Theurgical (Magical) Heads

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DCHindley
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Re: Theurgical (Magical) Heads

Post by DCHindley »

On the matter of Sabians of Harran:

Walter Scott, Hermetica, vol 1, 1924 (and so, out of copyright in the USA)

[97] ...

But while the reputation of Hermes as a philosopher and teacher of religion dwindled in Europe, it lasted on undiminished in another region. The centre in which it most strongly maintained itself, and from which it spread afresh, was Harran,1 an important city in northern Mesopotamia, situated on the main road between Babylonia and the West. When Christianity, in the course of the fourth century, became the dominant religion in the neighbouring regions of the Roman empire, the majority of the Harranians refused to be converted, and continued to worship in their heathen temples as before;2 so that Harran came to be spoken of by Christians as a ‘ city of Pagans ’ (Ellēnōn polis).3 When Syria and Mesopotamia were invaded and conquered by the Arabs (A.D. 633-43), a large part of the Harranians were still Pagans; and under Moslem rule they adhered to their religion with the same pertinacity. We hear little of them for nearly two centuries; but they emerge into light again in the reign of the Abbasid caliph al-Ma’mun (son of Harun ar-Rashid). In A.D. 830, al-Mamun, setting out from Bagdad, his [98] capital, on a campaign against the Byzantines, passed through Harran,1 and noticing, among those who there presented themselves before him, some people strangely dressed, asked them, ‘To which of the peoples protected by law2 do you belong?’ They answered, ‘We are Harranians’. ‘Are you Christians?’ ‘No.’ ‘Jews?’ ‘No.’ ‘Magians?’ ‘No.’ ‘Have you a holy scripture or a prophet?’ To this question they gave an evasive answer. ‘You are infidels and idolaters then’, said the caliph, ‘and it is permitted to shed your blood. If you have not, by the time when I return from my campaign, become either Moslems or adherents of one of the religions recognized in the Koran, I will extirpate you to a man.’3 Under this threat, many of them, in outward profession [99] at least, went over to Islam, and others to Christianity. But some of them held out, and consulted a Moslem jurist, who, in return for a large fee, gave them this advice: ‘When al-Mamun comes back, say to him, “We are Sabians”; for that is the name of a religion of which God speaks in the Koran.’ Al-Mamun never came back (he died two or three years later, while still at war); but the Harranian Pagans acted on the advice of the jurist. They called themselves Sabians, and were thenceforward officially recognized by the Moslem government as entitled to toleration under that name.1

But in order to make good their claim to this legal status, it was necessary for them not merely to call themselves by a new name, but also to put forward a Book on which it could be said that their religion was based, and a Prophet or Prophets to whom the contents of that Book had been revealed. The sacred books of the sect which had hitherto been denoted by the name Sabians were probably unknown and inaccessible at Harran; and if they had been known there, it would have been evident that those books had nothing to do with the religion of the Harranians. It was therefore [100] necessary to choose some other writings, which would serve the purpose better.

Now the religion of the Pagan Harranians of the ninth century was the indigenous religion of heathen Syria, more or less modified by Hellenic and perhaps by Persian and other influences. For the mass of the people, religion must have been, there as elsewhere, a matter of cult far more than of doctrine. Of the local cults of Harran some descriptions have come down to us in Arabic writings; but these are mostly vague and meagre, and some of the more definite statements are evidently due either to gross misunderstanding or to malicious invention. We learn from them, however, that there was at Harran a temple of the Moon-god Sin,1 and that among the deities worshipped by the Harranians the seven planet-gods were prominent; and there are also descriptions of a cult2 which seems to show some resemblances to Mithraism.

But there were among the Pagans of Harran learned men who were well acquainted with Greek philosophy; and in those times Greek philosophy meant a religious philosophy founded on Plato and Aristotle — that is, in one word, Neoplatonism.3 The religion [101] of these men must have been related to that of the uneducated mass of worshippers of Sin and the planet-gods in the same sort of way that the religion of Iamblichus was related to that of uneducated Pagans in the Roman empire. And when the Pagan Harranians were required, on pain of death or merciless persecution, to name a Book on which their religion was based, it would necessarily fall to the learned men among them to find an answer to the question, and to speak on behalf of the whole body. They might have said with some truth that their religion (i.e. the philosophic religion of these learned men themselves, though not the religion of the mass of Pagans) was based on Plato’s Dialogues; but they preferred to name what were believed to be the more ancient writings from which Plato had derived his wisdom — that is, the Greek Hermetica. ‘Our Scriptures’, they must have said to the Moslem officials, ‘are the Hermetic writings; and our Prophets are those whose teaching is recorded in those writings, namely, Hermes Trismegistus, and his teacher Agathos Daimon.’1

