Part (1.F). The Setian-Minoan Sea Empire of Atlantis.
The Setian-Minoan Empire in the Middle Earth Sea was the Atlantis of later Egyptian and Greek legends. The main source for the legend of Atlantis is the dialogue of Critias written by Plato in the 4th century B.C.E. This text of Plato’s is the origin of all later speculation about this fabulous lost empire of the sea, which as Plato relates, was supposed to have been destroyed in a war between Athens and Atlantis when earthquakes sank this mythical realm after its defeat by the Athenians.
In the Critias, Plato relates the known mythic details about Atlantis by using the character of Critias, who supposedly has been fascinated by the mythic legend ever since reading a family heirloom scroll written by his grandfather Solon. Solon learned the mythic legends remembered by the solar priests while he was traveling in mainland Egypt. They told of a mighty sea empire that existed beyond the Pillars of Hercules, an extremely wealthy and powerful empire that had perished and disappeared beneath the the waves. This empire had once flourished and ruled the Middle Sea from Spain to the Tyrrhenian Sea (west of Italy) to the coasts even of Egypt itself. The Atlanteans, says Critias recalling the myth, had once been very prosperous and powerful with an enormous thalassic kingdom preserved by the Gods. Their prosperity, however, had all ended with war, earthquakes, and deluge in the dim past some 9,000 years ago, when, Zeus became angered at their corruption and pride of power, in effect, allowing the Athenians to defeat them, and causing the seas to submerge their island home.
The myth of Atlantis relates the history of the Setian-Minoan Empire of the Sea with much distortion of the real details that is likely caused by Solon himself, his source for the myth, and the antiquity of the history within it. The Egyptian priests of Solon’s era still had a historical recollection of the island empire’s existence on Crete, and they knew of its destruction in a great war that involved the Athenians, though they had forgotten, or simply lied, about which side in the war the Athenians were on. And, then perhaps, it may have been Solon himself who made the Athenians the antagonists of the Setian-Minoans. The real history, of course, is that the Athenians and most other Greek cities (excepting a few traitorous ones such as Thebes and Troy) were either allies or colonies of the Setian-Minoans, such as the former Knossian colonies of the Achaean cities in the Argolid. The enemy of Knossos in the 4th great war between the Moon and the Sun had been the mainland Egyptians from the southern deserts near Luxor and Edfu. The allies of the southern Egyptians from the mainland had been the new friends of Rameses the Great, the Hittites with their Kingdom in Anatolia.
The real war that had caused the destruction of the Setian-Minoan Sea Empire had been the 4th and final war between the Kingdoms of the Moon and the Sun. The earthquakes and deluge the Egyptians told Solon about had happened at 1650 B.C.E., a few hundred years before the final Armageddon of the war’s last campaigns (not after the war and 9,000 years ago as the Egyptian solar priests claimed). There was a great natural catastrophe that caused much widespread destruction to the Sea Empire of Atlantean Knossos, and this had been the volcanic eruption at Thera that had entirely destroyed that island of Setian-Minoans. The eruption of the Theran volcano on the present-day island of Santorini (Thera was later renamed Santorini), caused tremendous damage in the entire Eastern Mediterranean, and especially on Crete and the other colonial islands of Knossos in the Aegean Sea. Enormous tsunami waves and thick layers of volcanic ash must have caused a huge amount of devastation to the island empire, since its principal member cities were in this area, either in the islands or along the coasts. The effects of the volcano eruption, with its destruction of an entire island and submergence of a large part of it, must have caused a substantial decline in the Minoan Sea Empire’s economic and military strength, not to mention much loss of life. It may be that the catastrophic eruption started a period of decline that eventually had the result of the Setian-Minoans losing control over Lower Egypt once again, since the Cretan 15th Dynasty of the Hyksos could only remain in power there for some few generations after the disaster.
And, the decline of Knossian power did not seem to end after the disaster of Thera and the loss of Lower Egypt, as the once mighty imperial capital of Knossos itself fell to invaders from Egypt in the next century, at approximately 1400 B.C.E. The Egyptian invaders did not stay however, and the Setians of Knossos once more resumed their traditional leadership position in league with their former Mycenaean colonies in Hellas, which, eventually prepared the volatile situation that had its culmination in the 4th and last great war between the Moon and the Sun.
The mythic history of Atlantis as given by Critias in Plato’s dialogue is a version of the Atlantean myth known to Solon, and translated by Solon into the language of the Athenians. Critias claims that this was done so that Greeks might be able to understand the foreign names and terminology within the myth. Plato is then making a new Greek myth based upon Solon’s recollections of an Egyptian legend given him by the Priests of the Sun. Critias is relating the tale written down by Solon and translated by him into Greek language and myth. The myth then as given by Plato in the Critias has been most likely garbled-up some by Plato, Solon, and the Egyptian priests. Embellishment and exaggeration of some of the details should also be an expectation.
With these factors in mind--the translating, the garbling, and the exaggeration--as well as the acknowledgement that some details may have been intentionally changed for nationalistic or religious reasons, it still is possible, even at this great distance in history to garner some important facts about a real Atlantis as it existed on the Setian-Minoan island of Crete.
An important first detail is given by Critias at the start of his mythic tale. Critias says that this Atlantis was from beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and was at war with Athens and those other nations within the Pillars. Most everyone, including the Athenians, have assumed this to designate that Atlantis was located somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean past the straits of Gibraltar. This was not the original idea as told to Solon though. The Egyptian priests were not speaking of the Pillars of Heracles at Gibraltar at all; instead, the Egyptian Priests of the Sun were probably referring to the pylons of the Sun God Horus. Mainland Egypt was, for these priests, entirely within the Pylons of the Sun, the Pylons of Dawn and Sunset. Solon either misunderstood the Egyptian priests, or, he may have intentionally changed the myth a bit when translating it into Greek terminology.
What the Egyptians were figuratively saying in religious terms was that Atlantis was positioned in the sea beyond the coasts of mainland Egypt. Atlantis was outside of mainland Egypt somewhere in the Middle Sea. Atlantis was the Lower Egyptian exiled Setian Dynasty of the Keftiu, with its capital at Knossos on Crete.
Even the Greeks of Solon and Plato’s day didn’t remember their complete history, either the historical background of colonial Mycenae, or that of Setian-Minoan Crete itself. There were legends and bardic poems of the Achaeans and the Cretans and their exploits during the Age of Bronze before the destructions and the fall of civilization into obscure barbarism, but these historical tales were centuries old and preserved by poetic verbal memorization. Turns out that much had been entirely forgotten due to the drastic reduction of population, the lack of writing after the war, and the lapse of centuries. The Setian religion of the Night Goddess of Earth had survived these long centuries of deprivation and illiteracy and rebuilding. The history of whence they came or how it was that they got there had been forgotten. The myths and tales told by the Dramatists and the poets were like a dreamy memory almost remembered but unclear in their details and substantial links. The sense of them combined, though never quite enough to bring back a full recollection. That is until something was jolting enough to stir the deep collective unconscious--a recovery of the essential dissimilarity existing between Night and Day, and the Gods of the Moon and Sun--between Lord Dionysos and Apollo.
The remainder moves back into its place. The many centuries of bright scorching daylight are relieved once more by the memory of an Empire of Night, exuding a fresh and foggy drift of air from the cave-damp depths of pre-historical Natura. No wonder Endymion slept languorously in dream on the verge of its mossy crevice. The labyrinthine passage leads into the Goddess-womb of rebirth following the tomb-still silence of slumbering aeons. Many rocky corridors and chambers follow upon another into the dark black other of nothing outside the world. There is an essence of existing somewhere, but not knowing whither. All the while there is a knowing of something near, and only beyond the perceived by a breath of air off the cool rocky grotto surface of earth.
The left path through the garden leads back to its beginning at the start of human existence. There is a great roar of subterran waters over a cliff into a gulf abyss of nothing below. Night is infinite. One still can’t see the bottom or the other side (without the magics of ancient guidance) though, there is a sense that something else is.
Maybe this is why the portal doorways to the Beyond were placed behind the altars of the Maltese temples. Was it a religion of the very mystery of death? The thought always recurs that any knowledge more than this is forbidden to us. The portals or pylons of the Maltese temples show that the builders of these megalith ossuary circles were of Egyptian descent, and, were somehow of a party with the northern nocturnal dynasty.
So, when the Egyptian priests of Heliopolis told Solon that Atlantis was beyond the Pillars of Heracles, they were referring to their own Pylons of the Sun upon the borders of the Egyptian Day. They also told him that Atlantis took its name from the royal house of its rulers, the Nocturnal Dynasty which ruled it.
Solon translated this name by using the Greek myth of Atlas, who was a God who held the Earth’s sphere upon his shoulders, and did so through all eternity due to a trick played upon him by Heracles. If Heracles was in fact the (par excellence) Horned Hunter of the Sun--a Horus--who might Atlas have been in Egyptian religion? Most likely, he was Shu, the Egyptian God of the Air, who separated Nu (Night) from Seb, the earth God, during the daylight hours, by holding the Night Sky aloft. During the evening he relaxed his up-raising hold upon Nu allowing the Night Sky and Earth to unite in a love embrace. Shu was then the primordial Egyptian God of the Air and Fire and creative Love energy, the Eros of Greek myth. Compare the Greek word for the air, aer, with the Greek word for love, eros. The Greek God Eros was worshipped in totem form as either the fire or the phallic kromlech. The Atlantis of Greek myth was the Sea Kingdom of Shu (or Eros) in Egyptian mythic legend; that is, before, it was transformed into the similar Greek myth of Atlas by Solon’s translation. Shu was the atmosphere of air between Nu and Seb, or the Night and Earth. Shu, or Eros, was the cavern entrance hearth or fire.
There were many outstanding features of Atlantean architecture, though one of the most indicative was the Atlantean taste for using red ochre to paint temple walls and columns. The Greek words for ochre were okhros and oreikalko, both words referring to an iron oxide clay used since the start of human history for producing red pigment. The earliest use of red ochre in Europe was made by Cro-Magnon humans to paint cave walls during the Paleolithic, some paintings of which date back to 30,000 BAS. The word okhros is the Greek word for ochre, and the Setian-Minoans always painted their columns red with red ochre. So, the column of Shu (which could be thought of as the red column of Seb or Set) came to be called the okhros column (from its red-ochre color) and, eventually, this distinctive red column of the Cretans came to be known as the Kronos column of Eros (Shu) because of the okhros-red paint used upon it.
Kronos, Eros-Shu, gave his name to the capital of the Setian-Minoans, and the Sea Empire of Night was known thereafter as the Knossian Empire. Atlantis, the Sea Empire of the House of Atlas, was in Egyptian terminology, the House of Shu, or the House of Nu, and in Cretan later-speak was called the House of Kronos, or the House of Eros. Later, this was changed through usage to simply be Knossos.
