The Secrets of the Gods 3. Decoding the Myths

As any other Christian, I could not fail to know 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. Even if this story of intrigues, betrayals and divine wars sounds good, looking a little like the Star Wars films, there is something it lacks. Logic, firstly. Why would those angels try to dethrone an almighty god? If us, people, know there is no being capable to equal or defeat this god, how did not Lucifer, an entity greater than us, knew this? Or maybe he knew that the biblical god is not as strong as we are told, an idea resulting from the rest he needed after he created the world. If it is so, it means that religions are based on lies. In addition to this question, others have emerged. Why did Lucifer want the throne? Why did not God fight him, sending Michael instead? Where was Jesus all this time? Why did he exiled Lucifer on Earth and not on another planet? Why did he let Lucifer hurt people, if he loves them so much and wants their wellbeing? Why will the fallen angel be punished only at the end of the world and not earlier? All these questions pale before a much more important fact: Lucifer doesn’t exists in The Bible! The legend and his name appeared following the misinterpretation of verses from two biblical chapters, the fourteenth of The Book of Isaiah and the twenty-eighth of The Book of Ezekiel. If Lucifer does not exist in The Bible, how did he appeared in Christianity? Was he invented because an evil character was needed, to keep believers in constant fear? This last premise makes sense and it is an already known fact that fear is the most effective method of control. In addition, there is not even one single proof of the existence of the biblical Jesus in Palestine two millennia ago, which reinforces the logical conclusion that The Bible is merely a collection of invented stories, as we will see in future chapters, explaining the multitude of errors and contradictions it contains.

Yet I could not fully accept this hypothesis, even if it is the most logical. What makes sense is not always true, as it is said. I did not do it, because I found Jesus, Lucifer and God in the myths of other peoples hidden behind different names and events, at least on the surface. Even if Jesus did not live two millennia ago and was invented only to give rise to a new religion, the character he copied is found in all the disappeared religions and cults. The same goes for his father, his earthly mother, the enemy Lucifer and other figures in Christian mythology. Given the spread of these stories and characters throughout space and time, there is a good chance that the legends will contain at least a kernel of truth, a truth that we can try to find out by decoding our ancestors’ stories, which we call today as myths, legends or fairy tales.

„The myth is a religion in which no one believes anymore”, says American poet and novelist James Feibelman. In Aspects of the Myth (1963), Mircea Eliade notes: „The myth tells a sacred history, it reports an event that took place during the primordial time, during the fabulous beginning”. The philosopher and historian Ananda Kentish Coomaraswsamy wrote in Hinduism and Buddhism that „the myth represents the highest approximation of the truth which can be translated into words”. For the philosopher Karl Jaspers, the myths carry cipher messages and symbols, left to us for decryption. In addition, Vasile Lovinescu said in The Esoteric Interpretation of Some Romanian Folk Tales and Ballades: „fairy tales contain the true knowledge, even if it is encrypted, but existing from ancient times. The essence of the fairy tale is valid both now and in eternity”. In ancient Greek, the word „mythos” („myth” in English) meant „word, story, narration”. Therefore, even though today they are considered fictional, at their birth the myths were considered primitive reports that exposed real events experienced by the people of those times. Let us not forget that Homer’s Iliad was considered fiction and Troy was a mythical place until, in 1868, amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered the ruins of Troy in Turkey. As he could not ignore the traces of a devastating war that led to the destruction of the city, just as in Homer’s work, many could not help wondering: if Iliad proved to be at least partially true, what other truths is mythology hiding?

In order to understand what our ancestors are communicating to us, we just have to open our minds by giving up any sort of religious or evolutionary indoctrination. Although they are apparently different, the legends of all peoples, from the earliest times, have been telling about the same events and characters. Even if they are still ignored by most of the people and labeled as fiction, the legends hide the true history of Earth. Modified by the multitude of religions and the purposes of their representatives, the legends managed to keep enough clues to help us better understand who the gods are, why we were created and how we were used over the millennia. By pulling out the essence of myths, gluing it to archaeology, history and other branches of science, we can put together enough pieces of a puzzle with too many empty spaces. And maybe this will bring us as close as possible to the truth about the world we live in.

