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Was There a Trans-Dimensional Race of Hybrid Beings?

1/25/2013

42 Comments

 
In his interview with Skeptiko host Alex Tsakris last week, Ancient Aliens Debunked filmmaker Chris White discussed his beliefs about Noah’s ark, the Great Flood, and the beings that lived before the Flood, whom he considers to be supernatural beings from another dimension that interbred with humans and gave rise to a hybrid race, which the Flood destroyed. These are the Nephilim of Genesis 6, the “sons of God” (literally: sons of the gods) and their children, the “mighty me of old, the men of renown.” Here’s part of what he told Tsakris:

…I think when you go back into anthropology you see a consistent profile of these beings. They’re summoned the same way; they’re consistently referred to as evil, deceptive, very, very intelligent, have an agenda of sorts, seek and accept worship. But I think the deceptive thing is really what comes so clear from Sumerians forward. These things will tell you what you want to hear.

They are often referred to in the texts as “watchers,” people that are observing you. They know what books you’re reading. They know what to say when you have the Ayahuasca trip and they know how to stroke just exactly what you’ve been reading on the plane trip to Peru. They have an agenda and unless we realize their agenda—and you’re saying, “Oh, you’re talking Christian theology right now.” We’re talking just truth right now.

If we can accept some of the basic premises that I just said, that there are beings and that people all across the world know how to summon them from time immemorial without Christian biases and are saying the same stuff, deceptive, super-intelligent, able to interact and give thoughts to and possess and are seeking possession. Possession is not a concept unique to Christianity and it’s always negative.

White also explained that myths and legends support his views about the universal nature of these beings since their description does not vary across time or cultures, though only Christian myth preserves the complete story. He explained that skeptics have failed to challenge the existence of such myths:

Now, that’s the philosophical situation that we’re in and until somebody starts to stop saying that they don’t exist and admit that they do, then we can start having a rational discussion with skeptics and everybody else. But at this point we’re at really the Dark Ages of people owning up to it. Nobody’s challenged me on this. They’ve only said, “All you’ve cited on this were Christian Apologist sites and I can’t look into that because it’s a Christian Apologist site.”

Well, okay, maybe it’s a Christian Apologist site but they are citing evidence there that they’re pointing you to the different mythologies in all the different places. You can go look at those mythologies and you can report back and say, “Well, I looked at them and they don’t exist.” But that’s not what you’re going to find. Anybody that actually does this work and is in deep in the mythologies is going to come up with it.

All right, I’ll take the bait. I will say that there is no consistent myth of super-intelligent evil beings who lie and deceive for personal gain. Nor is possession “always negative.” T. K. Oesterreich—a German philosophy professor and believer in the reality of possession and psychic powers—compiled a massive study of possession in 1921, Possession: Demoniacal and Other (English trans. 1930), which details in excruciating detail the many and varied forms of possession experienced by peoples across time and space, which differ greatly in their details. Oesterreich, however, saw possession as being remarkably consistent across time and space, agreeing fundamentally with the account given in Mark 5:2-10 (parallel to Matthew 8:28-34 and Luke 8:26-39). The evidence he marshaled, though, belies the fact that possession is not typically the thrashing, violent usurpation of the soul typified by The Exorcist. (Exorcist author William Peter Blatty used Oesterreich’s book in writing his novel.)

In truth, leaving aside whether such possessions have objective reality outside the mind, these possessions are rarely “negative” but are frequently welcomed by the possessed and play an important social role in the cultures that experience them. To take but the most famous example: The Greek Oracle of Delphi experienced possession by the god Apollo, and this was considered a very good thing. It is primarily in the Christian tradition that possession is considered negative, because monotheistic faiths by definition view interactions with beings other than the singular god as threatening to that deity’s supremacy. In traditional cultures, possessions can be positive, negative, or neutral. Christians are welcome to view the oracles as negative and manipulative, but those who created, employed, and experienced them did not.

But this isn’t really getting at the heart of the matter, is it? White’s primary claim is that the beings described in Genesis 6, the “sons of God” and their children, the “men of renown,” were real trans-dimensional beings and their hybrid children. Here is the relevant passage from Genesis (6:1-4), the entire of the Biblical narrative of them:

And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. 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.

Non-literalist scholars read this as the Biblical authors’ acknowledgement of a hero mythos among the Jews parallel to that of the Babylonians and other Near Eastern peoples, including the Greeks. I’ve written about these before. The typical story is that the gods bore children to humans, who became semi-divine supermen. Obvious examples include Gilgamesh, Perseus, and Heracles. As I noted before, explications of this biblical passage by later Jewish authors, as in the Book of Giants, make explicit the parallel, counting Gilgamesh among the “hybrid” giants

But it is primarily among the history-minded peoples of the Near East that a (relatively) clear distinction exists between the gods, the semi-divine heroes, and mortal men. (It is not perfectly clear: Heracles became a god, the hero Jason was fully human, and Dionysus was all sorts of ambiguity.) Outside of this tradition, the lines are blurred still further. Some heroes are human, some are the children of gods, and others are autochthonous creations that spring up from the earth, the trees, or other natural features. In the case of Native American myths, many heroes are animals. As a general rule (though no means universal), societies on the lower end of the development spectrum tell stories about gods and animals; higher-order civilizations humanize the stories into tales of heroes, first semi-divine, then fully human.

