Rise of the Nephilim

“The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.” These two brief sentences from the Book of [1]Genesis tantalize us. They suggest so much more than they tell, and we want to know more. Who were these mysterious Nephilim? And who were the ‘sons of God’ who sired them? The words hint at a powerful story, but the story does not continue further. It is as if we are in the middle of reading an exciting book – only to discover that the next several pages have been torn out. And in a sense, they have been.

One of the most intriguing names in scripture, the Nephilim have given rise to a whole body of speculative literature. They were giants. They were fallen angels. They were extra-terrestrials who visited our ancient Earth. Whatever their true nature, the devastation which these beings wrought seems to have been real enough.

Before the Bible became the book as we now know it, there were many such texts in circulation, each one with its own story to tell. One of these texts was the [2]Book of Enoch, the prophet who, we are told, was the seventh generation from Adam and the great-grandfather of Noah. As with other books bearing the names of the prophets of old, this does not mean that Enoch actually wrote the text, any more than Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel wrote the books which bear their names. In writing these texts at times in the first person (‘I was lifted up to heaven’, ‘then the angel answered me,’ etc.) the unknown authors of these texts were using a literary device which gave their texts both conviction and authority.

The prophet Enoch, said to have been the seventh generation from Adam. The parts of the Book of Genesis which mysteriously omit major narrative developments can be resolved by reading Enoch, even though the Book of Enoch appears nowhere in scripture.

This does not mean that these texts are less ‘authentic’ because we do not know who wrote them: we still can read them as accomplished pieces of ancient literature. And this is how we may regard the Book of Enoch. The mere fact that Enoch was presumed to have lived before the Flood, and therefore was describing events which happened prior to creation’s destruction, is enough to tell us that such events are fiction. But even fiction can contain elements of folktales and memories of events passed down through the generations as oral tradition before being committed to writing. So why does the Book of Enoch appear [3]nowhere in the Bible? It contains a truly visionary account of Enoch’s celestial journey to the heavenly realms at least as stirring as anything in Ezekiel, that other book of visions. And it significantly contains many details and even whole narratives that otherwise are [4]missing from Genesis. One of these is the complete story of those mysterious Nephilim.

The remarkable and vivid description of Enoch’s journey to the celestial realms is at least as stirring as anything comparable which we can read in the text of Ezekiel. And yet one is omitted from scripture while the other is not, and we are left to ponder the seemingly arbitrary nature of the reasons either for accepting or rejecting a particular text for inclusion in the canon.

His name, the writer of Enoch tells us, was Samyaza: one of the hosts of heaven. From on high Samyaza gazed down upon the earth, and his eye fell upon the comely ‘daughters of men’. Driven by a distinctly un-angelic lust, this rebel angel laid his plans. Samyaza got together a coalition of the willing: two hundred angels known as the Watchers, the ‘sons of God’ in Genesis, who swore a terrible oath of allegiance before descending through the heavenly realms to determine just how easy Earth girls were. By the time the company arrived on our planet they had acquired bodies of flesh and blood. And flesh and blood were what they were after.

Samyaza, the leader of the two hundred fallen angels described in Enoch as the Watchers, and in Genesis as the sons of God. The fact that Samyaza shares certain characteristics and story elements with Satan suggests that this particular fallen angel might have been an early version of the Prince of Darkness himself. 

But the Watchers were prepared to give as well as to take. One of their number, Azazyel, taught men the dubious arts of weaponry and warfare, and he showed women how they could enhance their beauty with trinkets, jewellery and makeup. The world became a place of lost innocence, of desecration, of suffering. And the half-angel offspring of the Watchers born to Earthly women, the Nephilim, proved to have insatiable appetites, gorging their way through every living thing: the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, crawling reptiles, and the fish that swam in the waters. But then the humans around them also went onto the menu. Enough was enough.

The nightmare visions of Hieronymus Bosch, with their desolate landscapes peopled by grotesque hybrid creatures and other monstrosities, powerfully suggest the world desecrated by the Watchers and their terrible offspring the Nephilim as described in the text of the Book of Enoch – which itself could have influenced such scenes in the Book of Revelation.

