Hesiod’s Theogony and Homer’s Iliad take on mysterious ramifications when one considers that the Bible characterized the place of imprisoned rebel angels using the same words as Hesiod and Homer employed to describe the place of Titan gods--Tartarus and the Bottomless Pit. Couple this with eerily similar discoveries on the actual moon Iapetus, and you have a growing number of academics pondering whether Iapetus is, as it appears to be, artificial. In Greek mythology Iapetus was the son of Uranus and Gaia, and father of Atlas, Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Menoetius. Because Atlas was a "father of mankind", Iapetus was understood in myth to be a progenitor of man, of Homo Sapiens, a creator god, winking at man as his light dimmed then brightened every 40 days. Italian astronomer and engineer Giovanni Domenico Cassini discovered Saturn’s moon Iapetus [eye-AP-i-tus] in 1672 using his small refracting telescope. Giovanni correctly deciphered the disappearing and reappearing act of Iapetus as due to the moon synchronously rotating with one hemisphere continuously facing Saturn. Iapetus is also divided by a great gulf formed by a giant walled threshold at its equator.
The giant wall of Iapetus was not even discovered until NASA’s Cassini spacecraft flew by and photographed the 1300 kilometers (808 miles) long and 20 kilometers (12 miles) high rim stretching over one third of the moon’s equator. No other moon in the solar system has been found with such a stunning feature... literally a 60,000 foot high wall.
Former NASA consultant Richard Hoagland also raises a number of significant questions about artificiality on Iapetus. Some of Hoagland’s comments question how science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke could have written about these mysteries before they were discovered, and why Clarke included a monolith stargate, through which creator beings had passed for millions of years. Recently, David Flynn made an interesting point about this in an email he sent me:
Back to the future In the second part of this series we discussed how scholars believe sky, sea, and physical earth contain extra-dimensional ("spiritual") entities described as locked away or contained behind barriers of some type--as in gates--with warnings to humans about seeking their communion. When contact has been desired, beings of startling similarity have materialized from sky, sea, or beneath the earth’s surface, as they did in the biblical narrative of 1 Samuel where they ascended from "out of the earth" and were interpreted as gods. Modern examples, which we mentioned, included Aleister Crowley’s "Amalantrah Working", which, according to Crowley, manifested a being strikingly similar to an alien grey, and the subsequent "Babalon Working" by Crowley’s students, Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard who sought to incarnate the spirit of Babylon. Ancient Greeks brought the gods through in similar ways Dionysus, the Thirteenth God of the Greeks, was the divine son of Zeus and of the mortal Semele. He was often depicted as the inventor of wine, abandon, and revelry, but this description seems inadequate in that it refers only to the basic elements of intoxication and enthusiasm which were used by the Bacchae (female participants of the Dionystic mysteries; also known as Maenads and Bacchantes) in their rituals to incarnate Dionysus. Followers of Dionysus believed he was the presence otherwise defined as the craving within man that longs to "let itself go" and to "give itself over" to baser earthly desires. What some might resist as the lustful wants of the carnal man, followers of Dionysus embraced as the incarnation of power that would, in the next life, liberate the souls of men from the constraints of the present world and from the customs which sought to define respectability through obedience to moral law. Until that day arrived, worshippers of Dionysus attempted to bring themselves into union with the god through a ritual casting off of the bonds of sexual denial and primal constraint by inviting him through to them via a state of ecstasy. According to myth, the uninhibited rituals of ecstasy (Greek for "outside the body") brought followers of Dionysus into a supernatural condition that enabled them to escape the temporary limitations of body and mind and to achieve a state of enthousiasmos, or, outside the body and "inside the god." In this sense Dionysus represented a dimensional dichotomy within Greek religion, as the primary maxim of the Greek culture was of moderation, or, "nothing too extreme." Yet Dionysus embodied the absolute extreme in that he sought to inflame the forbidden passions of human desire. Interestingly, and most students of psychology will understand, this gave Dionysus a stronger allure among Greeks who otherwise tried in so many ways to suppress and control the wild and secret lusts of the human heart. Dionysus resisted every such effort and, according to myth, visited a terrible madness upon those who denied him free expression. The Dionystic idea of mental disease resulting from suppression of inner desire, especially aberrant sexual desire, was later reflected in teachings of Sigmund Freud. Thus Freudianism might be called the grandchild of the cult of Dionysus. Conversely, the person who gave himself over to the will of Dionysus was rewarded with unlimited psychological and physical delights. Such mythical systems of mental punishments and physical rewards based on resistance and/or submission to Dionysus, were both symbolically and literally illustrated in the cult rituals of the Bacchae, as the Bacchae women (married and unmarried Greek women had the right to participate in the mysteries of Dionysus) migrated in frenzied hillside groups, dressed transvestite in fawn skins and accompanied by screaming, music, dancing, and licentious behavior.
