They Would Be Gods - 47 - Serpent Cults: A Common Origin?

THEY WOULD BE GODS: OUR PAST RECONSIDERED, OUR FUTURE FOREWARNED

PART VI: ANCIENT SECRETS

by Anthony Forwood (2011)

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47: Serpent Cults: A Common Origin?

Whether we consider the secret schools of Egypt, India, China, or Greece, or any of the ancient pagan religions whose origins we know so little about, or even the most ancient shamanistic cultures that existed even earlier in prehistory, we find a certain commonality underlying their beliefs, symbology, and magical rites. Although the names of their gods and spirits are different, the attributes of these gods and spirits, and many of the stories surrounding them were more often than not the same or quite similar among these cultures. This leads to the very reasonable possibility that the beliefs, symbology, and magical rites all originated from a single source, and because these similarities reach back to our earliest known cultures, this source might possibly have been a previously widespread civilization that is now lost to history. Some speculate that this prehistoric civilization was that of Atlantis, which Plato wrote about, or Lemuria, another legendary civilization that seems to have been from the same prehistoric time frame and which was only brought to public awareness by the Theosophical Society in the late nineteenth century.

What we might regard as ancient Egyptian artifacts and other signs of their culture have been found throughout the world at sites of ancient worship. The similarities between Egyptian symbolism as well as the artistic style and building construction to those of other cultures in other places, including that of the Toltecs, Maya, and Aztecs of South America, and of certain North American Indian cultures, and even in ancient China, is uncanny. All of these cultures seem to claim that they were given the gift of civilization from the gods, and many of them seem to have been unexplainably advanced in both mathematics and astronomy very early on. There is a great deal of accumulated evidence regarding the beliefs and religions of the different cultures of the ancient past that suggests they all stem from a single origin that predates the history of our own earliest civilizations. Whether the origin might have been Atlantis or Lemuria, or visitors from another planet, or even a subterranean race, or something else entirely, is not known. However, we must consider what we know about the earliest spiritual beliefs of our ancestors, to see what might be discovered about them that might be relevant to the theme of this book.

One particular commonality that will be noted among the various different cultures around the world that goes back to our very earliest prehistoric cultures is that they all put very similar symbolic meaning and importance in the serpent, and it will be found that serpent cults have always existed in virtually every ancient civilization, from China to Mesopotamia to the Americas. In each case, serpent worship goes back to the beginning of their remembered histories and was a very important aspect of their spiritual beliefs, and at one time it was very prominent in their spiritual practices.

The caduceus symbol of two snakes intertwined around a pole, which I mentioned in the last chapter, can be found cropping up in different isolated cultures of the far past, and it is always connected with these early serpent cults. Since earliest times, this symbol has related to medicine and healing. An interesting point to make here is that a strand of DNA looks very similar to a caduceus, while we’ve only known the shape of a DNA strand for less than a hundred years. Is this just a strange coincidence? Could it be possible that this symbol might reflect the level of scientific knowledge that was attained by a prehistoric civilization that passed on some of that knowledge, and this came into the possession of the early secret schools to which its origin is more commonly attributed today? It seems that this might be very possible, in light of what is being presented within these pages. But what is the significance of serpents? Why were they venerated so highly in earlier times, and why have they become equated with all that is evil?

We see that serpents had some significance in the Bible, and most of us are familiar with the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and of the rod that Moses carried that was turned into a serpent when he cast it to the ground. Less familiar is the ‘fiery serpent’ mentioned in Numbers 21:8, which the god Yahweh told Moses to construct out of brass and mount on a pole, and by which Moses was able to heal those who were bitten by snakes. Was this object a caduceus? Whatever the case, we see this brass object mentioned again in Kings IV 18:4, where it tells us that Hezekiah, son of Ahaz, king of Judah, destroyed this brass serpent because the people were burning incense in worship to it. Most interesting, but equally as mysterious, is the mention of ‘flying fiery serpents’ in Isaiah 14:29 and 30:6. What these may have been is unclear, since there is nothing that we know of that exists today that they might resemble, so we can only speculate. We can see, however, that throughout the Bible, serpents are equated with the lowest of creatures, and in Revelations 12:9 we find that it says, “And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” This is the most telling verse in the entire Bible regarding serpents, and reveals that these creatures were associated with Satan himself, who was a ‘great dragon’. The twentieth chapter of Revelations contains the most enigmatic verses regarding this great dragon Satan, referred to as the deceiver of nations, who is cast into a bottomless pit for one thousand years (20:2 – 3), after which he is let loose again (20:7), and through deceit joins together a great force from the four corners of the Earth (20:8) to do battle against those who follow the god Yahweh, but these forces are devoured by fire (20:9) and thrown into a lake of fire and brimstone for all of eternity (20:10).