The cries of despair coming from the human world were heard in heaven. The five [5]archangels - Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, Suryal and Uriel – descended to join battle with the wayward fallen angels. Raphael bound the troublemaking Azazyel fast, Gabriel incited the Nephilim to an act of terrible mutual slaughter, and [6]Michael bound Samyaza deep beneath the earth, where he shall remain until the End of Days before being thrown into the bottomless Pit of Fire.

It certainly makes for a tremendous story: an epic clash of forces classically portrayed as good pitted against evil, with our own Earth as the battleground. But is this primal battle the stuff of folk culture which simply belongs with other such texts and mythologies? Or is it something more? Supposing that these fallen angels were indeed more than just a story? Supposing that these beings really walked among us in those ancient times? If this was so, and if the Watchers and the Nephilim really existed, then who were they?

These two female figurines are from the pre-Sumerian Ubaid culture, and date from between 4,000 to 5,000 BCE. Archaeology cannot explain the strange reptilian faces, which are characteristic of all such Ubaid figurines, other than to comment that they cannot be masks: even the nursing infant has the same distinctly non-human face. Do these figurines suggest genetic deformities of some kind, or perhaps mysteriously hint at some distant truth to the story of the Nephilim?

Were the Watchers in reality perhaps all-too-Earthly visitors from a then-less familiar [7]geographical region, strangers come from a strange land? Or were they even extra-terrestrials visiting our planet to throw a few alien genes into the human mix, as has been speculated on the wilder shores of probability by some [8]credulity-stretching theorists? As with other such stories, it gets down to what we personally choose to believe. But the brief reason given in Genesis for the cause of the Flood – the ‘wickedness of men’ – seems way too vague and generic to be a justifiable reason for wiping out the whole of creation – with the exception, of course, of Noah and the contents of the Ark. As if things are any different now.

This 19th-century depiction of the Deluge by Gustave Doré manages to include every element of the drama. Even the very waves reach up like wrathful fingers to snatch the despairing figures from the last rock where they have taken refuge. We can read the story of the Flood in Genesis (which itself is borrowed from Mesopotamian sources), but it is in Enoch that we learn of the true reasons for the destruction of God’s creation. 

Again, it is not Genesis but the text of Enoch which suggests the true reason for the cause of the Deluge. The frightful Nephilim were half-fallen angel, half-human. They were malicious hybrids whose ruthless appetites consumed and despoiled everything around them. Nephilim greed had laid waste to the earth, and the lust of the Watchers had defiled the purity of human genetics. Creation had become tainted. Creation must begin anew.

We do not need to resort to conspiracy theories featuring interbreeding aliens to see the uncomfortable parallel with our own times. It is we, with our insatiable corporate-greed appetite for consuming all the natural products of our world and despoiling the very environment on which we depend, who are behaving like the Nephilim. Twenty-three centuries after it was first written, the Book of Enoch, and the vivid story of the Nephilim which it contains, carries an urgent and startlingly topical warning for us all. We have encountered the new Nephilim, and they are us.

Hawkwood       

Notes:

[1] This quote from Genesis 6:4 is from the Revised Standard Version. The King James Version offers a different nomenclature: “There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.” This comparison raises the gnarly question of translation, and what the term ‘Nephilim’ might actually mean. ‘Nephilim’ and ‘giants’ are not necessarily interchangeable terms, with the original Hebrew suggesting the term might mean ‘fallen ones’, although there is no scholastic consensus on this.

In 2004 Worth1000, a website which hosts contests for digital artists, created a competition on the theme of 'Archaeological Anomalies'. An artist with the web identity IronKite Photoshopped a clever image which went on to lead a life of its own. The image (above) subsequently appeared (with its source uncredited) on various pro-scriptural conspiracy theory websites and in videos, claiming to be ‘proof’ that the ‘giants’ of Genesis 6:4 had been discovered: not the first time that hoaxed claims have attempted to ‘prove’ the truth of scripture with misrepresentation. Please see note [2] of my post A Simple Misunderstanding for another such example.

[2] The Book of Enoch is actually five different texts taken together. There are enough stylistic differences between these five texts to regard them as being by different authors at different times.

