We are on a WAR! path.

Hi Friends and Followers,

With my country’s current regime this week pulling out of the INF Missile Treaty with Russia and also acknowledging we have been in an unrecognized war since 1941, it’s time to have a serious talk about war, and religion. This is why I am taking a bold step and releasing to you a sneak peak excerpt from my next book, “Being Truth’s Servant” coming out next month. This chapter, titled “Demonology” is meant to help illuminate the multi-millennia religious saga behind the deep state global affairs. It is the result of my investigation the past year into the story of religions, and my mild interest before that. I expect 99% of readers to be uncomfortable with the truths within, so you may want to refer back to my first ever youtube video titled, “The Case For Tough Love.” Don’t forget to self-care as you read and research, and I suggest you also seek secondary advice along the way. Im no expert in theology, so Im going to have some things wrong. But beware that so-called experts will claim I have things wrong that I indeed do not, so you’ll have to make your mind up for yourself. I welcome comments and questions at whoismarkdenome@gmail.com. Peace, Salaam, Shalom!

================”Demonology”=================

When we think of demons, most of us picture evil-looking horned creatures. This image that comes to our mind is the product of a multi-millennia smear campaign that plays on our fears of ferocious beasts, snakes, and even dragons, whereas true demons are internal abstractions. All creatures have within us the power for evil and the power for good. The real demons have been within us, in our commitment to investigate truth and stand courageously for it. Over time, people have done good deeds for evil, and people have done evil deeds for good. In the epic war over hearts and minds, both sides see themselves as on the side of good, and yet both sides have difficulty seeing when their actions do not align with good. On the side of good of course, is thoughts and actions that promote Trust, Unity, Respect, and Justice for all; while on the side of evil are thoughts and actions that incite mistrust, division, oppression, and injustice. It’s really a simple test to ask yourself if your idea or action falls on one side or the other, yet we have lost touch with this habit. It’s the mission I’ve been on as I write this book, and it’s the mission I ask everyone to take up as they read or listen.  

The knowledge of true good and evil is out there and getting more obvious, with more and more people screaming it from social media and from the rooftops, so this makes it ever more clear that evil is a result of poor impulse control, plain and simple. Our natural impulses are to mistrust, divine, violate, and oppress. Our tendencies are toward materialism, idolatry, hierarchy, and patriarchy, and they are the opposite of what pleases the divine. There is not-knowing-what-is-evil, and then there is knowing-and-still-letting-it-happen for personal gain evil. We must overcome both.

Chapter 1 has highlighted my religious skepticism growing up, chapter 2 summarizes my analysis of comparative religious concepts, chapter 3 describes the deception of the christian church, chapter 4 suggests a creation story counter to that offered by the major religions, and now chapter 5 depicts the dubious development over several millennia of religions as campaigns for the hearts and minds of people who are effectively enslaved. After articulating that, I provide a treatise on war as it relates to religion.

I believe coming to this understanding requires someone suspicious of religion to examine each carefully and bring light out of such chaos. It requires someone with appreciation for other cultures to study such beliefs so thoroughly, and it requires someone with demonstrable fortitude to face the perpetual suffering and the darkest aspects of humanity. With this book, I give you my best effort to be those things.

EARLY POLYTHEISM

Perhaps the first recorded references to good and evil come from the Egyptian judgment by the goddess Ma’at and then the weighing of the heart of the dead. The consort of Ma’at was a being known as Thoth, who was the scribe and scientist for Ma’at during the old kingdom of Egypt. While archeological findings suggest the early civilizations of the Arabian Peninsula worshiped many male gods like Dushara and Habul, the chief deities of some of the early Arabians were also female – the goddesses Manat, al-Lat, and al-Uzza. It is recorded that followers would travel far to a giant stone cube to seek the advice of the oracle Al-Uzza, until the lands were conquered by Rome in 32BCE and the temple of Al-Uzza destroyed in year 630.

The competing ideas of the time referred an all-male trinity of gods, and held that Ptahil, or Ptah (based on the ideas of Thoth), was the lowest of a group of three divinities, with the other two being Yushamin (a.k.a. Joshamin) and Abathur. Abathur's demiurgic role consisted of his sitting in judgment upon the souls of mortals. The role of Yushamin, the senior being, is that he wanted to create a world of his own, and he became what they call the Lord of Darkness, who was severely punished by the King of Light. Not only were females not included in this trinity, the main defender of the dark world in this set of beliefs is an evil female ruler known as Ruha, and her giant monster called Ur. Sometime during or even before the eighteenth dynasty, the temple of Ma’at was conquered and converted to worship the male Thoth.

Much later, with the 18th dynasty though, Khamose rose to pharaoh in upper Egypt and made his brother Ahmose prophet. Ahmose, perhaps you might know him as Aaron, argued for worship of a trinity of Amun, Mut, and Khonsu, which did at least include a motherly female deity, even if not the original goddesses. The prophet was able to unite upper and lower Egypt and became pharaoh, a position that transitioned to his son Amenhotep, which means “Amun is satisfied,” and then onto Thutmose, Thutmose II, Hatshepsut, and onward in a period whereby both a male and female deity was worshipped, even if their were merely the deified image of the pharaoh and his wife. This equity ended when Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten and ruled from a different city. He may have even been cast out of Egypt in 1335BCE. In 1319BCE though, a rebellion based out of Herakleopolis resulted in Horembheb becoming pharaoh, after the execution of the young Tutankhamun. By the end of the 25th dynasty, in 653BCE, the inhabitants of Egypt were worshipping the male demiurge Ptah again.

The migration of the triple male divinity into the Hindu Trimurti of three male gods, shows the influence the invading Arabians had not just on Egypt, but on the Hindu religion. Through trade, the people of India at the time had already been exposed to the teachings of the three Arabian goddesses Manat, al-Lat, and al-Uzza, in addition to a fourth more domestic messenger called Sana, which represent the Four Kumaras in Hinduism. Then when the male-loving Arabians arrived, they merely explained that the four Kumaras were the creations of the three male deities. The Hindu principle of the peaceful mindset of moksha was well established before this time, and the Hindis believe all beings could achieve it. This is why the Hindus still believe in millions of gods, one for each family, and only in times of severe distress follow another god. These practices clearly had an influence on other parts of the world, as the Hindu symbol for purity, the lotus flower, became associated with the Greek goddess Persephone before 600BCE, commemorated by the Phrasiklaeia Kore statues that also evokes the old Egyptian goddess Ishtar, who predated even Ma’at.

ZOROASTRIANISM

During these times, worship of the goddess Ishtar was in stark contrast to the worship of war, or fire, called Atar. Atar resonated more with those who resented what was foreign and lived a harder life as nomads through terrain without resources for bronze weaponry and other advancements common to those groups who embraced the cooperation of civilizations. In roughly 3500ya, a prophet arose by the name Zarathustra, whose name means “shepherd of camels” who was probably an ancestor of the Edomites, and a descendant of the Babylonian Marduk. Zarathustra called on the peoples of Mesopotamia to reject aestheticism, and created an army of followers from those who resented the riches and beautiful females that seems to surround the rulers who lived in perceived comfort. As a prophet, he was known as Zoroastor, and spread his motto of “Humata, Hukhta, Huvarshta,” means “good thoughts, good words, good deeds.” However what was considered good was seen as whatever brought security from ones enemies, so basically war and ultimately global domination. Most of the religious edicts in Zoroastrianism were focused on motivating soldiers to fight for him, offering the reward that if his followers do the fight thing, I mean ‘right’ thing, all kinds of beneficial things will come to them. This was how Zoroaster twisted the logic of domination and war as righteous, instead of cooperation and common good.

Zoroaster also drummed up a sense of collective pride that he used to unite his followers against his enemies, who were known to honor the divine feminine along side the masculine. According to the Sermon of Zostrianos in the Gnostic Bible, the prophet warned, “great is the punishment of the unconvinced; many fetters and punishers are around you.” The same scripture adds that among the warnings of Zoroaster are that those who do not fight with him will suffer troubled seas, thunder, stars not aligning, and the sun and moon darkening due to the wrath of the female god. The same scripture reports that this prophet said, “Do not wash yourselves with death nor rely on those who are inferior as if they are superior. Flee from the madness and the fetter of femaleness and choose the salvation of maleness.” The Book of Seth from the same time period refers to the goddess Sophia as a whore and says “Do not become female, lest you give birth to evil and its brothers: jealousy and division, anger and wrath, fear and a divided heart, and empty, nonexistent desire.” Even though the scripture is clearly not written by the biblical Seth, but by someone later suggesting a view of how biblical Seth might have seen the world, it is revealing about Zoroaster.

This is the same book that refers to “me alone who am perfect,” and Zoroaster seems to have much to say about perfection. In the Gospel of Truth within the Gnostic Bible, which gives the allegory of people being compared to dishes, suggesting that an argument of the time suggesting that people were like dishes that if cracked or broken during a move should be cast away, and the people should rejoice at dishes that were perfect. Zoroaster appealed to the fear within his people, and in spreading a false narrative of superiority for resisting temptations and fleeing what was foreign. He spread the idea that non-belief would devour the flesh, at a time when leprosy and other diseases were little known and much feared. Later, nonbelievers were told they will be handed over to fire-spitting angel Tartarouches and imprisoned in a cramped, dark abyss ruled by Hades. Zoroaster claimed to love his followers like a “father” and describes himself as the key to their mercy by aiming to destroy what was foreign and bitter. It is from this kind of paternalism of Zoroastrianism that the terms lord and master enter the narrative.  

While said to be opposed to use of Haoma, the psychedelic drug at the time, it was at a Haoma celebration that Zoroaster allegedly received a vision that inspired his belief in a single creator, Ahura Mazda, which means “wise lord.” Ahura Mazda was said to be the only one worthy of worship; however Zoroaster appears to also refer to himself as Ahura anyway, so he was the creator and the prophet, and in his own mind probably the holy spirit too. Zoroaster told his followers that in addition to the creator, there was also a destructive divinity called Angra Mainyu, “meaning angry lord,” and his subjects, called devas, who delight in war and strife. Later, this angry lord became known by the name Beelzebub, or Ba’al Zebub, the leader of an enemy called the Philistines. It is from Zoroaster that I first see reference to the battle between good and evil.

FIRST TEMPLE POLYTHEISM

These Philistines who battled the biblical David, and also apparently the prophet Zoroaster, were a sea-faring people from south Europe. They inter-married easily with other groups in Canaan, perhaps because of worship of shared deities, like Astarte (a form of Ishtar), the merman god Dagon, and a line of rulers known as Ba’al. Most relevant is that in addition to Astarte, the Philistines worshiped not just the original supreme god El, but also his female counterpart and wife, called Asherah. Asherah was seen as the mother of all gods, the life-giving goddess who represented the entire tree of life. Excavations have shown that female figurines were in wide production from 900-600BCE, likely used for conjuring aide with nursing and lactation. Asherah was once worshiped in the temple of Jerusalem along with her male counterpart El. In the 1970’s, pot shards from more than one archeological site made reference to “Yahweh and his Asherah,” though both Israel and Egypt have denied possessing such artifacts.

A pivotal moment in the time of the Philistines occurred when a foreigner called Samson entered Canaan and made a case for one of the deities of the pantheon, a lone female one associated with the lion, likely Asherah, to be torn down. Samson was called a Philistine because he was a foreigner, but he was a monotheistic one like the Zoroastrians, not a polytheistic one like the Assyrian foreigners. With the aid of an animal’s jawbone, Samson suggested a hierarchy of the remaining deities of the Israelites, thereby making the case for the worship of one ‘father’ god above the rest, and toppling the entire idea behind the polytheistic temple. As a successful converter of many Israelites, he became their judge in the eyes of his king and forced the Israelites to stop honoring their deceased ancestors and abandon the practices of cutting hair and cutting prepuces, thus overturning the lessons about increasing population and controlling the spread of disease in denser civilizations. Samson also ordered the Israelites to cease consumption of alcohol and sexual sins, which involved related a tale of the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by diseases that were transmitted sexually.

