— worshipped as a god.
The narrator already notes that it is feared, venerated, and worshipped as a god.
There was horror and frenzied approbation in that assent of a nation that their symbol should be sacrificed, all who perceived knowing and understanding that by such thing a nation signified its surrender to a Divinity whose power they did not comprehend, and which, their suddenly-strung consciences told them, was not the God of their fathers.
That assent marks surrender to a divinity they do not comprehend, and that their consciences say is not the God of their fathers.
Noah's condemnation of the idolatrous practices and his prophetic warnings about the destruction of Atlantis highlight the tension between the worship of Jehovah and the idolatry of the Fish-god.
It is also the site of the worship of the Fish-god, with a monstrous statue receiving offerings from the fishermen.
The Fish-god is a significant religious figure, particularly for the fishermen and those who frequent the harbor area.
Here are some details about the Fish-god based on the text:
Depiction: The Fish-god is described as a monstrous image, part man and part fish.
Location: The statue of the Fish-god is located at the entrance to the harbor.
Rituals and Worship: The Fish-god is regularly adorned with ornaments, especially during significant events such as the Jubilee of Zul.
Symbolism: The Fish-god holds a model of the Tacoatlanta in its hands, symbolizing its connection to the sea and maritime life.
Noah's condemnation of the idolatrous practices and his prophetic warnings about the destruction of Atlantis highlights the tension between the worship of Jehovah and the idolatry of the Fish-god.
At the same time, the followers of the Fish-god embody corruption and defiance of true worship.
The Atlanteans believed their forefather Adam to have been a god and deified their ancient ancestors.
This included obscene representations of mystical creation and effigies of degraded and bestial gods placed in every temple, grove, and garden.
This included the disembowelment of children and adults, with their blood being used in rituals to appease the gods.
Initially, the inhabitants of Atlantis possessed a pure faith and knowledge of God.
They maintained moral integrity and adhered to the commandments and teachings of God, avoiding the sensual and debased rituals that characterized the idolatrous practices.
Mercury, an Atlantean god, was revered by the Celtæ.
The Greek god Zeus, associated with Atlantis, parallels the Hindoo god Dyaus, indicating a shared origin.
The Hindoo god Deva-Nahusha, identified with Dionysos, was a king of Meru, which Theopompus described as the land of the Meropes, or the people of Atlantis.
In religion, the Atlanteans held advanced beliefs, including the concept of one universal, omnipotent God, symbolized by the sun, and the immortality of the soul.
The great god of the Semites, El, is linked to numerous names and traditions across Semitic and Aryan languages, hinting at a shared origin.
It was the Mesomphalos of the earlier Greeks, and the Omphalium of the Cretans, dominating the Elysian fields, upon whose tops, bathed in pure, brilliant, incomparable light, the gods passed their days in ceaseless joys."
"It was a region of wonders of all kinds; Okeanos lived there with his wife Tethys: these were the Islands of the Blessed, the gardens of the gods, the sources of nectar and ambrosia, on which the gods lived.
On the mountains dwelt the gods; they had palaces on these mountains, with store-rooms, stabling, etc.
They were far famed in antiquity; for it was there that springs of nectar flowed by the couch of Zeus, and there that the earth displayed the rarest blessings of the gods; it was another Eden." (Ibid., p.
the enchanted gardens' of the Chinese and Tartars, watered by the four perennial fountains of Tychin, or Immortality; it is the hill-encompassed Ilá of the Singhalese and Thibetians, 'the everlasting dwelling-place of the wise and just.' It is the Sineru of the Buddhist, on the summit of which is Tawrutisa, the habitation of Sekrá, the supreme god, from which proceed the four sacred streams, running in as many contrary directions.
"And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
And the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it." (Gen.
The Miztecs, a tribe dwelling on the outskirts of Mexico, had a tradition that the gods, "in the day of obscurity and darkness," built "a sumptuous palace, a masterpiece of skill, in which they male their abode upon a mountain.
The rock was called 'The Place of Heaven;' there the gods first abode on earth, living many years in great rest and content, as in a happy and delicious land, though the world still lay in obscurity and darkness.
The children of these gods made to themselves a garden, in which they put many trees, and fruit-trees, and flowers, and roses, and odorous herbs.
Subsequently there came a great deluge, in which many of the sons and daughters of the gods perished." (Bancroft's "Native Races," vol.