[3] The question of the Book of Enoch’s non-canonical status is complex, and provides a good example of just how arbitrary is the choice of texts which make up the scriptural canon. Various denominations or branches either of the Christian church, the Coptic church, or the Jewish community either partially include it or omit it, and for equally various reasons. One reason for its omission – the objection to angels having corporeal bodies – hardly holds up when we remember that the two angels (left, with Lot, by James Tissot) who entered the city of Sodom also had material bodies. Please see my post Lot and his Daughters: The Inside Story.

[4] It is in Enoch that we find a more detailed description of the fruit of the tree in Eden than is provided in Genesis. Please see my post Forbidden Fruit.

[5] The substance of my post is taken from the Richard Laurence translation of the Book of Enoch. The names of the five Archangels and the Watchers are taken from this translation.

[6] That the story tells us that it was Michael who bound Samyaza, and Samyaza’s own rebellious and troublemaking nature, suggests that Samyaza was an early archetype who later would evolve into Satan. The Book of Revelation was very nearly dropped from the canon because of its obvious resemblance to this passage in the text of Enoch, from which it presumably was derived.

[7] The case for the Watchers actually being humans from a different geographical region is cogently argued by Andrew Collins in his book From the Ashes of Angels. Collins mentions that early Judaic literature assigns specific physical characteristics to the Watchers as being extremely tall with white skin, hair ‘white as wool’, ruddy complexions, piercing eyes and serpent-like faces.

[8] The books of Zechariah Sitchin, particularly his first book The 12th Planet, claim an extra-terrestrial involvement in human affairs. Sitchin equated his extra-terrestrials, whom he called the Anunnaki, with the Nephilim, and postulated that they come from a planet as yet unknown in our own solar system which he called Nibiru (right), orbiting in a distant pronounced elliptical orbit around the sun. Weirdly enough, as recently as January 2016 a team of scientists suggested that an unknown giant planet might indeed exist in such an orbit, and which planet’s existence could account for gravitational anomalies observed in outer solar system bodies. That article may be read here.

Sources:

Elizabeth Clare Prophet: Fallen Angels and the Origins of Evil: Why Church Fathers suppressed the Book of Enoch and its startling revelations. Summit University Press, 2000. This title contains the complete Richard Laurence translation of the Book of Enoch, as well as a concordance citing references to Enoch in other texts, both canonical and ex-canonical.

Andrew Collins: From the Ashes of Angels: the Forbidden Legacy of a Fallen Race. Michael Joseph Ltd, 1996.

Zechariah Sitchin: The 12th Planet. Stein and Day, 1976. I am aware that Sitchin has a huge fan base out there, but it must be said that his theories contain fundamental inaccuracies both astronomical (to do with his calculations for the orbit of his hypothetical planet Nibiru) and cultural (to do with his misrepresentation of Mesopotamian mythology and texts). 

Are You Ready for The Rapture?

From 13th-century Europe comes the legend of the Wandering Jew: a hapless figure who, according to the story, mocked Jesus as he was being led to the place of crucifixion. For this ultimate lack of compassion this individual was cursed to walk the earth until the Second Coming. Later embellishments of this story give the man’s name as Ahasuerus – although why Ahasuerus was singled out from the [1]mocking multitudes who lined the way to Golgotha is something which the legend leaves unclear.

At the limits of his strength, Ahasuerus is himself mocked by the very Death which is denied to him.

What the story contains, and what concerns us here, is the unspecified time for Jesus’ triumphal return. Assuming the legend to be true, and with no Second Coming yet in sight, we must also assume that Ahasuerus is wandering still. How unimaginably strange and alienating the experience of witnessing the past two millennia must have been for him. He would have witnessed the growth of a religion which, for all its strength of numbers, has become deeply factionalized into thousands of different denominations, all with their own doctrines which differ from each other - sometimes radically so.

Twisted city: tornadoes demolish San Francisco.

But when will the Second Coming happen? At the time, it was fervently believed that this momentous event would take place within a [2]generation of the events of the crucifixion, in which case Ahasuerus would have lived a reasonably normal if rather lengthy life-span. There were many texts then in circulation about the coming end times, many revelations, all with appropriate signs to watch for that would signal the imminence of the event. As it turned out, only [3]one of these doom-laden texts finally made it into the canon. We know it as the Book of the Revelation of St. John the Divine.

