Cydonia: Chapter Fourteen: The Arrows of Ares

Apres moi, le deluge. (After me, the flood.) --King Louis XV of France 1710-1774, Royal member of the Order of the Golden Fleece According to the records of the Assyrians and Babylonians, Nergal was considered the deity represented by the sign Sagittarius. Sagittarius personified Nergal as regent of the red planet and as builder of cities. Unlike the depiction of Sagittarius in modern zodiacs as a half human half horse, Nergal was often depicted in Babylonian art as a distinctly Cydonian lion with a human head. Nergal's symbolic animal was the lion, and colossal lions were engraved on buildings and temples to represent Nergal's guardianship. Nergal seems to have been the lion-god represented by the colossal winged lions at the [1020] entrance to the palaces. In Hebrew the name Nergal--from the root ner (lamp) and gal (rotating or rolling round object)-- [1021] refers to the place of the god's origins, a round, orbiting, glowing planet. Nergal, whom the Babylonians associated with Mars, was considered by the Israelites to be the same god as the Egyptian [1022] Horus. Hermes, or Harmachis, was the Ptolemaic Greek version of the Egyptian god Horus, from the Egyptian words Heru-em-Akhet , meaning Horus of the Horizon. This version of Horus is represented as the Great Sphinx of Giza. Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, wrote: A little more than a bowshot from these pyramids is a colossal figure of a head projecting from the earth. If the dimensions of the head are a clue to those of the body, it must be more than 70 cubits long. On its face is a reddish tint, and a varnish as bright as if it had freshly put on. The face is remarkably beautiful, the mouth in particular has a charming expression; it seems to be smiling gently. The local inhabitants worship it as a deity… They believe King Harmachis is buried inside [1023] it, and like to think that it was transported there. It is, however, carved from local rock. Horus, unlike his father Osiris who subdued the world by gentleness, song and flute (which Egyptians say he invented), was born a warrior. Horus was said to have assumed the shape of a human- headed lion to gain advantage over his father's twin brother Set, and avenge the murder of Osiris. In this [1024] form Horus was the Sphinx. The Arabs assimilated the ancient Egyptian name of the Sphinx to their [1025] own language as Abul-hol which means "Father of Terror" in Arabic. Hermes (Harmarchis), the messenger of the gods, is analogous to the word angelos in Greek, and malak in Hebrew, both meaning "a messenger." The sphinx, the centaur (knower of the heavens), and Hermes were all composite deities with a message. Each have been depicted in ancient art with wings, signifying their ability to travel from the earth to the heavens and back again. Intriguingly, the National Aeronautic and Space Administration has catalogued a surface feature of Mars called Harmakhis Vallis, [1026] named for the god of Mars, depicted as the Egyptian Sphinx. The Egyptians depicted Sagittarius with the same sphinx-like lion/human features which they had attributed to their god Horus. Just as the Babylonian Nergal was the symbolic messenger conveying the knowledge of the heaven to earth alignment, so also was the Egyptian god of Mars credited as the source dispersing this knowledge. The Egyptian Denderah ( tree in Greek) Zodiac depicts Sagittarius as an archer with a face in two halves, a face of a lion on one side and the face of a human on the other. [1027] The Denderah depiction of the Sidonian archer Sagittarius is a haunting echo of the famous Cydonian face on Mars. The earliest correlation between Sagittarius and Nergal was found on a clay tablet in Sumer, in which Nergal is depicted with the hybrid of lion and human feature, and an astounding additional characteristic. The human side to the double-faced Sumerian Nergal bares a frighteningly accurate resemblance to the profile of the west side of the face--the human side of the face in a highly eroded state --on Cydonia Mars. (see image at end of the chapter) There is another correlation between Mars, the Giza sphinx which symbolized the cataclysmic Flood of Noah, and the arrow-wielding indicator of the suntelia, Sagittarius. The antediluvians understood that the movement of the sun, moon and stars in the heavens regulated "times and seasons," even comprehending the cycles of equinoxes. Enoch especially understood the heavens, due to his education by the angels, and passed that knowledge to his descendents through his son Methuselah: Enoch a righteous man, whose eyes were opened by God, saw the vision of the Holy One in the