Robert Baird
Paranormal Maven
Jason Colavito has done great work trying to free people from the cults of alien interventionists who are getting loads of exposure on TV. I think the fish man Oannes is an allegory for the Sea People who colonized most of the Middle East and gave alphabets to all of the Mediterranean. The latter is scientifically accepted fact and the Sumerian records say they were colonized out of Dilmun or modern day Dubai. That is where Phoenician ships were sold to Egyptians according to the World Book Encyclopedia (from Sumerian records of 2850 BCE). Marduk's alternate name is Belus which comes from Ba'al in Phoenicia and Bel in more northern climes called Keltoi or ogygia by authors with different languages. BL in vowel-less scripts before writing alphabets is a good path to seek out answers to the where of many myths. Ba'albek is BL's city for example.
http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/oa...ancient-aliens
In this excerpt from Jason's work in the link above we have an analysis of William Bramley and the serpent people he gave a name to. I would say giving a name to this cult which did exist is no big thing. The Chanes of Mexico are admirer's of these serpents and they boarded their kids heads so they would look like serpents in Mayan lands. A Dragon is a serpent and the Dragon Court of Nobles and Royalty written about by Sir Laurence Gardner in 'Genesis of the Grail Kings' plays a major part in many books of mine. Gardner gave up his association with that alien origin of civilization theory after I exposed it for a couple of years through linguistics, archaeology and every discipline known to man including what Rosicrucians like he and his boss (at the time) HRH Nicholas de Vere belonged to. De Vere's own book proudly proclaims Vlad the Impaler (Dracula) as one of their Sarkeny Rend Rosicrucian members. The Wiccans I briefly joined were vampire leaders in the Anne Rice mythos of the 90s too. Similarly we have a worldwide mythos of dwarves who I think relate to the Hobbit which was recently found on Flores Island.
"OK. Fair point. So let’s look at Oannes to see just why this Babylonian fish-man is not an ancient astronaut. Fair warning: Because Coppens identified this issue as essential to the ancient alien hypothesis, this post is very long.
The story of Oannes is told only by Berossus, a late Babylonian priest who related the tale in his Babylonian History, which does not survive. Summaries were made by Apollodorus, Abydenus, and Alexander Polyhistor, but of course none of these survive either. Extracts from these Greek summaries were recorded in Late Antiquity by Eusebius of Caesaria and in the Middle Ages by George Syncellus, whose books are the sole surviving record of Berossus’ work. We know Berossus existed because he is mentioned by other writers, such as Pliny, whose work survives. (Unrelated fragments of Berossus’ astronomical works were also preserved by Seneca.)
But this isn’t the end of the story. The Greek fragments of Berossus are known to modern readers in the form given them in the early 1800s by I. P. Cory, whose Ancient Fragments (an edition of which I recently edited) freely ran together material from Eusebius and Syncellus while excising the presumed contributions of the Greek authors to produce relatively linear narratives. (I have made this text available online here.) These fragments were further adapted by Robert Temple, who published them in the appendix to his Sirius Mystery from Richard Hodge’s 1876 revision of Cory’s Fragments. This is the form of Berossus’ work ancient astronaut hypothesizers know.
Now, Berossus is generally an accurate writer, but the form of his work that comes down to us does not perfectly match cuneiform records where such records exist. For example, the Greek summarizers make Berossus state that Belus (Marduk) “cut off his own head, upon which the other gods mixed the blood, as it gushed out, with the earth; and from thence men were formed.” However, the Babylonian creation epic, the Enuma Elish, differs on this detail in the cuneiform text. In tablet six, Marduk decrees that the god Kingu must be beheaded and his blood used by Ea to create man. Now, had the work of Berossus—a priest of Marduk—come down to us perfectly, it is very unlikely we should see such a profound mischaracterization of a sacred act of the god himself. As a result of such mistakes, we simply cannot be certain that the Oannes passage is uncorrupted.
