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CHAPTER 6 

THE AGE OF HEROES 

The Eighth Century BC. 

There was a point in the histories of all ancient peoples when the
purely mythical epoch, the age of the gods, came to an end. After
this, history proper, as we would understand it, began; But it began
only very gradually, and there was a prolonged period in which the
gods interacted with men, when, as the Bible describes it, the sons of
God consorted with the daughters of men. The fruit of these unions
were neither gods nor men, but demigods; beings of lesser stature than
the gods themselves, but infinitely superior to ordinary mortals.
These were the heroes; and their epoch is commonly termed the Heroic
Age.

The hero-demigods of old Ireland, Cuchulainn, Fionn and their
companions, as well as those of Britain, Arthur and his knights,
belong to this final generation of divine beings. Such characters, we
shall see, like Hercules of Greece, were essentially planetary
deities, yet by this stage they had become thoroughly
anthropomorphised, and, although still capable of titanic feats, took
on the dimensions at least of ordinary mortals. How much of their
nature was divine; and how much human? This is a question that has
long exercised the minds of men;

"Were Conchobar and his Ulster champions, Fionn and his Fianna, Arthur
and his Knights once living men round whom the attributes of gods have
gathered or were they ancient deities renamed and stripped of some of
their divinity to make them more akin to their human worshippers?
History or mythology? A mingling, perhaps, of both. Cuchulainn may
have been the name of a real Gaelic warrior, however suspiciously he
may resemble the sun god [Lugos] who is said to have been his father
... It is the same problem that confronts us in dealing with the
heroic legends of Greece and Rome. Were Achilles, Agamemnon, Odysseus,
Paris, Aeneas gods, demigods, or men? Let us call them all alike -
whether they are Greek or Trojan heroes, Red Branch Champions or
followers of the Gaelic Fionn or the British Arthur - demigods. Even
so, they stand definitely apart from the older gods who were greater
than they were."[4]1

As we have said, it is normally assumed that different ancient
cultures experienced their Heroic Age at different times and in
different epochs. This is due to the fact that the interpretation of
myth hitherto holding sway (whether for example that of James Frazer,
Robert Graves or Joseph Campbell) bears little or no relationship to
our interpretation. Whereas we suggest that myths largely represent a
human reaction to cataclysmic events of nature that occurred at a
specific time in the past, these other writers would see the
perennial, day to day concerns which still affect us all (the seasons,
birth, death, reproduction etc) as the major source. Yet such
interpretations, we repeat, can only be adhered to by ignoring most of
what the myths tell us in very graphic terms.

If then cosmic catastrophes in the heavens are the primary source of
myth, and if these events came to an end in the eighth century BC., as
we maintain, this would suggest that the Heroic Age, the age that
brought the strictly mythological epoch to an end, occurred everywhere
in the eighth century BC.: And that after this time, in lands that
were fully literate, the age of history, properly speaking, began.

Is this the case?

The facts speak for themselves. Evidence from many lands suggests that
the eighth century BC. was a crucial period for mankind. Many nations
traced the beginnings of their history, and also of their calendar, to
that period, whilst some held that no accurate history preceding the
8^th/7^th century existed. This was the epoch that saw the emergence
of historical consciousness. Before that, both in the orient and the
occident, there is only myth and legend. In the words of one eminent
historian;

"It is a strange fact, and one that appears never to have been given
the attention it deserves, that the strictly 'historical' period ...
stretches back exactly to the sixth [we would say seventh] century
before the Christian era, as though there were at that point a barrier
in time impossible to surmount by the methods of investigation at the
disposal of ordinary research. Indeed, from this time onwards there is
everywhere a well-established chronology, whereas for all that occurs
prior to it only very vague approximations are as a rule obtained, and
the dates suggested for the same events often vary by several
centuries."[5]2

Everywhere there is the suggestion that immediately prior to this
period unusual events of nature terminated the Age of Bronze and
launched the Age of Iron. A few examples should illustrate the point.

It was near the middle of the 8th century, according to modern
archaeology, that the Etruscans established themselves in north and
central Italy.[6]3 Herodotus informs us that the Etruscans had
originated in Lydia, in Asia Minor, and had left their home in the
wake of a disastrous famine.[7]4 The great city of Rome, situated at
the southern end of Etruria, was founded in the 8th century,[8]5
apparently by refugees arriving from the sacked city of Troy.
Migration precipitated by natural disasters led to warfare, but Troy
was apparently destroyed not by armies, but by a powerful earthquake.
This is suggested by Virgil, where he has a goddess remember the
city's destruction thus;

"There, you see masses of masonry scattered, stones wrenched from
stones, and smoke and dust billow upwards together, there Neptune
himself is at work shattering the walls and the foundations dislodged
by his mighty trident, and tearing the whole city from its site."[9]6

Neptune was the Roman name for Poseidon, whom the Greeks called
"Earthshaker" and who was symbolised by a horse. When Troy was finally
excavated it was discovered, much to everyone's surprise, that the
greatest stage of the town, Troy VI, had been destroyed by a massive
earthquake.

