Chapter II
The Lower Garden, Behemoth and Leviathan
And the saints shall rest in Eden, and in the New Jerusalem shall the righteous rejoice, and it shall be unto the glory of God for ever…(Testament of Dan 2:12).
The earliest map of Eden
There are, scattered throughout all the ancient texts and prophetic books, hints of the whereabouts of the garden of Eden, and talk of two more-distantly mythological creatures, the great Ox, Behemoth, and the equally great Dragon, Leviathan. (Job 40 and 41). Our interest in these things was sparked sometime ago, in the early 1960s, in an article in the Sunday section of one of Jacksonville, Florida's daily newspapers. The subject of the article, Elvy E. Callaway of Bristol, Florida, after describing the nature of his work--a search for the actual location of the garden of Eden by comparing topographical images, and other data concerning all the places on earth suspected of being the site, with the description of it in Genesis 2:7-17--rejected all possibilities but one. He concluded in a book entitled In the Beginning, that the only place on earth fitting the description from both a geographical and geological point of view (and may we now add the historical point of view), was the region and the river-system that lays along the Florida-Georgia-Alabama border in the southeastern corner of the United States...
Look South...(Ezekiel 20:46-49 KJV)
Hearing no more of this work, only keeping those things in that place in our minds where curious things are stored, we thought no more of it--until 1975, when from these same hills and forests came James Carter, a candidate for the office of President of the United States. (A "born-again christian" vying to become the most powerful man on earth)? (Matthew 4:8-10). Now how curious did this notion of the garden's whereabouts become, especially after we learned that the original name of Plains, Georgia, is Plain of Dura, Georgia, a name derived from the third chapter of the Book of Daniel. (Daniel 3:1). And then, because the garden has traditionally been associated with the eastern regions of ancient Babylon, and the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, and because the Book of Daniel (as well as Ezekiel) was written as a result of the people's captivity in that region in the 6th century B.C., the mystery of the Mystery of Babylon itself began to demand our attention. (Revelation, chapters 17, and 18; Isaiah 13, 14, and 47; Jeremiah 50, and 51) We began to search the Scriptures, and the history of our times in general, for possible connections between these things, to see if there were some timely meanings hidden there. (After all, were not multitudes of people everywhere sensing the signs of the times? and if rightly so, then it follows that the Scriptures must be being fulfilled in light of them. And not having any prior indoctrination, or preconceived notions about how to read the scriptures [Catholics you know], we were free to follow them where they would take us).
We learned that both the prophets Daniel (according to the Hebrew legends) and Ezekiel fulfilled their ministries in Babylon, but were especially caught by such phrases as: Go thy way, Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end...(Daniel 12:9; Revelation 5:1). And by the fact that Ezekiel himself is chided by the Jews: The vision that he seeth is for many days to come, they said, and he prophesieth of times that are far off. And they, in their own erring ways, were right. Ezekiel responds, however, very cryptically, by saying: Yet the days are at hand, and the effect of every vision...(Ezekiel 12:22-28). To our minds this passage says: It is true, I am prophesying of times that are afar off, and of things that will come to pass in the West in the last days; but so that you will understand that all things East and West are a reflection of each other, and that the truth of all things resides in the Center, waiting to be discovered, those things that will happen in the West in a great and historic way, will happen right here (or there) in the East in a lesser and more obscure way. And so likewise, those words that we in our time imagine apply only to those ancient times, actually apply to our own…
Measure the time diligently in itself, and when thou seest part of the signs past, which I have told thee before,
Then shalt thou understand that it is the very same time, wherein the Highest will begin to visit the world which He made.
Therefore when there shall be seen earthquakes and uproars of people in the world:
Then shalt thou understand, that the Most High spake of these things from the days that were before thee, even from the beginning.
For like as all that is made in the world hath a beginning and an end, and the end is manifest:
Even so the times of the Highest have plain beginnings in wonders and powerful works, and endings in effects and signs... (2 Esdras 9:1-6).
