Fake Commenters Must Die!, Versace's Eros Finally Gets It!, the Sefer Yehzirah and Daybooks

OMG, I am so tired of the never-ending fake comments posted here by xanax and viagra pitchmen ... you don’t see them because I have to check the comments first before publishing them ... trust me, I have no problems with legitimate comments, even if the legitimate comments are, “You’re boring as shit!”, "[bleep bleep] and die!", or "I'm young, studly and rich; please marry me!" as long as there aren’t ads for viagra and penis enlargement attached to them.  I go in and delete the hackers’ nonsense every single day ... and I am so tired of deleting them!  This morning I deleted about 10 of them.  Don’t these fools ever give up?

And yes, that last one was wishful thinking.

Meanwhile #1.  Ahhh ...  enjoying a Cosmopolitan martini, which makes me feel so ... cosmopolitan!  Meanwhile #2:  we are having about 8 inches of snowfall every three days ... will I ever manage to dig myself out before spring?

Speaking of my poor, snow-covered car; our second joint spell worked too – the muffler issue was a flange that had rotted away; a muffler shop should be able to fix it for very little $$$, thank goodness.  Have an appointment in Tewksbury on Monday ... assuming I can dig myself out, that is.

Found a wizard’s forum, which is actually rather interesting ... have been reading the Goetia posts with interest.  Also located a Facebook page that posts regular links to archeological discoveries in the Iran/Iraq area ... home of Sumer, of course ... so at least there are some people out there who aren’t swishing and flicking – and then shrieking “Real witches NEVER ... (fill in the blank)!!” with pursed lips, when the vast majority of them don’t know any.  Such a relief.

So this was my next question.  I’ve been reading the Kaballic translation Sefer Yetzirah:  The Book of Creation (Aryeh Kaplan, 1997, Revised Edition, Weiser Books).  I hadn’t planned to start reading that just yet, but became engrossed in the Introduction.  Sat and read the Introduction while waiting for my car to be examined.  I was particularly interested in the authorship and history of the text, to wit:

“The earliest source to which Sefer Yetzirah is attributed is the Patriarch Abraham.”  (page xii).

By which they don’t mean that Abraham sat down and scribbled the work onto the nearest scroll; they meant that these were his teachings that were recorded by others.  The earliest assignment of the author dates back to the 10th century, when a scholar jotted down, “The ancients say that Abraham wrote it.”  Who exactly those “ancients” were is not clarified.

However, my reaction was still, “Say what?”

This was my issue with that authorship:  Abraham was a Sumerian; and not only Sumerian, the son of a very powerful (and pagan) temple priest/magus.  And supposedly, Abraham was a very wealthy, influential Sumerian as well in his own right ... influential being an understatement, because it was his household god  - yeah, that little clay statue nailed above his lintel to protect his home - that turned into the deity of the judeo-christian-islamic religions, and became known as “the god of Abraham”.

Rather than unpack a Sumerian history book (really!  I do have them!), I’ll just quote from Wikipedia on the deities of Sumer:

“Sumerians believed in an anthropomorphic polytheism, or the belief in many gods in human form. There was no common set of gods; each city-state had its own patrons, temples, and priest-kings, however they were not exclusive. The gods of one city were often acknowledged elsewhere. Sumerian speakers were among the earliest people to record their beliefs in writing, and were a major inspiration later Mesopotamian mythology, religion, and astrology.

The Sumerians worshiped:

    An as the full-time god equivalent to heaven; indeed, the word an in Sumerian means sky and his consort Ki, means earth.
    Enki in the south at the temple in Eridu. Enki was the god of beneficence, ruler of the freshwater depths beneath the earth, a healer and friend to humanity who in Sumerian myth was thought to have given humans the arts and sciences, the industries and manners of civilization; the first law-book was considered his creation,
    Enlil, lord of the ghost-land, in Nippur. He gave mankind the spells and incantations that the spirits of good or evil must obey,
    Inanna, the deification of Venus, the morning (eastern) and evening (western) star, at the temple (shared with An) at Uruk.
    The sun-god Utu at Larsa in the south and Sippar in the north,
    The moon god Sin at Ur.”

So which one was Abraham’s household god?  An?  Enlil, since Abraham is credited with practicing the highly mystical Sefer Yetzirah?  My favorite, Enki?  Which one of these became the JCI (judeo-christian-islamic) deity, Yahweh/Allah?  Definitely not Inanna, the Abrahamic tribe turned her into a harlot, even though she most assuredly wasn’t.  Probably not Utu or Sin, even though Abraham came from Ur (and no, the word “sin” did not come from the moon god; the word “sin” itself is Proto-Germanic.)  Might have been a lesser one, not listed here.