There are a lot of misnomers and other bullshit in these scriptures – I suspect because the proud writers of the bible worked to reduce the perceived immorality behind some of the acts of their early heroes. The biblical hero Samuel for instance, was the son of foreigner Samson with Israelite prostitute. Documents tell us Samuel was the inspiration for Saul, from the tribe of Benjamin, to become king, and yet Samuel later becomes a major critic of Saul. My explanation is that Saul, during trade with the foreigner ‘Philistines,’ became interested in some of the teachings of female deities, and consults a council of female oracles known as Matri. With the aid of a female assassin named Jael, the Matri led a successful uprising against the oppressive king of Canaan and helped Saul become the first king of the new Israel. Saul selected as judge of the Israelites, Deborah, the leader of the Matri, who would properly punish rape and enforce other laws that were oppressive to women. Under Saul and the Matri, the Israelites created a glorious temple that housed two stone tablets outlining seven laws that among other things prohibited adultery and sexual immorality (rape).

It was Samuel though who spoke critically of Saul and against women and their abilities to hold official positions and hold the king responsible, adding that the people should not fall into the worship of Asherah, Ba’al, or other idols. The result of Samuel’s efforts was that several tribes successfully rebelled against Saul, alleging that a member of his tribe raped members of the tribe of Levi, which incited a war where even the women and children of the tribe of Benjamin were executed. The widely accepted biblical narrative emphasizes Samuel, not Deborah, as the ‘seer’ who chose Saul for king instead of some seer that foretold of some failure of female officials, though its possible both are true if Samuel and Saul refer to the same individual, and Samuel just had a change of heart once king and rescinded the promise of power he had promised the Matri. Regardless, there is an obvious effort to try to hide the role of the women Saul consulted with and relied on to become king.

The tribes who overthrew Saul replaced the Matri judges with the priest-like position called nasi, which in Hebrew means prince or president; however they lacked the secret carnal knowledge of creation possessed by Samson and the Nazirites, who settled into a community called Nazareth. The Nasoreans were the monotheists with that special knowledge, or gnosis, while the Assyrians were polytheists with the gnosis. Meanwhile, Samuel to the Arabians was considered a Nabi, meaning prophet, which suggests that the early Arabians were conquered by the Israelites and thereafter called Nabataens, which caused them to undergo a change from polytheism to monotheism.

SECOND TEMPLE MONOTHEISM

This new Israelite regime spun a tale that portrayed their new leader, David, as a commoner, a shepherd (oddly reminiscient to the origin of Zoroaster), who though young, challenged the giant Goliath to a duel and won, while the old king Saul cowered. David took one of Saul’s daughters as his bride and assumed power instead of any of Saul’s sons, which should tell you the overthrow was violent. This new regime focused on ‘uniting’ the lands, though it was more like conquering. David conquered Jerusalem from the Phoenicians, where he replaced the male and female deities there with a new idol, Yahweh. Yahweh, like David, was a divine warrior who led armies against unspecified enemies of Israelites, and our word ‘divine’ like comes from the name David.

A temple in Jerusalem promoted Yahweh as the god of the entire cosmos, possessing all the positive qualities previously attributed to the other gods and goddesses no longer worshipped. The goddess Astarte, once depicted as having the attributes of Asherah, Elat, and Ishtar, yet was thereafter always naked, likely meant as an insult. The Hebrew Bible mentions no less than 44 times that Asherah must be destroyed. Meanwhile we have evidence the Israelites started to concern themselves with the wives of enemy rulers, evidenced by “Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah” and “Yahweh of Teman and his Asherah.” By 600BCE the kingdom of Israel forcefully denied the existence of any other gods, and Yahweh was proclaimed as the creator of the universe as well.

One of David’s first acts as ruler was to replace the seven laws. He declared a new set that removed a couple, including the rape clause, restriction on eating the flesh of live animals, and the requirement to have judicial courts. The new set know included laws about honoring parents, worshiping only god, practicing the Sabbath day, being honest, and not coveting. David had the set of ten recorded on two stone tablets and placed in a glorious container called the Ark Of The Covenant, alleging they unlike the past set of seven, came straight from Yahweh through Moses. This act seems to worked to erase in many minds, the idea that women were capable of ruling. The kicker is Moses is the grandson of the same Levite whose tribe participated in the fabricated rape that took down Saul and the Matri.

Aside from falsifying David’s origin, fabricating exodus, and creating the commandments of Moses, the writers borrowed the all-male trinity from the Babylonians, describing Noah as having three sons, and gave the names of three Babylonian rulers. Thusly had these falsifiers now established a male creator (Yahweh), a male conqueror (David), a male messiah (Moses), a male chosen one (Noah), twelve male tribes of Israel, and many other male heroes like Abraham, who like Zoroaster, made a pact with a male supreme god to worship him in exchange for making his people prosper. In a dazzling saga about how the people of David are the victims of monstrous enslavers, an ancestor named Moses overcame their oppressors through magical ‘divine intervention’ and the heroic actions of a man. He is half god though after all.

The new regime wrote some other things down too. Although many argue the Jerusalem Talmud came first, it has less emphasis on temple rituals which was no longer relevant and more emphasis on agricultural laws, suggesting the Babylonian Talmud was developed first and later underwent major redactions. Neither are the complete set of Mishnah, and neither were officially published in a final version until year 600, possibly due to persecution by Christians. It’s also possible the Hebrews are lying about their timeline of holy books because it messes with the timeline for Christianity. It’s harder to prove Christ when his life is based on a Hebrew Bible that wasn’t complete until centuries after him. 

MANDAEISM

David and his advisors were overthrown by his fifteen year-old son Solomon, aka Shalim, aka Absalom, aka Sulayman. It is said Solomon was loved by many women, perhaps the women of the Matri, as I believe only this could explain the accusation that he had 700 wives and 300 concubines. A noteworthy wife of Solomon was a Nubian named Sheba who may have been a daughter of the pharaoh. Together they formed a people called the Sabaeans/Sabians based out of a city in southern Arabia called Saba after the prescribed day of rest to honor the seventh creation.

With Solomon, Sheba had child named Menelik who became king of Ethiopia and might have even come to possess the original Ark Of The Covenant. Ethiopians were devout Jews who were reportedly converted by Philip the Evangelist when Ethiopia was ruled by Queen Candace. Now they observe the Saturday Sabbath as well as the Sunday Lord’s day. The women cannot enter churches when menstruating, and must cover their heads and sit on the right side while men sit on the left. Despite the seemingly sexist treatment of women, rulers of Ethiopia followed a matrilineal line of descent all the way until 1974 when the royal family was mysteriously displaced by a revolution.

The writers of the Hebrew Bible seem conflicted by Solomon. On one hand, he was the author of the books of Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and Song of Songs, and known for his wisdom and wealth, which he acquired through trade with far-off lands. However, the bible also points out his sins of idolatry, marrying foreign women and, turning away from Yahweh by building temples for other deities. The accusations against Solomon are many, and allege he started his reign with a purge of his father’s advisors, taxed the people an extraordinary sum of 666 talents each year, and worked magic related to rings, candelabrum, thrones, and travel. Solomon also plays a significant role in Christianity, and Muslims venerate him and suggest his transgressions were merely the workings of a jinn/genie. The Quran tells of curious abilities he picked up from defeating other deities, like the power to employ birds, control wind, crush ants, and enslave demons. Or perhaps these are all figurative, not literal – who knows. One legend tells of Solomon sending demons after a virgin who had fled from him, much like the tale of Herod, who also had a temple, though hundreds of years later. Herod might also be seen as David, with Solomon being the child produced from said virgin.

The conflicted accounts perhaps reflect that the authors of the Hebrew Bible accept that Solomon was wise to marry out of the clan, and that at least he helped the Israelites at a time that was critical to their his-story. Noteworthy is that those authors, writing after the fact, know that Israel divided into two parts each rule by one of Solomon’s sons, and was eventually was sacked by Egyptian pharaoh Shoshenq, who robbed the city of much of the treasures and wealth Solomon had brought it through trade. I sense the Israelites are still awaiting their revenge on the Ethiopian ruling family, as I would consider stealing the original copy of their sacred law to be worthy of war and retribution. Hopefully, but doubtfully, the image of Solomon associating him with a dove holding a sparrow-hawk in its clutch, is a sign any resentment has been relieved.

During this time period, it is noted that there are three general groups of Judeans. First is the Pharisees, supporters of King Saul who resisted the Oral Torah and Hellenization, and who seem to suffer from lacking the power of the second group, the Sadducees, which coincidentally sounds like our modern word ‘seduce.’ The Sadducees are supporters of King David who with his priests created a written Torah aimed at seducing the Israelites away from matrilineage. Solomon’s son Jeroboam came to lead the Pharisees in Kingdom of Israel, while his other son to a foreign wife, Rehoboam, came to lead the Sadducees in Kingdom of Judaea.

Four generations after Jeroboam, the lineage of the Pharisees and Sadducees start to conflict with an Israelite daughter named Athaliah. A raid by the descendants of Solomon took the royal family of Judea, with the exception of the youngest son and his mother, Athaliah, who appears to be left to rule as Queen mother. Accounts that say otherwise all also try to spread misinformation about Athaliah’s son, Jehoash, saying for instance that it was he who killed the whole family and then suppressed the polytheistic “cult of Baal.” A different, Assyrian account lacks the whole Pharisee-Sadducee animosity and is likely most reliable. The Assyrian “Black Obelisk” document refers to an Israelite king named Jehu who severs his alliances with Phoenicia and Judea in 841BCE and appeals to the Assyria king Shalmenaser III, possibly a namesake of the late Solomon.

Those Sadducee priests who recorded the patrilineal tale known as the Torah, were called Zadokites, but a schism arose over the Torah that results in a separate group of priests called Essenes, who followed the Torah only in order to fit in but were recorded as being an unusual bunch of priests with some unique additional beliefs. The Essenes shared a similar ethics as other Canaanites at the time, particularly the high value placed on marriage and procreation and concern for cultic purity, and shared the same narrative and names as Hebrew angelology. Where they differed was in obeying the old code we call the seven laws of Noah, instead of the ten commandments of Moses, which they interpreted as violation of the sacred covenant. The Essenes also adhered to a more severe discipline, reportedly renouncing pleasures including sex and all oaths, including marriage. They refused to sacrifice animals and took no part in slavery, which may be why there were considered to be voluntarily impoverished. The Essenes also believed in the immortality of souls and were big on memorizing the names of the angels. The Dead Sea Scrolls are thought to come from their library.

The Essenes are thought to be sympathetic to Solomon. In Rabbinical Judaism, a bird told Solomon there were great riches to the east and connected him to a more preferable route to trade in India and China, by sea instead of the land route that passed through war-minded peoples. This bird may have been the Matri or a group of priests known as Essenes, or both. Nonetheless, the Essenes had come around to a new worldview that was in stark contrast to their prior understanding of the people they once considered their enemies. They negotiated shelter with the Assyrians and ritualized absolution of sins by baptism to honor the forgiveness they were granted for their change of heart.

To the Assyrians, the Essenes became known as Mandaens after mandies, the places of worship near water where they would hold baptism ceremonies (masbuta), and 'ascent of the soul ceremony' (masiqta). The Sabians that Solomon founded are said to also identify as Mandaeans and practice absolution of their sins. The Mandean community survives today though their numbers dwindled from the Iraq war, which forced many of them into Iran. In Iran the community of Mandaeans has been dwindling due to religious persecution. In 2003, a new temple was discovered in what is now Barrakesh, Yemen near the origins of the Sabians. It was excavated for four years and revealed scripts suggesting the goddess Ishtar was slandered and converted to a male Ashtar. Incidentally, in 2015, the site was bombed by Saudia Arabia, Great Britain, and the United States.

RABBINIC JUDAISM

After the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem, the next kings, Joash and his successor Uzziah set to rebuild the temple, though this time period coincides with the Assyria captivity. A suspicious account several generations later involves two leaders with similar sounding names, Josiah and Ezekiel, actually rebuilding the temple. In doing so, they coincidentally discover the “book of law of Yahweh” thus restoring the Ark Of The Covenant. To it they reportedly also insert Aaron’s rod, anointing oil, and a vial of painkiller – the tools one might use for carnal creation procedures. If true, this suggests the group seemed to understand the original intent of the Ark. Josiah and Ezekiel also reportedly executed pagan priests, removed symbols of Baal, and reinstituted Passover.

