SIRIUS

The notes on this collection were taken at least starting in the early 1960's. They may be outdated, they might not be in any kind of chronological order except to try to separate it into various places. I typed it due to demand from people to see it. The PURPOSE of the notes originally was to correlate mythemes in history to the Cthulhu lore in the Cthulhu Mythos in order to get ideas for stories. Stories equal fun. Key word. No one involved in any of this believed that aliens ever visited the planet earth. Man doesn't need aliens to tell him that E equals mc squared.

Suggest reading Robert Temple's book, "The Sirius Mystery." Please DO NOT get all over this document due to the debate over whether or not the Dogons knew any of this stuff about Sirius. It doesn't matter. The point is, someone invented the myth and we are dealing with mythology, here. All of it is invented by someone! There is doubt as to the accuracy of the original information that Temple relied upon regarding the Dogon people - and all of that Dogon information has been taken over by the Afrocentric school in order to say some pretty absurd things.

Please see the end of this compilation of notes for refutations of Temple's sources and his theories. The unbiased observer realizes that all of it amounts to hearsay and no conclusion can really be arrived at. What I mean by that is this: I don't know if the Dogon of Mali (Africa) had this myth or knew about Sirius or not. It is well known that the Egyptians based calendars on Sirius. I don't know if the Dogon had tales of Gods from the skies visiting Earth, but a modern anthropologist might interpret that as "aliens." What is in doubt is the very idea that the Dogons ever told anyone this legend and whether they ever knew about Sirius. That's a non-issue. Whether it's an issue of white people wanting to invent ancient knowledge for Africans or white people wanting to deny they had any ancient knowledge is not our concern. Did aliens ever visit earth? Who knows. If they did, they did not HAVE to teach humans anything. Humans can figure things out on their own just fine. Aliens didn't teach humans how to make modern technology - GREAT POINT.

All of that is irrelevant to this information being presented. The Dogon story as related by Temple is presented here. Also, much information about the ancient world, including Egypt, and India has come to light in much more recent times. This below was written a LONG time ago and I simply typed it up since there was a demand for it. Don't shoot the typist. Don't quibble with mythology - it's only mythology.

A very major point to this is that Lin Carter, a great Lovecraftian and The Man at Ballantine Books, knew that Sirius was called Sothis in ancient days. He was also very aware of Churchward's Mu fabrication. Lin Carter is the creator of the Xothic cycle in the Cthulhu Mythos. Xoth and Sothis are binary stars. The mere fact that "fishman lore" got connected to Sirius/Sothis was known to Lin Carter who wrote that Cthulhu came from Xoth. In order to connect "fishmen" (Deep Ones) to Sirius/Sothis (hence the Xothic Cycle), he had to have known about the Sirius story and the Dogon. It is also a fact that many cultures had a fish tradition involving the Oannes and the Egyptians had a Sirius based calendar. That is not in doubt. What Cthulhu Mythos writers can make out of this combination of tid bits is a whole New Story. And that is FUN. Key word.

I have to wonder why no one ever thought to give the Deep Ones their own cultural name; such as "Nommo," or perhaps have it spelled "N'mho" or something like that. Obviously, Deep Ones do not refer to themselves as Deep Ones. These were ideas and pieces of information about various old cultures that were collected for the sole purpose of using it for the Cthulhu Mythos. It's not intended to explain the whole picture or anything else.

This compilation with the inclusion of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos started in earnest at least in 1963; that's as far back as I saw dated letters and/or little membership cards proudly shown by the group with a smile. These were from the Societas Selectus Satanas (and by the way, they used the Baphomet in 1963), out of Queens, NY back then. The first group I was associated with in 1969, through an older friend and relative, was called the Starry Wisdom Sect. They used a symbol that looked like a diamond shape with rays coming out of it and a curvy crossed Vajra inside it. All of these were casual friends, people from lodge backgrounds, Kaballists, Theosophists, Witches, self-identifying Satanists, Gnostics, and backgrounds similar to mine (Eastern Esoteric Tradition) that used to hang out and get into this, I think that the Temple of Set (Dr. Michael Aquino's group) would probably call these small groups of friends, Pylons. In 1974 we formed our own little group of about 20 people, the Kishites. That name was not yet in any Cthulhu Mythos stories, but we used it anyway. Keep in mind, that's a lot of people to have over your house at one time. So groups soon split off and took up new names: The Dholes, the Shantaks, the Voormi, etc., names from the Cthulhu Mythos that weren't already being used by another group. The Societas Selectus Satanas at this time was out of McKeesport, PA and consisted of mostly college students. Xerox machines made this a lot easier. In case anyone is interested, Satanic Reds is the Kishites with exclusive emphasis on the Pure Dark Tradition, no inclusion of any fiction, and politics! And we are not super secretive as were these other groups for traditional reasons and for copyright reasons.

This is a compilation of notes serving to isolate that which is in the Fish Tradition or Sirius Mystery, from the other traditions that have more in common with the Dark Tradition. It is a series of notes separated by culture and referenced using the book "The Sirius Mystery" as the main reference (serious occultists didn't tend to reference things they noted down - so I am going to assume the rest of what is not referenced or related to Robert Temple's book, "The Sirius Mystery," is known by readers - I realize this is a large assumption...). Some of the information is outdated; thus it might be wrong or it might still be right. (Which Christianity is right? There are many opinions and that's not a study that needs archaeologists to figure out). This would also separate the Fish Tradition from the Light Tradition that always managed to degenerate into Sun Cults or worse, Solar Phallic Cults where they would dualize the Light as the good and make the Dark into the evil and where they also demonized or exploited women in a patriarchal manner, too. In a sense, one can see a trend from it.

The entire "twin sons Light and Dark" in some cultures is pure Fish Tradition and refers specifically to twins at odds with each other - dualism. This tradition is wholly unrelated to the Dark Tradition where you can see the Yin/Yang symbol which is actually a symbol of dark-becoming-light and light-becoming-dark in an ever flowing balance. The two are not related AT ALL. Both were esoteric traditions, too. With the idea/knowledge that all stars (and all cosmos) came out of the chaotic darkness, the stars become "sons" of the chaotic darkness or abyss or "the deeps" viewed as a Mother Goddess. Many people in the ancient world had names of gods and goddesses that were also names of planets and stars. (Why the name for the Sun was also the name for Saturn in many places is another mystery.) With the people having only the Light Tradition, dualism was easily mixed up with the Fish Tradition. The mytho-religious symbology must be already known to understand what I'm saying in such a crunched manner here.

We (the org represented on this website) have our stuff (Dark Tradition) in order; this has nothing to do with the Dark Tradition or anything serious. The Light Tradition is also originally part of the Dark Tradition (the Light burns IN the Darkness). This fish tradition, or in fact the entire pagan tradition with their gods and planets and sons of gods and semi gods, is wholly separate except for the dualistic confusion it may have caused with the Light Tradition peoples, the Sun cults or even the Logos Cults that demonised the Darkness. One need only look at Christianity to see the Light tradition mixed together with the Fish tradition! It's under everyone's nose. The real Priests of Dagon of old wore a mitre headdress and the Catholic religion uses this same design on their headdress! Jesus is Icthys and he is also the Light. Anything of Darkness is demonized. There is a good example of Fish/Light and dualism.

The mythopoetic method, especially in the esoteric schools, involves layers of meaning; the literal meaning being only for the fools. This can be seen with this example I'll use with Cadmus, a Dagon cultist who sets off for Greece. Getting there, he erects his fish temple and the myths are all abut his fifty warriors, fifty this and fifty that; the number fifty being important in all the Fish Traditions. That refers to the star Sirius, the orbit, etc. 50 years. Then Cadmus has a change of heart and decides he wants to join the dark mother cult of Athena. So what happens to all of Cadmus's myths about 50 warriors? Well, the myth says a Serpent comes up against the 50 warriors and they fight each other - and of course, 5 are left loyal to Cadmus. Five is always the number involved in the Dark Tradition, especially the Eastern-rooted traditions. So, having erased his own myths from the Dagon cult, he now joins up with the dark cult with a new myth to back up his conversion. If Cadmus further told us that a Bright Warrior slew the Serpent and seven new warriors sprang up, it would be saying that he left the Dark Mother cult and joined up with one of the Light Tradition cults.

A note to newcomers: Too bad LaVey was never involved in any of this, and didn't know any of it. If anything, he foolishly turned these types of people completely off with his heavy handed trashing of the politics of the day (tolerant politics). He'd have at least given people FIVE "crown princes of Hell" instead of the Christian imitation of four. It should be known that Nemo who has the Temple of the Vampire was probably shown a copy of this material in here since I, early on, 1990 or so, xeroxed it in its handwritten form for Gilmore of the CoS to give to Nemo. Nemo was familiar with the Sirius Mystery - we talked on the phone and he said this. I also wrote him a very long letter (never kept a copy) all about this. He made up a lot of his Vampire lore using this Sirius lore as the model.

This is a real KEY to mythopoetic forms: 50 is always Fish or Oceanic. 7 is always Light or Logos tradition. 5 is always Dark esoteric Tradition. 5 inside of 7 is the older pure Dark Tradition with the Light contained within it. 3 is the later trinity type cults. Dark versus Light are the dualistic Solar cults. When cults and cultures were usurped - wiped out more or less - the older traditions got co-opted and often inverted by the conquerors and altered to fit their own mythemes. E.g., there are almost no traces of the previous matriarchy - patriarchy wiped it out. The same goes foor about 90% of what was once in the Library of Alexandria - it was destroyed by the conquering and usurping cult of Christianity who, nonetheless, still celebrate those older pagan holidays with new stories to tell about why they celebrate. The Tau was once the symbol of the Mother Goddess in her wrathful form. Now it is a symbol of Jesus Christ, something comically the opposite of the original.

There is a recognizable pattern from the most ancient days on up to more familiar times that indicates to anyone familiar with this that cultural trends and groups of people replaced what was there. Aside from the numbers I've shown as a key, all fish or scale motifs were replaced by bird and feather motifs, sometimes showing a transition where both exist together. The Dark Tradition incorporates the Light Tradition within it, and the Light spoken of is the Vajra within, the inner Logos; but that got replaced by Sun Cults worshiping literal light and often condemning the darkness. The earliest people were matrilineal if not outright matriarchal; usually water played an important part and so did the literal earth (ground). The Solar cults were patriarchal and tended toward sky gods.

Fish Tradition = FT

Dark of Void Tradition = DT

Light or Vajra Tradition = LT

Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft and others = CM

CONTENTS:

Dogon Tribe - pure Sirius Fish Tradition (the veracity of the original document Temple relied on is in question - but that does not matter: this is still a story, a MYTH).

Egyptian, intermixed with the DT and with Sirius, Set/Osiris being Sirius, but Apap and such other entities being DT. (Based on older information on Egypt).

Sumerian

Babylonian

Greek, synthesized many elements as many of these different cults and peoples were in Greece.

Hindu

Jewish-Hebrew

Early Christians

Gnostic, Chinese, Polynesian, Persian, American Indian

Cthulhu Mythos (what the SSS was all about! The SSS used the Baphomet in 1963 at least). No other group used it. This section is included since some of the original Lovecraft Circle, and definitely the SSS people involved in the Cthulhu Mythos, knew this lore and the various traditions inside out and definitely put what they knew in their stories. This is the reason why so many people read the Cthulhu Mythos and think "this stuff is real." It was deliberately done. For this reason, we have included the Cthulhu Mythos section in an otherwise serious essay of comments on the Sirius Lore.

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The information given here of the esoteric knowledge of the Dogons was given to French anthropologists by four priests and priestesses of the Dogon Tribe of Mali in Africa who claimed they had only a "slight acquaintance" with this extremely secret body of knowledge. These revelations represent only one phase of a level of the teaching permitted to ranking initiates, of which there are four graduated levels of initiation.

1. Giri so or word at face value: the lowest level consisting of simple explanations involving mythical characters, often disguised, their adventures simplified and not linked together. "It had to do with invisible deeds concerning the ordinary rituals and materials;" Cf. Greek section on mythology of gods and heroes - Sirius Mystery, R. Temple.

2. Benue so, or word on the side, includes giri so but also a thorough study of certain parts of rites and representations. Their coordination only appears within the great divisions of learning which are not completely revealed.

3. Bolo so or word from behind, completes the preceding learning and furnishes the syntheses that apply to a vaster whole, but does not include instruction in the truly secret parts of the tradition.

4. So dayi or clear word, which concerns the edifice of knowledge and its complexity. Note that so dayi sounds like the Sod Ihoh of the Hebrews (see note at end of Dogon section).

The Dogons do not claim to have been visited by extraterrestrial fish men or "Nommo" as they call them. They make no such claims. They learned the following from their forefathers. Ethnologists say the Dogons are the cultural and biological descendents of "ancient Greeks" from the Isle of Lemnos in the Aegean Sea. (These are Turkic-Turanian peoples: Reading of the Lemnos Island Inscription, By Polat Kaya, M. Sc. E. E.). The Lemnians themselves claimed descent from the fifty Argonauts of Jason in Greek legend who, according to the legend, went to Libya, migrated westward as the Garamantians, were driven south and eventually reached the River Niger in Mali after many centuries to interbreed with the natives and teach them. We will see later that the legend of the Nommo existed throughout the ancient Mediterranean and Near-Eastern world. It is very common for teaching or doctrine to survive in a relatively pure form unchanged after many centuries once it has been transmitted to an isolated, backward people.

Temple's original research connects what the Dogons believe, as learned from the Lemnians, back to the people the Lemnians learned it from: Egyptians, Babylonians, Sumerians. This tradition he calls the "Sirius Mystery." This tradition is sometimes also referred to as the Great Tradition, Secret Doctrine, Cult of Isis, though this results in much confusion because "Secret Doctrine/Great Tradition" often refers to the Void Doctrine (Dark Tradition) while the Cult of Isis refers, or should refer, more specifically to the Sirius lore. This will be dealt with later, when the focus is on Egypt, Babylonia and Sumeria. There one will see two different traditions linked together for the deepest initiates, as well as a usurpation of the Sirius cult of Isis by a Cult of Astarte, which superceded it, submerging and erasing it as much as possible.

The Dogons possess the Sirius Mystery in a rather pure form, separated from any void/dark tradition knowledge or other esoteric traditions such as the Cult of Astarte (e.g., of the Hebrews).

Note that Temple of not an occultist. For his own research in writing the Sirius Mystery, he won a prestigious fellowship in the Royal Astronomical Society of London. He won this because the Dogons, in revealing their knowledge of the Nommo to French anthropologists, revealed also very advanced astronomical knowledge, some of it not yet equaled by modern radio and mathematical astronomy!

The Dogons say:

1. The star Sirius (known to the Dogons as "Sigi tolo" or "Yasigi tolo." "Tolo" means star; they mean "Star of Sigui and Star of Yasigui") has an invisible (to the unaided eye) companion star (known to modern astronomers as Sirius B). The Dogons say this star orbits Sirius A in an egg shaped or elliptical orbit with Sirius A at one focus of the ellipse. The orbit, they say, takes about 50 years for one circuit. This has all been confirmed by modern radio astronomy.

2. The Star Sirius B revolves on its own axis in about one year's time. Modern astronomical equipment can not (at the time this was written up) observe such detail!

3. The material of Sirius B is super dense "star metal" vastly heavier than anything found on earth. They call it "sagala." Modern calculations have confirmed this!

4. There is a third star in the Sirius system they call "Emma ya" (see CM section) four times as light in weight as Sirius B, traveling along a greater orbit around Sirius A but in the same direction as Sirius B, also taking 50 years to complete one orbit. Emma ya moves 90 degrees behind Sirius B as it orbits. The existence of a Sirius C or third Sirius companion is controversial among modern astronomical observers. Dogons say Sirius C is bigger than Sirius B.

5. The Nommo came from the Sirius system.

6. Saturn has invisible (to the unaided eye) rings and Jupiter has four great moons, likewise invisible (to the unaided eye).

7. The planets orbit the sun, as does the earth, and the earth rotates on its own axis fixing day and year length.

8. The sun distributed light in space and on the earth with its rays.

9. The Milky Way (our galaxy) contains all the visible stars and the earth and sun are part of this system or world of spiraling stars. The Dogons say an infinite number of such spiraling worlds exist. These worlds are populated by many creatures such as men with tails or men with wings. The moon, however, they flatly say is dry and dead.

The Dogon also know things an enlightened person of knowledge, ancient Greek or Lemnian might have known, e.g., that the red blood circulates in the body and the essence of nourishment passes into the red blood after the body changes food and beverage.

The Dogon priests have a subtle concept of matter. They say the universe is based on two principles; one a principle of the vibrations of matter, the other a principle of the general movement of the universe as a whole. The original germ of life is symbolized by the smallest cultivated seed. This seed, quickened by internal vibrations, bursts the enveloping sheath and emerges to reach the uttermost confines of the universe. Note: Christ, in explaining the Kingdom of God, compared it to a mustard seed, a tiny cultivated seed, which grows into a tree (see Christian section). At the same time this unfolding matter moves along a path which forms a spiral or helix. Two fundamental notions are thus expressed: on the one hand the perpetual helical movement signifies the conservation of matter; further, this movement is held to represent the perpetual alteration of opposites, right and left, high and low, odd and even, male and female, reflecting a principle of twinness which ideally should direct the proliferation of life. These pairs of opposites support each other in an equilibrium which the individual being conserves within himself. On the other hand, the infinite extension of the universe is expressed by the continual progression of matter along this spiral path.

Note that the aforesaid implies the possibility of individuals not having the equilibrium conserved in themselves. These beings would be partial beings or sub-humans and in this way unlike the universe as a whole. (Cf St. Paul's comments on his own body, in Christian section.)

Such ideas as these existed in ancient Greece. These astronomical, scientific and philosophical ideas are, to the Dogon priests, subsidiary to their main body of knowledge, the knowledge of the Nommo to which they attach the supreme importance. It is as follows:

Our solar system belongs to Ogo, but Sirius and its system belongs to Nommo. Nommos came to earth, amphibious fish-men, founding culture and civilization, teaching men astronomy, time keeping, agriculture, all arts and sciences. Sirius is called the "land of the fish." The matter in the Sirius system is called "pure earth" but in our solar system it is called "impure earth." The landing of the Nommo on earth is called the "day of the fish." The earth itself is envisioned as the center of Ogo's activity in this sun or solar system, where Ogo plugged into our system of planets. Ogo used our solar system as a placenta to give birth. Ogo is humans, cosmically impure, evolved here, the imperfect, the outcasts, the meddlers. Ogo rebelled at his own creation and remained unfinished or incomplete. In order to atone for our impurity, the Dogons say the Nommo dies and is resurrected, acting as a sacrifice for us, to cleanse and purify the earth. Nommo is crucified on a tree and forms a eucharistic meal for humanity and is then resurrected. So while humans are cosmic pariahs as is Ogo, there is hope to the Dogons, hope of redemption, not from some sort of sin or some sort of rules infraction, but more from a form of impurity such as Ogo represents. The Dogons say Nommo will return. A certain star will appear in the sky once more as a testament to Nommo's resurrection. When Nommo originally landed on earth he crushed Ogo, thus marking Nommo's future domination over the earth, which Ogo had had prior to this. Mankind is envisioned as a mixture in which Nommo and Ogo battle and struggle. The Dogons are not talking about a spiritual thing here. They are saying that our FLESH is of Ogo and impure.

The Dogon say Venus and Jupiter emerged from the blood which fell on the placenta of our sun. Venus, they say, was red when she was created, her color fading progressively. Mars too is a coagulation of nebula blood or matter.

The god of the universe, the Dogon's chief god, is Amma (Cf Egyptian Ammon in Egyptian section). Amma dwells in original darkness! His son is Nommo, instructor of the new world. (Note Nommo: key syllable to Om - the Demiurge, loose, theoretical connection). Amma sent the amphibious Nommo to earth. Nommo can also mean an individual. The Nommo's collectively are the "masters of the water," the "instructors", the "monitors." The Dogons say the Nommos seat is in the water. They are said to have landed northeast of West Sudan (the Dogon's home). This would be in the direction of Egypt or the Middle East or further beyond.

The Dogon describe the sound of the landing of the Nommo on earth in their ark. They say it sounded like the echoing of the four large stone blocks being struck with stones by the children, according to special rhythms, in a very small cave near Lake Debo. This is presumably a sound like a thunderous vibration.

