gobekli tepe - genesis of the gods (56 page)

Clearly, this is a religious concept, utilized today by Jewish and Christian nations around the world. It might seem also to have little, if anything, to do with the discovery 170 miles (274 kilometers) from Yeghrdut of Göbekli Tepe. Yet empowerment and otherworldly transformation through the use of specific types of wood, and the oils and resins extracted from them, is something that might well have had its origins in the early Neolithic world of southeast Anatolia.

The discovery at Göbekli Tepe of burnt almond wood and spent almond shells
¹²
among the fill covering its sanctuaries indicates that almond oil was almost certainly known here. Its use could easily have been the origin behind much later anointing traditions that existed among the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia and the Semitic peoples of the Levant (hence its association with biblical tradition). Interestingly, the rod of Aaron, Moses’s brother, is said to have “bloomed blossoms, which spreading the leaves, were formed into almonds” (Num. 17:8), while the seven-branched candle of the Jews known as the menorah represents both an almond tree and the Tree of Life. The two are synonymous,
¹³
even though elsewhere the Tree of Life, as we have seen, is said to be an olive tree.

LINKS TO YEGHRDUT

In view of all this, the fact that Thaddeus travels all the way from Judea via Edessa to Yeghrdut to deposit both a fragment of the Tree of Life and the bottle containing the essence of the perfumed oil that Yahweh had instructed Moses to make has incredible implications. It suggests that the disciple was taking them to somewhere already connected with traditions associated with the Oil of Mercy and Tree of Life. This he recognized through the presence there of an earthly representation of the Tree of Life in the form of Yeghrdut’s own evergreen tree, from beneath which flowed a source of the Euphrates, one of the four rivers of Paradise. It tells us also that Yeghrdut was considered the true foundation point of the Armenian Church, the Myron bottle and fragment of the Tree of Life being its symbols of divine authority over counter claims of supremacy from rival monastic foundations.

Of course, it might easily be argued that the Armenian Church made up the entire story of Thaddeus’s visit to Yeghrdut and his concealment there of the holy relics. Yet if this were the case, why connect the legend with Yeghrdut and not Surb Karapet, Taron’s showcase monastery on the opposite side of the plain of Mush? Why attribute this extraordinary tradition to Yeghrdut when Surb Karapet would have been a much better option, especially as it was founded around important relics of John the Baptist? Alternatively, why not connect the story to the Mother See of Holy Echmiadzin at Vagharshapat, Armenia’s great spiritual center located within sight of Mount Ararat, where eventually Yeghrdut’s sacred container was moved so that the holy Myron might continue to be manufactured there?

Everything points toward a long-held tradition suggesting that Yeghrdut’s evergreen tree was seen to mark the site of the terrestrial Tree of Life, planted by Seth either within or upon the skull of Adam, the first man. If correct, then close by was the Cave of Treasures, where Adam and the early patriarchs lived and were buried after the time of the Fall, and the book or books containing the secrets of Adam lay hidden within the Mountain of Victory, located in the land of Shir, or Seir.

In Gnostic tradition, Seth incarnates to save his “seed” on three occasions: first as Seth, the man; second as Shem, the son of Noah; and finally as Jesus Christ (his lives as Seth and Jesus both linking him with traditions concerning the Oil of Mercy). A. F. J. Klijn in his important work
Seth in Jewish, Christian and Gnostic Literature
(1977) says that the “race of Seth” may have been a historical phenomena “which existed until the flood or [they were] a group which was to be saved at the end of time.”
¹⁴
Yet as much as these ideas regarding the books, steles, or pillars of Seth are bound up in Jewish, Christian, and Gnostic millennialism, can they really be linked to the discoveries being made today at Göbekli Tepe?