I recently edited a one-volume edition of Edwin Sidney Hartland’s Legend of Perseus, which contains more than 500 pages of worldwide variations on the theme of the Perseus hero myth. I defy anyone to read that and find any sort of consistency in the depiction of this most archetypical of heroes: The same character is sometimes a god, sometimes a demigod, sometimes a human; his “divine” birth ranges from miraculous to mundane. Worldwide, parallel stories feature even broader differences.

Picture
Cover of my edition of "The Legend of Perseus," which records hundreds of mutually contradictory legends on various aspects of the Perseus theme.
Insofar as hybridization goes, there is again no consistency across cultures. Julius Caesar claimed Venus as his divine ancestor, while Native groups across the Americas speak of talking animals as their ancestors. Where gods are invoked as ancestral beings, they are the ancestors of still living groups and therefore the “hybrids” are what we would call “humans.” Among the Greeks, the Great Flood killed off people who were the offspring of the men Prometheus made from clay and the woman Hephaestus fashioned, Pandora. The age of the “hybrid” heroes was much later, and the ancient Greeks counted those “hybrids” among their direct ancestors. Sure, you could argue they got things in the wrong order, but then you’re rewriting myths to conform to a preconceived narrative. You might also try to squeeze the first man and Pandora into the “hybrid” mold, but to do so would condemn Adam and Eve to the same fate, since Adam was also made from clay and Eve fashioned later by (a) God/god(s).

Among the Maya, the Flood killed off most of the men of wood—not hybrid god-creatures—and modern humans arose later. But even these wooden men still exist, as New World monkeys, and I doubt anyone would try to explain that monkeys are hybrids from another dimension.

As for the claim that traces of the “Watchers” from the Book of Enoch can be found in world myths, I confess that I am at a loss. The Greeks had no evil “Watchers” on the order of those of the Book of Enoch, unless you count the Fates, who “watch” what people are doing but are not evil. The closest I can come are the Titans, the former race of gods who were condemned to Tartarus; their leader, Kronos, served as an oracle of the dead. (This was the view of occultist Richard Cavendish.) But this hardly seems the same, and at any rate the story is derived from Near Eastern models which also influenced the Enochian account, so they are not completely independent.

Nor do the Norse have Watchers, though Odin had two ravens who told him everything that occurred on earth each day. I don’t think that the ravens were quite what White had in mind.

Really, the only way to stretch the concept of Watchers to cover most mythologies is to adopt the idea of the early Church Fathers that pagan gods are themselves demons, so therefore all pagan mythologies are really demonologies of various Watchers and other infernal cliques. On the authority of St. Peter (Ephesians 2:2 with 6:12), Christians identify Satan with “the air” (in the KJV; “the unseen world” in other translations) and therefore demons with the air and other natural elements; from this, they see Watchers in pagan nature spirits, but I am at a loss to find any who answer to the Watchers of Enoch. The best I can do is suggest that White is referring to the widespread Near Eastern myth of the succession of the gods, in which an older race of gods is dispossessed by the younger and banished; but this is no means universal outside the Near East.

Where there are similarities in otherwise unrelated myths, it is on the structural level, and these similarities need no demons or Watchers to explain them. White mentions ayahuasca, the hallucinogen that South Americans use to access the spirit world. As I have repeatedly discussed, David Lewis-Williams (in The Mind in the Cave and Inside the Neolithic Mind) has carefully examined how altered states of consciousness, acting on specific neurological pathways in the brain, produce identical “visions” across time and space, which are then filtered through the cultural expectations of the people seeing them. If you wish, like Graham Hancock (see his Supernatural), to believe that the brain is channeling another dimension, that is your business, but it doesn’t imply the flesh-and-blood existence of beings capable of hybridizing with human females.

More than 200 years ago, Jacob Bryant tried to explain that all world myths were merely corruptions of the Book of Genesis, the great original of all literature. To do so, he had to start with a conclusion and work backward to the evidence, faking some of it. But the evidence he relied upon fell away from under him. George Smith, upon discovering the Babylonian creation and Gilgamesh myths, imagined he found independent proof of the Bible’s truth and published it as The Chaldean Account of Genesis in 1875; within twenty years scholars realized that the Babylonian (and still earlier Sumerian) versions of the stories predated the Bible by a thousand years.