Plato mentions the Atlantean, or Knossian, use of orichalc at several places in the Critias. First, he says that oreikhalkon or okhros (ochre) was mined at many locations on the island. After describing the geography of the island and the situation of Knossos in a large plain below encircling mountains all around, as well as the structure of its harbor facilities within a series of man-made circles, Critias begins the summary of his Atlantean description with a picture of the capital city’s Temple of Poseidon. The temple is made of gold and silver and ivory, with its outside adorned entirely in silver. Besides the fact that silver is the metal most closely associated with the Moon, and ivory was attainable only by way of trade with Egypt, there is another most important material in its decoration. Inside the temple of the Sea God is an enormous statue of the God of the Deep aboard his chariot pulled by six winged-horses. The statue is of great height reaching the roof, and surrounding the God as further adornment are the 100 Nereid mermaids of his water realm, each riding a dolphin. Although, the Atlantean worship of Poseidon is a vital characteristic of the mythic sea empire that agrees perfectly with archaeological artifacts of both Crete and Thera, there are other equally persuasive details of the legend given by Critias that make Setian-Minoan Knossos an almost exact correlation for the Atlantis of Solon and the Egyptians.
Before that, though, there is the worship of Poseidon at Knossos, which can be shown by artifacts such as the pillar columns of the sacrifice chamber within the Knossian palace which were inscribed with both the labrys of the terran Horned God, and the trident of the nautical Horned Hunter of the sea. This when combined with the Cretan artistic love of undersea frescoes, such as the dolphin fresco at Knossos, and, the Theran serpentine Octopus fresco, displays a definite worship of the Sea God, which is without doubt when the additional mention of Poseidon in the Linear B archives is also considered.
The Setian-Minoans then worshipped the Horned God of the Sea as a variation of the Horned God of the Moon and the Hunt, Zagreus having another form that was the Lord of the Sea, in his role as the Bull of the sacred hunt. This is where comes the myths such as Europa’s elopement with Zeus in the form of a sea-swimming Bull, and the myth of Pasiphae who did mate with a bull by the sea-side on Crete and gave birth to the Minotaur. And, Pasiphae was Queen at Knossos, later becoming a Sea Goddess as well.
Critias says that oreikhalkon (orichalc) was a decorative material used in the adornment of Poseidon’s temple. Orichalc was a type of fabled mineral supposedly used by the ancients to provide a golden color for painting. Oreikhalkon, though, was also a figurative term for the more familiar okhros of the Greeks, what today is called red ochre, a red pigment used widely and popularly even by modern painters to produce a red rust-like shade. Red ochre is the exact shade of red used by the Setian-Minoans to paint their distinctive style of columns. Oreikhalkon and okhros are this same mineral, an iron-oxide mineral pigment found in clay soils. The Atlanteans then used this red ochre to paint the inside of their temple to Poseidon. The walls of the temple were a dark shade of red exactly like the Setian-Minoan columns used so much in the building of Knossos.
The Critias is an incomplete dialogue, and Plato’s description of Knossos and its sea empire ends rather abruptly in mid-thought with Zeus pondering the wicked coveting caused by the island’s debased degeneracy from the very heights of its once divine wisdom. The Critias ends at this point, but in the preceding sections to this one, Plato has his character supply the reader with a sketch of the Knossian Nomarchs and their wise rule of the empire’s ten regions, a wisdom brought about by a reverent worship of their Gods Poseidon and Night.
The Knossians are ruled by ten Nomarchs who govern their districts and regions as subordinates to the Pharaoh of Night. They meet together every four or five years to discuss affairs of empire, and during these meetings they have certain celebrations and religious observances. The meetings of these rulers start with religious rites of bull sacrifice made individually by each of the Nomarchs for Lord Poseidon, the Horned Hunter God who rules the sea with his trident spear. The meetings are held in the Temple of Poseidon with its enormous statue of the Sea God. The walls of the temple are painted a deep rust shade of red, the color of dry blood and becoming creation. Most of the temple’s gilded adornment and decorative trim is done in silver, the precious metal of the Moon. Sacred bulls of the deep wander freely through the silvered halls and reddened corridors of the sea grotto sanctuary. A hundred Nereid mermaids surf over the waves around the Titanic God, riding their dolphin horses of the sea. Poseidon is master of the aquamarine and every living creature which swims or scampers in its cyan depths of liquid first generation.
At the center of the long, columned temple was an altar and hearth before the God where the Nomarchs made sacrifice of the aquatic bulls and freshened the okhros column of Kronos with their blood. The rounded offering pit of fire lay between the horned altar and the okhros column of darkened blood-soak red rising upwards near the God. Each of the Nomarchs chose his sea bull from those wandering the labyrinth of the great halls, and, after hunting the creature with his trident spear of silver, the expiring beast was brought to the Altar of Horn. Here upon the rough stone of earth, the princes made their own rite of sacrifice and offered the meat to the fire of Kronos. Each of them while doing so with their rites made sure to save a large draught of the blood for the kykeon’s mingling mixture in a large-brimming vase that was filled with wine and inscribed with the spiral coils of the Serpents. This potion of wine and blood with the flower of corn was to be drank during the later ceremonies at the black hour of Darkness. The remaining blood from the horned beast was cast into the fire to quench the thirst of Kronos before the long evening of erotic becoming had its start. The Nomarchs, after they let their blood libation, made sure to freshen the sacred column of Kronos from their silvered vases of living water, and especially whereupon the okhros pillar the ancient founding oracles were written in the glyphs of the Goddess Nu.
Following upon the rites in the Temple of Poseidon made by the ten princes of the Empire’s many several regions, they did depart to the banquet halls and celebrations where the noble comrade citizens of the Middle Sea did await them before the Mysteries had their start. These culminating rituals of the Goddess Nu and her Serpent daughter of the Corn were held after dark when the embers from the sacrificial fire of Kronos had dimmed to fiery ashes. After the banquets were held and those gathered had severally come together into the great pillared theatre they were shown several mythic skenes and choral dances by masked devotees of the Serpent God of Wine. The Dramas of Natura having been shown as a cultic revelation for the noble attendees, who had already partook of the psychedelic Saturnine potion of the flower and pomegranate, the black and cyan, robed and masked audience betook themselves to know the Greater Mysterious in the subterran rock circles of cavern tombs at the raven hour of Darkness by Night.
The myth of Athena and Aglauros is supposed to be about the establishment of Athena’s worship as a state religion of Athens. While the myth does relate the history of this event, it is also very much concerned with telling the hearer some information regarding the origins of this worship.
The myth starts with Neptune telling a fib to Hephaestus, the God of Smiths. Neptune whispers to him, “Hey Sore-Leg, I overheard that Athena has the secret hots for you.” Hephaestus believes Neptune and then makes Athena, the Goddess of Battle, a new shield as a means of luring her to his blacksmith shop for a liaison. Athena unsuspecting any ulterior motive on the lame God’s part, stops by to see Hephaestus and accept her new battle shield from him. She is much surprised when Hephaestus then puts the moves on her, and she pulls from his amorous embrace only to find that he has, somewhat soon, ejaculated upon her thigh. Athena, then in disgust, at the undesired love-making of Hephaestus, wipes the semen from her and throws it upon the ground.
This might have been the end of it, except that the discarded semen had the unforeseen result of impregnating Mother Earth, upon which it was thrown. The Earth Goddess eventually has the issue, the future King of Athens, who is named Erichthonius, or “From the Earth,” because of his dubious generation.
Erichthonius was Serpentine. Legend has it, in the exaggerated manner that myth-spinners enjoy, that this future King was half-snake and half-human, being Serpent below the waist. No doubt this was because he was the offspring of the Night Earth Goddess, and even during this mythical era the Greeks were already forgetting the real character of their titular maiden Goddess of battle and wisdom. These legendary Greeks of Athens perhaps only dimly remembered that Athena was once the Earth Mother Goddess of Night. Erichthonius was the son of Athena-Nyx, and she was the same Earth Mother Goddess from which he had been given birth.
Aglauros was the daughter of King Cecrops, the first King of Athens in legendary myth. The three daughters of Cecrops were most likely priestesses of the Night Goddess, and Aglauros was chosen to be the nurse of Athena’s new son. When Aglauros was given the basket that held Erichthonius, Athena told her never to look inside of it.
Somewhat later the God Hermes approached this same Aglauros to seek her help in gaining the attentions of Herse, her sister. Hermes had fallen in love with Herse, and he bribed Aglauros with gold to allow him access to Herse so as to satisfy his desire. Aglauros agreed, but made no plans to help Hermes. The God then became angered with her inattention and deception, whereupon he turned Aglauros into stone. Hermes then did satisfy his desire with Herse, and she was later delivered of Cephalus and Ceryx. Cephalus later became famous for being the beloved of Eos, the Goddess of Dawn, and Ceryx eventually became the first herald of the Eleusinian Mysteries. This is the myth as reviewed by Robert Graves, and the version of the legend he summarizes ends tragically.
After all this, Herse and Pandrosos and their mother Agraulos can’t resist looking in the basket given to Aglauros by Athena. So they defy the warning of the Night Goddess and look beneath the lid anyway. They are then horrified to find that Erichthonius is inside of it, and the lower half of him ends with a Serpent’s tail. The myth then resolves when the three curious royal Priestesses jump from the heights of the Acropolis to their deaths, presumably because of their horror and fright as such an unholy sight.
This myth in its present form doesn’t appear to be very likely. A Serpent Priestess who is herself the daughter of King Cecrops should not have become that frightened at seeing Erichthonius in his basket. This is especially so since Cecrops was supposed to have been half Serpent himself. Neither is the part about Aglauros very probable either. A Serpent Priestess most likely would not have reacted to the God of Love in such a manner, and Hermes was the God Eros in a later evolved form. At least the myth still retains the fact that Herse gave birth to Cephalus, the beloved of Eos, as a result of her liaison with the God.
The reason that the women jump from the heights of the Acropolis is because the ancient shrines and unholy gardens of Eros and Eos were nearby and directly below the sheer sides of the rocky summit. The shrine of Eros was on the north wall of the Acropolis, and the sacred dark pool of his sister was not far away from there. Other myths of the Night Goddess Athene have her priestesses carry these same baskets up and down these heights by secret passages to chasms down below. The mysterious rites of the Thesmophoria festival involved the same practices, and the name of the festival makes it clear that what they were carrying was to be taken out of these baskets and left in a chasm as an offering. After which, then something, presumably a sacred Serpent, was to be brought up in the basket in the same fashion.
The Serpent Priestesses of Athene were then doing what they had always done since the days of Stone Age Egypt; they were carrying the remains of swine sacrifices down from the temple heights to the chasms in the valley below and leaving these remains for the sacred Serpents of the Goddess. On the return trip up the Acropolis they were bringing Serpents back to their home in the Serpentarium on the summit.
