Chapter XXXIII

Torah, Kaballah
and When I Dream...



 

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The Secret History of The World by Laura Knight-Jadczyk

Discover the Secret History of the World - and how to get out alive!

 

 

The Wave

Wave Index

[ Chapter 01 ]
[ Chapter 02 ]
[ Chapter 03 ]
[ Chapter 04 ]
[ Chapter 05 ]
[ Chapter 06 ]
[ Chapter 07 ]
[ Chapter 08 ]

[ Chapter 09 ]
[ Chapter 10 ]

[ Chapter 10b ]
[ Chapter 10c ]

[ Chapter 11 ]
[ Chapter 11b ]

[ Chapter 11c ]
[ Chapter 11d ]

[ Chapter 11e ]
[ Chapter 11f ]

[ Chapter 11g ]
[ Chapter 11h ]

[ Chapter 11i ]
[ Chapter 11j ]

[ Chapter 11k ]
[ Chapter 12 ]

[ Chapter 12b ]
[ Chapter 12c ]

[ Chapter 12d ]
[ Chapter 12e ]

[ Chapter 12e1 ]
[ Chapter 13 ]

[ Chapter 13a ]
[ Chapter 13b ]

[ Chapter 13c ]
[ Chapter 13d ]

[ Chapter 13e ]
[ Chapter 13f ]

[ Chapter 13g ]
[ Chapter 13h ]

[ Chapter 13i ]
[ Chapter 13j ]

 
 

 

 

I realize that some readers of these pages may wonder exactly where I am heading with this discussion, particularly that which constitutes the previous section. I only ask that you be patient and not skip any of the material because it is important to further events and revelations. What I am trying to give you is a context of what was in my mind and my environment as the "clues" were given. Keep always in mind the following:

Q: (L) ...How come I am always the one who gets assigned the job of figuring everything out? A: Because you have asked for the "power" to figure out the most important issues in all of reality. And, we have been assisting you in your empowerment.

And once, when a guest asked if he could just contact the Cassiopaeans himself they remarked:

Q: (BRH) Is there any way I can contact you guys directly?
A: Well, B___, only if you present yourself into the presence of these 3rd densities here. Remember, their request was hard earned, and one of them has been channeling throughout this incarnation, much to his detriment. Those neighborhood kids usually do not respond favorably to psychic awareness, now do they? Another one here has literally turned the world upside down in search of the greatest truths for all of humanity, much to her potential peril. And the third one here had to endure almost unimaginable hardships and tests of stamina in order to realize his destined path of bringing your 3rd density realm to the brink of 4th density transitional adjustment. So, the path is open to you. Wanna follow?!?

So, please realize that I am working as hard as I can to enable anyone and everyone who so desires to unlock the truths they have within - and to do it perhaps a little less traumatically than I did it myself! I can take you, the reader, along with me to a great extent, reproducing for you in these words I am writing not only the events, but the thinking processes that I followed and the discoveries that I made; but it is up to you to have the perseverance and will to accompany me, and, perhaps, to go beyond. Yes, some parts seem to be boring or less interesting from one perspective or another; but if it were not important, and even crucially so, it would not be included here. I AM excluding a lot of the "false trails" and red herrings unless they have some bearing on what turned out to be the "right" path. And, what was the "right path" for me may not be the same for everyone. So each of you are responsible for doing your own additional work and research. And if what I have done makes it go faster and easier and eliminates some of the wasted time of pursuing disinformation and futile thinking, it is worth my effort.

At this point, I am going to try to finish filling in the "mental picture" that was in my mind at a most crucial point in the Quest so that I can then begin to mover forward through the sessions from 1996 onward in a more or less chronological fashion. When I finish these next few pages, the reader will have all the clues that I had as well as the context in which they were given.

As I have already noted, the presence at two sessions of the young Jewish woman (RC), who was convinced that she had been connected to me in some way in a previous life in Nazi Germany, really seemed to "shift" the direction of the Cassiopaean communications. In retrospect, it was also the opening of a "door" and the initiating of a new path in my life. After the first session she attended, I had the dream of the "happy wedding" where I was taken to meet the "faceless bridegroom," and after the second session she attended, I had the actual hallucinatory vision of the "unknown-yet-familiar-face." RC was also the one who accelerated the project of producing a magazine as an "organ" for the Cassiopaean material. I had envisioned something that would be more "serious" and yet "open-minded" than the usual metaphysical or UFO publications, and a "journal" seemed to just fit the bill. She had been producing a magazine for a few years and wanted to give it up because she had plans to relocate, and at the same time, she didn't want to leave her subscribers hanging. It seemed to be a perfect solution for me to take over the subscription list and carry on the work.

RC's focus had been more astrological, though she included many articles about alien abduction and conspiracy theories, so the slight reorientation I planned on adding didn't seem like too great a divergence from the original format. I didn't care for the name of the "rag," but that was a minor point that could be rectified. Everything looked like it was a "go" and we felt that this was the key to "networking" in a big way!

It was also at this point that I began to read the entire series of Matrix books assembled by Val Valerian. As I was digging through this mountain of material, I kept my eye open for the possibilities of Masonic connections because everyone was very hot on the Masonic Conspiracy idea. It had been connected to the Priory of Sion by virtue of the Templars, in a very interesting book entitled The Temple and the Lodge, by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. It was proposed that the Templars had "gone to ground" in Scotland and England and "reappeared" later as the Masons. And, there was that pesky number 33 that kept cropping up all over the place. The more I looked into the "number business," the more confusing it became. Anyone who seeks to do research into "conspiracy theories" - who is serious and honest and fair - will eventually conclude, as Dr. Robert A. Morey (who was, by the way, an anti-Masonic researcher) wrote:

Anti-masonic writers have generally been as unreliable as Masonic apologists. In their zeal to attack Freemasonry, they have been willing to use fantasy, fraud, and deceit. They have even created bogus documents when needed. Their writings must not be taken at face value.

Naturally, when one is considering the "secret significance" of numbers, Pythagorean Mathematics will be among the earliest considerations. Manly Hall wrote that:

"The true key to philosophic mathematics is the famous Forty-seventh Proposition of Pythagoras, erroneously attributed to Euclid. The Forty-seventh Theorem is stated thus: In a right-angled triangle the square described on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares described on the other two sides."

Everyone who has attended public school and paid the slightest attention in math class knows that one. The problem is: what does it really mean that is is the "true key to philosophic mathematics?" What does C2=A2+B2 have to tell us?

Accounts of the travels and studies of Pythagoras differ, but most historians agree that he visited many countries and studied at the feet of many masters. Supposedly, after having been initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries, he went to Egypt and was initiated into the Mysteries of Isis. He then traveled to Phoenicia and Syria and was initiated into the Mysteries of Adonis. After that, he traveled to the valley of the Euphrates and learned all the secrets of the Chaldeans still living in the area of Babylon. Finally, he traveled to Media and Persia, then to India where he was a pupil and initiate of the Brahmins there. Sounds like he had all the bases covered.

Pythagoras was said to have invented the term "philosopher" in preference to the word "sage" since the former meant one who is attempting to find the truth, and the latter means one who knows the truth. Apparently Pythagoras didn't think he had the whole banana.

Pythagoras started a school at Crotona in Southern Italy and gathered students and disciples there whom he supposedly instructed in the principles of the secrets that had been revealed to him. He considered mathematics, music and astronomy to be the foundation of all the arts and sciences.When he was about sixty years old, he married one of his disciples and had seven children. I guess he was a pretty lively senior citizen! His wife was, apparently, quite a woman in her own right and she carried on his work after he was assassinated by a band of murderers incited to violence by a student whom he refused to initiate. The accounts of Pythagoras' murder vary. Some say he and all his disciples were killed, others say that he may have escaped because some of his students protected him by sacrificing themselves and that he later died of a broken heart when he realized the apparent fruitlessness of his efforts to illuminate humanity.

The experts say that very little remains of the teachings of Pythagoras in the present time unless it has been handed down in secret schools or societies. And, naturally, every secret society on the planet claims to have this "initiated" knowledge to one extent or another. It is possible that there exists some of the original secret numerical formulas of Pythagoras, but the sad fact is that there is no real evidence of it in the writings that have issued from these groups for the past millennium. Though everyone discusses Pythagoras, no one seems to know any more than the post-Pythagorean Greek speculators who "talked much, wrote little, knew less, and concealed their ignorance under a series of mysterious hints and promises." There seems to be a lot of that going around these days! Even Plutarch did not pretend to be able to explain the significance of the geometrical diagrams of Pythagoras. However, he did make the most interesting suggestion that the relationship which Pythagoras established between the geometrical solids and the gods was the result of images seen in the Egyptian temples. The question we would ask is: what do geometrical solids have to do with "gods?"

