BEFORE we continue with our development of the Tree motif from Essenian times, through the earliest forms of the Kabbalah (classical Kabbalah, not to be confused with misnomers of same), we shall be occupying our time with a recap on the Dur.An.Ki., a theme which is of the utmost importance in the study of the Authentic Tradition. Indeed, it is of the utmost importance, since the Dur.An.Ki. is the truly legitimate Kingship, the truly legitimate Bloodline, the truly legitimate Priestly Succession handed down since the beginning, when "Kingship was Lowered to Earth".
One need not parrot the words of Zecharia Sitchin, as if that was a bad thing to do anyway! At least he gave us more worthwhile clues than most. And a lot of these can be checked out if we but spend the time in doing it, rather than point and click to the next email list on the web. Does it matter that he had Rockefeller funding? Perhaps, but then again we wish we had funding ourselves! This work costs a great deal of money to do it correctly. To do it even a "fraction" of "correctly"!
To begin at the beginning, then, we are told that the Dur.An.Ki. was the Bond-Heaven-Earth, that resided at the central temple at Nippur, when Kingship was granted to humankind by the Anunnaki. We have found (i.e., in the somewhat controversial writings of Laurence Austine Waddell) that there was indeed a special temple at Nippur, in which a sacred relic was kept. [See our piece, earlier in this Book Three, entitled The Cauldron of the Sages.] This relic was considered to be the veritable Grail of King Arthur, by Waddell, through a series of word-associations. What we do get, however, is that the bowl was won in a war between the good guys and the bad guys. The good guys being, of course, the superior sun-worshipping white boys and the bad guys being the inferior Goddess and Serpent worshipping darker-skinned boys. Well, we have precious little time for more of this sort of thing. To cut a long story short, the bowl was placed in the basement of the central portion of a specific Nippur temple. Somehow, we are getting at some kind of organically created radio antenna.
In Morris Jastrow, The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 539, note 2, we are told that the Dur.An.Ki. was "the name probably of a temple-tower in Nippur, sacred to En-Lil." O.K. What we get, then, is that the most sacred place, at least to the followers of En-Lil, was in Nippur, at the Central Temple where the Dur.An.Ki. was located. If, indeed, this was some sort of Mission Control, made like other Sacred Communicating devices, such as the Ark of the Covenant and the Tabernacle/Temple; and other Sacred Devices and Compounds: we have a formula for its creation, as we have numerous references to what was contained within.
And, like Mount Kailasa and / or Mount Meru, aka Mount Su.Meru, this Sacred and Holy Mountain resided not only in the real world, of Earth: but in the less-tangible world of the Spirit, i.e., as the hub of the Universe. Since "As Above, So Below™" is a reality in just about every system we care to consider for the moment, that Central Hub of the Universe and that Navel of the World, or Omphalos, on the Earth, had a corresponding place in the human body. That would be the system of Nadis in the spinal column. These include the Ida, the Pingala, and the Sushumna. The Sushumna is the central nadi, the central axis around which everything orbits, and the central communicating channel by which the Divine contacts Us, and by which we contact the Divine in Us.
These aren't hair-brained ideas, they exist in the sacred literature of the world, if one bothers to look. Nature's Finer Forces, by Rama Prasad, elaborates on the Nadis and the Tattwas. The Essay, Who or What is God? which forms the essay portion of The Code of the Eternal, also discusses this. Indian Tantra also is filled with this type of material, as is that which can be found in Tibetan Mysticism. In a completely different symbolism, this is also found in the West, in Kabbalah. It is true, as Dion Fortune once wrote, "Qabalah" is the Yoga of the West.
So, the connecting link between the concepts brought to us by Sitchin in The Earth Chronicles Series, and by Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln, in HBHG and related works (whether they are true or not! - for the benefit of the smithies out there!!) can be seen to be Tantrik practices, or those which reveal the SELF to the self. Is this so preposterous, after all? The whole thing was granted to us, because it is a part of our dna. But, it has been monopolized since the beginning, by the Priesthood. Well, that sort of thing can be necessary, after all. People are not always able to handle such energy, such liberating Knowledge, such Liberating Truth. And imperfect consciousness of IT can produce deleterious effects on the individual and every around sheheit.
Now, are we evolved to a position where we can all, collectively, use this sort of Knowledge rationally? I think not. It is still one person at a time, however long it takes, until we realize the Kingdom that most people are waiting for is here already.
Zecharia Sitchin introduces the Dur.An.Ki. in the first of his works, The Twelfth Planet. Somebody should come up with a General Index or Concordance to his works, because the indexes leave a lot to be desired! In touching upon the subject of the first colonization of Earth, he informs us:
"The Sumerian texts also stated that Enlil arrived on
Earth before the "Black-Headed People" - the Sumerian nickname for
Mankind - were created. During such pre-Mankind times, Enlil erected Nippur
as his center, or 'command post,' at which Heaven and Earth were connected through
some 'bond.' The Sumerian texts called this bond DUR.AN.KI ('bond-heaven-earth')
and used poetic language to describe Enlil's first actions on Earth:
"'Enlil,
When you marked off divine settlements on Earth,
Nippur you set up as your very own city.