THE CHILDREN OF SETH

An ancient Jewish religious work known as the book of Jubilees, which, like the book of Enoch, has been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, talks about Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, or Arpachshad, who found “a writing which the ancestors engraved on stone,” reminding us of the pillars or steles on which Seth wrote the secrets of Adam. These writings contained “the teaching of the Watchers by which they used to observe the omens of the sun and moon and stars within all the signs of heaven.”
¹⁵

It was this same starry wisdom that became the foundation of the beliefs of the Chaldeans; that is, the Sabaean star-worshippers of Harran, the ten-thousand-year-old city located on the plain beneath the gaze of Göbekli Tepe (see the Prologue for the full story). Arphaxad, Cainan’s father, is said to have been the progenitor of the Chaldeans of Harran.
¹⁶
His name, Arphaxad, is a conflation of the place-name “Ur of the Chaldees,”
¹⁷
Abraham’s birthplace in nearby Şanlıurfa, showing the firm connection between these early biblical characters and the
triangle d’or,
the birthplace of the Neolithic revolution. Completing the picture is the fact that Arphaxad’s father was Shem, the son of Noah, whose settlement at Simsar, or Sim Mountain, in the Eastern Taurus range overlooking the plain of Mush, is today occupied by the Yeghrdut monastery.

Interestingly, the Sabaeans, the pagan inhabitants of Harran, were said to have been “worshippers of fire called Magi” and claimed to be keepers of the mysterious “book of Seth,” because their founder was one “Sabius, a son of Seth.”
¹⁸
Moreover, they asserted that “we acknowledge the religion of Seth, Idris (Enoch) and Noah.”
¹⁹
So could the original book or books of Seth have been carved stone pillars, like those being uncovered today at nearby Göbekli Tepe? Were the twelve Magi that perpetually guarded the book or books of Seth an echo, however slight, of the rings of twelve anthropomorphic pillars erected at Göbekli Tepe some 11,500 years ago? Could these rings of stone reflect much later traditions regarding the “children of Seth” preserving the secrets of Adam in written form? If so, then who or what might the twin central pillars have come to represent in Jewish, Christian, and Gnostic tradition?

Too much speculation here would be foolish, although the fact that Gnostic writings emphasize that Cain and Abel, the twin sons of Adam, each had twin sisters is intriguing and reminds us of the belief that twins always grew inside the womb during pregnancy. Moreover, that Seth was born as Abel’s replacement sets up a twinlike relationship between Cain and Seth, reflected in the stories regarding our descendancy either from the “sons of Cain” or the “seed of Seth”; that is, the Sethites. The central pillars at Göbekli Tepe are perhaps allusions to this twin tradition, although whether they can be seen in terms of the twin offspring of Adam, the first man, who in Gnostic teachings was overshadowed by his own celestial twin, is another matter altogether.

So in addition to revealing humanity’s dual origins, angelic and mortal, do Göbekli Tepe’s T-shaped pillars reflect an understanding of Adam’s “astrological knowledge” which might have included information regarding the appearance of short-period comets? One brilliant-minded person once wrote that the secrets of Adam, handed down to Seth and Enoch, might have been “the knowledge of months, years and periods of comets that the remote generations had acquired—and the hope grew into faith that no such or similar destruction would come any more to decimate mankind.”
²⁰

That person was Russian-Jewish psychiatrist Immanuel Velikovsky (1895–1979), one of the greatest catastrophe theorists of the twentieth century. He realized that, in all likelihood, any such secret information
had
to relate not just to the conflagration and deluge itself but also to how to ensure that such catastrophes never again trouble our world.

Out there somewhere, in some lonely spot on Bingöl Mountain (in its likely role as Charaxio), or maybe in the vicinity of the Yeghrdut monastery (as a potential location of the Cave of Treasures), are perhaps the true secrets of Adam. Inscribed on standing pillars or on steles, similar to those seen today at Göbekli Tepe, they await discovery and interpretation. They might reveal how we, as mortal humans, can restore our bodies of light, lost at the time of the Fall, and be as angels ourselves; in other words, become as one with our incorporeal selves left behind during the process of incarnation on this earthly plane. They might also provide confirmation that the world was once brought to its knees by a comet impact and that only afterward did the genesis of civilization begin here in eastern Anatolia, the true location of the Garden of Eden.

A TRIP TO TURKEY

There was only one thing left for me to do, and this was to go to Turkey, where I would visit the ruins of the Yeghrdut monastery and get out to Bingöl Mountain somehow. I needed to find out what I could about these places and inquire locally into any folklore, myths, and legends that might help bring alive their geomythic reality. From there I would journey to Göbekli Tepe, where I hoped to interview Professor Klaus Schmidt.