The myth of Aglauros in its present version is a much altered tale from what it must have been originally. The fact that it makes a Serpent Priestess become turned to stone by the amorous adventures of the God of Love shows the solar pollution of the myth in the same way as do the myths of Medusa show pollution by the Solarists of Apollo. The Erotic ceremonies of the Setian Serpent worshippers was thought to be reptilian by the Solarists, and this is why legend has it that participants were emotionally turned to stone within their monolithic kromlech temples.
Theseus and the Minotaur.
The myth of Theseus and the Minotaur is perhaps the most well-known and popular legend of Minoan and Mycenaean relations from the epoch before the Trojan War. During the many centuries that elapsed between the greatest Armageddon of the ancient world and the subsequent revival of human civilization some 500 years later, this mythic legend of the pre-war nights survived, though it became garbled somewhat over the many years in-between.
The myth purports to be about the enforced tribute Athens was required to make so as to appease the monstrous Minotaur, the son of Minos. Legend says that the Athenians were required to choose seven virgins and seven noble youths to be given over to be devoured by the Minotaur in his underground lair at Knossos, a cavernous lair that went by the name of Labyrinthos. The legend makes these chosen few into human sacrifices for the half-human and half-bull Minotaur. In order to stop the slaughter, Theseus, the son of the Athenian King, nobly volunteers for being a member of the sacrificial tribute so as to somehow kill the demi-god in his nightmarish home. After journeying to Crete aboard a Minoan tribute vessel, he then does indeed succeed in killing the beast with the help of its sister, the Princess of Knossos, Ariadne. He then escapes from the Labyrinth maze lair by using a woven thread given him by this same princess. They then depart from Knossos, and in a rotten solar fashion he dumps the Princess Ariadne on the island of Naxos because of his love for Aegle before proceeding on to Athens.
As with the myth of Aglauros, much of this myth is based upon historical fact, though much has also been altered by solar pollution and exaggeration. The characters may have been real personages of the Minoan-Mycenaean epoch, and the Labyrinthos was a real underground Temple of Dionysian Set at Knossos. The horrific and nightmarish aspects of the myth though are almost certainly false imaginings of later solar yarn -spinners. The horrific gothic interpretation of the Minotaur and the Labyrinthos makes for a very good and exciting tale of religious practices at Setian Knossos, but the Minoans were a sensitive and nature-loving people who would have abhorred the idea of human sacrifice and cannibalism. This side of the Minoan character can most plainly be seen in their highly advanced works of art and painting done in a most naturalistic fashion using methods of realism and a primitive sort of impressionist abstraction. It is almost impossible to believe that such an art-loving society with so advanced a spirituality was still practicing human sacrifice. Many civilizations make this abhorrent practice part of their religion early in their history, but fewer advanced societies do so.
What seems to have been the original version of the myth was a tale of Minoan colonial expansion having to do with the religious and social education of the Athenian nobility. Some few youth of the ruling aristocracy at Athens may have been required by the Minoans to become indoctrinated in Setian-Minoan ways of administering the sea empire of Minos. This is why some may have been selected to make the brief voyage to Knossos ever so often. Once there, they would have received religious and civil instruction on how to rule Athens in a better and more satisfying way approved of by Knossos. Theseus was naturally one of those chosen to make the voyage since his father was the King of Athens. On his return, Theseus brought with him a Setian Princess to seal the alliance between Knossos and Athens. The myth then makes perfect sense, and it is highly doubtful that Theseus left Ariadne behind for Aegle. This was probably another solar addition. Theseus and Ariadne then eventually became the rulers of Athens, and another myth of the descent of Theseus to the Underworld is likely to be a tale of his initiation into the religion of the Three Goddesses. The new Queen Ariadne then most likely became the High Priestess of Athene, the Setian Goddess of Night.
Demeter and Demophoon.
This myth is part of the tale of Demeter’s search for her daughter Persephone, who elopes with Dis the God of the Netherworld. Persephone descends to Hell while she and the other society girls are out in the meadow picking poppy flowers for their narcotic effects. A chasm in the earth opens and Dis and Persephone ride down through this subterranean opening in a magical chariot teemed by four black steeds.
Demeter finds out about Persephone’s elopement with the Lord of Hell by way of a swineherd who happened to be nearby when the chasm opened in the ground. Demeter then searches for her lost Persephone over the surface of the Earth until she finally arrives at Eleusis, a place known for her later advent. Here, Demeter rests by sitting at a waterless well known for its beautiful dances, the well of Kalichoros. While resting she is met by the daughters of the future Eleusinian King who invite her to their home.
Somewhat later, while staying as their guest, Demeter becomes the nurse maid to Demophoon the infant son of the King to be. One night while everyone is asleep, Demeter is tending to Demophoon. The house being quiet and still, she decides to give the son of the future King a blessing of immortality in the Fire of Eros. As Demeter is holding Demophoon over the hearth fire giving him the Baptism of Night, she is surprised by one of the awakened daughters who becomes alarmed by her actions. This daughter then snatches Demophoon away from her. Demeter is much angered since she is kept from bestowing the blessing of immortal life upon Demophoon, and she reveals then her real Being.
The point of this myth is that no harm was to come to Demophoon. The Goddess was merely holding him above the hearth fire to bestow a divine gift upon him. Even in the days of later Classical Athens, it sounds as if many of the people had probably no thought of a blessing arising from Demeter’s actions without a myth to explain it for them. By this stage of Greek civilization, the sacred hearth fire of the Mycenaean-Minoan household was no longer remembered as being of the element of Eros. The hearth fire was remembered as being a gift to humankind of the Titan God Prometheus, but its original quality of being the abode of Eros had mostly been forgotten. This is the importance of this strange-seeming mythic interlude in the Demetrian mythos.
The Goddess Demeter was likely performing a form of ancient baptism upon the young Demophoon, same as had always been done since days immemorial, when the tribal hearth fire was used to welcome new arrivals into the society of the cavern. Immortality was then a natural result of belonging to the tribe, with its theology of the Night Earth Mother and her son Eros the Fire. The new arrival was then to be a chthonic son of the Night Goddess, and a brief warming by Eros, the God son of Demeter, was then to make the newtribal member immortal, as was her own son the Fire itself. The myth then relates a traditional tribal blessing bestowed upon everyone at birth by a hearth-fire baptism using the simplest of sympathetic magic.
Hercules at Thespia.
The mythos of Hercules brings together several very antique ideas of the ancient Setian worship, and this is especially visible in the tale of his assistance given to the King of Thespia. The hero himself is the most important ancient form left over from olden days. The myths of Hercules had most likely their origin in Mycenaean-Minoan stories of a great Horned Hunter of Night, a localized Mycenaean version of a Minotaur or Zagreus-type God or demi-god. The twelve labors of Hercules were probably originally thirteen in number and represented the year round protection and support given the tribe by its leader of the sacred hunt.
That Hercules was once a version of the Night Hunter consort of the Night Goddess can be seen from his name. Hera-cles was once a Minotaur-type son or Zagreus-like mate of Demeter; She who was also called by the name of Hera. The name Hera was perhaps sometimes used for the Night Earth Goddess when she was compared with Hathor. The initiation myths of Heracles and Theseus into the Eleusinian Mysteries are another legendary left-over of these heroes’ role as sacred Kings of the Setian religion of Night.
Heracles was at Thespia, the original mythic home of Drama, because of a local lion plaguing the herds of the Thespians. Heracles was recruited by the Thespian ruler with the tempting offer of several nights spent alone with his daughters. This was most probably an exceptionally enticing offer for Heracles, and the lion must have been a most dangerous beast, since the Thespian King had fifty daughters that were included as the prizes for successfully ridding the area of the feline menace. Of course Heracles was successful in his great hunt of the beast and ever after he wore the pelt of the creature as a lion-skin sweater tied about his shoulders. Then he got his prize and slept with all the many daughters of the King, singly, one each night successively. And, thinking of it, which was the greater escapade, the lion or the girls?
Heracles is the type extraordinaire of the Great Horned Hunter of Night. There is most likely significance to the tale in the fact that there were fifty daughters of the King, and, the Thespians were known to be great worshippers of the archaic Love God, Eros. At Thespia, Eros was worshipped as a great monolith stone phallic pillar kromlech. The fifty daughters were Priestesses of the Moon Goddess that may have been mythic representations of months, fifty Moons being equal to a four-year plan of some sort.
This myth then has many formations of the Setian worship contained within it. There is the phallic stone of Eros intimately connected with a Setian hero-hunter and the many priestesses of the Night Goddess. Other subsidiary forms are the lion itself, nature’s greatest animal predator, and Thespia’s traditional importance as the mythic home of Dionysian Drama. And, then finally you have the mythic denouement of a celebratory Lunar ceremony culminating with mystic rites and a rather large orgy involving the Setian hunters and Priestesses. (Since, most likely, Heracles didn’t do his hunting completely alone.)
Oedipus at Colonus.
This myth has been much misunderstood by many before now, with the possible exceptions of Jim Morrison and Friedrich Nietzsche. The myth has to do with the many generations of conflict between the worshippers of the Sun and the worshippers of the Moon upon the unholy ground of Hellas. The myths of Thebes, like many within the Greek mythos, are from the height of the Setian Minoan-Mycenaean Empire. Another thing that becomes clear from myth is the fact that a few of the Greek city states were traitorous to the Empire of Night. The main Greek cities that did not recognize the sovereignty of Knossos were Thebes and Troy. The fact that Troy was allied with the Hittite enemy is probably not that surprising due to the geographical location of the city. That Thebes was also an ally of the Hittites and the mainland Egyptians can be deduced from mythic stories originating in the Minoan-Mycenaean period.
The first myth that makes the politico-religious allegiance of Thebes clear is the myth of its founding by Cadmus. Cadmus and his colonists from Phoenicia are obviously Solarists in their religious practice and beliefs. The main part of this myth has to do with the slaying of the Setian Dragon, an ignominy that was achieved by Cadmus soon after his colonial expedition arrived in Hellas. The Dragon slain by Cadmus is our own Dionysian Lord Set who was worshipped in the area long before the arrival of the Solarists. The principal religious center in the area was at Delphi on nearby Mount Parnassus, and this unholy site was a seat of Setian worship way before Apollo and his minions arrived with Cadmus and the Phoenicians. The fact that Delphi was Setian long before Apollo arrived can be seen from the title of the Delphian High Priestess, the Pythoness--or more simply, the Serpent Priestess. The Delphian High Priestess kept this title at Delphi even after the arrival of the Thebans and their usurpation of this unholy site sacred to Lord Set, the Demetrian son of Night. Later myths of legendary Thebes give the subsequent history of conflict in the area between the new-arriving Apollonian Solarists and the native Dionysian Setians.