We were especially fortified in this opinion when Ezekiel is commanded to look into the South, into the Forest of the South, and he concludes by saying: Ah Lord God! They say of me, Doth he not speak parables? (Ezekiel 20:46-49). (Matthew 3:10; 7:15-20). We also began to discover the doctrines of the Kabbalah at this time, and learned from this tradition that the Book of Ezekiel (the son of man), was not to be discussed by one with another unless the other was already versed in the mysteries themselves. We learned that this tradition of secresy reached back to the Essenes who lived even before the time of Christ, and subsequently could see the ways in which these Essenes and their disciples (this Fellowship of the Mystery as they were called), afterwards incorporated this mystery of the Book of Ezekiel and the son of man into the Gospel narratives.
Thus, from our (un-Traditional--non Kabbalistic) traditional Christian (Catholic) upbringing, with its (un-Traditional) traditionally-orthodox teachings, we were being led into a labyrinth, and into another whole way of studying the Scriptures, into an entirely different tradition, where one book lead to another, and the way outward became inward, and where the world was literally "turned upside down." (Acts 17:6).
We found that this tradition, Kabbalah, which has accompanied
the more widely-observed forms of Judaism and Christianity a-cross the times
(and for which many have suffered at the hands of the orthodox church), which
leads into the broad field of religious and scientific studies, is able to do
just this: reconcile the world's religions to each other, religion to science,
and everyone to the Universal Mystery of Christ-Metatron, the Angel of Divine
Presence, which overshadows the thinking of the whole world. But in the West,
where this Presence (the Logos) has descended to inform the human spirit, it
is revealed in the figure of the Lamb of God (the Passover Lamb), and in the
name Jesus, or Hesus, or 
.
All of this will be understood in the following chapters, as we follow all the
secret pathways that wind their way through the dimensions of the Oracle--the
World Tree--the Tree of Life--into our own times:
Please read Gershom Scholem's The Mystical Shape of the Godhead.
"The first questions which the non-kabbalistic reader will ask are: What is the Kabbalah? Who was its author? What are its general teachings? And why is a translation of it required at the present time?
I will answer the last question first. At the present time a powerful wave of occult thought is spreading through society; thinking individuals are beginning to awaken to the fact that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in their philosophy; and, last but not least, it is now felt that the Bible, which has been probably more misconstrued than any other book ever written, contains numberless obscure and mysterious passages which are utterly unintelligible without some key wherewith to unlock their meaning. That Key is given in the Kabbalah. Therefore this work should be of interest to every biblical and theological student. Let every Christian ask themselves this question: 'How can I think to understand the Old Testament if I be ignorant of the construction put upon it by that nation whose sacred book it formed; and if I know not the meaning of the Old Testament, how can I expect to understand the New?'
Were the real and sublime philosophy of the Bible better known, there would be fewer fanatics and sectarians. And who can calculate the vastness of the harm done to impressionable and excitable persons by the bigoted enthusiasts who ever and anon come forward as teachers of the people?…What farragos of sacrilegious nonsense have not been promulgated as the true meanings of the books of the Prophets, and the Apocalypse?…(They) have cast down the Sublime and Infinite One from his throne, and in his stead have placed a demon of unbalanced force; (they) have substituted a deity of disorder and of jealousy for a God of order and love; (they) have perverted the teachings of the Crucified One. The Kabbalah Unveiled, by MacGregor Mathers.
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"Very few students of religion know anything at all about the fountain-head whence their tradition springs. Many of them do not even know there is a Western Tradition. Scholarship is baffled by the intentional blinds and defences with which initiates both ancient and modern have wrapped themselves about, and concludes that the few fragments of a literature which have come down to us are mediaeval forgeries. They would be greatly surprised if they knew that these fragments, supplemented by manuscripts that have never been allowed to pass out of the hands of initiates, and completed by an oral tradition, are handed down in schools of initiation to this day, and are used as the basis of the practical work of the Yoga of the West.
