SG 3. Decoding the Myths

 

Like any Christian, I knew well the legend of Lucifer, the angel who tried to take his father’s throne, but was defeated by his brother, the archangel Michael, and then exiled to Earth with his acolytes. Although it sounds good this tale of intrigues, betrayals and divine wars, looking a little like the Star Wars movie series, something was missing. First of all, the logic. Why would that angel try to overthrow an omnipotent god? If we, the humans, know that there is no being who can match Him, let alone beat Him, how come Lucifer, a superior entity, didn’t knew that? Or perhaps he knew that the biblical God is not as strong as we are told, an idea wich results from the rest He needed after He created the world. If so, it means that religions are founded on lies. Besides this, other queries have appeared. Why did Lucifer wanted the throne? Why God did not fought him, preferring to send Michael in His place? Where was Jesus at that time? Why God exiled Lucifer to Earth and not on other planet? Why He made the mankind on the same planet where He imprisoned the fallen angels? Why He let Lucifer hurt people if He loves them so much and He take care of them? Why Lucifer will be punished only at the end of the world and not earlier? All these questions fade away before a more important fact: Lucifer does not exist in the Bible! His legend and his name were born after the misinterpretation of few verses from two biblical chapters, 14th of the Book of Isaiah and 28th of the Book of Ezekiel. If Lucifer is not in the Bible, how did he appeared in Christianity? It was invented because it was needed an evil character to keep the believers in constant fear? This makes sense, being already known that the fear is the most efficient method of control. Besides, there is not even a single proof of the existence of the biblical Jesus in Palestine two millennia ago, which strengthens the logical conclusion that the Bible is just a collection of invented stories, as we shall see in the chapters to come, thus being explained the many errors and contradictions it contains.

However I could not fully accept this hypothesis, even if it is the most logical. What is logical is not always true, as they say. I didn’t because I found Jesus, Lucifer and God in other people’s myths, hidden behind different names and stories, at least on the surface. Although Jesus never lived two millennia ago and was invented just to give birth to a new religion, the character he copied is found in all the lost religions. Also his father, his earthly mother, the enemy Lucifer and other characters from the Christian mythology. Given the spread of these events and characters in space and time, there are great chances for the legends to contain at least a pile of truth, truth that we can try to find out by decoding the accounts of our forefathers, that today we label as myths, legends or fairy tales.

„A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes” said American poet and novelist James Feibleman. In Aspects of the myth, Mircea Eliade wrote: „The myth tells a sacred story, it recount an event that took place during the primordial time, in the fabulous time of the beginnings”. Philosopher and historian Ananda Kentish Coomarasswamy wrote in Hinduism and Buddhism: „Myth embodies the nearest approach to absolute truth that can be stated in words”. For the philosopher Karl Jaspers, the myths carry messages and encrypted symbols, left to us to be encoded. And Vasile Lovinescu said in The Esoteric Interpretation of Some Romanian Fairy Tales and Popular Ballads: „The fairy tale contains true knowledge, even if they are encrypted, but existing from ancient times. The essence of the fairy tale is true today and it will be forever”. In ancient Greek, the word „mythos” („myth” in English) means „word, account, story”. Therefore, even if today they are considered fiction, at their birth the myths were primitive reports that exposed real events experienced by people of those times. Let’s not forget that Homer’s Iliad was considered fiction and Troy a mythical place until 1868, when the amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered the ruins of Troy in Turkey. Unable to ignore the traces of a devastating war that led to the destruction of the city, just as in Homer’s book, many could not but wonder: if the Iliad proved to be true at least partially, what other truths hide in everything we call mythology?

In order to understand what our forefathers are telling us, we only have to open our minds and give up any kind of religious or evolutionary indoctrination. Apparently different, the legends of all peoples, since the ancient times, speak of the same events and characters. Even if they are still ignored by most, being classified as fiction, the legends hide the true history of the Earth. Modified by the multitude of religions and the aims of their representatives, the legends have managed to keep enough clues to help us understand better who the gods are, why we have been created and how we have been used over the millennia. Extracting the essence of the myths and combining it with the archaeological, historical and other branches of science discoveries, we can put together enough pieces of a puzzle with too many gaps. And perhaps we may be able to get an idea as close as possible to the truth about the world we live in.

