Alien Space Gods Of Ancient Greece and Rome (20 page)

Legend asserts that Venus appeared to Hippomenes in his race against the fleet-footed Atalanta, invisible to all save the youth himself, she gave him three golden apples; he dropped them one by one, Atalanta tarried to pick them up, so Hippomenes won and married his lovely prize. Sanskrit texts, Chinese myths, Teutonic legends, all tell of cloaks of invisibility; we ridicule such tales as nonsense flouting our laws of Physics yet as we consider the accumulating evidence of Extraterrestrial interference in human affairs, like the Greeks of old we wonder.

The Gods often had a golden staff with wonderful powers similar to the vril rods possessed by the Adepts of Atlantis, which were said to radiate sidereal forces causing apparent miracles. The 'Talmud' declares with some improbability that Moses found in the Midianite
garden
of
Jethro
, his father-in-law, the very staff which was carried by Adam out of
Eden
and passed down to Abraham, Noah, Isaac and Joseph; with this rod Moses discomforted the magicians of Pharaoh and smote the rock in Horeb to obtain water for the thirsty Israelites. Circe, the enchantress, waved her magic wand and transformed the companions of Ulysses into hogs; Athene with her wand of gold withered wandering Ulysses to miserable old age, in this disguise the hero returned home to
Ithaca
, there the Goddess with another wave of her wand restored him to graceful youth to the astonishment of his son, Telemachus. Hermes usually carried a caduceus, a wand of power, which he had received from Apollo wreathed with serpents, symbol of occult force.

The Druids were said to have wielded rods controlling Dis Lanach (Lightning of the Gods) and Druis Lanach (Lightning of the Druids) with which they shrivelled their enemies. The bow of Apollo transmitted plagues; the Vedas mention Indra's magic bow, Odin wielded a wondrous spear. There is reason to believe that Initiates in these great civilisations of the past mastered a psychic science, possibly learned for their Space Teachers; the powerful staff seems to have radiated some electrostatic force still unknown to us. Remnants of this occult science persisted down the ages preserved by wizards and witches all over the world, who carried wands of power or wishing-sticks hoping to work transformations flouting our own Physics. It is fascinating to think that the golden staff of the Gods, the vril rod of the Spacemen, is perpetuated today in the royal sceptre of the Sovereign.

The Ancicnts supposed that the Gods actually did descend to Earth and lived among men. Plaulus, the celebrated comic poet of Rome, in about 211 BC, expressed general belief in his Prologue to 'Rudens'; Arcturus declares that at night he was a bright, shining star in the sky, by day he walked among mortals appointed as a spy by the great Jupiter to observe the deeds and characters of men. In another play 'Arnphitryo', Plautus brought the Olympians down to the streets of Grecian Thebes; Mercury dressed as a young slave explains that Jupiter likes to have inspectors patrolling this theatre of Earth.
St. Paul
enjoined the Hebrews, ‘Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained Angels unawares.' People often did not realise until later that they had met Celestials just as we ourselves, it is alleged, may speak to Spacemen living among us yet never know. The Gods sometimes revealed their identity before departing, as Poseidon left
Ajax
and Venus her son, Aeneas. Zeus and Hermes visited the aged Philemon and his wife, Baucis, then drowned all their evil neighbours in a flood, paralleled by the appearance of Jehovah and His Angels to old Abraham and Sarah before the 'Lord' destroyed the wicked Sodomites with fire from Heaven.

Orpheus was contemporary with Moses five centuries before Homer and thirteen centuries before Christ.
Greece
was greatly divided both as regards her religion and her political life. In
Thrace
the solar and lunar cults were disputing for supremacy, two religions and two social organisations absolutely opposed to each other. War to the death between priests of the Sun and priestesses of the Moon raged with bitterness. Orpheus, son of Apollo, appeared in
Thrace
, his melodious voice had strange charm, he created Mysteries and became the soul of his country, he is said to have descended to Hades vainly for Eurydice, traditions say he was torn to pieces by wild Bacchante women.

The belief of God materialising in the Middle Ages was preserved in Jubinal's
'Nouveau Recueil de Contes'
, Vol. 2, pp. 377-8, which tells how the Lord God having fallen sick descends from Heaven to Earth to get cured and comes to Arras; there minstrels and jesters receive commands to amuse Him, one manages so cleverly that the Lord bursts out laughing and finds Himself rid of all his ills.

Today some 'Contacts' claim that Extraterrestrials are actually landed by Spaceships to live in most countries; they seem indistinguishable from ordinary humanity and report developments to the Rulers of their own planets. Our egocentric minds find such claims incredible yet certain mysterious personages, notably Count St. Germain, seen on Earth from the 17th to the 20th century do suggest that Spacemen may have always lived among us. George Adamski writes of meeting Venusians who took him for a trip in a Spaceship; Truman Bethurum lyricises over the beautiful Aura Rhanes from Clarion, and Howard Menger claims to have met Saturnians.

Perhaps the 'Gods' really did descend to Ancient Greece?

'Achilles' wrath to
Greece
the direful spring of wars unnumbered, heavenly Goddess sing.'

These opening lines of the 'Iliad' telling of the Siege of Troy heralded the literature of Antiquity to inspire our civilisation of the West. Homer's wonderful epic poem, still unequalled in sublime events, glows with human, passionate men and women caught in fateful drama between the conflicts of mortal life and the judgment of the Gods. Such age-old stories of love and war transcend all the struggles of history; techniques may change but the basic emotions of men and women, nobility, heroism, suffering, sorrow, ambition, defiance of destiny, must ever illumine the human spirit.