If Troy was wrecked by an earthquake in the 8th century, then perhaps
we also have an answer to the question of why the river Scamander
changed its course and threatened to drown the Greek hero
Achilles.[10]7 Indeed the story of Achilles' battle with the Scamander
is very reminiscent of the accounts of "erupting" rivers given in the
Irish traditions.

Immanuel Velikovsky pointed out that the battles between the gods
recounted by Homer in the Iliad referred quite simply to catastrophic
events in the skies at the time. Throughout the story we hear of
clashes between Ares (Mars) and his arch-enemy Athena (the great
comet), and these, Velikovsky insisted, were part of the upheavals in
the skies that led to disasters on earth.

But of course the Greek Heroic Age, or, as it is now sometimes
designated, the Mycenaean epoch, is normally placed in the 15th, 14th
and 13^th centuries BC. How do we reconcile this with an 8^th century
date? It is impossible at this stage to go into a detailed discussion
of Greek chronology, or to explain how and why it was erroneously
reconstructed. Suffice for the moment to state that those nations of
the Near East, such as Greece, Egypt, and Babylonia, which are said to
possess histories long predating the eighth century, in reality
possess no such thing, and these phantom "histories" are based on a
series of monumental errors committed by the archaeologists of the
19^th century. Some of the evidence relating to Egypt's chronology
will be examined in the final chapter; here we shall take an extremely
brief look at some of the abundant evidence showing the necessity for
a dramatic reduction in the date of the Greek Mycenaean/Heroic Age .
We need, for example, only look at the various circumstances
surrounding the Trojan War. This event is "traditionally" dated to
1184 BC., on the strength of an absurdly high estimate of 40 years for
a generation. Yet we are told that Aeneas the Trojan hero put in at
Carthage on his way westwards to find a new home in Italy. Carthage,
however, was not, by general consent, established until the middle of
the 8th century. King Midas, an 8^th century monarch of Phrygia, was a
contemporary of the Trojan Campaign, and the Phoenicians, who mastered
the seas in the 9^th and 8^th centuries, were powerful allies of the
Trojans.

Traditions surrounding the Olympic Games tell the same story. The
Greeks dated the beginning of history proper, historikon, from the
foundation of the Olympiads. Prior to that was mythikon, the age of
myths, and it is generally agreed that the Games were founded in the
eighth century, in the year 776 BC. to be precise. Yet Homer tells us
that heroes who fought at Troy took part in the Games. Again, it was
said that the Olympiads had been established by Hercules, well before
the commencement of the Trojan Campaign. As we shall see towards the
end of the present chapter, various ancient peoples, including the
Romans and the Irish, also had their "olympiads", and these were
invariably linked to a great event involving the god Mars. Thus it was
said that shortly after the founding of Rome, Romulus established the
Equiria, a gymnastics festival, in honour of Mars.[11]8 In the same
way, the Irish celebrated a gymnastics festival, the Aonach Tailteann,
or Tailton Games, in honour of the god Lugh/Lugos, whilst some have
argued that an analogous event also took place in Britain in the
vicinity of Stonehenge. The Irish event, celebrated every August,
included horse and foot races, wrestling and other types of combat,
and there is strong evidence that it was held in honour of Hermes, the
god of wisdom, and Mars, the war god.[12]9

Now Hercules, according to a number of ancient sources, was the god
Mars, and evidence would seem to suggest that the almost universal
custom of having martial games in honour of Mars commemorates some
form of cosmic event in the 8th century BC. As we have seen, Hercules
was the dragon-slayer par excellence. He it was who battled the
serpent-tailed Triton, and slew the serpent-headed Hydra. Velikovsky's
hypothesis was that sometime early in the 8th century BC. Mars had
crossed the path of the serpent-tailed comet, diverting it away from
the earth, and saving our planet from destruction. Here the name
Hercules is significant, for it apparently means "Glory of Hera". Hera
of course was Mother Earth.

It is evident then that the martial games honouring Mars were intended
to celebrate this god's decapitation or destruction of the Cosmic
Serpent.

Hercules performed Twelve Labours, and it is clear that these
represented the signs of the zodiac, or the months of the year. In
performing his labours, it seems that Hercules/Mars was establishing a
new calendar: and in fact, as we have seen, the ancients looked on
Hercules as a god of learning. Velikovsky explained the calendar
changes of the 8th century as a direct result of near-collisions
between the earth and other cosmic bodies at that time.