The City of Earth, the lofty,
Your pure place whose water is sweet,
You founded the Dur-An-Ki
In the center of the four corners of the world.'" - p. 96
In The Cosmic Code, a brief description is given:
"The Sumerians considered the abode (called 'cult center'
by most scholars) of Enlil as the Navel of the Earth, the place from which other
key locations were equidistant, the epicenter of concentric divinely ordained
sites. Best known by the later Akkadian/Semitic name Nippur, its Sumerian name
was NIBRU.KI - 'The Place of the Crossing,' representing on Earth the Celestial
Place of Crossing, the site of the Celestial Battle to which Nibiru keeps returning
every 3,600 years.
"Functioning as a Mission Control Center, Nippur was
the site of the DUR.AN.KI, the 'Bond Heaven-Earth' from which the space operations
of the Anunnaki were controlled, and at which the sky-maps, and all the formulas
concerning the celestial motions of the members of our Solar System and the
tracking of Divine Time, Celestial Time, and Earthly Time and their interrelationships,
were maintained and calculated." - p. 74
So, Time, or the Manipulation of Time is a crucial thing. It has been said that Rituals are a way of Manipulating Time. The Time System is an all important thing in several connected cultures, starting with the Sumerian, extending to the Indian, the Chinese, the Tibetan; including various Near-Eastern cultures too. Divine Time and Earthly Time are two Times. It is crucial that the various Times be Synchronized, because that is how the Manifestation takes place on the Day of Be-With-Us. Are we speaking riddles? Perhaps, but it's true. These Tablets of Destinies - what are they? Software of some sort? Hardware? Hard to say.
Even if it is something like the physical artifact of clay tablets that give the entire Time System and its Keys, that is something. But not necessarily enough to perform the tasks enumerated above. The Code of the Eternal is an attempt at regaining the Tablets of Destinies. The various TimeLines and the Time System itself can be seen to effect changes in consciousness from merely working on them.
One such Table, for us, at least, is the Bembine Table (or Isiac Table). Whether or not it actually goes back to original Egyptian times, and was placed on the top of the "sarcophagus" in the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid and used as a trestle board for Initiations matters little. That is a harmless story for the Nursery. The Pantomorphic Iynx occupies the all-important place, the centre of the table, flanked by various triads of Egyptian Deities and surrounded by the 36 Decans of the Zodiac.
This table is important in some very exciting and vital Tarot research to come about in recent years. It is also important in some other areas. .'.
Another important Tablet is that one depicting the Goddess as Qetesh or Qudshu, surrounded by Min and Reshef or Reshpu. And that is the bridge to our next section.
William Foxwell Albright, in Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan, a very important work, and one on our Official Curriculum, informs us:
"The chief god of Tyre in later times was BAAL MELCARTH; the appellation of MILK-QART, 'King of the City', refers to the City of the Underworld as in the case of various Sumerian deities of the Nether World. [The most important direct contribution is J. M. Sola Solé's proof that RSP (in the form 'RSP) was identified with MELCARTH in Punic Spain (SEFARAD XVI [1956], 341-55], as well as H. Seyrig's demonstration that MELCARTH was still identified with NERGAL in the Roman Period (SYRIA XXIV, 1947, 62-80). On the Pantheon of Tyre, see also R. du Meshul du Buisson, RHR-CLXIV (1963), 133ff. A valuable study of the Melcarth of Gades (Cadiz) has been published by A. Garçia y Bellido, Archivo Español de Arquelogia XXXVI (1964), 70-153. See further below, Ch. V, § C.] In Hebrew tradition Baal and Asherah (I K 16:33, 18:19) were heads of the Tyrian Pantheon, and the role of Asherah at Tyre is confirmed by the Keret Epic, centuries earlier.
"The basic Pantheon of Tyre is probably represented in Egyptian art, including particularly a beautiful stelé in the British Museum, which shows a triad with 'HOLINESS' (QUDSHU) in the centre. She is standing stark naked on a lion, with a Spiral Headdress which came originally from Babylonia, and was then developed in Twelfth Dynasty Egypt.
"Since the Palestinian plaques showing QUDSHU with the spiral locks aqre in many cases indistinguishable from contemporary plaques found in Babylonia, there is good reason to believe that the representation spread westward from Babylonia to Egypt, and not North from Egypt. The Lion appears elsewhere as her special favourite. In her right hand she holds lotus blossoms, and in her left hand, stylized serpents (NOT ONIONS!). At her right is EL, represented, because of the great stress laid in Canaanite mythology on his virility, as the Ithyphallic MIN (i.e., AMSU), or PTAH. At her left is the young god, RESHEPH, with a gazelle head projecting from his forehead and with a spear in his right hand. Since Melcarth was later identified with Nergal, the Babylonian God of the Nether World, and since RASAP was equated with NERGAL in the pantheon of UGARIT, there is no difficulty in the identification.