The ark landed on Ogo's dryland. Ogo is called "the fox." The Dogon describe a fire propelled landing ark and a mother ark hovering above.

The Nommo is the monitor of the universe the father of mankind, guardian of man's spiritual principles, dispenser of rain and master of the water generally (cf Tangaroa in Polynesian section). Not all Nommos came to earth. The one called Nommo-die, or Great Nommo, remained in heaven with Amma and he is his vicar. He manifests himself in the rainbow which is called the path of the Nommo. He is the guardian of the spiritual principles of the living creatures on earth.

There are 3 other distinct Nommos, each personified as individuals.

1. Nommo-Titiyayne, messenger or deputy of the Nommo-die; he executes the latter's great works. The Nommos who came to earth in an ark are presumably of this class.

2. Another class of Nommos are represented by O-Nommo, Nommo of the pond. He will be sacrificed for the purification and regeneration of the universe. He will rise in a human form and descend on earth in an ark with the ancestors of men; then he will take on his original form, will rule from the waters and will give birth to many descendents. (cf Christ's death and resurrection in Christian section).

3. The fourth Nommo is the disrupter Ogo, or Nommo-anagonno. As he was about to be finished being created he rebelled against his creator and introduced disorder into the universe. Eventually, he will become the Pale Fox which is the image of his fall.

Nommo comes from the Dogon word "nomo," to make one drink. It is said: The Nommo divided his body among men to feed them; that is why it is also said that as the universe had drank of his body the Nommo also made men drink. He also gave all his life principles to human beings. He was crucified on a "kileng" tree which also died, and was resurrected.

The second and third Nommos are really the same in successive stages because the one who came down from the sky became "Nommo of the pond" and men will not utter his name out of respect, but instead call him Di-tigi, "master of the water."

In the future, his twin will descend with the Black Smith twin of the victim (this is an incorporation of the DT) who will also be transformed in the pond. They will have many descendents and will always be present in the fresh made water of brooks, rivers, ponds and wells and also in the female sea water (cf, Sumerian section).

The Dogon say the Nommos breathed through their clavicles.

The Dogon associate a 60 year period with the creation of the world by Amma. A rite or celebration called Sigui is practiced every 60 years. The symbol of this rite is called the Kanaga sign: similar to Pisces the fishes. Sigui renovates the world. Circumcision is a part of this rite. To the Dogon, the act of circumcision (meaning "to cut around") symbolizes the orbit of Sirius B around Sirius A - this is speculation on Temple's part: the rites could have to do with the appearance of the generative organs of the Nommo, i.e., they would then presumably lack foreskins. The Dogon associate the number 60 with the cosmic placenta, the outer border of our solar system or major outer border which would be the orbits of Saturn and Jupiter. These two planets come together in orbit every 60 years. The Dogons associate the mutilation domination of circumcision with a victory over the femininity of Yasigni. Thus genital mutilation is symbolically associated with heavenly movements in the Sirius system. (A footnote in Josephus quotes from Ammonius suggesting that certain tribes in the ancient world were "by nature" circumcised from the beginning. There is no reason to assume, e.g., that the ancient Phoenician tribe of Cadmus had foreskins. Africans such as the Dogon do. One may wonder whether the Nommo or Hindu Prachetasas (fish men) had foreskins. This seems to be an area little studied by anthropology or ethnology.

The Dogon call Sirius B "digitaria" and believe a ray of this star or beam scans the earth periodically once a year. (cf Sumerian section on the ray of Enki and the CM section on the Elder Pharos).

The Dogon recognize an annual "bad day" which upsets people and places them in an unsure relationship with themselves and with each other. This occurs when Digitaria revolves upon its own axis once a year, ejecting on this day from its "three spirals" (?) the beings and the things which it contains. (cf. Call of Cthulhu by HP Lovecraft and the general disturbance Cthulhu's activity arouses in sensitive, artistic and insane minds, e.g., in Wilcox the artist in the story, CM section.)

Note on Ogo's creation:

Nommo and Ogo were created on twin placentas which were to give birth respectively to a pair of Nommo instructors. What happened, however, was that a single male being emerged from one of the placentas; in order to find his twin, this being tore off a piece of this placenta which became the earth. This intervention upset the order of creation: he was transformed into an animal, the pale fox, "Yurugg," and communicated his own impurity to the earth which rendered it dry and barren! But the remedy to this situation was the sacrifice, to the sky, of one of the Nommo instructors which had issued from the other placenta, and the descent of his twin to earth with life giving purifying rain. The destiny of Yurugg is to pursue his twin to the end of time. Please note that pale literally means lacking in color and they are talking about fleshly things, not spiritual things.

Also, there is a contradiction: Sigui is celebrated every 60 years, yet the orbital period of Sirius B is 50 years. French anthropologists have noted that Sigui appear to be brought forward so that the ceremonies are actually celebrated every 50 years. The uninitiated are thereby confused. This is one possible explanation of the contradiction.

The Dogons mention eight ancestral Nommos and the initial couple of Nommo.

NOTE on the Sod Ihoh: the word Sod means arcanum or religious mystery. In the Old Testament, Psalm 25 Verse 14, we read, "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him." This is a mistranslation and actually reads: "Sod Ihoh are for those who fear him." Sod Ihoh would mean the mysteries or arcanum of Ihoh. Members of Priest Colleges were called Sodales in Latin. Cicero says worshipers of the Mighty Mother studied what were called the Sodalities in the Idaean Mysteries of the Mighty Mother. Sod was the name for the greatest mysteries of Baal, Adonis, and Bacchus, who at one time or another were all sun gods with Serpents as symbols. Moses was the chief of the Sodales. In the Old Testament, the dying Jacob thus describes his sons Simeon and Levi: they "are brethren, instruments of cruelty are their habitations. O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly." In the original Hebrew, the words "their secret" reads "their Sod." (Psalm 86, verse 7.)

Note similarity of this syllable Sod to Sadogowah of HP Lovecraft and August Derleth's "Lurker at the Threshold: Billington's Wood." It says in the tale: "It had ye name Ossadogawah, which signifi'd 'ye child of Sadogowah." Cf also "The Seven Geases" by CA Smith, (a gease is a spell that compels you to carry out an action or series of actions) in which Ralibar Vooz is sent by the sorcerer Ezdagor as an offering to "Lord Tsathoggua." HP Lovecraft also used the name Tsathoggua in "Whisperer in Darkness" crediting CA Smith for its invention. Note also similarity of Sod Ihoh to Sod Io or "secrets of Io" (see section on Io in Temple's book. See also Jewish section here.).

COMMISSAR'S NOTE - BIG KEY: Right here, one can easily see how this kind of doctrine, talking about impure flesh versus pure flesh, can easily lead to a doctrine of Racial Superiority and Inferiority! Why, "we were created by the PURE Nommo, our flesh is PURE. But you see those other people over there? They were created by the IMPURE Ogo and their flesh is garbage." And to think, the original indicator of "impurity" was paleness. Interesting! Not only did the occultists of our own early group have this information, but the "Sirius Mystery" by Temple was also being sold in stores catering to early Afrocentrism!

When this kind of thinking got blended into the LT groups, it lead to a whole variety of Salvation Doctrines where it got transformed into a spiritual salvation or cleansing. It can lead to the Gnostic type or Manichaean dualisms where "the spirit is pure and clean but the flesh is filthy." And since these LT groups came to think of the Darkness as evil when they became dualists, they came to think of all things dark as evil - or impure: including dark people. And thaat thinking was prevalent right up until modern times (cf: "On Blackness without Blacks" collection of essays by European scholars, by Gilman).

This is a real historical curiosity, and what these primitive people knew - and learned about Sirius from Lemnians is positively astounding. But whoever (or whatever) invented this other "fish man" stuff or inspired it has caused not only a lot of misery for humans, but taught humans how to hate for no real reason.

Sothis is the ancient Egyptian name for Sirius as spelled by the ancient Greeks. Sothe and sothesetai are Greek words used in the New Testament to mean saved and salvation as in the Gospel of Mark and Luke!

Sirius was known to the Egyptians as Spd or Spdt ("t" is a feminine ending). This is transliterated in our Roman alphabet as Sept. The constellation Orion, a hunter armed with a sword shield and dagger, which rises just one hour before Sirius, was known as S3h which is transliterated as Sah.

Isis was called Ast. Asti refers to the sequentiality of Egyptian thrones (see succession of Hastur Kings in Chambers, CM section.) Note similarity of the syllable Ast to the root syllables of Astarte in all of succeeding notes including its containment in the word astral, astrology, astronomy, etc. Note also pronunciation of Hastur in the CM is similar and containing the word "star." Also Astaroth sounds like the same thing, plus has both "ast" and the word "star" in it. By the 18^th Dynasty, Astarte had become a goddess of healing in Egypt, referred to as Astar of Syria. Ramses III calls Astarte his shield. See also Hebrew section on Canaanite Asherah, Astarte and Anath worship.

Isis's consort is As-Ar or Osiris as spelled by the Greeks. Isis was identified with the very bright star Sirius, her consort with the invisible companion known to the Egyptians as the "eye star." The ancient Egyptians knew just as little about the original meaning of the name As-Ar and the hieroglyphs for it as we do, suggesting that even to them the sources were exceedingly ancient and dimly recollected, or perhaps highly secret and known only to the initiates and/or priests. The confusion is extreme, especially when Temple tells us the invisible companion of Sirius was called the "eye star" rather than the visible one, as common sense would expect.

The entire Egyptian calendar was based on the rising of the star Sirius! Traditional interpreters have explained this weakly by saying that the Egyptians worshiped Sirius because it happened to rise when the Nile flooded and irrigated Egyptian fields. This explanation is weak, circumstantial, narrow and based on a great deal of ignorance about what Egyptians actually said in their own Sirius worship.

The oldest known hieroglyph for Osiris has a throne over an eye. The earliest dynastic (historical) Egyptians (ca 3200 BC) had already forgotten or lost the reason for the use of this combination. The Bozo tribe of Mali, related to the Dogon, also call the invisible companion of Sirius the eye star. Aristotle's friend Eudoxus said that the Egyptians believed their god Osiris had his legs grown together (like a Merman).

To this day, Sirius is called the Dog Star and is in the constellation Canis Major, the Great Hound. Near it in the sky is Canis Minor, the Little Hound. These constellations come down to us from ancient Greece. In Plato's dialogues, the speakers swear oaths and curse "By the Dog." This is thousands of years later than the Egyptian periods dealt with here. A complete review of the constellations in the sky as they relate to this Sirius lore will be given in the Greek Section, since we have a rather complete version of it through them. In fact, the entire story is told by a stellar portraiture of a "battle in the sky" (between Sirius and Aldebaren) that links it all together clearly and simply. Recall that the Lemnians taught the Dogon. The Greeks received their astronomy from ancient Mesopotamian sources: our constellations come from the Greeks who got them from Sumeria by way of Babylon. Sumeria predates dynastic Egypt. All of this points to the idea that even as recently as in ancient Greece, the complete story was known to some and had formed the foundation for their culture.

Anubis is the Egyptian Dog headed god (cf Sumerian An). The Egyptian is actually Anpu and Agga is a synonym.

After referring to the fact that Anubis was born of Nephthys, the dark sister goddess of Isis, Plutarch states: "By Anubis they [Egyptians] understand the horizontal circle which divides the invisible part of the world, which they call Nephthys, from the visible, to which they give the name Isis; and as this circle equally touches upon the confines of both light and darkness, it may be looked upon as common to them both -- and this circumstance arose that resemblance, which they imagine between Anubis and the Dog, it being observed of this animal, that he is equally watchful as well by day as night." Plutarch indicates that Anubis protects the gods as dogs protect men. He identifies Isis with the Greek goddess of wisdom and mind: Athena.

Temple interprets this passage as describing an orbit of Sirius B around Sirius A; while this is not incorrect, it is superficial. Plutarch really seems to be describing a barrier-world between worlds of light and dark and the guardians (dogs, furies, hounds) who lurk there. The light and dark worlds are the visible and invisible worlds, respectively. (This would be a DT interpretation, similar to the Chod.) There is clearly a system here of superficial versus profound interpretation or meaning depending on the level of learning or initiation involved, as in the 4 layered Dogon stages of initiation.

Nephthys was the creator, the spirit of god, which hovered over the primeval waters (See CM section on Nephren Ka and further in this section on Black Rite of Osiris and Lord in Perfect Black.) Plutarch wrote in Greek, and was a priest himself, a Delphic initiate. He lived in the Roman Empire. (See note at end of this section on Plutarch's "Isis and Osiris.")

Nephthys in Egyptian is Nebt-het. (Cf Nebo and Nub and Neb in Sumerian section and in CM section). Neb in Egyptian means Lord.

Egyptians said Anubis was the son of Isis, but is really the son of Nephthys, Isis's dark sister. Temple interprets this as a teaching geared to placing a visible stand-in (Isis) for an invisible thing (Nephthys), i.e., Sirius A as a substitute for the invisible Sirius B. The idea that divine characters are really stars, planets, etc., and even their dynamic qualities (Anubis as an orbit) was a common view of ancient pagans, as can be seen in the writings of Proclus. Temple seems unaware that these "quaint" stories of divine characters have also a level of meaning beyond mere astronomy or physics and go deeper into metaphysics where Anubis is not just an orbit, but rather a hound-fury like guardian of the barrier between the realm of light and dark between two kinds of space!

Egyptians sometimes portrayed Isis (Sirius A) as traveling in a boat with two companions (Sirius B and C). One of them is Anubis (cf Annunaki in Sumerian section).

Wallis Budge seems to have interpreted this as Temple did. E. g., Budge interpreted Anubis to mean a dynamic quality, i.e., time and a circle (see Plutarch's statement) which would equal circular motion, i.e., Anubis equals an orbit.

Anubis worship was a secret mystery religion restricted to initiates in Egypt. It continued to exist right through the Roman world as the "Cult of Isis." Egyptian magical treatises refer to the "Black Rite" of "Black Osiris," The highest degree of secret initiation possible in ancient Egyptian religion. Budge believes the cult of Anubis in Egypt was older than that of Osiris.

The Greek name for the Egyptian author of these treatises was Hermes Trismegistus. Hence these works are referred to as HERMETIC, or Trismegistic. (The Hermetic tradition is the one I explain in the article we sell on "Set," contrasting it against the fish tradition or Spdt.)

The Hermetic treatise called "The Virgin of the World" calls Osiris the "Lord in the Perfect Black." Initiation into this rite was considered initiation into the unseen world, the mysterious black; the most secret and highest rite of all. This rite was supposedly taught by a personage referred to as Hermes who, after teaching it and other arts of civilization to mankind, with charge unto his kinsmen of the Gods to keep sure watch, he mounted to the stars. According to this treatise, mankind is a troublesome lot requiring constant scrutiny and, at rare intervals of crisis, intervention. After Hermes returned to the stars, there were people in Egypt designated as Tat (Greek word Thoth) who were these initiates.

Hermes was later known as Mercury to the Romans, a swift traveling messenger of the Gods (Hermod was Odin's son and messenger in Scandinavian mythology). (CF. H. P. Lovecraft and others who refer to Nyarlathotep as the soul and messenger of the Old Ones where it is said Nyarlathotep came to ancient Khem [Egypt] in the form of a black man, but not a Negro. In CM section). Temple gets into difficulty and begins stretching comparisons by attempting to make the Cult of Anubis equal the Cult of Isis; Hermes equal Dagon; and Hermians equal Dogon Monitors, etc., as if there is only ONE tradition involved here - the Sirius lore of the Oannes. There were two distinct traditions and two persons or races or brotherhoods; that of the Dogon and that of the Hermetic. Had Temple understood the Chandravansa history, he'd have known that these two traditions were, and often are, at war with each other! In fact, the Dogon might be earlier than the Hermetic which would mean that Budge's information on the precedence of the Cult of Anubis refers only to Egypt or else it is incomplete. It is possible that the highest initiates had complete initiation into both teachings. According to the esoteric tradition (not referenced by scholars) the Black Rite of Osiris does involve knowing both traditions as I point out in the article "Set." (cf in CM section, HPL's Haunter of the Dark, in which Dr. Dexter states he is afraid of the avatar of Nyarlathotep, who in antique and shadowy Khem took the form of man. He screams at the end of the story "the three lobed burning eye." This compares with the description of Hermes as Trismegistic (thrice megistic, i.e., holy great or Magi-like) and seems to refer once again to the eye star. It also refers to Trilochana in Tantra. Damascius, the Neo-platonist, says that the Egyptian philosophers, who are resident among us, explain their occult truth as this, "The one principle of the universe is celebrated as Unknown Darkness, and this three times pronounced as such."

Anubis is described often as "time" and "time the devourer." This would be like Sri Kala Chakra in Tantra: Lord Time Devourer. He is accused of devouring Apis the bull. Apis, the animal into which the dead Osiris was sewn and transported (known under the Ptolemies as Serapis) was known as Asar-Hapi. A cult of Jupiter-Serapis existed even as late as the Roman Empire.

An interesting passage from the "Virgin of the World" refers to the secret books: "The sacred symbols of the cosmic elements were hid away hard by the Secrets of Osiris. Hermes ere he returned to heaven, invoked a spell on them and spake these words: ' O holy books, who have been made by my immortal hands, by incorruption's magic spells, free from decay throughout eternity remain and incorrupt from time! Become unseeable, unfindable, for everyone whose foot shall tread the plains of this land, until old heaven doth bring forth meet instruments for you, whom the creator shall call Souls.' Thus spake he and, laying spells on them by means of his own works, he shut them safe away in their own zones (gates, mychos). And long enough the time has been since they were hid away." (This is pure DT stuff, Pentamychos tradition.)

In this treatise, the highest objective of the ignorant men searching for truth is described as: "Men will seek out the inner nature of the holy spaces which no foot may tread. In their daring they will track out Night, the farthest Night of all." (Cf CM section in HPL's Necronomicon "The Old Ones are, not in the spaces as we know, but between them... where they still tread.... no one can behold them as they tread.). This is standard Dark Tradition stuff, the gates are the five mychos, the Pentamychos tradition. (Commissar says: One need not tread all that far: Read my stuff where these secrets are....) No joking. This stuff is secret in the same way MUSIC is secret to the tone deaf! I DO explain it - all of it. (So buy it now, order now!! Heh...)

Khem means star in Egyptian, having specific reference to 50 days. Khem also means "shrine, holy of holies, sanctuary" and "little, small" also "he whose name is unknown," also "god of procreation and generative power," also "to be hot," also "unknown."

Egyptians believed in holy emanations from Sirius and Orion which vivify gods, men, cattle, and creeping things, both gods and men, and are a pouring out of the soul. (cf. rays of Digitaria, Nipper and Elder Pharos of Dogon, Sumerians and CM sections respectively).

They believed the deceased spirit of man goes to Nephthys in a boat.

A prayer to Osiris from one of the Pyramid Texts implores "Be not wroth in thy name of Tchenteru." Tchenteru means anger. Tchenteru is a two-headed god. A form of Osiris worshiped in lower Egypt was Asar-uu. Plutarch also gives Omphis as a name for Osiris (See omphalos in Greek section).

Tcham is a mysterious, potent stellar metal which is said to be the power of Anubis, the personification of the orbit of Sirius B. Tcham also means heavy and weight. Plutarch says Egyptians call the lodestone (magnetic pyrite stones) the bone of Horus and call iron the bone of Typhon.

Pepi I is described as directing his boat with the uas (Uaser or Asar) scepter and the tcham scepter.

Septit also means Sirius and septu means triangle: Sirius has a triangle shaped tooth-like symbol as its hieroglyph. This triangle was associated with teeth, especially serpent's teeth. In Egyptian geometry, the base of the triangle was thought of as its mouth or beginning.

The Sphinx is called "arq ur" (ur means chief or great). In Sanskrit, arksha means stellar (see Hindu section). Arq is related to our word arc for a circle, circumference, orbit or parts thereof.

The Egyptian hieroglyph for a thorn, called by them a plant tooth, is almost identical to the sign for Sothis-Sirius. The Egyptian word for tooth is abeh and is the same hieroglyph as the word for earth. The syllable Ab is connected throughout Egyptian language with purity, priests, offerings, etc. The Abt is the emblem containing the head of Osiris worshiped at Abydos. Note how in modern English, words carrying the syllable "ab" mean the opposite, i.e., they mean dirty, base, vulgar, etc., as in abscess, abnormal, abysmal, abhorrent. This is a cultural reversal of some kind.