The main characters of our hidden history are a few. Their real names are not known and probably it will never be known to us. Their names we know are merely epithets. Although we have not been able to decipher all of them, every name has a meaning, usually representing a feature of the wearer. Why can not we find out the real names of the gods, assuming they have names? Since ancient times there is the belief that the name is power and knowing the name of someone means to have power over that person. For example, in exorcism, the exorcist first tries to find out the name of the demon that he is dealing with in order to gain power over him. The biblical King Solomon did likewise. In Clavicula Salomonis it is said that the first thing the king did when he summoned demons was to try to find out their names. The ancient Egyptians used very often in their current speech the name of the god Amon, as the Greek historians recorded, considering that the invocation of the name will succeed in persuading the deity to make his appearence. This process has been implemented in all types of invocation rituals in both religions and occultism. Many Christians, especially Romanians, avoid using the Devil’s name for fear they will attract him in their lives. Instead, invoking the divine name is the essence of the liturgies. For example, on the Saturday Vespers it is sung: „Beholding the Resurrection of the Christ (…) Your name we call” and at the liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom it is said: „Your name we call (…) Blessed be the name of the Lord”. Every Christian receives a name following a ritual, the Baptism, which is done in the name of the divine Trinity. And the Christians exorcists claim the evil spirits are tormented by the name of Jesus.

One Egyptian legend tells that the supreme god Ra was known by many names, but he also had a secret name that he did not shared it with anyone because the one who knew it could acquire the absolute power of the god. The goddess Isis tricked him and found out the secret name, which she then revealed to her son, Horus. The old god asked them both to preserve the secret and not to use the power of his name. It seems that Isis and Horus kept their word, as Ra remained until the end at the head of the pantheon. Gaining power by knowing the name is found at the beginning of the Bible, where Adam named both animals and his consort, Eve, to master them. For this reason, the prohibition of pronouncing the divine names has appeared in some cultures. Around 150 AD, the Hebrew scholar Abba Saul ben Batnit misunderstood a command from Leviticus: „Whoever blasphemes the name of Yahweh shall surely be put to death”. He proclaimed that even uttering the holy name should be punished by death. Since then, for some time, the reading of the god’s name was avoided during religious processions. The name written in Hebrew as „YHWH” was combined with the vowels of the word „Adonai” („Lord”), the result of „Yehowah” (modernized as „Jehovah”) being used to read the name of the biblical god. Abba Saul was not the first Jew who appealed to this interdiction. Shortly before him, in the first century AD, historian Flavius ​​Josephus wrote: „Then Yahweh told him his name, which he had not spoke to any man. This name I am not allowed to speak”. Later, in Islam, a similar rule was applied to the name of the god Allah, to those of other religions being forbidden to utter it, regardless of context. The Sumerians used to frequently replace the names of the gods with numbers representing the ranks of those deities. This process has been adopted by many other cultures, numerology becoming an important part of the religions due to the equalization of the names of the gods with numbers.

The importance of the divine names is found also in the Bible. In the Old Testament, Yahweh’s name is written 6,828 times. In the 3rd of the Ten Commandments given to Moses, the god ordered: „You shall not misuse the name of Yahweh, your God, for Yahweh will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name” (Exodus 20:7). Before this episode, in Exodus 3:13, Moses wanted to know the name of his god, so that he could tell it to the Israelites. The god declined his identity by stating: „Ehyeh asher Ehyeh”, which is translated correctly as „I am the one called Ea”, not „I am that I am”, the preferred version of the translators who tries to conceal a Babylonian name attributed to the Jewish god. In front of the giant Goliath, shepherd David sought protection in the name of his god: „Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord Sabaoth, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied” (1 Samuel 17:45). „The desire of our soul is to thy name, and to the remembrance of thee” (Isaiah 26:8), the prophet Isaiah sigh.

The New Testament often emphasizes the importance of the name invoking. The apostle Paul wrote: „That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Romans 10:9). Also the apostle Peter: „whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Acts 2:21). In the Lord’s Prayer, dedicated to the heavenly god, it is said from the beginning „Hallowed be thy name” (Matthew 6:9). Even Jesus taught his disciples: „If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it” (John 14:14) and „your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you” (John 15:16). About the name of Jesus, Paul said: „Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name” (Philippians 2:9). His name was not randomly chosen, but was imposed on Joseph by the angel who appeared to him in a dream: „And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus” (Matthew 1:21). In the last biblical book, Revelation, the 144,000 chosen had „his Father’s name written in their foreheads” (14:1) and the servants of Jesus „shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads” (22:4).

In the text Asclepius from the Corpus Hermeticum, Hermes Trismegistus said about the name of the supreme god: „God is the Father, the universal Ruler – or whatever other name yet more holy and religious may be given to Him – and which, because of our intelligence, ought to be held sacred between us; but, in considering His divinity, we cannot define Him by any such name. For the voice is a sound resulting from the concussion of the Air, and declaring the will of man, or the impression that his mind has received through the senses. This name, composed of a determined number of syllables, serving as a token between the voice and the ear, and, moreover, sensation, breath, Air, all that is concerned with, and be

longing to its expression – these convey this name of God, and I do not think that a name, however complex it maybe, is able to designate the Principle of all majesty, the Father and Lord of all things. Nevertheless, it is necessary to give Him a name, or rather every name, since He is one and all; therefore we must say either that All is His name, or we must call Him by the names of all things”. (20:1-2).