heavens, which the angels showed me, and from them I heard everything, and from them I understood as I saw. (Book of Enoch 1:2) Observe ye (Enoch) everything that takes place in the heaven, how they do not change their orbits, and the luminaries which are in the heaven, how they all rise and set in order each in its season, and transgress not against their appointed order. Behold ye the earth, and give heed to the things which take place upon it from first to last, how steadfast they are, how none of the things upon earth change, but all the works of God appear to you. (Book of Enoch 2:1-3) Arthur W. Pink's Gleanings in Genesis, best explains the meaning of the name Methuselah: The name Methuselah strongly implies that Enoch had received a revelation from God. The name Methuselah signifies, "When he is dead it shall be sent; i.e., the deluge" (Newberry) Enoch named his son to reflect this prophecy. The name Methuselah comes from two roots: muth, a root that means "death"; and from shalach, which means "to bring," or "to send forth." Thus, the name Methuselah signifies, "his death shall bring." And, indeed, in the year that Methuselah died, the flood came. Methuselah lived 969 years. At its roots, the name Methuselah refers to the sign of the suntelia, the configuration of the heavens that would be the sign of the coming cataclysm. Though the name can mean, "his death shall bring" it also means, "Man of the Dart." Strong's #4968: Methuwshelach {meth-oo-sheh'-lakh} from Strong's #04962 math (men) and #7973 shelach (sword, weapon, dart). The angelic rebel Watchers corrupted the descendants of Cain, Lamech and Tubalcain. These angels instructed them in the making of weapons, like the bow and arrow, and also provided them with knowledge of every other civilizing skill. To those initiates of the mystery schools who preserved the knowledge taught by the descended "gods," the constellation Sagittarius represented the guard of the portal to the Duat. Sagittarius was the point on the zodiac where the sun rose during the suntelia; the arrow-man or "man of the dart" who pointed out that with this sign--the Milky Way ocean of stars encircling the earth and the sun rising from the mouth of the serpent Ouroboros--would come the cataclysmic end by Flood. The same celestial symbolism of ancient myth--the wolf, dwarves & giants, the tree, the serpent, and the cataclysmic end of the age--surfaces in the Norse legend of Fenrir and Ragnorok. The canine demi-god Fenrir was the eldest child of Loki and the giant Angrboda. Loki and Angrboda also produced Hel, whose body was half blue, half flesh color, and Ibrmungandr, an enormous serpent. Odin learned of a prophecy that the wolf Fenrir and his family would one day be responsible for the destruction of the world. Odin expelled the dualistic goddess Hel from heaven, who fell into the abode of the dead, inhabited by giants, which was appropriately called Niflheim. Odin then seized Iormungandr and threw the great serpent into the sea, where very soon he became so large that he was able to wind himself completely around the earth and hold his tail in his mouth. Later Odin caught the wolf Fenrir and locked him in a cage. Only the god of war, Tyr, dared to feed and take care of the wolf. It is interesting to note that "war god" is the particular occupation of the angel of Mars, and the Norse war god was named Tyr, like Tyre, the Sidonian city over which Melkart ruled. In the description of the earth- encircling serpent Ibrmungandr is the Norse interpretation of the sign of the suntelia, during the last Ouroboros alignment 12,500 years ago. When Fenrir was still a pup the Norse gods had nothing to fear, but when they saw one day how he had grown, the gods decided to render him harmless. They chained Fenrir with the strongest chain they could make, but the wolf demi-god broke free. A second attempt to chain the wolf brought the same results. In desperation the gods ordered the craftsmen Svartalfar Dwarves to make a supernatural fetter so strong that it could not be broken. The Svartalfar created a magical ribbon called the Gleipnir, and the gods devised a plan to trick the wolf into being caught. They persuaded Fenris to go with them to an island in the middle of a lake, and then, after they had all joined in various sports, one of them brought out Gleipnir and proposed that Fenrir should once more give an exhibition of his strength. Fenrir accepted the challenge to prove his strength, but because he mistrusted the gods he asked for a token of good will-- one of them had to put a hand between his jaws. It was the war god Tyr (counterpart of Mars and Sagittarius) who agreed to extend his hand into the wolf's