The adepts of those whose destiny is to conquer the physical plane have evolved a Yoga technique of their own which is adapted to their special problems and peculiar needs. This technique is based upon the well-known but little understood Qabalah, the Wisdom of Israel…
The original stream of Hebraic mysticism has received many tributaries. We see its rise among the nomad star-worshippers of Chaldees, where Abraham in his tent among his flocks hears the voice of God. But Abraham has a shadowy background in which vast forms move half-seen. The mysterious figure of the great priest-king, 'born without father, without mother, without descent; having neither beginning of days nor end of life,' administers to him the first Eucharistic feast of bread and wine after the battle with the Kings in the valley, THE SINISTER KINGS OF EDOM, 'who ruled ere there was a king in Israel, whose kingdoms ARE 'UNBALANCED FORCE.'
Generation by generation we trace the intercourse of the princes of Israel with the priest-kings of Egypt. Abraham and Jacob went thither; Joseph and Moses were intimately associated with the court of the royal adepts. When we read of Solomon sending Hiram, King of Tyre, for men and materials to aid in the building of the Temple we know that the famous Tyrian Mysteries must have profoundly influenced the Hebrew esotericism. When we read of Daniel being educated in the palaces of Babylon we know that the wisdom of the Magi must have been accessible to Hebrew illuminati…
It was not until the fifteenth century, when the power of the Church was beginning to show signs of weakening, that men dared to commit to paper the traditional Wisdom of Israel. Scholars declare that the Qabalah is a mediaeval forgery because they cannot trace a succession of manuscripts, but those who know the manner of working of esoteric fraternities know that a whole cosmogony and psychology can be conveyed in a glyph which means nothing to the uninitiated. These strange old charts could be handed on from generation to generation, their explanation being communicated verbally, and the true interpretation would never be lost. When in doubt as to the explanation of some abstruse point, reference would be made to the sacred glyph, and meditation thereon would unfold what generations of meditation had ensouled therein. It is well known to mystics that if one meditates upon a symbol around which certain ideas have been associated by past meditation, they will obtain access to those ideas, even if the glyph has never been elucidated to them…'by mouth to ear.' The Mystical Qabalah, by Dion Fortune.
If we strike a direct line from where we now believe the lower garden of Eden to be, here in America, eastward, it arrives in time in those regions of Palestine in the Middle East, the very land into which these mysteries were carried in ancient times. And when we lay the lower (Left-hand) side of the World Tree on top of this line, we see that this line now divides two realms from each other: the higher mysteries from the lower. It divides the precincts of that city made of Stone below, and also those pyramids made of Stone in Egypt, from the higher realizations that were hidden above, of which the Stone Tablets and the Law of Moses are also a direct reflection. Nor must we fail to consider the great Pyramids and temple structures that were also built to the West and just below this line in the Americas. All of it together points to those things that were hidden in the higher, transcendent world by those adepts who were spread throughout the earth in those ancient times:
Lay the lower, Left hand side of the Oracle directly on top of the line that leads from Eden to Palestine.
The Universal Pyramid and the Mystery of the Cross...Revelation 11:8.
The center of this structure, the place named Tipheret and numbered Six on the Tree of Life, is the focus, as we shall see, of the entire World Mystery. It is not situated in the Middle East--in the place the world is presently calling Israel--nor are these mysteries centered in the land the world presently thinks of as Egypt, for there is both a Higher Israel and a Higher Egypt...(Revelation 11:8...KJV).
The material sun reaches its highest point over the pyramids in present-day Egypt, just as the Spiritual Sun (as we shall shortly see) attains its zenith over the center of the Oracle, in the center of Europe. This place at the center of the Oracle is the True Sinai, or Horeb (Exodus, chapter 19), and to see it is to immediately enter into that higher state of mind that separates the lower Egypt and the Egyptians from the true spiritual Israel and the true Promised Land. For the Promised Land is not in the spiritual, or the prophetic, sense land at all, but a promised State of Mind, one that transcends the things of the earth, and the things of this age, and the whole material universe altogether.