The Chronicles of Britain and Ireland

During the early middle ages a whole mass of literature, both in
Britain and Ireland, but more especially in Ireland, claimed to tell
the history of the kings, champions and wise men of these islands many
centuries into the pre-Christian past. There is no doubt that the
Irish, in paticular, possessed a vast literature dating back to the
very first years of the Christian era and perhaps even before. Many of
the medieval texts preserved phrases and words which were obscure and
obsolete even then, which the medieval transcribers felt obliged to
explain to their own readers. A large number of books, said to be
written in Druid times, are named as the source of the information
appearing in the medieval chronicles; and there is in fact very good
evidence to suggest that the Druids did possess a substantial written
literature. The Spaniard Ethicus of Istria, for example (4^th century
AD.), was said to have travelled to Ireland, where he spent some time
"examining their volumes", whilst we are told that Saint Patrick
condemned and burned 180 volumes of the Druid lore.

The substantial histories of pre-Christian Ireland, and to a lesser
extent Britain, provided by the medieval chroniclers, are said to have
been either derived from or directly copied from these Druid texts;
and it is evident that the vast amount of information relating to
pagan times, with for example very accurate descriptions of the Celtic
gods and heroes, as well as knowledge of pre-Christian festivals and
the Ogam script, would suggest that the monks did indeed copy huge
amounts directly from texts of pagan date. But is this sufficient
reason to give credence to the pre-Christian histories also provided
by the medieval writers, which, in the case of Ireland, trace the
story of the Gaelic High Kings (the "Milesians" or children of Mil
Espaine) back roughly thirty-five generations into the pre-Christian
past? Unfortunately, it seems that we must exercise the greatest
caution in this regard.

It is beyond question that during the early centuries of the Christian
era there was an attempt, both in Britain and Ireland, to turn the
native gods, held in high esteem by the great mass of the people,
first into Christian saints, and, at a later stage, into ordinary
kings and leaders. In the words of one authority,

"It was the policy of the first Christianisers of Ireland to describe
the loved heroes of their still half-heathen flocks as having handed
in their submission to the new creed. The tales about Cochobar and
Cuchulainn were amended to prove that those very pagan personages had
been miraculously brought to accept the gospel at last ... Daring
attempts were made to change the Tuatha De Danann from pagan gods into
Christian saints ... Brigit, the goddess of fire, poetry and the
hearth, is famous today as St Bridget or Bride."[13]10

Precisely the same process is observed in Britain, where St Alban, for
example, promoted as the first Christian martyr of Britain, is fairly
obviously Albion, the eponymous hero-deity of the land. At a later
stage, however, in both islands, it was deemed that the acceptance of
the new saints was, "not sufficiently general to do away with other
means of counteracting the still living influence of the pantheon of
Gaelic [and British] gods."[14]11 The solution was drastic. A fresh
school of euhemerists,

" ... arose to prove that the gods were never even saints but merely
wordly men who had once lived and ruled in Erin. Learned monks worked
hard to construct a history of Ireland from the Flood downwards. An
amazing genealogy, compiled by Eugene O'Curry from the various
pedigrees the monks elaborated and inserted into the Books of
Ballymote, Lecan and Leinster, shows how not merely the Tuatha De
Danann but also the Fir Bholgs, the Fomorii, the Sons of Mil Espaine
and the races of Partholon and Nemedh were descended from Noah.
Japhet, the patriarch's son, was the father of Magog from whom came
two lines, the first being the sons of Mil Espaine, while the second
branched out into all the other races."[15]12

We see precisely the same process clearly at work in Geoffrey's
History of the Kings of Britain, where well-known deities like
Corineus (Cernunnos), Lud, Lear, Belinus, and Brennus, as well as
Arthur, are made into early kings and provided with reign lengths and
exact chronologies. In Ireland, a whole history of the island,
comprised mainly (or perhaps entirely) of euhemerised gods, and taking
us back to the very dawn of creation, was provided by the medieval
monks.

"Having once worked the gods first into universal history and then
into the history of Ireland [and Britain], it was an easy matter to
supply them with dates of birth and death, local habitations and
places of burial. We are told with precision exactly how long Nuada,
the Daghda, Lugh and the others reigned at Tara. The barrows of the
Boyne provided them with comfortable tombs. Their enemies, the
Fomorii, became real invaders who were beaten in real battles. Thus it
was thought to make plain prose of their gods."[16]13

It is clear then that if we wish to use any of the material contained
in the pre-Christian "histories", we must proceed with the greatest
caution. The euhemerisers, we saw, provided precise dates in the early
Christian era for Cuchulainn and his associates, and for Fionn
MacCumhaill and his. Yet these characters, we have demonstated, were
gods and demigods of the Heroic Age, an age we have fairly precisely
located in the early first millennium BC., in the eighth century,
roughly. Nevertheless, there exists some evidence to suggest that
elements of the chronicles purporting to deal with the pre-Christian
epoch are genuine.

Two factors are here worthy of note. The claim a Spanish origin for
the Gaels, and the insistence that their settlement in Ireland took
place amidst mighty upheavals of nature.