A famous friend of Cadmus is the Theban seer Teiresias. The main adventure of Cadmus and Teiresias together in the literature is their later attempt at advising Pentheus, the grandson of Cadmus. This occurs in the Bacchae of Euripides when Cadmus and the famous seer have grown old and Pentheus rules in Thebes. King Pentheus, of course, is a Solarist Apollonian like his grandfather Cadmus, and the play of Euripides is about the inevitable conflict that results when Setian Dionysos and his followers the Bacchae return to Thebes after journeys in the East. The play starts with the God Dionysos entering the skene in front of the city where his mother Semele’s tomb is yet smoking from where she was burned alive. The play is about how the God Dionysos exacts his revenge upon the sacrilegious murdering bastard who killed Semele, and his grandson King Pentheus, who is the same as the old Cadmus was.
Teiresias is an interesting figure for a seer. Teiresias gains his powers of psychic sight by having the unusually bad luck of frequently encountering snakes while they are screwing. The first instance when this occurs causes Teiresias to have an ancient sex change, and he then becomes a woman with big dugs straitaway. The next, and presumably only other instance, is when Teiresias encounters snakes screwing once more, and he is then struck blind and changed back into a male. This is how the unfortunate Solarist seer stays throughout most of his well-known adventures in myth. What exactly it is about amorous Serpents that makes them so dangerous we are never told in the mythos, though it seems sorta weird that something so natural in its occurrence could be so. Perhaps it wasn’t real snakes that Teiresias kept stumbling upon, but it was instead the Priestesses and Priests of the Serpent God Set with their Erotic nocturnal ceremonies that so intrigued the solar mage. And, may it not have been his own thoughts of sacrilege that caused him the misfortunes? After much misinterpretation and a garbling-up caused by many retellings made by later Solarist storytellers the mythic mentions of the famous seer might appear as they do now.
The next episode from Thebes involves a Sphinx. The Sphinx is a monster with the body of a lion and the head of a woman. The Sphinx has wings also, presumably not the wings of a crow, an owl, or a dove, but the wings of a large bird of prey, or a scavenger like the vulture. The Sphinx poses riddles to passersby, and kills those who give the wrong answer. The Sphinx is expecting the correct answer to be “a man.” The Sphinx is also the cause of a plague in the countryside around the city of Thebes. These are all characteristics of a solar animal, creature, or beast. Apollo, the Solarist God of the Sun, is a prime cause of plagues, and his totem creatures are the hawk and vulture. Apollo is a bit of a paternal woman-hater, and he and his sister are prudes. Other than that, they aren’t such bad sorts.
Oedipus was the unknown son of the King of Thebes by his wife the Queen. Oedipus is brought up in Corinth because of an oracle told to his father the King. He never knows his real parents until later in the mythic legend. On his way back to Thebes from Corinth he encounters the Sphinx on the road; he answers the riddle correctly, and this causes the death of the monstrous riddling creature with its solar plagues. Unfortunately for Oedipus though, his life seems to be cursed, because he next meets his father on the same road in his chariot. He then kills his father and the charioteer because of their insults and attack when they force him to make way for them. He doesn’t know it is his father, or that his father was King of Thebes. Upon reaching the city, the people learn he has killed the hated Sphinx and thereby released them from its plague; he is made King when his father doesn’t return. Then he marries the widowed Queen. For some reason, another plague then descends upon Thebes. Teiresias the old seer, who is still living generations later, says it is because of royal sacrilege. The Queen discovers that Oedipus is her son and kills herself. Oedipus learns the Queen is his mother and finds her dead, then blinds himself. The royal house of Thebes is cursed; the curse is older than the misfortunes of Oedipus. What is the main cause?
Apollo, the Solarist God of Thebes is against Nature, Natura, sacred Neter, sacred Night herself. This is the main reason that the royal house of Thebes is cursed. Apollo and his sister Artemis are the offspring of Zeus. Zeus is the powerful King of the Gods. Zeus was originally the Greek version of the mainland- Egyptian God Ra, or Re. Zeus is Egyptian Re. Apollo is the Greek version of Horus. Artemis is the Greek version of the Egyptian Nephthys, the Vulture Goddess of the necropolis and mortuary Death. Horus and Apollo Phaethon are the sons of the Sun God, the sons of Re. One thing that is important to remember about this curse upon the Sun Gods of the Solarists is that the curse has nothing to do with the actual physical Sun of the natural universe: the curse is caused by the Solarist ideas having to do with their Gods of the Sun.
The main point of the Oedipus myth is that what the royal house of Thebes believes is against Nature herself. The religious beliefs of the Thebans are unnatural, and therefore cursed. The same was true of the royal house of Troy, Priam’s house; Troy was cursed, because it was built by Apollo.
Oedipus at Colonus is the conclusion of the Oedipus myth. The drama we have of this myth was written by Sophocles, a native of Colonus. This suburb town of ancient Athens was known for its sacred groves unholy to the Goddesses Demeter and Persephone. Oedipus chooses this site to die, because he finally understands what is causing the curse upon Thebes. More generally, the Athens of Theseus is chosen by Oedipus, because the city and its area were a major center of worship for the Goddess of Night.
The family of Oedipus by his Queen and Mother survive and inherit the Kingdom of Thebes. His sons Polyneices and Eteocles make an agreement to rule Thebes alternately after their father abdicates. Eteocles when he rules refuses to relinquish the throne back to Polyneices, and the latter moves to Argos to live. Polyneices then visits his father and sister Antigone before his father’s death in Athens. Polyneices refuses his father’s advice when he urges peace with Eteocles and Thebes. After the death of Oedipus, Polyneices marches with the Argive army and six other commanders upon Thebes. Argos was the main city leading the forces of the Argolis against the Thebans, and was, like Athens, a major center of Setian worship in Hellas that was allied with Knossos. The army led by the city of Argos is defeated in battle before the seven gates of Thebes and forced to retreat. Polyneices and Eteocles kill each other in combat before the seventh gate of the city. The body of Eteocles is buried, but his uncle Creon, the new King crowned at his death, forbids the burial of the Argives who lie dead around the city. (Was this insult to the dead made so that their bones might be picked clean by the Vulture Goddess?) Creon also orders that anyone who does bury any enemy dead shall be put to death. Antigone, the sister of the dead Argive co-ruler, decides that Polyneices must be buried despite her uncle’s order. After Antigone buries the body of Polyneices, Creon learns that Antigone performed the burial, and so sentences her to death by being buried alive inside of a cavern. Creon’s idea here was perhaps due to Demetrian Argive worship of the Serpent Gods of Earth.
The myth of the Seven Argive commanders who attack Thebes is likely to be a legendary version of a real war fought between the cities of the Argolis and Thebes that occurred sometime during the Setian-Minoan-Mycenaean period. Perhaps this war may have been partially responsible for the final Armageddon between the three super powers of the Bronze Age. An attack by the Mycenaean colonies of Knossos in the Argolis upon Thebes may have provoked the Hittites into an attack upon Hellas. This could have been the opening border skirmish that started everything. The next invasion of Boeotia by the Argives resulted in the victory of the Epigoni and the sacking of Thebes. This success might then have been followed eventually by the attack upon Troy. The loss of these Solarist Greek allies could then have been the provocation that reignited the war between the Hittite-Egyptian Alliance and the Minoan-Mycenaeans. This should then be termed a resumption of war because of previous incursions of the Minoans into Lower Egypt during the Intermediate Periods and the eventual sack of Knossos in 1400 BCE by the mainland Egyptians in reprisal. The final Armageddon should then be seen as the last and greatest conflict between the super powers of the aeon; the last war between the Knossian descendants of Lower Egypt and the Thebans of Upper Egypt.
The historical period then starts in the Near East with a war between the Lower Egypt of Set and the Upper Egypt of Horus, and the Bronze Age civilization of the region ends some 2,000 years later with a final Armageddon between the descendant empires of these same pre-dynastic states, and their allies. Then after this final conflict the Dark Ages settled over the Near East, with the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization and the destruction of the Hittite Empire. The Mycenaeans, realizing that the land forces arrayed against them by the Hittite invaders crossing the Hellespont were very powerful, must then have decided upon the most effectual strategy.
The Minoan colonies of Achaeans took to their black ships after the Corinthian wall of fortification was breached. The armies of the Argolis in the island of Pelops took to the sea to strike the Hittite lines of supply stretching back into Anatolia. The only detachment remaining on the mainland may have been that of the Messenians at Pylos and Ithome, who guarded those refugees somehow able to reach the remote district nome. The superior black-ship navy of the Myceneaens then would have established bases on Crete and the islands before striking what fleet the Hittites may have had. In effect, the invading Hittite armies would then have been isolated and without supply upon the large island of Pelops, with its crops and resources scorched by the retreating Achaeans.
Even so, much of the invading Hittite army survived and were able to establish a base in the valley of the Eurotas at Sparta, where they had made their advanced camp before attacking over the mountains into the last bastion of the Achaeans left behind in Messenia. Meanwhile, the main Achaean army aboard its black ships invaded the coast of Anatolia, and meeting only garrison resistance quickly advanced into the Hittite hinterlands where they put siege to the capital at Hattusas, and eventually sacked it. After this the Achaean army moved back to the coast and the fleet, and they then proceeded to move south where lay remnants of Hittite power in Phoenicia and Cyprus.
These cities were also subdued, and the only foe remaining was then the traditional ancient enemy of mainland Egypt with its followers of the Sun and Horus. The Thebans of Egypt, though, had learned of the Achaean destruction of Hattusas and the cities of the coast. Pharaoh Rameses the Third, a namesake descendant of the Great Rameses, had prepared the Egyptian defenses on the borders and at the mouths of the Nile, and the strength of the Egyptian army was ready behind its defensive fortifications. The first attack by the remaining Setian Raiders of the Sea failed to break the Egyptian defenses, and the Achaeans had to retreat back into Phoenicia.
Several years later after the Mycenaeans had much reinforced their army from its many distant colonial allies, the Sea Raiders struck once more from the opposite direction where they had bases with their Libyan allies. This last invasion succeeded, and the descendants of Neith and Nu once more occupied the Lower Egyptian Motherland of Night; many of whom, in company with their Libyan allies, decided to remain there afterwards. The next Egyptian Pharaohs of the Lower Lands of Setian Egypt were either Mycenaean or Minoan rulers of the last part of the 20th Dynasty. The capital of these new Lower Egyptian Pharaohs was established at Tanis in the Delta. This is now referred to as the start of the Third Intermediate Period of foreign Dynastic rule and internal chaos.
Those who didn’t remain in Egypt and returned instead to their former lands in Hellas and Crete and the islands were later called the Returning Heracleidae in the Dark Ages that were soon to follow. In the Peloponnesus peninsula these Heracleidae mixed with the few survivors and the remnants of the Hittite army in Laconia to form the three tribes of the Dorians. The survivors of the Hittite army took up residence in Sparta, and ruled Laconia and Messenia until the rise of the Hellenistic Empires after the Classical period. The Mycenaean refugees who had fled to the last bastions of Messenia became the Helot servants of the Spartans, and served them as an underclass of farmers and artisans for most of the next millenium. Five centuries of darkness then elapsed before the society of Hellas had recovered enough knowledge, structure, and population to equal its former civilization.