Now if the garden of Eden (and the roots of the Tree of Life--the Foundation of this whole epic, historical drama) is really in the West, how did its whereabouts become associated with all those different regions in the East, Assyria, Babylon (Chaldea), and even Ethiopia? And we discover by studying deep into history that the traditions of the ancient religion of Adam (Manu) were brought to these places during the age of the ancient adepts (during the closing centuries of the Atlantean era--the age of the Ten mythical kings: Adam to Noah in the Hebrew texts), along with the names of Western places. Not only were these names and emerging traditions brought to the East and replanted there in Mesopotamia, but they were carried by historical forces into India and sown deep into the historical consciousness of the Vedic peoples. And they were taken down to Egypt and built into the pyramids (not necessarily by those who any longer understood their fullest and highest meanings), The Shemite religion (Semitism) has its roots in the West, and was brought to the East and affixed into the languages and the thinking of the peoples of the East. Like a small stream running into a river, and then to the ocean, so the religion of Adam/Manu (a theological system of developing monotheism), began to fill the world with itself. (The process is not fully complete yet).
And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from thence it parted and became into Four heads... (Genesis 2:10-14).
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"Now the garden was watered by One river which ran round about the whole earth, and it was parted into Four parts. And Phison, which denotes a multitude, running into India, makes its exit into the sea, and is by the Greeks called GANGES. (Thus the teachings of Adam/Manu found there way into the entire structure of Vedic philosophy).
EUPHRATES also, as well as TIGRIS, goes down into the Red Sea (which we shall see, according to this purely apocryphal, but factual account of the four rivers, eventually becomes the Pacific Ocean, as well as all the other oceans of the world. For the Red Sea--as we shall see in a moment--is where the great Red Serpent lives, and this creature comprises all the peoples and nations that inhabit the body of the great Continent, Leviathan). Now the name Euphrates, or Prath, denotes either a dispersion, or a Flower; By Tigris, or Diglath, is signified what is swift with narrowness (as these mysteries being swept through the narrow place at the center of the Oracle, from West to East in those ancient times)…
And Geon runs through Egypt, and denotes what arises from the East, which the Greeks call NILE." Josephus's Antiquities I.I.3.
The precepts of these mysteries were collected from the time of Moses onwards, according to all the dictates of the ancient wisdom, and sewn into the Torah. As such they went abroad in two forms, a written and an oral. It was this Oral Tradition, the hidden, epic meanings behind the written, that energized the thoughts and writings of the prophets and philosophers of the classical age. In time these meanings were collected again, in the Gospels. Then, not only did they go abroad again in the Mystery of Christ (which is the hidden meaning of all the types and images contained in the Torah), but following the path of this great Solar/Lunar epic, they have returned to the lower Eden, carrying in them the hopes and aspirations, and the beliefs of all the peoples of the earth.
"God said to Adam, I have ordained on this earth days and years, and thou and thy seed shall dwell and walk in it, until the days and years are fulfilled; when I shall send the Word that created thee, and against which thou hast transgressed, and that raised thee when thou wast fallen. The Word that will again save thee when the FIVE DAYS and A HALF are fulfilled…Then God in His mercy for Adam who was made after his own image and similitude, explained to him, that these were 5,000 and 500 years; and how one would come and save him and his seed." 1 Adam and Eve 3:1-6.
Ex. 23:19-33; Deut. 6:1-12; 7:1-6; Josh. 1:1-11; Psalm 106; 1 Cor. 10.
Open the Book of Ecclesiastes at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries.
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh, but the earth abides forever.
The Sun also ariseth, and the Sun goeth down, AND HASTETH TO THE PLACE WHERE HE AROSE.
