers on his helmet. It was also a practice of the Philistines to wear feathered headgear. An Etruscan link is likely. If the eagle was the chief of the birds symbolising the lightning god in the sky, the hoopoe was the chief of the birds that detected the electrical god in the earth. Its name, epops, beholder, indicates that it could see the earthquake light. [Japanese and American scientists are now studying such phenomena.] In the Birds of Aristophanes, a character says Quiet! The hoopoe is going to sing! A few moments later, the hoopoe begins its song. Probably the hoopoe is on stage and it is the hoopoe's crest that attracts attention. The Greek horan, to see, has a perfect tense opopa, sometimes used instead of the usual form heoraka. The hoopoe was the bird that saw, and there was a frieze of hoopoes at Knosos, the place of gnosis, getting to know. We have already seen that the Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 22: Sacred Birds 129 name of the hoopoe in The Birds is Tereus, a word that comes from the Greek tereo, I observe. The Hebrew for a hoopoe is dukhiphat. Duch is a Slavonic word meaning 'spirit'; phat is a Greek root meaning revelation, either by sound or by sight. The quail, ortyx, gives its name to an island: Ortygia is an old name for Delos. In Umbria, a district of Italy, the word angla, plural anglar, was used of birds that were watched for omens. There may be a link with the Latin angulus, corner. The point where a flight of birds would suddenly turn, all together, would be of great significance to the augur. The Umbrian word verfale, temple, may be from the Latin verb verto, turn. The place where birds turned could be thought to be the right place for a temple. This may be the explanation of a passage in the Etruscan Tables of Iguvium. Vide Mayani, The Etruscans Begin to Speak, p.371. This is not the only possibility. A bird was a messenger, Greek angelos, of the gods. We have already mentioned the Hebrew mopeth, omen, 'from the birds'. It is likely that there is a similar explanation of the important Greek word sophia. Sophia, usually translated as wisdom, means cleverness and natural aptitude, contrasted with mathesis, which means learning by inquiry. The adjective sophos was applied not only to humans but also, as for example by Xenophon, to animals. It is used to mean shrewd and wise in politics. Sophocles applies it to oionothetae, augurs, in his King Oedipus, l.484. The word can mean skilled in the sciences, cunning, and abstruse. In Wagner's opera Siegfried, the hero of that name has a conversation with a bird on his journey along the Rhine. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 23: Bolts 130 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE BOLTS The Greeks knew of two different kinds of thunderbolt, and Zeus is shown with each type. The ordinary one is shown in the hand of Zeus, with spikes projecting from either end. The design is similar to the pattern of iron filings on a piece of card when a bar magnet is put underneath. This makes it probable that it was copied from experiments with magnets and pieces of iron on Samothrace, a Greek island where mysteries were celebrated, which were described by the Roman poet Lucretius in his work on the nature of the universe, De Rerum Natura, VI:1044ff.: "It also happens that iron sometimes moves away from this stone, and is accustomed to flee and to follow it by turns. I saw iron at Samothrace jumping, and fragments of iron moving inside the bronze basin, when the Magnesian stone had been put underneath. The iron always seemed to wish to escape from the stone." The first kind of bolt was used by Zeus for short range work from a thundercloud hovering over an impious person whose wicked actions called out for punishment. It was also thought that it was sent as a general demonstration of power and as a reminder to mortals that they ought to behave properly. Bolts were frequently seen in marshy districts. The Greek word kypeiros is of Semitic origin and is the name of a marsh plant. It is possible that the Egyptian khu, soul, is present in the word. Anything suggestive of brilliant flashes of light was likely to be associated with lightning. Ovid speaks of the boar "fulmineo ore", with mouth [i.e. tusks] like a thunderbolt. [Fasti II:192.] Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 23: Bolts 131 It is possible that the Roman toga symbolised the clouds concealing the electrical deity who controls the lightning. The Di Involuti advised Jupiter on when to hurl the thunderbolt. Their name suggests that they were wrapped in cloud. The Egyptian ames, sceptre, is represented in a hieroglyph as almond shaped. This is the second type of thunderbolt. Greek amygdale, almond, may be a compound of ames, Gad [a name of Baal], and Al, or El, 'the sceptre of Baal, the god above'. Zeus can be seen holding a thunderbolt shaped like an almond, possibly a plasmoid. This would be the high -powered long range weapon. There may be a link between this kind of bolt and the planet Venus. AMMISADUQA The Ninsianna tablets give information about the apparent movements of the planet Venus. A recent study of them by Michael Reade, "The Ninsianna Tablets, a preliminary reconstruction", appears in Chronology and Catastrophism Review 1993 Volume XV. If we assume that ames, rod or sceptre, is the first part of the name Ammisaduqa, an explanation of the rest of the name becomes easier. Duq, or