Abeh means tooth and jackal. Anubis is a jackal. Aba means to make strong, and abt means path as of a star? or orbit?, or a way.

Note on change of Egyptian culture: After abut 1000 BC, innovations in Egyptian culture took place and the old system fell into complete decay, like a relic. Ra arose in popularity as a Sun god. In this period, the supreme god was called Ammon-Ra. Sirius became less important to impatient priests who wanted more obvious ideas. Perhaps when this began to happen, some purists may have gone off to other places where they hoped to retain traditions without interference from decadent Pharaohs. This may explain legends of the sailing of the Argonauts to Rhodes, the Greek Thebes as opposed to Thebes in Egypt, etc.

The Egyptian monster of darkness is Apap. He possessed many names. To destroy him it was necessary to curse him by each and every name by which he was known. A list of such names is on the Papyrus of Nesi-Amsu, one of them is Tutu, also one of the names of Marduk (see Sumerian section). Tutu is, according to Budge, a form of the god Shu, whose symbol is a lion walking. Shu is similar to the Sumerian Shuba. Shu and Shuba both mean bright.

Horus in Egyptian is Heru, an ancient name of the sun god. Heru also means face. There are many references in Egyptian writings to Horus-Osiris. Neb could also be derived from Neb-Heru; then Neb-Heru means lord of the sun. There is a Heru-ami-Sept-t or Horus of Sothis; and also a Heru-Sept, or Horus the Dog Star.

Egyptians temples were oriented to the rising of the star Canopus in the Constellation Argo. Another name for Canopus, which forms the rudder of the constellation Argo (which is an ark, or boat) is Kahi-Nub. In Coptic Egyptian, Kahi-Nub means Golden Earth. Canopus was considered a star of Osiris. Canopus has the root syllable "can" which means dog. The Alfonsine Tablets tells how the designation of Canopus as heavy was once applied to another star near Orion (obviously Sirius), but fled to the south (Argo is south of Orion and Sirius in the sky). Again, Temple takes this to be another instance in which references to the invisible Sirius B became attached to a visible star - this time Canopus. It is more likely that a cultural change occurred.

In Egypt, Qeti is a god of the abyss. Another version is Qetqet, one of their 36 gods: Qeti also means orbit and oarsmen. The constellation Argo is an arc or boat with 50 oarsmen (cf Sumerian Annunaki who hold large wooden beams like oars; also 50 Argonauts).

The Christians destroyed a site of rites of Canopus by destroying the temple sites near the mouth of the Nile near Behdet in order to supplant paganism there. This destroyed the continued Sirius tradition there.

There is a sacred cow identified with Isis called Hathor. Hathor is our form of the Egyptian He-t-her, which means House of Horus.

Asti refers in Egyptian to the sequentiality of thrones, their succession (cf the succession of Hastur kings in Chambers "King in Yellow: Repairer of Reputations." CM section).

Aakhuti means the two spirits, Isis and Nephthys.

The Egyptians also associated a 60 year period with Osiris. The Hymn to Osiris says "most terrible is his name of Asar. The duration of his existence is an eternal henti period in his name of Un-nefer." The henti period consisted of two periods, each containing 60 years.

The Egyptians, like the Dogons, had a rite of circumcision which the Jews acquired from them while in bondage or captivity there.

Note that Shu is symbolized by a lion walking, as previously mentioned. The domain of Osiris is surrounded by an iron enclosure. The Egyptians also called the star which was the domain of Osiris, "Osiris-Eloh" (as in Elohim). He came here to relieve man of trouble, encountered evil, was temporarily overcome by it, killed, buried and after 3 days arose and ascended to heaven and in this regard, is like Horus. This was written 4,000 years before the birth of Christ and the comparisons are all too obvious!

Horus is the son of Osiris, who kills Apap (Apophis) the Serpent of Evil. Horus is of the same substance as his father Osiris, an incarnation of him, but also identical to him. He is chaste, has no lovers. He is associated with the judgement of men and introduces souls to his father Osiris the judger of the dead. The Feast of Horus was December 21. At this time, a fish-like baby would be carried about in a carriage, representing Horus. This custom existed long after Egypt declined. An ancient Egyptian title of Horus was "Guardian of the Gates." Again, the comparison is too obvious.

Typhon is identified with Apap. Typhon incarnates in Apap and devours souls.

Much of this information on Typhon comes down to us by way of ancient Greece and Rome. Typhon is said to be a lower aspect or shadow of Osiris, but also his brother; i.e., of the divine body of Osiris, but lower. Typhon battles the God of Wisdom (Thoth) who has authority over all other gods. Typhon steals reason from the soul and is therefore the enemy of wisdom, Thoth. Thoth is the master of the dog-headed apes. Aasten is one of these ape-gods in the company of Thoth. He presided over the seven (other ape-gods).

Thoth may have originally been pronounced Tahuti. Izzu-Tahuti was a power behind Tahuti.

Later writers describe him as good and call him Typhon-Set. The slaying of Osiris by Set could be interpreted as an allegory to code or conceal the destruction of the Osiris knowledge later on. The Osiris Mystery cults declined or concealed themselves thereafter. The rise of monotheism evidenced in Sumeria (Cult of Marduk) was conjoined with the destruction of the Cult of Osiris and of Isis. Venus (the planet) was called Typhon-Set as envisioned above, battling Isis-Osiris. Keep in mind, as TeVelda states in "Seth God of Confusion," all things we'd call Semite were at this time called Set by Egyptians as their tribal name (descendents of Seth - or Set) and this antagonism toward the Deity may have been due to antagonism toward people, rigid monotheists who condemned the pagans around them, that didn't get along with others. The meanings of the Deity names changed during this later time. It may have been well known in the ancient world that Moses (Moshe) was none but Thut Moshe, the former priest of Akhnaten - and Akhnaten was hated for his intolerance and monotheism.

The Pharaoh Tutankhamen was originally named Tutankhaten (note ankh, amen and aten). His father in law was Akhnaten and mother in law Nerfititi. A geodetic religious market dispute lay behind Akhnaten's desire to build a new geodetic capital city which he did, outraging priests. He was also intolerant of other cults.

Note on Plutarch's "On Isis and Osiris." Typhon here refers to Set, not to Sutekh the original Hyksos wild-boar god. In this work, Plutarch states "for Isis is a Greek word, and so is "Typhon, her enemy; for he is puffed up by ignorance and deceitfulness; he tears in pieces and buries out of sight the sacred word, which the goddess again gathers up and puts together and gives into the care of those who are initiated."

Plutarch states her temple is called the Iseion (cf, Zion, the city of David on Mount Zion, i.e., Jerusalem. See Hebrew section). However, Zion may be etymologically delivered from the Hebrew Tsiyon, a hill. ?

Plutarch states that fish are forbidden to eat in her cult at Hermoupolis.

He states that of the 365 days of the year, the Egyptians consider the 5 additional and celebrated them as birthdays of the gods. On the first, Osiris was born; on the second Arueris whom some call Apollo, some the elder Horus; on the third, Typhon was born neither in due time nor in the right place, but by breaking through with a blow and leaping out of his mother's side; on the fourth Isis, in the moist regions; on the fifth, Nephthys. Isis they (Egyptians) say was begotten by Hermes, Osiris and Arueris by the Sun and Typhon and Nephthys by Kronos. The third day (of Typhon) was considered inauspicious and no one would do business on it, not even attending to bodily needs until evening.

When Osiris became king, he made the Egyptians give up their destitute and brutish mode of life, showing them the fruits produced by cultivation and giving them laws and teaching them how to worship the gods. After doing this he traveled over the whole earth, civilizing it, introducing music and all kinds of music. When this kind returned, Set devised a plot against him with a helper queen who came from Ethiopia whom they call Aso. The first to discover this plot were the Pans and Satyrs. Anubis, Plutarch states, is said to guard the gods just as dogs guard men. (Mytho-jargon: Seti people allied with Ethiopians and people in the Pan cultures discovered it. Explained in Set.)

Horus, Isis's son, battled Set for many days. Horus was victorious but Isis, after receiving from him Set bound in chains, did not destroy him, but on the contrary, released him and let him go free. (The Schesu-her - Horus culture, did this to the Seti people).

Plutarch says that it is correct to credit Set with whatever in the elements is either immoderate or disordered by reason of excesses of deficiencies, while all that is well ordered and good and beneficial we must reverence and honor as the work of Isis, and as the image, imitation, and reason of Osiris. Osiris, he states, is life giving moisture; Set the fatal heat and dryness of the desert. Set stands for all that is hostile to and destructive of life. Osiris is the reason and logos in the soul and the principle of order in the material world. Set is the opposite. Plutarch interchanges Typhon and Set here. Plutarch also speaks of when Osiris became Phtah spirit, Lunus intuition; Logos reason and Typhon passion. Set is against all this. Isis is like a Mother Goddess. These Greeks changed all of this into this. Set or Spdt may have once been Sirius A, an objective star. When Set was Sutekh, the Greek Typhon-passion it was not the Egyptian's own God but the conquering Hyksos's God - a wild boar. Later, Typhon was passion, Set was a deceiver yet the two were mentioned together. Typhon-Set was like a liar - and Typhon in the Greek sense was passionn. It's obvious to anyone who knows how to read it that they are talking about groups of people. When Set was good, Seti people were liked. When Set was no good, Seti people, or some of them, were considered no good, battled, chained up and then set free.

Another Roman, Apuleius, who wrote of an initiate into the cult of Isis named Lucius, has Lucius testifying as to the great power of Isis, whose right hand is so powerful that she can unweave even the inextricable skein of the Fates; the tempests of Fortune she assuages and restrains the baleful motions of the stars. It is she that whirls the sphere of heaven, that gives light to the sun, that governs the universe and tramples down Tartarus... the elements serve Isis. Note that a skein is a tangle as of yarn or thread and the Fates are Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, who weaved the web of a man's life. The power of the stars over a man's destiny was a truism of the ancient world (and still exists in Astrology today). The sun's power was universally recognized. Tartarus signified the infernal regions wherein the wicked are punished. Yet Isis had dominion over all this.

Sumerian civilization was the original basis of Mesopotamian civilization, better known to most people through the much later Babylonians and Assyrians who inherited much of the Sumerian culture. The actual language of the Sumerians was non-Semite, non Aryan, has been shown conclusively to have been Ural Altaic. Turkish and Hungarian (Ural Altaic and Finno-Ugric) - are Sumerian-like languages - absolutely. ("Lemnos Island Inscription," By Polat Kaya, M. Sc. E. E; "Search For the Origin of the Crescent and Star Motif in the Turkish Flag," By: Polat Kaya, M. Sc. E. E. and other things this author has written.). Sumerians and Akkadians had considerable physical differences between them. The Semites called Hebrews, Israelites and Jews appeared much later in this same Mesopotamian area and the tale of the Noah Flood in the Old Testament follows the much earlier Babylonian Deluge story of Xisithrus detail for detail.

Sumer-Akkad was roughly contemporaneous with ancient Egypt and the lands are known to have been in contact. The Sumerian word Magan can mean either Arabia or Egypt.

Wallas Budge believed that the Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations must have had a common source older than both, but he said he did not know what that could be. The Sumerians themselves said that fishmen brought them civilization by day and returned to the sea at night.

The Sumerian god of heaven is Anu, depicted as a dog-headed jackal in Babylonian mythology, like the Egyptian Anubis. An means heaven in Sumerian. Anu was displaced by the younger Enlil and even later Marduk usurped Enlil's position, just as in Greece Kronos usurped Uranus's position and was in turn overthrown by Zeus. These are cultural and ethic displacements.

The dog-headed Sumerian goddess is Bau. She is the daughter of An. There are 50 Annunaki who are the children of An also. They are invariably depicted as seated and associated with an underworld. They are sometimes said to hold large wooden beams in their hands. Bau's husband was Ninurta, the son of Enlil. Enlil is the exalted god over the Annunaki but, in other texts, his son Enki or Ea or Ia makes this boast of being their big brother and leader. Ea is an Akkadian name, Enki is Sumerian. Enki's key geodetic sacred city was Eridu, the southernmost of all Sumerian cities. Eridhu is the name sometimes used for the Lord of the Waves, the mysterious amphibious creature the Greeks called Oannes and greatest god of this Sumerian kingdom.

Enki resides sleeping at the bottom of the Abzu or Abyss. Enki warned the Sumerian Noah known as either Zuisudra or Utnapishtim to build an ark or boat.

Enki ruled the star Canopus in the constellation of fifty stars known as the Argo.

An is Sumerian god of Heaven. Ki is Sumerian god of Earth. An and Ki married, so you get Anki or Enki.

A hymn to Enlil has interesting details: He has a stellar abode. He lifts his eye and emits lifted light, a beam or scan which searches or scans all the lands like the Dogon's ray of Digitaria, once a year. Enlil decrees destinies. He sits broadly on a white dais high up in a shrine, the Ekur, a lapis lazuli house. Its awe and dread are next to heaven and none can look upon it. His pronouncements of men's destinies are unchangeable, Lapis lazuli is blue-azure with iron speckles. Nippur is another name for this shrine.

The epic tale of Sumeria surviving today is the Epic of Gilgamesh. He is accompanied by 50 heroes. He is connected to a ship called the Magan boat. In a dream, Gilgamesh describes an encounter with a heavy star that cannot be lifted, despite immense effort. It is described by him as connected to Anu. He is irresistibly drawn to this star as if by irresistible gravitational attraction. Gilgamesh refers to this star as possessing the essence of Anu, a word "essence" elsewhere used in Sumerian medical texts to mean "concentration." Gilgamesh's mother is versed in all knowledge.

Gilgamesh had a hairy and wild rustic companion named Enkidu who compares to the god Pan. The counterpart of Isis in Sumeria was Aruru (like Egyptian Aarurut). She was known as Ninhursu, Nintu, Ninmah. She, as Aruru, created Enkidu. The tale of Gilgamesh's encounters with and battles with Enkudu hint of details about Sirius B, such as its great density.

Note also that as Marduk worship finally prevailed as the monotheism of Babylonia, Marduk was worshiped under 50 names, the 50^th being Ea (Enki). The 49^th name is Nebiru. Nebiru means Lord of the Lands. Among the other names pertinent here are Asaru, Asarualin, Asarualimnunna, Asaruludu, Namtillaku, Namur, Tutu, etc.

In the constellation known to us as Argo, there is a Babylonian temple star called "ega Argus" by modern astronomy. It was associated with Ea or Ia of Eridhu.

Enki is sometimes thought of as residing in Abzu in fresh, not salt, water. Tiamat is then the lord of salt water.

A Sumerian inscription in honor of Hammurabi from 1750 BC refers to the Ashratum as the bride of Anu (see Hebrew section on Asherah).

The word "crescent" is associated with the moon and is used to describe the moon's shape in its early phase of the first quarter. Historically, it was a religious symbol from the earliest times. It has been used alone or together with a star or sun symbol on war standards, ancient seals, coins and monuments. The star used in the 'crescent and star' motif represented the Sun and hence the sun-god most of the times. In other times it represented the planet Venus and hence the goddess "Inanna" of Sumerians also known by the name "Ishtar" to Babylonians. {Please note that Sumeria and Babylonia are the same place - an older name for that was Ur or Uruq - and today's name for this is Iraq.} Particularly when the planet Venus makes conjunction with the moon in its crescent phase, it makes an unusual celestial crescent and star appearance that must have awed the earliest believers of astral objects as their gods, believing that their gods were sending a message for them to understand.

Traditionally Turks' ancestors were nature believers and nature worshippers in their homelands in Central Asia and Siberia. Through their Shamanistic and other cult beliefs, they revered astral entities and the natural forces on earth that were important for them in their daily life. In the ancient Turkish world as it is now, the word for god is "Tengri". {That is also the "Mongol" word - and the so-called "Mongols" were the same people as these Turko-Tatars, e.g., Turanians.} This word has variations in the form of "tengir", "tengere", "tangara", "tangri" and "tanri". In their religious beliefs, the sky is identified with "Tengri" and therefore the sky-god is called "Kok Tengri". {In the Mongol tongue, Koko Tengri means Blue Sky.} Tengri is considered to be the "Only God" who created every thing in the sky (universe) and on earth. In addition to this sky god, they also had other secondary gods such as the moon god "Ay Tengri", and the sun god "Kun Tengri" as their most sacred gods as part of the pantheon of Altaic shamanism.

About the Altaic Shamanism, M. A. Czaplicka writes the following: "The religion of the Turks who were responsible for the inscriptions found in the Yenisei and Orkhon valleys, seems to have been the same Shamanism which is still to be found in a comparatively vital state among many Turanians, especially the Altai 'Tatars' and the 'Yakuts'. If we take Shamanism as a form of animistic religion which originated in Asia, and which differs from the animistic religions of other parts of the world in its conception of the gods and in the nature of its propitiatory ceremonies, then we shall not find in any other part of Central and Northern Asia a more typical and more highly developed form of it than among these people. At the same time it must be remembered that Shamanistic conceptions underlie many of the high religious systems of the Asiatic continent."

The Sumerians were one group of Central Asiatic peoples who helped to spread the Central Asiatic cosmic beliefs and Shamanistic conceptions as the underlying foundation of the religious systems developed in Mesopotamia and the Middle East.

In time, race and culture, the ancient Greeks are the closest to modern Europeans of any of the civilizations thus far reviewed. Keep in mind that the first people in Greece were Pelasgians and Lemnians and these were Turanian peoples as shown by Polat Kaya, M. Sc. E. E. who translated the Pelasgian and Lemnian Tablets. The later Greeks were Ionians and then Achaeans. Even later the Dorians arrived and with their arrival began the slow deterioration of Hellenic (Greek) culture. The Renaissance was the rediscovery of classical Greek culture in Europe but the Arabs retained much of the knowledge of the Greeks long before that, so they will be included here. For example, medieval Arabs knew of the invisible companion to Sirius, calling the star "weight."

Even while forgotten in medieval Europe, the cult of Isis persisted through the Neo Platonic philosophers such as Proclus (410-485 AD) and even in an underground form during the Christian dark ages. In such figures and organizations as Giordano Bruno, John Dee, Knights Templar, and even Madame Blavatsky, figures wrongly associated with witchcraft, Satanism, mysticism, heresy, etc. Blavatsky called it the Secret Doctrine and wrongly lumped it in with the DT either partially imparted to her by someone in India, or misunderstood by her, or deliberately distorted by her. At any rate, therein is the same error Robert Temple makes believing there to be only one teaching or tradition instead of two in the most ancient world. Temple conflates the DT with the FT; Blavatsky incorporates the FT with the DT thinking there is but one great tradition. One might say that the highest initiates do know both traditions, but they'd never make the errors these people made and garble them up into a confusion.

Blavatsky does correctly trace the tradition back to the secret doctrines of the Pythagoreans who swore oaths of secrecy, penalty being death. Such secrets even included the precise value and manner of computing the golden section or Phi, a transcendental mathematical value. Recall that the "fish men" were thought by the Dogons to have taught men all arts and sciences, including mathematics. The Great Tradition in Western Europe traces itself back through Plato, through the Greek theology, to the secret doctrines of the Pythagoreans, back still to the Orphics who were taught by Orpheus, who was taught by his mother Calliope, who was an initiate in the Near Eastern or Mesopotamian mysteries taught to mankind by the Oannes. There is also a tradition that these trace to the Idaean Dactyls of the East (not to the Oannes). There is also a tradition that Pythagoras was taught by Pherecydes, who had access to secret Phoenician books. The point I'd like to make is that the Orphic knowledge had both FT and DT/LT The Pythagoreans are all DT/ LT! Proclus himself observed Egyptian holy days at his own late date, and practiced various Chaldean or later Babylonian rites such as the rite of Hecate. Proclus used the title of Horus, Guardian of the Gates, for Hecate, calling Hecate "Mother of the Gods," an ancient title of Isis. Hecate literally means 100 (2 X 50, the period of Sirius B's orbit).

Plutarch, in his book "Isis and Osiris," informs us that among the Greeks many things are done which are similar to the Egyptian ceremonies in the shrines of Isis, and they do them at about the same time.