The priests got to work expanding their written records with the tales of the early prophets, forming the Nevi’im consisting of the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. Curious are the similarities of the tale of Hagar and Ishmael to the story of Sheba and Menelik, as well as that of Athaliah and Jehu. To me this suggests there were significant redactions made to the Torah during this period, specifically the book of genesis. When Genesis 2:7 mentions nephesh as that which makes animals living, the first record we have of the concept of the soul. Later, the soul becomes something that can be taken from sinners, described in Ezekiel 18:4.

Perhaps the most devastating idea that arises in this period is related to the nature of the first woman, Eve. This account gives us the image of Eve defying god and eating of the tree of knowledge of life. Judaism is reluctant to take ownership of the implications the account of Eve had on the role of women in society, and the impact this narrative has had on other religions and society over time; however, gnostic texts from the same period reflect some of the awful attitudes swirling about. In the Paraphrase of Shem of the Gnostic Bible, we see phrases like “the sin of nature” and “the blind wisdom” used to describe sex. Later, we find suggestions that sex is a burden, “They who have a free conscience remove themselves from the babbling [baby words] of nature [which is sex].” 

The account of Eve also seems to seek to discredit the snake cult associated with foreign women like Sheba, and other groups of predominantly women  who associated serpents with healing. Meanwhile, the rulers used fear of snakes to repel their enemies, conjuring tales of fiery serpents flying about the throne of Yahweh. They gave Moses a serpent-like bronze staff with a fatal bite, which non-Israelites would refer to nehushtan, meaning "a brazen thing, a mere piece of brass.” It must have been a painful reminder, and tet another reflection of the pain caused by Solomon’s abandonment, is found in Exodus 34:14, “Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” However, the idea of an all-knowing and forgiving god who would not need to be jealous was about to come.

After Egypt changed hands, the new Persian king Artaxerxes sent a priest and scribe named Ezra to Jerusalem to restore the old law that was destroyed with the burning of the first temple. Ezra also worked to restore a sense of national and ethnic pride in the descendants of David, preaching that he was bothered that Jewish men had been marrying non-Jewish women, and thus gained favor with the Judeans. Ezra gave the Judeans reason to believe their struggles over the past generations were part of the plan god had for them, thereby suggesting a certain foresight by Yahweh. Thusly did he champion the idea of theodicy, or the existence of an all-knowing, all powerful deity, a concept which allowed Judeans and others to accept evil, even if it doesn’t explain evil, like later religions would do. Ezra also championed fortunetelling and divination, paving the way for a rise in esoteric ideas.  

With the help of his teacher Baruch and some others, Ezra prepared the Hebrew Bible, consisting of Torah/teaching, Nevi’im/prophets, and Ketuvim/writings, which would later be translated into the Greek Septuagint, and become the basis for the eventual Christian Old Testament. Ezra dictated twenty-four of books of the Hebrew Bible, along with another seventy secret books “for the wise alone.” Ezra identifies as the inspiration for reconstruction of the temple, a high priest by the name of Jesus, implying Joshua who was David’s advisor 800 years before. After Ezra, rabbinical Judaism implemented additional rituals, like the wearing of sacred scripts in black boxes called tefillin, around one’s neck during weekday prayers. I find it curious and worth mentioned because it is reminiscent of the old Arabian practice of praying to the goddess oracle Al-Uzza and her stone cube, and also because of the unmistakable similarity to the black cube called Kaaba associated with prayer in Islam.

Also long after Ezra came the Hebrew celebration of Hanukkah, with its candelabrum of seven lights supposedly for each of the seven additional days the oil burned, though I believe it might also represent the seven generations from the first man, Adam to the one taken by God, Enoch. Several copies of the Book Of Enoch were found with the Dead Sea Scrolls, and articulate the origins of demons, descriptions of how some angels fell from heaven, and an explanation of why the great flood, aka war, is deemed necessary. A third possibility is that the candelabrum represents the three patriarchs and their wives, plus a chosen one created by them. What would be a major holiday though is deemed minor compared to the holidays related to exodus. I consider this to be a red flag reminder of the resentment Jews have toward Muslims for whatever the Sabians took that is now protected within that giant Kaaba.

MITHRAISM

It has been thought that Zoroastrian priests persecuted all non-Zoroastrian religions, which would explain why Mandaeans seem to be temporarily erased from recorded his-story; however traces of their presence can still however be found in the so-called Mandaean magical bowls and lead strips produced from the 3rd to the 7th centuries. This suggests they were more likely integrated than conquered. Plus, as Heroditus pointed out, the Persians adopted foreign customs more readily than any other people. The then Zoroastrians, had welcomed the Sadducees, including an important one we now call Siddhartha, the first recorded monk, mendicant, and philosopher, known later as the first Buddha. 

Another class of Israelites set out to infiltrate the lands of Zoroastrians, the Essenes, who became known as Elcesaites (meaning “hidden strength”), a nod to the secret sacred knowledge they continued to protect and perpetuate. The knowledge the Elcesaites brought to the Zoroastrians was even more welcomed than that contained within the Sadducees written Torah. The Elcesaites taught Zoroastrian ruler the truth about their prophet, and later taught it to all Zoroastrians, using a tool known as a zodiac to tell the story in a manner that seemed written in the stars. To the Zoroastrian maxim of “good thoughts, good words, good deeds,” was added another maxim, that there is only one path and that is the path of Truth. To the Zoroastrian manuscript called “101 Names of Azura Mazda,” they now also had Gathas hymns, due to Israelite influence. Once a people known to make sacrifices for their Ahura Mazda, the Zoroastrians now viewed all life as sacred, though there is evidence they conducted ceremonial bull killing, similarly to the Greek cult of Magna Mater, and a couple of Spanish rituals. 

The Elcesaites were probably similar to later Mithraic initiates in that they participated in other civic religions while retaining their own secret beliefs and rituals. In order to preserve their knowledge over time, they were permitted to worship cult images provided the act was disavowed in the heart and only to escape persecution. In this way, the Elcesaites managed to integrate easily and have a profound influence on what was once a warlike male-monotheistic people, guiding and even converting them to a more friendly way. The Sanskrit term for friend, also agreement, or covenant, became the name of a prophet known as Mithra, who appears to have represented a transition toward reverence of both masculine and feminine rulers. Records show the emperor Artaxerses II (r. 404 - 358 B.C.) appeals to three deities – Ahura Mazda, Anahita, and Mithra – to protect what he had built. While Ahura Mazda represented Zoroaster, Anahita was a syncretistic goddess combining the beliefs of Zoroastrians with the ancient Mesopotamian goddess Inanna/Ishtar. Based on inscriptions and art, Anahita remained important for six hundred years before being replaced to form an all-male trinity. She might have been inspired by or even inspired the Elcesaites to recognize as their saints, two women: Martha ("mistress") and Marthana ("our mistress”), who may have been the namesakes of Mithra, the child of Anahita to Ahura Mazda or the con-current Zoroastrian ruler.  

As an adult, Mithra was seen as a judicial figure, an all-seeing protector of truth and the guardian of cattle, the harvest, and the waters, who was known as the third messenger. In art, Mithra was associated with a wide variety of creatures, including eagles, lions, serpents, crocs, snails, lobsters, dolphins, and dogs. He was also often depicted with the so-called Phrygian cap we associate with characters like Merlin and other workers of white magic. Mithra became known as one of the three wise guardians of the Chinvat Bridge, the boundary to the other-world of their enemies. This other-world, or underworld as Greeks called it, was the product of a split of the Greek cult of Magna Mater, led by the king’s daughter Persephone and her husband Hermes/Mercury, an influential Greek philosopher scientist recognized by the caduceus as the symbol of healing. The narrative spread by the Greeks who had just been shunned was that Perseus, son of Persephone and Hermes went off on a quest to save the Ethiopian princess, who he married and whose name Andromeda, means “man ruler.” The merge of these families marking the founding of the Persians, and the origin of the concept of the underworld.

One concept that was retained in Mithraism was the Zoroaster’s dark lord known as Angra Mainyu, which would later morph into the human-hating, lying devil we hear in fear-mongering sermons today. The closest equivalent the Elcesaites had was their old judge, which they communicated as Satan, or the steward of the Gate of Life. Instead what the Elcesaites taught was that the transcendent deity worshipped by the Zoroastrians was a different being than the megalomaniac creator who they would refer to as the demiurge, who looked like a snake with the face of a lion, and in error created humankind. The Elcesaites’ message of humankind being judged, enticing people to love matrimony, abstain from adultery, live without shame, and eventually die in the fight for good, resonated with the Persian rulers, and would later resonate with many Romans. But it did not resonate with everyone.

MAZDAISM (SOL INVICTUS)

Persephone and Hermes escaped with the aid of trade partners, the Ethiopian queen Cassiopeia and her king Cepheus. While experts are careful to distinguish Cepheus and Cephalus as two different identities, I believe the similar sounding names along with the social context of the stories being told over time by both the Assyrians and the Greeks in two different languages that have both been translated in languages of today, is enough to suggest that Cepheus and Cephalus are closely related if not the same individual. To the Greeks, the wife of Cepheus/Cephalus was known as Cassiopeia, but to the Assyrians, she was Procris, the morning dew, signifying the start of a new day. Procris had a child with Cephalus, called Lucifer, meaning “light bringer” who became associated with the morning star, like his mother, signifying the start of a new day. Lucifer is also associated with the Roman goddess Venus, so perhaps he is a she. More likely though is that in worshipping Lucifer, the Persians returned back to male monotheism. The sun, once associated with the male Apollo in complement with the moon, representing the female Artemis, is now simply worship of Lucifer as Invincible as the sun, or Sol Invictus.

The conquests of Alexander in 330BCE didn’t change Persian religion much. During his youth, Alexander was also acquainted with Persian exiles at the Macedonian court, who received the protection of Philip II for several years as they opposed Artaxerxes, including Barsine, who was even a mistress of Alexander. Long after Alexander, a line of Persian military leaders known as Mithridates, fought the Greco-Romans on behalf of the matrilinear Israelites, and it’s likely that vendetta is still not resolved. Then sometime between 250BCE and 224CE, the Parthians became a new force in the region that restored the triple male when they replaced Mithra with Mani, likely one of their military heroes. The Parthians also replaced the goddess Anahita with the male Apam Napal, seen as “child of the waters” and creator of all things, perhaps a nod to natural selection, or perhaps a reflection of modern day concept of mother earth, though I’m not sure why male.

Manicheans also formed a new narrative of the Israelites after Solomon, which had the Persians enabling a neo-Babylonian rebellion by the captive Sadducees around 700BCE. By this new account, the male-monotheistic Sadducees controlled Jerusalem again by 538BCE, and allegedly had a temple there from 516BCE-70AD. The temple is reported to have a separate court for women since they were not permitted into the main court. It also was reported to have a pinnacle from which one could jump to their death, and a barbershop for Nazirites, who if you remember, do not cut their hair. I imagine this is the origin of the storytelling game, Two Truths and a Lie, and the irony is this entire tale of the temple seems to be a massive lie. If a second temple existed, it was likely the Temple of Artemis, or an homage to the first temple, which contained a statue of the goddess Asherah.

There is reference to the existence during this period of a temple in the city of Emesa, which houses a holy stone describes as a black conical meteorite, called baelytus meaning “house of god.” Such a temple was more aligned with the beliefs of the Romans of the day, like emperor Elagabalus who in year 218 emphasized sun deity above all others, an attempt to unite the Roman and Syrian religions in compromise. Elagabalus assigned to the highest deity a wife – Astarte, Minerva, Urania, or some combination of the three. He declared that Jews, Samarians, and Christians must transfer their rites to his temple so that it "might include the mysteries of every form of worship,” and he called for the most sacred relics from a number of shrines to be transferred to his temple, namely the emblem of the Great Mother, the fire of Vesta, the Palladium of Athena, and the shields of Salii.

While the former clearly venerate female deities, the latter is lesser known and I can only speculate to its importance. A group of warriors called the Salii possessed some sort of shields that would protect the possessor, and they appear to have been constructed by the Etruscans, a people skilled in metallurgy who honored both men and women as warriors. There is a report that on the Ides of March, a mythic blacksmith named as Mamurius forged eleven replicas of the original divine shield that had dropped from the sky. This seems oddly reminiscent of the image I have of my mind of archangels, perhaps helped some by Marvel and Stan Lee’s character Falcon. I also notice a curious association of the Salian virgins with the Sabine hills, a mysterious city known for a legend of the “rape of the Sabine women.” But this is all conjecture from coincidental tidbits of information that hint at important pieces of the puzzle yet to be solved.  

