THE TRANS-HUMAN SOURCES OF
TANTRIC SERPENT SYMBOLISM
ON THE TRANS-HUMAN SOURCES OF ‘TANTRA’
‘NAGAS’ - THE SNAKED TRUTH OF AWARENESS
ON THE GLOBAL NATURE OF NAGA CULTURE
‘oannes’ and the nagas as ocean serpents
FROM SUMERIA TO THE STORY OF GENESIS
NAGAS, KUNDALINI AND KASHMIR TANTRISM
PERSONAL STARTING POINTS AND POSTSCRIPT
APPENDIX 1 – BEYOND ‘OBJECTIVE’ SCIENCE
APPENDIX 2 - THE MOTHERLAND OF MU
APPENDIX 3 – THE PAST AS KEY TO THE FUTURE
There have indeed been civilizations upon your planet that understood as well
as you, and without your kind of technology, the workings of the planets,
the positioning of stars - people who even foresaw ‘later’ global changes. They
used a mental physics. There were men before you who journeyed to the moon, and
who brought back data quite as ‘scientific’ and pertinent. There were those who
understood the ‘origin’ of your solar system far better than you. Some of these
civilizations did not need spaceships. Instead, highly trained men combining the
abilities of dream-art scientists and mental physicists cooperated in journeys
not only through time but through space. There are ancient maps drawn from a 200
mile-or-more vantage point - these meticulously completed on return from such
journeys.
SETH, in ‘The Unknown Reality’, Volume 1, by Jane Roberts
The root
meaning of ‘Tantra’ is ‘loom’. Its original usage, however, was in reference to
any form of experientially gained knowledge and practical ‘know how’ – whether
agricultural, architectural or artistic, alchemic or astrological. This of
course included such crafts as weaving and dyeing, metallurgy and medicine. Yet
such practical know-how seems to have sprung up ‘out of the blue’ with the
creation of the earliest known cities and civilisations. That this ‘blue’ may be
more than just metaphor is one thesis affirmed in this essay – namely that the
‘know-how’ was imparted to humanity by beings who appeared to human beings as
superhuman – as ‘gods’ who descended ‘out of the blue’. The thesis is that
these were indeed trans-human
beings. It was these beings who established and ruled the first cities and city
civilisations. They also inaugurated long-lasting lineages of human
ruler-priests whose purpose was to guard the spiritual-scientific knowledge or
‘gnosis’ granted to them. The beings not only communicated with human beings in
dream and ‘out of body’ states, but also manifested themselves bodily – albeit
in a non-human form. The other aim of this essay therefore, is to offer a deeper
historical and spiritual understanding of
why these trans-human beings and
their initial ruler-priests were almost universally perceived or symbolised as
‘Nagas’ or ‘serpents’ of some sort - underground or earthly, ocean-dwelling or
air-born, swimming or winged, amphibious or reptilian. The thesis here is that
these beings sought not only to impart greater knowledge to humanity but also
greater intelligence to the human race as such, in effect creating ‘Homo
Sapiens’ as a cross-breed of Nagas and mammalian human beings. The yogic god
‘Shiva’ is also called ‘Naga Natha’ – Lord of the Nagas. Herein lies a key to
the Tantric science of ‘Kundalini’. For as that power that lies ‘coiled up’ like
a serpent in the human body, the term ‘Kundalini’ also points us back to the
trans-human sources of Tantric spiritual ‘know-how’, to the NAGAS and to the
deeper truth of global serpent symbolism - this being an expression of ancient
but still latent powers of human awareness, above all its innately snake-like
mobility.
Behold him in his glorious joy:
Obsidian coils glist’ning against
Where he frolics.
His mighty sinewy trunk
Weaves being
On the loom
Of time.
Behold him in his cunning
When he draws his black body erect,
His lush velvet shadow
Languidly caressing your spine.
His eyes like dark and distant flames
Scorch what he sees
With a cold fire.
Behold him in his golden splendour
When he has shed his old skin
And become wise.
When he towers over you now
The fire in his eyes
Illuminates what is
With wry, loving
Amusement.
K.Heinitz, 2003
The truth is that the human being is not by any means confined within his skin … One of the worst forms of Maya [delusion] is the belief that man remains firmly within his skin … In reality you extend over the horizon you survey.
Rudolf Steiner
We do not
need to strip off our clothes, to walk around naked like Adam and Eve in the
Garden of Eden, or go about naked like the wandering ascetics of India called
‘Nagas’ – in order to feel our
skins and the nakedness of our bodies. Nor do we need to externally peel off our
skin in order to shed it from within like a snake or serpent - the meaning of
‘Naga’ - to no longer sense it as a confining and containing boundary of our
being. With our naked skin we can sense the light, warmth and space around us.
Yet, that sensuous, bodily awareness of the space around us, though we feel it
with the sensory skin surface of our bodies, is not itself an awareness bound by
our own bodies, - confined or contained by our skins. The naked truth is that
our bodies themselves, whether clothed or not, are always naked - and that in
this state of nakedness our skin in no way confines our awareness. The sense
that it does confine it can indeed be shed - allowing us to experience the
entire world around as a larger skin or circumference of awareness.
The truth of nakedness constitutes the naked truth with which the serpent
tempted Eve. In the story of Genesis, it was only after eating of the fruit of
the Tree of Knowledge that Adam and Eve become aware of their nakedness. At the
same time they became aware of feeling guilt at having eaten of the fruit. In
this way they became doubly naked - feeling shame not at their fleshly nakedness
as such but rather through knowing that God would see through it to the guilt
they were aware of feeling. The ‘knowledge’ they attained through becoming aware
of their nakedness was essentially knowledge of awareness itself – the knowledge
that anything we are aware of feeling cannot be concealed by our bodies, and
therefore leaves us nakedly exposed to the gaze of the other, the knowledge that
awareness communicates - instantaneously. Yet it is by virtue of doing so that
awareness is also the very ‘ligament’ that re-links and re-connects us as beings
– and the very essence of ‘re-ligion’.
That is one reason why, right across the globe, and long before either the Book
of Genesis or the current age of ‘Globalisation’ the serpent or snake was a
common religious symbol of this knowing or ‘gnosis’, and worship of the
serpent spirit – another meaning
of ‘Naga’ – a unifying element of early matriarchal religions and
civilisations. For the spirit of the serpent, like that of the human being, is
its awareness – an awareness so naked it is not even bound by its skin. The
naked truth of awareness – its unboundedness - is symbolised by the capacity of
the snake to shed its surface boundary skin - as a whole and in its entirety.
The serpent of Genesis, the first of the five books or ‘Pentateuch’ of the Old
Testament, stood upright. In the Haggadah, a
commentary on the Pentateuch, the serpent is described as tall, two-legged and
with superior mental powers: “God spoke to the serpent, ‘I created you to be
king over all the animals. I created you to be of upright position.”
Similarly, the divinities of ancient ‘Sumeria’ or ‘Sumaria’ were portrayed as
standing, winged humanoid reptiles, often accompanied by snakes. The Rigveda
refers to an entire race of serpent beings called NAGAS - whose leader
Ahi fought against Indra – the supreme god of the Aryan invaders. According to
the detailed historical account presented in Dr. Naval Viyogi’s book ‘Nagas –
the Ancient Rulers of India’, these were rulers belonging to a lineage of
ruler-priests stemming from Sumeria. In reality, the ancient Sumerian ‘King
List’ bequeathed two principal lineages of ruler-priests and spiritual teachings
- that of the Hebrew Patriarchs descended from Seth, along with their tradition
of esoteric knowledge known today as ‘Kabbalah’, and that of the NAGAS - whose
influence spread throughout India from the Indus Valley civilisation and is the
historic source of the Tantric tradition that later flowered in Kashmir. Both
esoteric streams found their way into Egypt, Greece and Palestine.
Naga kings and queens
with bodies shown as half human, half snake
- with intertwined tails and
cobra hoods behind their heads:
The religious symbols of the Naga lineage – not least the cobra – were
taken up in the Vedas, in Buddhism and amalgamated into ‘Hindu’ iconography –
the cobra around the neck of the god Shiva (otherwise known as Naga Natha –
‘Serpent Lord’). Vishnu asleep in the coils of the multi-headed cobra called
‘Ananta’ (the infinite) and the black (non-Aryan) figure of his avatar Krishna,
from whose mouth his soul issued forth at his death in the form of a cobra -
symbol of his unbounded ‘inner body’ or ‘soul body’.
In Buddhist lore the Nagaradja's are mythological serpent kings which rule the
various cosmic oceans.