Julian the Emperor, called "the Apostate" for his efforts to exterminate the new religion of Christianity, wrote a book "Against the Christians" in which he defends the pagan knowledge against Christians who condemned it. In this book he mentions the Chaldeans as obtaining their wisdom from disciples of Oannes and of Belus. He also mentions the tens of thousands of Greeks who have the wisdom from Cheiron, who initiated them into the mysteries of nature and knowledge of divine things.

As mentioned in the Dogon section, the Libyan Garamantians imparted their knowledge to the Dogon. In Greek mythology, Gaia (earth goddess) gave birth to Garamus after whom these Libyans are named. They occupied the Oasis of Djudo, south of the Fezzan, and were conquered by the Romans in 19 BC. They are said to have been of Kushite Berber stock, later subdued by the matriarchal Lemta Berbers in the 2^nd century BC. They later fused with Negro aborigines on the south bank of the Upper Niger and adopted their language. This bank is the home of the Dogon. In Greek mythology, the 50 Argonauts were blown off course to Libya, and stranded there awhile. Herodotus, the greatest Greek historian, connects the Argonauts and their leader Jason's visit to Libya to the foundation in Libya of a hundred Grecian cities. Oracular versus from the oracle of Delphi prompted the sending of a Greek colony to Libya. Thus Garamantians who knew the Sirius Mystery came from Greece to Libya and then south to Libyan oasis of the Sahara, then further southwest past the Sahara to Timbuktu and the region of the Dogon, to mingle with them. Thus the Dogon were the physical or biological descendents of the Argonauts or Lemnians. The Athenians uttered cries in honor of Athena of "olulu" or "ololu," which were believed to have been borrowed from an area of Libya, which had a shrine of Ammon.

Athena had 50 offspring, the Pallantids.

The Argo is the constellation depicting the boat of the Argonauts. It has fifty stars, including Canopus. Sirius lies between Argo and Orion. In Greek mythology, the fifty daughters of Danaus, a Pelasgian (i.e., Ural Altaic) were transported from Egypt to Greece (Rhodes) on the Argo. Hercules or Herakles (earlier name) is repeatedly connected with the Sirius lore, as when he lay with these 50 daughters of King Thespius for 50 nights running. Thespius or Thestios means divinely sounding.

Another important link between the later Semitic Egyptian world and the Greek world was Cadmus, a Phoenician warrior, and his tribe. He spoke a Semitic tongue and is credited with creating the alphabet in Greece that is more well known today, when he landed at Rhodes, about 1550 BC, where he built a temple to Poseidon with an hereditary priesthood. He also left one at Thera on his sea journeys.

Cadmus's mother was Telephassa, which means far shiner. Cadmus's father was Agenor, son of Poseidon and Belus's twin, so his grandfather was Poseidon, god of the seas. His mother was also called Argiope. When Cadmus's mother died unexpectedly on one of his journeys, he proceeded to the oracle at Delphi to ask where his lost sister Europe was. The Pythoness who speaks through the oracle advised him to give up this search and instead to follow a cow named Io (Egyptian Hathor) and build a city where it sank down in weariness. This became Greek Thebes as distinct from the great Thebes of ancient Egypt. (See Egyptian section where people would leave Egypt when the religion and traditions changed.) At the spot where Io sank down, Cadmus made a temple to Athena, calling her by her Phoenician name Onga. Cadmus ordered the cow sacrificed and sent for water from the spring of Ares. But a great Serpent guarded the water and killed most of Cadmus's men. Cadmus took vengeance, crushing the serpent's head with a rock. Athena then appeared at the cow sacrifice, praising Cadmus for killing the serpent, ordering him to sow the serpent's teeth in the ground. When he did so, armed men or Sparti (meaning sown men) sprang up. Cadmus threw a stone among them, provoking them to accuse and brawl with each other as to who threw it. Only five survived: Echion, Udaeus, Cthonius, Hyperenor, and Pelorus, who became attached in the service of Cadmus. Ares demanded vengeance for the serpent guardian's death and Cadmus was sentenced by a divine court to become a bondsman to Ares for a Great Year. A great year was 100 months. One myth says the teeth sown by Jason were left over from those Cadmus sowed at Thebes.

Echion means serpent. Udaeus means of the earth, a word etymologically related to Udeaus is the Greek "dak" which means "the bite and teeth of dogs." Dak also means ring-shaped, as in daktylios. Temple thinks this refers to the orbit of Sirius B around Sirius A, to arcs, etc. But the actual meanings are rings and the biting of dogs which to Temple has no significance other than as references to Sirius B and its elliptical orbit. This is in fact part of the DT and not related to Sirius at all.

In a related myth, Zeus's wife Hera set a 100 eyed monster named Argus to watch over Io. Argus was lulled to sleep by Hermes who played soothing tunes on the pipes of Pan and so was able to kill Argus. (Reference to Pan traditions taking over where once Argo traditions prevailed.) It should be noted that the constellation Argo does not really resemble a boat, but rather is a large, sprawling, shapeless constellation whose 50 or so stars wink like many eyes due to their proximity to the haze of the horizon, where the constellation appears. In this respect, Argo is like Argus, a shapeless monster-mass of blinking eyes like the protoplasmic beings in "At the Mountains of Madness" called Shoggoths (CM). The same constellation could also be viewed as a shapeless mass of waving tentacles with the bright Canopus as its single eye. Those who see Argo as a boat see Canopus as its rudder. Each of these views require powerful feats of imagination.

The word cyclopes in Greek means "ring eyed." Polyphemus had one eye. The cylopes was later considered a solar emblem. The older cyclopes were three wild ring-eyed sons of Gaia, the earth goddess. Just as in Egypt, solar deities gained ascendancy over all other in later Greece and one culture was replaced with another. Originally, the female deity of Delphi was Gaia. This position was usurped by Apollo in later Mycenaean times as a hostile intrusion - and it was a takeover by other people.

Uranus and Gaia (sky and earth) gave birth to 3 monsters, Cottus, Briareus and Gyges. From their shoulders sprung a hundred invincible arms and above these powerful limbs rose fifty heads attached to their backs. For this reason, they are called Hecatoncheises (100 hands) or the Centimanes. They resemble the Hound of Hades, Cerberus, who originally had 50 heads, later simplified to 3. Cerberus was Hecate's pet. Hecate was a form of Isis-Osiris and the name literally means 100. Hecate had 3 heads of forms.

Cottus was the name of the ancestors of the Cottians, who worshiped the orgiastic Catytto, a worship originating in Thrace. These tribes are described as hundred handed and their priestesses were organized in colleges of fifty. They had war bands organized in hundreds, like the early Roman centurions (cent means 100).

Since Hercules was an earlier form of Jason and Briarcus (son of Uranus and Gaia) an earlier form of Hercules, we have here the earliest form of the Argonautic legend, with Briar the 50-headed captain whose name means "strength and weight" as in dense nucleic star matter?, and whose brother's name means orbit and oarsman.

Note that in the sky, the pertinent constellations form a portrait; a battle in the sky with Orion a hunter containing the star Betelgeuse facing the bull Taurus, containing the star Aldebaren and the Hyades star cluster. At Orion's back stand Sirius and the two Hounds Canis Major and Canis Minor, and further behind them the constellation Argo. Aldebaren forms a red eye for the bull. The girdle of Orion has 3 linearly placed stars. One may view this as Orion the hunter attacking the Hyades, backed by hunting hounds and the great shapeless hundred-eyed Argus monster or the single eyed Canopus with a hundred limbs. This is very suggestive in terms of the Cthulhu Mythos: in "Trail of Cthulhu: House on Curwin Street" Hastur the Unspeakable shall return from the dark star which is in the Hyades near Aldebaren. In Chambers "The King in Yellow: The Yellow sign" ...when from Carcosa, the Hyades, Hastur and Aldebaren. Betelgeuse is given by the CM as the seat of the Elder Gods (they battle the CM entities).

In Greek, the word for dog is Kuon and Anubis is sometimes referred to as this. There is an etymological link between the Siren, an amphibian creature and Sirius. There were 50 Nereids, another sea life form of Greek myth.

Echidna bore a dreadful brood to Typhon (at this time, Typhon is not connected to Set), namely Cerberus. Typhon was identified with Python whom Apollo, the sun god, slew. Python was Sirius and two headed. Orthrus was a dog identified with Sirius, the brother of Cerberus. Thus Typhon was the father of Orthus and his brother Cerberus. Temple admits Typhon means a kind of comet with smoke and vapor (Velikovsky: Worlds in Collision), but Temple also makes Typhon to be a reference to the invisible obscure Sirius B because Typhon is the father of Sirius-Orthrus and Typhon implies the obscurity of an invisible moving star and Typhon's son Cerberus has 50 heads. A related term is the Egyptian Tepht or Tep which means a hole in the ground, such as when the rotting corpse of Python (Typhon) was placed under the Oracle of Delhi when Apollo slew it. This cavern or den produced sulphurous flames. Orthrus was the dog of the herdsman Euryton, so Temple has Orthrus being Sirius and the herdsman Euryton his companion Sirius B. Robert Graves compared Euryton to the Sumerian Gilgamesh's companion Enkidu

Temple believes werewolf stories persisted in Arcadia among the Pelasgians because they retained the Anubis dog traditions as a wolf (There were no dogs in Arcadia). Apollo was wolfian or had a wolf form.

Note also that out of 39 constellations, by one system of star charting, 20 figure in this Sirius lore or else depict figures directly representative of the sea, e.g., a whale, fishes, etc. This would not surprise one who knew these constellations originated in Sumeria.

The Greek world, in addition to what is known of cultures antedating it, evidences a geographically precise system of temple building and sacred cities and sites based on Sirius lore.

For example. if one takes the aforementioned constellation Argo and projects it on the earth so that its rudder, which is the star Canopus, sits on the pre dynastic Egyptian capital named Canopus (later Behdet) and its prow at Dodona where the oak for the prow of Jason's Argo came from, one can hold the stern firmly at Canopus and rotate the ship eastwards at the prow until the prow points to Mt. Aratat (or Ararat) where Noah's ark landed and then the arc described is exactly 90 degrees.

There is a sacred system of oracle centers starting at Behdet. This system is based on the number 7. Behdet is on the 31 degree 30 minutes N. latitude; 1 degree north of Behdet at 32 degrees 30 minutes is the oracle center El Morj; at 33 degrees 30 minutes is Knosius; at 36 degrees 30 minutes is Kythera; at 37 degrees 30 minutes is Delos; at 38 degrees 30 minutes is Delphi. The eight or octave, which repeats the tonic as in music to make a scale based on seven tones would be Dodona at 39 degrees 30 minutes. These sites are spaced precisely 1 degree of latitude apart. Behdet was considered the center of the ancient world. It is the main tonic in this scale, i.e., the lowest or southernmost tone. Even other countries appear to have located their main cities, such as Minrod, Sardis, Susa, Persepolis and even ancient Chinese cities such as An-Yung, according to a system using Egypt as the center of the world, much like our Greenwich meridian of longitude. Behdet was at the mouth of the Nile as the prime meridian. Behdet is located at the geographic center of all land masses, i.e., on the meridian of longitude having the greatest length of land running North-South, and on the line of the latitude having the greatest length land running East-West. Behdet was considered the center of the world, Delphi the navel of the world. Memphis, the first capital of united Egypt, was also on the same meridian of longitude as Behdet but at a latitude 6 degrees north of the tropic. Omphalos or stone navels were placed to mark out these key meridians of longitude and latitude, e.g., at Thebes where one sat in the main room of the temple of Ammon where meridian and parallel actually cross. The worship centers of Jews and Arabs also fit into this scheme, like the Kaaba at Mecca which dates from pre historic times and was supposedly established by Abraham.

These omphalos stones were spread over with nets or meshes representing latitude and longitude meshes of lines, according to Temple. Representations of Oannes show him carrying a basket with a mesh on it. Representations of bird-gods such as Ashur of the Assyrians show a bird holding the same basket, his scales replaced now by feathers. This warp and woof of the sacred basket of Oannes/Dagon survived as the lyknos basket of the Greek Demeter who succeeded the Philistine fish-tailed Dagon as an agricultural deity, but retaining Dagon's basket. The Dogons also set much store in warp and woof weaving and in sacred baskets which are not literal baskets.

The sacredness of the number 7 in the Greek culture is evidenced by not only a 7 tones diatonic scale such as ours, 7 oracle centers and an eighth, the octave, but also 7 vowels, 7 strings on Apollo's lute, the mystic and unspeakable name of god consisted of 7 vowels spoken by running them together in one breath. Or Om. (This is LT and DT - 7 Light, 5 Dark). Egyptian priests are described by Demetrius of Phalerum as uttering this sound. He said it sounded musical as if lute and lyre were used. 7 planets (considered to be stars that move freely, i.e., they looked small, like stars looked, but they moved) - note also 7 chakras or psycho-physical energy centers in the body (6 in the body, the 7^th outside).

Omphe of omphalos not only contains an Om but it means "sacred voice" or "speaking of Om."

Each omphalos center at each latitude has its own patron tree, planet and divine birth, e.g., Jupiter rules Knosius and the palm tree ruled Delos. Apollo and Artemis-Diane were born on Delos, Pallas Athena on Lake Tritona. The cult at Delphi was originally of Gaia, later Apollo. Dodona was connected with Zeus. His son Apollo seems to have been inserted somewhat awkwardly into the Greek pantheon when solar gods (and cultures that were solar) gained ascendancy later on, just as they did in Egypt. Minoan Cretans, contemporaneous and trading with ancient Egypt, took Apollo worship from Knossus to Delphi. The Hyperboreans supposedly sent certain Hyperborean gifts to Delus by way of Dodona to Delos's north. Dioderus Siculus wrote of Hyperboreans observing celestial objects through a kind of telescope. Recently, near Kythera, was found an ancient computer inside a shipwreck. This remarkable machine, from the 1^st century BC, was on the cover of Scientific American.

There is evidence that a related system of sacred center existed in what is now Russia in the 6^th century BC, as if carried there, key positions along the Dnieper were identified corresponding with key positions on the Nile, right up to the point of transferring Egyptian place names to Russia. It is also known that some of the Argonauts went to what is now Georgia, and the Macedonians, a Slavic people, were familiar with this system.

The inscription "E" is prominent, the 5^th letter (part of DT/LT). At the Delphic shrine. Even classical Greeks retained no memory as to its meaning probably due to the patriarchal solar cults wiping out all vestiges of the DT which was associated with a prior matriarchal period. E is the 5^th letter of Greek alphabet, named "ei," a diphthong or double vowel. In Plutarch's time it denoted the number 5. It is the Greek word for "if" and also the second person singular (in grammar) of "to be," i.e., "thou art" or "you are." Some say a Minoan E was transferred to Delphi and there, not understood, associated with Apollo. E was the Greek's 2^nd vowel and the sun was considered the 2^nd planet or free moving star after the moon, and the Greeks identify the sun with Apollo who is sacred to the Delphic shrine. Delphi is the second oracle center from the north below Dodona.

The Greeks also had a cycle based on 60 called a Daidalia (60 years).

The planet Uranus may have been known to the ancients and identified with Sirius B as being invisible. Proclus mentions spheres which carry the stars that are concealed from us. Temple interprets this to mean invisible celestial objects.

Pinder called Pan "the shape shifting dog of the Great Goddess Gaia." Sirius is envisioned in the ancient world as a kind of eighth planet and Pan as the ruler of the Cosmos.

There are rare and little known Greek references to more primal gods than Zeus, et. al. Kronos, not the original ruler of Mt. Olympus, usurped dominion over Mt. Olympus and the sky in a battle. Mt. Olympus's prior custodian and ruler was Ophioneus (DT stuff). This name is connected with Ophis, snake and is a snake like monster of the type of Typhoneus appearing in Hesiod's Theogony. Ophioneus has a consort, the Oceanid Eurynome, while Kronis is helped by the female Rhea. Thus Kronos, who represents time, encountered and battled an inchoate, unformed monster which preceded time. The victor, Kronos, has possession of the sky and became or remained the superior god. Thereafter Ophion (Ophioneus) and Eurynome had already ruled on Olympus and were trying to repel a challenge. This clearly speaks of cultural battles if you know what else was going on outside of these myths.

Eurynome is called an Oceanid, meaning a daughter of Okeanos. Okeanos and Tethys were sometimes called the first gods. Therefore Ophion and Eurynome are second generation in that they themselves replaced the still earlier rulers of the sky, Ouranos and Gaia. Zeus was only a child when Kronos usurped power from Ophion. An earlier form of Zeus was Zas (the Turkic or Lemnian Sais even earlier), later displaced Kronos. There was another Oceanid named Callirhoe who produced the snake woman Echidna, who mated with Ophioneus, bearing the dreadful brood Cerberus. (A system of DT where there are FIVE main "deities" or "daimones" preceded the more LT oriented system of 7. Eurynome, Echidna, Ophion, Callirhoe and also Cthonie are the 5 daimones protectors of the "house" shown on the Pythagorean pentacle - the circle around the pentacle denotes the barrier between Light and Dark and it is protected by the hounds/furies. Likewise this system was usurped by sun worshiping patriarchal people who finally took over completely via Perecles, by armed force.)

Just as Kronos battled Ophion, Zeus battled Typhoneus. Cosmic fights with these monstrous snake gods not exclusive to Greece, but are found all over the Near East in both Semitic and Indo-European contexts. In a Hurrian-Hittite story, the storm god defeats the dragon Illuyanka. The Egyptian dragon Apap is overcome nightly by the sun god Re in his journey under the earth (this is how they viewed the sun's rising and setting). Typhoneus/Typhon is equated with the Egyptian Set/Seth only much later.

These myths do not imply that the defeated side is destroyed. The result of these wars is actually that the loser deities and winner deities are assigned different portions of existence as a result of the battle. So if once "-" was the name of the Sun, it would then become the name of something more remote and of lesser importance. The loser of the Ophioneus-Kronos battle falls into Ogenos. Zeus later creates earth and sea as we know them, sky's existence being implicit in Zeus. Zeus's defeated enemies are assigned as their sphere of activity, Tartarus. The 3 giants, Briareus, Kottos, and Gyges are polar giants imprisoned in their circle by Kronos. Their jail is surrounded by a barrier or wall of bronze and the exit is through gates fabricated by Poseidon which they cannot cross (this is pure DT, Pentamychos type stuff). It is a damp jail or region where there is eternal darkness.

KEY: Many of the older cults, gone underground or into the esoteric guilds like the Pythagoreans, would use the planets to disguise what they were saying. The mychos or "caves of the hidden in darkness" was called Jupiter; space was called Venus; time was called Sun; the element of fire (elektros diastasis) was called Mars; wind (Phos) was called Mercury; water (Demiurgos also) was called Saturn; and earth was called Moon. In the esoteric sense then, and they wrote this down, if they referred to Saturn they'd be talking about the Demiurgos. If they spoke about Sun, they'd be talking about time were as prior, Kronos referred to time. Kronos group was overthrown, probably persecuted so they'd code their words. The DT stuff was at this time, completely esoteric. As said previously, Eurynome, Echidna, Ophion, Callirhoe and also Cthonie are the 5 daimones protectors of the "house" shown on the Pythagorean pentacle - the circle around the pentacle denotes the barrier between Light and Dark and it is protected by the hounds/furies. The actual angles that each of these Daimones protects would be Eurynome defends the principle of Hypopteros Drys; Echidna protects the principle of Dike; Ophion protects the anima within and one's own Demiurge; Callirhoe

protects the principle of Psyche or yogic inner harmony; and Cthonie protects the principle of nature and the pure heart. This is the Pythagorean doctrine and it is identical to Tantra, which was never persecuted. (See Tantra, Vajrayana and Pythagoreanism sold on this website - see AD). These might be seen as abstract concepts, but if they are explained clearly - there are many people who can clearly understand these things; they are simply felt, experienced and measured in nature. Contrary to what some think, the ancient world was filled with groups that would shroud their knowledge in myths and secrecy. This is very well known, that they did this.

Some Greek theogonies say Zas, Cthonie and Chronus (space, matter and time) pre existed all gods. Zas, an earlier form of Zeus, is connected to Zatheos (soth again). Preceding these three was Chaos. This is a portion of the cosmogenesis DT stuff.