Albert Pike, the great Masonic symbolist, also admitted that there were many things that he couldn't figure out. In his Symbolism for the 32nd and 33rd degrees he wrote:

"I do not understand why the 7 should be called Minerva, or the cube, Neptune. ...Undoubtedly the names given by the Pythagoreans to the different numbers were themselves enigmatical and symbolic - and there is little doubt that in the time of Plutarch the meanings these names concealed were lost. Pythagoras had succeeded too well in concealing his symbols with a veil that was from the first impenetrable, without his oral explanation."
Manly Hall writes:
"This uncertainty shared by all true students of the subject proves conclusively that it is unwise to make definite statements founded on the indefinite and fragmentary information available concerning the Pythagorean system of mathematical philosophy."
But, of course, in the present time, there is a whole raft of folks who don't let such remarks stop them. Any number of modern gurus claim to have discovered the secrets of "Sacred Geometry!" Not only that, they don't seem to have even studied the matter deeply at all, missing many of the salient points that ARE evident in the fragments of Pythagorean teachings. Regarding this, there is a passage in Foucault's Pendulum, by Umberto Eco, that explicates the problem:

Amid all the nonsense there are some unimpeachable truths... I invite you to go and measure [an arbitrarily selected, but specific] kiosk. you will see that the length of the counter is one hundred and forty-nine centimeters - in other words, one hundred-billionth of the distance between the earth and the sun. The height at the rear, one hundred and seventy-six centimeters, divided by the width of the window, fifty-six centimeters, is 3.14. The height at the front is nineteen decimeters, equal, in other words, to the number of years of the Greek lunar cycle. The sum of the heights of the two front corners is one hundred and ninety times two plus one hundred and seventy-six times two, which equals seven hundred and thirty-two, the date of the victory at Poitiers. The thickness of the counter is 3.10 centimeters, and the width of the cornice of the window is 8.8 centimeters. Replacing the numbers before the decimals by the corresponding letters of the alphabet, we obtain C for ten and H for eight, or C10H8, which is the formula for naphthalene. ...With numbers you can do anything you like. Suppose I have the sacred number 9 and I want to get the number 1314, date of the execution of Jacques de Molay - a date dear to anyone who professes devotion to the Templar tradition of knighthood.

...Multiply nine by one hundred and forty-six, the fateful day of the destruction of Carthage. How did I arrive at this? I divided thirteen hundred and fourteen by two, by three, et cetera, until I found a satisfying date. I could also have divided thirteen hundred and fourteen by 6.28, the double of 3.14, and I would have got two hundred and nine. That is the year Attalus I, king of Pergamon, ascended the throne. You see? ...The universe is a great symphony of numerical correspondences... numbers and their symbolisms provide a path to special knowledge. But if the world, below and above, is a system of correspondences where tout se tient, it's natural for the [lottery] kiosk and the pyramid, both works of man, to reproduce in their structure, unconsciously, the harmonies of the cosmos. [Foucault's Pendulum, Eco, 1988, pp.288, 289, emphases, mine.]

The idea has been promoted with great vigor for over a thousand years that so-called Kabbalists and "interpreters of mysteries" can discover with their incredibly tortuous methods The Truth, completely misses the point of a truth that is far more ancient: Mathematics is the language of Nature.The Pythagoreans declared arithmetic to be the mother of the mathematical sciences. This idea was based on the fact that geometry, music, and astronomy are dependent upon arithmetic, but arithmetic is not dependent upon them. In this sense, geometry may be removed but arithmetic will remain; but if arithmetic be removed, geometry will be eliminated. In the same way, music depends on arithmetic. Eliminating music affects arithmetic only by limiting one of its expressions.

The size, form, and motion of the celestial bodies is determined by the use of geometry and their harmony and rhythm by the use of music. If astronomy is taken away, neither geometry nor music is harmed; but if geometry and music are done away with, astronomy is destroyed. The priority of both geometry and music to astronomy is therefore established and arithmetic is prior to all of them, being primary and fundamental. Playing endless games with numbers demonstrates only that which cannot be otherwise. The real secret seems to be much more profound and most, if not nearly all, "seekers" of truths never penetrate beyond the surface of the matter.

So, I could see that there was a lot of nonsense being propagated in the present day, mostly by people who had not bothered to study of history of metaphysical and occult matters. But, even with such an opinion in my mind, I could not help but notice the repeated occurrences of the number 33 in not only mystical literature, but also in world events of great import. Or, so it seemed. I wonder if all the MANY events of significance were cataloged, would we find a preponderance of these so-called mystical numbers, or would we find a spread of numbers that indicate no statistical significance? Just because SOME events occurred on the 33rd parallel, did that signify it was a "Masonic Conspiracy?" How many other events of similar significance have occurred at places and times that have no "occult" significance at all? But, of course, those that do, possibly by virtue of pure chance, get all the attention while everything else is ignored.

On the other hand, the idea was growing in my mind that such "synchronicities" or appearances of certain numbers and characteristics of events, WERE a sort of "clue" that the veil between dimensions and densities had been breached, either accidentally or deliberately. But who or what was doing it was still at issue.

But, clearly, the number 33 was being used by SOME occultists at various points to signify something, even if it was supposedly initiated by Bacon with his "33 cipher." So, the only right thing to do, I thought, was to ask the Cassiopaeans about this. It seemed to be a well-established "clue" that was very popular and certainly did appear to be behind or related to a lot of mysterious events.

An even deeper question seemed to me to be: If the number 33 was a code indicating both the presence and action of the Secret Masters, just WHY was this number the one selected? If mathematics is the "Language of Nature," just what was Nature saying? With the new complexity of the picture, it was pretty clear to me that all of the old explanations just were not going to hold up to scrutiny. I wanted to ask, with no prejudice or anticipation about the answer just WHAT did this number 33 REALLY mean? I was interested in getting to the "Pythagorean" level of secrets. So, even though we have already looked at portions of this session, let's look at it again in it's entirety.

Q: (L) Now, the main thing I wanted to ask about is the references I come across in tons of reading, that the number 33 is somehow significant. Could you tell us the significance, in esoteric terms, or in terms of secret societies, of the number 33. There is the cipher of Roger Bacon, based on the number 33, the 33rd degree masons...
A: As usual, we do not just give you the answers, we help you to teach yourself!! Now, take 11 and contemplate...

Here we see that the Cassiopaeans have immediately diverted my attention to the number 11, which is a divisor of 33. (3 X 11 = 33; 33 divided by 11=3, 33 divided by 3= 11)


Q: (L) Well, three times eleven is thirty-three.
A: Yes, but what about 11?

Again, they are diverting me to the number 11. And you are about to see how totally dense I can be!


Q: (L) Well, eleven is supposed to be one of the prime, or divine power numbers. In Kaballah, 11 is the power number...
A: Yes...
Q: (L) Eleven is 10 plus 1; it is divisible only by itself and by 1. I can't think of anything else. What else is there to the number 11?
A: Astrology.

And here, even though I didn't know it at the time, was one of the chief clues they were dropping in my lap. My first thought was, of course, the 11th house of astrology: Aquarius, which happens to be my own sun sign.


Q: (L) Well, in astrology, the eleventh sign is Aquarius. The eleventh house is friends, hopes, dreams and wishes, and also adopted children. Aquarius the Water bearer, the dispenser of knowledge. Does 11 have something to do with dispensing of knowledge?
A: Now, 3rd house.

Note that they didn't answer my question directly, but redirected my thinking to the 3rd house so that we have the two elements that make up 33, i.e. 11 X 3. The idea of the "gods" of the signs, i.e. Mercury and Saturn (Uranus was a later addition AFTER Pythagoras) did not occur to me.


Q: (L) Gemini. Okay. Gemini and Aquarius. Third house is how the mind works, communication, relations with neighbors and siblings, education, local travel, how one speaks. Gemini is known as the "consummate man." Somewhat shallow and interested in the things of material life. It is also the divine number of creation. [I should add here that originally Gemini was the "Divine children," Adam and Eve, and only later became the twins.] So, what's the connection here?
A: Matrix.
Q: (L) Is there something about this of importance in the Matrix material?
A: No.
Q: (L) This IS a matrix. The third house and the eleventh house create a matrix?
A: Foundation.
Q: (L) Gemini is in June, Aquarius is in February. Gemini is the physical man, and Aquarius is the spiritual man?
A: Yin Yang.