"At Byblos the situation is less transparent. The earliest pantheon dating from the 18th C., BCE, consists of a native deity, who is reflected by the Egyptian Sun God incarnated in Pharaoh (i.e., Horus); of a Mother Goddess, who is called the 'Lady of Byblos' - BA'ALAT for short - represented by the Cow-Goddess HATHOR; and of the Egyptian patron of the forests of Lebanon, KHA'Y-TAW. This last god is probably Phoenician KOSHAR. It is likely that the DAMU of the Sumerian Tammuz litanies from the early 2nd Millennium BC., where it is the short form of the name of the latter. (See O. Schroeder, OLZ, XVIII (1915), 291 or EA 84:31-35, written by Rib-Addi of Byblos to Pharaoh. These lines should be rendered: 'And let my lord, but let not that dog (Abdi-Asirta) take any property of thy gods.'] The name Tammuz was originally Sumerian DAMU (DUMU) - ZID-ABZU, meaning something like 'The Faithful Son of the Subterranean Freshwater Ocean'. This probably means that Koshar was later identified with Tammuz and that the Byblian figure of the Dying God Adonis (literally'Adoni, 'my lord') was identical with Koshar. That the cutting down of the coniferous trees of Lebanon should become a symbol of the God who dies but is always reborn, is not surprising. With this was combined the annual death of Adonis when the waters of the River Adonis (Nahr Ibrahim) are coloured blood-red after the first heavy winter rains bring down mud stained with the ferrous-oxide of the terra rosa.
"According to Greek tradition, derived from Paphos in Cyprus, Adonis was the son of the Cyprian King Cinyras, who must be identified with the Phoenician Kinnur, god of the lyre [Spelled KI-NA-RU(M). On the name and its feminine counterpart KINNARTU (CHINNERETH) see A. Jirku, FF XXXVII (1963), 211. Note, however, that the Ugaritic vocalization reflects the ancestral vocalization of Heb. KINNOR, 'lyre' (e.g. Kennur, VESO 47, IX, C. 6.). In later Phoenician the final vowel became (unprintable character in the present character set) yielding KIN(N)UR = KINURASI (Greek).], and of a mother called Myrhha or Smyrna, both variant Greek dialect forms of the word for 'myrhh' or 'incense'. [It is at least a striking coincidence that 'Utht and KNR are mentioned together, possibly as the two parents of Adonis. The incense in question must have been derived from the resin of the cedars and pines of Lebanon, regardless of the etymology (on which see n. 90: the Divine Incense Burner ('Utht) [I provisionally accept J. Nougayrol's translation of 'Utht, which he compares with Accad. sehtu. The latter means 'high incense burner', i.e., an incense burner on a pole (cf. BASOR 85, 1942, 18-27), from Accad. sehu, 'grow, be high'. (For this word see Müller, DAS ASSYRISCHE RITUAL [MVAG XLI:3, p. 21].) But the first syllable would remain unexplained, so we may have to identify the name with Accad. Assuhu; Jewish-Aramaic Asuha, said to mean 'female (!) cedar'. It may be that 'Utht was a tree-goddess like the Egy. NUHE, 'Sycamore', a solution which might explain the idea that the cedar is unisexual." - Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan, pp. 145-148.
A lot has been said here. Perhaps it does not appear to relate to the Dur.An.Ki. We shall get to that when we present some material by Archibald Henry Sayce, next.
Here is what Sayce has to say:
LECTURES ON THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF RELIGION AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT BABYLONIANS. BY A. H. SAYCE, LECTURE IV. TAMMUZ AND ISTAR; PROMETHEUS AND TOTEMISM. pp. 235 - 242.
Greek mythology itself knew the name of Tammuz as well as that of Adonis. Theias or Thoas [1] was not only the Lemnirtn husband of Myrina aud the king of the Tauric Khersonese who immolated strangers on the altars of Artemis, he was also king of Assyria and father of Adonis and his sister Myrrha or Smyrna. In the Kyprian myth the name of Theias is transformed into Kinyras; but, like Theias, he is the father of Adonis by his daughter Myrrha. Myrrha is the invention of a popular etymology; [2] the true form of the name was Smyrna or Myrina, a name famous in the legendary annals of Asia Minor. Myrina or Smyrna, it was said, was an Amazonian queen, and her name is connected with the four cities of the western coast - Smyrna, Kymê, Myrina and Ephesos - whose foundation was ascribed to Amazonian heroines. But the Amazons were really the warrior priestesses of the great Asiatic goddess, whom the Greeks called the Artemis of Ephesos, and who was in origin the Istar of Babylonia modified a little by Hittite influence. It was she who, in the Asianic cult of Attys or Hadad, took the place of Istar and Aphrodite; for just as Attys himself was Tammuz, so the goddess with whom he was associated was Istar. At Hierapolis, which succeeded to the religious fame and beliefs of the ancient Hittite city of Carchemish, the name under which the goddess went seems to have been Semiramis, [3] and it is possible that Semiramis and Smyrna are but varying forms of the same word. However this may be, in the Kyprian Kinyras who takes the place of Theias we have a play upon the Phoenician kinnôr, or "cither," which is said to have been used in the worship of Adonis. But its real origin seems to be indicated by the name of Gingras which Adonis himself bore. [4] Here it is difficult not to recognize the old Accadian equivalent of Istar, Gingira or Gingiri, "the creatress." [5]
The fact that Tammuz was the son of Ea points unmistakably to the source both of his name and of his worship. He must have been the primitive Sun-god of Eridu, standing in the same relation to Ea, the god of Eridu, that Adar stood to Mul-lil, the god of Nipur. It is even possible that the boar whose tusk proved fatal to Adonis may originally have been Adar himself. Adar, as we have seen, was called the "lord of the swine" in the Accadian period, and the Semitic abhorrence of the animal may have used it to symbolise the ancient rivalry between the Sun-god of Nipur and the Sun-god of Eridu. [6] Those who would see in the Cain and Abel of Scripture the representatives of elemental deities, and who follow Dr. Oppert in explaining the name of Abel by the Babylonian ablu, "the son," slightly transformed by a popular etymology, may be inclined to make them the Adar and Tammuz of Chaldean faith.