The main characters of our hidden history are a few. Their actual names are not known and will probably never be known to us. The names under which we know them are but epithets. Although we have not managed to decipher all of them, not even today, each name has a meaning, usually representing an attribute of the one who bears it. Why we cannot know the real names of the gods, assuming they have names? Ever since the earliest times there has been a belief that the name means power and the person who knows the name of a person has power over that person. For instance, in exorcism, the exorcist first tries to find out the name of the demon with which he is dealing, in order to gain power over him. The biblical king Solomon did the same. In Clavicula Salomonis it is said that the first thing the king did when he invoked demons was to try to find out their names. Ancient Egyptians used the name of god Ammon very often in their current speech, as Greek historians have noted, believing that invocation of the name would convince the god to make an appearance. This procedure has been taken over in all types of invocation rituals in both religions and occultism. Many Christians, especially the Romanians, avoid using the name of Devil, for fear they will draw him into their lives. Instead, the invocation of the divine name constitutes the essence of the liturgies. For example, at Saturday’s Vespers it is sang: „The resurrection of Christ seeing (…) your name we call” and at the liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom it is said: „Your name is called (…) Let the name of the Lord be blessed”. Every Christian receives a name following a ritual, baptism, which is also performed in the name of the Divine Trinity. Moreover, Christian exorcists claim that evil spirits are tortured by the name of Jesus.

In one Egyptian legend it’s told that Ra, the supreme god, was known under many names, but he had a secret one which he didn’t tell anyone, because whoever knew it received the sheer power of the god. But the goddess Isis tricked him and found his secret name, which she later revealed to her son, Horus. The old god asked them to keep the secret and to not use the power of the name. it seems that Isis and Horus kept their word, because Ra remained until the end at the head of the pantheon. Holding the power through knowledge of the names can also be found at the beginning of The Bible, where Adam named all the animals as well as his wife Eve, in order to control them. For this reason, in some cultures appeared the prohibition of pronunciation of holy names. Around the year 150, the scholarly Jew Abba Saul ben Batnit misunderstood a commandment from The Leviticus: „Whoever blasphemes Yahweh’s name must surely be put to death”. He proclaimed that even the utterance of the holy name has to be punished with death. From that moment, for a good while, during religious processions, the reading of the god’s name was avoided. The name written in Hebrew as „YHWH” was combined with the vocals from Adonai, the result „Yehowah” (modernized as „Jehovah”) being used for reading the name of the biblical god. Abba Saul wasn’t the first Jew that appealed to this interdiction. Shortly before him, in the first century of our era, historian Flavius Josephus wrote: „and then Yahweh told them his name, which he never told any human before. This name I am not allowed to say”. Later, in Islam there was a similar rule referring to Allah’s name, with those of a different religion being forbidden to say it, no matter the context. Sumerians used to often replace the name of the gods with numbers, which represented the ranks of each deity. This method was copied by many other cultures, numerology becoming an important part of religions thanks to the equivalence of the gods’ names with numbers.

The importance of the holy names can be found in The Bible as well. In The Old Testament, Yahweh’s name is written 6.828 times. In the 3^rd commandment out of the 10 given to Moses, the god ordered: „Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain” (Exodus 20:7). Before this episode, in Exodus 3:13, Moses wanted to know the name of the god, to be able to share it with the Israelites in Egypt. The god declined his identity through the statement: „Ehyeh asher ehyeh”, which translates as „I am the one called Ea”, and not at all „I am who I am”, the preferred translation of translators that try to hide a Babylonian name attributed to the Jewish god. Sitting in front of the giant Goliath, David the shepherd searched for his 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 of hosts, 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 also sighed.

The New Testament often highlights the importance of the name invocation. 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). Same for the apostle Peter: „And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Acts of the Apostles 2:21). In the Our Father prayer, devoted to the heavenly god, it is said right from the beginning: „hallowed be thy name” (Matthew 6:9). Even Jesus taught his disciples: „If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it” (John 14:14) and „Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you” (John 15:16). About Jesus’ name, Paul stated: „Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name” (Philippians 2:9). This name was not chosen at random, but it was imposed on Joseph by the angel that appeared in his dream: „And she shall bring forth a son and thou shalt call his name Jesus” (Matthew 1:21). In the last biblical book, Revelation to John, the 144.000 chosen ones had „his Father’s name written on their foreheads” (14:1) and Jesus’ servants „shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads” (22:4).