Triton is the son of Amphitritite and Poseidon. Below the waist Triton is a fish or dolphin, above the waist a man. The dolphin was placed for his service by Poseidon in the constellations becoming Capricornus, the goat, whose hind quarters are that of a dolphin. Goats were sacrificed to Amphitrite and the Nereids (50 sea nymphs) on the sea shore. The shield of Zeus, the Aegis, was made of the skin of the goat Amalthaea. This shield represents divine protection.

The Greeks believed the ancestors of the Hellenic races were the river gods, all of them sons of the primeval ocean. For them the ocean was the father of the Gods.

Note again, the earlier form of Zeus as Zas (and the Lemnian Sais) connected to the zatheos, i.e. containing the syllable of soth again. Zeus has been portrayed with his legs grown together like a merman. In this connection, the Dogon association of genital mutilation (circumcision) with the Nommo appears when Kronos shears off the genitals of Ouranos his father and prior ruler of the world. Aphrodite was formed from severed parts that fell into the seas to make foam.

The Mellisae were priestesses, especially those of the Delphic Apollo.

There was a Babylonian monarch named Naram-Sin, king of Eshunna, connected with the five degree omphalos or cultic center at Kythera. This center was dedicated to Aphrodite in the Greek world.

One fragment of Berossus about Babylonian history tells a creation story in which, in the beginning, were only darkness and an abyss of waters where resided monsters with parts of different species mixed together. Delineations of these monsters, Berossus says, were preserved in the temple of Belus at Babylon. (cf CM section where Zadok Allen mentions Belial and Babylonish abominations). Presiding over them was the woman Omoroca, which in Chaldean is Thalatth which the Greeks express Thalassa, the sea, but according to the most true computation, it is equivalent to Selene, the moon. Belus came and cut the woman asunder. One half of her he formed into the earth, the other half the heavens and he also destroyed the animals in the abyss. Belus cut off his own head upon which the other gods mixed the gushing blood with the earth to form men, making men rational and partakers of divine knowledge. Men call Belus "Dis." He divided the darkness, separated the heavens from the earth, and reduced the universe to order. But the animals so lately created were not able to bear the prevalence of light and so died. Belus saw the vast uninhabited space left, ordered one of the gods to take off his head, and when taken off they were to mix the blood with the soil of the earth to form other men and animals capable of bearing the light. Belus also formed stars, sun, moon and five planets. Belus's queen was Beltis. (Beltis Zapuna later on became Beelzebub, a male evil creature).

Helladius tells of Oe from the Red Sea who taught astronomy and letters. Some say he came out of a great egg whence his name, Oe, which means "egg born," but others say he only seemed like a fish because he was clothed in the skin of a sea creature. He exited in a strange suit from some kind of vessel, likened to an egg, that fell into the sea. The egg like vessel was luminous or like a fiery star.

The Chaldeans also had a cycle of time based on 60 called a Saros (360 years). A neros was 600 years.

The Nabatheans were a caste devoted to Nebo, god of secret wisdom, an occult brotherhood. Nebo was the deity of the planet Mercury, Nabo to the Greeks. The Nabatheans were one group against whom the laws of Moses were enacted. Nebo is the oldest god of wisdom of Babylonia. Nebo was the son of Zarpa-nitu (moon) and Merodach (sun). Nebo was the overseer among the seven gods of the planets. Nebo was originally the deity of the visible universe who was the bolt or binder of its several parts together. He was the bond of the universe. The ziggurat or planet tower of his temple at Borsippa was called the house of seven bonds of heaven and earth. Nebo was thus a god of all heavenly bodies. At Borsippa Nebo was considered the supreme god, the creator of the universe. Some speculate that Nebo is connected to the words Bo, Bod, Boden, Buddha and even Fo in China, sacred Eastern words and even Wo, Wod, and Woden of the Scandinavians. The day sacred to Woden is Wednesday, the same day which is sacred to Buddha in India and sacred to Nebo among the Akkadians. Wednesday is also sacred to the Ophites. It was on the fourth day, i.e., Wednesday, that genesis says the planets were created as signs for the wise.

In Chaldea, the Sed or Alaph, a bull with a man's face, was sacred to Nebo. Nebo is a prophet who makes known or proclaims the desire of Merodach the merciful. Merodach is identified with Marduk of Assyria. Merodach is a raiser of the dead. Akkadian races conceived the heavens and earth as primordial powers or Zi which maintained an external struggle with Chaos.

Moses died or disappeared on the mount sacred to Nebo.

The Hurrian-Hittite first king of heaven was Alalu (cf Greek section on ololu cry of Athenians worshiping Athena). He was deposed by the sky god Anu and Anu was deposed by Kumarbi (Kronos). Kumarbi bites off his penis (circumcision). This could easily refer to cultural take over, not literal circumcision. This is how they'd write of such a thing.

In this story of the Eridu, a Babylonian myth in the beginning all land was sea; then Marduk built a raft on the surface of the water and on the raft a reed hut which became the earth.

The Hindu equivalents of Isis and Osiris are Isi and Iswara or Ishwara. Isha is Sanskrit and means arrow, but also means ray of light. The Ishustrikanda is a constellation the "three fold arrow." Also note, Ishwa is Jesus's name, Yishua. Ishwara, earlier on came to mean the "male alone without the female" or a "castrated male" referring to solar phallic sun cult people or pretarupa whose coming heralds the Kali Yuga. The girdle of Orion has three linearly placed stars, also called Orion's belt.

In Sanskrit, Arkam means "as far as the sun, even to the sun inclusively." The name Arjuna to Krishna's companion in the Baghavadgita is a related word. Note Arkam contains arc. The cycle of Vrihaspati is 60 years. Vishnu has a Matsya (fish) avatar, a man fish recorded in the Zodiac as Pisces. Arksha means stellar. (Cf CM section, Arkham is a key city in the CM.)

In India, the sages or Rishis of the Prachetasas race are shown coming forth from the deep. In the Vishnu Purana they passed 10,000 years of austerity in the vast ocean. Water is the symbol of wisdom and occult learning. Water is the production of Nara the spirit of God. Narayana means "he who abides in the deep" or plunged in the waters of wisdom, water being the body of Nara. Vayu is the mover on the waters. Idaspati is the master of the waters.

The Prachetasas worship Narayana who, like Poseidon, moved or dwelt over not under the waters. There are ten exoteric Prachetasas and five esoteric ones. Prachetas in Sanskrit is the name of Varuna who is like Nereus, a water god (this is in much later myth). The mother of the Prachetasas was Savarna, the daughter of the ocean.

In the Hari-Purana and the Baghavadgita, as well as several other books, the god Vishnu is shown as having assumed the form or avatar of a fish with a human head in order to reclaim the Vedas lost during the deluge. He enabled the Indian Noah, Visvamitra, to escape with all his tribe in the ark. He then remained with pitiable humanity to teach them building, cultivation and give thanks to the unknown deity he represented by teaching them to build temples and to worship. He remained half fish, half man all the time and at sunset returned to the ocean to pass the night. One day he returned no more, when the earth was covered with fruit, vegetation and cattle. The Haripurana says "he had taught the Brahmin the secret of all things.."

Jacolliot says the Sanskrit word Oan or Oannes has the O in Sanskrit as an interjection expressing an invocation as in "O God." The "an" signifies in Sanskrit a spirit of being even a semi-god. In other words, Vishnu disguised as a fish gave the sacred books to the Hindus or more specifically to the Brahmins, the Vedas and Manu reckon more than 25 thousand years of existence implying great antiquity.

The second person of the Brahmanic trinity is the future savior or redeemer of humanity. This is Vishnu who had a fish avatar. Vishnu in his fish form shown in the temple of Rama holding the lost Veda which he restores and leads on the blessed with. He is also shown in the same temple reclining on the seven headed serpent of eternity, Ananta, and moving like the Hebrew Elohim on the face of the primeval waters.

In the Puranas, Marisha, the daughter of Kandu the sage, becomes the wife of the Prachetasas and the mother of Daksha who is the father of the first human like progenitors. (This is a later retelling of the events. See Serpents versus Adamites sold by us - shortly summarized - the Chandravansa lived in the land from earliest time. The Suryavansa came. The two got along and intermarried in some areas - other Chandravansa left for the north. The Prachetasas were sea faring folk. A war broke out, a huge war that burned everything up, between the Prachetasas and the Suryavansa. It was agreed to swap daughters of the Suryavansa with men of the Prachetasas and this was done. The offspring were considered pretas due to their character and behavior and referred to as Ishwara, which at that time, meant "male alone with no female." Their birth heralds the Kali Yuga. Much later when the Aryans invaded, they turned everything into gods and goddesses and dumbed down everything that went before. They are regarded as part of the Kali Yuga - also known as the Aryan Age!).

The original center of Jewish worship was not Jerusalem, but Gerizion, exactly 4 degrees east of the prime meridian or axis of Egypt. It was moved to Jerusalem after 980 BC. Hebron was the eastern oracle octave equivalent to western Behdet, being on the same exact line of latitude. David moved his capital from Hebron and to this day the people of Hebron have not forgiven him for it. Jerusalem means Holy Salem, which they call New Salem, as though Hebron was the older, authentic one. An heretical sect of Jews called the Melchizedekians frequented Hebron to worship or consult the spirit of Adam. They may also have adhered to an older, purer, undistorted form of worship.

Saul was the first King of Israel, his father was Kish. They were Benjamites. The second King was David, a Judean. Saul persecuted David and drove him out, but David had victory in the end. When the Philistines defeated Saul, they deposited his captured armor in the temple of Ashtaroth as a token of gratitude. The Benjamites attempted to seize the oracle center or shrine of Hebron from the Calebites. This was a guardian tribe whose name means "dog men," implying dogs as guardians as the dog-guarding preserve and protect the secrets of the Dog Star Sirius. A confederacy of mercantile tribes called by the Egyptians "People of the Sea" invaded Syria and Canaan among them Philistines who captured the shrine of Hebron from this clan of Calebites, who were Edomites. But the Calebites, allies of the tribe of Judah, recovered the shrine around the same time. Temple suggests the identification of Edom with Adam, both mean "red or redman." Esau, ancestor of the Edomites, was buried at Hebron, as the Talmud reports Joseph buried Esau's head at Hebron also.

Adam was the original oracular hero of Machpelah, his burial cave, but Caleb conveyed the holy spirit to Hebron ousting the Anakim from the shrine of Machpelah. Caleb supposedly went there to consult Abraham's shade or ghost but Temple suggests perhaps it was Adam's ghost he went to consult. Elias Levita, a 15^th C Hebrew commentator, records how the teraphim Rachel stole from her father Laban were mummified oracular heads, among them that of Adam. If this is so, the Genesis narrative refers to the seizure of the oracular shrine of Hebron by Saul's Benjamites from the Calebites.

Blavatsky regards David as a perverter, sensualizer and debaser of religion. Note that St. Paul was a Benjamite, some of the Benjamites survived efforts by the other tribes including the Judeans to exterminate them. Rachel died giving birth to Benjamin. St. Paul wrote that Melchizedek was superior to Abraham (Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 7, vs 1-10). Jacob supposedly felt Benjamin was dearest to him.

The Jews had an eight letter version of the sacred name: JEHUOVAO. "H" is an aspirate, not a letter. Also, some think that when you read that the "Holy Spirit" or "Holy of Holies" was transported or conveyed to a place, it refers to the Ark of the Convenant.

The tribe of Isaac had devotees of the goddess Sarah, and had allies among the devotees of the goddess Heth who owned a shrine or oracular cave said to be the grave of Abraham, in which his ghost or shade could be consulted. Sarah was forced out of Beer-Lahai-Roi by another tribe who came for asylum at nearby Hebron. Robert Graves says Abraham was a tribe, not an individual. (Likewise, Abrahm means Not Brahm). The oral tradition agrees, Abrahm, later called Abraham is a group of people, a tribe.

The original hero of Hebron could have been the Danaan Adamos or Adamastos, the unconquerable or the inexorable, a Homeric epithet of Hades, borrowed from the death goddess his mother.

Hebron is the center of the earth near the junction of 2 seas and 3 ancient continents, akin to Delphi, the navel of the world. There is a tradition that Adam was created at Hebron and it is the site of the Garden of Eden.

Temple believes, contra Velikovsky, that Moses commanded the Hebrews to observe the fifty year jubilee because this is the orbital period of Sirius B: Moses was raised in an Egyptian Pharaoh's court and would therefore have known various secrets. Thut Moshe was Akhnaton's priest and there is little doubt now that this was Moshe (Moses).

In the Zohar, two Rabbis meet a man carrying a heavy load. They ask him "Who caused thee thus to walk and carry such a heavy load?" He answered by stating the letter "nun" in Hebrew that is the essential germ of the Holy name of YHVH. They said to him: "If thou wilt tell us the name of thy father, we will kiss the dust of thy feet." He replied: "As to my father, he had his dwelling in the Great Sea and was a fish therein and he was mighty and Ancient of Days." One of the Rabbis answers him, "Thou art the Son of the Holy Flame, thou art the Son of Rab Ham-nun-ah Sabah." The latter means the old and "nun" in Aramaic or Chaldee is "fish." The rabbis were R. E. 'aZar, son of R. Shim-om b-Io'hai and Rabbi Abbah. Note that the man with the burden also says of his father, that he destroys the Great Sea from one end to the other and he was great and mighty and Ancient of Days until he swallowed all the other fishes in the Great Sea and after that, he produced forms, the living and existing beings from all the best in the world and in his might he swims through the Great Sea and one moment he brought me forth and then returned to his place and hid himself in the sea.

Joshua is called Son of the Fish (nun)," as is Jesus (Dag). Note that O Nommo, the redeemer in Dogon section is the son or offspring of Amma, the Father.

Jonah fled to Jaffa where Dagon, the man-fish was worshiped and dared not go to the Ninevah where the dove was revered. The Kaballists say the story of Jonah being swallowed by a fish is really an allegory or code for the fact that when he was thrown overboard at sea, he was picked up by a vessel having a keto or big fish on its prow. Keto is Dagon or Poseidon. The Kaballists say he was a runaway priest from the temple where the dove was worshiped and desired to abolish idolatry and institute monotheistic worship. Note that the legitimate Jewish Kaballists are adepts in reading this mytho-jargon. Then, caught near Jaffa, he was held prisoner by devotees of Dagon and his cell or prison was fish-shaped. A Portuguese Kaballist, Mose de Garcia, had a collection showing the interior of a temple to Dagon. There was an immense idol there, the upper portion man and lower portion fish. Between the belly and tail was a closet like compartment in which transgressors against the local deity were disposed of. The inscription in this drawing shows Phoenician characters. Note that Jonah is the Greek Iona, containing Io. Also Iona means dove sacred to Venus or Astarte. Thus Jonah appears to have been a monotheistic Astarte devotee and enemy of the worshipers of Dagon. We see here an animosity between fish worship (Dagon) and bird worship, Astarte. Fish or sea versus birds of the air (cf Derleth in CM section: Hastur versus Cthulhu). See also note on Dogon section on Sod Ihoh.

In the 14^th century BC, Ugaritic mythology of Canaan, tablets written in a language quite close to Biblical Hebrew show Asherah as the wife of El, the chief god. Her full name is "Lady Asherah of the Sea." She was progenitress of the gods: all other 70 gods were her children, including Baal. Qadesh wa-Amrur called fisherman of Lady Asherah of the Sea was one of her servants, fishing at her bidding. (Cf Sumerian section on Ashratum). In the 14^th century BC, letter written by Canaanite petty chieftains to their overlords of Egypt use the names Asherah and Astarte interchangeably.

The goddess Astarte is mentioned 9 times in the Bible, Asherah 40 times.

The Canaanite's Astarte is shown with two long spiral ringlets identical to those of the Egyptian god Hathor (see Egyptian section).

The Canaanite myth of Anath is that she is the daughter of El, god of heaven and of his wife Asherah of the Sea. She has many features in common with the Akkadian Ishtar. In a 13^th century BC Egyptian text, she and Astarte are called the goddesses who conceive but do not bear. Philo Bylus, early 2^nd century AD identifies Anath with Athena the virgin Greek goddess. Her foremost lover and brother was Baal. This union produced a wild bull. In Egypt, Anath came to be regarded as the wife of the god Seth and an Egyptian magical text of the 13^th century BC describes how Seth deflowers Anath on the seashore in surprisingly sadistic terms.

Hugo Grossman, in a study of the Ark of the Covenant, expressed the view that originally there were two images in it, that of Yahweh and that of his wife Anathyahu, or Astarte.

When Moses died, the Shekina, a female reflex or aspect of God, took him on her wings and carried him from Mt. Nebo off to an unknown burial place four miles away. The Levites, originally a priestly class (called Sodales at one time) among the early Jews, were connected to Nebo. Nebo oversaw the 7 gods as their messenger. The Kaballa connects Nebo with the city and the 5^th race of occult theosophy by the followers of Moses feared the knowledge of the Sod. This knowledge existed before the Zohar and the Kaballa and passed into it.

Old Testament Amos 5:8 enjoins one to seek him who maketh the seven stars and Orion who calleth for the waters of the sea and powereth them out upon the face of the earth. The Lord is his name. The seven stars are the well known Pleiades cluster in Taurus, one of which is Caeleno (See CM section). Sir John Herschel, famous astronomer, Royal Society of England, ascertained in 1840 that only in the 22^nd century BC did the north or Pole Star shine from a position where it would have been visible from deep inside the bore in the north face of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt: This deep tunnel is known as the descending passage since it leads underground from the north face. Sir John also found that at the very same time, the Pleiades were in direct alignment with the scored lines of the pyramid's descending passage. These are lines cut into the walls of the passage at regular intervals. The Pleiades appears in the constellation Taurus. The exact date for the positions of these stars was the vernal equinox of 2141 BC. They are ancient traditions, that the pyramid builders were from a land east of Egypt and were related to Almodad, a Hebrew rendition of Jonathan, both of whose names mean "God is a friend." He was the reputed inventor of geometry, earth measurements, astronomy, etc. Almodad came from Arabis, somewhere east of Egypt. Job was Almodad's youngest brother. Job 38 has the almighty speaking to Job as if he laid the measures of the pyramid.

In the 1^st century AD, Jewish historian Josephus says the descendents of Seth were the inventors of the peculiar sort of wisdom needed to build the pyramid and incorporated into it, and that they did in fact, he says, leave two pillars on the earth with their discoveries inscribed in them. He says that one was made of stone, remains in the land of Siriad to this day. Siriad indicates Siriadic or the Sirius worshipers land of Egypt where Sirius was venerated as the star of Isis. This is Josephus trying to claim that the Jews (descendents of Seth) built the pyramids. In fact, in order for Solomon to have his grand temple built, the one with the two pillars (Yakob and Boaz as some call them) they had to hire out help. Hiram Abiff built it for them with the guilds.

There are many passages in the Bible alluding to some sort of monument or pyramid of a unique and significant type that clearly points to the Great Pyramid of Giza, such as Jer. 32:18-29, Job 38, as well as Amos 5:8. This seems to indicate a common substratum of lore from Chaldea and Egypt conveyed to us through Jewish texts, especially Hebrew - a lore that is embodied in the Pyramid by an uncanny and ingenious system of proportions and structures, marks, angles and dimensions known universally in the ancient world, today known as pyramidology in the sense of the study of the proportions and structures of the Great Pyramid. Many of the marks have a prophetic value that can be harmonized with the well known 70 weeks of Daniel, interpretation of the Old Testament prophecies and their fulfillment or culmination in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Like the Dogons, the Jewish Kaballists have four species of interpretation:

1. Remez, indication, hint, known meaning, where in the deeply veiled meaning is indicated by gentle hints, spiritual and moral hints and discussions. .

2. D'rash, allegorical exposition, wherein the still thickly veiled meaning hardly penetrable is indicated by a few words.

3. Haggadah, enigmatical language wherein the meaning is covered by a thinner veil involving full length conversation.

4. Sod Mysteries or secret learning, Wisdom wherein the meaning is revealed face to face, all innermost secrets shown.

There is also a purely exoteric layer of interpretation for the layman or non initiate called Pashut, the ordinary and usual meaning or literal meaning or intelligence of the words. When one has reached the Sod and has wisdom, one can see how even the plain meaning or Pashut level of scriptures such as the Torah, contains the deepest meanings of the Sod with "not a single Yod to be taken or added." (Zohar).