Athena and Arachne.
Arachne was a spinner of linen cloth who thought she was the very best at weaving. Like many other artists and musicians of Greek myth, she was susceptible to hubris when it came to valuing her own productions, which it might be said is a common fault of humanity in general, everyone liking to value what they do. With artists and musicians who produce forms of beauty this might be even more of an inherent difficulty, because it takes some amount of self-confidence even to attempt the production of beautiful form in art and music; or else, one never attempts anything. This may be why Greek myth is filled with these types of legends having to do with mortals who erroneously thought they could somehow outdo the Gods of Nature in some way or another. It is a common human problem of our egos, and everyone is made to be that way. If we weren’t like this we might never accomplish anything. Perhaps, the Greek mythographers realized this, and that explains why they were so fond of these artistic and musical tales of hubris. It probably also explains the excessive Greek love for competition that made even the arts, crafts, and music areas for competing and prizes. The myths of this type are only about the exceptional occurrences where there was some individual who thought they might even outdo the very Gods of Nature. These legends are then about artisans and musicians having exceptional skills and talent who might be said to approximate the Creator or Creatrix in their nearly perfect beautiful productions. The legends then are necessarily very similar, the human creatrix or artist is always hubristic in this necessary self-delusion, because they are ultimately endeavoring to emulate the creative and artistic power of the Gods themselves.
Arachne is one of these hubristic types who thinks she can out-spin the Goddess of weaving herself. The Goddess Athena learns of the beautiful cloth tapestries woven by Arachne, and the Goddess is made a bit envious because of the young woman’s art in thread. The Goddess then disguises herself as an old hag and goes to visit the girl from Lydian Miletus. The Goddess asks her if she thinks herself better than Athena herself, and Arachne, of course, being the epitome of the artist with great talent, answers that she is indeed the best, surpassing even Athena, the Goddess of Night. Thereupon the Goddess reveals herself in her real form of bright shimmering energy and Arachne’s friends drop to do suppliance before the Goddess of Earth. Arachne, though, is mostly unshaken in her great hubris and high self-opinion engendered from the inflation of artistic praise, so she remains standing before the Goddess. The Goddess asks her if she might like to compete at spinning with her Unholiness. Arachne agrees, and they then proceed to attempt outweaving one another.
This is the typical legend of artistic hubris. Arachne necessarily loses the competition, and as a result of losing hangs herself; whereupon, Athena takes pity upon her and changes her into the spider. The main lesson here is that humans, however skillful they might be, are no match for the Gods. And, Arachne was a very brilliant artist and weaver of cloth, the very best, almost equal to the Goddess herself. This though was a human art of creativity, and even then Arachne could only approach the talent of the Deity. The other main lesson is that the artistic creativity of the Goddess moves within this Natura-Physic of Her Creation, and it is not a mere human production of altering its materials on a much smaller woof. This is why Arachne is eventually changed into the spider, so she may continue to practice her human art for eternity, doing what she loves best.
Besides these main lessons of the myth, some supplementary details are also given in the legend as an aid for learning more about the social history of Night and Earth. Arachne is from the area of Miletus, and Miletus was a city of the Lydian coast that was founded by Minoans and named after a town in the Lasithi mountains of Crete. The emblem of this town near Knossos may have been the spider, since artifacts have been found at this Cretan Miletus that utilized this heraldic device. The city is also thought to have been a major exporter of linens and purple dye. Robert Graves makes mention of these artifact seals in his book the Greek Myths, and he states that the linen industry of colonial Miletus was a rival of Athens in this trade. So it seems very likely then that the myth is based upon some real historical economic interaction between these cities in the Minoan-Mycenaean epoch. Miletus was known for more than the linen trade though, it was also supposed to be the largest founding city of overseas colonies among the Greek city states, and somewhat later this Minoan colony became renowned as the first home of Greek science and philosophy. Thales and Leucippus made the first attempts at understanding the material composition of the universe while living in a city of Arachne’s Lydian lands.
The great war between the Moon and the Sun did not end with the solar victory, and the unification of Egypt into one kingdom. This war continued for many years afterwards (with a long peaceful lapse in-between) and wasn’t finally settled in the region until several thousand years later. (It is important to remember that events and changes in the ancient world occurred very slowly.) With the solar victory came unification in Egypt, and the country was ruled by one kingdom for most of the 5th millenium BAS. The old southern Kingdom of the Sun ruled from its new centrally located capital at Memphis, and the Kingdom of Lower Egypt is assumed to have been conquered and merged within this new unified state. However, this is not what happened, exactly.
Geographically, Egypt became one unified state ruled by the Dynasties of the Old Kingdom, except, for the former colonies once controlled by the Kingdom of Lower Egypt. These colonies of the sea then became the last refuge and resource of the Lower Egyptian exiles who refused combination with the solarists of southern Egypt. The large island colony of Crete, some 150 miles to the north in the Great Middle Sea, became the new Land of Night for all disaffected patriots from Lower Egypt and the Delta. For some reason, though most likely due to their disproportionate lack of sea vessels, the victorious southern solarists did not pursue the fleeing remnants of the conquered nocturnal realm.
Maybe it was the walls of their fleet that preserved them, or else, it could have been the obscurity and distance of their island colonies over the sea; whatever it was, the war had brought about a new geographic and temporal separation of the warring Egyptian kingdoms. For most of the next millenium the Solar and Lunar Kingdoms progressed peacefully and in isolation from one another. From the start of the great rupture between the Kingdoms of the Day and the Night, it must have been the more nautical castaway Setian Kingdom of the colonial islands that ruled the waves of the Middle Sea.
What maritime adventures that are written of by the mainland kingdom are directed towards the south from the coasts of the Red Sea. Theban expeditions are sent on sailing adventures to exotic locales such as Punt, but these expeditions have their origin in Red Sea ports and are destined for explorations in the Red Sea itself, or perhaps somewhere in the Indian Ocean. It seems a bit strange that such an advanced and sea-going civilization makes no effort to explore the Great Middle Sea directly off of its northern coastline. There may have been an occasional shipping along the coast to Palestine or Syria, but no mention is made of any deeper excursions into this sea. The reason for this omission may very well have been the maritime sea empire of Minos and Neptune and Set. It could be that the former colonies of Lower Egypt had survived to form their own naval empire in this Great Middle Sea, and the capital of these waves of Neptune was at Knossos.
This scenario of a Minoan-Setian sea empire ruled by former Dynasts of Lower Egypt is very likely after one considers the artifacts, myths, and history of the Minoans and Egyptians. Artifacts of Minoan manufacture have been found as far west as the island of Malta and the coasts of Spain. The Mycenaean civilization of the mainland of Hellas had its start in Minoan colonies there. Artifacts produced in northern parts of Europe near the Atlantic coast, have been found in the tombs of Mycenaean royalty. One important ancient source of the metal tin was these northern lands, and it was traded on the western coasts. Many islands of the nearby Aegean Sea were also stations of the Minoan sea empire. The settlement on the Cycladic island of Thera must have also been part of this empire of the sea. Some cities of Anatolia were first founded by the Minoans, such as the city of Miletus. Minoan manufactures have been found along the Adriatic Sea in Illyria, an important gateway to the amber trade of Germany and the Baltic. A Minoan base at Malta was a harboring port halfway along the routes to the West Mediterranean trading towns. Megalithic buildings with kromlech architectural structures are found in a broad swathe from Egypt through Libya and Tunisia, to Malta, Sardinia, and the coastlines of Western Europe. There is no doubt that the Minoans once ruled a large sea empire in the Mediterranean. The question is whether or not this Minoan civilization was founded by Lower Egyptians.
The impression one gets after reading The Palace of Minos by Sir Arthur Evans, the first excavator at Knossos, is that he thought Minoan civilization was a foundation of Lower Egypt. The recognition of this fact, if it is so, is tremendously important for the ancient history of the region, and, indeed, for the history of European civilization in general. There might be no more fanciful tales of all-powerful, all-conquering tribes from the steppes of Russia overwhelming everything in their paternalistic sky-god paths. That there were waves of immigration of these nomadic steppe tribes throughout history may be so, but the effects of these immigrations won’t be considered as so greatly influential upon history until the fall of the Roman Empire.
Our current histories say that these barbarians from the Russian plains were mostly responsible for the destructions of civilization at the end of the Bronze Age in the East Mediterranean. Once one realizes the origins of the Minoans and Mycenaeans, this theory doesn’t seem as probable as once it did. Much more likely seems to be a great devastating war between the super powers of the epoch.
There were three of these great super powers in the region of the Eastern Mediterranean during the Bronze Age, and, they were the Minoans, the Hittites, and the mainland Egyptians. It is not at all unlikely that in this ancient day of human history there should have been almost constant tension between super-power states in the region, and from the historical sources left to us, it is sure that these tensions developed into open warfare, once in awhile. The ultimate result of this situation was a hypothetical Armageddon that finally occurred between these great super-powers of the ancient world. The primitive nomadic tribes of the steppes may have emigrated into the Balkans and the Near East eventually at some point, but it may have been into a military vacuum left after the greatest war in ancient history.
The Near East region washed by the waters of the Middle Sea was divided into a tripartite détente stalemate of imperial kingdoms. The Hittites ruled Anatolia (modern Turkey) and the eastern coastline. The Minoans and their Mycenaean colonies ruled Hellas and the islands, and the solar mainland Egyptians ruled Egypt and Palestine. These were the three super powers of the day (or the night).
The final destructive war between these great nation kingdoms was most probably caused by economic and religious differences of opinion, though the militarism of the ruling classes most likely also had much to do with it. Particularly, the militarism and vanity of Pharaoh Rameses was one catalyst to the ultimate total war that followed.
Rameses and his Egyptian legions invaded the Hittite Syrian dominions in 1286 BCE, most likely with a main object of gaining greater glory and renown for the youthful Pharaoh. The battle of Kadesh followed when the Hittites met the Egyptian advance division, and Rameses led the next division to their relief. With his divisions strung out on the march, Rameses was almost defeated and killed by the combined Hittite army when his next marching division arrived at the last moment to stave off complete disaster. Rameses was saved and the battle ended indecisive, but it had one very important result; Rameses never again attacked the Hittites, and much later in 1268 BCE he and the Hittite King signed a treaty of alliance and mutual aid. Somewhat after the treaty signing, Rameses even went so far as to marry a Hittite princess to seal the alliance between mainland Egypt and the Hittite Empire.
This alliance between their possible foes in the Near East left the Minoan-Mycenaean Sea Empire alone and without any major allies, except for the Libyans of Cyrenaica. It was the single great sea empire left alone against the great land empires of the epoch. Nocturnal Neptune was opposed by the solar Amun-Ra of the mainland, and, his partner, an Anatolian god of some sort. The big problem for the Minoans and their colonial Mycenaeans was that the Hittites had a huge army, with a passage into Hellas via the Bosphorus straits. And, then, of course, the Minoan capital of Knossos had already been sacked 150 years previously, in 1400 BCE (3400 BAS), by an Egyptian landing upon Crete itself. So, the strategic situation was very grim-looking for the once powerful sea empire of King Minos and Lord Set.
