On one page he writes twelve kings and ten bulls and says the numbers are not consistent.
Bull-cult and the Cogul painting.
The bull-cult began in Spain and France probably 20,000 years ago and spread to Crete, Greece, Egypt, and Babylonia (p.
Before the assize they bring ten bulls into the sacred enclosure.
Each king vows to offer one of these bulls.
Spence writes that the number of kings and bulls is not consistent.
He takes the bull through Macedonia, the cave paintings of Altamira and the Dordogne, the Egyptian Serapeum as an architectural elaboration of those cave-shrines, then along the Mediterranean to Crete, Egypt, Greece, Italy, and Palestine.
Samson, the man of bull-like strength, is for him another Minotaur, bound and baited by the Philistines.
The bull is a symbol of Poseidon as the tempestuous sea.
A robe of bulls' hides was worn on certain occasions and also symbolised the god.
Spence joins that to the winged bulls of Assyria.
Lévi gives the angel the head of a bull and a flaming sword, and calls the cherub the angel or the soul of the earth, represented in the mysteries as a bull.
Plato's ceremony of the twelve kings, every six years, alludes to iron as a metal which must not be used for the sacrifice of the bulls, which would seem to imply that iron was in use for less sacred purposes.
Close by, the great statue of Poseidon in his bull form reared what the writer calls a spectacle of hideous and shaggy terror.
The bull was recognised in Britain in the figure of Hu Gadarn, who took the form of a bull, or was symbolised by one, as Osiris assumed the form of the Apis bull and the Gaulish Esus was regarded as a human semblance of it.
The generating sun was a white bull.
Bulls or kine were offered annually at Belteinn, kept up in a modified form in Scotland and Ireland until a comparatively late period, the sacrifice by fire mimicked by driving the animals through the smoke of a bonfire.
The records of the Presbytery of Dingwall show bulls sacrificed in the parish of Gairloch, in Ross-shire, from 1649 to 1678, and oblations of milk poured on the hills.
About a century earlier, in 1538, an idol of the bull-cult was burned at Smithfield.
Edmunds, under the date 4 June 1487, Master John Swarsham, sacrist, with the consent of the prior, let the manor of Habryden, in Bury, on condition that the tenant find a white bull every year, so often as any gentlewoman, from devotion or vows, should visit the tomb of St.
At the monastery gates the bull was sent back.
Bull-baiting in England was, in all probability, an extension of the sacrifice to Hu Gadarn, lord of the oak and the sun.
Sacrifices of bulls also took place at Clynnog in Carnarvonshire, in 1589, in the grounds of "St.
Aelred of Rievaulx, travelling in Scotland in 1164, witnessed a bull-sacrifice at Kirkcudbright.
The clerks of the church, the Scolofthas, opposed the ceremony and proposed to bait the bull.
Spence takes that as a hint of how bull-baiting in Britain began.
The bull sacrifice and the cult of the dead are the salient elements he does claim for both.
The Fomorians were giants of huge and deformed appearance, with the heads of goats, horses, or bulls, the Children of the Sea, coming from a land sunk beneath the ocean.
the bull-cult, which had its commencement in Spain and France probably 20,000 years ago, and which spread thence to Crete, Greece, Egypt and Babylonia.
Bull, pyramid, mummy.
The bull rite of the kings is the germ he finds in Apis, in Beltane, and in the Spanish bullfight.
On the same page the sacred bulls are offered by the ten kings of the islands.
That religion, from Plato, was connected with the bull.
In Egypt the bull is Apis, a form of Osiris, the calf of Nut, and other cattle were sacrificed to the bull that represented him.
The bull was sacred to the Druids and was sacrificed at Beltane, Bile's Fire, when cattle were driven into the flames.
From 1649 to 1678, according to the records of the Presbytery of Dingwall, bulls were sacrificed in the parish of Gairloch, in Ross-shire, and oblations of milk were poured on the hills.
The sacred bull is depicted on Scottish standing-stones.
Bull-fighting in Spain, which he calls the purest Iberian race, is a survival of bull-sacrifice.
The bull was sacred, and the arena was almost certainly used for bull-fights.
Bull.
A six-year rite of ten kings and ten bulls, which he then finds in Aurignacian caves, in Osiris-Apis by about 3000 BC, in Crete, and in British bull-baiting (pp.
Every six years they met, brought in ten bulls, and each king vowed to offer one to Poseidon without iron.
They killed the bulls at the column, passed the limbs through the fire, poured the blood on the column, and later splashed blood from gold cups on the fire, swearing to judge by the engraved laws.
The bull sacrifice, he says, fits the early Aegean civilisation of Spain and southern France, and he reads the Spanish bullfight and English bull-baiting, still semi-religious into the early eighteenth century, as the last of an Azilian rite.
He also notes that Cro-Magnon fishermen shared the Atlantean reverence for the bull and painted it on cave walls.