As mother of Tammuz, Dav-kina, the wife of Ea, had a special name. She is called Tsirdu, or 'Sirdu [7] - a word in which I believe we may see the Assyrian surdu, "a falcon." Now it will be remembered that 'Sirrida, also written 'Sirdam, and pronounced 'Sirgam, 'Sirrigal or 'Sirrigâ, 'Surgâ and Nirda, [8] in the different dialects of pre-Semitic Chaldea, was a title of Â, the wife of the Sun-god of Sippara or Accad. As we are told that a temple of Tammuz existed at Accad, where it was known by the double name of "the tower of mighty bulk" and "the shrine of observation," [9] it would seem that the worship of Tammuz had been transported from Eridu to the capital of Sargon at the time when the culture of southern Babylonia made its way to the north, and the empire of Sargon was fusing the civilisation and religion of the country into a single whole. It was then that the Sun-god of Eridu and the Hun-god of Accad would naturally be identified together, and that the wife of Samas of Accad should become the goddess whom mythology represented as at once the wife and the mother of Tammuz.
But the primitive home of Tammuz had been in that "garden" of Edin, or Eden, which Babylonian tradition placed in the immediate vicinity of Eridu. [10] The fragment of an old bilingual hymn has been preserved, which begins in the following way :
1. "(In) Eridu a stalk [11] grew over-shadowing; in
a holy place did it become green ;
2. its root ([sur]sum) was of white crystal which stretched towards the
deep ;
3. (before) Ea was its course in Eridu, teeming with fertility; [12]
4. its seat was the (central) place [13] of the earth;
5. its foliage (1) was the couch of Zikum (the primaeval) mother.
6. Into the heart of its holy house which spread its shade like a forest hath
no man entered.
7. (There is the home) of the mighty mother who passes across the sky.
8. (In) the midst of it was Tammuz.
10. (There is the shrine?) of the two (gods)."
The description reminds us of the famous Ygg-drasil of Norse mythology, the world-tree whose roots descend into the world of death, while its branches rise into Asgard, the heaven of the gods. The Babylonian poet evidently imagined his tree also to be a world-tree, whose roots stretched downwards into the abysmal deep, where Ea presided, nourishing the earth with the springs and streams that forced their way upwards from it to the surface of the ground. Its seat was the earth itself, which stood midway between the deep below and Zikum, the primordial heavens, above, who rested as it were upon the overshadowing branches of the mighty "stem." Within it, it would seem, was the holy house of Davkina, "the great mother," and of Tammuz her son, a temple too sacred and far hidden in the recesses of the earth for mortal man to enter. It is perhaps a remi- niscence of this mystic temple that we find in the curious work on "Nabathean Agriculture," composed in the fourth or fifth century by a Mandaite of Chaldaea, where we are told of the temple of the sun in Babylon, in which the images of the gods from all the countries of the world gathered themselves together to weep for Tammuz. [14] What the tree or "stalk" was which sprang up like the bean-stalk of our old nursery tale, is indicated in the magical text to which the fragment about it has been appended. [l5] In this, Ea describes to Merodach the means whereby he is to cure a man who is possessed of the seven evil spirits. He is first to go to "the cedar- tree, the tree that shatters the power of the incubus, upon whose cure the name of Ea is recorded," and then, with the help of " a good masal" or phylactery which is placed on the sick man's head as he lies in bed at night, to invoke the aid of the Fire-god to expel the demons. It is the cedar, therefore, which played the same part in Babylonian magic as the rowan ash of northern Europe, and which was believed to be under the special protection of Ea; and the parallel, therefore, between the ash Ygg-drasil of Norse mythology and the world-tree of the poet of Eridu becomes even closer than before.
Long after the days when the hymns and magical texts of Eridu were composed, the mystic virtues of the cedar were still remembered. A tablet which describes the initiation of an augur, and states how he must be of pure lineage, unblemished in hand and foot," speaks thus of the vision which is revealed to him before he is "initiated and instructed in the presence of Samas and Rimmon in the use of the book and stylus'' by "the scribe, the instructed one, who keeps the oracle of the great gods:" he is made to descend into an artificial imitation of the lower world, and there beholds "the altars amid the waters, the treasures of Anu, Bel and Ea, the tablets of the gods, the delivering of the oracle of heaven and earth, and the cedar-tree, the beloved of the great gods, which their hand has caused to grow." [l6] It was possibly the fragrance of the wood when lighted for sacrificial purposes that gave the tree its sacred character.