Valiant efforts have been made to explain why Noah was the original occupant of the ark, but the fact of the matter is that the stories that came down to us in Genesis are relatively late adaptations of earlier stories, a mere fraction of a Near Eastern mythology that was once very different from the one familiar from the Biblical text. Genesis 6:1-4 is in all likelihood a reminiscence of this lost mythology, an acknowledgement that the polytheistic populace once had a set of hero myths about the sons of the Semitic pantheon, just like all their neighbors. That they seem menacing and evil is not because demons are real but because monotheism simply did not allow for rivals to Yahweh, so they had to be diabolized.

Picture
Cover of my edition of "The Chaldean Account of Genesis," the first book to discuss the remarkable Babylonian tablets that recorded myths that predated the Bible.
42 Comments
Jesus myth
1/25/2013 01:05:03 pm

I'm curious as to what you think of Earl Doherty and the Christ-mythicist claims that Jesus never existed. It sounds to me to be of the ancient aliens variety but since you have some expertise in ancient history I wonder what you think. Do you believe in a historical Jesus or a mythical one?

Reply
Jason Colavito link
1/25/2013 01:41:49 pm

The evidence I've seen tells me there was a historical Jesus (the Romans, including Tacitus, knew of him), though obviously one who was much embellished into the god-man of modern myth.

Reply
Thomas Whitmore
1/26/2013 02:53:44 am

Embellished by whom, Jason? Paul, who has arguably the highest 'Christology' of the writers of the New Testament, was almost certainly writing before the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, and there is a fragment of Mark's Gospel that dates into the 1st century AD. It's very hard to claim it was 'embellished' by anybody but the people who were writing about his life almost immediately after his death. And if some of them were contemporaries or interacted with contemporaries, that should tell you something. It's an extraordinary thing to have documents whose ran so close to the original events.

The obvious recourse is to argue that the people who were writing these were actively fabricating myth. By way of heading off that argument, it should be noted that it makes very little sense to undergo serious torture and execution for a knowing work of fiction.

Jason Colavito link
1/26/2013 04:03:24 am

Surely you won't tell me that all of the stories of Christ or Christian myths can be found in the canonical Gospels? The story as given in the Gospels was much embellished later, including but not limited to the extra-Biblical tale of Christ's harrowing of hell, an important part of medieval theology.

Thomas Whitmore
1/26/2013 04:41:37 am

No, but surely that was not what you were asserting. The point was that the conception of him as "god-man" is an early one, further and ridiculous elaborations notwithstanding.

Jason Colavito link
1/26/2013 05:48:42 am

You're right; I wrote my initial response too quickly. There is a fine theological point between the attested belief that Christ was fully human but also the son of God and the later embellished version of a superhero. That said, we know that ancient writers were not terribly wedded to truth, and we have the testimony of Lysimachus in Plutarch that even ancient historians (let alone polemicists) embellished, rewrote, and fabricated material at will, during the lifetimes of those involved. Lysimachus listened to a book about himself and quipped, “Why and where was I then?”

terry the censor
2/6/2013 06:25:07 am

> it makes very little sense to undergo serious torture and execution for a knowing work of fiction.

Thomas, you should relax the rhetoric and show a little modesty.

Redaction criticism of the NT and any book of gospel parallels (Throckmorton is the standard text) will show very distinct theological differences in the accounts (and that's not even including John, which is quite dissimilar to the other three gospels).
Textual criticism shows that Jesus' resurrection is a late addition to Mark -- it's not in the earliest manuscripts.
Luke and Paul make it clear in their texts they never met Jesus. Scholars can find no reason to think the other gospellers did either.

So...a little modesty.

John J. McKay link
1/25/2013 03:25:09 pm

An anthropologist I know says that any statement that starts "all cultures have" or "all cultures believe" is almost certainly bullshit. In the alternate history crowd, the most common is everyone has a flood myth. Except most of Sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for almost half of the cultures on Earth.

Are you familiar with "Crash Go the Chariots" by Clifford Wilson, M.A., B.D., Ph.D, M.O.U.S.E.? His little book was published in 1972 by the paperback house Lancer Books.I'm not sure how much distribution it had since Lancer, despite having the rights to RE Howard and having Frank Frazetta on the payroll, went bankrupt soon after.

As the title implies, Wilson was an early debunker of von Daniken. His book starts off pretty well, but, as he gains steam, it becomes clear his main problem with EvD is that his aliens mess with Wilson's literalist interpretation of the Old Testament. Wilson admits that there are versions of the Mesopotamian flood that predate the composition of Genesis, but they don't count because Genesis is the only version that is true. The others are all corrupt copies of Genesis. Where he warmed up with legitimate science and history, he finishes by pounding his fists on the pulpit thundering "BECAUSE THAT'S NOT WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS!!"

I'd always lumped creationists together with ancient astronauts and Atlanteans. This was one of the first times I'd seen them going at each other's throats.