Los Angeles slides into the Pacific Ocean.

That John’s text originally was only one of many such [4]eschatological texts then in circulation says as much about our preoccupation with such scenarios as it does about any specifically religious context. How else to explain our hunger for the sort of graphic scenes that we eagerly watch in any number of blockbuster disaster movies? We look on spellbound (but nevertheless safely nestled in our armchairs) as whole cities are engulfed by mega-tsunamis, by planet-rupturing earthquakes, by collision-course asteroids, by super-volcanoes, or even by out-of-control unreasoning monsters, all of it presented in the convincing fidelity of detail which state-of-the-art [5]CGI technology can now conjure forth.

That something in our nature actually seems to relish these images is evidenced by the box office takings of such films. And human nature being what it is, it’s a hop-skip-and-jump away from placing these things in a religious context – as in a pre-disaster movie age John of Patmos and others of his time actually did. We still have these hankerings for a spiritual disaster scenario. In our own time such a scenario is known as The Rapture.

Yellowstone Park heads skywards as the supervolcano erupts from beneath it.

The Rapture, the bodily ascent of believers into heaven which heralds the Second Coming, is an evangelical Christian concept, the details of which, inevitably, are contested between different evangelical groups. Is The Rapture concurrent with the Second Coming, or will the loyal faithful be raptured up into the realms celestial to greet the returning Christ? There can be no certainties for an event which, by its very definition, is supernatural. Not that certainties are not claimed, of course. Any number of signs for the end times are proposed, and any number of predictions of the precise time and date have been made in the last century and a half. As you are reading this, you can comfortably conclude that all such predictions have proven to be inaccurate.

A contemporary version of John's beast from the sea: the Cloverfield monster attacks New York. 

I will make a modest prediction of my own: The Rapture is like the future. It is and always will be something that is about to happen. I have, you see, a basic objection to the concept itself, and that objection crystalizes in the word ‘selectivity’. Any idea which smacks of spiritual elitism is an idea that needs to be questioningly scrutinized. If only believers who have [6]prepared themselves (specifically: Christian evangelical believers) are going to get raptured up, where does that leave the rest of us? Are all the non-evangelical Christians, Jews, Hindus, Bahais, neo-Pagans, Jains, Taoists, atheists, Buddhists, Sikhs, animists, you name it, going to be cut loose to roam a post-apocalyptic [7]dystopia, guarding precious fuel dumps like they were Fort Knox and praying that Mad Max is out there somewhere?

The bleak highway which Mad Max rides. The future, it seems, is a road to nowhere.

There is another side to this. With me, there always is. In the hypothetical situation of me being offered a ticket to ride (I said it was hypothetical), I assure you that I would turn it down. Somewhere inside me there lives a [8]bodhisattva. I would elect to stay behind and do what I could on earth. And if you are one of those who is getting ready for The Rapture, knowing that in so doing you are preparing yourself to be among the chosen elite who will leave so many of your fellows behind to suffer, then I would suggest that you might discover that heaven could well apply rather different criteria for selection than mere denominational doctrine and Rapture-ready preparedness. Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew who must wait for the Second Coming, could be continuing his wanderings for quite a while yet.

Hawkwood      

Notes:

[1] Using the same rationale we must also wonder why Pontius Pilate, the soldiery who scourged Christ, and the entire cynically derisive crowd who chose to free the thief Barabbas were not also visited by the same curse which condemned Ahasuerus. Curses in legend, apparently, are irrationally selective. Another example of such a selective curse is Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner (left), whose worldly sufferings seem out of all proportion to his original act of shooting the albatross and thus precipitating the curse against him. Such curses in stories and legends can be devices for both driving a narrative forward and underscoring a moral point.

[2] In Matthew 24:34 Jesus says: "Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled".

[3] At the Council of Nicaea, presided over by Emperor Constantine, The Book of Revelation only just scraped through the selection process to become canonical. With its intense visions both wondrous and bizarre, it has been inspiring artists (myself included), writers and End-of-Days conspiracy theorists ever since.

[4] Eschatology is the study of end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenarios from all cultures.

[5] CGI: computer generated image.