But the cedar was something more than a world-tree. It was employed, as we have seen, in incantations and magic rites which were intended to restore strength and life to the human frame. It was thus essentially "a tree of life," and the prototype and original of those conventional trees of life with which the walls of the Assyrian palaces were adorned. Those who bave visited the Assyrian collection of the British Museum will remember the curious form which it generally assumes, as well as the figures of the two cherubs which kneel or stand before it on either side. At times they are purely human; at other times they have the head of a hawk and hold a cone - the fruit of the cedar - over the tree by whose side they stand.
It is possible that, as time went on, another tree became confounded with the original tree of life. The palm was from the earliest period characteristic of Babylonia; and while its fruit seemed to be the stay and support of life, the wine made from it made "glad the heart of man." Date-wine was largely used, not only in Babylonian medicine, but in the religious and magical ceremonies of Babylonia as well. It is not at all improbable, therefore, that the later Babylonian tree of life, with its strange conventional form, was an amalgamation of two actual trees, the cedar and the palm. It is even possible that while one of them, the cedar, was primarily the sacred tree of Eridu, the other was originally the sacred tree of some other locality of Chaldaea.
What gives some colour to this last suggestion is, that in later Babylonian belief the tree of life and the tree of knowledge were one and the same. The text which describes the initiation of a soothsayer associates the cedar with "the treasures of Anu, Bel and Ea, the tablets of the gods, the delivering of the oracle of heaven and earth." It was upon the heart or core of the cedar, too, that the name of Ea, the god of wisdom, was inscribed.
And it was wisdom rather than life, the knowledge of the secrets of heaven and the magical arts that benefit or injure, which the priesthood of Babylonia and the gods they worshipped kept jealously guarded. Only the initiated were allowed to taste of its fruit. In this respect, consequently, there was a marked difference between the belief of the Babylonians and the account which we find in the earlier chapters of Genesis.
1 Thoas is practically identical witsh the Ssabian Ta'uz.
For Theias, the Assyrian king, see Apollod. iii. 14, 4; Tzetzes, ad Lykoph.
91.
2 The Aramaic marthâ, "mistress,"
or the Assyrian martu, "daughter," may have assisted the etymology;
compare the Biblical name Miriam.
3 Lucian, De Dea Syria, 33, 39.
4 Athen. iv. 174, xiv. 618.
5 W.A. I. ii. 48, 29; K 170. Rev, 7 (AN-gi-ri).
6 See above, p. 153.
7 W. A. I. ii. 59,9. As she seems to be identified with Istar
in the same passage, we may conclude that the compiler of the mythological list
regarded her as equally the mother and the wife of Tammuz.
8 W. A.I. ii. 57. 11, 24, 23, 21, 22, 26. In line 26 the
name of  is also written phonetically by means of the ideograph for father
( â ) . In lines 30, 31, SIR-UT-KAN and SIR-UT-AM must each be
read 'Sirdam (or 'Sirudam). See above, p. 178.
9 W. A. L ii. 50. 10, ll. It would appear from this that
the paráku, or "shrine," was, like that of Bel-Merodach
at Babylon, in the highest chamber of tha ziggurut, or "tower,"
from whence observations of the sky could be made.
10 Hence his mother (and wife) is called "the lady of
Edin" (W. A. I. ii. 59. 10, 11.)
11 See K 165,22 (U-QI gesdin), "the stalk of
a grape." QI (= lamma) tur is the Assyrian epitâtu,
"a small stalk" (W. A. I. ii. 4.1. 58, 56). U-QI is also explained
as ritu sitehu, "a growing slip" (W. A. I. ii. 41,8). We are
reminded of the old story of Jack and the Bean-stalk as well as of the Polynesian
tree which enables the climber to ascend into the heavenly land. The mother
of Tammuz was called ''the (mistress) of the vine" (W. A. I. ii. 59, 11).
Hommel (Die Semitiszlien Völker; p. 406) very ingeniously reads
the "QI-tree" as gis-kin, in Accadian mus-kin, from
which he derives the Assyrian musukkanu or mussikannu, "a
palm." But the Semitic rendering is not ukkanu, as he reads, but
kiskanu, from the Accadian giskin. The palm was the sacred tree
of Babylonia, and Adar was "lord of the date."
12 The original seems to be literally, "while (before
Ea) it went ( = grew), Eridu was richly fertile."
13 This appears to be the meaning of the line, the site of
the tree being regarded as, like Delphi among the Greeks, the omfaloj
of the earth. The Sumerian equivalent of '' earth" is SI-NAD, which must
be read nad (W. A. I. v. 38, 59) with the determinative prefix.
14 Ibn Wahshîyah, the translator of the Nabathaean
Agriculture of Kuthâmi into Arabic, adds that he had "lit upon
another Nabathaean book, in which the legend of Tammuz was narrated in full;
how he summoned a king to worship the seven (planets) and the twelve (signs
of the Zodiac), and how the king put him to death, and how he still lived after
being killed, so that he had to put him to death several times in a cruel manner,
Tammuz coming to life again after each time, until at last he died; and behold,
it was identical with the legend of St. George that is current among the Christians."
