BLACK TERROR WHITE SOLDIER

BLACK TERROR WHITE SOLDIER ( BLACK MAGIC PART 2)

  

  When he was asked what would be the basis of the beliefs of the philosopherkings,  Plato responded with the Myth of Er at the end of The Republic. In the  myth, in which are found several  Kabbalistic ideas,  Plato describes a vision of the afterlife recounted by Er, the son of Armenius [Armenian], who died  in a war but returned to life to act as a messenger from the other world. Such  mystical experiences were reputed to be a specialty of the Magi, who, according  to Lucian, he heard “…are able, through certain spells and rituals, to open the  gates of Hades and take down safely whomever they want and then bring them  back up again.” 22 Clement of Alexandria and Proclus both quote from a work  entitled On Nature, attributed to  Zoroaster, in which he is equated with Er. 23

  For future occultists, in addition to the Myth of Er,  Plato’s most important  works were the Phaedrusand the Timeaus. In the Timaeus,  Plato treated the common Magian themes of Time, triads, pantheism, astrology, and the four elements, and presented the myth of Atlantis.  Plato posits the existence of three       distinct realities, as in the ancient pagan trinity, which he identifies with a father, a mother, and their offspring. These are: the model or archetype of  creation; the space or receptacle in which creation was placed; and creation  itself. Each is a living being. From different types of triangles, God formed  the four elements. These are poured into the receptacle, from which God  creates two bands, in the form of the letter Chi(X), becoming the circle of the  fixed stars and that of the planets. The universe is suffused with a spirit, the  agent of cosmic sympathy, called the  World-Soul. The universe, the stars and  planets, are    all living gods, and the reflection of the more perfect model. The revolutions of the astral bodies are regulated according to the Perfect Year, known as the Platonic  Great Year, and derived from the Babylonian Great Year,  when  the Sun, the Moon, the planets and the fixed stars  will have returned to their point of departure. The souls of men originate among the stars. Those  that live well after death return to their native star, but those that live otherwise  are reincarnated as women, or for those who persist in wrongdoing, return into  the bodies of animals.

  The Epinomis, either a work of  Plato, or his pupil Philip of Opus, is a  discussion of the preeminence of astrology, which is acknowledged as belonging originally to the Egyptians and the Syrians, “from when the knowledge  has reached to all countries, including our own, after having been tested by  thousands of years and time without end.” 24

  According to the work, of the  ancient gods, the greatest are the stars and the seven planets. That science  which makes men most wise is astronomy, for it proffers man with knowledge  of numbers, which allows man to attain to a knowledge of virtue. Therefore,  those who study astrology are the most wise, and are to be the guardians of  the ideal state.

  Likewise, several later ancient historians claimed that  Pythagoras had  ventured to Babylon where he became a student of the Magi. It appears that  Plato, in his later years, became increasingly devoted to the teachings of  Pythagoras,        and that he finally  came  to view his            idea    of Forms as numbers.      

  Essentially,  Plato devised a system the Monad and the Dyad as the philosophical  rendering of the pagan trinity. The Monad represents the Father, while the  Dyad represents the dual-natured goddess, taken from the ancient trinity. By  acting on the Dyad, the One generates the Form-Numbers. First the Dyad produces the number Two, by doubling the One, and then produces the other  numbers by either adding to Two and to each successive number the One or  itself. A special importance was placed by  Plato, as it was by the Pythagoreans,  on the “primal numbers,” one, two, three, and four, the Tetraktys, and their  sum-total, ten or the Decad.

  But while  Plato’s connection with the Near East has been downplayed by  mainstream historians, his relationship with the   Magi remained an important  secret shared by Kabbalists and occult secret societies for centuries.   Aristobulus  also claimed: “It is evident that  Plato imitated our legislation and that he had  investigated thoroughly each of the elements in it… For he was very learned,  as was  Pythagoras, who transferred many of our doctrines and integrated them  into his own beliefs.” 25 From that point onward,  Plato was regarded as the  godfather of the Jewish  Kabbalah .