In B.C. 410, Euripides wrote of the bloody rituals of the Bacchae in his famous play, The Bacchantes:
Euripedes went on to describe how Pentheus, King of Thebes, was torn apart and eaten alive by his own mother as, according to the play, she fell under the spell of Dionysus. The tearing apart and eating alive of a sacrificial victim refers to the earliest history of Dionysus. Ancient and violent cult rituals existing since the dawn of paganism stipulated that, by eating alive, or by drinking the blood, of an enemy or an animal, a person might capture the essence or "soul-strength" of the victim. The earliest Norwegian huntsmen believed this idea, and they drank the blood of bears in effort to capture their physical strength. East African Masai warriors also practiced omophagia, and they sought to gain the strength of the wild by drinking the blood of lions. Human victims were treated in this way by head-hunters of the East Indies in an effort to capture their essence. Today, omophagia is practiced by certain Voodoo sects as well as by cult Satanists [excerpt from Ahriman Gate where fictional character believes in, practices occult omophagia]. Theologians point out that eating human flesh and drinking human blood as an attempt to "become one" with the devoured is today, in many cases, a demonization of the Eucharist, or Holy Communion. Yet sparagmos and omophagia, as practiced by followers of Dionysus, was not an attempt of transubstantiation (as in the Catholic Eucharist), nor of consubstantiation (as in the Lutheran communion), nor of a symbolic ordinance (as in the fundamentalist denomination), all of which include the common goal of elevating the worshipper into sacramental communion with God. The goal of the Bacchae was the opposite: The frenzied dance; the thunderous song; the licentious behavior; the tearing apart and eating alive; all were efforts on the part of the Bacchae to capture the essence of the god (Dionysus) and to bring him through the portal into an incarnated rage within humans. The idea was more of possession by Dionysus then communion. Hebrews believed demonic possession actually occurred during the mystery rituals of Dionysus. They considered Hades (the Greek god of the underworld) to be equal with Hell and/or the Devil, and many ancient writers likewise saw no difference between Hades (in this sense the Devil) and Dionysus. Euripedes echoed this sentiment in the Hecuba, and referred to the followers of Dionysus as the "Bacchants of Hades." In Syracuse, Dionysus was known as Dionysus Morychos ("the dark one") a fiendish creature; roughly equivalent to the biblical Satan, who wore goatskins and dwelt in the region of the underworld. In the scholarly book, Dionysus Myth And Cult, Walter F. Otto connected Dionysus with the prince of the underworld. He wrote:
But the Hebrews considered the magic ceremonies of the Bacchae to be the best evidence of Dionysus’ "Satanic" connection. While most details are no longer available because Dionysus was a mystery god and his rituals were thus revealed to the initiated only, the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel described the "magic bands" (kesatot) of the Bacchae, which, as in the omophagia, were used to capture (magically imprison) the souls of men. We read,
In Acts 17:34 we read of a man who may have been similarly liberated from control of Dionysus:
To carry the name of Dionysus typically meant one of two things:
Such imagery of Pan, the serpents, the imprisoned souls, and the magic Kesatot and Kiste, have never been adequately explained by available authorities, and the interpretation of them as a method for producing zombies is thus subject to ongoing scrutiny. Yet since the prophet Ezekiel spoke of the efforts of the Bacchae to mystically imprison the souls of men through the magic bands of Dionysus; and since Pan was most beloved of Dionysus because of his pandemonium ("all the devils") which struck sudden panic in the hearts of men and beasts; and as the serpent was universally accepted by the Hebrews as a symbol of occult devotion; it can be easily surmised that the iconography of Dionysus represented tenacious effort on the part of the Bacchae to employ symbolic and imitative magic--based on deeply held ancient beliefs about orcas, pits and containers--to incarnate the god through dimensional openings. In our next entry we will look at elevated snakes and heavenly gateways through which some see the return of the gods. Back to Contents Next - Part Five
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In
Pergamum, perpetual sacrifices were offered to Zeus upon his
towering and famous 40-foot high altar—the same artifact that now
stands inside the Berlin Museum. Some scholars believe Antipas, the
first leader and martyr of the early Christian church in Pergamum,
was slain for resisting this altar worship of Zeus. Tradition holds
that Antipas was slowly roasted to death inside the statue of a
bull—the symbol and companion of Zeus—and some claim that the
passage in Revelation 2:13 is a reference to the cult worship of
Zeus at Pergamum. 
When,
for instance, a baby animal was too young and lacking in instinct to sense
the danger and run away from the revelers, it was picked up and suckled by
nursing mothers who participated in the hillside rituals. But when older
animals sought to escape the marauding Bacchae, they were considered
"resistant" to the will of Dionysus and were torn apart and eaten alive as
part of the fevered ritual. Human participants were sometimes subjected to
the same orgiastic cruelty, as the rule of the cult was "anything goes".
Later versions of the ritual (Bacchanalia) became so debauched that
eventually it was outlawed. Until then, any creature that dared to resist
such perversion of Dionysus was often subjected to sparagmos ("torn
apart’) and omophagia ("consumed raw").
The
kesatot was a magic arm band used in connection with an orca
or container called the kiste. Wherever the kiste is inscribed on
sarcophagi and on Bacchic scenes, it is depicted as a sacred vessel (a
soul prison?) with a snake peering through an open lid. How the magic
worked and in what way a soul was imprisoned is still a mystery. Pan, the
half-man/half-goat god (later relegated to devildom) is sometimes pictured
as kicking the lid open and letting the snakes (souls?) out. Such loose
snakes were then depicted as being enslaved around the limbs, and bound in
the hair, of the Bacchae women.