The Irish traditions were very consistent in their claims that when
the children of Milesius arrived the land was beset by "eruptions"
(Irish tomaidhm). These "eruptions", evidently powerful earthquakes,
changed the courses of rivers, made lakes both appear and disappear
overnight, and caused irruptions of the sea, in the form of great
tidal waves. Such events, if they occur during the actual settlement,
are accredited to the magical powers of the Tuatha De Danann, who,
notwithstanding the attempts of Christian chroniclers to make them
into mortal men, nevertheless retained some of their supernatural
powers. Often however the eruptions are not interpreted mythically,
but recorded as simple facts. Consider for example a typical entry in
"The Annals of the Four Masters", recounting events in the second year
of the reign of Eremon, Ireland's supposed first Gaelic High King:

"The Age of the World, 3503. The second year of the reign of Eremhon
over Ireland. Amergin Gluingeal, son of Milidh, fell in the battle of
Biletineadh this year by Eremhon. The eruption of the nine Brosnachs,
ie. rivers of Eile; of the nine Righes, ie. rivers of Leinster; and of
the three Uinsionns of Hy-Oiliolla."[17]14

Similarly, in Keating we find:

"The fourteenth year after the death of Eibhear, Eiremhon died at
Airgeadros at Raith Beitheach, beside the Feoir, and there he was
buried. The same year the river called the Eithne burst over land in
Ui Neill; and the river called the Freaghobhal burst over land between
Dal nAruide and Dal Riada."[18]15

Modern scholarship is of course at a loss to explain such statements.
The majority of commentators simply ignore them. When they are
mentioned it is normally briefly, and the suggestion is made that they
represent somewhat exaggerated accounts of ancient river floods.
However, the rivers "erupted", they did not merely overflow. Nor do
flooding rivers explain the sudden appearance and disappearance of
lakes recounted in the same passages; nor indeed the mass irruptions
of the sea.

Support for the view that these medieval Irish traditions are derived
from the deepest antiquity is provided by the fact that Gallic myths
and legends, as recorded by Roman writers, speak of more or less the
same things. It is in fact evident that Continental Celtic mythology
laid great stress upon nature's destructive forces. As in the Irish
accounts, these are generally identified as catastrophes of earthquake
and flood, and they precipitated migrations. In a famous passage of
Ammianus Marcellinus, where he quotes Timagenes, we read:

"According to ancient druidic teachings, the population of Gaul is
only partly indigenous, and expanded at various times to include
foreigners from across the sea, and people from beyond the Rhine who
had to leave their homes either because of the hardships of war, a
constant problem in those countries, or because of the invasion of the
fiery element that roars on their coasts."[19]16

What, we may ask, was the "fiery element" that roared on the sea? Did
the Druids here refer to tidal waves or fiery disturbances in the
skies? Notably, disturbances in nature are here linked to tribal
migration, an element in Celtic tradition that we encounter with great
frequency.

The Cimbri were one of the most renowned tribes of ancient Europe,
with an identity partly Celtic and partly Germanic. They too had a
legend, alluded to by Strabo, of forced migration caused by the action
of the sea:

"How are we to suppose that the Cimbri were driven from their original
homeland by a high tide in the ocean when we now see them today living
in those same places? ... Is it not absurd to suppose that a whole
people could be driven from their homes by resentment against a
natural and continual phenomenon which recurs twice a day? In any
case, this extraordinary tide appears wholly fictitious. since
variations in the level of ocean tides are quite regular and
seasonal."[20]17

Indeed the ocean tides are quite regular and seasonal, and it is just
this fact that gives credence to the Cimbrian legend: for the Cimbri
must have been well aware of the normal behaviour of the tides, and
they could scarcely have invented such a ridiculous story had the
events recounted by them not been extraordinary. Continuing in his
sceptical tone, Strabo exclaims:

"Neither do I believe ... that the Cimbri brandish their weapons at
the mounting waves to drive them back, nor, as Ephorus says of the
Celts or Gauls, that they train themselves to fear nothing by calmly
watching the sea destroy their homes, which they later rebuild, and
that floods have claimed more victims among them than war."[21]18

A strong hint that these destructive waves from the sea were far from
being normal tide-action or storms, is provided by Aristotle, who
specifically links them with earthquakes. Speaking of human courage,
he muses, "When one goes to the extent of fearing neither earthquake
nor rising waves, as the Celts claim to do ..."[22]19

Like their Irish and continental counterparts, the bards of Wales
emphasised the terrible fury of the sea in an age long past: And here
too, tribal migration is one of its results. Thus in the Triads of
Britain we read:

"The third invasion of [of Britain] was that of the men of Galedin who
sailed in ships without masts or rigging to the isle of Gweith [Isle
of Wight] when their country was flooded."[23]20

The men of Galedin were almost certainly the Gauls - Galatae - and
this invasion must refer to the mass migration of Celtic-speaking
Gauls to Britain. Of great interest is the fact that the various
Gallic immigrations into Britain are recalled in medieval literature
as having been led by Hercules, as indeed is the immigration of the
Gaels into Ireland from Spain.