Well, in retrospect, I was completely missing the obvious. The 3rd house and the 11th house "create a foundation." And we note that, from the Cassiopaean point of view, Aquarius precedes Gemini in the elements given.

Q: (L) So Gemini is the physical man and Aquarius is the spiritual man... Yin Yang... is that the...
A: Yes...
And, of course when the Cassiopaeans indicate three dots in a row, they want me to go deeper. But, at the time, I really didn't know how or where they could possibly be going with this.


Q: (L) So 33 could represent the transformation of the physical man to the divine man through the action of secret or hidden teachings... and those who have gone through this process represent themselves with the number 33, which means that they started out oriented to the flesh and then became...
A: Medusa 11.

Again, in retrospect, the Cassiopaeans are interrupting my flow of assumptions with a new term.

Q: (L) Medusa 11? What does Medusa have to do with it? Please tell me how Medusa relates here?
A: Heads.
Q: (L) Heads. Medusa. 11. Were there eleven snakes on the head of Medusa or eleven heads? This is really obscure... you need to help me out here.
A: We are.
Q: (L) Do I need to read the Medusa legend to understand?
A: No.
Q: (L) Medusa. Heads. 11. Is there something about the mythical Medusa that we need to see here?
A: 11 squared divided by [or into?] Phi.

At this point in time, I am ashamed to admit that I had never heard of the term "Phi" (even if I did know about the common term "Golden Ratio"), and I assumed that the C's had made a mistake and that they really meant to say "pi" which even I, the math idiot, had heard of! So, I framed the next question in terms of my assumption.


Q: (L) By pi. 11 squared divided by pi. What does this result bring us to?
A: 33.infinity.
Q: (L) Well, we don't get 33 out of this... we get 3.3166 etc if we divide the square root of 11 by pi. Divided by Phi... what in the heck is Phi? Okay, if we divide pi into 11, we get 3.5infinity, but not 33.

I had a calculator!


A: 1 [pause] 1
Q: (L) Oh. You weren't saying 11 times 11, you were saying 1 times 1.
A: No.

And, even though they said "no" to my question, I continued on in my assumptions.


Q: (L) 1 times 1 is what? 1.

I think the fact that I was just plowing along and ignoring everything the Cassiopaeans were saying must have caused some consternation. They changed tactics.


A: 5 minus 3.
Q: (L) Okay, that's 2.
A: 2 minus 1.
Q: (L) I don't get it. A math genius I am NOT. What is the concept here?
A: Look: 353535. Is code.
Q: (L) What does this code relate to?
A: Infinite power.
Q: (L) How is infinite power acquired by knowing this code? If you don't know the correspondences, how can you use a numerical code?
A: Lord of Serpent promises its followers infinite power, which they must seek infinite knowledge to gain, for which they pledge allegiance infinitely, which they possess for all eternity, so long as they find infinite wisdom, for which they search for all infinity.
Q: (L) And that is the meaning of the number 33? Well, that is a round robin... a circle you can't get out of!
A: And therein you have the deception! Remember, those who seek to serve self with supreme power, are doomed only to serve others who seek to serve self, and can only see that which they want to see.

Well, that sure described me at the moment! I was just NOT seeing! Even if I had the objective of asking open questions, I HAD come to the session with some strong assumptions about what the answers SHOULD be, and I was shooting myself in the foot with every question. Well, I sort of gave up on the number 33 in frustration because the answers weren't going where I thought they ought to go and diverted off in another tangent.


Q: (L) The thought that occurs to me, as we are talking here, is that the STS pathway consists of an individual who wants to serve themselves - they are selfish and egocentric - they want to compel others to serve them; they want to enslave others; and they find ways to manipulate others to serve them. But, they end up being compelled by some higher being than they are, because they have been tricked into believing that by getting others to serve them, or some agenda that they promote, that they are either drawing power to themselves or even that they are giving power to others or some god through the teachings, including the popular religions which promote being "saved" by simply believing and giving up your power. And, in the end, you have a whole pyramid of people TAKING by trickery and deception, from others. The taker gets taken from in the end. There's always somebody higher than you who is "over you" in a hierarchy. A pyramid where all those on the bottom, the majority, have no one to take from, so they take from each other until one of them "gains enough weight" to be absorbed into the next level higher, and this process continues until you get to the apex and everything disappears. But, in the STO mode, you have those who only give. And, if they are involved only with other STO persons who are also giving, everyone receives and no one is at the bottom or at the top or in a "void" state. But, the funny thing is that, in the end, it seems like everyone ends up serving someone else anyway, and [the only difference is] the principle of INTENT which basically determines who you are giving to. But in STO, it is more like a circle, a balance, no one is left without.
A: Balance, Yin-Yang.
Q: (L) Obviously the 33 represents the Serpent, the Medusa, and so forth...
A: You mentioned pyramid, interesting... And what is the geometric one-dimensional figure that corresponds?
Q: (L) Well, the triangle. And, if you have a triangle point up you have 3, joined to a triangle pointing down, you have 3, you have a 33. Is that something like what we are getting at here?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) Is there a connection between the number 33 and the Great Pyramid in Egypt?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) And what is that connection? Is it that the builders of the pyramid participated in this secret society activity?
A: Yes. And what symbol did you see in "Matrix," for Serpents and Grays?
Q: (L) You are talking about the triangle with the Serpent's head in it?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) Are we talking in terms of this 33 relating to a group of "aliens," or a group of humans with advanced knowledge and abilities?
A: Either/or.
Q: (L) Is this what has been referred to in the Bramley book as the Brotherhood of the Serpent or Snake?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) Is this also what you have referred to as the Quorum?
A: Close.

Remember that Yin-Yang circle of the previous discussion about the Quorum? The Cassiopaeans are here indicating that there is a subtle, but distinct difference between the Brotherhood of the Serpent and the Quorum. Yes, the Quorum is a group with advanced knowledge and abilities, but their objectives and intent are to preserve Free Will for all, while the objectives of the Brotherhood are to manipulate, dominate and control others.


Q: (L) So, we have a bunch of people who are playing with mathematics, and playing with higher knowledge, basically as a keep busy activity to distract them at the human level from the fact that they are being manipulated at a higher level. Is this what is going on? Or, do they consciously know what they are doing? Is it a distraction or a conscious choice?
A: Both.
Q: (L) If I were to name some names, could you identify if named individuals were involved in this secret group?
A: It would not be in your best interests.
Q: (L) Is there anything more on this 33 number that I should look at now?
A: No. You need to contemplate.

Boy, did I ever! I was now completely disoriented. The idea of the Pyramid being associated with the STS oriented "faction" sort of threw me off. And there was a definite suggestion here that the number 33 was associated with the Consortium of humans and aliens who ruled the world from behind the scenes: The Brotherhood of the Serpent. This reminded me of something else the Cassiopaeans had said at one earlier point that distressed me because it went against the standard metaphysical and occult teachings:

Q: (L) Who was Hermes Trismegistus?
A: Traitor to court of Pharaoh Rana.
Q: (L) Who is Pharaoh Rana?
A: Egyptian leader of spiritual covenant.
Q: (L) In what way was Hermes a traitor?
A: Broke covenant of spiritual unity of all peoples in area now known as Middle East.
Q: (L) Who did Hermes betray?
A: Himself; was power hungry.
Q: (L) What acts did he do [in this breaking of the covenant]?
A: He inspired divisions within ranks of Egyptians, Essenes, Aryans, and Persians et cetera.
Q: (L) What was his purpose in doing this?
A: Divide and conquer as inspired by those referred to as Brotherhood in Bramley book you have read.
Q: (L) Is this the Brotherhood of the Snake Hermes formed in rejection of unity?
A: Hermes did not form it; it was long since in existence.
Q: (L) Who was the originator of the Brotherhood of the Serpent as described in the Bramley book?
A: Lizard Beings.
Q: (L) I would like to know the approximate year of the life of Hermes Trismegistus.
A: 5211 approx. (Years ago or B.C.?)
Q: (L) Who was this Pharaoh Rana? Was he prior to the Pharaoh Menes?
A: Much prior.
Q: Was the Pharaoh Menes the same as King Minos of Crete?
A: No.
Q: What was the relationship between the Cretans and the Egyptians?
A: All were the same originally.
Q: So they were Egyptians who left Egypt and moved to Crete and set up their version of the Egyptian culture there? Is that it? Or did they develop independently?
A: Former is closest.
Q: Was Abraham of the Jews the same individual as Hermes, which some people are suggesting?
A: No.
Q: Was Akhenaten the same individual as Moses, as some other people are suggesting?
A: Only through the eyes of the themes.

