LOUGH GUR

Irish mythological site.

This small LAKE in Co. Limerick, inhabited for almost 6,000 years, is surrounded by low hills, each of them connected with a goddess or god. Site of the largest extant STONE CIRCLE in Ireland, the Grange, the lake is believed to be an entrance to the OTHERWORLD, a belief common to Celtic lands where water was seen as the dividing line between this world and that of the FAIRIES.

The many legends connected with the lake emphasize a cycle of time, usually seven years. Each time that cycle passes, distinctive events occur. The lake empties of water, and passersby see a tree growing from its bottom, covered with a GREEN cloth; beneath it, a woman named TOICE BHREAN sits KNITTING. The goddess or fairy queen Áine is similarly seen at Lough Gur each time the seven-year cycle ends, as is her enchanted son GERÓID IARLA, born to her after her affair with Maurice, earl of Desmond, who saw her swimming in the form of a SWAN and stole her cloak in order to capture her. As with other such marriages, the groom was put under a taboo by the bride, in this case to show no surprise, no matter what their son might do. Maurice forgot himself when, at a banquet, the now-grown Geróid shrank himself into a tiny being and leaped into a bottle, then out again, resuming his regular size. The moment Maurice called out in amazement, Geróid disappeared into Lough Gur, appearing on its surface as a GOOSE. Every seven years, he emerges from his fairy residence on the island named for him, Garrod Island, and takes on human form as he leaves the lake. He rides a white horse and leads the WILD HUNT across the land.

Other legends tell of a FAIRY HOUSEKEEPER who appears on the chair-shaped ancient monument called the Suidheachan or “housekeeper’s seat” near the lake. The housekeeper once fell asleep when the dwarf harper, Áine’s brother FER Í, stole her COMB (a female anatomical symbol, suggesting the theft might have been a rape), whereupon the housekeeper cursed the CATTLE of the region as well as the dwarf. Fer Í returned the comb, but to no avail, for the CURSE held and he died. The housekeeper, or another fairy woman, is believed to “steal”—drown—a human in the lake waters once every seven years. The lands around the lake are believed to be the territory of the fairy race, who frequently kidnap children from its shores.

Sources: Carbery, Mary. The Farm by Lough Gur: The Story of Mary Fogarty. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1937; Croker, T. Crofton. Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland. London: William Tegg, 1862, pp. 167 ff; Dames, Michael. Mythic Ireland. London: Thames and Hudson, 1992, pp. 73 ff; Evans- Wentz, W. Y. The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe Humanities Press, 1911, pp. 78–79, 81 ff.

BOMARZO: THE ART OF MELANCHOLY

Bomarzo, the most instantly recognizable of Italian gardens, is also the most untypical – indeed it is unique and impossible to categorize. Its weird monsters, giants, gaping mouths and lopsided architecture would seem more at home in the paintings of Salvador Dali or the pages of H.P. Lovecraft than in the peaceful countryside of the Latium. Located near Viterbo, the palace of Bomarzo, at the town of the same name, belonged to the Orsini family, and the garden was created by one of its most eccentric members, Vicino Orsini. Born in about 1516, Vicino grew into a colourful and talented young man who sired a number of illegitimate children before marrying in 1544 the beautiful noblewoman Guilia Farnese. He had a distinguished diplomatic and military career before being captured in battle in 1553 by the forces of the Habsburg Emperor Charles V and held to ransom for three years. Orazio Farnese, his closest friend, was killed in the same battle, and shortly after he was freed from imprisonment his beloved young bride also died. In his grief he became a recluse and began obsessively to build one of the world’s most bizarre gardens.

Why did he create such an extraordinary place? The explanation may have something to do with his friend Cristoforo Madruzzo, a brilliant, worldly aristocrat and Church potentate who lived not far away in the palace of Bagnaia at the town of Soriano. Hansmartin Decker-Hauff, in an essay on Bomarzo, speculates that the two men entered into a kind of competition: Cristoforo Madruzzo set out to create at Bagnaia a garden of beauty, harmony and light, while Vicino Orsini at Bomarzo created one of gloom, disharmony and weirdness, reflecting his melancholy state of mind. However, I would suggest that the explanation is perhaps more complex. There are two opposite approaches to dealing with the condition of melancholy. One is to attempt to banish the melancholy by subjecting oneself to cheerful stimuli. The other is to do the opposite, namely to surround oneself with sad and gloomy things, thus giving oneself a kind of homeopathic dose of melancholy to stimulate a counter-reaction. As an example of the latter approach, the writer Colin Wilson has described how, as a young man, when he returned home from a tedious day’s work feeling depressed, he would retire to his bedroom and read the gloomiest poetry he could find. Inevitably, after a while he would begin to cheer up and be able to put the gloomy reading aside. This method was surely known to the Renaissance, and would provide a convincing explanation for Vicino’s creation of the Bomarzo garden.