Not just in the religious symbolism and mythology of India alone, but in
that of China, Tibet, Iran, Iraq, Anatolia, Ceylon, Crete, Palestine, Egypt,
Greece and Ireland - not to mention Africa, America and Australia, we find
evidence of the ubiquity of ‘Nagas’ – of oceanic and flying serpents, serpent
spirits and deities, and of serpent kings - all connected with ancient cradle
civilisations and cities of the past, with the races connected with them and the
cultures they evolved – whether Chinese or Celtic, Sumerian, Semitic or South
American, Dravidian or Druidic, Tamil or Tibetan, Aztec or Toltec, Hopi, Hebrew
or Harappan.
As long as humanity has kept records of its existence, legends of a serpent race have persisted. These myths tell of a mysterious race of superhuman reptilian beings who descended from the heavens to participate in creating humankind and to teach the sciences, impart forbidden knowledge, impose social order, breed with us, and watch over our development. These serpent-like beings were not alone, but were part of a retinue of super-beings thought to be gods by the ancients. Yet, in cultures as widespread and diverse as those of Sumeria, Babylonia, India, China, Japan, Mexico, and Central America, reptilian gods have been feared and worshipped. To this day, the dragon and serpent signify divine heritage and royalty in many Asian countries, while in the West, the serpent represents wisdom and knowledge.
Joe Lewels
Sumerian and Indus Valley origins:
Aratta is often
mentioned in the Sumerian literature as a far-away land controlled by the
goddess Inanna from her tutelary city of Uruk. According to the epic Enmerkar
and the Lord of Aratta, it lay beyond Anshan (now Iran) and a journey to Aratta
required the crossing of seven mountains and the dreaded river Kur.
It has been suggested that Aratta may be the same as Harappa of the lost Indus
Valley civilization. Harappa, along with Mohenjo-daro, was a city of the ancient
Dravidians, the legendary serpent people who preceded the Aryan occupation of
India.
These cities did not evolve from primitive villages but were completed as cities
within a century or so. They were built from ‘scratch’ as if by an outside
force. In other words, they were constructed as a colony, probably by the
Sumerians, and presumably by Enki, their chief engineer. The cities sprang up
about 3500 to 3000 BC and later came to a violent end around 2000 BC or soon
thereafter, according to archaeological evidence. What has puzzled historians is
that the people who lived here are not related to the Aryans who came some 500
to 600 years later and settled in the Panjab and Gangetic plain. Like the
ancient Sumerians, the people of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa spoke an unknown
language. It has been suggested by historians that these cities were the centre
of the Dravidian culture and inhabited by the Nagas, a race of serpent-men. The
Ancient Book of Dzyan, probably the oldest of Sanskrit sources, speaks of
a serpent race which descended from the skies and taught mankind. Madame H. P.
Blavatsky spent three years in Tibet, Bhutan, and Sikkim, accumulating thousands
of Sanskrit sources which were compiled into the Book of Dzyan.
These sources concern the ancient people called the Nagas or Sarpa which were
semi-divine beings with a human face and the tail of a dragon. Blavatsky
believed that these Sarpa are undoubtedly the Seraphim of the Old Testament; the
Seraphim would thus have the same etymological roots as the Sarpa of ancient
India. Hindu mythology and literature are also replete with the sexual liaisons
of gods and mankind, and of the procreation of numerous strange beings called
Dravidian and Dasyus. This race reportedly lived in large walled cities. They
were a coarse, cannibalistic people, dark-skinned and flat-nosed. The Aryans who
came later ran into the remnants of these serpent people; they are vividly
described in the Ramayana:
“Near Bhogavata stands the place where dwell the hosts of the serpent race, a
broad-wayed city, walled and barred, which watchful legions keep and guard. The
fiercest of the serpent youth, each awful for his venomed tooth, and throned in
his imperial hall is Vasuki who rules them all.”
The antediluvian Dravidians had been wiped out by the Deluge. When the Earth was
repopulated, Harappa and Mohenjo-daro became the centre of the Dravidian
culture.
Much of the evidence that Dravidian, Dasyus, and Nagas were all different names
for these people can be found in the great epics of India, the Mahabharata and
the Ramayana. Both epics concern the early Aryan contacts with these serpent
people, some of which were friendly, others hostile. Due to the intermarriage of
the Aryans with these people, a sort of ambivalence, a love-hate relationship,
seems to permeate these two great epics.
In the epic Mahabharata, a group of “celestials” arrive by aerial car to attend
the wedding feast of the Aryan kings:
“The gods came in cloud-borne chariots, came to view the scene so fair. Winged
Suparnas, scaly Nagas, bright celestial cars in concourse sailed upon the
cloudless sky.”
These Nagas intermarried with Aryans, producing kings and heroes. For example,
in the Rig Veda there are names like Divodasa which indicate that there
was some cross-breeding between Dasyus and Aryans soon after 1500 BC.
Many of the ancient Hindu gods mated with humans and, like in Sumer, produced a
hybrid mammal-reptile, the semi-divine kings which resound throughout the
literature of both Sumer and India. One of the great epics of India, the
Ramayana, is the story of Sita, the bride of a northern Prince called Rama, who
is abducted by Ravana, the serpent king of Ceylon [the modern Sri Lanka].
Ceylon, the island
kingdom of Ravana, is the stronghold of the Nagas. It is described as the home
of the Nagas in very ancient Chinese sources. In one of the first literary
references to Ceylon, when it traded with China before the Aryan occupation of
India, it is described as a land of strange reptilian-like creatures. Because of
its gems and spices and its convenient location as an entrepot, it became
popular with Chinese merchants. Fa-Hsien, the Chinese pilgrim trader, disclosed
that originally the island was occupied by Nagas or serpent deities with whom
merchants of various countries carried on a trade. The Nagas never showed
themselves to the outsiders. They simply set forth their precious commodities
with price labels attached to them. The visiting merchants made their purchases
according to price and took the things away.
The Mahabharata story begins with the great sacrifice of King Janamejaya. As the
story is narrated by the sage Vyasa, the son of Pariksit, King Janamejaya
performs a ceremony to avenge his father's death, a snake sacrifice called the ‘yajna’.
Its purpose is to totally destroy the Nagas, the serpent-gods which supposedly
could assume snake or human form at will, and one of which killed Pariksit.
R.A. Boulay
Africa:
Legends of
serpent-gods also abound throughout the mythology and religion of Africa. To the
Dogon of Mali and Upper Volta, their ancient god created the sun and moon, then
the earth from a lump of clay, and finally the first primitive beings who were
twins called Nummo, half-human and half-snake.
In the Nyoro tribe, legends say that god sent the first human couple down from
heaven when he established the world. The man had a tail and produced two
maidens and a boy. These in turn bore the chameleon, the father of mankind.
Other African tribes also trace their ancestors to lizard-like people. To the
Kumbi, the first men that god created had tails. The Ewe-Ho tribe describes men
with tails who had climbed down on a rope to Earth. To the Jagga, their
ancestors came down to Earth from heaven on a thread from a cobweb: the ancestor
was called ‘the tailed one’.
R.A. Boulay
China:
While the
serpent-god shows up in the form of the dragon in Chinese history and mythology,
there is no doubt that we are dealing with the winged, legged serpent or Naga of
the Hindus. China chose the dragon as the national emblem for profound reasons.
They believed that the Celestial Dragon was the father of the First Dynasty of
Divine Emperors and as a result the dragon's pictorial emblem became regarded as
inspiring divine beneficence to the land of China.
According to Chinese history, Asian dragons were present at the Creation and
shared the world with mankind. Like the Western serpent, the dragon was linked
with the development of Man; and it was the dragon that taught him the essential
arts such as how to make fire, how to weave nets for fishing, and how to make
music.
The Chinese dragon was unrivalled in wisdom and its power to confer blessings
and as a result came to symbolize that most beneficent of men, the Emperor who
was believed to have dragon blood. This affinity with the dragon is shown by the
imperial accoutrements: the Emperor sat on a dragon throne, rode in a dragon
boat, and even slept in a dragon bed.
The Vih King, the most ancient of Chinese books, whose origins are cloaked in
mystery, describes the days when man and dragon lived together peaceably and
even intermarried, how the dragons came to represent the Emperor and the throne
of China, and how the Chief Dragon had its abode in the sky.
In the year 212 BC, the Emperor Tsin-Shi Hwang-Ti ordered all ancient books
destroyed and the persecution of learned men for a period of four years
[Comment: the first "cultural revolution"?]; and as a result of which, at one
time 460 savants were buried alive together. During this orgy of suppression of
ancient knowledge, the Vih King was considered so sacred that it was
specifically exempted from the edict. In this classic, many of the ancient
emperors are described as having dragon-like features as, for example, Hwanti
which Gould dates to 2697 BC. The Emperor Yaou (2356 BC) is said to have been
conceived by a dragon father and a human mother. Emperor Shun, dated to 2255 BC,
is described as having the countenance of a dragon.