The Moslems did not set any fixed limit to the number of ‘prophets’ acknowledged by them (among those whom they recognized as prophets were Adam, Seth, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, &c., and we are told by one authority that the total number of prophets amounted to 313, Chw. i. 626); and there might be no great difficulty in adding two more to the list; but it would be easier to get these two accepted if they could be identified with prophets already well known to Mohammedans. It was probably for this reason, and at the suggestion of Harranians, that Agathodaimon came to be identified with Seth son of Adam, and Hermes with Idris, whom Moslems held to be identical with Enoch (Koran 19.57 and 21.85).

Notes:

97
1 The evidence of Arabic writers concerning the Pagans of Harran has been collected and very thoroughly discussed by D. Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, St. Petersburg, 1856 (a work in two volumes, which contains large stores of material, exasperatingly ill arranged). Chwolsohn’s main conclusions are accepted by more recent authorities, e.g. Carra de Vaux, Avicenne, 1900, pp. 61-71, and E. G. Browne, Lit. Hist, of Persia, 1902, pp. 302-6. (It is very likely that my transliterations of Arabic names will be found inaccurate or inconsistent. In writing the names I usually omit diacritical marks, except at the first place where each name occurs.)

2 Northern Mesopotamia was the chief battle-ground in the long series of wars between the Romans and the Persians. It was therefore of great importance to the Roman government to retain the loyalty and goodwill of the inhabitants of Harran, which was one of the chief strongholds of that region; and it may have been for this reason that Paganism was connived at there when it was forcibly suppressed in other places.

3 Chwolsohn, i, pp. 303 and 438. (He refers to Acta Conciliorum, t. ix, ed. Paris, 1644, pp. 34 and 37.) Procopius, Bell. Pers. 2. 13, says that in A.D. 540 the Persian king Chosroes showed exceptional favour to Harran because its inhabitants were mostly Pagans’ ....

98
1 This story is quoted by an-Nadim, Fihrist (a. n. 987), Bk. 9, cap. 2 (Chwolsohn, ii, pp. 14 sqq.), from a book called The disclosure of the doctrine of the Harranians, who are in our time known under the name of Sabians, which was written (probably c. A.D. 900) by a Christian named Abú-Júsuf Abshaa’al-Qathíi.

2 According to Mohammedan law, 'Peoples of a Book', i.e. non-Moslems whose religion was founded on a scripture containing truths revealed by God to one whom Moslems recognized as a prophet, were entitled to toleration, on condition of payment of a fixed tax. This law was based on certain passages in the Koran in which Jews, Christians, and ‘Sabians’ were favourably spoken of. (Koran 2.59: ‘The believers, be they Jews, Christians, or Sabians, if only they believe in God and the last day, and do what is right, will find reward in the presence of their Lord; neither fear nor sorrow shall torment them.’ See also Koran 5.73 and 22.17.)

According to Chwolsohn, the people called ‘Sabians’ by Mohammed were the Mandaeans, a sect residing in the marsh-lands near the head of the Persian Gulf. (See Brandt, Mandäische Religion, 1889, and Mandäische Schriften, 1893.) These people called themselves Mandaeans, a name derived from mandâ, which means ē gnosis; but their neighbours called them Sabians, a Semitic word meaning ‘people who wash themselves’, or ‘baptists’. A few thousands of Mandaeans were still to be found in the neighbourhood of Basra in the nineteenth century; but they are probably by this time almost, if not quite, extinct. The sect may have been in existence as early as the second century A.D. Their scriptures are written in an Aramaic dialect, and contain a mixture of Babylonian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian ingredients, slightly modified by Christian influence. These writings, in the form in which they are now extant, may perhaps have been composed about the seventh or eighth century A.D., but were doubtless compiled out of documents of earlier date. In the ninth century, so little was generally known about this sect, that it was possible for the Pagans of Harran, who had no connexion whatever with them, to claim the name of Sabians without fear of contradiction, and thereby to get for themselves a legal status similar to that of Jews, Christians, and Magians (i.e.·Zoroastrians) under Moslem rule.

