image: Wikimedia commons (link).
As discussed in the previous post (and video), I am convinced that overwhelming evidence demonstrates that the world's ancient myths and scriptures were designed to uplift, to empower, and to enlighten -- but that when these same ancient myths and scriptures have been forced into a literalistic interpretation, history shows that their message is often inverted and used to down-press instead of uplift, to enslave instead of to empower, and to benight instead of to enlighten.
Many examples could be offered to prove beyond debate that the literalistic mis-interpretation of the world's precious ancient myths and scriptures has often been used in previous centuries to try to falsely "justify" or "excuse" the oppression and degradation of other men and women through various forms of racism, feudalism, colonialism, and imperialism -- and that literalistic mis-interpretation continues to play that role to this very day.
I personally believe that men and women naturally and innately know that oppression and degradation of other men and women is wrong -- which is why various forms of powerful conditioning, including propaganda and (very often) arguments which attempt to use literalistic mis-interpretations of ancient myths and scriptures, will almost always be employed in support of unjust violation of the rights of other men and women, as a way of "numbing" the conscience and judgement of those who might otherwise voice their outrage at such injustices.
For example, most people are aware of the employment of the concept of "Manifest Destiny," which was used to falsely "excuse" or "justify" actions which actually cannot be justified: the deliberate slaughter of millions of Native American men, women and children, the systematic attempt to eradicate their culture and way of life, the seizure of the land and natural resources given to them by the gods (or, if you prefer, by nature and the universe itself), and their subsequent impoverishment which was (and in many ways continues to be) falsely "excused" or "justified" with arguments based on racism. The phrase "Manifest Destiny" itself clearly indicates that an appeal to a specific interpretation (or, rather, mis-interpretation) of ancient scripture played an absolutely central role in the campaign to keep the populace at large from waking up to the injustices and outright atrocities they were enabling and supporting.
History also shows that the same appeal to "Manifest Destiny" did not end at the coastlines of the North American continent but continued across the Pacific Ocean, and that this same mis-interpretation of ancient scriptures was used to falsely justify similar slaughter, eradication of culture, seizure of land and resources, and impoverishment of survivors in the Hawaiian Islands and the Philippine Islands right into the twentieth century. And similar arguments were used to support the inexcusable institution of slavery and (after the abolition of slavery) of institutionalized forms of racism throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, and right up into the twenty-first.
The role of "religion" in keeping men and women from perceiving and then standing up against the perpetration of such injustices should not be underestimated. I would suggest that the institutions we refer to when we use the term "religion" are almost invariably based upon literalistic mis-interpretation of ancient myths or (more commonly) scriptures, and that a clear distinction should be maintained between these "religions" and the ancient myths or scriptures themselves. To the extent that religion provides a way of falsely "excusing away" or falsely "justifying" the violation of the innate rights of other men and women, it serves as a form of propaganda or mind control, and an inversion of the actual purpose of the world's ancient wisdom, which is properly to uplift, empower and enlighten.
While many may not perceive it to be a religion, or consider it to be as dangerous in this regard as religions which in previous centuries (and up to the present day) have been used to promote or to excuse oppression, feudalism, colonialism, or imperialism, I would also suggest that the modern-day "UFO religion" can in some cases be shown to be built upon a very explicit literalistic interpretation (or, rather, mis-interpretation) of ancient scriptures, and that because of this literalistic mis-interpretation, it too invites the inversion of the message of the world's ancient wisdom. For this reason, the literalistic mis-interpretations of ancient scripture upon which much of the modern-day "UFO religion" has its foundation should be challenged, because they can be shown to be false.
I personally do not deny the possibility of extra-terrestrial life in our universe, or the possibility of extra-terrestrial craft -- although I do not insist on these as certainties, either, or make their existence a point of faith or a test of whether or not I am willing to converse with someone or listen to what he or she has to say. What I am talking about here is not the possibility of extra-terrestrial life but rather the dogmatic insistence that ancient myth describes literal ancient alien visitors to this planet, who created humanity to be their servants -- a storyline which has grown into an entire religion of its own, and one whose teachings are by now fairly familiar to most people who have a television or an internet connection.