It has also been claimed that the figures at Bomarzo, most of them carved out of natural pieces of rock on the site, are alchemical images. Vicino was deeply interested in alchemy and corresponded with the French alchemist Jean Drouet, and certainly a number of the figures could be given an alchemical interpretation. Others, however, appear to have no obvious connection with alchemy.

Probably the most penetrating and detailed study of Bomarzo and its creator is Horst Bredekamp’s Vicino Orsini und der heilige Wald von Bomarzo (Vicino Orisini and the Sacred Wood of Bomarzo), illustrated with wonderfully evocative photographs by Wolfram Janzer. Bredekamp sees much of the meaning of Bomarzo as lying in Vicino’s Epicurean world view, which led him to seek solace in sensual pleasure and the joys of nature and to rebel against the Counter- Reformation orthodoxy of his day by plunging into an extravagant world of the imagination, full of weird and bizarre images. Bredekamp also explains many of the features of Bomarzo as being intended to commemorate Guilia Farnese.

An interesting fictional treatment of Vicino’s life, written in the form of an autobiography and clearly based on thorough research, is the novel Bomarzo by the Argentinian writer Manuel Mujica Lainez. As Lainez portrays him, Vicino created the garden as a kind of inner portrait of himself, a ‘book in stone’, deliberately enigmatic. Writing of the rocks before they were carved, he says: ‘Each rock contained an enigma in its structure, and each of these enigmas was also a secret of my past and my character. I only had to uncover them, to strip each rock of the crust that covered its essential image.’

The approach to the garden of Bomarzo takes one first past two sphinxes, which underline the mysterious nature of what the visitor is about to see. An inscription on one of them reads:

TU CH’ENTRI QUI CON MENTE

PARTE A PARTE

ET DIMMI POI SE TANTE

MARAVIGLIE

SIEN FATTE PER INGANNO

O PUR PER ARTE.

(You who enter this place, observe it piece by piece and tell me afterwards whether so many marvels were created for deception or purely for art.)

Here the word ‘art’ could possibly be taken to mean the alchemical art.

Passing between the sphinxes the visitor comes to a small house, built deliberately so that it leans disconcertingly to one side. Bredekamp sees this as one of the memorials to Guilia Farnese. The pictorial source for the house he identifies as a contemporary emblem book by Achille Bocchi, where a similar leaning building signifies ‘a woman who, with great steadfastness during her husband’s absence at war, preserves the family house from collapse’. More strange images follow: a huge scowling face with a gaping mouth leading to a cave (perhaps the most famous of Bomarzo’s features), an androygne (possibly an alchemical image) being held upside down and ripped apart by a giant, a mermaid with two tails (again an image found in many alchemical treatises), a dragon attacking a deer, a giant tortoise carrying a globe surmounted by a female figure with a trumpet, and numerous other marvels.

Possibly the creation of the garden served many purposes – part memorial to Vicino’s deceased wife, part therapy for melancholy, part autobiography in stone, part collection of alchemical symbols, part mannerist experiment. The sculptures lay forgotten for centuries, gathering moss, until in the twentieth century they began to attract the attention of art historians, artists and writers. The writer Manuel Mujica Lainez has already been mentioned. The artists that the garden has inspired include Niki de Saint Phalle and the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali, who incorporated some of its images into his paintings and who was once photographed holding a candle and talking to a white cat in the jaws of Bomarzo’s largest monster. The spectacle perhaps drew a wry smile from the ghost of Vicino Orsini.

Occult Symbols

Symbols are employed as tools to communicate the spiritual attributes of the New Age movement and the occult. And while most of these symbols are many centuries old, their meanings have remained the same. In fact, as the public extension of ancient occult teachings, the New Age movement has placed mystical symbolism squarely in the face of our modern culture.

What makes this especially disturbing is that while the "marks" of occultism can be found throughout society, yet we no longer recognize their spiritual implications. However, just because the average person doesn’t know the meaning of occult symbols, it in no way negates their significance. As Manly P. Hall stated, "They are centers of a mighty force, figures pregnant with an awful power…."

Occult symbols have never lost their meaning. Today, New Agers and practitioners of the occult still employ their use, just as mystics have throughout the ages.