Nevertheless, reading the passage on Berossus as it currently stands gives us no confidence that it describes an extraterrestrial. In fact, it says nothing about outer space at all:
Quote
At Babylon there was (in these times) a great resort of people of various nations, who inhabited Chaldæa, and lived in a lawless manner like the beasts of the field. In the first year there appeared, from that part of the Erythræan sea which borders upon Babylonia, an animal destitute of reason, by name Oannes, whose whole body (according to the account of Apollodorus) was that of a fish; that under the fish's head he had another head, with feet also below, similar to those of a man, subjoined to the fish's tail. His voice too, and language, was articulate and human; and a representation of him is preserved even to this day.
This Being was accustomed to pass the day among men; but took no food at that season; and he gave them an insight into letters and sciences, and arts of every kind. He taught them to construct cities, to found temples, to compile laws, and explained to them the principles of geometrical knowledge. He made them distinguish the seeds of the earth, and shewed them how to collect the fruits; in short, he instructed them in every thing which could tend to soften manners and humanize their lives. From that time, nothing material has been added by way of improvement to his instructions. And when the sun had set, this Being Oannes, retired again into the sea, and passed the night in the deep; for he was amphibious. After this there appeared other animals like Oannes, of which Berossus proposes to give an account when he comes to the history of the kings.
Such legends prompted Carl Sagan to write in the 1960s that “stories like the Oannes legend, and representations especially of the earliest civilizations on Earth, deserve much more critical studies than have been performed heretofore, with the possibility of direct contact with an extraterrestrial civilization as one of many possible alternative explanations.” Sagan later discounted this when he learned more about myths and legends and why they are unreliable.
Note that contra Coppens, Berossus clearly states that this event happened at Babylon (not Sumer), which was only founded in 1894 BCE, many centuries after the arts and sciences the creature claimed to bring with him were already in use at Sumer, Eridu, and Ur. (You can claim Berossus is wrong here, but if so, why trust anything else?) Note, too, that Oannes is described as a fish-man (and depicted in “literal” ancient art as a man in a giant fish suit) who lives in and returns to the sea. This is not outer space, and the only reason anyone ever thought it had anything to do with space is because at one particular moment in history—the 1960s and ’70s, when Sagan and Temple wrote—spacecraft routinely “splashed down” in the ocean, thus leading to an erroneous—and artificial—assumption of a connection between space and water."
The story of Oannes is told only by Berossus, a late Babylonian priest who related the tale in his Babylonian History, which does not survive. Summaries were made by Apollodorus, Abydenus, and Alexander Polyhistor, but of course none of these survive either. Extracts from these Greek summaries were recorded in Late Antiquity by Eusebius of Caesaria and in the Middle Ages by George Syncellus, whose books are the sole surviving record of Berossus’ work. We know Berossus existed because he is mentioned by other writers, such as Pliny, whose work survives. (Unrelated fragments of Berossus’ astronomical works were also preserved by Seneca.)
But this isn’t the end of the story. The Greek fragments of Berossus are known to modern readers in the form given them in the early 1800s by I. P. Cory, whose Ancient Fragments (an edition of which I recently edited) freely ran together material from Eusebius and Syncellus while excising the presumed contributions of the Greek authors to produce relatively linear narratives. (I have made this text available online here.) These fragments were further adapted by Robert Temple, who published them in the appendix to his Sirius Mystery from Richard Hodge’s 1876 revision of Cory’s Fragments. This is the form of Berossus’ work ancient astronaut hypothesizers know.
Now, Berossus is generally an accurate writer, but the form of his work that comes down to us does not perfectly match cuneiform records where such records exist. For example, the Greek summarizers make Berossus state that Belus (Marduk) “cut off his own head, upon which the other gods mixed the blood, as it gushed out, with the earth; and from thence men were formed.” However, the Babylonian creation epic, the Enuma Elish, differs on this detail in the cuneiform text. In tablet six, Marduk decrees that the god Kingu must be beheaded and his blood used by Ea to create man. Now, had the work of Berossus—a priest of Marduk—come down to us perfectly, it is very unlikely we should see such a profound mischaracterization of a sacred act of the god himself. As a result of such mistakes, we simply cannot be certain that the Oannes passage is uncorrupted.