There is, however, some doubt whether Chwolsohn was right in identifying the ‘Sabians’ of the Koran with the Mandaeans. De Goeje (Actes du 6me congrès international des Orientalistes, Pt. ii, section 1, Leyden, 1885, p. 289) says that the people called Sabians in the Koran were ‘a Christian sect strongly impregnated with Pagan elements, the Elkasaites, who existed in Babylonia, and who, while having much resemblance to the Mandaeans, are not identical with them, as Chwolsohn thought they were’. But whether the sect denoted by the name Sabians before A. D. 830 was that of the Mandaeans or some other, it was in any case a sect with which the Pagans of Harran had nothing to do.

3 Ameer Ali, A Short History of the Saracens, 1921, p. 274, says: ‘In his [cont'd on pg 99] sagacious tolerance, Mamun recognized no distinction of creed or race; all his subjects were declared eligible for public offices, and every religious distinction was effaced. ... Liberty of conscience and freedom of worship had been always enjoyed by non-Moslems under the Islamic rigime, any occasional variation in this policy was due to the peculiar temperament of some local governor. Under Mamun, however, the liberality towards other religions was large-hearted and exemplary.’ This seems hardly consistent with the story told above. But the discrepancy is to be explained in this way; Mamun’s tolerance of non-Moslem religions was genuine as far as it went, but it extended only to those religions which were recognized by law.

Carra de Vaux, Avicenne, p. 30, tells a story (reported by Masudi) of a group of Manichaeans arrested and put to death as heretics by Mamun's order.

99
1 Hence, from A.D. 830 onward, the name Sabians had a new and different meaning. Some Arabic writers were aware that there were people ‘in the marshes ’ near the head of the Persian Gulf who were called Sabians; but the name was henceforward more commonly used to denote the Harranian Pagans. And since these were the only Pagans with whom the Moslem Arabs of the Bagdad region were directly or personally acquainted, the name Sabians came to be habitually used (from about A. D, 1000 onward) to signify Pagan polytheists or 'star-worshippers’ in general. (The Arabs were inclined to think that all Pagans were star-worshippers; this notion they probably got by generalizing from what was known to them about the local cults of Harran.) An Arabic writer says, for instance, that Constantine was converted from ‘Sabism’ to Christianity; and another says that Pharaoh was a ‘Sabian’.

The name ‘Sabians’ then had three different meanings. (1) Before A.D. 830, it meant the Mandaeans, or some other sect of similar character, (2) From A.D. 830 to about 1000, it meant the Harranian Pagans. (3) From about A.D. 1000 onward, it meant Pagans in general, of all places and all times. But most Moslems were not aware of these distinctions; and it is often difficult to decide whether an Arabic writer is using the name in the second or the third sense.

100
1 The cult of the Moon-god Sin must have been firmly rooted at Harran ever since what may be vaguely called ‘the time of Abraham’; and this Harranian cult was in high repute under the Roman empire. We hear of it, for instance, in the time of Caracalla; and in A.D. 363, Julian, halting at Harran on his way to war against the Persians, worshipped in the temple of the Moon-god (Amm. Marcell. 23. 3. 1). This worship seems to have continued without intermission under Moslem rule, until the temple of Sin at Harran was finally destroyed, either in A. D. 1032, or according to another authority, at the time of the Tartar invasion in A.D. 1230.

2 We are told (Chwolsohn, i. 496, 513, and ii. 319-64) that in one of the temples at Harran was worshipped a god named Shemâl, ‘ the lord of the genii (or daemons), the highest God, the God of the mysteries’; and that underneath this temple there were crypts, in which were idols, and in which mysteries were celebrated. Boys were admitted into a crypt, and were there terrified by weird sounds and voices. Women were excluded from the rites. There was a sacrament in which cakes were eaten (we are told that these cakes were made of meal mixed with the blood of a slaughtered baby; but that is doubtless a calumny, like similar accusations against the early Christians; and in both cases alike, the accusation may have been based on a too literal interpretation of symbolic actions and metaphorical phrases used in the ritual); and there was also a sacramental drinking of some liquid out of seven cups.

In this description there is much that reminds one of Mithraism. It must have been in some region not far distant from northern Mesopotamia that the Mithraic cult which spread over the Roman empire first took shape; and after it had spread westward, it might have been brought back to that same region and revived there by Roman soldiers and merchants.


3 Roughly speaking, it may be said that the Neoplatonists made use of Aristotle as their chief authority for logic, but Plato for philosophy in the stricter sense. But they habitually tried to explain away the differences between Plato and Aristotle, and to show that one and the same philosophy was taught by both. The [cont'd on page 101] 'Aristotle' of the Arabs meant Aristotle as interpreted by Neoplatonic commentators, and included, inter alia, the so-called Theologia of Aristotle, which is a paraphrase of Plotinus.