Serpent cults were apparently quite popular in Canaan and Edom prior to the arrival of the Israelites, and the serpent represented the divine spirit or essence. The serpent was used as a symbol by the brass-smiths because of its symbology with fire, light, and heat, but perhaps also as a symbol of transformation and purification. These symbols of fire and light were also seen to be reflected in the dazzle of precious gems, which seemed to shine with a divine light. Depictions of serpents have been found in ancient Sumer, Babylon, and Assyria as well.

It needs to be understood that the gods were vying for power over the human race, and not all humans were followers of Yahweh, the god of the Bible. That the serpent god would be cast in a bad light by another god who sought to gain more followers is quite possible. Yahweh sought to keep his followers dependent on him for their existence, while the serpent god in the Garden of Eden offered them the ability to become as gods themselves through greater awareness and the knowledge that came with it.

What is interesting is that we see a caduceus-like object in later Greek mythology and associated with the god Hermes – a winged staff with two snakes coiled around it. Hermes was the god of the occult and alchemic sciences, or Hermetic sciences, which was an important part of the secret knowledge of the early mystery schools. Hermes was none other than Hermes Trismegistus, who is believed by some to have been Alexander the Great. Apparently, the serpent symbology was important to the early secret schools, and logically, so was serpent worship.

It should be further noted that the caduceus symbol is also representative of the Kundalini experience of Tantric yoga that was discussed in an earlier part of this book, in which the concept of a coiled serpent rests at the base of the spine, and at the moment of this experience of enlightenment it quickly winds itself up through the body, passing through each chakra point until it reaches the top of the head and releases its energy.

Since earliest times, the serpent has also been symbolized in the form of a circle, with its mouth engulfing its own tale. This symbol is known in ancient Greece as the ‘Uroboros’. It’s meaning embraces the concepts of holism, cycles, balance, rejuvenation, the alpha and the omega, etc. In Norse mythology, this symbol referred to ‘Midgard’, which was thought of as a snake that encircled the Earth and moved the waters.

In the Americas, there are the Toltec and Aztec legends of Quetzalcoatl, the ‘feathered serpent’, known as Kukulkan to the Maya, who was attributed as the god who bequeathed knowledge to these cultures.

We see a lesser form of the serpent image on the headdresses of the Egyptian pharaohs, who were the priest-kings and therefore directly associated with the mystery schools of Egypt. The Egyptian god Nun was associated with serpents, being either depicted with them or as one himself. The serpent was associated with knowledge, and in ancient times (as much as today) knowledge was kept in the hands of the elite. We see today, on the official crests of many of the oldest European dynastic families, the symbol of the dragon – the great serpent. Another very common depiction on these dynastic family crests is that of the phoenix, which is another mythical creature that resembles a flying dragon, and represents the aspect of death and rebirth, which is also signified by the serpent. In the story of the phoenix, it starts out as a worm – symbolic of the serpent – but is transformed through fire.

Ancient Ireland was devoid of indigenous snakes, and yet pre-Christian stone crosses bearing images of serpents are to be found throughout that land. In fact, serpents and dragons were incorporated into most of the ancient designs and ornamentations still surviving from Ireland’s most distant past, and were prominent figures in their myths, legends, and folklore. The story of St. Patrick ridding Ireland of snakes is said by some to have been symbolic of the early Christians eradicating serpent worshippers, since there were no actual snakes there. This is the same land that had once been inhabited by an unknown culture that was responsible for erecting the many standing stones, stone circles, and mounds in Neolithic times, both there and elsewhere. Is there a connection between serpent cults and these ancient people?

It should also be noted that dragons have always been associated with treasure, and treasure consists of precious gems and metals. Aside from the possible significance of these materials to ancient technologies, which we will look at in a later part of this book, it needs to be pointed out here that there may be an association between the symbolic dragon’s treasure and the desire of dynastic kings and queens to possess these precious materials. The dragon represents the ‘great serpent’, which might be representative of the god Enki, who was cast down by the other gods who did not want knowledge to be bequeathed on humans, while Enki sought to enlighten them. Those who become enlightened through greater knowledge have greater power, which leads to greater riches in life, and greater riches have come to be represented by those things which are the most valuable, in this case rare and precious gems and metals. Why are these gems and metals so precious? We’ll leave this question for later, but the reader should consider what has been said here and realize that a deception may have been played on the human race by a few who seek to retain their advantage over the rest of us through confusion and misunderstandings.