These entrancing tales of Ancient Greece, the seduction of beauteous Helen, the anger of Achilles, the outraged majesty of Agamemnon, the wily Ulysses, effeminate Paris, brave Hector and his heroic wife, Andromache, grim battles, tremendous duels, funeral games, manly valor, womanly grief, overshadowed by the Gods; all led to the grandeur of Greek tragedy linking Antiquity with our troubled world today. The heroes and their courageous women experienced all the trials of humanity, fighting the enemy and each other, depicted in brilliant scenes and colourful imagery; their lofty ideals and moral precepts enshrined this poem like the Bible in the hearts of the Greeks inspiring the spirit of
Hellas
to civilize the world. The common people quoted the 'Iliad' like sacred texts almost with the force of laws; even philosophers like Plato bowed in humility to the divine vision of Homer. Poets and scholars down the centuries have plundered such treasure to create our European culture; today this epic of the Gods and men shines in startling significance suddenly illuming our Space Age.

Who Homer was and when he lived, no one knows. Even Herodotus who knew everything about everybody, supposed uncertainly that he probably lived about four hundred years earlier in the ninth century BC, Tradition accepts that this greatest of Greek poets was born not in Greece but in Ionia, Asia Minor, about 850 BC; in his old-age Homer was blind and poor. The Achaeans led by Agamemnon besieged
Troy
near the entrance to the
Dardanelles
towards the end of the Mycenaean Age about 1200 BC; for centuries wandering minstrels sang lays about the Gods and the Heroes, which Homer finally collated into one intellectual and artistic unity giving vivid descriptions of life in the Bronze Age.

Scholars have argued that 'Homer' was in fact a corporate name for perhaps six authors although academic opinion supports the poet, Matthew Arnold, who maintained that the 'Iliad' has the stamp of genius and must be the work of a great Master. The 'Odyssey' narrating the wonderful adventures of Ulysses returning home to Ithaca after the fall of Troy was thought not to be Homer's but an epic by more than one writer. The Rev. A. Q. Morton and the
Cambridge
professor, Dr. John Chadwick, a Greek scholar and joint discoverer of Linear B script have patiently conducted a computer analysis of the 250,000 words of Homer and claim to have proved that they must all have been written by one man.

Even more remarkable perhaps than the events of the 'Iliad' are the brilliant language, the sublimity of thought and superb characterisation expressed in picturesque similes and poetic invention, which make Virgil's 'Aeneid' seem an uninspired imitation. Today we boast writers of genius yet it is difficult to conjure any world-figure with the universality of Homer. Such a supreme poem cannot be the work of some ignorant barbarian but the quintessence of many hundreds probably thousands of years of literary tradition. The recent decipherment of Linear B script proves that Greek was written in Mycenaean times; tantalisingly few texts remain, it is likely that a vast literature was lost; the wonder of the 'Iliad' surely suggests that Homer was heir to a great and long-developed culture. The noble ideals and mellifluent language penned with such supreme genius nearly three thousand years ago prove in the 'Iliad* the vast, unfathomable antiquity of
Man.

Paris, son of Priam, King of Troy, asked to judge the fairest Goddess, slighted Hera and Athene, he gave the golden apple to Aphrodite, who promised him the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen, married to Menelaus, King of Sparta. The young Prince eloped with her to
Troy
. The Greeks launched a great expedition led by Agamemnon, brother of Menelaus, to assault
Troy
and capture Helen; they were joined by all the famous heroes of
Greece
including invincible Achilles. The Gods took sides in the conflict. Hera, Athene and Poseidon favoured the Greeks, Aphrodite and Ares the Trojans; Zeus and Apollo were neutral. The 'Iliad' begins in the ninth year of the Siege with a quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon over the hero's slave-girl Briscis. Achilles in anger sulks in his tent, the Gods in heaven take counsel and as the battle against
Troy
continues frequently intervene to protect their favourites. Finally to avenge the death of his friend, Patroclus, Achilles slays the Trojan Hector. The 'Iliad' ends with the funeral of Hector amid the lamentations of his wife, Andromache.

Soon afterwards
Troy
was taken following the strategem of the Wooden Horse, and the city sacked in flames, told in Virgil's '
Aeneid
', Book 2. Agamemnon sailed home to be murdered by his faithless wife, Clytcmncstra; Achilles and Paris were killed. Helen, the alleged cause of this long war, surprisingly enough returned to Menelaus and lived happily ever after in
Sparta
as though nothing had happened. But did she?

For many centuries scholars extolled the 'Iliad' as a brilliant invention, classic fiction unrivalled in fire and splendour, the source of literature, the summit of genius. The Greeks regarded the 'Iliad' as superbly revealing the Will of Zeus, just as the Jews venerated the Old Testament as enshrining the Will of Jehovah; they did not believe the story to be literally true. Educated people all over
Europe
for generations treasured this epic of Homer and based their cultured standards on the heroic example of those proud and noble men and women contending for
Troy
but even the most learned pedants mesmerised by such a marvellous poem laughed at suggestions that the events might have actually happened. People accepted Adam and Eve in the Garden-of
Eden
but
Paris
and Helen in the
palace
of
Troy
was plainly romance. The great nineteenth-century scholar, Professor Max Muller, declared, 'The Siege of Troy is a repetition of the daily siege of the East by the Solar Powers that are robbed of their brightest treasures in the West.' So much for the wisdom of experts!