In a Grove of Ash (Azor Ahai Goes into the Weirwoodnet)

sweetsunray · May 4, 2017

On 3/5/2017 at 9:44 AM, LmL said:

First of all I apologize for hurting your feelings. We are indeed friends (though it's been a long time since I've seen you on any of my threads, I was beginning to wonder...)

I've been on hiatus basically (and still am), except for a few posts in one or two threads that were "light". With that I mean, I have been on the fringe of the radar, but on hiatus of deep analysis. The analysis that you do is one I prefer to give a maximum of my attention, not just at a glance, and I had other things that I focused on. Congrats on the new job. I started on a new one this week too. Monday was a holiday.

My hurt feelings have to do with paging me to personally comment on Hancock, a subject we very briefly had an exchange over in private over half a year ago (you have some private personal pre-knowledge that we regard this author in a completely different light), then railing against me ad hominem in public because I could not give you the answer you hoped for. That felt like betrayal of a level of confidence.

On 3/5/2017 at 9:44 AM, LmL said:

because you started out with ad hominem sneering - exactly what I hope you would not do - and by making straw man arguments which the article nor Hancock ever made.

I was not sneering at Hancock in my first response. I said nothing personal about Hancock in my first response. I clearly commented on the daily mail article itself and criticised its content. I remarked I find several of his claims to be based on flawed evidence in very general terms (commenting negatively on someone's claims is not ad hominem) and gave you a hint that I would not be a convert. That was not a sneer nor ad hominem, just a hint that maybe we should not go into Hancock publically.

As for straw man argument. I still am convinced that I read the meaning and implications of the daily mail article correctly. Your interpretation is one that gives the author of the daily mail article the benefit of the doubt. For a straw man I would need to be deliberately skewing the likely interpretation. I can concede that I jumped too quickly on the "earlier human race" mentioned in the article, but that hunter gatherers don't have time to watch stars is still blatanly claimed in the article.

And as it turns out, while I did not originally remark on that at all in relation to Hancock, Hancock does claim that an advanced farmer race instructed the hunter gatherers, aka without these supposed Atlanteans (and in Magicians he does assert that he does believe they are Atlanteans) they wouldn't have built GT. I repost the interview with the fan at the start of him claiming this.

I would have looked into GT and the comet strike if you had pointed me to it, with or without mentioning Hancock.

As for Hancock, after getting up to speed on him again in relation to the developments of the last few years, my previous perception has deepened only more. I know perfectly well what my issues are with him, and they are not his beliefs or on topic claims (even if they make me sigh), let alone espoused spirituality. It has everything to do with personal responsibility a person has when they are in a position to share or teach information. Once you have a platform to influence minds it comes with an enormous personal responsibility, not to convince them of your ideas, but to give them the tools and information to make up their own minds after dueful consideration. It does not matter whether someone is a lay(wo)man on the subject, nor even inclined to follow the scientific method. One makes damn sure to know all there is to know about the subject and understand in relation to his or her abilities, that includes the sources, their evolution, etc. and present the opponent's claims correctly. And for me, Hancock fails in that respect.

None of my dislike is based on the actual ideas (such as earth crust displacement) in his books, no matter how nonsensical they seem to me. Nor is it their unoriginality. These ideas are older than him and stem from the Victorian theophist era. But I can understand and sympathize with the attraction of them, and I can also respect efforts to make a case or search for evidence for them. And it's not because they're 130-140 years old they might not have merrit. I do not buy into Andrew Collins's overall beliefs (the alien connection), but the man keeps himself very up to date and does not misrepresent the claims of others, and quite clearly engages in a dialogue. Apparently his soul holes idea of GT is a term speculation of Klaus. I saw them depicted in a video, and they are indeed quite large (diameter about 15 cm), cut into some capping stone. It doesn't make the idea correct, because that remains speculative, and imo always will remain speculative, but it had some function.

I certainly don't have issues with spiritualists relating their visions. Blavatsky's work is part of my library for the last 20 years. I don't believe a word of the claims within as actual truth about history, but that she had evocative visions cannot be doubted. The book has meaning for me in that way - reading someone's visions thousand pages of tiny letters long. I meditate myself for as long.

There is need for populistic writing so scientific finds can reach the laymen. And that an author of populistic books on such subjects glosses over the specific terms and proofs is almost a necessity. It happens in Dawkins' books on evolution, in populistic books to explain quantum mechanics. But you'd still want people to have a correct image, not instantly freezing mammoths or extinct Clovis people.

A library can get outdated, but it's not that much of an effort to look for newer translations instead of flawed outdated ones (especially in translations of the Summerian writing and Egyptian writing, the older the more flawed or outright faulty...), and it's not so hard to check for contamination in them (the known Popul Vuh version was written after surviving Mayans were being converted) or investigate the literary source and edition history (I imagine you'd get the whole Arthurian scholary over your head if you were to mess Iddylls of the King up with Morthe D'Arthur and Gottfried Von Strassburg's Tristan while writing a populist book about Avalon and Arthur). We're laymen and just look at us making sure we quote and reference people correctly. Amazon is full of useful reviews about which translations on Greek/Summerian/Egyptian writing is more accurate in vocabulary, or more faithful to the poetic meter, or easier, etc. I have several versions of the Taín, 1001 nights, Illiad, Homeric Hymns, GIlgamesh and Morte D'Arthur in my library for such reasons: one is more accurate but proze, others are more beautiful poems, and there are several editions that vary on source compilation. And if someone doesn't want to spend time reading reviews, you can order guides to literary editions on almost any anicient literature. Unfortunately Hancock's source material is very flawed in such ways, and allegedly he fudges with uncredited copying. It's not what he added to his bibliogprahy, but what he leaves out. Now that is an issue for me, whether out of sloppiness or deliberately.

It should be applaudable if someone updates and changes his mind based on evidence, but then it turns out based on the fan interview above he hasn't actually changed his mind on the earth crust displacement hypothesis... he just did not want to focus on it. And while in '95 he explicitly refrained from calling it Atlantis, now he does, affirming he always believed it to be Atlantis. That is not changing his mind, but to me that is altering his presentation to suit the audience. That is my most serious issue with him. And so, yes, I ultimately distrust this man. The topic you introduced convinced me to at least try and do a re-check, but I found no new evidence that he can earn my trust as an author. That is indeed my bias. I recognize this. It is one of the reasons I tend to look for independent original sources on any topic that he may put forward, while I avoided him as a source altogether for the past 15 years - I do not want my distrust of him cloud my information flow or my opinion on the actual topics, ideas, historical sites, artifacts, etc, And finally I do not want to spend my time, mind and feelings on him again as I have done the past week for the next 15 years either.

Independently from him, I can be in awe over GT, will check on updates on the comet/meteorite evidence in relation to the Younger Dryas, and I will certainly follow some of the astronomically related elements of GT. I thank you for introducing me to those.

I will conclude on my opinion on Atlantis itself. I have had a fascination for Atlantis. I have read Plato's two works regarding Atlantis. I read the pro and anti-arguments and the many various explanations, and double checked it. There are many anti-arguments I actually disagree with, such as Plato mistakenly using 9000 years instead of 900 years to refer to the cataclysm that destroyed the Minoan culture. The manner in which Plato literary constructs the time elapse it's clear he did not just mistook 9000 for 900 years. What happened to the Minoan culture may have inspired him, but it is not the lost culture he's talking about. There are certainly motifs incorporated in the Atlantis culture that match bronze age rites, architecture and artifacts, and Gobekli Tepe seems to be the oldest site to date that contains elements that shows the bull rites actually go back to the hunter gatherers at the start of the Hollocene and neolithic. But there are also issues with his source claims, the own culture-centricism applied to the past, and the actual framework of Timaeus and Critias he wrote. It took me years to deliberate and let it sit, but I've concluded for myself that Plato may have been the first one at attempting to write fantasy: making a commentary on history and society through a self-invented world. It is far easier to have readers sympathize with social commentary ideas via a fictional, idealized (compared to then) world than it is through more recent history where feelings of national animosity might stand in the way; just as it is far easier to argue morals or satire through an animal fable like Aesop's or The Fox Rheynaert. Troy serves much less in that regard, because even though that too is a tale of a lost civilisation (to us), it also fed the Greek (of that time) feelings of righteousnes.

It's actually the detailed descriptiveness that Plato uses to describe Atlantis that convinced me after years of being on the fence that it's fiction. For example: imagine a lost civilisation and oral tales of survivors describing it, especially how they would describe it to people who've never seen it, without pictures, without powerpoints, without scribes, and that getting passed on. It would be only a vague story. You've seen Gobekli Tepe on images in videos and in documentaries. Try to describe it with measurements, without checking on the internet. Not even eye-witnesses describe buildings or settements with that much detail. But we do when we make something up - when we want to create a non-existent world/land/city. No other genre other than fantasy focuses on description with such care for detail. It has almost all the elements of fantasy - the detail of world building, somewhere beyond the ability of his contemporary readers to reach, a mythical time, magic, alluring culture, storytelling, and social commentary. All it lacks are named protagonists or villains in Atlantis. It seems to me that Plato avoided that on purpose, because his framework of social comment on the ebb and flow of civilisations throughout history was imo his main point. He did imo not finish the work, because he clung too much to the goal of the framework, trying to stay within the Greek tradition of argumentation, and aborted any continuation on it because that would actually take him into full blown fantasy. Thomas Morus managed the social commentary far better centuries later with his Utopia, while Tolkien allowed his fantasy to tell his tale.

