Ancient Psychedelia: Alien Gods & Mushroom Goddesses
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| "...the states sanctioned myths as a tool to teach the young all the way up to maturity. The marvelous and portentous elements excite the senses and allow the multitudes to learn much easier. When they're young, we use myths as bait, but when they get older, we teach them the facts. But every illiterate and uneducated man is still a child, and like a child, he still loves these tales found in myth and is persuaded by them. Not only the pleasing aspects of myth, but also the fear-inspiring elements deter them from wrong-doing. They learn of divine punishments, terrors, and threats, but these were employed to scare the simple-minded. For the thunderbolt, aegis, trident, torches [of the Furies], snakes [dragons], thyrsus-lances, arms of the gods, are myths [fables], and so is the entire ancient theology. But now philosophy has come to the front, but it is only for the few, while myths are needed for the majority of society." - Strabo (64BC-24AD ; Historian, Geographer) paraphrasing his 'Geographica' Book I, Chapter II, Verse VIII Chapter 14: The Bull of Lunar and Solar Worship Contrary to popular opinion, Rome wasn’t always a murderous, heartless, soulless despicable authoritarian empire-building monstrosity. The early Romans were Etruscans who were very much like the early Phrygians. They were mushroom deity aficionados and they were made up of tribal bands of families who had lived there for some time without the dictates of any Republican form of government or Imperialist authority. The first families of Rome were the Tarquins of Tarquinia (now Corneto), who ruled in the latter part of the 6th century BC. They were expelled from Rome in 509 BC, and according to Campbell: “the epochal process of the Hellenization of the Roman religion began, which brought its local, archaic customs into accord with the new humanism of the rapidly growing chief centers of civilization.” (1) The Roman authorities were rigid in what they considered to be acceptable for the citizenry and differentiated between these norms by placing occultic practices, such as prophecy, spiritism, necromancy, and anything that had to do with the intangible or what would require faith in the supernatural, into the category of suspicion and it was frowned upon. (2) It was a slow process over time that Rome conditioned the people to look at their leaders as gods. Tacitus, who was a priest and member of the Quindecemviral College stated: “The reverence due to the gods was no longer exclusive. Augustus claimed equal worship. Temples were built and statues were erected to him; a mortal man was adored; and priests and pontiffs were appointed to pay him impious homage.” (3) Julius Caesar was first deified in the temple of Jupiter Ammon, on the Winter Solstice of the year 48 BC. (4) Commodus (r. 180-192 AD) followed a similar pattern by allowing himself to be worshiped as a god while living. Aurelion (r. 270-275) went by the title of “Lord and God,” (dominus et deus) and Diocletian (r. 284-305) ordered that he should be known as Jovius, “of Jove.” (5) |
In Rome, the family pantheon of gods was Saturn, Ops, Jupitor (Jove) and Juno, also aka Juno Lucina, or Lucetia. She was a goddess of marriage, like her Greek twin, Hera. She was known as “Matrona” which is very similar linguistically to the Jewish Matronit, the Kabbalistic daughter goddess. Her festival in Rome was called the Matronalia or Matronalis and was celebrated on May 1, a most appropriate day for marriage celebrations, due to the association with fertility and the age of Taurus. (6) Supposedly, according to Godfrey Higgins, in the Church of St. Peter’s in Rome, “is kept in secret a large stone emblem of the creative power, of a very peculiar shape, on which are the words, Zeus Soter (or Jove the Saviour); only persons who have great interest can get a sight of it.” (7) One thing that is not secret is the giant pinecone sitting in the middle of the Vatican, in plain sight, under everyone’s nose (27d) just like the ones atop the temples at Angkor Wat (27a).   R: (27d) Vatican, Rome Numa, the second king of Rome (753–673 BC) (reigned 715–673 BC), reformed the Calendar, by altering the division of the year from ten into twelve months. He also abolished the sacrifices of all animate objects, confining the offerings to “flour, wine, and other simple and inexpensive things.” (8) (1) Occidental Mythology, p. 322 (2) Cults of the Roman Empire p. 10 (3) Middle Ages Revisited, p. 1 (4) ibid, p. 37 (5) Occidental Mythology, p. 333-34 (6) Hebrew Goddess, p. 119-20; Cf. Roscher, Ausfuhrliches Lexicon der griechischen und romischen Mythologie, s.v. Juno; H.J. Rose, A Handbook of Greek Mythology, London, 1933, pp. 102, 324 (7) Ancient Symbol Worship. P. 97; Godfrey Higgins, Celtic Druids, 1827, p. 195-6 (8) Middle Ages Revisited, p. 19 |
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