R.A. Boulay
Central America:
In Central America “… sources show that
Nagual and
Nagualism were associated with
"men of knowledge" long before the
new age movement
and
Carlos Castaneda.
During the
conquest and
inquisition, many
priests and explorers recorded the use of the word
Nahualt being used
to represent both a language, a culture and people, as well as the act of
knowing itself, and those specialized in dealing with this direct knowing were
called nagualists. In 1894 a noted
archaeologist,
linguist and
ethnologist named
Daniel Griffin Brinton
wrote a book called "Nagualism: A Study in Native-American Folklore and History"
which chronicled some of the historical interpretation of the word and those who
practiced
nagualism.” (Wikipedia).
Among the Mayas of Central America, snake symbolism was very common. Most of the
serpents depicted in their art are feathered, indicating the ability to fly. The
ancient Mayan book Chilam Balam relates that the first inhabitants of Yucatan
were the Chanes or ‘People of the Serpent’, who came across the sea from the
East led by Itzamna, a serpent-god. He was the most important deity in the Mayan
pantheon; and as the dominant sky-god, ruler of the heavens, he is one of the
few Mayan gods not to be associated with death and destruction. Itzamna was the
creator god, the one who infused the breath of life into Man. As such, he fits
the description of the Sumerian god Enki perfectly. Eric Thompson, the dean of
Mayan studies, maintains that the term ‘itzem’ from which the god's name is
derived should be translated as ‘lizard’ or ‘reptile’. In fact, Itzamnal, the
city of the god Itzamna, literally means ‘the place of the lizard’. There are
also many anthropomorphic forms of the god Itzamna where he is depicted as
half-human and half-serpent. The benevolent serpent-god is also found in the
later Mexican mythology in the Aztec civilization which superseded the Mayan
one. Quetzalcoatl is the plumed serpent-god who brought the benefits of
civilization to Mexico and taught the science of astronomy and mathematics to
man.
R.A. Boulay
Egypt:
The
duality of the serpent as a source of both good and evil is seen in Egyptian
religion probably due to certain singular historical events. In the Old and
Middle Kingdoms, it is benevolent and associated with the gods and immortality.
Later, starting with the New Kingdom, in particular the 18th Dynasty, it becomes
a sinister creature and an object to be hated and exorcised. On the walls of the
tombs of the earlier dynasties, the snake is depicted as a friendly creature
which bears the king on his back into the stellar sky. It is symbolic of the
king's being carried by the serpent-god to the land of immortality, to the land
of the gods. At about this time, the snake was adopted as a symbol of kingship
or godship and began to appear as the ‘uraeus’, the divine asp on the headdress
of the pharaoh.
But in the New Kingdom after the first kings of the 18th Dynasty had rid the
country of the hated Hyksos, the serpent takes on an evil character. It becomes
an evil object to be exorcised at rituals. Called Apep or Apop (Greek Apophis),
it is the manifestation of the foreign barbaric Hyksos who had invaded and
occupied Egypt for hundreds of years. Apop was the original Hyksos ruler and
with his descendants ruled from the 14th through the 17th Dynasty. Many of the
rulers adopted the name Apop and in particular the last Hyksos king to be
defeated by Ahmose and Kamose, the founders of the 18th Dynasty. Apop possessed
many epithets and in ceremonies meant to destroy him was cursed by a number of
names. The ritual is reminiscent of the ‘yajna’ ceremony of the ancient Hindus
who called out the various names of the snakes as they were thrown into the
fire. The Egyptian hate was deeply rooted in the memory of the cruel rule of the
Hyksos kings who systematically destroyed Egyptian culture and monuments. We
shall see that these hated people were none other than the descendants of the
Rephaim, the offspring of the antediluvian Nefilim, who ruled the lands of the
Middle East after the Deluge.
Nagas are not just serpentine but also aquatic and
oceanic spirits - the female Nagi being ‘the princess with the fishy smell’ in
Indonesian legend. “The kings of Chota Nagpur were descended from a Naga named
Pundarika, who was reported to have foul-smelling breath.” (Eliade). In
Mesopotamian culture the Naga takes the form of the amphibious
wisdom-disseminating god ‘Oannes’, akin in nature and form to the Sumerian water
god ‘Enki’ or ‘Ea’.
The traditions of ancient Mesopotamia recount the story of an amphibious
ancestor who taught the arts and crafts of civilization to Mankind. Written in
the Third Century BC by the Babylonian priest Berossus, it describes the origins
of civilization as his forefathers believed it.
… one of Aristotle's disciples who also wrote an Assyrian history of his own,
now lost. The account speaks of a group of creatures who came out of the Persian
Gulf called ‘Annedoti’ led by one Oannes. They reportedly were amphibious
creatures with the head of a man, the body and tail of a fish, yet legged like a
man.
“He had the whole body of a fish, but above his fish's head he had another head which was that of a man, and human feet emerged from beneath his fish's tail. He had a human voice, and an image of him is preserved unto this day. He passed the day in the midst of men without taking food; he taught them the use of letters, sciences and arts of all kinds. He taught them to construct cities, to found temples, to compile laws, and explained to them the principles of geometrical knowledge. He made them distinguish the seeds of the earth, and showed them how to collect the fruits; in short he instructed them in everything which could tend to soften human manners and humanize their laws. From that time nothing material has been added by way of improvement to his instructions. And when the sun set, this being Oannes, retired again into the sea, for he was amphibious. After this there appeared other animals like Oannes.” (Berossus)
The figure and posture of Oannes bears close resemblance to that of the Sumerian
gods called ‘Anunna’ or ‘Anunnaki - ‘those who came down from the Heavens’.
OANNES ANUNNA
Led by Oannes,
these creatures taught man all of the ancient knowledge. According to the
legend, Oannes instructed Man how to build cities, to found temples, to compile
laws, to survey the lands, and how to grow food. He also taught them
mathematics, the sciences, and every kind of art. Apollodorus referred to Oannes
and the Annedoti as ‘Musarus’. The word ‘musarus’ means ‘an abomination’ in
Greek just as ‘annedoti’ means ‘the repulsive ones’. In other words, the
creatures credited with founding civilization were frankly described by the
ancient Babylonian people, who revered them, as ‘repulsive abominations.’ Of
further significance is that the Oannes of Berossus and Apollodorus bears a
striking resemblance to the Sumerian Enki who founded the Mesopotamian
civilization and brought civilized arts and sciences to mankind. Enki lived in
his water palace or Abzu located on the edge of the Persian Gulf. Enki’s Abzu
was sealed and was presumably submersible. Oannes was said to return to his
watery abode in the evening to spend the night. Even the name Annedoti is quite
similar to the people of Enki - the Anunnaki - from whence it was probably
derived. The Greek term may have originated with the Sumerians and was later
carried over as a description of a race that was both reptilian and loathsome.
R.A. Boulay
Augustine wrote
concerning the fish: “If you combine the initial letters of the five Greek
words, which are Iesous Chreistos Theou Uios Soter, Jesus Christ the Son
of God the Saviour, they make the word
ichthus, meaning fish, and
the mystic meaning of this noun is Christ, because He had power to exist alive,
that is, without sin, in the bottomless pit of our mortal life, as in the depths
of the sea.” The amphibious ‘Oannes’ is also associated with the Johannine
Christian tradition that reveres Saint John over the other Apostles. John the
submerger or ‘baptiser’ is Joannes or ‘J-OANNNES’. And both the traditional and
still popular symbol of Jesus is the fish – more specifically the geometric
shape formed by the overlap of two circles at their centre called the ‘Vesica
Piscis’ - symbolic also of the female labia. The ‘Essenes’, of which Jesus the
‘Nazarene’ is thought to have been a member, derived from the ‘Naaz’ or
‘Naasenes’ – a sect revering SOPHIA as the light-bringing ‘wisdom’ of the
serpent (OPHIS).
As for the Nagas as ‘ocean serpents’, in the Mahabharata, ‘Kadru’, wife of the
Rishi Kashyapa, becomes mother of a thousand serpent sons - ‘serpents of
splendour’ - and arranges for Garuda to return them to the abode of the Nagas,
situated in the womb of the sea.
“...Dagon or Oannes, a half-human, half-fish combination who was known as the ‘Lord of the Flood’... was said to rise out of the sea every day to teach his secret knowledge to those who followed him. It is this character upon which Satan or Lucifer is based, but the physical description attributed to him applied to an entire race of ‘gods’, or as they were described in the Bible, Nephilim, or Fallen Angels, the ‘Great Old Ones’.”
This term ‘Nephilim’ is used in Genesis in connection with the plural Hebrew word for ‘gods’ – ‘Elohim’ – that word which has long been mistranslated as ‘God’ in the Old Testament.