mouth, and the gods chained the wolf with the Gleipnir. No matter how hard Fenrir struggled, he could not break free from the thin ribbon. In revenge, [1028] he bit off Tyr's hand. According to the Norse myth, on the day of Ragnarok, Fenrir will break his chains and join the giants in their battle against the gods. He will seek out Odin and devour him. Vidar, [1029] Odin's son, will avenge his father by killing the wolf. The wolf secured and bound by the thread of Gleipnir represented the secret knowledge or mystery religion kept secure and hidden until the next Ouroboral alignment. The island in the middle of the lake symbolizes the image of the last catastrophic epoch in 10,500 B.C. when Ouroboros circled the earth and the world rose from the cosmic sea. This cosmic cataclysmic cycle of the suntelia was kept by the great serpent and by Sagittarius, the archer horse-man or centaur. A ken-taur was a knower of the heavens, and Chiron the first centaur, was the teacher of such skills with the hands as: archery, music, and medicine. It was the keeper of the wolf, the war god Tyr (counterpart of Mars and Sagittarius) who lost his hand to the teeth of Fenrir, who embodied the secrets of Isis. The keepers of the secret knowledge of the heavens-- knowledge received from the angel of Mars and his rebellious co-horts--were those who populated the cities of Tyre & Sidon. The Pelasgians, who were said to be "older than the moon," founded the land of Sidonia. Previous chapters have explained the meaning behind the myth that the sons of Mars, twins who had been suckled by a wolf, founded Rome. Romulus, deified as "Mars Quirinus," was said to have instituted the Roman calendar, which began on April 21, 753 B.C. ab urbe condita AUC "from the birth of the city." Astronomically the New Year sun rising in a new constellation marked this time. For 2160 years before this age the sun rose in Aries in March. In the year 753 BC the sun began rising in Pisces. On April 21 the planet Mars rose before the sun in the exact spot the sun had risen at the spring equinox just a month previous. On the date of the founding of Rome, the rising sun followed the rise of Mars. According to Plutarch, after Romulus ascended to heaven as Quirinus, Numa Pompilius succeeded him. Myths concerning Numa claim his birthday was the date of the founding of Rome, April 21, which associates him with the god Pales whose feast was celebrated on that date as well. Numa, whose name comes from the same root as "counting" and "coins" in Latin, began improving the calendar system, adding January in honor of the dualistic god of beginnings and endings, Janus. Some myths claim that the Greek mystery school adept Pythagoras gave advice on policy and reform to Numa. Plutarch, however, pointed out that the two might not have been contemporaries, but legend has preserved this association symbolizing the continuity between the Greeks and Romans. The correlation between the foundation myths, and the dating of the calendars, of both the Greeks and Romans was related to the time of the Trojan War. The fall of Troy and the events leading up to it were outlined in the writings of Homer in the Iliad and Odyssey. Rome was founded, according to Varro, on April 21, 753 BC, calculated by referencing the Greek Olympic games which had been kept since the first Olympiad of 776 B.C. The legendary founder of the Olympics was Herakles, a god associated with the origin of the Milky Way, and also with the Martian god Melkart, city-god of Tyre. According to legend, Zeus himself invented the festival after defeating Cronus in the battle for Heaven. The games were held every four years at Altis, a sacred plain near the Hill of Cronus. The third day of the games began with a sacrifice to Zeus, which was the most solemn moment of the entire festival. A herd of 100 bulls (Centa- taurus) or hecatomb were slaughtered by assembled priests [1030] after a procession to the Great Altar of Zeus. The mystery schools preserved the practice of the 100 oxen sacrifice, because it provided a symbolic reference to the ancient knowledge of Isis and the heavens. Pythagoras was said to have offered this peculiar sacrifice when he discovered the theorem named for him, also called the 47th proposition of Euclid. Intriguingly, the Euclid triangle is also called another, more taurine, name. It is known as the dulcarnein (two horns) or horns of a dilemma. The practice of sacrificing tauri at the fruition of a great work demonstrated how the play on the words Cen-taur came to be associated with the "key" to the problems of time, space, measure, mathematics, sciences and architecture. The consummate symbol of which is found in the