Whilst these other Celtic sources do provide some corroboration for
the Irish chronicles, it must be again stressed that most of what they
say can probably have no basis in history. The memory of mighty
irruptions of the sea and the overspilling of lakes would have been
too traumatic to be erased from the national consciousness: Yet the
detailed life-stories of generations of High Kings can only be seen as
largely if not entirely spurious. Having said that, there are
tantalising hints that some of the events recounted may be partly
historical. For many of the early High Kings, who are supposed to have
reigned during the disasters, are regarded as Sage Kings; and in this
regard their characters parallel the early kings and lawgivers of
other cultures and civilisations far removed from Ireland. And
secondly, the cataclysmic eruptions, say the chronicles, die away in
intensity and frequency as the centuries pass. This is a detail of
great importance.

Ireland, it is said, saw its worst natural disaster during the reign
of Tighernmus, a character reviled by Christian commentators as a
practioner of human sacrifice, who is supposed to have reigned a
couple of centuries after the intial settlement of the Gaels.
Nevertheless, from this point onwards, the "eruptions" begin to be
reported less and less. Indeed, only a few generations afterwards, we
hear the last of them. This was during the funeral of the High King
Melghe Molbhthach. "When his grave was digging," we are told, "Loch
Melghe burst over the land in Cairbre, so that it was named from
him."[24]21 If the chronology provided in the annals is correct (which
of course we do not for one minute suggest is the case), this would
have occurred sometime in the fourth century BC.

One of the major points stressed by Immanuel Velikovsky was that
earthquakes, caused originally by the disruptive gravitational pull of
other heavenly bodies, would have continued well after the offending
planet or comet had departed from the immediate vicinity of the earth;

"On the basis of the material offered in the foregoing pages, the
assumption is made here that earthquakes result from torsion of the
crust following a change in the position of the equator and the
displacement of matter inside the globe caused by the direct
attraction of a cosmic body when in close contact. Pull, torsion, and
displacement were responsible for mountain-building too.

"If this conception of the causes of earthquakes is correct, then
there must have been fewer earthquakes during the course of time since
the last cosmic earthquake. The regions of the Apennine Peninsula, the
eastern Mediterranean, and Mesopotamia, for which we have reliable
records, can be compared in this respect to the same regions today.

"Earthquakes in Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome are described or
mentioned in many classic authors. For the purpose of comparison with
earth-tremor activity of the present day, it is enough to point to
fifty-seven earthquakes reported in Rome in a single year during the
Punic wars (-217)."[25]22

But Italy and the Near East are perhaps not the only areas that kept
records of earthquakes; the same phenomenon seems to be recorded in
the Irish annals. The "eruptions" grow less and less frequent after
the time of Tighernmus, until, about three centuries later, we hear
the last of them. These final Irish earth tremours (if there is any
truth whatsoever in the chronicles) must have occurred around the
fourth century BC. Italy is a more seismically active part of the
world than Ireland, so it should come as no surprise to find that Rome
was still being afflicted by such a large number of tremours as late
as 217 BC.

Two other circumstances, we have said, would suggest that some
credence at least must be given to the pre-Christian Irish records.
The Gaels are said by them to have come from Spain; a claim which
shall be examined in the final chapter; and the early High Kings are
regarded as men of wisdom and cultural innovators; a factor which
links them to other ancient kings of the eighth and seventh centuries
BC.

The Sage-Kings

As befits an age of such awe-inspiring events, the eighth century BC.
was everywhere the Age of Heroes. Men who lived at the time had
watched the gods in action. They had seen the arrows of Hercules and
Apollo (meteorites) showered upon the earth. They had viewed the
awesome thunderbolts of Jupiter hurled across the skies. They had
watched in terror as Poseidon, the Shaker of Earth, had set the ground
under their feet in motion and propelled vast walls of water over the
headlands. Above all, they witnessed the decapitation in the skies of
the terrible Serpent of Chaos, the monster losing the giant tail it
had dragged across the heavens. This event was the great watershed
that defined all future developments. The cult of the serpent, which
had demanded hecatombs of human beings, could now be abandoned: And
sure enough, the heroes of the time employed themselves in ending this
barbaric practice (Centuries later, in Ireland, Saint Patrick was
credited with the same feat). 

We can only guess at how these events affected the people of the time.
Certainly the entire planet experienced what could only be described
as a cultural revolution. This revolution touched every aspect of
human life, manifesting itself in the construction of the immense
temples and pyramidical structures, as well as an outpouring of
philosophical and religious works. It became an age of sages, seers
and prophets, men who had been inspired by the awesome events they
were witness to. In Israel, this was the time of Moses, an enemy of
the serpent-god, who established a completely new religious system for
his people. In Persia, the epoch saw the appearance of Zoroaster; in
India it was the time of the great avatar Krishna (another
serpent-slayer), whilst in China the Taoist sages were active. Greece
too had its sages and seers. Theseus, for example, the legendary king
of Athens, was credited with formulating various wise laws.[26]23
Hercules of course was believed to have initiated great social and
religious changes. The Romans looked to Romulus as a great legislator
and reformer.