dug, suggests the Greek dokein, to appear. Could the name mean 'the appearance of the sceptre'? That the planet Venus should be referred to as a sceptre may seem strange, until we recall that Venus is often referred to as the 'hairy star'. Jubar stella, the star with a fiery mane, is the morning and evening star, i.e. the planet Venus. Observations of Venus as they are recorded in the tablets are concerned with the disappearance and appearance of the planet in its journey round the sun, as observed from the earth. Fear that it would not appear on time was one of the causes of the close study of the planet by so many civilisations. It was a good sign if it appeared punctually. It may be significant that the Greek dokein, to appear, is the word used to mean 'it seems good', or 'it was decided'. For Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 23: Bolts 132 example, it was a good sign when the priest succeeded in eliciting a spark or sound from a capacitor [ark]. It is an interesting coincidence that the reversal of dug resembles the German gut, good. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 24: The North 133 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR THE NORTH In ancient European literature, the north is associated with phenomena that may be the originals of what has been photographed recently from space. The phenomena described fall into two classes. The first is of those which were perceived and experienced as threats, the timing of whose arrival was calculated by seers who expected from past experience that a threatening object would reappear in the sky, probably the northern sky. Isaiah and Jeremiah are examples of such prophets. The second class is of phenomena which were more or less static and permanent, such as the poros or passage of Alkman, and the column or pillar of Plato's Republic. The Hebrew tsaphon, north, is the same root as tsapha, to watch. There are references in the Old Testament to prophets watching the skies, ready to give warning of approaching disaster. Egyptian meht means north. It is shown as a cross and a lotus flower. The Greek lotos is suggestive of el oth, god above, and sign. We have seen that in the Sanskrit padma, lotus, we may have pa, light, and demas, body. Demas is used in Greek of a living body, and may have some connection with Latin domus, house, which in its turn is related to the root thom, to speak. Egyptian meh is a tiara, like the Greek crown, stephanos, Set visible. The Greeks used for the north the terms arktos, a bear, and Boreas. Boreas was used especially of the north wind, and is the Kassite god Buriash. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 24: The North 134 Esh, ash, is a Semitic root meaning fire.The names Boreas and Buriash lead one to suspect that whatever was seen in the northern sky was thought of as the fire of Bor. One may speculate and suggest a link between Bor and the Latin verto, turn, alternative spelling vorto. The poli, heavens or poles, may have been thought of as a fire stick, with fire produced as Bor caused the axis of the heavens to turn. This is a variant of the widespread myths of the mill, with which a deity such as Saturn ground the salt that was generally believed to have reached the earth from the sky. Vide A.de Grazia, The Lately Tortured Earth, p.139f., Metron Publications, Princeton, 1983. Apollo was said to have come from the land of the Hyperboreans, a people whose name includes the word hyper, meaning beyond, or above. A connection with fire and light begins to emerge when we remember that the first fruits of the Hyperboreans were sent by relay, packed in straw, to the shrine of Apollo at Prasiae, and then taken by the Athenians to Delos, the island that was sacred to him as his birthplace. Whatever it was that constituted the first fruits of the Hyperboreans, the people who lived beyond, or above, Boreas, there is an interesting coincidence in the fact that the key letters of Prasiae, prs, if reversed, give the consonants of the Hebrew tsaraph, burn. The Greek poet Pindar writes: "But neither in ships nor on foot will you find the marvellous road to the agon of the Hyperboreans". [Pythian X:29] An agon is a contest, or a place, possibly in the sky, where contests may occur. When the Roman augur took up his lituus, and made movements with it in the air and down on the ground, he was transferring to the ground the pattern that he claimed to see in the sky, to mark the outline plan of a projected temple. A temple would be the main building round which the houses of the new city would be built. The Latin word urbs, city, may easily be an accident created by reading what is now the Slavonic word sobor the wrong way Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 24: The North 135 round. In modern Russian, sobor is a cathedral, or a synod. The Slavonic preposition 's' [written 'c' in Russian] means 'down from', or 'with'. Sobor, or sbor, could mean 'down from Bor'. The Arabic shemal, north, resembles the Hebrew sham, there, which occurs in shammayim, the 'there-waters', i.e. heaven. Hebrew tav, cross, may conceivably be related to Latin vates, stem vat-, prophet or seer. Latin arbor, tree, may be the fire, ar, of Bor, who is seen above, el, in the northern sky. His name may even be the poros referred to by Alkman. Arbor may have been Yggdrasil, the world tree. Yggd, frightful, is a name of Odin. Ross is a German word for horse, and might be