The word Elohim is dominant in the five Books of Moses, generally known as the Pentateuch or as the Elohist Tradition, in which ‘Elohim’ rather than ‘Yahweh’ was used to refer to the Creators. In Hebrew, the term ‘El’, stemming from the Akkadian word ‘Ilu’, was a generic term for a God or Deity, and ‘Elohim’, being it's plural literally meant ‘the gods’. Every place you see the word 'God' in Genesis, replace it with the word Elohim, the original word used. In several cases when the leader of the Elohim is addressing the other ‘Gods’, it has been rendered in English as ‘The Lord God’; it should be read as ‘the Leader of the Gods’. The Elohim were also known by the Hebrews as the Anakim, which is a derivative form of the Sumerian word ‘Anunnaki’. Anakim was used by the Hebrews exactly as the Sumerians used Anunnaki, when referring, collectively, to the race of Gods. When talking of a specific God the Hebrews used ‘El’ normally in a context such as ‘El Shaddai’, which means God of the mountain or any specific title. The Nephilim is the term employed to describe the children of a union between people of the race of Anakim and Humans … The Sumerians and Akkadians did not call their alien visitors ‘gods’. It is in the later cultures that the notion of divine beings filtered into our language and thinking. They called them ‘Ilu’ or the lofty ones, from which the Semitic ‘Ili’ and ‘El’ of the Hebrew evolved.
R.A. Boulay
The
Sumerian word for the gods (Annuna or Anunnaki in Akkadian)
means those who came or ‘fell’ to Earth from the Heavens. These ‘gods’ were
trans-human beings from both another plane of awareness and another physical
planet. A suggested name of this planet - ‘Nibiru’ - is itself also a possible
root of the term ‘Hebrew’. The appearance of the Sumerian gods was quasi-reptilean.
Their chief god was the god of the skies named AN or ANU. The
first name of the first city they created when they came down to Earth –
Eridu – may well be the root of the word ‘Earth’ (‘Erde’) itself. Their
‘Land of the Gods’ was called E-din - the ‘Eden’ of Genesis. Sumerian
records also tell of their attempts to create a more intelligent species of
human mammal – ‘Homo Sapiens’ – through what appears today as experiments in
interbreeding or genetic engineering. In the SETH books of Jane Roberts, the
‘seeding’ of cradle civilisations such as Sumeria by trans-human beings, and
their direct role in the evolution of the human “stock”, is described as
follows:
Now, your human stock did not all originate solely from your planet. I never
told you that it did. In that respect your ancestry is indeed varied …
Evolution, as it is thought of, had many different aspects in those terms. There
were three or four beginning points.
There
were then visits from others in other planetary systems. In that regard this is
quite natural. Your own relative isolation is far from the average. The legends,
many of them, therefore, were of course chronicles of quite legitimate physical
events, describing phenomena for example for which natives had no adequate
vocabulary. They were forced to describe what they saw by making comparisons
with objects and events already familiar to them. Some such visitors, in your
terms, were more evolved than others. All, however, would appear as superhuman
in contrast to those civilizations that encountered them. There were some
deliberate experiments, that were in fact far more dangerous to the
experimenters, always in which the experimenters tried, in one way or another,
to advance man’s knowledge. It is not nearly as
simple as that, however. There is not a one-line development. By the time that
feasible inter-system space travel is practical, the psychic abilities are
developed to a very high degree. One is necessary for the other.
Therefore, it became much more feasible to approach earthmen during their
dream state, when their natural fear reactions were somewhat minimized, and
where the danger to the visitors was far less. Out of body encounters were used
as a matter of course. The visitor could appear and disappear then without fear
of pursuit. Civilizations were often warned in advance of natural disasters that
were apparent to the visitors with their greater viewpoint. Such warnings were
either given in the dream state of the earthmen, for the reasons given or often
in some secluded place, for often the visitors would be attacked.
Seth explains that the original ‘Sumerians’ were not just a biological species but belonged to a specific ‘family’ or ‘species’ of consciousness which he calls the ‘Sumarians’ – one of a number of consciousness groupings to which each individual human being has a specific soul affiliation. It was the Sumarians who “left the memory of their existence in the ‘Sumerian’ culture” (also called ‘Sumarian’ by historians).
They [the Sumarians] initiated it, though they did not direct all of its activities, nor were they responsible for the distortions of their teachings that often resulted. There is a difference then between Sumarian and the culture in the books. Your Sumarian[s] were behind the culture - they initiated that particular civilization.
Seth speaks of the Sumarians’ intent to impart knowledge to
humanity, but also indicates a difference in their biological nature and
manifestation by describing them as not initially being “of human stock” but
only having become so in time.
Your
Sumarian[s] showed earth people at that time how to communicate, how to initiate
crafts, gave them all the fundamentals upon which a civilization then could be
based. The Sumarians … however, were not of human stock at that time. Your
Sumarians have become human stock in those terms at other times. It is not a
point of them trying to invade a native stock. They simply understood the nature
of individual existences. Therefore, they are able to choose from various
physical systems those in which they would like to have experience. They
maintain their inner knowledge and integrity, and are born within any given
system.
They always use their native abilities and talents to help the system, working
very strongly in psychic or creative endeavours.
As for
the enduring affiliation of individuals with the “family of consciousness” from
which the mixed Sumaro-human stock derived, a family Seth calls ‘Sumari’ or ‘Sumarian’:
I do
not necessarily mean that they are consciously aware of their affiliation. This
is an individual matter. They are often inventors, always then involved with the
initiation of new ideas or discoveries. All of this follows inner patterns that
are specifically human in your terms. Humanity therefore has its own
characteristics, and no ‘outside influence’ can go counter to these, but must
work with them.
A
trace picture of the interbreeding of Sumarians and human beings is retained in
The Book of Genesis,
where the
‘gods’ are clearly referred to in the plural when they decide to create man in
their own image. “And Elohim said ‘Let US create man in our image and after
our likeness’.” Genesis 6 states that “when man began to increase on Earth
and daughters were born to them, the Elohim [‘gods’ or ‘divine beings’]
saw how beautiful the human daughters were, and took as their wives … It was
then that the Nephilim appeared on Earth, as well as later, after the
Elohim had united with human daughters to whom they bore children.” The word
‘Nephilim’ means ‘fallen ones’. Before the Biblical ‘fall’ in other words, came
a ‘fall’ of the Gods or Elohim themselves - one which seeded the human
race in the form of ‘demi-gods’, part-human and part-divine, part mammal and
part bird, snake or reptile (the Nephilim or Nefilim) and also
giants called Raphaim. The Haggadah hints that before The Fall, even Adam
and Eve were Nephilim - part human but with glistening snake-like skins which
they lost with the Fall, but then used as garments to clothe their human
nakedness.
“Before their bodies had been overlaid with a horny skin, and enveloped with a
cloud of glory. No sooner had they violated the command given them than the
cloud of glory and horny skin dropped from them, and they stood there in their
nakedness and ashamed.”
The
Hebrew term Seraphim – meaning ‘fiery’ or ‘shining’ serpents - is used to
refer to venomous snakes (‘Nagas’) encountered during the Exodus, at which time
God commanded Moses to create a serpent idol, gazing upon which would cure its
venom.
“The
Hebrew word ‘seraph’ … appears only a few times in the books of the Old
Testament … associated with Philistia and the Negeb, lands which were
traditionally the home of the descendants of the Nefilim [Nephilim] after the
Deluge.” (R.A. Boulay). Yet the
apparently snake-like, crypto-reptilian or ‘Naga’ form taken by the initial
Sumarians, as well as by the legendary ‘Nephilim’ and ‘Seraphim’ of the Old
Testament - along with the highly contemporary historical ‘myth’ of them as
nothing but an extra-terrestrial
biological species with advanced
technological powers such as space travel – all this needs to be
understood in a deeper way. For as Seth says:
The
problem comes when you try to categorize consciousness or being. The out of body
state, in greater terms, is a far more natural state than in the body. You adopt
and make a body. You do this now without even knowing that you do so, but a body
can be made from the camouflage of any system, constructed easily when you know
how to do it. Space suits are, therefore, an inadequate, clumsy memory of an
inner ability to clothe the inner self with whatever camouflage is at hand, to
merge with the elements of an environment in such a way that you become a living
part of it … Space and time as you understand them
ripple through each other. They do not behave as you think they do, however.
Presently you understand your existence only as it intrudes into three
dimensions. Its own activity is in many other dimensions however.
The Sumari, therefore, appear in or intrude into the three dimensional system
from other dimensions.