The tenets of this "ancient alien" or "ancient astronaut" religion were popularized most widely successfully, perhaps, by the writings of Zecharia Sitchin (1920 - 2010). Although he was not the first to propagate the idea that the ancient myths were describing ancient extraterrestrial visitors, he was certainly the most well-known and most prolific proselytizer of this interpretation of the ancient texts. He based most of his interpretations of the Hebrew Scriptures (aka the "Old" Testament), and of the myths of ancient Mesopotamia (including Sumer, Babylon, and Akkad).
Here is a sample of the kind of declarative proclamation which characterizes Sitchin's writings about ancient myth, from the prologue to his first book, The 12th Planet (1976):
Using the Old Testament as our anchor, and submitting as evidence nothing but the texts, drawings, and artifacts left us by the ancient peoples of the Near East, we will go beyond the intriguing questions and the provocative suggestions. We will prove that Earth was indeed visited in its past by astronauts from another planet.
We will identify the planet from which these astronauts came.
We will decipher a sophisticated ancient cosmology that explains better than our present sciences how Earth and other parts of the solar system came into being.
We will lay bare ancient reports of a celestial collision, as a result of which an intruding planet was captured into the Sun's orbit and show that all the ancient religions were based on the knowledge and veneration of this twelfth member of our solar system.
We will prove that this Twelfth Planet was the home planet of the ancient visitors to Earth.
We will submit texts and celestial maps dealing with the space flights to Earth, and will establish when and why they came to Earth.
We will describe them, and show how they looked and dressed and ate, glimpse their craft and weapons, follow their activities upon Earth, their loves and jealousies, achievements and struggles. We will unravel the secret of their "immortality."
We will trace the dramatic events which led to the "Creation" of Man, and show the advanced methods by which this was accomplished. We will then follow the tangled relationship of Man and his deities, and throw light on the true meaning of the events passed to us in the tales of the Garden of Eden, the Tower of Babel, the Deluge, the rise of civilization, the three branches of Mankind. We will show how Man -- endowed by his makers biologically and materially -- ended up crowding his gods off Earth. 8 - 9.
If you read through this first book and the several more which followed it, you will see that Sitchin interprets the stories in the Bible and the myths of ancient Mesopotamia as literal descriptions of technologically advanced aliens from a "twelfth planet," who arrive on earth using "rocketships" in order to obtain gold which is needed to support the atmosphere on their home planet (an idea perhaps inspired by the "Mars books" of Edgar Rice Burroughs, in which the atmosphere of Barsoom is generated by an atmosphere machine that must be maintained at all costs, or else all life on the planet will perish). These aliens from the twelfth planet mine the gold themselves for a while, but tiring of that, they create mankind using genetic engineering in order to do the work instead.
As we will see, the idea that the various families of humanity were created by alien visitors was put forward long before the publication by Sitchin in 1976 of his first book in the "Earth Chronicles" series -- and has a long history of racist application, going back to the end of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth. Indeed, we can see from just the small portion of Sitchin's writings quoted above that he adopted the literalistic doctrine of the "three branches of Mankind" which was used to falsely "justify" outright racism for centuries against men and women supposedly descended from the family of Ham. For more on the literalistic mis-interpretation of the story of Shem, Ham and Japheth in the book of Genesis, and the way this literalistic mis-interpretation was used to falsely "justify" institutionalized racism for centuries, see this previous post, as well as this more recent post and video.
