The Secrets of the Gods 3. Decoding Myths

As a Christian, it was impossible not to learn 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 followers. Although this story of intrigue, betrayals and divine wars sounds good, something is missing. First of all, its logic. Why would that angel try to dethrone an omnipotent deity? If we, humans, know that there is no being that can equal, let alone defeat, the mighty God, why didn’t Lucifer know that, being an entity superior to us? Or maybe he knew that the biblical god was not as powerful as we are told, as suggested by the rest he needed after creating the world. If that’s the case, it means that religions are based on lies. In addition to this confusion, others have arisen. Why did Lucifer want the throne? Why didn’t God fight him, choosing to send Michael instead? Where was Jesus at that time? Why did God exile Lucifer to Earth and not to another planet? Why did he make humans on the same planet where the fallen angels were imprisoned? Why did he let Lucifer harm humans, if he loves them so much and wants their best? Why will Lucifer be punished only at the end of the world and not sooner? All these questions lose relevance in the face of a much more important fact: Lucifer does not exist in The Bible! The legend and his name appeared as a result of the erroneous interpretation of verses from two biblical chapters, the thirteenth in The Book of Isaiah and the twenty-eighth in The Book of Ezekiel. If Lucifer does not exist in The Bible, how did he appear in Christianity? Was he invented because a malicious character was needed to keep the faithful in constant fear? This makes sense, knowing that fear is the most effective method of control. Moreover, there is not even a single evidence of the existence of the biblical Jesus in Palestine two millennia ago, which strengthens the logical conclusion that The Bible is only a collection of invented stories, as we will see in future chapters, thus explaining the multitude of errors and contradictions it contains.

However, I couldn’t fully accept this hypothesis, even though it’s the most logical. What is logical is not always true, as they say. I couldn’t 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 didn’t live two millennia ago and was only invented to give birth to a new religion, the character he copied is found in all extinct religions and cults. The same is true for his father, his earthly mother, the enemy Lucifer and other characters from Christian mythology. Taking into account the spread of these events and characters in space and time, there is a high chance that the legends contain at least a kernel of truth, a truth that we can try to find out by decoding the accounts of our ancestors, which today we categorize as myths, legends or fairy tales.

„Myth is a religion in which no one believes anymore„, said American poet and novelist James Feibleman. In Aspects of a Myth, Mircea Eliade noted: „Myth tells a sacred story, it relates an event that took place in primordial times, in the fabulous time of beginnings„. Philosopher and historian Ananda Kentish Coomarasswamy wrote in Hinduism and Buddhism: „Myth embodies the highest approximation of truth that can be translated into words„. For philosopher Karl Jaspers, myths are carriers of encrypted messages and symbols left to us to be deciphered. And Vasile Lovinescu said in The Esoteric Interpretation of Some Romanian Folk Tales and Ballads: „The fairy tale contains true knowledge, even if they are encrypted, but existing since ancient times. The essence of the fairy tale is valid in the present and in eternity„. In ancient Greek, the word „mythos” („myth” in English) meant „words, narration, story”. Therefore, even if today they are considered fables, at their birth, myths were primitive reports that exposed real events experienced by the people of those times. Let’s not forget that Homer’s Iliad was considered fiction and Troy a mythical place until 1868, when amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered the ruins of Troy in Turkey. Unable to ignore the evidence of a devastating war that led to the destruction of the city, just as in Homer’s epic, many could not help but wonder: if The Iliad has proven to be true, at least partially, what hides behind the so called „mythology”?

To understand what our ancestors pass on to us, we only need to open our minds and get rid of any religious or evolutionary indoctrination. Although they are apparently different, the legends of all peoples, from the earliest times, speak of the same events and characters. Although they are still ignored by the majority and considered fiction, legends hide the true history of the Earth. Modified by the multitude of religions and the purposes of their representatives, the legends have managed to preserve enough clues to help us better understand who the gods are, why we were created and how we have been used over the millennia. By extracting the essence of myths, combining it with archaeological, historical and other scientific discoveries, we can put together enough pieces of a puzzle with too many gaps. And thus, we may be able to get a more accurate idea about the world we live in.