LmL · May 4, 2017

In related news, it seems the aborigines from Australia have accurate myths of a volcanic eruption from 7,000 years ago and of sea level rise 10,000 years ago. Point being, the idea that Egyptians and many other people around the globe retained a real memory of 'Atlantis' and the Younger Dryas climactic events is absolutely plausible. In fact, it is the view that myths like this are NOT rooted in fact which are themselves baseless.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/australia/7000-year-old-indigenous-story-proved-true.aspx

sweetsunray · May 5, 2017

23 hours ago, LmL said:

In fact, it is the view that myths like this are NOT rooted in fact which are themselves baseless.

That would be a negative assertion, especially if generally said, and I agree at least one should not say so outright. But one should not beleive it either because it's a myth that it's trying to give a historical account, and people can disagree on what is actually a myth or not.

For example, I cannot count Atlantis as an Egyptian myth, nor a Greek one.

Egypt has creation myths. It has near destruction myths (the creator god wants to destroy his creation out of boredom and old age - he becomes a cynic - but is dissuaded from doing it upon the return of his daughter and son). It has many myths about the tides of the Nile in relation to the MIlky Way (which are its flood myths) and how it brings life. It has a political unification myth tied to certain gods, and a unification struggle happened and succeeded by kings who began a traditon of using a falcon symbol on top of a name cartouche with an extra king-name (Horus name) associated with them other than their birth name, and either their mother or sister wife having the name "Neith" incorporated in their name (let's call her simplistically the predecessor of Isis in myth), some who actually were widowed regents while their son was a minor. And the weird thing is that looking at the oldest dates of the appearances of these gods, it's not clear whether the 1st Dynasty kings and their predecessor King Scorpion mimicked a myth, or that the myth is crafted after them. More, Eyptians had both a historical list of first unification kings, and then a separate Horus unifier myth, and one cannot actually say that the Horus unifier myth came after the factual history. It seems to originate from the same period, without the Egyptians confusing or unifying the two, nor explicitly separating the two. Egyptian myth is multi-layered and complex, intricate and takes a long time to unravel, but what it is not is secretive. The historical lists are publically depicted as are the myths. Certainly by Plato's time, when writing is pretty much democraticised in Egypt. It does not appear that Egyptians had "mysteries" for their fellow Egyptians in the way that Greek culture has it (capital punishment on daring to divulge a truth publically only known to an initiate). History wasn't disguised by myth in Egypt, wasn't confused either, and yet both were told as truth. At least to me, it seems Egyptians regarded myth as a spiritual truth and historical narration as the material truth, that co-existed and were equally valued. If they had a myth or a history about a lost Atlantis as Plato claims through 3rd source hearsay at the temple of Neith, it would have appeared openly, would have been told openly, and there would be numerous copies of it in papyrus writing by Plato's time. Mysteries and secrets are un-Egyptian. But it is very Greek. We don't have a single copy or engraving on a wall about it in Egypt. While we do have scribes writing out sacred books of the dead for coin for anyone who has it, whether he be a king, a merchant, a priest, a sailor or a builder.

Working on all the Horus, Neith, Isis stuff and simultaneously getting into King Scorpion, King Den and his Neith-named regent mother for aSoIaF over more than half a year now has deeply taught me to not try and frame and understand Egyptian mythology in a manner that we're almost ingrained to do in Greek or Minoan tradition. They had an entirely different sort of myth and history tradition, that co-existed side by side openly and simultaneously were linked to one another, so that we cannot tell anymore whether the myth was grafted upon actual events, or that actual historical figures grafted themselves after myths. Even trying to answer the latter is un-Egyptian. They didn't give a f- about that. Hence, I cannot but for myself conclude that since Atlantis is both absent in actual Egyptian myth and history sources, Egypt was not its source.

So, then it all comes back down to Plato and Greek myth. Was Plato divulging a secret or mystery kept under guard by Greeks so much that it never appeared or was never told before? Was he afraid for his life so much for wanting to mention it that he inserted a false independent source to protect his life? Well even with regards to the mysteries that could get you killed if you published its secrets we have a cult and myths in evidence. We even have evidence of prior related cult and myths going back to the bronze age, and their ties to Minoan and Summerian or Thracian origin and vice versa in most cases. An important feature of the Greek mystery was that it was publically known that there was a mystery, a secret that only the initiate could know - both as a lure, as well as a status message to those who were not initiated. The mysteries flaunted their secret in the face of the non-initiates: "look we're parading around the city with our tourches to go to the temple/the forest where we're going to tell and show and celebrate something amongst ourselves that you are not allowed to know, hear or see". And pretty much every worhsip in relation to Greek myth had its cult and mystery. If a god or myth didn't have his mystery, then well they didn't amount to much. We don't have that circumstantial evidence regarding Atlantis.being a mystery, while you would suppose it would have a Greek mystery if it was an actual myth in Greece - a major part of Plato's telling is the victory of the pre-historian Greeks in their war against the Atlanteans.

So, it ain't Greek mystery and it isn't Egyptian. It's not even a mythical telling in Plato's work. So, what the hell is it? I can only conclude it's a literary construct from Plato himself.

My problem with some of the "inuitive" method in relation to explaining myths is that especially Westerners assume something to be intuitive while it is actually a cultural Greek tradition on how to approach myth, and in many occasions is actually counter-inuitive to the mythology that does not have its roots in Greek mythical thinking:

that knowledgable people try to keep the truth secret from the general public. That's Greek mystery thinking, from the outsider point of view.
that myth is the layer of disguise used to keep something secret. Again Greek mystery thinking.
that there is a rational explanation and a mythical explanation. That's Greek rational and myth dichotomy.
assimilation and universal from one original source. This is exactly how Greeks (and later Romans) approached myth from other cultures. On the one hand they assimiliated gods and myths from other cultures, as they "colonized" regions, and they actively tied this myth figure with a Greek figure or god, even using Greek names to them and declaring them equivalent. But Romans erred to Celtic and Germanic mythology by doing that, and Greeks certainly erred to Egyptian mythology by doing that. Christians did it in Europe and Americas whenever they Christianized a region. And Christian thinking is fundamentally Greek thinking. And while undeniably every world mythology has figures that have something in common, they also have differences and those differences are just as important, if in some cases not more.

That doesn't mean that there isn't something universal about mythology and its imagery. I've had dreams at times with certain imagery of which a friend with vast knowledge of Hindu myth told me that what I described was actually a Hindu myth. So, whatever sprouted the Hindu myth also is a symbol my own mind came up with in a dream (and no, I had no prior knowedge of this myth whatsoever. I know little of Hindu myth and have been reluctant to get into it until about now, because only recently an actual unabbreviated translation by an actual Indian adept has been published in English that is recommended by both Hindus and English readers for accuracy, completeness and readability. I'm saving money to get it). So, I'm very much a Jungist in that regard. It doesn't mean however that I can decipher it using my own cultural approach. In fact, I failed to understand the dream's meaning, until I was told about the Hindu meaning. What I woke up from assuming it had a negative threat connotation (swimming in a pool of water with crocodiles lurking under water), despite that's not how it actually felt while dreaming it, turned out to be a message about old inner knowledge.

The Volcanic Eruption news in relation to the Gugu Badhun "epic". Here's the press release of University of Glasgow of the 28th of April that NG based their article on: http://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_523966_en.html. I must say I've read better articles on NG, with regardgs to linking to sources and explaining things. It's quite vague abotu the "epic" and absolute in language about the claims in comparison than I'm used to. So, this prompted me to try and find an account of this alleged epic. In doing so, I stumbled on Calvino's website again who tried to research the tale shortly after it was being picked up: http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/did-australian-aborigines-preserve-a-memory-of-a-volcanic-eruption-for-7000-years

I'm not endorsing his personal comments and all of his assertions either, but he does have a factual point: the "epic" appears to be 2 separate stories told and recorded in the course of 2 weeks in 1970. A Gugu Badhun who is not a fluent Gugu Badhun speaker anymore either by then tells two stories, one of a fire along the river courses, and later a story of a witch doctor digging a pit and a dust in which people got lost and died. The recordings are kept in a university. I have not found an actual complete transcription of it. 2 separate stories told by one person to two Englishmen in 1970. That's what we have. And then one of the scientists working on the Volcano eruption, Dr. Cohen, giving a very brief summary and speculating on it (a speculation that might be right or wrong). How he arrives to the number of generations it has been told and how epic it was cannot be answered or veirfied reliably at all. It doesn't mean that this Gugu Badhun is making stuff up or not giving an account of a disastrous event orally told for generations. But neither you nor I can even check what the man was telling, nor for how many generations it was told. So, how the author of the NG summary can make such assertions is at the moment beyond me.