Elsewhere, Sitchin takes a predictably literalistic interpretation of the story of Cain and Abel and speculates that the "mark of Cain" described in Genesis 4: 15 might apply to Native Americans. On pages 30 and 31 of his book Divine Encounters (1995), Sitchin proposes that the "mark of Cain" was a genetic modification inflicted by the supposed astronaut-visitors of the twelfth planet upon the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, saying:
Our own guess (in The Lost Realms) was that the mark might have been a genetic change, such as depriving the line of Cain of facial hair -- a mark that would be immediately obvious to whoever shall find them. Since this is a mark of recognition of Amerindians, we have suggested that since Cain "went away from the presence of Yahweh and resided in the Land of Nod, east of Eden," his wanderings took him and his offspring farther into Asia and the Far East, in time crossing the Pacific to settle in Mesoamerica.
These sorts of literalistic interpretations of stories such as the Cain and Abel story or the Shem, Ham and Japheth story have been wrongly used for centuries in extremely racist ways -- to argue that those who are supposedly descended from "cursed" characters in a mythical story (such as Cain and Ham) can be justly deprived of their rights -- or even their lives -- by those supposedly descended from different characters.
Just as I provide abundant evidence that the brothers Shem, Ham and Japheth are based upon specific constellations in the night sky (as is their father, Noah), I also provide convincing evidence that Cain and Abel can be shown to be based upon specific constellations as well, in my 2016 book Star Myths of the World, and how to interpret them, Volume Three (Star Myths of the Bible). The story thus cannot be interpreted as describing various groups of humanity who are physically descended from either Cain or Abel (since the constellations themselves are made up of stars which are incredibly far apart from one another in three-dimensional space, and thus no one can be descended from any constellation), but can -- like all the other ancient myths entrusted to our distant ancestors -- be interpreted as teaching profound spiritual truths which apply to each and every one of us, regardless of our physical characteristics.
Indeed, it should be readily apparent to anyone who takes time to think about it that the "ancient aliens" narrative propagated by Sitchin (and turned into its own kind of "religion" in subsequent decades) invites racist interpretations, by implying that certain groups have "more" or "less" of the genetic material of the godlike visitors from the twelfth planet.
Fortunately, the literalistic mis-interpretations of ancient myths and scriptures propagated by Zecharia Sitchin and his followers can be definitively proven to be completely incorrect and untenable.
Dr. Michael Heiser, a scholar of ancient Semitic languages, whose main website is here, has provided extensive evidence demonstrating that Sitchin's supposed translations and interpretations of ancient Mesopotamian texts are not only wrong but in some cases completely fabricated and lacking in any textual support whatsoever (see his numerous arguments here and in his videos and podcast appearances, in which he explains how to use modern text-searching capabilities to peruse the corpus of ancient near-eastern texts for yourself).
In addition to the textual arguments put forward by Dr. Heiser, however, I would argue that we can also see that Sitchin's interpretations are based on literal readings of texts which can be conclusively shown to be describing constellations and heavenly cycles, and not literal figures whose actions took place in terrestrial history.
For example, the story of the creation of Adam and Eve, which Sitchin discusses at great length, arguing that it represents a literal description of creating "test tube babies" (as Sitchin says using those exact words on page 14 of Divine Encounters) can be shown to be describing the constellations Virgo, Bootes, and the serpent of Hydra -- and their expulsion from Eden represents the sinking of these constellations into the west due to the turning of the earth on its axis, which causes the man to return to the "dust" from whence he first came (he came up from the "dust" of the eastern horizon, and he returns to the "dust" of the western horizon after crossing the starry sky).
The "paradise" which they lost was the heavenly realm -- a fact which takes on spiritual significance when we realize that the ancient myths and ancient texts are describing our own condition in this present incarnate life, when our soul is "cast down from Eden" into the lower realm of this material universe, where we are given a physical body made out of the "lower two elements" of earth and water (that is to say, "of clay"), just as the stars each night can be seen to sink down from the heavenly realm of the upper elements and plunge into the lower realm of earth and water when they meet the western horizon. The motion of the stars illustrates profound truths about our human condition, and describes the journey of each and every human soul -- not the literal history of two distant figures who were bio-engineered by alien visitors.