Reply
Tara Jordan
1/25/2013 06:33:00 pm

Jason,I wonder why you never mentioned the Hyperborean mytho, which served as the founding stone for most Eastern & Western esoteric esoteric schools. The Ancient Aliens - Ancient Gods synopses are also directly influenced by the Hyperborean mytho.It is found throughout classical & modern esoterism, mysticism & metaphysics. Many Science fiction writers like Lovecraft & Robert Charroux also relied on it ( Erik Von Daniken who plagiarized much of earlier writings on ancient astronaut race by Robert Charroux )

Reply
Jason Colavito link
1/25/2013 10:37:50 pm

Because my blog was long enough and Hyperborea isn't in the Bible!

Reply
Mila
1/25/2013 09:28:06 pm



You siad , "I will say that there is no consistent myth of super-intelligent evil beings who lie and deceive for personal gain."

Well, there is no culture that would deny the existence of the spirit world. The name may differ. I would be very foolish to believe that all spirits are positive. We may ask why they interact with humans.

Second, you wrote that "possession is not always negative". I mean, seriously? You may believe that it is positive when Apollo enters someone’s psyche. Have you ever considered the fact why god has to enter into human psyche rather than riding on his Delphic tripod and visiting in person? After all, he is god….or perhaps you believe that he is.LOL!

Sorry, I can’t take your blog seriously. I better go back to ancient historians and real scholars.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
1/25/2013 10:40:05 pm

If you seriously believe that entities from other dimensions have an objective reality and enter into human bodies, there isn't much I could possibly say to you.

Reply
Mila
1/26/2013 08:30:36 am

LOL! It were you who tried to argue that not all possession were negative. Well, you may reject the work of famous occultists and magicians who openly talked about demons. You may reject the fact that necromancy was well known in ancient Greece, for example. I am not going to waste my time to quote ancient historians but let’s look at C. Jung and S. Freud.

Johann Weyer, a Dutch physician, occultist, and demonologist, disciple and follower of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa wrote Praestigiis Daemonum The book also contains a famous appendix also circulated independently as the Pseudomonarchia daemonum, a listing of the names and titles of infernal spirits. S. Freud called the Praestigiis Daemonum one of the ten most significant books of all time.

In 1898, Jung began to get seriously interested in the occult. When he learned that his 16-year-old cousin is a practicing spiritualist medium, made her the object of his research and became interested in spiritualist séances that a group of his relatives has carried out. He hypnotized his 16-year old cousin. For two years, Jung Young was an active participant in these sessions and their faithful chronicler, in the end, they also have become a key topic of his doctoral dissertation, "The psychology and pathology of so-called Occult phenomena" Now we know that H. Preiswerk was also during this time mistress CG Jung. M. Brumlik, 1999 p. 254)) He must have learned that from Freud who also had incestuous relationships. Anyway, Jung couldn't be neutral in terms of scientific research to the woman who was hypnotized and with whom had sexual relations.

E. Jones expressed the opinion that after the "seminal research on dementia praecox associations, Jung fell into pseudo considerations and will never be liberated from them" (E. Jones, Free Associations, 1959, p 165).

Later, Jung he was engaged in spiritualist medium talks with the spiritual leader, whom he called Philemon, as if it were a real person. He writes in his memoirs: "Philemon represented a force which was not me (...). He taught me psychic objectivity, the reality of the soul (...). He was a very mysterious character for me. Sometimes seemed very real, a living person . I walked with him in the garden, he was for me the one whom the Indians call a guru "(CG Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Pantheon, 1973, pp. 183). Some suggest that Jung that between 1913-1918 Jung was a schizophrenic.

Finally, let’s look at Giordano Bruno, the author of De vinculis in genere, the book that is considered by Oxford scholars and intellectuals as most intelligent and insightful political work - on the par with Machiavelli’s Prince. We can’t also forget prof. Dahrendorf, prof. Eliade and his disciple prof. Couliano, who are just the latest scholars who considered De vinculis in genere as a masterpiece of political manipulation. The first to recognize the importance of Bruno’s text were the Rosicrucians, as indicated in the texts of P. Arnold and F. A. Yates on the movement’s history.

The sixth sense adds to this the exhortation or invocation of the intelligences and external or higher forces by means of prayers, dedications, incensings, sacrifices, resolutions and ceremonies directed to the gods, demons and heroes. Sometimes, this is done for the purpose of contacting a spirit itself to become its vessel and instrument in order to appear wise, although this wisdom can be easily removed, together with the spirit, by means of a drug. This is the magic of the hopeless, who become the vessels of evil demons, which they seek through their notorious art. On the other hand, this is sometimes done to command and control lower demons with the authority of higher demonic spirits, by honoring and entreating the latter while restricting the former with oaths and petitions. This is transnatural or metaphysical magic and is properly called ‘theurgy’.