And we find here the idea that Abraham was a "betrayer" of a prior covenant when he made the covenant with Jehovah. And this will prove to be EXTREMELY interesting later on. But, back to the numbers.

When I asked about the number 33, I was directed to the number 11, Astrology and a "Matrix" of some sort. Not only that, but all the "occult" ideas, practices and teachings that I had studied for so many years were being implicated as "keep busy activities" of manipulation from higher levels. And, when you dig into anything "occult," somehow you always find yourself confronting Kaballah.

A "matrix" is defined as "the womb" or "that within which and from which something originates or develops."

In math, a matrix is "a set of numbers or terms arranged in rows and columns between parentheses or double lines." More technically, it is "a rectangular array of numbers or other elements..." having application as computational devices in such widely diversified fields as economics, psychology, statistics, engineering, physics, and mathematics.

In mathematics, matrices are useful tools in the study of linear systems of algebraic equations, linear differential equations, linear mappings and transformations, and bilinear and quadratic forms. Matrices can be regarded as generalized numbers, and their utility in applications depends on the possibility of combining them in certain definite ways.

The product of a matrix A and a number a is called a scalar product and is obtained by multiplying every element of A by a.

The term "scalar," in mathematics, is synonymous with "real" as in real number or real function. A vector is a directed line segment and, as such, has magnitude and direction. Many physical quantities such as velocity, acceleration and force, are VECTORS.

What this means is that, using a matrix, one can establish vectors which can then be used to calculate a scalar product, which is simply a number that can mean anything depending on how it is used.

When we think about what the Cassiopaeans were saying, or trying to say, against the impenetrable thick-headedness of yours truly, we come to this:

A: 1 [pause] 1; 5 minus 3; 2 minus 1.
Q: (L) What is the concept here?
A: Look: 353535. Is code.
Q: (L) What does this code relate to?
A: Infinite power.

This "infinite power" is then further defined as:

"Lord of Serpent promises its followers infinite power, which they must seek infinite knowledge to gain, for which they pledge allegiance infinitely for, which they possess for all eternity, so long as they find infinite wisdom, for which they search for all infinity. ... And therein you have the deception! Remember, those who seek to serve self with supreme power, are doomed only to serve others who seek to serve self, and can only see that which they want to see.

In other words: Kaballah.

Basically, Kaballah developed as a way to play games with numbers and letters as described above. One school endeavors to find beneath the letters of the "sacred text," i.e. The Torah, all references to the ten Sefirot. The Sefirot can be compared to a theory of cosmic chains or levels of reality of the emanations of God. A hierarchy of power, that is.

The Kabbalist uses the Torah as an "instrument." They affirm that, beneath its letters, beneath the stories and events depicted there, there are "secrets" waiting for the enterprising Kabbalist to discover! Thus, the text cannot be read ONLY literally, but must also be read allegorically, hermeneutically and mystically.

Notariqon is a technique of using acrostics to cipher and decipher hidden messages. The initial or final letters of a series of words generate new words.

Gematria is based on the fact that, in Hebrew, numbers are indicated by letters and every word has, therefore, a numerical value. This allows mystical relationships to be seen between completely different words having completely different meanings. It is such relationships that the Kabbalist seeks to discover.

Temurah is the art of anagrams. Abraham Abulafia systematically combined the letter Alef with each of the four letters of the tetragrammaton YHWH; then he vocalized each of the resulting units by every possible permutation of five vowels, thus obtaining four tables with fifty entries each!!! Eleazar ben Yudah of Worms went on to vocalize every unit using twice each of the five vowels, and the total number of combinations increased geometrically. [cf. Idel, 1988]

The Kabbalist has an unlimited number of options as to how to interpret the Torah, but the important thing was that they believed that this was more than just interpretation: it was the very method whereby God created the world. And understanding it would admit the practitioner to the inner circles of power and control over the forces of life.

So, we see the clue leads us to the idea of "Infinite Power."

I hope you realize that, the Kaballah has a mind-boggling array of combinations and methods. In the end, it was thought that, by these methods, along with employing certain recitations and breathing techniques, the practitioner could pass into states of ecstasy and from there, achieve the desired magical powers. Because, in the end, the objective of Kaballah was to reproduce the same sounds with which God created the world.

The Sefer Yezirah, or Book of Creation, (written in the Dark Ages, I might add, somewhere between the 2nd and 6th centuries), explicated this doctrine. According to the Sefer Yezirah, the "stones" out of which God created the world were the thirty-two ways of wisdom which were formed by the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the ten Sefirot.

It was claimed that the primordial Torah was inscribed in black flames upon white fire and many Kabbalists denied the existence of any kind of historical development of either the Torah or Kaballah. As a result of this idea, it became widely accepted that the Kaballah was the esoteric part of the Oral Law given to Moses at Sinai. There were additional genealogies in the kabbalistic literature which were designed to support the claim of a continuity of tradition but even Hebrew scholars note that they are faulty and misconceived, and lack "any historical value." [Scholem, 1974]

At first the word "Kaballah" did not especially denote a mystical or esoteric tradition. In the Talmud it is used for the extra-Pentateuchal parts of the Bible, and in post-talmudic literature the Oral Law is also called "Kaballah." In the writings of Eleazar of Worms (beginning of the 13th century), esoteric traditions (concerning the names of the angels and the magical Names of God) are referred to as "kabbalahy." ...in his Hilkhot ha-Kisse (in Merkabah Shelemah, 1921) and Sefer ha-Shem. In his commentary to the Sefer Yezirah (c. 1130), when he is discussing the creation of the Holy Spirit, i.e., the Shekhinah, Juda ben Barzillai states that the sages "used to transmit statements of this kind to their students and to sages privately, in a whisper, through kabbalay." All this demonstrates that the term "Kaballah" was not yet used for any one particular field. The new, precise usage originated in the circle of Isaac the Blind (1200) and was adopted by all his disciples.

Kaballah is only one of the many terms used during a period of more than 1,500 years, to designate the mystical movement, its teaching, or its adherents. The Talmud speaks of sitrei Torah and razei Torah ("secrets of the Torah"), and parts of the secret tradition are called m'aseh bereshit (literally, "the work of creation") and ma'aseh Merkabah (the work of the chariot). At least one of the mystical groups called itself yoredei Merkabah (those who descend to the chariot), an extraordinary expression whose meaning eludes us. ...Historically speaking, organized closed societies of mystics have been proved to exist only since the end of the Second Temple era. [Scholem, 1974, Emphases, mine.]

Kaballah is the "tradition" of esoteric teachings of Judaism. It is, in essence, a compilation of the different mystical movements issuing from the Second Temple in Jerusalem. One thing that has to be considered when thinking of Kaballah is the fact that its admitted purpose is to:

"broaden the dimensions of the Torah and to transform it from the law of the people of Israel into the inner secret law of the universe." [Scholem, 1974]

And, as we have already noted, (and will go into more deeply later), the so-called "Second Temple" in Jerusalem may have been the First, and the forces behind its construction and the development of its theology could very well have been those very forces with designs on our freedom. So, at this point, we need to consider the roots of Kaballah, the Torah upon which it is based, as well as the "tradition."

In The Curse of Cain, Dr. Regina Schwartz writes about the relationship between Monotheism and Violence, positing that Monotheism itself is the root of violence. She writes:

Collective Identity, which is a result of a covenant of Monotheism is explicitly narrated in the Bible as an invention, a radical break with Nature. A transcendent deity breaks into history with the demand that the people he constitutes obey the law he institutes, and first and foremost among those laws is, of course, that they pledge allegiance to him, and him alone, and that this is what makes them a unified people as opposed to the 'other,' as in all other people which leads to violence. In the Old Testament, vast numbers of 'other' people are obliterated, while in the New Testament, vast numbers are colonized and converted for the sake of such covenants.

So, we are seeing a clear example of what the Cassiopaeans have explicated in their remarks:

Lord of Serpent promises its followers infinite power which they must seek infinite knowledge to gain, for which they pledge allegiance infinitely, which they possess for all eternity, so long as they find infinite wisdom, for which they search for all infinity. ... those who seek to serve self with supreme power, are doomed only to serve others who seek to serve self, and can only see that which they want to see.

Dr. Schwartz also writes about the idea of the 'provisional' nature of a covenant, which the Cassiopaeans mention above: that it is conditional. "Believe in me and obey me or else I will destroy you." Doesn't sound like there is any choice, does there? And we find ourselves in the face of Nazi Theophany.

The chief thing that occurs to me in terms of the "believe in me" business in relation to religions, is that it constitutes a sort of 'permission,' if you will, whether it is conscious or subconscious, for the deity to take the 'vengeful' action if the agreement is broken!