  These ideas were also transmitted to Egypt, where they have been confused  by occultists ever since as representing an ancient Egyptian tradition. However,  as is rarely acknowledged, Egypt came under Persian rule with the conquest of  Cambyses in 525 BC, and remained as such, except for an interruption of sixty years, until the conquest of Alexander at the end of the fourth century BC. In Alien Wisdom: the Limits of Hellenization, Arnoldo Momigliano remarked, “I could  not indicate a dividing line between what was thought to be Egyptian and what  was thought to be Chaldean, even in the muddled form in which Chaldean and  Zoroastrian became synonymous.”26 As Cumont indicated:

  The   first Greco-Egyptian astrologers            did not invent the discipline they         claimed to teach the Hellenic world. They used Egyptian sources going  up to the Persian period which were themselves at least partially derived  from ancient Chaldean documents. Traces of this primitive substratum  still survive in our much later texts, erratic blocks transported on to  more     recent soil. When    we find mentions  there  of “the king  of kings” or “satraps” we are no longer in Egypt but in the ancient Orient… We limit ourselves to noting that in all appearances, the priests who  were the authors of Egyptian astrology stayed relatively faithful to the  ancient Oriental [Babylonian] tradition. 27

  In Egypt , these influences led  to the production   of works attributed to a supposed ancient Egyptian sage named  Hermes Trismegistus. Then, following  the conquests of Alexander, the city he founded in Egypt, Alexandria, became  the locus of an inter-mingling of these pseudo-Egyptian and Greco-Jewish  traditions. From the thought of  Plato emerged  Neoplatonism , and from the books attributed to  Hermes, the Corpus Hermeticumand  Hermeticism . The magical  rites were performed in what are called  Ancient Mysteries, which worshipped  various versions of the  dying-god—in other words, Lucifer, by his many pagan  names. But these schools were merely departments of a single occult tradition.

  Neoplatonism represented the theology of the mysteries, while  Hermeticism  represented what is known as practical  magic, or more  specifically,  alchemy. The mystery cults of Greco-Roman antiquity included the  Eleusinian  Mysteries, the  Dionysian Mysteries and the  Orphic Mysteries. Some of the many gods that the Romans nominally adopted from other cultures also came  to be worshipped in Mysteries, for instance, Egyptian  Isis, the Persian Mysteries  of Mithras, Thracian/Phrygian Sabazios, and Phrygian Cybele. The rites of  Dionysus, known as  Dionysus-Sabazios, were the same as those performed in Asia Minor in honor of Cybele, known as the Magna Mater, which was taken over from the Persian worship of Anahita in Cappadocia, now east-central Turkey. He was originally Attis, named after the Phrygian name for goat. His  consort was the Magna Mater, the Great Mother, Cybele,  identified with Venus  and worshipped as the goddess of fertility.

  In Phrygia, where numerous Jewish colonies were established, Attis was  assimilated to  Dionysus-Sabazios, which an etymology that dates back to the Hellenistic period equates with Yahweh Zebaoth, the Biblical Lord of Hosts.28  Cumont maintained: “undoubtedly he belonged to a Jewish-pagan sect that  admitted neophytes of every race to its mystic ceremonies.” 29

   According to  Lydus, a Byzantine astrologer of the sixth century AD, “the Chaldeans call the  god  Dionysus (or Bacchus), Iao [Yahweh] in the  Phoenician tongue (instead of  the Intelligible Light), and he is also called Sabaoth, signifying that he is above  the seven poles, that is the Demiurgos.” 30

           

  In the first   century AD, Cornelius Labeo, equated Iao with  Dionysus, from the following Oracle of  Apollo of Claros: Those who have learned the mysteries should hide the unsearchable  secrets, but, if their understanding is small and the mind weak, then ponder this: that Iao is the supreme god of all gods; in winter, Hades; at spring’s beginning,  Zeus; the Sun in summer; and in autumn, the  splendid Iao.31

  There has been a tendency among modern apologists of the occult to  suggest that the Ancient Mysteries were unfairly maligned by Christian authors  who equated their gods with the devil of the Bible. However, similar complaints about the barbarity of these mysteries were made by pagan critics as well. In 186 BC a scandal over the  Bacchanalia, the Latin name for the Dionysian Mysteries, so upset the Romans that a decree of the Senate prohibited them throughout Italy, except in certain special cases. Livy, the Roman historian  who   lived   at the turn of the first millennium, described the Dionysian rites as  they had come to light in the controversy:

  When wine            had     infl      amed their   feelings,        and     night  and     the mingling of the sexes and of different ages had extinguished all power of  moral judgment, all sorts of corruption began to be practiced, since  each person had ready to hand the chance of gratifying the particular  desire to which he was naturally inclined. The corruption was not  confined to         one kind of evil, the promiscuous violation of freemen and    women; the cult was also a source of supply of false witnesses, forged documents and wills, and perjured evidence, dealing also in poisons and in wholesale murders among devotees, and sometimes ensuring that not even the bodies were found for burial. Many such outrages  were committed by craft, and even more by violence; and the violence was concealed because no cries for help could be heard against the shriekings, the banging of drums and the clashing of cymbals in the  scene of debauchery and bloodshed.