The Sol Invictus cult was not made official until December 25, 274 and was meant to serve as a new year festival. Just a decade later, the temples meant to honor the traditional Greek pantheon are being converted to a temple to the emperor Diocletian, who is so caught up in himself, he chose to see himself as greater than those rulers who came before him, thereby minimizing the male deities as well as the female ones. Soon his oracles abandon him and he is committing his famously atrocious persecutions of both the Christians and the Sol Invictus cult.

But for a short time before that, there was a Queen Zenobia from the ornate city of Palmyra, where the incense route from Arabia met the Silk Road to China. From years 267-273, the Palmyra Empire was under siege by Rome, eventually giving way and watching the relics of several temples devoted to many different gods transferred to the Sol Invictus cult. Palmyra became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013 and in 2015 was destroyed allegedly by terrorist group ISIL.

CHRISTIANITY

Within the ranks of Diocletian was arising a future emperor who would be the first to endorse Christianity, Constantine, in year 306, though he did also perpetuate Sol Invictus in several curious ways. During his reign, much Byzantine art depicts prophets, saints, and angels with a halo that is suggestive of a sun. He also decreed “sun” day as the weekly day of rest and his official coinage continues to bear images of Sol until year 326. Additionally, he built a triumphal arch that when viewed from the front happens to accentuate the colossal statue of Sol near the Roman colosseum.

The version of Christianity that Constantine championed created the story of the Israelites we follow today, which started way back with Moses and his high priest Aaron, both of the Levite tribe. The biblical account is that Moses’s brother Aaron testified to the greatness of Moses, and remained in Egypt to teach the Torah, along with his sister Miriam, who taught women the Torah. Yet as is often true in this life, the more disgusting story is often more accurate. Meanwhile, the true rule traditionally would have passed through Mariam, sister of Moses, so when Moses takes an Ethiopian woman as his wife, the decision is criticized by his siblings, Aaron and Miriam, who seem to have orchestrated his assassination and assumed power.

At the time of Miriam, a man named Joseph, from the tribe of Benjamin, was vizier to the pharaoh and aided in the preservation of the matrilineage, conceiving with Miriam. Joseph however, might actually be Miriam’s brother Aaron, because afterward, the pharaoh implements divine worship of a new trinity consisting of Amun (possibly Aaron), Mut (possibly Miriam), and son Khonsu (possibly Jesus). The name of this pharaoh, who assumed power after the assassinations of his brother and father, is Ahmose, a name awfully close to the biblical name Aaron. The reference to Aaron being better with words than Moses in Exodus 4:10, has new meaning under this light, since no ego-filled pharaoh would ever say something like that; however the meaning of the golden calf created by Aaron in Exodus 32:21-24 still escapes me.

While the bible tells that the tribes of Israel were granted specified lands, the Levites were granted “God himself as its inheritance,” which to me implies that the Aaron became the primary deity and presided over the priesthood over all of Egypt, which was far more powerful than stewardship of some of the former lands of Canaan that were now ruled by Egypt. The Song Of The Pearl is a writing within the Gnostic Bible that tells of a young Persian prince who went to Egypt and fell asleep, a figurative way of saying he forgot his enlightenment having enjoyed meat and domination of the ‘serpent’ leaders, but later awoke and returned with a pearl (of wisdom) to rule, and thus donned a brilliant toga. Some say this prince was Judah Thomas, while others say it was Joseph with his coat of many colors, and some believe those two might have been the same person. Judah refers to himself as follower of Jesus, and has a ‘twin’ thought to be the apostle Thomas (which means ‘twin’ in Aramaic), who spreads his gospel to Parthia and India, while Judah seems to be the Didymus (which means ‘twin’ in Greek), spreading the message through Greece.

I go through this to explain why the parents of Jesus are said to be Mariam and Joseph, because through the tribe of Benjamin, they carry the message if not the genes, and keep it alive until the day that Constantine adopts the pieces of the story that suit him, conveniently leaving out the part about matrilineage, and telling it his own way. Constantine for instance, changed the name of Mariam’s son to Jesus, after Judean ruler, and presided over creation of the testimonies of the witnesses, first the ‘twins’ Judah and Thomas, and later ten more for a total of twelve. Evidence for the controversy of this time exists also in the differing assertions on acceptance of different testimonies. The Hebrews for instance, reject the books of Baruch, Esdras, Judith, Maccabees, Sirach, Tobit, and Solomon, while the Protestants accept the latter ones but not Baruch nor Esdras. 

I reason there has been a secret crusade ever since, working to eke out information to identify and disrupt the Miriam line, but I suggest that the identity of a ruler doesn’t actually matter anymore, now that we have moved away from monarchies toward democracy. What does matter however is the knowledge and proof being kept from us that properly deposes the church as the fabricators of a made-up Jesus, and the proliferators of him as a false idol by censoring publishing and pushing the gospels that don’t even agree with one another.

Among the disagreements between Matthew and Luke, two witnesses to the life of Jesus through their gospels, is the genealogy between David and Jesus. They are off by several generations even, and differ even more greatly from the Hebrew history. According to the kingdom of Israel, the line went:

David, Solomon, Jeroboam, Nadab, Elah, Ahab, Jehoram, Jehu/Jesus

Matthew, however follows the line through the Judeans, with:

David, Solomon, Reheboam, 12 names, Shealtiel, Zerubbabel, 9 names, Joseph, Jesus.

Meanwhile, Luke follows the line of Nathan, one of the elder brothers of Solomon, claiming the line went:

David, Nathan, 19 names, Shealtiel, Zerubbabel, 18 names, Joseph, Jesus.

All three accounts follow the males through the Davidic line in difference ways, which is really beside the point. The most noble line would have been through Mariam, not David. David was not even about peace, but was a champion of war. Luke describe the city of David as Bethlehem, not Jerusalem, which actually means “City of Shalem” probably named after David’s son Solomon. A statue of a golden calf honoring the son of David was erected here, and also at Bethlehem, which was a religious center once associated with the female oracle Deborah. We are told Bethel was destroyed several generations after Jesus, by Josiah, a king who “walked in all the ways of David” (Kings 22:2), and it is not a coincidence that the reported birthplace of Jesus is likely the birthplace of Solomon, or at least strongly associated with him.

The tale of the famous birth at Bethlehem relates that there were three guests, magi who perform alchemy and manipulate fate; however they may have just been envoys:

·      Balthazar, who gifted Frankincense, from the people of Kush and Kerma on the continent of Africa;

·      Casper, who gifted Gold, from the people of Arabia; and

·      Melchior, who gifted Myrrh, from the Greeks and the continent of Europe.

Nonetheless, the association of Solomon with these foreign partners eventually led to this child Solomon attaining a worldly worldview, and eventually with his worldly wisdom, choosing the ways of the queen Sheba and her people over the Israelites. In Kaballah, Sheba is considered the queen of the demons, associated with Lilith, a woman who chose shared rule over rule by the supposed ‘first man.’ The book of Matthew mentions the “queen of the south,” widely accepted as a reference to Sheba, and also refers to the Assyrian male deity Balesebub several times, while overlooking the female deities of the Assyrians.

Another of the curious tales of the Christian bible is the account of the possessed swine, found in both Matthew and Luke. I have suspected this is an odd euphemism for the words of Jesus causing people to sail off to war, though it might also be a reference to a people whose customs are deemed dirty, possibly the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, as Matthew and Luke continue the resentment of expressed about those cities in Genesis and other books of the Hebrew Bible. The Christian views on sexuality as sin might be exactly why the authors of Matthew and Luke try to attribute Jesus with a virgin birth. 

With the story of Jesus we see a tale of a man, Solomon, who chooses to uphold the equal value of women, twisted into a tale of Jesus, who does not even welcome his mother and brother who wish to talk with him, as told in Matthew, Luke, and also Mark. My best guess is this stems from an author who chose to consider it disobedience when his mother acted independently from his father, as is supposedly related in a letter from Peter to Philip, and also in a secret Book of John. Speaking of letters, the disjointed flow of the gospels as they skip from tale to tale with different rhetorical styles are all signs that excepts were added by multiple authors at different points in time.

A major contributor of content was probably Justin Martyr, several hundred years after Jesus. I suspect that if he had the gall to add so-called sacred scripture, he surely would have thought himself authorized to also remove portions as he gave it is current numbering. Those who study these things pretend there’s a lost scripture called Q source, which explains why some gospels have seemingly new passages, but I suspect Q course just represents all the things Justin Martyr made up, including the “love they neighbor” guidelines, do-not’s, and all the parables. 

With the new Q source content also came more sexism, like “The head of every woman is man” (Corinthians 11:3), “The husband is the head of the wife” (Ephesians 5:23), and “In this way they can train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, managers of their households, kind, and subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be discredited” (Titus 2:4-5). This same sexism made its way into the new chapters we now call the gospels, which relayed tales of John baptizing and promising the greatness of a coming prophet, followed by four partially corroborating accounts of Jesus healing pain, possession, paralyzation, seizure, and blindness, though many of these miracles could be interpreted as figurative more than literal.

According to Matthew, Jesus also comforted others, “blessed are persecuted because there’s is the kingdom of heaven.” He also encourages others to teach how to deal with anger, how to give, how to pray, how to fast, how not to store/steal, how not to worry about money, or worry at all. Yet one of the more unsettling aspects of these tales is how Jesus only heals those who believe in him (Matthew 8:13, Matthew 9:29, Mark 5:36, Mark 9:23, Luke 7:9-10, Luke 8:50, and John 12:40), and how so many people seem not to realize how immoral that is. As a paramedic, I never could have looked down at an ‘invalid’ and asked “Do you want to get well?” (John 5:6), or even suggested that someone who was sick was ‘not valid.’ I also find it particularly off-putting that Jesus said, “Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them” (Matthew 13:12).

Guess what, the gospels at times provide conflicting accounts of the life of Jesus. One of the unique aspects of the Gospel of Matthew is it mentions an earthquake at the moment of the death of Jesus, a pretty significant event that should be mentioned by other gospels claiming to be witness to the goings-on of Jesus. A glaring difference in the Gospel of Luke is Jesus’s prophecy for Jerusalem, even though the introduction by Theosophis makes it clear the gospel is recorded far later with the perfect vision of hindsight. The gospel of Luke is the only one to give an account of Elizabeth, a descendant of Aaron, and her miraculous birth to John the Baptist. Luke is also the only gospel that has Jesus addressing the daughters of Jerusalem with “do not weep for me but for yourself” (Luke 23:28).

A uniqueness of the gospel of Mark is that it provides the most detailed version of John the Baptist being executed due to the wishes of Herod’s dancing daughter. It also refers to Herod as a king, not a tetrarch, so the author of Mark’s Gospel seems sympathetic of Herod. While the earliest version of the short version of the Gospel of Mark is dated to year 305 and evidenced by Justin Martyr and his student Tatian, a long ending has been dated back to the 2nd century, and includes references of speaking new tongues, taking up snakes, and drinking poison without being harmed. This redaction appears to be how the church responded to criticism by the skeptic Porphyry.

The Gospel of John is different from the other gospels in many ways. Aside from leaning hard toward the Coptic religions of north Africa at the time, John is more descriptive of the heart and mind of Jesus. In John for instance, Jesus assures, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33), and also later suggests that if his apostles love him, they will “feed his sheep” (John 21:16-17). In John, we find the references to the apostles as fishers of men, reflecting the very intentional efforts by the apostles to reach the masses with the message of Jesus.

The Gospel of John, above all though, brings light to the role of women to Jesus and his followers. While other gospels seem to minimize the existence of Mary at all, John comes in smoothly and exclaims that three different Mary’s were there: Mary Magdalene, Mary (a handmaid and mother of Jesus), and something about a Mary of Cleopas, a name which means peace-loving. The Gospel of Phillip in the Nag Hammadi Library echoes this, and also refers to Mary Magdalene as the koinonos, or companion, of Jesus. Such a claim would mean Jesus went against the idea of celibacy that was practiced by the Essenes who influenced the teachings of Jesus. He just might have.