The Wind turneth toward the South, and turneth about unto the North; it whirleth about continually, AND THE WIND RETURNETH AGAIN ACCORDING TO ITS CIRCUITS. (see John 3:1-12).
All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; UNTO THE PLACE FROM WHENCE THE RIVERS COME, THITHER THEY RETURN AGAIN.
All things are full of labour; men cannot utter it, the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
The thing that hath been, is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the Sun.
Is there anything whereof it may be said, See this is new (the New World?) It hath been already of old time, which was before us... (Ecclesiastes 1:4-10).
We will not go to great extremes here to explain the differences that exist between the Holy Commonwealth of Israel--the epic Nation comprised of souls from all other nations--and the present-day nations of Britain and America. Some have grossly confused them because they are sojourning through this time in history together. They are as apart as the Holy Spirit in man is from the body it occupies, or as the Higher Mind is from the lower form it occupies. The British founders of the American nation are the spiritual heirs of the sons of Tyre, or Tyrus, their Pheonician forbears who sailed out of ancient Britain and America long before they colonized the Mediterranean Sea; whose historic task it was to guard the old sea-lanes back to Eden. (Ezekiel, chapters 26 to 28). The very act of guarding the sea-lanes from the rest of the world was itself a metaphor for the fact that the meanings of the oracles were being concealed. But as the knowledge and significance of these things disappeared from the recollections of those who were charged with keeping them, iniquity appeared. The Phoenicians went from guarding the Mystery of God to guarding their trade routes, and fell from the Light into the Warring Darkness. These are the sons of Darkness, the present leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Modern Atlantis), (1 Thessalonians 5:1-13). Even up to the time of the colonial period we find this Dark Cherubic nation thrashing and driving the French and Spanish (not to mention the native inhabitants), away from the eastern regions of America, and away from the garden. (Several excellent works on the subject include the recent, Sailing to Paradise, The Discovery of the Americas by 7,000 BC, by Jim Baily; Lost Cities of North & Central America, by David Hatcher Childress; and Atlantis/Europe: The Secret of the West, by Dmitri Merejkowski).
Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus (ancient Britain), and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.
Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God…
Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; I have set thee so; thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.
Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee…By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire... (Ezekiel 28:11-16).
(The other Dark Cherub is Cyrus, Japan…Isaiah 45. These two island kingdoms are known as Tyrus and Cyrus...Please see the chapter entitled Tyrus and Cyrus in the Addendum to this work).
Thus the Scriptures say: Beware, lest that light in thee be darkness, then how great the darkness. How great is the Darkness that overshadows and pervades the American state of mind. For no soul can serve both together, the higher precepts of the Israel of God and the fallen notions of the nations of men. (Matthew 6:23,24). We see that the Spirit has also committed all these things to the doctrines of the Masonic order, while hiding them at the same time from the mind of the Masonic order (the modern Knights Templars) itself. They also inspired William Blake to write: To The Jews…
"Jerusalem the Emanation of Giant Albion! Can it be? Is it the truth that the learned have explored? Was Britain the primitive seat of the Patriarchal Religion? If it is true, my title page is also true, that Jerusalem was & is the Emanation of the Giant Albion.
It is true and cannot be controverted. Ye are united O ye inhabitants of the earth, in One Religion, the Religion of Jesus, (Jehoshua, Hesus), the Most Ancient, the Eternal and Everlasting Gospel. The Wicked will turn it to wickedness, the Righteous to righteousness, Amen! Huzza! Selah!
All things begin and end in Albion's Ancient Druid Rocky Shore.
Your ancestors derived their origins from Abraham, Heber, Shem, and Noah, who were Druids, as the Druid Temples (which are the patriarchal Pillars and Oak Groves) over the whole earth witness to today.
You have a tradition that Man anciently contained in his mighty limbs all things in Heaven and Earth: this you received from the Druids…But now the Starry Heavens are fled from the limbs of Albion…(Blake).
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God filleth all things with Wisdom, as Phison and Tigris in the time of the New Fruits. (See James 1:18).