For many generations, as long as the divine nature lasted in them, they were obedient to the laws, and well affectioned toward the gods, who were their kinsmen; for they possessed true and in every way great spirits, practising gentleness and wisdom in the various chances of life, and in their intercourse with one another.
The Pyramid.--Not only are the Cross and the Garden of Eden identified with Atlantis, but in Atlantis, the habitation of the gods, we find the original model of all those pyramids which extend from India to Peru.
This, too, is the ordinary form of the altars dedicated to the Assyrian god of fertility.
The pyramidal imitations, dear to the hearts of colonists of the sacred mountain upon which their gods dwelt, was devoted, as perhaps the mountain itself was, to sun and fire worship.
In Germanic myth, the chief god appears under several dialect names.
They name the same deity complex, not three unrelated gods.
They are dialect names of one Germanic chief-god complex.
Ignatius Donnelly opened his 1882 chapter “The God Odin, Woden, or Wotan” in Atlantis: The Antediluvian World by stating the Germanic identity, then moving into Olympus and Atlantis:
In the Scandinavian mythology the chief god was Odin, the Woden, Wotan, or Wuotan of the Germans.
He is represented with many of the attributes of the Greek god Zeus, and is supposed by some to be identical with him.
He dwelt with the twelve Æsir, or gods, upon Asgard, the Norse Olympus, which arose out of Midgard, a land half-way between the regions of frost and fire (to wit, in a temperate climate).
He places Odin with the twelve Æsir on Asgard, the Norse home of the gods.
The Æsir are the Norse gods of Odin’s tribe.
Germanic Odin, Woden, and Wotan are the same chief god.
Wotan, Woden, and Odin are dialect or cognate names of the same chief god, from reconstructed Wōðanaz.
What does Woden mean?Woden is the Old English form of the same god.
Not only were the gods of the Greeks the deified kings of Atlantis, but we also find that the mythology of the Phoenicians was drawn from the same source.
In the Phoenician cosmogony, the Titans (Rephaim) derive their origin from the gods Agrus and Agrotus.
The Phoenician god Ouranos had a daughter named Astarte (Ashtoreth) and another called Rhea.
Chronos traveled to different regions of the habitable world, giving Egypt as a kingdom to the god Taaut, who invented the alphabet.
The Egyptians called him Thoth, and he was depicted as "the god of letters, the clerk of the under-world," bearing a tablet, pen, and palm-branch.
The royal personages who formed the gods of Greece were also the gods of the Phoenicians.
The Phoenician gods and their myths show a deep connection to the kings and legends of Atlantis.
Ptah was the father of Ra, the sun-god, who was the supreme divinity.
Phoenicians: Their chief god was Baal-Samin, the god of light and creator.
The Greeks converted the kings of Atlantis into their gods and depicted Atlantis as the heaven of the human race.
The mythology of Greece contains references to gods who acted and behaved like humans, pointing to the historical kings of Atlantis.
Immortality: Greek gods were believed to be immortal but not eternal.
Human-like Attributes: The Greek gods had human qualities, including love, pain, and conflict, suggesting they were deified humans.
Olympus, the home of the Greek gods, is reminiscent of Atlantis:
Inhabitants: The gods of Olympus, like those of Atlantis, were twelve in number, including Zeus, Poseidon, and others.
At-tit: The Guatemalan deity associated with the worship of the true God, reminiscent of Atlantean religious practices.
The Spirit of God: The Bible says (Gen.
1:2), "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." The Quiche legend says, "The Creator—the Former, the Dominator—the feathered serpent—those that give life, moved upon the waters like a glowing light."
1:9), "And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so." The Quiche legend says, "The creative spirits cried out 'Earth!' and in an instant it was formed, and rose like a vapor-cloud; immediately the plains and the mountains arose, and the cypress and pine appeared."
Divine Approval: The Bible tells us, "And God saw that it was good." The Quiche legend says, "Then Gucumatz was filled with joy, and cried out, 'Blessed be thy coming, O Heart of Heaven, Hurakan, thunder-bolt.'"
2:7) we are told, "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground." The Quiche legend says, "The first man was made of clay; but he had no intelligence, and was consumed in the water."
The gods, angered by their presumption, destroyed the structure and scattered the builders.
2:21-22), God created Eve from Adam's rib while he slept.
3:22-23), God expels Adam and Eve from Eden to prevent them from eating from the tree of life and living forever.
The Quiche legend states that the gods feared that men had become too perfect and clouded their vision.