101
1 An Arabic writer, who died in A. D. 898, describes the doctrine of the Sabians ’ (i.e. Harranian Pagans) as a philosophy, and says that their teachers Agathodaimon and Hermes, and that they have a writing of the latter (Chwolsohn, i. 196).

DCH (Bedtime...)
Robert Baird
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Re: Theurgical (Magical) Heads

Post by Robert Baird »

Great Thread and lots to sink my teeth into as an introduction. Unfortunately it would take a couple of books to address it all. I have written those books and much more. Might I provide links to threads at another site where a great deal already is compiled?
This may be comparing apples & oranges. Proclus speaks of an initiation in which the initiate's body is buried with the head exposed to receive the mysteries. Initiations tend to be highly symbolic.

On the other hand, the "Sabians" have supposedly kidnapped (and it is assumed killed) a man who superficially resembles the popular representation of Mercury, embalms him, and then when they need a question answered, would reveal the body, lift off the head (separate it from the body) and it would magically speak in answer. This lifting of the head seems to have been based on trickery (like magician's mirrors?) but the head speaking is probably that of a living human being. It wouldn't have been the first time such a trick was perpetrated in antiquity by priests of a cult.

It doesn't help that "Sabian" is used to describe a wide range of people in Islamic literature, but does here seem to refer to those who chose to present the Hermetic literature as their "scriptures", so Mercury would actually be Hermes Trismegistus. It was a matter of convenience, as Magians (Zoroastrians) were considered infidels and the lives of the Sabians forfeit if they did not find a suitable "book" to adhere to the teachings of. There are just enough allusions to the book of Genesis in Hermetic mystical texts (not the alchemical ones) to treat them as part of the Judean tradition, which was considered acceptable to Islam (IIUC).

DCH
To begin.

Epithets and proscriptions against pre-Empire and Classical peoples who the Greeks and Romans borrowed and stole from while destroying all doctrine and anything written makes almost all of the posts into a mishmash of half truths and it is justifiably difficult to pierce the veils created by propagandists like Hirtius who wrote the books attributed to Julius Caesar or Josephus, Philo and others employed by Rome. We have had many great scholars focus on who wrote the Gospels and it is almost universally accepted in non-dogmatic circles that Paul wrote little if any of the Gospels. NO doubt you have seen the video by Atwill titled Know Rome - Know Jesus, No Rome - NO Jesus. If not I can link you to it.

More importantly I can link you to a couple of books written in the early 20th Century by a Masonic Linguist named Connor MacDari. They are only about 150 pages each but it took me ten years of research to prove what could be proven and another eight years of research (with helpers on a few research forums) while writing over seventy books addressing what I learned and integrating what I already knew from Hermetics and more. The main book is Irish Wisdom and it is now available on line for free along with another book more focussed on the Bible and Pyramids. In 1990 when Ogham scholars tasked me to re-write it; it was not even available from Kessinger Publishing. I worked with photocopies.

But let me address a couple of points about the head.

1. The Keltoi (greek word for ancient ones) or Kelts (Kets of Siberian DNA and related to the Ainu or DN and DNN of Homer who founded Greece as the Danaus) felt the head was the seat of the soul and took heads from their enemies to put around their camps or towns for protection - having the soul of the enemy leader was most important (See what happened to Ajax or was he the one doing the driving, in the Trojan era for a different but effective tool as he was dragged dying or dead behind a chariot back and forth in front of his troops.).

2. The Magians are far older than any of the people you speak about and Idries Shah traces them back 40,000 years to the area of the Ainu in the Altaic Mountains where a later red head named Temujin was a Nestorian who built the safest and largest Empire the Earth had seen - yet few books are written about him. The Hermetic alchemists like the probable amalgam Hermes Trismegistus could make a talking head - as was done by Aquinas and his mentor many years later. When having to answer Heresy charges they called it the Talking Head of Jesus. The Judeans or Mandaeans are not alchemical even as the Hassidim are most adept - Kabbalah is "twisted" (Dion Fortune) from Qabala which is the Verbal Tradition long before Strabo tells us the Celtiberians had a 7,000 year old WRITTEN history (Senchus Mor and other books destroyed by St. Patrick). Ogham is like the Le Placard baton proven to be an accurate lunar calendar of 25,000 to 30,000 years ago near where the half-breed Neanderthal Baby was found.