[6] A Rapture-Ready Check List: What being Rapture-ready actually entails can involve a whole check list of do's and don't's requirements, with the don't's including: don't sleep around with your girlfriend or boyfriend, don't work on Sunday, don't put the needs of your wife or husband and family before your faith, don't fail to truly repent of your sins, don't commit idolatry (which, as the website Divine Revelations makes clear, includes praying to saints, just to cut out all those idolatrous Catholics) and, rather mysteriously, you apparently can forget about being raptured up if you are merely ‘Worldly or Lukewarm’ (whatever that might mean).

All the stringent requirements (and the Divine Revelations website lists many more than the six I have mentioned here) when taken together would ensure that a negligible minority (if any) of evangelicals would pass muster. And human fallibility being what it is, this in turn prompts the curious scenario of The Rapture happening – and no one actually being raptured up. All in all, this laundry list of requirements catalogued by the Divine Revelations website, which would seem impossible to fulfill by all but the most neurotically stringent and religiously obsessed individuals (who presumably would be considered too unstable to be suitable Rapture candidates anyway), is merely another example of that perennially favourite ploy: a reward-and-punishment system of faith through fear, the ‘fear’ part in this case being the dire consequences of being one of the multitudes who will be left behind in a world which will descend into the stuff of nightmares.

[7] Dystopia: a future dysfunctional society in which the social order has broken down, which is the opposite of the ideal society as originally envisaged in the 16th-century book Utopia by Sir Thomas More.

[8] The Buddhist term bodhisattva has evolved in Western interpretations to mean a soul who declines to enter the bliss of Nirvana, electing instead to remain behind and help other sentient beings.

Sources:

Elaine Pagels: Revelations: Visions, Prophesy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation. Viking, 2012. Professor Pagels’ book puts John’s text in the context of the times in which he was writing: in the despairing aftermath of the crushed Jewish Revolt, and pointing out that each succeeding generation has seen its own sufferings and trials reflected in John’s visionary writings. The book also makes clear what I have mentioned here: that John’s text was only one of many of its kind then in circulation.

The top image is a detail of the painting Ahasuerus at the End of the World, by the Hungarian artist Adolf Hiremy-Hirschl, 1888. Left behind by the angel of Hope, mocked by an indifferent Death, Ahasuerus struggles on through an icy and forbidding wilderness as scavenging crows scatter around a comotose woman - the desperate epitome of all of fallen humanity. Other images are taken from the feature films: The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, Cloverfield, and the Mad Max online game.

666: The Number of the Beast

“Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.” Oh, how much dread this brief phrase has invoked! The phrase, from the New Testament’s [1]Book of Revelation, has provided fertile source material for [2]artists, assorted metal bands and horror blockbuster scriptwriters, and has been the source of much speculation by serious scholastic opinion at one end of the spectrum and doomsday conspiracy theorists at the other.

The number has even generated its very own medically-recognized phobia with the Scrabble-defying name of hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia (no, I don’t know how to pronounce it either), which has resulted in such startling urban changes as U.S. Highway 666 being renamed Highway 491 for that specific reason.

When fear gains the upper hand then chaos reigns, and common sense goes straight out the window. But as often as not, fear is not a rational thing, and just how irrational our fear of the ‘beast’ and the number 666 really is can be realized with a better understanding of the true meaning behind the phrase. The first clue is right there in the phrase’s opening words: “Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding…”. With these words we are given the clear signal that this phrase is not intended as some ghastly portent, but as containing concealed ‘wisdom’, if only we can unlock the puzzle and gain access to that inner knowledge. We are specifically told that we will need understanding – insight – to solve the puzzle, or as Jesus himself says [3]elsewhere: it is the sort of knowledge intended ‘for those who have ears to hear’.

We are further told that 666 is ‘the number of a man’. But which man? Based upon [4]gematria, candidates ranging from the [5]suitably bestial Roman emperor Nero to the [6]Pontiff and even Mohammed have been put forward. So we have a two-part puzzle to solve: the identity of this ‘man’, and why his number totals that mysterious 666. But there is another factor: we need to remember that we are reading what is in reality a translation from the Greek original. Did the author of Revelation really mean a ‘beast’? The word in English is immediately scary and emotive, suggesting all manner of misshapen horrors lurking in the shadows. But the word used in the original Greek is Θηρίον (thērion), which suggests something wild, primal and untamed. And such a force need be neither ‘good’ nor ‘evil’, but merely impartial – as neutral as an unleashed thunderstorm which, for all its display of awesome power, simply ‘is’. So our lurking beast is already looking a touch more friendly and less sinister. But what about that most notorious of numbers?