According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, "symbol" can be defined as "a mark or character taken as the conventional sign of some object, idea, function, or process." The New Age movement and the occult–which, in many ways, are one and the same–have greatly employed the use of symbolism. I find it disturbing that while the historical and contemporary "marks" of occultism can be found throughout our modern culture, we no longer recognize their spiritual significance. However, just because the average person no longer knows the meaning of occult symbols, it in no way negates their significance. The fact remains that these symbols have never lost their meaning, and occultists today still recognize their power and influence.

TOPOGRAPHICAL MAP OF PART OF THE NECROPOLIS OF MEMPHIS

(PYRAMIDS OF GIZA)

The temple lying next to the Sphinx had recently been cleared by Mariette, and Prisse had assumed it was a tomb. Actually, it was the valley temple of the pyramid of Khephren, linked to it by a causeway. In drawing this detailed map of the site of the Giza pyramids, Prisse seems to have been more interested in the temples at the foot of the pyramids, drawn as architectural ground plans, than the rest, drawn as an aerial view.

THE NIBELUNGENLIED

This painting shows an episode from the German poem the Nibelungenlied: King Etzel enters the city of Vienna on horseback.

The Nibelungenlied (Song of the Nibelungs) is the great story of the Burgundian people, who had settled in the city of Worms in the 5th century, and of their tragic fate. By the start of the 13th century, this tale has been immortalized as an epic poem, popular throughout the courts of Germany.

THE MARRIAGES OF SIEGFRIED AND GUNTHER

Siegfried, a knight from the city of Xanten on the lower Rhine, hears of the great beauty of Kriemhild, sister of the Burgundian king, Gunther, and decides to woo her. Upon his arrival in Worms, only Hagen, Gunther’s most powerful vassal, recognizes him, and relates his heroic deeds: Siegfried firstly won a great treasure from the Nibelungs (two princes and brothers named Schilbung and Nibelung), by slaying them. After taking the Tarnkappe (a cloak of darkness) from Alberich, the dwarven treasurer of the Nibelungs, he rose to become ruler of Nibelungland. Hagen also tells of how Siegfried had killed the dragon Fafnir and bathed in its blood, after which his body became invulnerable. (In fact he had only one vulnerable spot, between his shoulder blades, where a large leaf had rested on his skin as he was soaked in the dragon’s blood.)

King Gunther allows Siegfried to marry Kriemhild, on the condition that he helps him to gain the hand of Brünhild, the legendarily strong queen of Iceland. Siegfried agrees, and upon their arrival in Iceland, Brünhild is most disappointed that it is Gunther, instead of Siegfried, who has come to woo her. Nevertheless, she agrees to marry Gunther if he can best her in three contests of strength. With the use of the Tarnkappe, Siegfried manages to substitute himself for Gunther in the contest, and deceive Brünhild into thinking that Gunther has bested her. Returning to Worms, a double marriage is arranged: Gunther with Brünhild and Siegfried with Kriemhild. Of these four, only Brünhild is unhappy, since she is in love with Siegfried instead. Gunther’s marriage immediately hits difficulties, as his new wife overpowers him on their wedding night and hangs him up on the wall. Siegfried again helps Gunther, and takes his place in the bedchamber, overpowering and restraining Brünhild, so that Gunther can deflower her. Brünhild loses her great strength, which relied on her maidenhood. However Siegfried also takes Brünhild’s ring and girdle, and gifts them to Kriemhild. He returns home with his new wife, where he becomes king of the Nether Lands, and they live happily for ten years.

THE DEATH OF SIEGFRIED

In Worms, Brünhild remains unhappy in her marriage to Gunther, still unaware of how he cheated to gain her hand. Siegfried and Kriemhild return for a festival, at which Gunther treats him as an equal. Brünhild, however, thinks that Siegfried is a vassal of Gunther, and treats Kriemhild as her inferior, leading to a quarrel between the two queens. Kriemhild claims that Siegfried is braver and stronger than her brother Gunther, which she proves by revealing that it was Siegfried who had overpowered her in her bedchamber. She claims (wrongly) that it was Siegfried who had claimed her virginity, and reveals the belt and girdle. Brünhild is mortally embarrassed and Gunther has no choice but to confront Siegfried. Siegfried swears that he never claimed to be Brünhild’s first man, which Gunther accepts.