translated 'steed'. Ill, or Il, is light. Hungarian kivilagit means to illuminate. The Illyrians may even have been the people of the great light, since the root ur means great. Perhaps Yggdrasil is the steed [means of travel], of the light of the frightener, or the light of the frightener's steed. The name of the actual horse of Odin was Sleipnir. In Greek myth, the father of Eros, love, was Poros, the passage to the sky. This suggests a link with Dionysus and Hermes. Hermes was the Greek equivalent of Thoth, and Dionysus was one of the deities who controlled the thunderbolt. The Greeks were aware of the connection between a deity of the thunderbolt and sexual passion. Tall trees such as the pine [Greek elate], the sycamore and the cypress may be associated with the poros. Greek hule means wood [as a material]. If reversed, hule becomes eluh, the final h being pronounced more like ch, as in the Scottish word loch. Egyptian ucha is a pillar. Hule, wood, is probably the tree of El, the divine pillar. The Latin insula, island, may be derived from in-, power or presence, and sul, a Celtic word and divine name, meaning column. A city may have been regarded as an island, copying what the augur claimed to see in the sky. Egyptian texts refer to Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 24: The North 136 the island of fire, where Horus sits on the throne of his father Osiris. Osiris had an iron throne. Words connected with the north are rich in reversals. Subura was a densely populated area of Rome near the forum, and is the Etruscan spur and Slavonic sobor, assembly. Reversed, these give the Latin for a city, urbs. Polis, Greek for city, may be a reversal of El and op-, the face of El. El opope would mean 'El has seen' or perhaps 'El has looked'. Reversed, it could be the Latin word populus, people, but this is becoming very speculative. The Latin word for the augur's curved rod, the lituus, is a reversal of the Latin utilis, useful. It was the augur's most useful, indeed essential, tool. The Greek halme, brine, is a reversal of Hebrew melach, salt. In Hebrew, yam is sea. Yam melach is the Dead Sea. Hebrew min, m, means 'from'. Melach, salt, may indicate that the Hebrews shared the general view held by the ancients that salt came from above. Latin sal, Greek hales or hals, could be 'from El'. One may compare with this the Greek and Latin mel, honey, which Vergil describes as caelestia, of heavenly origin [like manna]. A king, Hebrew melekh, has his powers from above. The ekh part of melekh may be more familiar in the form of the Greek echo, I have. A Greek prince is described by Homer as skeptouchos, he who holds the sceptre. Could a king, melekh, be 'he who has the honey'? The evidence in Greek myth for this interpretation is that the infant Zeus was fed by bees when hidden in a cave in Crete. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 25: Resurrection Techniques 137 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE RESURRECTION TECHNIQUES The techniques for resurrection fall into two main groups, that of collecting or summoning the electrical deity, and that of applying the electrical force. Sympathetic magic was used, and is the explanation of some of the actions. Much of the relevant material has been mentioned already, but in this chapter it may fit into a new pattern, and there are a few new details. The deity could be collected by charging a chest from the atmosphere. The chest or ark was constructed on the principle of the Leyden jar. Obviously the quickest and most dangerous charging would be at the time of an electrical storm. Egyptian art shows the god Osiris rising from a chest, holding an ankh in each hand, and a relief from Dendera shows technicians carrying a length of what appears to be striated cable, with pictures of snakes at the end to show that the god is present. A more symbolic method was that of enclosing a statue of Osiris in a length of hollow tree trunk, and raising the trunk until it was upright. I stand, sto, is closely related to zo, I live. The Egyptian practice of embalming must be included among techniques aimed at assisting the soul to continue to exist after death in a recognisable form. In Egypt, Osiris was the god on top of the staircase. Pyramids were fire-collectors; the aim was that a pharaoh buried in a pyramid should receive the full force of the electrical god. Burial in a tholos tomb or in a shaft grave at Mycenae would have the aim of bringing the dead person into contact with the deity in the earth, just as the burning of a corpse would have Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 25: Resurrection Techniques 138 the aim of aiding the soul in its flight to the region of heavenly fire. Eating the bull, drinking the blood of goats, and so on, were more a matter of obtaining superhuman strength than of obtaining immortality, but are worth mentioning because they are all part of the general effort to cross the limen, threshold, between our world and that of the spirits of the dead and of the gods. Ghosts recovered the strength to speak by drinking blood. Sanguis, blood, is basically the same as sanga and sankh. Greek haima, blood, is the same as Hebrew chaim, life. The dancing of the Arval brothers at Rome was associated with the renewal of life in the fields in the spring. It was presumably aimed at rousing the chthonic deities Cerus and Ceres, the deities of crops and vegetation. The dance of the