Seventh, magic is the petition or invocation, not of the demons and heroes themselves, but through them, to call upon the souls of dead humans, in order to predict and know absent and future events, by taking their cadavers or parts thereof to some oracle. This type of magic, both in its subject matter and in its purpose, is called ‘necromancy’. If the body is its viscera with very active incantations, then this type of magic is properly called ‘Pythian’, for, if I may say so, this was the usual meaning of ‘inspired’ at the temple of the Pythian Apollo.

Eighth, sometimes incantations are associated with a person’s physical parts in any sense; garments, excrement, remnants, footprints and anything which is believed to have made some contact with the person. In that case, and if they are used to untie, fasten, or weaken, then this constitutes the type of magic called ‘wicked’, if it leads to evil. If it leads to good, it is to be counted among the medicines

Mila
1/26/2013 08:46:28 am

It is the end of my previous post.

Eighth, sometimes incantations are associated with a person’s physical parts in any sense; garments, excrement, remnants, footprints and anything which is believed to have made some contact with the person. In that case, and if they are used to untie, fasten, or weaken, then this constitutes the type of magic called ‘wicked’, if it leads to evil. If it leads to good, it is to be counted among the medicines belonging to a certain method and type of medical practice. If it leads to final destruction and death, then it is called ‘poisonous magic’.

Finally, ‘magic’ and ‘magician’ have a pejorative connotation which has not been included or examined in the above meanings. In this sense, a magician is any foolish evil-doer who is endowed with the power of helping or harming someone by means of a communication with, or even a pact with, a foul devil. This meaning does not apply to wise men, or indeed to authors, although some of them have adopted the name ‘hooded magicians’, for example, the authors of the book De malleo maleficarum (The Witches’ Hammer). As a result, the name is used today by all writers of this type, as can be seen in the comments and beliefs of ignorant and foolish priests.
Giordano Bruno,Cause, Principle and Unity An Essays on Magic p. 105 -107

As I said, I don’t take your website seriously. You didn't even take time to answer in an intelligent manner. It would be better for you, if you just ignored my post. LOL!

Enjoy your ancient aliens.

Best regards,

Jason Colavito link
1/26/2013 09:06:04 am

That's your definition of magic, following Western conventions. Other societies do not see it that way.

Mila
1/26/2013 09:59:26 am


LOL! Haven’t you noticed that I quoted Giordano Bruno? Have you missed that I mentioned Johann Weyer, and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, a famous renaissance magician and occultist? Reading comprehension........ or just you are out of ammunition.


I am not going to waste my time to show how other societies view demons in the same way.

Jason Colavito link
1/26/2013 10:06:03 am

All of those are Western authors. Traditional societies (i.e. the animistic cultures of the Amazon, sub-Saharan Africa, etc.) have a radically different view.

Mila
1/26/2013 10:50:18 am


No, they don’t. I am sure that you know it very well. As, I said I am not going to write about it. I have more interesting reading about “ mystics” such as Emanuel Swedenborg.

According to Wikipedia, in 1741, Emanuel Swedenborg , at the age of 53, he entered into a spiritual phase in which he began to experience dreams and visionsd , beginning on Easter weekend of April 6, 1744. This culminated in a 'spiritual awakening', in which he received revelation that he was appointed by the Lord to write a heavenly New Church Doctrine and to reform Christianity. According to the New Church Doctrine the Lord had opened Swedenborg's spiritual eyes, so that from then on he could freely visit heaven and hell and talk with angels, demons and other spirits.

His Journal of Dreams can be captivating. lol

Unlike the works he published in his lifetime, or intended to publish, which were all written in Latin, the Journal of Dreams was, in the words of a present-day Swedish Swedenborg scholar, written in ‘rather crude but expressive Swedish’ (Jonsson, 16). It has been described as a ‘difficult and obscure notebook’ (Jonsson, 130) which ‘reflects a profound psychical crisis’ (Jonsson, 150). Among the heavenly visions come other scenes both mundane and fantastical: a cast of various dogs, Kings, an executioner with his heads, dragons, a talking ox, and an abstract apparition of an oblong globe. There are also many women and, as we shall see, some dreams that are erotic in content.

Quite early in the Journal Swedenborg noted that after arriving at The Hague ‘…the inclination for women, which had been my chief passion, so suddenly ceased’. Swedenborg never married, nor is it recorded that he ever had a long-term mistress. In his dreams, the woman touches his penis with her hand and he has an erection, bigger than he has ever had. He penetrates her, reflecting that a child must come of this, and writes that he got off en merveille. In another dream he is lying with a woman who was not beautiful but who pleased him. He touched her vagina and discovered that it had a set of teeth.

Oh, those "mystics"….. Given the emphasis that Swedenborg gave to sexual love between men and women, an analysis of the eroticism of his dreams that was replaced by the passion for women at a crucial turning point in his life would seem to be an interesting subject of study.