Brünhild’s humiliation lingers, and she conspires with Hagen (who is jealous of Siegfried’s wealth and prowess) to kill Siegfried. Hagen persuades Gunther, with reluctance, to agree. He then deceives Kriemhild and manages to learn of Siegfried’s sole weakness. Hagen goes on a hunt with Siegfried in the Odenwald, and challenges him to a race. As Siegfried quenches his thirst at a spring, Hagen seizes his javelin and thrusts it between Siegfried’s shoulder blades, his only weak spot, and slays him. Kriemhild is inconsolable at the death of her husband. At his funeral, as Hagen and Gunther move around the bier, Siegfried’s wounds run anew, revealing the traitors.

THE TREASURE OF THE NIBELUNGS

Kriemhild stays at Worms, and after three years she is eventually reconciled with her brother Gunther. He persuades her to bring the Nibelung treasure to Burgundy, to which she has a right, as Siegfried’s widow. Thus Kriemhild becomes fabulously wealthy, but her acts of generosity do not sit well with Hagen. Hagen also fears that she will use this money to raise an army to attack him. He therefore steals the treasure, and prevents Kriemhild from regaining it by sinking it in the Rhine. Gunther does not punish Hagen for this; apart from Hagen, he and his brothers are the only ones who know of where the hoard is sunk.

KRIEMHILD’S REVENGE

Some years later, Etzel (Attila), king of the Huns, decides to seek the hand of Kriemhild, who is still the most beautiful woman in the world. She is initially reluctant to marry a heathen, and she still mourns for Siegfried, yet she sees that the marriage will finally allow her to take revenge on Hagen. Etzel and Kriemhild marry in Vienna and travel to Etzelnburg, Etzel’s capital in Hungary. After winning the trust of her new husband’s vassals, she invites her brothers to a midsummer festival in Hungary, knowing that Hagen will also attend. Hagen however persuades Gunther to take an escort of a thousand armed men. In crossing the River Danube, Hagen encounters water sprites who warn him to turn back, foretelling that they are all doomed to die, bar one (a priest). Hagen tries to disprove the prophecy by murdering this priest, but he fails and the churchman escapes. Gunther and Hagen arrive at Etzel’s court but are given a cold reception by Kriemhild. After a day, fighting breaks out, and many Huns are killed. Gunther allows Kriemhild and Etzel, with his vassal Dietrich of Bern, to leave the hall.

Hagen foolishly taunts Etzel, and the battle is renewed. Dietrich manages to overpower and capture Gunther and Hagen, but honorably offers to return them safely to their home. Kriemhild, however, confronts the imprisoned Hagen, demanding the return of Siegfried’s treasure, in return for freedom to return to Burgundy. Hagen responds with mockery, so Kriemhild has Gunther beheaded, and brings his head to Hagen. Kriemhild again demands that he tell her the location of the treasure; when he refuses, she takes up Balmung (Siegfried’s sword) and decapitates him. Upon discovering the bodies of Gunther and Hagen, Hildebrand (Dietrich’s man-at-arms) retaliates by killing the queen. Thus the tale ends in tragedy with the death of all the leading participants, and the treasure of the Nibelungs remains lost.

Cian (Kian, Cian mac Cainte) Irish hero.

Balor

When BALOR, king of the FOMORIANS, was told that he would be killed by his grandson, he thought he could outwit the prophecy because his only daughter EITHNE was still a virgin. So he locked her in a high tower, where she would never meet a man and therefore never bear a child.

Balor proved his own undoing, for he coveted the magically abundant COW, the GLAS GHAIBHLEANN, which was in the keeping of Cian, a man from the mainland. Some tales say that Cian was the cow’s owner, while others say that he was merely the cowherd, the owner being a magical SMITH. Sailing over from his home on Tory Island, off the northwest coast of Ireland, Balor stole the cow and brought her back to his distant home. Unwilling to lose such a splendid beast, Cian went secretly across the waters, where he found a greater prize: the fair Eithne. Helped by a DRUID woman, BIRÓG, he decked himself in women’s clothes and took up residence in the tower, where he seduced Eithne. She gave birth to three sons, two of whom were drowned by their grandfather; the surviving child was the hero LUGH. In variants of the story, Cian is called Kian or MacInelly; he is also said to have impregnated Eithne’s other 12 handmaids, all of whom gave birth to SEALS.

In some stories, Cian is described as a son of the physician god, DIAN CÉCHT, which would make him one of the TUATHA DÉ DANANN, the people of the goddess DANU. He died when three brothers, the SONS OF TUIREANN, ambushed him because of enmity between Cian and their father. To his humiliation, he attempted to avoid the encounter with the armed warriors, turning himself into a PIG and pretending to scour the forest floor for acorns, but the brothers saw through the SHAPE-SHIFTING and turned themselves into DOGS to bring Cian down, only permitting him to return to human form just before death. The great earthwork called the Black Pig’s Dyke is said to be his petrified body or to have been dug by him while in pig form.