mouth of the Ouroboros where the "clockworks of heaven" merge at the sign Sagittarius. Alexander Hislop explains the origin for the name Centaur: The name for a priest, as written, is just Khn, and the vowel is supplied according to the different dialects of those who pronounce it, so as to make it either Kohn, Kahn, or Kehn. Kentaurus is [1031] evidently derived from Kehn, "a priest," and Tor, "to go round." It was the Cydonian priests of Caanan who carried the knowledge from the Nephilim to the Greeks. The word kehn was related to the words in Latin for Caananites. A hecatomb or sacrifice of 100 bulls was the Homeric ideal. The hekatombas, literally "one hundred oxen" was a traditional Greek communal sacrifice, especially associated with Apollo on the seventh day of the new moon festival (Burkert 1985:231). Apollo's association with the hecatomb was preserved in the Iliad. Agamemnon had taken as a prisoner of war Chryseis, the daughter of Chryses, Apollo's priest; Apollo responded to the dishonor, and to his priest's request for vengeance. He took his silver bow and shot the animals of the Greeks with plague, then attacked the troops. To appease Apollo, Agamemnon sent Chryseis back with a hecatomb on a ship captained by Odysseus, saying: Therefore the archer [Apollo] sent griefs against us and will send them still, nor sooner thrust back the shameful plague from the Danaans until we give the glancing-eyed girl back to her father without price, without ransom, and lead also a blessed hecatomb to Chryses; thus we might propitiate and persuade him. Apollo, the serpentine god of prophecy and the giver of knowledge, called the "Shining One" and "Far Shooter," the son of Zeus and Leto, was protector of the Pelasgian Trojans and fought on their side during the Trojan War. Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey seem to have been composed in the mid to late eighth century BC, toward the end of the so-called Dark Ages circa 700 B.C. The poems concern events that took place in the early twelfth century B.C. The Trojan War--and the epic cycle of Greek myth and ultimately Roman myth--began with the fruit of Cydonia. The first scene of the Iliad took place at a banquet of the gods held on the earth. The Goddess of Discord Eris, a consort of the god of Mars, was angered at not being invited to the gathering of the gods. Eris threw a golden Quince among the guests at the wedding banquet of Peleus and Thetis, marked "To the Most Beautiful." Three goddesses, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, competed for the apple, each promising a bribe to Paris, son of Priam, if he would choose her. Paris had three choices of goddesses to consider, but chose Aphrodite for a number of symbolic reasons. Aphrodite had risen from the foam of the great ocean (the Milky Way), having her origin in the castrated (Castor of Gemini) and usurped Uranus's phallus (from phalec the word for "division" or "watercourse") remembering the lost phallus of Osiris which was searched for by the Egyptian counterpart of Aphrodite, Isis. Because Ares and Aphrodite, and their Roman counterparts Mars and Venus, were united in myth, it is appropriate that Paris chose to give the golden quince, the Pyrus Cydonia, to Aphrodite. In return, Paris ended up with the mortal Helen--the sister of the "Gemini twins"--who embodied the secret knowledge of the alignment of heaven and earth, and the origins of the technology upon which civilization was founded. This myth is an esoteric Greek metaphor for the process of enlightenment. The man Paris, whose name in Greek comes from the same root as the word for the planet Mars--was named after that fiery philosopher's stone. Paris appropriately chose Isis, the religion of Sirius, that produced wisdom and understanding, symbolized by "Helen," meaning "light." The heroes of Greece who had also courted Helen had sworn an oath that they would defend her husband who ever he would turn out to be. Her husband was Menelaos, king of Sparta, whose name means, "withstanding the people." When Helen ran off with Paris to Troy, Menelaos and his brother Agamemnon forced the heroes to keep their promise and join him in a great expedition to Troy to win [1032] Helen back. (This is alluded to briefly in Iliad 24.34-37). The calendar of the Greeks began on July 1, 776 BC (the date of the first Olympic games) and used the metonic cycle, named after the Greek astronomer Meton. This was a cycle of 235 phases of the moon between its solstices--a length of time of about 19 years. According to the accepted date for the founding of Rome in 753 B.C. Romulus would have been 19 years of age when he founded Rome. This is the [1033] equivalent