Mila
1/26/2013 05:02:13 pm

Your blog is quite inspiring I must say. From Emanuel Swedenborg to Jan Potocki, a Polish nobleman, ethnologist, linguist, traveler, known for his novel The Manuscript Found in Saragossa. I watched his movie yesterday and I started reading his novel. Interestingly enough, it is the same theme of erotic dream with two Persian women as in Swedenborg’s Journals of Dreams. I don’t know if Potocki was influenced by Swedenborg. Dominique Triaire wrobe about J. Potocki but I haven’t read it. Manuscript touches on all things supernatural. The Cabbala, geomancy, and magic in and far between.

Potocki suffered from melancholia and committed suicide at the age of 54. Coincidentally, I have read Three Books of Occult Philosophy, written by Cornelius Agrippa. In Chapter LX : Of Madness, and Divinations which are made when men are awake, and of the power of a Melancholy humor, by which Spirits are sometimes induced into men bodies

Agrippa wrote:

“Democritus, and Plato attest the same, saying, that there were some melancholy men, that had such excellent wits, that they were thought, and seemed to be more divine then humane. So also there have been many melancholy men at first rude, ignorant, and untractable, as they say Hesiod, Ion, Tynnichus, Calcinenses, Homer, and Lucretius were, who on a sudden were taken with a madness, and became Poets, and prophesied wonderful, and divine things, which they themselves scarce understood. Whence divine Plato in Ion saith, many Prophets, after the violence of their madness was abated, do not well understand what they wrote, yet treated accurately of each Art in their madness, as all Artists by reading of them judge. So great also they say the power of melancholy is of, that by its force, Celestial spirits also are sometimes drawn into men bodies, by whose presence, and instinct, antiquity testifies men have been made drunk, and spoke most wonderful things. And that they think happens under a threefold difference, according to a threefold apprehension of the soul, viz. imaginative, rational, and mental. They say, therefore, when the mind is forced with a melancholy humor, nothing moderating the power of the body, and passing beyond the bonds of the members, is wholly carried into imagination, and doth suddenly become a seat for inferior spirits, by whom it oftentimes receives wonderful ways, and forms of manual Arts. So we see that any most ignorant man doth presently become an excellent painter, or contrivers of building, and to become a master in any such Art. But when these kinds of spirits portend to us future things, they shew those things which belong to the disturbing of the Elements, and changes of times, as rain, tempests, innundations, earthquakes, great mortality, famine, slaughter, and the like. But when the mind is turned wholly into reason, it becomes a receptacle for middle spirits and obtains the knowledge, and understanding of natural, and humane things. So we see that a man sometimes doth on a sudden become a Philosopher, physician, or an excellent Orator, and foretells mutations of Kingdoms, and restitutions of Ages, and such things as belong to them, as the Sybil did to the Romans; but when the mind is wholly elevated into the understanding, then it becomes a receptacle of sublime spirits, and learns of them the secrets of divine things, such as the Law of God, the orders of Angels, and such things as belong to the knowledge of things eternal, and salvation of souls.”

Agrippa didn't say that Sybil were involved in necromancy. I guess his body was a seat for inferior spirits. Lol Ancient aliens can be interesting if we look what have been scrupulously avoided.

"The Sibyl [performing the rites of necromancy at the oracle of the dead at Cumae] first lined up four black-skinned bullocks, poured a libation wine upon their foreheads, and then, plucking the topmost hairs from between their brows, she placed these on the altar fires as an initial offering, calling aloud upon Hecate, powerful in heaven and hell. While other laid their knives to these victim’s throats, and caught the fresh warm blood in bowls, Aeneas sacrifices a black-fleeced lamb to Nox (Night), the mother of the Furiae, and her great sister, Terra (earth), and a barren heifer to Proserpine. Then he [Aeneas] set up altars by night to the god of the Underworld [Hades], laying upon the flames whole carcases of bulls and pouring out rich oil over the burning entrails. But listen! - at the very first crack of dawn, the ground underfoot began to mutter, the woody ridges to quake, and a baying of hounds was heard through the half-light: the goddess was coming, Hecate. [a path then opened up for the Sibyl & Aeneas to travel down to Hades]." - Virgil, Aeneid 6.257

Tom
1/25/2013 11:01:10 pm

"In traditional cultures, possessions can be positive, negative, or neutral. Christians are welcome to view the oracles as negative and manipulative, but those who created, employed, and experienced them did not."

Did you read the whole article and understand it? Its a reply to Chris Whites claim that across ALL cultures there are mythos of deceptive 'watchers' meddling in human affairs. Some are positive, some are not. We don't need to ask why they interact with humans, but why the people who believe in them believe they interact with them.

Your second point about Apollo choosing possession rather than flying in on his tripod makes no sense. What does the quote about possession not being negative have to do with the question of whether the god that visits them is real or not?

If you cannot read comprehensively and reply with anything constructive then how are people supposed to take your reply seriously? Oh wait, we're not supposed to are we?