They kept the caves as temples and kept the bull, but their faith was grosser and more magical.
Near Poseidon's temple the sacred bulls are sacrificed by the ten kings, who put on azure robes and judge offenders.
The bull cult is an aristocracy.
Both Geryon and Mider lived on Atlantic islands and owned sacred cattle, which is his link to the Atlantean bull.
Every six years, before the court, ten bulls are brought in.
Each king vows one to Poseidon, kills it without iron, and the kings pass the limbs of each bull through the fire.
Spence sets a Mexican rite beside it, then the bulls painted in Aurignacian caves, then Egypt.
Bull worship in Egypt is early.
Herodotus describes the Apis bull as black.
The Egyptians held that the soul of Osiris passed into a bull, and that when that bull died a calf with the same marks had to be found.
He thinks it met an older British bull cult.
The Welsh triads put bull sacrifice inside Druid ceremony.
Pictish stones in Scotland cut the bull with other religious signs.
Into the early seventeenth century, more than one Highland presbytery denounced peasant bull-sacrifice.
Bull-baiting is the rite worn down into a sport.
His conclusion is that bull worship from Britain to India had one origin, and that if the Aurignacians came from Atlantis they brought the bull with them.
In an early phase Dionysus is a bull.
Euripides still shows bull-shaped Dionysus adored in Macedonia.
In the Orphic mysteries the worshipper ate raw bull flesh before union with the god.
Firmicus Maternus says the Cretans tear a live bull with their teeth and howl in the woods.
The bull is Poseidon's beast because Poseidon is earthquake and storm, and the bull stamps and bellows.
He suggests Poseidon was once the bull itself.
The bull is sacred, and the great court at Knossos was used for bull fights or sacrifices.
Spence still thinks the bull in a cave, shared with Spain or with Atlantis, is the older myth, and that Minoan civilisation was modelled on Atlantis rather than the other way round.
The bull paintings in Cretan palaces resemble early Aurignacian work, and the link from Crete to Spain runs by the Balearic Islands.
He connects that figure with earthquake, with the Minotaur as the bull of Poseidon, and with the Canary priestesses who went into the sea.
In the British chapter he writes of ten kings sacrificing bulls.
In the bull hunt of the ten kings, the kings hunt "with staves and nooses but with no weapon of iron" (Critias 119e, Bury translation on my Timaeus & Critias page).
He adds the bull sacrifice, a fire cult, the king's blue robe and the temple of Poseidon.
Both have bull sacrifices, ship sheds, a mild climate and two harvests a year.
In some regions, bull sacrifices linked to figures such as Crom Dubh.
They expressed extreme opposites of masculine and feminine energy: the cow being nurturing and loving: the bull, powerful and protective.
In the sacred precincts of Poseidon there were bulls at large; and the ten princes, being alone by themselves, after praying to the God that they might capture a victim well-pleasing unto him, hunted after the bulls with staves and nooses but with no weapon of iron; and whatsoever bull they captured they led up to the pillar and cut its throat over the top of the pillar, raining down blood on the inscription.
The legend of the minitor says that the Atlanteans were bull worshippers, so the idea is that they adopted some of the Grecian architecture but still retained something quite different.
The Minoans on Crete, contemporaneous with the proposed time of Atlantis, practiced bull-leaping, a ritualistic and possibly religious ceremony involving bulls.
This practice indicates a shared cultural motif centered around bulls in the ancient Mediterranean, possibly influenced by or parallel to Atlantean traditions.
Zeus, the shape-shifting king of the gods, abducted the Phoenician princess Europa in the form of a magnificent white bull and carried her across the sea to Crete.
He became king of Crete (after prevailing in a contest involving a bull sent by Poseidon).
In Greek mythology the Minotaur was a creature with the body of a man and the head of a bull.
King Minos of Crete received a special white bull from the god Poseidon.
Minos’s wife, Pasiphaë, fell in love with the bull (through a curse) and gave birth to the Minotaur.
Minos in particular became the eponymous figure for the sophisticated Bronze Age culture of Crete (the Minoans), whose palaces, art, and bull-related rituals echo in the myths.
The abduction of Europa by the bull is one of the most iconic scenes in Greek art and literature.
The transition from Taurus (bull cults, common in earlier civilizations) to Aries (ram symbolism, e.g., Abraham's ram sacrifice, later Mosaic emphasis) is often symbolically linked here.
1484: Papal bull gives official recognition.
Later, Looeamong explains it means "IN THIS THOU SHALT CONQUER!" He commands Hatuas to make a decorated cross inscribed "THE KRISTE, OUR LORD, SON OF THE HOLY GHOST," carry it at the army's head, and write edicts (called bulls) in lamb’s blood.
At once, Looeamong (the false god claiming to be Christ) and his angels provide a supernatural sign: a cross smeared with blood appears in fire, resting on a bull's horns, like a cloud of fire on a cloud of fire.