LmL · May 6, 2017

@sweetsunray I am short on time and don't have time to go through the massive posts you are leaving here. However it is good to know Graham Hancock is in good company with National Geographic, both having scholarship which falls short of your own lofty standards.

As for Egyptian Atlantis myth, that's right here, the Island of the Ka, just as i mentioned above. A primordial island of the gods, upon which a star fell, then it became water and is no longer to be found. Its the place where Egyptians came from. Same story, basically.

http://www.ancient.eu/article/180/

Also, I find your arguments about Plato's Atlantis (which I have also read) not being rooted in truth entirely unconvincing. I agree the details such as the lengths of the various moats and island rings are fiction, as is the talk of the walls being sheeted in metals. But I don't see why you wouldn't assume Plato might simply be adding in detail and color to the framework of an older myth, one which we see parallels all over the world: that of a lost golden age civ, usually on an island, which perished in fire and/or flood. That makes more sense than the idea he made special care to stress the true nature of THIS story as opposed to others he tells, despite it being total fiction. And it just so happens his date of 9600 lands squarely at the end of the Younger Dryas, right when sea level was rapidly rising, as you said. Right when amazing monument building with advanced astronomical data was going on at GT, and this is important, with no precedent whatsoever to be found as of yet. Now maybe we will find older stone circles which show the GT people starting off small and learning how to do this shit, because many enclosures are still buried, but as of now the oldest ones are the best ones, as if the knowledge of how to do advanced archeoastronomy and megalithic construction appeared out of nowhere. It's similar to Egypt actually, where the best pyramids are the oldest ones, with the art and skill gradually deteriorating for the most part. This is also what happens at GT, as you said yourself - the circles get smaller a s the astronomy disappears at some point until they are personal shrines at peoples dwellings. That is actually all consistent with Hancock's idea that an advanced people passed on knowledge to the natives there. Which is of course another myth found all around the world, most famously in South America with the Quetzalcoatl / Kulkulkan mythology. Another great example: the Apkallu.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apkallu

Quote

The Apkallu (Akkadian), or Abgal (Sumerian), are seven Mesopotamian (Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, Babylonian) sages, demigods who are said to have been created by the god Enki (Akkadian: Ea) to establish culture and give civilization to mankind. They were noted for having been saved during the flood. They served as priests of Enki and as advisors or sages to the earliest kings of Sumer before the flood. They are credited with giving mankind the Me (moral code), the crafts, and the arts. They were seen as fish-like men who emerged from the sweet water Abzu. They are commonly represented as having the lower torso of a fish, or dressed as a fish.

sweetsunray · May 6, 2017

14 hours ago, LmL said:

However it is good to know Graham Hancock is in good company with National Geographic, both having scholarship which falls short of your own lofty standards.

Now that's a straw man. There's nothing wrong with my lofty standards, as they are fairly common review standards of checkign the sources and find out what the sources say. When I read the Glasgow Univsersity news release it is appropriately speculative. That particular NG article boasts it as a certainty while not even the source (the paper of the volcanic eruption) its based on makes such absolute claims. I do believe I am entitled to form my own opinion and to express it, and explain why, no? It's not because it's NG that it's gauranteed to be of quality or correct. Hell, it's not because it appears in a peer reviewed journal that an article is guaranteed to be correct. Though it should give some guarantee it went through a preliminary review against a standard. But we wouldn't have debate amongst specialists publishing their own papers on a certain subject in answer to a prior publishing if we're supposed to even accept a published article in a peer reviewed journal as undisputed fact.

Also, you're free to disagree and make up your own mind as well.

14 hours ago, LmL said:

As for Egyptian Atlantis myth, that's right here, the Island of the Ka, just as i mentioned above. A primordial island of the gods, upon which a star fell, then it became water and is no longer to be found. Its the place where Egyptians came from. Same story, basically.

http://www.ancient.eu/article/180/

The Land of Punt in the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor. The land of Plenty. It was copied by a scribe before Hatsepsjut's celebrated diplomatic trade mission with the Land of Punt (land of plenty). The serpent is a classic symbol as protector of the Ka (the spirit form). The narrator (the Servant who was once a Shipwrecked Sailor) describes it as a land between life and death. The serpent promises the sailor he'll get back home, because his countrymen will arrive there and take him with them along. So, the framework is the description of being solely shipwrecked and his life hanging by a thread, between death and survival. A bit of a Robinson Crusoe story. Then the serpent tells his own tale. That once he was not alone on the island, but there were other serpents, cousins, kin, offspring, but a star fell and burned everyone (except apparently his daughter whom he had whisked away) and he was the sole survivor, just like the sailor was the sole survivor of the shipwreck. The sailor promises the serpent to send riches (incense) to the island for his help to get him back home, but the serpent urges him not to make such promises, as his land is the land of incences and riches (land of Punt) and besides the island cannot be found again, sunken under water.

It is a very esoteric tale with a lot of double entendres: the serpent is the Ka (psirit), making the island, the spirit land. The raised serpent is the image of the uraeus with a human head. The number of total serpents is the same number of forms the sungod has in the later Litany of the Sungod. The serpent also tells the Sailor that he died too in the calamity, but nevertheless there he is. It's not clear whether the serpent died metaphorically or literally but was resurrected.

In relation to the drowning of the island there is certainly a reference to spell 175 of the Book of the Dead.

Quote

words of Osiris N.: "Oh, Atoum, why must I go into the desert, and live without water or air? It is so dark there and seems endless;"

Atoum replies: "You shall live there in bliss; there one lives in glory and has no need of water, air, bread nor beer."

[Osiris]: "I will see the face of the Master of all; but how long will my life last there?"

[Atoum]: "Your life will be millions of years long and this land will return to the state of Noun, to the floods which were there at the beginning. I shall destroy everything I have created. When I am transformed again into a snake, (which men cannot see), I shall stay beside Osiris. I have performed many beautiful acts for Osiris, more than for any other God. I gave him the desert region of the necropoli. I prepared his place in the "barque of the people", and I made his son Horus the heir to throne in the island of flames. But will the soul of his wicked brother, Seth, (the symbol of evil), be sent to the West, unlike all the other gods?

Atoum replies [to himself] "I have arranged for his soul to remain a prisoner in his barque, so that the divine body will be protected".

...

The Book of the Dead is the esoteric promise that everybdoy can look forward to an Osiris resurrection in the land of the dead.

The "floods" relate to the creation and the destruction of it. And Atum is the unseen snake (spirit). Notice how like the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor this spell starts with Osiris's despair, and it ends with a jubilation (that I did not include int he quote of the spell). This is the same repeated framework in the Sailor tale:

the king despairs, his servant (the sailor) tries to cheer him with his tale and not to despair.

the sailor despairs after finding himself shipwrecked and the rest of his crew dead, but is promised a return/resurrection, cheered by the serpent

the serpent despairs after finding his kinsmen dead, "died" himself, but apparently lives on in spirit form

And the tale's framework ends with the king telling the sailor not to act the clever one to him, because who pours water for the goose on the dawn of his slaughter. In other words the king is dying, or expecting his ending.

So, its whole purpose is the ironic situation of a sailor reassuring his king that for him too he can expect to be resurrected like Osiris inthe afterlife, just like Atoum promised it to the sailor. It's basically the pauper instructing the king he has the afterlife to look forward to.

All that not withstanding there certainly is a reference to a meteorite or comet strike.

14 hours ago, LmL said:

Also, I find your arguments about Plato's Atlantis (which I have also read) not being rooted in truth entirely unconvincing. I agree the details such as the lengths of the various moats and island rings are fiction, as is the talk of the walls being sheeted in metals. But I don't see why you wouldn't assume Plato might simply be adding in detail and color to the framework of an older myth, one which we see parallels all over the world: that of a lost golden age civ, usually on an island, which perished in fire and/or flood. That makes more sense than the idea he made special care to stress the true nature of THIS story as opposed to others he tells, despite it being total fiction. And it just so happens his date of 9600 lands squarely at the end of the Younger Dryas, right when sea level was rapidly rising, as you said.

Well, the island motif is esoteric in nature. An island is isolated and requires sailing expertise, which is dangerous and can be deadly, especially in ancient times, unless you were a Phoenician. The Greeks and Egyptians both sailed waters, but they weren't sea-farers like the Phoenicians or the Vikings, or the sea-faring people that brought about the bronze age collapse. They weren't navigators. Hence we have Odyssey lost at sea for years, sailing often in the wrong directions or being at the mercy of the gods' whims taken off course. They sailed along the shores of mainland coastlines. You can only reach an island by leaving the shoreline, and only expert navigators can do that. If a Greek or Egyptian sailor was taken off course and came upon an island, and managed to go back home again, there was no way he could find it again anyway, because they weren't expert sea navigators. Hence, most of the esoteric heavenly lands are often islands. They might think to sail again for an island to find it again and fail at it, even if it didn't sink.