He maketh Understanding to abound like Euphrates, and as Jordan in the time of the Harvest. (In the West).
He maketh the doctrine of Knowledge to appear as Light, and as Geon in the time of vintage.
The first man knew her not perfectly, no more shall the last find her out.
For Her thoughts are more than the Sea, and Her counsels profounder than the Great Deep.
I also came out as a brook from a river, and as a conduit into a garden,
I said I will water my best garden, and will water abundantly my garden bed. and, lo, my brook became a river, and my river became a sea.
And I will yet pour out doctrine as prophecy, and leave it to all ages together... (Ecclesiasticus 24:23-34), (KJV).
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"The spirit in thee is a river. Its sacred bathing place is contemplation. Its waters are truth; its banks are holiness; its waves are love. Go to that river for purification. Thy soul cannot be made pure by mere water…" (Sanskrit Book of Stories).
The historic process was involved. The ancient adepts instructed the world, and the world in turn informed the mind of Israel. If one were to study, say, The Golden Bough, by James Frazer, the Greek myths, by Robert Graves, or The Masks of God, by Joseph Campbell, or any other work like these, and compare them to the unfolding elements of these Oral traditions which are based squarely in the Law and the Prophets, they would find them deriving one from another, pagan mythology from Hebrew, thus Hebrew in part from "pagan" again. And by this we mean they would find the structure of these mythologies to be the same, and each to have their origins in the West, in the hidden isles beyond the North Wind.
What is it then that set the Universal Israel apart from the other nations? Well first let us agree that immediately after the time of Moses and Jehoshua, when the Scriptures say that Israel came up out of Egypt, it disappears from history. Where did it go? Despite its own written record it cannot be found among the other nations until just prior to the Christian era. Nor are the handful of shards that have been found with words or names on them in Palestine sufficient to prove Israel's actual political existence at that time. First of all the written traditions of Israel were indeed being composed against the backdrop of other historical events (even without the participants in these events knowing that they were being included in another story), such as Homer's story of Troy and the Wars of the Hebrew Kings having the same basis of fact in one another (fact embellished throughout with mythological and epic content).
If the history of Israel were literally true as it has come down to us in the Hebrew writings, or rather, if the story was actually centered in Palestine as we suppose it to have been, there should be museums and warehouses filled with its artifacts. The lack of such should suggest that Israel was not a singular power as we understand such things on a political scale, that it was not the Islamic empire that we envision it to be, cutting a bloody trail through the land of Promise and literally destroying all who stood in the way. But rather it was a school of Thought (even in those times), a religious philosophy, whose exploits were performed, not on the literal field of battle but in the field of allegory and metaphor, and whose sword has always been the Sword of the Spirit and the Word of God. (Ephesians 6:10-17; 2 Corinth.10:3-6). But as the hidden meanings of it all were being concealed from the world at large, and as the outer meanings were falling into the hands of ignorant teachers, and warring factions, who could no longer interpret them, this School itself became increasingly attended by fewer and fewer individuals. These adepts in the hidden science of things continued to be those whose minds, through study and communion with God, and by pure love and righteous actions, penetrated the barriers that divided the outer and inner worlds from each other. These were the Sibyls and Rishis and (shaman) prophets of old, and certain scribes, and then later, and to a limited degree, philosophers such as Pythagorus and Plato, the allegorists, and at last that fellowship of Essenes who, gathering it all back together, left us the Qumran writings, and brought to the world that set of Gnostic texts we call the Gospels...