Numerous previous posts and videos have gone into the celestial details of the Adam and Eve story, for example this one. The Biblical texts and their celestial foundations and possible esoteric interpretations are also explored at greater length in the previously-mentioned Star Myths of the Bible.
Many of the ancient Mesopotamian and ancient Egyptian artifacts and artworks that Sitchin uses to support his literalistic narratives can also be shown to be based on constellations, further undermining his arguments. For instance, in Figures 3 and 4 on page 13 of Divine Encounters, Sitchin presents illustrations which he claims represent the ancient alien visitors creating the first Homo sapiens "through genetic engineering" by modifying an existing species of hominids which they found "roaming wildly as, and with, other beasts" (see text on page 11). The upper illustration is from ancient Mesopotamia, and the lower illustration is from ancient Egypt. In each case, the divine figure is depicted in the specific posture of the constellation Virgo, seated as if on a throne (as the outline of the constellation itself suggests), and holding the child upon her lap (in the upper illustration) or creating the figure of the man upon the potter's wheel (in the lower figure, depicting the ancient Egyptian god Khnum).
Below I have added the stars of the region of the constellation Virgo to show the constellation's distinctive "outstretched arm" -- which is marked by the star Vindemiatrix and which was anciently associated with the divine child held by the goddess Isis in ancient Egypt, and by the Virgin Mary in the scriptures of the "New" Testament:
The evidence connecting the constellation Virgo to seated figures in this specific posture and with an outstretched arm is quite abundant across the Star Myths of the world. It is also possible, and perhaps even likely, that the small figure of the human on the potter's wheel (lower image), or the child with the forelock on one side of the head (upper image), corresponds to the constellation Bootes, which can be envisioned as sitting almost upon the "lap" of the constellation Virgo. Note that the long "pipe" protruding from one side of the head of the constellation Bootes could possibly be seen as providing the celestial foundation for the "forelock" of hair depicted on only one side of the head of many of these "divine child" images from ancient mythology (across more than one ancient culture), although again this is not definitive.
What I believe can be definitely established, however, is the celestial correspondence of the figure immediately behind the seated "Virgo" figure in each of the illustrations selected by Sitchin -- a branching tree in the upper image (from ancient Mesopotamia) and the god Thoth with his stylus in the lower image (from ancient Egypt). Both of these figures correspond to the same constellation -- one which is sometimes envisioned as a branching tree, and other times as an anthropomorphic figure writing with a writing instrument (this specific constellation is discussed at length in Star Myths of the Bible, particularly in the chapters discussing the Biblical character of David, whose name corresponds to the name of the Egyptian god Thoth or Dhwty). The constellation in question is not far from Virgo or Bootes in the night sky -- and the scenes above (one from ancient Mesopotamia and one from ancient Egypt) can thus be conclusively understood to be depictions of events which are seen in the heavens, using celestial allegory, and not literal events from terrestrial history (as Sitchin would have us believe).
Many more such examples could be offered in order to show the celestial allegory at the foundation of myths which Sitchin argues represent literal descriptions of actual historical events. For example, he spends some time discussing the events in the Gilgamesh epic (or Gilgamesh cycle), arguing for literal interpretations of everything in the story (including "skyrockets" taking off from Uruk, and amorous encounters with goddesses -- who of course are actually alien beings -- in spaceships).
Once again, the entire Gilgamesh cycle can be shown to be based upon celestial metaphor, as I discuss in both Star Myths of the World, Volume One and even to some extent in my first book, The Mathisen Corollary. The pattern of the semi-divine Gilgamesh (whose mother is immortal) mourning over the death of Enkidu can be conclusively demonstrated to match the same pattern found in ancient Greek myth when the semi-divine Achilles (whose mother is also immortal) mourns the death of Patroclus -- which is also repeated in the so-called "New" Testament when Jesus mourns the death of Lazarus (see John chapters 11 and 12).