Finally, though, the year 1250 BCE rolled around, and a Trojan prince set out for Sparta on a friendly visit of diplomacy….
This is somewhat later history though, and much had already happened between the exile of the Setian refugees and this great war of Armageddon occurring in the Mycenaean period. First off, the Setian-Minoans never forgot where it was that their ancestors once lived and ruled. So, somewhere near the end of the Early Minoan epoch, after they had successfully rebuilt another Lower Egyptian Kingdom in the islands of the sea, they figured it was as good a night as any to return to Egypt and remake the original Kingdom of the Serpent. And, they did so.
Today, this first invasion of the mainland of Egypt by the Minoan-Setians is called the First Intermediate Period. There were others later on, such as the so-called Hyksos invasion and the invasion of the Sea Raiders, and these later invasions were also Minoan-Mycenaean returns to the Lower Egyptian Motherland. During this first invasion of the original ancient Land of Night, the Setians were not powerful enough, and could only manage to stay in control of Lower Egypt for a few hundred years. The Egyptians of the South and Thebes called the invaders Khety, probably a term for Keftiu, the people of unknown(?) origin who lived on Crete. The Khety ruled the lower half of Egypt from a capital at Herakleopolis (Ihnasya el-Medina) near the Faiyum Oasis, a city not far south of Memphis. This was most likely so that they could keep an eye on the border re-established between the Kingdoms of the Moon and the Sun. Manetho’s later listing of the dynastic pharaohs makes the Cretan pharaohs (the Khety) rulers of the 9th and 10th Dynasties.
After the Setian refugees resettled at Knossos, the rulers and followers of the last Lower Egyptian Dynasty probably had nothing more important planned than the rebuilding of the kingdom they had lost. (This it seems was to occupy them almost completely for the next thousand years or so.) Towns were to be built with paved roads linking them. Harbor facilities improved. Trade routes expanded and new ones explored. The population of the islanders multiplied. What had been trading colonies and frontier settlements now had to be remade and expanded into the Lower Kingdom of the Sea. This great endeavor was much facilitated by the long history of Lower Egyptian expansion by colonization and immigration into this region, and by the great skills of their merchant and military shipping.
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The Serpent priestess who lived in a cave on the edge of the Saharan savannah was now an island queen of an Egyptian exile sea kingdom. Most of the religion of the Aournos Cavern had remained unchanged for nearly 10,000 years, even though the tumbleweed scrub desert near the Nile had changed into a lush and paradisiacal island refuge of the Middle Earth Sea. This new High Priestess-Queen of the Setian-Minoans had her own throne room and ceremonial suites on the ground floor of the new palace. This new palatial structure was erected on the site of the old megalithic stone palace that had been the first royal residence after the war between Lord Set and Horus. Her ceremonial suites were separate from her domicile apartments upstairs in the east wing of the new palace. The throne room and adjoining annexes were placed apart down here for cult devotions, and she exercised her duties as High Priestess from them on the ground floor next the big central patio. The reception room of the throne was decorated with fantastic creatures such as the griffin, though the painting was done in the best impressionistic and naturalistic methods of her Minoan artists.
Other than the exquisite wall paintings of mythical beasts in all their bright and lively colors, the next and most perfect thing about it, for her, was the large serpentarium basin that formed the audience room’s lower level. Here she kept all of her favorites, those Serpent ancestors she had really taken an affection for. Of course, every once in awhile, one of these Dragons might slither out and coil up in some corner, or, greet a guest with begging about their leg for a left-over swine haunch, but, that only made their proximity the more adorable.
On the other side of the shrine, Lord Set’s column outside, were the meeting rooms of her priestesses, and through the interior doorway, a vestibule for waiting guests and the banquet hall of Deo beyond it.
Guests usually arrived at Knossos either from the port at Candia to the north, or by land over the long roadway from Phaistos on the south coast. Once they reached Knossos, they were first taken to the traveller’s Hostel of Rhea over the stream from the southern portico. There they could freshen up a bit in its baths, or revive themselves in the sacred spring of Eos, where it flowed from the dark realms of Dis. She thought the caravanserai hostel was a charming building for introducing visitors to the comforts of staying at Knossos.
Recently, her mortician had stopped there after his long journey up from Hagia Triada on the coast. He had come to show her a finished sarcophagus made for a noble woman of the Phaistos nome. She had desired this so as to give her an idea of his skillful craftsmanship. The coffin container he had brought was very finely done in silver with many well executed religious scenes engraved upon it. She distinctly remembered the scene upon the lid, which was very elaborate in that it showed a scene of her priestesses performing a bull sacrifice with the ritual bloodletting for the Goddess Rhea.
She was glad for the new Theban practices of the royal morticians, and she shuddered to think of the old burial arrangements still used by the commoner Setians in the villages and countryside. The old traditions were religiously sacrosanct, but she disliked the idea of having her dead flesh eaten by scavenging birds, even if they were the messengers of the Goddess. Not that it made much difference really, once your kha left its body, that was pretty much it; unless of course, you were some Theban Egyptian, who believed the body was going to Hell as well.
Ugghh…and those damn tholos tombs of charnel, they, the commoners still used--right in amongst their houses in the villages. Bone depositories so filled up you couldn’t dig new ground; and, then, there were the stacks here and there….
She didn’t like thinking of it, but it had always been their way, she supposed; the sacred caverns were the same, where they hadn’t been renovated for the rites, and the burials of the ancient ones, did, she think add to the gothic feeling she experienced while in their gloomy corridors of echoing torchlight. So, it must not be the thought of cleansed bones so much, that thought of death didn’t trouble her, it was those birds of Rhea, those scavengers, picking her flesh clean--her beautiful skin and delicate parts--that made her dread the great journey to the Underworld realm of Lord Dionysos and his Mistress of the Offerings.
Hell, she figured, when the bones returned to the soil of Earth and the abode of the ancestors, what was there to dislike? She loved her snake friends, and they loved her, she thought cheerfully. Then, after you were dead and gone to the shadowy world of Night, some priestess might offer your bones, amid the other ancestors, the blood of Dis from the kykeon cup. That wasn’t horrible, that was pure joy, and together with snakes like hers, she was to receive the offering blood of Persephone, with its great magic.
That was comforting to her, the thought of lying down in death--with her pet snakes of the lustral basin, and then feeling their cool smooth skin glide over her remains--the blood flowing out, and then down, oozing over her bones. That was bliss, the purest form of it in this world of Neter’s becoming; it could only be surpassed when she entered her sepulchral tomb--in the Temple depths, where stood the Kromlech of Erotos. Though, she yet thought herself most pleasantly occupied this side of her grave, in the lands of the living, above the beyond of the Knossian subterran vaults.
There is no doubt that Lord Set and Queen Isis were worshipped on the island of Crete after the arrival of the Setian refugees, and, that this Setian worship eventually became the Dionysian Mystery religion of Hellas.
The most ancient image of Persephone ever found is from a pillar crypt at Knossos. This is the famous Snake Goddess figurine discovered by Evans in the back of this room that was used as a crypt and a sacrifice chamber. Evans called it a pillar crypt because of the two large pillar columns within it. One of these columns was inscribed with a labrys and the other was inscribed with a trident. The labrys was the weapon and ceremonial sacrificial instrument of the Great Horned Hunter while on land, and the trident was hissd weapon of choice by sea. The blood and remains of the sacrifice in this room were offered to the sacred serpents of the Goddess Persephone, and, also the bones of the ancestors buried beneath. The other figurine found in the room may have been that of a priestess, or the Goddess of Night, or the Goddess Rhea. This statuette has either a feline or a dove perched upon its head, and it is difficult to determine which. If it is a feline upon her head, this then is the Goddess of Night and Earth, the Night Huntress. If it is a dove, the figurine should then be a statuette of the Goddess Rhea in her role as sacrificial offering maker--she who pours the waters of life. Either Goddess is then appropriate in this setting with the Goddess Persephone.
The room with the columns and statuettes was then built to resemble the cavern crypts and sacrifice chambers and serpentaria of the Stone Age cave. Another room like this one inside the palace was excavated in a nearby villa, and the pillar crypt of the villa had the additional useful feature of a serpentarium cavern room situated below the pillar crypt. The subterranean serpentarium chamber was connected to the pillar crypt above by a drain through which the blood of sacrifice might flow to the sacred serpents beneath. This was a very handy and useful architectural implementation of the Minoan expertise in plumbing technology. Blood libations no longer needed to be collected by a priestess in a jar or vase, they simply let it flow through the drain down to the serpentarium beneath the floor.
That a priestess of the Goddess Rhea was an assistant in these rites is shown by her name and totem. The name Rhea comes from the Greek words for “streaming,” “flowing,” “stream,” and “rivulet.” Rhea was Eos, the Goddess of water and other types of moisture, and her newest totem was the dove, and bird totems had always been mortuary creatures, the cleansers of human bones.
The Serpent Goddess Persephone was there in the crypt, because she had always been the Queen of the Underworld of Death. The Night Huntress might have been there as well, in her role as huntress, who along with the Horned Hunter, was to be worshipped as a great provider of the life-sustaining meat carved from the horned animal’s carcass. The cattle from the herds of Knossos were still ceremonially sacrificed in cavern-like crypts where the blood and remains could be offered to the spirits of the dead ancestors. And, the sacred Serpents of the Life-after-Death Goddess, still, even yet, received their share that wasn’t consumed by humans.
The Horns of Consecration altar in the great outdoor patio at the center of the palace was most likely used for an initial thanks given to the God of the Hunt for providing the cattle sacrifice. Zagreus, the God of the pasture fields, was here invoked by his priest, and occasionally the King, so as to bless this hoofed provender of the palace. Herding and ranching had mostly replaced hunting, though both types of horned provisions--wild game and stock--were here consecrated in the name of Zagreus and Minos. After this ceremony, performed usually by a priest, the horned creature was then to be either sacrificed or slaughtered in a pillar crypt of the palace.
Zagreus, the Horned Hunter of Night, the Horned Moon, Dis, the Eye of Set, was the King at sacrifices instead of a solar hunter god. Dis-Zagreus was the mate of the Night Earth Goddess, Deo or Demeter. The architectural horns of decoration at Knossos were of a Horned God of Night and the Moon. Dis/Zagreus was the Lunar mate and companion of the Night Huntress, and they mated in the thrice-plowed harvest fields to produce the Serpent Gods of the Corn. The Sun was merely the Moon during the daylight. A prince of the royal house was known as the Minotaur, the demi-god offspring of the hunter Dis, the Horned Moon, and the Goddess Deo, or Demeter, the Night Mother. The Minotaur was the God Dionysos, the son of Nyx, and Nyx was Demeter. Dionysos and the Minotaur were the self-same Horned Serpent of Egypt--our Lord Set. The decorative horns at Knossos were the Moon, Dis, Dionysos, the Minotaur, and Lord Set.