Two important epithets which are in common use by the conquered people are 'Celt' - means 'hammered tool' as David Hume speaks about the drunken louts of Ireland in a letter to Gibbon about his book The Rise and Fall of The Roman Empire - I can provide the quote. Ir-land can still be seen on maps used today. Ir means "lost" and though it was never fully conquered by Rome who made a deal with it's leaders and 'lost' in the eyes of average Romans it was actually the home of the main teaching and development ashrams or university sites for Roman saints and clerics. St. Columba was one and after he learned enough to be the arch-druid saving the 1200 Bairds at the Synod of Drum Ceatt (Check out the modern neo-Druid group I detest called OBOD) he said "Jesus is the new Druid". Most real druids had escaped to the Americas and elsewhere. Three Roman Emperors put bounties on their heads and the Britannica still says their language (Ogham and it's many tracts in many regions of the world including Tiffinaugh) did not exist until 400 AD.
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DCHindley
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Re: Theurgical (Magical) Heads

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DCHindley wrote:On the matter of Sabians of Harran:

Walter Scott, Hermetica, vol 1, 1924 (and so, out of copyright in the USA)
I mention this only because it stresses the fictitious nature of the claims of the Harranian "Sabians" about their origins, and probably equally fictitious accounts about their "idolatry" in some Islamic accounts. As the book had stressed,
"The name ‘Sabians’ then had three different meanings. (1) Before A.D. 830, it meant the Mandaeans, or some other sect of similar character, (2) From A.D. 830 to about 1000, it meant the Harranian Pagans. (3) From about A.D. 1000 onward, it meant Pagans in general, of all places and all times. But most Moslems were not aware of these distinctions; and it is often difficult to decide whether an Arabic writer is using the name in the second or the third sense."
Stories of kidnapping folks, soaking in sesame oil and borax while fed a diet of figs, so their head could be pulled off without tearing, seems as whimsical, and accurate, as the evil things that pagans thought that Jews and later Christians did (eat people, including babies, which was also attributed to the Harranian pagans). But it is true that the "head" has long been seen, symbolically, as the gateway for wisdom to be let into the mind, or let out.

As Alex says in A Clockwork Orange:
Uh, no time for the ol' in-out, love. I've just come to read the meter!


DCH

Edit: added an "an" and Alex.
Last edited by DCHindley on Sat Oct 24, 2015 9:26 am, edited 2 times in total.
andrewcriddle
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Re: Theurgical (Magical) Heads

Post by andrewcriddle »

DCHindley wrote:
DCHindley wrote:On the matter of Sabians of Harran:

Walter Scott, Hermetica, vol 1, 1924 (and so, out of copyright in the USA)
I mention this only because it stresses the fictitious nature of the claims of the Harranian "Sabians" about their origins, and probably equally fictitious accounts about their "idolatry" in some Islamic accounts. As the book had stressed,
What is clearly fictitious, in the sense of a deliberate politically motivated fiction, is the claim that the Harranians had any legitimate connection with the Sabians mentioned in early Islam.

The truth value of the other material is less straightforward. I.E. is it sheer lies or is it misinterpretation of genuine Harranian rituals ?

Andrew Criddle
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DCHindley
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Re: Theurgical (Magical) Heads

Post by DCHindley »

andrewcriddle wrote:What is clearly fictitious, in the sense of a deliberate politically motivated fiction, is the claim that the Harranians had any legitimate connection with the Sabians mentioned in early Islam.

The truth value of the other material is less straightforward. I.E. is it sheer lies or is it misinterpretation of genuine Harranian rituals?
Similar claims of abominable atrocities laid against Jews and later Christians are very likely "lies" as well, with no basis in any actual practices of these two groups, except perhaps in the most general sense. They ate secret meals (Christians) or avoided most common foods in their diet (Judeans), which allowed the outsiders, especially enemies, to fancifully (and sometimes maliciously) fill in the blanks with regard to the "real" nature of "the body & blood" of the Christian ritual (the babies' blood mixed with flour and made into cakes) or the "real" diet of the Judeans (human flesh, which was almost universally believed by non-Judeans in Egyptian North Africa in early 2nd century CE as a consequence of their uprising over unequal treatment).

However, there are magical texts (see H. Dieter Betz on the The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation-Including the Demotic Spells (1986) that speak of tricks, spells and rituals, involving burning incense and the vague illumination of the glass object in front of dark backgrounds, by which a magician can create the illusion of speaking statues, including spooky voices, etc.*

DCH (taking son's dog to Vet to see if her surgury drains can be removed - they could not be removed at this time!)