Reply
tubby
1/26/2013 03:08:39 am

I think what they're trying to say is that even if the Greeks thought possession by Apollo was a good or neutral thing that it in 'fact' was not, and that Apollo did not jump into the room with his oracle and give his advice and orders directly rather than through possession because he was unable to.

Whether they think it's because Apollo couldn't due to not existing or because he's one of those evil watcher type entities doesn't matter too much since the same accusation can be made against currently accepted 'legitimate' gods. They seem to give their advice and orders through revelation rather than by walking into the religious institution which holds them sacred and delivering their comments in person.

Tom
1/26/2013 11:37:31 am

Yes, that was the way I'd interpreted his/her ramblings as well. Seems they've already accepted that there are real entities from other dimensions and occultists with magical powers (as well as the evil 'LOL!' demon)

tubby
1/26/2013 03:14:10 pm

I thought believing in a selection of additional supernatural beings came with the deity territory. All those visions of Marys, angles and saints come to mind.

And come to think of it, don't some members of charismatic churches claim a sort of holy possession? That's what I've heard about the whole speaking in tongues and rolling on the ground- that they feel they are 'filled' with the Holy Spirit during worship and inspired by it to behave that way. I'd think this is an example where Christians would claim a positive form of possession.

Mila
1/26/2013 03:51:51 pm

I guess you were speaking about yourself and your problems with understanding. Projection can be painful. lol I am not going to waste my time to answer it as I have written a few posts but you refer to my first post. BTW, Apollo and Delphic tripod was a joke. Too bad that you can’t even understand a joke.

Tom
1/26/2013 09:49:29 pm

Everything after your first post was irrelevantly block quoted from Wikipedia with a few words about what you find interesting about it. No argument, no point, just some rambling about erotic dreams and occultist magic philosophy with lots of 'LOL!' hardly worthy to construct any counter-arguments from.

At least from your first post your position of believing in actual fairies which can possess people is laughably clear.

Mila
2/21/2013 03:18:52 am


Thanks for another laughter. I have made only a short quote about Emanuel Swedenborg from Wikipedia. Have you missed that I quoted Bruno and Agrippa? Those quotes from their original work stand on its own.

So, it sounds that you didn’t understand it or you just wanted to distract.
BTW, I don’t believe in fairies but occultists believe in elementals. Are you a mason by a chance? You remind me about them ….the same hive mind and methods of arguing. LOL!

Thomas Whitmore
1/26/2013 03:25:11 am

I'd also like to comment, Jason, that the translation you're using is probably not the most optimal. The interpretation of the beings referred to in the passage as being 'giants' belongs to the tradition of the Septuagint, rather than the earliest Hebrew sources, not subject to the filtering of Alexandrian scholars who were familiar with Greek and Hebrew traditions. It is probably more faithful to the original interpretation to refer to them as 'angels' and so forth.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
1/26/2013 03:53:57 am

This is a point of contention, and a controversy I know all about. Mike Heiser has on his website a very long and detailed discussion of why the original text best supports "giants" rather than "Fallen Ones," and I found that argument to be compelling.

Reply
Thomas Whitmore
1/26/2013 04:16:38 am

Not to be a bother, but if you accept Heiser's thesis, you must abandon a parallel between Near Eastern myth and Genesis, in that Heiser's argument depends entirely on his translation of "ha nachash" meaning 'shiny one' and not 'serpent'. Leaving aside the validity of that interpretation, that deprives one of drawing a parallel between Jewish Garden of Eden myth in having a serpent present in the garden and the serpent which steals Gilgamesh's herb.

Jason Colavito link
1/26/2013 04:26:27 am

I was referring to his discussion of the origins of the term "nephilim," which I don't recall having anything to do with the serpent of Genesis, or Gilgamesh's serpent.

Thomas Whitmore
1/26/2013 04:40:13 am

Heiser's entire interpretation of how the term means 'giants' depends on them being the descendents of the "ha nachash". Their physical characteristics and so forth being derivative not of serpants (how else could they be giants?) but something else entirely. He supports the meaning of the term in large part because of how he interprets "ha nachash". The relevance is therein: if "ha nachash" means "shiny one" as he says, it can't be a serpent, and your (again repeated) claim of antecedence must take a corresponding hit. If it doesn't mean "ha nachash" then 'giants' isn't an appropriate translation.

Jason Colavito link
1/26/2013 06:45:39 am

Heiser's argument was entirely linguistic and has nothing to do with shiny ones or snakes. As you can see, his paper on the subject says nothing about any of that: http://www.michaelsheiser.com/nephilim.pdf

It is entirely an argument based on Aramaic and Hebrew word forms.

And so far as I can tell, I've never said anything about Gilgamesh's serpent being the same as the one from the Garden of Eden.