“…
we cannot say that the organ has capacities, but must say that the capacity has
organs.” (Heidegger). Similarly, it is not that creaturely organisms ‘have’
capacities - natural or supernatural. It is capacities that take the form of
creatures. That is why images of actual or ‘mythical’ creatures can also
symbolize specific capacities. Whether or not the Sumarians had the physical
wings they are depicted with, those wings were symbols of a psychic capacity -
the capacity to fly.
Sumarian god ‘ENLIL’, son of AN
NAGA god
As Lilian Silburn writes “… it is not possible to
grasp Tantrism without a real knowledge of Kundalini.” Kundalini means the
‘curled’ or ‘coiled’ one. So “… may we not discern some allusion to Kundalini in
certain myths of ancient India, where the naga, those mighty divinities in the
likeness of cobras, play an important role?”
“During a Vedic ritual, the sacrificial seat of the Brahmin priest,
endowed with ‘unfathomable knowledge’ is thus addressed: ‘Thou art an
all-encompassing ocean, thou art the one-footed unborn, thou art the serpent of
the oceanic depths.” (Silburn)
“Poets (‘Kavi’) and mystics (‘Rishi’) kept the science related to these
divinities so secret that its key was lost, even at the time of the Rig Veda. As
early as that era … the serpent Ahi, guardian of the sources [of knowledge]
becomes a dragon and is defeated by Indra.” Yet “Kundalini calls to mind the
ancient serpent of the depths, Ahirbhudhnya, celebrated in the Vedas … The
depths of its realm are those of the ocean, of the atmosphere with its clouds
and mists, as well as the depths of the Earth out of which surge the beneficent
sources; Ahirbhudnya then encircles the universe.”
But “Let us also mention, in probably
pre-Aryan India, and especially in Kashmir, the cult of the prestigious Naga,
both divine serpents and mystic sages, in possession of an eminent science of an
occult nature, concealing a heavenly ambrosia.”
In Kashmir Shaivist Tantrism, ‘Kundalini’ becomes the means by which not just
the factual historical foundation but also the naked INNER
truth of such myths and legends
is revealed - uncoiled. ‘Ocean’ and ‘atmosphere’ are understood as the ocean and
the ether of awareness. Kundalini is recognised as the essence of the ‘inner
body’ - that ‘Body without Organs’ (Deleuze and Guattari) whose inside and
outside are nothing but spaces of pure awareness.
Oh Mother, the whole
body with all its organs, inside as well as outside, Thou doest bring them all
to the void of Awareness.
Oh Uma! She is situated in the empty Sky of Awareness free of all veil.
Maheshvarananda
The mother goddess Uma, as ‘Kundalini’, is intimately related to ‘Khechari
Mudra’, that inner bearing or posture by which we can experience the capacity to
‘move in the void’ (Kha), to fly in the translucent ether of pure awareness, to
descend to its fluid oceanic depths, or to reach down into its underground
earthly core of molten fire - the fire of awareness.
The Shaivist-Tantric tradition constituted a seamless synthesis of post- and
pre-Ayran-Vedic religious symbols, understood in an entirely new way. The Vedic
fire god ‘Agni’ became the pure fire of awareness that can be felt as coiled up
in the base of the spine and kindled in the egg-shaped bulb (‘Kanda’) in the
lower abdominal region. The Kanda is the source of that rising, vitalising flow
of fiery awareness breath – dragon breath or ‘Prana’ - that is ‘Kundalini’.
Its rise through the central channel of our ‘hollow’ inner body of awareness
(known in Buddhist terminology as the ‘tubular citadel’) is facilitated by the
simultaneous suspension and unification of the ascending and descending breaths
through the channels (‘Nadis’) known as ‘Ida’ and ‘Pingala’. In the ancient
symbol of the cauduceus these channels are symbolised as snakes coiling round a
central rod or staff – not the spinal column as such but the median channel of
awareness breath. The rising fire of pure awareness or subjectivity becomes the
Sun-like light of awareness, centred in the Heart region, and illuminating and
divinising all sensory objects - collectively symbolised by the Moon (‘Soma’).
From out of the union of Sun and Moon, Agni and Soma, pure subjectivity and the
divinised object, arises the ‘elixir of life’, that nectar or ambrosia
(‘Amrita’) of awareness bliss (‘Chitananda’), symbolised by the juice of the
Soma plant beloved of Indra.
“Just as, when joining,
Yoni and Linga emit ambrosia, in the same way,out of the union of Fire and Moon
flows ambrosia …”
“If the Subject predominates over the object, ambrosia immediately begins to
flow … She [Pranakundalini] … is the one who, further excited by the fire, sends
forth successively the five sense rays … Let this process also be witnessed in
the sense organs such as the ears, and the organs of action down to the feet …
So awareness manifests as both internal and external reality; and there, within
its own Self, due to its own freedom, it appears as the ‘other’, in the aspect
of subject and object.”
Abhinavagupta
The present identification of Kundalini yoga with
‘Tantric Sex’ and with Tantric sexual rites of the past forgets that the
divine-sensual awareness bliss at which it aims can but need not be associated
with sexual union at all - for its essence lies in the union and dynamic
interplay of the innate potency of pure awareness - arising as the flame or fire
of inner awareness breath - with the sensory experience of its fleshly and
material manifestation. Tantric symbolism is not sexual symbolism. Instead
Tantra is the understanding of sexual coupling (‘Maithuna’) as a symbol of the
union (‘Yoga’) of the Divine Awareness (Shiva) with its latent, coiled-up power
(Kundalini) of fleshly and sensory manifestion (Shakti).
The ‘rod’ or ‘staff’ of Kundalini, symbolised by the upright snake or Cobra, is
no mere phallic symbol. It is the hollow awareness space of the body as a whole
– that ‘tubular citadel’ which is at the same time both Yoni and Linga – fertile
womb and vaginal channel for the kindling and arising of ‘Kundalini’. Kundalini
herself is a rising phallic serpent, which taking the form of the rising fire
and luminous radiance of awareness bliss, reaches up from below the feet and
ground, through the watery womb-depths of the soul up to the top of the head and
beyond – drawn up to a point above the crown of the head (‘Dvadasanta’) where
it ‘ejaculates’ itself into the all-surrounding and all-pervading space or ‘sky’
of pure awareness that is Shiva in his essence.
“It becomes manifest in successive spheres:
subject or fire, knowing or Sun, and the known or Moon. In the intimate union
(‘Maithuna’) of fire and Moon a reciprocal exchange takes place through the
contraction and expansion [of awareness]. From this unifying friction of
subjectivity and objectivity arises plenary [ultimate] awareness.”
Abhinavagupta
As the innate capacity, power or ‘Shakti’ of
awareness to freely shape-shift itself, to move and fly, curve and coil in the
boundless space or ‘Aether’ of awareness (‘Akasha’), Kundalini is also the very
essence of the ‘etheric’ body as a ‘serpent spirit’ – a Naga. The essence of
‘Kundalini’, as understood through The
New Yoga of Awareness, is to learn to once again feel and exercise the
total motility
of awareness – its capacity to
ascend and descend, stand erect or crawl, curve and coil, or to swim and fly in
the unbounded ‘ether’ or ‘ocean’ of awareness that is the ultimate source of all
things, all worlds and all beings.
The New Yoga of
Awareness is therefore the very essence of
‘Kundalini Yoga’, aimed at preparing the human body to once again become a loose
and flexible vessel or garment for our ‘etheric body’ or ‘awareness body’ –
allowing us to experience the totally free and motile spirit of those ‘serpents
of splendour’ once known as Nagas. The root meaning of the Greek word for ‘the
flesh’ (‘sarx’) meant simply skin. The skin is both a sensory image of the soul
and its most important sense organ. We transcend ‘the flesh’ not by scourging it
but by becoming it. Through a heightened, inner awareness of our naked skin – of
that which seemingly bounds our own ‘soul’ or awareness and separates it from
that of others – we can come to experience it as that which unites us with
others and with the cosmos as a whole – our larger spiritual body.
Paradoxically, any surface boundary of space, has itself no spatial boundaries.