Quetzalcoatl was a high-priest and god of the Toltecs, credited with various cultural advancements such as gem-cutting, metal-casting, and the invention of the Mexican calendar.
Ancient Mediterranean traditions, including those of Homer and Orpheus, refer to the ocean as the source of gods and life.
A little more, and they would make a god of it.
Before weeding the patch, incense was burned at each of the four corners of the field, to the four gods of the winds and rains; and the first fruits were consecrated to holy uses.
The Stone God, indeed, is a prominent figure in their mythology, as it was in their daily life.
This was the sacred Chay Abah, the Obsidian Stone, which was the oracle of their nation, and which revealed the will of the gods on all important civil and military questions.
In the Cakchiquel Annals, as in the Popol Vuh and the Maya Chronicles, we hear of the city of the sun god, Tulan or Tonatlan, as the place of their origin, of the land Zuiva and of the Nonoalcos, names belonging to the oldest cycles of myths in the religion of the Aztecs.
The Bible agrees with Plato in the statement that these Antediluvians had reached great populousness and wickedness, and that it was on account of their wickedness God resolved to destroy them.
In both the Bible history and Plato's story the destruction of the people was largely caused by the intermarriage of the superior or divine race, "the sons of God," with an inferior stock, "the children of men," whereby they were degraded and rendered wicked.
Popul Vuh: Describes a great flood caused by the god Hurakan, resulting in a resinous rain and darkness, akin to the Chaldean and biblical accounts.
Divine Intervention: Gods or spirits often warn of the flood and provide means of survival.
Chaldean Legend: Xisuthros (Khasisatra) is warned by the god Cronos (Ea) of a flood.
After the flood, Xisuthros sacrifices to the gods and is taken to live among them.
He builds a vessel and is guided to safety by the fish, which is an incarnation of a god.
Purânas: King Satyravata is saved by a fish-god, who warns him of the deluge.
The shorter, ancient version by Berosus describes how Xisuthros (Khasisatra) was warned by the god Cronos (Ea) of a coming flood and instructed to build a vessel to save his family, friends, and animals.
After the flood, Xisuthros’s vessel lands on a mountain, and he sacrifices to the gods.
Xisuthros and his family are then taken to dwell with the gods, while the survivors return to Babylon to disinter sacred writings and rebuild civilization.
The narrative includes precise instructions from the god Ea on building a large vessel, loading it with provisions and animals, and surviving a cataclysm involving rain, thunder, and earthquakes.
The hero releases birds to find land, and upon finding dry ground, he sacrifices to the gods, who then grant him and his wife immortality.
Chronos (Saturn): The god who warned of the flood is linked to a great civilization in the Atlantic, matching Atlantis’s description.
Ea: The fish-god who brought civilization from the ocean, indicating a maritime culture similar to the Atlanteans.
In Zulu mythology, the creator god Unkulunkulu emerged from a reed and began to create everything, including humanity, animals, and the physical features of the world.
The Shona people of Zimbabwe believe in a supreme god called Mwari, who created the world.
The Kikuyu people of Kenya believe in a god named Ngai, who lives on Mount Kenya (Kirinyaga).
He is remembered for his wisdom, leadership, and the divine favor he received from Ahura Mazda, the supreme god in Zoroastrianism.
Ahura Mazda: The supreme god in Zoroastrianism, who warns Yima of the impending catastrophe.
Against the White Cave of Initiation in the City of the Golden Gates was set up the Dark Cave in which the mysteries of Pan, the Earth-God, were celebrated.
Spiritual Journey: Man, as a spiritual being, originates from God and eventually returns to God.
WHENCE comes man and whither goes he t In the fullest answer we can only say : Man, as a spiritual Being, comes forth from God and returns to God; but the Whence and Whither with which we deal here denote a far more modest sweep.
And yet the title is not wholly wrong, for he who comes from God and goes to God isjijgj; precisely 'Man'.
That great Sage, Plato, one of the world's masterintellects, whose lofty ideas have dominated European thought, makes the pregnant statement: "God geometrises.
The religious student will think of the seven Ameshaspentas of the Zoroastriaii, of the seven Spirits before the throne of God of the Christian: the Theosophist of the supreme Triple Logos of the system, with His Ministers ; the
In the Monadic Sphere, on the super-spiritual level, dwell the Divine Emanations, the Sons of God, who are to take flesh and become Sons of Man in the coming universe.