Nevertheless, reading the passage on Berossus as it currently stands gives us no confidence that it describes an extraterrestrial. In fact, it says nothing about outer space at all:
Quote
At Babylon there was (in these times) a great resort of people of various nations, who inhabited Chaldæa, and lived in a lawless manner like the beasts of the field. In the first year there appeared, from that part of the Erythræan sea which borders upon Babylonia, an animal destitute of reason, by name Oannes, whose whole body (according to the account of Apollodorus) was that of a fish; that under the fish's head he had another head, with feet also below, similar to those of a man, subjoined to the fish's tail. His voice too, and language, was articulate and human; and a representation of him is preserved even to this day.
This Being was accustomed to pass the day among men; but took no food at that season; and he gave them an insight into letters and sciences, and arts of every kind. He taught them to construct cities, to found temples, to compile laws, and explained to them the principles of geometrical knowledge. He made them distinguish the seeds of the earth, and shewed them how to collect the fruits; in short, he instructed them in every thing which could tend to soften manners and humanize their lives. From that time, nothing material has been added by way of improvement to his instructions. And when the sun had set, this Being Oannes, retired again into the sea, and passed the night in the deep; for he was amphibious. After this there appeared other animals like Oannes, of which Berossus proposes to give an account when he comes to the history of the kings.
Such legends prompted Carl Sagan to write in the 1960s that “stories like the Oannes legend, and representations especially of the earliest civilizations on Earth, deserve much more critical studies than have been performed heretofore, with the possibility of direct contact with an extraterrestrial civilization as one of many possible alternative explanations.” Sagan later discounted this when he learned more about myths and legends and why they are unreliable.
Note that contra Coppens, Berossus clearly states that this event happened at Babylon (not Sumer), which was only founded in 1894 BCE, many centuries after the arts and sciences the creature claimed to bring with him were already in use at Sumer, Eridu, and Ur. (You can claim Berossus is wrong here, but if so, why trust anything else?) Note, too, that Oannes is described as a fish-man (and depicted in “literal” ancient art as a man in a giant fish suit) who lives in and returns to the sea. This is not outer space, and the only reason anyone ever thought it had anything to do with space is because at one particular moment in history—the 1960s and ’70s, when Sagan and Temple wrote—spacecraft routinely “splashed down” in the ocean, thus leading to an erroneous—and artificial—assumption of a connection between space and water."
http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/oa...ancient-aliens
In this excerpt from Jason's work in the link above we have an analysis of William Bramley and the serpent people he gave a name to. I would say giving a name to this cult which did exist is no big thing. The Chanes of Mexico are admirer's of these serpents and they boarded their kids heads so they would look like serpents in Mayan lands. A Dragon is a serpent and the Dragon Court of Nobles and Royalty written about by Sir Laurence Gardner in 'Genesis of the Grail Kings' plays a major part in many books of mine. Gardner gave up his association with that alien origin of civilization theory after I exposed it for a couple of years through linguistics, archaeology and every discipline known to man including what Rosicrucians like he and his boss (at the time) HRH Nicholas de Vere belonged to. De Vere's own book proudly proclaims Vlad the Impaler (Dracula) as one of their Sarkeny Rend Rosicrucian members. The Wiccans I briefly joined were vampire leaders in the Anne Rice mythos of the 90s too. Similarly we have a worldwide mythos of dwarves who I think relate to the Hobbit which was recently found on Flores Island.
"“Do alien visitors really desire the blood of humans in order to exert power and gain control over the earth?”
Funny, I thought that was vampires.