The inwardly sensed flesh, as skin or ‘sarx’, is a veritable ‘spacesuit of the
soul’, enabling us to travel inwardly in ‘outer space’ in the manner of our most
distant spiritual ancestors, who knew it not as physical space alone, but as the
vast and divine spatiality of awareness itself. This was symbolised by the
supreme Sumerian sky god - AN or ANU - after which the Sumerian
gods or Anunna were named. This same capacity for ‘space travel’ however, went
by the name of ‘Khechari Mudra’ in the Tantras – the capacity to move or ‘fly’
in the infinite translucent ‘void’ of awareness. The Sumerians are said to have
taught humanity – among many other things – the power of inner sound,
in-vocation or ‘Mantra’ that is also central to Tantra. In Tantric teaching ‘A’
is the inner sound of awareness expanding to the ‘unsurpussable’ circumference
echoed in the sound ‘N’. From these two phonemes come the Tantric term for the
unsurpassable absolute: A-N-UTTARA. ‘AN’ is thus not only a Sumerian
god-name but a most powerful Mantra. ‘Kundalini’ itself is released through its
power, in such manners as described by the great Tantric adept Abhinavagupta:
After placing the
phoneme ‘A’ in his body … [the Guru] should then, by the act of ritual placing
transfer the phoneme ‘A’ which is shining, powerfully resplendent, across to the
disciple. Then, as a result of the bond being released, [the disciple] is
released to the supreme category [‘A-N-UTTARA’]. Such a procedure … is called
penetration by sound. The disciple’s mind is located in the position of the
Bindu which is placed either between the eyebrows or in … the heart … [After
visualising the Bindu as possessing the spendour of … flames, [the Guru] should,
by means of it, fully awaken awareness. By arousing the base of the body, the
Guru arouses that which pertains to Shakti.
From Phillip Gardiner - author of ‘The Serpent Grail’
This is a tale of
lost legend, of hidden people taken from our site by the jealousy of the Church.
Born in the 3rd or 4th Year BC in Tyana … at 16 Appollonius of Tyana became a
disciple of Pythagoras … He soon became a reformer and fixed his abode in the
Temple of Aesculapius - the serpent healing deity.
Apollonius was thought to have been one of the wisest of all men. This in itself
gave us a clue, for Sophia or wisdom derived from the root Ophia or serpent and
S'Ophia meant simply, shining serpent. You see, we discovered that Apollonius in
all likelihood gained his immense wisdom whilst at the feet of the wise
serpentine Naga sages of the Indian sub-continent. We can see evidence of this
from Philostratos, the biographer of Apollonius, who tells us of the journey to
Kashmir to meet the Naga sage Iarchus and of the “emerald valley set in a rim of
pearls” and of the tales that Apollonius told his travelling companion, Damus,
of dragons which lived in the hills. Both emerald and pearls have symbolic
resonance with wisdom and knowledge and the dragons, which lived in the hills,
were nothing more than the Naga, or serpent followers of the region.
The hill where these wise men lived was defended on all sides by immense piles
of rocks. As soon as the travellers had dismounted a messenger from one of the
Masters appeared, wearing of all things, a serpent Caduceus on his brow - an
obvious allusion to the enlightenment process via the Indian Kundalini, or
coiled serpent. Eventually Apollonius became a wise sage himself and his own
notoriety grew. Aurelian vowed to erect Temples and statues to his honour "for
was there ever any thing among men more holy, venerable, noble, and divine than
Apollonius? He restored life to the dead; he did and spoke many things beyond
human reach." (Vopiscus in Aurelian, cap. 24)
… by accepted tradition, Apollonius was born in the reign of Augustus, the great
literary age of the nation of which he was a subject. In the Augustan age
historians flourished; poets, orators, critics and travellers abounded. Yet not
one of them mentions the name of Jesus Christ, much less any incident of his
life. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius admitted that it was to Apollonius that he
owed his own philosophy, and erected Temples and statues in his honour. No
statues or Temples were erected to Jesus.
Faust said, “Everyone knows that the Evangeliums were written neither by Jesus
nor by his apostle, but long after their time by some unknown persons, who,
judging well that they would hardly be believed when telling of things they had
not seen themselves, headed their narratives with the names of the apostles or
disciples contemporaneous with the latter.” On the other hand, the written
record of the life of Apollonius is very sound and Philostratos who wrote the
Life of Apollonius was the close friend of Damus who had related the whole thing
in person.
Philostratos said:
Some consider
him as one of the Magi, because he conversed with the Magi of Babylon and the
Brahmans of India and the Gymnosophists of Egypt. But even his wisdom is
reviled, as being acquired by the magic art, so erroneous are the opinions
formed of him. Whereas Empedocles and Pythagoras and Democritus, though they
conversed with the same Magi, and advanced many paradoxical sentiments, have not
fallen under the like imputation. Even Plato, who travelled in Egypt, and
blended with his doctrines many opinions collected there from the priests and
prophets, incurred not such a suspicion, though above all men on account of his
superior wisdom.
The very
fact that Apollonius was in danger of usurping the ‘idea’ of Christ with his own
‘factual’ life caused much consternation amongst the early Christians. Justin
Martyr, one of the Church Fathers of the 2nd century said, "How is it that the
talismans by Apollonius have power over certain members of creation, for they
prevent, as we have seen, the fury of the waves, the violence of the winds, and
the attacks of wild beasts. And whilst Our Lord's miracles are preserved by
tradition alone, those of Apollonius are most numerous, and actually manifested
in present facts, so as to lead astray all beholders?"
The book by Philostratos was therefore, and not surprisingly, kept back from
translation and distribution. In fact, the books of the New Testament did not
appear until at least one hundred years after the Life of Apollonius.
Even the birth of Apollonius bears some remarkable similarities to the fictional
life of Christ. Whilst his mother was pregnant with Apollonius, Proteus, the
Egyptian God, appeared to her and said, “Thou shalt bring forth me!” The mother
of Apollonius was to bring forth God. Incidentally, Proteus was known to take
the form of a snake.
According to Phillimore, Apollonius actually founded a church and a community,
made up of his disciples. It is highly likely that these were connected to a
branch of the Essene, known as the Therapeuts and Nazarenes.
Indeed there was a
group known as the Apolloniei, the adherents of Apollonius, who actually
survived some centuries after his death. These constituted what became the
Christian Church, after the Council of Nicaea - so Apollonius did indeed begin
Christianity, based upon serpentine myths and traditions of the oldest order.
Let's just take the time to look a little deeper into these Naga or Naaga: Naga
is a Sanskrit term meaning literally Serpent (especially cobra), but
interestingly it also holds the meanings - a tree; a mountain; the sun; the
number seven; wisdom and initiate - all symbols and emblems we became familiar
with in our search for those who worshipped the serpent. The Naga were and
indeed are said to reside in Patala, an underwater kingdom much like Atlantis,
however this has a meaning similar to antipodes, the same name given by the
ancients to the Americas. Naga is a similar term to the Mexican Nagals, the
medicine men (healers) and sorcerers who always kept a god in the shape of a
serpent. In Burma they are Nats or serpent gods. Esoterically Naga is a term for
wise men. There is a folk tradition that Nagas washed Gautama (Buddha) at his
birth - the wise men visiting the deity on Earth. They are also said to have
guarded him and the relics of his body after his death. According to H. P.
Blavatsky in Theosophical Glossary, the Naga were descended from Rishi Kasyapa
who had twelve wives (therefore he is the sun), by whom he had numerous Nagas
(serpents) and was the father of all animals.
The Nagas of Kashmir instructed Apollonius of Tyana. This is the same Kashmir
where the serpent tribes became famous for their healing skills. There is a
theory that the Nagas descended from the Scythic race (who brought many of the
Arthurian legends to the British Isles) and when the Brahmins invaded India they
found a race of wise men, half gods, half demons (snakes). These men were said
to be teachers of other nations and themselves instructed the Hindus and
Brahmans - no wonder that Apollonius visited them.
It seems that they also left behind myths of healing as a story in the Journal
of the Bombay Branch of the Asiatic Society demonstrates. When there was an
epidemic among the children, it seems the only answer was to bring them to a
snake skin which was hung on a pole and allow them to touch it - reminding us of
the idea of the Brazen Serpent of Moses, which was upon a pole and for the
healing of the "children" of Israel. This may explain why it is that the
tree-gods are not specially and separately mentioned in the Maha Samaya list of
deities who are there said by the poet to have come to pay reverence to the
Buddha.”
The history of the Nagas that we do have, textually beginning around the 7th
century BC is an amazing history of ups and downs. It parallels the rise and
fall of the serpent worshipped by the Semites, with the Brazen Serpent being
raised in the wilderness and then broken up in the temple. The hill where these
wise men lived was defended on all sides by immense piles of rocks. As soon as
the travellers had dismounted a messenger from one of the Masters appeared,
wearing of all things, a serpent Caduceus on his brow - an obvious allusion to
the enlightenment process via the Indian Kundalini, or coiled serpent.
… Apollonius learned from one called Iarchus,
that these Nagas had delivered their wisdom to the Egyptians and even Ethiopia …
In truth it seems that the wisdom of the serpent brothers spread far and wide.
Eventually Apollonius became a wise sage himself and his own notoriety grew.
Aurelian vowed to erect Temples and statues to his honour “for was there ever
any thing among men more holy, venerable, noble, and divine than Apollonius? He
restored life to the dead; he did and spoke many things beyond human reach.” (Vopiscus
in Aurelian, cap. 24).