Let's say that Solon was told a tale like the Shipwrecked Sailor at the temple of Neith. What would this Greek make of it without being familiar with all the esoteric references? He comes away with an island of god-like people who have everything being destroyed by a cataclysm, completely missing out on the esoteric resurrection motif (a truth to the Egyptians), but instead translating it to the coming and going of civilisations. This he then tells to Plato's grandfather, who tells it to Plato. Then we very much have the telephone-game making its effect, showing how secondary and tertiary sources skews the source.

As for the date: Plato does not give an explicit date. The date is something we construct out of his reference. Solon heard the story during his travels in Egypt, and claims it happened 9000 years before that. Solon traveled around 580-570s. Add 9000 years and you end up with 9500-9600 BC or 11500-11600 years ago, roughly a few hundred years after the end of the Younger Dryas. The sea levels did rise, but how did it rise? Well there are various papers proposing different periods and rates. Liu and Milliman claim in 2004 the Meltwater Pulse 1B dated between 11400 and 11100 years ago, and seas rose 13 m over a time span of 300 years, with an annual rate of 4 cm per year. Bard argues in 1996 and 2010 papers that the sea rose between 11500 and 10200 years ago. While Stanford in his 2010 paper argues sea rising between 11500 and 8800 years ago, with a peak rate of 2.5 cm per year. Others argue 7.5 meters rise over 160 years with a peak around 11000 years ago, or even less than 6 m. No matter whether it was 160 years or 300 years or over 2500 years, no matter whether it was less than 6 m or 13 m, obvioiusly coastlines would have changed, and islands ended up submerged, sea-level land would be flooded, and it would certainly spark migrations. It would however be something happening across generations. And it also shows that "hey Plato's given timespan fits precisely" is not an accurate statement. It roughly coincides, with a great margin of error. (BTW I never said "rapidly rising" in the post about the Yougner Dryas. I did not even discuss sea-levels rising in relation to the Younger Dryas. I mentioned sea-rising with regards the Old Dryas IIRC).

14 hours ago, LmL said:

Right when amazing monument building with advanced astronomical data was going on at GT, and this is important, with no precedent whatsoever to be found as of yet.

What is advanced? I've only seen one picture that undisputedly (imo) shows the marking of a solar eclipse in relation to a constellation, and that there is evidence the GT builders had constellations. Meanwhile you have a professor of the Rig Veda speculate one thing, other researchers speculate it's about a comet, and a lot of debate between Hancock, an Italian and Collins about the direction we're supposed to take into account: Orion, Cygnus, others... It's astronomical data, and it plays a role. A solar eclipse is hard to miss when it occurs, and looking up at the sky and determine the significant constellation at the time isn't that hard. What it does show is that they have star gazers and constellations and stories about them. Meanwhile the Magdelanian painters also painted volcanic eruptions and motifs that may be star watching related.

14 hours ago, LmL said:

Now maybe we will find older stone circles which show the GT people starting off small and learning how to do this shit, because many enclosures are still buried, but as of now the oldest ones are the best ones, as if the knowledge of how to do advanced archeoastronomy and megalithic construction appeared out of nowhere.

The imagery taken from what's still buried shows there's an earlier phase. So, it doesn't appear out of nowhere. What overal does appear for the first time, even including the older still burried phases, is that these people begin to build a pure ritualistic center, where before we only have evidence that sacred or ritualistic places being done at natural pre-existing places (the painted caves). We have people living at cave shelters (not actual caves, but ledges with a sleter drop), and they paint their stuff at other caves in the area, less easy accessable, where they don't live. Then at the Levant, near the Mediterranean we have people settle and build stone bases with wooden walls and roofs, harvesting wild cereals before the Younger Dryas. At the start of the Hollocene we have people settle and build mud brick and stone permanent houses and a separate ritualistic centre and the first appearance of megaliths made from the nearby quarry and during its use people begin to actually farm and lose the need to travel to other areas for ritual purpose, but instead remain to oversee their crop.

14 hours ago, LmL said:

It's similar to Egypt actually, where the best pyramids are the oldest ones, with the art and skill gradually deteriorating for the most part.

Earlies dynasties (and pre-dynasties before and around 3100 BC, 5100 years ago) had kings (and regent queens) buried in Mastabas: flat roofed, rectangular tombs made out of mud brick, with inward sloping walls. Then Imhotep comes up with the idea to construct a tomb for Djoser (ca. 2667 to 2648 BC, 4670-4650 years ago) by constructing a building existing of layers of mastabas on top of each other. But there are precedenting mastabas with extra steps on certain sides (an intermediary process). Djoser's pyramid becomes the first step-pyramid (proto pyramid), existing of 6 tiers, and using larger blocks. At the height of most absolutist and centralised rule, the true great pyramids of Gizeh are built (2580-2510 BC, 4580 tot 4510 years ago) along with many smaller pyramids for wives, sons, daughters, servants. Then after power is less centralised, the architecture detoriates by 500 years later (less material, mud brick instead of large stones, at hilltops to redcue the need of material needed) and is eventually abandoned.

There are clear intermediary experiments, even at the height of true pyramid building where architectural techniques alter. It does not come out of nowhere. What we see is a basic preliminary situation and abilities and then someone comes up with an idea and it's tried out, relatively successful and a rapid focus to improve, but as it starts to cost while there's decentralisation and democratisation, the work becomes sloppier and eventually outdated and abandoned as not deemed necessary anymore.

It's directly comparable to the idea of the 20th century to build sky scrapers and large high apartment blocks to house as many people as we can on a small surface area. And the 50s up till the 70s are rife with grand projects of apartment blocks with grass fields separating them for the inhabitants' convenience and prestige towers to have over this and that many floors. This type of building started earlier in the US. Less than a hundred years later, such projects are being abandoned more and more. The social building projects failed in its original aims for a large part. There are no communities and they look depressing, and the grass fields are close to a wasteland. So, now we have more complexes that are still apartments, but no higher than 4 or 5 levels around a closed courtyard, which does achieve a far better community feeling. Stricly speaking if in another 1000 years people find those towers they'd see an early spike of the best towers being built with the greatest ornamental care, it then being democraticised so that everyone could live in a tower, eventually becoming smaller scale and at some point in time possible abandoned altogether. There is no need to insert an outside teaching civilisation into it.

14 hours ago, LmL said:

Which is of course another myth found all around the world, most famously in South America with the Quetzalcoatl / Kulkulkan mythology.

Well that is a highly simplified version of the Quetzalcoatl and Kukulcan myth, and there is a lot of contamination from the Spanish's agenda (plural).

While it's uncertain what role the feathered serpent played, it's first attested appearance is at the Olmec site of La Venta (the oldest Mexican culture,with the giant heads...havent been at La Venta itself, but I did visit the historic museum at Villahermosa... which is far from a beautiful city, alas, except for the museum and its park), and dated to 900 BC. The Olmecs can be regarded as the ancestral epicenter of the culture that spreads west and east and south in Mexico.

At Teotihuacan (100 BC - 600 AD) it has gained such a prominence that we could regard it as a patron/founding deity there. This city state had trade influence as deep as the Mayan area in present day Guatemala and Honduras. But it gains even more prominence in Cholula (at Puebla) of the central highlands (which is the largest meso-american pyramid, though covered with earth and the Spanish built a church on top of the hill. You can visit its internal base though and see unearthed fundaments of the city around it. It requires some imagination to picture what it was like, but once there the scale of it is gigantic). Cholula became one of the competitors of Teotihuacan. It was long believed that Teotihuacan was sacked by outsiders, but the unearthing of the buildings occupied by the non-elite shows no burning, and now the hypothesis that it was an internal revolt against the elite is gaining prominence (not unlike the destruction seen during the statue-desecration in the 16th century here in Antwerp). This would fit with the period of draught in the 7th century with a large child mortality and undernourishment.

The first cities in Mayan territory were being built around 750 BC and begin to have monumental architecture around 500 BC, and the hierglyphic writing appearing in the 200s BC. By 250 AD we start to see the rise of very prominent city states in rivalry war with each other, such as between Calakmul and Tikal (with Tikal losing. And I personally prefer to visit Calakmul over Tikal, as you'll have no more than 20-40 visitors a day there). That's when Teotihuacan has an intrusive influence as well. By the 800s AD there's a collapse with all out warfare between city states and abandonment of cities by the populace, again coinciding with an extensive drought (most likely due to deforrestation). While Chichen Itza has its older architecture of the Red Deer house, the Caracol round observatorium and a small pyramid with feathered snake symbolism (Osario) from 600-900 AD (classic period), it gains new heights and prominence again after the classic collapse and the famous El Castillo is built (with its equinox effect of the serpent staircase), the large ball game, the temple of the warriors and the etc. Its architecture differs a lot from Classic Mayan and has a lot of Toltec (Central Highlands, Tula) architectural elements. Here we have the rise of Kukulcan to prominence as well as the stories that people arrived in the Mayan area coming from the central highlands with one man calling himself "feathered serpent" and teaching them stuff.