The Romanians call the supreme god „Dumnezeu”, which is not his real name, as the majority think, but an epithet composed of the words „Doamne” („Lord”) and „zeu” („God”). The Romanian „Dumnezeu” comes from the name of the supreme divinity to the Greeks, Zeus, who in turn comes from that of the Indian Dyaus Pitar, the father of the gods. The Greeks turned it into Dzeus Pater then in Zeus, and the Romans in Iuppiter or Iupiter. In the Germanic languages, the name has a different form: „God” in English and Dutch, „Gutt” in German or „Gud” in Norwegian, Swedish and Danish. Researchers have determined that the source of these names is the proto-german „gudan”, whose origin remains unknown. In reality, it is the Sumerian „heavenly bull”, composed of „gud” („bull”) and „an” („heaven”). In the Latin languages, the divine name has another form because it comes from a different root. In order to designate their gods and, after renouncing the polytheism, the supreme god, the ancient Greeks combined the name of Dzeus / Zeus with one derived from that of Djehuty (the god of wisdom for the Egyptians), which they called Thoth, Thot or Thout. Thus, the new supreme god received the name „Theos”, which in Latin became „Deus”, of which we now have „Dieu” in French, „Dio” in Italian and „Dios” in Spanish. But none of them represent the true name of the god.

Considering the importance given to names by most ancient cultures, their adaptation to other languages seems illogical. Just as the Greeks did, for example, who adapted to their own language almost all the foreign names they met. For this reason, I preferred to use in this book the original names of the characters, as they are found in the old writings. Given that the New Testament was written in Greek, and the biblical scholars could not decide whether the names of the characters were Hebrew or Aramaic, I preferred to let the New Testament names as it appeared in the Greek original. In the table below I wrote the names of some biblical characters in four variants, as they appear in the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Quran and their adaptation to English:

The Old Testament (Hebrew)	The New Testament (Greek)	The Quran (Arabic)	English
Yahweh	Theos	Allah	God
Yeșu’a	Iesous	Isa / Yasu	Jesus
Mașiah	Khristos	al-Masih	Christ
Mikha’el	Mikhael	Mikha’il	Michael
Gabri’el	Gabriel	Jibrayil	Gabriel
Hawwah	Eua	Hawwa	Eve
Qayin	Kain	Qabeel	Cain
Hebel	Abel	Habeel	Abel
Șet	Seth	Sheeth	Seth
Hanok	Enoch	Idris / Akhnukh	Enoch
Noah	Noe	Nuh	Noah
Avram / Avraham	Abraam	Ibrahim	Abraham
Yișma’el	Ismael	Isma’il	Ishmael
Yișaq	Isaak	Ishaq	Isaac
Ya’aqob	Iakobos	Ya’aqub	Jacob
Esaw	Hesau	Isaw	Esau
Yehudah	Ioudas	Yahudha	Judas
Yosep	Ioseph	Yusuf	Joseph
Șimșon	Samson	Șamșun	Samson
Șa’ul	Saulos	Sha’ul	Saul
Dawid	David	Dawud	David
Șelomo	Solomon	Sulayman	Solomon
Moșeh	Moyses	Musa	Moses
Yehoșu’a	Iesous	Yusha	Joshua
Eliyahu	Elias	Ilyas / Ilya	Elijah
Elișa	Elissaios / Elisaie	Alyasa	Elisha
Yeșa’yahu	Esaias	Ish’iya	Isaiah
Y’hez’qel	Iezekiel	Hizqeel	Ezekiel
Daniyyel	Daniel	Daniyal	Daniel
Yirmiyahu	Ieremias	Irmiya	Jeremiah
Iyyob	Iob	Ayyub	Job
Yona	Ionas	Yunus / Yunan	Jonah
Ezra	Esdras	Uzair	Ezra
Șim’on	Simon	Sim’an	Simon
Pol	Paulos	Bulus	Paul
Matityahu	Matthaios	Matta	Matthew
Yohanan / Yehohanan	Ioannes	Yahya	John
Elior	Loukas	Luqa	Luke
bar-Tolmay	Bartholomaios	Barthulmawus	Bartholomew
Miriam	Maria	Maryam	Mary

We can not know whether or not the names have real power. We can not even know if the gods really have secret names that they keep hidden. Assuming they have, their concealment does not prevent us from reaching our goal of finding out the true history of the Earth, which can help us understand our present and shape our future. For this we must first identify the main gods in the multitude of existing religions from ancient times to today, all built around the same characters.