In the same way, all the primeval kings and god-kings of Britain and
Ireland, as well as being the builders of the monuments, were regarded
as culture-bearers and religious innovators. These were Homer's
"god-like kings", for whom the giants raised the mighty temples. Some
of the megalithic Passage Graves in the Boyne valley were linked by
tradition to these High Kings. Thus Carn T. at Loughcrew was
identified by its first excavators in the 19^th century as the tomb of
one of the wisest, Ollamh Fodhla, as it conformed in detail to the
description of his burial-place in ancient legend.

In Ireland, the fifth High King, Irial Faidh, was remembered for the
innumerable beneficial laws he enacted, whilst his son Ethrial, who
succeeded him, was long recalled as a great poet, some of whose
compositions, like those of his contemporary the British Taliesin,
were still recited in the Christian age. He was also said to have
composed a history of his people up to that time. The eighth High King
of Ireland, known as Tighearnmhas, was remembered for his
technological innovations:

"It [was] ... Tighearnmhas who first found a mine of gold in Ireland;
and Uchadan was the name of the artificer who used to refine the gold
for him; and it was in Fotharta east of Lithfe he used to smelt it. It
was in the time of Tighearnmhas that clothes were first dyed purple,
blue and green in Ireland. It was also in his time that embroidery,
fringes and filigree were first put on mantles in Ireland."[27]24

Greatest of all the Irish Sage Kings however was Ollamh Fodhla, who
was reputed to have lived a few generations after Tighearnmhas. His
name means simply "Sage of Erin", and many of the most enduring laws
and customs of the Irish were dated to his reign.

British tradition, as preserved for example in Geoffrey of Monmouth's
History, also speaks of Sage Kings who reigned immediately after the
settlement of the land by Brutus, the eponymous ancestor of the
people. We can of course take with a pinch of salt many of the claims
made by Geoffrey and others of his ilk (such as the supposed Trojan
ancestry of the Britons), though the evidence would suggest that their
writings, like those of the Irish, contain at least a nucleus of
genuinely ancient material. This is proved, as we have seen, by the
very clear references to catastrophic disturbances of nature in many
of the accounts. The Sage King who raised Stonehenge is not named by
Geoffrey, for the simple reason that the monument was already strongly
connected to Merlin, who was nevertheless placed many centuries after
Brutus' initial settlement. That Stonehenge was raised in honour of
the god Arthur/Lugos is beyond question, yet it may be that some of
the material relating to Arthur properly belongs to the king who built
it. Could it be that his name is yet preserved? Certainly the chances
are that a ruler so powerful would be remembered in folk tradition.
His monument alone, like the pyramid of Cheops, would perchance
guarantee his immortality.

I believe it reasonably possible that the king who erected the great
Round Temple of Britain was named Vlatos, recalled in medieval British
tradition under the name Bladud, who was, as we have already
indicated, almost certainly identical to the Hyperborean sage Abaris,
reputedly the preceptor of Pythagoras. In the British tradition Bladud
has all the appearance of a god, flying high above the great temple of
Apollo at New Troy. Yet the deification of real people is a common
enough phenomenon, and we need only recall how the Egyptians turned
Imhotep, the architect of the Step Pyramid at Sakkara, into the god
Imouthes/Asclepius.

Against this, it has to be admitted that the name Abaris could be
little more than a variant of Abal (Celtic "apple"), a local title for
Apollo. Certainly the links between the Hyperboreans and Apollo's cult
would support this interpretation. Nevertheless, early Celtic
warrior-kings regularly adopted the names of their tutelary deities
(witness the warrior Brennos who invaded Greece in the 3^rd century
BC.), so Abaris could possibly (though it is unlikely) be the name of
a real priest-king devotee of Apollo/Belinos, whose name perhaps
translates as "Apollo's man".

Alternatively, it may be that the Welsh name for Stonehenge, Gwaith
Emrys, may contain a reference to its builder. Emrys, one of the
titles of Merlin, has usually been dismissed as a Welsh
transliteration of the Latin Ambrosius; yet evidence uncovered in the
present work suggests otherwise. As with so much else in British
tradition, what is popularly traced no further than the Romans or even
the early Christians has in fact a much more ancient pedigree. Emrys
is really a Welsh rendering of the Vulgate Arthurian Bors, Boras, who,
as we have already demonstrated, is even now linked to the area just
west of Stonehenge. The true antiquity of the link between this name
and the monuments of Salisbury Plain is also, we have seen,
demonstrated by the fact that Hecataeus of Abdera regarded Boreas and
his descendants as the keepers of the sacred precinct of the
Hyperboreans - a precinct identified even by sceptical scholars with
Stonehenge and Avebury.