John explains more about early church views on women, telling that the apostle and eventual first pope, Peter was angry that Jesus confiding his teachings to a woman. Peter says, "Did he really speak with a woman in private, without our knowledge? Should we all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?” to which the apostle Levi rebukes Peter, saying "Peter, you are always angry. Now I see you arguing against this woman like an adversary. If the savior made her worthy, who are you to reject her?” Peter who became the first pope, along with many early church fathers, dismissed the role of Mary, and she soon becomes known as “a hysterical female…through wishful thinking…to provide a chance for other beggars,” as recorded by the pagan Celsus.

Additional light is shone of John’s view of women in relation to the temple of Artemis protected by the Ephesians. Acts 19:35 suggests the people worshipping at the temple rioted against John, yet were calmed by the priest of the temple. Another account, in the Acts of John chapters 37-47, contained within a New Testament apocrypha of the same time period, describe John “using the power of God” to destroy the altar of Artemis and kill its priest. If John actually was responsible for the destruction of the temple of Artemis, it would explain his association in art with the snake and the chalice, also known as the holy grail, or holy container. It also would explain why the church considers all the apostles as martyrs, with the exception of John.

All this evidence seems to suggest to me that though some try to give John credit for portraying Mary Magdalene as the first apostle, John did not truly honor women as equals, nor humans worthy of worship as deities. He merely mentions them for their role as companions, mistresses, and mothers. This is evidenced by the major glorification of the father and not the mother throughout his gospel, and it leads me to believe the original Christians intended to uphold the equal rights of women. Unfortunately, the gospels were overcome by events, that event being appointment of emperor Nero, who beheaded the apostle Paul and crucified the first pope, Peter. Since then, Christianity has been turned even further toward male-monotheism for the betterment of Nero and all those males in power, more than the betterment of followers who deserve truth.

I don’t see it as unreasonable to suggest that before the church was overtaken, it worked to overwhelm the testament of John with conflicting accounts, through the competing gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Although another theory is that the four gospels also could have been customized for each of the delineated tetrarchs, with each set to appeal to the people of respective parts of world: Greco-Roman (Matthew the Apostle is entombed in Salerno, Italy), North Africa (Mark the Evangelist died in Alexandria), Mesopotamia (Luke the evangelist died in Greece), and Byzantium (John the Evangelist died in modern day Turkey). The gospels are also thought to correspond to four horsemen of the coming apocalypse, aka lifting of the veil. These are not to be confused with the four beasts of the book of Revelation (lion, ox, man, eagle), which was written by someone else named John.  

Some wishful thinkers like to believe the multiple accounts in the four gospels and twelve apostles are collaborating evidence of the crucifixion and resurrection, yet I say that the church actually did us a huge favor by giving us four conflicting accounts. More than anything, the differences prove the book cannot all be the words of an all-knowing supreme being, for the simple reason that not every passage can be true. And if one piece not true, then it should cause us to question every piece of it. Matthew says Jesus, seemingly answering the questioning of some of his ideas, advises not to cut off a toe that causes you to stumble, thereby asking his followers to simply overlook errors in the gospels, like when Jesus warns “do not put the lord, your god to the test” (Matthew 4:7). It should cause pause though that Jesus himself did not write anything down, at a time when paper was so easily available, yet all we have are these second-hand accounts that conflict and only parallel because of the “harmonizing” three centuries later.

I think the world of my grandma, someone who embodies the love of christ more than anyone, so it amazed me in doing some research with her for this book, to learn how little my MeMe knew about the gospels she so ardently praised. I came to understand her understanding of them, was from listening to preachers who cherry picked only what was lovely, fit their intended message, and would cause the congregation to tithe and stay loyal. When she did read for herself, I imagine she must have simply glossed over what made little sense and out of faith, focused on what was familiar and lovely. Seeing my loved ones brainwashed in this way generation after generation means I have absolutely no shame in doing some cherry picking of a couple passages that show all the mess contained in this so-called holy book that has, I will remind you, even already undergone a redaction from the Old Testament it used to be.  

That Jesus was both a miracle worker and teacher is difficult to believe to say the least, when he reportedly instructed two healed blind men, “see that no one knows about this” (Matthew 9:30) and orders the healed leper to “tell no one” (Mark 1:40-45). Similarly, Mark 8:30 has Jesus referring to himself as the son of man and giving strict orders not to tell others he was the son of god, yet he is referred to as the son of god in the other three gospels and in many other books, and yes, even the same exact Gospel of Mark (Mark 1:11, Mark 5:7, Mark 9:7, and Mark 14:61). John takes it one further, explaining first thing that Jesus is the word, the word is god, and therefore Jesus is god and not just the son of god (John 1:1). Interestingly, there was another Israelite who was once called the son of Yahweh. According to Gabriel’s Revelation in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Simon of Peraea was a “prince of princes” who was, after his death referred to as a son of God. Perhaps this is the same Simon who is reported to have carried the cross, and maybe even took the place of Jesus on the cross (Matthew 27:32).

The gospels differing views on prostitution is also telling, and they tell that as the day of crucifixion approached, a woman put perfume in hair of Jesus, who explained, “the woman has done a beautiful thing; what she has done will also be told.” This account is told in all four gospels for the very reason that every one knows it’s a euphemism for prostitution, as that is what many a man would want on his last day. Meanwhile, Matthew reports that it was John, not Jesus, who the prostitutes listened to, suggesting Jesus had no interaction with these individuals, because Jesus also allegedly said “anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). To the opposite point, in John 8:10-11, Jesus tells a prostitute that he does not condemn her for her life of sin.

More suspicious scripture are those that portray the centurions favorably, for instance that they offered Jesus a wet sponge (Matthew 8:5-13), which his perhaps laughable considering we know exactly how police officers are merciful and love to take sides in civil disputes. Even more unbelievable are the accounts that make us belief the centurion Pontius Pilate was somehow a conspirator in saving Jesus, when the crucifixion occurred 300 years before Rome decided to become Christian, and how not thirty years before that, Rome was doing mass killings of Christians.

With all this questionable and even conflicting content, it is almost as if church wanted the new testament to be riddled with errors in order to get people to question the content. If this is the case, we must wonder, what is taking the church so long to unveil the truth. Surely if an organization or anyone in an organization knew better that to cover up lies, it would be the church, the people preaching the way of a prophet who said, “Therefore let us keep the feast, not with the old bread, leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and of truth” (Corinthians 5:8). Then again, in Luke 8:10, Jesus said, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that, 'though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand.'

Actually, in Matthew 13:11-13, Jesus replied with the exact opposite intent as what he said in Matthew, that “The knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them… Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. This is why I speak to them in parables: ‘Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.” Ironically, this conundrum comes from the prophet who, according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, claimed that, “What goes into your mouth will not defile you, but what comes out of your mouth will.” This basic conflict is a reminder that just because some passages are right does not make them all right, and just because some passages are wrong does not make them all wrong. However having wrong passages does mean we should stop calling it a holy book.

When conflicting information is at play, look for those working to bring light to truth. As is related in the Gnostic Bible passage called Nikodemus Questions Yehua, “All who do paltry things hate the light and do not come toward the light so that their works will not be exposed; but those who do the truth, come toward the light so that their works may shine as accomplished through god.” Well, this is what I am trying to do here, and the only explanation I can think of is that would-be truth-tellers were not sure the critical mass of us would believe it, and that too many women would be harmed by the blowback of males not ready to make the changes necessary for gender equality. 

Imagine what other lies were told during this time period when leaders intentionally deceived their people! For instance, could it be a lie that Carthage marched elephants around the Mediterranean to make Romans fearful. Another lie to make the roman people fearful of the Carthaginians was to paint them as a bunch of witches and practitioners of magic, which perhaps explains the reports that the Carthaginians used living blood in their worships, ate dogs, and executed children in their sacrifices. This is an important lesson, that someone who wants you to condone war and all atrocities against a people, can easily suggest their enemies are mysterious practitioners of magic who use all means necessary to get what they want out of life. Meanwhile, we now know the Carthaginians were people who did much traveling by sea and trade with other cultures, so they must have gotten along with others just fine. 

For a religion that has created and perpetuated so many lies, the Christian church is awful brazen to teach sin and morality, but that’s what churches do. From the so-called ‘desert fathers’ we get the seven cardinal sins (pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth), seemingly laws that allow the rich to keep the poor subdued and don’t apply to the rich and powerful. There is one sin in particular that our US society, and other parts of the world, has completely lost – pride. We have written it off as false, based on the idea that pride is good and we should revel in our achievements, or those of close associates, and that is partly true. Where pride becomes problematic is when we attribute a ‘betterness’ based on those traits, possessions, or achievements, and shame those who have less than us. It has been sad for me to watch people I know, emergency responders who proudly serve the people of Baltimore’s 7th district, shame Baltimore’s forgotten poor. And it’s ironic that these souls stuck in the sin of pride are the same ones who say “All Lives Matter.” Too few of us are capable of recognizing pride, though all of us have witnessed the demonic ugliness of judgment of other humans deemed less worthy, usually associated with accusations of sloth. Hence I believe it essential that in naming the cardinal sins, we replace the much-liked term ‘pride’ and very seriously acknowledge and battle the presence of the demon called ‘bigotry’ in our every lives.

Those falsifiers of Jesus who gave us the cardinal sins also chose to retain the concept of the devil embraced by Zoroastrianism, yet they give him the name of the one who was once the judge of the Israelites a thousand years prior – Satan. Additionally, knowing eternal life was sought by common Egyptians, Christianity capitalized on this desire and on the mortal fear of death and aging, telling followers that eternal life would come to those who practiced prescribed rituals (see Acts 24:15, Romans 2:7, Romans 5:21, Romans 6:23, Revelation 20:12-14, Revelation 21:4, Psalms 22:26, Corinthians 15:51-55, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Galatians 6:8, Thessalonians 4:17, Timothy 1:16, Timothy 6:12, Titus 3:7, and Luke 18:27). Then the evangelist John, or whoever wrote the gospel of John the Baptist, cranked it up even more with John 1:2-3, John 2:17, John 2:25, John 3:16, John 3:36, John 4:14, John 5:11-13, John 5:20, John 5:24-25, John 5:28-29, John 6:27, John 6:40, John 10:27-28, and John 11:25-26, John 12:25, and John 17:2. While John was all about convincing converts, the original concept of eternal life came about from cowardly people in power trying to convince impressionable people to fight their battles for them.

Over time, there has been more than a few dinner table discussions about some endeavors you might have heard of called the crusades, which focused on finding artifacts that prove or disprove the tale of the crucifixion and resurrection. However, until science proves the existence of items like the body of Mary or blood on the tunic of Jesus, I think we should all go with the idea that the crusades were meant to capture the Ark Of The Covenant and whatever else was once in that sacred black box at Mecca.

And the sad part is this pursuit has created a great demand for replicas of these false relics. People in our lust of money, would sell items for worshiping Jesus. Well, what sold most was an image of Jesus similar to that of Cesare Borgia, the first illegitimate son of a pope. We also have talented renaissance artists to thank – you know those artists with the ninja turtle names, who have solidified in our minds, a false image of a false prophet that causes our subconscious to prefer pinkness. I want to be very clear to everyone who reads this, that it is no trivial matter that the form selected for the leader of a massive religious movement has, over time, been corrupted from one with much melanin, to one that is far paler. In doing so, it stripped the more melanined of yet another hero reminding them of their power and worth. Especially given that after murdering, raping, and enslaving millions of blacks, pink faces have brutally converted blacks into Christians, telling them God was pink, and that if they ever wanted to meet him they had to forgive pink people and everything pink people did to them and their ancestors. And it worked – so many millions of darkly-pigmented people fight to defend this false religion even now, almost two thousand years later.

NASOREANISM (NASOREAN MANDAEISM)

As Christianity grew, the Sadducees became Christians, while most of those Israelites who remained were the Torah renouncers known as Pharisees. They did not possess the carnal knowledge of their priests, yet the Pharisees were the Israelites who influenced Constantine. This is why Christianity seems to portray Jesus as a Pharisee who condemned the markets as robbers and was critical of the hypocrisy of the Sadducee rabbis, criticizing their pomp and views on divorce, and referring to them as blind guides (Matthew 15:14), while the Sadducees viewed Jesus as a blasphemer for suggesting he would sit at the right hand of God. Meanwhile, we know looking back that the real debate was not about the judgment but about the patriarchal Torah versus the matriarchal oral tradition. The author of the Odes to The Pharisees in the Gnostic Bible supports this, suggesting Jesus was actually in favor of abandoning the oral tradition to adopt the Torah and in order to receive incentives and favor with the Greeks. By this account, Jesus, if he even existed, was a sell-out, even if he was a martyr, while the Pharisees chose to live simply and even starve than abandon their tradition of gender equity. 