Abû Sayid Wahb ibn Ibrahim, in his calendar of the Ssabian festivals,
says under the month Tammuz: "On the 15th of this month is the festival
of the weeping women, which is identical with Ta'uz, a festival held in honour
of the god Ta'uz. The women weep over him, (telling) how his lord slew him,
and ground his bones in a mill, and scattered them to the winds; and they eat
nothing that has been ground in a mill, but only soaked wheat, vetches, dates,
raisins and the like" (Chwolson's Die Ssabier, ii. p. 27).
15 W. A. I. iv. 15. Rev. 10-13. It is pretty clear from the
sculptures that the sacred tree of the Babylonians was the cedar, which was
subsequently displaced by the palm; so that Hommel's view, which sees a palm
in "the stalk" of Eridu, may still be maintained. On the other hand,
in W. A. I. ii. 59. Rev. 10, "the divine Lady of Eden" is called
"the goddess of the tree of life" in the Accadian of north Babylonia,
''the goddess of the vine" in the Sumerian of south Babylonia. It is clear
from this that the sacred tree was also conceived of as the vine. According
to the Old Testament, it will be remembered, there were two sacred trees in
the girden of Eden.
16 K 2486, Obv. 2-4. A fragment of a duplicate of this text is published in W. A. L ii 58, No. 3.
[It is worth noting that in the very brilliant, and useful, From the Ashes of Angels, by Andrew Collins: some of this material is briefly referred to in Chapter 15, but the importance to be found here, is completely passed over. It is for us to relate the following in the context of the Work in Progress...] [[Please do not mistake this -- we do not disparage the above-mentioned Author, by stating this... but we do have to make references to sources...]]
We quote from pages 150 – 154 of the English language edition.
“The Chaldees,” says Diodorus Siculus, [1] “have quite an opinion of their own about the shape of the earth: they imagine it to have the form of a boat turned upside down, and to be hollow underneath.” This opinion remained to the last in the Chaldean sacerdotal schools, their astronomers believed in it, and tried, according to Diodorus, to support it by scientific arguments. It is of very ancient origin, a remnant of the ideas of the purely Accadian period; and if we did not clearly understand this conception of the earth, we should find all that the magic texts say about the form and economy of the universe perfectly unintelligible, as also their division of the principal parts of the universe under the dominion of different gods. [2]
Let us imagine then a boat turned over, not such an one as we are in the habit of seeing, but a round skiff like those which are still used, under the name of Kufa, on the shores of the lower Tigris [3] and Euphrates, and of which there are many representations [4] in the historical sculptures of the Assyrian palaces; the sides of this round skiff bend upwards from the point of the greatest width, so that they are shaped like a hollow sphere deprived of two thirds of its height, and showing a circular opening at the point of division. Such was the form of the earth according to the authors of the Accadian magical formulae and the Chaldean astrologers of after years. We should express the same idea in the present day by comparing it to an orange of which the top had been cut off, leaving the orange upright upon the flat surface thus produced. The upper and convex surface constituted the earth properly so called, the inhabitable earth (ki) or terraqueous surface (ki-a), to which the collective name of kalama, or the countries, is also given. The interior concavity opening from underneath was the terrestrial abyss, ge, where the dead found a home (kur-nu-de, kigal, arali). The central point in it was the nadir, or, as it was called, “the root” (uru), the foundation of the whole structure of the world; this gloomy region witnessed the nocturnal journey of the sun.
Above the earth extended the sky [5] (ana) spangled with its fixed stars (mul), and revolving round the mountain of the East (xarsak kurra), the column which joined the heavens and the earth, and served as an axis to the celestial vault. The culminating point of the heavens, the zenith (nuzku), was not this axis or pole; [6] on the contrary, it was situated immediately above the country of Accadia, and was regarded as the centre of the inhabited lands, whilst the mountain which acted as a pivot to the starry heavens was to the north-east of this country. Beyond the mountain, and also to the north-east, extended the land of Aralli, which was very rich in gold, [7] and was inhabited by the gods [8] and blessed spirits.
The Chaldean astrologers imagined in later times a spherical heaven completely enveloping the earth; but it seems, from many characteristic expressions, that at the period when the greatest part of the fragments of the magic collection were composed, the firmament was regarded as a hemispherical skull-cap, the lower edges of which, “the foundations of the heavens,” rested upon the extremities of the earth, beyond the great reservoir of waters (abzu), [9] surrounding the continental surface, and corresponding exactly to the ocean of Homer. We also must give to it the name of ocean in addition to that of reservoir of waters, designating the subterraneous cavity or ge as the abyss, which word was sometimes used as a translation of the Accadian abzu and its Assyrian equivalent apsu. [10]. The periodical movements of the planets (lu-bat), which were assimilated by their Accadian name to animals endowed with life, [11] took place in a lower zone of the heavens, which was called ul-gana, underneath the firmament e-sara [12] of the fixed stars; astrology afterwards ascribed to them seven concentric and successive spheres, above which the firmament extended, but we can perceive no trace of a similar idea in the magical documents. The firmament supported the ocean of the celestial waters, ziku, viewed under the form of a river, 13] as was frequently the terrestrial ocean, which even assumed the name of “river,” arra or aria.