All the esoteric traditions had this level of encoding, therefore it is amusing for one who knows these all to see modern people making "planets" or "aliens" out of all of this, doing so by ignoring everything else pertinent to events involving people! In these modern times, you can TELL someone the esoteric meaning breaking a traditional code of silence - and they don't listen! Heh. Prophecy is true: they CAN NOT hear it! It's like trying to teach a tone deaf person how to sing in harmony. Not possible. And that is the essence of ALL esoteric schools. (I [Tani] wrote this all down in the Kaballa and Tantra articles I now sell. Still, some people really get it and it seems to raise their level of clarity, they say reading it is as if they read something they already knew but were unable to put to words; some can't get it, their minds are too filled with clutter and extraneous things; others get it and flip out - the actual written words seem to hurt them - just as esoteric tradition states - though esoteric traditionalists would NEVER speak it to such a person!)

The legit Kaballists (Isaac Myer) call the 2^nd Sephira Binah the Great Sea who brooded over the face of the waters at the creation. The Great Fish in the Zohar story of the man with the burden is said to be Leviathan in the Kaballa. The fish is the astrological symbol of Judea. That is, the Great Fish, Leviathan, is the symbol.

The Book of Enoch tells the story of a certain B'nai ha Elohim or "Sons of Elohim" who forsook their proper habitation and taught men the arts of war, lapidary (jewelry) , astronomy, metallurgy and mated with men. Among them were the leaders Uzza and Azael. Their teachings and matings with man led men to err, war with one another, kill beasts wantonly and even practice cannibalism. They were punished by the Eli Raphael (Eli is singular of Elohim) who bound them in chains in the mountains of darkness where spirits of Light and Darkness must dive into the great sea to see them. There they await final judgement. This is the same as the Prachetasas story where, defeated in war, they return to the bottom of the ocean.

Josephus says the name YHVH was written in vowels.

Lady Ellenborough had a talisman in her possession, presented to her by a Druse from Mount Lebanon. It belonged to a certain class of gems known in Palestine as a Messianic amulet of the 2^nd or 3^rd century BC. It is a green stone of pentagonal form. At the bottom is engraved a fish; higher is Solomon's Seal (6 pointed star); still higher is engraved the four Hebrew letters Jod He Vau He or IAHO which form the name of the Deity. these letters are arranged in an unusual way running from below upward, in reversed order and forming an Egyptian Tau. The Tau is considered a representation of the Tree of Life by many occultists. This is a grand synthesis of the DT and the FT.

The earliest Christian emblems of Jesus were the Lamb, Good Shepherd, and the Fish, as well as the dove. He is very often called Dag which means fish. Jesus was considered a revealer of mysteries like the Oannes, a revealer of knowledge extraneously, not known or discovered inwardly. The conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in Pisces was considered the sign of Jesus's coming. Clement of Alexandria, when debating on an emblem for Jesus said, "Let the engraving upon the gem of your ring be either a dove or a ship running before the wind." During the middle ages, a very common figure of a Christian symbol was there fishes interlaced into a triangle and having the 5 letters in Greek spelling Icthys engraved o it. This is another synthesis of 3 fish instead of the 3 fates in a triangle instead of a triangle being chaos, dark mother and the born light/logos and the five, by it's using letters of a word, Icthys (5 letters spell this in Greek). The number five was sacred to the Pythagoreans and related to Kaballistic computations.

St. Paul referred to Satanas as the prince of the power of the air about us (Ephesians 2:2). (In the CM the air deity Hastur fights with Cthulhu). Note that the Greek word in the New Testament repeatedly used and translated "saved" or "salvation" is Sothis and Sothesetai, as in the Gospels of Mark and Luke, (Cf Dogon view of Nommo who shall return as a savior and redeemer of mankind.). Keep in mind that the Ogo story is about flesh (and the matter of the planet itself) being impure, not spirit. St. Paul (Rom 7:17-23) states that it is his flesh (sarchi means meat) that does evil against his wishes, a law of his members, making him prisoner to the law of sin. Christ stated that unless someone be "born or generated physically out of water - and also spirit" he may not enter the kingdom of God (John: 3:5). The emphasis is on the water.

Some of the earliest Christians worshiped seven archangels and their abodes wrongly identified with seven stars and even later deliberately coded as the names of 7 planets. They were a sect almost identical to the Nazarenes and Sabeans who had more reverence for John the Baptist than for Jesus. Maimonides identifies them with the astrologers citing proof from the book The agriculture of the Nabatheans. They were called Nabathean Christians from Nebo, god of secret wisdom. Jesus's mother's name, the Latin word Mare, means the sea. According to a hymn of the 10^th century AD sung at the Annunciation she is "star of the sea, gracious mother of god and always Virgo, Happy Gate of Heaven." Early Christian syncretists in Egypt identified John the Baptist, who preceded Jesus, with the Chaldean Oannes.

Gnostic means "those who know" believing salvation comes through knowledge, not merely faith. The Peratae Gnostics had five ministers of Chozzar who was like Poseidon. These were Aot, Aoai, Oto, Otoab and the fifth was a triple name making seven (5 in 7) and is lost, no longer known. Iao or Abraxas of the Gnostic sects also was the same as the Egyptian Horus. There is a collection of Christian and Gnostic gems. One of his them showed Horus seated on the lotus inscribed "Abraxis Iao."

The Jewish Gnostics, (Ophites) honored Wisdom or a female Binah creative reflex of Chaos who sent seven prophets from Moses to Ezra corresponding to the 7 planets to help mankind after the flood.

The rest of Gnosticism is all LT and dualism, nothing related to the Sirius Mystery.

The Peruvian god Viracocha, the Supreme Being of the ancient Incas, literally means "foam of the sea." Note that in Derleth's Trail of Cthulhu, Andrew Phelan discovers a detailed map of Peru where the Salapunko fortress is located. Another paper in the CM book mentions an old Inca representation, possibly of Illa Tici Viracocha.

The Chinese call the star system containing Sirius "Hoo She," the bow and arrow. The Egyptians associated bow and arrow motifs with the Sirius system. The constellation Orion holds a bow and arrow (the hunter) (see Greek section).

A primeval octopus god of Polynesian natives called Tangaroa or Tangaloa or Kanaloa or Taroa was an oceanic deity who quarreled with his brother, the storm deity Tawhirima-tea, which led Tangaroa to take refuge in the sea (see CM section). In Hawaii, Kanaloa makes an abortive effort to create man, revolts against the other gods, and was cast into the lower regions.

The waters follow Tangaroa's ordinance. He is called the god and father of fish and reptiles. He is considered the biological ancestor of the highest chiefly families. He is sometimes considered a sun god also (see Egyptian section and note importance and rise of the solar cults which took the place of earlier cults).

Tangaroa had an incarnation as a bird. In some accounts, he flew to and from the earth on a bird. Tangaroa has numerous forms (like the Dogon Nommo). Tangaroa-eiki (celestial chief), Tangaroa-tufu (celestial artisan), Tangaloa-atu-logo-logo (celestial messenger).

In one myth, Tangaroa rescued two humans, Seve and Pouniu, from a universal flood by raising up Samoa (cf Hindu, Jewish, Babylonian and Sumerian sections on universal flood, e.g., Enki warns Utnupishtim to build an ark in Sumeria).

The Maori chief primal creative deity is called Io. The first created woman was Io-wahine.

In Persian Zoroastrianism, Mithras mediates between darkness (Ahriman) and light (Ahura Mazda). The Persians say Ahura Mazda also called Oromazes or Ormuzd, enlarged himself and removed himself from sun and earth, creating stars in the heavens. Oromazes was born of the purest light. He set the Dog Star in the heavens as guardian and watchman. He had created six gods and Ahriman (or Angra Manyu) countered with six others. Then after the Dog Star, Oromazes created 24 other gods and placed them in an egg, combining evil with good. 24 good plus 24 evil plus 1 Oromazes equals 50.

The egg is an ellipse like the orbit of Sirius B around Sirius A. Temple says this corresponds to light and dark Sirius A and B, respectively, in a garbled form, wavering between 49 and 50 years as an orbital period. Note this is later Persia, after they "castrated" the singular idea of a Boundless Darkness called Azvran and made dualism of light and dark.

The Olmecs taught the Toltecs. The Olmec busts remains look like frog-men to some who see them (they look like some W. African people to me...). The Toltecs had a famous king Ce-Acatl Topiltziu, a manifestation of their god of knowledge. He had sea origins and constantly reincarnates in various times as a teacher of men. Quetzalcoatyl is an avatar of him. Quetzalcoatyl is portrayed even in later incarnations as wearing a turtle shell on his torso. Recently the Chinese have identified this culture and their writing as originating from Tang Dynasty China.

At Chichen-Itza, there are stone faces of the rain god Chac. He has a coiling proboscis suggestive of a tentacle with suction discs or pads.

The pre-Aztec site of Teotihuacan shows a stylized face of the rain god called Tlaloc having a scaly, squidlike flavor with great, round expressionless eyes and jutting proboscis covered with suction pads. The ancient name of the temple here was "Temple of the Frog."

The Aztecs called the star Aldebaren "Yohualtecutlii" or Lord of the Night, and associated it with the destruction of the world, which would take place every 52 years unless the appropriate rituals were enacted.

Note that later representations of Quetzalcoatyl show him more as a feathered serpent or bird like being, feathers replacing scales.

This is not an attempt to summarize the entire Cthulhu Mythos, but only those features that bear directly or indirectly on the Sirius Mystery lore. Many of these are merely curious details that have a profound effect on the imagination and echo or parallel the myth-patterns already summarized with remarkable faithfulness. I will mention that most of the original CM authors knew the mythologies and did this deliberately. Later we include similarities in the CM with Hermetic knowledge - again, mostly put there deliberately by the writers.

In the Trail of Cthulhu by August Derleth, Andrew Phelan dreams he and his new employer, Dr. Laban Shrewsbury, fly through space on monstrous black winged bat-like creatures with the speed of light. Phelan notices great Canopus as he flies. Phelan discovered, in Shrewsbury's house, a detailed map of Peru where the Salapunko fortress is located. A letter to Professor Andros from Claiborne Boyd quotes from Andrada's paper referring to a picture possibly being Illa Tici Viracocha of old Inca belief. The center of the paper says it is really a representation of Cthulhu. Derleth refers to the Humboldt current, which flows past the Western coast of S. America as flowing past R'lyeh, the sunken citadel prison of Cthulhu. Boyd discovered many S. Pacific pieces in the collection of his Uncle Asaph. Shrewsbury asks Horvath Blayne if the Polynesian sea god Tangaroa has the same origin as Neptune. Blayne guesses Hindu or Indo-Chinese. Shrewsbury then states he is interested in the conceit or notion which gave rise to Polynesian sea gods in the first place, and its relation to so many batrachian or icthyic figures and motifs which occur and recur in the art work, ancient and modern, to be found in the S. Pacific Islands and notes that the S. Pacific primitives emphasize the avian. Derleth has a passage from Shrewsbury's "Cthulhu in the Necronomicon" which stresses the need to increase the tension between such followers of Cthulhu as those batrachian Deep Ones who inhabit Y'ha-nthlei deep in the Atlantic as well as sunken R'lyeh and the bat-winged interplanetary travelers who serve Hastur the Unspeakable. The openings for Cthulhu may be stopped by the aid of these air beings serving Hastur. Hastur is served by strange bat-winged creatures who can travel in time and space, the Byakhee. The Lords of the Air serve Hastur, Him Who is Not to be Named, the ancient rival of Cthulhu (cf Dogon, Ogo vs. Nommo). The Byakhee birds fly to a domain of Hastur and they are summoned by invoking Hastur and by blowing a stone whistle. Robert Chambers in the "King in Yellow" refers to a succession of Hastur Kings that even Emperors serve. Asti, in Egyptian, refers to the sequentiality of thrones.

Shrewsbury mentions an astronomical panel of Semnut's time in Egypt showing the Orion-Taurus group held to be the seat of the Elder Gods who are believed to exist at or near Betelgeuse and at least one of the Ancient Ones, Hastur; and were presumably home to all the Ancient Ones. Derleth states Hastur the Unspeakable shall return from the dark star which is in the Hyades near Aldebaren, the red eye of the bull (Taurus). In Chambers "The Yellow Sign" it is stated when from Carcosa the Hyades, Hastur and Aldebaren.

In The Festival, HPL (Lovecraft) identifies a festival kept once every century, a festival commanded to be kept by certain kinsmen in memory of primal secrets older than Bethlehem, Babylon, Memphis and mankind. The narrator states the festival has to do with the spells of the eastern sea (Atlantic). He says his people came from the sea in the elder time. He refers to the passing of Orion and Aldebaren near the horizon. Aldebaren actually passes where the narrator states twice a year at the two solstices. (See Dogon sigui practiced every 60 years or half century, also Amerind section on appeasement of Aldebaren every 52 years to prevent world destruction.)

The Call of Cthulhu describes Cthulhu as octopoidal and bat winged. The Cthulhu cult captives in the custody of Legrasse speak of Great Old Ones who ruled the earth ages before man. They were gone now, locked inside the earth and under the sea, but their great priest Cthulhu will bring them back when the stars were ready. Refer to Poseidon knowing the passages to the older gods banished by Zeus and company in Greek section. The Emma is a two masted schooner thrown off course toward a craft manned by Deep Ones - compare to Dogon Emma-ya.

The Cthulhu Mythos described Cthulhu's appearance as baleful, dread or worse. He sleeps imprisoned in a great towering monolith of R'lyeh, now sunk beneath the sea. In the "Elder Pharos: Fungi from Yuggoth," a tower (pharos) is described having a beam or beacon shooting out blue rays making shepherds whine in prayer. (See Sumerian section on Enki's ray and Dogon section on ray of Digitaria.)

In Whisperer in Darkness, a letter from Henry Akeley states that the Outer Ones from Yuggoth who visit earth mean no harm to men. They revere and have knowledge of Nyarlathotep (the Lovecraftian Hermes), Cthulhu and Shub-Niggurath (the Lovecraftian androgynous Goat of Mendes). Akeley states that these Outer Ones were cruelly wronged and spied upon by a whole secret cult of evil men linked with Hastur and the Yellow Sign devoted to the purpose of tracking them down and injuring them. The Outer Ones are directed against those aggressors. Akeley believes many of his lost letters to Wilmarth were stolen by emissaries of this malign Hastur cult.

Nyarlathotep is the messenger and it is said he came to ancient Khem (Egypt) in the form of a black man but not a Negro. (See Black Rite of Osiris, Lord in Perfect Black.) In Haunter of the Dark, Dr. Dexter states he is afraid of an avatar of Nyarlathotep who in antique and shadowy Khem took the form of a man; see later on Nephren-Ka. He screams at the story's end "the three lobed burning eye." (See Egyptian section on Hermes the thrice holy and messenger and the eye-star.) In Lurker at the Threshold (Derleth) Dewart discovers Billington's documents to include several works by Hermes Trismegistus; Hermes is also mentioned in other stories.

In Lurker at the Threshold a passage reads "It had ye name Ossadogowa which signified ye child of Sadogowah." In The Seven Geases by CA Smith, Ralibar Vooz is sent by the sorcerer Ezdagor as an offering to Lord Tsathoggua. HPL also used the name as Tsathoggua in his stories crediting Smith for its invention. (See notes on mysteries of the Sod in Dogon section.) Also note the key syllable in Ezdagor is Dag as in Dagon. Dagon worship by Innsmouth natives is mentioned by Zadok Allen in Shadow Over Innsmouth. Sexual and cultural intercourse between Captain Obed Marsh and the Pacific South Sea Islanders of Ponape of a specific Deep One fish breed is supposed to have been the source of the Innsmouth "look" and their knowledge and reverence for heathen sea gods like Dagon and Cthulhu.

In The Dunwich Horror, the Necronomicon states that "the Old Ones are not in the spaces as we know them but between them...where they still tread....no one can behold them as they tread. (See Egyptian section on the spaces in which the works of Hermes were hidden.) Also, a key syllable of Ossadogowa is also Dog or Dag.

Arkham, a well known city invented by HPL and important in the CM would mean in Sanskrit "as far as the sun even to the sun (inclusively). Arkha means stellar.

Lin Carter (our once fearless leader Count Zarnak, no less...) makes frequent references to Polynesian folk lore as in The Dweller in the Tomb and Out of the Ages. In the latter he refers to obscure cults across the breadth of the Pacific. In the same story Professor Copeland's notes evince a need where he must have the Necronomicon passages concerning the Xothic data in complete form. Xoth is pronounced Zoth - the same word as Soth or Sothis. Xoth is a twin sun (Sothis, Sirius A and B) where Cthulhu and Idh-yaa (or Quum-yaa) conceived three sons. (One could call the Sirius Mystery the Sothic Mystery, or Sothic Cycle - Carter's stories are what he called the Xothic Cycle). Zoth-Ommog (note Zoth and Om syllables) is mentioned as Cthulhu's son from under the great waters off the Isle of the sacred stone cities; they lurk ever just beyond the threshold which they cannot pass. Carter also gives alternate spellings of Zoth-Ommog, presumably so we can figure out what it is intended to be. (See later.) The two other sons are Ythogtha and Ghatanothoa. Carter quotes a passage from the Necronomicon which states that the Elder Gods, after imprisoning Cthulhu, returned to their home in Glyu-Vho or Ibt al Janzah, the name Arabic astronomers of Alhazred's day used for the star we call Betelgeuse. A quote from the Necronomicon in Derleth's Lurker At the Threshold states that Glyu-Vho is the home of those who imposed the Elder Sign upon Cthulhu to imprison him beneath the sea. A clue as to the star Glyu-Vho is given: it is a winter star. (See Greek section on Sothis.) Xoth is mentioned as the ancient home of Cthulhu and his sons and is a double star. Cthulhu is clearly Nommo.

Brian Lumley's "Rising with Surtsey" mentioned Othuum, containing sounds like O Toom and Om. (See Greek section on Omphalos stones.) In Egypt, Toom was a god issued from Osiris in his character of the Great Deep Noot or Nut. He is the Protean god who generates other gods assuming the form he likes.

In Call of Cthulhu, Cthulhu's activity arouses disturbances in sensitive, artistic and insane minds. (See the Dogon "bad day.")

In Out of the Ages, Carter has a freighter Eridanus sighting a new island unmarked on any chart which found certain articles from a prehistoric tomb. (See Sumerian section on city of Eridu.) Eridu as a name for Lord of the Waves and star Eta-Argo associated with Ea or Ia of the Eridhu. Eridanus is a constellation abutting Orion.

The frequency with which Ia is mentioned as an invocation in the CM stories goes without saying. Ia is a form of Ea which is an Akkadian name for the Sumerian Enki, whose sacred city was Eridu.

In The Shadow Over Innsmouth, HPL has Zadok Allen state, referring to the heterodox church of Innsmouth, "I heard what I heard and seen what I seen, Dagon and Ashtoreth, Belial and Beelzebub, Golden Calf and the idols of Canaan and the Philistines, Babylonish abominations." (See note on Ast at end of Egyptian section.)

Note also that HPL suggests that Shub-Niggurath has two sons, Nub and Neb. Nebo.

Nephren-Ka was the avatar of Nyarlathotep that appeared in Khem. A fragment of the Necronomicon from Robert Bloch's "Fane of the Black Pharaoh" states: "...the place of the Blind Apes where Nephren-Ka bindeth up the threads of truth." The Egyptian iconography of Thoth shows him as ibis or ape-headed.

The Black Pharaoh Nephren-Ka was a corrupter of the religion of Egypt, a messenger of the Great Old Ones and heirophant of Nyarlathotep. He sought refuge underground when overthrown. He is supposed to have sacrificed his remaining attendants in a Faustian bargain with Nyarlathotep, giving him foreknowledge of coming events. The quote given above is described as a Hermetic text.

According to Dr. Robert M. Price (Ph.D. Theology)'s research, Neph as stated in the Egyptian means the creator, the spirit of god which hovered over the primeval waters. Ka means a person's soul or spirit-double which survives death. Ergo, Nephren-ka would denote either "soul of the spirit of God," or "double of the spirit of God." I.e., his visible manifestation on earth. Crypt of Cthulhu #58. That would be an avatar of Nyarlathotep (the God in this instance).