Riane Eisler, an acclaimed scholar, has developed what she calls "Cultural Transformation Theory," which proposes that there are two basic models of society underlying the great diversity of human culture. The first is the "Dominator Model," that can be termed a patriarchy OR matriarchy. It consists of ranking one half of humanity over another, in the broadest terms, but essentially can be any situation where any group dominates and any other group is considered inferior whether male or female, black or white, rich or poor, free or slave.

The second model is what Ms. Eisler calls the "Partnership Model," which is based on the principle of "linking rather than ranking."

Thus, it seems that the work of Ms. Eisler is describing precisely what the Cassiopaeans call Service to Self versus Service to Others; Networking versus judgment!

As Ms. Eisler acutely points out:

"If we stop and think about it, there are only two basic ways of structuring the relations between the female and male halves of humanity. All societies are patterned on either a dominator model - in which human hierarchies are ultimately backed up by force or the threat of force - or a partnership model, with variations in between. [Eisler, 1987]

In an amazing book that should be read by everyone, When God Was a Woman, Merlin Stone reveals the sexual and religious bias of many of the scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which have been responsible for the general lack of knowledge about these most ancient times. Most of these male scholars were raised in societies that embrace the male-oriented religions of Judaism or Christianity, and this obviously heavily influenced their opinions. One of them, Professor R.K. Harrison wrote of the Goddess religion: "One of its most prominent features was the lewd, depraved, orgiastic character of its cultic procedures."

"Despite the discovery of temples of the Goddess in nearly every Neolithic and historic excavation, Werner Keller writes that the female deity was worshipped primarily on 'hills and knolls,' simply echoing the words of the Old Testament. Professor W. F. Albright, one of the leading authorities on the archaeology of Palestine, wrote of the female religions 'orgiastic nature worship, sensuous nudity and gross mythology.' He continued by saying that 'It was replaced by Israel with its pastoral simplicity and purity of life, its lofty monotheism and its severe code of ethics.' It is difficult to understand how these words can be academically justified after reading of the massacres perpetrated by the Hebrews on the original inhabitants of Canaan as portrayed in the Book of Joshua, especially chapters nine to eleven. Professor S. H. Hooke, in his collection of essays Myth, Ritual and Kingship, openly admits, 'I firmly believe that God chose Israel to be the vehicle of revelation.'

"Albright himself wrote, 'It is frequently said that the scientific quality of Palestinian archaeology has been seriously impaired by the religious preconceptions of scholars who have excavated in the Holy Land. It is true that some archaeologists have been drawn to Palestine by their interest in the Bible, and that some of them had received their previous training mainly as biblical scholars.' But he then proceeded to reject this possibility of impairment, basing his conclusion primarily upon the fact that the dates assigned to the sites and artifacts of ancient Palestine, by the scholars who took part in the earlier excavations, were subsequently proven to be too recent, rather than too old, as might perhaps be expected. The question of whether or not the attitudes and beliefs inherent in those suggested 'religious preconceptions' had perhaps subtly influenced analysis and descriptions of the symbolism, rituals and general nature of the ancient religion was not even raised for discussion." [Stone, 1976]

In most textbooks of archaeology, the Goddess religion is referred to rather deprecatingly as a "fertility cult!" And, as Ms. Stone notes, the word "cult" always has the connotation of something less civilized than "religion," and is nearly always applied when referring to the Goddess worship, while the rituals associated with that clever ET, Jehovah/Yahweh are always reverently referred to as "Religion," with a capital!

Considering the extreme monotheistic, Judeo-Christian bias of the scholars who have written the words, directed the schools, published the books, and overseen our educations for the past 1500 years or so, how else can we think but that males have always played the dominant role, and that males have always been the "doers" and "creators" and "movers and shakers" of our cultural, social and technological development?

As children, most little girls of the Western world are told the story of Adam and Eve. Eve is made from Adam's rib to be his companion and helper because he was lonely. Next they are taught that Eve was foolishly gullible and was pathetically "easy" to the wiles of the serpent. She disobeyed God Almighty, and led Adam down the primrose path, and forever after, all women bore the blame for this perfidy!

Not only that, but forever after, because of Eve's foolishness, all women must accept men as their masters, the representatives of the omnipotent male deity, whose wisdom and righteousness they must admire and respect with reverence and awe!

Over and over again, the legend of the loss of paradise has been utilized to impress upon us the natural inferiority of women. Only Man was created in God's image... woman came later and was a poor semblance of a human being! Everywhere in our culture this story pops up over and over again! It is the foundation of poetry, art, advertising and jokes. Everywhere you look, Eve is tempting Adam to do wrong over and over again. Women are portrayed as inherently conniving, contriving, (yet somehow also gullible and simple-minded) and most of all SEXY! They clearly need a divinely appointed overseer to keep them out of trouble and there is a man around every corner just ready to do the job!

Joseph Campbell wrote about the Adam and Eve myth:

"This curious mythological idea, and the still more curious fact that for two thousand years it was accepted throughout the Western World as the absolutely dependable account of an event that was supposed to have taken place about a fortnight after the creation of the universe, poses forcefully the highly interesting question of the influence of conspicuously contrived, counterfeit mythologies and the inflictions of mythology upon the structure of human belief and the consequent course of civilization." [quoted by Stone, 1976] (emphasis, mine)

The religion of the Great Mother Goddess existed and flourished for many thousands of years in the Near and Middle East before the arrival of the patriarch Abraham, the first prophet of the dominator male deity, Yahweh. Archaeologists have traced the worship of the Goddess back to the neolithic communities of about 7000 B.C., some to the Upper Paleolithic cultures of about 25,000 B.C. From Neolithic times, at least, its existence has been repeatedly attested to well into Roman Times. Yet, Bible scholars agree that Abraham lived in Canaan as late as between 1800 and 1550 B.C., a veritable Johnny-come-lately! How in the world has such a recent appearance on the world scene managed to push itself into such prominence and domination?

The people of the early Neolithic cultures of the Near and Middle East may have come down from Europe, possibly the descendants of the Gravettian-Aurignacian cultures. Later, waves of more Northern people descended on both Europe and the Near East. There has been some conjecture that these were the descendants of the Mesolithic (15000 - 8000 B.C.) Maglemosian and Kunda cultures of Northern Europe. But, their arrival was NOT a gradual assimilation - it was wave after wave of aggressive invasion.

These northern invaders, generally known as Indo-Europeans, brought their own religion with them: the worship of a young warrior god and a supreme father god. Their arrival in the Near East is attested to by 2400 B.C., but there may have been several earlier invasions.

Archaeology reveals that, after these invasions, the worship of the Mother Goddess fluctuated from city to city. As the invaders gained more and more territory over the next two thousand years, the male began to appear as the dominant husband or even the murderer of the Goddess!

Up to this point in time, writing seems to have been primarily used for the business accounts of the temples. The arriving Northern groups adopted this writing and used it for their own purposes.

"Professor Chiera comments: 'It is strange to notice that practically all the existing literature was put down in written form a century or two after 2000 B.C.' Whether this suggests that written language was never considered as a medium for myths and legends before that time or that existing tablets were destroyed and rewritten at that time remains an open question." [Stone, 1976] (emphasis, mine)

Over and over again in the studies of the ancient religions it is noted that, in place after place, the goddess was debased and replaced by a male deity after the coming of the Northern Peoples. The transition was accomplished by brutally violent massacres and territorial acquisition throughout the Near and Middle East.

The Northern Invaders left neither tablets nor temples to explain why or how they came to choose a male deity. These "Sons of the North Wind, Aeolus" - these Nordics - are referred to variously as Indo-Europeans, Indo-Iranians, Indo-Aryans, or simply Aryans. Their existence, once they burst upon the historical scene, is described as aggressive warriors riding two abreast in horse-drawn war chariots; or as big sailors who navigated the rivers and coastlines of Europe and the Near East. Jaquetta Hawkes writes:

"On no subject have authorities differed so completely or with greater lack of objectivity than on the origins of these cultures. The reason for this partisanship lies in the one thing the authorities are agreed upon - that the BATTLE AXE cultures represent the roots of the Indo-European speaking peoples. ...What can be said with some certainty is that the battle axe people had a large ethnic, social and cultural inheritance from the hunter-fishers of the forest cultures such as the Maglemosian and Kunda. ...Though it may not always or everywhere have been so, this character came in time to be dominantly pastoral, patriarchal, warlike and expansive." [quoted by Stone, 1976]

The invasions of the Aryans took place in waves over a period of up to three thousand years according to standard archaeology. The invasions of the historical period are attested to by literature and artifacts, and are agreed upon by scholars. Those of prehistoric times are suggested by speculative etymological connections.