The legends and myths about Quetzalcoatl and Kukulcan vary from region to region, from time period to time period. Only in Maya regions do they claim him to be a foreigner (from the Teotihuacan or Tula or Cholula region) who taught them, and evidently the Mayans were influenced by the central highlands. And priests did take on Quetzalcoatl as a form of title. I don't see how that makes Quetzalcoatl, let alone Kukulcan, an Atlantean. That's cherry picking elements while ignoring the rest of the regional history. That 19th century explorers would come to such a conclusion is understandable, because archeology was in its child feet and nobody had a thorough picture of any Meso-American and South American culture yet, and most of these archeologists had imperialist and euro-centric mindsets to begin with. Cultures do spread stuff through trade or conquest. It would be silly to deny such a thing. So, logically we'll have stories within certain cultures how they were influenced by another. It does not prove however that all these cultures were taught by the same original culture, and the architectural and earlier artifact evidence in the post-classic Mayan region clearly points to the Central Highlands.

You might point to the Popul Vuh, for example for the "flood" story, but the known written Popul Vuh stems from the period that the Spanish were aggressively converting Mayans. It's contaminated with Christian motifs, just like the histories of the Celts or Ireland talks of Joseph of Aramathea and inserts migrations of people of the bible, or Snorri inserts Christian lore and stuff in the Proze Edda. Obviously the pre-Christianzed Irish and Norwegians would not have been telling tales about Jesus, or Jospeh, or this or Noah's descendants populating their island. We can readily recognize that as some pseudo-history writing by early Christians in their effort to convert those lands and semi-legitimize the earlier "pagan" tales. The same thing happened in the Americas, although not as absurdly naive anymore as was done in the early days of Christianizing pagan Europe.

Now, none of the source history is important to George writing aSoIaF of course. Heck, he can use old bad translations and use its imagery for his own story, because it's fiction. I've chosen to abandon the setting for Bronze Age Ireland for the same reason, so I'm now free to pick and choose whatever myth, badly or well translated, or speculation on history, even can use known pseudo-historical works, because the whole planet is fictional for my own writing.

Sly Wren · May 6, 2017

On April 20, 2017 at 6:24 PM, LmL said:

And, because the 'follow' function does not work on this bulletin board, here's a tag for everyone who has 'followed' me:

Hey! Congratulations on another great one! *applause*

I've had to be away for a quite while and am thus very behind.

But the basic idea of AA or whomever he might be based on going into the weirwood--or being sacrificed to the weirwoods--makes a fair amount of sense to me.

Back when I've had time to get caught up.

LmL · May 6, 2017

It's very true that the question of Spanish influence plagues analysis of mesoamerican myth. However, I am finding a lot of stuff about Quetzalcoatl / Viracocha / Kulkulkan coming from the sea, not from another region of Mexico or South America. Graham cites a book called "World Mythology"by Roy WIlllis, summarizing that:

Quote

Meanwhile, however, I was keen to pursue another, related line of inquiry. This concerned the bearded white-skinned deity named Quetzalcoatl, who was believed to have sailed to Mexico from across the seas in remote antiquity. Quetzalcoatl was credited with the invention of the advanced mathematical and calendrical formulae that the Maya were later to use to calculate the date of doomsday.19 (Fingerprints of the Gods)

He went on to say:

Quote

After spending so long immersed in the traditions of Viracocha, the bearded god of the distant Andes, I was intrigued to discover that Quetzalcoatl, the principal deity of the ancient Mexican pantheon, was described in terms that were extremely familiar.

For example, one pre-Colombian myth collected in Mexico by the sixteenth-century Spanish chronicler Juan de Torquemada asserted that Quetzalcoatl was ‘a fair and ruddy complexioned man with a long beard’. Another spoke of him as, ‘era Hombre blanco; a large man, broad browed, with huge eyes, long hair, and a great, rounded beard—la barba grande y redonda.’1

Another still described him as a mysterious person ... a white man with strong formation of body, broad forehead, large eyes, and a flowing beard. He was dressed in a long, white robe reaching to his feet. He condemned sacrifices, except of fruits and flowers, and was known as the god of peace ... When addressed on the subject of war he is reported to have stopped up his ears with his fingers.2

According to a particularly striking Central American tradition, this ‘wise instructor ...’ came from across the sea in a boat that moved by itself without paddles. He was a tall, bearded white man who taught people to use fire for cooking. He also built houses and showed couples that they could live together as husband and wife; and since people often quarreled in those days, he taught them to live in peace.3

1 Juan de Torquemada, Monarchichia indiana, volume I, cited in Fair Gods and Stone Faces, pp. 37-8.

2 North America of Antiquity, p. 268, cited in Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, p. 165.

3 The Mythology of Mexico and Central America, p. 161.

And then:

Quote

Viracocha’s Mexican twin
The reader will recall that Viracocha, in his journeys through the Andes, went by several different aliases. Quetzalcoatl did this too. In some parts of Central America (notably among the Quiche Maya) he was called Gucumatz. Elsewhere, at Chichen Itza for example, he was known as Kukulkan. When both these words were translated into English, they turned out to mean exactly the same thing: Plumed (or Feathered) Serpent. This, also, was the meaning of Quetzalcoatl.⁴

4 See Nigel Davis, The Ancient Kingdoms of Mexico, Penguin Books, London, 1990, p. 152; The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya, pp. 141-2.

There were other deities, among the Maya in particular, whose identities seemed to merge closely with those of Quetzalcoatl. One was Votan, a great civilizer, who was also described as pale-skinned, bearded and wearing a long robe. Scholars could offer no translation for his name but his principal symbol, like that of Quetzalcoatl, was a serpent.⁵ Another closely related figure was Itzamana, the Mayan god of healing, who was a robed and bearded individual; his symbol, too, was the rattlesnake.⁶

What emerged from all this, as the leading authorities agreed, was that the Mexican legends collected and passed on by Spanish chroniclers at the time of the conquest were often the confused and conflated products of extremely long oral traditions. Behind them all, however, it seemed that there must lie some solid historical reality.

In the judgment of Sylvanus Griswold Morley, the doyen of Maya studies:

The great god Kukulkan, or Feathered Serpent, was the Mayan counterpart of the Aztec Quetzalcoatl, the Mexican god of light, learning and culture. In the Maya pantheon he was regarded as having been the great organizer, the founder of cities, the former of laws and the teacher of the calendar. Indeed his attributes and life history are so human that it is not improbable that he may have been an actual historical character, some great lawgiver and organizer, the memory of whose benefactions lingered long after death, and whose personality was eventually deified.⁷

All the legends stated unambiguously that Quetzalcoatl/Kukulkan/Gucumatz/Votan/Itzamana had arrived in Central America from somewhere very far away (across the ‘Eastern Sea’) and that amid great sadness he had eventually sailed off again in the direction whence he had come.⁸ The legends added that he had promised solemnly that he would return one day⁹—a clear echo of Viracocha it would be almost perverse to ascribe to coincidence.

In addition, it will be recalled that Viracocha’s departure across the waves of the Pacific Ocean had been portrayed in the Andean traditions as a miraculous event. Quetzalcoatl’s departure from Mexico also had a strange feel about it: he was said to have sailed away ‘on a raft of serpents’.¹⁰

5 Fair Gods and Stone Faces, pp. 98-9.

6 Ibid, p. 100.
7 Sylvanus Griswold Morley, An Introduction to the Study of Maya Hieroglyphs (introduction by Eric S. Thompson), Dover Publications Inc., New York, 1975, pp. 16-17.

8 New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, Paul Hamlyn, London, 1989, pp. 437, 439.

9 Ibid., p. 437.

10 Fair Gods and Stone Faces, p. 62.

And having a glance at the wikipedia for Virachocha, it seems he is indeed thought to have disappeared by walking out to sea and never returning. His overall legend is full of destroying the world with floods and other calamity, as is all Mesoamerican myth. Now the pale skin / bearded thing seems to be shaky, I am not putting too much stock in that, and the idea of a prophesied return is also in question, being a possible Spanish invention. But the idea of a great teacher of civilization and the arts and sciences coming to South America by sea, that is interesting, as are the tales of deluges. I found other stuff as well, but it's hard to know how reliable a source us without doing a ton of research on every source in every article. Where do you go for as accurate as possible mythology involving Quetzalcoatl / Kukulkan and the like?

Some interesting stuff from the Kukulkan wiki entry:

Quote

Stories are still told about Kukulkan among the modern Yucatec Maya.^[15] In one tale, Kukulkan is a boy who was born as a snake. As he grew older it became obvious that he was the plumed serpent and his sister cared for him in a cave. He grew to such a size that his sister was unable to continue feeding him, so he flew out of his cave and into the sea, causing an earthquake. To let his sister know that he is still alive, Kukulkan causes earth tremors every year in July.^[7]

A modern collection of folklore from Yucatán tells how Kukulkan was a winged serpent that flew to the sun and tried to speak to it but the sun, in its pride, burnt his tongue. The same source relates how Kukulkan always travels ahead of the Yucatec Maya rain god Chaac, helping to predict the rains as his tail moves the winds and sweeps the earth clean.^[16]

Among the Lacandon Maya of Chiapas, Kukulkan is an evil, monstrous snake that is the pet of the sun god.^[7]

Notes[edit]

Jump up^ Read & Gonzalez 2000, pp. 180-2.