This week’s Ancient Aliens used its conceit as an excuse to rehash the most salacious aspects of ancient and modern cults, including Heaven’s Gate and the Thugees of India. Mostly the show talked about human sacrifice, murder, castration, mass suicide etc. and then threw in random moments of ancient astronaut theorists (AATs) claiming that the gods worshipped by the cults were actually aliens. But this is largely irrelevant, since the cults were comprised of human beings, and the aliens or the gods never showed up. Later, when the show said AATs believe that aliens were really in touch with modern cult leaders like Marshall Applewhite of Heaven’s Gate through brain implants and ordered them to commit mass suicide, the show crossed the line from irresponsible to perverse.
Much hay is made of the so-called “Brotherhood of the Snake,” a supposedly ancient secret society founded by extraterrestrials but perverted into a sinister force. The AATs attribute evidence of this society to unnamed “ancient legends,” but so far as I can tell the first mention of this supposed secret society didn’t come until the twentieth century, when William Bramley described them in 1989’s The Gods of Eden, which drew its “knowledge” of Mesopotamian (Sumerian and Babylonian) mythology from Zecharia Sitchin’s eccentric interpretations.
The closest pre-Bramley source appears to be the Ophites (from the Greek for “snake”), a Gnostic group who had taken the snake as their symbol, and were referred to as the Brotherhood of the Serpent in Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine (1888) and only in Blavatsky and those dependent upon her. Peter Tompkins says that a “Brotherhood of the Serpent” among the Maya were extraterrestrials in his 1987 Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids.There was also a “brotherhood of the Snake” mentioned in a 1929 Journal of American Folklore article, but this refers to a Native American group within one southwestern tribe. Another, fictional, Brotherhood of the Snake occurred in the 1916 novel The Boy Settler by Edwin Legrand Sabin.
Bramley does not provide “ancient legends” of the “Brotherhood” in his book. Instead, he conjures the existence of the Brotherhood out of two parts: First, world mythologies feature frequent allusions to serpent worship, which he takes a unified cult symbol. Second, he then imagines that the Sumerian gods are flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials, meaning that Sumerian myths are minutes taken at the meetings of the Brotherhood, whose members masqueraded as gods. But look at how Bramley first introduces his Brotherhood:
“The snake was the logo of a group which had become very influential in early human societies of both Hemispheres. That group was a disciplined Brotherhood dedicated to the dissemination of spiritual knowledge and the attainment of spiritual freedom. This Brotherhood of the Snake (also known as the ‘Brotherhood of the Serpent,’ but which I will often refer to as simply the "Brotherhood") opposed the enslavement of spiritual beings and, according to Egyptian writings, it sought to liberate the human race from Custodial bondage. The Brotherhood also imparted scientific knowledge and encouraged the high aesthetics that existed in many ancient societies. For these and other reasons, the snake had become a venerated symbol to humans and, according to Egyptian and biblical texts, an object of Custodial hatred.” (1990 paperback ed., pp. 53-4)
Note that there is no evidence whatsoever presented for the group’s existence. The group is presented as an assertion in the first sentence, given a name without a source in the third, and only then is evidence marshaled to support the supposition—but this evidence, the Bible and Egyptian texts, says nothing about any brotherhood of the snake. Instead, these are mere mentions of snakes that Bramley has chosen to interpret as evidence of a unified snake cult. In other words, this is nothing but circular reasoning.
For whatever reason, once Bramley proposed the Snake Brotherhood, other authors picked up on it, dozens in the five years following publication of the Gods of Eden. In 1993 Jan van Helsing discussed the cult as having been formed in early Mesopotamia c. 300,000 BCE. Van Helsing’s name is a pseudonym, chosen in honor of the famous vampire hunter, because van Helsing believed Jews were bloodsuckers who used the Brotherhood of the Snake to control the world. This was one of the more disturbing uses of Bramley’s imaginary brotherhood."
My own first published book is reviewed by others herein.
Diverse Druids
Funny, I thought that was vampires.