… Temples and statues were erected to Apollonius in many places, including his
own town of Tyana.
From a letter from the King of Taxila to the Sages of Kashmir:
King Phroates to Iarchas, his Master; and to the Wise Men with him - health. Apollonius, a man famed for wisdom, thinks you have more knowledge than himself, and goes to be instructed in it. Send him away learned in all you know, and believe that nothing you teach him will be lost.
-----------------------------------------------------------
The Greeks and
Indians have different opinions about Bacchus [Dionysios]. The Indians affirm
that Bacchus was the son of the River Indus, and that the Theban Bacchus was his
disciple. A young man must go beyond the Hyphasis and see the men to whom you
are going. When he comes into their presence, he must make a public declaration
of studying philosophy; and they have it in their power, if they think proper,
to refuse admitting him to their society if he does not come pure. And when no
stigma is discovered, the youth's character is then examined. Such information
as relates to the candidate’s individually, is acquired by a minute
investigation of their looks. Wise men, and such as are deep read in nature, see
the tempers and dispositions of men just as they see objects in a mirror. In
this country philosophy is deemed of such high price, and so honoured by the
Indians, that it is very necessary to have all examined who approach her.
Apollonius of Tyana
I came to you by land; you have given me the sea. In communicating to me your
wisdom, you have opened the road to heaven. I will remember this among the
Greeks; I will continue to enjoy your conversation as if still with you, if I
have not drunk of the cup of Tantalus in vain. Farewell, excellent philosophers.
Apollonius to Iarchas and the other Naga sages:
Iarchas begged Apollonius to propose whatever questions he pleased, “for you know you speak with men who know all things.” Remembering the inscription carved over the entrance of the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, Apollonius asked: “Do you know yourselves?” Iarchas answered: “We know all things because we know ourselves. For there is not one among us who would have been admitted to the study of philosophy had he not had that previous knowledge.”
At the heart of the Valley of Kashmir is still the city of Srinagar - abode of the great Tantric adept Abhinavagupta. ‘Srinagar’ means ‘Sri-Naga’, the ‘Holy Serpent’. Founded in 300 B.C. by the great Buddhist King Asoka it was therefore in existence when Apollonius was in Kashmir.
The New Yoga of awareness is a journey that takes us from Apollonius to Abhinava and beyond - taking us back in time, behind the layers of tantric religious symbolism to the larger historical story of the Nagas. The journey began for me with countless lucid dreams – experienced long before I had ever heard of Nagas. Dreams of naked yogins; of an open book with a diagram of two perfectly overlapping circles – the Vesica Piscis; of a single star that regularly drew me out of my body in the dream state as I gazed on it; of the night sky exploding in vortices of colour as I did so; of a journey beyond the Earth and a planet I approached; of countless varieties of extraordinarily shaped ‘etheric’ spacecraft magically appearing in dream skies. And of The Ichtheus Society – centred in a Masonic lodge or temple in a small seaside town in England. Walking down a street at night, I discover the lodge and enter through its unlocked door – only to find its wooden-floored hall almost deserted. I am ‘told’ by the one ‘guardian’ present that it was not yet time for me to come in, or for the Members of the Society to gather in it - for its ‘Elders’ needed to meet again in an upper room and to first continue their work with individual Members. Instantly I intuit the nature of this work and its aims. This was to prepare the bodies of each of the Members to once again become vessels in which the free and unbound spirits of ancient serpents could incarnate. At the same time I sEE these serpents in their ancient and primordial, oceanic habitat, and as ‘serpents of splendour’ in the most literal sense - longer and thicker than the longest and thickest of pythons, radiant with glistening, rainbowed scales sparkling in the light of the Sun, and all exuberantly revelling in the oceanic spume, twisting and turning, coiling and curving together in joyous freedom of Spirit.
From ‘The Unknown Reality’, Volume 1, by Jane Roberts
So-called objective science gives you a picture, a model, that has served well enough in its own fashion, enabling you to travel to the moon, for example, and to advance in a technology that for a time you set your hearts upon. In the framework of objective science as it now exists, however, even the technology will come up against a stone wall. Even as a means, objective science is only helpful for a while, because it will constantly run up against deeper inner realities that are necessarily shunted aside and ignored simply because of its method and attitude. No objective science or splendid technology alone will keep even one man or woman alive, for example, if that individual has decided to leave the flesh, or finds no joy in daily life.
A loving technology, again, would always add to the qualitative and spiritual deepening of experience … The true scientist is not afraid of identifying with the reality he chooses to study. He knows that only then can he dare to begin to understand its nature. There are many unofficial scientists, true ones in that regard, unknown in this age. Many are quite ordinary people in exterior terms, with other professions. Yet it is no accident that greater discoveries are often made by ‘amateurs’ - those who are relatively free from official dogmas, released from the pressure to get ahead in a given field - those whose creativity flows freely and naturally in those areas of their natural interest.
Without an identification with the land, the planet and the seasons, all of your technology will not help you understand the earth, or even use it effectively, much less fully. Without an identification with the race as a whole, no technology can save the race. Unless man also identifies himself with the other kinds of life with which he shares the world, no technology will ever help him understand his experience. I am speaking in very practical terms. Gadgets will, ultimately, teach you nothing about the dimensions of your own consciousness. When you use them (biofeedback, for instance) even to attain alterations of consciousness, you are programming yourselves, stepping apart from yourselves.
… gadgets can be useful only if they show you that such alterations are naturally possible. Otherwise, with your ideas of applied science and technology … gadget-produced altered states will almost certainly be used to manipulate, rather than free, consciousness. I am not making a prediction here. I am simply pointing out one probability that exists.
There have indeed been civilizations upon your planet that understood as well as you, and without your kind of technology, the workings of the planets, the positioning of stars - people who even foresaw ‘later’ global changes. They used a mental physics. There were men before you who journeyed to the moon, and who brought back data quite as ‘scientific’ and pertinent. There were those who understood the ‘origin’ of your solar system far better than you. Some of these civilizations did not need spaceships. Instead, highly trained men combining the abilities of dream-art scientists and mental physicists cooperated in journeys not only through time but through space. There are ancient maps drawn from a 200 mile-or-more vantage point - these meticulously completed on return from such journeys.
There were sketches of atoms and molecules, also drawn after trained men and women learned the art of identifying with such phenomena. There are significances hidden in the archives of many archaeological stores that are not recognized by you because you have not made the proper connections - and in some cases you have not advanced sufficiently to understand the information.
The particular thrust and direction of your own science have been directly opposed to the development of such inner sciences, however, so that to some extent each step in the one direction has thus far taken you further from the other … Until you perceive the innate consciousness behind any "visible" or "invisible" manifestations, then, you put a definite barrier to your own knowledge.
From Sacred Circles Teachings 1994-2004
This discourse is about the Ancient Lemurian bloodlines of the Amuru Muru. A legendary bloodline that goes back many centuries to terrestrial people known as the Aser, the Elder race. This elder race cohabitated the planet along with the hybrid children of the Anunnaki, who have been here on the Earth plane for over 400,000 years. Lemuria is actually the name for the latter part of lands once known as the Motherland of Mu. The destruction of [the] lands of Mu and its submergence was not a singular incident, but a series of cataclysms, which had their beginnings about 35,000 years BCE. After the initial devastation had its way, many of the landmasses that comprised MU were lost. However much of the lands remained and would become rebirthed as Le-mu-ria.
Today parts of the Western coast line of the United States and Canada. From My Shasta up through BC, Canada would be the lands that were a part of the original motherland of MU. This would have been the northern most mountaintops of Lemuria.
There is land in those islands, for instance Turtle Mountain on Orcas Island, which defies any type of testing science has attempted for determining its age.
There are tunnels located in the San Juan Islands that upon entering one could end up in Hopi Land, in Arizona. The Islands in and around the San Juan Islands off the Washington state coast going all the way up the coast lines of Vancouver Island, show obvious signs that the land was simply raised from the ocean floors some 5,000 years ago.
After initially three periods of destruction, what was left of Mu was rebirthed as Lemuria. However, there were a few problems, which developed. During the periods of destruction, it became necessary for many of the Lemurians, and their Celestial relatives to remain underground for extended periods merely for matters of safety; as the Earth Changes were unlike anything known by a human species before.