of one metonic cycle from the first Olympic games. Incorporated into the Olympic origin myth are the main components to the aion cycle, and movement astronomically through signs of the zodiac. Although the Olympics are associated with the Greek gods and Herakles, its origin is linked to the god of Mars. Oinomaos, a son of Ares, challenged the suitors of his daughter Hippodameia (horse maiden) to a chariot race, the losers of which would die. Ares gave the horses used in the contest to Oinomaos. Oinomaos won the race 13 times before the 14 suitor, the hero th Pelops (dark eyes--origin of the location named Peloponnesus), won the hand of the horse maiden [1034] Hippodameia. The horse theme underlying the myth is connected to Mars as the centaur, the guard at the gate of the duat, and the indicator of the cosmic clock of suntelias. Demeter, the goddess presiding over times and seasons, was associated with the Olympiad calendar system and horses. Myth preserves the mysteries of the goddess and her association with the Ouroboros time cycle, as embodied in the deity Poseidon. An ardent admirer of his sister goddess, Poseidon chased Demeter to Arcadia, where she attempted to hide in the form of a mare. Poseidon became a stallion and from that union issued the horse Arion, who was sometimes depicted with the half-face of a human, as a dualistic horse-man, another aspect of Sagittarius, and Mars as Ares the god of horses. Pelops was the son of Tantalus, a wealthy king of Phrygia in Asia Minor, who enjoyed the [1035] friendship of the gods, with whom he shared meals. Tantalus is most famous for the punishment he incurred in Hades condemned to stand in water to the neck without ever being able to drink because the water receded as soon as he tried, and with fruits hanging over his head that receded when he tried to [1036] reach them. Several reasons are given for Tantalus' punishment: revealing to men secrets of the gods heard at their table, or the theft of nectar and ambrosia for his mortal friends. Yet, another explanation has to do with his son Pelops. Tantalus was said to have killed his young son and prepared a stew for the gods with the parts of his body in order to put their cleverness to the test. The gods had no problem finding out what they were served and none of them ate the stew, except hungry Demeter who ate a shoulder of Pelops. The gods then reassembled the body of Pelops and resurrected him, with an ivory shoulder to make up for the one [1037] Demeter had eaten. Like Pelops, another god who was at one time murdered and chopped into pieces, and then resurrected to new life, was Dionysus. These dismembered and reassembled deities are echoes of the Egyptian Osiris, who symbolized the body of knowledge which was scattered and reassembled by Isis. The Olympic games were a religious symbolic enactment of the quest for hidden knowledge lost after the deluge. The area of Asia Minor was the first of a series of settlements founded by the Pelasgian race, descendants of Canaan and Sidon. The Pelasgian religion, which was the basis for the mystery schools of Samothrace and Crete--inherited by Rome--worshipped aspects of a god who fell from heaven bringing the foundations of civilization, and his consort the goddess of sacred locations. As they traveled establishing branches of the mysteries throughout the Mediterranean, the Pelasgians encountered people who were "in the dark"--like the "dark-eyed" Peloponnesians--until the secret knowledge was disclosed. The Peloponnesians (land of the dark-eyed) became through the influence of the Cretan mysteries, Hellenes (of the light), and ultimately Romans (high ones). Clay impression of an archer-war god Nergal (Mars) with a double "lion-human" face. This early Assyrian "Sagittarius" depicts the Cydonia face in its state of extreme erosion, circa 5000B.C. The same dual lion-human face is seen in Sagittarius from the zodiac of the temple of Hathor, Dendra, Egypt. The head of Sagittarius as Nergal of the Assyrians bears a striking resemblance to the "face of Cydonia Mars" in profile. The two-faced feature of the lion and human seen in these images fits R. C. Hoagland's theory that the face on Mars is a bi-faced lion man: Profile of Cydonia face. Image by author. NASA image of the face on Cydonia Mars. Enhanced image of bi-faced monument on Cydonia Mars from R. C. Hoagland's Enterprise Mission. And it [the paneling of the holy place of the temple] was made with cherubs…and two faces were to a cherub, the face of a man, toward the palm tree from here, and a young lion's face toward the palm tree from there. It was made to all the house round and round…on the wall of the temple. (Ezekiel 41:18)