Note that Nephren-ka, this avatar of Nyarlathotep, can bind up threads, like the threads of the Fates, Clotho, Lakhesis and Atropos, who weave men's destinies of threads. This implies that Nephren-ka can consult some sort of tapestry or weave to know the truth, perhaps thereby foreseeing the future. A tapestry further figures in this story where the truths foreseen by Nephren-ka are written on underground walls covered by tapestries rolled back daily to uncover the day's events. Dr. Price states that the actual medium of the truth, the weave or tapestry, became garbled with wall covering for Nephren-ka's revelations. He also states that understanding the truth by being able to consult this tapestry was garbled or reduced to a mere forecast of future history in the myth of Nephren-ka. (See Egyptian section on the rite of the Lord in Perfect Black, the most secret and highest Egyptian rite.)

Many more stories were written (thousands of them) since this was compiled. This is old information. Don't scream at the typist.

END.

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http://skepdic.com/dogon.html

The Dogon and Sirius

The Dogon are a people of about 100,000 who dwell in western Africa. According to Robert Temple (The Sirius Mystery), the Dogon had contact with some ugly, amphibious* extraterrestrials, the Nommos, some 5,000 years ago. The aliens came here for some unknown reason from a planet orbiting Sirius some 8.6 light years from earth. The alleged visitors from outer space seem to have done little else than give the earthlings some useless astronomical information.

One of Temple's main pieces of evidence is the tribe's alleged knowledge of Sirius B, a companion to the star Sirius. The Dogon are supposed to have known that Sirius B orbits Sirius and that a complete orbit takes fifty years. One of the pieces of evidence Temple cites is a sand picture made by the Dogon to explain their beliefs. The diagram that Temple presents, however, is not the complete diagram that the Dogon showed to the French anthropologists Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, who were the original sources for Temple's story. Temple has either misinterpreted Dogon beliefs, or distorted Griaule and Dieterlen's claims, to fit his fantastic story.

Griaule and Dieterlen describe a world renovation ceremony, associated with the bright star Sirius (sigu tolo, "star of Sigui"), called sigui, held by the Dogon every sixty years. According to Griaule and Dieterlen the Dogon also name a companion star, po tolo "Digitaria star" (Sirius B) and describe its density and rotational characteristics. Griaule did not attempt to explain how the Dogon could know this about a star that cannot be seen without telescopes, and he made no claims about the antiquity of this information or of a connection with ancient Egypt.*

Temple lists a number of astronomical beliefs held by the Dogon that seem curious. They have a traditional belief in a heliocentric system and in elliptical orbits of astronomical phenomena. They seem to have knowledge of the satellites of Jupiter and rings of Saturn, among other things. Where did they get this knowledge, he asks, if not from extraterrestrial visitors? They don’t have telescopes or other scientific equipment, so how could they get this knowledge? Temple’s answer is that they got this information from amphibious aliens from outer space.

Afrocentrists, on the other hand, claimed that the Dogon could see Sirius B without the need of a telescope because of their special eyesight due to quantities of melanin (Welsing, F. C. 1987. "Lecture 1st Melanin Conference, San Francisco, September 16-17, 1987"). There is, of course, no evidence for this special eyesight, nor for other equally implausible notions such as the claim that the Dogon got their knowledge from black Egyptians who had telescopes.

A terrestrial source?

Carl Sagan agreed with Temple that the Dogon could not have acquired their knowledge without contact with an advanced technological civilization. Sagan suggests, however, that that civilization was terrestrial rather than extraterrestrial. Perhaps the source was Temple himself and his loose speculations on what he learned from Griaule, who based his account on an interview with one person, Ambara, and an interpreter.

According to Sagan, western Africa has had many visitors from technological societies located on planet earth. The Dogon have a traditional interest in the sky and astronomical phenomena. If a European had visited the Dogon in the 1920's and 1930's, conversation would likely have turned to astronomical matters, including Sirius, the brightest star in the sky and the center of Dogon mythology. Furthermore, there had been a good amount of discussion of Sirius in the scientific press in the '20s so that by the time Griaule arrived, the Dogon may have had a grounding in 20th century technological matters brought to them by visitors from other parts of earth and transmitted in conversation.

Or, Griaule's account may reflect his own interests more than that of the Dogon. He made no secret of the fact that his intention was to redeem African thought. When the Belgian Walter van Beek studied the Dogon, he found no evidence they knew Sirius was a double star or that Sirius B is extremely dense and has a fifty-year orbit.

Knowledge of the stars is not important either in daily life or in ritual [to the Dogon]. The position of the sun and the phases of the moon are more pertinent for Dogon reckoning. No Dogon outside of the circle of Griaule's informants had ever heard of sigu tolo or po tolo... Most important, no one, even within the circle of Griaule informants, had ever heard or understood that Sirius was a double star (Ortiz de Montellano).*

According to Thomas Bullard, van Beek speculates that Griaule "wished to affirm the complexity of African religions and questioned his informants in such a forceful leading manner that they created new myths by confabulation." Griaule either informed the Dogon of Sirius B or "he misinterpreted their references to other visible stars near Sirius as recognition of the invisible companion" (Bullard).

The only mystery is how anyone could take seriously either the notion of amphibious aliens or telescopic vision due to melanin.

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FROM:

http://dailygrail.com/misc/cop181299.html

Sirius Lie

by Filip Coppens

In 1976, two major books on extra-terrestrial visitation were published: Zecharia Sitchin's The Twelfth Planet and Robert Temple's The Sirius Mystery. Of the two, the latter became by far more famous and even attained the status of a semi-scientific work, as many were impressed with the scientific-looking train of logic of the book. Temple stated that the Dogon, a tribe in Africa, possessed extraordinary knowledge on the star system Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, the star which became the marker of an important ancient Egyptian calendar, the star which according to some is at the centre of beliefs held by the Freemasons, the star which according to some is where the forefathers of the human race might have come from. Temple claimed that the Dogon possessed knowledge on Sirius B and Sirius C, companion stars to Sirius that are, however, invisible to the naked eye. How did the Dogon know about their existence? Temple referred to legends of a mythical creature Oannes, who might have been an extraterrestrial being descending on Earth from the stars, to bring wisdom to our forefathers. In 1998, Temple republished the book with the subtitle "new scientific evidence of alien contact 5,000 years ago".

Though Temple's work is now therefore definitely challenged, the core of the mystery remained intact. At the centre of this enigma is the work of Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, two French anthropologists, who wrote down the secret knowledge on "Sirius B" and "Sirius C" in their book The Pale Fox. But now, in another recent publication, Ancient Mysteries, by Peter James and Nick Thorpe, this "mystery" is also uncloaked, as a hoax or a lie, perpetrated by Griaule. To recapitulate, Griaule was initiated in the secret mysteries of the male Dogon, who allegedly told him the secrets of Sirius' invisible companions. Sirius (sigu tolo in their language) had two star companions. This was revealed in an article that was published by Griaule and Dieterlen in the French language in 1950. In the 1930s, when their research occurred, Sirius B was known to have existed, even though it was only photographed in 1970. There was little if no possibility that the Dogon had learned this knowledge from Westerners that had visited them prior to Griaule and Dieterlen.

Griaule and Dieterlen published their findings on the Sirius companions without any reference or comment on how extra-ordinary the Dogon knowledge was. It would be others, particularly Temple in the sixties and seventies, who would zoom in on that aspect. To quote Ancient Mysteries: "While Temple, following Griaule, assumes that to polo is the invisible star Sirius B, the Dogon themselves, as reported by Griaule, say something quite different." To quote the Dogon: "When Digitaria (to polo) is close to Sirius, the latter becomes brighter; when it is at its most distant from Sirius, Digitaria gives off a twinkling effect, suggesting several stars to the observer." James and Thorpe wonder - as anyone reading this should do - whether to polo is therefore an ordinary star near Sirius, not an invisible companion, as Griaule and Temple suggest. The biggest challenge to Griaule, however, came from anthropologist Walter Van Beek. He points out that Griaule and Dieterlen stand alone in the world in their claims on the secrets of the Dogon. No other anthropologist supports their opinion - or claims. In 1991, Van Beek led a team of anthropologists who declared that they could find absolutely no trace of the detailed Sirius lore reported by the French anthropologists. James and Thorpe understate the problem when they say that "this is very worrying". Griaule had stated that about fifteen percent of the Dogon tribe knew about this secret knowledge, but Van Beek could, in a decade of research with the Dogon, find not a single trace of this knowledge. Van Beek was initially keen to find evidence for Griaule's claims, but had to admit that there may have been a major problem with Griaule's claims. Even more worrying is Griaule's background. Though an anthropologist, Griaule was interested in astronomy, which he had studied in Paris. As James and Thorpe point out, he took star maps along with him on his field trips as a way of prompting his informants to divulge their knowledge of the stars. Griaule himself was aware of the discovery of Sirius B and it is quite likely that he overinterpreted the Dogon responses to his questions. In the 1920s, before Griaule went to the Dogon, there were also unconfirmed sightings of Sirius C. Was Griaule told by his informants what he wanted to believe? It seems, alas, that the truth is even worse, at least for Griaule's reputation.

Van Beek actually spoke to the original informants of Griaule, who stated: "though they do speak about sigu tolo [interpreted by Griaule as their name for Sirius], they disagree completely with each other as to which star is meant; for some, it is an invisible star that should rise to announce the sigu [festival], for another it is Venus that through a different position appears as sigu tolo. All agree, however, that they learned about the star from Griaule." So whatever knowledge they possessed, it was knowledge coming from Griaule, not knowledge native to the Dogon tribe. Van Beek also discovered that the Dogon are of course aware of the brightest star in the sky, which they do not, however, call sigu tolo, as Griaule claimed, but dana tolo. To quote James and Thorpe: "As for Sirius B, only Griaule's informants had ever heard of it."

With this, the Dogon mystery comes to a crashing halt. The Sirius Mystery influenced more than twenty years of thinking about our possible ancestry from "forefathers" who have come from the stars. In 1996, Temple was quick to point out the new speculation in scientific circles on the possible existence of Sirius C, which made the claims by Griaule even more spectacular and accurate. But Temple was apparently not aware of Van Beek's recent research. With this new research of both Van Beek and the authors of Ancient Mysteries, we uncover how Griaule himself was responsible for the creation of a modern myth, which, in retrospect, has created such an industry and almost religious belief that the scope and intensity can hardly be fathomed. Nigel Appleby, in his withdrawn publication Hall of the Gods, which was, according to Appleby himself, tremendously influenced by Temple's book, Appleby spoke about how Temple believed that present-day authorities were apparently unwilling to set aside the blinkers of orthodoxy or were unable to admit the validity of anything that lies outside their field or offers a challenge to its status quo. He further wondered whether there was also a modern arrogance that could not countenance the possible scientific superiority of earlier civilisations. It seems, alas, that Griaule, a scientist, wanted to give earlier civilisations more knowledge than they actually possessed. And various popular authors and readers have since been led into a modern mythology, the "Age of the Dark Sirius Companion".

Filip Coppens

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FROM:

http://www.csicop.org/si/7809/sirius.html

Investigating the Sirius "Mystery"

Ian Ridpath

Did amphibious beings from the star Sirius visit the earth 5,000 or more years ago and leave advanced astronomical knowledge that is still possessed by a remote African tribe called the Dogon? This astonishing claim was put forward in 1976 by Robert Temple in his "ancient astronaut" book, The Sirius Mystery. An astronomer, familiar with the Sirius system, would say no, because astronomical theory virtually precludes the possibility that Sirius is a suitable parent star for life or that it could have habitable planets. But most of Robert Temple's readers would not know enough astronomy to judge the matter for themselves. Neither would they find the relevant astronomical information in Temple's book, most of which consists of brain-numbing excursions into Egyptology. (Isaac Asimov has been quoted by Temple as having said that he found no mistakes in the book; but Temple did not know that the reason for this, according to Asimov, was that he had found the book too impenetrable to read!*) Even the BBC-TV Horizon investigation on ancient astronauts (broadcast as part of the PBS "Nova" series in the United States), which did an otherwise excellent demolition job on the more extreme fantasies of Erich von Däniken, left the Sirius problem unanswered because of its extreme complexity. Yet an answer is needed, because the Dogon legends about a companion to Sirius are claimed to originate before any terrestrial astronomer could have known of the existence of Sirius B, let alone its 50-year orbit or its nature as a tiny, condensed white dwarf star, all of which the Dogon allegedly knew. So what is the truth about the Dogon and Sirius? Does astronomical and anthropological information omitted by Temple help us to resolve this most baffling of all ancient astronaut cases?

First, let's recap Temple's story. At the center of the mystery are the Dogon people living near Bandiagara, about 300 kilometers south of Timbuktu, Mali, in western Africa. Knowledge of their customs and beliefs comes from the French anthropologists Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, who worked among the Dogon from 1931 to 1952. Between 1946 and 1950 the Dogon head tribesmen unfolded to Griaule and Dieterlen the innermost secrets of their knowledge of astronomy. Much of this secret lore is complex and obscure, as befits ancient legends, but certain specific facts stand out, particularly those concerning the star Sirius, with which their religion and culture is deeply concerned. In the information imparted to the French anthropologists, the Dogon referred to a small and super-dense companion of Sirius, made of matter heavier than anything on Earth, and moving in a 50-year elliptical orbit around its parent star. The white dwarf companion of Sirius which answers to this description was not seen until 1862, when the American optician Alvan Graham Clark spotted it while testing a new telescope; the superdense nature of white dwarfs was not realized until the 1920s. But the Dogon Sirius traditions are at least centuries old. How can we account for the remarkable accord between ancient Dogon legends and modern astronomical fact?

Temple's answer, since espoused by Erich von Däniken (of course!), was that the Dogon were told by extraterrestrial visitors. A Dogon legend, similar to many other tales by primitive people of visits from the sky, speaks of an "ark" descending to the ground amid a great wind. Robert Temple interprets this as the landing of a rocket-powered spacecraft bringing beings from the star Sirius. According to Dogon legend, the descent of the ark brought to Earth an amphibious being, or group of beings, known as the Nommo. "Nommo is the collective name for the great culture-hero and founder of civilization who came from the Sirius system to set up society on the Earth," Temple explains in his book. The Nommo were amphibious, he presumes, because water would keep them cool and absorb short-wavelength radiation from the hot star Sirius.

Much of Temple's book is devoted to establishing that the Dogon share common roots with Mediterranean peoples. This explains the central place occupied by Sirius in Dogon beliefs, because the ancient Egyptians, in particular, were also preoccupied with Sirius, basing their calendar on its yearly motion. But is there any explanation of the apparent Dogon belief in life in the Sirius system?

First, let's look at what astronomers know about Sirius to see if it is at least theoretically plausible that advanced life might have arisen in its vicinity. Sirius A, the brightest star in the night sky as seen from Earth, has a mass 2.35 times that of the sun. Its white dwarf companion, Sirius B, has a mass of 0.99 suns. Stellar evolutionary theory tells us that the most massive stars burn out the quickest, so that originally Sirius B must have been the more massive of the two, before burning out to become a white dwarf. Probably Sirius B spilled over some of its gas onto Sirius A during its aging process, so that the original masses of the two stars were approximately the reverse of what we see today.

A star with twice the sun's mass, as Sirius B probably had, can live for no more than about 1,000 million years before swelling up into a red giant; this does not seem long enough for advanced life to develop. But had life evolved, it would have disappeared during the red giant stage of Sirius B, when any nearby planet would have been roasted by the star's increased energy output, followed by a stellar gale for at least 100,000 years as hot gas streamed from Sirius B to Sirius A. During this mass transfer the two stars would have moved apart, thereby destabilizing the orbits of any planets in the system. According to observations of Sirius B as analyzed by H. L. Shipman of the University of Delaware, Sirius B has been a cooling-down white dwarf for at least 30 million years. Sirius B is now emitting soft x-rays, so that life in the region of Sirius would not be very pleasant today. But in any case, Robert S. Harrington of the U.S. Naval Observatory has recently shown that planetary orbits in the "habitable" zone around Sirius, defined as the region in which water would be liquid, are unstable. So there are unlikely to be any amphibious beings living on planets in the Sirius system today, if indeed any such beings ever lived there.

Temple offers one prediction which allows a test of his theory. In his book he says: "What if this is proven by our detecting on our radio telescopes actual traces of local radio communications?" To help in my investigation of the Sirius mystery, I asked radio astronomers Paul Feldman at the Algonquin radio observatory, Canada, and Robert S. Dixon at the Ohio State University radio observatory, both of whom are carrying out searches for extraterrestrial signals, to listen to Sirius. They would normally have paid the star no attention, because of the extreme unlikelihood of its supporting life. In April 1977 both radio astronomers listened to Sirius on different wavelengths, without detecting any artificial signals.

With this information in mind, let's look more skeptically at the Dogon legend. Immediately, we encounter a surprise: the Dogon maintain that Sirius has two companions, not one. These companions have male and female attributes, respectively. It seems that they are not to be interpreted literally as stars, but as fertility symbols. Nowhere is this better shown than in a Dogon sand diagram of the complete Sirius system, shown in the illustration redrawn here from a paper by Griaule and Dieterlen. Its description, given in the caption from information by Griaule and Dieterlen, is clearly symbolic; Temple chooses to interpret it literally. On pages 23 and 25 of his book he gives his own modified version of this diagram, retaining the symbol for Sirius, one of the positions of Sirius B, and the surrounding oval; all else is omitted. He then interprets the surrounding oval meant to represent "the egg of the world," as the elliptical orbit of Sirius B around Sirius A, even though the symbol equated with Sirius B is drawn as lying within the oval, not on it. This is Temple's basis for saying that the Dogon "know" Sirius B orbits Sirius A in an ellipse.

The Dogon are also supposed to know that Sirius B orbits every 50 years. But what do they actually say? Griaule and Dieterlen put it as follows: "The period of the orbit is counted double, that is, one hundred years, because the Siguis are convened in pairs of 'twins,' so as to insist on the basic principle of twinness." The Sigui ceremony referred to is a ceremony of the renovation of the world that is celebrated every 60 years (not 50). And the "twinness" referred to here is an important Dogon concept which explains why they believe Sirius must have two companions.

Is there any astronomical evidence that Sirius has more than one companion star? Some astronomers in the 1920s and 1930s thought they had glimpsed a third member of the Sirius system, but new and more accurate observations reported in 1973 by Irving W. Lindenblad of the U.S. Naval Observatory, Washington, D.C., showed no evidence of a close companion to either Sirius A or Sirius B.

The whole Dogon legend of Sirius and its companions is riddled with ambiguities, contradictions, and downright errors, at least if we try to interpret it literally. But what can we make of the Dogon statement that Sirius B is the smallest and heaviest star, consisting of a heavy metal known as sagala? Sirius B was certainly the smallest and heaviest star known in the 1920s, when the super-dense nature of white dwarfs was becoming understood; the material of which white dwarfs are made is indeed compressed more densely than metal. Now, though, hundreds of white dwarfs are known, not to mention neutron stars, which are far smaller and denser. Any visiting spaceman would certainly have known about these, as well as black holes.

Perhaps one would forgive Robert Temple for believing that the Dogon had been visited by men from Sirius if their legend specifically stated so. But it does not! Nowhere in his 290-page book does Temple offer one specific statement from the Dogon to substantiate his ancient astronauts claim. The best he does is on page 217, where he reports that the Dogon say: "Po tolo [Sirius B] and Sirius were once where the Sun now is." Of this ambiguous statement, Temple comments: "That seems as good a way as any to describe coming to our solar system from the Sirius system, and leaving those stars for our star, the Sun." But this cannot conceal the fact that the whole Sirius "mystery" is based on Temple's own unwarranted assumption.

The parts of Dogon knowledge that are admittedly both ancient and profound, particularly the story of Nommo and the concept of twinning, are the parts that bear least relation to the true facts about Sirius. The parts that bear at least superficial resemblance to astronomical fact are most likely trimmings added in this century. Indeed, in view of the Dogon fixation with Sirius it would surely be more surprising if they had not grafted on to their existing legend some new astronomical information gained from Europeans, picking what fitted their purpose and ignoring the rest.

Carl Sagan has underlined how easily information gained from Westerners can be absorbed into native culture. He recounts the true case of the physician Carleton Gajdusek in New Guinea, who was approached by a scientific colleague who had found that some local natives believed that a certain disease was transmitted in the form of an invisible spirit that entered the skin of a patient. The native informant had sketched with a stick in the sand a circle outside which, he explained, was black, and inside which was light. Within the circle the informant drew a squiggly line to represent the appearance of these invisible malevolent spirits. How did the natives get such an astounding insight into the transmission of disease by microbes? Years earlier, Gajdusek himself had shown the natives the appearance of a disease-causing germ through his microscope, and the sand drawing was simply the natives' recollection of this deeply impressive sight.