Anyway – even at that early stage – the kabbalah of the Sefer Yetzirah was still a mystical, magical oral teaching, which Abraham did not invent.  We know this because practicing the magick of the Kabbalah was considered too sacrilegious to practice alone; you had to perform the rites with another person or the gods would not look kindly on you for trying to usurp their skills and “play god” all by yourself.  According to those same “ancients”, Abraham practiced the magick with Noah’s son, Shem.  (I would really like to know who these “ancients” were, if they actually existed!  Kaplan does not identify them.)

In other words, this was something they both had to study FIRST, become proficient at, and then perform.  It had to have pre-dated both of them.  And Abraham was a Sumerian.

So where did it originate?

Kaplan hints at rituals from the near and far east carried by traders and travelers ... possibly from ancient Egypt; materials found at their sites indicated trading routes to Africa.  Archeologists just recently (as in last month) began a major excavation at Tell Khaiber in Iraq; they have a Facebook page, too (not the same one as mentioned above) so I’m following their work with interest.

Now – I do understand the Kaballah being connected with judaism because it passed through Abraham, and because so many jewish scholars studied the Kaballah and attached the Hebrew alphabet to it.  The vast majority of commentaries are jewish.  BUT, the Hebrew alphabet came from the Phoenician.  And if the Kaballah predates the patriarch of judaism, where DID it originate?  Which alphabet was connected with it?

For answers to these and all other questions ... we should all fervently hope that this book answers all of them.  I’ll keep reading.

Meanwhile, back to my Daybook.  The Pagan Book of Days is completely empty for today.  The Witch’s Book of Days announces, “Victoria’s Day promotes promotions, leadership opportunities and success!” without once telling you what “Victoria’s Day” actually was.  Only one I can find is celebrated in May, in Canada.  Grrrr.  Between the Lights waxes poetic about serving others.  The Real Witches Year has a post-Valentine’s Day “Drawing partners closer together” ritual.  Which would be lovely if I actually had one.  Interestingly enough, though, the entry for the 14th, “Eros” is actually interesting, if not a validation of what I posted well over a year ago about the infantilization of Eros in the Common Era.  (Addendum:  my observation in that entry that Aphrodite was his mother was not true of these earlier incarnations of Eros):

“According to Herodotus in his Theogony, Eros was one of the primeval gods who, along with Chaos and Gaia (Earth), were responsible for the Creation.”  (Mark Cartwright, 06 May 2013, http://www.ancient.eu.com/Eros/)

“They said that in the beginning the whole world was all one mass of stone, and there was no earth or sky or sea. Then Eros, or Love, was the only living thing; and just as the mother-hen warms her eggs till the little chicks peep out, so the Greeks said Love brooded over the world until living things appeared, and the world began to take shape.”
http://www.heritage-history.com/?c=read&author=harding&book=greek&story=eros

“According to Hesiod (c. 700 BC), one of the most ancient of all Greek sources, Eros was a primordial god, that is, he had no parents. He was the fourth god to come into existence, coming after Chaos, Gaia (the Earth), and Tartarus (the Abyss or the Underworld).” (Wikipedia)

This almost sounds like the Sumerian creation myth as well – their Ea/Enki Tiamat/Chaos, for example.

As I was hunting around for a graphic of the REAL Eros, and not those silly sanitized infants courtesy of the Common Era and their terror of sex ... I ran across a wonderful advertisement for the Versace male cologne, Eros.  Now, far be it from me to support the usual advertising hoo-ha on this blog, but this made me stop and take notice.  You can look at the images of the older Eros on Greek vases all day, but even they (and they're pretty accurate as far as his age and masculinity goes) don't do justice to the guy.  Nothing like bringing Eros up to the present and our latter day image of male beauty.  Maybe not my personal one; I'm the one drooling over Piero Barone.  But this wonderful commercial, with all of its steaming imagery, was the closest thing to Eros that I've seen in a while.  Featuring the rather strikingly tanned, oiled and buffed Brian Shimansky as the Greek god in question (minus the wings, but you get a glimpse of them as he removes his cape after climbing the pedestal) ... now THIS is Eros!  Enjoy:

http://www.essential-homme.com/2013/07/10/brian-shimansky-in-versace-eros-new-fragrance-campaign/

I wonder what it smells like?  Has anyone whiffed this cologne?

More on "Man-Beast Amulets"

Continuing from my previous entry on “Man-Beast amulets”:  I doubt very much that the Sumerians would have depicted Inanna using amulets with a Sphinx on it – I am not sure of the Sumerian-Egyptian comparative timelines to know far apart the Sphinx and the recorded love story in Sumerian hieroglyphics are – or even if they ARE “far apart”.