These latter were the same Merkabah mystics who laid the foundation for such later Kabbalistic works as Sefer ha-Bahir, Sefer Yezirah, and the Zohar. It is all the same tradition, secretly winding its way here and there across the pages of history, from one side of the Oracle to the other, until it reaches all of us here in this generation. What this School possessed was in-sight, as well as epic-sight. They could sense, thus see, the Invisible Presence of God hidden within the fabric of every natural and human event. They could interpret the motions of history, the motions of the spheres as it is. They knew how to reveal and hide truth at the same time, leaving it for others to rediscover when there was need for it. They knew that revelation, like the Tree of Life itself, was alive and organic, and that it would grow up in the heart of humanity at exactly the same rate as history, and in direct proportion to the manner in which the Mind was being prepared to receive it. They also understood that there was a Light side and a Dark side to this mystery, and that both had to achieve their own perfection before all things could be fulfilled. This School possessed the additional gifts of Wisdom and Understanding, of Love and Power, of Endurance (or Victory), and in the end, when the true Messiahs appear, the gift of Majesty, as Paul wrote: For Messiah is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth... (Romans 10:1-4).
Upon the wings of this text concerning Messiah we may leap again from the Hebrew Prophets to Homer, who has naturally gotten the general drift of these things (as it seems the "Greeks" are always doing), and who also sends his hero on a journey to the Western ends of the earth and back, as it is written: Therefore, a certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return...(Luke 19:12). Homer's account, as we study Strabo's account of it, will also place the garden at the Western end of the earth. It will also reveal to the trained mind something of the methods employed by the authors of the Gospels when they committed to that One Body of writings the many things that must be fulfilled here in the West, even though we associate their occurrence with events that seemed to have happened in the East in the time of Christ:
"The science of Geography, which I propose to investigate, is, I think, quite as much as any other science, a concern of the philosopher…Wide learning, which alone makes it possible to undertake a work on geography, is possessed solely by those who have investigated things both human and divine-knowledge of which, they say, constitutes philosophy. And so too the utility of geography-and its utility is manifold, not only regards the activities of statesmen and commanders but as also regards knowledge both of the heavens and of things on land and sea…
I say we are right in regarding Homer as the founder of the science of geography…for otherwise he would not have gone to the uttermost bounds of the inhabited world, encompassing the whole of it in his description.
In the first place, Homer declares that the inhabited world is washed on all sides by Oceanus, and this is true; and then he mentioned some of the countries by name, while he leaves us to infer other countries by hints…By Erembians he probably means Arabian Troglodytes-whereas he only indicates in general terms the people who live in the far East and West by saying that their countries are washed by Oceanus, for he makes the Sun to rise out of Oceanus and set in Oceanus…As for the people of the West…he declares: 'But the deathless gods will convey thee to the Elysian Plain and the ends of the earth…' And too, the Islands of the Blessed lie to the West.
Furthermore Homer makes it plain that the Ethiopians live at the ends of the earth, when he speaks of the 'Ethiopians that are sundered in twain, the farthermost of men.' About the next verse there is a difference of opinion, Aristarchus writing: 'abiding some where Hyperion (the Sun) sets, and some where he rises,' but Crates: 'abiding both where Hyperion sets and where he rises.' FOR THIS TOO, MEANS THAT THE ETHIOPIANS (Genesis 2:13) LIVE ON BOTH SIDES OF OCEANUS, BOTH TOWARD THE EAST AND TOWARD THE WEST." The Geography of Strabo, Book I.
"Again, the men of Homer's day, in general, regarded the PONTIC Sea a kind of Oceanus, and they thought that those who voyaged thither got beyond the limits of the inhabited world just as much as those who voyaged beyond the Pillars of Hercules; The Pontic Sea (the Black Sea) was thought to be the largest of the seas in our part of the world, and for that reason they appointed to that particular sea the term 'the Pontus' just as they spoke of Homer as 'the Poet.' Perhaps it was for that reason that Homer transferred to Oceanus things that were true of the Pontus…" Book II.
Thus some things were applied to the West that seemed to have their meanings in the East. But more important is the method itself, and the way it was used by classical and biblical authors when they wrote things seemingly of the East when in reality they were referring to the West. Take the voyage of Jason (a figure of the universal Christ) for instance, in search of the Golden Fleece. What is this fleece but the coat of the Ram, and the covering of Him who is the Father of the Lamb? Why is this fleece golden in color? Because gold is the color of the Sun, and because the ancient mystery of God was hidden in the Face of the Sun, and in the motions of the Sun, from its rising in the East every morning to its setting in the West each evening.
