Misadventures in Babylon

[fitz]

Could not help but think the US invasion of Iraq was a symbol of something being returned to Babylon to be resolved. Like a math equation of the duality that was spun out from there and needed to return there to be resolved and dissolved.

Anyone else feel this way and have any thoughts to add to this? TIA

[daniel]

Hi fitz,

I wrote about this a bit elsewhere: I think that while the Iraq War is clearly about oil, it may be that it is even more deeply about time. It was in Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago that patriarchal dominator priest culture emerged, and we went from the lunar calendar to the solar calendar based on arbitrary division of the year into 12 months ("moon-ths"). This also represented the shift in focus from the "leftness" of feminine intuitive thought to the "rightness" of masculine rational thought. I would see (as hypothesis) the vengeful return to Uruk and Babylon as an Oedipal acting-out against the original cultures that trapped the modern mind in false time, and therefore a prophetic aspect of the "Closing of the Cycle" between now and 2012.

[Eagle Wing]

Don't forget that before the rise of patriarchal domination, Mesopotamia (specifically the Tigris-Euphrates valley, modern Iraq), was the early civilization of Sumer, which was still a goddess-worshipping culture. There is strong evidence that much of the astro-shamanic belief systems had their origin in this time period, particularly concerning the Moon and Venus.

There is some evidence that suggests the original impetus for patriarchal organization in this region actually came from the invading Aryans and Assyrians to the north and east, not from the people of modern day Iraq. Many have looked at Abraham, who was actually a polytheistic astrologer from the city of Ur, as the original founder of patriarchal monotheism in Mesopotamia. Which, in my estimation, would make Israel the location of the Oedipus drama, not Iraq. Also I would be much more inclined to look to Africa for the original birthplace of dominator cultures. I think this idea of a "golden age" where the entire world was governed by enilghtened women is a bit misleading. Obviously, early cultures would have had matriarchal family structures, but when it comes to the expression of male jealousy and possessiveness as repression of feminine power, I seriously doubt that this is only 5-10,000 years old, and it might be a bit narrow to think that it "originated" in Mesopotamia, just because that's where the Hebrews lived. We might as well say that ANY war is an Oedipal acting out of the drama (which I would agree with, by the way!)

On another note, I think the number 12 has unfortunately been demonized of late as being a "patriarchal" number which is a little unfair... 12 of course is a round number of symmetry and structure, and was revered as a sacred number by the Egyptians and Mayans, as well as 13. The understanding of 12 and 13, I believe, goes back into the dawn of human knowledge, and the spiritual significance of both would have been known to early daykeepers and shamans. 13 is a lunar number, while 12 is a solar number... the "silver fraction", or the number of full moons in a solar year, is a fraction in between 12 and 13. You can actually replicate this exact value by drawing a pentagram, a natural correspondence from which that symbol derives power.
The potential of that power resides not within 12 or 13 themselves, but in their union as the Sun-Earth-Moon syzygy.

[ July 01, 2005, 09:07 AM: Message edited by: Eagle Wing ]

[fitz]

[" It was in Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago that patriarchal dominator priest culture emerged"

What is a good text to get into this topic? Were there symbols that they destroyed, such as the old goddess, vulva type symbols? TIA

[fitz]

Also, anyone ever read "Zero: Biography of a Dangerous Idea"
About how the concept of zero came about during this same time period. TIA.

[daniel]

hi eagle wing,

i agree about the unfair demonization of 12 - this was a natural counteraction to recognizing the unfair demonization of 13 ,a kind of seesaw balancing in the other direction. You could sum up my criticism of Arguelles by noting that he became 13-centric, instead of realizing that the correct solution would find the integration of 12 (representing masculine rational solar "rightness") and 13 (representing feminine intuitive lunar "leftness.").