What is most significant in the historic records is that these Northern invaders viewed themselves as a very superior people. They were aggressive and continually in conflict with not only the peoples they conquered, but among themselves as well. Their coming revolutionized the art of war. They introduced the horse-drawn chariot, and the charioteer became a new aristocracy.

Historical, mythological and archaeological evidence suggests that it was these northern people who brought with them the concepts of light as good and dark as evil and of a supreme male deity. The arrival of the Aryans, the presentation of their male deities as superior to female deities, and the subsequent interweaving of the two theologies are recorded mythologically in each culture. It is in these myths that we can discover the attitude that led to the destruction of the Goddess.

The Aryan male god, unlike the son-lover of the Goddess, was frequently depicted as a storm god, high on a mountain, blazing with the light of fire or lightning. (Haven't we heard this before?!) In many of these myths, the goddess is depicted as a serpent or dragon, associated with darkness and evil. Sometimes the dragon is neuter or even male, but in such cases, is closely associated with the goddess, usually as her son.

However, in many of the older archaeological finds, the Goddess was represented by birds and wavy symbols that indicated water and/or energy. These same wavy lines are retained as the symbol of the Astrological sign of Aquarius which may be the oldest extant symbol of the Great Mother Goddess.

The Goddess religion seems to have assimilated the male deities into the older forms of worship, and survived as the popular religion of the people for thousands of years after the initial Aryan invasions. But her position had been greatly lowered and continued to decline. It was the assaults of the Hebrews and eventually the Christians that finally suppressed the religion.

And here we come to the most interesting thing of all: it is in the accounts of the Aryans that we find the original religious ideas of the Hebrews.

There is the mountain-top god who blazes with light; there is the duality between light and darkness symbolized as good and evil; there is the myth of the male deity defeating the serpent; and there is the supreme leadership of a ruling class: the priestly Levites. All of these are to be found in both the Indo-European and Hebrew religious concepts and politics!

And this leads us to the obvious suggestion: The Indo-European patterns were either adopted by the Hebrews, or the Hebrews were Indo-Europeans from the start.

The Indo-Aryan attitude toward women is made clear in two sentences attributed to Indra in the Rg Veda: 'The mind of woman brooks not discipline. Her intellect has little weight.' And orthodox Jewish males daily thank god that they were not born women!

The only thing that is certain is that these groups brought the worship of the male deity with them and the worship of the Goddess was systematically suppressed and eventually almost totally obliterated by monotheism, a new "variation" of the male dominator god thesis initiated by the Hebrews, and continuing into the present time as Christianity, and Islam.

An interesting fact turns up in the field of archaeology. Systematic examinations of the skulls in several Anatolian sites shows that in the third millennium B.C., most of the residents were predominately doliocephalic, or long headed Mediterranean types, with only a minority of brachycephalic, or round headed Alpine types. After the beginning of the second millennium, the proportion of brachycephalic skulls increases to about 50 percent. It is the brachycephalic types that came to be know as the ruling class of the Hittite empire.

The original people of Hatti became the subservient or conquered class, just as the "black headed" people of Sumeria became "slaves" of their conquerors. The invading Indo-Europeans assumed roles of royalty everywhere they went, subjugating the indigenous populations one after the other. The Indo-Europeans were bigger, and possessed military supremacy never before seen due to their horse-drawn war chariots and iron weapons. They increased their height by wearing conical hats that appear to be about 18 to 24 inches high in depictions. (These conical hats are interesting as a certain type of conical hat is representative of the alchemical initiate!)

The word "iron" may be related to the word "Aryan," and the mining and smelting of iron which was associated with these peoples, was a closely guarded secret for many centuries.

The original Hattians may have been related to the goddess worshipping people of Catal Huyuk which is about 125 miles from the Hittite capital of Hattusas. The goddesses of the Hatti appear to have survived from an even earlier Hattian religion. In several texts the Goddess was simply called "The Throne," a title associated with Isis in Egypt and may be related to Cassiopeia, known as the "Enthroned Queen," and the "hump of the camel," a throne of sorts.

Now, Ms. Stone has brought up a very interesting thing regarding a group called Luvians, Luvischen or Louvites. They seem to be a group of Indo-Europeans who lived directly south of the Hittites in Cilicia, close to the Toros Mountains which is practically the same area as Catal Huyuk once flourished.

Very little is known of these people except that they were authors of what has become known as the Hittite hieroglyphs. These are picture words that appear most often on royal monuments and in a few texts. These hieroglyphs are still, for the most part, a mystery.

Professor Albright says that the Luvians occupied most of southern Asia Minor not later than the third millennium B.C. Another writer, R.A. Crossland suggests a later date. Professor Lloyd agrees with Crossland saying:

"In about 2300 B.C. a great wave of Indo-European speaking peoples, speaking a dialect known as Luvian, seems to have swept over Anatolia... their progress was marked with widespread destruction..." [quoted by Stone, 1976]

The name Luvian comes from the Hittite texts which refer to the land of these people as Luviya and their language as Luvili. French archaeologists call them Louvites; the Germans call them Luvischen.

The one thing that has come out of the partial translation of their hieroglyphs is that their major deity was the storm god whose name was Tarhund, Tarhunta or Tarhuis. The only material so far found in their texts is what is referred to as the "magic type; spells and incantations inserted into ritual texts." The fact that this totally religious material was written in their own hieroglyphs while other means of writing was available could indicate that they were a priestly caste of the Indo-Europeans. Other indications that seem to confirm this are the fact that scribal schools producing myths in Hurrian, Hittite and Akkadian appear to have been located in the Luvian territory of Kizzuwatna.

A priestly class of Indo-Europeans with scribal schools who worshipped the Weather God whose similarity to Jehovah in all respects, is startling, busily turning out myths for all the local and not so local populations? Magic spells and incantations? Oh, my! What have we found here?! Sounds an awful lot like what was going on in Spain and France during Medieval times when Kaballah was being developed.

It is certainly beginning to look like the Hebrew religion was not, as is taught, formed in a vacuum or necessarily delivered directly from the hand or mouth of God!

Both of the two creation accounts in Genesis have long been noted to be related to Mesopotamian creation stories. The stories of the origins of civilization in the Bible are markedly similar to Phoenician tales. The divine "fiat" in the beginning: "Let there be light," is derived from Egyptian myth and this motif achieved it's classic form in the cult of Heliopolis. In some of the earliest forms of this myth, there is the primeval ocean whose origin is not explained, from which emerges the creator god who is either reptilian, insect or birdlike, and he engages in the creative activity as an act of expectoration, self-fertilization, or masturbation - he "broods upon the face of the waters."

The pinnacle of the quest after the First Principle in ancient Egypt was reached with the composition of the so-called Memphite Theology. In form a dramatic-cultic text glossed by a commentary at the end, the Memphite Theology is found on a block now in the British Museum that dates to the reign of Shabaka (712-697 B.C.), who claims to have found the original on a papyrus "which the ancestors had made, worm-eaten and unknown from beginning to end." ...The contents became known (again?) only at the beginning of the Kushite period around 710 B.C. and were disseminated during the following two centuries. The commentary, among other novel ideas, advances the proposition that the essence of the creator god, Ptah, resides in "heart" and "tongue," [keeping in mind that the Egyptian intent in the word "heart" is our present concept of consciousness/mind.] ...That is to say mind and creative utterance. Mind conceived of being, and the creative word made it concrete. So the creation itself becomes in a sense an emanation of the creator, or at least that part of it which has life-force: "Thus it happened that the heart (mind) and the tongue gained control over every other member of the body through the teaching that he (Ptah) is in every body and every mouth, of all gods, all men, all cattle, all creeping things and everything that lives, by thinking and commanding everything that he wishes." ...It seems premature to commit oneself to a judgment on the possibilities of Egyptian influence on the Genesis creation account. It may in fact prove to be a simple case of linear borrowing, albeit accompanied by a purposeful intent to "demythologize.' [Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, 1992, Princeton; emphasis, mine.]

The oldest extant texts of the Old Testament in Hebrew are those found at Qumran which date only to 2 or 3 centuries before Christ. the oldest version before those were discovered was a Greek translation from about the same period! The earliest complete Hebrew text dates only from the tenth century A.D.!!! Something is wrong with this picture.

It is generally believed from textual analysis, that a very small part of this bible was written about 1000 B.C. and the remainder about 600 B.C. And, the Bible as we know it, is the result of many changes throughout centuries and is contradictory in so many ways we don't have space to catalog them all!