One group that was critical of the Constantine Christians were the Mithraists, from whom Constantine claimed several stolen concepts as their own, including baptism and communion. Even the fact that John the Baptist was a cousin of Jesus was a concept that comes from the life of Mithra, whose first convert was his cousin Maidhyoimanha. To a different group of critics of Christianity, the Sol Invictus cult, John the Baptist was known as the light-bringer Lucifer. The Dead Sea Scrolls refer to a “Teacher of Righteousness” prior to the church, which seems to be a prototype of Jesus. The teacher was regarded as a redeemer, or savior, and put to death by reactionary factions, critics of this Teacher of Righteousness that ardently believed only the higher power can forgive sins, which is why teacher 2.0 had to be considered the same as god. That is why the church insisted with great ardor that the prophet Jesus was a miracle-working son of god. These groups may have been right to rejected Jesus as christ, but that doesn’t mean they knew of the battle to restore matrilineage, or at least recognition of influential females from times past.

There was another group who did, the Essenes, who report that they resided in Nazarene where Jesus lived. The Nazarenes accept the virgin birth, but reject the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). They proclaim to know the son of Mary as a messiah, yet do not recognize his apostles. So rather than worshipping Jesus, they venerate John the Baptist, or rather, John the Evangelist, and they were persecuted. Many houses of worship called Mithraea have been found underneath Christian churches. It re-arose in year 651 when an alleged leader shared a copy of their holy book, the Ginza Rabba, proclaiming the chief prophet to be John the Baptist. Then these Mithraists seems to be suppressed further with the Muslim conquest of Persia, until discovery of a quasi-historical Mandaean document, the Haran Gawaita, which narrates the exodus from Palestine to Mesopotamia in the 1st century, of a group called Nasoreans. These Nasoreans/Nazaraites consider themselves not only practitioners of Mandaeism, but are now referred to as the priestly caste, on behalf of the Mandaiia, or the laity.

Leaders of Mandaean schools, sometimes called gnostic schools, included teachers by the name of Basilides, Marcion, and Valentinus in the first couple centuries. Like other gnostics, Basilides taught that salvation comes through knowledge and not faith. The his-torian Origen complained that Basilides deprived men of a salutary fear by teaching that transmigrations are the only punishments after death, not hell. Another gnostic teacher in France, Marcion argued that many of the teachings of Jesus were incompatible with the actions of Yahweh, the belligerent god of the Hebrew Bible. Marcion’s eraser is the phrase used to describe his rejection of the Hebrew god and all of old testament, and acceptance only of the Gospel of Luke and the ten Pauline epistles, as he saw Paul as the only true apostle. For this reason, the Marcosian school faced even greater criticism than other gnostic schools more closely affiliated with Rome.

More and more documents debunking the claims of the church have been brought to greater light. The Sibylline Oracles for instance, warns of false testaments, “And then an old false writer shall appear in that time AGAIN, counterfeiting his country, being also blind, he shall have much wit and eloquence, but a small measure of reason” The same scriptures reflect several ideas floating around at the time that have to do with the role of women, like “O Italy... you will not be a mother of the good, but a nurse of wild beasts,” and “O Isis, the unfortunate goddess! You shall continue at the waters of the Nile alone, mad and raging upon the sands of Acheron [place of the dead], and you shall no more be remembered through all the earth.” The Sibylline Oracles also hint that it up to mothers to teach their boys to uphold the rights of women generation after generation, prophesizing that “When the tribes of women do not produce children who conquer... some deceivers will arise with great fame as prophets.” Lastly, the Second Treatise of the Great Seth in the Nag Hammadi Library, describes those who fail to stand for injustice, saying, “And the senseless and blind ones are always senseless, always being slaves of law and earthly fear.” 

Because the Mandaeans were persecuted, they continued to suppress their knowledge and customs for the sake of safety. The Gospel of Thomas for instance, directs the followers of Thomas, “When you go into any region... eat what they serve you and heal the sick among them,” which to me is an expression of the Mandaean practice to follow the customs of the lands they occupy while disavowing the sayings and rituals in ones heart. One people that perhaps still operates by some of these principles today, are the Romani, or Roma, who by their name, must have been cast out of Rome at some point long ago, though the are thought to have originated in India given how their language reflects many Arabic and Persian words.

Though they adopt the dominant religion of their host country, the Roma continue to practice Shaktism, wherein the metaphysical reality is considered inherently feminine, namely Adi Parashakti. The Roma and other Shaktis only worship a male deity if the worship is conducted through a female consort of that deity, such as the Virgin Mary instead of Jesus. The Roma specifically venerate Saint Sarah, who was servant to one of the three Mary’s and seen as a protectress of the Roma, perhaps for deeds she once did for the Roma. They claim to have no specific records left by ancestors, and their history is retold by clan family customs, such as singing and storytelling. While many among the Roma lack access to education and therefore fall short in some intelligence standards, the are not quite the cons, thieves, and livers of luxury our television shows would have you to think. It is said there were significant changes made within the Romani culture following World War II. It is said that more Roma embraced evangelism at this time, particularly in France and Spain where there are over a thousand Romani churches; however I have a suspicion it relates to the mysterious creation of the nation state of Israel.

Persecuted groups with sacred knowledge worked not only to proliferate themselves, but also to proliferate their knowledge, and therefore found clever ways of incorporating enlightening concepts in ways the church would not detect. For instance, the Odes of Solomon refer to the spirit of soul coming from father as milk. The goal was for a reader who recognizes that males do not produce milk, to be illuminated with the possibility that the spirit of the soul actually comes from the mother without actually saying so. By changing keys words and adjusting the order of sentences, the Roma, in their perceived illiteracy, could avoid suspicion at intentional criticism of church ideas. These tactics of anti-deception worked to enlighten many a soul to the injustices concealed by the church through falsehood, notably in a group called the Cathars who put forth a quite a challenging insurrection against the church for many years. In the King James Version of the New Testament, the church removed “The just will sprout like the phoenix [die and be reborn]” and replaced it with “righteous shall flourish like a palm tree, he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon,” thereby removing the original intent that hinted that social justice warriors sprouted up all the time, and seeking to bury any acknowledgement in the bible that conditions were not suitable for justice in the first place.

ISLAM

Enter Muhammad, who in his life from years 570-632, was a political, social, and religious leader who championed monotheism among the polytheists of the city of Mecca, and would later become known as the final prophet. In pre-Islamic Arabia, gods or goddesses were viewed as protectors, and the Kaaba shrine in the town of Mecca was the site of annual pilgrimages to pay homage to some 360 deities. In 629, after eight years of intermittent fighting with Meccan tribes, a nearly sixty year-old Muhammad gathered an army of 10,000 Muslim converts and conquered Mecca. Followers of Muhammad today claim that by being in the prophetic line, he would have been a supporter of Jesus, yet he seems to have overlooked Exodus 22:21, in which the prophet says, “You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

Afterward referred to as “light giver,” he produced a religious book in the Quran that was reportedly revelations he received from God, and are regarded by Muslims as the word of god verbatim. The Quran commands Muhammad to proclaim and praise the name of his lord and instructs him not to worship idols or associate other deities with God, like the Romani and other Shaktis were doing. I read the Quran for the first time at age fourteen, and I remember thinking is was not very original. It very much follows the Hebrew Bible so closely that it appears almost as a translation customized to sell male monotheism to Arabian audiences. Anyway, the expectations for believers at this time were few in number: belief in God, asking for forgiveness of sins, offering frequent prayers, assisting those in need, rejecting cheating and greed, being chaste, and not committing female infanticide, as this latter was apparently a significant issue of the time.

On top of the Quran, Muhammad urged his followers to take what he did and form a body of literature that discussed and prescribed the traditional customs and practices of the Islamic community, both social and legal. The result was the Sunnah sayings, actions, and silent approvals suggested by Muhammad, which became the basis for Islamic sharia law. However, like the Christian gospels, there are several competing collections of Sunnah hadiths worshiped by different denominations, also similar to Christianity. Some Muslims even place the Quran as supreme to all hadiths, seen as not necessarily consistent with the verbal teachings. Shia Muslims give preference to hadiths credited to the prophet's family and close associates, while Sunni Muslims do not consider family lineage in evaluating hadiths narrated by any of thousands of companions of Muhammad. Both Shi’ites and Sunnis however; in their epic battle of the true line of succession for Muhammad, are in the wrong by today’s standards, for not only worshipping the father and not the mother, but also for insisting on transfer of power via lineage at all, instead of by the more democratic principle of voting and power by one’s own merit. It is interesting though how Shi’ites claim the successor of Muhammad to be his daughter Fatima, even if it’s because she was the only descendant out of six to live into adulthood.

Muslim historians say that caliph Uthman ibn Affan, the third successor of Muhammad who was once his secretary, is generally believed to urge Muslims to record the hadith just as Muhammad suggested to some of his followers to write down his words and actions. Of note, his effort to do so was interrupted by his assassination, and no sources survive directly from this period, as they were not collected, compiled, and collated until a generation later. It is generally accepted though that the earliest teachings of Islam reflect a more flexible following of hadiths as the advice of Muhammad, while later definitions directed that religions duties were not optional. Nonetheless, Muhammad was not a peacemaker, but an instigator of religious conflict and war.

The conflict over religion was so bad that governors instituted sacred months during which all violence was forbidden, making it possible to participate in pilgrimages and fairs without danger. In year 595, a 25 year-old Muhammad married a wealthy 40 year-old widow and was suspiciously selected ‘by chance’ to lay the east-most black stone in the Kaaba after it had been renewed for renovations. Then, twenty years later, Muhammad and his followers had to seek refuge in Christian Ethiopia due to all the religious violence. Within another 15 years, Muhammad would succeed in overtaking Mecca. A significant and ironic factor in the success of Muhammad was his ability to attract the masses by exclaiming that the Quran requires payment of an alms tax for the benefit of the poor.

Muhammad gave guardianship of the Kabba to his tribe, the Quraysh, a name that evokes Cyrus, the Persian king famous for expanding his empire through conquest, and also for reportedly freeing the Jews from their reported captivity. He then began to dispatch expeditions aimed at eliminating symbols and evidence of pre-Islamic religion. It is reported he personally took his sword to the statue of the goddess Al-Uzza, after which time she became depicted as a black Abyssinian (Ethiopian) woman, naked with disheveled hair. The Book Of Idols written around year 800 about pre-islamic Arabia, quotes the prophet Muhammad as saying “That was al-'Uzza. But she is no more. The Arabs shall have none after her. Verily she shall never be worshipped again.” The book also described the concept of shirk, the Arabian term for the sin of polytheism.

Muslims generally avoid depictions of Muhammad and decorate mosques with inscriptions and calligraphy rather than sculptures or other images of the prophet. This is to ensure worship of God, not his prophet. As a natural skeptic, I am inclined to wonder whether Muhammad actually existed, or if the idea of Muhammad as prophet was a prepared public relations campaign to convert the Arabians to male monotheism. The falsifiers of Jesus perhaps intended to falsify again, with a prophet more aligned with Arabian customs. It’s a long-shot, but if I were to toss a guess at the origin of such a false final prophet, I lean toward John the Faster, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, who is reported to have died in 595, the same year Muhammad wed a wealthy widow. Side note: the canons of John the Faster are interesting because they reveal that sodomy at the time was not thought of in same-sex terms but in terms of any anal intercourse. Sodomy between husband and wife was actually penanced more severely than sodomy between unmarried males, which reflects that the same-sex aspect of homosexual sodomy was mitigating rather than aggravating.

If you are like me, you are noticing the damage the bigoted male ego has done to our world time and time again, and hopefully taking in the message that we must do the difficult work to combat this tendency of ours. The fact that we read about prophets, kings, and emperors does not mean these individuals were glorious. The prophets Zoroaster, Moses, Mani, Justin Martyr, and Muhammad were males with god complexes, promoters of war and death for the sake of their own power, so basically the opposite of what we should want to be as a person. The same was true of so-called greats (Cyrus, Alexander, Constantine, and Justinian), who were merely conquerors representing the opposite of freedom.