Stonehenge and Avebury were temples of solar-lunar integration - Robin Heath in his excellent Sun, Moon, and Stonehenge writes about this at length. He also notes that the 153 fishes that Christ directs his followers to pull from the sea, after his resurrection, represents a key number in calendrical calculation: the square root of 153 is 12.369 - almost the exact number of lunations in a year (12.368). The interplay between 12 and 13 is symbolically written into Christ and the 12 disciples, King Arthur and the 12 Knights of the Roundtable, Sleeping Beauty or Briar Rose (the 13th uninvited wise woman curses the kingdom), and the Mayan mythology of Quetzalcoatl (who is the 13th deity in a pantheon, and the one who leaves).

[Eagle Wing]

yeah that's right! so glad you know about Robin Heath, he's just great. Funny how the New Testament is so full of astrological references, right? i guess they were selling it to their post-Hellenistic audience. The most incredible one is probably the 144,000, as what may have only been 12 squared times 1000 to the Europeans actually meant a Baktun to the Maya.

Fitz, for a "standard" introduction to the pre-patriarchal religions of Mesopotamia, including a nice discussion of Sumer, you could do worse than checking out the first volume of Joseph Campbell's "Masks of God":Primitive Mythology.
Better than Campbell in this area, though, is Marija Gimbutas.
Her "Language of the Goddess" and "Civilization of the Goddess" were revolutionary multidisciplinary scholarship -- I think she had to invent the term "archaeomythology" to describe her work.

If you just want to do a google search, look for the myth of Inanna, the Goddess of Heaven. This story from Sumer is one of the few pre-patriarchal goddess myths of Mesopotamia that were preserved.

[ July 02, 2005, 03:45 PM: Message edited by: Eagle Wing ]

[dragonfly]

I wonder how useful it is to link the rational/solar 12 and intuitive/lunar 13 concepts with gender? After all, Lithuanian pagans like Gimbutas worshipped a feminine sun ("Saule") and a masculine moon ("Menulis").

Their earth creation myth is quite charming: Saule and Menulis were once married and gave birth to Zemyna, the earth. But Menulis fooled around with other goddesses and Saule divorced him. Their joint-custody arrangement puts Saule with Zemyna by day and Menulis by night. Saule is said to represent a mother's warmth.

[snow]

Well, I had a dream to this effect, that the conflict in Iraq was some kind of retribution for genetic engeneering, technology, elitism. I had the dream before I started reading woo woo theories to this effect, so there ya go. Whatever.

Whatever indeed. I hate the war. I hate that people are bing killed 'over there'. The stupid justification being peddled is that Americans can continue to be complacent, because the terrorists are 'over there' and and not here. That is how Bush can justify this invasion. I heard a bit of his speech and it was like fingernails on chalkboard. A CNN poll revealed that 67 percent of Americans did not want his speech on prime time. No one wants to listen to the lies.

Violence sets a chain reaction of ignorance that lasts eons. A being cant come out from the ignorance of violence until they stop in the tracks of the lakes of their tears.

[hector]

Hi Fitz, if your looking for some mythology in that region, try researching Lilith. There are many stories about her from various cultures in that region. You might find it interesting since her legend touches the masculine, feminine aspect of our existence

[Eagle Wing]

Dragonfly --
I agree. That myth from LIthuania is very interesting. I believe there's some Native Americans who also see the Sun as Goddess and the Moon as God -- they explained women's cycles by calling the Moon their "First Husband". I forget which tribe this was.

[dragonfly]

There's also Amaterasu, the sun goddess who's a central figure in Shinto mythology.

[paul]

th

Yeah, some interesting paralels here

i read some where, maybe david icke (sorry, daniel) that the 1st thing ancient babylonians did when laying siege to a city was demolish these twin pillars (capstones/towers?) that were positioned outside every cities gates

... a kind of declaration of war...

As for the moment...more concerned about what the descision to hold the 2012 (auspicious date) olympics in babylon-don actually means...

-------------------------------------------------------------------- give and thou shall receive

[Eagle Wing]

i'll bet that lots of people in London are not too happy about it today.

[fitz]

Especially after today's events. 7/7/7

[nanouk]

hmm yes, 7/7/7 struck me too yesterday...
there seem to be no pardon to anyone, anywhere.