* Ahh guess this is an overstatement, as I could only find these two specific "tricks" in Betz's volume:

PGM VII. 167-86 Demokritos' "table gimmicks"
To make an egg become like an apple: Boil the egg and smear it with a mixture of egg-yolk and [red] wine.
To make the gladiators painted [on the cups] "fight": Smoke some "hare's head" underneath them. [It seems likely that the reference is to translucent, painted glass which, when lit, produces the effect.]

PGM XIb. 1-5 (No title) "Table gimmick" (?)
To make men who have [been] drinking at a symposium appear to have donkey snouts to outsiders, from afar: In the dark [take] a wick from a lamp and dip it in donkey's blood; make a new lamp with the new wick and touch the drinkers. [LSJ, s.v., cites this as a gloss (a plant name). But here and in Psellos, Lect. Mirab. (A. Westrrmann, Paradaxographi Graeci [Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1963; repr. of 1839 ed.] 147, 11; the paignion of Anaxilaos in Wellmann, APAW.PH 1928, p. 79, 7) the term can be rendered literally "donkey-faced" or ass-snouted." The paignion of Anaxilaos reads: "If you wish your wife to appear 'ass-mouthed' when she looks in the mirror, rub her mirror with donkey's tears."]


For the interest of some, an example of a jug with a gladiator scene painted onto it can be found in The Gladiator Jug from Ismant el-Kharab by Colin A. Hope and Helen V. Whitehouse:
http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/ancient ... or-jug.pdf

However, the smoke part is in one of the tricks above (I know knot what "hare's head" is supposed to be), but also in PGM VII.636-9
"Then take the incense burner in where you are going to sleep and burn 3 grains of frankincense and wave the ring in the smoke of the incense ..."

PGM XII.213-6
"Make these [sacrifices of birds] whole burnt offerings and burn, with the birds, all sorts of incense. Then, standing by the pit, look I to the east and, pouring on a libation of wine, honey, milk, [and] saffron, and holding over the smoke, while you pray [the stone] in which are engraved the inscriptions, say..."

PGM XXIIa.5-9
"But if [the patient] recovers [due to the spell] and shows ingratitude, take a pan of coals, throw [it in the altar (?)], and place the amulets over the smoke; add a root, and write this verse in addition: "the Far-shooter, having attained his aim, has, therefore, given pain and will give it further. [Hom. Il. 1.96]"
These things with smoke were likely done in the sight of all to enhance the effect on the client.

The mirror part is in PGM XIII. 749ff "You may use these [sacred names] on boy-mediums who do not see the gods, so that one will see unavoidably, and for all spells and needs: inquiries, prophecies by Helios, prophecies by visions in mirrors." Mirrors seem to have been used for prophesies where the mirror would appear to speak (as in "mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the ... of all").

If one remembers some of the work done in recent years on the Shroud of Turin, the Byzantine Greeks were capable of constructing elaborate mechanical structures to cause the shroud to rise up from a hidden closet and unfold to display it in a very dramatic way.

Wiki article on Shroud of Turin:

In 1204, a knight named Robert de Clari who participated in the Fourth Crusade that captured Constantinople, claims the cloth was among the countless relics in the city: "Where there was the Shroud in which our Lord had been wrapped, which every Friday raised itself upright so one could see the figure of our Lord on it." ... ( ... the original French could equally well be translated as the cloth was raised upright ...)


So, why not elaborate means to display "talking heads" in Harran?


DCH

Edit: added the material in red.
Last edited by DCHindley on Sat Oct 24, 2015 5:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Robert Baird
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Re: Theurgical (Magical) Heads

Post by Robert Baird »

If one seeks gnosis as the Gnostics did they will find what Michael Grant said was the primary and highest intellectual school of the Mediterranean around and before the time of the mythical Jesus (title but certainly Yeshua's family had an alchemist or wise man in every generation who studied and developed the science thereof.). Grant said the two names for this knowledge were Thoth/Hermes and Imhotep/Asklepios. In reading this excert from Wikipedia remember also the Therapeutae of Pythagoras became the Essenes headed by the older brother of Yeshua bar Joseph.