The main characters of our hidden history are few. Their real names are not known and probably they will never be. The names that we use to identify them are only epithets. Although we have not managed to decipher all of them, each name has a significance, usually representing a quality of the god who bears it. Why can’t we find out the real names of the gods, assuming they have names? Since ancient times there is a belief that names hold power and whoever knows someone’s name has power over that person. For example, in exorcism, the exorcist tries first to find out the name of the demon he is dealing with, in order to gain power over him. And the biblical king Solomon proceeded in the same way. According to the Clavicula Salomonis, the first thing the king did when summoning demons was to try to find out their names. The ancient Egyptians often used the name of the god Amun in everyday speech, as recorded by Greek historians, believing that invoking the name would convince the deity to appear. This procedure was adopted in all types of invocation rituals both in religion and occultism. Many Christians, especially Romanians, avoid using the name of the Devil, for fear of attracting him into their lives, and, at the same time, the invocation of the divine name is the essence of liturgies. For example, in the Saturday evening service, they sing „Seeing the resurrection of Christ (…) We call your name„, and at the liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom they say „We call your name (…) May the name of the Lord be blessed„. Each Christian receives a name through a ritual, the baptism, which is performed in the name of the divine Trinity. And Christian exorcists claim that evil spirits are tormented by the name of Jesus.

In an Egyptian legend, Ra, the supreme god, was known by many names, but he also had a secret name which he did not share with anyone, as whoever knew it would gain his absolute power. However, the goddess Isis tricked him and found out the secret name, which she later revealed to her son, Horus. The old god asked them both to keep the secret and not to use the power of his name. It seems that Isis and Horus kept their promise, as Ra remained the ruler of the pantheon until the end. The possession of power through knowledge of the name is also found in the beginning of The Bible, where Adam named the animals and his wife, Eve, in order to control them. For this reason, the pronunciation of divine names was banned in some cultures. Around the year 150, the Jewish scholar Abba Saul ben Batnit misunderstood a commandment from Leviticus: „Whoever blasphemes the name of Yahweh must surely be put to death„. He proclaimed that even the uttering of the sacred name must be punished with death. From that moment on, during religious processions, the reading of the name of the biblical god was avoided for a while. The name written in Hebrew as „YHWH” was combined with the vowels of the word „Adonai” („Lord”), the result „Yehowah” (modernized as „Jehovah„) being used to read the name of the biblical god. Abba Saul was not the first Jew to invoke this prohibition. Just before him, in the first century AD, the historian Flavius Josephus wrote: „Then Yahweh revealed his name, which he had not told anyone before. I am not allowed to say this name„. Later, in Islam, a similar rule was applied regarding the name of the god Allah, those of other religions being forbidden to say it, regardless of context. The Sumerians often used to replace the names of their gods with numbers, which represented the ranks of the respective deities. This procedure was adopted by many other cultures, numerology becoming an important part of religions due to the equivalence of the names of gods with numbers.

The importance of divine names is found also in The Bible. In The Old Testament, the name of the god Yahweh is written 6,828 times. In the third of the ten commandments given to Moses, the god ordered: „Thou shalt not take the name of Yahweh, your God, in vain; for Yahweh 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, in order to share it with the Israelites in Egypt. The god declined his identity by stating: „Ehyeh asher ehyeh„, which is correctly translated „I am the one called Ea”, not „I am that I am”, the preferred version of translators who try to hide a Babylonian name attributed to the god of the Jews. Facing the giant Goliath, the 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 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 sighed.

The New Testament often emphasizes the importance of invoking the name. 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” (Epistle to the Romans 10:9). So did the apostle Peter: „And is 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 Lord’s Prayer, dedicated to the heavenly deity, it is said from the beginning „hallowed be thy name” (Gospel of Matthew 6:9). Even Jesus taught his disciples: „If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it” (Gospel of John 14:14) and „that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you” (Gospel of 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” (Epistle to the Philippians 2:9). This name was not chosen randomly, but was imposed on Joseph by the angel who appeared to him in a dream: „She shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus” (Gospel of Matthew 1:21). In the last biblical book, Revelation, the 144,000 chosen ones had „his Father’s name written in their foreheads” (14:1) and Jesus’ servants „shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads” (22:4).