The name Emrys/Boras may also be linked to that of the Irish
hero-deity Eber/Emer, one of the legendary Galician colonizers of
Ireland. Certainly the most important innovators amongst the various
megalith-building groups were the folk of the Atlantic (Irish-Spanish)
culture, who imported many of the Mediterranean techniques into the
British Isles. Could it be that these ancient megalith-builders are
here recalled?

The primeval traditions of Britain and, even more especially, Ireland
thus need to be re-examined in the light of our new understanding, and
we may reasonably hope that they will provide the framework for
reconstructing the history of these islands in the pre-Christian
centuries.

Thus the period that saw the end of the cosmic upheavals, which we
hold to be the 8th century BC., was an epoch of revolutionary progress
in all fields. The Druid priesthood of the Celtic realms mobilised
their efforts chiefly towards the creation of a new religious
orthodoxy, in which esotericism was of primary importance. They
codified their teachings and passed them on to selected persons.
Theirs however was not a knowledge to be spread democratically
throughout the population. They went to great lengths to ensure that
their wisdom would remain secret. Little did they realise how
successful they would be! So successful indeed that their own
descendants have lost sight of their achievements, and attributed
their greatest feats, the megalithic monuments, to another priesthood
and another time.

The Celtic Olympiads

A central concept of Velikovsky's was that all the great festivals of
early mankind commemorated or celebrated the cosmic events so recently
observed in the heavens. This applied not only to the overtly
religious rituals associated with the temple-pyramids, but to
virtually every custom and tradition of popular culture. In
particular, he emphasised that athletic festivals, with their
ritualised combats, were in all probability re-enactments of the
cosmic combats in the skies. Thus it was the 8^th century BC., that
epoch of cosmic instability, which saw the establishment of the
Olympiads in Greece and the Equiria in Rome. The Greek Olympiads, we
have seen, were linked to Hercules, the dragon-slaying hero deity,
while the Roman Equiria were linked to Mars, the god of war. A number
of ancient sources make it clear that Hercules and Mars were
originally one and the same god,[28]25 and  it seems virtually certain
that the violent sporting events of the classical world, including
even the later gladiatorial contests, can all trace their inspiration
to the bloody sacrificial rituals of the Bronze Age.

Yet as our knowledge of ancient cultures far removed from Europe
improves, it becomes clear that such ritualised sporting events were a
feature of all civilisations. Thus the deadly ball-games of
Mesoamerica, played out in the vicinity of the pyramid-complexes, were
explicitly viewed as re-enactments of cosmic battles amongst the
planets.[29]26

Sacred sporting events were also a feature of Celtic culture.
According to the Irish legends, Lugos (Lugh Lamhfada) established an
annual festival of athletic and martial events at Tailton in Meath,
the Aonach Tailteann, or Tailton Games. The events included horse and
foot races, wrestling and other types of combat, and were, in
MacGeoghegan's testimony, comparable to those "instituted at Rome ...
by Romulus in honour of Mars."[30]27 The competitions were no myth;
"These olympiads" says MacGeoghegan, "always continued among the
Milesians [Irish] until the arrival of the English."[31]28 We learn
from the same source that the games were held for exactly thirty days
- fifteen days before and fifteen days after the first of August (Mi
Lughnasa), and that they commemorated the victory gained by Lugh and
Ogma over the Fomorian giants at the Plain of the Tower.

The Tailton Games can therefore definitely be linked to cosmic
upheavals of nature in the first half of the first millennium BC., the
very upheavals that accompanied the migration of the Gaels to Ireland
early in the 8^th century BC. Thus these Celtic olympiads were not
only comparable to those of Greece and Rome, but were contemporary
with them. Furthermore, they appear to have been, like the Grecian
olympiads, established in honour of the combats of Hercules. According
to Robert Graves, "the Tal syllable is often present in the primitive
names of Hercules. In Crete he was called Talus, the man of bronze,
whom Medea killed ... The Irish Tailteann Games are probably called
after an agricultural Hercules the first syllable of whose name was
Tal."[32]29 We have of course already identified Stonehenge as a
temple of Artos/Hercules - the most important temple of that god in
the British Isles, indeed in the whole Celtic world. Now we ask
ourselves, is it possible that Britain too had her own olympiads, her
own martial and athletic festival (no doubt, as befits the character
of Lugos, combined with a festival of poetry and bardic skill) taking
place in the vicinity of Stonehenge?

To begin with, if such a festival did exist, and of that there is
every likelihood, it was almost certainly held in close proximity to
Stonehenge. The central position of the monument is here crucial.
Among the Irish, the national festival was held in Meath (Irish Mid),
a name denoting "middle", and it is evident that the central area of
the kingdom was regarded as having an important symbolic or magical
significance. (In this regard we should recall how the mythical battle
at the Tower was believed as having occurred at the mid-point of the
earth, the World Axis, at the Pole). Stonehenge likewise occupies the
mid-point of southern Britain, a fact which cannot be accidental.
Scarcely a better meeting place or middle place could be conceived of.