The Saga of the Lords of MU
Amaru Muru (Serpentine Father)
Amaru Mayu (Serpentine Mother)
The legend goes that just before the final destruction of Lemuria, Sanat Kumara, grandfather to the Solar Brotherhood assigned his heir Amaru Muru and 12 other "Serpentine Lords" to take the records and power objects of the Amaru to various parts of the world for safekeeping. These beings were the hybrid children of the Annunaki and the Elder Earth race of the Aser. These groups or ‘Rings’ as they were called would later become known in our history as founding genetic lines or clans, with origins back to the ‘Root Race’ or the Elder Race, an original Earth Race. These rings were placed in each culture …
1. Nagas (Serpents in Sanskrit) of Indus (India).
2. The earliest Mayans and their first Serpent kings, Caramaya and Naga Maya.
3. Later the Serpentine Kings Kukulcan and Quetzalcoatal creating the Itza Maya Culture of South America.
4. The Lung Dragons of China, and an interesting fact is that an ancient Chinese term for dragon was Naga.
5. We have the Amarus and Con Ticci Viracocha of Peru.
6. … The Zoharim or the Books of Splendor – were the Original texts of the Kabbalah. An earlier priest cult in Egypt was specifically formed to take care of the Royalty that went by the title of 'Messah' or Crocodile Lords, who also lay claim to the Adam or Amen (Sun King) as being their Kamara. The early Egyptians who built the pyramids were called the Naga.
7. The Olmec returning to North Africa from the lands of the Maya.
8. The Azteca who absorbed the cultures and religions of Meso-America had the goddess Coatlcue who wore a skirt of snakes. She is often depicted as having two dragon heads.
9. In the mythology of Assyria the goddess Tiamat in her fury would destroy all who challenged her. All that is but the Babylonian sun god, Marduk. In a celestial battle which took place in the heavens, Marduk slew Tiamat. Then, from Tiamat’s dismembered body, he fashioned the heavens and the earth. From her dragon’s blood Marduk created man.
10. Nidhogg is said to be the Dragon Father of an underground world known by the Norse as Niflheim.
From the speeches of Subcommander MARCOS of the indigenous Mexican ZAPATISTA liberation movement:
Brothers and sisters:
We want to say a few words to those present in the National Indigenous Forum
There exists, in many of our indigenous communities in Mexico, the custom of reading in the first days of January how the months of the year to come will be. This knowledge serves to know when to prepare the earth, when to plant the seed and when to harvest. Amongst the most ancient Mayas, this practice was known as Xoc-kin or "accounting of the days".
And there were then, as there are today, learned men and women. The H-MEN, "those who know". These H-MEN have great knowledge which they had learned in their dreams. Through dreams the gods taught the H-MEN the knowledge of the world. In this way they could find things that were lost, they could cure sickness with their medicinal plants and their prayers and they could read the future in their sacred stones or by counting grains of corn; but their main responsibility and concern was to use their direction to ensure a good harvest. Today we have our H-MEN, those men and women of knowledge who make up the body of counselors of the EZLN to seek peace with dignity. They are the ones who organized this forum which will allow us to find one another and construct the bridge of the seventh rainbow. They dreamed together with the great gods, the ones who gave birth to the world, the first ones, and from them was learned great words and their best thoughts. They have been able to find things that were lost, the word, reason, disinterest, dignity. They have been able to cure that most mortal illness called oblivion. They have been able to read the future by reading what their hearts say and counting the grains of corn, which in the world of today are called hearts.
But, just like our ancient H-MEN, their principal responsibility and concern is to give direction so that we may have a good harvest. Therefore we ask you, the participants attending this National Indigenous Forum, to join us in this salute, which we give to the knowledge of our counselors, and ask that it be used to secure a good harvest in the seeding of the word and the knowledge of dignity, as we end today. We ask for an accurate tally of the Xoc-kin, so that we may know about the days, and our harvest may be good and the brown chests of the first inhabitants of these lands may always be filled with hope.
Some of our counsellors are not here today to build this bridge, for different reasons. A good group of our H-MEN are not here because they are imprisoned.
They are accused of the crime of belonging to an organization with which the government dialogues, under the protection of a law. By keeping them in prison, the government violates a law that forces it to talk and not to fight. That is why these men and women are our counselors on this good road. We, the Zapatistas, want to ask all of you to send, together with us, a salute to these prisoners. And we ask you to salute them in the traditional way of indigenous communities, by applauding.
To all who have attended the National Indigenous Forum corresponds the task of planting the seeds of the word that we have gathered these days. Here, in the Valley of Jovel, where intolerance, racism and stupidity, which excludes, reign, we have gathered to speak and to know one another. We have gathered up the seed. We must prepare the planting of a tomorrow. Today we must live in a country that is not like the one of our fathers. Today we live in a country with a government that wants to sell us to the foreigners, as though we were animals, things. We, the indigenous people, are just merchandise, they say. The Powerful of money does not want to buy a merchandise that does not produce good profits. And we the indigenous people are not profitable. We are a bad investment. That is why the salesman who is in the government gives us oblivion and repression, because he cannot get a good price for our sale. Today the salesman has to modernize his store and has to eliminate all of the merchandise that is unattractive and we, with our dark skin and this overwhelming need to stay close to the earth, which makes us short in stature, are not attractive.
They want to forget us. But it is not only the indigenous threatened by this oblivion, there are many other unattractive Mexican men and women because their value is not transferable in dollars. Those, who are not indigenous, and we, who are, have been condemned to oblivion. Our house is sold by all and along with it our history. If we want to save ourselves from oblivion, we must do it together, united. Today the hope of this Nation which hurts has an indigenous heart, it is up to its brown skin to save us from oblivion. It is not enough to die, this we have learned now for five centuries. Now it is necessary to live and to live together with the others who are also us.
The past is the key of the future. In our past we have wisdom which can serve to construct a future - where all of us fit without squeezing one another the way in which we are squeezed today by those above us. The future of the nation must be found by looking towards the past, towards those who were the first inhabitants, to those who first had wisdom, who first made us.
We have to prepare for the planting. We must become rain, we have been like the CHAACOB or gods of rain who came out of the underground reservoirs and met in the sky to travel by horse, each one with his sacred gourd full of water, in hand moistening the earth from one to the other so that all might have the giver of life, water.
If the rain is not present, then we will have to kneel as did our forefathers and sing much the same way the frogs do before the rain and beat the branches as the wind of a storm and someone will play the role of KUNU-CHAAC, the principal god of rain, with his lightening rod and sacred gourd.
We must know how to sow and how to plant one another. No more are the times when the stones were soft and they could be moved by whistling, and when it was not necessary to work to plow the field, and when one grain of corn was enough to feed a whole family. Since the chief was defeated by a foreigner at Chichen Itza the good times have ended and the bad times began. The ancient chief buried himself in a tunnel which runs east from Tulum submerged beneath the ocean. Then the foreigner DZUL, took the Powerful. Today we have to turn so that reason can reign in our lands. We will do this by seeding the word.
We are our earth. We understand well how we and the earth are one. In olden times before the agricultural camp, the field was protected by four spirits. There were another four which cared for the village, one for each cross planted in the corners of the village. The MACEHUALES, our ancient ones, had seven directions; the first four were the corners of the field or the village, the fifth was the center and in each community it was traditionally marked by a cross and a silk- cotton tree. The sixth and seventh directions go up and down. In addition to the four guardians of the field and the four of the village, each person had an individual guardian. In order to represent the five points, the four plus the center, our ancestors used a cross. As time passed the center rose, and the four corners became five and this star with five points now represents a guardian of men and women and harvests.
Guardian and heart of the people is Votan-Zapata who is also the guardian and heart of the word. He, the man, the star with the five points who represents humanity, he. Today that we have spoken and listened, he is happy, the heart of Votan-Zapata is happy.
Boulay, R.A. Flying Serpents and Dragons: The Story of Mankind's Reptilian Past
Dupuche, John R. (translator) ABHINAVAGUPTA: the Kula Ritual, as elaborated in Chapter 29 of the Tantraloka, Motilal Banarsidass 2003
Marcos, Subcommandante Our Word Is Our Weapon: Selected Writings of Subcommandante Insurgente Marcos
Roberts, Jane The Unknown Reality, Volume 1, Prenctice Hall 1977
Roberts, Jane The Personal Sessions, Book Two of the Deleted Seth Material, New Awareness Network 2003
Sacred Circles Teachings 1994-2004
Silburn, Lilian Kundalini, Energy of the Depths SUNY Press 1988
Solarion, Rob Apollonius of Tyana and the Shroud of Turin AuthorHouse 2005
Temple, Robert The Sirius Mystery: New Scientific Evidence for Alien Contact 5000 Years Ago St. Martin’s Press 1975
Viyogi, Dr. Naval Nagas, The Ancient Rulers of India D.K. Publishers, 2002
Wilberg, Peter
The New Yoga of Awareness, Tantric Wisdom for Today’s World, New Yoga
Publications, Exposure Publishing 2007
©Peter
Wilberg 2006