  Because Hellenistic mysticism was a melee of various sources, apparently  Zoroastrian, Egyptian, Greek and Jewish, scholars have struggled to identify its origins, pointing at times to one or a combination of these traditions. But all had their source in the so-called Chaldean  Magi, whose doctrines became apparent in Judaism in a form of a Jewish   Gnosticism known as  Merkabah Mysticism, representing the earliest formulation of the  Kabbalah .  Merkabah involved a complex tradition of visionary architecture, which meditated on the vision of the Book of  Ezekiel. The aim was to achieve visions of otherwise invisible mathematical-linguistic concepts, in the form of chariots, thrones, palaces and  ultimately, the Temple. According to the book, the prophet  Ezekiel, exiled in  Babylon, experienced a series of seven visions between the years 593 to 571 BC.

  The book opens with a vision of God on his chariot supported by four  Cherubim. These creatures are described as each having two sets of wings, the body of a man, but the legs and cloven feet of a goat. Each had four heads.  While not referred to explicitly in the  Bible ,     these  heads can     be            identified with the four seasons of the zodiac and their related signs, demonstrating to what  degree astrological            influences    corrupted     the      Bible. Each creature has the head  of a man for Aquarius, an eagle for Scorpio, a bull for Taurus, and a Lion for Leo. Each creature stands on a “wheel inside a wheel,” representing the  intersection of the celestial and earthly equator.

  The book then predicts the destruction of  Jerusalem and the Temple because of the abominations being practiced there, and closes with the  promise of a new beginning and a new Temple. Ezekiel saw a supernatural  human  figure who would serve  as the architect, who showed him in detail the design measurements, and  ornamentation   of the new    Temple. The            book  finally

envisions the permanent entrance of the God of  Israel through the eastern gate  of the Third Temple wall.

  When the Babylonian exile ended in 538 BC, great messianic hopes  were placed on the revival of  Israel’s sacred mission and the Second Temple  of  Jerusalem became the embodiment of its aspirations. Despite the fact that the destruction of the First Temple was to have been in punishment for the corruption of pagan themes, many  Jews believed that the fertility of the land and its people, as well as the harmony of the universe itself, was dependent upon the ritual of the Temple. Edwin Goodenough argues that by the time King  Herod the Great proposed the reconstruction of the Temple in 20 BC,  the great “Temple Cultus” had become for many  Jews an allegory of a Jewish  mystery religion.33

  Flavius  Josephus records that  Herod completely rebuilt the Temple, which  therefore became known as Herod’s Temple. During Herod’s reconstruction, only priests with skills as masons were allowed to work in the inner sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, where even  Herod himself was not allowed to enter. The Holy of Holies guarded the erotic secret of the Cherubim in sexual embrace,  mirroring the  dying-god tradition of the Sacred Marriage. When  Israel fulfilled God’s will, the faces of the Cherubim were turned towards each other. But when  Israel sinned, they were turn away from each other. On the Feast of Booths (or Sukkoth), a great fertility ritual, the pilgrims were allowed a glimpse at the Cherubim in the Holy of Holies, and then to indulge in “an orgiastic outburst of sexual license.”34 The ostensibly monotheistic  Jews were exposed to humiliation when the overtly pagan statuary was discovered by Antiochus, the Syrian King, when he sacked the Temple in 168 BC.

  The   first examples of Merkabah symbolism were found among a Jewish  baptismal sect famously known as the  Essenes , who are commonly regarded  as the authors of the  Dead Sea Scrolls . The longest text of the  Dead Sea Scrollsis  known as the Temple Scr oll, written in the form of a revelation from God to  Moses, which describes a Jewish temple which has never been built, along with  extensive detailed  regulations  about sacrifices and temple          practices. Among the  Essenes, who no longer had access to the physical Temple, the aim of  each member was to become a Temple of the Holy Spirit, by passing through  three grades of initiation. The  Essenes were also related to a similar sectarian  community based in Alexandria called the  Therapeutae, through whom their  teachings spread to Hellenistic Egypt , and even to Catholic  Christianity .