The mighty God, even the Lord, hath spoken, and called the earth from the rising of the Sun unto the going down thereof.
Out of Zion, the Perfection of Beauty, God has shined.
Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence: a Fire (war) shall devour before Him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about Him.
He shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth, that He may judge His people.
Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant unto me by sacrifice... (Psalm 50:1-5).
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THEN SHALL THE RIGHTEOUS SHINE FORTH AS THE SUN in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears let him hear... (Matthew 13:43).
Or the story of Prometheus bound hand and foot to a "rock." All of this symbolism can be divined from the Oracle, from the Universal Mystery of Christ on the World Tree. And why was he bound? For bringing Fire to man, that is, for the sins of Adam--for making man to be as gods. (Genesis 3:22-24). This Fire, which comes to earth from heaven, from the Sun, and which burns eternally on the altar in the midst of the Temple of God, symbolizes Divine Wisdom. This knowledge of heavenly things passes from God to humanity, just as one flame is ignited by another. But when Prometheus (along with his brother, Epimetheus, Forethought and Afterthought, who together represent the beginning and the end of the entire epic), passed this Fire indiscriminately on to those who were not yet mentally and spiritually prepared to use it--evil ensued, and the 20th (and now the 21st) century is the great burning effect of it all:
"Prometheus, son of Iapetus, surpassing all in cunning, you are glad you have outwitted me and stolen Fire--a great plague to you yourself and to men that shall be. But I will give men as a price for Fire an evil in which they may be glad of heart when they embrace their own destruction." Hesiod's Works and Days.
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"They have one love and that is for weapons; ever more horrible are these weapons until they reach for the one that is ultimate. Should they use that (which they did…see Revelation 18:6-8), there will be no forgiveness in that vale where there is no turning. Using such a weapon to make man over IS REACHING INTO HEAVEN FOR THE GODHEAD." He Walked the Americas, by L.Taylor Hansen, pp.167,68.
So the elements of the entire epic, the fall and redemption, can be seen in the story of Prometheus. But for what reason would Zeus, the Earth-Shaker, Thunderbolt-Thrower (Job 37:5; 1 Samuel 2:10; Psalm 77:18-20; Haggai 2:6,7; Hebrews 12:25-29; Revelation 15:1-4) bind him to a rock in the very farthest reaches of the Pontus, unless it was to both conceal and reveal the fact that the farthest reaches of the Western Ocean (the Atlantic) were meant? Especially since his other brother Atlas was also fated to bear upon the family shoulders the entire burden of the Western world. What are these burdens but the cares of this world (along with the deceitfulness of riches). All of this is the story of Adam, whose fallen sons and daughters gave birth to an age of Giants, or Titans (Genesis 6:1-5), whose stories are all mixed together with the Hebrew story, all of whom are sitting on the thrones of empires and nations, and city-states at this very day.
While attempting one night to reconcile all these things and the history of Israel as it is recorded in Scripture, with that sliver of land we now call Palestine, which I could not, not even by allowing it to flow over its borders as it seemed to in order to accommodate certain historical events (and it is embarrassing to read the accounts of certain scholars who believe they have it all crammed in there to everyone's satisfaction), nor could I, as I mentioned before, discover anything of substance in the records of surrounding nations to support the scriptural account of Israel's own history…when a very strange and mind-startling thing occurred. While studying a map of the world the continent of Eurasia suddenly appeared to my mind's eye in the form of a dragon, a Great Dragon:
THE GREAT DRAGON, LEVIATHAN
And when I thought my imagination was carrying me away the continent of North America became the Great Ox, Behemoth:
THE GREAT OX, BEHEMOTH
(CHAPTER TWO CONTINUED)