Highlights of his writing career included addressing topics such as: the existence of a loving God, The Masters of Wisdom, what happens after death, immortality of the human soul, reincarnation, Karma or the Law of Consequence, development of clairvoyant abilities, the nature of thought forms, dreams, vegetarianism, Esoteric Christianity.
But the grandest display of all was at one of the great feasts of the Sun-God, when the people came together, each robed in the gorgeous vestment of his tutelary Deity, and the whole immense multitude performed the solemn circumambulation of the Suntemple.
It was His benediction that was sought by those who were more especially born under His influence, and He was regarded by them much as the great Archangels, the " seven Spirits before the throne of God," are regarded by the devout Christian — as a mighty Minister of the divine power of the LOGOS, a channel through which that ineffable splendour manifests itself.
It will be obvious that when the Manu and His lieutenants — great Adepts from a far higher evolution — incarnated among the youthful Race which They were labouring to develop, They were to those people absolutely as Gods in knowledge and power, so far were They in advance of them in every conceivable respect.
Fruit and flowers were offered in their temples, not from any idea that the Sun-God desired such service, but simply as a token that they owed all to Him; for one of the most prominent theories of their faith was that all light and life and power came from the Sun — a theory which is fully borne out by the discoveries of modern science.
The Spirit of God: The Bible says (Gen.
1:2), "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." The Quiche legend says, "The Creator—the Former, the Dominator—the feathered serpent—those that give life, moved upon the waters like a glowing light."
1:9), "And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so." The Quiche legend says, "The creative spirits cried out 'Earth!' and in an instant it was formed, and rose like a vapor-cloud; immediately the plains and the mountains arose, and the cypress and pine appeared."
Divine Approval: The Bible tells us, "And God saw that it was good." The Quiche legend says, "Then Gucumatz was filled with joy, and cried out, 'Blessed be thy coming, O Heart of Heaven, Hurakan, thunder-bolt.'"
2:7) we are told, "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground." The Quiche legend says, "The first man was made of clay; but he had no intelligence, and was consumed in the water."
The gods, angered by their presumption, destroyed the structure and scattered the builders.
2:21-22), God created Eve from Adam's rib while he slept.
3:22-23), God expels Adam and Eve from Eden to prevent them from eating from the tree of life and living forever.
The Quiche legend states that the gods feared that men had become too perfect and clouded their vision.
God Consciousness: The ultimate level of existence and awareness.
There you find an indication of what the initiates of the East had to give, and what was given back to them by the Celts was the Balder myth, the myth of the god of light and the god of darkness.
They added to this myth something that lay in the future, namely the fall of the gods.
Balder could not withstand this fall, so a second migration was prepared for after the twilight of the gods.
North: Masculine gods were revered; warlike nature present.
Expanded Concept of God: Accepting a populated universe necessitates a broader, less anthropomorphic view of God.
Misinterpretation of Elohim: Translating 'Elohim' as 'God' distorts the ethical implications of biblical stories.
[1:09] As soon as you accept the probability of a populated universe, your image of God has to expand.
They’ve altered it in plain sight.[1:47] Going to the sources reveals that this is not originally a story of God and the devil.
What it really is, is the story of Enlil and Enki retold, with new names airbrushed over the top.[2:10] This is part of a massive airbrushing done through the centuries, with the most significant one perhaps in the 6th century BCE, where the great library of texts that form the Hebrew scriptures was reworked to turn it into a single book that gave the impression of being about monotheism with a single story of God Almighty from beginning to end.[2:42] It sort of works that way, except for these moments that don’t make any sense, which clue you in that something else was the original form.
There is an equivalence there that makes sense of the moments when you realize that Yahweh sees himself in peer-to-peer competition with other powerful ones in the land.[3:51] None of that makes sense when you think you’re reading a story of Almighty God from beginning to end.
It all makes sense when you peel off that final layer of editing from the 6th century BCE, go to the root meanings of the names used for God, and it becomes clear that you’ve got a panoply of advanced beings on the planet’s surface, each dominating their own human colonies and bumping up against each other in competition for resources and hegemony.[4:14] That’s the actual story of the Old Testament of the Hebrew scriptures.
But the moment you don’t allow yourself to read it that way and pretend that Elohim means God, you’ve then got to justify all these violent behaviors as the behavior of a loving, transcendent God.[5:18] So now God is doing the colonizing, God is doing the bullying, God is punitive, can turn on a dime, will punish your family to the seventh generation for a mistake you might make, will slaughter people who are actually trying to serve him.