  The Merkabah mystics aspired to a vision of God as described in the Book  of Ezekiel, as a “figure in the form   of a man.” Merkabah involved an ecstatic contemplation of the Merkabah, as an ascent to the heavens, namely, like the Magi,           “descent      to       the     Merkabah.”            Through the influence of Merkabah , the  system held in common by all the Hellenistic mysteries schools came to be  the notion of the passage of an initiate through the stages of the seven known planets, to remove the stains acquired on his soul during its descent into a  human body. In order to ascend through the celestial spheres, the initiate  had to master techniques of meditation, which included concentrating on the  Hebrew scriptures,  Gematria, as well as breath-control, chanted hymns, and certain body movements. In order to bypass the hostile gatekeepers of each sphere, the initiate had to display his “seal” or amulets, composed of complex geometric designs that contained magical powers.  These were mainly psycho-physical experiences, but because they were out of the ordinary, they were falsely considered “religious” or “divine,” through even modern science continues to grapple to make sense of these phenomena.

  In his study of Jewish visualization techniques, Elliot R. Wolfson asked:

  Did the Merkavah mystics actually ascend to the celestial realm and  did they see something “out there,” or should these visions be read as  psychological accounts of what may be considered in Freudian language  a type of self-hypnosis?…

  Some texts assume a bodily ascent, a translation into the heavenly  realm of the whole person, whereas others assume an ascent of the  soul or mind separated from the body as the result of a paranormal  experience such as a trance-induced state. 35

  The ascent was also known as an  alchemical mystery, representing the  transmutation of  lead into  gold,  or           more  specifically, the  initiate’s           soul into divinity. The lowest level was symbolized by  Saturn, equal to lead, while the  ascent culminated in “union” with the true god, the Sun, represented by gold.  The Sun god was typically equated with the ancient dying-gods of antiquity, such as  Baal,  Mithras,  Dionysus , Osiris , and in the case of the Christian Gnostics, with  Jesus. Like the dying-gods of the ancient world, this god was regarded as a pagan version of  Lucifer , as god of the underworld, or Hades, where he ruled over the souls of the dead, or demons. In  Kabbalah , this god came to be equated with  Enoch, a pre-Flood patriarch of the  Bible , who was believed not to have died, but to have ascended directly to Heaven. In  Hermeticism , Enoch was  identified     with    Hermes . He later came to be regarded as the “Archetypal Man, ”  the “Primordial Adam,” who was equated with    the      Biblical           figure of            Melchizedek, or the angel  Metatron, becoming the source of the Kabbalah’s anthropomorphic  doctrine, by being interpreted as the image of God. Archetypal Man, or Adam  Kadmon, was          also    identified     with   the Tree of Life, Life, which through the  influence of            the Decad of Plato and Neoplatonism was later equated with what were called ten Sephiroths, or divine emanations. 36

  Like the ancient Asherah  pillars, this god was also depicted as a phallus, representing the pillar or axis of  the world, entwined by a serpent known as  Teli, representing the constellation  Draco which circles around the celestial pole.

  Merkabah texts involved elaborate  anthropomorphic descriptions of  God, known as Shiur Komah, which were based on the  Song of Solomon. The most important of all  Kabbalistic texts, and from which most of its symbolism is derived, the  Song of Solomon, or Song of Songs, describes the mystical erotic relationship between the god and goddess. The text is a collection of love poems spoken alternately by a man and a woman, a number of which describe the beauty and excellence of the “beloved.” The female counterpart, cryptically  representing the pagan goddess, is known as the  Shekhinah. To  Rabbi Akiva  (ca.40      – ca.137        AD),    the great exponent of Merkabah, as for later  Jews, the  Song was regarded as an allegory interpreted as a dialogue of love between God  and the Shekinah, symbolizing the nation of the Israelites, with whom God has made His sacred covenant. In the Song ,the “beloved,” or the Shekinah, is described as bride, daughter and sister. Originally, she is the planet  Venus, the goddess of love and war of Antiquity. She also represents the darker aspect of  the god, as did  Moloch or  Saturn in ancient times. She says of herself, “I am  black, but I am beautiful.” 37

  According to the  Song of Solomon, 6:10:

Who is this arising like the dawn 

fair as the Moon,

resplendent as the Sun,

terrible as an army with banners?