This week’s Ancient Aliens used its conceit as an excuse to rehash the most salacious aspects of ancient and modern cults, including Heaven’s Gate and the Thugees of India. Mostly the show talked about human sacrifice, murder, castration, mass suicide etc. and then threw in random moments of ancient astronaut theorists (AATs) claiming that the gods worshipped by the cults were actually aliens. But this is largely irrelevant, since the cults were comprised of human beings, and the aliens or the gods never showed up. Later, when the show said AATs believe that aliens were really in touch with modern cult leaders like Marshall Applewhite of Heaven’s Gate through brain implants and ordered them to commit mass suicide, the show crossed the line from irresponsible to perverse.
Much hay is made of the so-called “Brotherhood of the Snake,” a supposedly ancient secret society founded by extraterrestrials but perverted into a sinister force. The AATs attribute evidence of this society to unnamed “ancient legends,” but so far as I can tell the first mention of this supposed secret society didn’t come until the twentieth century, when William Bramley described them in 1989’s The Gods of Eden, which drew its “knowledge” of Mesopotamian (Sumerian and Babylonian) mythology from Zecharia Sitchin’s eccentric interpretations.
The closest pre-Bramley source appears to be the Ophites (from the Greek for “snake”), a Gnostic group who had taken the snake as their symbol, and were referred to as the Brotherhood of the Serpent in Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine (1888) and only in Blavatsky and those dependent upon her. Peter Tompkins says that a “Brotherhood of the Serpent” among the Maya were extraterrestrials in his 1987 Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids.There was also a “brotherhood of the Snake” mentioned in a 1929 Journal of American Folklore article, but this refers to a Native American group within one southwestern tribe. Another, fictional, Brotherhood of the Snake occurred in the 1916 novel The Boy Settler by Edwin Legrand Sabin.
Bramley does not provide “ancient legends” of the “Brotherhood” in his book. Instead, he conjures the existence of the Brotherhood out of two parts: First, world mythologies feature frequent allusions to serpent worship, which he takes a unified cult symbol. Second, he then imagines that the Sumerian gods are flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials, meaning that Sumerian myths are minutes taken at the meetings of the Brotherhood, whose members masqueraded as gods. But look at how Bramley first introduces his Brotherhood:
“The snake was the logo of a group which had become very influential in early human societies of both Hemispheres. That group was a disciplined Brotherhood dedicated to the dissemination of spiritual knowledge and the attainment of spiritual freedom. This Brotherhood of the Snake (also known as the ‘Brotherhood of the Serpent,’ but which I will often refer to as simply the "Brotherhood") opposed the enslavement of spiritual beings and, according to Egyptian writings, it sought to liberate the human race from Custodial bondage. The Brotherhood also imparted scientific knowledge and encouraged the high aesthetics that existed in many ancient societies. For these and other reasons, the snake had become a venerated symbol to humans and, according to Egyptian and biblical texts, an object of Custodial hatred.” (1990 paperback ed., pp. 53-4)
Note that there is no evidence whatsoever presented for the group’s existence. The group is presented as an assertion in the first sentence, given a name without a source in the third, and only then is evidence marshaled to support the supposition—but this evidence, the Bible and Egyptian texts, says nothing about any brotherhood of the snake. Instead, these are mere mentions of snakes that Bramley has chosen to interpret as evidence of a unified snake cult. In other words, this is nothing but circular reasoning.
For whatever reason, once Bramley proposed the Snake Brotherhood, other authors picked up on it, dozens in the five years following publication of the Gods of Eden. In 1993 Jan van Helsing discussed the cult as having been formed in early Mesopotamia c. 300,000 BCE. Van Helsing’s name is a pseudonym, chosen in honor of the famous vampire hunter, because van Helsing believed Jews were bloodsuckers who used the Brotherhood of the Snake to control the world. This was one of the more disturbing uses of Bramley’s imaginary brotherhood."
My own first published book is reviewed by others herein.
Diverse Druids
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