In the ancient world the sun and moon were thought of as planetary ‘spheres’ together with the other then-known [7]planets, and each of these seven spheres were assigned their own seals and [8]magic squares. And it is the magic square of the sun that provides the key to unlock our puzzle. For adding all the numbers together in the sun’s magic square produces (as you probably have now guessed) the total of 666. So it is the [9]sun which must have some special connection with this number. And surely the sun fits the job description of thērion – not a beast, but an untamed (and untameable) force of splendor and power.

But the phrase is not an isolated number. About the ‘man’, it ends: ‘and his number is 666’, which in its original Greek yields the gematria value of 2368. And this number in Greek letters spells out: Ιησούς Χριστός – ‘Jesus Christ’. I am aware that to many, the realization that the ‘man’ alluded to in this notorious passage turns out to be Jesus himself will probably either provoke an outraged rejection, or require them to sit down quietly for awhile to catch their breath. But that the number values of the text in its original Greek yield this actual name is surely beyond all coincidence. And the only way we can make sense of these findings is to press on deeper into Gnostic beliefs.

The spiritual vision of the Gnostics involved the belief that all that is visible to us in our material existence – including the life-giving sun – has a higher equivalent in the spirit. So there is a ‘spiritual’ sun beyond the actual sun – the ‘666 sun’ – which we see in the heavens, just as there is a true Christ – the Christ of the Holy Spirit – beyond the man – the son – who appeared on earth. What the phrase is telling us is that we need to seek beyond the material world – beyond what we see and experience with our senses – to reach the greater mysteries of the spirit which lie behind these outward appearances.

I cannot deny that a part of me rather regrets raining on the parade of all those growling goth metal bands and horror scriptwriters, but I would sooner press on to the heart of a mystery, wherever it might lead. And where this particular mystery leads is to realize that what this notorious phrase in the Book of Revelation describes is anything but the creature of bestial evil which our own [10]misreading of the phrase has created. It is rather a message of grace and hope, and its messenger is our own life-giving sun.

Hawkwood

Notes:

[1] The Book of Revelation 13:18

[2] Ah, mea culpa! It provided one of the key sequences for my own REVELATIONS video. Please see my post Hawkwood and Divine Retribution.

[3] This phrase is usually repeated in scriptural texts as a way of signaling that a statement has both an everyday ‘story’ meaning and a hidden spiritual message intended for an inner circle of followers.

[4] Gematria: the system of attributing numerical values to written letters in those alphabets which have no numbers. This would include both Hebrew and the Greek in which scriptural texts were written. Names and phrases then yield a numerical total which can have a further esoteric significance.

[5] Known for his persecutions of those belonging to the new faith (at this early date the term ‘Christianity’ and its doctrines had not yet been defined), Nero was said to have lit the grounds of his villa with their crucified and burning bodies. A stroke of ruthless political maneuvering also had him arranging and carrying out his mother’s murder. Desolate at the death of his first wife, he had a freed slave castrated and then married him, apparently because the slave bore an uncanny resemblance to his late wife. Facing ultimate revolt, he decided on suicide, but balked when the moment came and instead ordered his private secretary to murder him. Nero was just thirty years old when he died, which for history was probably not a day too soon.

[6] Yes, I’m aware of all the conspiracy theory websites and assorted YouTube videos which claim ‘proof’ for the alleged link between the Papal office and the beast of Revelation. But none of them as far as I am aware make the connection that were this to be so, then it would establish a pro-Gnostic, if not an actual Gnostic author for Revelation. In an increasingly hostile orthodox environment, and with their own faith coming under threat from the Church of Rome, the Gnostics would have had good reason to encode the identity of the perceived threat into scripture. As this post summarizes, I personally consider the truth to lie elsewhere, and in more positive directions – although this in itself still makes a pro-Gnostic stance for the Revelation author both likely and plausible, It is tempting to speculate about other encoded information in the text, perhaps in the form of gematria. The mere fact that there are no less than twenty one separate sets of sevens mentioned (seven candlesticks, seven seals, seven plagues, etc.) must at least give pause for thought.