Jump up^ Read & Gonzalez 2000, p. 201.

Jump up^ Freidel et al 1993, pp. 289, 325, 441n26.

^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h Sharer & Traxler 2006, pp 582-3.

^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c Sharer & Traxler 2006, p. 619.

Jump up^ Miller & Taube 1993, p. 142.

^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c ^d Read & González 2000, p. 201.

Jump up^ Freidel et al 1993, p. 325.

Jump up^ Freidel et al 1993, p. 478n60.

Jump up^ Freidel et al 1993, p. 289.

^ Jump up to:^a ^b Yucatec-English Dictionary at FAMSI

Jump up^ Schele & Freidel 1990, pp. 394-5.

Jump up^ Sharer & Traxler 2006, p. 598.

Jump up^ Schele & Freidel 1990, pp. 361-2.

Jump up^ Read & González 2000, p. 202.

Jump up^ Gómez 1995, p. 57.

LmL · May 6, 2017

33 minutes ago, Sly Wren said:

Hey! Congratulations on another great one! *applause*

I've had to be away for a quite while and am thus very behind.

But the basic idea of AA or whomever he might be based on going into the weirwood--or being sacrificed to the weirwoods--makes a fair amount of sense to me.

Back when I've had time to get caught up.

Oh gosh, it's been a minute Sly Wren! My current train of thought on greenseers and weirwoods essentially begins with the sacred order of green zombies series and the weirwood compendium episodes. Not sure which ones you may have seen, but you know where to find it all.

Increasingly, I am thinking about "Azor Ahai" in terms of a group of people, kind of like looking at the last hero and his original Night's Watch brothers as a group or the original cadre of Others as a group. Azor Ahai to me represents the "naughty greenseer" archetype, the prometheus / lucifer character who reaches too high. I suspect it was a group of naughty greenseers as opposed to one special dude, in keeping with Martin's style and the clues I am finding. In any case, it's the act itself which is of primary importance, that of the invasion of the weirwoodnet by the first greenseers. I think those first seers to enter the trees were dragon people, or became dragon people, something like that.

LmL · May 6, 2017

@sweetsunray, the other Egyptian legend which is often claimed to be similar to the Atlantis myth and other myths of that type are the Edfu building texts. Do you have a trusted source for the translations of these? Because everything you find on the net speaks of a primordial world of the gods destroyed by floods, and of seven sages who survive and bring the knowledge of the previous age to man afterward, very similar to the Apkallu. I'm almost afraid to ask, but do you have an opinion on that?

sweetsunray · May 6, 2017

1 hour ago, LmL said:

@sweetsunray, the other Egyptian legend which is often claimed to be similar to the Atlantis myth and other myths of that type are the Edfu building texts. Do you have a trusted source for the translations of these? Because everything you find on the net speaks of a primordial world of the gods destroyed by floods, and of seven sages who survive and bring the knowledge of the previous age to man afterward, very similar to the Apkallu. I'm almost afraid to ask, but do you have an opinion on that?

I'll check.

The tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor I have from the booik "The Tale of Sinuhe, and other Ancient Egyptian Poems, 1940-1640 BC" as part of the Oxford World's Series, which was translated by R.B. Parkinson. I also have Writings from Ancient Egypt, by translator Toby Wilkinson, also the Tale of Shipwrecked Sailor, accounts of battles, natural disasters, obelisk inscriptions, mortuary spells, funeral hymns, songs, satires and advice from a pharaoh to his son, and then I have several books by Erik Hornung who's the modern to go guy when it comes to the Pyramid texts, the coffin texts and the Book of the Dead (but not everything yet, as they are some of the pricier books I'm saving on), and seriously updated the very old outdated translations done at the start of the 20th century on the coffin texts.

As to Quatzalcoatl coming from the sea, that's a conflation wth a foretelling about Quetzalcoatl's return rather than his origin or his coming to Mayan territory. The Spanish legend goes that Aztecs awaited Quetzalcoatl's return, believed him to be light skinned, having a beard (with the often wrongly cited claim that Meso-Americans can't grow beards, and reddish hair, and when Cortez arrived at Tenochtitlan he was mistakenly hailed by the Aztecs to be the Quetzalcoatl-returned. However, this is a story told by the Spanish and basically propaganda. It's clear that Moctezuma was very wary and suspicious of Cortez, and planned to kill the Spanish, and they barely escaped Tenochtitlan with the skin between their teeth. And without using the other tribes who wished the Aztecs gone (because they levied slaves and sacrifices from them) they wouldn't have succeeded in bringing down the Aztecs. Anyhow, that is basically a Spanish propaganda tale. I've stayed with the Lacandons several times, some are personal friends of mine, who occasionally mail me. Several of them have beards. They didn't have beards until 2000, when they still wore their traditional white dress and their hair long (up to the waist), but having grown weary of tourists mistaking them for women and going to San Cristobal de las Casas to work there for extended periods, some got tomahawks, others short, and they have moustaches and beards and drive large vans or mustangs in the jungle. I saw them alter appearance in the course of a decade - same guys, different looks. The whole "they can't grow a beard" is euhm a "myth" (here used in the sense of factually incorrect for once). They just used to shave. Also some of them have reddish-blonde hair because they're albinos.

ETA: I'm currently reading through "The Code of Kings" by Linda Scheele and Peter Mathews (1998), which are at the very least great recent books on the vision serpents, architecture, hieroglyphs, steles and depictions of the major Mayan sites, where they explain the rituals, kingmaking, founding of cities, the political struggles. Code of Kings covers Tikal, Palenque, Copan, Seibal, Chichen Itza, Uxmal and Iximche. Another book by Linda Scheel, this time with David Freidel is a "Forest of Kings" published in 1990. This is in depth insights into the Mayan cultures and history, the world tree mythology, sometimes challenging theories that prevail since the 19th century. I'll go more into that in another post, because she gives a radically different proposal for the Kukulcan myths, and in her notes references sources of people who've re-assessed the Quetzalcoatl myths more in relation to the source history.

I'll also check on what I can find on the Apkallu, as I have an Oxford translation of the Mesopoatanian myths of creation, flood, gilgamesh (have 2 versions), SIhtar's descent (again 2 of those, also have the Inanna book). And I know a site where you can read the latest translation efforts of the cuneform writing - there's an open source project on translation work going on there.

LmL · May 6, 2017

@sweetsunrayare you familiar with the 'handbags carried by the Apakallu and the figures at Gobekli Tepe? Hancock and others have linked them to other figures from world myth carrying similar items. I can dig up the photo comparisons, but I was curious if you have already heard of it.

sweetsunray · May 6, 2017

9 minutes ago, LmL said:

@sweetsunrayare you familiar with the 'handbags carried by the Apakallu and the figures at Gobekli Tepe? Hancock and others have linked them to other figures from world myth carrying similar items. I can dig up the photo comparisons, but I was curious if you have already heard of it.

Well, I've seen the the "handbags" depicted on the stele of GT (the one with the scorpion, headless man, and giant bird with a spherical symbol). They actually appear like "houses" to me, and in relation to a scorpion, a possible headless "Orion", it's more logically to show a band of houses with a hole in the roof to go down into via a ladder (the houses they built in their settlements) than "handbags". If they are depicting 2 constellations and are the ones who began to divide the sky for astrological reasons, then "houses" would be the likeliest interpretation, especially since they're so large in relation to the alleged animals depicting constellations.

Just assuming it is astronomical, we have headless orion at the bottom, bound to earth, then above it we have Scorpio. Then in the tier above it, divided by a line we have the winged big strange bird, the spherical object, and flamingos to the right. And in the upper tier we have "houses" and tiny symbols engraved there. That would be somethign like "when this and this" in the 3rd house in conjunction with the "sun". ?????

I did notice that the paper claiming the engravings are a time stamp of a comet impact preliminary called them "handbags" (and that actually makes me suspicious of the paper). I've seen a depiction of the Mesopotanian half fish man carrying a handbag on Calvino's site in relation to his review of Magicians of the God.

LmL · May 6, 2017

The apkallu 'handbags': http://firstlegend.info/The Apkallu.html

compared to an image in Mesoamerica: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/f3/9e/54/f39e5445d8ed7fd50d10e6cd33638a7f.jpg

This website has all the possible "handbag' examples all together - I haven't read the site and have no idea how they are interpreting, but it does conveniently have them all together:

https://knittingittogether.com/tag/gobekli-tepe/

Notable is the one from Karatepe, just down the road from GT

sweetsunray · May 6, 2017

On the Edfu texts I have to ask: which part of Edfu? There's the Horus Temple which is Ptolemeian (Greek Egypt) and then there is Tell Edfu, a settlement where people lived since the Old Kingdom (and some pre-dynastic finds, though not all textual). It's mostly archeological evidence there with regards the development of a provincial town over a course of 2500 years. There are some mastabas in the area and a a few step-pyramids. There were some studies done in the area in the first half of the 20th century (in 1922 by Henne of Lille, Gueraud in 1928, and Alliot in 1931, and a Franco_polish mission in 1938). Since 1939 barely any new research has been done at Tell Edfu except for Barry Kemp of Cambridge. Since 2001 Nadine Moeller of Chicago has the lead on the Tell Edfu site. Since 2010 they're focusing on the pyramids.