[ July 08, 2005, 12:55 AM: Message edited by: nanouk ]

[Lowlight]

777? am i missing something? didnt the bombing happen on 07/07/05? i must be missing something...

[okster]

2005 2+5=7

[Rob P]

and ...wait for it....
what's 9 minus 1 minus 1 ????
i see a pattern of the law of seven
emerging...or not!
hmmm
seeya
r o b

[Paravati]

What is the law of seven?

[daniel]

hi paravati,

The "law of seven" proposed by many occultists takes note that there seems to be a seven-stage process of development and unfoldment that appears in a lot of natural systems (7 colors of the rainbow, 7 notes of the diatonic scale). Rudolf Steiner saw the Earth passing through seven "incarnations," each of those incarnations made up of seven distinct phases, and each of those ages made up of seven smaller phases.

A good account of the law of seven is given in In Search of the Miraculous, Ouspensky's work on Gurdjieff, who also defined it as the law of octaves. The law is demonstrated in the Enneagram, a symbol that governs the evolutionary pattern on all levels. A great exegesis of this is A E Blake's The Intelligent Enneagram. There are two points where the evolutionary process on any scale requires "shocks from outside," that change the vibration or pitch of the process taking place. This is clear in the musical scale, where there are two points in which the mathematical progression of the notes is shifted. Gurdjieff thought it was also the key to any development of consciousness, on an individual, societal, or global level. You could, for instance, in regards to the US, see Bush's election in 2000 as the first note in a new octave, then 9-11 as a "shock from outside" that changed the tone. I would say we are still awaiting the second shock.

[daniel]

hi paravati,

The "law of seven" proposed by many occultists takes note that there seems to be a seven-stage process of development and unfoldment that appears in a lot of natural systems (7 colors of the rainbow, 7 notes of the diatonic scale). Rudolf Steiner saw the Earth passing through seven "incarnations," each of those incarnations made up of seven distinct phases, and each of those ages made up of seven smaller phases.

A good account of the law of seven is given in In Search of the Miraculous, Ouspensky's work on Gurdjieff, who also defined it as the law of octaves. The law is demonstrated in the Enneagram, a symbol that governs the evolutionary pattern on all levels. A great exegesis of this is A E Blake's The Intelligent Enneagram. There are two points where the evolutionary process on any scale requires "shocks from outside," that change the vibration or pitch of the process taking place. This is clear in the musical scale, where there are two points in which the mathematical progression of the notes is shifted. Gurdjieff thought it was also the key to any development of consciousness, on an individual, societal, or global level. You could, for instance, in regards to the US, see Bush's election in 2000 as the first note in a new octave, then 9-11 as a "shock from outside" that changed the tone. I would say we are still awaiting the second shock.

[dragonfly]

Seven is a symbol of the Gnostic Sophia, among other things (http://arc-akashicrecords.org/cgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?tpc=9&post=157):

There are a number of reasons we use the seven pointed star. I am going to quote from our report about integrety and standards of our organization. "In the gematria, which is the profound decodification of the Hebrew alphabet through numbers in the mystic Kabbalah "7" is miracles perceived through the natural order. In medieval magic, seven was the most popular number of mystic power after the three. It was often associated with the heavenly Seven Sisters, guardians of the axis mundi (the Pole or Axis of the World); they were either the seven bright stars of the pole-encircling Ursa Major, or the Pleiades, whose name is Greek for "flock of doves." Seven legendary priestesses bearing this name were said to have founded major oracle-shrines in the ancient world. In the Middle East, they were the Seven Pillars of Wisdom. In Southeast Asia, they were the Krittika, or Seven Mothers of the World. Egyptians called them the Seven Hathors, or the "seven beings who make decrees," whom the dead would meet on their journey through the seven spheres of the afterlife. Arabians called them the elder Seven Sages...In Gnostic lore, the seven pillars were woman-shaped carytids associated with shrines of Sophia mother of wisdom. These, too were "seven sisters."...the Star of the Seven Sisters was popularly used as a defense against outsiders' penetration of one's secrets." We also correlate seven emotional attributes from Kabbalah: Loving kindness and benevolence; Inner strength and awe; Beauty and harmony; Endurance and fortitude; Humility and splendor; Bonding and foundation; Nobility and leadership which can be correlated to masculine counterparts balancing the seven Priestesses mentioned above. ... Ellena (Chava Leah)