I knew the region pretty well from my years of research, having visited Göbekli Tepe, Çayönü, Harran, and Karahan Tepe back in 2004. However, I saw one slight problem looming on the horizon like a dark cloud, and this was the fact that the mountains around Mush, including Bingöl Dağ and the Eastern Taurus Mountains beyond Yeghrdut, were currently the front line for the Kurdish uprising headed by the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers Party. They have been fighting for Kurdish independent rule and an autonomous Turkish Kurdistan for the past thirty-five years. Although most of the offensives against them by the Turkish army and secret police are today concentrated in the mountainous region close to the border with Iraqi Kurdistan, I was shocked to find that there had been recent military operations against the PKK in the area of Zengok (modern Yörecik), a village just 7 miles (11 kilometers) from the Yeghrdut monastery ruins, and even on a mountain named Kozma Dağ, immediately to the south of Dera Sor.

As the date of my departure for Turkey grew nearer, the matter did begin to worry me, yet there was very little I could do. Nothing, not even my better judgment, was going to stop me from getting out to Yeghrdut, which, however you look at it, was first introduced to my world though a simple, though quite profound dream.

39

THE RETURN TO EDEN

M
onday, September 10, 2012. After a night spent in a dismal hotel on the outskirts of Istanbul, I journeyed on to eastern Turkey. From the small airport at Mush, a taxi took me to the hotel, which lay on the edge of town. Close by was the road out to the villages of Kızılağaç and Suluca, near to which I would find Dera Sor, the ruins of the Yeghrdut monastery.

The next morning, over breakfast, I was able to appreciate exactly where I was for the first time. Through the hotel’s panoramic windows I could see the plain of Mush stretching away in every direction, beyond which was a seemingly impenetrable wall of mountains, reminding me of the seven mountains that encircle the Garden of Righteousness, according to the book of Enoch.
¹
Only toward the east did they seem to lower slightly, and here I thought I could make out the summit of Nemrut Dağ, the extinct volcano on the western shores of Lake Van.

THE TAXI RIDE

With breakfast over I waited in the lobby as the hotel owner made various phone calls. These resulted in a taxi driver arriving just after ten, although the guide-interpreter situation was not good, apparently. For two hours I drank sweet black tea and waited, until finally two guys turned up, both quite young, one of whom said he was usually paid the going rate as an interpreter for the European Union, which worried me slightly due to the potential expense. The other was his friend, who also spoke good English. Very quickly we were in the taxi on our way out to Suluca.

No one had heard of Dera Sor, or Yeghrdut, which seemed bizarre. I was telling them about a sacred site, an ancient ruin of substantial size with a fascinating history spanning nearly two thousand years, yet nobody knew a thing about it. If it had not been for the images I had brought along that showed Dera Sor on Google Earth, my new friends might not have believed it even existed.

As the taxi left the outskirts of town, I followed the route closely to ensure we were going in the right direction, but the driver knew Suluca, and very soon we were on a side road leading toward the foothills of the Eastern Taurus Mountains and a cluster of prefabricated buildings. We stopped to ask the way to Dera Sor, and an old man pointed immediately toward the heavily forested mountain slope behind him. So at least the ruins still existed and were known to the villagers of Suluca.

The elderly man climbed into the taxi and guided us to the start of an unmade track that marked the beginning of a very bumpy ride in a vehicle that was scarcely suitable for such a journey. As we climbed higher and higher, generally with the steep hillside to our left, we rose above the surrounding landscape, which stretched away to the north, and for the first time I got a glimpse of the Murad Şu, or Eastern Euphrates, winding its way across the plain of Mush.

PKK SITUATION

I did inquire about the situation with the PKK locally and was informed that the mountains were under rebel control, so much so that Turkish forces did not even venture into the area unless it was part of an official military offensive. I asked also about the chances of getting to Bingöl Mountain and was told that this area was currently an active front line and thus a no-go zone to visitors like me. This was a massive disappointment, but for the moment my principal goal was to get to Yeghrdut.