  There is a growing misconception that in its chauvinism the Catholic Church had suppressed the true form of  Christianity taught by  Jesus, which supposedly is reflected in Gnostic texts and the  Dead Sea Scrolls. With the available evidence  alone, is it  difficult to determine the truth. It is the Quran that provides a key  to the answer, revealing not only the truth of  Christianity, but of the ultimate  message intended for humanity. The Quranprovides two essential clues. The  first        is  that the Bible  has  been  altered, an    assertion confirmed  by scholarly opinion: “Then woe to those who write the Book with their own hands, and then say: ‘This  is from God,’ to traffi c with it for miserable price! Woe to them for what their hands do write,  and for the gain they make thereby.” 38

  The Quran  further clarifies that the original message of the Bible was a monotheistic one, proving that any instances in the text that would suggest otherwise can be attributed to its corruption. Moreover, the Quran       confirms that           Jesus was a man, and that the Christians  developed the doctrine that he was the Son of God, or God himself as one of  the Trinity, by borrowing from foreign traditions: “…the Christians call Christ the  Son of God. That is a saying from their mouth; (in this) they but imitate what the unbelievers  of old used to say.” 39

  In truth,  Jesus was an orthodox reformer who chastised the  Jewish leadership of his time for straying from the “Spirit of the Law,” which  he insisted was founded on a message of social justice.  Jesus quoted Deuteronomy and Leviticus: “All the Law can be summed up in this: to love God with all your  heart, all your soul and all your mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself.”

  Therefore, in Matthew5:17-19  Jesus is to have said: Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets;  I  have not come to abolish   them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

  As such,  Jesus could not have taught a doctrine of Gnosticism. Rather, Gnosticism represented the penetration of heretical   Kabbalistic ideas into Christianity, by borrowing from the worship of the dying-god of the Mysteries, or Lucifer, who was equated with the angel  Metatron. Although there had been attempts to deny that  Gnostic dualism had its origin in Judaism, in his now classic work, Alan Segal demonstrated how among  Jews who were regarded as heretics, Enoch’s apotheosis came to justify that “There are indeed two powers in Heaven!”40  It is now largely accepted by scholars that Christian Gnosticism had its origin in these tendencies.41

  Scholem explained, “in the second century Jewish converts to  Christianity apparently conveyed different aspects of   Merkabah mysticism to Christian Gnostics. In the  Gnostic literature there were many corruptions of such elements, yet the Jewish character of this material is still evident, especially among the Ophites, in the school of Valentinius, and in several of the  Gnostic and Coptic texts discovered within  the last fifty years”42  These opinions were confirmed by several            ancient sources. For example, in fragments quoted from Eusebius, we know that Hegesippus  argued that the Gnostics were inheritors of various Jewish or baptist sects, such as the Essenes. Filastrius, the fourth century AD bishop of Brescia, numbers  the  Gnostic sects of the Ophites among the sects that flourished in Judaism before the advent of  Christianity.43

  So while there is little evidence of an overtly Luciferian doctrine among  the early Jewish heretics, it was only when these  Kabbalistic  Jews entered into Christianity—which in its early stages was unencumbered by the strictures of a religious establishment that could enforce an orthodoxy—where they formed the heretical sects of Gnosticism, when the true basis of this dualism was boldly proclaimed. To the Gnostics , the god of the mysteries, or  Metatron  of the Merkabah, was identified with Lucifer who was regarded as the true God. Whereas, God the Creator of the  Bible—referred to as the  Demiurge, a Neoplatonic term taken from  Plato—was a usurper who tried to claim divine authority for himself alone. Union with the “god” resulted in gnosis, meaning knowledge acquired outside of ordinary means.

  The knowledge revealed was magic, a tradition commonly attributed to the Chaldean   Magi. This was despite the fact that there were clear condemnations of this art found in the Bible, as in Jeremiah 27:35: “A sword  is on the Chaldeans and the people of Babylonia, and on her rulers and on  her wise men! A sword is on the soothsayers, and they will become foolish!”  Therefore, as explains Attilio Mastrocinque, in From Jewish magic to Gnosticism,  “In  Gnostic thinking, therefore, the science of the Chaldeans was bound to  be valued as a form of knowledge, precisely because it had been forbidden  by the creator.” 44

  Effectively, Gnosiswas equated with the arcane knowledge revealed to man by  Lucifer, who showed him to the  Tree of Knowledge, which had been forbidden to them by God. As such, the Gnostics typically believed that all morals imposed by God were intended only to oppress man. To free themselves from the cycles of reincarnation, the Gnostics believed, they needed to experience everything “falsely” considered evil by the “ignorant” masses, including murder, adultery, incest, cannibalism, pedophilia, and the ingestion    of        various          bodily            fl          uids    and            excrement.   Thus wa the philosophical basis for the practice of black magic.

