Ancient Legends, Racist Projections?

Ancient Legends, Racist Projections?

by | Mar 2, 2018 | Paradigm Revolution, The Magdalene Prophecies

Ancient Legends, Racist Projections?

In this article, I would like to discuss something disturbing when it comes to ancient legends and history. It seems there is a new type of racist attitude when it comes to local legends of various gods.

Local legends around the world attribute various achievements to gods and giants. But modern thinking ignores these local legends and attributes these achievements to the ancestors of the people living there now.

But in some ways isn’t that worse: to ignore the voices of indigenous peoples around the world and project Western scientific values onto them in the name of anti-racism? By not listening to the voices of indigenous people when it comes to the attribution of past achievements, are we projecting a new type of racism onto them instead? Do we have a case of ancient legends, racist projections? 

Preserving the memories of the gods

A few years ago I was visiting the ruins of Tulum on the Yucatan peninsula. There, literally carved in stone, are figures carved in the sides of temples that depict the gods returning to Earth. Our guide told us some of the accompanying stories that the gods were supposed to one day return to earth having lived amongst humans in the distant past.

Descending God (Tulum)

By El Comandante (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

We see a similar motif around the world. Local legends about mysterious structures say that giants or gods built something them in the distant past. This applies to everything from The Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland to the legends around Puma Punku which say that the god Viracocha and his giant servants created much of the world. A lot of myths such as those from Sumerian cultures speak of how the gods gave human beings skills such as metallurgy and even makeup.

Some of these local legends have survived to this day and are carefully preserved by indigenous cultures around the world. Yet an interesting trend is occurring whereby people who take these legends seriously are accused of being racist for not believing that the ancestors of the local people could have created marvellous structures.

Yes, there might be some actual white supremacists amongst them but I would argue that it is actually racist to dismiss the voice and agency of the local peoples and cultures that have so carefully preserved this heritage. Just because it does not suit the current Western scientific paradigm to accept that gods and giants lived amongst us in the distant past and built certain monuments doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen and it is insulting to the people whose histories contain such stories.

Dismissing indigenous agency and science

What is worse is that people who do believe the local legends are accused of being racist because they are not giving the credit for these great feats to the local people. But by dismissing the voice and agency of local people I think it is actually another offence. It is yet another projection of the way we want people of other cultures to be, but may not reflect who they actually are. In a way, it is yet another colonialist, paternalistic attitude which yet again removes the agency from people.

When I was in Japan in 2008 at the Hokkaido summit for Shifting the Assumptions in Science, one of the main points we discussed was that the science of various indigenous peoples of the world needs to be respected. Too often their scientific ideas are dismissed as primitive, when they may actually be more in tune with how the universe actually is: not how we are projecting it to be.

So for example when aboriginal legends discuss the Dreamtime as an aspect of the universe with no end or beginning – that sounds very much like higher dimensions beyond space and time. Just because it sounds different from modern physics doesn’t make it any less real when it comes to how the universe works.

I have made a little video to illustrate the issue of this new type of projection. By writing this article and making this video, I hope that more people can become aware of this and move through it. Please leave your comments below and tell me what you think.

Images: Wikimedia Commons, Pixabay,  Vyond

Is this a lost temple to the giants?

Is this a lost temple to the giants?

by | Apr 28, 2017 | Paradigm Revolution, The Magdalene Prophecies

We live in a society influenced by the Bible and in most people’s minds, the classic biblical monarchs such as David and Solomon evoke a golden age of Israel: of wisdom, wealth and sophistication.

So it comes as a shock to most people to find out that despite over half a century of archaeological searching, we still cannot find any evidence of a monarchy at the time of King David. No palaces, no temples, no infrastructure, no masses of court records and as one archaeologist said, we cannot even find the garbage! It just did not exist at that time in that place.

Of course, people do argue that because the Temple mound, where the Dome of the Rock is currently situated, cannot be excavated, we are unable to confirm if the original Temple of Solomon which used to be the centre of the Jewish faith, actually existed there.

But even so, we would expect to find the artefacts of a great kingdom that existed in the area; an organised society like that simply leaves its mark, but we have found nothing.

This has led some leading experts to rewrite the Biblical stories understanding them to be greatly exaggerated. According to the archaeological evidence, the area around Jerusalem was just sparsely populated highlands at the supposed time of King David.

Le courronnement de David.Paris psalter (BnF MS Grec 139), folio 6v
National Library of France. Public Domain

So according to some scholars, the great monarch becomes a tribal chieftain with a band of tribal warriors instead of armies. This may be far from the sumptuous riches that the Bible describes, but it fits the picture that we see in the actual evidence.

I find this idea quite strange. Not because I am religious (I am not) or because I have a need to glorify these kings – these were not the heroes of my childhood. I find it odd that King David – such a flawed character would be pure fiction. He is murderous, conniving and backstabbing to the point where even his own sons rise up against him.

Far from being the happy succession from father to son, we tend to assume happened, Solomon was not King David’s eldest son but the son of the woman he spied from the rooftops who was married to someone else. David had the husband out of the way and got his wife Bathsheba pregnant. (So much for ‘you shall not commit adultery or murder’!)

I just don’t think it is human nature to provide a character to your glorious made-up ancestral King and make him into such a nasty piece of work. The fact that there are two versions of the story of King David in the bible and one has been sanitised shows that someone was indeed embarrassed at his antics at some point.

It started me wondering if the stories have not been transplanted from another place and time and brought to Jerusalem in the memories of another people. Could it be that we have been looking for evidence in the wrong place.

I find it very intriguing that although nothing like the Temple of Solomon or his kingdom can be found in Jerusalem and the ancient Kingdom of Judah, further north there exists a temple that fits the description of the Temple of Solomon very closely. This is the Ain Dara Temple in Syria and it has some very interesting features.

Its measurements, the way in which it is decorated and its layout greatly resembles the Temple of Solomon in the Bible. There are other Temples in the area which are of a similar style. And in contrast to Judah in the south at this time, the writing of a great civilisation has been found: for example over 20,000 clay tablets at the site of Ebla or Tell Mardikh also near Aleppo in Syria. Here we do find temples, palaces and a lot of writing.

By Odilia (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or FAL], via Wikimedia Commons

Could it be that the stories we see in the Bible are actually memories of people who migrated from north to south? They just transplanted their memories of the glory days to their new habitat.

The Old Testament only started to be written down after the time of the Babylonian exile in 700s BC. The people we now call ‘Jews’ had just been through a massive humiliation. They needed to rally round and write down their history in order to unite under a common story. This was possibly when stories which were originally about what we now call Syria were simply incorporated into the narrative of the people who lived in Judah.

Was it possible that the ones who had migrated from the north brought their stories with them and transplanted them? If so it gives a very interesting slant on what else can be found at Ain Dara.

Because almost as if a god or goddess had entered the temple, the footprints actually exist of what appears to be a giant being. Now the Old Testament does indeed mention giants on some occasions. We are also rediscovering many reports from around the world in the last 200 years especially of giant skeletons having been found.

Could Ain Dara be evidence that the Bible and other giant myths are true? Could the temple be a site where an actual giant god mentioned in the bible was present? I am going to be discussing more about these ideas in the forthcoming book and mystery school so stay tuned.

Image: By Odilia (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or FAL], via Wikimedia Commons

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