Perhaps the most spectacular find at Knossos was what Evans called the Hypogaeum chamber. This was a very large ceremonial room of some sort dug deep under the earth. The chamber was reached by a long winding staircase that twirled around its descending shaft to the depths below. The staircase corridor had windows that opened to the inside allowing a view of the room at bottom. The chamber itself was a large circular dimension some 30 feet in diameter and 60 feet below the palace level. There were no artifacts found at floor level in this underground circular room that might explain its use. When the later palace of the Middle Minoan period was built this chamber and its shaft were filled with soil and debris from the new levels of construction. This unusual vault was built during the first stages of the Early Minoan period when the first palace was, soon after the Setian refugees arrived. Although it was later filled in with debris from the New Palace construction, there were several subterranean tholoi labyrinths built in a similar fashion nearby to the Knossian palace.
One possible and very likely explanation of these Hypogaea is that they were the main ceremonial areas of the Setian religion and dynastic crypts. The royals of the palace probably had their skeletal remains interred somewhere in the deep interior of these elaborate rounded shaft circles. That these structures obviously resembled cavernous descents into the realm of Demeter is a safe enough observation. The builders may have had recollection of their master architects who had constructed similar structures in Egypt, and it is these Knossian Daedals who later instruct the cyclopean lithic-movers of the Argolis when they make the tholoi of Mycenae and Sparta. The tholos was the favorite sepulcher of the Minoans, and was used for communal bone burials on Crete down until the later periods of its history. The enormous and deep gothic tholoi of the palaces were most likely reserved for royalty, however, since the yokel peasants had their own above-ground tholoi ossuaries fashioned in the same way as their houses, these bone repositories still retained the functional purpose of the more aristocratic artificial cavern tomb. It is almost astounding that the eternally ancient burial practice of the Paleolithic cave-dwellers was still the preferred mortuary ideal of these, their modern island descendants living in the far future of the Setian Night.
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The tribe of the ancestors was gathered round the Fire of Eros as twilight came to the desert savannah. With the first rising of the horned Moon, the meat of the hunt was grilled in the light of the God, before the entrance to Aournos. The flame-lit shadows always flickered-on until the Dawn of Eos, and the wide open area cleared before the cave was the scene of many a mimic hunt and celebratory dance in gratitude to the Hunters of Night.
Wild-growing shrubs of potent medicine had been gathered in the thickets of the grove round the crystalline pools of the stream. These had now been brewed into an aromatic elixir of venomous magic by the feeders of She-who-speaks-with-forked-tongue. As the fresh drink of the grove was passed round the fiery rock, the dance of vultures appeared in the starry roof of sky.
Horned satisfaction was cheered by the retelling of the hunt’s success in fields distant from Aournoi lands; the masked troupe was done remaking the victorious kill for enjoyment of the spectating tribe, and as the dipping goblets were now passing more quickly to the cauldron of the serpentine weirded offering, the party of hunters relaxed very much, and they partook more with the festivities. The great kromlech of Eros was casting its jutting form over the torch-brightened clearing before the deeps of Aournos. The horned Moon was by now far in its gleaming with the Star of Evening, and inclining above towards the coming of Eos.
Mist dew dark obscured the rounded clearing, and the smoke of the great bonfire swirled into the airs above the great rock. Came then the lonely notes of a reed from somewhere outside the light, sounds wavering from down near the flower-bestrewn stream, close by to where the weirding weeds blossomed in their lush vine bunches.
The skin hunting-drums took up with their methodic bonging, and the black-skirt dancers of the Snake entered from the shadows between the torches to do their desultory chant of the Moons. A priestess hailed the flaming rock of Becoming with arms raised above her long, flowing black hair. She sang the song of Serpent descent from the Night, and her circling sisters joined her with choral refrains echoing praises to the Moon and Stars.
And, the Piper, he kept on playing with his reed, afar out in the black night of weird.
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Since the Minoan mortuary practices were of very archaic origin, coming ultimately from the Paleolithic cavern, then that must indicate some other cult practices were kept and retained through the eternal epochs of Setian pre-history. Aeons having passed, the Gods of the Setian Minoans must be looked to in order to determine what these other cult practices in the hypogaeum of the underground mortuary Labyrinthos might have included in addition to internment of royal bones. Still another source of possible indication might be supplied by the shape of the labyrinthos. Because it resembled an enormous underground womb-like cavern in its general outline, this seems to indicate that some sort of fertility ceremonies probably occurred within it. What abominations of sexual depravity and blood lust these rites of Lord Set included as part of the cult, upon especial festal occasions, is difficult to determine exactly. Though, after a review of the artifacts and mythic lore, as well as a searching of our own imaginative dementias, some guesses might be ventured.
The center of the Labyrinthos most likely had a large megalithic rock of phallus shape at its middle point. Here there was a large fire built that was of the element of Eros, with the rough stone sculpture of the column pillar rising next to it representing the God as well. The assembled company of worshippers may have been a nearly equal mixture of male and female devotees of Lord Set who were part of the royal establishment.
Eros was at the center of the circular chamber because of his divine status as a God of the Ennead; Eros was a God of very great antiquity; his worship had its start in the pre-history of our cave-dwelling ancestors. Eros was the element of Fire, and he was the life force of procreation in Natura. Eros was the God of male sexuality, and his sister Eos was the Goddess of female sexuality. The new Deities Kronos and Rhea were their alternative personas as Gods of the Air element. Eos had always been the dark waters. Knossos had taken its name from Kronos.
And then, the cavern, which the Labyrinthos was built to simulate, was a natural Temple of Lord Set, and had been so since the first Serpent priestesses took to keeping their sacred snakes within it. The phallus and the column were artificial structures first made to resemble the natural pillars of rock within the cave. Stalgmites and stalactites are natural formations of phallic shape. The Serpent totem of Lord Set is a phallic-shaped creature.
Ideally, the temple should have had a circular arrangement of megalithic rocks around the outer circumference of the room. This was the plan of Stone Age outdoor Temples of the Moon and the Sun. The size of this palatial version dug out from the interior of a hillside must have kept the attendance at these rites in the Labyrinth to a few aristocratic worshippers. There were most likely only 28 Setians participating during the monthly Lunar ceremonies.
The festivities most likely involved a bull sacrifice made by the King with the labrys to get things going. The attendees may have included thirteen priestesses of Persephone with thirteen males to pair with them. The King and the High Priestess then might of made the entire congregation equal the Lunar number of 28 nights. Special attire befitting the ceremony should have been required, and the use of masks by everyone was part of the ritual accoutrement. Maybe, these rites might have had an additional organizational benefit of keeping the nobility on close terms with one another. Some sort of intoxication to produce a drug-induced altered state of consciousness is a given. This may very likely have been a form of LSD derived from fungus that grew on the wheat in the crop fields. This LSD was then very probably mixed with the sacred blood of the bull and dispensed from rhytons in the shape of a horned bull’s head. These rhytons then held a very special potent drink, or elixir, and were probably attached to the walls to enhance the décor. Potent as this drink then should have been, it is to be assumed that large quantities of wine were also provided. The later Hellenes called this pomegranate punch by the name of kykeon, for obvious reasons. (One additional side note for the imaginative is the fact that the bloody-fruit cocktail was poured into the rhyton’s neck and dispensed from its mouth.) This was definitely vampirism that had gotten badly jaded and psychedelic in its cult ceremonies.
What happened during the main part of the ceremonies remains mysterious, though it probably had to do with Persephone and Dionysos and their serpentine importance to the corn harvest. It is very likely that some sort of sacred drama was performed as well. Whatever it might have been exactly, there was an experiencing and showing of something that changed an individual’s perception of reality, and to the extent that death no longer caused as much dire dread as once it had.
Perhaps the altered state of the conscious psyche in tandem with the ritual of cult produced such a profound sense of altered Being that it caused this change in perception, and did so abruptly in such a way as to make the mystes remember the sudden change ever after the event. Whereas, someone else outside of the Setian Cult might arrive at such an alteration in their view of Existence and Natura more gradually via a more time-consuming process of thought and life-experience, the cult mystes was brought to it very suddenly. This could explain some of the descriptions made of the Dionysian Mysteries at Eleusis centuries later.
It was a life-altering happening for almost all initiates, and it might be more surprising if it were not such, with so great a focus of energies magical, cultic, sexual, and psychical wrought upon the individual simultaneously. That the rites did result in a new and different understanding of Natura, and, the role of the human psyche within it, may sound doubtful to those of other perceptions. This, though, was undoubtedly the greatest good coming to the devout, and notwithstanding the many other favorite sensations of pleasure one recieved in bringing the alteration upon the self.
At last with so many methods performed for altering the individual psyche, the Great Rite of culmination and release into ecstasy was to be accomplished. For those of a differing perception this may sound somewhat cool and reptilian, this ritual sex magic outside of love, and for the express purpose of lust. Though it must be remembered, that most of the participants in these monthly occult rites were of a uniquely different outlook upon the reality of existence, and had made their psychic union with Eros or Eos previously.
The masks and the magic of the rites were combined with the elixir and the setting of the mythic cultos to produce a totally immersive sensation of the numinous and the Deity moving within Natura. This was the reason for obscuring identity with masks; it made the worshippers like unto the God and merged them into one unified tribal social group. During the monthly celebrations of Lord Set, the worshippers could for a brief while have a sensation of Being in the Other realm beyond this world of normality. The ecstatic orgies that followed upon these preparing rites were the great release into the Dimension of the Other where the psyche was sensate of nothing except the ultimate joy and freedom of an existence without restraint or pain, and the only thing was the pleasure of Being. In the philosophical terminology of later epochs this might be described as a temporary submergence into the world of spirit and forms.
Great Lord Set loves the bloody remains of the sacred hunt sacrifice. Persephone. Persephone. Serpent Goddess of Death--She who is Queen of Tuat--Queen of Hell--Serpentess of the Labyrinthos.
The pre-historic Ennead changes when the Setians settle at Knossos after the war between the Moon and the Sun. Nyx becomes Deo. Nuit-Net becomes Demeter, Night Huntress of the Moon, and Earth Goddess of the cavern. Demeter is the Goddess of Night in future speak.
Ouranos the Horned Hunter of the Sun has his phallus cut off by a harvesting sickle, a golden scythe of Eros. Anu and Nu separate permanently. Nu changes her name to Deo.
Deo needs a new mate. She takes Dis, the God of hunting and the fields--Dis, the God of the mountain cavern underground, for a new Lord and Master of the Animals. Zagreus is his alternate name as the Lord of the pasture fields. Later, in future speak, this Zagreus is trimmed to Zeus.