  As with  Gnosticism, the  Merkabah Mysteries also penetrated to  Mithraism— mysteries dedicated to the Persian dying-god  Mithras—which became the  most popular cult of the Roman Empire. Although attributed to the Magi, and  regarded as the original teachings of  Zoroaster, little similarity between the  Mysteries of Mithras and what we know of  Zoroastrianism. Therefore, modern  scholars have falsely assumed that they were entirely a Roman creation. This  conclusion is a rejection of the theories of Franz Cumont, who founded the  study of the subject. However, what modern scholars have failed to understand  what Cumont proposed, largely because his main thesis, Les Mages hellénisés (“The  Hellenized  Magi), has yet to be translated into the English language. Cumont  made clear that the Magi of the tradition of Mithraism derived from a heresy of Zoroastrianism, which worshipped  Zurvan the god of Time, and developed  a  cult influenced    by Babylonian magic        and astrology. These  he called instead Magussaeans, who he regarded as responsible for the false popularity of Magian  teachings among the Greeks.

  Little evidence survives of the Mysteries of Mithras, and so scholars rely mainly on pictorial representations. The central image of the cult featured the statue of the tauroctony, a depiction of  Mithras slaying the Bull. Mithras was portrayed on the back of a bull and thrusting a dagger in its shoulder.  Around the central tauroctony are shepherds at the scene of his birth. Mithras  is often paired with the goddess Anahita, related to the Canaanite Anat, or the Greek  Athena. Other  figures include Saturn and Jupiter, and symbols of  the constellations of the  zodiac. Following the slaughter of the bull, Mithras  banquets on   the flesh of  the  Bull with  the  Sun-god  Helios, with whom he      ascends to the sky riding his chariot drawn by four horses.

  Though we know nothing of the details of these rites, Nigosian, in The  Zoroastrian Faith, has pointed out that according to a  Zoroastrian text titled the  Yasna,         Yima was the instructor of the bull-sacrifice which    conferred immortality      on those who consumed  the animal’s flesh. Condemned by Zoroaster, these were nocturnal and orgiastic rites, like those of  Dionysus, accompanied with  shouts of joy, and combined with the haoma, an intoxicating drink prepared  from the sacred plant of Zoroastrianism. 45

In the Indian   Ved as, in a myth  which may be related,  Soma, who is the same as the Haoma, and represents the rain which springs from the Moon, is both the semen of the sacred bull who fertilizes the earth, and the milk of the all-nourishing heavenly cow. The gods, wishing to partake of this potion for its gift of immortality, devise a plan to murder the  Soma-plant. Mithra participates in its slaying, and as a result, the   beasts turn against him. 46

  A matter that has not been recognized by scholars is the fact that, as Cumont indicated, the Magi had assimilated Mithras to the Babylonian Sun god Shamash, who was  also identified with Bel. As demonstrated by Michael Speidel in Mithras- Orion: Greek Hero and Roman Army God, like his ancient  predecessors, Mithras should be identified with Orion. Thus Mithras is also connected with  Sirius, the Dog Star. The animals surrounding the scene represent the evil creatures Ahriman, the  Zoroastrian devil, swallowing up the life-giving energies issuing from the Bull, as well as the four elements. A raven hovers above, a snake slithers nearby, a scorpion attacks the bull’s genitals, and a dog leaps at the bull’s wound. In some cases, a lion is added to the scenery, and the serpent slithers towards the cup. Commonly, in Mithraic iconography,  the   tail of the bull ends in ears of corn, from its blood        springs forth            the first ears of grain and the grape, and from its genitals issued the holy seed which was  received by a mixing bowl.

  The cup, or mixing bowl, is the constellation Crater, and the sacred bowl of the mysteries, from which the initiate drinks the intoxicating wine, or the blood of the god, in order to imbibe the knowledge of hidden things. Likewise, to the Dionysiacs and  Orphics,  Dionysus was the grapevine, and the Bacchanals  received his divine nature in a cup. 47 The cup is the receptacle first outlined in Plato’s Timaeus, in which the four elements were mixed to create the universe.