Justinian is considered great by many his-storical accounts for his efforts to revive the empire’s greatness by re-conquering the western empire from the Germanic tribes, and also for his creation of the Corpus Juris Civilus, which is the basis for rule of law of modern states. However, Justinian's religious policy reflected the imperial conviction that the unity of the Empire presupposed unity of faith, and it appeared to him obvious that this faith could only be his own. He re-instituted persecution of non-Christians, restricted the civil rights of Jews, and interfered with the affairs of their synagogue. Justinian also faced resistance from Samaritans, those possessors of the carnal knowledge, who actively opposed conversion to Christianity. Even though the Christian bible portrays Samson, Samuel, and the Samaritans in a softer light than the Israelites often did, the Samaritans conducted repeated insurrections against the orthodoxy of Justinian.

Justinian is considered a “nursing father” almost at the level of “church father” for his numerous religious enactments in the Codex and in Novellae. The Codex contained two statutes that decreed the total destruction of paganism, even in private life. These provisions were vigorously enforced, particularly targeting Asia Minor and north Africa, and affected several high ranking officials. Justinian held leverage over Rome felt entitled to settle disputes in papal elections, which he did when he appointed Vigilius as pope in 537 and banished his rival to a remote island where he is reported to have died of famine a few months later. 

The rule of the church by the emperor at Constantinople, called caesaropapism, set in motion the events that brought about the Great Schism of 1054, when the churches split into eastern and western factions. The church had agreed on five regional patriarchs at the Council of Chalcedon in year 451; however at the Council of Trullo in year 692, the patriarchs agreed to reject many of the new emperor-influenced customs as non-Orthodox, like fasting on Saturdays, depicting christ as a lamb, and using unleavened bread in the sacrament. They also rejected celibacy and upheld the right of married men to become priests, though still forbidding priests to marry and forbidding bishops to live with their wives. To combat the unorthodox influence of the emperor in church affairs, the church attempted to institute primacy of the roman branch, and a concept called papal infallibility. In defiance of being accused of being unorthodox, the emperor-led church became known as the Eastern Orthodox Church, distinct from the Catholic Church. Not long after, the Catholic Church would initiate crusades against the east to claim possession of key religious relics.

In 1453, Constantinople fell to the Muslim Ottomans, who instituted a multinational, multilingual empire at the center of interactions between the eastern and western world for six centuries. In the 16th century, an Ottoman sultan by the name of Suleiman actually evoked Solomon, regarded as a saint in Eastern Orthodox and also by Muslims as wise builder of first temple who was dedicated to GOD. Perhaps more like Solomon’s father David, Suleiman personally led Ottoman armies in conquering the Christian strongholds.

Though a conqueror, Suleiman gave particular attention to the plight of the rayas, Christian subjects who worked the land. His reforms governing levies and taxes raised the status of rayas above serfdom enough that Christian serfs are said to have migrated to Ottoman territories for a better life. The sultan also played a role in protecting the Jewish subjects of his empire, for instance when they were accused of murdering Christian children for blood rituals. Suleiman also enacted new criminal and police legislation that reduced the instances requiring death or mutilation as punishment. In the 18th century, the Ottoman military system started to fall behind that of their rivals, namely the Russian Empire, and by the end of World War I, the Ottoman influence in the world was tremendously reduced. This kind of reduction of global power is the stuff of revenge.

It is essential for global harmony that today’s adherents of Sharia law become informed of the dubious basis of the traditions they hold so ardently; however it is unreasonable for us to expect such a transformation, when we are a people predominantly composed of a religion, Christianity, that has a legacy of even more violent and more persistent persecution of others. Which is why it is my intent with this book, to deal the crushing blow to Christianity that forces the church to reckon with its falsehoods and atrocities. Once these other religions see their long-time oppressors take the first grand gesture toward truly embracing a secular world governance where freedom and democracy are inalienable, then they might be more inclined to follow in kind, de-escalate, and maybe one day even end this religious war that started so many millennia ago. So, if you are threatened by the edicts within Sharia law, look first at the man in the mirror and ask him to change his ways.

FIGURE: War In The Heavens

Early Polytheism Angels (for Shared Rule)

Zoroastrianism Archons (for Male-Only Rule)

First Temple Polytheism Angels (for Shared Rule)

Second Temple Monotheism (text: Talmuds) Archons (for Male-Only Rule)

Mandaism  Angels (for Shared Rule)

Rabbinic Judaism (text: Hebrew Bible) Archons (for Male-Only Rule)

Mithraism (text: Gathas) Angels (for Shared Rule)

Mazdaism (text: Avesta) Archons (for Male-Only Rule)

Christianity (text: Old Testament, New Testament) Archons (for Male-Only Rule)

Nasoreanism (text: Ginza Rabba) Angels (for Shared Rule)

Islam (text: Quran) Archons (for Male-Only Rule)

And the GOAL: Religious Freedom (text: Article 18, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR))

We have been raised to worship what we think are deities, not realizing the deities we worship are just people possessing the very demons we are meant to resist. At least half a dozen times humanity has made big gains against the devil, and then we seem to fall right back under his spells. He may not have won it all just yet, but that possibility seems closer every day as TheRump provokes both adversaries and allies, falling us closer and closer toward outright war in an age where the weapons of war sweep up souls like dust. There has never been so many lives at stake, and yet, so many lives have already been taken. Here a short list:

Roman Wars, including:

·      Punic wars (264-146BCE): +1.5 million deaths

·      Germanic/Gothic Wars (113BCE-596AD): +1 million deaths

·      Gallic Wars (58-50BCE against Gallic tribes): +1 million deaths

·      Jewish Wars (years 66-136): +1 million deaths

·      Hunnic Invasions (years 395-453): +165,000 deaths

·      Moorish Wars (years 534-548): +5 million deaths

Medieval Wars:

·      Reconquista (Christians vs Muslims from 711-1492): +7 million deaths

·      Crusades (Christians vs Muslims from 1095-1291): +1 million deaths

·      Mongol Conquests (Muslims vs Christians from 1206-1368): +30 million deaths

·      Hundred Years War (female succession rejected, led to claim to rule by English, and resulting war from 1337-1453): +2.3 million deaths

·      Conquests of Timur (“Sword of Islam” from 1370-1405): +8 million deaths

·      Conquests of Mehmed (opened mosques and codified law from 1451-1481): +873,000 deaths

Post-Renaissance Wars:

·      Italian Wars (French claim to rule causing war against Italians and England, from 1494-1559): +300,000 deaths (Protestants vs. Catholics)

·      Spanish Conquests of Americas (Catholics vs pagans from 1519-1632): +34 million deaths

·      Huguenot Wars (Catholics vs Protestants from 1562-1598): +2 million deaths

·      Dutch War of Independence (Protestants vs Catholics from 1538-1648): +600,000 deaths

·      Anglo-Spanish War (Protestants vs Catholics from 1585-1604): +140,000 deaths

·      Thirty Years War (Catholics vs Protestants from 1618-1648): +3 million deaths

·      Franco-Spanish War (Protestants vs Catholics from 1635-1659): +200,000 deaths

·      British Civil Wars (Protestants vs Protestants from 1639-1651): +876,000 deaths

·      Dutch War (Protestants vs Catholics from 1672-1678): +220,000 deaths

·      War of the Holy League (Sunnis vs Catholics from 1683-1699): +120,000 deaths

·      War of Spanish Succession (Protestants vs Catholics from 1701-1714): +400,000 deaths

·      Crimean War (Protestants and Catholics vs Eastern Orthodox from 1853-1856): +356,000 deaths

·      World War I (Germans, Austrians, and Ottomans subdued from 1914-1918): +8.5 million deaths

·      World War II (Germans, Italians, and Japanese subdued from 1939-1945, and Israel formed): +56 million deaths

·      Arab-Israeli Conflict (native Palestinians in arms over Israeli occupation from 1948 to present): +116,000 deaths

·      War in Afghanistan, years 1978 to present (US intervention after Russia invasion of Afghanistan): +1.2 million deaths

·      Iran-Iraq War, years 1980-1988 (Shia vs Sunni): +500,000 deaths 

·      Gulf War/uprisings (US against Iraq for Kuwait in 1991): +110,000 deaths

·      War on Terror led by the United States that brought about 150,000 deaths in Afghanistan and 270,000 deaths in Iraq, predominantly of Sunni Muslims.

In many recent wars, the religious intention behind the war has been carefully concealed. Afghanistan and Iraq were known to have Russian affiliations, so was it a Christian US power grab against a secular Russia, or were these wars a front for the coordinated destruction of Sunni landmarks, relics, and culture? It’s hard to say, but what is evident is that the US has been encroaching on the autonomy and natural resources of these nations, using them as proxies against direct conflict with Russia. We are complicit in the deaths of so many Muslims, and by our hypocrisy have made ourselves targets of reciprocal kharma. Other actions have already come back to bite us, like when we worried of a Russian takeover of Iran and in 1953 led a coup d’état against Iranian Prime Minister Mosaddegh, which caused Iran to be too westernized for comfort, and led to the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and subsequent US hostage crisis, Iran afterward becoming intolerant toward religious freedom and free speech.

I do not believe it is an exaggeration to say that all the instigators of any war ever have been influenced by religion, and always by a religion that sits on the side of man-rule instead of shared rule. It’s a reflection that they all – Judaism, Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism – have it way wrong. The Shia-Sunni war is dumb. The Muslim-Judaic war is dumb. The Christian-Judaic war is dumb. The Christian-Islam war is dumb. And the people who participate in these wars are, well, have some learning to do. Billions of people on this earth are waging war because of the wagers placed on entire races. Maybe only a few among us belong to the fat-cat families that deal in oil and other resources possessed by brown people, but that does not free us entirely from blame, especially now that you have been enlightened to the religious motivations behind these wars.

So figure out how to do something about it. If you are Christian, you can try studying the teachings of the many buddhas that has been collected over time instead of the life of just one. If you are Jewish or Muslim, you might find Sufism and its “many as one” principle a peaceful alternative that honors your people and culture. These are not perfect, but at least they teach and practice non-violence. Honestly though, I’m not asking you to believe in any god, but to believe in yourself. There is no one to heal or baptize as John or Jesus did, but with a little help, you can heal yourself. Seek forgiveness from another. Do the work of showing love to sinners and atoning for your own sins. Trust your fellow human and work with them to figure out how what they think is best doesn’t match what you think is best. Because everyone is wrong sometimes, and those who are wrong all the time have just a hard a time admitting it as those who are wrong only once in a while. We really are all so much alike in how we suffer. 

Suffering is what religions should be trying to combat, yet religious leaders spend all this time, effort, and money interpreting the teachings of dead messengers and military men who had insufficient information about suffering through time. All the while, the message gets muddled by disciples, becoming more and more difficult for us to sort out the original content that caused this public figure to say what they did. Perhaps the Sikhs have it right, in worshipping the guru Granth Sahib, who isn’t a person, but a book that is never altered. In the same vein, I like how the buddhas that popped up over time never seemed to try to name a substitute or replacement, and instead stayed focused on reason and virtue as the only religion.

But there are a lot of people who don’t care about reason nor principle either; they only care about winning. To them there is no civility to how to win an argument, and they resort to tricks like lies, personal attacks, and accusing other of what they are guilty of. It’s actually a sign of stupidity, because if we were smart we could see this approach is weakness, not winning.  But because we are human and faulty and lie to save face, we must work extra hard to be courageous enough to give serious consideration to the worst case scenarios. This is all why faith is problematic to say the least, unlike hope, which has great utility without ignoring reason.

There is a lesson in realizing it not about the outcome of winning or losing, but about the principle. I’ve sometimes thought about what I would do if I were to meet TheRump. My first inclination is to think my patriotic duty calls for some good ol’ fashioned frontier-style justice, where I would desecrate his body publicly after I look him in the eye and take his life, for what he has done to our country, to our people, to all people, and to the globe - just to show the world how seriously we combat bigotry and dictatorship. I even wrote out how I would go about it, and decided not to include it - not because of any fear about prison, but because that is against my country’s principles. Plus I remember there is a vice president in line behind him, not much different than he, and a thousand more elected officials just like him, and 60 million more who voted for them. Aside from violating our virtues of justice, taking such violent action martyrs him and plays into the narrative that he and his constituents are victims, thereby only energizing his base. It serves to fuel the crowd instead of snuffing out the ideology. To defeat the ideology we have to stay true to our principles, which includes democracy and justice. No matter how slow our justice system is being, no matter the pain we have inside, we have to believe it will work out, and the people who spread hate will be connected with the support they need and be rehabilitated. And be prepared to take the steps within our power consistent with our legal role in the checks and balances.