The first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, also known as the Torah, upon which Kaballah is based, were supposed to have been written by Moses. Early Christian and Jewish tradition held this view even though nowhere in these five books does the text say that Moses was the author.

Biblical scholars generally date Abraham to about 1800 - 1700 B.C. The same scholars date Moses to 1300 or 1250 B.C. However, if we track the generations as listed in the Bible, we find that there are only seven generations between and including these two patriarchal figures! Four hundred years is a bit long for seven generations. Allowing 35 to 40 years per generation, places Abraham at about 1550 B.C. and Moses at about 1300 B.C. Tracking back to Noah, using the generations listed in the Bible, one arrives at a date of about 2000 to 1900 B.C. - about the time of the arrival of the Indo-Europeans into the Near East.

Using the Bible as source material presents a number of very serious problems. There are many contradictions in the text that cannot be reconciled by the standard theological mental gymnastics. In some places, events are described as happening in a certain order, and later the Bible will say that those events happened in a different order. In one place, the Bible will say that there are two of something, and in another it will say that there were 14 of the same thing. One one page, the Bible will say that the Moabites did something, and then a few pages later, it will say that the Midianites did exactly the same thing. There is even an instance in which Moses is described as going to the Tabernacle before Moses built the Tabernacle! (I guess Moses was a time traveler!)

There are things in the Pentateuch that pose problems: it includes things that Moses could not have known if he lived when he is claimed to have lived. And, there is one case in which Moses said something he could not have said: the text gives an account of Moses' death, which it is hardly likely that Moses described. The text also states that Moses was the humblest man on earth! Well, as one commentator noted, it is not likely that the humblest man on earth would point out that he is the humblest man on earth!

All of these problems were taken care of for most of the past two thousand years by the Inquisition. Meanwhile, even the Jewish commentators took care of the problems in novel ways. The contradictions were not contradictions, they were only "apparent contradictions!" They could all be explained by "interpretation!" Usually, these interpretations were more fantastic than the problems, I might add. Moses was able to "know things he couldn't have known" because he was a prophet! The medieval biblical commentators, such as Rashi and Nachmanides, were VERY skillful in reconciling the irreconcilable!

In the 11th century, a real troublemaker, Isaac ibn Yashush, a Jewish court physician in Muslim Spain, mentioned the distressing fact that a list of Edomite kings that appears in Genesis 36 named a few kings who lived long after Moses was already dead. Ibn Yashush suggested the obvious, that the list was written by someone who lived after Moses. He became known as "Isaac the Blunderer." The guy who memorialized clever Isaac this way was a fellow named Abraham ibn Ezra, a 12th century rabbi in Spain. But Ibn Ezra presents us with a conundrum because he also wrote about problems in the text of the Torah. He alluded to several passages that appeared not to be from Moses' own hand because they referred to Moses in the third person, used terms Moses would not have known, described places that Moses had never been, and used language that belonged to an altogether different time and place than the milieu of Moses. He wrote, very mysteriously, "And if you understand, then you will recognize the truth. And he who understands will keep silent."

So, why did he call Ibn Yashush a "Blunderer?" Obviously because the guy had to open his big mouth and give away the secret that the Torah was not what it was cracked up to be and lots of folks who were totally "into" this Jewish mysticism business would lose interest. And keeping the interest of the students and seekers after power was a pretty big business. It still is.

In 14th century Damascus, a scholar by the name of Bonfils wrote a work in which he said "And this is evidence that this verse was written in the Torah later, and Moses did not write it..." He wasn't even denying the "revealed" character of the Torah, just making reasonable comment. Three hundred years later, his work was reprinted with this comment edited out!

In the fifteenth century, Tostatus, Bishop of Avila also pointed out that the passages about the death of Moses couldn't have been written by Moses. He then said that there was an "old tradition" that Joshua, Moses successor, wrote this part of the account. A hundred years later, Luther Carlstadt commented that this was difficult to follow because the account of Moses' death is written in the same style as the text that precedes it.

Well, of course, things were beginning to be examined more critically with the arrival of Protestantism, and the Inquisition tried, but failed, to keep a complete grip on the matter. But, it's funny what belief will do. In this case, it was decided that the problem was solvable by claiming that, yes, Moses wrote the Torah, but editors went over them later and added an occasional word or phrase of their own!

Wow. Glad we solved that one!

The really funny thing is that one of the proponents of this idea of editorial insertions, who was really trying to preserve the "textus receptus" status of the Bible, was blacklisted by the Catholic Index. His book was put on the list of "prohibited books!"

Well, finally, after hundreds of years of tiptoeing around this issue, some scholars came right out and said that Moses didn't write the majority of the Pentateuch. The first to say it was Thomas Hobbes. He pointed out that the text sometimes states that this or that is so "to this day." The problem with this is that a writer describing a contemporary situation would not describe it as something that has endured for a very long time, "to this day."

Isaac de la Peyrere, a French Calvinist, noted that the first verse of the book of Deuteronomy says "These are the words that Moses spoke to the children of Israel across the Jordan..." The problem was that the words meant to refer to someone who is on the other side of the Jordan from the writer. This means that the verse amounts to the words of someone who is WEST of the Jordan at the time of writing, who is describing what Moses said to the children of Israel on the EAST of the Jordan. The problem is exacerbated because Moses himself was never supposed to have been in Israel in his life.

De la Peyrere's book was banned and burned. He was arrested and told that the conditions of his release were conversion to Catholicism and recanting his views. Apparently he perceived discretion as the better part of valor.

Not too long after this, Baruch Spinoza, the famous philosopher, published what amounted to a real rabble rousing critical analysis. He claimed that the problem passages in the Bible were not isolated cases that could be solved one by one as "editorial insertions," but were rather a pervasive evidence of a third person account. He also pointed out that the text says in Deuteronomy 34 that "There never arose another prophet in Israel like Moses...." Spinoza pointed out, quite rightly, that these were the words of a person who lived a long time after Moses and had had the opportunity to make comparisons. One commentator points out that they also don't sound like the words of the "humblest man on earth!" [Friedman, 1987] Spinoza was really living dangerously because he wrote:

It is ... clearer than the sun at noon that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses, but by someone who lived long after Moses.

Spinoza had already been "excommunicated" from Judaism. Now, he was in pretty hot water with the Catholics AND Protestants! Naturally, his book was placed on the "prohibited books" list and a whole slew of edicts were issued against it. What is even more interesting is that an attempt was made to assassinate him!

A converted Protestant who had become a Catholic priest, Richard Simon, undertook to refute Spinoza and wrote a book saying that the core of the Pentateuch was written by Moses, but there were "some additions." Nevertheless, these additions were clearly done by scribes who were under the guidance of God or the Holy Spirit, so it was okay for them to collect, arrange and elaborate on the text. It was still God in charge here.

Well, you'd think the church would know when it was ahead. But, nope! Simon was attacked and expelled from his order by his fellow Catholics. Forty refutations of his work were written by Protestants. Only six copies of his book survived burning. One of these was translated by a guy named John Hampden who also got into some hot water. He "repudiated the opinions he had held in common with Simon ... in 1688, probably shortly before his release from the tower." [Edward Gray]

Simon's idea that scribes had collected, arranged and elaborated on the textus receptus was, finally, going in the right direction.

In the 18th century, three independent scholars were dealing with the problem of "doublets," or stories that are told two or more times in the Bible. There are two different stories of the creation of the world. There are two stories of the covenant between God and Abraham. There are two stories of the naming of Abraham's son Isaac, two stories of Abraham's claiming to a foreign kind that his wife is his sister, two stories of Isaac's son Jacob making a journey to Mesopotamia, two stories of a revelation to Jacob at Beth-El, two stories of God's changing Jacob's name to Israel, two stories of Moses' getting water from a rock at Meribah, and on and on.

Those who were stuck in wishful thinking, believing that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, tried to claim that these doublets were always complimentary, not repetitive nor contradictory. Sometimes they had to really stretch this idea to say that they were supposed to "teach" us something by their contradictions which were not really contradictions. This explanation, however, didn't hold up against another fact: in most cases one of the two versions of a doublet would refer to the deity by the divine name, Yahweh, and the other would refer to the deity simply as "God." What this meant was that there were two groups of parallel versions of the same stories and each group was almost always consistent about the name of the deity it used. Not only that, there were various other terms and characteristics that regularly appeared in one or the other line of stories and what this demonstrated was that someone had taken two different old source documents and had done the original cut and paste job on them to make a "continuous" narrative.

Well, of course, at first it was thought that one of the two source documents must be one that Moses had used as a source for the story of creation and the rest was Moses himself writing! But, it was ultimately to be concluded that both of the two sources had to be from writers who lived AFTER Moses. By degrees, Moses was being eliminated almost entirely from the authorship of the Pentateuch!