  The Dionysian symbolism of the wine-cup, the sacred bowl carrying the blood  of the god, familiar to Mithraism, and other mystical systems, also had a strong  presence in early Jewish synagogue art.48

  A further element in the creation of Mithraism which has fallen from the attention of scholars was that of Merkabah, which would have been mediated by way of the  House of  Herod. Herod the Great arose from a wealthy,  influential Idumaean family. The Idumaeans          were            successors to the    Edomites  who had settled in Edom in southern Judea, but between 130-140 BC were  required to convert to Judaism. It was Herod who was originally responsible  for the “Massacre of the Innocents.” According to the Book of Matthew, after  the birth of  Jesus, the “wise men of the East,” meaning Magi, visited Herod  to inquire about the birth of the “king of the Jews,” because they had seen his  star in the east, referring their purported skill as astrologers.  Herod became  alarmed at the potential threat to his power and sent the Magi to search for the child in Bethlehem. However, after they found  Jesus, the Magi were warned  in a dream not to report back to Herod. When Herod realized he had been  outwitted by the  Magi, he ordered the slaughter of all boys under the age of two  in Bethlehem and the surrounding area. But Joseph as well was also warned in  a dream and had fled with Mary and Jesus to Egypt, where the family stayed  until Herod’s death, before moving to Nazareth in Galilee.

  The  House of Herod was one of four leading families who were formative  in the development and spread of  Mithraism.49 They included the  House of  Commagene, who were descended from   Alexander the Great as well as the kings  of Persia. Another were the  Priest-Kings of Emesa in  Syria, hereditary priests of  Elagabalus, a derivation of  Baal, also known as  Sol Invictus, which later became  one with  Mithras. Lastly was the  Julio-Claudian dynasty, which normally refers  to            the first five Roman Emperors:  Augustus,     Tiberius,  Caligula,  Claudius and  Nero. The dynasty is so named because its members were drawn from the Julia  and the Claudius family. Julia derive their name from Iulus, or Julus, also known  as Ascanius, who, according to Greek and Roman mythology, was a son of the  Trojan hero Aeneas, himself the son of Aphrodite. The name “Ascanius” is  thought to have been derived from Ashkenazi, referred to in the Bible as the son  of Gomer and grandson of Japheth. Following the Trojan War, Ascanius escaped  to   Latium in Italy and had a     role in the founding of Rome as the first king            of Alba Longa. The founder of the dynasty, Caesar Augustus, was a Julian through his  adoption by his great-uncle, Julius Caesar.

  Commagene was a small kingdom that was part of the   Armenian Empire,  where, along with Cappadocia and Pontus, the cult of the heretical Magi was most prevalent. Additionally, both  Armenian and Georgian historians also record  that           after  the destruction of the first Temple, Nebuchadnezzar    transported            numbers of Jewish captives, not only to  Babylon, but also to  Armenia and  the Caucasus. By the end of the fourth century BC, some  Armenian cities  had large Jewish populations. 50 The medieval  Armenian historian Moses of Khorene, wrote that King Tigranes II the Great, king of  Armenia in the  first century BC, settled thousands     of  Jews from Syria and Mesopotamia in Armenian cities. Josephus wrote that Judean  Jews were taken by the  Armenian  king Artavazd II, and resettled in   Armenia,     again  during the first century BC,         but some years after Tigranes II’ resettlement. 51  In the article in the November  2001 issue of The American Journal of Human Genetics, Ariella Oppenheim, of  the Hebrew University of  Israel, wrote that her study revealed that  Jews have  a closer genetic relationship to populations in the northern Mediterranean,  including Kurds, Anatolian Turks, and Armenians, than to populations in the  southern Mediterranean, like Arabs and Bedouins.

  The person through which the House of  Commagene was able to enter  into contact with this network of families was   Antiochus IV (before 17 AD –    after 72 AD). His great-grandfather, Antiochus  I of Commagene  (86           – 38 BC), had been able  to deflect Roman attacks from            Mark  Antony, whom he eventually joined in the Roman civil war, but after Antony’s defeat to Augustus,  Commagene was made a Roman client state. Antiochus I is most famous for founding the sanctuary of Nemrud Dagi, an enormous complex on a mountain-top, featuring giant statues of the king surrounded by gods, each god being a synthesis of Greek and Persian gods, where  Apollo is equated with Mithras, Helios and  Hermes.