So, Mr. TheRump-Voter, have peace and know that you are not damned. Anyone with a right mind wants you to be redeemed and join the rest of us on the team that promotes good, not evil. Yet you must learn to be more careful with your words and your impact on others and on GOD’s great earth. Release your pride. Release your ego. Read more Confucius if you like ego so much. Read more, period. At least try. Yep, it’s going to be hard, but you can either choose to do it as a free man, or you can do it with all the free time you will have behind bars, because that is where hatred leads, to prison and to an ugly death.

And this brings us to another major concern I have with TheRump, which is that when our president is so morally bankrupt, we likely are not able to trust when they say we need to go to risk death for our country, so when there is a real threat justifying very immediate military action, we may not act with immediacy or may not support the war, and this makes us more vulnerable, which is of course the opposite of what we all want. Each day I am seeing TheRump’s instability bringing us closer and closer to war, and I am losing hope that it can be prevented more and more each day too.

Along your journey, try to do two more things. First, try Ronald Reagan’s famous saying, “Trust, but verify.” Most of the policy debates I see are a result of one side assuming the other side has malicious intent. Sure, a lot I’ve times people just like to piss other people off when they themselves are hurting – I call it being a trumpanzee because it causes people to fling bullshit, or whatever kind of shit, all over the place.

Second, try to avoid bigotry along the way. It doesn’t matter whether a human has type 1 hair or type 4, we are all human, and that means our shared ancestors have over time been through the some profound suffering, and even been the cause of much suffering too. By being on this earth together, we are all the same. It’s time to stop pretending any of us are less deserving of empathy, less deserving of equity, while others among us are more deserving of anything.

After announcing my intent to publish this chapter on modern day good and evil, I was approached by a Jewish friend of mine who I met while learning Krav Maga. She implored me to be sensitive to the plight of Jews. I reassured her that I would be sensitive to the sad reality of anti-semitism, and promised to profess that in a world of religious freedom, peoples and cultures must be safe from persecution and blame for the actions of their leaders, who exert pressure on their subjects that makes them less free. It’s the leaders who must be firmly held to account, while the subjects be subject to mercy and forgiveness.

In addition to reassurance, I also asked my friend if she had heard of another group, the Mandaeans, which are even fewer in number and yet have not been blessed with their own nation state, making the religion even more vulnerable to elimination. She had not. I could have also drawn her attention to Mithraism, or to the Romani, and all kinds of people who have been persecuted through time and who are one genocide away from complete annihilation of their knowledge and customs, in a world where genocides happen more often than we like to admit.

I’ve heard similar appeals from other Jewish friends in while discussing racism, during which time I acknowledge the his-story of Jewish persecution and politely point out how the anti-Semitism in this country is mild compared to the systemic oppression of black Americans, who cannot choose to change the color of their skin the way Jews have the choice to change their customs to assimilate, like the Mandaeans have over the millennia. I also point out that blacks have a tremendous saga of persecution over time as well.

I’ve noticed my black power friends like to refer to the Moors, a group of black scientists in 7th century Spain who knew then that the world was round. But even before them, the great Greeks worshipped the physical strength of the Spartans’ black bodies. Before that black minds were experts of travel, trade, language, astronomy, geometry, construction, surgery, medicine, and biology. Blacks were rulers and even deities – that is until racism set in, bringing with it statues with thin noses and thin lips on what were once black heroes. Many statues today have damaged noses, in my mind signifying a past conflict over appearance. Those conflicts were long ago, before the explosion of fine art during the Venetian Renaissance that solidified those false faces literally in stone.

I used to puzzle over the white supremacist mindset wondering how on earth people could hate someone based on skin color. People who absolutely recognize we all came from the same starting point, yet somehow think that pink people graduated more rapidly than others over the millennia. Well, as a pink person who has excelled over most other pink persons, I have to just plainly disagree, and I find it ironic that it’s pink-skinned screw-ups in my family who tend toward thinking they are better than others. Yes, I am calling us pink instead of white to piss off white supremacist snowflakes.

In seriousness though, I like how the artist Prince talks about the shade of peach, which reminds me of how white is not even a color humans for anyone but albinos. I wonder if the albinos among us are irritated as white supremacists for stealing their color. Since no one is actually white or actually black, I’d like for us to one day all identify as shades of brown. Alas, brown refers to specific race of easterner, albeit one that might not kind if we all joined them in solidarity.

I think what I find most fascinating is that racists can condemn one of GOD’s creatures and savagely call another being savage, because they believe GOD is on their side. And yet they deny they are doing it, suggesting they just don’t like lazy people, or loud people, or non-conformists, or non-family, or anyone who doesn’t bend to authorities. Well as a paramedic, I saw humans in situations where they lost their humanity, but I’ve never seen such savage souls in such denial of it like white supremacists are. False religion is the only explanation I have for such moral failure.

It is no exaggeration to say that the Catholic Church has only ever paid lip service to helping blacks, and has barely budged on gender equality and other-gender equality. This is the Vatican who helped the Italian Fascist regime escape during World War II, and hung “god’s banker” from Black Friar’s Bridge in 1982. It’s also the Vatican that controls its own country so that it can forgive itself for its crimes. Worse yet, the powerful families who oppose the church, like the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, are even more enemies of freedom and democracy. Before the Nazi’s made it extremely uncool, the Rockefellers were funding human eugenics studies, and might also have been involved in whatever, or whoever, caused the mass poisoning of Pont St. Espirit in France in 1951. That conspiracy has very little support, but others do, and while the common accusations of conspiracy are directed as the US Central Intelligence Agency, I find it less likely that a government agency with moderate scrutiny could be at fault instead of the oligarchs behind all the government.

Don’t think for a minute that royal families don’t realize that the source of ‘our father’ is the early Egyptian worship of the sun-god. They are the ones in power who stand to lose from instability, so they pretend to be faithful to a Christian god or a Jewish god, or a Muslim god in order to promote calm and feign peace, all the while justifying their wars. “Let them eat cake,” they say regarding whether to reveal the truth to us or keep us blissfully ignorant. I intend to take our government secrets to my grave, but you bet I am going to share these carnal secrets with you now in this moment that we are seemingly at the beginning of the end of his-story.

There is a great battle of religion occurring this very moment among the fat-cat families and other puppet masters of the globe, some of whom are working to destroy certain relics and eliminate support for ideas that have been concealed for several thousand years. With the dawn of the information age and the proof of religious deception being more publicly available, these forces have realized they are on their last sands of the hourglass to conceal the lies for good, and they are executing whatever last ditch efforts they can.

And this great battle is over us, playing out for our hearts and minds, actually in our hearts and minds. On one hand we have a set of ideas from our parents, and while there are a lot of known falsehoods, we are told our book is holy, moreso than all the other holy books because our faith leaders have cherry picked the passages that fit their mission of making us give us their money. And on the other hand, there are explanations of all the religions, like the one I provide here, that generally flow logically but it’s in a book written by an ordinary person, not a book that we are told is written by God, so it’s hard to break from that cycle.

As I see it, we are faced with a choice about how to see the genesis of humanity. We can choose to see it as a good vs. evil, whereby evil has won out and it’s useless to struggle and makes sense to put self and immediate family above all. This mindset is called greed, but I have another word for it: godlessness. Or, we can believe that our puppeteers make us subject to the “bread of adversity and the water of affliction” (Isaiah 30:30), so that we may learn, that they are patiently guiding us toward the day when our critical mass rises to the point that our species proves worthy of truth, and we say “Let there be light!” (Genesis 1:3).

Obviously I believe the latter. I believe that those in power, at least the majority of them, are on the side of good, waiting for us to unlock the clues to our own power. Those in power have been waiting for someone among the blind to key in on the proper priorities, and devote themselves to wake their fellow blind beings. I am here trying, not because I consider myself all that special, after all I’ve been built up by the thousands who have interacted with me, but because I have to try. I feel we all have to try, always. I consider it highly unlikely that I will unlock any gates to some special vortex, but maybe I can arrange enough of the pieces to inspire future investigative thinkers to fill in even more of the puzzle.

If I can piece together this much of the puzzle, the evil-doers can too, so we should be deeply concerned that one result of the conclusions I present is it might incite wars and genocides over religion. For example, the Ottomans (Sunni Islamists of modern day Turkey), conducted the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians, 150,000 Assyrians, and 450,000 Pontic Greeks during the World War I, at which time the entire Christian population in the empire had been killed, had fled, or was in hiding by the end of the war. Seemingly inspired, forces in Russia carried out the Red Terror and the Great Purge, which combined saw at least 780,000 Russians executed. In true karmic fashion, the Generalplan Ost (German ethnic cleansing of Russians in 1941-1945) resulted in over 3 million Russian deaths in the next world war. This is the same Germany, a predominantly Christian regime, that was responsible for 6 million deaths as part of the holocaust genocide of the European Jews.

Don’t think this kind of thing hasn’t been happening since world wars. The major players, including the United States, just fight its enemies through proxies and propaganda. The Bosnian War saw the breakup of Eastern Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats from predominantly Muslim Yugoslavia, and saw all three sides supported by foreign fighters of similar religious ideologies. Then it saw the genocide of 7,000 Muslims in the territory of the Eastern Orthodox Serbs. Fearing these families would join the fight against their new rival territories, the Serbs executed the very people they had been living next door to. I’m worried that without United States commitment to ‘good’ and active combat of such atrocities, we are about to see much more of this kind of thing.

The true leaders of a free world must be proactive and anticipate nations leaning toward authoritarianism, and incentivize policies that resist that authoritarianism. We must also, when it becomes necessary, use aggressive tactics including war, to prevent for instance, 32 million Vietnamese, 6 million Cambodians, and 2 million Laotians from falling under the thumb of Soviet Union and China. Now perhaps the deaths of 450,000 Vietnamese, 300,000 Cambodians, 20,000 Laotians, and 58,318 from the US was too great a cost, but there is justification for being proactive about preventing authoritarian regimes from rising to power or gaining control over other powers. As someone who has worked in nuclear counterterrorism, I am not denying the purpose of war in certain circumstances, but destabilizing the economy of foreign ethnicities is NOT justifiable circumstances, Mr. Presi-don’t.

With global security like a wrecking ball, the world needs the strongest force to be a stabilizer, not another instigator exerting forces that make the wrecking ball swing and spin wildly and rapidly. As the greatest military on earth, we have a responsibility to the world to not abuse the power of our military might. Being who we are, we need to be a stabilizing force for freedom, liberty, and justice. To do so, we must have respectability and credibility on the global stage, which is why we must limit our mistakes. War crimes and other mistakes only fuel the anti-American resentment, place our soldiers and citizens in harm, and harm the effectiveness of our operations. If we don’t act quickly to depose our own dictator, we are going to be complicit in the executions of millions of innocent children, adults, and elders. Who even knows what kind of impact on the environment such events will have once the militaries start to mobilize and the bombs start to drop at even greater rates.

The world needs a United States and a United Nations that gives a damn about people and cultures, enough to have the bravery to send our troops to war and to also have the courage to preempt violence and have in place plans to protect people from their governments and provide aid to millions of refugees. It is essential for life on this planet that we have clear international standards for freedom and peace, and assurance that violations of a country’s sovereignty are going to be met with swift international intervention or other response. Additionally, when witness to a country’s civil wars, the United Nations must have an international forum for receiving the concerns of separatist groups, so we at least offer them a civil option before we match their violence with violence. It also must be able to calculate whether there is freedom to be gained or whether the conflict is simply a social movement, and respond or not respond accordingly.

From pre-historic hunter-gatherer societies, to the wild American west, to the present day, every single human society has depended on pluralism, cooperation, pooling resources, and putting the interest of the group ahead of any individual within it, for survival. All the ego-driven kings, prophets, and emperors we’ve discussed thought otherwise, and all eventually lost. We absolutely must agree that every body has the same worth, and work together to create the kind of democracy where everyone is empowered to reach their full potential. Maybe one day we can get there; maybe one day we can overcome this demon. PLEASE DON’T LET US GET INTO ANOTHER RELIGIOUS ARMED CONFLICT!!!