"Hermes Trismegistus may be a representation of the syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth.[1] In Hellenistic Egypt, the Greeks recognised the congruence of their god Hermes with Thoth.[2] Subsequently the two gods were worshipped as one in what had been the Temple of Thoth in Khemnu, which the Greeks called Hermopolis.[3]

Both Thoth and Hermes were gods of writing and of magic in their respective cultures.[citation needed] Thus, the Greek god of interpretive communication was combined with the Egyptian god of wisdom as a patron of astrology and alchemy. In addition, both gods were psychopomps, guiding souls to the afterlife. The Egyptian Priest and Polymath Imhotep had been deified long after his death and therefore assimilated to Thoth in the classical and Hellenistic period.[4] The renowned scribe Amenhotep and a wise man named Teôs were equally deified as gods of wisdom, science and medicine and thus placed alongside Imhotep in shrines dedicated to Thoth-Hermes during the Ptolemaic period.[5]

A Mycenaean Greek reference found on two Linear B clay tablets at Pylos[6] to a deity or semi-deity called ti-ri-se-ro-e (Linear B: ����������; Tris Hḗrōs, "thrice or triple hero")[7] could be connected to the later epithet "thrice wise", Trismegistos, applied to Hermes/Thoth. On the aforementioned PY Tn 316 tablet as well as other Linear B tablets, found in Pylos, Knossos and Thebes, appears the name of the deity "Hermes" as e-ma-ha (Linear B: ������), but not in any apparent connection with the "Trisheros". This interpretation of poorly understood Mycenaean material is disputed, since Hermes Trismegistus is not referenced in any of the copious sources before he emerges in Hellenistic Egypt.

The majority of Greeks, and later Romans, did not accept Hermes Trismegistus in the place of Hermes.[citation needed] The two gods remained distinct from one another. Cicero noted several individuals referred to as "Hermes": "the fifth, who is worshipped by the people of Pheneus [in Arcadia], is said to have killed Argus, and for this reason to have fled to Egypt, and to have given the Egyptians their laws and alphabet: he it is whom the Egyptians call Theyt."[8] In the same place, Cicero mentions a "fourth Mercury (Hermes) was the son of the Nile, whose name may not be spoken by the Egyptians." The most likely interpretation of this passage is as two variants on the same syncretism of Greek Hermes and Egyptian Thoth (or sometimes other gods); the one viewed from the Greek-Arcadian perspective (the fifth, who went from Greece to Egypt), the other viewed from the Egyptian perspective (the fourth, where Hermes turns out "actually" to have been a "son of the Nile," i.e. a native god). Both these very good early references in Cicero (most ancient Trismegistus material is from early centuries AD) corroborate the view that Thrice-Great Hermes originated in Hellenistic Egypt through syncretism with Egyptian gods (the Hermetica refer most often to Thoth and Amun).[9]

Hermes Trismegistus, floor mosaic in the Cathedral of Siena
The Hermetic literature added to the Egyptian concerns with conjuring spirits and animating statues that inform the oldest texts, Hellenistic writings of Greco-Babylonian astrology and the newly developed practice of alchemy (Fowden 1993: pp65–68). In a parallel tradition, Hermetic philosophy rationalized and systematized religious cult practices and offered the adept a method of personal ascension from the constraints of physical being, which has led to confusion of Hermeticism with Gnosticism, which was developing contemporaneously.[10]

As a divine source of wisdom, Hermes Trismegistus was credited with tens of thousands of writings of high standing, reputed to be of immense antiquity. Plato's Timaeus and Critias state that in the temple of Neith at Sais, there were secret halls containing historical records which had been kept for 9,000 years. Clement of Alexandria was under the impression that the Egyptians had forty-two sacred writings by Hermes, encapsulating all the training of Egyptian priests. Siegfried Morenz has suggested (Egyptian Religion) "The reference to Thoth's authorship... is based on ancient tradition; the figure forty-two probably stems from the number of Egyptian nomes, and thus conveys the notion of completeness." The Neo-Platonic writers took up Clement's "forty-two essential texts".

The Hermetica is a category of papyri containing spells and initiatory induction procedures. In the dialogue called the Asclepius (after the Greek god of healing) the art of imprisoning the souls of demons or of angels in statues with the help of herbs, gems and odors, is described, such that the statue could speak and engage in prophecy. In other papyri, there are recipes for constructing such images and animating them, such as when images are to be fashioned hollow so as to enclose a magic name inscribed on gold leaf."

Arcadia is the place that the Merovingians took the Benjaminite tax collectors to safety during one of the times the people of Israel/Palestine threw them out.