Eros gets a new name as well. This son of Demeter takes a new avian totem and is no longer not merely Eros, but he also comes to be known as Kronos, the dark scavenger feeder on death and bones. Krozo. Krozo. Krozo. He calls menacingly above the crop fields of sun-ripening corn. Upon arrival from Egypt, the refugees notice large flocks of this strange bird congregating in great black Night masses in a tilled valley below the Mountain of Dis. So, they name their new home after this scavenger of the bones--they name it Knossos, or, “a-place-to-bury-the-bones.” It is the dark valley of the Night Bird, and a low hill of the valley is where they choose to build the new palace and town of the Scavenger Crow of Death. The God of Love and the Evening Star gets a new form, and takes an additional new place in the diminished Ennead of the Setians. Eros is now to be Kronos-Eros, and he replaces his sibling Horus, the Hawk of the Upper Nile.
And, Kronos takes the phallus and scrotum of Ouranos with him on the voyage to the new lands of Phaistos colony. Upon nearing the coast, he throws his grisly prize into the deep salt depths, and up from the bubbling foam that rises from the sinking bloody member, his sister floats, riding a clam shell upon the wave. It is Eos of the Waters, and the Star of Dawn. Even Eos of the world’s liquid and moist element, even she is required to absorb a new moniker replacing the old titular gods left behind. Their sister Vulture Nephthys-Nekhbet was now to be forgotten, she who stayed behind to warm the Eggs of the Sun. The refugee servants of the Moon Goddess now make the cooing dove a Venusian creature of Love and Flight instead, and Eros and Eos are multiplied into the new winged Gods of the Air, though staying their former selves when the powers of Fire and Water have need to be called upon. In flight round the Holy Mountain of Dis, the airs resound with the new krazoos and coos of the crow and dove. Knossos is the home of twilight Kronos of the bier and the corn, and his sister--Venusian Rhea--she who softly pours the blood of sacrifice in streaming rivulets beneath the earth.
Great Lord Set loves the bloody remains of the sacred hunt sacrifice. Persefone. Persephone. The Serpent Goddess of Death rules the underworld cavern abyss, the great chthonian Labyrinthos of the torch-lit circled Stone, far down the stairs Tholossian in an infernal subterra of Knossos. Lord Set, the son of Night, builds his new palace of the cyclopean Titan walls in the valley of Kronos, upon a hill from which he can observe his ripening corn in the Fields of the Snake. From the polyglot Egyptian speak of his new island homeland realm, he takes a new name; he calls himself the son of Darkness, the son of Nyx--he is now, henceforth, to be known as Dionysos.
The first palace at Knossos was built after the war between the Moon and the Sun in Egypt, near the start of the Early Minoan I phase of Cretan civilization. The base of the structure was built of massive stone blocks rough-hewn in a megalithic fashion. These enormous foundations to the first palace were found when the later stages of the imperial palatial buildings were excavated by Sir Arthur Evans.
The pre-historic Ennead of Egypt most likely arrived in Crete much sooner than 5,000 BAS when the Setian refugees disembarked from Lower Egypt. Before the ninth millenium (starting at 9,000 BAS) the island of Crete was uninhabited by humans, and since by this date the Neolithic in Egypt had already progressed for some two to three thousand years, it seems highly likely that the first colonists were Egyptians.
(Review Evans’ finds from the Neolithic, the pottery finds similar to those of Egypt prior to the Naqada phase.)
Starting with the Naqada period of the Egyptan Neolithic, there are numerous finds of ceramics from the NileValley on Cretan soil.
(Ivory and faience items and figurines imported from Egypt.)
Since many of the first Cretan colonists, from the very beginning of human settlement on the island, were most likely Egyptians, and, since many of the colonists for thousands and thousands of years must have been Egyptians, it seems highly probable that the most ancient mythological Ennead of the pre-historic Egyptian Gods should have been worshipped in Crete as well. At least you should expect that the Cretan colonists of the pre-historic Neolithic should have worshipped some of the same Gods that they had worshipped in Egypt. Perhaps there might have been slight changes made to the Ennead after so many thousands of years of maritime separation from the Motherland of Lower Egypt. This you might expect, and with the arrival of the Setian refugees at the start of the Early Minoan historical period more changes might have been introduced to the ancient pre-historic Ennead inherited from the farmers of the Nile and the ranchers of the Sahara. These changes you should expect to favor the Gods of Night worshipped by the farmers of Lower Egypt. Whereas, the Gods of Day, the Gods favored by the Upper Egyptian enemies of the Setians, you might also expect to be excluded mostly from any further acknowledgement by the fleeing refugee Setian colonists. The net effect of the war then, you should expect to have been a great rupture between the Gods of Day and the Gods of Night, with the extreme South becoming more like Noon Day and the extreme North becoming more like Midnight.
The greatest changes made to the pre-historic Ennead, with its equality between Solar and Lunar, may have been made in the farthest North--in the newly independent remnant sea colonies of Lower Egypt. Within mainland Egypt, some more balanced representation of the old ancient Ennead may have been necessary to help ease the unification into one kingdom. The Heliopolitan and Hermapolitan Enneads of the later Dynastic period were then altered to emphasize the role of Khepera as the Sun, though they kept the primordial chaos of material Night (Nuit) as a subordinate Goddess-partner of Khepera’s solar Unity. So, what had been a male and a female emanation of Khepera into Being, then became in the post-war period a single male emanation of Khepera into the masculine Sun, a Sun that existed with no place to stand in a feminine sea of material Being. The Goddess of primordial Being was then imagined to be not one feminine Deity, but a sexual pairing of a male and female Deity. This was done so the Sun God could be made the Supreme neuter emanation of Khepera.
As the Sun God was emphasized in the now Solar-led and unified kingdom of the mainland, so were the Deities of Night emphasized in the former colonies of the Northern Sea. Only, the colonies of the sea, had already mainly favored the nocturnal Deities of the pre-historic Ennead anyhow. Most of the islanders were swine-farmers, and not only was ranching not as important, the islanders had gotten most of their religion from the coast of Lower Egypt, and Night had always been Supreme there. So, the Setians received a very sympathetic reception when they fled to their former colonies. Not only were colonists already established there from immemorial days before their arrival, they also thought of themselves as Egyptians, and, were worshippers of Set, Isis, and Night (being swine-farmers mostly as they were).
In order to add something new, and make their worship stand out as somewhat different from the rustic yokels, the refugee Setians thought of the expedient of eliminating the Gods of Day entirely. There was only three of the nine Gods of the Ennead that they had to do away with, namely: Ouranos (Osiris), Horus, and Nephthys. Ouranos, the Horned Hunter God of the Sun, they did away with by replacing him with the yokel’s God of the Hunt and the pasture fields, who went by the name of Zagreus. Horus and his sister Nephthys they eliminated by having Eros and Eos take bird totems for themselves as Deities of the Air, as well as being both Fire and Water. The new Ennead then only had six Deities instead of eight, with Khepera kept as the ultimate God of Unity existing above Being and everything else. Though Khepera wasn’t the Sun anymore, he was instead made to emanate at first Creation into the male Zagreus and the female Nyx. This Zagreus was a Horned Hunter God of the country Cretans who resembled a bull in some way or other. After many thousands of long years had passed, his name was trimmed through usage to the more dimunitive Zeus. Legend has it that a mountain not many miles from Knossos had this God’s tomb upon its summit.
The pre-historic Ennead of the first Egyptians was then eventually altered by both sides of the great war between the Sun and the Moon. While the Solar worshippers of Horus made their new Enneads more Sun-genetic, the Lunar worshippers of Lord Set made their new Ennead entirely nocturnal, as there were no politico-religious compromises needed in the islands of the sea. That is except for Zeus/Zagreus who was the Sun, though, his role as the Horned Hunter was emphasized instead of his solar attribute. Zagreus was the great Master of Animals and Horned Beasts on Crete, fulfilling the same role in the new Ennead of Night as had Ouranos, Osiris, and Anu in Egypt previously. Nyx was still the Night Huntress and Goddess of Mother Earth, and as Queen of the Gods was always supremely potent in the Setian mythos. Eros and Eos were still the Deities of Twilight and Dawn, the Venusian stellar offspring of the Sun and the Moon who were the natural productive forces of male and female Love and Lust in the Creation of existence. Dionysos, the son of Night, and Persephone his Serpentess mate were the new-speak incarnations of Lord Set and Queen Isis, and as Deities of the crops and corn were the same Supreme monarchs as had always ruled in the supernatural world that was somewhere beyond death. Kronos and Rhea were new alternative names for Eros and Eos in their now additional roles as fowls of the Air element, replacing the Setian enemies Horus and Nephthys. Kronos and Rhea were not new Deities; they were merely new persona titles for Eros and Eos when they ruled the Air. Eros had always been the Fire element in Natura, and Eos had always been the Water element; now, they were both Deities of the Air element as well. The Earth, of course, had always been the element of Mother Night, and remained so, though her Serpent regents Lord Set and Queen Isis often ruled in her stead as Deities of the Earth, the fertile soils, and the Caverns of Darkness.
The Setians changed the old ancient Ennead of pre-historic Egypt, as did the Solarists of the mainland. The later evolution and separation of religions into distinctly different forms of either Lunar or Solar worship started with this great rupture of the ancient Ennead made by the warring worshippers of Lord Set and Horus. Although later theologies might borrow piecemeal from these great mainstreams or religious fountains of belief, most later systems of myth predominantly follow either one or the other of them in their structure: later mythic structures are mostly composed of either the Moon or the Sun.
Starting with the first Egyptian colonization of Crete at about 9,000 BAS, the beneficial practices and ideas of Egyptian civilization continued to expand into new regions to the north, northeast, and northwest. The islands of the Mediterranean were the first to benefit from this communication and trade with the sea-faring farmer colonists. Somewhat later in the pre-historic New Stone Age of agriculture, the settlements became more far-flung and eventually reached the coasts of Southern Europe; from where, these benefits continued in their progress into the uncharted vast unknown of these nearby lands beyond the sea. And then, you always had ever-developing networks of trade and communication into the unknown distant fringe regions surrounding the first Egyptian settlements of colonists and merchants. The later myth of Triptolemus may be a legendary account of this first epoch of Egyptian colonization and trade. In the milleniums following the discovery of crop-planting near the Nile Valley, the practice of harvesting spread first to the islands and the coasts of the Middle Sea, and then eventually into the farther hinterlands. After Crete and Hellas became agricultural, the new agrarian science came to be known in the Balkans and along the Danube River; then there followed Germany, Gaul, and the British Isles. The great flow of farming technology starts in the Southwest, and then it streams into the Central and Western areas of Europe. Therefore, the New Stone Age practice of crop-raising starts somewhere along the Nile Valley and is progressively then exported first to Crete and Hellas, and then the hinterlands of Europe. You might then expect that there should be other forms of civilizing knowledge and belief that were dispersed by the Egyptian Neolithic Kingdoms to a barbarous and primitive Stone Age Europe.