[7] Outwards from the earth, the planetary spheres were believed to be: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, with beyond these seven, the sphere of the stars, and beyond the stars, the realms of the different orders of angels. 

[8] Magic squares are figures set out in a grid whose numbers create the same totals when added along all the vertical, horizontal and two principal diagonal columns. Each planet is ascribed its own magic square, and one – the magic square of Jupiter – has been adapted from the writings of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (who resurrected these figures from antiquity) by the artist Albrecht Dürer, who incorporated it into his famous masterpiece engraving known as Melencolia 1 (left). Agrippa gave his three-volume work the title Occult Philosophy – although the word ‘occult’ did not then carry our own contemporary overtones, but was used in the sense of describing ‘hidden knowledge’. The relevant page of Agrippa’s text can be viewed here: Occult Philosophy, Book 2, chapter xxii. Of the tables of the Planets, their vertues, forms, and what Divine names, Intelligencies, and Spirits are set over them.

[9] That these pre-Christian teachings of Pythagoras and Plato exist in canonical scripture is already established by the story in John’s gospel (John 21: 10-11) of the miraculous catch of 153 fishes in the net (please see my post: Vesica Piscis: The Tale of a Fish), and there are other examples which I would like to cover in future posts. I can only imagine that these examples of pre-Christian Gnosticism survived the 3rd-4th-century purges of such material to make it into the canon simply because the uncomprehending orthodox editors failed to realize their significance. But there they are in any Bible – and there is the encrypted reference to the sun in the Book of Revelation.

[10] An idea, once it has taken root, can be more resilient and more powerful than the truth. Few examples which I can think of illustrate this point so tellingly as the way in which the literal reading of the ‘number of the beast’ phrase has embedded itself in our culture. And how ironic is it that it is Gnostic insight – the very beliefs which were so ruthlessly rooted out by the early Church Fathers – which transforms this seemingly-dark phrase into a message of hope.  

Sources:

John Michell: The Dimensions of Paradise: Sacred Geometry, Ancient Science, and the Heavenly Order on Earth. The gematria calculations in this post are those of Michell’s in this title. A considerably more detailed exposition of these conclusions can be found in his book than is given here.

David Fideler: Jesus Christ, Sun of God: ancient Cosmology and Early Christian Symbolism.

Nero sesturtius coin, 54-55 CE, from: Classical Numismatic Group, Inc. http://www.cngcoins.com.
Melencolia 1, engraving by Albrecht Dürer, 1514, in the British Museum, with other original prints housed in various museums around the world. 666 'beast' and all other graphics by Hawkwood, ©David Bergen Studio. 

Hawkwood and Divine Retribution

"For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book."

Stern words indeed. These are almost the very last words spoken in the book of Revelation, and therefore in the Bible itself. They read like a sort of 1st century notice of copyright, reinforced with the threat of terrible divine retribution. And they apply to me.

For awhile now I have been working on a video which is my own interpretation of the book of Revelation, and in the course of creating that video I have indeed been 'adding unto' and 'taking away from' the words which are written there. I have shaped and changed the visions of John of Patmos to suit my own creative ends, following wherever my own vision of things led me.

This has included a necessary pushing beyond the limiting dualities of the scriptures (God=good, Devil=bad) to portray a perceived mystic connection between The Woman Clothed with the Sun, who in John's writings is presented as all that is virtuous, and the Whore of Babylon, who is portrayed as being vile beyond redemption - a connection so extreme that the description of mere heresy hardly covers it.

So am I holding my breath waiting for assorted plagues to strike me down, and for my impending banishment from the holy city to take effect? Hardly. It is an easy matter to start thinking along the lines of: 'if I do (or don't do) such-and-such, then bad things will happen to me', and the line between faith and fear-driven superstition can be crossed without our even being aware of it.

Hawkwood

My video REVELATIONS has since been uploaded to YouTube and can be viewed here:
REVELATIONS: The End of Time