Moses (also a title) is thought to be Ahkenaten by some scholars including myself, and his sister was held in higher regard than he was by the adept alchemists (various names at different times and places). Due to the androgyny of adepts it could be that some character using a leader appellation (Moses means leader) was adept and Ahkenaten's statues show a morphing over time according to Rick Gore in Nat Geo. There are also issues created by grave robbers in his remains and a possible moving of remains later to make Moses appear as different than he (Ahkenaten) was. It appears the Way of Horus and Ashkelon which had been by-passed for research because it does not fit the Bible Narrative which the Egypt Exploration Fund was organized to support, will provide more evidence than we now have. There is an extant treatise of Mariae Prophetessoriae who is thought to be his sister and also the wife of his staff-bearer Jasher.
Robert Baird
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Joined: Fri Oct 23, 2015 9:52 pm

Re: Theurgical (Magical) Heads

Post by Robert Baird »

The recipes for animating the inanimate are many and likewise for the golem or once animate such as your fig and oil ritual. This is why I highlighted that section in red - blood red. There are many rituals from the Star-Fire Ceremony (see my article on the Dragon Court) to the cannibalism of the Eucharist and vampirism of transfiguration and the Last Supper. Even the Lord's Prayer properly practiced is a decree - which is far more than a prayer. You can see the result in the Movie David and Bathsheba, Close attention to the family of Bathsheba and her hubby Uriah gives insight to the elite families who intermarry and maintain San Graal (The Royal Blood). The Dragon Court today is headed by HRH Nicholas de Vere who in his book written before he did the foreword for Genesis of the Grail Kings by Sir Laurence Gardner who I quote in my article mentioned above - and who changed his acceptance of the alien theory of the Dragon Court - says Count Vlad was one of their proud heritage inside the Sarkeny Rend Rosicrucians. Despite buying the history of archaeologically provable things which I have done Gardner's work in that book is a mine of great insight in biblical scholarship and from whence the Gnostics come or the later neo-Gnostic retinue of Empire cretin sycophants, called Mandaean or Gnostika. De Vere's book also says we "are food for their table". An earlier De Vere (one of the 13 families) claimed or had others make his claim to the work of Shak-hes-spear. That is one reason I do not like the neo-Druidic Organization of Bairds, Ovates and Druids or OBOD. Their leader a decade ago was a major proponent of that weak theory.

This little adventure starts with Wikipedia quoting Homer and a quote which is full of code. Homer, Hesiod and Orpheus are descended from Kapnobatai bards with Orpheus being most bardic of them. Hesiod is said to be bardic but I am not sure.

There was a Harvard professor who went to Yugoslavia and northern Macedonia about 1920 who wrote a book I quote in my books. Unfortunately I do not have his name in my not-so-steel trap mind. He documented how accurate the stories are (were) compared to other history and propaganda.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogygia#...ount_by_Strabo

"The Odyssey describes Ogygia as follows:


...and he (Hermes) {Hermetics and alchemy} found her within {The soul or feminine intuition}. A great fire {The alchemical agent - see Bronowski chatting with Aldous Huxley} was burning in the hearth, and from afar over the isle there was a fragrance of cleft cedar and juniper {Here starts tree Ogham and a possible medicinal tincture recipe}as they burned. But she within was singing with a sweet voice {Mantra and harmonics} as she went to and fro before the loom, weaving with a golden shuttle. Round about the cave {The meanings are many and part of why idiots say alchemists hung out in caves} grew a luxuriant wood, alder and poplar and sweet-smelling cypress {Is this available in Ireland or Iceland where Plutarch places Ogygia?}, wherein birds {BRDs - language} long of wing {Could also be long winded} were wont to nest, owls and falcons and sea-crows with chattering tongues {Confirmation of many alphabets drawn from the Langue D'Oc or Alchemy}, who ply their business on the sea. {A clear reference in almost no code whatsoever to the Phoenician Sea Peoples} And right there about the hollow cave ran trailing a garden vine, in pride of its prime, richly laden with clusters. {Each colony with a different alphabet and source of wealth or wisdom} And fountains four in a row {The four primary forces in all disciplines including lattices studied on Malta and plaids Elizabeth Wayland-Barber studied before going to Urumchi to continue connecting similar dots} were flowing with bright water hard by one another, turned one this way, one that. {Many possible sources of wisdom as seen in Jesus drinking and sharing in The Gospel of Thomas I quoted elsewhere for a Mandaean who called it New Age nonsense.} And round about soft meadows of violets {Key scent in astral travels and Isis meditations} and parsley were blooming {A conclusion}... [2]"
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