It is all too easy for Westerners to think of African tribes as isolated, uneducated, and ignorant. But the Dogon are not isolated. They live near an overland trade route, as well as close to the banks of the Niger River, an important channel of trade. Any number of travelers could have come into their midst, or Dogon tribesmen could have journeyed to the coast, where they might have met astronomically informed seamen. The Dogon have been in contact with Europeans since at least the late nineteenth century.

Nor are they uneducated and ignorant. Peter and Roland Pesch of the Warner and Swasey Observatory in Ohio have pointed out that French schools have existed in the Dogon area since 1907. Dogon tribesmen wishing to pursue their education have been able to do so in nearby towns. Then there are missionaries, who would naturally be interested in the legends of the natives. Missionaries from the White Fathers made contact with the Dogon in the 1920s. It is tempting to speculate that certain of the more specific details about Sirius B were grafted onto the existing Sirius legend at that time, because it was in the 1920s that astronomers were discovering the true nature of Sirius B as a tiny, super-dense star, and white dwarfs were being accorded the same kind of publicity as attends black holes today. Alas, there is no mention in the missionaries' summary reports of their activities that they discussed Sirius with the Dogon; if more detailed notes were published, these might throw more light on the origin and antiquity of Dogon myths.

The point is that there are any number of channels by which the Dogon could have received Western knowledge long before they were visited by Griaule and Dieterlen. We may never be able to reconstruct the exact route by which the Dogon received their current knowledge, but out of the confusion at least one thing is clear: they were not told by beings from the star Sirius.

References

Harrington, R. S. 1977. Astronomical Journal, 82: 753.

Lindenblad, I. W. 1973. Astronomical Journal, 78: 205.

Pesch, P. and R. Pesch 1977. The Observatory, 97: 26.

Ridpath, Ian 1978. Messages from the Stars. New York: Harper & Row.

Shipman, H. L. 1976. Astrophysical Journal, 206: L67.

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FROM

http://www.ramtops.demon.co.uk/dogon.html

The Dogon Revisited

Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano

In 1976 Robert Temple published the Sirius Mystery claiming that the extraordinary astronomical knowledge of the Egyptians and the Dogon of Mali(1) was due to visitations from inhabitants of the Sirius system. These claims were dealt with in a article in The Skeptical Inquirer (Ridpath 1978). Since that time, however, the Afrocentrist movement has revived and expanded these claims (Adams 1983a; 1983b; 1990; Van Sertima 1983; Ortiz de Montellano 1991), and they have been naively parroted in more mainline publications (Gebre-Egziabher 1993/1994; Harding 1991). Adams (1990: 60) briefly presents the current claims:

They knew of the rings of Saturn, and the moons of Jupiter, the spiral structure of the Milky Way, where our star system lies. They claimed that billions of stars spiral in space like the circulation of blood in the human body... Perhaps the most remarkable facet of their knowledge is their knowing intricate details of the Sirius star system, which presently can only be detected with powerful telescopes. The Dogon knew of the white dwarf companion star of Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. They knew its approximate mass ("it is composed of 'sagala,' an extremely heavy, dense metal such that all the earthly beings combined cannot lift it') its orbital period (50 years) and its axial rotation period (one year). Furthermore, they knew of a third star that orbits Sirius and its planet [sic]. The X-ray telescope aboard the Einstein Orbiting Observatory recently confirmed the existence of the third star. (2) The Dogon with no apparent instrument at their disposal, appear to have known these facts for at least 500 years.

Claims that the Dogon knew these things for at least 700 years (not 500) and that the ancient Egyptians also possessed this knowledge were first made in Adams (1983a) and endorsed by Van Sertima (1983). The sole source this information about Dogon astronomical knowledge is the research of two French anthropologists, Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen (1950; 1965), and more directly the book by Temple (1976).

Griaule and Dieterlen describe a world renovation ceremony, associated with the bright star Sirius (sigu tolo, "star of Sigui"),(3) called sigui, held by the Dogon every sixty years. According to Griaule and Dieterlen the Dogon also name a companion star, po tolo "Digitaria star" (Sirius B) and describe its density and rotational characteristics. Griaule did not attempt to explain how the Dogon could know this about a star that cannot be seen without telescopes, and he made no claims about the antiquity of this information or of a connection with ancient Egypt. Temple (1976: 203-227) argues that the Dogon learned all this from amphibious beings from a superior civilization in the Sirius system.(4) Stars are rated on a visibility scale which differs by a factor of 2.5 brightness per unit; the higher the number on the scale, the dimmer the star. Adams (1983b) claims, without any reference, that under optimum conditions people with blue/green eyes can see stars of 6.5 magnitude, but that dark-eyed, dark-skinned people can see up to 8.1. The very bright, Sirius A has a magnitude of -1.47 while Sirius B is 8.7 (Allen 1973: 235). The canonical limit of visibility is 6, although a few exceptional people, with lifelong training, on high mountains and hyperventilating can achieve 7.8 (Schaefer 1995). This maximum human performance is still 2.26 times less than would be needed for naked eye observation of Sirius B. Even if Sirius B were bright enough to be seen, it could not be distinguished by a naked eye because it is too close to Sirius A. The average separation between Sirius A and B is 9.5 seconds of arc (Allen 1973: 240) with a maximum separation of 11 seconds. However, a person with 20/20 vision can only distinguish two points of light that are at least 42 seconds apart, i.e. four times the separation of Sirius A and B (Schaefer 1995).

Adams (1983), based on Temple, argues that the ancient Egyptians had telescopes which enabled them to see Sirius B, "The Russians have recently discovered a crystal lens, perfectly spherical and of great precision, used in ancient Egypt.(5) It is a short and simple step to place one lens in front of another to make a basic telescope, and chances are that it could have happened and many times." This is an example of a type of reasoning described by Mary Lefkowitz (1993), referring to Martin Bernal's claims of massive Egyptian influence on Greece in Black Athena, "because something is possible, it can be considered probable, or even actual si potest esse, est." Adams and Van Sertima are even less cautious and use the following chain of reasoning: if it is conceivable, it is possible, it is probable-- it is true. In fact, it is impossible. Even if the evanescent Egyptian telescope existed, it would not suffice. The glare due to Sirius A requires the use of at least a 5-inch telescope to see Sirius B at its maximum separation; at its closest approach, about half the time, a minimum of a 100-inch telescope is needed (Schaefer 1991, 1995). The first sighting of Sirius B in 1844 required an 18_-inch refractor telescope, the largest in the world at the time (Krupp 1991: 223).

Adams' repeated claims that the Dogon have known about Sirius B for 700 years are equally devoid of evidence. Adams' (1983: 38) sole proof is the following statement given without attribution or citation, "A wooden mask called the kanaga, used by the Dogon to celebrate the Sirius-related Sigui ceremony, is among the archaeological finds that indicate their preoccupation with this star for at least 700 years." Adams' source is actually Griaule and Dieterlen (1950; Temple 1976: 37-38). The kanaga mask represents a crane-like bird, the bustard, and is connected to the Dogon creator god Amma (Griaule 1938: 470). The dating of the sigui ceremony involves a different set of enormous wooden masks that are not worn but kept in protected shelters. These masks were not dated with C14, and their true age is not known. Griaule extrapolated the age of the masks by counting the number of masks in shelters and multiplying by 60 years per mask because a new mask was made for each 60-year sigui ceremony.(4) Most shelters had 3 or 4 masks taking the ceremony back to AD 1720-1760 (Griaule 1938: 242-244; Temple 1976: 38). A single location had 8 masks, the remains of another and 3 piles of dust, which Griaule (1938: 245) interpreted as possibly three further masks. This very shaky hypothetical extrapolation is the sole evidence dating the sigui ceremony to AD 1300, and tells us nothing concerning knowledge of Sirius B, the invisible dwarf star.

In fact, the entire Dogon question may be futile theorizing, because Griaule's original data, on which this whole edifice is built, is very questionable. His methodology with its declared intent to redeem African thought, its formal interviews with a single informant through an interpreter, and the absence of texts in the Dogon language have been criticized for years (Goody: 1967; Douglas 1968; Lettens 1971; Clifford 1983). Even a sympathetic reviewer (Roberts 1987\1988), who believes that Sirius and its two companions are important components of Dogon thought, feels that the actual existence of Sirius B is purely coincidental, "... it is equally clear that the first companion of Sirius (Po Tolo) as recognized by the Dogon is not [sic] the companion (Sirius B) recognized by Western astronomers... The two companion stars that the Dogon recognize are elements of a particular cosmology that would exist even if Sirius B did not. That Sirius has a second companion for Dogon, which has never been discovered or presumed to exist by Western astronomers, should make this point obvious."

Recently, a Belgian anthropologist, Walter van Beek, who has spent 11 years among the Dogon, pointed out that Griaule's data is unique: "Is Sirius a double star? The ethnographic facts are quite straightforward. The Dogon of course, know Sirius as a star [it is after all the brightest star in the sky]... Knowledge of the stars is not important either in daily life or in ritual. The position of the sun and the phases of the moon are more pertinent for Dogon reckoning. No Dogon outside of the circle of Griaule's informants had ever heard of sigu tolo or po tolo... Most important, no one, even within the circle of Griaule informants, had ever heard or understood that Sirius was a double star [or according to Renard Pále,(6) even a triple one, with B and C orbiting A]. Consequently, the purported knowledge of the mass of Sirius B or the orbiting time was absent (van Beek 1991).

Van Beek points out that Griaule's data was developed in long intense sessions with one primary informant, Ambara. In this process, Griaule probably reinterpreted statements from his informant in the light of his own knowledge about Sirius and its heavy companion, which had been much in the news at the time he began his field work. In turn, the Dogon, because Griaule was extremely respected and liked and because the Dogon culture places enormous importance on consensus and in avoiding contradictions, would have accepted his analysis as if it were theirs (van Beek 1991: 152-155). As an example of the process, van Beek points out a Dogon tale which explains the differences between white people and the Dogon, but which, in fact, is taken from the Bible. "Thus the story of the drunken Noah [Genesis 9: 21-27] has found its way into the stories of the se Dogon, who emphatically denied that this was a 'white' story." Traditionalists and Christians unanimously declared it to be Dogon: it belonged to the tem. In many other instances the process was discernible: foreign elements were adopted and in a single generation became "traditional."

It might be argued that the knowledge given to Griaule was very secret and known only to a few, including Ambara. Van Beek points out that "neither the myths nor the song texts--though they are sacred-- are secret. In fact, the tem [collective knowledge] is public knowledge." Van Beek argues, given the fact that he cannot find traces of these data, that "The question is then, how secret secrets can be and yet be part and parcel of a culture. As shared meaning is a crucial aspect of any definition of culture, a secret not shared is not cultural, while one shared by very few is by definition marginal... Thus, if the secrets revealed to Griaule are part of Dogon culture, one should be able to retrace them to some extent." Jacky Boujou, an anthropologist with 10 years experience with the Dogon, is in complete agreement with van Beek, "I am struck by the degree to which van Beek's analyses coincide with those I have gradually arrived at... The third period is represented by the Renard Pále,(7) which remains altogether strange and entirely unverifiable in the field, whatever Dogon region investigated." And also, "I would underline the obvious desire of the Dogon for collective harmony and consensus that is striking to the participant observer (Boujou 1991)." Another anthropologist with fieldwork among the Dogon, Paul Lane, agrees, "Many of van Beek's substantive claims come to me as no surprise. Thus, for instance, although the objectives of my research in the Sanga region in the early 1980s were quite different, along with van Beek I found little evidence for the complex but nonetheless allegedly unified symbolic ordering of daily life described by Griaule (Lane 1991)."

Sagan (1980: 81-87) and Brecher (1979: 110) have proposed that the information about the discovery of Sirius B and its characteristics were told to the Dogon by another European prior to Griaule's fieldwork. Although derided by Van Sertima (1983: 13) and Adams (1983: 37) this explanation, or the one given by van Beek, are plausible and do not require extraterrestrials or mythical telescopes.

Adams does not provide any explanation for Dogon knowledge although one is current among the Afrocentric circles in which he runs.(8) Frances Welsing (1987, 1991), as well as Adams (1987, 1988), argue that melanin has the ability to pick up all kinds of energy frequencies. Welsing (1987) further claims that the Dogon by virtue of their melanin are able to pick up vibrations from Sirius B just as if they possessed infra-red telescopes.(9) Welsing also claims that melanin gives ancient Egyptians and other Blacks extra-sensory perception, psi and the ability to foretell the future. This explanation of an extraordinary claim is also not supported by any evidence (Ortiz de Montellano 1993).

NOTES

The Dogon live in near Bandiagara, about 300 kilometers south of Timbuktu, Mali in West Africa (Ridpath 1978).

The paper cited as evidence for this (Chlebowski, Halpern, and Steiner 1981) does not claim that the X-ray emitting dwarf 9' south of sirius is a third companion. This star is, actually 37 times farther from the Earth (325 light years) than is Sirius (8.7 light years). Linden blad (1973) deliberately searched for a third component in the Sirius system and found none.

The bright star sirius is also referred to as "Sirius A", with its dense companion being "Sirius B." The sigui ceremony deals with Sirius A, which everyone agrees is known to the dogon. It is, after all, the brightest star in the sky. It is also known as the "Dog Star."

These space travelers were very ill-informed; Jupiter has sixteen moons, not four, as they supposedly told the Dogon (Brecher 1979).

A sphere would be useless as a lens because the focal length would be extremely short, and because the image produced would be greatly distorted by spherical and chromatic aberration (Muirden 1969: 6-7). In order to focus light adequately the lens should be either concave or convex. The sole evidence for this Russian (why always the Russians?) discovery is a citation to a journalist Peter Tompkins (1978: 219). The academic credibility and accuracy of Tompkins can be judged by his co-authorship with Christopher Bird (1973) of a book which claims that plants can speak to people. In turn, Tompkins' sole evidence for the Russian discovery is a reference with no page number to an Italian publication ("Peter Kolosimo in Terra Senza Tempo ) published in Milan in 1969") that is not listed in the bibliography to Tompkins book. The claim can be found in the translated version (Kolosimo 1973: 3). In the book Kolosimo, who is even less critical than Von Dänniken, claims that both Atlantis and Lemuria existed and were the possible sources for this advanced technology. He also postulates that visitors from outer space have visited earth. The Egyptian telescopes, accepted so easily by Van Sertima and Harding, turn out to be quite evanescent.

See Griaule and Dieterlen 1965.

This book (Griaule and Dieterlen 1965) represents the third and final period of Griaule and Dieterlen's writing on the Sirius myth among the Dogon.

A number of Afrocentrists, whom I have labeled as melanists, propose that melanin has extraordinary properties, which, in turn, make black people biologically superior in intellect, morals, and spirituality to white people (Ortiz de Montellano 1993). Hunter Adams is a melanist, and may well believe that melanin is the source of Dogon knowledge since even his exaggerated claims of visual acuity for "dark-eyed" people are not enough to see Sirius B.

Even this far-fetched claim is not applicable to Sirius B. sirius B is too hot (22,000 degrees Kelvin). Most of its radiation is emitted in the far ultraviolet, and little is emitted in the infrared (Seeds 1988, 137, 195).

References:

Adams, H. H. 1983a. "African Observers of the Universe: The Sirius Question." In I. Van Sertima, ed. Blacks in Science. Ancient and Modern. 27-46. New Brunswick: Transaction Books.

-----1983b. "New Light on the Dogon and Sirius." In I. Van Sertima,ed. Blacks in Science. Ancient and Modern. 47-49. New Brunswick: Transaction Books.

-----1987. "Lecture 1st Melanin Conference. San Francisco, Sept. 16-18, 1987. Broadcast "African-American World View" WDTR 90.9 FM Detroit Public School's Radio, September 25, 1990.

-----1988. "Lecture 2nd melanin conference New York, 1988. Broadcast on "African American World View," WDTR 90.9 FM Detroit Public School's Radio, October 2.

-----1990 [1987]. "African and African-American contributions to Science and Technology." In African-American Baseline Essays. Portland, OR: Multnomah School District.

Allen, C. W. 1973. Astrophysical Quantities. 3rd. ed. London: Athlone Press.

Boujou, J. 1991. "Comment," Current Anthropology 12: 159.

Brecher, K. 1979. "Sirius Enigmas," In K. Brecher and M. Feirtag, eds., Astronomy of the Ancients. 91-115. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Chlebowski, T., J. P. Halpern, and J. E. Steiner. 1981. "Discovery of a New X-ray Emitting Dwarf Nova 1e 0643.0-1648." The Astrophysical Journal 247: L35-L38.

Clifford, J. 1983. "Power and Dialogue in Ethnography; Marcel Griaule's Initiation," In G. Stocking, ed. Observers Observed. 121-156. Madison: Univ. Wisconsin Press.

Douglas, M. 1968. "Dogon Culture: Profane and Arcane." Africa 38: 16-24. Gebre-Egziabher, S. 1993/1994. "Africans' Contributions to Science: A Culture of Excellence." Equity Coalition (University of Michigan School of Education) 3 (#2): 30-31.

Goody, J. 1967. "Review of M. Griaule, Conversations with Ogotemmeli: an Introduction to Dogon Religious Ideas" American Anthropologist 69: 239-241.

Griaule, M. 1938. Masques Dogon. Paris: Institut d'Ethnologie.

Griaule, M. and G. Dieterlen. 1950. "Un systeme soudanais de Sirius," Journal de la Societe des Africanistes 20: 273-294

-----1965. Le renard pále. vol.1, fasc.1, Le mythe cosmogonique: La creation du monde. Paris: Musée de l'Homme (Travaux et Memoires de l'Institut d'Ethnologie).

Harding, S. 1991. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? 223-224. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press.

Kolosimo, P. 1973. Timeless Earth. P. Stevenson, trans. New Hyde Park, NY: University Books Inc.

Krupp, E. C. 1991. Beyond the Blue Horizon. Myths and Legends of the Sun, Moon, Stars, and Planets. New York: Harper Collins Publishers.

Lane, P. 1991. "Comment," Current Anthropology 12: 162.

Lefkowitz, M. R. 1993. "Ethnocentric History from Aristobulus to Bernal." Academic Questions. 6(2): 12-20.

Lettens, D. 1971. Mystagogie et mystification: Evaluation de l'oeuvre de Marcel Griaule. Bujumbara: Presses Lavigerie.

Muirden, J. 1969. Astronomy for Amateurs. London: Cassell.

Ortiz de Montellano, B. R. 1991. "Multicultural Pseudoscience: Spreading Scientific Illiteracy Among Minorities. I." Skeptical Inquirer 16(1): 46-50.

-----1993. "Afrocentricity, Melanin and Pseudoscience." Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 36: 33-58.

Ridpath, I. 1978. "Investigating the Sirius Mystery," The Skeptical Inquirer Fall: 56-62.

Roberts, A. E. 1987/1988."The Serious Business of Dogon Cosmology," Archaeoastronomy 10: 148-153.

Sagan, C. 1980. Broca's Brain. New York: Ballantine Books.

Schaefer, B. E. 1991. "Glare and Celestial Visibility." Publication of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. 103: 645-660.

Schaefer, B. E. (Physics Department, Yale University). 1995. Personal Communication, 5/18.

Seeds. M. E. 1988. Foundations of Astronomy. 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Temple, R. G. 1976. The Sirius Mystery. London: Sidwick and Jackson.

Tompkins, P. 1978. Secrets of the Pyramids. New York: Harper.

Tompkins, P. and C. Bird. 1973. The Secret Life of Plants. New York: Harper.

van Beek, W. E. A. 1991. "Dogon Restudies. A Field Evaluation of the Work of Marcel Griaule," Current Anthropology 12: 139-167.

Van Sertima, I. 1983. "The Lost Sciences of Africa: An Overview." In I. Van Sertima, ed. Blacks in Science. Ancient and Modern. 7-26. New Brunswick: Transaction Books.

Welsing, F. C. 1987. "Lecture 1st Melanin Conference, San Francisco, September 16-17, 1987." Broadcast "African-American World View" WDTR 90.9 Detroit Public School's Radio, September 5 and 12, 1989.

-----1991. The Isis Papers. Chicago: Third World Press.