[Eagle Wing]

more 7s --

the 7 visible celestial bodies (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) were reckoned an important symbol of manifestation in ancient cultures. The seven days of the week are named after them. This might also be the origin of the "seven spheres of the afterlife" mentioned by dragonfly above(?)
It was certainly believed both in western occult circles and in India that the soul passed through these 7 spheres on the way IN towards being born.

In a neolithic Sumerian myth, Inanna, queen of Heaven, must descend through 7 gates on her path to the Underworld.
These gates can be likened to the descent/ascent of energy through the 7 chakras (energy centers) of the body.

the simplest return cycle for Mercury is 7 years (that is, when both Mercury and the Sun return to approximately the same spots in the sky on the same day of the year, recapitulating their relationship of phases). Because Mercury is associated with the mind and reasoning, this is why 7 years old was considered by many (including Steiner) to be the "age of reason".

Also, one quarter of a Saturn cycle is 7 years. Saturn is associated with all condensation of form, all material manifestation, so this quarter cycle can be seen as a correspondence to things like the regeneration cycle of the cells of the body (7 years) or the life cycles of many insects (locusts) etc.

[ July 10, 2005, 08:55 AM: Message edited by: Eagle Wing ]

[dragonfly]

More numerology of terror from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid_bombing): The 3/11/2004 Madrid bombings came 912 days after the 9/11/2001 attacks. That means there were 911 days between the two events. And the 10/12/2002 Bali bombing came one year, one month and one day after 9/11.

[dragonfly]

I also found some interesting information on the repeated appearance of 11 -- another magickal mystical number -- around 9/11 here (http://n.w.o.watch.tripod.com/id60.html). For example:

The date of the attack:** 9/11 -* 9 + 1 + 1 = 11.
September 11th is the 254th day of the* year:** 2 + 5 + 4 = 11.
After September 11th there are 111 days left to the end of the year.
New York City - 11 Letters
The first plane to hit the towers was American Airlines Flight 11.
The Flight 11 call letters were AA11: A=1, A=1, AA=11.
Four of the hijackers on flight AA11 have the initials A. A. for their names: AA=11.
The fifth AA11 hijacker was the pilot, Mohamed Atta, 11 letters, and AA in last name.
Flight AA11 had 92 people on board - 9 + 2 =* 11.
Flight AA11 had 11 crew members - 2 pilots and 9 flight attendants.
Manhattan Island was discovered on Sept. 11, 1609 by Henry Hudson -11 letters.
World Trade Center Towers is 22 letters - 2 x 11 =22.
The WTC Twin Towers - standing side by side, look like the number 11.
The WTC Towers are each 110-storeys high.
The first WTC tower hit (North Tower) collapses at 10:28 A.M. -1+2+8=11.
The 1st Fire Unit to arrive to the WTC towers was FDNY Unit 1. Unit 1 lost 11 firemen.
The WTC towers collapsed to a height of 11 stories.
After 99 days of burning, NYC declares the WTC fires are extinguished - 9 x 11 = 99.
On September 7, 2002, NYC Medical Examiners announced the revised official
death toll from the World Trade Center attacks was 2,801 - (2+8+0+1 = 11).
The Pentagon - 11 letters
The plane that hit the Pentagon was United Airlines Flight 77 -11 x 7 =77.
Flight 77 - 65 on board - 6 + 5 =* 11.
On 9/11/2002, the winning numbers in the NY lottery were 9-1-1.

[fitz]

Daniel,

Feels like the event in London on 7/7/2005 (7) was a signal that we are now at the end of third 7 cycle and are now to ramp up into the closing 7 year cycle culminating 7 years from now in 2012. Many remote viewers have predicted that the time of financial chaos begins this fall. Even the Bank of England announced today that it will cut interest rates due to predictions of the economic dislocation being caused, already, by the bombings. With London being the true economic center of the world, it would be natural to have that bell rung there. Going to be an interesting ride!