Serpent cults have always centered around the darker occult mysteries, and we find signs of these cults stemming as far back as our earliest known cultures in Neolithic times. It seems as though these serpent cults have always existed in secret, at least since the later religions took root. Before that, however, they seem to have been quite a bit more prominent, and may have even flourished widely. There are signs that during, and perhaps even prior to the last ice age, at a time when other great civilizations may have existed on the planet, and long before Sun worship became popular, serpent worship seems to have been a very common practice among the peoples of the Earth. We see these signs in cave paintings and among the early human artifacts that trace back to our supposed hunter-gatherer period, long before formal religions came into existence. Serpent worship and serpent cults seem to have been a common phenomenon whose origins stem from a common influence in prehistory.

Why serpents? We see in the symbology and beliefs that developed over time that the serpent represented the undercurrents of life, the winding paths and spiraling cycles that encapsulate birth and death and all the possible events that take place between those moments. The serpent has always represented a creature of the Earth, while its winding body is represented in the paths of the planets and stars, reflecting their slow, patient movement through time and space. The serpent also represents the darkness of mystery, being the symbol of all things secret and unknown. How fitting, then, that the later secret schools would have grown out of this earlier belief system. From the early serpent cults came the practices that formed the basic format for all later schools of initiation, as well as all the methods of retaining and guarding and passing on the secrets of the deeper mysteries through hidden meanings and symbols and practices.

Serpents are not just glorified snakes, however. The serpent represents all varieties of the reptilian species, from snakes to lizards to alligators to mythical dragons. It almost seems as though the serpent, in its highest form, represents a creature that is highly developed both physically and intellectually and is equal to or even greater than the human species. The serpent is attributed with magical powers, with deeper wisdom, and more lately, with guile and deception. But these latter attributes didn’t necessarily originate with the earliest serpent cults, and only came about when later religions took root and pushed serpent worship into the shadows. As we saw in a previous chapter, the serpent in the Garden of Eden didn’t trick Eve into eating from the Tree of Knowledge, but rather spoke honestly, and revealed that the god who had warned Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of the tree had been the real deceiver, saying that they would surely die if they did so. And we see that they didn’t die, but rather, just as the serpent had claimed, their eyes were opened and they became aware.

If we consider that the Sumerian god Enki came to be represented in Genesis as the serpent, and that these gods were of a different species than we humans are, a flesh-and-blood species that has existed since before humans even evolved from the apes or were otherwise created, then we need to consider that such a godly species may have correspondences to creatures that existed on Earth before our time. We see that until sixty-five million years ago the Earth was predominated by many different varieties of reptilian species, which our modern-day scientists claim became extinct, save for a few varieties that were able to survive and which have developed into the common reptile species we know to exist today. But in considering who Enki was and how he relates to humans as the god of their creation, perhaps there is more to all this. It may be that there is a connection between these gods and the dinosaurs that once walked the Earth. Perhaps the dinosaurs were earlier experiments in genetics that the gods were responsible for, or perhaps the gods themselves originated from that past age. The snake is a highly evolved reptilian creature whose origin stems back to that earlier age, and may therefore be closely related to the gods of old.

Whatever the case, it may be that serpent cults were and are related to worshipping the god Enki, who the Sumerian texts tell us was banished to the Lower World for having created humans. Perhaps what we read in the Bible regarding serpents and the association of them to Satan and everything dark and evil is a somewhat exaggerated depiction that was intended to lure humans into following certain other gods instead, by painting Enki/Satan in the worst possible manner so as to keep humans from pursuing the attainment of higher knowledge, to which Enki is attributed.

The reptilian aspect of the serpent and its affiliation with the creator god has led some authors (most notably David Icke) to suggest that the gods of our oldest legends were themselves a reptilian species, and they go even further to suggest that the bloodlines of the most powerful and longest surviving dynastic families that still exist today are directly descended from these gods, and have been careful to retain within their genetic makeup certain characteristics that have been inherited from these gods. These families, thirteen in all, do in fact trace their lineage back to the earliest kings, and claim that the divine right to rule was given to them by these gods.

In India, the ancient kings and rulers were said to have originated from a serpent race. Whether these were the ancient Nagas who lived in the underworld, this author is uncertain, but it’s very likely that this is the case.