Certainly the idea that Stonehenge and its immediate vicinity was used
for athletic contests is not a new one. As early as the 17^th century
William Stukeley had identified the Cursus, a lengthy oblong feature
surrounded by a low dike, as a hippodrome for chariot races and other
athletic contests. Hence the name Cursus, a name that has stuck for
the simple reason that no one has been able to suggest a more likely
use for it.

We have already seen how the Pythian Odes of Pindar refer to Perseus'
journey to the "wondrous road of the trysting place of the
Hyperboreans." Gerald Hawkins believed this "trysting place" (Greek
Agona) to be another classical reference to Stonehenge or Avebury, or
both. Noting that agona "can mean a gathering place for sports,
trials, battles or other activities," Hawkins asks "Was this
Hyperborean agona a racecourse or parade ground like the Cursus, an
enclosure like Woodhenge or the Sanctuary, a great open circle like
Avebury, an eminence like Silbury Hill, a cathedral-court-observatory
like Stonehenge - or all of them?" "What road," Hawkins continues
"could be more wondrous than that which led to the complex, magical
trysting place of the great monuments of Salisbury Plain?"[33]30

If the Gorgon slain by Perseus was the same as Balor and Bran, the
dragon-headed protector of Britain, then the sporting events held at
this Hyperborean agona would have celebrated the very same event as
that celebrated by the Tailton Games in Ireland, which marked the
death and decapitation of the dragon-headed Balor.

I would suggest that the Cursus was indeed a racetrack, and that the
Stonehenge complex was the venue for a pan-British athletic and poetic
festival held either every year, or every four years, in honour of
Hercules/Arthur. The founder of the games would of course, as in
Ireland, have been Lugos/Hermes/Merlin, the great benefactor of
mankind who also constructed the monument. From this perspective we
can see how the entire tradition of Arthur and his jousting knights
would have been rooted in the athletic and poetic festival of
Stonehenge. We tend to think of the chivalric principle as being a
peculiarly Christian concept; and there is no doubt that the idea as
it occurs in the medieval Arthurian stories is heavily coloured by
Christian thinking. Yet many, or most, of the values of chivalry
(courage, heroic fighting ability, love of poetry etc.) were already
present and occupied a vastly important place in Celtic culture, and
it would have been the easiest thing in the world for the medieval
troubadors to turn the jousting pagan heroes of ancient Britain into
the Christian heroes of the Middle Ages that we have come to know.

_______________________

[34]1 Geddes and Grosset Celtic Mythology  (1999) pp.130-1

[35]2 Rene Guenon The Crisis of the Modern World (trans. London,1942)
p.14

[36]3 D. Randall-MacIver "Etruscan Tombs" Antiquity ix No.33
(March,1935) p.50

[37]4 Herodotus i,93

[38]5 Traditionally in 735 BC.

[39]6 Virgil Aeneid 610-15

[40]7 Homer Iliad xxi

[41]8 MacGeoghegan The History of Ireland (New York,1845) p.13

[42]9 Lugnasad, the Old Irish name for August, implies "triumph of
Lug", and this triumph, we have seen, was the triumph gained by Lugh
and Ogma, as well as the other gods, against the titan Fomorians at
the battle of Magh Tuireadh, the "Plain of the Tower". In the Celtic
myth of gods versus giants it is Lugos (Hermes) who is mainly
responsible for the victory, whilst in the Greek myth the real hero of
the gods was Hercules. But Hercules is himself an alter-ego of Mars.
The name Tailton, as we saw in the previous chapter, is also linked to
Hercules.

[43]10 Geddes and Grossert loc. cit. p.185

[44]11 Ibid.

[45]12 Ibid. p.186

[46]13 Ibid.

[47]14 Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland (trans. O'Donovan,
Dublin,1856)

[48]15 Keating History of Ireland Vol.1 sec.22

[49]16 Ammianus Marcellinus xv,9

[50]17 Strabo vii,2

[51]18 Ibid.

[52]19 Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics viii,7

[53]20 Triad 109

[54]21 "The Four Masters loc. cit.

[55]22 Velikovsky Worlds in Collision p.267

[56]23 See eg. Plutarch Theseus 24 and 25

[57]24 Keating History of Ireland Bk.1 Sec.xxv

[58]25 This is claimed by Macrobius (Saturnalia iii,12,5-6) on the
authority of Varro, whilst in Eratosthenes we read; "Tertia est stella
Martis quam alii Hercules dixerunt." (Mars is the third star, which
others say is Hercules).

[59]26 See eg Benny Peiser "Cosmic Catastrophes and the Ballgame of
the Sky Gods in Mesoamerican Mythology"  SIS Chronology and
Catastrophism Review Vol.XVII (1995)

[60]27 MacGeoghegan The History of Ireland (New York, 1845) p.33

[61]28 Ibid. p.13

[62]29 R. Graves The White Goddess p.136

[63]30 G. Hawkins Stonehenge Decoded (London, 1965) p.86

References

2. http://www.consciousevolution.com/Rennes/arthurchapter6.htm