[daniel]

hey dragonfly,

have you read Rev11 lately?

[Paravati]

Very interesting, regarding 7 and 11.

Do the numbers 8, 23, 14, or 437 mean anything to any of you?

[dragonfly]

Originally posted by daniel:
have you read Rev11 lately?I hadn't -- but I see it's the revelation of the "two candlesticks" (Twin Towers/11?):

Revelation 11

The Fate of the Two Witnesses

11:1 Then a measuring rod like a staff was given to me, and I was told, “Get up and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and the ones who worship there.

11:2 But do not measure the outer courtyard of the temple; leave it out, because it has been given to the Gentiles, and they will trample on the holy city for forty-two months.

11:3 And I will grant my two witnesses authority to prophesy for 1,260 days, dressed in sackcloth.

11:4 (These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth.)

11:5 If anyone wants to harm them, fire comes out of their mouths and completely consumes their enemies. If anyone wants to harm them, they must be killed this way.

11:6 These two have the power to close up the sky so that it does not rain during the time they are prophesying. They have power to turn the waters to blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague whenever they want.

11:7 When they have completed their testimony, the beast that comes up from the abyss will make war on them and conquer them and kill them.

11:8 Their corpses will lie in the street of the great city that is symbolically called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was also crucified.

11:9 For three and a half days those from every people, tribe, nation, and language will look at their corpses, because they will not permit them to be placed in a tomb.

11:10 And those who live on the earth will rejoice over them and celebrate, even sending gifts to each other, because these two prophets had tormented those who live on the earth.

11:11 But after three and a half days a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and tremendous fear seized those who were watching them.

11:12 Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them: “Come up here!” So the two prophets went up to heaven in a cloud while their enemies stared at them.

11:13 Just then a major earthquake took place and a tenth of the city collapsed; seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven.

11:14 The second woe has come and gone; the third is coming quickly.

The Seventh Trumpet

11:15 Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven saying: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever.”

11:16 Then the twenty-four elders who are seated on their thrones before God threw themselves down with their faces to the ground and worshiped God 11:17 with these words: “We give you thanks, Lord God, the All-Powerful, the one who is and who was, because you have taken your great power and begun to reign.

11:18 The nations were enraged, but your wrath has come, and the time has come for the dead to be judged, and the time has come to give to your servants, the prophets, their reward, as well as to the saints and to those who revere your name, both small and great, and the time has come to destroy those who destroy the earth.”

11:19 Then the temple of God in heaven was opened and the ark of his covenant was visible within his temple. And there were flashes of lightning, roaring, crashes of thunder, an earthquake, and a great hailstorm.

[fitz]

To keep this interesting number game going, there are 2725 days between 7/7/05 and 12/22/2012. 2+7+2+5=16=1+6=7

[JCCamp007]

You bring forth a new notion of number that is akin to the concept of 0.
That other number is of course 9.The concept can be titled a number that is,but is not.
In numerology- 1367245542781- you can quickly see the number is 1 by crossing out everything that adds up to 9 because the number 9 has no bearing on the final total,unless it is of course 9.

[ July 13, 2005, 04:08 PM: Message edited by: JCCamp007 ]

[Eagle Wing]

JC - have you checked out Buckminster Fuller? The last chapter of his Synergetics has a great treatise on numerology, i think you'd dig it.

[okster]

I saw Fuller speak at the University of Oklahoma in about 1975. I don't really remember it, except that I was in awe and he seemed like a saint. I have actually never been able to begin to read his books. Anyway, I thought I might check and see if the Synergetics book might happen to be online, as some of his stuff is. So I went to http://www.bfi.org (Buckminster Fuller Institute) and followed the link to the book. Several links later and here is the outline to the last chapter, Numerology:

http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s12/toc12.html

looks like its probably all way over my head.....