On the Horus Temple there's the Edfu translation project currently running and some translations have been published since the millenium: http://adw-goe.de/en/research/completed-research-projects/akademienprogramm/the-inscriptions-of-the-ptolemaic-temple-of-edfu/publications/

There are downloadable works, but they're all German. There are English translations though that one can order. I'll have to check the Penguin book as possibly containing a few transcripts of it, as that one was first published in 2016.

LmL · May 6, 2017

4 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

The imagery taken from what's still buried shows there's an earlier phase. So, it doesn't appear out of nowhere. What overal does appear for the first time, even including the older still burried phases, is that these people begin to build a pure ritualistic center, where before we only have evidence that sacred or ritualistic places being done at natural pre-existing places (the painted caves). We have people living at cave shelters (not actual caves, but ledges with a sleter drop), and they paint their stuff at other caves in the area, less easy accessable, where they don't live. Then at the Levant, near the Mediterranean we have people settle and build stone bases with wooden walls and roofs, harvesting wild cereals before the Younger Dryas. At the start of the Hollocene we have people settle and build mud brick and stone permanent houses and a separate ritualistic centre and the first appearance of megaliths made from the nearby quarry and during its use people begin to actually farm and lose the need to travel to other areas for ritual purpose, but instead remain to oversee their crop.

I would maintain that no precedent for GT has been found. Until we dig up the older circles, we cannot say there was a gradual increase in knowledge of the technique there for certain. What we have is the sudden appearance of GT. What are you referring to when you say "At the start of the Hollocene we have people settle and build mud brick and stone permanent houses and a separate ritualistic centre and the first appearance of megaliths made from the nearby quarry"?

4 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

What is advanced? I've only seen one picture that undisputedly (imo) shows the marking of a solar eclipse in relation to a constellation, and that there is evidence the GT builders had constellations. Meanwhile you have a professor of the Rig Veda speculate one thing, other researchers speculate it's about a comet, and a lot of debate between Hancock, an Italian and Collins about the direction we're supposed to take into account: Orion, Cygnus, others... It's astronomical data, and it plays a role. A solar eclipse is hard to miss when it occurs, and looking up at the sky and determine the significant constellation at the time isn't that hard. What it does show is that they have star gazers and constellations and stories about them. Meanwhile the Magdelanian painters also painted volcanic eruptions and motifs that may be star watching related.

There are a lot of people besides Graham Hancock who have documented their claims of extensive astronomy being encoded in GT. I suppose you will simply dispute all of them, but that's what I am referring to. One of the people Graham cites is Paul Burley, whose article Graham reprinted on his website. It also seems Andrew Collins participates on Hancock's board, and engages in discussion about GT. Hancock mentioned Collins and many others when discussing astronomy at GT too, so I am not sure where the idea that there is bad blood or accusations of stealing from Collins is coming from, for what it's worth. Here is Burley's paper:

https://grahamhancock.com/burleyp1/

P.S. I am re-reading Magicians of the Gods to see what exactly Graham has claimed about GT and what he has agreed with in terms of other people's claims. As I said he is not hesitant to cite people, so I have lost track of what ideas are his versus other people's.

LmL · May 6, 2017

8 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

On the Edfu texts I have to ask: which part of Edfu? There's the Horus Temple which is Ptolemeian (Greek Egypt) and then there is Tell Edfu, a settlement where people lived since the Old Kingdom (and some pre-dynastic finds, though not all textual). It's mostly archeological evidence there with regards the development of a provincial town over a course of 2500 years. There are some mastabas in the area and a a few step-pyramids. There were some studies done in the area in the first half of the 20th century (in 1922 by Henne of Lille, Gueraud in 1928, and Alliot in 1931, and a Franco_polish mission in 1938). Since 1939 barely any new research has been done at Tell Edfu except for Barry Kemp of Cambridge. Since 2001 Nadine Moeller of Chicago has the lead on the Tell Edfu site. Since 2010 they're focusing on the pyramids.

On the Horus Temple there's the Edfu translation project currently running and some translations have been published since the millenium: http://adw-goe.de/en/research/completed-research-projects/akademienprogramm/the-inscriptions-of-the-ptolemaic-temple-of-edfu/publications/

There are downloadable works, but they're all German. There are English translations though that one can order. I'll have to check the Penguin book as possibly containing a few transcripts of it, as that one was first published in 2016.

So, what is your opinion of the story of the seven sages from the Edfu texts I am referring to? Here's an example of what I am talking about, though the site itself is not what you would call a reputable site. Glancing at Graham's discussion board, there were folks trying to verify this supposed account from the Edfu texts and what was recommended were several books about them, which I don't have access to.

Unchained · May 6, 2017

On 4/26/2017 at 4:12 PM, Equilibrium said:

Tyrion's, giant of Lannister moniker is also probably important, as he is a known AA stand-in. After Shae divulged that nickname to court, courtiers laughed to the earthquake like volume The sudden gale of mirth made the rafters ring and shook the Iron Throne. Tyrion, the lion, himself grew darker, like he was of the night, say and uttered I wish I had enough poison for you all. You make me sorry that I am not the monster you would have me be, yet there it is. I am innocent, but I will get no justice here. You leave me no choice but to appeal to the gods. Yup, he was wronged, got omnicidal and decided to appeal to celestial (objects) beings for the justice. Seems like something AA would do, and maybe later forgot, just to mention the one piece of you essay were you link Tyrion's body count to AA's.

I may be way off, but I think this line of thinking of AA is hinting that we are supposed to think of him as some sort of Hitler/Manson. They were little guys who failed at their desire to make art and turned to forming a cult of personality to carry out their superiority complex. NK bound his brothers to his will. BE enslaved his people and started the cult of starry wisdom. Manson's followers were on mind altering drugs and some thought he was Jesus returned. All the revelations about AA being a trickster who gets others to do his killing and take the fall sounds like him as well. I think Euron may even be meant to look like him, and of course he is all about getting his brothers to die for and be sacrificed for him. He is fond of getting them to drink mind altering drugs. Euron was never mocked when younger that we know of, but we have others like Tyrion and Littlefinger to show us that part.

sweetsunray · May 6, 2017

Well I've googled "Edfu saven sages" (no translation sources are given alas) but I did notice a reference to the 'great primeval mound', which are mentioned in relation to Edfu (amongst others) in the Penguin Book of Myths & legends of Ancient Egypt by Joyce Tydlesley, of 2016. She tries to summarize the myths. The first chapter is about creation, with the "mound of creation" as a sub-part, and Horus Temple of Edfu is mentioned in the subchapter "Alternative Creations", and it is related to seeing a temple as a copy or re-creation of this sacred primeval mound.

HELIOPOLIS CREATION MYTH (Atum, the sun)

So, initially there were only the deep, dark waters of Nun (genderless), no land, no sky, no gods, no people, no light and no time. But in these endless waters of Nun floated an egg, and trapped within was the spark of life. When it cracked open, a mound rose out of the waters and Atum (male) sat on top of it, shining like the sun, and thus bringing light. The seed sprouting from his penis after masturbation birthed 2 children, a male and female pair, called Shu (god of dry air) and Tefnut (goddess of moisture). They lived happily together on the mound, but Atum's children either fell in the water or went exploring. Grieving and blinded by tears Atum asked his "eye" to search for his twins. When found and returned, Atum cried tears of joy and men and women were brought to life from those tears. And humans and gods lived in harmony on the mound. Sheu and Tefnut coupled and another pair of twins were born - Geb (god of fertile land) and Nut (goddess of the sky). Their children were the stars on the night sky. However, when she ate her own star children, Geb grew furious (earthquakes), while Nut tried to stay away from his grasp by stretching herself, only touching the land with toes and fingertips still, thereby making the sky firmament. Their father Shu (the air) sat between his chidlren Geb and Nut to keep them from quarreling any further. And since then, Nut swallows the sun, but rebirths it in her womb at dawn. Eventually, once reconciled, and after creation, Nut will bear two sons - Osiris and Seth - and two daughters - Isis and Nephtys. Together with the previous, except for Nun, form the "nine" of Heliopolos (the Ennead): Atum, Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Osiris, Seth, Isis and Nephtys.

The myth of Atum and creation is not preserved in a single straightforward account, but nees to be pieced together from references. The principle written sources are the Pyramid Texts, the Coffin Texts, various New Kingdom funerary texts and the Ptolemaic Papyrus Bremner-Rhind.