It’s monstrous behavior, and if you have to worship the entity that you’ve now credited with that behavior, you’ve just done something to your own conscience in that moment.[5:44] If you worship a God who will do genocide, you have to justify genocide, and you’ve done something to your own moral compass.
You can draw a straight line from that translation choice that says these are God’s stories, a straight line through history to all the enslavements, colonizations, brutalizations, xenophobia—it’s justified all kinds of atrocities through the ages in the name of God because apparently that’s what God is like.[6:24] This is what flows from the translation error.
If you’ve been in a church where the pastor feels he has to justify the violence of the Old Testament God, you know straight away how that feels—you know that’s off.
But any preacher knows there are issues here; every preacher knows there’ll be dragons.[7:22] That’s part of my motivation in writing the Eden series—to say let’s get real, let’s talk about what’s in the texts, let’s talk about the problems of believing that God is the way Jesus says he is, and then trying to square that with what’s in the Old Testament.
No, I don’t think God would do that; he would do this." Usually, my response is, "I love how you’re thinking.
[19:12] As soon as you accept the probability of a populated universe, your image of God has to expand.
God has created more than I thought, and then you think through the implications of that, and you realize your whole concept of God has to become less anthropomorphic if we’re not the only species in the cosmos.[19:40] It took me back to some words of the Apostle Paul’s in Acts 17, where he is having to define what he means by God to a non-religious audience.
He says, "By God, I mean the source of the cosmos and everything in it, that in which we all live and move and have our being."[20:03] I think that’s a wonderful definition of God.
There’s no room for the kind of manipulative religion that builds on separation anxiety.[20:49] It happens in all kinds of religions: you are separated from God, and we, the priesthood, will tell you how to claw your way back into his presence, and we’ll tell you when you’ve made it.
So there’s a lot of thinking that flows on from understanding God in a more cosmic light.[21:52] Rediscovering Plato was important for me in that regard as well because I had to recognize that many of the early church fathers, their start point in understanding reality was Plato.
It was from that footing that they then understood Jesus.[22:10] Whereas I had come into a church that believed that the Old Testament and this angry God was the footing on which we should understand Jesus, and that never quite worked.
There is this dissonance, this incompatibility, that you really can’t resolve.[22:23] Going back to Plato and thinking, "What did the early Christians believe?" and finding that they believed in a populated universe, that they believed in a human race that had been adapted by ET visitors, and that this didn’t in any way unravel their belief in God, I thought was very significant.[22:47] Church fathers like Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and Marcion were very significant early church fathers who held these beliefs and said the things I was saying.
The name Yahweh has become understood as a name for Almighty God, the source of the cosmos, and that is the holy name that’s been pasted over all the stories of God from the beginning to the end of the Hebrew scriptures.[40:26] That name is used by the later prophets, for instance, to refer to a God of love, the cosmic source God who is in a love relationship with the whole of creation and with the whole of humanity.
You go to the later prophets, and you see that name Yahweh—they’re talking about God in the way the Apostle Paul meant.
No, he identifies God as Abba—my Father.
That’s Jesus’s concept of God.[46:27] He makes a very clear separation between him and the Yahweh stories in one moment in the Gospels when he says, "What kind of father?" Because that’s how he understands God.
Unless they kowtow to the image of the dragon or the serpent, they will die.[48:06] That is the story Jesus is identifying, and so he’s cutting himself off from the dragon stories, from the Yahweh stories, and talking instead about God who is our Father, God who is our source.
I’m a fan of Jesus, and that’s precisely why I reject those stories as God stories and regard them as stories of other kinds of entities.
If what they wanted people to know is that you shouldn’t be running around worshiping things that claim to be gods because there is only one cosmic source—the source of all things in the cosmos, that in which we all live and move and have our being—I think they’re right.[53:33] That’s actually a very liberating thing to know, and there are plenty of clues that there was other information they were lacing into the texts in the way they reshaped it at that time.
Sarah, Saraswati.[1:01:35] In the Hebrew tradition, Isaac is the beginning of the story of the people of God.
It’s been the world in which you’ve lived—you’ve had an idea of God, of Jesus, of our place in the cosmos.[1:06:07] I certainly can remember a couple of moments when I felt like the floor was falling away from me as I realized that story didn’t quite add up anymore, didn’t match with what’s really in the texts.[1:06:13] I would just want to encourage people that on the other side of the reframing is a far more exciting, intimate sense of connection with the source.[1:06:20] I have a better opinion of Jesus than ever before.