According to such authors as Fritz Springmeier and David Icke, these bloodline families are all of a single genetic stock, and they have retained their genetic purity by keeping meticulous geneological records and only marrying those within their family tree who retain the necessary genetic traits to maintain their purity. These families have always honored the gods of Babylon, and are even said to secretly involve themselves in the deepest levels of satanic activity and demonic worship that go on in our society’s underground. But is this related to serpents and serpent cults? It’s said that these families have reptilian genes, and the purest-blooded among them are supposedly able to shapeshift into reptilian form at certain times. No matter how ridiculous this might seem, it shouldn’t be dismissed lightly. There is possible relevance of this relating to the activities that take place during satanic rituals, including the drinking of fresh blood and eating the heart of a sacrifice to receive the life-force of a sacrificed offering, and the association of these rituals to those sacrifices to the gods that are described in the Bible may have a common connection – the only difference between them being that in the latter the life-force is received by the gods, rather than humans.

A possible connection between the beliefs of these dynastic families and serpents is the fact that the members of these families consider themselves to be gods, and this may relate to what the serpent told Eve in Genesis 3:5, that “in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” We know that Adam and Eve did eat from the tree, and their eyes were opened, so that they had in fact become as gods. Now, if these families trace their geneologies to the Adamic race, then they would have reason to make such a claim, while the rest of us, having countless times mixed our genetics with ‘lesser’ human stock, wouldn’t be able to make that claim so easily. Long ago, the early ancestors of these families may have taken to honoring the serpent god, recognizing that this god was the benefactor of humans. This doesn’t mean that this serpent god is evil, even if what these families do and believe is evil. It simply means that they understand where the source of their power lies, and who bequeathed it to them, while the rest of us continue to believe that the serpent in the Bible represents everything evil. This may not be an accurate characterization, however, and these families may have corrupted the gift of knowledge that was given to Adam by the serpent, and helped to pervert his image through their activities.

Christianity and the biblical texts have been largely corrupted over the centuries with such confusion and misunderstandings, and many things have been hidden from our modern-day awareness that was once better known. For instance, the Nazarenes, a group to which Jesus belonged, were associated with the serpent, and ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ translates to ‘Guardian of the Serpent’, while in Egypt he was known as ‘Son of the Serpent’. The fact that the serpent has always represented immortality, rejuvenation, and transcendence should not go unnoticed in relation to the resurrection of Jesus, either.

These dynasties and their offshoots have always involved themselves heavily with many of the most powerful secret societies that exist, and they have always filled their upper levels. They control these organizations, whose members extend throughout the upper levels of the government and corporate sectors, and this effectively gives them immense power and the ability to control events and situations and the direction that these lead us. It has been reported by a former 33^rd degree Mason in the Scottish Rite, Rev. Jim Shaw, that serpent worship goes on regularly at the Masonic House of the Temple in Washington, DC. It has also been claimed that this building, and a number of government buildings in this city, have been built over entrances to the subterranean tunnels that lie below. The reader should also consider the purposeful layout of the US capital, and the Masonic/Satanic symbolism that has been incorporated into it. The connections here are laid very clearly and cannot be easily dismissed.

Other signs of a serpent cult exist in our modern day, but not of the type that most people are willing to believe or easily accept. These signs stem mostly from the field of ufology, where a reptilian alien species has been reported in a large number of cases to be involved with US military forces in some strange and sinister activities. These activities involve abductions, animal (mostly cattle) mutilations, genetics and/or cloning of humans or human-like hybrids, and rumors of secret underground bases. Although I will not delve into these issues too deeply due to the lack of corroborative physical evidence and the speculative nature of what is actually being witnessed, I feel that it’s necessary to mention them because these reports tie in with the activities of those among the elite who are engaged in the darker activities of certain powerful secret societies. The very fact that so many people have come forth and given accounts of their encounters with these creatures, and continue to do so, and the fact that their accounts all seem to corroborate each other in too many ways to be either coincidence or contrivance, lends a certain amount of weight to the truth of what they relate. At first, the majority of these reports came from abductees while attempting to use hypnotic regression to find out what happened to them to cause periods of missing time, and due to the fact that they tended to be ordinary people with no more than their word to go on, they have been largely ignored outside of the community of ufologists. However, as the years have gone by, more and more people with greater credibility, such as government workers who claim to have worked in these secret underground bases and have given information that has later been validated, including certain reputable high-level government officials, and the stories have shown little contradiction between any of them. Basically, what these people relate is that there is a reptilian race that is working with certain factions of the US government (and probably others) in a secret plot to infiltrate, subjugate, and completely enslave the human race. These reptilians are not the common ‘gray’ aliens that have been made popular through the entertainment media, but are a different sort of creature that is much more fearsome and deadly. These reptilians appear to be members of the serpent race that has existed in the shadows throughout our recorded history, and are those who the dynastic bloodlines have honored and worshipped above all else.