In the Asklepios text from Corpus Hermeticum, Hermes Trismegistus says about the name of the supreme deity: „The god is the Father, the universal Ruler – or any other name even more holy and religious could be given to him – and which, because of our intelligence, must be kept sacred among us; but, considering his divinity, we cannot define him by any such name. For voice is a sound resulting from the vibration of air and expressing the will of man, or the impression that his mind has received through the senses. This name, made up of a certain number of syllables, serves as a symbol between voice and ear and, in addition, sensation, breath, air, and everything that concerns and pertains to his expression – all these convey the name of the god. I do not think that one single name, however complex it may be, can designate the Principle of the whole greatness, which is the Father and Ruler of all things. Nevertheless, we must give him a name, or rather all names. For he is One and Everything; therefore, we must say either that Everything is its name, or that it should be called by the name of all things” (20:1-2).

In Romanian, we call God „Dumnezeu„, which is not his real name, as most people believe, but an epithet composed of the words „Doamne” („Lord”) and „zeu” („god”). The Romanian word „Dumnezeu” comes from the name of the Greek supreme deity, Zeus, which derives from the name of the Indian deity Dyaus Pitar, the father of the gods. In Germanic languages, the name has a different form: „God” in English and Dutch, „Gott” in German or „Gud” in Norwegian, Swedish and Danish. Researchers have established that the source of these names is Proto-Germanic „gudan,” whose origin remains unknown. In reality, it is the Sumerian „Celestial Bull”, composed of „gud” („bull”) and „an” („heaven”). In Latin languages, the divine name has a different form because it comes from a different root. To designate their gods and, after the abandonment of polytheism, the supreme deity, the ancient Greeks combined the name of Zeus with one derived from Djehuty (the god of wisdom in Egypt), which they called Thoth, Thot or Thout. Thus, the new supreme deity received the name „Theos„, which in Latin became „Deus„, from which we have today „Dieu” in French, „Dio” in Italian and „Dios” in Spanish. However, none of these represents the true name of the god.

Considering the importance given to names by most ancient cultures, in the table below I have listed the names of some biblical characters in four versions, as they appear in The Old Testament, The New Testament, The Quran and, of course, their adaptation to English:

The Old Testament (Hebrew)	The New Testament (Greek)	The Quran (Arabian)	English
Yahweh	Theos	Allah	God
Yešu’a	Iesous	Isa / Yasu	Jesus
Mašiah	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
Šet	Seth	Sheeth	Seth
Hanok	Enoch	Idris / Akhnukh	Enoch
Noah	Noe	Nuh	Noah
Avram / Avraham	Abraam	Ibrahim	Abraham
Yišma’el	Ismael	Isma’il	Ishmael
Yišaq	Isaak	Ishaq	Isaac
Ya’aqob	Iakobos	Ya’aqub	Jacob
Esaw	Hesau	Isaw	Esau
Yehudah	Ioudas	Yahudha	Judah
Yosep	Ioseph	Yusuf	Joseph
Šimšon	Samson	Šamšun	Samson
Ša’ul	Saulos	Sha’ul	Saul
Dawid	David	Dawud	David
Šelomo	Solomon	Sulayman	Solomon
Mošeh	Moyses	Musa	Moses
Yehošu’a	Iesous	Yusha	Joshua
Eliyahu	Elias	Ilyas / Ilya	Elijah
Eliša	Elissaios / Elisaie	Alyasa	Elisha
Yeša’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
Šim’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 cannot know if names have any real power, nor can we know if gods really have secret names that they keep hidden. Assuming they do, their concealment does not prevent us from reaching our goal of finding the true history of the Earth, which can help us understand the present and shape the future. To achieve this, we must first identify the main gods among the multitude of existing religions from ancient times until today, all built around the same characters.