[okster]

Wow, took a peek and there is certainly some interesting stuff there. Check this:
(why 7, 11, 13 are "bad luck" numbers)

1230.00 Scheherazade Numbers
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1230.10 Prime-Number Accommodation: Integration of Seven: The Babylonians did not accommodate a prime number like 7 in their mathematics. Plato had apparently been excited by this deficiency, so he multiplied 360 by 7 and obtained 2,520. And then, seeing that there were always positives and negatives, he multiplied 2,520 by 2 and obtained 5,040. Plato apparently intuited the significance of the number 5,040, but he did not say why he did. I am sure he was trying to integrate 7 to evolve a comprehensively rational circular dividend.
1230.11 H2O is a simple low number. As both chemistry and quantum physics show, nature does all her associating and disassociating in whole rational numbers. Humans accommodated the primes 1, 2, 3, and 5 in the decimal and duodecimal systems. But they left out 7. After 7, the next two primes are 11 and 13 . Humans' superstition considers the numbers 7, 11, and 13 to be bad luck. In playing dice, 7 and 11 are "crapping" or drop-out numbers. And 13 is awful. But so long as the comprehensive cyclic dividend fails to contain prime numbers which may occur in the data to be coped with, irrational numbers will build up or erode the processing numbers to produce irrational, ergo unnatural, results. We must therefore realize that the tables of the trigonometric functions include the first 15 primes 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23,29,31,41,43.
1230.12 We know 7 × 11 is 77. If we multiply 77 by 13, we get 1,001. Were there not 1,001 Tales of the Arabian Nights? We find these numbers always involved with the mystical. The number 1,001 majors in the name of the storytelling done by Scheherazade to postpone her death in the Thousand and One Nights. The number 1,001 is a binomial reflection pattern: one, zero, zero, one.
1230.20 SSRCD Numbers: If we multiply the first four primes, we get 30. If we multiply 30 times 7, 11, and 13, we have 30 × 1,001 or 30,030, and we have used the first seven primes.
1230.21 We can be intuitive about the eighth prime since the octave seems to be so important. The eighth prime is 17, and if we multiply 30,030 by 17, we arrive at a fantastically simple number: 510,510. This is what I call an SSRCD Number, which stands for Scheherazade Sublimely Rememberable Comprehensive Dividend. As an example we can readily remember the first eight primes factorial__510,510! (Factorial means successively multiplied by themselves, ergo 1 × 2 × 3 × 5 × 7 × 11 × 13 × 17= 510,510.)
1230.30 Origin of Scheherazade Myth: I think the Arabian priest-mathematicians and their Indian Ocean navigator ancestors knew that the binomial effect of 1,001 upon the first four prime numbers 1, 2, 3, and 5 did indeed provide comprehensive dividend accommodation of all the permutative possibilities of all the ''story-telling-taling-tallying," or computational systems of the octave system of integers.
1230.31 The function of the grand vizier to the ruler was that of mathematical wizard, the wiz of wiz-dom; and the wiz-ard kept secret to himself the mathematical navigational ability to go to faraway strange places where he alone knew there existed physical resources different from any of those occurring ''at home," then voyaging to places that only the navigator-priest knew how to reach, he was able to bring back guaranteed strange objects that were exhibited by the ruler to his people as miracles obviously producible only by the ruler who secretly and carefully guarded his vizier's miraculous power of wiz-dom.
1230.32 To guarantee their own security and advantage, the Mesopotamian mathematicians, who were the overland-and-overseas navigator-priests, deliberately hid their knowledge, their mathematical tools and operational principles such as the mathematical significance of 7 × 11 × 13 = 1,001 from both their rulers and the people. They used psychology as well as outright lies, combining the bad-luck myth of the three prime integers with the mysterious inclusiveness of the Thousand and One Nights. The priests warned that bad luck would befall anyone caught using 7s, 11s, or 13s.
1230.33 Some calculation could only be done by the abacus or by positioning numbers. With almost no one other than the high priests able to do any calculation, there was not much chance that anyone would discover that the product of 7, 11, and 13 is 001, but "just in case," they developed the diverting myth of Scheherazade and her postponement of execution by her Thousand and One Nights.