THE LOST MINES OF THE GODS

The claim by Sitchin that the area of Lake Titicaca was set up as a major metallurgy center is quite an extraordinary piece of detective work and the supporting evidence is astounding. Again the conclusion that the entire complex was set up as part of a major control center to deal with matters of travel and supply is further hinted at by the depiction on the Mayan stele of the figure bearing the ‘Star of David’ symbol on his ear-ring.

The Star of David symbol is extraordinarily similar to an earlier Sumerian emblem which is quite likely the original precursor to the Jewish symbol. The Sumerian symbol, which signifies a ‘Supreme Place of the Four Regions’, has also been found at many ancient trade centers in the Persian Gulf area such as the ancient Sumerian city of Ur.Shulim, (the modern Jerusalem,) at Uruk (the Biblical Erech) and at other places that are all thought to have been vital control centers of the Sumerians that dealt with matters of travel and supplies. Plus there further evidence to support the conclusion that the site was indeed used for the refining of metals.

The mountain on which Tiahuanaco is situated is itself also extremely rich in tin bearing ores. Tin of course is not a naturally accessible metal like gold and must be smelted and extracted by various chemical processes and then mixed with a required percentage of copper to produce bronze, it’s not just a straightforward and simple procedure. The ancient bronze clamps that are still evident on many stone slabs are intriguing because only minimal supplies of copper with which they could have been made are available anywhere near the location of Cuzco. In startling contrast to this lack of a local copper source, many of the river rocks on the shore of Lake Titicaca, especially near the remains of ancient docks and port facilities at Puma Punka, are stained a deep bluish green.

What causes rocks to turn a bluish green?

The only thing that can cause such a reaction is prolonged exposure to copper – end of list. It’s similar to the way rocks rich in iron turn red as the iron oxidizes with the water, rocks rich in copper turn a bluish green. Yet the rocks at Lake Titicaca contain no copper! It therefore stands to reason that there was once a good deal of copper brought into Cuzco via the Puma Punka port facility. Then of course we need to ask why would all this copper have been brought in if not to mix with the abundant source of tin that already existed there in order to make bronze? It would certainly seem more reasonable than taking the ore bearing tin to the source of the copper. The manufacture of bronze at the site is further confirmed from the presence of the bronze clamps.

When considering this shoreline of greenish rocks on Lake Titicaca high in the Andes and the possibilities of an ancient metallurgy facility founded by the Gods and the descendents of Cain, there are also some comments made in an enigmatic passage in the Bible to consider in which such distant and remote mines and even the forgotten descendents of Cain seem to be suggested. The passage occurs when Job is talking to Yahweh complaining about all of the trials and tribulations heaped upon him and Yahweh says to Job:

Surely, there is a source for silver

A place where gold is refined

Where copper is obtained from ores

And iron is smelted out of stones

To darkness He puts an end

The usefulness he researches

Of stones in depths and obscurity

He breaches the brook away from Habitation

Where the forgotten and strange men move about

There is a land from which the ingots come

Whose underground is upheavaled as with fire

A place where the blue-green stones are

That has the ores of gold

Even a vulture knows not the way thereto

And a falcons eye has not discerned it

There He set His hand to the granite

He overturned the mountains at their roots

He cut galleries through the rocks

And all that his precious eyes had seen

He damned up the sources of the streams

And that which is hidden He brought to light

These Biblical verses coupled with ancient Sumerian texts, significant geological evidence, local legends and the substantial genetic differences to be found in the races native to the Americas provides a strong case that the South American civilization was indeed established by the lost tribes of Israel and possibly even the son of Cain himself.

TOPOGRAPHICAL MAP OF THE RUINS OF THEBES

The ancient capital Thebes, present-day Luxor, lay on the east bank of the Nile facing the necropolis on the west. This map of one of Egypt's most extensive archeological sites marks the capital and its necropolis with their Greek names: Diospolis and Memnonia, respectively. All the monuments that were known in Prisse's day are on the map, often with the name of the pharaoh who had commissioned their construction. The map is from the original published by Sir J.G.Wilkinson in 1835.

CEILING PATTERNS (Memphis &> Thebes- 18th to 30th Dynasties)

The vulture, often painted on ceilings of temple gateways, may also appear in a tomb as did the vultures in the pattern above from the tomb of Bekenrenef. Below, the pattern is a combination of vultures from two gateways in Philae: from the reigns of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II above, and Nectanebo X below. The geese center are from the New Kingdom tomb of Nebamun and Imiseba.