However, since I have no idea what Inanna’s amulets looked like, if I need to make a good faith effort to design a contemporary amulet that still dives deeply into history, you can’t do better than the Sphinx.  Particularly as there are so many magickal correspondences attached to the Sphinx.

“Eliphas Levi here offers the Four Powers as the words of the Magus and casually links them with the Sphinx. He goes on in the same chapter to link the Four Powers of the Sphinx with the four Elements and the four Kerubic Signs of the zodiac:

“You are called to be king of air, water, earth and fire; but to reign over these four living creatures of symbolism, it is necessary to conquer and enchain them. He who aspires to be a sage and to know the Great Enigma of Nature must be the heir and despoiler of the sphinx: his the human head, in order to possess speech; his the eagle’s wings, in order to scale the heights; his the bull’s flanks, in order to furrow the depths; his the lion’s talons, to make a way on the right and the left, before and behind.”
Source:  http://hermetic.com/osiris/onthepowersofthesphinx1.htm

Okay, so I missed the eagle in my last entry.  Human, eagle, lion, bull.  There’s a “Man-Beast” if I ever saw one!  I will say that Levi seems a tad “patriarchal” in this paragraph, enthusing about “conquering” and “enchaining” things.  I’d rather seduce things, or maybe that’s just me.

I also should have added an explanation of that “cylinder seal” she held in her hand:

“A cylinder seal is a small round cylinder, typically about one inch in length, engraved with written characters or figurative scenes or both, used in ancient times to roll an impression onto a two-dimensional surface, generally wet clay. Cylinder seals were invented around 3500 BC in the Near East, at the contemporary sites of Susa in south-western Iran and Uruk in southern Mesopotamia. They are linked to the invention of the latter’s cuneiform writing on clay tablets.  They were used as an administrative tool, a form of signature, as well as jewelry and as magical amulets; later versions would employ notations with Mesopotamian cuneiform. In later periods, they were used to notarize or attest to multiple impressions of clay documents. Graves and other sites housing precious items such as gold, silver, beads, and gemstones often included one or two cylinder seals, as honorific grave goods.”

Now here is an interesting coincidence.  The ancient city of Susa, which “appears in the very earliest Sumerian records”, is  “one of the places obedient to Inanna, patron deity of Uruk, in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta .” (Wikipedia)  Susa is located in present day Iran.  An ancient cylinder seal was unearthed in Susa.  In an article comparing mankind’s search for the elixir of life to the history of dragon mythology and folklore (“the most venerable symbol employed in ornamental art and the favorite and most highly decorative motif in artistic design"), author G. Elliott Smith captured early depictions of dragons on cylinders found in Susa (founded in 4200 BCE), with many similarities to the Great Sphinx which is commonly believed to have been constructed later, 2558–2532 BCE.  Looking at the general timeline:

4200 BCE: Susa is founded in western Persia
4700-2900 BCE dragon motifs found along the Yellow River in China from this period
3000 BCE - Kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt unite. Successive dynasties witness flourishing trade, prosperity and the development of great cultural traditions. Writing, including hieroglyphics, is used as an instrument of state.
2558–2532 BCE - Construction of The Great Sphinx
2500 BCE - Construction of the pyramids
2018 BCE - the Sumerian empire disintegrates

... it appears that, of the two/three empires,  the dragon motif originated first in Sumer or China and migrated to Egypt.  I suspect Sumer because the components of the Sphinx seem more closely connected to Sumerian origins than Chinese, and because Iran is closer to Egypt than is China.  (However, the Chinese have traditionally been known as seafarers so I wouldn’t completely disregard them, either).

However, Elliott draws a fascinating line between the earliest Sumerian dragon and the Egyptian Sphinx by pointing out that the Sumerian consisted of Sekhmet (the lioness), Horus (the eagle or falcon) and Osiris (human attributes and water controlling powers) – which also brings us back to the Sphinx which was believed to be near water at the time it was constructed.

Smith, G. Elliot, M.A., M.D., FRS.  Dragons and Rain Gods,  “Bulletin of the John Rylands Library”, Volume 5, The University Press, Manchester; Longmans, Greene and Company, London; August 1918 – July 1920, p. 317-380.

And yes, on the right is the same dragon of chaos you saw battling Marduk in this blog. 

THE ultimate point being that I suspect an amulet of the Sphinx is a perfect “Man-Beast” amulet to celebrate Inanna’s sacred marriage to Dumuzi.