The celestial and esoteric importance of the Achilles-Patroclus, and Jesus-Lazarus, patterns are discussed in Star Myths of the World, Volume Two (which focuses almost exclusively on the mythology of ancient Greece) and in Star Myths of the World, Volume Three (Star Myths of the Bible).
See also this previous post and video about the famous Vision of Ezekiel, interpreted by Sitchin (and others before him) as a literal Biblical description of an encounter with a UFO, but which can be shown to be based upon a detailed description of the motions of the heavens and the heavenly cycles.
Literalistic mis-interpretation of ancient myth has historically been used as a form of mind control, as discussed earlier, in order to invert the uplifting message of the ancient wisdom, and to further the oppression and subjugation of some men and women by others (usually the oppression of the many by the very few). Because of this undeniable historical fact, I believe we should be very alert to the potential for misuse created by the relatively new literalistic misinterpretation of ancient myth and scripture to propagate a kind of "ancient aliens" religion.
During the first half of the year 1992, the extraordinarily insightful researcher and radio host Dave Emory (website here, and also mentioned in this previous post) delivered a remarkable lecture on the subject of UFO mania, and its potential for misuse and exploitation -- a lecture which I believe to be just as important, and just as interesting, today as when it was first given, so many years ago now. The entire lecture, entitled "The Political Implications of the UFO Phenomenon and the 'ET' Myth," is available in its entirety online, under the "Lectures" section of Dave Emory's enormous body of archived material. You can download each of the audio files, just like a podcast, by "right-clicking" (or "control-clicking") on the links on that page for Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of the lecture (as well as Part 4, which is Q&A).
During that lecture, among other dangers, Dave Emory highlights the history of connections between theories that humanity was "engineered" by aliens and odious racist theories going back to the first decades of the twentieth century (and even perhaps before that). He also highlights the potential for misuse of the widespread belief in the UFO "religion" for purposes of mind control and even the potential for the simulation of a return of the ancient alien gods using modern technologies such as projections and holograms and exotic (albeit human) craft.
These warnings should be taken extremely seriously, especially in light of the fact that other forms of mind control and deception, which may have worked in previous centuries and even in previous decades, are now having less impact due to the large numbers of men and women who in recent years have started waking up to the use of false flags and other deceptive practices.
Among those who are in fact waking up to such criminal deceptions, talking about false flags (such as the Gulf of Tonkin incident, or the USS Maine incident, or even the horrific mass-murders of September 11, 2001) is no longer taboo -- at least in some circles, if not in others. However, even among those circles where such talk is not taboo, questioning of the "UFO religion" (the "ancient alien" religion) would be a pretty sensitive and divisive subject. Therefore, it is safe to say that this widely-accepted narrative, based (as we have seen) upon an admittedly literalistic interpretation of the ancient scriptures, can still be a very potent tool (potentially) for mind control and for deception.
I am convinced that, once you begin to understand the celestial codes which the ancient myths (all around the world) are using, you will not be easily fooled by arguments such as the arguments of Sitchin in his books. It will be very obvious that many of the episodes that he is telling us represent literal visits by aliens are actually Star Myths which can be shown to be based on the motions of the celestial actors of the stars and constellations -- and which are describing truths pertaining to the Invisible Realm, the realm of the gods.
Ultimately, the gods are not technologically-advanced human-like astronauts visiting our planet using "skyrockets" from another planet in our solar system: they represent something much more incredible, and much more important to our lives here and now. And this fact points to perhaps the worst aspect of literalistic interpretations, including the literalistic interpretations of the "ancient astronaut" mis-reading of the ancient myths and scriptures: they can keep us from connecting with the Other World which is not found only in the infinite realm of the heavens above, but which is immediately accessible to us at all times, and which some would rather we learn nothing about at all.
But if we learn to listen to the ancient myths, in the language that they are actually speaking, they will tell us everything we need to know about it.