Between the earth and the heavens was the zone in which the atmospheric phenomena were produced, where the winds (imi) blew, and the storms (imi-dugud) raged, where the clouds (imi-dir) were spread, and at length, rent asunder by the lightning (nun-gir) and the hot whirlwinds of the thunder-bolt (amâtu) from the planets, poured forth rain (sur) [14] through their gutters (ganul).
There were then three zones of the universe; the heavens, the terrestrial survace with the atmosphere, and the lower abyss. The three greatest gods, Ana, Hea, and Mul-ge or Elim, answered to and presided over those three zones. They corresponded to the gods of the supreme triad of the Chaldaio-Babylonian religion, Anu, Hea, and Bel, the two first of which retained their Accadian names.
But in truth the early conception of these deities with the exception of Hea, as expressed in the magic fragments, is very different from what it afterwards became. Anu certainly preserves some features belonging to the Accadian Ana, but if we compare Bel with the ancient Mul-ge of the magic books we see that a purely artificial assimilation had been made between the Accadian god and a Semitic god of an entirely different character, and, as we have already remarked, probably of a solar origin.
[1. Lib. II., sec. 31.]
[2. See this idea as a point of the Homeric myth fully worked out in Gladstone’s Homeric Synchronisms, page 230.]
[3. See Chesney’s Expedition to the Euphrates and Tigris, Vol., I., page 57; Vol. II., page 641.] [OUR NOTE: See also The Tigris Expedition, by Thor Heyerdahl.]
[4. See The notes to Herodotus, by G. Rawlinson, lib. I., sec. 194.]
[5. W. A. I. IV., 20, 2.]
[6. W. A. I. II., 48, l. 55, 56, c, d, distinguishes between the zenith, nuzku, Assyrian elit same, and the middle point of the heavens, ana sâga, Assyrian kirib same.]
[7. W. A. I. II., 51, l. 11, a, b.]
[8. This idea had passed to the Assyrians; see the great inscription of Sargon at Khorsabad, I, 156, published in Records of the Past, Vol. VII.]
[9. A compound, signifying literally, “abounding in waves.” The orthography of this name is derived from a more ancient form, in which the order of the elements was reversed, zuab; but the grammars show us that in the form abzu was substituted for it in the spoken idiom.]
[10. This is merely an alteration of the Accadian word.]
[11. Lu-bat, translated in the Assyrian bibbu, is the goat which leads the flock.] [OUR NOTE HERE: Cf. the ideas expressed in Liber A’ash vel Capricorni Pneumatici. This would appear to be the “Goat of the Spirit,” too.]
[12. The Accadian spelling of this name gives it the sense of “the dwelling of impulse;” it is translated in the Assyrian by esiru, from the root r#). It is evident that one of the two languages has played upon the word which it borrowed from the other, in order to give it a peculiar signification.]
[13. W. A. I. II., 50, l. 27, c, d.]
[14. I have found the decisive proof of this rendering; the usual spelling A. AN, does not represent a compound word, it is a complex ideographic expression translated by a simple word.]
This material is interesting. Notice the material quoted above, in boldface, and in particular the underscored portion. This has parallels elsewhere, as we shall see. The idea that early Tibet existed as gold-fields is not entirely fanciful, for that final sentence describes the place, fairly well. We now append some extracts from Laurence Austine Waddell’s The Indo-Sumerian Seals Deciphered: We begin with some material on the Maruts, survivals of the Nephilim. Footnotes will be served up at the end of the quotations.
At
the outset, it is noteworthy that the Indus Valley, which is referred to
several times in the Vedic hymns as exploited by Early Aryan Marutas (or
Amorites)
[3] and Krivi (or Syrio-Phoenicians) [4] for its gold-dust and drugs, etc.,
was apparently until Alexander’s invasion the sole “India” known
to the early Greeks and the Persians. [5] And our modern name of “India” is
derived from the name of the Indus River, the extension of that name to the
Ganges Valley being post-Alexandrine, and its extension to the southern part
of that peninsula of still much later date.
The Indus, under the name of Sindhu, is repeatedly mentioned in the Vedas as
an especial abode of the Maruta (or Amorites) [6] “who rise from the
sea, who abide in the sea.” Thus the Maruta are invoked:
“So let not . . . Sindhu hold you back.” [7]
And they were defenders there of the Krivi (the Syrio-Phoenicians):
“The Maruta are victorious and guard the Sindhu well,
And succour the Krivi in his need.” [8]
The Maruts also brought healing remedies from the Indus Valley and its upper tributary the Asikni (the Akesines of Alexander), the modern Chenab, which appears to have probably joined the Ravi in ancient times near Harappa:
“Maruta! . . . bring us what balm soever Sindhu or Asikni hath,
Or mountain or the seas contain.” [9]
The Maruts were clothed “in robes of wool,” [10] that is precisely as the Early Sumerians are clad in their contemporary sculptured representations and seals in Mesopotamia. And as confirming these Vedic records, we shall find that more than one of those Indo-Sumerian seals from the Indus Valley are inscribed by “Maruta” (or Mer or Muru, i.e., Amorites).