The whole cosmic plan was reflected in formal temple architecture, making each temple the original mound of creation. A tall wave like perimeter wall surrounds the temple complex (at Heliopolis), keeping Nun's chaos waters away. The entrance or pylon are the mountains of the eastern horizon. The inside columns decorated with lotuses and papyrus stalks represent the plantlife on the primeval island. And the path leading from the daylight (at the entrance) to the inner sanctuary is sloped upward (priests going up the mound). The dark ceiling has stars painted on it, and the decoration on the walls between floor and ceiling (mound and sky) represent life and activity within the harmonious temple-world. And outside artificial lakes represent Nun. And of course the god can be found within the inner sanctuary, seated.

Nun could be repsented as both male and female (Mehet-Weret), representing different aspects of the primeval waters. And while Atum is a male god, his masturbating hand can be personified as a female goddess. His hand (djeret in Egyptian is a female word) is his female aspect. And human queens had titles such as God's Wife and God's Hand. (throws another meaning to the King's Hand of aSoIaF). His Eye is also a female aspect.

In the Pyramid text (old kingdom) it's pure masturbation. In the Coffin Texts (middle kingdom) Atum spits out Shu and Tefnut. Late Kingdom and Ptolemaic combines it by Atum ejaculating in his own mouth. These scenes of Atum in sexual poses are depicted in the temples withotu reserve. The Victorian discoverers and visitors blinked at it though and museum labels and screens were strategically placed to preserve modesty for the eyes of the delicate lady visitors.

That's for mostly the Heliopolis version of creation. But there are alternative versions. Each temple might claim they are the original mound, and most cults develop their own creation story, which is often like the Heliopolis one, but featuring their own god.

HERMIOPOLIS CREATION MYTH (Toth)

At Hermopolis Magna for example at the temple of Toth there is a creation version with the Ogdoad, eight gods of creation. The Egyptian name for Hermopolis was Khemnu (Eight Town), a reference to the Ogdoad. It was called Hermopolis by the Greeks because they equated Toth with Hermes. It's however not well preserved, having to rely mostly on middle kingdom coffin texts from nearby cemetaries and ptolemaic period writing, which contains many distortions and late additions. Still the Ogdoad reference suggests it's an old myth.

There are several Hermopolis versions, starting with four pairs of gods: Nun and Naunet (chaos), Heh and Hauhet (infinity), Kek and Kauket (darkness), and Amen and Amaunet (hidenness) living together in the primeval waters. Then with a burst of creative energy

The Mound of Flame burst out of the waters. A giant goose egg laid on the mound, cracked open and the sun god was born, and he created all living things.
OR the Mound of Flame burst out of the waters. The sun god in the form of a falcon landed on the mound, which was the first land.
OR the Mound of Flame burst out of the waters. A lotus bud pushed through the mound, and as it opened it revealed the sun god inchild form.
OR a lotus bud appeared at the surface of the waters, opened, revealed the sun god in child form. And the sun god brought with him time and creation.

So where at Heliopolis there existed only Nun initially, at Hermopolis exist 4 inert pairs (4 cardinal points, 4 corners of sarcophagus, 4 canopic jars). The 4 males are frog-headed. The 4 females are snake-headed. Though inert, together they carry the spark of life. Once the sun god is born, they die and retreat to the afterlife. Later traditions see these 4 pairs not as the fathers and mothers of the sun god, but the children or souls of Toth, Shu or Amen, represented as eight baboons greeting the sun.

The Book of the Mounds onthe walls of the Edfu temple (there's your Edfu) says the mound offers a desolate, watery vista of islands, pools and reeds. The bleak landscape bears a lotus bud whose petals open to reveal the blazing sun in the form of a child (in some versions as a scarab or ram). We of course notice the importance of the blue lotus flower, who rises by day from the waters and opens its petals, but at night closes and disappears into the water again. There have been suggestions that the lotus may have served as a narcotic, but research has shown that the lotus flower contains no alkaloids needed to be a narcotic.

MEMPHIS CREATION MYTH (Ptah)

At Memphis Ptah is the god associated with the mound (his complex though is unfotunately destroyed). Sekhmet was his wife. Their son Nefertem the lotus. Now the Ptah creation myth comes majorly from the Shabaqo Stone. The 25th dynastic Nubian king Shabaqo allegedly was appalled when he heard that the ancient papyrus scroll within the Ptah complex of Memphis was partially eaten by worms. So he ordered to ahve a copy made on stone slab. Unfortunately it was employed as a mill stone in Roman times, so it has been considerably damaged. Initially the archaic langauge used on the Shabaqo Stone convinced scholars that it was copied from ancient manuscripts of the Old Kingdom. However, it is now believed to be a composition dating from Shabaqo's own reign period (not before the New Kingdom), but deliberately written in archaic Egyptian to ingratiate the new Royal Family, ruling from Memphis, with the priests of the Ptah temple. Ptah is an ancient god worhsipped in early Dynasties, but his early mythology is lost and he is barely mentioned in the Pyramid texts. I won't go too much into it, but the Mephite Theology basically puts Ptah forward as the creator god, since he was the mound itself, coming into existence before Atum, able to create the Ennead (the nine) with his heart (the Egyptian seat of intellect) and his tongue (who can also be seen as Tefnut). So Ptah is the supreme creator who doesn't need masturbation, just his heart (aka his intellect). The Apis bull was not Ptah himself, but an avatar.

ELEPHENTINE CREATION MYTH (Khnum)

Knhum of Elephentine didn't become a creator god of life until the New Kingdom. Khnum shaped human beings from mud on his potter's wheel. Now Khnum was worshipped at Elephentine since the Eearly Dynasties, but the potter's wheel wasn't invented in Egypt untilt he 5th dynasty. In the Pyramid texts Khnum is no more than a craft-builder of inanimate objects. In the Coffin texts his potter's wheel becomes unified as a symbol of the sun disk, and he's a reanimator of what is broken. And only in the New Kingdom is he said to be making people out of clay as an original creator.

There are more than the ones above mentioned in the book, but I'm not going into them, I think these 4 serve well enough as an example.

EDFU (Horus Temple)

Now, without actually having read the texts, from this we can surmise that the Ptolemaic Horus Temple of Edfu no doubt would also try to claim to be this "original primordial mound of flame". And I already mentioned that indeed the Edfu temple describes this primeval land.

I have read one of the fringe sites. I'm not sure about "seven sages" - it seems a weird number, either one is lacking or there's an extra as with the ennead (the 9th being Amun). The sites complain the Egyptologists don't seem to be bothered much with who they are. If they were godly dwellers with Horus at the primeval mound, they're bound to be gods already mentioned.

I do have serious doubts about the claim that these texts asserts the primeval mound was destroyed by a flood. Here we have an obvious interpretation of someone who lacks any contextual understanding and even knowledge that the primeval mound is featured in every major patron god temple, trying to make out their god as the supreme creator. It's an inserted interpretation, by someone who doesn't know that there are primeval waters first, from which the mound rises, rather than being destroyed. They mention drowning, but that may refer to Amun's twin pair who disappeared and made him cry. I'm not going into it any further without the ability to read the translations on the texts, but I hope that the above series of creation myths provides context.

Equilibrium · May 7, 2017

14 hours ago, Unchained said:

I may be way off, but I think this line of thinking of AA is hinting that we are supposed to think of him as some sort of Hitler/Manson. They were little guys who failed at their desire to make art and turned to forming a cult of personality to carry out their superiority complex. NK bound his brothers to his will. BE enslaved his people and started the cult of starry wisdom. Manson's followers were on mind altering drugs and some thought he was Jesus returned. All the revelations about AA being a trickster who gets others to do his killing and take the fall sounds like him as well. I think Euron may even be meant to look like him, and of course he is all about getting his brothers to die for and be sacrificed for him. He is fond of getting them to drink mind altering drugs. Euron was never mocked when younger that we know of, but we have others like Tyrion and Littlefinger to show us that part.

While I do think Euron is supposed to evoke AA's later days, I think AA was set up as a tragic villain who genuinely had good intentions at least in the beginning.

Btw did you read the essay, I linked it for you.

Unchained · May 7, 2017

44 minutes ago, Equilibrium said:

While I do think Euron is supposed to evoke AA's later days, I think AA was set up as a tragic villain who genuinely had good intentions at least in the beginning.

Btw did you read the essay, I linked it for you.

I did, it was really good. Partnership and dominator cultures are definitely a theme the author is working with. You pointed out the civilizations that fill these roles where a partnership becomes a dominator. Recently I have seen people point out that individuals do this too. Garth was pro nature and growing things. His potential son Brandon of the bloody blade fought the partnership culture native westrosi races. Then his son Brandon the Builder worked with the giants and the CotF. Durran Godsgrief and Brandon the Shipwright had children who notably have very different policies than they do on the CotF and ships respectively. I think the Greyjoys are still showing this alternating sequence. Quellon Greyjoy was, I think, more Garth-like. He was tried to integrate the islands into the green lands. Balon took them in the opposite direction and is more Grey King like.

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