Blood-Smeared Cross on a Bull's Horns: This imagery strongly mirrors the ritual in Leviticus 16:18, where Aaron is instructed to put the blood of a slain bull on the "horns of the altar all around" to make atonement.
The cross represents the sacrifice of Jesus, which fulfills the "blood of bulls and goats" (Hebrews 10:1-11).
Resting on the bull's horns, this indicates that God's holiness (fire) is present and accepted through the sacrifice (blood).
Pope Boniface VIII in his infamous Bull “Unam Sanctam” declared that he was in effect the Emperor and the Master of the world and that “every human creature be subject” to him.
1484 – Papal Bull Summis desiderantes affectibus Pope Innocent VIII issued this bull after receiving complaints from the Dominican inquisitor Heinrich Kramer (also called Institoris) about witchcraft in parts of Germany (especially the Tyrol region).
In 1500 (with some related bulls or breves dated late 1499 / early February 1500), Pope Alexander VI appointed Heinrich Kramer as papal nuncio (an official diplomatic/representative role for the Holy See) and reassigned his inquisitorial duties specifically to Bohemia and Moravia (the historical lands that largely correspond to the modern Czech Republic).
Pope Alexander VI issued the papal bull Inter Caetera in 1493.
The bull gave Spain religious and legal permission to conquer non-Christian peoples and force them under Spanish rule.
The Bull
Ten kings ruled absolutely but met every five or six years at the temple to enforce laws, inscribe oaths on an orichalcum pillar, and sacrifice bulls.
Bull sacrifice
In her book series The Convoluted Universe, she details sessions where subjects recall Atlantean laboratories creating hybrid beings, such as mermaids (half-human, half-fish), centaurs (half-human, half-horse), and minotaurs (half-human, half-bull).
“…and they produced double-winged beings…and more people with legs of goats and horns on their heads…And others, cloven hoofed and more with horse bodies and human torsos…they have also wrought bull-headed men…and even other monsters…with manifold characters very different from each other…and many wonderful natures…whose images remain in the Temple of the Belos, one next to the other.”
Symbolism: The cherubim on the Ark had four faces: a man (Aquarius), a bull (Taurus), a lion (Leo), and an eagle (Scorpio).
The teaching associated with them includes symbols like the bull (for Osiris, representing "to go forth") and the lamb (for Isis, representing "to rest in meekness").
The Pleiades, located at the shoulder of Taurus the Bull, are central to these traditions.
Taurus has been recognized as a constellation for at least 16,000 years, as seen in cave paintings depicting the bull with the Pleiades as a star cluster.
In the Mithraic tradition, Mithras stabs a bull in the shoulder (where the Pleiades reside), with blood pouring forth, symbolizing a cosmic event.
Look west, beyond the V-shaped stars that form the face of Taurus the Bull, and you will see a tight cluster of stars that many people mistake for the Little Dipper.
Art and Culture: Minoan frescoes depict scenes of nature, religious rituals, and bull-leaping—a practice unique to their culture.
Religion: Their religious practices included goddess worship, with symbols like the double axe (labrys) and the bull playing significant roles.
For the next ten days, he assumes the shape of a bull.
Tishtrya is depicted in various forms, reflecting his mythological transformations: a radiant white stallion, a bull, a human figure.
(Hathor, a cow goddess, and Apis, a bull god, may be relevant here.)
See Jahi, taurus, the Bull God of Force and Authority
Jahi, taurus, the bull.
(See Tablet Biene Poit, the figure of a bull, with man’s face.) The spiritual meaning, force, or force of character, or energy to do, or decree with authority.
As the pope issue a Bull, of which the foregoing was the original.
Symbolism: Representations of the lunar crescent and bull horns, possibly linked to broader Middle Eastern cultural connections.
Bel sometimes wore a tiara with his bull's horns; the tiara was the crown subsequently worn by the Persian kings, and it became, in time, the symbol of Papal authority.
The Atlanteans having domesticated cattle, and discovered their vast importance to humanity, associated the bull and cow with religious ideas, as revealed in the oldest hymns of the Aryans and the cow-headed idols of Troy, a representation of one of which is shown on the preceding page.
Upon the head of their great god Baal they placed the horns of the bull; and these have descended in popular imagination to the spirit of evil of our day.
"Clootie" is derived from the cleft hoof of a cow; while the Scotch name for a bull is Bill, a corruption, probably, of Bel.
Less than two hundred years ago it was customary to sacrifice a bull on the 25th of August to the "God Mowrie" and "his devilans" on the island of Inis Maree, Scotland.
The first cut on page 429 represents an idol of the Moquis of New Mexico: the head is very bull-like.
like a bull his country he ascended after him3.
One of the next exploits of Izdubar and Heabani his servant was the conquest of the winged bull, a monster supposed to have existed in those days; but I must pass over this and other matters, to approach the subject of the Flood.