  The first actual  instance of       mystery rites dedicated to  Mithras were  attributed to the pirates of Cilicia, a province bordering  Commagene. As Plutarch explained, these pirates constituted such a threat to Rome until Pompey drove them from the seas. In his biography of Pompey, Plutarch writes of the pirates: “They brought to Olympus in Lycia strange offerings and performed some secret mysteries, which still in the cult of  Mithras,  first made     known by them [the pirates].” 52

  The Kingdom of  Commagene maintained its independence until 17 AD, when it was made a Roman province by  Tiberius, but reemerged temporarily as an independent kingdom when   Antiochus IV was reinstated by  Caligula,  with whom he was closely associated.  Caligula (12      – 41 AD),          who    has been described as a “monster of lust and diabolical cruelty,” 53 Was also influenced by  the Babylonian or Mithraic tradition of worshipping the king as embodiment  of the dying-god, symbolized by the Sun, a cult which he tried to institute in  the Roman Empire.           The Cult of    the Deified   Emperor had been established and promoted under Augustus   (27 BC–14 AD), but he proclaimed that he was not himself personally divine, but instead centered the Cult around his numen, his  personal spirit, and gens, the collective spirit of his family and ancestors. After Augustus,  Tiberius showed little interest in the Cult, but  Caligula expanded  it on an unprecedented scale, when the Cult changed to direct worship of  Caligula himself.

  According to Josephus, after the murder of his father, young Agrippa was  sent by Herod to the imperial court in Rome. There,  Tiberius conceived a great affection for him, and he eventually also became a close friend of  Caligula. And  on the assassination of  Caligula in 41 AD, Agrippa’s advice helped to secure  the ascension of emperor  Claudius        (10 BC– 54   AD), who was the grandson of Mark Antony and Octavia, and who eventually made Herod Agrippa governor of Judea. A plan to place a statue of  Caligula as  Zeus in the Holy of Holies in the Temple in  Jerusalem was halted only after his intervention.

  In 54 AD, after the death of  Claudius, Vologases I, king of the Parthian  Empire and the great-great-grandson of Antiochus I of  Commagene, placed his own brother Tiridates I on the  Armenian throne which led to open war with Rome. From 59 to 63 AD, the Romans installed as King of  Armenia Tigranes  VI, the grandson of Herod the Great. Tigranes married a noblewoman called Opgalli, who may have been a Hellenic Jew. Tigranes had arranged with king Antiochus IV of  Commagene, with whom he was an ally, that when he was crowned king, to marry his son Alexander to Antiochus’ daughter Julia Iotapa. After the marriage, Nero crowned Alexander and Iotapa as Roman client rulers of the small Cilician region of Cetis. By 63 AD, however, a peace treaty was negotiated in which Tiridates I would lay down his crown, hence surrendering the Parthian right to place him on the throne. But it was agreed that he would travel to Rome where Nero himself would give him the throne under Roman authority. At the coronation, Tiridates declared that he had come “in order to revere you [Nero] as  Mithras.”54 In the same visit, according to Pliny, Tiridates  “the Magus” brought Magi with him and “initiated him [Nero] into magical  feasts [mystery rites].” 55 Nero adopted the radiating crown as the symbol of his  sovereignty, to exemplify the rays of the Sun.

  The families of the Mithraic bloodline also contributed to the Roman  attempt to suppress a Jewish revolt which culminated in the capture of  Jerusalem. Under Roman occupation, though rebellion had been sporadic,  disturbances among the  Jews of Palestine were frequent. In 67 AD, the future  emperor  Vespasian and his son  Titus arrived with the  Fifteenth Apollonian Legion, which had fought against the Parthians in  Armenia , and captured Galilee.  Jerusalem fell in 70 AD when 97,000  Jews according to Josephus were  taken captive. 56   Jerusalem was destroyed, the Temple itself was sacked and the  sacred contents of the Holy of Holies, were carried back to Rome.

  The  Fifteenth Apollonian Legion (XV Apollinaris) was originally formed  by Julius Caesar in 53 BC, but was destroyed in Africa. It was again founded in 41/40 BC, by Caesar’s heir Octavian, who chose the name Apollinaris, because he worshipped  Apollo above all other gods. Following its campaign against the Jewish Revolt, the Apollonian legion then accompanied  Titus to Alexandria, where they were joined by new recruits from Cappadocia. It seems to have been a curious mix of these several elements, after the Legion had been transported to Germany, who erected            their   first temple dedicated to Mithras on the banks  of the Danube. 57