I would like to note right here that this was not happening because somebody came along and said "hey, let's trash the Bible!" Nope. It was happening because there were glaring problems and each and every researcher working on this throughout the centuries was struggling mightily to retain the textus receptus status of the Bible! The only exception in this whole chain of events is our curious guy Abraham ibn Ezra, who KNEW about problems in the text of the Torah in the 12th century and enjoined others to silence! Remember what he said? "And if you understand, then you will recognize the truth. And he who understands will keep silent." And what do we see as the result of this silence? Eight hundred years of Crusades, the Inquisition, and general suppression. But, we'll come back to that.

Back to our chain of events: in the nineteenth century, Biblical scholars figured out that there were not just two major sources in the Pentateuch; there were, in fact, four. It was realized that the first four books were not just doublets, but there were also triplets that converged with other characteristics and contradictions leading to the identification of another source. Then, it was realized that Deuteronomy was a separate source altogether. More than that, there were not only the original source documents, there was the work of the "mysterious editor."

Thus, after years of suffering, bloodshed and even death over the matter, it was realized that somebody had "created" the Bible by assembling four different source documents into a "continuous" history. After much further analysis, it was concluded that most of the laws and much of the narrative of the Pentateuch were not even part of the time of Moses. And, that meant that it couldn't have been written by Moses at all. More than that, the writing of the different sources were not even that of persons who lived during the days of the kings and prophets, but were evidentially products of writers who lived toward the end of the biblical period!

Many scholars just couldn't bear the results of their own work. A German scholar who had identified the Deuteronomy source exclaimed that such a view "suspended the beginnings of Hebrew history not upon the grand creations of Moses, but upon airy nothings." Other scholars realized that what this meant was that the picture of biblical Israel as a nation governed by laws based on the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants was completely false. Another way of putting it was that the Bible claimed a history for the first 600 years of Israel that probably never existed.

Well, they couldn't handle this. So along came Wellhausen (1844-1918) to the rescue. Wellhausen synthesized all of the discoveries so as to preserve the belief systems of the religious scholars. He amalgamated the view that the religion of Israel had developed in three stages with the view that the documents were also written in three stages, and then he defined these stages based on the content of the "stage." He tracked the characteristics of each stage, examining the way in which the different documents expressed religion, the clergy, the sacrifices and places of worship as well as the religious holidays. He considered the legal and narrative sections and the other books of the Bible. In the end, he provided a "believable framework" for the development of Jewish history and religion. The first stage was the "nature/fertility" period; the second was spiritual/ethical period; and the last was the "priestly/legal" period.

As Friedman notes: To this day, if you want to disagree, you disagree with Wellhausen. If you want to pose a new model, you compare its merits with those of Wellhausen's model.

I should also note that a professor of Old Testament, William Robertson Smith, who taught at the Free Church of Scotland college at Aberdeen, and who was the editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica, was put on trial before the church on the charge of heresy for promoting the work of Wellhausen. He was cleared, but the tag "the wicked bishop" followed him to his grave.

Opposition to critical study of the Bible has been spearheaded, throughout the centuries, by the Catholic Church. But, curiously, in the modern day, the Catholics are more open to examination of the text that the new American Christian Fundamentalists who resemble, more than anything, Holy Crusaders and Inquisitors!

Nevertheless, analysis of the Bible has proceeded. the book of Isaiah was traditionally thought to have been written by the prophet Isaiah who lived in the eighth century B.C. As it happens, most of the first half of this book fits such a model. But, chapters 40 through 66 are apparently written by someone who lived about 200 years later!

New tools and methods of our modern time have made it possible to do some really fine work in the areas of linguistic analysis and relative chronology of material. Additionally, there has been a veritable archaeological frenzy since Wellhausen!

This archaeological work has produced an enormous amount of information about Egypt, Mesopotamia, and other regions surrounding Israel, which includes clay tablets, inscriptions on the walls of tombs, temples and habitations, and even papyri. And here we find another problem: in all the collected sources, both Egyptian and west Asian, there are virtually NO references to Israel, its "famous people" and founders, its Biblical associates, or anything else prior to the 12th century B.C. And the fact is, for 400 years after that, no more than half a dozen allusions can be deduced.

This same problem finds correspondence in the Bible itself. The Bible displays absolutely no knowledge of Egypt or the Levant during the 2nd millennium B.C. The Bible says nothing about the Egyptian empire spreading over the entire eastern Mediterranean, (which it did), there is no mention of the great Egyptian armies on the march (which they were), and no mention of marching Hittites moving against the Egyptians (which they did), and especially no mention of Egyptianized kinglets ruling Canaanite cities (which was the case).

The great and disastrous invasion of the Sea Peoples during the second millennium is not mentioned in the Bible. In fact, Genesis described the Philistines as already settled in the land of Canaan at the time of Abraham!

The names of the great Egyptian kings are completely absent from the Bible. In other places, historical figures who were NOT heroic have been transformed by the Bible into heroes as in the case of the Hyksos Sheshy (Num. 13:22). In another case, the sobriquet of Ramesses II is given to a Canaanite general in error. The Egyptian king who was supposed to assist Hosea in his rebellion of 2 Kings 17:4 has suffered the indignity of having his city given as his name. The Pharaoh Shabtaka turns up in the Table of Nations in Gen 10:7 as a Nubian tribe!

The errors of confirmable history and archaeology pile higher and higher the more one learns about the actual times and places so that the idea that comes to mind again and again is that the writers of the Bible must have lived in the 7th and 6th centuries B.C., and knew almost nothing about the events of only a few generations before them.

Such ignorance is puzzling if one has felt inclined to be impressed by the traditional claims of inerrancy made by conservative Christianity on behalf of the Bible. And indeed the Pentateuch and the historical books boldly present a precise chronology that would carry the Biblical narrative through the very period when the ignorance and discrepancy prove most embarrassing. A totaling of the lengths of reign of the kings of Judah from Solomon's fourth year (when allegedly the temple in Jerusalem was dedicated) to the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. yields 430 years which should take us to the year 1016 B.C. for the reign of Solomon. Again, according to 1 Kings 6:1, 480 years is supposed to have elapsed between the Exodus and the dedication of the temple, thus producing a date of 1496 B.C. for the [Exodus.] Since the Sojourn in Egypt is stated to have lasted for 430 years (Exod. 12:40), the descent of Jacob and his family to the land of Goshen must have taken place in 1926 B.C. If now we add the lengths of life of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (290), we arrive at 2216 B.C. for the birth of Abraham. This would mean that Abraham's arrival in Canaan would have to fall in 2141 B.C., and his descent to Egypt between that date and 2116 B.C., or under the 10th Dynasty of Herakleopolis. Jacob's descent would have occurred in Senwosret I's reign, and the entire Sojourn would have occupied the outgoing 12th dynasty, the entire 13th Dynasty, the Hyksos occupation, and the early Dynasty to Hatshepsut's ninth year! In the light of Numbers 32:13, which assigns 40 years to the Wandering, the conquest of the land under Joshua must have begun in 1456 B.C., or on the morrow of Thutmose III's victorious campaigns when all Canaan belonged to Egypt, and on the eve of Amenophis II's deportation of the local population. Even more astounding are the implications of the resultant placement of the Period of the Judges, namely 1456 to 1080 B.C. this is almost exactly coeval with the Egyptian Empire in Asia! yet our Egyptian sources mention neither the patriarchs, Israel in Egypt, Joshua, nor his successors, while the Bible says absolutely nothing about the Egyptian empire in the land. In fact, the Biblical writers are wholly and blissfully unaware of the colossal discrepancy to which their "history" and "chronology" have given rise.

The strength, however, of a confessional commitment to bolster a prejudgment will not allow most conservative Jewish or Christian exegetes to discard the whole chronological arrangement, and recent work has proven Muslim scholars similarly in thrall. (A. Osman) The basic pattern of Patriarchal Age, Descent and Sojourn, Exodus and Conquest, and Judges MUST be essentially correct - Is it not inherently reasonable? Do you have a better one? - and consequently numerous ingenious solutions are devised. the most common trick has been to reduce time spans to generations: thus the 480 figure must really represent twelve generations: but 40 years per generation is too long, 20 being much closer to the average. Hence we can cut the figure in half and put the Exodus around 1255 B.C. instead of 1486, and lo! it falls squarely in the reign of Ramesses II, and thus allusion to "Ra'amses" in Exodus 1:11 can be nicely accommodated! Similarly the 430 year