Salii, the leaping priests of the Romans, was accompanied by a hymn. It contains the words Limen sali! Sta! Berber! Vile vale! Staile! Itrile! Vide Mayani, The Etruscans Begin to Speak, p.316. Anyone who has kept, say, a cat as a pet will know that the animal can communicate with its owner. If it is hungry, it will run purposefully and repeatedly to the place where its food is put down and look up, inviting one to imitate it and put down a plate of food. The Salian priests may have been doing just this kind of thing in their dance. The aim would be to persuade the Manes to appear and give advice and help. To do this the Manes would have to cross the limen, threshold. The Salii were showing the dead what they wanted them to do by leaping over an invisible threshold, stopping and looking backwards, returning and repeating the movements. The basic idea behind the verb salio, leap, is that of crossing. Hebrew shal is to transgress. It is noteworthy that representations of priestly dancers show them with the head turned, looking backwards. The painting of a tanasar in the Tomb of the Augurs at Tarquinia shows him at work. In front of him is a bird, perhaps symbolising a soul. His left palm is on top of his head, his right Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 25: Resurrection Techniques 139 hand is stretched out forwards. To understand this picture we have to examine the word tanasar. One of the difficulties in understanding Etruscan is that words are often run into one another, and it is hard to know how to separate them. In the case of the tanasar, it is two words, tanas, and ar. Ar we know is the divine fire that descends from the sky and strikes the ara, altar, and is also found in the head, as described by Plato in the Timaeus. We are left with the word tanas. In Etruscan, words are found ending in the letters -ac, for example frontac, thunderer; cf. Greek bronte, thunder. It is probable that we should regard the -ac as being -as; the letter c in Etruscan is sometimes to be pronounced as a k, sometimes as an s. The Lydian kupassis is a kind of shoe. Etruscan capesar is a shoemaker. Hungarian cipö is a shoe, cipész is a shoemaker. In Hungarian, the endings -as, -asz, and -esz indicate a performer of an action. Portas is a doorkeeper. Munka is work, munkas is a workman. I suggest that we see this phenomenon in the Etruscan tanas. Greek tanuo means stretch out. The tanasar is he who holds out the ar, sacred electrical fire, as he is shown doing in the picture from Tarquinia. There remains the question of why he holds the other hand on his head. The head was recognised as the electrical headquarters of the human body, as shown by the words kephale, katec and caput. The Etruscan katec is that which covers the ka, and the Latin caput is a well or source of ka, as was Pytho, as Delphi used to be called. The tanasar appears to be transferring electrical power from his head through his left hand so that he can direct it at the object with his right hand. The action is reminiscent of that of the Egyptian god Amen-Re as he holds out the ankh, symbol of life, to Psammetichus III. [From the temple of Osiris at Karnak] Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 25: Resurrection Techniques 140 Another example of the invisible force being directed at a person or object is that of Kheri-heb, who is shown holding his staff to the head of a statue. Vide Budge, From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt, p.33, Arkana edition. In the Tables of Iguvium, the Osco-Umbrian word purdouiti occurs, meaning to sacrifice. Mayani suggests that this is the Albanian pertetoj, to dedicate, to consecrate. Latin porrigere is to stretch out, to offer. This makes good sense with pyr, fire. It is tempting to speculate that the Greek word anthrop-, man, may originally have been santhrop-. A number of Greek words lost an initial s. Santhrop- could then have been a reversal of prytanis, the official who held out the fire. Humans were distinguished by their ability to imitate and even to manipulate the electrical god. In general, jerky movements were taken as a sign of life. The angular poses seen in Egyptian hieroglyphics for dancing support this idea; furthermore an electrical shock can cause convulsive movements. Libations were a method of rousing the dead. Greek spendo and Hittite spanza, libation, both show that radiation 'down from the five' was directed onto the grave. The Egyptian hieroglyph tebh is a vase containing an udjat, an eye as a symbol of radiation. Tebh means an offering, and is evidence that radiation was what the king directed onto the ground in the relief from Malatya. It is, moreover, noteworthy that when reversed, the word tebh resembles the Hebrew beith, house, and the Greek for a tripod cauldron, lebet-, which is the dwelling place of El. It is possible that the significance of mirrors, of which the Etruscans have left us so many, may be that a mirror gives the holder not only a reflection of his or her face, but also a degree of control over the direction of the divine radiation. The Egyptian un hra is a mirror. Hra means 'upon', or 'face'. Un, Uni are forms of the name of Juno. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 25: Resurrection Techniques 141 Singing was one of the methods of raising the ka, by sympathetic magic. 'Sing' may be related to Latin sancio and to sankh. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 26: Reversals 142 CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX REVERSALS The following words may be reversals caused by the meeting of peoples with different directions of writing, as could easily occur between Hebrew, Etruscan, Greek and Latin, with Etruscan territory well placed in Asia Minor and elsewhere to be the meeting place. This list is meant to be merely provisional and suggestive. No claim of certainty is made. Abbreviations: Akk., Akkadian Ar., Arabic Eg., Egyptian Etr., Etruscan Ger., German Gk., Greek Heb., Hebrew Lat., Latin Slav., Slavonic akra point, peak, Gk.; arca, chest, Lat. ames sceptre, Eg.; sema, sign, Gk. Anath Athene Anu Rav Great Anu; Varuna ar Ra ardeo burn, Lat.; drao, do, Gk. aresko please, Gk.; kasher, pleasing, right, Heb. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 26: Reversals 143 argos shining, Gk.; gora, mountain, Slav. ari lion, Heb.; ira, anger, Lat. aspid- shield, Gk.; dipas, cup, Mycenean Gk. Assaracus currus, chariot, Lat. balta axe, Arabic; dolabra, Lat. baradh hailstones, Heb.; thorubos, noise, Gk. beth house, Heb.; Thebes. bosheth shame, idol, Baal, Heb.; Teshub cepen priest, Etr.; Nephesh, spirit, Heb. charath engrave, Heb.; trachys, rough, Gk. cherebh hand, arm, Heb.; bracchium, arm, Lat. chets stechen, prick, Ger. chlamud- cloak of a Greek general; dhu melekh, hidden king.Gaelic dhu = dark, hidden, as in skean dhu,hidden dagger. Cf. sakin, knife, Heb. clava club, Lat.; pilakku, Akk.; pelekus, axe, Gk. cortina cauldron, power of the horns, Lat.; Tarquin cras tomorrow, Lat.; shark, east, Ar. Culsu an Etruscan god; sulcus, furrow, Lat.; -cello, strike, Lat. dabhar speak, Heb.; rabid-, raving, Lat. dam blood, Heb.; madere, to be wet, Lat. dolabra axe, Lat.; vladetj, to be powerful, Slav. Dolopes name of a people in Thessaly; peladha, iron, Heb. edher garment, splendour, Heb.; rete, net, Lat. falando sky, Etr.; tlabrys, axe, Gk.; dolabra, Lat. Farsi Persian; saraph, burn a corpse, Heb. garbh west, Ar.; vrag, enemy, Slav. gibor leader, hero, Heb.; robigo, redness, Lat. hebhel idol, nothingness, Heb.; levis, light, Latin hemisus half, Gk.; ims, Etr.; semi, Lat. Hermes Mercurius herit fear, Eg.; tru, Etr. hule wood, Gk.; el, Heb.; ucha, Eg., divine pillar. hulsna libation, Etr.; schlucken, drink, Ger. iacche a cry to Bacchus; chai, alive, Heb. irp wine, Eg.; vere, wine, Etr. keilaph hoe, axe, Heb.; pelekus, sacrificial axe, Gk. keneset church, Heb.; sancio, bring to life, Lat. kerata horns, Gk.; tark, bull, Etr. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 26: Reversals 144 labrys axe, Gk.; rabh al, great Al lahat flame, Heb.; thallo, sprout, flourish, Gk. limen harbour, Gk.; namal, harbour, Heb. lituus augur's rod; utilis, useful, Lat. logos word, Gk.; qol, Heb.; golos, voice, Slav. losk gleam, Etr.; luscus, one-eyed, Lat.; kashil, hoe, axe, Heb. Luz stulos, pillar, Gk. mare sea, Lat.; ram, high, Heb. marun staff, Etr.; norma, staff, measuring rod, Lat. mitra tiara, Gk.; ar, fire; time, honour, Gk. mors death, Lat. [stem mort-]; tromos, fear, Gk. naga snake, Sanskrit; agan, too much [hubris?], Gk. necht to be strong [picture of a man holding a stick; Budge, Egyptian Language p.45]; techne skill, Gk. nekros corpse, Gk.; or, light, kenos, empty nemeton grove, Celtic; temenos, shrine, Gk. nemmet slaughter block, Eg.; temno, cut, Gk. neter divine, Eg.; antron, cave, Gk., Retenu, Eg. pach metal plate, snare, danger, Heb.; in the plural, pachim, lightning; hap, to hide, Eg. patagos sound of striking, Gk.; kitab, writing, Ar. pelekus axe, Gr.; Peleg, Heb.; kolpe, a blow, Gk. pogon beard, Gk.; naghaph, smite, Heb.; pogonias aster is a bearded star, i.e. comet, Gk. Prasiae saraph, to burn, Heb. prezu tornado, Etr,; stirp-, tree trunk, Lat. qal swift, Heb.; alacer, swift, Lat. raqs dance, Ar.; sacer, sacred, Lat. rex king, Lat.; sacer rupes rock, crag, Lat.[stem rup-]; pyr, fire, Gk. Rutuli a Latin tribe; tur, bull, Etr. sakin knife, Heb.; nachush, bronze, Heb. schlafen sleep, Ger.; uples, sleep, Etr. sentra incense, Eg.; ar Thanasa, fire of Thanasa shemal north, Ar.; El ames, El's sceptre siu god, Hittite; vis, force, Gk. and Lat. subura assembly; urbs, city, Lat. taphar sew together, Heb.; rhapto, sew, Gk. thans life, Etr.; senatus, Lat.; Tanz, dance, Ger. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 26: Reversals 145 thumos high spirits, Gk.; Muth, spirit, courage, Ger. thura door, Gk.; ar uth, fire road, Etr.vates life, Lat.; ghiv, alive, Sanskrit Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 27: Glossary 146 CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN GLOSSARY It may be useful for the general reader to have a reminder of some features of Latin, Greek and Semitic languages. Final s may be a nominative singular ending in Latin and Greek. For our purpose the important part of, say, logos is simply log-, or even lg. Greek u can be transliterated as either u or y. P and f, b and v, may be interchanged [vide Grimm's Law]. Latin and Greek verbs often appear ending in o, e.g. audio, I hear, but an infinitive may be quoted, ending in -re, or -ein, e.g. audire, to hear, airein, to raise. In Hebrew, the endings -im and -oth indicate the plural, e.g. othoth, signs, mayim, waters. The letter c is pronounced in English sometimes like a k, sometimes like an s. This occurs also in Etruscan. The Greek letter kappa is sometimes transliterated as k, sometimes as c. The Slavonic hard L sounds more like a w. The Greek ending -eus, as in basileus, king, has a nasalised sound approaching n, as in modern Polish. The Latin present participle ends in -ens, e.g. regens, ruling, stem regent-, and in the case of a typical Greek verb, luo, I release, it is luon, stem luont-, so that the name of the Greek king Tereus can mean 'observing', or 'the observing one'. Zenos is a form of the genitive singular, meaning 'of Zeus'. The Semitic q is pronounced farther back than the English k. It was sometimes replaced by g in Latin and Greek, e.g. Hebrew qol, voice, Greek logos, word. Z can be ts, ds, sd or st, as in Hebrew zayin, the letter z, a weapon, Set's eye [ayin = eye]. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 27: Glossary 147 Onomatopoeia played a part. The rise and fall of the sound iaaooei imitates the sound made by the wind, and perhaps by an ark. The sound of the name Set, and of the Egyptian tcham, sceptre, suggests a spark. There are four or five words or roots that stand out for frequency of occurrence and as the keys to many important words. Ar: Etruscan for electrical fire, as in arseverse, 'turn aside the fire', a prayer to Sethlans which one might describe as a lightening conductor. Cf. arca, chest; har, mountain [where the fire often appeared]; haram, pyramid [fire collector]. Sanskrit aras means 'swift'. Ka: Egyptian for the double. Cf. Hebrew qadhosh, holy; Greek kairos, success in raising the ka; Latin caput, head, source of ka. Set: the Greek Typhon. Cf. Greek stephanos, crown, Set appearing; Etruscan zichne, Set's footprints, marks, e.g. writing. El, Al: Semitic for 'above', implying 'the god above'. Cf. elektron, amber, el ek thronou, god out of the seat. Is, in-, force or presence, is a Greek word that could be used in periphrasis when talking about a person, just like kara, 'head'. "Greetings, Oedipus!" might be expressed as "Greetings, head of Oedipus!" Latin cortina, cauldron, is 'power of the horns', in-, and kerata, horns. Cauldrons could be decorated with bulls' heads, and the one at Delos mooed, "...mugire adytis cortina reclusis," Aeneid III:92. In Hebrew, a short unstressed vowel, a shewa, is often sounded between two consonants for ease of pronunciation. The Greek stephanos, crown, is an example. It starts life as setephanos, Set revealing, or Set appearing, and ends up as stephanos. Metathesis, as in the Greek kratos or kartos, power, can be explained in this way. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 27: Glossary 148 GLOSSARY LIST almond Juergens and De Grazia have drawn attention to the resemblance of a thunderbolt in the hand of Zeus to a plasmoid. Greek amygdale, almond, may be Egyptian ames, sceptre; the hieroglyph is of an almond-shaped object. Gad is the name of Baal, the force above. The prophet Jeremiah,I:11, writes that he saw the rod of an almond tree. This is followed two verses later by his reference to a seething pot in the sky. The Greek for an emerald, smaragdos, suggests the sign, sema, of the fire, ar, of Gad. There was a temple in Tyre which was reported to have a column made of emerald. Sema, Greek for a sign, is probably the Hebrew shem, name. Sema is a reversal of the Egyptian ames, sceptre. Apollo At his temple at Delphi, the motto meden agan means 'nothing to excess'. Agan, 'too much', is a reversal of the Sanskrit naga, snake. The serpent in the sky went too high; the prophet Isaiah, XIV, rejoiced that it was brought low. Agenor, king of Phoenicia and father of Kadmos [who turned into a snake], has a name composed of agan, the snake, and or, a Phoenician word meaning 'light', or 'skin'. arrow In the Paradiso of Dante, God is said to shoot arrows to instil varied natures and gifts in humans. In Plato's Timaeus, 42e, gods, probably planets and stars, and not the demiurge, create human bodies and faculties. ball game In ancient China, 3rd. to 4th.century B.C., a ball game, Tsuchin, was played. It survives in similar form in Japan, where it is performed ceremonially by priests. At the start of the game the ball is held between two horns. bees The eating of honey may have been thought to give divine power; mead produces intoxication. The Cretan name of Phaeton is Adumnos. Greek hedus means sweet, menos is strength and high spirits. The buzzing of bees may have been Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 27: Glossary 149 compared to the sounds on a rocky mountain ridge warning that a lightning strike was imminent. Herodotus reports in Book V that the farther north one travelled, the more bees there were. belly The Greek gaster suggests ka, Set and ar. The word for treasure, gaza, applied by Vergil in Aeneid I:119 to the treasure lost in the shipwreck off Carthage, may be related. The most important treasures were the apparatus used for capturing and controlling the electrical god. This would be especially the case on the occasion of the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt, and perhaps that of the Trojans from Troy. De Grazia, in God's Fire: Moses and the Management of the Exodus, gives a full account of the apparatus and technique involved. bow The old spelling of the Latin arcus, bow, is arquus, fire of qu, or ka. Ariadne's bow or snake recalls Artemis, Apollo and the arrows that symbolise radiation, plague and sudden death from an electrical deity. Ceres An earth goddess responsible for crops. Her male equivalent, Cerus, is named in an inscription on an Etruscan pot: cerus in ceri pokolom. Poculum is Latin for a cup [for libation?]; pokol is Hungarian for hell, the underworld, home of departed spirits. Cerritus means out of one's mind, as does larvatus, which suggests larva, a word meaning ghost, and mask. The Etruscan mime, the tanasar, was an actor who might have worn a mask. cobra This word is said to have come via Portuguese from Latin coluber, snake. The hard L and the b-v link suggest that it may be the Albanian word kove, bucket. The Hebrew kobha, bucket, may be a Philistine word, the Philistines being associated with Illyria. Etruscan katek, head, and Albanian katoc, suggest ka and Latin tego, cover, protect. The skull was the cover for the ka, the fire in the head. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 27: Glossary 150 djed pillar This columnar structure, seen frequently in Egyptian reliefs, has been interpreted as the backbone of Osiris, as a symbol of stability. Standing upright was closely connected with life. There is a relief on the wall of the temple of Hathor at Dendera. It shows two attendants carrying what appears to be striated cable; nearby a djed pillar leans like the tower of Pisa. The snakes shown at the cable ends in what look like twentieth century thermionic valves indicate the presence of the electrical god, not stone slabs; stone slabs could not possibly be lifted or carried in the manner shown. The god is to be used to make the djed pillar stand upright. Etruscans They were Rasna. Lydian words could have had an initial t which disappeared, as with tlabrys, axe. Thus Rasna could be Trasna, Tiras, Tursha, and Trusci. They were Tursha to the Egyptians; the name Tiras occurs in Genesis X:2. eye Greek ophthalmos. Ophis is a snake. Thallo = sprout, flower. Greek kanthos, corner of the eye, is ka and anthos, a flower. The Greek auge is ray of light; German Auge is an eye. Greek baskaino is to direct the evil eye at someone, to fascinate and bewitch. The word appears to be a compound of fa, or ba, light, and the Semitic sakin, knife. In Latin, eye is lumen, oculus, acies. Hebrew ayin is an eye; cf. Greek ainos, terrible. fear Latin pavor = fear; pavo is a peacock, sacred to Juno. Hera may be atmosphere or radiance around Zeus. The bird's sensational display of plumage, with a pattern of what look like eyes, may have suggested a celestial phenomenon. flesh Greek kreas. It may be 'flow of ka', implying creation, Latin creo or cereo. Another Greek word for flesh is sarx, sark- . Latin caro, carn-, means flesh. fool In old Norse, skir means wise, or innocent. It may appear in the name of the Cumbrian village of Skirwith. The holy fool Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 27: Glossary 151 was an important figure in Russia, and appears in the opera Boris Godunov. In Hebrew, Kesil means fool, impious, and Orion. Kesil and Khima are mentioned together in the book of Amos. Khima is equated with Saturn. In the Iliad, XXI:410, the war god Ares is a fool; Athene hits him on the neck with a rock. In line 401 it appears that the aegis of Athene is more powerful than the thunderbolt of Zeus. Kesil, a fool, impious, means in the plural the constellation of Orion. There is a parallel with Parsifal, the young innocent, who in Wagner's opera starts as a hunter. He shoots a swan, an act which a Greek might possibly have interpreted as hostility towards Aphrodite, who is associated with birds. Orion was a great hunter, whose dog was Sirius, the dog star. The Greek for 'fool' is moros. It is possible that the word is Semitic m, from, and or, light. Or- is also Greek for a mountain. We have seen that kings, for example Minos, made a practice of visiting shrines on mountain tops. It may be that exposure to electrical storms and priestly experiments on altars could result in mental disturbances such as epilepsy, the sacred disease [electrical in origin], and amnesia such as afflicted the Lotus Eaters in the Odyssey. glory Latin gloria. Sumerian gal = great; Hebrew or = light. Greek or- is a mountain, megal- means 'great'. Great light? hearth Greek eschara. Cf. Hebrew esh, fire, and Greek chara, grace and beauty. The eschara was a sunken hearth. honey Greek meli, Latin mel. It was of celestial origin; Vergil refers to caelestia mella, honey from the sky. The infant Zeus was attended by bees. Hebrew melekh is a king. Was a king fed on honey? Vergil writes in Georgic IV that bees come from the body of a dead ox. There is a possible link here with the head and horns of a comet at a time such as that of the Exodus and the fimbulvetr, when manna descended as food for survivors. In Persia it was called 'honey rain'. When Zeus put bonds round Kronos, Kronos was drunk with honey. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 27: Glossary 152 Isis A Greek inscription on the island of Andros reads: "I am Isis....I prescribe the course of the sun and moon." lamp Greek lampo = shine. Latin lambo = lick. Snakes gave divine help to the sick by licking wounds etc. The snake's tongue symbolised a lightning stroke. lap of the gods The Homeric phrase "tauta theon en gounesi keitai", these things lie in the lap of the gods, may refer to the apparent tendency of objects in the sky to reproduce or to eject material, afflicting the earth with, for example, stone showers, radiation, mutations and sudden death. The usual explanation is that it refers to the holding of the thread of life, or wool, for Atropos to cut with the 'abhorred shears'. But death of a person was not the only thing that depended on the gods. Much depended in the mind of the ancients on the arrival or departure, presence or absence, of objects in the sky, especially new arrivals. Much depended, too, on the power of heroes who had divine ancestry, on divine inspiration and on radiation. libation As well as the Malatya relief which shows a god holding his thunderbolt over the cup at a libation ceremony, there is a reference to libation in the Book of the Dead which is amenable to an electrical interpretation: Thoth dwells within his hidden places and performs the ceremonies of libation unto the god who reckoneth millions of years, and he maketh a way through the firmament." [Budge's translation, p.392] magh Hebrew for a Persian priest. Cf. Latin magnus, great. The Sibyl became maior videri, bigger in appearance, as the god Apollo inspired her. manna Egyptian bener, sweet, may be related to the Latin Venus, Vener-. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 27: Glossary 153 mouse Greek mus, sminthos. Smintheus was one of the epithets of Apollo. Augurs watched birds, mice and snakes. 'Mystery' was mouse-watching. Smintheus may contain the Greek word sema, sign. 'Sign of the god's presence'? net Greek diktys, Latin rete. The Great Net is called Anqet, The Clincher; Budge, Book of the Dead, p.515, Arkana. Augurs wore a net-like garment. Hutchinson, Prehistoric Crete p.337, notes the net-like treatment of the lion's mane on some Cretan shields, with possible eastern connections. Cf. the Roman retiarius, who had a net and a trident, matched with a swordsman in the gladiatorial games. There is a possible link with Perseus, the swordsman like Ares or Mars, and Medusa, the Powerful One, who may represent Aphrodite. Odin One of his epithets was 'the long-bearded one'. His beard may have been compared to the tail of a comet. pelor Greek, a monster. Pel = cave; Hebrew or = light. popoi A Dryopian word meaning 'gods'. Used by Cassandra in the Agamemnon of Aeschylus, when about to prophesy. rite Latin ritus. Etruscan ri = fresh. A rite is a renewal, as at the Babylonian festival of Akitu, New Year. sea Latin mare. Hebrew ram, high, becomes mar when reversed. Okeanos, Uginna, was originally up in the sky, the 'there-waters'. Hebrew sham = there; mayim = waters. study Set audire, Latin, means 'to hear Set'. Studium is zeal. Concentration would be needed to hear faint electrical sounds, such as sparks, from the ark, hence the priest's call for silence. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 27: Glossary 154 thigh The constellation of the Great Bear was named by the Egyptians 'The Thigh'. It was described as being in the northern heaven in the Great Lake. It was also named Mesekhti, and was described as having a bull's head. The Book of the Dead [Tr.Budge, Arkana p.409] refers to the water flood which is over the thigh of the goddess Nut at the staircase of the god Sebaku. The bull is described as enveloped in turquoise [Budge, op.cit. p.333]. thing The Greek chrema, thing, may be a flow of ka. Creation may have been thought of as a flow of ka, as the unseen god became visible. Greek rheo = flow. The phenomenon would have been helpful to Plato in his formulation of a theory to account for the power and influence from an invisible realm. thunderbolt Pliny distinguishes three kinds of bolt: those that are sicca, dry, and do not burn but dissipant; those that do not burn but blacken, infuscant; and the clear bolt, clarum fulmen, of remarkable nature, by which jars are emptied with the lids untouched and no other trace left. Gold and silver are liquified inside, but the bags themselves are in no way singed, and not even the wax labels are melted. This appears to be the same phenomenon that has occasionally been reported in recent times, and sometimes described, misleadingly, as spontaneous combustion. tripod As well as being a suitable support for a cauldron imitating an object in the sky, a tripod could imitate the apparatus used for obtaining a display from an ark. Two terminals would be needed, plus some kind of adjustable rod, making a total of three pieces of apparatus. It may even be relevant to note that a basic feature of electronic circuits in the twentieth century A.D. has been the trio of anode, cathode and grid, and, in the case of the transistor, base, collector and emitter. Q-CD vol. 13, A Fire Not Blown, Ch. 27: Glossary 155 west Arabic garbh. Reversed, the consonants become bhrg, or vrg [bh = v]. Slavonic vrag is an enemy. In augury, the west and northwest were the directions from which there was danger. wild bull In Crete, the word was bolynthos. Greek lyssa is madness, bous is an ox. wizard Greek goetes. This might be ka and at, Etruscan and Albanian for father, implying authority and source. Russian otets, pronounced [approximately] atyets, is a father. Cf. the Egyptian ut in utchat, or udjat. writing Etruscan zichne means tracks of Set. German zeichnen means to mark or draw. Greek grapho is likely to be ka and rhapis, rod. In Hindi, nagari is a set of scripts of Indian languages, including the divine script Devanagari. Deva means 'divine'. Naga, in Sanskrit, is a serpent, also a member of a race of semi-divine creatures, half human, half snake. The Greeks were familiar with these ideas; cf. Kadmos and Harmonia at Thebes, and the legendary first king of Attica, Kekrops. ========== End of Fire Not Blown... ========== Home