The Indus or Sindhu River was also an especial haunt of the “The Horsemen of the Sun” (the Aswin of the Sanskrit, figured and named on the Catti coins of Early Britain) [11] and as a pair they called Nasatya in Sanskrit, and Nassati of the Khatti, Catti or Hittites; and this pair is actually invoked in these seals. They were associates of the Maruts, and were the especial patrons of the Sun-worshipping Panch(-ala) or Phoenicians. [12] They are thus celebrated in the Vedas:
“This river with his lucid flow attracts you
More than all the other streams –
Even Sindhu with his path of gold.” [13]
Here “path of gold” appears to refer to the famous gold-dust of the Indus Valley sands referred to by Herodotus, Strabo, etc., see later; and the Maruts are constantly celebrated in the Vedas as “the bestowers of gold to the Aryans.”
Here we have the description of the “Gold-fields” of Tibet. Remember, though, that in those days, Tibet was not where it is today. Tibet was what we would refer to as “Udyana”. It was much farther to the west than it is today. And, for that matter, one must consult the writings of Owen Lattimore for accurate information as to the real history of Tibet.
The Harappa site also, about 380 miles higher up the river and about 600 feet above sea-level, and the antiquity of which is attested, besides the seals, etc., by its great Buddhist monuments of King Asoka and the Indo-Scythians, stands on the left bank of the Ravi River, amidst a network of the dead channels of the Chenab, Bias and Sutlej tributaries of the Indus. The vast sea-like plain here is deeply scored by the dead channels of these ever-shifting great rivers which mostly arise in Tibet, like the main stream of the Indus itself. And along the banks of the Ravi and Sutlej to the great break in the Himalayan range, led and still lead the caravan-routes to the ancient gold-fields of Tibet, famous for their “gold-digging ants” of Herodotus and Strabo [21] – these ants, however, having a very matter of fact basis. [22] The relationship of Harappa to the dead channels of these old rivers is indicated in the survey-map. And it was doubtless an old confluence of two, if not three, of these old rivers that would be selected as an up-country trading-station by the early Sumerian or Phoenician merchants in their exploitation of the gold and turquoise industry of Tibet.
[Compare the above paragraph with Lenormant's writing, above. This leads to "Food for thought, grounds for further research."
[4. On Krivi and Kuru-Panch-ala as “Syrio-Phoenician” ib., 12, 13, 188, etc.] [Ditto observation.]
[5. H., 3, 98 f.; 4-44. Alexander, who never penetrated to the Ganges Valley, probably heard during his expedition of that richer and more populous valley; for his eastern satrap and successor Seleukos Nikator sent his ambassador Megasthenes to the court of the Indian emperor (Asoka’s grandfather) at Pataliputra, the modern Patna (see W. E. P., 4 f.), and Megasthenes first describes the Ganges Valley to the Greeks.]
[6. See W. P. O. B., 216, 243, 343.]
[7. R. V., 5, 53-9, after G. H. V. The other rivers named here before Sindhu, namely Rasa, Kurmu, Anitabha and Kubha, are supposed to be tributaries of the Upper Indus, and Kubha is supposed to be the Kophen or Cabul river, cp. G. H. V., I, 522. In this latter location is a stone circle generally resembling the Keswick Circle on West-Mor-land border, and I have adduced a mass of evidence showing that these solar monuments were erected by Morites or Amorites. (W. P. O. B., 216 f.)]
[8. R. V., 8, 20, 24.]
[9. R. V., 8, 20, 25.]
[10. Ib., 5, 52-9.]
[11. W. P. O. B., 58-9, 285-6.]
[12. See previous note.]
[13. R. N., 8 – 26, 18.]
. . . . .
[21. H., 3, 98, 102-6. St. 15, I, 44.]
[22. The gold-digging “ants” (myrmeces) are described by Strabo as having “skins as large as leopards.” They were evidently the large Tibetan rabbit-like marmots, which burrouwed in the auriferous sand and brought gold to the surface. On my visit to the source of the Sutlej at the Manasarowar Lake at Mt. Kailas in Tibet in 1900, I observed how numerous were the marmots and their burrows on the plateau, some of the animals standing nearly two feet high.]
[23. M. R., 528.]
[24. M. R., 528.]
[25. Ib., 528. For photographic illustrations of many of these objects and excavated buildings, see Illustrated London News, Sept. 20, 1924.]
So, then, we see the Dur.An.Ki., associated with a tree. A Cedar Tree. Or a forest of them. Then, too, the tall cedars have been known as Initiates, according to some. These concepts will work their way into the simpler symbolism of the Teacher's Oak, by the time that the latter intersects with the former, and a new tradition is forged: that of the Kabbalah.
All Original Contents Copyright © 1997 - 2003 e.v., Jonathan Sellers.
All Rights Reserved.
The exception being the artwork. The art piece that opens this segment is by
Abdul Mati Klarwein, from his excellent work "Milk n' Honey", 1973.