Jeff
1/28/2013 06:02:22 am

Hello Jason: I was quite surprised to read that Chris White in his interview with Skeptiko host Alex Tsakris put forth this bizarre idea about trans-dimensional race of hybrid beings? After watching the Chris White film Ancient Aliens Debunked I figured he was grounded in reality. What gives with him? His movie was absolutely great but is he just partially bonked or what?

Reply
Jason Colavito link
1/28/2013 06:27:08 am

I obviously can't speak for Chris White, who in my albeit limited conversations with him has always been nothing but kind, polite, and intellectually engaged. That said, he is a devout Christian and interprets evidence in that light, and is therefore looking for rationalizations that would support a literal interpretation of Genesis 6:1-4. In that sense, he seems to view the ancient astronaut theory as a rival to Biblical literalism.

Reply
Jeff
1/29/2013 04:54:43 am

#1 Personally I think Chris White is trying too hard - Ha!

His work on Ancient Aliens Debunked was stellar but his musings the interview was bizarre & depressing.

#2 Which of your books would you recommend someone read as a beginning to your writings? I usually purchase books regularly thru Amazon unless you can recommend a better source.

Thanks, Jeff

Reply
Jason Colavito link
1/29/2013 11:45:31 am

Thank you for your interest in my books. My only two books that are directly about ancient astronauts are my first book, "The Cult of Alien Gods" (2005), and my "Critical Companion to Ancient Aliens" (2012). However, if you want a (free!) overview, you can read online and/or download my free ebook "Origin of the Space Gods."

Reply
Jeff
1/30/2013 04:06:44 am

Ordered the "The Cult of Alien Gods" from Amazon - it should be a good read on my upcoming trip to Singapore.

Video you might enjoy - Logical Fantasies on Illuminutti website.

Reply
Jeff
1/30/2013 04:07:19 am

Ordered the "The Cult of Alien Gods" from Amazon - it should be a good read on my upcoming trip to Singapore.

Video you might enjoy - Logical Fantasies on Illuminutti website.

Reply
Jeff
1/30/2013 04:07:44 am

Ordered the "The Cult of Alien Gods" from Amazon - it should be a good read on my upcoming trip to Singapore.

Video you might enjoy - Logical Fantasies on "Illuminutti" website.

Reply
Jeff
1/30/2013 04:08:14 am

Ordered the "The Cult of Alien Gods" from Amazon - it should be a good read on my upcoming trip to Singapore.

Video you might enjoy - Logical Fantasies on "Illuminutti.com" website.

Reply
Jeff
1/30/2013 04:08:52 am

I ordered the "The Cult of Alien Gods" from Amazon - it should be a good read on my upcoming trip to Singapore.

Video you might enjoy - Logical Fantasies on "Illuminutti.com" website.

Reply
jeff
1/30/2013 04:40:00 am

Sorry for the duplicates - the site kept telling me I had a spelling error on the Logical Fantasies website and that I had to resend it.

Reply

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        • The Secret Doctrine >
          • Volume 1: Cosmogenesis
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        • Phoenicians in America
        • The Electric Ark
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        • Prince Henry Sinclair
        • Pyramid Prophecies
        • Templars of Ancient Mexico
        • Chronology and the "Riddle of the Sphinx"
        • The Faith of Ancient Egypt
        • Spirit of the Hour in Archaeology
        • Book of the Damned
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        • Richard Shaver's Proofs
    • Alien Encounters >
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        • The Condon Report on Ancient Astronauts
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        • Noah's Ark Cables
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      • Ancient Extraterrestrials >
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        • Plane of Ether
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      • A Message from Mars
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      • Orville Wright on UFOs
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    • The Supernatural >
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      • Science and Fairy Stories
      • The Cursed Car
    • Classic Fiction >
      • Lucian's True History
      • Some Words with a Mummy
      • The Coming Race
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      • An Inhabitant of Carcosa
      • The Xipéhuz
      • Lot No. 249
      • The Novel of the Black Seal
      • The Island of Doctor Moreau
      • Pharaoh's Curse
      • Edison's Conquest of Mars
      • The Lost Continent
      • Count Magnus
      • The Mysterious Stranger
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      • The Lost World
      • The Red One
      • H. P. Lovecraft >
        • Dagon
        • The Call of Cthulhu
        • History of the Necronomicon
        • At the Mountains of Madness
        • Lovecraft's Library in 1932
      • The Skeptical Poltergeist
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      • The Second Satellite
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      • A Martian Odyssey
    • Classic Genre Movies
    • Miscellaneous Documents >
      • The Balloon-Hoax
      • A Problem in Greek Ethics
      • The Migration of Symbols
      • The Gospel of Intensity
      • De Profundis
      • The Life and Death of Crown Prince Rudolf
      • The Bathtub Hoax
      • Crown Prince Rudolf's Letters
      • Position of Viking Women
      • Employment of Homosexuals
      • James Dean's Scrapbook
      • James Dean's Love Letters
      • The Amazing James Dean Hoax!
    • Free Classic Pseudohistory eBooks
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