In Asklepios from Corpus Hermeticum, Hermes Trismegistos said about the almighty god: „The god is the Father, the universal Master – or any other name even more holy and religious might be given to him – and which, because of our intelligence, must be kept solely between us; yet, minding his holiness, we cannot define him through no such name. For the voice is a sound that results from the air’s vibration and which expresses the will of man, or the impression that his mind got through senses. This name, made from a set number of syllables, serving as a symbol between voice and ear and, in addition, sensation, breath, air ad everything that regards and depends on its expression – all these convey the name of the god. I don’t believe in just one singular name, no matter how complex it is, it can appoint the Principle of the entire greatness, which is the Father and Master of all things. Still, we need to give it a name, or more like all the names. For he is One and All; that is why we have to say either that All is his name, or it’s appropriate to call him by the name of all things” (20:1-2).

In Romanian we call the almighty god „Dumnezeu”, which is not his name, as most seem to think, but an epithet composed from the words „Doamne” („Lord”) and „zeu” („god”). The Romanian „zeu” comes from the Greeks’ high god Zeus, which descends from that of the Indian Dyaus Pitar, the father of the gods. The Greeks transformed it in Dzeus Pater and then into Zeus and the Romans in Juppiter or Jupiter. In the German languages, the name has a different form: „God” in English and Dutch, „Gutt” in German or „Gud” in Swedish, Norse and Danish. Researchers have established that the source of these names is the Proto-Germanic „guddan”, whose origin remains unknown. In reality, it is about the Sumerian „Heavenly bull”, formed of „gud” („bull”) and „an” („sky”). In the Latin languages, the holy name has a different form, because it comes from a different root. To designate their gods and the supreme god after relishing the polytheism, the ancient Greeks combined the name of Dzeus / Zeus with one derived of Djehuty (the god of wisdom for the Egyptians), which they named Thoth, Thot or Thout. Therefore, the new high god got the name „Theos”, which in latin became „Deus”, from which today we have „Dieu” in French, „Dio” in Italian and „Dios” in Spanish. However, none of them represents the true name of this deity.

Keeping in mind the importance given to the names in most ancient cultures, their adaptation to other languages seems illogical. Just as the Greeks proceeded, for example, which adapted to their own language almost every foreign name they encountered. For this reason I preferred to use in this book the original names of the characters, as they appear in the older writings. Seeing as The New Testament was written in Greek, and the biblical researchers have not decided if the names of the characters were Hebrew or Aramaic, I left the names from it as they originally appear, meaning in Greek. In the table below, I’ve written the names of a few biblical characters in four versions, as they are written in The Old Testament, The New Testament and The Quran, next to their adaptation to English:

Old Testament (Hebrew)	New Testament (Greek)	Quran (Arabic)	English
Yahweh	Theos	Allah	God
Yeșu’a	Iesous	Isa / Yasu	Jesus
Meșiah	Khrisos	al-Masih	Christ
Mikha’el	Mikhael	Mikha’il	Michael
Gabri’el	Gabriel	Jibrayil	Gabriel
Hawwah	Eua	Hawwa	Eve
Qayin	Kain	Quabeel	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	Ismael
Yișaq	Isaak	Ishaq	Isaac
Ya’aqob	Iakobos	Ya’aqub	Jacob
Esaw	Hesau	Isaw	Esau
Yehudah	Ioudas	Yahudha	Judas
Yoseph	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
Yonahan / Yehohanan	Ioannes	Yahya	John
Elior	Loukas	Luqa	Luke
bar-Tolmay	Bartholomaios	Barthulmawus	Bartholomew
Miriam	Maria	Maryam	Mary

We cannot know if the names do or do not hold any real power. Just how we cannot know if the gods indeed had secret names, which they keep hidden. Supposing that they do, hiding them does not stop us from reaching our goal, that of finding out the true history of the Earth, that can help us understand our present and mold our future. To accomplish this we must first identify the main gods amongst the myriad of existing religions from the oldest of times up until today, all of them built around the same characters.